Israel Regardie Quotes

All that can be said with truth of this Absolute and Supreme Reality is that IT IS. This must suffice.

Within every man and woman is a force that directs and controls the entire course of life.

If you face something that you fear and recognize it for what is, you give it balance. You restore equilibrium.ʺ

Unbalanced power is the ebbing away of life. Unbalanced mercy is but weakness and the fading out of the will. Unbalanced severity is cruelty and the barrenness of mind.”7

The “Intelligence of Will” denotes that this is the path where each individual “created being” is “prepared” for the spiritual quest by being made aware of the higher and divine “will” of the creator. By spiritual preparation (prayer, meditation, visualization, and aspiration), the student becomes aware of the higher will and ultimately attains oneness with the Divine Self—fully immersed in the knowledge of “the existence of the Primordial Wisdom.

Magical work involves change and creation. And the subject of the magician’s work is the self. The magician is the focus of his or her own alchemical processes. By adapting one’s personal vision to reflect the macrocosm, we can change ourselves to better reflect those divine ideas. We may alter our body, appearance, the chemical composition of our blood, and the configuration of our nervous system. We may tame the feral beasts that dwell within our organic structure. By changing ourselves to resonate with the divine, we may transmute every portion of ourselves and become as purified vessels for the eternal spirit.

one gradually equilibrizes the whole of one’s mental structure and obtains a simple view of the incalculably vast complexity of the universe. For it is written: “Equilibrium is the basis of the work.” Serious students will need to make a careful study of the attributions detailed in this work and commit them to memory. When, by persistent application to his own mental apparatus, the numerical system with its correspondences is partly understood—as opposed to being merely memorized—the student will be amazed to find fresh light breaking in on him at every turn as he continues to refer every item in experience and consciousness to this standard.

The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic was Israel Regardie's last book, the final token of his True Will. Through this book he bequeathed to us the means to carry on the Great Work of the Golden Dawn which, in a nutshell, is Initiation.

The object of the theoretical (as separate from the practical) Qabalah, insofar as this thesis is concerned, is to enable the student to do three main things: First, to analyze every idea in terms of the Tree of Life. Second, to trace a necessary connection and relation between every and any class of ideas by referring them to this standard of comparison. Third, to translate any unknown system of symbolism into terms of any known one by its means.

One may even state for that true success in all Magic a thorough grounding in Yoga technique is an absolute essential.

The “Intelligence of Will” denotes that this is the path where each individual “created being” is “prepared” for the spiritual quest by being made aware of the higher and divine “will” of the creator. By spiritual preparation (prayer, meditation, visualization, and aspiration), the student becomes aware of the higher will and ultimately attains oneness with the Divine Self—fully immersed in the knowledge of “the existence of the Primordial Wisdom.” The Hebrew letter Yod means “hand,” and it refers to the hand of the divine, extended to assist us. Yod is the primary letter whose shape forms the basis for all other Hebrew letters.

Israel Regardie (November 17th, 1907 – March 10th, 1985) met with the Golden Dawn magician Aleister Crowley (October 12th, 1875 – December 1st, 1947) in Paris, France on October 12th, 1928 to become his personal secretary and student (he also became Crowley‘s Confidential Agent and a IX° member of Crowley’s O.T.O.). On October 28th, 1930, Regardie took the Oath of the Probationer in Crowley’s Order of the A.·. A.·. (Astron Argon). The Order of the A.·. A.·. was Crowley’s reformulated and advanced version of the system of the Golden Dawn. He even maintained the name of the Golden Dawn (Aurora Aurea) for the Outer Order.

According to the traditional philosophy of the Magicians, every man is a unique autonomous center of individual consciousness, energy, and will—a soul, in a word. Like a star shining and existing by its own inward light, it pursues its way in the star-spangled heavens, solitary, uninterfered with, except in so far as its heavenly course is gravitationally modified by the presence, near or far, of other stars. Since in the vast stellar spaces seldom are there conflicts between the celestial bodies, unless one happens to stray from its appointed course—a very rare occurrence—so in the realms of humankind there would lie no chaos, little conflict, and no mutual disturbance were each individual content to be grounded in the reality of his own high consciousness, aware of his ideal nature In the his true purpose in life, and eager to pursue the road which he must follow. Because men have strayed from the dynamic sources inhering within themselves and the universe, and have forsaken their true spiritual wills, because they have divorced themselves from the celestial essences, betrayed by a mess of more sickly pottage than ever Jacob did sell to Esau, the world in this day presents a people with so hopeless an aspect, and a humanity impressed with so despondent a mien. Ignorance of the course of the celestial orbit, and the significance of that orbit inscribed in the skies forever, is the root which is at the bottom of universal dissatisfaction, unhappiness, and race-nostalgia. And because of this the living soul cries for help to the dead, and the creature to a silent God. Of all this crying there comes usually—nothing. The lifting up of the hands in supplication brings no inkling of salvation. The frantic gnashing of teeth results but in mute despair and loss of vital energy. Redemption is only from within and is wrought out by the soul itself with suffering and through time, with much endeavor and strain of the spirit.

It is a well-worn saying but one nonetheless true and nonetheless worthy of repetition, inasmuch as it expresses peculiarly the situation now widely prevalent, that "where there is no vision the people perish. " Mankind as a whole, or more particularly the Western element, has lost in some incomprehensible way its spiritual vision. An heretical barrier has been erected separating itself from that current of life and vitality which even now, despite willful impediment and obstacle, pulses and vibrates passionately in the blood, pervading the whole of universal form and structure. The anomalies presented today are due to this rank absurdity. Mankind is slowly accomplishing its own suicide. A self-strangulation is being effected through a suppression of all individuality, in the spiritual sense, and all that made it human. It continues to withhold the spiritual atmosphere from its lungs, so to speak. And having severed itself from the eternal and never-ceasing sources of light and life and inspiration, it has deliberately blinded itself to the fact— than which no other could compare in importance—that there is a dynamic principle both within and without from which it has accomplished a divorce. The result is inner lethargy, chaos, and the disintegration of all that formerly was held to be ideal and sacred.

The whole idea of the wand of Aaron the High Priest, implies the shaft connecting the Sephiros on the Middle Pillar- a straight road from the Kingdom to the Crown.

In the last year of his life, Regardie came out rather strongly against the efficacy of Jungian practice, calling active imagination 'plain mental masturbation'—a characterization that plainly calls into question his previous statements as to active imagination’s identity with certain magical practices.

The essential point of the preparative nature of psychotherapy in relation to magical practice is again reinforced two years later, in The Eye in the Triangle, where Regardie clearly notes that 'there must be no confusion between the two,' emphasizing that while therapy makes an excellent precursor to esoteric practice, the two are not identical.

The search for, and quite often assumed discovery of some paternal-like God or a testy senior after the fashion of Jehovah, frequently has its origins in an adolescent rejection of the father.

Since, therefore by this definition, man is a spark of so lofty a consciousness, a child of the cosmic gods, there is no alternative to the tenor of his life than that to his spiritual progenitors he should aspire for union. It is to effect this union that Magic owes its origin and its raison d’être.

In the garden of pomegranates, I trace the Tree, Where spheres of light and darkness meet in me. From Malkuth’s soil, I rise in quest, Toward Kether’s crown, where the soul finds rest. Through the paths of the Serpent, I weave and climb, Crossing the Abyss, transcending time

At the age of twenty, I obtained my first copy of The Eye in the Triangle at an Occult Bookstore in Los Angeles called The Psychic Eye and, naturally, I read it with the greatest enthusiasm and interest, and I excitedly extracted the essentials from its pages. It subsequently left a deep impression upon my mind, and it has continued to influence my life in ways invaluable to my growth as both a man and a magician. Since that first reading, I have read the book a few more times, including recently, and every time it has illumined my understanding of Crowley, his magick and his mysticism in some manner or another useful to my life and magical progress. I have read most published and unpublished works by Israel Regardie, but this book is the one he wrote that moved me the most, finding the greatest meaning and place in the sanctuary of my soul. I feel that The Eye in the Triangle is essential reading material for anyone who is seriously interested in learning about the life, magick and mysticism of Aleister Crowley.

Some of the ancients have said that five is a symbol of the creative power, and in this concept of creativity and power we have the character of Gevurah…It expresses not so much a state of things as an act, a further passage and a transition of ideality into actuality.

But if any man is anxious to discover the eternal font wherefrom the flame of Godhead springs, should there be one who is desirous of awakening in himself a more noble and lofty consciousness of the spirit, and within whose heart burns the aspiration to dedicate his life to the service of mankind, let such a one turn eagerly to Magic.

Yet he is a man or a woman living for the moment in what appears to be a material world. He has to accept the world of appearances, the phenomenal world, heat burns, cold freezes, water is wet, concrete is hard and his body needs nutrition of every kind. Although each and everyone of these phenomena are divine phenomena - and in their constant change are nonetheless representative of the ceaseless activity of the unchanging, omnipotent body of God - yet he must learn to keep all these diverse phenomena in their own place.

Now, to demonstrate the grandeur of modern progress, we have a poor, miserable, disconnected populace with nothing but American films, politics, and empty vacations to satisfy the ever-present human need of living in harmony with the universal spiritual forces underlying nature and all phenomena.

Magic is the accumulated record of psychic and spiritual experience which we have inherited from the past, from former generations of mankind.

Analytical psychology and magic comprise in my estimation two halves or aspects of a single technical system.

Waite, from where I sit, had about as much insight into that [the personality link to the Minor cards] and other matters as my beautiful Siamese cats. If anything, I have a sneaking suspicion that his artist, Pamela Coleman [sic] Smith, also a member of The Golden Dawn, was a strange clairvoyant creature whose inner vision must have had a greater effect on Waite than Waite did on her. Furthermore, I have always suspected that the real shining light behind this and so many of the other Golden Dawn concepts emanated from the fertile brain and vision of MacGregor-Mathers about whom we know so very little. —Israel Regardie, in a letter to Muriel Hasbrouck, October 25,

You will be freed from the labour of worry.

that in us may be health and wealth and strength and divine pleasure according to the Law of Liberty.

Formal academic philosophy glorifies the intellect and thus makes research into what are, after all, incidentals- if we consider philosophy as the supreme means of investigating the problems of life and the universe. The Qabalah makes the primary claim that the intellect contains within itself a principle of self-contradiction, and that, therefore, it is an unreliable instrument to use in the great Quest for Truth. Numerous academic philosophers have likewise arrived at a similar conclusion. Some of the greater of these have despaired of ever devising a suitable method of transcending this limitation, and became sceptics. Others, seeing simply the solution, have seized upon intuition, or to be more accurate, the intellectual concept of intuition, leaving us, however, with no methods of checking and verifying that intuition, which in consequence is so liable to degenerate into mere guesswork, coloured by personal inclination and abetted by gross wish-phantasm.

Qabalists assert that Reason is a weapon inadequate to the Search for Reality since its nature is essentially self-contradictory. Hume and Kant both saw this; but the one became a sceptic in the widest sense of the term, and with the other, the conclusion hid itself behind a verbose transcendentalism.