“In a recent survey of people who had an opinion, four out of five report that they would prefer to do good over evil if given the choice.”
(Okay. I just made that up.)
In my experience, ninety-nine percent of people would choose to do good. And most of them would fail utterly. At least in the eyes of others if not in their own. The road to hell can indeed be paved with good intentions.
Have you ever met an evil person? I have come across very few. I have run across some who considered themselves to be evil but only a primarily good soul is able to recognize evil within itself.
For those of us in the western world, Hitler is most commonly held up as the face of evil incarnate. Not only did he ruin the name “Adolph” as far as anyone being able to name their kids that, he also made it quite impossible to sport that funny little mustache without incurring the opprobrium of others.
If you spend some time studying what Hitler said and wrote however, you will discover that he never considered himself to be evil at all. He was just honestly trying to help out. He was simply trying to make the world a better place. A better place for himself. And a better place for (a certain segment) of the German people. This over-achieving epitome of evil actually considered himself to be an agent for good.
In all probability, you consider yourself to be one also. But what if your good is someone else’s evil?
What is good anyway? What is evil? Are they opposites? Is one to be preferred over the other?
Well, first of all, those two terms are way too nebulous. They can mean different things to different people. Maybe we could replace them with the terms, “Order” and “Disorder”. Okay? So now let’s try to define those two words. Order might be described as the tendency to form patterns whereas disorder would be its opposite. Random chaos.
But are they really opposites? I mean, are they completely different from each other? Or are they degrees on a scale that have no meaning unless compared to another degree on the same scale? In other words, can there be light in the absence of dark?
To embrace this viewpoint is to accept the fact that evil is every bit as necessary as good in this world. It allows one to morally embark on a path of conscious evil or what is called the “Left-Hand Path” in occult circles. The person who pursues this course usually comes from a background of enforced piousness. Aleister Crowley for instance was raised within a fundamentalist Christian household. As was I.
If you would pursue the Great Work, I advise you to tread carefully! To bring on the Precipitation in a premature manner is to court not only madness but also a willing decent into absolute darkness, pain and despair.
At least, that’s my experience.