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Amrita, The Elixir of Life
Liber CCCXLIII: AMRITA
Some Comments on the Elixir of Life
Extracted from the Magical Record of the Beast 666
for the year 1920 e.v.
By Aloster Kerval (Aleister Crowley)
7 June 1:55 a.m.
I feel inspired to jot down a few notes upon the Elixir of
Life.
The Elixir of Life by the Master Therion
The conditions of life are that the organism should be able to adjust itself
continually to its environment. Any individual, to do this for long, needs
either very great intelligence or very great luck. His chief physical asset
is elasticity, the power of compensation and recuperation. Our bodies are
some 75% pure water; we are a mere sponge, our strength arises from the great
mechanical ingenuity of our structure. But we are not `solid bodies' like
most inanimate beings. This water, by kidneys, lungs, and skin, constantly
cleanses us, and carries off most of our waste and noxious matter. Block one
of these conduits; death follows very rapidly. However, this drainage system
is not quite perfect; our pipes `fur' like a kettle. Disease and accident
apart, we die of arterio-sclerosis caused by the gradual deposits of insoluble
salts which harden the arteries and destroy the elasticity which enables them
to adjust themselves to new conditions. In fact, we `perish' like india
rubber. Old age is simply a solidification of the tissues, all of which
become hard, dry and brittle.
As in philosophy, change is life, stagnation death; we should not fear a brisk
metabolism. Why should the process which we call growth only a few years ago
become degeneration? For the same reason that a well-kept well-oiled machine
works more easily with age while a rusty one wrecks itself. Exercise helps us
to sluice our sewers, but we must flush them well with water to dissolve
mineral waste. We must avoid the ingestion of foods likely to leave insoluble
deposits.
But there is another cause of decay, cause also in part of this poisoning. Our
organs would repair themselves perfectly, if they were given sufficient rest.
In their haste they absorb the first material to hand, be it good or bad. Also,
we call on them to work before they are fully rested and so wear them
gradually out. Exercise is necessary to keep us clean; but our rest must be
perfect restoration also. We can give the muscles this benefit by Asana, and
also reduce to a minimum the work of heart and lungs. We can give our diges-
tions rest by eating only at noon and sunset, thus allowing them a clear
twelve hours of the twenty-four. Pranayama is the ideal exercise as it
promotes metabolism to the utmost with the minimum of fatigue, and can be
combined with Asana.
The Hindus, to whom we owe these practices, realize also (as I, above) that
the solidity of the food is an objection. They try to live on the Prana
(subtle energy) contained in it. For instance, they teach people to reject
their food before it has passed out of the stomach. In the West, we have
sought rather to discover concentrations of good, and pre-digested prepara-
tions with a minimum of substance liable to form waste insoluble or poisonous
products. We thus endeavor to diminish the work necessary to assimilation, as
well as to avoid dirt and disorder in our Temple. We even eliminate on
occasion the whole alimentary canal, and feed our patients by direct injection
into the blood, or by absorbtion of nutriment in some convenient mucous
membrane.
But mankind--in temperate climes--does not ask merely to exist; it demands
joy; and joy, physiologically speaking, consists in the expenditure of surplus
energy. Men living in the tropics need very little food since all we require
beyond the repair of tissues and supply of mechanical force, is the heat
required to keep our bodies at 37o Centigrade, as above the temperature of the
air. If that be already 27o or so, we need but half of that necessary if it
be 17o, or one third if it be 7o. Yet men in the tropics are not more
energetic than our Scots and Norsemen. Those like dolce far niente, repose,
as these take pleasure in activity. Even their phantasies attest to it, the
one inventing Nirvana as the other Valhalla.
We admire the frolics of the young horse turned out to grass; we cultivate
rough games, wild sports, and athletics. The Struldbruggs of Swift are
perhaps, to us, of all his creations the most horrible. The immortality we
ask is neither idleness nor stagnation. We want infinite Youth to squander,
just as we wish a bottomless purse not to hoard but to spend. We cannot rest,
just as the tropical peoples cannot work properly and efficiently. By our
theory they should live longer than we do; but the same high temperature that
favours them befriends their enemies, bacteria; and they lack our science of
health.
Now all the means that we take to prolong life, such as I have outlined above,
have so far failed to supply this superfluity of energy which we really
desire. People with diets and breathing exercises and the like are usually
walking sepulchres--some of them whited! The animal who thinks about his
health is already sick. Absence of noise and friction is the witness of free
mechanical function. Fear actually creates disease, for the mind begins to
explore and so interferes with, the unconscious rhythm of the body, as the
Edinburgh Review killed John Keats.
The man with the best chance of prolonged youth is he who eats and drinks
heartily, not much caring what; who does things vigorously in the open air,
with the minimum of common-sense precautions; and who keeps his mind at the
same time thoroughly active, free from worry, and his heart high. He has
come, with William Blake, to the Palace of Wisdom by the Road of Excess. He
is on friendly terms with Nature, and though he does not fear her he heeds
her, and does not provoke her. It is better says he, to wear out than to rust
out. True, but is there need to wear out? He tires himself improperly, and he
digs his grave with his teeth.
It is this surplus of good food, this codocil to our Will to Live, that makes
us, like the Englishman on the fine day, want to go out and kill something.
And so Death pays in some much Uric-Acid at his human Savings-Bank.
There are only two solutions possible, the invention of either a solvent more
perfect than water, or a super-Food. The first alternative is theoretically
none too probable. As to the second, if food were merely a chemical and
mechanical agent in us, the problem would be one of diet. But there is some
reason to believe that food contains a substance yet unanalyzed and unweighed
which is of the nature of pure Energy. Live foods, like oysters, stimulate
inexplicable; foods long stored lose their nutrive value, though the chemist
and physicist can detect no change. We need no psychical research but only
common sense and common experience to tell us that there is a difference
between a live thing and a dead one beyond the detective powers of the
laboratories of Mid-Victorian arrogance and dogmatism.
A copper wire changes not in colour, weight, or chemical composition when a
current of electricity passes through it; must we deny the existence of that
force whose nature is still perfectly mysterious despite our knowledge of its
properties, our measurements and our control of it? Why then deny a Life-
bearing force? Ostensibly because `there is no evidence of it'; but mainly
because the hypothesis happened to be packed in with the theological parcel of
rubbish. But we have nothing to span the gap between the two well-ascertained
groups of facts familiar to all; namely the facts of `matter' and the facts of
`mind'.
To our copper wire again! Electricity is matter of a subtle and tenuous sort,
in a peculiar state of motion; so is my hypothetical Life-bearing force. The
charged copper wire does not wear out; why should the human body do so, if
only we could feed it with pure Life?
Nature everywhere is prolific of live things, animal and vegetable. (Pray note
that these things, and only these avail to feed us.) What wealth of
`spriritual' force in and acorn! What history, its beginning veiled beyond all
search! What potentiality of future life, of growth, of multiplication,
beyond all conjecture! Like us, it has the power of Life; it can take live
things and dead things into its own substance, bidding them, for its own
purposes, to live again, transfigured! There's far more energy in the acorn
than in radium, at which fools gape so wide in wonder. Far more, and far
higher; radium only degenerates and dissipates; the acorn lives!
But all that energy is latent and potential; the acorn must be fed, like the
fire that it is. (For every growth is a chemical change, a kind of combustion,
element married to element with violence, with change of state, with heat,
light pleasure, pain, as its by-products. Growth crowns itself with bloom or
scent, with flame or colour, with wisdom conscious or unconscious.) The acorn
cannot hoard its wealth or experience, use its credit of possibility, except
by taking earth, air, and water into partnership, and invoking on the Venture,
the Benediction of the Sun. If we destroy the fragile walls of its huge
Library of Wisdom, we do not otherwise than the Saracen at Alexandria. The
ages draw black hoods over their mighty foreheads; they cover their
inscrutable eyes; they breathe no more upon us; their voice is Silence,
Mystery, Oblivion; and we are left orphan, exposed like Oedipus, cheating
croupier, Malice, has loaded with a curse. Where is the treasured wisdom of
that dead world? Where is the Sphinx that hid in our crushed acorn? It was;
it is not. Love itself no more intangible, more fugitive, more tragic, or more
heedless. Its Fate? The oracles sneer; the hieroglyphs are indecipherable;
the black lamb is found without a heart, and we must make our pilgrimage
perforce to the altar of the Unknown God. All we can say is: It is not. Nay,
but It was; and so, in some strange form, must be; else were all science and
all mathematics falsehood and mockery.
But, as long since we learned, first to distinguish rubbed from unrubbed
amber, next to measure, last control, though never yet to understand, the
nature of, the force that made that distinction; so we can tell the living
from the dead, can even measure life roughly, by taking heed of its external
shews and proofs; so we shall come to control it, perhaps--nay, surely!--to
create it.
We cannot yet direct the forces of the acorn, save within narrowest limits; we
can stop, thwart or foster, even distort its growth; but we cannot lure it so
far from its path as to grow Elms from it. But that is due to the definite
bent and scope of the particular structure of the physical basis of the
Life-force which must be one even as Electricity is one.
We shall be able to gather, if not to create, this Life; to transmute it into
other forms of force, as now we transmute heat to light. We shall be able to
store it, to harness it, to guide it; to absorb its energy ourselves directly,
without resorting to our present gross, inefficient, cumbrous and dangerous
means of abstracting it from ores (if I may say so) mechanically, blindly,
empirically, and with such toil and strife. Our journey--by such means of
transit--is necessary and hateful; our travelling companions are our diseases,
and the host to ease us at the end of the short, the weary day, is Death.
As we cannot drink at the source of Life, keep Youth perpetual as we can keep
Light--strange realization of the Rosicrucian's dream, or, it may be,
discovery of his secret!
But we have found the Super-food. We know a vehicle of which a few grains can
house enough pure light to fill a man not only with nourishment, but with
Energy almost superhuman, and parallel, Intelligence incredibly sun-bright for
four-and twenty hours. That substance is theoretically easy, but practically
hard to obtain. In England and America it would be impossible to procure any
quantity even of the raw material, at least in strength and purity; much less
to prepare it. We know how to charge this substance with the Life-force. The
process is at present laborious and expensive; great skill is required, and
much precaution for errors in preparation are hard to detect, and may result
in hideous mischance.
It is now six years since we gained our knowledge. They have been crowded
with experiment; we are arrived at the practical stage. We cannot understand
the true Nature of this force; we cannot measure it; we cannot create it, or
obtain it synthetically. But we can purify and intensify it; we can, within
wide limits, determine at will the quality and scope of its action; we can
postpone death, increase energy, or prolong youth; and we are justified in
saying that we possess the Elixir of Life
666
Note: The Elixir is only administered to selected individuals for good reason
shown. The normal course of treatment consists of two or three months'
preparation in the place prepared for the purpose in Sicily, followed by the
necessary period, usually one month, of the actual experiment which is made in
the greatest secrecy.
Here at 5:50 a.m. (legal time) on the
Day of Diana, being the 7th of June,
An XVI Sol in Gemini.
-o-
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