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[ « back to TOC ] THE EQUINOX OF THE GODSCHAPTER I. The Boyhood of Aleister CrowleyAt 36 Clarendon Square, Leamington, Warwickshire, England, at 10.50 p.m. on the twelfth day of October, in the Eighteen Hundred and Seventy-Fifth Year of the vulgar era, was born the person whose history is to be recounted. His father was named Edward Crowley; his mother, Emily Bertha, her maiden name being Bishop. Edward Crowley was an Exclusive Plymouth Brother, the most considered leader in that sect. This branch of the family of Crowley has been settled in England since Tudor times, but is Celtic in origin, Crowley being a clan in Kerry and other counties in the South-West of Ireland, of the same stock as the Breton `de Querouaille' or `de Kerval' which gave a Duchess of Portsmouth to England. It is supposed that the English branch---the direct ancestry of Edward Alexander Crowley---came to England with the Duke of Richmond, and took root at Bosworth. In 1881 he went to live at The Grange, Redhill, Surrey. In I884 the boy, who had till then been educated by governesses and tutors, was sent to a school at St. Leonards, kept by some extreme Evangelicals named Habershon. A year later he was transferred to a school at Cambridge kept by a Plymouth Brother of the name of Champney. (The dates in this paragraph are possibly inaccurate. Documentary evidence is at the present moment unavailable. Ed.) On March 5, 1887, Edward Crowley died. Two years later the boy was removed from the school. Those two years were years of unheard-of torture. He has written details in the Preface to "The World's Tragedy." This torture seriously undermined his health. For two years he travelled, mostly in Wales and Scotland, with tutors. In 1890 he went for a short time to a school at Streatham, kept by a man named Yarrow, his mother having moved there in order to be near her brother, an extremely narrow Evangelical named Tom Bond Bishop. This prepared him for Malvern, which he entered at the summer term of 1891. He only remained there a year, as his health was still very delicate. In the autumn he entered for a term at Tonbridge, but fell seriously ill, and had to be removed. The year 1893 was spent with tutors, principally in Wales, the north of Scotland, and Eastbourne. In 1895 he completed his studies in chemistry at King's College, London, and in October of that year entered Trinity College, Cambridge. With this ends the first period of his life. It is only necessary to state briefly that his brain developed early. At four years old he could read the Bible aloud, showing a marked predilection for the lists of long names, the only part of the Bible which has not been tampered with by theologians. (This curious trait may perhaps be evidence of his poetical feeling, his passion for the bizarre and mysterious, or even of his aptitude for the Hebrew Qabalah. It may also be interpreted as a clue to his magical ancestry.) He could also play chess well enough to beat the average amateur, and though constantly playing never lost a game till I895.(The first man to beat him was H. E. Atkins, British Chess Champion (Amateur) for many years.) He was taught by a tailor who had been summoned to make clothes for his father, and was treated as a guest on account of his being a fellow "Plymouth Brother". He beat his teacher uniformly after the first game. He must have been six or seven years old at this time. He began to write poetry in 1886, if not earlier. Vide "Oracles". After the death of his father, who was a man of strong common sense, and never allowed his religion to interfere with natural affection, he was in the hands of people of an entirely contrary disposition. His mental attitude was soon concentrated in hatred of the religion which they taught, and his will concentrated in revolt against its oppressions. His main method of relief was mountaineering, which left him alone with nature, away from the tyrants. The years from March, 1887, until entering Trinity College, Cambridge, in October, 1895, represented a continual struggle towards freedom. At Cambridge he felt himself to be his own master, refused to attend Chapel, Lectures or Hall, and was wisely left alone to work out his won salvation by his tutor, the late Dr. A. W. Verrall. It must be stated that he possessed natural intellectual ability to an altogether extraordinary degree. He had the faculty of memory, especially verbal memory, in astonishing perfection. As a boy he could find almost any verse in the Bible after a few minutes search. In 1900 he was tested in the works of Shakespeare, Shelley, Swinburne (1st series of Poems and Ballads), Browning and The Moonstone. He was able to place exactly any phrase from any of these books, and in nearly every case to continue with the passage. He showed remarkable facility in acquiring the elements of Latin, Greek, French, Mathematics and Science. He learnt "little Roscoe" almost by heart, on his won initiative. When in the Lower Fifth at Malvern, he came out sixth in the school in the annual Shakespeare examination, though he had given only two days to preparing for it. Once, when the Mathematical Master, wishing to devote the hour to cramming advanced pupils, told the class to work out a set of examples of Quadratic Equations, he retorted by asking at the end of forty minutes what he should do next, and handed up the whole series of 63 equations, correct. He passed all his examinations both at school and university with honours, though refusing uniformly to work for them. On the other hand, he could not be persuaded or constrained to apply himself to any subject which did not appeal to him. He showed intense repugnance to history, geography, and botany, among others. He could never learn to write Greek and Latin verses, this probably because the rules of scansion seemed arbitrary and formal. Again, it was impossible to him to take interest in anything from the moment that he had grasped the principles of "how it was, or might be done." This trait prevented him from putting the finishing touches to anything he attempted. For instance, he refused to present himself for the second part of his final examination for his B.A. degree, simply because he knew himself thoroughly master of the subject! (Swinburne similarly refused to be examined in Classics at Oxford on the ground that he knew more than the examiners.) This characteristic extended to his physical pleasures. He was abjectly incompetent at easy practice climbing on boulders, because he knew he could do them. It seemed incredible to the other men that this lazy duffer should be the most daring and dexterous cragsman of his generation, as he proved himself whenever he tackled a precipice which had baffled every other climber in the world. (In Chess also he has beaten many International Masters, and ranks on the Continent as a Minor Master himself. But he cannot be relied upon to win against a second-rate player in a Club Match.) Similarly, once he had worked out theoretically a method of climbing a mountain, he was quite content to tell the secret to others, and let them appropriate the glory. (The first ascent of the Dent du Geant from the Montanvers is a case in point.) It mattered everything to him that something should be done, nothing that he should be the one to do it. This almost inhuman unselfishness was not incompatible with consuming and insatiable personal ambition. The key to the puzzle is probably this; he wanted to be something that nobody else had ever been, or could be. He lost interest in chess as soon as he had proved to himself (at the age of 22) that he was a master of the game, having beaten some of the strongest amateurs in England, and even one or two professional "masters." He turned from poetry to painting, more or less, when he had made it quite certain that he was the greatest poet of his time. Even in Magick, having become The Word of the Aeon, and thus taken his place with the other Seven Magi known to history, out of reach of all possible competition, he began to neglect the subject. He is only able to devote himself to it as he does because he has eliminated all personal ideas from his Work ; it has become as automatic as respiration. We must also put on record his extraordinary powers in certain unusual spheres. He can remember the minutest details of a rock- climb, after years of absence. He can retrace his steps over any path once traversed, in the wildest weathee or the blackest night. He can divine the one possible passagr through the most complex and dangerous ice-fall. (E.g. the Vuibez seraes in I897, the Mer de Glace, right centre, in I899.) He possesses a "sense of direction" independent of any known physical methods of taking one's bearings; and this is as effective in strange cities as on mountains or deserts. He can smell the presence of water, of snow, and other supposedly scentless substances. His endurance is exceptional. He has been known to write for 67 consecutive hours : his "Tannhauser" was thus written in 1900. He has walked over 100 miles in 2 1/2 days, in the desert : as in the winter of 1910. He has frequently made expeditions lasting over 36 hours, on mountains, in the most adverse connditions. He holds the World's record for the greatest number of days spent on a glacier--65 days on the Baltoro in 1902; also that for the greatest pace uphill over 16,000 feet--4,000 feet in 1 hour 23 minutes on Iztaccihuatl in 1900; that for the highest peak (first ascent by a solitary climber)--the Nevado de Toluca in 1901; and numerous others. (Written in 1920 e.v.: these records may no longer stand.) Yet he is utterly fagged-out by the mere idea of a walk of a few hundred yards, if it does not interest him, and excite his imagination, to take it; and it is only with the greatest effort that he can summon the energy to write a few lines if, instead of his wanting to do them, he merely knows that they must be done. This account has been deemed necessary to explain how it is that a man of such unimaginable commanding qualities as to have made him world-famous in so many diverse spheres of action, should have been so grotesquely unable to make use of his faculties, or even of his achievements, in any of the ordinary channels of human activity; to consolidate his personal pre-eminence, or even to secure his position from a social or economic standpoint.
[ « back to TOC ] THE EQUINOX OF THE GODSCHAPTER II. Adolescence: Beginnings of MagickHaving won freedom, he had the sense not to waste any time in enjoying it. He had been deprived of all English literature but the Bible during the whole of his youth, and he spent his three years at Cambridge in repairing the defect. He was also working for the Diplomatic Service, the late Lord Salisbury and the late Lord Ritchie having taken an interest in his career, and given him nominations. In October, 1897, he was suddenly recalled to his understanding of the evils of the alleged 'existing religion,' and experienced a trance, in which he perceived the utter folly of all human ambition. The fame of an ambassador rarely outlives a century. That of a poet is almost as ephemeral. The earth must one day perish. He must build in some material more lasting. This conception drove him to the study of Alchemy and Magick. He wrote to the author of "The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts," a pompous American named Arthur Waite, notorious for the affectations and obscurities of his style, and the mealy-mouthed muddle of his mysticism. This nebulous impresario, presenting an asthmatic Isis in the Opera "Bull-Frogs," had hinted in his preface that he knew certain occult sanctuaries wherein Truth and Wisdom were jealously guarded by a body of Initiates, to be despensed to the postulant who proved himself worthy to partake of their privileges. Mr. Waite recommended him to read a book called "The Cloud on the Sanctuary." His taste for mountaineering had become a powerful passion, and he was climbing in Cumberland when he met Oscar Eckenstein, perhaps the greatest of all the mountaineers of his period, with whom he was destined to climb thenceforward until 1902. In the summer a party was formed to camp on the Schonbuhl Glacier at the foot of the Dent Blanche, with a view to an expedition to the Himalayas later on. During his weeks on the Glacier, where the bad weather was continuous, he studied assiduously the translation by S. L. Mathers of three books which form part of von Rosenroth's "Kabbalah Unveiled." On one of his decents to Zermatt, he met a distinguished chemist, Julian L. Bater, who had studied Alchemy. He hunted this clue through the valley, and made Baker promise to meet him in London at the end of the sea- son, and introduce him to others who were interested in Occult science. This happened in September; through Baker, he met another chemist named George Cecil Jones, who introduced him to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He made rapid progress in this Order, and in the spring of 1900 was its chief in England. The details of this period must be studied in "The Temple of Solomon the King," where a full account of the Order is given. In the Order he met one, Allan Bennett, Frater Iehi Aour. Jones and Bennett were both Adepts of high standing. The latter came to live with him in his flat, and together they carried out many operations of ceremonial magick. Allan Bennett was constant illhealth, and went to Ceylon at the end of 1899. It was on his entry into this Order that the subject of this history took the motto of "Perdurabo"--'I will endure to the end.' In July, 1900, he went to Mexico, and devoted his whole time to the continued practice of Magick, in which he obtained extraordinary success. (See Equinox Vol. I, No. III for a condensed account of some of these. It may be here stated summarily that he invoked certain Gods, Goddesses, and Spirits to visible appearance, learnt how to heal physical and moral diseases, how to make himself invisible, how to obtain communications from spiritual sources, how to control other minds, etc., etc.) And then.... [ « back to TOC ] THE EQUINOX OF THE GODSCHAPTER III. Beginnings of MysticismThe Birth of Oscar Eckenstein, on his arrival in Mexico, where he was to climb mountains with the subject of our essay, found him in a rather despondent mood. He had attained the most satisfactory results. He was able to communicate with the divine forces, and operations such as those of invisibility and evocation had been mastered. Yet with all this there was a certain dissatisfaction. Success had not given him all that he had hoped for. He placed the situation before his companion, rather to clear his own mind than hoping for any help, for he supposed him to be entirely ignorant of all these subjects, which he habitually treated with dislike and contempt. Judge of his surprise, then, when he found in this unpromising quarter a messenger form the Great White Brotherhood ! His companion told him to abandon all magick. "The Task," said Eckenstein, "involves the control of the mind. Yours is a wandering mind." The proposition was indignantly denied. "Test it," said the Master. A short experiment was conclusive. It was impossible for the boy to keep his mind fixed upon a single object for even a few seconds at a time. The mind, though perfectly stable in motion, was unable to rest, just as a gyroscope falls when the flywheel slows down. An entirely new course of experiments was consequently undertaken. Half-an-hour every morning and half-an-hour every evening were devoted to attempts to control the mind, by the simple process of imagining a familiar object, and endeavouring to keep concentrated upon it. (See Part I of Book 4 for a description of this, and an explanation of the difficulty of the task, even in the case of one whose powers of concentrated attention, in the ordinary sense of the phrase, are highly developed.) He soon became sufficiently expert in this initial practice to proceed to concentration on regularly moving objects such as a pendulum, and, ultimately, on living objects. A further series of experiments dealt with the other senses. He tried to imagine and retain the taste of chocolate or of quinine, the smell of various familiar perfumes, the sound of bells, waterfalls, and so on, or the feeling excited by such objects as velvet, silk, fur, sand and steel. In the spring of 1901, he left Mexico, went to San Francisco, Honolulu, Japan, China and Ceylon, always continuing these experiments. His Master had not told him to what they would ultimately lead. In Ceylon he found Frater I.A. (Allan Bennett), with whom he went to Kandy, where they took a bungalow named Marlboroigh, overlooking the lake. I.A. had himself been developing on similar lines under P. Ramanathan, the Solicitor-General of Ceylon, known to occultists under the name of Shri Parananda. (He is the author of commentaries on the Gospels of Matthew and John, which he explains as containing many of the aphorisms of Yoga.) I.A. told him that in order to concentrate he must first see that no interruptions reached him from the body, and counselled the adoption of Asana, a settled position in which all bodily movement was to be suppressed. Further, he was to practice Pranayama, or control of the breathing, which has a similar effect in reducing to the lowest possible point the internal movements of the body. (See Part I of Book 4 for full descriptions, and Equinox for some of FRATER PERDURABO'S records of these practices.) During the months of this stay at Kandy, he practised these, obtained success in Asana, the intense pain of the practices being overcome, and changed into an indescribable sense of physical well-being and comfort. While in Pranayama he passed through the first stage, which is marked by profuse perspiration of a peculiar kind; the second, which is accompanied by rigidity of the body ; and the third, in which the body unconsciously hops about the floor, without in any way disturbing the Asana. During the latter part of August and the whole of September, his practices became continuous by day and night, in order to create a rhythm in the mind similar to that which Pranayama produces in the body. He adopted a Mantra, or sacred sentence, by the constant repetition of which it became automatic in his brain, so that it would continue through sleep, and he would wake up actually repeating the words. Sleep itself, too, was broken up into short periods of very light sleep of a peculiar kind, in which consciousness is hardly lost, although the body obtains perfect rest. These practices continued into October, at the beginning of which he reached the state of Dhyana, a tremendous spiritual experience, in which the subject and object of meditation unite with excessive violence in blinding brilliance and music of a kind to which earthly harmony affords no parallel. (See Part I of Book 4, and Equinox Vol. I, No. IV.) The result of this however was to cause so intense a satisfaction with his progress, that he gave up work. He then visited Anuradhapura and others of the buried cities of Ceylon. In November he went to India, and in January visited I.A. at Akyab in Burma,where that Adept was living in a monastery, with the intention of preparing himself to take the Yellow Robe of the Buddhist Sangha. The whole of the summer of I902 was spent in an expedition to Chogo Ri (K2) in the Himalayas. (An account of this journey is given by Dr. Jacot-Guillarmod: "Six mois dans l'Himalaya." His own story is in "The Spirit of Solitude" (The Confessions of Aleister Crowley) Vol. II.) During the whole of this period he did very little occult work. November, 1902, him in Paris, where he stayed off and on till the spring of 1903, when he returned to his house in Scotland. We must now go backwards in time, to take up a thread which had run through his whole work, so important as to demand a chapter to itself:--
[ « back to TOC ] THE EQUINOX OF THE GODSCHAPTER IV. The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the MageThe Birth of (The Mystic Name of an Adept of this degree is not to be divulged without special reasons for so doing.) In the autumn of 1898 George Cecil Jones had directed the attention of Frater Perdurabo to a book entitled "The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage". The essence of this book is as follows : The aspirant must have a house secure from observation and interference. In this house there must be an oratory with a window to the East, and a door to the North opening upon a terrace, at the end of which must be a lodge. He must have a Robe, Crown, Wand, Altar, Incense, Anointing Oil, and a Silver Lamen. The terrace and lodge must be strewn with fine sand. He withdraws himself gradually from human intercourse to devote himself more and more to prayer for the space of four months. He must then occupy two months in almost continuous prayer, speaking as little as possible to anybody. At the end of this period he invokes a being described as the Holy Guardian Angel, who appears to him (or to a child employed by him), and who will write in dew upon the Lamen, which is placed upon the Altar. The Oratory is filled with Divine Perfume not of the aspirant's kindling. After a period of communion with the Angel, he summons the Four Great Princes of the Daemonic World, and forces them to swear obedience. On the following day he calls forward and subdues the Eight Sub-Princes; and the day after that, the many Spirits serving these. These inferior Daemons, of whom four act as familiar spirits, then operate a collection of talismans for various purposes. Such is a brief account of the Operation described in the book. This Operation strongly appealed to our student. He immediately set about to procure a suitable house, and to prepare everything that might be necessary for the operation. All was ready for the beginning in Easter of 1900, and it must be said that the preliminary work alone is so tremendous that a long story might be written of the events of these 18 months of preparation. The Operation itself was however never begun. A fortnight or so before the time appointed, he received an urgent appeal from his Master to save him and the Order from destruction. He gave up his own prospects of personal advancement without hesitation, and hastened to Paris. (See the Equinox "The Temple of Solomon the King" for a fairly full account of these various matters. The "Master" was the late S.L. Mathers.) That the Master proved to be no Master, and the Order no Order, but the incarnation of Disorder, had no effect upon the good Karma created by this renunciation of a project on which he had set his heart for so long. In Mexico, he kept vigil during several nights in the Temple of the Order of the Lamp of the Invisible Light, an Order whose High Priest is pledged to maintain a Secret and Eternal Lamp. In this shrine he received some shadowing forth of the Vision of the Holy Guardian Angel, and that of the Four Great Princes : here also he renewed the Oath of the Operation. (The whole of his magical career is best interpreted as the performance of this Operation. One must not suppose that Initiation is a formality, observing the "unities," like being made a Mason. All life pertains to the process, and it pervades the whole personality; the official recognition of attainment is merely a token of what had taken place.) On his return to Scotland in 1903, he found ample evidence of the presence of the forces of the Operation, but by now, having conceived that Work in a subtler manner and having prepared to carry it out in the Temple of his own body, having seen Magick, in short, more of less in the manner in which it is seen in Parts II and III of the Book 4, he was able to dispense with the exterior physical appurtenances of this Operation. We must now pass over a few years, and deal with the completion of this Operation, although it is in a sense irrelevant to the purpose of this book. During the winter of 1905-6, he was traveling across China. He had come to the point of conquering his mind. That mind had broken up. He saw that the human mind is by its very nature evanescent, because of the fact that nature is not unity but duality. Truth is relative. All things end in mystery. In such sentences have the philosophers of the past formulated this proposition, as announcing the intellectual bankruptcy which he, with greater frankness, describes as insanity. Passing from this, he became as a little child, and on reaching the Unity behind the mind, found the purpose of his life formulated in these words, The Obtaining of the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. He then found himself, having destroyed all other Karma, perfectly free to pursue this one work. He then accomplished the six months of Invocation, as prescribed in the Book of the Sacred Magic, and was rewarded in October, 1906, by complete success. (An account of these matters, in part, is to be found in the Equinox, Vol. I, No. VIII, and in his own poem "Aha !") He then proceeded to the evocation and conquest of the Four Great Princes and their Inferiors, a work whose results must be studied in the light of his subsequent career. We have now finished all that is necessary to say concerning him, for the account of some of his further Attainment is given fully in Liber CDXVIII, "The Vision and the Voice," also in Equinox Vol. I No. X "The Temple of Solomon the King," where the unexpected result of the Communion of the Holy Guardian Angel is shown in a symbolism which can hardly be understood without reference to the events of 1904, which are now wholly pertinent to this Essay.
[ « back to TOC ] THE EQUINOX OF THE GODSCHAPTER V. The Results of RecessionThe wisest of the Popes, on being shown some miracles, refused to be impressed, remarking that he did not believe in them, he had seen too many. The result of the Meditation practices and their results, following those of Magick, was to give our student a conception of the Universe which was purely mental. Everything was a phenomenon in mind. He did not as yet see that this conception is self-destructive; but it made him skeptical, and indifferent to whatever happened. You cannot really be impressed by anything which you know to be nothing more than one of your own thoughts. Any occurrence can be interpreted as a thought, or as a relation between two thoughts. In practice this leads to profound indifferentism, miracles having become commonplace. But what would be the amazement of the priest who, placing the Host upon his tongue, found his mouth full of bleeding flesh ! At the period of writing, it is evident for what purpose our student was led into this state. It was not to the Magician, not to the mystic, it was to a militant member of the Rationalist Press Association that the great Revelation was to be made. It was necessary to prove to him that there was in actual truth a Sanctuary, that there was in sober earnest a body of Adepts. It matters nothing whether these Adepts are incarnated or discarnated, human or divine. The only point at issue is that there should be conscious Beings in possession of the deepest secrets of Nature, pledged to the uplifting of humanity, filled with Truth, Wisdom and Understanding. It is practical to prove the existence of individuals whose knowledge and power, although not complete -- for the nature of Knowledge and Power is such that they can never be complete, since the ideas themselves contain imperfections -- are yet enormously greater than aught known to the rest of humanity. It was of such a body that our student had heard in the "Cloud upon the Sanctuary" ; admission to its adyta had been the guiding hope of his life. His early attainments had tended rather to shake his belief in the existence of such an organization. He had not yet reckoned up the events of his life; he had not yet divined the direction and the set purpose informing their apparently vagrant course. It might have been by chance that whenever he had been confronted with any difficulty the right person had instantly come forward to solve it, whether in the valleys of Switzerland, the mountains of Mexico, or the jungles of the East. At this period of his life he would have scouted the idea as fantastic. He had yet to learn that the story of Balaam and his prophetic ass might be literally true. For the great Message that came to him came, not through the mouth of any person with any pretensions to any knowledge of this or any other sort, but through an empty-headed woman of society. The plain facts of this revelation must be succinctly stated in a new chapter. [ « back to TOC ] THE EQUINOX OF THE GODSCHAPTER VI. The Great RevelationThe Arising of It has been judged best to reprint as it stands the account of these matters originally compiled for "The Temple of Solomon the King." (Equinox Vol. I, No. VII, pp 357-386.) (The notes for this article were worked out in collaboration with Captain (now Major-General) J.F.C. Fuller. Every means of cross-examination was pressed to the utmost.)
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| Jan. 1 | ...(Much blotted out)...missed deer and hare. So annoyed. Yet the omen is that the year is well for works of Love and Union ; ill for those of Hate. Be mine of Love ! (Note that he does not add "and Union." As a devotee of Yoga, "Union," would have done.) |
| Jan. 28 | Embark for Suez. |
| Feb. 7 | Suez. |
| Feb. 8 | Landed at Port Said. |
| Feb. 9 | To Cairo. |
| Feb. 11 | Saw b.f.g. b.f.b. (This entry is quite unintelligible to us.) |
| Feb. 19 | To Helwan as Oriental Despot. (Apparently P. had assumed some disguise, pro- bably with the intention of trying to study Islam from within as he had done with Hinduism.) |
| Feb. 20 | Began golf. |
| March 16 | Began INV. (invocation) IAO (Given in Liber Samekh: see "Magick.") |
| March 17 | THOTH [in Greek] appeared. (Thoth, the Egyptian God of Wisdom and Magick.) |
| March 18 | Told to INV. (invoke) HORUS [in Greek] as the sun [drawn] by new way. |
| March 19 | Did this badly at noon 30. |
| March 20 | At 10 p.m. did well--Equinox of Gods--Nov--(? new) C.R.C. (Christian Rosy Cross, we conjecture.) Hoori now Hpnt (obviously "Hierophant"). |
| March 21 | in . 1.A.M. (? one o'clock) |
| March 22 | X.P.B. (May this and the entry March 24, refer to the brother of the A.'.A.'. who found him ?) E.P.D. in 84 m. (Unintelligible to us ; probably a blind.) |
| March 23 | Y.K. done. (?His work on the Yi King.)*1* |
| March 24 | Met [sanskrit] again. |
| March 25 | 823 Thus 461 = p f l y 2 b z 218 " " |
| (Blot) | wch trouble with ds. |
| (Blot) | P.B. (All unintelligible ; possibly a blind.) |
| April 6 | Go off again to H, taking A's p. (This is probably a blind.) |
Fra. P. never made a thorough record of this period. He seems to have wavered between absolute scepticism in the bad sense, a dislike of the revelation, on the one hand, and real enthusiasm on the other. And the first of these moods would induce him to do thins to spoil the effect of the latter. Hence the "blinds" and stupid meaningless cyphers which deface the diary.
And, as if the Gods themselves wished to darken the Pylon, we find later, when P.'s proud will had been broken, and he wished to make straight the way of the historian, his memory (one of the finest memories in the world) was utterly incompetent to make everything certain.
However, nothing of which he was not certain will be entered in this place.
We have one quite unspoiled and authoritative document:
"The Book of Results," written in one of the small Japanese vellum note-books which he used to carry. Unfortunately, it seems to have been abandoned after five days. What happened between March 23rd and April 8th?
THE BOOK OF RESULTS
March 16th Die [mercury] (ie, wednesday) I invoke IAO. (Fra. P. tells us that this was done by the ritual of the "Bornless One," identical with the "Preliminary In- vocation" (See "Magick" Appendix Liber CXX.) in the "Goetia," merely to amuse his wife by showing her the sylphs. She refused or was unable th see any sylphs, but became "inspired," and kept on saying: "They're waiting for you !")
(Note. The maiden name of his wife was Rose Edith Kelly. He called her Ouarda, the Arabic for for "Rose." She is hereafter signified by "Ouarda the Seer" or "W." for short. Ed.)W. says "they" are "waiting for me."
17. [Jupiter] (Thursday) It is "all about the child." Also "all Osiris." (Note the cynic and sceptic tone of this entry. How different it appears in the light of Liber 418!) Thoth, invoked with great success, indwells us. (Yes ; but what happened? Fra. P. has no sort of idea.)
18.[Venus] (Friday) Revealed that the waiter was Horus, whom I had offended and ought to invoke. The ritual revealed in skeleton. Promise of success [Saturn] (Saturday) or [Sun] (Sunday) and of Samadhi. (Is this "waiter" another sneer? We are uncertain.)
The revealing of the ritual (by W. the seer) consisted chiefly in a prohibition of all formulae hitherto used, as will be seen from the text printed below.It was probable on this day that P. cross-examined W. about Horus. Only the striking character of her identification of the God, surely, would have made him trouble to obey her. He remembers that he only agreed to obey her in order to show her how silly she was, and he taunted her that "nothing could happen of you broke all the rules."
Here therefore we insert a short note by Fra. P. how W. knew R.H.K. (Ra Hoor Khuit)
We had made no pretension to clairvoyance; nor had P. ever tried to train her.
P. had great experience with clairvoyants, and it was always a point of honour with him to bowl them out. And here was a novice, a woman who should never have been allowed outside a ballroom, speaking with the authority of God, and proving it by unhesitating correctness.
One slip, and Fra. P. would have sent her to the devil. And that slip was not made. Calculate the odds! We cannot find a mathematical expression for tests 1,2,3,4,5, or 6, but the other 7 tests give us
1/10 x 1/84 x 1/4 x 1/6 x 1/7 x 1/I0 x 1/15 = 1/21,168,000Twenty-one million to one against her getting through half the ordeal!
Even if we suppose what is absurd, that she knew the correspondences of the Qabalah as well as Fra. P., and had know- ledge of his own secret relations with the Unseen, we must strain telepathy to explain test 12.
(Note. We may add, too, that Fra. P. thinks, but is not quite certain, that he also tested her with the Hebrew Alphabet and the Tarot trumps, in which case the long odds must be still further multiplied by 484, bringing them over the billion mark!
But we know that she was perfectly ignorant of the subtle correspondences, which were only existing at that time in Fra. P.'s own brain.
And even if it were so, how are we to explain what followed--the discovery of the Stele of Revealing?
To apply test 4, Fra.P. took her to the museum at Boulak, which they had not previously visited. She passed by (as P. noted with silent glee) several images of Horus. They went upstairs. A glass case stood in the distance, too far off for its contents to be recognized. But W. recognized it ! "There," she cried, "There he is !"
Fra. P. advanced to the case. There was the image of Horus in the form of Ra Hoor Khuit painted upon a wooden stele of the 26th dynasty--and the exhibit bore the number 666! (666 had been taken by Fra. P. as the number of His own Name (The Beast) long years before, in His childhood. There could be no physical causal connection here ; and coincidence, sufficient to explain this one isolated fact, becomes inadequate in view of the other evidence.)
(And after that it was five years before Fra. P. was force to obedience !)
This incident must have occurred before the 23rd of March, as the entry on that date refers to Ankh-f-n-khonsu.
Here is P.'s description of the Stele. "In the museum at Cairo, No. 666 is the stele of the Priest Ankh-f-n-khonsu.
Horus had a red Disk and green Uraeus.
His face is green, his skin indigo.
His necklace, anklets, and bracelets are gold.
His nemyss nearly black from blue.
His tunic is the Leopard's skin, and his apron green and gold.
Green is the wand of double Power; his r.h. is empty.
His throne is indigo the gnomon, red the square.
The light is gamboge.
Above him are the Winged Globe and the bent figure of the heavenly Isis, her hands and feet touching earth.
(We print the most recent translation of the Stele, by Messrs. Alan Gardiner, Litt. D., and Battiscombe Gunn. It differs slightly from that used by Fra. P., which was due to the assistant-curator of the Museum at Boulak.)
STELE OF ANKH-F-NA-KHONSU.
Obverse
Topmost Register (under Winged Disk)
Behdet (? Hadit ?), the Great God, the Lord of Heaven.
Middle Register. Two vertical lines to left :---
Ra-Harakhti, Master of the Gods.
Five vertical lines to right :---
Osiris, the Priest of Montu, Lord of Thebes, Opener of the
doors of Nut in Karnak, Ankh-f-n-Khonsu, the Justified.
Below Altar :---
Oxen, Geese, Wine (?), Bread.
Behind the god is the hieroglyph of Amenti.
Lowest Register.
(I) Saith Osiris, the Priest of Montu, Lord of Thebes, the opener of the Doors of Nut in Karnak, Ankh-f-n-Khonsu, (2) the Justified :--"Hail, Thou whose praise is high (the highly praised), thou great-willed. O Soul (ba) very awful (lit. mighty, of awe) that giveth the terror of him (3) among the Gods, shining in glory upon his great throne, making ways for the Soul (ba) for the Spirit (yekh) and for the Shadow (khabt) : I am prepared and I shine forth as one that is prepared. (4) I have made way to the place in which are Ra, Tom, Khepri and Hathor."Osiris, the Priest of Montu, Lord of Thebes (5) Ankh-f-na-Khonsu, the Justified ; son of MNBSNMT (The father's name. The method of spelling shows that he was a foreigner. There is no clue to the vocalisation).; born of the Sistrum-bearer of Amon, the Lady Atne-sher.
(I) Saith Osiris, the Priest of Montu, Lord of Thebes, Ankh-f- (2)na-Khonsu, the Justified :--"My heart from my mother, my heart (different word, apparently synonymous, but probably not so at all) of my existence (3) upon earth, stand not forth against me as witness, drive me not back (4) among the Sovereign Judges (quite an arbitrary conventional translation of the original word), neither incline against me in the presence of the Great God, the Lord of the West (Osiris of course); (5) Now that I am united with Earth in the Great West, and endure no longer upon Earth.(6). Saith Osiris, he who is in Thebes, Ankh-f-na-Khonsu, the Justified: "O Only (7) One, shining like (or in) the Moon; Osiris Ankh-f-(8)na_Khonsu has come froth upon high among these thy multitudes. (9) He that gathereth together those that are in the Light, the Underworld (duat) is (also) (10) opened to him ; lo Osiris Ankh-f-na-Khonsu, cometh forth (II) by day to do all that he wisheth upon earth among the living."
There is one other object to complete the secret of Wisdom -- (P. notes "perhaps a Thoth") or it is in the hieroglyphs. (This last paragraph is, we suppose, dictated by W.)
| 19 | The ritual written out and the invocation done -- little success. |
| 20 | Revealed (We cannot make out if this revelation comes from W. or is a result of the ritual. But almost certainly the former, as it precedes the "Great Success" entry) that the Equinox of the Gods is come, Horus taking the Throne of the East and all rituals, etc., being abrogated. (To explain this, the analogy is between the "new formula" given by the "Word" every six months in the Order, and that given every couple of thousand years (more or less) by the Word of a Magus to the whole or part of Mankind. The G.D. ritual of the Equinox was celebrated in the spring and autumn within 48 hours of the actual dates of Sol entering Aries and Libra.)
Great success in midnight invocation. |
But that "great success" means something very important is clear enough. The sneering sceptic of the 17th of March must have had a shock before he wrote those words.)
| 21. | ☾. ☉ enters ♈. ("Monday. The Sun enters Aries." i.e. Springs begins.) |
| 22. | ♂ (Tuesday) The day of rest, on which nothing whatever of magic is to be done at all. ☿ (Wednesday) is to be the great day of invocation. |
| 23. | The Secret of Wisdom. |
INVOCATION OF HORUS
ACCORDING TO THE DIVINE VISION OF W., THE SEER.
The above is W.'s answer to various questions posed by P.
Preliminary. Banish. L.B.R. Pentagram. L.B.R. Hexagram. Flaming sword. Abrahadabra, Invoke. As before. (These are P.'s ideas for the ritual. W. replied, "Omit.")
The MS. of this Ritual bears and left unrevised, save perhaps for one glance. There are mistakes in grammar and spelling unique in all MSS. of Fra. P.; the use of capitals is irregular, and the punctuation almost wanting.)
CONFESSION
Unprepared and uninvoking Thee, I, OY MH, Fra R.R. et A.C., am here in Thy Presence--for Thou art Everywhere, O Lord Horus! --to confess humbly before Thee my neglect and scorn of Thee.How shall I humble myself enough before Thee? Thou art the mighty and unconquered Lord of the Universe: I am a spark of Thine unutterable Radiance.
How should I approach Thee? but Thou art Everywhere.
But Thou hast graciously deigned to call me unto Thee, to this Exorcism of Art, that I may be Thy Servant, Thine Adept, O Bright One, O Sun of Glory! Thou hast called me --should I not then hasten to Thy Presence?
With unwashen hands therefore I come unto Thee, and I lament my wandering from Thee --but Thou knowest!
Yea, I have evil!
If one (doubtless a reference to S.R.M.D. who was much obsessed by Mars, P. saw Horus at first as Geburah; later as an aspect of Tiphereth, including Chesed and Geburah--the red Triangle inverted--an aspect opposite to Osiris.) blasphemed Thee, why should I therefore forsake Thee? But Thou art the Avenger; all is with Thee.
I bow my neck before Thee; and as once Thy sword was upon it (see G.D. Ceremony of Neophyte, the Obligation), so am I in Thy hands. Strike if Thou wilt: spare if Thou wilt: but accept me as I am.
My trust is in Thee: shall I be confounded? This Ritual of Art; this Forty and Fourfold Invocation; this Sacrifice of Blood--(Merely, we suppose, that 44=DM, blood. Possibly a bowl of blood was used. P. thinks it was in some of the workings at this time, but is not sure if it was this one.)--these I do not comprehend.
It is enough if I obey Thy decree; did Thy fiat go forth for my eternal misery, were it not my joy to execute Thy Sentence on myself?
For why? For that All is in Thee and of Thee; it is enough if I burn up in the intolerable glory of Thy presence.
Enough! I turn toward Thy Promise.
Doubtful are the Words: Dark are the Ways: but in Thy Words and Ways is Light. Thus then now as ever, I enter the Path of Darkness, if haply so I may attain the Light.
Hail!
a I [aleph]
Strike, strike the master chord! Draw, draw the Flaming Sword! Crowned Child and Conquering Lord, Horus, avenger!
| I. | O Thou of the Head of the Hawk! Thee, Thee, I invoke! |
| (At every "Thee I invoke," throughout whole ritual, give the sign of Apophis.) | |
| A. | Thou only-begotten-child of Osiris Thy Father, and Isis Thy Mother. He that was slain ; She that bore Thee in Her womb flying from the Terror of the Water. Thee, Thee I invoke! |
| 2. | O Thou whose Apron is of flashing white, whiter than the Forehead of the Morning! Thee, Thee, I invoke! |
| B. | O Thou who hast formulated Thy Father and made fertile Thy Mother! Thee, Thee, I invoke! |
| 3. | O Thou whose garment is of golden glory with the azure bars of sky! Thee, Thee, I invoke! |
| C. | Thou, who didst avenge the Horror of Death; Thou the slayer of Typhon! Thou who didst lift Thine arms, and the Dragons of Death were as dust: Thou who didst raise Thine Head, and the Crocodile of Nile was abased before Thee! Thee, Thee, I invoke! |
| 4. | O Thou whose Nemyss hideth the Universe with night, the impermeable Blue! Thee, Thee, I invoke! |
| D. | Thou who travellest in the Boat of Ra, abiding at the Helm of the Aftet boat and of the Sektet boat! Thee, Thee, I invoke! |
| 5. | Thou who bearest the Wand of Double Power ! Thee, Thee, I invoke! |
| E. | Thou about whose presence is shed the darkness of Blue Light, the unfathomable glory of the outmost Ether, the untravelled, the unthinkable immensity of Space. Thou who concentrest all the Thirty Ethers in one darkling sphere of Fire! Thee, Thee, I invoke! |
| 6. | O Thou who bearest the Rose and Cross of Life and Light! Thee, Thee, I invoke! |
[beta] II
Strike, strike the master chord! Draw, draw the Flaming Sword! Crowned Child and Conquering Lord, Horus, avenger!
| I. | By thy name of Ra, I invoke Thee, Hawk of the Sun, the glorious one! |
| 2. | By thy name Harmachis, youth of the Brilliant Morning, I invoke Thee! |
| 3. | By thy name, Mau, I invoke Thee, Lion of the Midday Sun! |
| 4. | By thy name Tum, Hawk of the Even, crimson splendour of the Sunset, I invoke Thee! |
| 5. | By thy name Khep-Ra I invoke Thee, O Beetle of the hidden Mastery of Midnight! |
| A. | By thy name Heru-pa-Kraat, Lord of Silence, Beautiful Child that standest on the Dragons of the Deep, I invoke Thee! |
| B. | By thy name Apollo, I invoke Thee, O man of Strength and splendour, O poet, O father! |
| C. | By thy name of Phoebus, that drivest thy chariot through the Heaven of Zeus, I invoke Thee! |
| D. | By thy name of Odin I invoke Thee, O warrior of the North, O Renown of the Sagas! |
| E. | By thy name of Jeheshua, O child of the Flaming Star, I invoke Thee ! |
| F. | By Thine own, Thy secret name Hoori, Thee I invoke! |
Behold! I stand in the midst. Mine is the symbol of Osiris; to Thee are mine eyes ever turned. Unto the splendour of Geburah, the Magnificence of Chesed, the mystery of Daath, thither I lift up mine eyes. This have I sought, and I have sought the Unity: hear Thou me!
[gamma] III[gimel]
| 1. | Mine is the Head of the Man, and my insight is keen as the Hawk's. By my head I invoke Thee! |
| A. | I am the only-begotten child of my Father and Mother. By my body I invoke Thee! |
| 2. | About me shine the Diamonds of Radiance white and pure. By their brightness I invoke Thee! |
| B. | Mine is the Red Triangle Reversed, the Sign given of none, save it be of Thee, O Lord! (This sign had been previously communicated by W. It was entirely new to P.) By the Lamen I invoke Thee! |
| 3. | Mine is the garment of white sewn with gold, the flashing abbai that I wear. By my robe I invoke Thee! |
| C. | Mine is the sign of Apophis and Typhon ! By the sign I invoke Thee! |
| 4. | Mine is the turban of white and gold, and mine the blue vigour of the intimate air ! By my crown I invoke Thee! |
| D. | My fingers travel on the Beads of Pearl ; so run I after Thee in thy car of glory. By my fingers I invoke Thee! (On Saturday the string of pearls broke : so I changed the invocation to "My mystic sigils travel in the Bark of the Akasa, etc. By the spells I invoke Thee !--P.) |
| 5. | I bear the Wand of Double Power in the Voice of the Master--Abrahadabra ! By the word I invoke Thee! |
| E. | Mine are the dark-blue waves of music in the song that I made of old to invoke Thee--- |
Strike, strike the master chord! Draw, draw the Flaming Sword! Crowned Child and Conquering Lord, Horus, avenger!
| By the Song I invoke Thee! | |
| 6. | In my hand is thy Sword of Revenge ; let it strike at Thy Bidding! By the Sword I invoke Thee! |
[help] IV [resh]
(This section merely repeats section I in the first person. Thus it begins: 1. "Mine is the Head of the Hawk! Abrahadabra!" and ends: 6. "I bear the Rose and Cross of Life and Light! Abrahadabra!" giving the Sign at each Abrahadabra. Remaining in the Sign, the invocation concludes:)Therefore I say unto thee: Come forth and dwell in me; so that every my Spirit, whether of the Firmament, or of the Ether, or of the Earth or under the Earth; on dry land or in the Water, or Whirling Air or of Rushing Fire; and every spell and scourge of God the Vast One may be THOU. Abrahadabra!The Adoration--impromptu.
Close by banishing. (I think this was omitted at W.'s order.---P.)
During the period March 23rd--April 8th, whatever else may have happened, it is at least certain that work was continued to some extent, that the inscriptions of the stele were translated for Fra. P., and that he paraphrased the latter in verse. For we find him using, or prepared to use, the same in the text of Liber Legis.
Perhaps then, perhaps later, he made out the "name coincidences of the Qabalah," to which we must now direct the reader's attention.
The MS. is a mere fragmentary sketch.
Ch=8=ChlTh=418 Abrahadabra=RA-HVVR (Ra-Hoor).
Also 8 is the great symbol I adore.
(This may be because of its likeness to [?] or because of its [old G.D.] attributions to Daath, P. being then a rationalist; or for some other reason.)
So is O.
O=A in the Book of Thoth (The Tarot).
A=111 with all its great meanings, [sun]=6
Now 666=My name, the number of the stele, the number of The Beast (See Apocalypse), the number of the Man.
The Beast AChIHA=666 in full. (The usual spelling is ChIVA.)
(A=111, Ch=418, I=20, H=6, A=111.)
HRV-RA-HA. 211 + 201 + 6=418.
This name occurs only in L. Legis, and is a test of that book rather than of the stele.)
ANKH-P-N-KHONShU-T=666
(We trust the addition of the termination T will be found justifies.)
{Bes-n-maut, B I Sh N A - M A V T }=888
{Ta-Nich, Th A - N I Ch }=Ch x A.
Nuteru NVTh IRV=666
Montu MVNTV=111.
Aiwass AIVAS=78, the influence or messenger, or the Book T.
(P.S. Note this error! Ed.)
Ta-Nich TA-NICh = 78. Alternatively, Sh for Ch gives 370, O Sh, Creation.
So much we extract from volumes filled with minute calculations, of which the bulk is no longer intelligible even to Fra. P.
His memory, however, assures us that the coincidences were much more numerous and striking than those we have been able to reproduce here; but his attitude is, we understand that after all "It's all in Liber Legis. `Success is thy proof: argue not; convert not; talk not overmuch!'" And indeed in the Commentary to that Book will be found sufficient for the most wary of inquirers.
Now who, it may be asked, was Aiwass? It is the name given by W. to P. as that of her informant. Also it is the name given as that of the revealer of Liber Legis. But whether Aiwass is a spiritual being, or a man known to Fra. P., is a matter of the merest conjecture. His number is 78, that of Mezla, the Channel through which Macroprosopus reveals Himself to, or showers His influence upon, Microposopus (I.e. the messenger of God to Man). (But see the miraculous events connected with "The Revival of Magick" described in Magick pp. 257-260, where he is shewn as 93.) So we find Fra. P. speaking of him at one time as of another, but more advanced man; at another time as if it were the name of his own superior in the Spiritual Hierarchy. And to all questions Fra. P. finds a reply, either pointing out "the subtle metaphysical distinction between curiosity and hard work," or indicating that among the Brethren "names are only lies," or in some other way defeating the very plain purpose of the historian.
The same remark applies to all queries with regard to V.V.V.V.V. (The motto of Fra. P. as a Magister Templi 8° = 3□; He used it in His office of giving out the "Official Books of A∴A∴" to the word in the Equinox.); with this addition, that in this case he condescends to argue and to instruct. "If I tell you," he once said to the present writer, "that V.V.V.V.V. is a Mr. Smith and lives at Clapham, you will at once go round and tell everybody that V.V.V.V.V. is a Mr. Smith of Clapham, which is not true. V.V.V.V.V. is the Light of the World itself, the sole Mediator between God and Man; and in your present frame of mind (that of a poopstick) you cannot see that the two statements may be identical for the Brothers of the A∴A∴! Did not your greatgrandfather argue that no good thing could come out of Nazareth? `Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things? And they were offended in him.'"
Similarly with regard to the writing of Liber Legis, Fr. P. will only say that it is in no way "automatic writing," that he heard clearly and distinctly the human articulate accents of a man. Once, on page 6, he is told to edit a sentence ; and once, on page 19, W. supplies a sentence which he had failed to hear.
To this writing we now turn.
It must have been on the first of April that W. commanded P. (now somewhat cowed) to enter the "temple" exactly at 12 o'clock noon on three successive days, and to write down what he should hear, rising exactly at 1 o'clock.
This he did. Immediately on his taking his seat the Voice began its Utterance, and ended exactly at the expiration of the hour.
These are the three chapters of Liber Legis, and we have nothing to add.
The full title of the book is, as P. first chose to name it,
This was the original title devised by 666 to appear in the 1909 publication. The "Key of it all" and the true spelling of Aiwass had not then been discovered.
[ « back to TOC ]
CHAPTER VII.
Certain very serious questions have arisen with regard to the method by which this Book was obtained. I do not refer to those doubts --real or pretended --which hostility engenders, for all such are dispelled by study of the text; no forger could have prepared so complex a set of numerical and literal puzzles as to leave himself (a) devoted to the solution for years after, (b) baffled by a simplicity which when desclosed leaves one gasping at its profundity, (c) enlightened only by progressive initiation, or by "accidental" events apparently disconnected with the Book, which occurred long after its publication, (d) hostile, bewildered, and careless even in the face of independent testimony as to the power and clarity of the Book, and of the fact that by Its light other men have attained the loftiest summits of initiation in a tithe of the time which history and experience would lead one to expect, and (e) angrily unwilling to proceed with that part of the Work appointed for him which is detailed in Chapter III, even when the course of events on the planet, war, revolution, and the collapse of the social and religious systems of civilization, proved plainly to him that whether he liked it or no, Ra Hoor Khuit was indeed Lord of the Aeon, the Crowned and Conquering Child whose innocence meant no more than inhuman cruelty and wantonly senseless destructiveness as he avenged Isis our mother the Earth and the Heaven for the murder and mutilation of Osiris, Man, her son. The War of 1914-18 and its sequels have proved even to the dullest statesmen, beyond wit of even the most subtly sophistical theologians to gloze, that death is not an unmixed benefit either to the individual or the community : that force and fire of leaping manhood are more useful to a nation than cringing respectability and emasculate servility; that genius goes with courage, and the sense of shame and guilt with "Defeatism."
For these reasons and many more I am certain, I the Beast, whose number is Six Hundred and Sixty Six, that this Third Chapter of the Book of the Law is nothing less than the authentic Word, the Word of the Aeon, the Truth about Nature at this time and on this planet. I wrote it, hating it and sneering at it, secretly glad that I could use it to revolt against this Task most terrible that the Gods have thrust remorselessly upon my shoulders, their Cross of burning steel that I must carry even to my Calvary, the place of a skull, there to be eased of its weight only that I be crucified thereon. But, being lifted up, I will draw the whole world unto me; and men shall worship me the Beast, Six Hundred and Three-score and Six, celebrating to Me their Midnight Mass every time soever when they do that they will, and on Mine altar slaying to Me that victim I most relish, their Selves; when Love designs and Will executes the Rite whereby (an they know it or not) their God in man is offered to me The Beast, their God, the Rite whose virtue, making their God of their throned Beast, leaves nothing, howso bestial, undivine.
On such lines my own "conversion" to my own "religion" may take place, though as I write these words all but twelve weeks of Sixteen years are well nigh past. (Written in I920, e.v.)
So much for the sceptics; put your heads in the Lion's mouth; so may you come to certainty, whether I be stuffed with straw!
But, in the text of the Book itself, are thorns for the flesh of the most ardent swain as he buries his face in the roses; some of the ivy that clings about the Thyrse of this Dionysus is Poison Ivy. The question arises, especially on examining the original manuscript in My handwriting: "Who wrote these words?"
Of course I wrote them, ink on paper, in the material sense; but they are not My words, unless Aiwaz be taken to be no more than my subconscious self, or some part of it: in that case, my conscious self being ignorant of the Truth in the Book and hostile to most of the ethics and philosophy of the Book, Aiwaz is a severely suppressed part of me. Such a theory would further imply that I am, unknown to myself, possessed of all sorts of praeternatural knowledge and power. The law of Parsimony of Thought (Sir W. Hamilton) appears in rebuttal. Aiwaz calls Himself "the minister of Hoor-parr- Kraat," the twin of Heru-Ra-Ha. This is the dual form of Horus, child of Isis and Osiris. If so, the theorist must suggest a reason for this explosive yet ceremonially controlled manifestation, and furnish and explanation of the dovetailing of Events in subsequent years with His word written and published. In any case, whatever "Aiwaz" is, "Aiwaz" is an Intelligence possessed of power and knowledge absolutely beyond human experience; and therefore Aiwaz is a Being worthy, as the current use of the word allows, of the title of a God, yea verily and amen, of a God. Man has no such fact recorded, by proof established in surety beyond cavil of critic, as this Book, to witness the existence of and Intelligence praeterhuman and articulate, purposefully interfering in the philosophy, religion, ethics, economics and politics of the Planet.
The proof of His praeterhuman Nature --call Him a Devil or a God or even an Elemental as you will --is partly external, depending on events and persons without the sphere of Its influence, partly internal, depending on the concealment of (a) certain Truths, some previously known, some not known, but for the most part beyond the scope of my mind at the time of writing, (b) of an harmony of letters and numbers subtle, delicate and exact, and (c) of Keys to all life's mysteries, both pertinent to occult science and otherwise, and to all the Locks of Thought; the concealment of these three galaxies of glory, I say, in a cipher simple and luminous, but yet illegible for over Fourteen years, and translated even then not by me, but by my mysterious Child according to the Foreknowledge written in the Book itself, in terms so complex that the exact fulfilment of the conditions of His birth, which occurred with incredible precision, seemed beyond all possibility, a cipher involving higher mathematics, and a knowledge of the Hebrew, Greek and Arabic Qabalahs as well as the True Lost Word of the Freemason, is yet veiled within the casual silk-stuff of ordinary English words, nay, even in the apparently accidental circumstance of the characters of the haste-harried scrawl of My pen.
Many such cases of double entendre, paranomasia in one language or another, sometimes two at once, numerical-literal puzzles, and even (on one occasion) an illuminating connexion of letters in various lines by a slashing scratch, will be found in the Qabalistic section of the Commentary. (In preparation.)
The fool (Parzival = Fra. O.I.V.V.I.O.) understandeth it (being a Magister Templi, the Grade attributed to Understanding) not (i.e. to be `not').
This Parzival, adding to 418, is (in the legend of the Graal) the son of Kamuret, adding to 666, being the son of me The Beast by the Scarlet Woman Hilarion. This was a Name chosen by her when half drunk, as a theft from Theosophical legend, but containing many of our letter-number Keys to the Mysteries ; the number of the petals in the most sacred lotus. It adds to 1001, which also is Seven times Eleven times Thirteen, a series of factors which may be read as The Scarlet Woman's Love by Magick producing Unity, in Hebrew Achad. For 7 is the number of Venus, and the secret seven-lettered Name of my concubine B A B A L O N is written with Seven Sevens, thus:
77 + ((7+7)/7) + 77 = 156, the number of BABALON.418 is the number of the Word of the Magical Formula of this Aeon. (666 is I, The Beast.)
Parzival had also the name Achad as a Neophyte of A∴A∴, and it was Achad whom Hilarion bare to Me. And Achad means Unity, and the letter of Unity is Aleph, the letter of The Fool in the Tarot. Now this Fool invoked the Magical Formula of the Aeon by taking as his Magick, or True, Name one which added also to 418.
He took it for his Name on Entering the Gnosis where is Understanding, and he understood it--this Book--not. That is, he understood that this Book was, so to speak, a vesture or veil upon the idea of "not." In Hebrew "not" is LA, 31, and AL is God, 31, while there is a third 31 still deeplier hidden in the double letter ST, which is a graphic glyph of the sun and moon conjoined to look like a foreshortened Phallus, thus--when written in Greek capitals. This S or Sigma is like a phallus, thus, [Greek], when writ small ; and like a serpent or spermatozoon when writ final, thus, [Greek]. This T or Theta is the point in the circle, or phallus in the kteis, and also the Sun just as C is the Moon, male and female.
But Sigma in Hebrew is Shin, 300, the letter of Fire and of the "Spirit of the Gods" which broods upon the Formless Void in the Beginning, being by shape a triple tongue of flame, and by meaning a tooth, which is the only part of the secret and solid foundation of Man that is manifested normally. Teeth serve him to fight, to crush, to cut, to rend, to bite and grip his prey; they witness that he is a fierce, dangerous, and carnivorous animal. But they are also the best witness to the mastery of Spirit over Matter, the extreme hardness of their substance being chiselled and polished and covered with a glistening film by Lefe no less easily and beautifully than is does with more naturally plastic types of substance.
Teeth are displayed when our Secret Self --our Subconscious Ego, whose Magical Image is our individuality expressed in mental and bodily form --our Holy Guardian Angel --comes forth and declares our True Will to our fellows, whether to snarl or to sneer, to smile or to laugh.
Teeth serve us to pronounce the dental letters which in their deepest nature express decision, fortitude, endurance, just as gutturals suggest the breath of Life itself free-flowing, and labials the duplex vibrations of action and reaction. Pronounce T,D,S or N, and you will find them all continuously forcible exhalations whose difference is determined solely by the position of the tongue, the teeth being bared as when a wild beast turns to bay. The sibilant sound of S or Sh is our English word, and also the Hebrew word, Hush, a strongly aspirated S, and suggests the hiss of a snake. Now this hiss is the common sign of recognition between men when one wants to call another's attention without disturbing the silence more than necessary. (Also we have Hist, our Double letter.) This hiss means: "Attention! A man!" For in all Semitic and some Aryan languages, ISh or a closely similar word means "a man." Say it: you must bare your clenched teeth as in defiance, and breathe harshly out as in excitement.
Hiss! Sh! means "Keep silent! there's danger if you are heard. Attention! There's a man somewhere, deadly as a snake. Breathe hard; there's a fight coming."
This Sh is then the forcible subtle creative Spirit of Life, fiery and triplex, continous, Silence of pure Breath modified into sound by two and thirty obstacles, as the Zero of Empty Space, though it contain all Life, only takes form according (as the Qabalists say) to the two and thirty "Paths" of Number and Letter which obstruct it.
Now the other letter, Theta or Teth, has the value of Nine, which is that of AVB, the Secret Magick of Obeah, and of the Sephira Yesod, which is the seat in man of the sexual function by whose Magick he overcomes even Death, and that in more ways than one, ways that are known to none but the loftiest and most upright Initiates, baptised by the Baptism of Wisdom, and communicants at that Eucharist where the Fragment of the Host in the Chalice becomes whole. (The Chalice is not presented to laymen. Those who understand the reason for this and other details of the Mass, will wonder at the perfection with which the Roman Communion has preserved the form, and lost the substance, of the Supreme Magical Ritual of the True Gnosis.)
This T is the letter of Leo, the Lion, the house of heaven sacred to the Sun. (Thus also we find in it the number 6, whence 666). And Teth means a Serpent, the symbol of the magical Life of the Soul, lord of "the double wand" of life and death. The serpent is royal, hooded, wise, silent save for an hiss when need is to disclose his Will; he devours his tail --the glyph of Eternity, of Nothingness and of Space; he moves wavelike, one immaterial essence travelling through crest and trough, as a man's soul through lives and deaths. He straightens out; he is the Rod that strikes, the Light-radiance of the Sun or the Life radiance of the Phallus.
The sound of T is tenuous and sharply final; it suggests a spontaneous act sudden and irrevocable, like the snake's bite, the loin's snap, the Sun's stroke, and the Lingam's.
Now in the Tarot the Trump illustrating this letter Sh is and old form of the Stele of Revealing, Nuith with Shu and Seb, the pantacle or magical picture of the old Aeon, as Nuit with Hadit and Ra Hoor Khuit is of the new. The number of this Trump is XX. It is called the Angel, the messenger from Heaven of the new Word. The Trump giving the picture of T is called Strength. It shows the Scarlet Woman, BABALON, riding (or conjoined with) me The Beast ; and this card is my special card, for I am Baphomet, "the Lion and the Serpent," and 666, the "full number" of the Sun. (The "magical numbers" of the Sun are, according to tradition, 6, (6 x 6)=36, (666 / 111, and [epsilon] (1-36)=666.)
So then, as Sh, XX, shows the Gods of the Book of the Law and T, XI, shows the human beings in that Book, me and my concubine, the two cards illustrate the whole Book in pictorial form.
Now XX + XI = XXXI, 31, which we needed to put with LA, 31 and AL, 31, that we might have 31 x 3 = 93, the Word of the Law, THELEMA [in greek], Will, and help, Love which under Will, is the Law. It is also the number of Aiwaz, the Author of the Book, of the Lost Word whose formula does in sober truth "raise Hiram," and of many another close-woven Word of Truth.
Now then this Two-in-One letter [sun, moon], is the third Key to this Law; and on the discovery of that fact, after years of constant seeking, what sudden splendours of Truth, sacred as secret, blazed in the midnight of my mind.! Observe now: "this circle squared in its failure is a key also." Now I knew that in the value of the letters of ALHIM, "the Gods," the Jews had concealed a not quite correct value of [pi], the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, to 4 places of decimals: 3.1415; nearer would be 3.1416. If I prefix our Key, 31, putting [sun, moon], Set or Satan, before the old Gods, I get 3.141593, [pi] correct to Six places, Six being my own number and that of Horus the Sun. And the whole number of this new Name is 395, which on analysis yields and astounding cluster of numerical "mysteries." (Shin 300 Teth 9 Aleph 1 Lamed 30 He 5 Yod 10 Mem 40. Note that 395 being the corrections required! Note also the 31 and the 93 in this value of [pi].)
Now for an example of the `paronomasia' or pun. Chapter III, 17---"Ye, even ye, know not this meaning all." (Note how the peculiar grammar suggests a hidden meaning.) Now YE is in Hebrew Yod He, the man and the woman; The Beast and BABALON, whom the God was addressing in his verse. Know suggests `no' which gives LA, 31; `not' is LA, 31, again, by actual meaning; and `all' refers to AL, 31, again. (Again, ALL is 61, AIN, "nothing.")
The external evidence for the Book is accumulating yearly: the incidents connected with the discovery of the true spelling of Aiwaz are alone sufficient to place it beyond all quaver of doubt that I am really in touch with a Being of intelligence and power immensely subtler and greater than aught we can call human.
This has been the One Fundamental Question of Religion. We know of invisible powers, and to spare! But is there any Intelligence or Individuality (of the same general type as ours) independent of our human brain-structure? For the first time in history, yes! Aiwaz has given us proof: the most important gate toward Knowledge suings wide.
I, Aleister Crowley, declare upon my honour as a gentleman that I hold this revelation a million times more important than the discovery of the Wheel, or even of the Laws of Physics or Mathematics. Fire and Tools made Man master of his planet: Writing developed his mind; but his Soul was a guess until the Book of the Law proved this.
I, a master of English, was made to take down in three hours, from dictation, sixty-five 8" x I0" pages of words not only strange, but often displeasing to me in themselves; concealing in cipher propositions unknown to me, majestic and profound; foretelling events public and private beyond my control, or that of any man.
This Book proves: there is a Person thinking and acting in a praeterhuman manner, either without a body of flesh, or with the power of communicating telepathically with men and inscrutably directing their actions.
My sincerity and seriousness are proved by my life. I have fought this Book and fled it; I have defiled it and I have suffered for its sake. Present or absent to my mind, it has been my Invisible Ruler. It has overcome me; year after year extends its invasion of my being. I am the captive of the Crowned and Conquering Child.
The point then arises: How did the Book of the Law come to be written? The description in The Equinox, I, VII, might well be more detailed; and I might also elucidate the problem of the apparent changes of speaker, and the occasional lapses from straightforward scribecraft in the MS.
I may observe that I should not have left such obvious grounds for indictment as these had I prepared the MS. to look pretty to a critical eye; nor should I have left such curious deformities of grammar and syntax, defects of rhythm, and awkwardness of phrase. I should not have printed passages, some rambling and unintelligible, some repugnant to reason by their absurdity, others again by their barbaric ferocity abhorrent to heart. I should not have allowed such jumbles of matter, such abrupt jerks from subject to subject, disorder ravaging reason with disconnected sluttishness. I should not have tolerated the discords, jarred and jagged, of manner, as when a sublime panegyric of Death is followed first by a cipher and then by a prophecy, before, without taking breath, the author leaps to the utmost magnificence of thought both mystical and practical, in language so concise, simple, and lyrical as to bemuse our very amazement. I should not have spelt "Ay" "Aye," or acquiesced in the horror "abstruction."
Compare with this Book my "jokes," where I pretend to edit the MS. of another: "Alice," "Amphora," "Clouds without Water." Observe in each case the technical perfection of the "discovered" or "translated" MS., smooth skilled elaborate art and craft of a Past Master Workman; observe the carefully detailed tone and style of the prefaces, and the sedulous creation of the personalities of the imaginary author and the imaginary editor.
Note, moreover, with what greedy vanity I claim authorship even of all the other A∴A∴ Books in Class A, though I wrote them inspired beyond all I know to be I. Yet in these Books did Aleister Crowley, the master of English both in prose and in verse, partake insofar as he was That. Compare those Books with the Book of the Law! Their style is simple and sublime; the imagery is gorgeous and faultless; the rhythm is subtle and intoxicating; the theme is interpreted in faultless symphony. There are no errors of grammar, no infelicities of phrase. Each Book is perfect in its kind.
I, daring to snatch credit for these, in that brutal Index to The Equinox Volume One, dared nowise to lay claim to have touched the Book of the Law, not with my littlest finger-tip.
I, boasting of my many Books; I, swearing each a masterpiece; I attach the Book of the Law at a dozen points of literature. Even so, with the dame breath, I testify, as a Master of English, that I am utterly incapable, even when most inspired, of such English as I find in that Book again and again.
Terse, yet sublime, are these verses of this Book; subtle yet simple; matchless for rhythm, direct as a ray of light. Its imagery is gorgeous without decadence. It deals with primary ideas. It announces revolutions in philosophy, religion, ethics, yea, in the whole nature of Man. For this it needs no more than to roll sea-billows solemnly forth, eight words, as "Every man and every woman is a star," or it bursts in a mountain torrent of monosyllables as "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."
Nuit cries: "I love you," like a lover; when even John reached only to the cold impersonal proposition "God is love." She woos like a mistress; whispers "To me !" in every ear; Jesus, with needless verb, appeals vehemently to them "that labour and are heavy laden." Yet he can promise in the present, says: "I give unimaginable joys on earth," making life worth while; "certainty, not faith, while in life, upon death," the electric light Knowledge for the churchyard corpsecandle Faith, making life fear-free, and death itself worth while: "peace unutterable, rest, ecstasy," making mind and body at ease that soul may be free to transcend them when It will.
I have never written such English; nor could I ever, that well I know. Shakespeare could not have written it: still less could Keats, Shelley, Swift, Sterne or even Wordsworth. Only in the Books of Job and Ecclesiastes, in the work of Blake, or possibly in that of Poe, is there any approach to such succinct depth of thought in such musical simplicity of form, unless it be in Greek and Latin poets. Nor Poe nor Blake could have sustained their effort as does this our Book of the Law; and the Hebrews used tricks of verse, mechanical props to support them.
How then --back once more to the Path! --how then did it come to be written ?
Chapter 1 was written between Noon and 1 p.m. on April 8, 1904.The writing began exactly on the stroke of the hour, and ended exactly an hour later ; it was hurried through, with no pauses of any kind.
Chapter II between Noon and 1 p.m. on April 9, 1904.
Chapter III between Noon and 1 p.m. on April 10, 1904.
The city was Cairo.The street, or rather streets, I do not remember. There is a `Place' where four or five streets intersect; it is near the Boulak Museum, but a fairly long way from Shepherd's. The quarter is fashionable European. The house occupied a corner. I do not remember its orientation; but, as appears from the instructions for invoking Horus, one window of the temple opened to the East or North. The apartment was of several rooms on the ground floor, well furnished in the Anglo-Egyptian style. It was let by a firm named Congdon & Co.
The room was a drawing-room cleared of fragile obstacles, but not otherwise prepared to serve as a temple. It had double doors, opening on to the corridor to the North and a door to the East leading to another room, the dining-room, I think. It had two windows opening on the Place, to the South, and a writing table against the wall between them.
Morality---Sexually powerful and passionate. Strongly male to women; free from any similar impulse toward my own sex. My passion for women very unselfish; the main motive to give them pleasure. Hence, intense ambition to understand the feminine nature; for this purpose, to identify myself with their feelings, and to use all means appropriate. Imaginative, subtle, insatiable; the whole business a mere clumsy attempt to quench the thirst of the soul. This thirst has indeed been my one paramount Lord, directing all my acts without allowing any other considerations soever to affect it in the least.
Strictly temperate as to drink, had never once been even near intoxication. Light wine my only form of alcohol.
Sense of justice and equity so sensitive, well-balanced and compelling as to be almost an obsession.
Generous, unless suspicious that I was being fleeced : "penny wise and pound foolish." Spendthrift, careless, not a gambler because I valued winning at games of skill, which flattered my vanity.
Kind, gentle, affectionate, selfish, conceited, reckless and cautious by turns.
Incapable of bearing a grudge, even for the gravest insults and injuries; yet enjoying to inflict pain for its own sake. Can attack an unsuspecting stranger, and torture him cruelly for years, without feeling the slightest animosity toward him. Fond of animals and children, who return my love, almost always. Consider abortion the most shameful form of murder, and loathe the social codes which encourage it.
Hated and despised my mother and her family; loved and respected my father and his.
My "occult" career.Critical events in my life.
First travelled outside England, 1883.
Father died March 5, 1887.
Albuminuria stopped my schooling, 1890-92.
First sexual act, probably 1889.
Ditto with a woman March, 1891 (Torquay--a theatre girl).
First serious mountain-climbing, in Skye, 1892. (The "Pinnacle Ridge" of Sgurr-nan-Gillean.)
First Alpine climb, I894.
Admitted to the Military Order of the Temple midnight, December 31, 1896.
Admitted to permanent office in the Temple midnight, December 31, 1897.
Bought Boleskine, 1899.
First Mexican climb, 1900.
First Big game, 1901.
First Himalayan climb, 1902. (Chogo Ri, or "K2" expedition.)
Married at Dingwall, Scotland, August 12, 1903.
Honeymoon at Boleskine, thence to London, Paris, Naples, Egypt, Ceylon, and back to Egypt, Helwan and then Cairo early in 1904.
Parents Plymouth Brethren, exclusive.
Father a real P.B. and therefore tolerant to his son.
Mother only became P.B. to please him, perhaps to catch him, and so pedantically fanatical.
After his death I was tortured with insensate persistency, till I said : Evil, be thou my good ! I practised wickedness furtively as a magical formula, even when it was distasteful ; e.g. I would sneak into a church*1*---a place my mother would not enter at the funeral service of her best-loved sister.
Revolted openly when puberty gave me a moral sense.
Hunted new "Sins" till October, '97, when one of them turned to bay, and helped me to experience the "Trance of Sorrow." (Perception of the Impermanence of even the greatest human endeavour.) I invoked assistance, Easter, '98.
Initiated in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, November 18, '98.
Began to perform the Abramelin Operation, I899.
Initiated in the Order R.R. et A.C., January, I909.
Made a 33 Freemason, 1900.
Began Yoga practices, 1900.
Obtained first Dhyana, October 1, 1901.
Abandoned all serious occult work of every sort, October 3, 1901, and continued in this course of action till July, 1903, when I tried vainly to force myself to become a Buddhist Hermit Highland Laird.
Marriage was an uninterrupted sexual debauch up to the time of the writing of the Book of the Law.
She indulged in a few feeble-executed intrigues till August 12, 1903, when she became my wife, becoming pregnant with a girl born July 28, 1904. Health, admirable robust at all points; she was both active and enduring, as our travels in Ceylon and across China prove. Figure perfect, neither big nor little, face pretty without being petty; she only missed Beauty by lacking Goethe's "touch of the bizarre." Personality intensely powerful and magnevit, intellect absent but mind adaptable to that of any companion, so that she could always say the right nothing.
Charm, grace, vitality, vivacity, tact, manners, all inexpressible fascinating.
From her mother she inherited dipsomania, as bad a case for stealth, cunning, falsehood, treachery, and hypocrisy as the specialist I consulted had ever known. This was, however, latent during the satisfaction of sexuality, which ousted all else in her life, as it did in mine.
Education strictly social and domestic ; she did not even know schoolgirl French. She had read nothing, not so much as novels. She was a miracle of perfection as Poetic Ideal, Mistress, Wife, Mother, House-president, Nurse Pal and Comrade.
I suppose I hardly ever saw the servants under his authority: I do not even know how many there were.
I was annoyed at her irrelevance, and her infliction of nonsense upon me.
She had never been in any state even remotely resembling this, though I had made the same invocation (in full) in the King's chamber fo the Great Pyramid during the night which we spent there in the previous autumn.
March 17. More apparently nonsensical messages, this time spontaneous. I invoke Thoth, probably as in Liber LXIV, and presumably to clear up the muddle.
March 18. Thoth evidently got clear through to her; for she discovers that Horus is addressing me through her, and identifies Him by a method utterly excluding chance or coincidence, and involving knowledge which only I possessed, some of it arbitrary, so that she or her informant must have been able to read my mind as well as if I had spolen it.
Then she, challenged to point out His image, passes by many such to fix on the one in the Stele. The cross-examination must have taken place between March 20 and 23.
March 20. Success in my invocation of Horus, by "breaking all the rules" at her command. This success convinced me magically, and encouraged me to test her as above mentioned. I should certainly have referred to the Stelle in my ritual had I seen it before this date. I should fix Monday, March 21, for the Visit to Boulak.
Between March 23 and April 8 the Hieroglyphs on the Stele were evidently translated by the assistant-curator at Boulak, into either French or English--I am almost sure it was French--and versified (as now printed) by me.
Between these dates, too, my wife must have told me that her informant was not Horus, or Ra Hoor Khuit, but a messenger from Him, named Aiwass.
I thought that she might have faked this name from constantly hearing "Aiwa," the word for "Yes" in Arabic. She could not have invented a name of this kind, though ; her next best was to find a phrase like "balmy puppy" for a friend, or corrupt a name like Neuberg into an obscene insult.
The silence of my diaries seems to prove that she gave me nothing more of importance. I was working out the Magical problem presented to me by the events of March 16-21. Any questions that I asked her were either unanswered, or answered by a Being whose mind was so different from mine that we failed to converse. All my wife obtained from Him was to command me to do things magically absurd. He would not play my game: I must play His.
April 7. Not later than this date was I ordered to enter the "temple" exactly at noon on the three days following, and write down what I heard during one hour, nor more nor less. I imagine that some preparations were made, possibly some bull's blood burned for incense, or order taken about details of dress or diet ; I remember nothing at all, one way or the other. Bull's blood was burnt some time in this sojourn in Cairo ; but I forget why or when. I think it was used at the "Invocation of the Sylphs."
I went into the "temple" a minute early, so as to shut the door and sit down on the stroke of Noon.
On my table were my pen -- a Swan Fountain -- and supplies of Quarto typewriting paper, 8" x I0".
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 mannerisma, 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 Guradian 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 and 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.
The MS. shows what has been done, and why, as follows:
The problem of the literary form of this Book is astonishingly complex; but the internal evidence of the sense is usually sufficient of make it clear, on inspection, as to who is speaking and who is being addressed.
There was, however, no actual voice audible save that of Aiwaz. Even my own remarks made silently were incorporated by him audibly, wherever such occur.
Chapter I.
Verse 1. Nuit is the speaker. She invokes her lover and then begins to give a title to her speech in the end of verse I--20.In verses 3 and 4, she begins her discourse. So far her remarks have been addressed to no one in particular.
Verse 4 startled my intelligence into revolt.
In verse 5 she explains that she is speaking, and appeals to me personally to help her to unveil by taking down her message.
In verse 6 she claims me for her chosen, and I think that I then became afraid lest I should be expected to do too much. She answers this fear in verse 7 by introducing Aiwaz as the actual speaker in articulate human accents on her behalf.
In verse 8 the oration continues, and we now see that it is addressed to mankind in general. This continues till verse 13.
Verse 14 is from the Stele. It seems to have been written in by me as a kind of appreciation of what she had just said.
Verse 15 emphasizes that it is mankind in general that is addressed; for the Beast is spoken of in the third person, though his was the only human ear to hear the words.
Verses 18-19 seem to be almost in the nature of a quotation from some hymn. It is not quite natural for her to address herself as she appears to do in verse 19.
Verse 26. The question "Who am I and what shall be the sign?" is my own conscious thought. In the previous verses I have been called to an exalted mission, and I naturally feel nervous. This thought is then entered in the record by Aiwaz as if it were a story that he was telling ; and he develops this story after her answer, in order to bring back the thread of the chapter to the numerical mysteries of Nuith begun in verses 24-
25, and now continued in verse 28.
Another doubt must have arisen in my mind at verse 30; and this doubt is interpreted and explained to me personally in verse 31.
The address to mankind is resumed in verse 32, and Nuith emphasizes the point of verse 30 which has caused me to doubt. She confirms this with an oath, and I was convinced. I thought to myself, "in this case let us have written instructions as to the technique," and Aiwaz again makes a story out of my request as in verse 26.
In verse 35 it seems that she is addressing me personally, but in verse 36 she speaks of me in the third person.
Verse 40. The word "us" is very puzzling. It apparently means "All those who have accepted the Law whose word is Thelema." Among these she includes herself.
There is now no difficulty for a long while. It is a general address dealing with various subjects, to the end of verse 52.
From verses 53-56 we have a strictly personal address to me.
In verse 57 Nuit resumes her general exhortation. And I am spoken of once more in the third person.
Verse 61. The word "Thou" is not a personal address. It means any single person, as posed to a company. The "Ye" in the third sentence indicates the proper conduct for worshippers as a body. The "you," in sentence 4, of course applies to a single person; but the plural form suggests that it is a matter of public worship as opposed to the invocation in the desert of the first sentence of this verse.
There is no further difficulty in this chapter.
Verse 66 is the statement of Aiwaz that the words of verse 65, which were spoken diminuendo down to pianissimo, indicated the withdrawl of the goddess.
Chapter II.
Hadit himself is evidently the speaker from the start. The remarks are general. In verse 5 I am spoken of in the third person.
After verse 9 he notices my vehement objections to writing statements to which my conscious self was obstinately opposed.
Verse 10, addressed to me notes that fact ; and in verse 11 he declares that he is my master, and that the reason for this is that he is my secret self, as explained in verses 12-13.
The interruption seems to have added excitement to the discourse, for verse 14 is violent.
Verses 15 & 16 offer a riddle, while verse 17 is a sort of parody of poetry.
Verse 18 continues his attack on my conscious mind. In verses 15-18 the style is complicated, brutal, sneering and jeering. I feel the whole passage as a contemptuous beating down of the resistance of my mind.
In verse 19 he returns to the exalted style with which he began until I interfered.
The passage seems addressed to what he calls his chosen or his people, though it is not explained exactly what he means by the words.
This passage from verse 19 to verse 52 is of sustained and matchless eloquence.
I must have objected to something in verse 52, for verse 53 is directed to encourage me personally as to having transmitted this message.
Verse 54 deals with another point as to the intelligibility of the message.
Verse 55 instructed me to obtain the English Qabalah; it made me incredulous, as the task seemed an impossible one, and probably his perception of this criticism inspired verse 56, though "ye mockers" applies evidently to my enemies, referred to in verse 54.
Verse 57 brings us back to the subject begun in verse 21. It is a quotation from the Apocalypse verbatim, and is probably suggested by the matter of verse 56.
There is no real change in the essence of anything, however its combinations vary.
Verses 58-60 conclude the passage.
Verse 61. The address is now strictly personal. During all this time Hadit had been breaking down my resistance with his violently expresses and varied phrases. As a result of this, I attained to the trance described in these verses from 61-68.
Verse 69 is the return to consciousness of myself. It was a sort of gasping question as a man coming out of Ether might ask "Where am I?" I think that this is the one passage in the whole book which was not spoken by Aiwaz; and I ought to say that these verses 63-68 were written without conscious hearing at all.
Verse 70 does not deign to reply to my questions, but points out the way to manage life. This continues until verse 74, and seems to be addressed not to me personally but to any man, despite the use of the word "Thou."
Verse 75 abruptly changes the subject, interpolating the riddle of verse 76 with its prophecy. This verse is addressed to me personally, and continues to the end of verse 78 to mingle lyrical eloquence with literal and numerical puzzles.
Verse 79 is the statement of Aiwaz that the end of the chapter has come. To this he adds his personal compliment to myself.
Chapter III.
Verse I appears to complete the triangle begun by the first verses of the two previous chapters. It is a simple statement involving no particular speaker or hearer. The ommission of the "i" in the name of God appears to have alarmed me, and in verse 2 Aiwaz offers a hurried explanation in a somewhat excited manner, and invokes Ra-Hoor-Khuit.Verse 3 is spoken by Ra-Hoor-Khuit. "Them" evidently refers to some undescribed enemies, and "ye" to those who accept his formula. This passage ends with verse 9. Verse 10 and verse 11 are addressed to me personally and the Scarlet Woman, as shown in the continuation of his passage which seems to end with verse 33, though it is left rather vague at times as to whether the Beast, or the Beast and his concubine, or the adherents of Horus, generally, are exhorted.
Verse 34 is a kind of poetical peroration, and is not addressed in particular to anybody. It is a statement of events to come.
Verse 35 states simply that section one of this chapter is completed.
I seem to have become enthusiastic, for there is a kind of interlude reported by Aiwaz of my song of adoration translated form the Stele; the incident parallels that of chapter I, verse 26, &c.
It is to be noted that the translations from the Stele in verses 37-38 were no more than instantaneous thoughts to be inserted afterwards.
Verse 38 begins with my address to the God in the first sentence, while in the second is his reply to me. He then refers to the hieroglyphs of the Stele, and bids me quote my paraphrases. This order was given by a species of wordless gesture, not visible or audible, but sensible in some occult manner.
Verses 39-42 are instructions for me personally.
Verses 43-45 indicate the proper course of conduct for the Scarlet Woman.
Verse 46 is again more general --a sort of address to soldiers before battle.
Verse 47 is again mostly personal instruction, mixed up with prophecies, proof of the praeterhuman origin of the Book, and other matters.
I observe that this instruction, taken with with those not to change "so much as a style of a letter," etc., imply that my pen was under the physical control of Aiwaz; for this dictation did not include directions as to the use of capitals, and the occasional mis-spellings are most assuredly not mine!
Verse 48 impatiently dismisses such practical matters as a nuisance.
Verses 49-59 contain a series of declarations of war; and there is no further difficulty as to the speaker or hearer to the end of the chapter, although the subject changes repeatedly in an incomprehensible manner. Only verse 75 do we find a perroation on the whole book, presumably by Aiwaz, ending by his formula of withdrawal.
I may admit a Qabalistic or cryptographic secondary meaning when such confirms, amplifies, deepens, intensifies, or clarifes the obvious common-sense significance ; but only if it be part of the general plan of the "latent light," and self-proven by abundatnt witness.
For example: "To me!" (I, 65) is to be taken primarily in its obvious sense as the Call of Nuith to us Her stars.
The transliteration "TO MH" may be admitted as the "signature" of Nuith, identifying Her as the speaker; because these Greek Words mean "The Not," which is Her Name.
This Gematria of TO MH may be admitted as further confirmation, because their number 418 is elsewhere manifested as that of the Aeon.
But TO MH is not to be taken as negating the previous verses, or 418 as indicating the fromula of approach to Her, although in point of fact it is so, being the Rubrick of the Great Work. I refuse to consider mere appropriateness as conferring title to authority, and to read my own personal theories into the Book. I insist that all interpretation shall be incontestably authentic, neither less, more, nor other than was meant is the Mind of Aiwaz.
The Word of Aiwaz must put forth a perfect presentation of the Universe as Necessary, Intelligible, Self-subsistent, as Integral, Absolute, and Immanent. It must satisfy all intuitions, explain all enigmas, and compose all conflicts. It must reveal Reality, reconcile Reason with Relativity; and, resolving not only all antinomies in the Absolute, but all antipathies in the appreciation of Aptness, assure the acquiescence of every faculty of making in the perfection of its plenary propriety.
Releasing us from every restriction upon Right, the Word of Aiwaz must extend its empire by enlisting the allegiance of every man and every woman that puts its truth to the test.
On these principles, to the pitch of my power, will I the Beast 666, who received the Book of the Law from the Mouth of mine Angel Aiwaz, make my comment thereon ; being armed with the word: "But the work of the comment? That is easy ; and Hadit in thy heart shall make swift and secure thy pen."
The reader is now in full possession of the account of "how thou didst come hither". The student who wishes to act intelligently will be at pains to make himself thoroughly acquainted at the outset with the whole of the external circumstances connected with the Writing of the Book, whether they are of biographical or other importance. He should thus be able to approach the Book with his mind prepared to apprehend the unique character of their contents in respect of its true Authorship, the peculiarities of Its methods of communicating Thought, and the nature of Its claim to be the Canon of Truth, the Key of Progress, and the Arbiter of Conduct. He will be able to form his own judgment upon It, only insofar as he is fixed in the proper Point-of-View; the sole question for him is to decide whether It is or is not that which It claims to be, the New Law in the same sense as the Vedas, the Pentateuch, the Tao Teh King, and Qu'ran are Laws, but with the added Authority of Verbal, Literal, and Graphic inspiration established and counter-checked by internal evidence with the impeccable precision of a mathematical demonstration. If It be that, It is an unique document, valid absolutely within the terms of its self-contained thesis, incomparably more valuable than any other Transcript of Thought which we possess.
If It be not wholly that, it is a worthless curiosity of literature; worse, it is an appalling proof that no kind or degree of evidence soever is sufficient to establish any possible proposition, since the closest concatenation of circumstances may be no more than the jetsam of chance, and the most comprehensive plans of purpose a puerile pantomime. To reject this Book is to make Reason itself ridiculous and the Law of Probabilities a caprice. In Its fall it shatters the structure of Science, and buries the whole hope of man's heart in the rubble, throwing upon its heaps the sceptic, blinded, crippled, and gone melancholy mad.
The reader must face the problem squarely; half-measures will not avail. If there be aught he recognize as transcendental Truth, he cannot admit the possibility that the Speaker, taking such pains to prove Himself and His Word, should yet incorporate Falsehood in the same elaborate engines. If the Book be but a monument of a mortal's madness, he must tremble that such power and cunning may be the accomplices of insane and criminal archanarchs.
But if he know the Book to be justified of Itself, It shall be justified also of Its children; and he will glow with gladness in his heart as he reads the sixty-third to the sixty-seventh verses of Its chapter, and gain his first glimpse of Who he himself is in truth, and to what fulfilment of Himself It is of virtue to bring Him.
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CHAPTER VIII.
In this revelation is the basis of the future Aeon. Within the memory of man we have had the Pagan period, the worship of Nature, of Isis, of the Mother, of the Past; the Christian period, the worship of Man, of Osiris, of the Present. The first period is simple, quiet, easy, and pleasant; the material ignores the spiritual; the second is of suffering and death: the spiritual strives to ignore the material. Christianity and all cognate religions worship death, glorify suffering, deify corpses. The new Aeon is the worship of the spiritual made one with the material, of Horus, of the Child, of the Future.
Isis was Liberty; Osiris, bondage; but the new Liberty is that of Horus. Osiris conquered her because she did not understand him. Horus avenges both his Father and his Mother. This child Horus is a twin, two in one. Horus and Harpocrates are one, and they are also one with Set or Apophis, the destroyer of Osiris. It is by the destruction of the principle of death that they are born. The establishment of this new Aeon, this new fundamental principle, is the great work now to be accomplished in the world.
FRATER PERDURABO, to whom this revelation was made with so many signs and wonders, was himself unconvinced. He struggled against it for years. Not until the completion of His own initiation at the end of I909 did he understand how perfectly he was bound to carry out this work. Again and again He turned away from it, took it up for a few days or hours, then laid it aside. He even attempted to destroy its value, to nullify the result. Again and again the unsleeping might of the Watchers drove Him back to the work; and it was at the very moment when He thought Himself to have escaped that He found Himself fixed for ever with no possibility of again turning aside for the fraction of second from the Path.
The history of this must one day be told by a more vivid voice. Properly considered, it is a history of continuous miracle. Enough if it is now said that in this Law lies the whole future: it is the Law of Liberty, and those who refuse it proclaim themselves slaves, and as slaves shall they be chained and flogged. It is the Law of Love, and those who refuse it declare themselves to be the children of hate, and their hate shall return upon them and consume them with its unending tortures. It is the Law of Life, and those who refuse it shall be subject to death; and death shall catch them unawares. Even their life shall be a living death. It is the Law of Light, and those who refuse it thereby make themselves dark for ever.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law! Refuse this, and fall under the curse of destiny. Divide will against itself, the result is impotence and strife, strife-in-vain. The Law condemns no man. Accept the Law, and everything is lawful.
Refuse the Law, you put yourself beyond its pale. It is the Law that Jesus Christ, or rather the Gnostic tradition of which the Christ-legend is a degradation, attempted to teach; but nearly every word he said was misinterpreted and garbled by his enemies, particularly by those who called themselves his disciples. In any case the Aeon was not ready for a Law of Freedom. Of all his followers only St. Augustine appears to have got even a glimmer of what he meant.
A further attempt to teach this law was made through Sir Edward Kelly at the end of the sixteenth century. The bondage of orthodoxy prevented his words from being heard, or understood. In many other ways has the spirit of truth striven with man, and partial shadows of this truth have been the greatest allies of science and philosophy. Only now has success been attained. A perfect vehicle was found, and the message enshrined in a jewelled casket; that is to say, in a book with the injunction "Change not as much as the style of a letter." This book is reproduced in facsimile, in order that there shall be no possibility of corrupting it. Here, then, we have an absolutely fixed and definite standpoint for the foundation of an universal religion.
We have the Key to the resolution of all human problems, both philosophical and practical. If we have seemed to labour at proof, our love must be the excuse for our infirmity ; for we know well that which is written in the Book:
We ask no more than one witness; and we call upon Time to take the Oath, and testify to the Truth of our plea.
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Proof read and edited by Frater D.M.T. © Thelemagick.
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