From wags to witches…
פ-416’s comment on the Typhonian OTO,
1984
INTRODUCTION
The second half of the twentieth
century brought a great mass and variety of material published in
English incorporating—if not referring to itself as—kabbalah, qabalah,
cabala, and so on. In rough terms, the sources for this kabbalah
material were
(α) Jewish,
consisting of studies (such as the works of Gershom Scholem, Joseph
Dan, Moshe Idel, Elliot R. Wolfson), texts in translation (e.g., Sefer
Yezirah, Sefer ha-Bahir, Zohar), and some practical instruction;
(β) Western
occult, primarily the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn1, Aleister
Crowley (OTO [Ordo Templi Orientis] and A.˙.A.˙. [Astrum Argentum])2,
and their descendents, consisting of practical instruction, some
studies, and a few kabbalistic texts rendered from Latin translations
(such as Westcott’s Sefer Yezirah from Pistorius’ Artis
cabalisticæ and Mathers’ sections of the Zohar from Knorr von
Rosenroth’s Kabbala denudata).
This paper is concerned with
developments following upon (β).
The present survey focuses on
(1) forms and uses
of the kabbalistic TREE OF LIFE
(2) notions of the
PROCESSION OF THE ÆONS
It will be shown that (1) and (2) are
not independent topics.
1.
Founded in 1887 by S. L. MacGregor Mathers,
William Wynn Westcott, and William R. Woodman, The Hermetic Order of
the Golden Dawn is “[t]he foremost esoteric, and later magical,
initiatic Order in the late 19th and early 20th centuries” (Dictionary
of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, vol. I, page 544), which had among
its members W. B. Yeats, Arthur Edward Waite, and Aleister Crowley.
For sources of kabbalah in English
(and French) available to the early Golden Dawn, see Part 2 of my Study
of Christian Cabala in English, at
http://www.digital-brilliance.com/kab/karr/ccinea.pdf, pages 22-30.
2.
The OTO is an “[o]ccultist and initiatic Order
… founded at the beginning of the 20th century … [whose] origins can be
traced to the activities of a group of German-speaking occultists”
(Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, vol. II, p. 898), which
had among its early members Rudolph Steiner and H. Spencer Lewis. Not
long after being inducted (around 1910-12), Crowley commandeered the
organization.
The A.˙.A.˙. is a magical order formed by Crowley upon his expulsion
from the Golden Dawn (1900); see James A. Eshelman, The Mystical
& Magical System of the A.˙.A.˙.: The Spiritual System of Aleister
Crowley & George Cecil Jones Step-by-Step, Los Angeles: College of
Thelema, 2000.
The TREE OF LIFE is familiar to
anyone who has picked up a popular book on kabbalah from either the
Jewish or Western occult tradition. Here is a fairly typical
description from the Western occult perspective:
The Tree of Life is a “western
mandala” and it can be used for mystical purposes of meditation. It can
also be used as a practical system of occult knowledge upon which to
base the formula of one’s Ritual Magick. These may be called the
subjective and objective ways by which to use the Tree of Life. The
Tree comprehends and synthesizes all forces, forms, and concepts of the
Universe, and it embraces all essential keys to attain true union with
the Divine. It is a most excellent model by which to view your entire
Universe. It allows you to see all the differences of your Universe
while at the same time allowing you to maintain conscious Unity.
The Tree of Life is the most profound
method for classifying the phenomena of the Universe, and it helps us
to develop an understanding about the various subtle relations between
those phenomena. Every member of the Thelemic Order of the Golden Dawn3
should commit the Tree to memory, and it should become the automatic
background of all his or her thinking. For the Qabalistic Tree of Life
plays a vital role in the initiation and training of the Golden Dawn
Magician. Every phenomenon, every idea and every experience must be
referred to the Tree according to the scientific principle of analogy.
By this means the Golden Dawn Magician cultivates an organized mind and
strengthens his magical knowledge, and he will inevitably be able to
unify that knowledge and transmute the Many into the One.
—David Cherubim,
“Concerning the Qabalah,” at
http://thelemicgoldendawn.tripod.com/qabalah.htm
It should be noted at the outset
that, in the Western occult streams surveyed here, the correlation of
tarot and kabbalah is assumed: The 22 tarot trumps correspond to the 22
letters of the Hebrew alphabet, which, in turn, correspond to the 22
paths of the TREE OF LIFE. This conjunction of tarot and kabbalah
filtered into the Golden Dawn by way of the French occult scene of the
mid- to late nineteenth century, which included such characters as
J.-B. Alliette (Etteilla), Eliphas Levi, Gerard Encausse (Papus), and
Paul Christian. Refer to Papus’ Tarot of the Bohemians, translated by
A. P. Morton, with a preface by A. E. Waite (London: Chapman and Hall,
1892; New York: Arcanum Books, 1958; New York: Samuel Weiser, 1971) and
Decker, Depaulis, and Dummett’s Wicked Pack of Cards (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1996). For more recent developments, see Decker and
Dummett’s History of the Occult Tarot: 1870-1970 (London: Duckworth,
2002).4
3. Not
all branches of the Golden Dawn are “Thelemic,” i.e., accepting of The
Book of the Law. Gerald Suster remarks:
“It is the failure of the G[olden]
D[awn] to accept The Book of the Law which has caused certain members
of the OTO to declare that the former is useless for the present
purposes of humanity. The GD has responded to this charge by acidly
pointing out that the Ceremonial Magick which is now taught in the
lower OTO degrees derives directly from the Golden Dawn—which is
perfectly true, except when the innovations of Crowley are adopted.
Certain OTO members try to answer this by arguing that without the Law
of Thelema and the energy which is termed ‘the 93 Current’, the GD is
no longer relevant to the present Aeon; and that the work of
introducing people to the glories of Magick, formerly performed by the
GD, is now done by the OTO.”
—The Legacy
of the Beast, page 217 [my brackets—DK]
4.
The introduction to A History of the
Occult Tarot discusses and reproduces several TREES OF LIFE in various
forms and arrangements. Decker and Dummett’s source for TREES from
“Jewish Cabala” is primarily Aryeh Kaplan’s Sefer Yetzirah (York Beach:
Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1990); see Kaplan’s Figures 1, 4, 5, and 6.
Of the TREES shown, the most
interesting in the present context is Decker and Dummett’s Figure 4: A
Tree according to Elijah ben Solomon (History…, page 15), which is the
same as Kaplan’s Figure 5: The 32 paths according to the GRA (Sefer
Yetzirah, page 30). [Elijah ben Solomon, or Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo
Zalman (1720-1797), the Gaon of Vilna, is referred to as the GRA, or
ha-GRA, an acronym for ha-Gaon Rabbi Eliyahu.] The general structure of
the GRA TREE matches THE PERFECTED TREE of 416 (1982), discussed below,
pages 26-32; the attributions of Hebrew letters to the paths are
identical except that the ר-resh and ת-tav paths are switched: On the
GRA TREE, ר-resh crosses א-aleph at the exact center, whereas on 416’s
PERFECTED TREE, ת-tav crosses א-aleph at the exact center. However, the
GRA TREE has Tiferet in the usual place of Da’at, Yesod in the usual
place of Tiferet, and Malkut in the usual place of Yesod, with no
pendant sefirah; thus, while the compact and horizontally symmetrical
form of the GRA TREE matches that of THE PERFECTED TREE, the
arrangement of the sefirot does not. See below, page 28.
In the order of the sefirot, the GRA
TREE matches the arrangement in O.A.I.’s Liber K (1982) and Liber
Andana (1983): the fourth, fifth, and sixth sefirot are shown as
Tiferet, Hesed and Gevurah respectively, rather than as the more usual
Hesed, Gevurah and Tiferet. See below, pages 20 and 22.
Decker and Dummett’s Figure 3: A Tree
according to Luria (History…, page 13) matches in all aspects the
“Lurianic TREE OF LIFE,” shown below on page 26. Decker and Dummett’s
Figure 6: A Lurianic Tree with Daath (History…, page 21), drawn from
Kabbala denudata, matches in all aspects the “Golden Dawn PERFECTED
TREE,” shown below on page 8.
The PROCESSION OF ÆONS is more
esoteric.5 Very generally, an æon is a period of about 2000
years. A broad description of the æons is offered on The HORUS /
MAAT LODGE FAQ page:
…rising out of the Nameless Aeon of
our prehistoric and shamanic past are four periods of historic
development. The age of Isis the Mother was of paganism and nature, and
that of Osiris the Father of monotheism and the rise of cities. The
corruption at the end of this period is now being overthrown by the new
energies of Horus the Son, our modern era of anarchy and chaos and
technological changes. This will in turn become the time of the
Daughter Maat, whose way of being will manifest in unique and
unexpected ways. Part of her magick involves the reversal of time, as
the forward flow of Horus meets the backwards current of Maat,
inspiring us with an understanding of the future Wordless Aeon, when we
all may become something far greater, something which exists in the
form of seeds within us in the eternal Now.
—
http://www.horusmaat.com/HMLFAQ.html
According to PROCESSION doctrine, the
current Æon of Horus began in 1904 with Aleister Crowley’s
reception of The Book of the Law6 from the præternatural
intelligence Aiwass (or Aiwaz).7 Dionysos Thriambos outlines
developments through the 20th century in “Aeons Beyond the Three”
(online at THE HERMETIC LIBRARY site):
[Aleister] Crowley sets forth in
various texts an outline of the three principal Aeons. In “The
Historical Conception on which The Book of the Law is Based” (part V of
“On the Reception of the Book of the Law” in his Confessions8, and
currently reprinted as an appendix to Magick), he presents the
following summary:
To recapitulate the historical basis
of The Book of the Law, let me say that evolution (within human memory)
shows three great steps: (1) the worship of the Mother, continually
breeding by
her own virtue; (2) the worship of
the Son, reproducing himself by virtue of voluntary death and
resurrection; (3) the worship of the Crowned and Conquering Child (the
Aeon announced by Aiwass and implied in His Word, Thelema [Greek for
will]). (Magick, p. 703)
By characterizing the second or
Osirian Aeon as that of “the Son,” this exposition differs somewhat
from the one approved by Crowley in W[illiam]. B[ernard]. Crow’s
“Manifesto of the E.G.C.”9
5.
Kabbalah and the æons can be interconnected via the
tetragrammaton, YHVH (יהוה): Y ≈ Osiris, H ≈ Isis, V ≈ Horus, and the
final H ≈ Maat; these also correspond to the kabbalistic parzufim
(FACES) aba, aima, zeir anpin, and nukva, and the sefirot hokhmah,
binah, tiferet and malkut, respectively. Note, however, that there is a
conflict in the order.
6.
For the text of The Book of the Law, go to
http://www.sacred-texts.com/oto/engccxx.htm. Most biographies of
Crowley contain accounts of the reception and import of The Book of the
Law, e.g., CHAPTER FOUR: “The Birth of the New Aeon (1904-05),” in
Lawrence Sutin’s Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley (New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000).
7. In
the present context, receiving prophesies or profound secrets from
otherworldly entities such as Aiwass is not at all strange. The
generation preceding Crowley’s saw Mme. Blavatsky’s “hidden mahatmas”
and Golden Dawn co-founder S. L. M. Mathers’ “secret chiefs.” W. W.
Westcott, another Golden Dawn co-founder, fabricated a
not-so-otherworldly “high continental adept” named Anna Sprengel,
called Soror Sapiens Dominabitur Astris (SDA), who was the supposed
Imperatrix of the German Rosicrucian Order DIE GOLDENE DAMMERUNG
(Golden Dawn) at the temple LICHT, LIEBE UND LEBEN. Westcott needed an
entity which possessed the pedigree and authority to approve the
establishment of the Golden Dawn. See R. A. Gilbert, The Golden Dawn:
Twilight of the Magicians. The Rise and Fall of a Magical Order.
Wellingborough: The Aquarian Press, 1983.
In
the ‘eighties—a period highlighted in the present paper—the
extra-terrestrial contact of moment was Lam. See Zossian 393 ˙.˙,
LAM-ED. Seattle (Bellingham): Axil Press, n.d. (ca 1981); this booklet
was sent out with every copy of Mezla: Official Organ of the Ordo
Templi Orientis. Volume I, NO. 13 (Cincinnati: n.d. [ca. 1981]), which
included “An Official Statement of the O.T.O. Concerning the Cult of
Lam, The Dikpala of the Way of Silence,” submitted by Kenneth Grant
using the name “Aossic Aiwass 718˙.˙ O.H.O. of O.T.O.” (O.H.O. = Outer
Head of the Order). Also included is a picture of Lam drawn by Crowley;
Crowley had been in contact with Lam in 1919.
Crowley’s drawing of LAM with the
title “The Way” is shown in “Liber LXXI: The Voice of the Silence by
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky with a commentary by Frater O.M. 7° =
4,” special supplement to The Equinox: The Official Organ of the
A.˙.A.˙. / The Official Organ of the O.T.O., THE REVIEW OF SCIENTIFIC
ILLUMINISM, Volume 3, Number 1 [called THE BLUE EQUINOX] (Detroit: The
Universal Publishing Company, 1919).
8.
Confessions is Crowley’s “autohagiography.” For a complete list of
Crowley’s works, go to THE HERMETIC LIBRARY: www.hermetic.com/
> “The Libri of Aleister Crowley”: www.hermetic.com/crowley/.
9.
Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica = Gnostic Catholic Church, the
ecclesiastical branch of the OTO, Ordo Templi Orientis. Refer to U.S.
GRAND LODGE, ORDO TEMPLI ORIENTIS site: “Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica”
at http://oto-usa.org/egc.html.
The world has entered (March, 1904)
the New Aeon, the Age of the Crowned and Conquering Child. The
predominance of the Mother (Aeon of Isis) and of the Father (Aeon of
Osiris) are of the past. Many people have not completely fulfilled
those formulae, and they are still valid in their limited spheres; but
the Masters have decided that the time has come for the administration
of the Sacraments of the Aeon of Horus to those capable of
comprehension.
The familiar Egyptian form of the
goddess of Justice who is the characterization of the fourth Aeon is
Maat. And it was the Aeon of Maat or “MA-ION” that Crowley’s student
Frater Achad (Charles Stansfield Jones) later came to advocate as
prematurely succeeding that of Horus. Kenneth Grant and his school
later confused the issue further by suggesting that Maat was the
“daughter” complement of Horus the son, and promoting the idea of a
“double current” in which those two godforms were coeval. Probably the
most interesting and consequential outgrowth of this premise has been
the Maatian magick of Nema, with its own inspired scripture Liber
Pennae Penumbra and its independent body of magical technique.
Kenneth Grant also proposed three
prehistorical Aeons, of the Void, of Chaos, and of the Earth, which
would have preceded that of Isis. Nema, writing in The Cincinnati
Journal of Ceremonial Magick (No. VII)10, telescoped these three into
the “Nameless Aeon,” characterized by the Egyptian god Bes. In
addition, she added a “Wordless Aeon” to succeed the double Aeon of
Horus and Maat, so that Harpocrates as silence would complete the
cycle. Thus, the full sequence proposed by Nema is Bes – Isis – Osiris
– Horus – Maat – Harpocrates.
—www.hermetic.com/dionysos/beyond3.htm (Thriambos’ parentheses)
[my brackets—DK]
Here, then, is Kenneth Grant’s
summary of the PROCESSION OF THE ÆONS:
According to obscure occult
traditions, the present planetary life-wave comprises seven cycles, or
aeons, numbered for the sake of convenience, Nought to Six. The current
aeon is the Fifth.
Aeons 0, 1, and 2 are pre-ëval
and nameless; that is to say, their names are unknown to history. They
covered immense periods of time, their cycles not being limited to a
two-thousand year period, which is the equivalent of a single change of
equinoctial colure.
The pre-ëval aeons were
dominated by the Elder Gods, of which The Great One of the Night of
Time was supreme. These elemental powers were divided into two major
streams: the chthonian Old Ones, and the Lords of the Abyss, sometimes
known as the Deep Ones.
To the first Aeon, the void was
ascribed; nothingness in the sense of the Great Abyss, sometimes called
the Primal Sleep, the symbol of which is the bindu (seed, dot or
point). To the second Aeon was attributed Chaos, of which the phallus
is the emblem. To the third Aeon, Earth or Chaos Stabilized; its
emblem, the kteis [the “female organ of generation”].
These three pre-ëval aeons are
represented by the Point (Tao), the Line (Yang), and the Circle, the
Cleft or Broken Line (Yin). In terms of the ancient Chinese trigrams:
This is equivalent to the initial
cosmic vibration, represented by the letter “A”.
Following these three aeons came: the
Aeon of Isis (the Mother), represented by the element Water and
typified by three angles and the planetary power, Saturn; the Aeon of
Osiris, symbolized by the four points of the Cross, or Square of the
Father, whose planetary emblem is Jupiter; the Aeon of Horus (the Child
of Isis and Osiris), whose vehicle is the fire or blood of Mars, the
Five-rayed Star of Will.
The fifth Aeon will be followed by
that of Maat (the Daughter), and the flowering of full solar
consciousness imaged by the Six-rayed Star. …
Aeons three to six comprise the
phases of evolution of the life-wave on this planet through the
formulae of (a) Parthenogenesis (Isis); (b) Self-Sacrifice (Osiris);
(c) Analysis, or Disintegration (Horus); (d) Synthesis, or
Re-integration (Maat).
—Aleister Crowley
and the Hidden God, pages 56-7 [my brackets—DK]
10.
“Panaeonic Magick,” in The Cincinnati Journal of Magick, ISSUE VII.
Cincinnati: Black Moon Publishing, 1989.
The Æon of Maat, or at least
the Maat current, has been assumed by many recent and present-day
followers of THELEMA (≈ Crowley/OTO) in two ways:
• via the notion of
the “Double Current,” which allows for the currents and manifestations
of both Horus and Maat
• via the more
radical notion that the Maat current—if not the Æon of
Maat—should be realized now, bringing its characteristic truth and
justice to replace (overthrow?) the current age of the acquisitive
“Crowned and Conquering Child.”
There have been (and are)
non-affiliated advocates of Maat as well.
the complete paper can be found at:
http://www.digital-brilliance.com/kab/karr/maat/index.htm
