CYCLE THIRTY-THREE

1. The spiritual self, or mind, has no knowledge of itself but only consciousness of itself, through aware feeling, as a spiritual entity.

2. Knowledge, on the contrary, is what applies to the ego, and, in sensibility, knowledge is always intellectual.

3. In sensuality, on the other hand, knowledge is always carnal, since associated, through outer ego, with the phallus - and hence the flesh - as opposed to the brain.

4. Knowledge can of course be negative or positive, depending on whether achieved in connection with the anti-ego or the ego, in both external and internal, sensual and sensible contexts.

5. So-called spiritual knowledge is really knowledge of the spirit or of spiritual issues from the standpoint of the superego, as and when intellectuality takes a specifically philosophical turn in connection with metaphysical thought.

6. Such knowledge of the spirit is therefore an extreme manifestation of egocentricity, and is effectively a gnostical shortfall from that which, having direct reference to spiritual self-consciousness, is mystical.

7. Hence the gnostical stands to the mystical as vegetation to air, whether in sensibility, as above, or in sensuality, where the 'gnosis', or knowledge, is likely to be rather more carnal than intellectual, in keeping with its phallic nature.

8. Unlike the vegetative Gnostic, the airy Mystic does not have knowledge of self (ego) but consciousness (aware feeling) of self (mind), whether subconsciously in relation to metaphysical sensuality or superconsciously in relation to metaphysical sensibility - the former having associations with the ears and the latter with the lungs.

9. Whereas knowledge of self is carnal and/or intellectual, depending on the mode of egocentricity, consciousness of self is aural and/or spiritual, depending on the mode of 'psychocentricity'.

10. The Gnostic never really transcends his masculinity, whereas the Mystic will be either submasculine in sensuality or supermasculine in sensibility, either of which is comparatively divine.

11. Mysticism takes over from gnosticism at that point where metaphysical being ensues upon physical taking, as and when one ceases to cogitate and/or pray, but simply meditates instead.

12. It is difficult to conceive of antitheses to mysticism and gnosticism in view of the extent to which each term has been twisted away, in Western civilization, from its rightful ascription, but such antitheses are more likely, being objective, to have either magic(al) or tragic(al) associations, in keeping with their female (un)nature.

13. Certainly I would not hesitate to contend that, on the basis of their respective objective dispositions, there is something magic about the Devil and, by contrast, tragic about woman, the latter corresponding to a quantitative 'fall' from an apparent precondition, as in the case of water from fire, or chemistry from metachemistry.

14. Magic has associations not with the spirit but with the soul, with an emotional response to metachemical stimuli, and we may believe that tragedy ensues upon magic when instinctual responses to chemical stimuli bring the id into conflict with the soul and oblige it to enact the goodness of punishment at the soul's (evil) expense.

15. Thus the tragedy for woman is that she is fated to come into punishing conflict with the magic of the soul, once she abandons the 'garden' of metachemical innocence for the chemical responsibilities of the World.

16. Such responsibilities, being maternal, ensure that magic loses its metachemical innocence and becomes associated, through instinctual goodness, with all that is emotionally unacceptable from a chemical, and hence feminine, angle.

17. The tragedy for woman is that once she has lost her emotional innocence on the Cupidian axis of space-time metachemistry, she can never get it back, but is fated to punish both in herself and especially in others (offspring) that which runs contrary to the responsible will of instinctual goodness.

18. Deprived of magic, life becomes tragic for those women who have 'fallen' from the diabolic heights of metachemical innocence to the feminine depths of chemical responsibility.

19. The skirt has replaced the dress, and never again can the dress be worn with the same metachemical insouciance as was formerly the case, before the darkness of instinctual responsibility ensued upon the brightness of emotional freedom.

20. Woman is fated to plumb the chemical depths, for she cannot fulfil her instinctual needs by remaining metachemically aloof from the World, like a magician. Henceforward that which was innocent becomes vulnerable, through guilt, to the stigma of criminal irrelevance and the onerous responsibility of punishment.

21. If to turn against that which is higher and which one had emotional experience of is tragic, then to hype up, for personal reasons, what is lower ... must be comic, and such, it would seem, is the case where the generality of relationships between women and men are concerned, since the latter only enter into relationships with the former out of folly and a corresponding lack of wisdom, and women instinctively know this!

22. One might say that it is the phallic folly of the average man's sensual relationship to the opposite sex which affords women comic relief from their tragic renunciation of soul.

23. A man does not find himself anywhere near as comic as he appears to his woman at those times when the enormity of his phallic folly comes into conflict with the tragedy of her renunciation of soul.

24. Sin is accordingly comic, but not from the sinner's standpoint, nor from the standpoint of grace, but only from the point of view of that woman whose tragic lot it is to punish what she experientially knows, in her heart of hearts, to be greater than the World, and who is afforded comic relief by the man's renunciation or, more likely, denunciation of wisdom.