HUMAN FLESH
Hermetic Library Ministry of Information
“There shall be no property in human flesh. The sex-instinct is one of the most deeply-seated expressions of the will; and it must not be restricted, either negatively by preventing its free function, or positively by insisting on its false function.
What is more brutal than to stunt natural growth or to deform it?
What is more absurd than to seek to interpret this holy instinct as a gross animal act, to separate it from the spiritual enthusiasm without which it is so stupid as not even to be satisfactory to the persons concerned?”
— New Comment on Ch I 41
“We have heard a great deal in recent years of the freedom of women. They have gained what they thought they wanted and it has availed them nothing. They must adopt the slogan, ‘There shall be no property in human flesh.’ They must train men to master their sexual selfishness, while of course allowing them the same freedom as they themselves will enjoy.’
— Chapter 12 in Confessions
“With regard again to personal jealousy and ill-regulated passion, is it too much to say that nine tenths of the social misery not due to poverty arises from these hallucinations? The Book of the Law sweeps them out of existence. ‘There shall be no property in human flesh.’ Nobody has a right to say what anyone else shall or shall not do with his or her body. Establish this principle of absolute respect for others and the whole nightmare of sex is dispelled. Blackmail and prostitution automatically lose their raison d'être. The corrupting influence of hypocrisy breaks like a rotten reed. The sweating of ‘female labour cheapened by prostitution’ (as Bernard Shaw says) becomes impossible.”
— Chapter 49 in Confessions
“There shall be no Property in Human Flesh. Every Man and every Woman hath Right Indefeasable to give the Body for the Enjoyment of any other. The Exercise of this Right shall not be punished either by Law or by Custom; there shall be no Penalty either by Loss or Curtailment of Liberty, of Rights, of Wealth, or of Social Esteem; but this Freedom shall be respected of all, seeing that it is the Right of the Bodily Will. For this same Reason thou shalt cause full Restriction and Punishment of any who may seek to limit that Freedom for the sake of his own Profit, or Desire, or Ideal. Every Man and every Woman has full right either to grant or to deny the Body, as the Will speaketh within. This being made Custom, the Evils of Love, which are many, extending to the Disturbance not only of Body but of Mind, and that in obscure Paths, shall little by little disappear from the Face of His unspeakable Glory.”
— Αη De Libertate Corporis in Liber Aleph
“But from your questions I gather that what you want is advice on how to advise, how marriage as an institution is regarded by The Book of the Law. Very good.
It is not actually mentioned; but that it is contemplated is shown by the use of the word ‘wife’—AL I, 41. The text confirms my own thesis ‘There shall be no property in human flesh.’ So long as this is observed I see no reason why two or more people should not find it convenient to make a contract according to the laws of customs of their community.”
— Chapter LVI: Marriage—Property—War—Politics in Magick Without Tears
“Will not human flesh be bought and sold in the markets before the war and its attendant revolutions are over?”
— The Vindication of Nietzsche from The Giant’s Thumb
“But Thy servants — those self-seeking, priestly usurers — See! how they have blighted the hearts of men, and massed the treasure of Souls into the hands of the few, and piled up the coffers of the Church. How they racked from us the very emblems of joy, putting out our eyes with the hot irons of extortion, till every pound of human flesh was soaked as a thirsty sponge in a well of blood: and life became a hell, and men and women went singing, robed in the san-benito painted with flames and devils, to the stake; to seek in the fire the God of their forefathers — that stern Judge who with sworded hand was once wont to read out the names of the living from {171} the Book of Life, and exalt the humble on the golden throne of tyrants.”
— The Miser in Book I of The Temple of Solomon the King