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LIBER CCXXVIII - Book 228
DE NATURA DEORUM
OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS
A∴A∴ Publication in Class B
SECRET INSTRUCTION FOR THE VIII° O.T.O.
BAPHOMET X° O.T.O.
HIBERNIÆ IONÆ
ET OMNIUM BRITANNIARUM,
REX SUMMUS SANCTISSIMUS
from the Throne of Ireland Iona and all the Britains
that are in the Sanctuary of the Gnosis
to all Members of the Supreme Grand Council of
Very Illustrious Sovereign Grand Inspectors General VII°
Greeting and Peace.
Under the seal of the Obligation of the VII°
I
From the Beginning of Years the Initiates of all peoples have held one central secret as a sure Bond of Brotherhood, as a unity whose truth is able to harmonize all men upon the Earth.
No fabrications of knavish priests, no vain dreams of mystics, can hide from the sane this one fact:
Not only is the Earth but a chilled spark of the Sun, a dropt petal of the Rose of Heaven, but the source of all Light and Life upon the planet is that same Sun. Not only is he creator, but sustainer, and it is He also that destroyeth in due season, and redeemeth when the time is come.
Therefore in the Macrocosm is one sole God, the Sun. Now in the Microcosm, which is Man, the viceregent of the Sun, sole giver of life, is the Phallus. He is also sole giver of Light in a certain secret sense not fully declared in the VII°. This much may We hint: the Phallus is the physiological basis of the Oversoul (see also Liber 333, The Book of Lies, Caps. A, H, IA, IE, IF, IH, LB) And also of His own nature is He Liberty and Love.
Now of old our brethren hid this doctrine in tradition, and in fable, and in great buildings, and in the Rituals of Freemasonry. With this Key all these Rituals become intelligible, luminous, radiant; without it they are dark, the just scorn of the ignorant. Search and see.
II
In this book we have no need to speak of local and tribal Gods, of animistic personifications of partial phenomena, and the like.
But of universal Gods, as these:
The Fire; an image of Sol, and a fable of the Phallus.
The Moon; an image of Kteis, only worshipped with Sol in his aspect as an extension of the Phallus.
The Mountain; reverenced as the home of the Gods, the visible place of the rising of Sol, and as by shape symbolical of the Phallus. Some mountains are female, from shape or tradition.
The Ancestor; revered as an incarnation of the Phallus.
The Yoni or Kteis; revered as the House of the Phallus, and his complement.
The Snake; revered as giver of Death, and as a symbol of the Spermatozoon. He has often the head of
The Lion; to indicate the mighty power of the Spermatozoon.
The Egg; revered as Solar, and in itself as the vehicle of Phallic energy.
The Eagle; and many other winged creatures; also wings attached to the symbols. This represents the flight of Life from one resting-place to another, and is therefore a proper attribute of the Phallus.
The Tree; is but the flowering Phallus.
The Stars; these being the concourse of the Brethren of the Sun are venerable for the Wise even as He. And the star-universe is as it were His Mother, whence Nuit is the highest and holiest of all that may be. And her mate is Hadit, the secret and essential energy of Life whose raiment is the Phallus, wherefore is Hadit equal with Her, the highest and holiest of all that may be. And Their Child Ra-HoorKhuit is the visible Sol-Phallus upon earth. But this is a mystery of the Adepts of Thelema and the vulgar may not attain to it.
All other Gods should be referred to this synthesis in the Microcosmic Sun.
Thus Corn-goddesses conceal Mysteries of Germination, Wine-gods are Phallic and Solar in the Ecstasy of overflowing Life of which the proper use of wine makes even the common people conscious.
There are also gods invented to represent things useful to man; but these are by nature subservient to the prime God whose use and beauty are fundamental.
III
In that Sanctuary of the Gnosis to which, Very Illustrious Sir Knights your valour and chastity may one day obtain your admission, there is a certain deeper interpretation. Nor are ye wholly ignorant of how in the Figure called Baphomet and Babalon is a Measure of Heaven and Earth.
Again, those, Initiates indeed, who have penetrated in truth into the Sanctuaries of their own Being, and found That God Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent who is Light, Life, Love, and Liberty, beyond Time and Space, without quantity or quality, One Eternal, the very essence of the Sun and of the Phallus alike, will possess in their own consciousness, illuminated by That, a certain apprehension of the Truth which is not in any way to be shared by those who have not attained to this Treasure.
These, if they are wise, will make no attempt to disclose this inner Truth to the profane, but will be content that they rest in the shadow of that external Truth which We have here declared unto you, that God is One, and that His name is in the Macrocosm the Sun, and in the Microcosm the Phallus.
For all attempts to initiate even the worthy before they initiate themselves are folly and fatality. The Secrets of the Wise, although known of them, are not to be exprest in the language of common men. Look you, Sir Knights, this Doctrine itself that We reveal to you in this Supreme Grand Council to which ye have attained so hardly, how will it sound, think you, even in a Consistory of Princes of the Royal Secret, prepared as they are for some such revelation? How then to mere Knights Kadosch, to Sovereign Princes of Rose Croix? And how to Master Masons? It is for this reason that our Council is thus Sentinelled within and without, and that our whole Ritual from Minerval upward is but a constant series of hints of this One Truth.
What is the tent of Saladin but the Phallus? And the First Word as the last is ON, the Sun.
But were the Minerval to suspect this truth, would he not turn to flee in terror from the Camp and be cut down by the Black Guard that wardeth even the outmost marches of the Kingdom of the Most Holy and Most High Lord God Almighty?
Therefore, reflect, act wisely and with prudence, Sir Knights, not declaring openly the Arcanum to such as understand not already of their own ripe wit. And in what time seemeth Him good shall the O.H.O., gathering his forces, declare this Truth privily unto the Kings and Princes of the Earth, that they may take counsel together and rule all men in peace and love by virtue of this Secret under the Shadow of the Wings of the One ineffable Lord.
For this secret is not only a convenient manner of doing this, a Pillar of Flame to disperse the Shadows of Earth, but is also a convenient veil — and the only veil worthy — of that further Light which We are not able to reveal even to this Supreme Grand Council of the O.T.O.
IV
Of all our enemies those are most to be feared, who make false gods of their imaginations.
For the heathen are turned easily from gods of clay; for truth strikes home sharply on their dark minds. It is easy to prove that the Sun is indeed the source of Life and Light, that the Phallus is indeed PANGENETOR. But to those who have stultified themselves, who have darkened their own eyes, who have betrayed their own reason in seeking out phantastic gods, foul and tangled cobwebs of metaphysic spun by emasculate spider-professors in sunless cloisters, bubbles blown by idiots and madmen, myths misinterpreted, fables taken for history, lies pushed forward by every forgery, fraud, treachery and murder, to such the Truth seems false, and the Light darkness.
Such Gods as Parabrahman merely bewilder the people, and render them the prey of priestcraft, while the Christs of the Latin, Lutheran and Anglican Churches alike are but the machine-gods of all fraud and oppression, being stolen and prostituted from that Christ in whom our Fathers in the Gnosis strove to synthesize the warring gods of Syria, Greece, Chaldea, Rome and Egypt at the time when the growth of the Roman Empire first made travel and the intercommunication of the priests of Mithras, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Dionysius, Isis, Astarte, Venus and many scores of others possible.
Traces of this recension are still visible in the Mass and in the Calendar of the Saints, all gods and goddesses of universal import receiving the same honour by the same rites as before, while the local gods were replaced by saints, virgins, martyrs, or angels, often of the same name, always of the same character.
Thus on the altar the Solar-phallic Crucifix is surrounded by six lights for the planets, to use one example only of a hundred at Our disposal; and Christmas is at the winter Solstice, the birth of Christ put for the birth of the Sun. All these points may be studied in:
and many other books which may be studied in the library of the O.T.O. and elsewhere. But in pure Free Masonry and especially in the O.T.O. this synthesis has been made with greater accuracy and skill, and with higher concentration, with more lucidity, with dramatic and poetic genius, so it is easier for ourselves to distinguish the Jewel from its setting, and possibly in the event of the Rite and its Tradition being lost in some universal Cataclysm for worthy successors inspired by Our Lord ‘to retrieve our loss, and recover the Word’.
Now then let Us once again recall to you, Very Illustrious Sir Knights of the Order of the Temple of the East, the history of our Religious and Military Monks and Knights, how, issuing from the West as crusaders, they met with initiates in the armies of Salah ‘ud Din, and from them obtained the secret called Baphomet, being the Mystery of the Measure of Heaven and Earth that lieth behind this secret of the VII° concerning the Unity of God. And ye have verily reason from the crowns of your heads to the soles of your feet to remember how this is the origin of all our tragedy. Thus therefore, Sir Knights valorous and noble, war constantly on all tyranny and superstition, and mostly against bigotries such as ‘orthodox’ Christianity as interpreted in its material sense, old wives’ tales and foolish fables, the immoral doctrines of original sin and vicarious atonement, and the most hideous eschatology in the history of false religion. Nor can much less be averred against all other orthodoxies, with their fables equally absurd, their postulates equally immoral.
But also let there be war upon those who seek to refine upon these bigotries in any other way than that of eclectic and syncretistic harmonizations; beware moreover of those who seek to ‘spiritualize’ their false gods, for their heads are even as vain pigs’ bladders of poisonous miasma.
But in your warfare honour brave antagonists; spare them, and bring them to initiation; while the hag and the eunuch — and such are well nigh all who support orthodoxies — must be shown the only mercy possible, that of swift destruction.
For those calling themselves orthodox who are yet men, and women, have in truth no faith in these follies, but only profess them as convenient means of dominating the vulgar. Such are already of us, although they know it not; such, albeit unconsciously, understand and live according to our Law of THELEMA — DO WHAT THOU WILT. They are ripe for conversion; they are of the Blood, and with little pains may be brought to fight in our ranks. So mote it be.
V
Here declare We a certain secret method of worship of the One True God if haply ye may find Him.
Let every Knight appoint a privy Chapel in his castle, and so far as may be let it resemble this order and disposition of Our Supreme Grand Council, having an ever-burning lamp as an image of the Sun to give light to a Phallus carved or moulded in gold, silver, platinum or bronze by the fine art of the sculptor.
And let the Knight keep oft times vigil before it, devotedly with his whole heart uttering hymns and invocations, as may be fitting, and exalting himself in due commemoration of this Lord of Life, in such wise that the Image becomes consecrated by his will. Thus shall it be a storehouse of strength, and a focus or magnet, drawing to itself all subtle forces, and radiating benediction.
Let then the Knight keep secret this devotion, and enjoy its fruits in quiet.
VI
Here also is a deeper worship and an inner, that lieth nigher to the heart of God.
Let the good Knight devout appoint a secret shrine in his own body, in the brain, or in the throat, or in the heart, or in the solar plexus, or in that place called groin, or in some other centre of force, and there let him establish firmly a mental image of the Phallus or of the Sun; and, closing all avenues of sense, as it were tyling the lodge, let him worship and cherish that image with unwearying care.
Let him rehearse before the Lord thus exalted his own deed of knightly devoir unto that Lord, so that Memory and Imagination dance about him as maids about the Maypole. And to these let him add Will, consecrating himself with oaths to the service of the Lord, and vowing to make himself a worthy priest unto Him.
Thus, then, the whole thought being closely knit together and ranged about the Image, as soldiers that rally to a Standard, let him turn devoutly and intensely his mind to the sole contemplation of that Image, figuring to himself that all other thoughts are but as cowans and eavesdroppers. Now then, for a season shall it be difficult rightly to tyle that Lodge, and the mind shall turn ever from the Image.
So therefore let the good Knight with fortitude redouble zeal, until it be that on a sudden all that turmoil cease, and the thought flow evenly up to the image.
Then shall the God appear in all His glory, assuming the worshipper into His Heaven.
VII
Be it known unto you, Very Illustrious Sir Knights Councillors, that there lieth beyond all this a supreme mode by which God not only manifesteth Himself to man, but is with him united in most sweet nuptials. But this mystery is not to be known of them that are not yet initiates of the Sanctuary of the Gnosis IX°.
But be ye also assured that by these practices preliminary ye shall be led to Godliness, and to the Reward and Favour of the All-One; and ye do fit yourselves for that further advancement, ye make yourselves worthy candidates for the Secret Areopagus of the Illuminati, wherein is much made light that is yet dark to you.
VIII
And may the Blessing of our Lord and Father the Sun, and the Favour and Fervour of the Lord ITHEPHALLOS be upon you, and prepare you in brain and heart and body (wisdom, and beauty, and might of creation being within you) for the Glory of which this Council is but a figured veil.
Hail, Sir Knights Councillors, and farewell.
In the Name of BABALON and THE BEAST conjoined, of the Secret Saviour and of IAO.
Proof read and edited by Frater D.M.T. © Thelemagick.
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[ SEE ALSO: LIBER XXIV & LIBER CCCLXVII ]
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