Section a
Birth of an Idea
May 22 '43 3.30 p.m. GMT
666 making considerations of the True Will or Destiny of Fra.·.132 [Wilfred T. Smith] was haunted persistently by the word Apotheosis. The Qabalistic value of this word is 645, which added to 132 gives 777! His work had been based on very varied reports concerning Fra.·.132: friends, enemies and critics. He was able to reconcile all the conflicting accounts by this Idea: his memory then suggested Louis Bromfield's book: "The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg." In the deepest purport of this book he saw an adumbration of the method by which Fra.·. 132 might come to full Initiation, the perfect realization of his self and the free fulfillment of his True Will.
This came to Fra.·. 666 as a dazzling light thrown upon this very difficult case. He was impelled to take an Omen and an oracle, and later to set up a Genethlical figure. (This last heads these remarks: comment follows in due course). The Omen was the 58th Hexagram, Tui, the watery part of Water; and the Marriage of Water with the Sun, the child thereof. Roughly interpreted, this means a pleasing solution, and success through the Image of his Illumination.
The Oracle was AL. III. 18. "Now this mystery of the letters is done, and I want to go on to the holier place": incredibly apt; this might well be the utterance of Fra.·. 132 at this juncture!
The Magical Ring of Fra.·. 666 stopped so as to cover the letters n to t in the words "on to the" in the MS of Liber AL. The word 'to' YZ is the Hebrew UZ}, Ateh, Thou; N H is ♏, and T (of the) ♌. So that those letters might be read: - "Thou, between the Lion and the Dragon" ( or Serpent). The 4 letters [i.e. E,Y,Z,H] add to 465 = 5 x 93! (Add this also to 645: the result is 1110.)
Fra..·. 132 himself should be very specially qualified to appreciate these Qabalistic significances; perhaps better than any other member of the Order.
The Horoscope: this is one of the most astonishingly fortunate figures that Fra.·. 666 has ever set up in his whole life.
♆ is 12th exactly on the place of 132's radical ♅ shews the intervention of the Masters of the A.·.A.·.. ☊ on the cusp of 11th shews the friendly intervention of 666. It is the place of 666's radical ♅, his Magical Will.
♀ the lady of the figure, culminating, and ♃ in 10th shew good fortune attending the discovery. [ (sic) in 10th may shew permanence of the fame attaching to it.
♄ is in the 9th house- philosophy, science and religion.
☉ ☌ ♅ ☌ ☿ support ♆ from the Quartile, as does ♂ ☌ ☽ from the Trine, aspect. They shew the Word and the Will taking charge of 132's life.
♂ ☌ ☽ in the House of Personal Initiation, supported by △ ♆ and ⚺ ☉ ♅ ☿ shews 132's Energy softened, enlightened and blessed by the protection of the Highest.
Fra .·. 666 has from the beginning been baffled by the extraordinary Figure of the Heavens at the Nativity of Fra.·. 132. There are no less than 8 planets in close — remarkably close, the limit of divergence is only 5°—aspect. Add [ 3° away: that is 9. (It will later appear significant that the only "outsider" is ☉, the human self to W.T.S.) It is perhaps the most important astrological discovery of Fra.·. 666 that "greatness" always accompanies "Complexes" of planets; they stabilize the whole structure, and each enriches the other elements of the complex. A complex of more than 5 planets is rare; of 8 Fra.·. 666 knows one only — William Shakespeare — besides Wilfred Smith! (The figure is attached) [Note: The figure was not in fact attached, but the place and date of birth of WTS are given as follows: "12.40 a.m. 9th June 85. Tunbridge, Kent." G{erald}J Y{ork}]
Yet no corresponding qualities could be found in the man. He has rio birth, no breeding, no education; physically he is a meagre specimen; mentally and morally he possesses every vice, every defect, conceivable. Spiritually, he has no attainments to his credit; his achievements are null. To set off these flaws, he can boast few virtues; even his persistence in upholding the Order may have been
due to self-prevation rather than to loyalty.
These facts are patent: Fra.·. 666 has set them forth less from personal observation than from the reports of his friends and admirers.
Accordingly, the horoscope is completely absurd and nonsensical: indeed "a giant's robe upon a dwarfish thief."
Yet, with all that has been said against Fra.·. 132, there is no doubt that something in him demands and receives the most extravagant, blind, unreasonable, devotion. Fra.·. 666 was struck, while making these observations, by certain curious parallels between his personality (and his effect upon those who know him) and that of Cyrus Spragg, the "Prophet" of Louis Bromfield's book. This book must be read with very great care, or it will be fatally misunderstood. The key is in the last fact cited by Horace Winnery at the end of paragraph ii of the last chapter.
The simple, the astounding Truth, flooded the mind of Fra.·. 666 with light. It explains all obscurities: it reconciles all contradictions. We have all of us throughout been blinded by a single misapprehension, precisely as if a Staff of Astronomers, mistaking a planet for a star, observed its motion, and so found nothing but irritating, bewildering, inexplicable attacks upon the "laws of Nature".
All became clear on recognising the fundamental mistake: WILFRED T. SMITH is not a man at all: he is the Incarnation of some God.
Section b
Dead Reckoning: and the Fort
It having been discerned above in that Fra.·. 132 is an incarnation (not necessarily an avatar) of some god, it is expedient to discuss diverse implications of this thesis.
1. The word 'god' implies a fact; it is no question of convenience, as when the Ephesions called Barnabas Jupiter and Paul Mercury.
2. The incarnation of a god is an exceedingly rare event to become known, although frequent enough when he makes it secretly "to take his pleasure on the earth among the legions of the living." It being known, it is important to ascertain his purpose, especially when (as in the present case) the material envelope has been so perfectly constructed that he is himself not fully aware of it.
3. One must distinguish such cases very sharply indeed from that phenomenon — in these days so common as to constitute an appreciable percentage of the population, and to exercise notable influence upon society — the incarnation of elementals.
Nor is a 'god' here to be confounded with 'daimon' or 'angel,' even although his function wholly or in part prove to be that of an 'angel', or messenger, or 'prophet' (cf. liber AL I.7. There is no reason to suppose that Aiwass is, or is not, a living man).
4. By 'god' is to be understood a complete macrocosmic individual, as contrasted with human-elementals, who incarnate partial — planetary or zodiacal — intelligences, (Note in original. For the general theory the student may refer to "Moonchild.") of higher or lower rank in the Yetziratic Hierarchies; such are salamanders, undines, sylphs, gnomes in human form.
5. It is of the first importance for those who would reap full benefit from the sojourn of such a being on this planet that they should understand his nature; they ought 'to know his name.' (cf. neophyte's ritual of G.·. D.·. and J.C. Fraser's remarks on this formula in "The Golden Bough"). To determine his identity is a task of notable magnitude: what means are at the disposal of the Enquirer?
In a matter of such moment it would be rash to rely upon the ordinary methods of divination; and in this particular case astrology fails to afford even a suggestion.
The letter of Fra.·. 132 to Fra.·. 666 of February 3 '43 e.v. seems to supply a hint. The letter was written in a state of intense excitement: "in vino veritas" Fra.·. .132 himself seems to regard himself as a "prophet" of the Law of Thelema, and even of Fra.·. 666 himself, adulating that very humble brother in fastastically unbalanced and exaggerated language. If this were so, the fact would immediately manifest when Fra.·. 132 begins to 'prophesy'; but even so, no light is thereby cast upon the problem of his identity.
6. Fra.·. 132, having hitherto been unconscious of his true nature is plainly incompetent to announce off-hand who he actually is in the celestial orders; and his tempestuous and thwarted career while in subjection to hallucination that he was human in the full sense has presumably obfuscated his intelligence, and masked his countenance with ten thousand irrelevant but direfull deceptive excrescences, as it were a handsome youth smeared with the ordure troughs of Dachau.
7. It must therefore be his primary object to recognise himself.
With this end in view, he must first of all withdraw completely from further occasion of contamination; and he must devise for himself — with such help as this essay may be able to render him — a true method of self-realization. This aim is of course that of initiation itself; but in the normal man the self to be realised is altogether beyond identification with any person; it is universal, and identical for all of us, since
ultimately we differ only as points in a boundless space; that is, by position, which is itself only recognisable by virtue of imperfection in the analysis.
8. In this case Fra.·. 132 has to realise and to proclaim his identity and function very much as Fra.·. 666 regards himself in the light of what is spoken of him in The Book of the Law. He ought to be able to say very simply: I am Apu-t, or Habsehnut, or Thoum-aesh-neith, or as may be the case. It will not serve the present purpose to accept Asar, or Ra, or one of the Universal Gods, such as of whom all men are in a sense incarnations.
It is not necessary that the god should have incarnated at (or before) the birth of Wilfred T. Smith. A quite possible significant moment might have been the Summer Solstice of '16 e.v., or during the winter of '09 e.v. when terrific forces were set in motion by the Chiefs of the Order.
The 'child' might well have been begotten by the "Paris Working" (Jan. '14) or as the result of some of the immense Enochian Invocations: in the latter case the name of the 'god' required might be found on the Watch Towers of the Universe, and his nature determined by analysis of the squares concerned.
Another possibility, suggested by the place of residence of Fra.·. 132, is that one of the aboriginal "Red Indian" gods may have seized the opportunity somehow afforded by Fra.·. 132's state at the moment.
9. Do these suggestions conflict with the original thesis? Is the case rather one of permanent possession of a man by a god? This question recalls the phenomena observed in the late Fra.·. Lampada Tradam [Victor Neuburg], who became for periods (on one occasion it extended to 11 days) the vehicle of such deities as Isis, Jupiter and Pan; also of obsessing demons, who were, of course, exorcised without delay, but often with extreme difficulty.
During such times Fra.·. L.T. lost completely all his human characteristics, his awareness of the world about him, and lived in uninterrupted consciousness of the deity that was then possessing him, and manifested the qualities of that godhead in singular perfection, untainted, unalloyed by any corporate externalization of the vehicle.
10. The case of Fra.·. l32 seems quite different. He appears almost continually thwarted, enraged, the imprisoned god chafing at his base confinement, and the 'human' qualities those rather of some animal than a man. Only in the ecstasy of the performance of his sacerdotal function in the Gnostic Mass, and when similarly freed by equivalent magical condition, did Fra.·. 132 exult in the fullness of his self-realization in freedom; but still, through failure to understand the true nature of the phenomenon, neither wholly satisfied with the present, nor capable of manipulating the future.
11. The strategical attitude of the task which confronts Fra.·. 132 is accordingly simple, clear, straight-forward, and capable of being carried through to triumph on lines well-known, well-tried and already proved applicable with satisfaction to and by Fra.·. 132 himself.
The problem may be succinctly stated as follows:
To initiate himself to the point at which he may be classed in the hierarchy to which he belongs, so as to be recognisable by himself, and by observers of adequate skill.
12. The further work of self-initiation up to the final resolution of the pantomorphous tensorial equation: Naught = two = one = many = all (in A and W dimensions) is clearly the business of the god himself to undertake; but it may be laid down on considerations of general principle that the first condition of its success must be that the god has perfectly fulfilled the particular purpose to execute which he embarked upon so extraordinary and hazardous an undertaking as to incarnate in human form.
The True Will of Wilfred T. Smith, or of Fra.·. 132, is from A to W identical with that of every other star; videlicet, to discover, understand, and enjoy his own original Universal Perfection by postulating it in terms of every possible imperfection in every possible dimension; but the True Will, at any given moment, of any particular complex of Imperfections is for the individual so composed to discover by the accepted Formulae. And it is certain that to be baulked of success in this "Next Step" is to be barred temporarily from attainment of the broader, deeper, and ultimate "Great Work."
13. For the observer, therefore, who is bound by the oaths of the Great White Brotherhood to assist Fra.·. 132 in his Work, receiving in turn the benefit appointed, it will be especially useful to study the following sections of this essay.
Section Gamma
The Captain. Ships' Discipline: Hints on Navigation.
1. It must appear of little real vantage to the divine Tenant of any human mansion to be aware of the name assigned to him by his neighbours, or even by the man who shelters him; but from a shallow and temporary standpoint it may well be for him to take measures that will ensure his proper treatment by, and even assistance from them. The problems of all concerned will even be simplified if he be fitted with accurate appellation. He must be enabled to fulfill himself with the least possible friction; this implies a preparation and a safeguarding of the conditions of his incarnation. Thus confident in reliance on the understanding, good will and assistance of his appointed guardians, he must take the utmost pains to realise himself, to develop his nature so as best to carry out the purpose to accomplish which he has undertaken this rare and difficult form of strategy.
2. The divine nature must never be contaminated or cheapened by human associations. He must be seen and heard by his attendants only, except in actual ceremonial or when "prophesying"
The most difficult of all his tasks will be to establish proper relationship with those attendants. "No man is a hero to his valet." But that is exactly what he must be: and he must achieve this simply, without artifice, pose or superficial play upon the emotions of his guardians.
3. It should be most convenient for him to dwell in a tent or "shack," preferably on some remote yet consecrated place such as "Temple Hill" where his food could be supplied from the neighbouring G.H.Q. of the S.M.M.G. [SG or SCMG? - G{earld}J Y{ork}. The Leffingwell's desert lodge with 50 acres of desert land] now called Rancho RoyAL. He would occupy himself in building single- handed a Chapel or Temple from the materials there abounding, or till his own garden, or both.
4. To emphasize the solemnity of his dedication, and its irrevocable nature, it would be wise for him to cause the Mark of the Beast to be tattooed upon his fore-head, or in the palm of his right hand; also, if he chose, over his heart and upon his Mons Veneris.
5. He must always wear special robes appropriate to his nature and his work.
(a) Ceremonial vestments correct for his particular godhead.
(b) Working dress, the most convenient and comfortable for his daily life and work.
(c) Whatever robes may be proper for any ceremonial of the Order in which he may be taking part.
6. "Unassuaqed of purpose." He must not make speeches designed to bring about any course of events in the outside world. His words must be Utterances, followed by Silence. They must be confined to "prophecies", definite outburst of divine self expression. There must be no reporting of these Utterances, and no writings on any sacred topic. He must train his personal attendants as Athos did Grimaud in "The Three Musketeers" to understand his requirements with a minimum of speech. (Arrangements must be made for a medical visit to Fra.·. 132 at short intervals).
7. It may be that in order to fulfill his nature and mission, he must receive, from time to time, secret visitors. Such visits must be limited to a single aim, and while they last, all restrictions may be cancelled; the visit will have its own ceremonial amenities. But, the purpose of the visit once attained, there is to be no repetition; nor, before that, any undue frequency. The error to be avoided is that the tendency to establish normal human relations with any person is compelling; it must be eschewed, as utterly fatal to his whole mission.
Applications to visit him must be allowed or disallowed by Frater ♄ himself on his judgement of their propriety. Fra.·. 132 must never on any account have any say in the matter.
8. Fra..·. 132 is to formulate his own "Oath of the Beginning"; he is advised to submit a draft of this for the approval and suggestions of Fra.·. 666.
Fra.·. 666 may revise the terms of the Oath from time to time as Fra.·. 132 develops.
9. There should be a period of preparation pending the full assumption of his Dignity by Fra.·. 132. These suggestions following may be of use.
(a) Frater ♄ might appoint a local committee of 3 Brethren to make the necessary practical arrangements.
(b) Fra.·. 132 should begin to attune himself to the final regimen at once by making a Great Magical Retirement, living alone, and seeing no-one except (say) 2 hours weekly conference with the Committee to discuss minor problems that may arise in the course of the preparations.
(c) His main work will of course be to use such practices, invocations, etc. as will help him to establish his Identity. Until this is discovered, beyond all possibility of error, there is a risk of making plans which would conflict with that Identity, e.g. King of Oreads would require a mountain dwelling; a King of Undines a lake, river, or seashore; a Son of Demeter, a Grove; and so on for all.
(Nevertheless, the suggestions above put forward of Temple Hill as an Abode, and the Building of a chapel with garden as the material side of the work, came spontaneously and it may be not wholly without inspiration.)
(d) During the period of preparation, it is of the very greatest importance that no hint soever of the significance of the activities of those concerned should reach the outer world: and the strictest silence in respect of the matter should be most straitly enjoined upon every member of the Order; not even among themselves should it be mentioned, much less discussed. The sole exception to this rule: Fra.·. 132 and the Committee; and they, to the exact contrary, should discuss nothing whatever that does not appertain to the business of the preparations.
