Chapter I
(Chapter 1)
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Ko Yuen Translation |
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The Nature of the Tao |
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| 1. | The Tao-Path is not the All-Tao. The Name is not the Thing named1. |
| 2. | Unmanifested, it is the Secret Father of Heaven  and
Earth  ; manifested,
it is their Mother2. |
| 3. | To understand this Mystery, one must be fulfilling one's will3, and if one is not thus free, one will but gain a smattering of it. |
| 4. | The Tao is one, and the Teh but a phase thereof. The abyss of this Mystery is the Portal of Serpent-Wonder4. |
S. Mitchell Translation |
| The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnamable is the eternally real. Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. Darkness within darkness. |
James Legge Translation |
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| 1. | The Tao that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Tao. The name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name. |
| 2. | (Conceived of as) having no name, it is the Originator of heaven and earth; (conceived of as) having a name, it is the Mother of all things. |
| 3. | Always without desire we must be found, If its deep mystery we would sound; But if desire always within us be, Its outer fringe is all that we shall see. |
| 4. | Under these two aspects, it is really the same; but as development takes place, it receives the different names. Together we call them the Mystery. Where the Mystery is the deepest is the gate of all that is subtle and wonderful. |
GNL not Lao Interpolation |
The Way |
| The Way that can be experienced is not true; The world that can be constructed is not real. The Way manifests all that happens and may happen; The world represents all that exists and may exist. To experience without abstraction is to sense the world; Beyond the gate of experience flows the Way, |
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Ko Yuen Footnotes |
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| 1. | Tao parallels Pleroma, Shiva, Jod, etc. Teh parallels
Logos, Sakti, He, etc. But the conception of Laotze unites all these
at their highest. The best parallel is given in Liber CCXX, Caps.
I. and II., where Hadit is Tao and Nuit, Teh -- (Yet these are in certain
aspects interchanged!) The point of this paragraph is to make discrimination
or definition, not to assert the superiority of either conception.
The illusion of any such preference would depend on the Grade of Initiation
of a Student. A Magus 9' = 2' of A
A would doubtless esteem
the Path of "Becoming" as his Absolute, for the law of his Grade
is Change (see Liber I. vel Magi.) But -- who knows? -- an Ipsissimus
10' = 1' might find a conception to transcend even this. For instance,
one might interpret this first paragraph as saying that Becoming is not
Tao, but that Tao is a Being whose nature is Becoming. Matter and
Motion cannot exist separately. The reader should regard every verse
of this Book as a text worth of the most intense and prolonged meditation.
He will not understand the Book thoroughly until he has wrought his mind
into its proper shape in the great Forge of Samadhi.
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| 2. | This doctrine is the initiated teaching to hint at
which priests invented legends of parthenogenesis.
W.E. Heidrick note: In the original each of the eleven places is enclosed in a circle for one of the ten Sephiroth and Da'at. This chart presents problems. Crowley did not properly draw the trigrams, but mostly with unbroken lines. He also appears to have written in the wrong names for some of the Trigrams. These difficulties have been corrected by reference to the diagram Crowley made on the blank page preceding the table of content in his copy of the Legge Yi King. See OTO NEWSLETTER, V. I, No. 3, p. 15. Nexist note: The following Chart is the corrected version.
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| 3. | In a moral state, therefore, without desire, frictionless. |
| 4. | Cf. "Berashith" for the identity of the phases of "O Degree" and "something." Serpent-Wonder refers to the Magical Force called Kundalini. |
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