AN
UNAUTHORIZED COMMENT
ON THE BOOK OF THE LAW:
THE ALKHEMION WORKING
PART ONE
By Shade Oroboros 817
N U I T H * H A D
N U I T H A D I T
N U * H A D I T H
0. The Genesis of Thelema
00. The Gods of AL & Khem
000. The Previous Commentators
I. AL-MANDAL: the Infinite Circle of
Nuit
II. AL-QUTUB: the Center-Point of Hadit
III. SAIF AL-HAQ: the Sword of Truth:
Ra-Hoor-Khuit
A. A Century After AL
B. Some Notes on Liber AL
C. Origins Of Abrahadabra
0. The Genesis of Thelema
"The Aeon is a Child at Play...”
- Heraclitus, around 500 BC
In March of 1904 the infamous English magician Aleister
Crowley was visiting Egypt on honeymoon with his wife Rose. Fresh from
the raging internecine battles surrounding the collapse of the Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn, and by then largely defining his spiritual
quest in terms of Buddhism, Crowley was somewhat disillusioned with
magick at this time. Nevertheless, we are told that he performed a
ritual as a demonstration for his new bride, and was very surprised
when she entered a state of trance and began to insist
that "They are waiting for you!" and saying “It is all about the Child,
all Osiris” and “He who waits is Horus.”
Taking her to the Boulak
Museum in Cairo, he tested Rose by asking her to show him an image of
Horus, and was quite amused when she passed by several. Then she
pointed to a glass case in the distance and insisted that this was what
he sought, and it turned out to be a small funerary stele (XXVIth
Dynasty) for a priest of ancient Thebes named Ankh-af-na-Khonsu. This
point of contact depicted a scene of the enthroned hawk-headed sun-god
Horus with the priest making offerings before him; above them are a
falcon-winged solar disk and the surrounding image of Nuit, goddess of
the heavens, framing the whole composition. Very significantly for
Crowley, this artifact was listed in the museum catalog as Stele #666;
it later became known as the Stele of Revealing. This is the Foundation
Myth of Thelema (which is the greek word for Will, paired with Agape or
Love, both of whose numerology totals 93; hence his system is known as
the 93 Current).
Rose continued to insist that forces from beyond were seeking to
contact him, and directed him to perform a ritual in a room with many
mirrors and employing some correspondences alien to his Golden Dawn
training, which he summarized as:
“To be performed before a window open
to the E. or N. without incense. The room to be filled with jewels, but
only diamonds to be worn. A sword, unconsecrated, 44 pearl beads to be
told. Stand. Bright daylight at 12.30 noon. Lock doors. White robes.
Bare feet. Be very loud. Saturday. Use the Sign of Apophis and Typhon.”
So, he acquired a translation of the text from the stele, rendered it
into verse, devised what he called 'The Ritual of Invocation According
to the Divine Vision of W. the Seer', and performed it upon March 20th,
now known as the Equinox of the Gods (and documented in his book of the
same name, a full account of the experience, quoted above). The result
changed his life, the course of modern occult philosophy, and perhaps
even future history (time will tell!).
At the hours of noon on April 8th, 9th, and 10th in the year 1904,
Aleister Crowley received the transmission known as Liber AL vel Legis: The Book of
the Law in the Victorious City of Cairo in Egypt. While at first
he claims to have rejected it, this philosophically revolutionary
vision of a New Aeon of Thelema was ultimately to radically transform
his understanding of the universe, his practice of the Great Work, and
his legacy to the innocently unsuspecting world.
I suppose I should note more recent claims that these events actually
began upon April 1st, and that he may have obscured this fact due to
concerns of it being seen as an April Fool’s joke, and/or possibly
Easter… and also a theory that he was perhaps subliminally influenced
by a play involving Horus (The
Beloved of Hathor & Shrine of the Golden Hawk) written by
fellow member Florence Farr of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn,
which was also permeated with Egyptian motifs. There are also many
other foreshadowing’s of Crowley’s Abbey of Thelema earlier in history,
in the writings of Francois Rabelais, the orgies of Sir Francis
Dashwood’s Monks of Medmenham (better known as the Hellfire Club), and
even St. Augustine’s maxim “Love and do what you will”. Magical
currents, like archetypes, may run underground for centuries before
reappearing in full flood. Omens happen.
Liber AL vel Legis s.f. CCXX,
as it came to be called, is very obviously quite different in tone and
style to any of Crowley's other works at that time. A prose poem in
three chapters totaling 220 verses, it is primarily expressed in terms
of an ancient Egyptian cosmology, yet its rather surreal narrative
stream of consciousness might also contain encoded echoes of visionary
elements reminiscent of many other inspired influences: arcane,
hermetic, alchemical, gnostic, astrological and qabalistic lore; wisdom
of Taoism and Tantra, and the works of Blake, Milton, and Nietzsche;
the Angelic Enochian workings of Dee & Kelly in Elizabethan times;
the Tarot and the Golden Dawn; modern physics and psychology; and
clearly the King James Bible, especially Ezekiel and the Book of
Revelation, and the Koran.
These are the secret archetypes of our collective memory, our cultural
heritage. As John Lennon once said, “A
dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is
reality.” A good idea whose time has come can change the world.
The word 'Liber', by the way, means 'book'.
Liber AL somehow
merges cosmology, philosophy, politics, ethics, prophecy, art,
sensuality and magick into a coherent whole, expressed through the
mysterious personas of three pagan cosmic god-forms. Savagely
beautiful, erotic and cryptic, subtle and violent, with gorgeously
bizarre jewels of imagery, strange numerological riddles and
existential, spiritual, immoral and apolitical musings, the text
somehow forms a unique and coherent whole that speaks to the hearts and
souls of many of us. While much (but not all) of it may be congruent
with the rather unusual personality of Crowley, the voice is clearly
not truly his. Indeed, he always insisted that Liber AL was not just
something that erupted from his own deep mind, but verifiable proof of
contact with a disembodied consciousness from outside. Perhaps all Holy
Books are somewhat influenced by the minds of their Prophets, as a ray
of light is tinted with color as it passes through a jewel; but the
lives of such seers and shamans often seem to have somehow prepared
them to receive a vision and to explain it as well: Moses wandered in
the desert, some say Jesus spent his missing years in India, Mohammed
meditated in a cave and the Buddha under a tree, and Crowley entered
into the Vault of the Adepts. His quest through magick and yoga clearly
made him something of an appropriate instrument of the gods, and like
these others he taught. Nevertheless, I somehow doubt that he saw this
one coming…
Other than parables and sixth-hand accounts we really know
comparatively little about the personalities of most of history’s
earlier prophets. Moses was averse to asking for directions (leading to
forty years in the desert), Jesus did magic tricks at the Wedding of
Cana and provided catering services with loaves and fishes, and
Mohammed inadvertently created a vast tourist industry for Mecca and
Medina. Crowley, on the other hand, is almost embarrassingly well
documented (with various levels of reliability) and even wrote his own
Autohagiography. While most religious leaders have laid down rigid
dogmas to be followed slavishly, he is almost unprecedented and very
modern in his exaltation of the path of the Individual. His own
individualism was rampant to the celebrity-tabloid level, and his love
of the camera preserves many images for the benefit of posterity. It
was once pointed out to me that the semi-religious movement begun by
Osho Rajneesh was probably the first to be fully documented from the
beginning in sound recordings, film and video.
In reading Liber AL we must also confront the oversized personality of
Crowley himself, as the human vehicle of its transmission. Looking at
his later life, he often seems to be a battlefield of the conflicting
conditions of the Old Age and the New Aeon. What made him the
unexpected lens that caught this ray of light? Having Christianity
rammed down his throat as a child imprinted the Bible into his psyche,
while the Golden Dawn later provided the Qabalistic and Egyptian
symbolic systems in which the Book was encoded. From some strange
ferment of his deep mind the possibility of prophecy emerged, and his
life experience allowed him to interpret and expound it. In ancient
times prophecy was a profession. Did not IHVH inspire Moses and Jesus,
and Allah Mohammed? Did their own lives not somehow prepare them for
these great missions of destiny? Were their Words in turn not activated
by God?
Who notably moves in very mysterious ways?
Comparisons might also be made with other transmissions even more
recent: C.G. Jung's Septem
Sermones ad Mortuos (Seven Sermons to the Dead), G.’.D.’. poet
W.B. Yeats’ odd work A Vision,
Blavatsky's Book of Dyzan,
Timothy Leary’s The Starseed
Transmissions, the Principia
Discordia, the Book
of the Sub-Genius, and even OAHSPE and the Book of Mormon. And if we
remain even remotely willing to suspend our disbelief sufficiently to
accept the validity of any of these (especially Mormonism), it would
seem rather unfair not to extend the same courtesy to Mr. Crowley. Much
of his later writing is in a sense a commentary upon this prophecy of Liber AL vel Legis; however
his most succinct message, generally known as the Short or Tunis
Comment, reads as follows:
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole
of the Law.
The study of this Book is forbidden.
It is wise to destroy this copy after the first reading. Whosoever
disregards this does so at his own risk and peril. These are most dire.
Those who discuss the contents of
this Book are to be shunned by all, as centres of pestilence. All
questions of the Law are to be decided only by appeal to my writings,
each for himself.
There is no law beyond Do what thou
wilt.
Love is the law, love under will.”
- The priest of the princes, Ankh-f-a-Khonsu
If we take that as an absolute, then my own attempt to engage this
transmission in an open dialogue might technically be regarded as
sacrilege; however, such a cheerful blasphemy is still in full accord
with the spirit of the book itself, and the decision to embrace Thelema
by disobeying this dictum becomes the first test of each neophyte.
Besides, Crowley can hardly have intended everything he ever wrote
(even in Class A!) to be considered as gospel, as one of the man’s few
saving graces was his sense of humor. As a Guru, he was well known for
jerking his disciple’s chains (although always with the clear intention
of breaking them) in all kinds of unusual ways. It is not really
necessary for people to actually destroy the book after reading it in
order to successfully misunderstand it, although it can be a very
interesting burnt offering. What I am doing here is just trying to
explain this strange and
beautiful vision, as I understand it, both for my own pleasure and for
all others now among the living.
Those who study Crowley’s work are most often drawn to his magical
practices, and while his system was largely drawn from the Golden
Dawn’s qabalistic paradigm, it was also inspired by the eastern
practices of Yoga and Tantra and even Sufism. This merging of diverse
cultural traditions is a key element of the 93 Current, the theory
being that with the ‘Dawning of the Age of Aquarius’ the Aeon of the
Child is being born, that with these changing astrological influences
we are entering a New Age. This mutation of the cosmic forces is
altering the Noosphere of the human mind or the Jungian collective
unconscious, as well as the surreal estate of the Astral Plane, the
contents of the Akashic Record, the Spheres & Paths of the Tree of
Life & Death itself. Horus as the Zeitgeist, the Spirit of the Age,
the ruling God or Archon of our Times, is present at the New Birth of a
New Earth, a Spiral of Change. The mythic and psychic forces of this
Word upon our World are transforming all of Humanity.
“Our spiritual consciousness acts
through the will and its instruments upon material objects, in order to
produce changes which will result in the establishment of the new
conditions of consciousness which we wish. That is the definition of
Magick.”
- Aleister Crowley, Confessions
The High Magick spoken of in Liber AL is ultimately creative and deeply
personal, and centered in the Self of each sovereign individual. Our
credo is: “Do what thou wilt shall be
the whole of the Law. Every man and every woman is a star. Love is the
law, love under will.” The meaning of this is that every single
person should make his or her own existence into a work of Art, a
celebration of Being, a forging of Destiny. To become who we are really
meant to be, to fully control how we live, to fulfill our core purpose
as well as our every desire, is the meaning of the Crowleyan concept of
True Will: not merely an indulgence in random caprice, but giving life
to our highest aspirations, fully experiencing our souls to the
ultimate extent of bliss, through every brilliant and bizarre excess we
can imagine. There is no salvation or damnation here; just the living
light of countless conscious Stars, burning brightly for all time and
thus imprinted into the diamond fabric of Forever, each shining as a
beacon to all, a call to freedom and ecstasy and adventure, to unique
moments of meaning in a strange and miraculous Universe. Buddhism sees
the transitory nature of all things as Sorrow, while Thelema proclaims
that this Dance is eternal Joy. Which do you prefer?
This strange revelation is now regarded as a prophecy of the age to
come, and as the sacred grimoire of its magick; to absorb it by deep
study is therefore the work and play of every Thelemic magician. The
quantum cosmology it describes is perfectly modern: the innermost
individual consciousness or viewpoint of each observer continuously
interacts with the entire universe personified as the Great Goddess who
is Everything and Nothing. All aspects of the worlds we think we know
are created by their blissful love-play, and are to be freely
experienced to the fullest in every possible or impossible way.
The conceptual framework from which this paradigm emerges is based upon
the notion of a procession of symbolic periods in human history: first,
the Aeon of Isis the Great Mother goddess, the time of paganism and
shamanism, hunting and tribal life; followed by the
now-fortunately-ending Aeon of Osiris the Father god, when monotheism
and revealed religions, agriculture and writing and cities took hold.
Now we are entering the Aeon of Horus the Child or the Son, a time of
both rapidly advancing technology and an anarchistic magical revival,
of freedom from imposed dogmas, of revolution and ecstasy, expressed by
an archetype whose double or androgynous nature reconciles the
matriarchy and patriarchy of the previous ages. The sequence concludes
with the mysterious future Aeon of Maat the Daughter, whose balance of
Truth has been foreshadowed today, but has yet to fully unfold. This
fourfold paradigm of human evolution is often seen as rising from the
prehistoric Nameless Aeons, and will perhaps be followed in turn by an
unimaginable Wordless Aeon.
It is my intention to allow this present work to follow naturally the
text of Liber AL
itself, but perhaps this might occur more lucidly if I briefly
introduce the primal and cosmic deities whose messages it expresses.
00. The Gods of AL & Khem
“O King, you are the essence of all
the gods,
and Horus has protected you,
you having become the essence of him.”
- Utterance 589, Ancient
Egyptian Pyramid Texts
The First Chapter contains the words of the Goddess described as Nuit,
the Queen of Heaven, the all-embracing body of space and time, the
Universe Herself, defined as ‘Infinite Space, and the Infinite Stars
thereof’; and this qabalistic notariqon of ‘Infinite Space, Infinite
Stars’ clearly identifies her as ISIS, and shows her double nature as
both the diamond void of empty space as well as the physical form of
the galaxies and all within them. In ancient Egypt the great goddess
Isis is often portrayed as paired with her sister Nephthys as the twin
guardians of life & death:
"... they understand the horizontal
circle, which divides the invisible part of the world, which they call
Nephthys, from the visible, to which they give the name Isis; and as
this circle equally touches upon the confines of both light and
darkness, it may be looked upon as common to them both...”
- Robert Temple, The Sirius
Mystery
The usage of this Egyptian pantheon runs through Thelema, and we may
therefore syncretistically identify her with the whole range of
Egyptian goddesses, for the many deities of the Two Lands or Double
Kingdom of ancient Khem constantly transform in the subtle interplay of
their aspects and attributes. Emerging from the primordial waters of
the void at the beginning of time, these ‘neters’ or avatars or
emanations or archetypical principles form an ever-shifting whirl of
kaleidoscopic images, like the Tantric Dance of Shakti, which express
the various forms that the divine may assume. Prominent among those who
are most clearly linked to Nuit (variously spelled as Nu, Nuit, and
Nuith in Liber AL) are these:
First is the Nun, the vast dark chaotic ocean of the waters of space
which predate the creation of the universe, and which is usually seen
as more of a cosmic principle than a personified being.
Second and most clearly is Nut, the night-sky goddess represented as a
beautiful woman, her body jeweled with stars, arched over the world. At
times Nut is also depicted as the divine Cow, an animal form also taken
by both Isis and Hathor, whose four hooves rest upon the four quarters
of the earth and whose belly is speckled with stars. Nut’s symbol is a
water-jar.
Third, there is also an early royal goddess named Neith, who might well
reflect the spelling of Nuith. As a dually sexed gynander who is seen
as the virgin mother of the Sun, she rules both warfare and skillful
crafts, and also became (like Isis) one of the great universal forms of
the Goddess. She is most often associated with Athena, and also in
Greek terms the celestial Hera (like Hathor, also a cow-goddess) who
might possibly be cognate to Nuit as a personification of the sky. The
symbol of Neith is two crossed arrows.
Fourth, there is the above-mentioned Nephthys, sister of Isis, wife of
Set, and mother of jackal-headed Anubis; a very old but rather shadowy
figure without a well-defined cult, but who may indeed have ruled in
the realm of death, while Isis controlled the fields of life. Her
symbol is a hieroglyph that represents a house with a door, and she was
the guardian of both the homes of mortals and the temples of the Gods.
Fifth, Isis herself is among the best-known deities of Egypt, as a
Great Mother (of the god Horus), a Mistress of Magick, a universal
goddess who later absorbed the symbolism of many others in the
pantheon, and whose worship became widespread throughout much of the
Mediterranean world and the even wider Roman empire. Her symbol is the
throne, and she was also strongly linked to the sacred kingship. Her
iconography as a seated queen nursing the child Horus was later
appropriated by
the Virgin Mary as the Mother of God (giving rise to an early and very
weird German translation of Liber AL which actually replaced Nuit’s
name with Mary!).
Sixth, her most primal form is Hathor, the ‘House of Hor’ or bride of
Horus (or of Ra as the Sun), who is seen as the day sky as Nuit is the
night. She is found throughout all of Egypt from very early times and
great annual festivals and processions ritually commemorated their
sacred marriage. In Liber AL her name appears transliterated as
Ahathoor, and she is an important yet secret presence in the book,
perhaps missed by Crowley due to the chauvinism of his day.
“In Egypt (the cow) was revered
primarily as a representation of the sky goddess Hathor, who was seen
as mother and spouse of the Sun; as the mother of Horus; as the
grandmother of the Egyptian king; as the goddess of joy, dance and
music (in the form of a young woman); as the image of hope and the
renewal of life; as the living soul of trees; and as the mistress of
the mountains and the dead. Among other forms, she could appear as
gleaming gold or assume the shape of a lioness.”
- The Herder Symbol
Dictionary
Seventh, perhaps, is Our Lady Babalon! And all her lovely avatars… many
if not all the other goddesses may also be assimilated as forms of this
Great Universal Goddess Nuit, including Tefnut and Sekhmet and Maat.
“The goddess Nut was primarily the
personification of the vault of the heavens… the firmament which
separated the earth from the encircling waters of chaos out of which
the world had been created… she was not only the great sky whose
‘laughter’ was the thunder, and whose ‘tears’ were the rain, but she
was also the ‘mother’ of the heavenly bodies who were believed to enter
her mouth and emerge again from her womb each day. The sun was thus
said to travel through the body of the goddess during the night hours
and the stars traveled through her during the day.
Several scholars have
suggested that
Nut may have originally represented the Milky Way, as Spell 176 of the
Book of the Dead refers to this broad band of stars which crosses the
night sky and the following spell begins with an invocation of Nut, and
some representations of the Ramesside Period show stars around the
figure of the goddess as well as on her body. There is astronomical
evidence which may support the equation. Ronald Wells has shown that in
the pre-dawn sky at winter solstice in pre-dynastic Egypt the Milky Way
would have looked remarkably like a stretched out figure with arms and
legs touching the horizons in exactly the manner in which the goddess
was often later depicted. Furthermore, at the time of the winter
solstice the sun would have arisen in the area of the goddess’s figure
- her pudendum - from which it would be imagined to be born, just as
nine months earlier, at the spring equinox, the sun would have set in
the position of the goddess’s head - suggesting it was being swallowed.
Nut also became inextricably
associated with the concept of resurrection in Egyptian funerary
beliefs, and the dead were believed to become stars in the body of the
goddess.”
- Richard H. Wilkinson, The
Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt
The Second Chapter expresses the god as Had, Hadit, or Hadith, the
omnipresent center of all consciousness, the seed of the true self, the
universal yet unique point of view wherein every man or woman is seen
as a holy star in the infinite body of Nuit. This entity is usually
depicted as a hawk-winged solar orb or disk, a symbol also popular in
Babylon as well:
"An ancient conception of heaven held
that it was the wings of a falcon stretched out over the world. A
drawing on a First Dynasty tomb shows the solar bark, together with a
Horus falcon, on a pair of wings thus symbolizing heaven. From the
Fifth Dynasty onwards a sun disc was placed between the pair of wings,
hence the image of heaven became a solar symbol. Originally the winged
disc belonged to the god Behdet whose epithet was 'he with colored
plumage' and who had already merged with Horus at an early date. With
that, Behdeti began to assume the role of Horus who was identified with
the king. The two uraei which surrounded the solar disc towards the end
of the Old Kingdom were a part of royal symbolism; there are New
Kingdom representations in which the snake's heads wear the Upper and
Lower Egyptians crowns respectively. After the New Kingdom the winged
disc appeared as a symbol of protection above temple doors and at the
top of stelae."
- Manfred Lurker, Gods and
Symbols of Ancient Egypt
In terms of Liber AL (and its visual template, the ancient artifact
known as the ‘Stele of Revealing‘) this deity is thus identified with
the Horus of solar fire who is portrayed as the winged globe,
Heru-Behutet; however, Hadit is also said by some (notably Kenneth
Grant) to be one with Set, the dark god of chaos and magick, who is in
some senses the twin brother (or uncle, in later versions) of Horus;
they battle and are then fully reconciled in a cosmic drama of sacred
kingship. Red Set is the rebel, the outsider, the god of Chaos and the
desert, discord and windstorms, strangers and foreigners: perhaps thus
a suitable symbol for the zeitgeist of our era. In some ways he is a
Dark Star or Black Flame, a living paradox. His magical current may
also be seen manifesting in the Temple of Set.
As the quintessential polarity, Nu and Had may be seen as any of the
pairs of gods in Egyptian (or any other) mythology: as the dark waters
of the Nun and the lotus-born sun-god Atum-Ra who rises from them; as
the primal formative dyads of Tefnut and Shu (heat & moisture and
cool air & light), or Nut and Geb (who are the arching vault of
heaven and body of earth); as Isis and Osiris, or Nephthys and Set; as
Sekhmet and Ptah, Mut and Amoun, Maat and Thoth... the interwoven
pantheons of Egypt are archaic yet sophisticated, elegant and
evocative, and reward deep study and devotion with arcane insight and
sorcerous power. The ancient pagan gods are often very complex
personalities, like any other living and growing beings, and in
exploring the energies and symbols of these archetypes one achieves new
heights and depths of meaning. An all-to-often-quoted aphorism of
modern hermetics claims “All gods are one god, all goddesses are one
goddess, and there is one initiator.” That Initiator is now
Ra-Hoor-Khuit.
There has been some debate (and even considerable controversy) about
the etymology of Hadit as used in Liber AL; I quote from the online
version of Crowley’s Comments, with thanks:
“{WEH NOTE: "Hadit" is the spelling
of "Bahadit" found on the Stele. This is unusual in that most Egyptian
spelling of the period maintained the "Ba" prefix. Crowley adopted the
spelling from the Stele, and it is common as well in Liber AL. This
"Hadit" or "Bahadit" is the winged sun disk, used over the entrances of
temple doorways, at the tops of stele and elsewhere in Egyptian art and
architecture. Interestingly, the full name of Ra-Hoor-Khuit is
Ra-Heru-Khuti-Ba-Hadi, Ra-Horus who flies into the disk of the sun.
-information researched by Fr. Ebony. Liber AL was received during that
part of the year in which Ra-Heru-Khuti-Ba-Hadi was said by the ancient
Egyptians to rule the decan occupied by the Sun. It is not known if
Crowley was aware of this particular deity being astrologically "on
official watch" at the time.}”
In my opinion any of the gods may be seen as Hadit, especially the
creator gods, but essentially whichever deity best expresses your own
nature. There is an academic concept called henotheism, simply put,
that any God is the True God, every aspect of the divine is equally
valid. Whether you worship Odin or Krishna or the
judeo-christian-islamic hybrid, God is whomever you choose wisely.
Egyptian paganism was not monolithic, and accepted various concepts and
narratives as all containing Truth. In Heliopolis the Supreme Being was
Atum, later merged with the sun-god as Atum-Ra. At Memphis the creator
was Ptah, at Hermopolis the ibis-headed Thoth. Any god may be
understood as the true god, since we are not equipped to perceive the
totality of such a being. No one name can encompass the universe. Find
your own!
The Third Chapter more fully expresses Horus (the High One) as the Lord
of the New Aeon; in ancient Egypt he appears under very many names and
forms in different locations and historical periods. Many of the major
pantheons of Khem (and there were any number of local cosmologies) were
ruled by father/mother/son triads: Osiris, Isis, Horus are probably
still the best known to the casual reader, but there are also Amoun,
Mut, Khonsu or Ptah, Sekhmet, Nefertum or Amoun-Ra, Hathor, Ihy and
others who are prominent. So Horus is the Holy Child, the ever-becoming
one, and the defining god of the sacred kingship: every deceased
pharaoh became one with his father Osiris, and every son and royal heir
was then crowned as the living and incarnate Horus. In later times all
humans were seen as resurrected by or joining with the group-soul of
Osiris as the god of the dead in the afterlife, and perhaps today we
may consider ourselves as the embodied forms of Horus, the Crowned and
Conquering Child of AL: each of us arising as a star in the body of
Nuit, which is one of the earliest known models of the soul in the
Egyptian afterlife.
Horus is seen in a sense as Twins, as having a double aspect: Horus the
Elder, the solar lord of kingship and victory in battle, the
incarnation of the supreme sun-god Ra; and Horus the Younger, son of
Isis and Osiris, the innocent holy child, the eternally reborn Babe in
the Egg or Lotus (which are both symbols of unfolding life and
essential elements of the various versions of the Creation myth). In
Liber AL they are named Ra-Hoor-Khuit and Hoor-par-kraat (and as
several other variations discussed below); they may represent the
various processes of turning outwards and inwards, of union with the
external Nuit by eternal expansion and the internal Hadit by an
infinite contraction, of the paths of active magick and passive
mysticism or yoga, of speech and silence, of the light and the
darkness, of the central star and the boundless cosmic void spinning
and spiraling with whirlpool galaxies.
In Egyptian cosmology the supreme sun-god Ra sails over the sky in the
solar boat by day, but during the night his orbital journey passes
through the gates and caverns of the underworld, the Duat or land of
the dead, and is assaulted by monsters of the deep who are eternally
battled by the company of the gods who sustain our world; these twin
realms of waking and dream (or nightmare) reflect the creative tension
that cycles between Primordial Chaos and Divine Order. This polarity
and infinite potential is also what makes us fully human. The Hero’s
Journey of the sun-god Ra-Hoor is also the evolutionary path of the
individuation of the soul or psyche in the New Aeon, now going beyond
the pendulum swing between death & rebirth and into the knowledge
(gnosis) of the continuity of consciousness: 'the unfragmentary
non-atomic fact of my universality' (AL c.I, v.26). That is why the
Tree of Life & Death has two sides, why the Taoist concept of Yin
and Yang originally referred to the shadowed and sunlit sides of a
mountain, why Horus manifests in twin forms, and why N'Aton appears
half-dark, half-bright. With magick the psychological is also
spiritual. We contain all possibilities. Polarity is not exactly the
same thing as duality. The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.
In order of appearance in the text, and assuming that there is meaning
in every aspect and numeration of the orthography of AL, the variant
spellings are:
Hoor-paar-kraat
Ra-hoor-khuit
Hoor
Heru-pa-kraath
Ra-hoor-khu
Ra-hoor-khut
Hrumachis
Heru-ra-ha
Hoor-pa-kraat
The following quotation makes a very important point about the Formula
of the Aeon as comprising Mother, Father and Child:
“Ra-Hor Khut was, as the Boulaq
translation tells us, “chief of the gods” who faces Ankh-f-na-khonsu on
the stele. Thankfully, there is a god of Egypt’s history, spelled only
in a slightly different manner, as Ra-heru-Khuti. This is a compound
name of the gods, of Ra, Horus and Khuti. There is only one reference
with Crowley’s spelling of “Khuit.” She was an ancient female deity
from Anthribes that later became directly associated with Hathor. It is
not surprising then, that Crowley chose the spelling of a goddess that
was the personification of the great power of nature which was
perpetually conceiving and creating. She was “the mother of her father,
“ and “the daughter of her son.” Thus, Ra-Hoor-Khuit was the Father,
the Son and the Mother, a potent triad in one magical formula. And
after saying this all-encompassing powerful name, what could possibly
be conveyed but the power of silence, with the sign of silence.”
- Soror Lutea, Who And What
Are Those Egyptian References In Liber Resh?
This indicates a very radical change in the historical relations
between deity and humanity: Mother and Father are inevitably external,
caring yet different beings, and often seen as distant or superior. The
Child, however, is All of Us: we are by nature and in our very own
being the manifestation of consciousness, and hence of divinity itself.
This may lead us on to an essential concept of the Maatian system:
N’Aton, the potential group-mind or collective existence of humanity,
the fully evolved soul of our race, perhaps Teilhard de Chardin’s Omega
Point, that ultimate goal toward which humanity strives. If this is
indeed the path of our spiritual evolution, then the Aeon of Horus is
the unique development of the fully self-realized Individual, which
must be completed and then transformed into the awakening of Unity that
becomes the soul of our species in the Aeon of Maat. We must first
attain our own True Wills in order to create the Next Step, the
World-Mind, the Future Perfect.
The goddess Maat was one of the major cosmic forces of the Egyptian
pantheon, seen almost as an abstract concept, representing Truth,
balance, justice, breath, life, order, law and straightness. She is
very like the Chinese concept of Tao or the Way. Her symbols are the
Feather against which the soul was weighed in the Scales in the hall of
judgment after death, and the strange narrow plinth with one straight
and one angled edge usually seen beneath the Throne, which represents
the primeval mound or First Hill that emerged from the waters of space
at the time of Creation; it is also perhaps a measuring rod, and is
seen in the ramps that led in to the inner sanctum of temples. The
first duty of the Pharaoh as King was to maintain the order and justice
of the world. She is often portrayed as winged, and images of her were
given as offerings at the end of rituals to sustain the World. Maat
might now be represented by the hieroglyph of the Mouth, as Horus is by
the Eye.
An essential key to The Book of the Law is the word AL (or EL, meaning
God), which reverses as LA (Not or naught), implying the identity or
reconciliation of Had & Nu, All & Nothing, being &
non-existence, life & death. These dual modes of reality form the
pattern of the universal dance, just as linked pairs of opposites
largely defined the Gnostic chain of Aeons and Archons.
The constant themes of duality, paradox, twins, doubles, reflections,
significant reversals of words, puns, and essential polarity are at the
core of a system perhaps best expressed in the metamathematical formula
of 0 = 2. In Thelemic Taoist terms, the Void (Tao, the Way) manifests
itself as pairs of opposites (the Yin and the Yang). Our creation
oscillates between cosmos & chaos, universe & emptiness, Hadit
& Nuit. Divinity seen simply as the One, which perpetually obsesses
most religious philosophies, is a shifting chimera that exists as an
ongoing yet momentary paradox of unity or in-betweeness, in the
'hieros-gamos' or sacred marriage of the two extremes. Perhaps one way
to express this is that we are equally defined by What One Is and What
One Is Not.
The Book of the Law
can be read on many levels and in many ways, and everyone must find
their own method of interpreting the formulas presented. Ultimately the
path must be shown by the psychological formula of ‘solve et coagula’,
or analysis and synthesis. Experience must be examined, divided into
its component parts, reunited, and ultimately absorbed into a burst of
orgasmic energy which transforms the individual, for in the words of
ancient alchemy often quoted by the luminous scholar and psychologist
Carl Jung: “The Self is a circle
whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere found.”
Nuit is the infinite circle or Zero, and Hadit is the dual-natured
secret center, and a circle with a point in the middle is both the Eye
and the symbol of the Sun, which is Ra-Hoor-Khuit.
Perhaps the most personally essential element of this vision is the
energizing unity of Love and Will (Agape and Thelema), of Nuit and
Hadit living as their incarnate avatars the Scarlet Woman and the Great
Wild Beast, as perception and action, Night and Day, silver and gold.
Many become two, two one, one naught.
‘Every man and every woman is a star.’
“The Holy Book or Scripture is
anterior to all things, but it gradually reveals itself as that which
precipitates breath to form Heaven, Earth and the Space Between. Image
of the world in superimposed sheets that are individually transparent
and readable, it represents a pledge of alliance with the innumerable
deities and the function between Heaven and Earth.
The Book is bestowed upon the
adept so that he can discover the secret form and hidden geography of
the stars and the celestial currents of the heavens, of the mountains
and rivers on earth, and of the vital circuits of the human body. It
invites the adept, both within himself as well as externally, to travel
throughout all of the immense universe. Striding forth and measuring
the universe, he enjoys and elevates himself - though he is unmoved -
during his thousand-mile journey.
The scriptures are dramatic
plays of light, or of light upon light, where the eyes and stars
illuminate the way - scintillating mirrors that reflect with a doubled
and redoubled brilliance so that mysteries are uncovered and truth is
unveiled. They are also repetitive games with new beginnings and new
twists, with reversals and involutions. They are like: the coiling of a
snake, a guarded treasure, a closed hand, a pledge of allegiance within
a casket, interlocking and circling steps, accumulated energy, a
sheltered enclosure at the end of a cave, a glance that mirrors itself,
something unmoved in itself, one page facing another page.”
- Isabelle Robinet, Taoist
Meditation: The Mao-Shan Tradition of Great Purity
I took this lovely quotation from Peter Lamborn Wilson’s marvelous “Shower of Stars” Dream & Book,
which excellently expounds upon the nature of magical texts. Much of
what he writes is applicable to Liber AL. He is also known as Hakim Bey.
I would also add that Crowley’s view of magick and myth was heavily
influenced by Eliphas Levi (who he claimed as a previous incarnation),
and by Sir James Frazer’s classic The Golden Bough, and also
the egyptological writings of Sir E.A.Wallis Budge of the British
Museum… who is unfortunately a century out of date. Immersion in the
culture of ancient Egypt is invaluable in contacting
these gods, and I would recommend more contemporary (and very readable)
sources like Geraldine Pinch, Barbara Watterson, Richard H. Wilkinson,
Rosalie David, George Hart, Erik Hornung, Robert Ritner, Manfred
Lurker, Christian Jacq, Barbara S. Lesko, Stephen Quirke, Hans Dieter
Betz, R.T. Rundle Clark, Jan Assmann and Jeremy Naydler.
However, it is also extremely important to note that while the powerful
Egyptian deities explored above all flow into those of Thelema, they
have now evolved into very different forms, just as human thought and
modern cultures have mutated. The cosmic deities or functions or
principals or aspects of ourselves found in Liber AL are something
miraculous and completely new. They are the gods of the Space Age, not
of the Stone Age, and manifest uniquely and individually in all of us.
000. The Previous Commentators
"The Book of the Law or Liber Legis,
as the communication from Aiwass is called, is a series of dithyrambic
verses with more exclamation marks than any other work of similar
length."
- John Symonds, The Great
Beast
As observed above, Crowley reserved to himself the ultimate authority
to comment upon this transmission, although that has not always stopped
his various heirs (or me!). The book itself insists upon the absolute
preservation of the original text, and states that Crowley must have
the last word in interpreting it, but also that others will follow him.
He labored for years upon his own very thoughtful and extensive and
essential commentaries, and in fact his entire body of magical work
must be considered as an expansion of Liber AL. Yet even in his own
lifetime he saw the need for another hand to edit this massive work,
for in the original form he rambles on considerably, and quite frankly
his attitudes and style sometimes tend to reflect the fact that he was
coked up to the gills for much of that time (more obviously in the 1920
New Comment period
than in the relatively concise 1912 Old Comment). In a letter
to Cambridge historian E.M. Butler he once wrote: “Some 25 years ago I wrote a Commentary on
The Book of the Law – over a quarter of a million words of the most
turgid and incomprehensible hogwash ever penned. Certain adventurous
spirits, however, have claimed to have found specks of gold in the silt.”
There are also his incomplete 1923 Djeridensis Comment, and
the account and analysis of the events in The Equinox of the Gods in
1936, and others that are believed not to have survived. See also his Confessions and The Temple of Solomon the King.
I do not say this to knock Crowley, who always took his writing very
seriously indeed and steadily evolved his literary skills as well as
his understanding of the transmission. Indeed, one of the strongest
arguments against his being a mere charlatan is the genuine devotion
and discipline he maintained to expounding and spreading this vision. I
would add that since so much of his work is devoted to defining
technical aspects of his Magick, these various comments may be among
the clearest unfolding of his personal understanding of philosophy (a
subject to which he devoted considerable study) and of his political
thought (much of which is clearly a half-baked, obsolete, and
idiosyncratic product of his upbringing and times). I’m just being
honest here. We should keep in mind that the man was born in 1875 and
writing the New Comment in the 1920s. Most importantly, we should
remember that he had a ferociously wicked sense of humor, and loved to
shock people.
Zen authority Alan Watts had this to say about Crowley:
"For myself, I make no judgment. It
is possible that a man can be such a fraud as to be an incomparable and
magical fraud. It is also possible that a man of high compassion and
wisdom can play at being a fraud so as not to become an idol or the
founder of a formal religion. Great and powerful men, in the religious
dimension, are invariably regarded gods by some and as devils by others."
(San Francisco Examiner,
on 2/28/1970)
To date his Comment has been published in three (and a half?) forms.
Perhaps the most complete version is The Magical and Philosophical
Commentaries on the Book of the Law, edited by John Symonds
& Kenneth Grant and lovingly published in a beautiful edition by 93
Press in 1974 (with the obverse and reverse of the Stele embossed in
gold on the front and back covers). Mr. Grant is the Outer Head of the
London-based Typhonian Order, a mutation of the O.T.O. born from his
Nu-Isis Lodge, and his own works, especially the nine core volumes of
the Triple Typhonian Trilogies, contain considerable deep study of AL,
often as seen from a Tantric or extra-terrestrial and or even
Lovecraftian perspective, and provide many of the most innovative and
important insights subsequent to the work of the Great Wild Beast
himself. Personally, I was enormously influenced by Grant in my
misspent youth. While I will mention some of his insights in passing, I
will refer you to his own works for a much fuller understanding of his
concepts, which really deserve to be read as he presents them. This is
perhaps a facile cop-out to excuse me from rereading them all at this
time, as well as courtesy to a living author who is one of the few if
not last surviving people to actually be taught by both Crowley &
Spare.
In America there have been two separate versions published as The Law Is For All,
originally as edited by Crowley’s former secretary Israel Regardie (the
man who probably saved the Golden Dawn from oblivion) and first
released by Llewellyn in 1975 (with the Stele mistakenly
photographically reversed upon the cover!). A later edition began in an
even earlier form edited by Crowley’s old friend and literary executor
Louis Wilkinson, which was revised and completed by Hymenaeus Beta (the
present Outer Head of Order of the Caliphate dispensation of the Ordo
Templi Orientis) and published by New Falcon Press in 1996 (with a
photo of the original Stele itself on the cover, easily recognizable by
the two big holes the Cairo museum made when they nailed it to the damn
wall!).
Lastly, there is the Commentaries
of AL, edited by the late Marcelo Ramos Motta (O.H.O. of the
Brazilian Sociedade O.T.O.) with his own usually somewhat loony yet
occasionally quite cogent thoughts interpolated, and published by
Weiser in 1976. It must be admitted that he had some serious paranoia
about the (occult) Black Brothers and a major bug up his butt about
transvestites, but the poor man was raised in a Catholic country… and
please also note that Crowley originally included extensive quotations
from other authors who are generally omitted from all these versions,
including A.S. Eddington, Bertrand Russell and Aldous Huxley.
The fact that I mention these three genially dueling O.H.O.s of three
schismatic O.T.O.s (and there have in fact been several others,
including the Swiss and various internet versions) shows both the vast
diversity and inevitable contentiousness of the Thelemic movement; and
we must recall that there were several splinter groups even before
Crowley, since the Ordo Tempi Orientis began as an irregular Masonic
group in the late 19th century (most might say very irregular!).
Nevertheless, and not to get us bogged down in any form of heated
controversy, the American O.T.O. still claims legal precedence and many
of the copyrights. And I assume we must give their first Caliph
Hymenaeus Alpha (the late Major Grady Louis McMurtry) due credit for
his genuine dedication in working to revive the O.T.O. in America; and
his successor Hymenaeus Beta kudos for his work in keeping much of the
Crowley Canon in print and often in improved and scholarly editions,
for organizing a show of Crowley’s paintings, and for considerably
expanding the fraternal organization internationally.
If the extremely prolific Crowley is ever resurrected by cloning (he
was cremated and his ashes lie under a tree in New Jersey, but DNA
ejaculated onto his talismans still survives) his first words may well
be “Where the hell are my royalties?” It is very easy to fall under the
spell of reading through his system; Isaac Bonewitz (author of the
important study Real Magic)
called his books ‘cities within cities’, a vast network of interlocking
volumes and aspects, a puzzle to be solved, a mystery explored, each
qabalistic clue illuminating the next connection. Big Fun!
Among those who followed in Crowley’s footsteps perhaps the first was
Frater Achad, who has described in his Liber 31 the discovery of
the key word AL, often reversed as LA, which was accepted by Crowley as
an essential revelation. After breaking with Crowley he produced
several other works (primarily The Egyptian Revival, QBL or the Bride’s Reception,
and The Anatomy of the Body
of God) that explicate his own vision of the universe of the New
Aeon and the English qabala, which involve a complete reversal of the
order of the Paths on the Tree.
Achad also foreshadowed the coming Aeon of Maat, whose influence has
been more clearly revealed by the recent works of Soror Nema, including
the seminal Liber Pennae
Praenumbra, Maat
Magick, and The Way
of Mystery. Other aspects of Achad’s work have been continued by
the order Q.B.L.H., notably in Liber XIII. Further
insights appear in the works of a later Crowleyan disciple, the famed
rocket scientist Jack Parsons, and are collected in his Freedom Is A Two-Edged Sword.
I sometimes wonder if there is any surviving material analyzing Liber
AL written by the mathematician Norman Mudd, another student and
defender of Crowley, and unfortunately a suicide. Other aspects of the
complex alphanumerical ciphers in Liber AL have been explored in such
interesting works as T. Allen Greenfield‘s Secret Ciphers of the UFOs
and The Key of the Abyss
by Anthony Testa. There are many other brave attempts to work out a
workable qabala of the English Alphabet both online and off, including
the notable work of Linda Falorio, Gerald del
Campo, Jake Stratton-Kent, and many others.
Perhaps oddest of all is the so-called Book of Perfection and its
later commentary Sunrise In
The West, which purported to be a continuation of Liber AL, but
has (to put it mildly) not found general acceptance; the author has
recently been identified as James Beck, a.k.a. Jimmy Rocket. Judging by
internal evidence he may also have written the privately published Riddle of Sebra, as by
Prince Ariel. Actually rather interesting, although not canonical
works... Llee
Heflin’s The Island Dialogues
are another early and creative heresy.
Many more contributions to the literature appear internationally in the
various magazines of the diverse A.A. and O.T.O.-based and other far
more heretical groups over the years, and in the anarchistic and
creative and ephemeral ferment of the Internet. In addition, there
appears to have been an important but now frustratingly unavailable
issue of the journal Red
Flame that contributed some new commentary and controversial
thought. I’m sure I’ve missed a few things…
Coming from the Temple of Set, Don Webb has written a very interesting
study titled Aleister
Crowley: The Fire & The Force, and their original founder
Michael Aquino has his own extensive although rather critical comment
on the Book of the Law;
while clearly emerging from a Setian perspective it also includes
rather scholarly egyptological and other information and is well worth
reading, even though the online version breaks off in mid-sentence
about halfway through… like an unfinished Grail myth (have you noticed
that many of them are incomplete?)
Aside from the pioneering works of Crowley, Achad, Parsons, Regardie,
Culling, Grant, Motta et al (and Soror Nema’s writings on the Aeon of
Maat), there have been several other valiant attempts at clearly
explaining the magical system of the Aeon of Horus, including The Magick of Thelema by
Lon Milo DuQuette, The
Heretic’s Guide to Thelema by Gerald del Campo, The Magickal & Mystical System
of the A.’.A.’. by James A. Eshelman (excellent!), and Abrahadabra by Rodney
Orpheus. A recent new crop includes two studies by Dave Evans, and Initiation in the Aeon of the Child
by J. Daniel Gunther, The
Ending Of The Words by Oliver St. John & Sophie Di Jorio,
and Aleister Crowley: A
Modern Master by John Moore.
An interesting study of the historical antecedents of Thelema is Do What You Will: A History of
Anti-morality by Arthurian scholar Geoffrey Ashe, recently
re-issued and re-titled The
Hellfire Clubs. There have also been at least two or three dozen
biographies of Aleister Crowley, of rather varying quality. We should
also pay tribute to Robert Anton Wilson, whose wide-ranging writings
introduced thousands of readers to the Great Work of Thelema with wit
and wisdom.
Last but not least I would like to salute The Scarlet Sisterhood Commentary
on Liber AL for the thought-provoking use of language to explore
and often illuminate the hidden dimensions of the text. Current on-line
resources might include hermetic.com, which collects several of these
commentaries, and all the issues of Silver Star, and many, many other
sites. What would Crowley have thought of the Internet? Holy Cow, all
that free porn…
What I am attempting to do here is to explain this work both as I have
come to understand it and as a useful (?) introduction to the
hypothetical layman. While I have obviously been influenced by many
sources, what follows should probably be regarded entirely as my own
thrice-damned opinion, illuminated mostly by personal practice, Crowley
himself, and study of the world’s great psycho-spiritual traditions. I
started this project years ago by writing my own version of a Comment
from scratch, conceived as a response to each verse, and later
re-consulted many of the other authorities mentioned above in hopes of
incorporating the most important insights of Crowley as well as the
recent studies of others. I’ll probably be revising and expanding this
for the rest of my life, and I invite suggestions and (dare I say?)
debate…
In general I am not particularly interested in extensively discussing
all this in the customary but all too often obsessively numerological
terms, although there have been multiple proposed interpretations of
New Aeon English Alphabets, which their various vociferous proponents
can well explain for themselves. Yet some numbers will inevitably come
up, as both qabalistic Gematria and the hallowed cosmogram of the Tree
of Life & Death remain essential interpretive elements of the code
and the key to it all… and please note that Mr. Crowley employed the
symbolism of the Tarot and both Hebrew and Greek alphabets in his
calculations, some of which are perhaps a bit of a stretch... but the
man was always known for pushing his luck.
“To a new age of gods and monsters!”
- Dr. Praetorius in The
Bride Of Frankenstein
Part I: AL-MANDAL: the Infinite Circle
of Nuit
(al-Mandal is the term for the
‘magical circle’ in Arabic sorcery,
as Mandala is in Sanskrit)
LIBER AL
vel LEGIS: THE BOOK OF THE LAW
(sub
figura CCXX as delivered by XCIII = 418 to DCLXVI)
Liber Legis is ‘Book of the Law’, and the AL was added some years
later; CCXX is 220 in roman numerals, the count of verses in the
transmission; and XCIII is 93, the key qabalistic number of the work
along with 8, 11, 31, 56, 61, 80, 89, 111, 156, 418, 666, 718, ‘Pi’ and
others; while DCLXVI is 666 (and all roman numerals under 1,000), the
fabled Number of the Beast with which Crowley cheerfully
self-identified, to the pants-wetting terror of all pseudo-Christian
fundamentalists.
NU=56 and HaD=9, making 65 the number of Adonai or the HGA; there are
65 pages in the original manuscript (taking HAD=10 makes 66, sum total
of the numbers from 1 to 11, ‘a number of the Great Work’). The various
encoded numerological formulas and ciphers are seen as evidence of
praeterhuman origins… and it is well worth noting that the manuscript
clearly does appear to have been written in haste!
The three chapters seem to me a revelation of the nature of the new
universe, then of the methods of magical evolution for the individual,
then a series of often dire prophesies about modern times. They are
spoken through the personas of Nuit, Hadit, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit via the
voice of the entity Aiwass. Throughout the Book one might consider all
appearances of the words ‘not’ or ‘none’ or ‘no’ as clues to the nature
of Nuit, and ‘I’ or ‘all’ (AL) to the essence of Hadit or Pan or
Abraxas…
Crowley remarks not otherwise cited are from his Old (and generally
precise) or New (and often verbose) Comments and those of Motta are
from his own odd revision thereof. While both of these gentlemen are
often very amusing, I have generally tried to limit both my
paraphrasing and their direct quotations to technical matters. Quotes
from Frater Achad are from his Liber 31. Several notes are
drawn from the individual Comments of the Scarlet Sisterhood and of
Michael Aquino of the Temple of Set, and I quote many other sources.
My sincere thanks and appreciation (and acknowledgement of the
copyrights of the O.T.O. and others) to them all… and I trust I have
not exceeded the hazy concept of “fair usage”. I enjoy such quotations
both as the making of a point with wit and style, and as a tribute to
those who have inspired me. The Law is for All!
The First Chapter
1. Had! The manifestation of Nuit.
Had or Hadit is the seed of the Self, of the original and omnipresent
consciousness, the secret star or individual point of view which is at
the center of the circle; that circle or sphere is the external
universe of space-time and matter, personified as the galactic goddess
Nuit. Had is the archetypical primal core of the internal and
experiential cosmos, creatively manifesting love and will into the void
of chaotic potential which veils ultimate existence and/or
nonexistence. As the unified focus of the infinite void and
multiplicity of Nuit, he embodies and centers her being and is
essentially her lover and child. Nuit is the macrocosm and Hadit the
microcosm. The Sun is also a Star.
If we read this text in Tantric terms, Hadit is Shiva and Nuit is Kali
or Shakti, or in Buddhism they may be Bodhicitta and Shunyata, in China
Fu-Hsi and Nu-Kua. In Gnosticism, Nuit would be the fullness of the
Pleroma and Hadit the manifested Creatura. In A.O. Spare’s system, I
feel that Hadit is Zos and Nuit is Kia: the Hand and the Eye, or Lingam
and Yoni, or vice versa. In Norse terms they are Odin and Wyrd, or Fire
and Ice.
Hadit might be the proton and Nuit the electron on the atomic level. In
terms of the Creation Myth of the Orphic Mysteries of Greece Nuit would
be Nox (Night), Hadit is the primal genesis of Chaos, Heru-Ra-Ha is
their firstborn Phanes (Light) or Eros (Love), and Maat is Gaia (the
manifested World-Order).
Crowley states that Nuit is Matter, TAO, the Noun, Form, and the North,
while Hadit is Motion, TEH, the Verb, Being, and the South; and that
they may also be identified as Anu and Adad, a goddess and a god of the
Sumerians.
Manifestation is a very important Word.
2. The unveiling of the company
of heaven.
The company of heaven is every soul, every star, every god or beast or
tree, every element or form of being and becoming which is life. In the
immortal words of the poet William Blake, “Everything that lives is holy, life
delights in life.” ‘Company’ is perhaps the primary reason for
the universe to have evolved multiple forms of life. The ‘unveiling’ or
‘revealing’ or ‘manifestation’ is the process of the expansion of
consciousness and our unfolding innate divinity.
We might even recall Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld in Babylonian
myth, when the goddess ventured down to the land of the dead to rescue
her slain lover Tammuz and was forced to leave her seven articles of
clothing and jewels at each of the seven gates, arriving naked to be
slain and reborn herself. We are aethyrial spirits who materialize into
physical incarnation.
3. Every man and every woman is a star.
Every man and every woman is unique, individual, perhaps ultimately
equal in importance to every other, and expresses the art and essence
of their life’s creation as a star radiates light. The Sumerian
hieroglyph of a Star indicates a ‘deity’.
How many tyrannically established “religious traditions” have not
systematically oppressed women and thus effectively denied equality and
humanity to half the people on earth? As early as the third verse this
Book supports feminism!
4. Every number is infinite; there is
no difference.
Much study of Liber AL is based upon qabalistic manipulation of the
various formulas of numerology, while in physics it is mathematics that
is generally seen as the underlying schema of the universe. This phrase
reminds us that much of this is still perfectly arbitrary, and that
while every number possesses endless layers of validity and meaning,
all may be ultimately meaningless outside the human context. The core
concept of ‘no difference‘ is introduced, reminding us that everything
is both true and false, neither true nor false, both meaningful and
meaningless, and neither meaningful nor meaningless. This is the ‘not
this, not that’ of Buddhist meditation, and the ‘neither-neither
concept’ of A.O. Spare. It breaks the bonds and limits of conceptual
thought.
"The stars are matter and we are
matter but it doesn’t matter”, as Captain Beefheart once said.
5. Help me, o warrior lord of Thebes,
in my unveiling before the Children of men!
The ‘warrior lord’ could be the falcon-headed god of war and virility
Montu, a patron deity whom the scribe Ankh-af-na-Khonsu served in life,
or perhaps Amoun, who was the patron god of Thebes. An alternate
interpretation of this Warrior Lord is the scribe Crowley himself, who
received this message and thus becomes the prophet of Horus,
hawk-headed lord of the New Aeon. Thousand-gated Thebes was a city of
ancient Egypt, now called Luxor.
The repeated theme of unveiling pictures the universe as a dancer,
removing the layered veils that hinder perception to reveal endless new
beauties and insights. The ‘children of men’ are all the generations
and peoples of our earth.
6. Be thou Hadit, my secret centre, my
heart & my tongue!
Hadit is the lover, complement, and core of the being of Nuit,
through which she expresses her creation. Crowley identifies the secret
centre as Life, the heart as Love, and the tongue as Language.
The formula of the Heart & Tongue derives from Egyptian ritual and
myth, specifically when the name of the creator is Ptah: his heart was
seen as the center of thought, truth, and perception, and linked to
shining Ra; his tongue declared action brought into form, and was
attributed to the magician-god Thoth, the Logos or Word. The heart is
love, and the tongue expresses the word of will. Love & Will (Agape
& Thelema, which in Greek qabala both total 93) are keys to the New
Aeon. See also c.I, vs.32 & 53. The ‘secret centre’ may also be the
mind or soul, or perhaps the sexual organs: Nuit as Kteis, Hadit as
Phallos, the Cup and the Wand.
Another relevant triad of primal gods is that of Heka, the incarnation
of Magick and Life itself, whose name implies the vivifying of forms or
images, and who is one of several ‘first’ emanations of the
Creator/Creation and the essential energizing power in all things. He
is often accompanied by the deities Sia (who personifies perception,
insight and intelligence, which were regarded by the Egyptians as
seated in the heart) and Hu (the principle of ‘authoritative
utterance’, the power of the True Word uttered by the tongue). The Word
of Maat is IPSOS, ‘by that same mouth’.
7. Behold! it is revealed by Aiwass
the minister of Hoor-paar-kraat.
Aiwass is the entity that delivered this message to the Beast known as
Crowley, who later identified him with his own Holy Guardian Angel. As
the minister of Hoor-paar-kraat, he is the Voice of the Silence. The
name is also spelled Aiwaz, possibly the Arabic word for ‘Voice’, and
variously numerated by Crowley at first as 78 (the number of cards in
the Tarot deck and of the word MeZLA “the influence from Kether”), and
later as the more familiar 93 (hebrew) and 418 (greek).
Hoor-paar-kraat is the ‘babe in the lotus’ or in the ‘egg of blue’ (the
womb of space), the younger form of Horus, the Child who is the avatar,
ruler or expression of the oncoming aeon, and in some sense an
androgyne uniting and transcending the previous stages of the Mother
and the Father. This ‘inner child’ is sometimes also identified with
the individual’s Guardian Spirit or True Self. The idea of the Magical
Child can also be expanded to the birth of any conception or sorcerous
operation, the planted seed-wish of Crowley’s ‘bud-will’ or the
subliminal sigils of A.O. Spare.
In Egyptian iconography child-gods are often depicted with a finger at
their lips, which was later interpreted as a sign of silence. In the
Thelemic or Golden Dawn systems one may employ the Sign of the Enterer
(lunging forward with right foot and both arms extended at eye level)
to project a charge of energy outward; followed by the Sign of Silence
(stepping back, feet together, left index finger to lips, eyes shut) to
withdraw or absorb energy, to center oneself, to banish any unwanted
influences, to become invisible, or to end a ritual (for which the
Signs of Opening or Closing the Veil are also very useful, and their
performance is self-explanatory). These gestures of the Enterer or of
Silence are means of assuming the aspect and powers of Horus or of
Harpocrates (which are the greek forms of egyptian names).
This is Crowley’s own account of the experience of the transmission:
“I never looked round in the room at
any time.
The Voice of Aiwass came
apparently from over my left shoulder, from the furthest corner of the
room. It seemed to echo itself in my physical heart in a very strange
manner, hard to describe. I have noticed a similar phenomenon when I
have been waiting for a message fraught with great hope or dread. The
voice was passionately poured, as if Aiwass were alert about the
time-limit. I wrote 65 pages of this present essay (at about my usual
rate of composition) in about 10 1/2 hours as against the 3 hours of
the 65 pages of the Book of the Law. I was pushed hard to keep the
pace; the MS. shows it clearly enough.
The voice was of deep timbre,
musical and expressive, its tones solemn, voluptuous, tender, fierce or
aught else as suited the moods of the message. Not bass - perhaps a
rich tenor or baritone.
The English was free of either native
or foreign accent, perfectly pure of local or caste mannerisms, thus
startling and even uncanny at first hearing.
I had a strong impression that
the speaker was actually in the corner where he seemed to be, in a body
of "fine matter," transparent as a veil of gauze, or a cloud of
incense-smoke. He seemed to be a tall, dark man in his thirties,
well-knit, active and strong, with the face of a savage king, and eyes
veiled lest their gaze should destroy what they saw. The dress was not
Arab; it suggested Assyria or Persia, but very vaguely. I took little
note of it, for to me at that time Aiwass and an "angel" such as I had
often seen in visions, a being purely astral.
I now incline to believe that
Aiwass is not only the God or Demon or Devil once held holy in Sumer,
and mine own Guardian Angel, but also a man as I am, insofar as He uses
a human body to make His magical link with Mankind, whom He loves, and
that He is thus an Ipsissimus, the Head of the A.'.A.'. Even I can do,
in a much feebler way, this Work of being a God and a Beast, &c.,
&c., all at the same time, with equal fullness of life.”
-Aleister Crowley, The
Equinox of the Gods
8. The Khabs is in the Khu, not
the Khu in the Khabs.
9. Worship then the Khabs, and
behold my light shed over you!
A powerful magical formula expressed in Egyptian terms. Crowley defines
Khabs as the Light or Star, and the Khu as ‘the magical entity of a
man’ or ‘spirit’ or ‘Magical Image’. The Khabs is the essential cosmic
spark of Hadit, the True Self. The Khu is all that which we formulate
and recall and experience, our own body/mind/soul complex, the garment
of personality and reality that we weave, our individual being and
awareness. It is also the entire external world that we define by our
apparent‘perceptions’ of an external ‘universe’. Michael Aquino notes
that Khabs can be a hieroglyphic term for ‘stellar gods’ and Khu can
also mean ‘fire or flame’, and thus explains this verse as “The stellar gods are within the flame;
they do not create it.”
We are then primarily to worship this Light within ourselves rather
than any of the archetypical images of hypothetical deities outside,
which may well be illusory or empty or transparent in the Buddhist
perspective, although also simultaneously sublimely inspirational in
the sense of Joseph Campbell’s Masks of God. By uniting ourselves with
(and as) this inner Light of Hadit, we illuminate the outer Darkness
that is the manifestation of Nuit. Shining this central life-giving
Light upon the seeds of potential in the Darkness is the act of
creation, and we should identify with the Truth of ourselves rather
than any perhaps illusory (due to our preconceptions or childhood
social programming) perceptions of the nature of so-called ‘reality’.
Note that the Khabs is the House of Hadit, while the Khu is the House
of Nuit: the center and the sphere. In Castaneda’s system the Khabs
might be seen as the Nagual and the Khu as the Tonal.
I really do try to resist directly quoting Crowley overmuch in this
work, but I think this section of his New Comment is very important:
“We are not to regard ourselves as
base beings, without whose sphere is Light or "God". Our minds and
bodies are veils of the Light within. The uninitiate is a "Dark Star",
and the Great Work for him is to make his veils transparent by
'purifying' them. This 'purification' is really 'simplification'; it is
not that the veil is dirty, but that the complexity of its folds makes
it opaque. The Great Work therefore consists principally in the
solution of complexes. Everything in itself is perfect, but when things
are muddled, they become 'evil'…
The Doctrine is evidently of
supreme importance, from its position as the first 'revelation' of
Aiwass. This 'star' or 'Inmost Light' is the original, individual,
eternal essence. The Khu is the magical garment which it weaves for
itself, a 'form' for its Being Beyond Form, by use of which it can gain
experience through self-consciousness... This Khu is the first veil,
far subtler than mind or body, and truer; for its symbolic shape
depends on the nature of its Star.
Why are we told that the Khabs
is in the Khu, not the Khu in the Khabs? Did we then suppose the
converse? I think that we are warned against the idea of a Pleroma, a
flame of which we are Sparks, and to which we return when we 'attain'.
That would indeed be to make the whole curse of separate existence
ridiculous, a senseless and inexcusable folly. It would throw us back
on the dilemma of Manichaeism. The idea of incarnations "perfecting" a
thing originally perfect by definition is imbecile. The only sane
solution is as given previously, to suppose that the Perfect enjoys
experience of (apparent) Imperfection.”
“We are to pay attention to this
Inmost Light; then comes the answering Light of Infinite Space. Note
that the Light of Space is what men call Darkness; its nature is
utterly incomprehensible to our uninitiated minds. It is the 'veils'
mentioned previously in this comment that obstruct the relation between
Nuit and Hadit.
We are not to worship the Khu,
to fall in love with our Magical Image. To do this (we have all done
it) is to forget our Truth. If we adore Form, it becomes opaque to
Being, and may soon prove false to itself. The Khu in each of us
includes the Cosmos as he knows it. To me, even another Khabs is only
part of my Khu. Your own Khabs is your one sole Truth.”
From other sources:
“We are told in Ch. I, V.9 to worship
the Khabs (the house of Hadit) and behold my (Nuit's) light shed over
you, because Khabs is the Central Point of Light, and we thus perform
an act similar to that which made Creation manifest, rather than Not.”
- Frater Achad, Liber
31
“We are not human beings on a
spiritual journey.
We are spiritual beings on a human journey.”
- Stephen Covey
‘”The soul is not in the body. The
body is in the soul” is a near-quote of a statement in Aleister
Crowley’s The Book of the Law: “The Khabs is in the Khu, not the Khu in
the Khabs.” Khu means “spirit”, while Khabs means “star”.”
- Anarchy for the Masses: An
Underground Guide to the Invisibles
by Patrick Neighly & Kereth Cowe-Spigai
“The universe is loved not for its
own sake, but because the Self lives in it.
The gods are loved not for their own
sake, but because the Self lives in it.
Creatures are loved not for their own
sake, but because the Self lives in it.
Everything is loved not for its own
sake, but because the Self lives in it.”
- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
10. Let my servants be few &
secret: they shall rule the many & the known.
Apparently both a call to the natural elitism of a self-chosen Thelemic
aristocracy and a subtle reference to the very distinct possibility of
a worldwide Illuminati conspiracy. Also a tacit recognition that truly
awakened beings have always been very few and far between, and that
magical secrecy does have many practical purposes. Survival, for one.
Grant insists that the constant usage of the term ‘secret‘ in AL is a
codeword for the biochemical ‘secretions’ of the human physiology and
their use in sexual and Tantric rites. Again, Nuit is the Yoni, Hadit
the Lingam: Shakti and Shiva.
11. These are fools that men adore;
both their Gods & their men are fools.
This points to the idiocy of finding one’s center in deities,
authorities or institutions outside of oneself, whether political,
academic, or religious. Most of the unnatural catastrophes in human
history were caused by this kind of lemming-like behavior and its
consequent avoidance of genuine personal responsibility. It may even
refer to the ultimate philosophical impossibility of actually or
definitively ‘knowing’ absolutely anything…
However, in esoteric terms we might also explore the complex symbolism
of the sacred Fool of the tarot, and distinguish between the Fool and
mere fools.
12. Come forth, o children, under the
stars, & take your fill of love!
13. I am above you and in you. My
ecstasy is in yours. My joy is to see your joy.
An impassioned call to pagan abandon, freedom, and love. Also an
assertion that the divine awareness is not anything remotely separate
but is present in all of us, taking Her pleasure in our bliss (rather
than sitting remotely and grimly in judgment and dealing out eternal
damnation for mere sexual escapades?). A beautiful conception of the
purpose of life and an affirmation that we have entered the Space Age,
and that our rituals should take place under the open sky of the starry
night. We are the souls and brains and bodies that allow the universe
to find joy and meaning through our mutual ecstatic experience or union
or Samadhi. Magical rites have almost always been performed at night,
when psychic sensitivity is at a peak, the children and mundanes are
safely asleep, and the Earth shields the full force of solar radiation.
The subtler energy of the stars empowers the initiate.
Also a reminder that many have found in Egypt the mythic remnants of a
stellar cult, and that in the very earliest versions of afterlife
beliefs souls did not descend to an underworld, but ascended as stars
in the body of Nuit.
14. Above, the gemmed azure is
The naked splendour of Nuit;
She bends in ecstasy to kiss
The secret ardours of Hadit.
The winged globe, the starry blue,
Are mine, O Ankh-af-na-khonsu!
This verse is drawn from the ritual to Horus that Crowley wrote to
prepare for the reception of Liber AL, and based upon the translation
of the text upon the Stele of Revealing to which he was led in the
Cairo Museum. It depicts the main entities of Thelemic cosmology: the
arching body of the night-sky star-goddess Nuit and the winged solar
globe of Hadit, above the enthroned presence of hawk-headed
Ra-hoor-khuit. Before him stands the figure of the priest/scribe
Ankh-af-na-khonsu for whom the stele was made, and who Crowley
considered an alter ego or previous incarnation. This verse is an
exquisite mantra for magical workings, perfectly expressing the
cosmology of AL.
The name ‘Ankh-af-na-Khonsu‘ apparently means ‘He whose life is in
Khonsu’ or ‘Life (or Energy) of the Moon’, and this leads us to a
parenthetical consideration of the ancient lunar god Khonsu, another
child god, at times a warrior and avenger or a magical healer and
exorcist of demons, who is usually depicted in a form bearing the
attributes and regalia of almost all of the other deities. His name
means ‘traveler’, and he also often has the head of a falcon, or wears
a crown combining the moon-crescent and sun-disk. A lunar priest for a
solar god?
15. Now ye shall know that the chosen
priest & apostle of infinite space is the prince-priest the Beast;
and in his woman called the Scarlet Woman is all power given. They
shall gather my children into their fold: they shall bring the glory of
the stars into the hearts of men.
This introduces the officers or priesthood of the Thelemic Cultus, the
celebrants of the rites: the male form is the Great Beast foreseen (in
a mushroom-induced experience) by St. John in the biblical Book of
Revelation, and who might better be understood as the wild goat-god Pan
(whose name means ‘All’) or perhaps the red Set or Bes of Egypt (and we
will happily leave Satan in some other obsolete mythological category).
The female avatar is the Scarlet Woman, the Woman Clothed In The Sun,
who is also typically vilified in Revelation, but more properly seen as
the incarnation of the Goddess, the Tantric dakini or suvasini, or the
Priestess of the Silver Star.
In The Vision & The Voice
they are named as Chaos and Babalon (whose number is 156). The Great
Beast is also called TO MEGA THERION, which totals 666 by isopsephy
(greek qabala), and is one of Crowley’s magical names and childhood
role models. She is also BABALON HE MEGELE (Babalon the Great).
Revelation states that 666 is ‘the number of a man’. Joel Love recently
pointed out to me that the hebrew spelling of Scarlet Woman would be
ShNI AShE, which also adds up to 666 (the same spelling could also mean
‘Two Women’ or ‘Other Woman’). 666 is a very complex number in
mathematics, and also the sum of all numbers on the roulette wheel… the
fear of the number 666 is Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia.
According to Wikipedia (which is often surprisingly good on occult
topics!):
“666 is the natural number following
665 and preceding 667. It is also an abundant number. It is the sum of
the first 36 natural numbers (i.e. 1 + 2 + 3 + ... + 34 + 35 + 36 =
666), and thus a triangular number. Since 36 is both square and
triangular, 666 is the sixth number of the form n2(n2 + 1) / 2
(sequence A037270 in OEIS) and the eighth number of the form n(n +
1)(n2 + n + 2) / 8 (doubly triangular numbers, A002817). The number of
prime numbers up to 666 is 121, the square of the number of prime
numbers up to 36. 666 is the 60th 12-factored number; 60 is the first
12-factored number. 666=(36) − (26) + 1; 6=(32) − (22) + 1; 66=(34) −
(24) + 1. 666 is the sum of the squares of the first seven prime
numbers (i.e. 22 + 32 + 52 + 72 + 112 + 132 + 172 = 666). The harmonic
mean of the decimal digits of 666 is (trivially - all repdigit natural
numbers have this property) an integer: 3/(1/6 + 1/6 + 1/6) = 6, making
666 the 54th number with this property. In base 10, 666 is a
palindromic number, a repdigit and a Smith number. A prime reciprocal
magic square based on 1/149 in base 10 has a magic total of 666.The
Roman numeral representation of the number 666 (DCLXVI) uses once each
the Roman numeral symbols with values under 1,000, occurring in
descending order of their respective values (D = 500, C = 100, L = 50,
X = 10, V = 5, I = 1). 666 is a member of the Indices of prime Padovan
sequence, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 14, 19, 30, 37, 84, 128, 469, 666, 1262, 1573,
2003, 2210, ...”
The epithet ‘scarlet‘ refers to the sacred womb-blood of the lunar
cycle, for the magicks of the new aeon are said to be largely sexual in
nature. Note the emphasis that the arcane power is always to be found
in the Woman, the Shakti, Shekinah, Sophia, or wisdom-principle of
cosmic energy. There is a Hindu saying that ‘Shiva without Shakti is
shava’, or ‘God without Goddess is a corpse’. In Egypt Horus and Hathor
celebrated a yearly sacred marriage, when her statue visited his temple
in a holy procession and riotous festival. These dramatic roles are
evocative forms that human beings may use to incarnate the very gods
themselves.
I sometimes interpret them in Jungian terms: the Scarlet Woman as the
Anima, the Beast as the Shadow, and their Child as the Self. Another
perspective might see them as the Soul, Spirit and Flesh, or in alchemy
as Sulfur, Mercury and Salt. It is said that they will gather a
community of the newly awakened together, and draw the cosmic
influences of the constellations into them, perhaps implying
astrological or stellar or planetary forms of magick. Crowley,
typically egocentric, came to believe that all these prophecies applied
to him (and his current lovers) personally; while some clearly may, I
consider them to provide a far more universal formula for ritual
dramas. We can all wear these masks.
16. For he is ever a sun, and she a
moon. But to him is the winged secret flame, and to her the stooping
starlight.
This would appear to express the conventional solar man/lunar woman
polarity of western esotericism and alchemy, and following Grant to
assign the activation of the Kundalini energy to the priest, and the
exudation of the Tantric kalas to the priestess.
Yet I think that sometimes they switch: She is the Woman clothed with
the Sun, and Ankh-f-n-Khonsu is the Life of the Moon. Reversal, of
course, is a major formula, and often a gateway to both the Aeon of
Maat (time running backwards) and the Nightside of the Tree. It is good
to remember that there are many cultures (Norse, Japanese, Egyptian)
with strong male/moon and female/sun affinities. There is a great deal
of fire in Babalon, Sekhmet, Freya, and all the solar/leonine
goddesses. Role-reversal rules, there are absolutely no absolutes....
experiment! The sun gives direct light, while that of the moon is
reflected or mirrored. The sun is electric, the moon magnetic.
Moon/Sun conjunctions or eclipses always seem like the hieros-gamos or
sacred marriage to me; and as far as the Knowledge & Conversation
of the Holy Guardian Angel goes, the path of Samekh links Yesod and
Tiphareth, the wedding of moon and sun, the unconscious and
superconscious minds. Art, Alchemy, or the Angel of Time would all be
names of the tarot trump concerned; the name Temperance of course
refers to the alchemical process of tempering iron into steel by
heating it in fire/sun and cooling in water/moon.
Note that Crowley also thought male stars or souls were formed from the
center outwards and female stars from the circumference inwards,
possibly implying a somewhat sexist belief that men expand from a core
of self while women make up their own personalities from their
surrounding influences. My own corollary to this is the notion that
men’s thoughts may tend to run in straight lines and sharp angles, and
women’s thoughts in curves and parabolas.
Crowley also states:
“In II, 16, we find that HAD is to be
taken as 11 (see II, 16, comment). Then Hadit = 421, Nuit = 466.
421 - 3 (the moon) = 418
466 + 200 (sun) = 666
These are the two great numbers of
the Qabalistic system that enabled me to interpret the signs leading to
this revelation.”
17. But ye are not so chosen.
The uninitiated person is not yet fully awakened to the aeonic energy.
The word ‘initiate’ means ‘to begin’. Being ‘not’ or Nuit may imply the
crossing of the Abyss.
Motta says “The word 'ye' is usually
employed in the verses as a cypher for The Beast and The Scarlet Woman
- Yod + He.” A very clever thought.
This may also imply that Aleister Crowley is still The Beast, and that
the legions of lunatics who have claimed to be his heir or
reincarnation are not! His biographer Israel Regardie once considered
compiling a book to be titled Liber
Nuts: Letters From People Who Think They Are Aleister Crowley.
I am very sad that it was never published.
18. Burn upon their brows, o
splendrous serpent!
19. O azure-lidded woman, bend upon
them!
Invokes Hadit (as the Egyptian uraeus-serpent of royal and magical
power or the Tantric Fire Snake of Kundalini, arising to open the third
eye or Ajna-chakra, then going beyond) and Nuit (as the omnipresent
mystery of the unfolding universe, or the thousand-petalled lotus of
the crown chakra called Sahasrara) to activate the psychic centers of
the human microcosm.
In the famous mantra OM MANI PADME HUM (Hail! The Jewel in the Lotus!)
Hadit is the Jewel and Nuit the Lotus, also corresponding to the Dorje
or thunderbolt-scepter and the Bell or skull-cup of Tantric practice,
or to the Lance and Grail of our western mysteries.
This verse seems to be a formula of consecration. In personal practice
I speak these two verses when lighting my candles and incense and
filling my cup respectively. Note that Horus transmitted Liber AL at
noon (also sacred to Pan), while the rites of Nuit are always to take
place in the dark of night.
20. The key of the rituals is in the
secret word which I have given unto him.
Keys are very old symbols of opening and authority, especially those of
temples.
Crowley produced any number of impressive words of power, which may be
studied in his writings. I suspect that the word referred to here may
be the secret name of each individual’s Holy Guardian Angel, or perhaps
simply ABRAHADABRA, the Word of the Aeon (see c.III, v.1). There was
another mysterious Word of the Aeon given to Crowley in the 27th Aethyr
of The Vision & the Voice:
MAKHASHANAH. Both have eleven letters and both total 418. But in hebrew
this word is spelled with eight letters: Mem/40, Aleph/1, Kaph/20,
Aleph/1, Shin/300, Aleph/1, Nun/50, He/5 (and remember that hebrew
would actually be written from right to left). This was very
significant for numerological reasons, but the point is that Crowley
apparently and unexpectedly heard the word for the first time with no
notion of its qabalistic complexity. This is a good example of how such
codes are keys in his more inspired or transmitted visionary works. His
Angel is giving him clues. The numbers and tarot attributions and
mantras that make up these words are magical formulas to be explored
and given life.
21. With the God & the Adorer I am
nothing: they do not see me. They are as upon the earth; I am Heaven,
and there is no other God than me, and my lord Hadit.
Nuit is ultimately beyond any normal human conception.
Also, most of the formal devotions of conventional religions have
essentially become mundane and bordering on useless, because they are
strictly mediated by external symbols, formalized and often censored
texts, and well-paid priesthoods. The reunitings of Nuit and Hadit, of
the inmost self with the otherness beyond, are thus a higher form of
yoga or union.
Less esoterically, Nuit is simply the physical universe, only perceived
by the consciousness of Hadit. All that we seem to experience or think
we know is filtered through our perhaps unreliable senses and the
activity of our minds. Nuit is objective, Hadit subjective; or Nuit is
potential, Hadit actual.
22. Now, therefore, I am known to ye
by my name Nuit, and to him by a secret name which I will give him when
at last he knoweth me. Since I am Infinite Space, and the Infinite
Stars thereof, do ye also thus. Bind nothing! Let there be no
difference made among you between any one thing & any other thing;
for thereby there cometh hurt.
23. But whoso availeth in this, let
him be the chief of all!
Again refers to the power of the secret names to be discovered by each
individual, and with the key formula of ‘Infinite Space, Infinite
Stars’ that identifies Nuit with the great goddess ISIS. The promised
secret name on the goddess was revealed during Crowley’s Enochian
visionary experiments in the Sahara desert as Our Lady Babalon, who
with Lord Chaos are avatars or forms of Nu & Had in The Vision & the Voice.
Crowley also received the name OLUN, who shares the numeration of 156
with BABALON. Other Words totaling 156 are KAOS (as 20+70+6+60), ALONE,
QUIM, & PUNK (rock). Chaos Magick has become one of the most vital
strands of occultism active today.
Continues to emphasize the word of ‘no difference’, the level of yogic
attainment and non-attachment where apparent duality can no longer
affect the equilibrium, and is perceived simply as the joyful dance or
play of Maya or Shakti. ‘Bind nothing’ is also an excellent exhortation
to absolutely avoid imposing limitations, obsessions, habits,
preconceptions, rigidity or possessiveness of any kind upon yourself or
on others. The ‘chief of all’ is one who has mastered their Self, or
been mastered by it: the enlightened sage. For ‘all’ read AL,
throughout the book.
24. I am Nuit, and my word is six and
fifty.
25. Divide, add, multiply, and
understand.
More qabalistic conundrums. NU would be Nun/50 and Vau/6, which
reversed as UN perhaps reveals a key to the negation of things. These
two letters are ascribed to Scorpio and Taurus, and the scorpion and
bull are central to Mithraic iconography, which makes much use of
zodiacal imagery. The vulture goddess MAUT totals 56.
Crowley suggests that this means dividing 6/50 = 0.12, with zero as
Nuit the circumference, the point as Hadit the center, one as
Ra-Hoor-khuit, and two human consciousness or Thoth, the breath of life
(I might ignore the decimal point in favor of simply 012: Nuit as zero
the void, Hadit the center as one, and the Twins as two). Adding 50+6 =
56 or NU, then 5+6 = 11, the number declared by Nuit as her own and
claimed by Crowley as the number of Magick (the One Beyond Ten, outside
the Tree of Life). Abrahadabra has eleven letters. Multiplying 50x6 =
300, the number of the Hebrew letter Shin assigned to Fire or Pluto and
the Aeon trump, which had been previously titled the Last Judgment or
the Angel (or in Etteilla’s early revision of the Tarot deck, as Chaos,
which as I mentioned above is now a well-known and creative magical
movement). Aquino believes the Word of Nuit is ‘Inertia.’
26. Then saith the prophet and slave
of the beauteous one: Who am I, and what shall be the sign? So she
answered him, bending down, a lambent flame of blue, all-touching, all
penetrant, her lovely hands upon the black earth, & her lithe body
arched for love, and her soft feet not hurting the little flowers: Thou
knowest! And the sign shall be my ecstasy, the consciousness of the
continuity of existence, (the unfragmentary non-atomic fact of my
universality) the omnipresence of my body.
This expresses the nature and purpose of the universe as ecstasy, and
affirms that there is ultimately no real division between its countless
beings and elements. Greek philosophy, the various traditions of
alchemy, and most religions have regarded all things as variant
manifestations and permutations of a single primordial substance, The
One. The land of Khem is an ancient name of Egypt, meaning ‘black
earth’, referring to the fertile soil bordering the Nile. In the
seasonal course of the annual flooding of the Nile various waves of
color from mineral deposits passed down the river, which have been
compared to the changes in color in the alchemical process of
perfecting the Philosopher’s Stone. Much of this sacred science
originated in Egypt, hence Al-Khem or alchemy.
Liber Pennae Praenumbra states: “The nature of true Alchemy is that it
changes not alone the substance of the Work, but also changes thence
the Alchemist.”
There is also an implied promise that consciousness is immortal. For
‘continuous’, perhaps consider the quantum continuum. My personal
theory is that in terms of modern physics light or energy sometimes
appears as a particle (Hadit) and sometimes as a wave (Nuit). The word
‘flowers’ might refer to the chakras.
Originally, the last part of this verse was dictated as ‘the
unfragmentary non-atomic fact of my universality’; considering this to
be incomprehensible, Crowley asked for clarification and was told
‘Write this in whiter words’ and ‘But go forth on’; he later replaced
it with ‘the omnipresence of my body.’
27. Then the priest answered &
said unto the Queen of Space, kissing her lovely brows, and the dew of
her light bathing his whole body in a sweet-smelling perfume of sweat:
O Nuit, continuous one of Heaven, let it ever be thus; that men speak
not of the as One but as None; and let them speak not of thee at all,
since thou art continuous!
Spiritual love is expressed in physical or Tantric terms, and the
ancient symbolic language of perfumes, flowers, essences, secretions
and kalas reflects a deep physiological gnosis. Throughout history
magico-religious rites have employed incense and perfumes, often
dedicated to specific entities, as the sign of an invisible presence.
The sense of smell is one of the deepest keys to the re-creation of
memory and altered states.
Also reflects in words like Not and None the core secret of eastern
meditation: that emptiness, transparence, the infinite diamond void,
always underlies, permeates, and is the ultimate ground of existence.
The suggestive term ‘continuous‘ again implies the stellar continuum.
As Albert Einstein said, "Once you
can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is
something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy."
Crowley’s New Comment includes many long discourses on psychology,
philosophy, mathematics, chemistry and physics, drawing upon Einstein
and Eddington, Freud and Jung. Passing on in 1947, I doubt that he made
it too far into quantum theory, but he was clearly aware that the
rapidly accelerating science of the future was somehow shining forth in
this magical revelation. And oddly enough, he was in school at
Cambridge when the electron was discovered or defined there.
Not speaking at all is the invincible formula of Hoor-par-kraat or
Harpocrates, the invisible Lord of Silence. The apparent disdain for
One as an obsession may well reflect the tragically bloodstained and
fanatical history of the obsolete monotheisms sometimes termed the
Black Dharmas.
28. None, breathed the light, faint
& faery, of the stars, and two.
29. For I am divided for love's sake,
for the chance of union.
Again, 0 = 2. Taoism in Action. These two are Yin & Yang, as the
motive of being is bliss: separation for the sake of fusion, dazzling
combinations of endless activity and love played out on myriad
unfolding levels. The Creation of the World is a primordial Change from
nonexistence into incarnation, where cosmic romance with ‘the 10,000
things’ as an adventure becomes the purpose of existence. Breath is
life, pranayama is yoga, and darkness becomes filled with light.
‘faery’ is perhaps a nod to the heritage of Celtic culture; or perhaps
misheard for ‘fiery’?
Here are three verses from the Scarlet Sisterhood Commentary:
“The One that is Nuit, the Whole, can
not be accurately described as thus. The concept of One implies
something that is not-One perceiving it. Nuit is more than one. Yet she
is without division. So perfect, so whole, so unified in her Self is
Nu, that she is none, meaning without parts, not parts lacking. But to
speak so of her is to divide from her, and such is impossible. Thus Nu
is not Nu, none.
The perception of division,
which is impossible, is necessary to give definition to union. Thus can
the non-divided be united.
Since division is a veil, a
mask, it has no power to cause pain, which also is as a mask, but
exists to heighten the ecstasy of union.”
Michael Aquino writes:
“Nuit validates the concept that she
is all-inclusive, hence cannot be distinguished from any other thing
known to her… Yet the objective universe is not a homogenous whole; it
is everywhere separated into complementary parts: +/- magnetic fields,
matter/antimatter, mass/energy, light/darkness, heat/cold, etc. It is
the interaction of these parts that engenders the phenomena of time and
mathematics.”
A.O. Spare says,
"Self-pleasure by infinite unities
and equal separations, to retain separateness.”
Frater Achad writes in Liber
31:
“I think the idea we should try to
formulate, is very much that of the Qabalists, though the real meaning
is, I am convinced, a matter of experience. First was Nothing, and this
may be called LA while it is considered as expanding into Limitless
Space (Ain Soph) and becoming Limitless Light, perhaps. The Beginning
of things was caused by a simple change of conception, as it were a
"looking inwards" instead of outwards, and a corresponding change from
LA to AL. I think the difference in the way the English and Hebrew
Alphabets are written, is a good symbol of this, the direction is
different, so that the two letters might stand for either LA or AL
according to the manner in which we look upon them. The great value of
this Word lies in the fact that the self-same symbol contains the ideas
of Nothing and Something, without any change in itself, and this seems
to be the one Symbol that gets over the difficult transition from NOT
to ONE. Of course it was not even a Word in the beginning, but the
Silent Breath, Expansion and Contraction, and the true theory of the
Universe is that it was created by the First Breath of the Tao, or
Nuit. We find this confirmed in Liber Legis Ch. 1 Verse 28. "None,
breathed the light, faint and faery, of the stars, and two."
30. This is the creation of the world,
that the pain of division is as nothing, and the joy of dissolution all.
The ‘pain of division’ is the birth pang of the Universe, and also the
condition of humanity. Yet this verse joyously dismisses the Buddhist
obsession with sorrow and illusion, while perhaps retaining the concept
of Nirvana (often conceived of as an ‘ocean of bliss’ or ‘the shoreless
sea’, though the original meaning was ‘cessation’). Our universe is a
vast playground; as Heraclitus said,
“The Aeon is a Child at play.”
31. For these fools of men and their
woes care not thou at all! They feel little; what is, is balanced by
weak joys; but ye are my chosen ones.
The limited roles and daily dramas of common life pale before the quest
for ultimate answers, and every true individual must undertake this
journey on no terms but their own. Also points out the pitfalls of
second-hand emotion and blind belief, which seem to ensnare and obsess
many of us so completely that we feel compelled to interfere with the
lives of others, or live out our own lives vicariously on the screens
of computers, televisions and films. It has often been said that “most
people lead lives of quiet desperation”; I might well add to that the
constant distractions of gossip, group-thought, the mindless barrage of
the Media Spectacle, and habitual self-destruction by alcohol or other
medicaments (whenever used to achieve numbness and addiction rather
than creativity, metamorphosis or joy). Let’s face it: most people
probably are doing the very best they can according to their rather dim
lights, and just want a peaceful and undemanding life (and good luck
with that!). However, there are also a lot of genuine idiots on this
planet.
Balance or Equilibrium (Maat) is an extremely important concept… and
practice! In general, many polarities must maintain an active ongoing
equilibrium, or collapse.
32. Obey my prophet! follow out the
ordeals of my knowledge! seek me only! Then the joys of my love will
redeem ye from all pain. This is so: I swear it by the vault of my
body; by my sacred heart and tongue; by all I can give, by all I desire
of ye all.
Apparently identifies Crowley as the prophet, and warns of the
inevitable ordeals which may lead to knowledge or gnosis, while
promising transcendence of sorrow and pain. In general most magical
initiations wind up including a corresponding ordeal, self-created or
external, and in many cases the twin concepts seem inseparable and
inevitable processes.
Aquino states: “Dissolution of the
self into Nuit brings an end to all self-consciousness and thus from
pain. The ultimate argument of Nuit is for suicide of the finite self
in order to become part of the infinite whole.”
The formula of the ‘heart & tongue’ reappears. The vault of Her
body is the arching Sky or the universal matrix of the curved
time/space continuum. I recently found a magical word of Nuit in The One & The Many by
the eminent Egyptologist Erik Hornung, who wrote: “But the sky is a number of things - cow,
baldachin, water, woman - it is the goddess Nut and the Goddess Hathor…”
Baldachin? This is variously defined as a richly embroidered brocade
fabric of silk and gold or silver threads, a cloth canopy fixed or
carried over an important person or a sacred object in procession, or
an ornamental structure resembling a canopy used especially over an
altar or tomb. The body of Nuit, the infinite night-sky, jeweled with
stars…
33. Then the priest fell into a deep
trance or swoon, & said unto the Queen of Heaven; Write unto us the
ordeals; write unto us the rituals; write unto us the law!
The altered state of trance or gnostic consciousness is an essential
prerequisite for the successful practice of magick, and there are
countless techniques for achieving it, including the various physical,
spiritual, psychological and entheogenic technologies of Magick and
Yoga. As Crowley said:
“We place no reliance
On virgin or pigeon;
Our Method is Science,
Our Goal is Religion.”
"Oh, it's marvelous! We can do
anything now that science has invented magick!"
-Marge Simpson
34. But she said: the ordeals I write
not: the rituals shall be half known and half concealed: the Law is for
all.
Life is quite well known for presenting us all with ordeals or tests,
the trick is to accept them as learning experiences and work through
them, at which point ordeal becomes initiation. One should probably
expect initiation to be somewhat stressful (and that is a considerable
understatement). Rituals may be best drawn from one’s chosen cultural
traditions or previous incarnations, but in the New Aeon must be
adapted, expanded, and made one’s own: the best magick is that which
you create yourself. The Law is termed universal, and acceptance of
Thelema triggers inspiration and mutation. Individual change is
Initiation, collective change is Evolution.
35. This that thou writest is the
threefold book of Law.
Three chapters, three deities, three ecstasies; and hence titled The
Book of the Law. This may be the ‘Sealed Book’ prophesied in Revelation.
36. My scribe Ankh-af-na-khonsu, the
priest of the princes, shall not in one letter change this book; but
lest there be folly, he shall comment thereupon by the wisdom of
Ra-Hoor-Khu-it.
The three chapters of the Book of the Law are, if one truly accepts
them, the program for a very remarkable series of transformative
experiences. They contain far less dogma and accretion than most
religious texts, which tend to be heavily edited as the centuries pass.
This makes the insistence upon preserving the unchanged original quite
logical. The reference to ‘wisdom’ links the work of comment to the
qabalistic sphere of Chokmah and the accompanying grade of the Magus,
and various other commentators upon AL were covered in my introduction.
William Blake said, “If the fool
would persist in his folly he would become wise.”
37. Also the mantras and spells; the
obeah and the wanga; the work of the wand and the work of the sword;
these he shall learn and teach.
Mantras and spells are verbal and poetic formulas, repeated to
concentrate the mind; the obeah and the wanga are drawn from
Afro-Caribbean tradition, and perhaps refer to ecstatic ritual actions
such as drumming and dance, although Crowley defines them simply as Act
and Words. I rather doubt that Crowley studied much Vodou, but it is
clearly very significant that so many terms from various cultures
appear in this text. The shift to a Nu Aeon affects all world
traditions, and every consciously willed act is a magical act. The 93
Current reconciles all teachings, a process seen in The Vision & The Voice,
the series of Enochian scryings that continued his initiation and the
transformation of the metaphysical or metaphorical cosmos.
More specifically, Obeah is largely a system of spirit communication,
while Wanga are traditional magical ‘charm assemblages’ or gris-gris,
talismanic or medicinal substances, often sealed in the bellies of
protective statues in Africa, or in America in healing or cursing or
attracting ‘hoodoo bags’.
The sword and wand (Solve et Coagula, Analysis & Synthesis) are the
more masculine tools of the magician, perhaps indicating that the cup
and disk are the work of the priestess?
Crowley in his Comment ever so modestly says:
“Why am not I to learn and teach the
work of the Cup and of the Disk? Is it because they are the feminine
weapons? Shall the Scarlet Woman attend to these? The Book does not say
so; the passives are ignored. I feel the omission as a lack of balance,
the only case of the kind in the Book. This makes me certain that there
is a special meaning. This wand and sword may not be the wand and
sword, or rather dagger, of the elemental weapons. The Wand may be that
of the Fool, the sword that of Justice, whose letters are A & L; AL
is the Key of the whole Book.
We may also take them as
simple symbols, the one as that of Love, the other as that of War. But,
looking back over sixteen years, what have I learnt and taught? Surely
the work of the wand, the free use of the Will to create, and the way
to give power to the Will. I have set it up and caused men to worship
it, for its name is God-in-action. As to the work of the sword, I have
fought, I have shorn shams asunder, I have anatomized my mind as no man
has done since Gautama. Last, I have shown how pure analysis leads to
the highest Trance, and unveils the absolute Truth.”
The Cup is the Holy Grail and also the Chalice of Abominations, while
in our era the Pantacle or Globe of the Earth has evolved beyond the
Coin to become the data disk, encoding huge amounts of information in
the form of texts, numbers, images and music. The Sword of Thelema is
paired with the Balance of Truth, while the Wand or Rod or Staff is the
quintessential tool and symbol of the Magus.
There is a very old practice called bibliomancy, divination by opening
a random page of a book and closing your eyes and pointing out a
sentence for an oracle. For a long time the Bible was preferred, but
Liber AL and the other Thelemic Holy Books, Joyce’s Finnegans Wake or R.A.
Wilson’s Illuminatus!
or whatever has meaning for you can work. This is just such an
omen-quote that I randomly found, which turned out to be on the nature
of the wand, from a favorite literary star of mine:
“As the World Tree stands, so stands
its child, the sanctified stick. Shamans climb it. Maidens dance around
it. Men use it for pointing. It points to thunder, to comets, to the
migrating herds. Sometimes it points to you.
Once there was a man who carried a
stick that he swirled in a stream until a hair clung to it. The
direction in which the hair pointed led to satisfaction. But who
deserved credit, the hair or the stick?
Stick is the magic penis. When waved,
it sows sons and daughters. Stick is also lethal. It cracks a skull
nicely.
Guns have been called “magic sticks,”
but guns are only half magical: they take life but can’t create it.
If a stick is twirled under proper
conditions, it makes fire. If rubbed against another stick, it makes
fire. Once a stick is painted, however, it is assigned to other duties.
Sigmund Freud observed children
rolling hoops with sticks. Freud made notes in his journal.
T.S. Eliot wrote:
Crossed staves in a field
Behaving as the wind behaves.
In a deck of cards, there are four
suits: diamonds, spades, hearts and sticks. The card stick was both the
rod of the peasant and the wand of the magi. Whip the donkey. Stir the
moon.
Like a sword, or a phallus, it feels
quite good to hold a stick in your hands. If held correctly, with
maximum consciousness (and that is difficult to do), the stick may
suddenly flower.
There is a sense in which a painted
stick is a stick in bloom. This stick points to the hidden face of God.
Sometimes it points to you.”
- Tom Robbins, skinny
legs
and all
38. He must teach; but he may make
severe the ordeals.
There is a duty to spread the word, but lessons must ultimately be
learned by the personal struggle of the individual student, and one
thrust into the role of teacher has the right to test their students as
well as the obligation to share their experiences. Conversely, students
have an equal right to test the honesty of their teachers. While
cooperation is needed within organizations, all authority in the New
Aeon ultimately rests within the individual. However, it is still the
people who do the Work who earn the rewards…
39. The word of the Law is Θελημα.
Thelema (written in Greek letters in the original manuscript) or ‘Will’
is the key word and core principle of the magick of this system. With
its other half Agape or ‘Love’ it shares the signal numeration 93,
hence the term 93 Current. According to Robert Anton Wilson its
linguistic roots lie in words meaning ‘sorcery or spells’. The
discovery of the True Will and the Great Work of carrying it out are
the goals of the Thelemic magician. Beyond mere focus or
one-pointedness, the True Will is defined as the full expression of the
primal essence of your own unique nature, of ‘being who you are’.
An A.U. is the scientific term for an astronomical unit, the average or
mean distance between the Earth and the Sun: 93 million miles. ‘Au’ is
also the symbol for solar Gold in the periodic table of elements, from
the Latin ‘Aurum’.
See also Rabelais's Gargantua
& Pantagruel for details of his idea
of an Abbey of Thelema and its way of life, whose only law was ‘Fay ce
que vouldras’, or ‘Do What Thou Wilt’. In the 1700s the same phrase was
carved by the notorious rake Sir Francis Dashwood over the door of
Medmenham Abbey as the motto of the libertine Hellfire Club. Benjamin
Franklin and Voltaire were occasional visitors.
40. Who calls us Thelemites will do no
wrong, if he look but close into the word. For there are therein Three
Grades, the Hermit, and the Lover, and the man of Earth. Do what thou
wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
The Hermit is solitary in his concentration, and might imply the
formula of the ascetic or yogi. The Lover implies connections with all
life, and perhaps the varied methods of sexual magick, or the devotion
of bhakti-yoga (’yoga’ means ‘union’). The Man of Earth takes action in
the mundane or physical world, but it would be a mistake to consider
this in any way a ‘lower’ form of practice; all three are equally valid
modes of being, and one’s work or career in the material world should
be as clear an expression of the True Will as any other aspect of life.
The rejection of the physical realm as evil or flawed or unclean is a
sad delusion of monotheist superstitions such as christianity or new
ageism, and has no place in genuine and natural paganisms such as
Thelema.
The Scarlet Sisterhood
Commentary quite lucidly says: “The
Hermit changes himself, the Lover changes another, and the man of Earth
changes his World.”
Crowley interprets these Thelemic grades in terms of the Tarot Atus:
THE is the Hermit, numbered IX,
LE is the Lovers and VI,
MA is the Tower and XVI: and 9+6+16 = 31, one-third of 93.
He also states that:
"It is explained
in Liber 418 that: "The man of earth is the adherent. The lover giveth
his life unto the work among men. The hermit goeth solitary, and giveth
only of his light unto men. Thus we have in the Order, the Mystic, the
Magician, and the Devotee. These correspond closely to the Nuit - Hadit
- Ra-Hoor-Khuit Triad.”
I might also suggest another view: the Man of Earth I ascribe to the
lower four spheres of the Tree of Life (Malkuth, Yesod, Hod and
Netzach), which are considered the basic elemental workings of the
First Order or Golden Dawn.
Then there is the Veil of Paroketh, between the lower four spheres and
the attainment of the Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian
Spirit.
The Lover grade I see as the triangle of Tiphareth, Geburah and Chesed
or the King, Warrior and Priest. These form the downward-pointing red
triangle that is the symbol of Horus, and are the Second Order of the
Rosy Cross.
Between the lower seven spheres and the three highest spheres lies the
non-sphere of Daath, the gateway of forbidden Knowledge guarded by the
Veil of the Abyss.
I regard the Hermit grade as the Supernals, Binah, Chokmah and Kether.
These final or primal three spheres are considered to be the realm of
the Third Order or Silver Star. Above this paradoxical Abyss all things
exist only as identical with their own opposites: in Binah, Sorrow is
Joy; in Chokmah, Truth is Falsehood; in Kether, Self is Not-Self.
Beyond this are the Triple Veils of the Beyond, of negative existence:
Ain, Ain Soph, Ain Soph Aur, sometimes interpreted as Nothingness,
Without Form, and the Limitless Light. The Ain is Nuit, is later
reversed as Nia, and will be discussed later.
Seeing the Tree of Life as a Ladder of Lights is essentially a fallacy,
and it should probably be seen as one sphere ringed like an onion; or
even better as one atomic sphere vibrating different musical notes at
11 levels of frequency. The Tree is Hadit.
‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law!‘ is the credo and
essence of all of Crowley’s teaching. This is not merely a call to
hedonism, but more like a magical version of Jung’s process of
Individuation: the purpose of human existence is to discover one’s own
True Self, one’s Buddha-Nature, to achieve wholeness and fulfill one’s
destiny and purpose, ‘to become who we really are’. It is to discover
your primal obsession, to reify the inherent dream. Like Nietzsche,
Reich and many modern psychologists Crowley deeply believed that all
human beings are born truly free, but are then immorally programmed
with the rigid (and stupid) rules of society and culture. This
inevitably leads us to much of the unhappiness in the world, and it is
only by a determined and revolutionary process of conscious
deconditioning and discarding the ego-masks of the socialized persona
that the genuine Self is finally allowed to emerge. To discover this
True Will is to find the real purpose at the core of one’s being, and
to work it out fully in life is the only possible meaning for any
individual experience, the existential and heroic quest for meaning.
A.O. Spare said: “Do as you please,
to whom the pleasing is the law.”
Oscar Wilde said: "To become a work
of art is the object of living."
41. The word of Sin is Restriction. O
man! refuse not thy wife, if she will! O lover, if thou wilt, depart!
There is no bond that can unite the divided but love: all else is a
curse. Accursed! Accursed be it to the aeons! Hell.
Apparently the only sin in a completely Thelemic society would be to
deny or transgress against another’s Will, and ideally in such a
sublime cosmos stars in their harmonious orbits will never disastrously
conflict. In practice there may still be some bugs in the system, as
not everyone is perfected in their ongoing evolution… and worlds do
indeed collide.
Born at the end of the Victorian era when sexual hypocrisy was at a
phenomenally high level, with prostitution rampant and divorce nearly
impossible, Crowley had a great lifelong appreciation of the importance
of freedom and a matching aversion to external authority. No doubt we
would like to consider ourselves in the 21st century as much more
personally liberated and socially advanced, but the struggle still
continues: much of America still maintains bizarrely puritan obsessions
which corrupt our culture and politics to this day. The vital
separation of church and state envisioned by our founding fathers and
forgotten mothers is continually threatened; we should recall that they
sought to escape many centuries of European religious conflict by
creating a utopia on a new continent, and if we contemplate
dictatorships of orthodoxy such as Muslim Afghanistan and Iran or
fascist North Korea and Burma or semi-communist China today we might
see why. Frankly, most of this planet remains completely screwed… and
many of us are simply starving to death.
Anton Szandor LaVey’s magical formula was “Indulgence instead of
Abstinence.”
Yet another bald-headed mage without a day job, declaring a new age…
42. Let it be that state of manyhood
bound and loathing. So with thy all; thou hast no right but to do thy
will.
The ‘state of manyhood bound and loathing‘ could refer to the chaotic
demon of dispersion Choronzon (333) who guards the non-sphere of Daath
or Knowledge at the pylon of the gate of the Abyss, and doubled with
SHuGaL (333) equals the Beast as 666 established in equilibrium. Or
even more likely, it points to society and/or schizophrenia. ‘thy all’
confronts ‘the many’.
43. Do that, and no other shall say
nay.
‘No right but to do thy will’ is a rather high moral principle; it
implies that everyone has the responsibility and obligation and
potential to perfect their own life alone, and no right whatsoever to
interfere with anyone else’s decisions or judgment. This may or may not
actually be possible, and remains unlikely, but might lead to Utopia.
44. For pure will, unassuaged of
purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.
Pure Will would thus appear to be a very high state indeed,
corresponding to the Tantric Svecchachara (“a way of life where one
acts as one wishes and does what is right in one's own eyes”). One
should never be a slave to obsession, but act as an artist with life as
your work, expressing the essence of your true nature.
The warning against the ‘lust of result’ is a magical formula implying
a certain ironic or enlightened detachment from one’s obsessions, as
was deliberately cultivated by Spare’s method of concealing desires in
sigilized form to elude the raging conflicts of the ego-consciousness.
Much meditation throughout the eons has been devoted to non-attachment,
with varied levels of success. Attachment, on the other hand, has a
long history of inevitable sorrow, hence the solution of Buddhism.
As Crowley says:
“I recommend serious study of the word unassuaged which appears not
very intelligible.”
45. The Perfect and the Perfect are
one Perfect and not two; nay, are none!
Defines the equation of 0 = 2 as (+1) (-1) = 0; the positive and
negative poles, the Yang and Yin that cancel each other out. One of the
major keys to these mysteries.
46. Nothing is a secret key of this
law. Sixty-one the Jews call it; I call it eight, eighty, four-hundred
& eighteen.
More bloody math. Nothingness, the void, emptiness, is a key to
understanding, or what underlies understanding: an emphasis perhaps
more eastern than western. 61 is the Jewish qabalistic concept of AIN
or nothingness: Aleph/1, Yod/10, Nun/50. Reversed it is NIA (see AL
c.III, v.72). KALI also equals 61. Eight could be Cheth/8, the Atu of
the Chariot of Horus; while eighty is Pe/80, corresponding to the Tower
of Maat; both are keys to the Dual Aeon. 418 is, like 93, a core number
of Thelema, corresponding to the magickal words Abrahadabra and
Makhashanah among others. 418 is also the letter Cheth spelled in full:
Cheth/8, Yod/10, Tau/400. In greek qabala PALLAS ATHENA = 418, as does
HIEROGLYPH (‘sacred sign’) in English.
Frater Achad also numerates his other name Parzival as 8, 80 and 418:
“There is of course a very definite
connection between Parzival and Abrahadabra, the Word of the Aeon,
through 418. And it is said that Abrahadabra shall be His child and
that strangely. And Parzival having Eight letters, and Initial value 80
and total numeration of 418 is therefore connected with this verse.”
“Now Parzival is 8.80.418, and as The
Fool or Aleph is both Zero and One. 61 is the Word Ain = Nothing and
equivalent to NOT. If 61 is one half and 1 (Aleph) the other, we get 62
which is twice 31 and LA: AL in which ALL (Note three letters LAL)
disappear in the Final Mystery of Kether. Also we have considered the
threefold aspect as 93, and this may have to do with AAA and LLL,
Light, Life, Love and Liberty of His Law.”
47. But they have the half: unite by
thine art so that all disappear.
Crowley, in my less than humble opinion, may not have completely solved
this riddle. He takes 8+80+418 = 506, NU as ‘six and fifty’ in c.I,
v.24. That works fine. Adding 506+61 = 567 = 27x21, not particularly
helpful. He resorts to reversing it to 605+61 = 666. 1+2+…36 = 666, the
sum total of the magical kamea or square of the Sun, also notorious as
the Number of the Beast and the Devil’s area code, and SURaTh the
spirit of the Sun, and SURT the Norse fire-giant… Okay as far as it
goes I guess, but I believe a further solution must eventually be found.
“I am not of this world, nor of the
next, nor of Paradise, nor of hell.
My Place is the Placeless, my trace
is the Traceless;
'Tis Neither body or soul, for I
belong to the soul of the Beloved.
I have put Duality away, I have seen
that the two worlds are one...”
- Jalal al-Din Rumi, The Diwan of Shams-i-Tabriz
48. My prophet is a fool with his one,
one, one; are not they the Ox, and none by the Book?
The Book of Thoth is
the Tarot; these are all aspects of the complex (or utterly simple) Atu
of the Fool, whose numeration in the Tarot is 0 (zero or none) and
Hebrew letter is Aleph/1, which means ‘Ox’ and equals 111 when spelled
in full. He thus symbolizes and encompasses existence and nonexistence,
all and naught, wisdom and folly, personifying paradox. Note that OX is
the circle and cross which make up the Mark of the Beast, and also
recall the Ordeal X in Chapter III.
Frater Achad discovered one of the major mysteries of this book with
the word AL or ‘God’ (more usually transliterated EL from the Hebrew,
as in ‘Elohim’ or at the end of angelic names like Raziel). Its
reversal LA means ‘not’ or ‘naught’, thus giving us a dual formula: the
positive pole of AL as God or All is Hadit, balancing LA as the
negative Not or Naught or Night of Nuit (and Laylah, Arabic for Night
as Nuit is the French for Night). Throughout this book, we must bear
these aspects in mind wherever the words ‘all’ or ‘not’ may appear.
While Aleph/1 means Ox, Lamed/30 means Ox-goad, a striking parallel;
the total of 31 is of course one-third of 93. The prophet as fool might
then indicate Achad, one of whose other magical names was Parsifal
(=418), the Pure or Holy Fool of the Arthurian Quest for the Holy
Grail. The letters A & L also resemble the compass & square of
Masonic symbolism. It was important to Achad that AL/LA was a Name of
God (Allah), that it seemed to be the sound of breathing in and out,
and that written in English (left to right) or Hebrew (right to left)
it is reversed, hence the Word of Double Power.
49. Abrogate are all rituals, all
ordeals, all words and signs. Ra-Hoor-Khuit hath taken his seat in the
East at the Equinox of the Gods; and let Asar be with Isa, who also are
one. But they are not of me. Let Asar be the adorant, Isa the sufferer;
Hoor in his secret name and splendour is the Lord initiating.
All previous systems of initiation are declared obsolete in the Aeon of
Horus; the Equinox of the Gods was March 20th, 1904. There are echoes
of the Golden Dawn equinox ceremony, where new officers took their
places in the temple for the half-year to come; however, all of their
practices are now to be superseded by the arcane rites of Thelema.
Years later, Crowley used this rationale to declare himself the new
leader of the Order and sole link to the authority of the Secret
Chiefs; naturally this deeply endeared him to those who had previously
considered themselves in charge.
Asar is Osiris, the god of the previous aeon of the Father, whose
magical formula was Death & Rebirth. Asar is the adorant, the
lover/brother of the goddess Isis; and is also the lord of the dead in
the underworld, often portrayed as swathed in the wrappings of a mummy,
which may point to the shamanic or tantric meditation of becoming a
corpse, seen in the Tibetan graveyard Chod rites, adopted by the Golden
Dawn as the image of the archetypical Rosicrucian Christian Rosenkreutz
in the Vault or Tomb of the Adepts, and by Spare as the fulgurous
trance of the Death Posture. Isis as the mourning widow searched for
the scattered pieces of Osiris to reunite and reanimate them, so that
she could give birth to the child Horus after magically recreating the
missing phallus of her murdered sibling/husband. This is one of the
major myth-cycles of ancient Egypt; cross-cultural parallels might
include the similar dismemberment of Kali in India, where there are
temples dedicated to each place where a piece of her body fell; or
Innana’s descent to the underworld in Sumerian myth; or even the
grieving Demeter’s search for her lost daughter Kore or Persephone in
Greece and the Eleusinian Mysteries.
I (and many others) have often logically assumed that Isa was a form of
the name Isis, but that is generally transliterated as Asi (Osiris,
Isis, Horus and Harpocrates are all the Greek forms of Egyptian names).
Crowley actually takes Isa as the Islamic (and Irish!) form of the name
of the suffering Jesus, associating him with Asar and the previous Aeon
of the Father and its formula of death and rebirth. Hoor or Horus is
the initiator and transformer, the hierophant or psychopomp of this new
age or Nu Aeon, when consciousness may be eclipsed but remains
continuous, and the Osirian (or Judeo-Christian-Islamic) Age is
overthrown and transcended.
Motta notes: “"Isa the sufferer".
This expression needs no explanation if you have any acquaintance with
the sado-masochistic nature of Christian mysticism, especially where
Roman Catholicism predominates. Some people are happy only when they
suffer. Let them be.”
50. There is a word to say about the
Hierophantic task. Behold! there are three ordeals in one, and it may
be given in three ways. The gross must pass through fire; let the fine
be tried in intellect, and the lofty chosen ones in the highest. Thus
ye have star & star, system & system; let not one know well the
other!
The Hierophant is the guide of souls and high priest; his task is
initiation, which Jung termed individuation, and the formula given
recalls the alchemical process of the creation of the famous Stone of
the Wise or Philosopher‘s Stone, which is closely paralleled and
precipitated by the transformation of the alchemical adept himself.
These three ordeals are physical, mental, and spiritual tests. The
‘gross’ refers to the base or primal matter of the Great Work which is
reduced into decay and a formless chaotic state and purified by the
Secret or Invisible Fire, then refined to become ever more subtle. As
the ‘fine’ the alchemist’s own wisdom or intellect increases through
this experience and by the understanding of the encoded texts that
describe this operation. In the final ‘lofty’ stage one ultimately
ascends to become an unveiled star in the body of Nuit: the gross is
the physical, the fine is the mental, and the highest the spiritual
body of the self-perfected human being.
Each star is a sun encircled by its own solar system, whose unfolding
complexities can never be fully known by another. In terms of the three
main alchemical stages the Gross would refer to the blackening and
putrefactions of Nigredo, the Fine to the repeated purifications and
refinement of Albedo, and the Lofty to Rubedo, when the final
attainment and activation of the Philosopher’s Stone transforms lead
into gold and mundane awareness into truly illuminated consciousness.
These three stages also represent body, soul and spirit, or the black
raven, white swan and red phoenix, or salt, mercury and sulfur. The
chemical process parallels the psychological evolution of the alchemist
herself. As for ‘star & star, system & system’: everything in
its place.
51. There are four gates to one
palace; the floor of that palace is of silver and gold; lapis lazuli
& jasper are there; and all rare scents; jasmine & rose, and
the emblems of death. Let him enter in turn or at once the four gates;
let him stand on the floor of the palace. Will he not sink? Amn. Ho!
warrior, if thy servant sink? But there are means and means. Be goodly
therefore: dress ye all in fine apparel; eat rich foods and drink sweet
wines and wines that foam! Also, take your fill and will of love as ye
will, when, where and with whom ye will! But always unto me.
This is a ritual of initiation. The palace of the king may be the
temple of the priest, and the four gates the four quarters of the world
and the four elements of the magus (north, south, east, west or earth,
fire, air, water or disk, wand, blade, cup). The black & white
chessboard floor design of Masonic halls is now formed of the
shimmering silver & gold of the lunar and solar currents. Entering
the hall one is tested, to rise or fall, uniting with angel or with
demon; it may make no final difference which.
Lapis lazuli and jasper are stones (Earth) of blue and of green
ascribed by Crowley to Nuit and Hadit; jasmine and rose are scents
(Heaven) ascribed to the Moon and to Venus (the Rose has a very complex
series of symbolisms, and is in the West what the Lotus is to Egypt and
the East). Lapis lazuli is especially interesting, a vivid blue with
flecks of gold, traditionally seen as a symbol of the celestial
firmament and used as protection from the evil eye. In Egypt the
goddess Hathor is the Lady of Turquoise, and since ancient descriptions
of substances are often variable, it has been suggested that this also
refers to lapis lazuli. ‘Lapis’ is simply latin for ‘stone’: the Lapis
Philosophorum is the Philosopher’s Stone of alchemy. I keep two pieces
of lapis lazuli and jasper on my altar, and sometimes burn jasmine and
rose as incenses. One last thought on lapis lazuli and jasper: in some
ancient South American cultures the night-sky serpent with green
quetzal feathers unites with the turquoise day-serpent to create the
cosmos. In Egypt creation begins and ends with Atum and Osiris (now
Horus?) as two serpents in the dark waters of the formless abyss.
Crowley states: “The rare scents are
possibly various ecstasies or Samadhis. Jasmine and Rose are
Hieroglyphs of the two main Sacraments, while the emblems of death may
refer to certain secrets of a well known exoteric school of initiation
whose members, with the rarest exceptions, do not know what it is all
about.”
By this he probably means the White and the Red, the male and female
sexual secretions, the seed and the egg. He is also ragging on the
Freemasons.
The ‘emblems of death’ may perhaps be the skull and crossed bones of
ancient Osirian, Pirate, and modern Masonic ritual: one must often
confront and pass through symbolic death to achieve initiatory rebirth.
Amn. might be the Hindu root-mantra OM or AUM, often spelled ‘Aumgn’ by
Crowley for qabalistic reasons (it equals 100); or the Egyptian god
Amoun, the hidden one or invisible god. Ho! could seem to imply
laughter or joviality, the mystic mantra of Santa Claus. We can only
hope it does not refer to that fine-assed Ho’ of Babalon… If such a
temple is ever erected, ‘Will he not sink? Amn. Ho! warrior, if thy
servant sink?’ may refer to the construction of a crocodile pit for the
disposal of failed initiates. Sobek is the Egyptian crocodile god of
the Nile.
With ‘means’ we turn to methods, and are exhorted to a fine life and
high style of luxury and indulgence, perpetual feasting and
drunkenness, delight and debauch. We are encouraged to share in
sensuous and erotic delights of all kinds, without any limitations as
to partners, timing or location, but to offer up all our ecstasies to
Nuit. It is in fact essential that all acts of love and union be
offered up to Her. I suspect that sweet and foaming wines are more
likely to be champagne than beer, but might be another veiled reference
to the biochemical or alchemical elixir of the sexual fluids. The gods
always love a good feast.
The bisexual Crowley again, here sounding very contemporary indeed:
‘The Beast 666 ordains by His
authority that every man, and every woman, and every
intermediately-sexed individual, shall be absolutely free to interpret
and communicate Self by means of any sexual practices soever, whether
direct or indirect, rational or symbolic, physiologically, legally,
ethically, or religiously approved or no, provided only that all
parties to any act are fully aware of all implications and
responsibilities thereof, and heartily agree thereto.”
52. If this be not aright; if ye
confound the space-marks, saying: They are one; or saying, They are
many; if the ritual be not ever unto me: then expect the direful
judgments of Ra Hoor Khuit!
The space-marks are cosmological or conceptual reference-points, and
are often considered to be the eightfold compass-rose marking of the
directions which orient our sacred space around the center; consider
the recent vitality of the eight-arrowed symbol of the Chaosphere. In
Vodou the four main points may represent the rhythms of the Rada rites
and the in-between points the offbeat drumming of the Petro spirits.
A.O. Spare made use of “the sacred in-betweeness concepts”. Between
darkness and light is shifting shadow, the weaving and woven fabric of
magick itself.
The cosmic conception of the One and the Many is apparently superseded
by the Thelemic formula of 0 = 2. Again it is emphasized that all rites
are devoted to Nuit as the ‘visible object of worship’, as Hadit
remains the invisible and subjective observer. Ra-Hoor-Khuit maintains
this discipline, and the Last Judgment is another name for the Atu
retitled the Aeon.
53. This shall regenerate the world,
the little world my sister, my heart & my tongue, unto whom I send
this kiss. Also, o scribe and prophet, though thou be of the princes,
it shall not assuage thee nor absolve thee. But ecstasy be thine and
joy of earth: ever To me! To me!
The regeneration of the world may portray ecological concerns, in
addition to the more spiritual sense of a new heaven and a new earth,
or a Nude World Order. The scribe is (quite accurately) warned that his
destiny remains stormy, but is promised ecstasy and joy (Nu & Had,
heaven & earth?) in recompense. Starry Nuit’s joyous refrain of ‘To
me! To me!’ is introduced, Her most sacred mantra; and the formula of
‘heart & tongue’ again reappears, as well as that very interesting
word assuage’:
“Oh, yeah! Assuage me harder, baby!”
Crowley also adds some Greek qabala:
“The last words "ever To me! To me!"
have a double sense. My motto at that time was OV MH - "No! certainly
not," the "Not That! Not That!" of certain very exalted Hindu mystics.
Our Lady of the Stars not only calls me to Her, but bestows upon me as
a name 'To me' - To {Mu-eta} - "The Not", the Attainment of that
Aspiration expressed in my motto. And {To Mu-eta} adds to 418!”
To be clear on this point, he is saying that ‘TO ME’ in Greek
means ‘The Not’.
54. Change not as much as the style of
a letter; for behold! thou, o prophet, shalt not behold all these
mysteries hidden therein.
Another warning regarding the sanctity of the text, and that there will
be revelations found after Crowley himself. The vast importance of the
individual letters points to the almost universal usage of esoteric and
number symbolism in sacred alphabets: in Egyptian hieroglyphs, Greek
scripts, Norse runes, Celtic oghams, Hebrew qabala, Spare’s sigilic
alphabet of desire, or the garland of Sanskrit letters worn by Kali.
55. The child of thy bowels, he shall
behold them.
This is a prophecy interpreted by Crowley to imply the coming of a
magical child to be his heir, and he sought to find, spawn or manifest
one for the rest of his life; Jones (Frater Achad) and Parsons (Frater
Belarion) were both considered candidates, although Crowley rather
typically ignored the strong possibility of a female disciple in spite
of a clear warning to expect the unexpected in the following verse.
The reference to ‘thy bowels’ might involve homosexual sex magick,
which Crowley generally encoded in his journal as p.v.n. (‘per vas
nefandum’, or ‘by the unmentionable vessel’: anal intercourse).
56. Expect him not from the East, nor
from the West; for from no expected house cometh that child. Aum! All
words are sacred and all prophets true; save only that they understand
a little; solve the first half of the equation, leave the second
unattacked. But thou hast all in the clear light, and some, though not
all, in the dark.
‘not from the East, nor from the West ‘ implies neither Oriental nor
Occidental cultural supremacy. ‘All words are sacred and all prophets
true‘ has always struck me as a most excellent and deeply charming and
heartfelt Unitarian statement, and clearly refutes those who would
limit AL to an authoritarian (or fascist) discourse. I suspect that the
‘clear light’ refers to the revelations of the world’s various
prophets, while the ‘dark’ implies the diamond void of emptiness that
underlies all human doctrines (or perhaps is merely ignorance). The
Known and the Unknown? LITTLE as 30+10+9+9+30+5 = 93.
57. Invoke me under my stars! Love is
the law, love under will. Nor let the fools mistake love; for there are
love and love. There is the dove, and there is the serpent. Choose ye
well! He, my prophet, hath chosen, knowing the law of the fortress, and
the great mystery of the House of God.
All these old letters of my Book are
aright; but {TzADDI} is not the Star. This also is secret: my prophet
shall reveal it to the wise.
In the manuscript Tzaddi/90 (then attributed to the tarot atu of the
Star) is written as a Hebrew letter. Invoking under the open sky is an
imperative. ‘Love is the law, love under will!’ is the balancing
completion of ‘Do what thou wilt’, the other half of the equation. The
dove would appear to be spiritual love (greek ‘charis’) and the serpent
physical congress (greek ‘eros’), the two sides of human nature, which
fools and lovers so ceaselessly confound.
Motta, however, sees Dove or Serpent as either heterosexual or
homosexual love and oddly also notes “The
general key is that you
should practice homosexuality only with a fellow Thelemite.”
That
probably narrows the field a bit…
One of the more poignant things an ex-girlfriend has ever said to me
was:
“But why is it Love UNDER Will?”
The Fortress or House of God are other names for the Atu called the
Lightning-Struck Tower (Pe/80), which is ascribed to Mars and thus a
key to the warlike aspect of Horus; it is also clearly a phallic
symbol, or the human spine which can be seen as the axis of chakras
which the Kundalini ascends, or the Egyptian symbol of the Djed or
backbone of Osiris, which was ritually erected as a pillar and often
worn as an amulet. This leads into more mysteries of the Tarot, whose
order is declared to be essentially correct with the exception of
Tzaddi/90, a deep qabalistic conundrum concerning the order of the
trumps which our Beastie Boy attempted to solve in the manner of the
‘double loop in the zodiac’ described in his Book of Thoth, and
summarized here:
“Tzaddi is the letter of The Emperor,
the Trump IV, and He is the Star, the Trump XVII. Aquarius and Aries
are therefore counterchanged, revolving on the pivot of Pisces, just
as, in the Trumps VIII and XI, Leo and Libra do about Virgo. This last
revelation makes our Tarot attributions sublimely, perfectly,
flawlessly symmetrical.”
58. I give unimaginable joys on earth:
certainty, not faith, while in life, upon death; peace unutterable,
rest, ecstasy; nor do I demand aught in sacrifice.
Joy is the constant theme of AL, though the verse perhaps leaves open
the question of an afterlife (other than the fact that nirvana in its
original meaning was cessation or extinction). Oblivion might actually
come as something of a relief. Sacrifice is happily declared obsolete,
at least until we reach the gory bits in Chapter III...
Much more specifically, Crowley says:
“These joys are principally (1) the
Beatific Vision, in which Beauty is constantly present to the recipient
of Her grace, together with a calm and unutterable joy; (2) the Vision
of Wonder, in which the whole Mystery of the Universe is constantly
understood and admired for its Ingenium and Wisdom. (1) is referred to
Tiphareth, the Grade of Adept; (2) to Binah, the Grade of Master of the
Temple.
The certainty concerning death is
conferred by the Magical Memory, and various Experiences without which
Life is unintelligible.
"Peace unutterable" is given by the
Trance in which Matter is destroyed; "rest" by that which finally
equilibrates Motion. "Ecstasy" refers to a Trance which combines these.
"Nor do I demand aught in
sacrifice"--the ritual of worship is Samadhi. But see later, verse 61.”
59. My incense is of resinous woods
and gums; and there is no blood therein: because of my hair the trees
of Eternity.
The offering unto Nuit is incense, smoke rising in the air toward
space, made from plants or trees; we might often view the goddess as
Flora and the god as Faunus in biological terms of plant- and
animal-based life forms. The trees making up her hair recall the
qabalistic Tree of Life, which in the microcosmic sense is the human
body, and the tree is a metaphor for the human being in several
mythologies, notably the Norse. The human race would thus form the
living crown of our Lady’s flowing hair, and I note several other
references to hair in AL. Burning offerings of a rare and valuable
substance is an extremely old human custom.
“In Egypt… the sycamore fig… was
regarded as a manifestation of the sky goddess. Its foliage and shade
signify rest and peace in the life beyond; sometimes the souls of the
deceased were thought to be birds that lived in its branches.”
-Herder Symbol Dictionary
60. My number is 11, as all their
numbers who are of us. The Five Pointed Star, with a Circle in the
Middle, & the circle is Red. My colour is black to the blind, but
the blue & gold are seen of the seeing. Also I have a secret glory
for them that love me.
Eleven, as the ‘one beyond ten’, is the number of magick in Crowley’s
thought; the ten spheres of the qabalistic tree now include the
activation of the 11th non-sphere or gateway to beyond of Daath or
Knowledge (Gnosis).
The five-pointed star or pentagram is a very ancient symbol of arcane
energy worldwide, first documented as early as 3,000 BCE in Mesopotamia
and later in Greece, and shows our basic structure as human beings (two
arms, two legs, and the customary head). To the Pythagoreans it
symbolized health and knowledge, and it was sacred to the goddess
Hygieia; the formula SALUS or ‘health’ is often inscribed within its
points. Its 5-fold structure symbolizes the 5 classical planets (aside
from Sol and Luna) and the 5 elements and the 5 senses. There are
hidden mathematical mysteries of geometry encoded in its proportions:
it is said to be the simplest regular star polygon and as such it
always contains ten points (the five points of the star and the five
vertices of the inner pentagon) and fifteen line segments:
“Each intersection of edges sections the edges in the Golden Ratio”
or Golden Mean, the Fibonacci series, wherein each new number is the
sum of the two previous numbers: “the
ratio of the length of the edge to the longer segment is φ, as is the
length of the longer segment to the shorter. Also, the ratio of the
length of the shorter segment to the segment bounded by the 2
intersecting edges (a side of the pentagon in the pentagram's center)
is φ… The pentagram includes ten isosceles triangles: five acute and
five obtuse isosceles triangles. In all of them, the ratio of the
longer side to the shorter side is φ. The acute triangles are golden
triangles.” (Wikipedia)
The spiraling pattern of growth called the Fibonacci series appears
everywhere in nature, in fetal development, seashells, leaves and
flower petals, pinecones, the muscles of the heart and the ratio of
male to female bees in hives. It also forms the basis of much sacred
architecture; and as many ancient civilizations knew, the apparent path
of the planet Venus (which is both the Evening and Morning Star) forms
a pentagram in the sky every 8 years (or 99 lunar cycles). The
pentagram appears in many forms of talisman, including rings, pendants
and the gnostic Abraxas gems. As both the ‘Devil’s Footprint’ and also
a symbol of the 5 wounds of Christ, it was seen as protection from
witchcraft in medieval times; while in modern Wicca it has become the
best-known symbol of the Craft itself, which is in turn perhaps the
most widespread public manifestation of the 20th century occult
revival. We should recall that Wicca’s founder Gerald Gardner was a
member of the O.T.O. and a friend of Crowley, and that his earliest
versions of the ‘Charge of the Goddess’ quoted from the Book of the
Law. Spare also identified with the witch-cult, and considering that
all three of these men knew each other is very interesting indeed: the
fathers of Thelema, Wicca and Chaos magick, three major contemporary
strands.
Crowley would have made much use of pentagrams in the invoking and
banishing rituals of the Golden Dawn later incorporated into the A.A.
and O.T.O., and also found it familiar in Freemasonry. It is a
religious symbol in the ancient Near East as well as in China and
Japan, where it encodes the 5-element system of Taoism; and is used in
Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, Bahai and Neopaganism as well
as Thelema. In Egypt the hieroglyph of the star was usually drawn
simply as 5 straight lines radiating from a central point.
The red circle in the center is the Sun or the pool of magical power;
red is often considered the fundamental or base color of the spectrum,
related to life’s blood and fiery energy. In many cultures it is the
quintessential hue of magick, most notably in the Typhonian tradition
of graeco-egyptian sorcery, in Norse rune lore, and in left-hand
tantra. No doubt it also refers to the Scarlet Woman.
Black is the ultimate shade of the night-sky, blue and gold of the
solar day, thus Nu and Had. Each individual must discover his or her
own secret glory. Alternatively, to the unawakened the universe is
‘black to the blind’ who see only empty space and dead matter, while
adepts see living stars, each linked to every other star by rays and
waves of light.
Crowley says: “The uninitiated
perceive only darkness in Night; the wise perceive the golden stars in
the vault of azure.”
Also, Rose via Aiwass provided part of this verse. Crowley again,
writing in the third person:
“Again in chapter 1, on page 19,
Crowley writes, (Lost 1 phrase) The shape of my star is—. Later, it was
Rose who filled in the lost phrase: The Five Pointed Star, with a
Circle in the Middle, & the circle is Red. (AL I:60)”
“In the original MSS. the second
paragraph begins "The shape of my star is" -- and then breaks off --
the Scribe was unable to hear what was being said. This was presumably
because his mind was so full of preconceived ideas about the different
kinds of stars appropriate to various ideas. An alternate phrase was
subsequently dictated to the Scarlet Woman, and inserted in the
manuscript by her own hand.
This star is the pentagram, with the
single point at the top. The points touch the parts of Nuith's body as
shown in the Stele. The earth-point marks the position of her feet, the
fire-point, that of her hands, the other three points -- air, spirit,
and water respectively -- refer to "my secret centre, my heart, and my
tongue."
61. But to love me is better than all
things: if under the night-stars in the desert thou presently burnest
mine incense before me, invoking me with a pure heart, and the Serpent
flame therein, thou shalt come a little to lie in my bosom. For one
kiss wilt thou then be willing to give all; but whoso gives one
particle of dust shall lose all in that hour. Ye shall gather goods and
store of women and spices; ye shall wear rich jewels; ye shall exceed
the nations of the earth in splendour & pride; but always in the
love of me, and so shall ye come to my joy. I charge you earnestly to
come before me in a single robe, and covered with a rich headdress. I
love you! I yearn to you! Pale or purple, veiled or voluptuous, I who
am all pleasure and purple, and drunkenness of the innermost sense,
desire you. Put on the wings, and arouse the coiled splendour within
you: come unto me!
This beautiful verse, with its important numeration of 61 (AIN or NIA)
reveals the entire secret ritual of Nuit; Crowley expanded this into
the important instruction Liber
NU s.f. XI (go read it!), which gives a full account of the
practices leading to the attainment of union with Her (HER = 210, as
does ART and NOX or Night, the opposite formula to LUX or Light; 2,1,0
is a countdown of Duality into Unity into Nothingness). The ‘desert’
(of Set) and the giving of ‘one particle of dust’ may imply the
Crossing of the Abyss.
The ‘single robe’ is an intact and charged aura and the ‘rich
headdress’ the thousand-petalled lotus or Sahasrara Chakra. ‘Put on the
wings’ refers to the Ajna Chakra or Third Eye, usually depicted with
two petals and looking essentially identical to the winged globe of
Hadit. The ‘coiled splendour within you’ is the Kundalini or Fire
Snake, or Heka the power of Magick (AL = HEKA = 31 = KIA = LA = KHU).
The City at Night may also be a Desert.
62. At all my meetings with you shall
the priestess say -- and her eyes shall burn with desire as she stands
bare and rejoicing in my secret temple -- To me! To me! calling forth
the flame of the hearts of all in her love-chant.
The sky-clad state of ritual nudity is often employed in Magical,
Tantric, Wiccan and other ritual; it recalls a primal state of social
equality, innocence and honesty as well as a charged erotic atmosphere
and absence of pretense. The ‘flame of the hearts of all’ is Hadit.
Naked women as a religion are just about the best idea ever.
63. Sing the rapturous love-song unto
me! Burn to me perfumes! Wear to me jewels! Drink to me, for I love
you! I love you!
The ‘rapturous love-song‘ stimulates the sense of hearing; ‘perfumes‘
that of scent; bright ‘jewels‘, vision; ‘drink‘, taste; and ‘love‘ that
of touch.
64. I am the blue-lidded daughter of
Sunset; I am the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night-sky.
This vision of the Goddess as the physical form of Nature poetically
idealizes the universe as a living being, and also recalls the early
tendency of western anthropology to define all pagan deities as
personifications of natural forces. Astronomical phenomena stellar,
lunar and solar are, like ecstasy, a constant underlying theme of Liber
AL.
65. To me! To me!
The great mantra of Her worship, the call to interstellar space.
66. The Manifestation of Nuit is at an
end.
Again, Liber NU sub figura XI
contains the magical and meditational practices for achieving Nuit. The
first and last verses of this chapter both emphasize the word of power
‘manifestation’, and Frater Achad seized upon this as a major key.
"Not only is the universe stranger
than we imagine,
it is stranger than we can imagine."
-Sir Arthur Eddington
"If you would swim on the bosom of
the ocean of Truth,
you must reduce yourself to a zero."
-Mahatma Gandhi
(the second half appears on the next page)
