eventually, because it antagonizes the very power it is seeking to use.
This inverted use of the Will is the basis of "Black Magic," a term some
readers will perhaps smile at, but which is practised at the present day
to a much greater extent than many of us have any idea of--not always,
indeed, with a full consciousness of its nature, but in many ways which
are the first steps on the Left-hand Path. Its mark is the determination
to act by Self-will, rather than using our will to co-operate with that
continuous forward movement of the Great Whole, which is the Will of
God. This inverted will entirely misses the point regarding the part we
are formed to play in the Creative Order, and so we miss the development
of our own individuality, and retrograde instead of going forward.

But if we work _with_ the Law instead of against it, we shall find that
our word, that is to say our conception, will become more and more the
Word of Power, because it specializes the general Law in some particular
direction. The Law will serve us exactly to the extent to which we first
observe the Law. It is the same in everything. If the electrician tries
to go counter to the fundamental principle, that the electric current
always flows from a higher to a lower potential, he will be able to do
nothing with it; but let him observe this fundamental law and there is
nothing that electricity will not do for him within the field of its own
nature. In this sense, then, of specializing the general Law in a
particular direction, we may lay down the maxim that "The Law flows from
the Word, and not _vice versa_."

When we use our Word in this way, not as expressing a self-will that
seeks to crush all that does not submit to it, but as a portion, however
small, of the Universal Cause, and therefore with the desire of acting
in harmony with that Cause, then our word becomes a constructive,
instead of a destructive power. Its influence may be very small at