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Complete Commentaries on Liber AL vel Legis by A. Crowley

Chapter 3

retrieved from:
* http://hermetic.com/220/crowley-comments.html
* http://www.geocities.com/nu_isis/dcomment.pdf

New Comment and Old Comment are titled as such; The actual verses from Liber AL are underlined.

***

The Third Chapter

The Comment Called D or Djeridensis Working, denoted as D throughout the past two chapters, has only one comment for this entire chapter:

D: Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

The first two chapters of this Book describe Ideas without limit; the third concerns a fixed Event due to one union of them, namely the coming of
HERU-RA-HA.
The contents of the chapter are instructions to those who are to govern His Aeon in His Name; and these rulers will appeal to me The Beast 666 for a comment upon the text when need is. Aum Ha.

***

The Old Comment

It is the Red descending triangle, -- the whole thing visible, for Hadit and Nuit are far beyond.

Note that Ra-Hoor Resh-Aleph-He-Vau-Vau-Resh = 418.

The New Comment

Why is the name of Him spelt Khut? We have seen that ST is the regular honorific ~terminitation for a God. Ra is, as shown in the Old Comment, the Sun, Hoor the Warrior Mars; who is Khu? He is the Magical Ego of a Star. Without the Yod or Iota, Khu-t, we get a human conception; the insertion of that letter makes the transmutation to Godhead. When therefore Ra Hoor Khut is rewarded or Re-guarded with the Magick Word of the Aeon, he becomes God. Thus in the next verse. I 'raise the spell of Ra Hoor Khuit'.

The text may also be read as follows. Abrahadabra is the formula of the Aeon, by which man may accomplish the Great Work. This Formula is then the 'reward' given by the God, the largesse granted by Him on His accession to the Lordship of the Aeon, just as the INRI-IAO-LVX formula of attainment by way of Crucifixion was given by Osiris when he came to power in the last Aeon. (See Book 4 Part III, and Equinnox I, III, pp. 208-233).

I must here say that I find myself in the greatest difficulty, again and again, in the comprehension of this chapter. It might be said roughly that at the end of the first five years of Silence (An 0-IV) I understood Chapter I; at the end of the second five years (an X-XIV) I understood Chapter II, ---

The Old Comment

The New Comment

'Spelling is defunct'; this seems to be an echo of the statement in Cap. II, v:5 "The rituals of the old time are black". (The word 'defunct' is decidedly curious; the implication is 'no longer able to fulfil its function'.) 'Spelling' then means 'making spells'. And this is characteristic of Ra-Hoor-Khuit, that He demands not words, but acts. (Compare 'The Paris Working'). So then we pass naturally to verse 3. 'All is not aught' is an abrogation of all previous law, on the accession of a Monarch. He wipes out the past as with a sponge.

This phrase is also an excessively neat cipher or hieroglyph of the great Key to this Book. All (AL) is not aught (LA). AL is LA: that is to say, the phases of the Universe X and 0 are identical.

"Beware!" as if it were said to a soldier, "Attention!"

"Hold!", that is, "Steady! LIsten to the Proclamation!"

"Raise the spell of Ra-Hoor Khuit!" That is "Here, I, the New God, utter my Word".

The Old Comment

Yet a mystical meaning is easy to find. Exempli gratia; vv. 4-9.

The New Comment

(The God of Vengeance is in Greek Omicron Alpha-Lambda-Alpha-Sigma-Tau-Omega-Rho, Aleister. For some reason which I have not been able to trace, this God became ALASTOR, the Desert Daemon of the Rabbins, the later the "Spirit of Solitude" of Shelly. The attribution is appropriate enough, the root being apparently A AOMAI, I wander. The idea of "Going" is dreadful to the bourgeois, so that a wanderer is "accursed'. But, me judice, to settle down in life is to abandon the heroic attitude; it is to acquiesce in the stagnation of the brain. I do not want to be comfortable, or even to prolong life; I prefer to move constantly from galaxy to galaxy, from one incarnation to another. Such is my intimate individual Will. It seems as thou this "god of War and of Vengeance" is then merely one who shall cause men to do their won Wills by Going as Gods do, instead of trying to check the irresistible course of Nature.)

P. S. El Ouid Algeria An XX Sol in Sagittarius. The terror of Syria in the reign of Oman was the great soldier and administrator Melekh-Al-Astar. Possibly Jewish mothers used to scare their crying babies by threatening them with this "demon of the desert" and the Rabbins incorporated the "bogey man" in their averse hierarchy.

The Old Comment

The New Comment

The Old Comment

The Old Comment

The New Comment

The Old Comment

The New Comment

The Old Comment

The Old Comment

The New Comment

(The events beginning in An XVII Sol in Libra, when I write these words, and ending I do not yet know when, will form a luminous comment on the passage. There is an alternative, taking the beginning as An X sol in Libra, and implying larger periods).

The Old Comment

That temple; it was arranged as an octagon; its length double its breadth; entrances on all four quarters of temple; enormous mirrors covering six of the eight walls (there were no mirrors in the East and West or in the western halves of the South and North sides).

There were an altar and two obelisks in the temple; a lamp above the altar; and other furniture.

Kiblah -- any point to which one turns to pray, as Mecca is the Kiblah of the Mohometan.

"It shall not fade," etc. It has not hitherto been practicable to carry out this command."

The New Comment

The Old Comment

Of course, the original is in "locked glass."

The New Comment

Ra-Hoor-Khu; why is the name without its termination? Perhaps to indicate the essence of the force.

The Ritual of the Adoration of Ra-Hoor-Khuit is, as one might expect, illustrative of His nature. It seems doubtful whether this Ritual can ever be of the type of symbolic celebration; it appears rather as if expeditions against the Heather: i.e. Christians and other troglodytes -- but most especially the parasites of man, the Jews -- were to be His rite.{WEH NOTE: The crack about Jews is often deleted from copies of the Comment. Crowley's views in the 20s not withstanding, about 1/3 of the present members of O.T.O. are Jewish, the "Paris Working" was a homosexual love affair between Crowley and Victor Newberg, and Crowley wouldn't even be "up a tree" without the Jewish Qabalah! One of the best features of Crowley is his absent-minded bigotry. No chance that any intelligent person would accept his opinions without repeated trial! In some versions of "Liber Aleph" the passage "never marry a nigger" appears after Crowley was seriously "paved" by his quadroon wife of the time. For the European whites, it is a matter of record that Crowley was sent a notice of expulsion from Beastship by Scarlet Woman Alostrael.} And it is to be taken that 'the woman' is to take arms in His honour. This woman might be The Scarlet Woman, or perhaps Woman generally. Remember that in the Scarlet Woman 'is all power given'; and I expect a new Semiramis.

The Old Comment

The New Comment

The Old Comment

The New Comment

"Know 'not' this meaning 'all'"; another cipher for LA = AL.

The Old Comment

And the great Red Triangle is as a shield, and its rays are far-darting arrows!

The New Comment

The New Comment

The New Comment

Are we going to repeat the insanity? Should we not rather breed humanity for quality by killing off any tainted stock, as we do with other cattle? And exterminating the vermin which infect it, especially Jews and Protestant Christians? Catholic Christians are really Pagans at heart; there is usually good stuff in them, particularly in Latin countries. They only need to be instructed in the true meaning of their faith to reflect the false veils.

An XXI Sol in Cancer After some years spent in Catholic countries, I wish to modify the above. Catholics are dead alike to Spirituality and to Reason, as bad as Protestants. And the Jew is far from hopeless outside America, where the previous paragraph was written.

The Old Comment

The New Comment

An XVII Sol in Libra. I think it proper to insert here the account of the true meaning of this verse, though it more properly belongs to the Appendix. But the circumstances are so striking that it is well worth the while of the lay reader to become acquainted with the nature of the reasoning which attests the praeterhuman character of the Author of this Book.

It follows, in the words in which it was originally written, An XVII Sol in Gemini, Moon in Cancer, June 8, 1921 e.v., with no preliminaries, in my Magical Diary, at the Abbey of Thelema in Cephaloedium of Trinacria.

These verses are very subtly worded. How should I understand this allusion to the stele; how "count well its name" without knowing it?

I tried to count "Abomination of Desolation", but that is what "they shall call" it, not its proper name.

It seemed that this name, when found, ought to add to 718, or to be identical with some other word or phrase that did so. More, this name when found must some how express "the fall of Because".

For many years these two verses, despite elaborate research, yielded no meaning soever. At last I chanced on Upsilon-pi-omicron-mu-omicron-nu-eta as 718; it means "persistence", the Greek noun corresponding to "Perdurabo", my first magical Motto. Of course the Stele had persisted since the 26th Dynasty, but that scarecely justified naming it "Persistence"; also, there was nothing about "the fall of Because".

Now (An XVII, Sol in Gemini, Moon in Cancer) I was going through the Law in order to repair any details of omission in the rituals ordained, and found these verses introduced among the instructions. They fascinated me; when I had finished the work in hand, I returned to them and worked for some hours with a Lexicon, starting from the word APXH, Cause, 709, to find some phrase equal to 718 which would deny Cause. I found AZA, 9, a word meaning "dryness", but most especially the dirt or mould upon a disused object. APXH AZA is, therefore, a precise expression of the doctrine expounded in our Law about "Because".

So far, so good; but this is no sense the name of the Stele.

I worked on, and found XOIZA, 718, "Yesterday" which might be grasped as a straw if I sank the third time; but I was swimming strongly enough.

I found XAIPE A.'.A.'. 718, "Hail to the A.'.A.'.". I gracefully acknowledged the greeting to Our Holy Order, but went on with my search.

There is no such word as AXPICTA, "unchristlike things"; only blind bigotry could be satisfied with so crude an invention.

Then came XAPA H, 713, an engraved character. That was a true name for the Stele; if I suffixed AD, 5, it might read "The Mark of Hadit". But I did not feel inwardly that thrill of ecstacy that springs in the heart or that dawn of amazement that kindles the mind, when Truth's sheer simplicity takes form. There is a definite psychological phenomenon which accompanies and important discovery. It is like First Love, at First Sight, to the one; like the recognition of a Law of Nature, to the other. It inflames one with Love for the Universe, and it explains all its puzzles, in a flash; and it gives an interior conviction which nothing can shake, a living certainty quite beyond one's argued acquiescence in any newly acquired facts.

I lacked this; I knew that I had to seek further. The Truth uttered by Aiwaz is hidden with such exquisite art that it is always easy to wring out a more or less plausible meaning by torture. Yet all such learned and ingenious fumblings reveal their own impotence; the Right Key opens the safe in a second, so simply and smoothly as to make it ridiculous to doubt that the lock was made by a master smith to respond to that key and no other.

The reader will have noticed that all the really important correspondences in this Book are so simple that a child might understand them. There are also my own creaking and lumbering scholar-dredgers, not one of which is truly illuminating or even convincing. The real solutions, moreover, are almost always confirmed by other parts of the text, or by event subsequent to the Writing of the Book.

I worked on: I asked myself for the thousandth time what the Stele could claim with literal strictness as "its name". I scribbled the word CTHAH and added it up. the result is 546, when CT counts as 500, or 52, when CT is 6, a frequent usage, as in CTAYPOS, whose number is thus 777.

Idly enough, my tired pen subtracted 52 from 718. I started up like a Magician who, conjuring Satan in vain till Faith's lamp sputters, and Hope's cloak is threadbare, gropes, heavily leaning on the staff of Love, blinking and droning along -- and suddenly sees HIm!

I did the sum over, this time with my pen like a panther. Too good to be true! I added my figures; yes, 718 past denial. I checked my value of Stele; 52, and no error. Then only I let myself yield to the storm of delight and wonder that rushed up from the Hand of Him that is throned in the Abyss of my Being; and I wrote in my Magical Record the Triumph for which I have warred for over seventeen years

718

CYHAH 6 6 6

No fitter name could be found, that was sure ... ---

And then came a flash to confirm me, to chase the last cloud of criticism; the actual name of the Stele, its ordinary name, the only name it ever had until it was called the "Stele of Revealing", in the Book of the Law, itself, "its name" in the catalogue of the Museum at Boulak, was just this: "Stele 666".

I have described this discovery at length because I wash to emphasize its importance.

Most of the numbers and words openly mentioned in the Book of the Law which conceal Secret Matters were already at that time possessed of a certain significance for me. Some unconscious co-operation of my mind might be alleged as the determinant factor in the choice of those numbers, their subsequent interconnexions, and so on explained by the commentators' ingenuity, and the confirmation of independent facts by coincidence.

Similarly, the hidden numbers such as 3,141593, 395, 31, 93, may be ascribed to the commentators, and denied to the intention of the text; at least, by that class of Pharisee which strains at the Butterfly of the Soul, preferring to swallow any hippopotamus if it be slimed thickly enough with the miasmal swamp-mire of materialism.

But 718 is expressed openly; its nature is described sufficiently and unambiguously; and it meant nothing to anybody in the world, either then or for seventeen years after.

And now the meaning falls so pat, so natural, so self-justified, so evidently the unique value of the 'x' of the equation, that it is impossible to quibble.

The law of probablities excludes all theories but one. The simple Truth is what I have always asserted.

There is a Being called Aiwaz, an intelligence discarnate, who wrote this Book of the Law, using my ears and hand. His mind is certainly superior to my own in knowledge and in power, for He has dominated me and taught me ever since.

But that apart, the proof of any discarnate intelligence, even of the lowest order, has never before been established. And lack of that proof is the flaw in all the religions of the past; man could not be certain of the existence of "God", because though he knew many powers independent of muscle, he knew of no consciousness independent of nerve.

The Old Comment

The New Comment

There is much on the ethics of this point in Chapter II of this Book. Thomas Henry Huxley in his essay "Ethics and Evolution" pointed out the antithesis between these two ideas; and concluded that Evolution was bound to beat Ethics in the long run. He was apparently unable to see, or unwilling to admit, that his argument proved Ethics (as understood by Victorians) to be false. The Ethics of Liber Legis are those of Evolution itself. We are only fools if we interfere. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law, biologically as well as in every other way.

Let us take an example. I am an antivaccinationist in a sense which every other antivaccinationist would repudiate. I admit that vaccination protects from small-pox. But I should like everybody to have small-pox. The weak would die; the strong might have pitted faces; but the race would become immune to the disease in a few generations.

On somewhat similar lines, I would advocate, with Samuel Butler, the destruction of all machinery. (I admit the practical difficulties of defining the limits of legitimate devices. The issue is this: how are we to develop human skill? The printing press is admirable in the hands of an Aldus, a Charles T. Jacobi, or even a William Morris. But the cheap mechanical printing of luetic rubbish on rotten pulp with worn types in inferior ink has destroyed the eyesight, putrefied the mind, and deluded the passions, of the multitude). For machines are dodges for avoiding Hard Work; and Hard Work is the salvation of the race. In the Time-Machine, H.G. Wells draws an admirable picture of a dichotomized humanity, one branch etiolated and inane, the other brutalized and automatic. Machines have already nearly completed the destruction of individual craftmanship. A man is no longer a worker, but a machine-feeder. The product is standardized; the result mediocrity. Nobody can obtain What He Will; he must be content with what knavery puts on the market. Instead of every man and every woman being a star, we have an amorphous pullulation of Vermin.

The Old Comment

The New Comment

The word "Set" is curious -- is there here a reference to Set the God?

With regard to the Old Comment, I did indeed find an image of the kind implied. But there seems no special importance in this. I am inclined to see some deeper significance in this passage. There has elsewhere been reference to the words "not", "one", "Thou knowest". The word "easy" is moreover suggestive of some mystery; it is used in the same doubtfully intelligible sense in verse 40.

The Old Comment

The Ordeal "X" will be dealt with in private.

The New Comment

The New Comment

Leavings: the "beewing" of port should be good.

Oil of Abramelin: take eight parts of oil of cinnamon, four of oil of myrrh, two of oil of galangal, seven of olive oil{WEH NOTE: This is not the recipe given in Abramelin, though it seems at first correct. That recipe took the proportions from the dry ingredients. If the essential oils are used instead at the same proportion, the mixture will be much too strong. In fact, the oil of cinnamon may injure the eyes or raise blisters if used at this strength!}.

The New Comment

B: possibly "dragon's blood".

These two kinds of 'blood' are not to be confused. The student should be able to discover the sense of this passage by recollecting the Qabalistic statement that "The blood is the life", consulting Book 4 Part III, and applying the knowledge which reposes in the Sanctuary of the Gnosis of the Ninth Degree of O.T.O. The 'child' is "BABALON and THE BEAST conjoined, the Secret Saviour", that is, the Being symbolized by the Egg and Serpent hieroglyph of the Phoenician adepts. The second kind is also a form of BAPHOMET, but differs from the 'child' in that it is the Lion-Serpent in its original form.

The process of softening and smoothing down is thus in this case that of vitalizing the Eagle. It is inadvisable to word this explanation, in terms too intelligible to the profane, since uninitiated attempts to make use of the formidable arcana of Magick presented in this passage could lead only to the most fulminating and irremediable disaster.

The Old Comment

The New Comment

The New Comment

The Old Comment

The New Comment

The Puritan is undoubtedly a marvel. He has even succeeded in attaching a foul connotation to a colourless word like "certain" -- "In a section of the city with a certain reputation women of a certain class suffering from certain diseases are charged with performing certain acts" is a common enough item in the newspapers. It allows the fullest play to the dirtiest imaginations -- which appears to be the aim of the societies for the Suppression of Vice, and their like.

AL III,29: "Moreover, be they long kept, it is better; for they swell with my force. All before me."

The New Comment

There is a considerable amount of evidence in my possession which throws light upon this part of the chapter; but no important purpose would be served by producing it at present. These are circumstances when apparent frankness defeats its own ends as well as those of policy.

The Old Comment

The New Comment

The Old Comment

The New Comment

The obvious meaning of "from the West" in an Egyptian document would be "from the House of the Dead".

Alternatively, there may be a reference to the name of the person in question. I feel convinced that some event will occur to fit the passage with unmistakeable accuracy. (I write this in AN XVII {?} in {?}.)

The Old Comment

The New Comment

The Old Comment

Yet he must expound it.

The Hierarchy of the Egyptians gives us this genealogy: Isis, Osiris, Horus.

Now the 'pagan' period is that of Isis; a pastoral, natural period of simple magic. Next with Buddha, Christ, and others there came in the Equinox of Osiris; when sorrow and death ware the principal objects of man's thought, and his magical formula is that of sacrifice.

Now, with Mohammed perhaps as its forerunner, comes in the Equinox of Horus, the young child who rises strong and conquering (with his twin Harpocrates) to avenge Osiris, and bring on the age of strength and splendour.

His formula is not yet fully understood.

Following him will arise the Equinox of Ma, the Goddess of Justice, it may be a hundred or ten thousand years from now; for the Computation of Time is not here as There.

The New Comment

Taking the "holy place" to be Boleskine House, it has already been subjected to a sort of destruction. It was presented by me to the O.T.O. and sold in order to obtain funds for the publication of The Equinox Volume III. But the proceeds of the sale were mostly stolen by the then Grand Treasurer General of the Order, one George MacNie Cowie, who became obsessed by the vulgarest form of hate against the Germans, despite my warnings, with reference to verse 59 of this chapter. He became insane, and behaved with the blackest treachery, this theft being but a small portion of his infamies. The incident was necessary to my own initiation. {WEH NOTE: As the current Grand Treasurer General of the Order, I feel it incumbent upon me to offer a defense of General Cowie. In point of fact Crowley's pro-German involvement in the USA, whether clandestine on behalf of the Allies or not, occasioned a police raid on his British office. Cowie, a deafmute thousands of miles away from Crowley, could hardly prevent the Crown from seizing the Golden Book and such assets as lay about. Cowie's letters to Crowley were filled with invective against the Axis powers out of simple precaution of reputation. Crowley also was unable to understand that the British Government had seized his book sales stock. Crowley instead blamed the management of the warehouse!}

Hrumachis is the Dawning Sun; he therefore symbolizes any new course of events. The "double-wanded one" is "Thmaist of dual form as Thmais and Thmait", from whom the Greeks derived their Themis, goddess of Justice. The student may refer to The Equinox Vol. I., No 2, pages 244-261. Thmaist is the Hegemon, who bears a mitre-headed sceptre, like that of Joshua in the Royal Arch Degree of Freemasonry. He is the third officer in rank in the Neophyte Ritual of the G.'. D.'., following Horus as Horus follows Osiris. He can then assume the "throne and place" of the Ruler of the Temple when the "Equinox of Horus" comes to an end.

The rimed section of this verse is singularly impressive and sublime. We may observe that the details of the ritual of changing officers are the same on every occasion. We may therefore deduce that the description applies to this "Equinox of the Gods" itself. How have the conditions been fulfilled? The introduction to Book 4, Part IV tells us. We may briefly remind the reader of the principal events, arranging them in the form of a rubric, and placing against each the corresponding magical acts of the Equinox previous to ours, as they are symbolized in the legends of Osiris, Dionysus, Jesus, Attis, Adonis, and others.

The Ritual. Aeon of Horus Aeon of Osiris

Another prophet The Beast 666 Dionysus and shall arise (Aleister Crowley) others others are names for (perhaps) Apollonius of Tyana. In the conditions then obtaining, several magi were required And bring fresh "Force & Fire" of Horus fever from the "Skies" of Nuit skies.

Another woman See Comment on "Venus" of the shall awake Chapt. I. 15. Adonis legends.

We have no clue to her name. The lust and The Might and Worthiness The "Holy Ghost" worship of the of Hadit within men; also or "Satan" indwelling.

Snake the cult of the Spermatozoon The key to Magick in the Snake Apophis the destroyer.

Another soul of The Union of AIWAZ and Pan as God and God and beast The Beast in Aleister goat; Mary, &c: Crowley. The identification as Mother of the of Matter and Spirit in Son of God, fertilized our Doctrine. by the Dove -- or Bull, Swan &c. The doctrine of the regenerate incorruptible body.

Another sacrifice Love is the Magical Crucifixion, &c., as shall stain Formula: Sex as the Key to the Magical the tomb Life. "The tomb" -- the Formula. Death as temple of Love the Key to Life. "The tomb" -- the coffin or grave.

Another king Horus (Ra-Hoor-Khuit) the Osiris (Jesus, &c.) shall reign Crowned Child. the dying King (See Fraser.)

And blessing no Blessing = Semen Blessing = Blood.

longer be poured to the Hawk-headed mystical Lord.

It may be presumptuous to predict any details concerning the next Aeon after this.

35. Note Heru-ra-ha = 418.

The New Comment

The language suggests that Heru-Ra-Ha is the 'true Name' of the Unity who is symbolized by the Twins Harpocrates and Horus. Note that the Twin Sign -- and the Child Sign -- is Gemini, whose letter is Zain, a sword.

The doctrine of the dual character of the God is very important to a proper understanding of Him. "The Sign of the Enterer is always to be followed immediately by the Sign of Silence": such is the imperative injunction to the Neophyte. In Book 4 the necessity for this is explained fully.

The New Comment

The New Comment

May thy Mind be open unto the Higher!

May thy Heart be the centre of Light!

May thy Body be the Temple of the Rosy Cross!

The New Comment

The Old Comment

The New Comment

The present volume is thus the obedience to this command.

'At them' may mean 'at their house', that is, one must give when one recognizes any one as a potential king by accepting his hospitality. An alternative meaning is "in their honour".

The Old Comment

The New Comment

The Old Comment

The New Comment

The Old Comment

The New Comment

I quote: --

Mighty, mighty, mighty, mighty; yea, thrice and four times mighty art thou. He that riseth up against thee shall be thrown down, though thou raise not so much as thy little finger against him. and he that speaketh evil against thee shall be put to shame, though thy lips utter not the littlest syllable against him. and he that thinketh evil concerning thee shall be confounded in his thought, although in thy mind arise not the least thought of him. And they shall be brought into subjection unto thee, and serve thee, though thou willest it not. And it shall be unto them a grace and a sacrament, and ye shall all sit down together at the supernal banquet, and ye shall feast upon the honey of the gods, and be drunk upon the dew of immortality -- FOR I AM HORUS, THE CROWNED AND CONQUERING CHILD, WHOM THOU KNEWEST NOT!

The Old Comment

Let the next upon whom the cloak may fall beware!

The New Comment

The accounts of certain magical experiments in this line will be found in "The Urn."

This 'child' is not necessarily to be identified with him who 'shall discover the key of it all.'

The Old Comment

The New Comment

"at your arms" is a curious turn of phrase. There may be some cryptographic implication, or there may not; at least, there is this, that the use of such un-English expressions makes a clear-cut distinction between AIWAZ and the Scribe. In the inspired Books, such as Liber LXV, VII, DCCXIII and others, written by The Beast 666 directly, not from dictation, no such awkward expressions are to be found. The style shows a well-marked difference.

The Old Comment

The New Comment

"one cometh after him:" 'one,' i.e. Achad. See Appendix{WEH NOTE: Appendix not yet recovered} for this and other points of this most 'evidential' verse. "the Key of it all:" all, i.e. AL 31 the Key! See MS for allusion to the "line drawn" and the "circle squared in its failure."

The attribution (in the Old Comment) of the letters to those of the Book of Enoch is unsupported.

The New Comment

We may then take it that this Solar-Phallic Ra Ha is Each Man Himself. As each independent cell in our bodies is to us, so is each of us to Heru-Ra-Ha. Each man's 'child'-consciousness is a Star in the Cosmos of the Sun, as the Sun is a Star in the Cosmos of Nuith.

The New Comment

Thus it is the eyes of 'Jesus' -- his point of view -- that must be destroyed; and this point of view is wrong because of his Magical Gesture of self-sacrifice.

One must not for a moment suppose that this verse supports the historicity of 'Jesus.' 'Jesus' is not, and never was, a man; but he was a 'god,' just as a bundle of old rags and a kerosene tin on a bush may be a 'god.' There is a man-made idea, built of ignorance, fear, and meanness, for the most part, which we call 'Jesus,' and which has been tricked out from time to time with various gauds from Paganism, and Judaism.

The subject of 'Jesus' is, most unfortunately, too extensive for a note; it is treated fully in my book 888.

The New Comment

The New Comment

'Mongol:" presumably the reference is to Confucianism, whose metaphysical and ethical flawlessness has not saved its adherents from losing those ruder virtues which are proper to a Fighting Animal, and thus yielding at last a civilization coeval with history itself to the barbarous tribes of Europe.

"Din" -- 'severity' or 'judgment' may refer to the Jewish Law, rather than to the Faith (ad 'din') of Islam. Assuming this, the six religions whose flesh must be torn out cover the whole globe outside Islam and Christianity.

Why assault their flesh rather than their eyes, as in the other cases? Because the metaphysics, or point of view, is correct -- I take Judaism as Qabalistic -- but the practice imperfect.

The Old Comment

The New Comment

By sound Bahlasti suggests "hurling" or "blasting;" Ompegda is not too phantastically onomatopoeitic for 'an explosion."

The New Comment

"Let me strictly meditate this hate of the mother. M R is the Sanskrit root = "Kill," hence Mara, Mors, Maria, and I suppose Meer, Mere, Mer -- in short, lots of words meaning death or sea. Note Mordred as the traitor villain in Morte d'Arthur. In Liber Legis we have "Mary" who is to be 'torn upon wheels' apparently because she is 'inviolate.' Liber 418 has some explanation of this: 'because she hath shut herself up', I seem to remember is the phrase.

It appears (I don't remember the Sanskrit as if a dental T or D were inserted phallically to give us Madar, Mu-eta-tau-eta-rho, Mater, Mother, (? meter = measure.)

Does the accent in mere conceal a lost dental? I suppose Jung or Freud has this all worked out in detail.

I have thought this before, long ago, but can't get a satisfactory Qabalah. 240 is a doubling of the Pentagram, of course, and is a sixfold of 40, the number of repressive 'sealed-up' law. By our R.O.T.A., M R is the Sea swallowing the Sun, and the insertion of a Tau would help this in a certain formula of "He lives in the Sun." But that would only boost the Mother, which won't do, for she is the Tomb, the Eater of Flesh, and there's no getting away from it. But apparently she is all right just so far as she is open, to enter or leave at one's pleasure, the Gateway of Eternal Life.

She is Sakti, the Teh, the Magical Door between the Tao and the Manifested World. The great Obstacle than is if that Door be locked up. Therefore Our Lady must be symbolized as an Whore. (Note Daleth, the Door = Venus. The Dove; Free flowing; all this is linked up in the symbol). Clearly, at last, the Enemy is this Shutting up of things. Shutting the Door is preventing the Operation of Change, i.e. of Love. The objection to Calypso, Circe, Armida, Kundry, and Co. is that one is liable to be shut up in their Gardens. The whole of the Book of the Dead is a device for opening the closed vehicles, and enabling the Osiris to go in and out at his pleasure. On the other hand, there seems to be a Sealing Up, for a definite period, in order to allow the Change to proceed undisturbed. Thus Earth lies fallow; the womb is closed during gestation; the Osiris is plugged with talismans. But it is vital to consider this as a strictly temporary device; and to "cut out the idea of Eternal Rest". This Nibbana-idea is the coward -- 'Mother's Boy' idea; one ought to take a refreshing dip in the Tao, no more. I think this must be brought forward as the Cardinal Point of Our Holy Law. Thus though Nuit cries "To me!" that is balanced by the Formula of Hadit. "Come unto me" is a foolish word; for it is I that go.

Now the Semen is God (the going-one, as shown by the Ankh or Sandal-strap, which He carries) because he goes in at the Door, stays there for a specified period, and comes out again, having flowered, and still bearing in him that Seed of Going. (The birth of a girl is a misfortune everywhere, because the true Going-Principle is the Lion-Serpent, or Dragon; the Egg is only the Cavern where he takes refuge on occasions){WEH NOTE: Shall we simply say that Crowley had a problem with misogyny in general? His love for the specific seems not to have been effected, witness the latter part of "Confessions".}.

LIber 418 explains this succinctly; 3rd Aethyr

"Moreover, there is Mary, a blasphemy against BABALON, for she hath shut herself up; and therefore is she the Queen of all those wicked devils that walk upon the earth, those that thou savest even as little black specks that stained the Heaven of Urania. And all these are the excrement of Choronzon."

It is this 'shutting up' that is hideous, the image of death. It is the opposite of Going, which is God.

Women under Christianity are kept virgin for the market as Strasbourg geese are nailed to boards till their livers putrefy. The nature of woman has been corrupted, her hope of a soul thwarted, her proper pleasure balked, and her mind poisoned, to titillate the jaded palates of senile bankers and ambassadors.

Why do men insist on 'innocence' in women?

1. To flatter their vanity.

2. To give themselves the best chance of (a) escaping venereal disease, (b) propagating their noble selves.

3. To maintain power over their slaves by their possession of Knowledge.

4. To keep them docile as long as possible by drawing out the debauching of their innocence. A sexually pleased woman is the best of willing helpers; one who is disappointed or disillusioned a very psychical exzema.

5. In primitive communities, to serve as a guard against surprise and treachery.

6. To cover their secret shame in the matter of sex. Hence the pretence that a woman is 'pure', modest, delicate, aesthetically beautiful and morally exalted, ethereal and unfleshly, though in fact they know her to be lascivious, shameless, coarse, ill-shapen, unscrupulous, nauseatingly bestial both physically and mentally. The advertisements of "dress shields," perfumes, cosmetics, anti-sweat preparations, and "Beauty Treatments" reveal woman's nature as seen by the clear eyes of those who would lose money if they misjudged her; and they are loathsomely revolting to read. Her mental and moral characteristics are those of the parrot and the monkey. Her physiology and pathology are hideously disgusting, a sickening slime of uncleanliness.

Her virgin life is a sick ape's, her sexual life a druken sow's, her mother life all bulging filmy eyes and sagging udders.

These are the facts about "innocence;" to this has man's Christian Endeavour dragged her when he should rather have made her his comrade, frank, trusty, and gay, the tenderer self of himself, his consubstantial complement even as Earth is to the Sun.

We of Thelema say that "Every man and every woman is a star." We do not fool and flatter women; we do not despise and abuse them. To us a woman is Herself, absolute, original, independent, free, self-justified, exactly as a man is.

We dare not thwart Her Going, Goddess she! We arrogate no right upon Her will; we claim not to deflect Her development, to dispose of Her desires, or to determine Her destiny. She is Her own sole arbitar; we ask no more than to supply our strength to Her, whose natural weakness else were prey to the world's pressure. Nay more, it were too zealous even to guard Her in Her Going; for She were best by Her own self-reliance to win Her own way forth!

We do not want Her as a slave; we want Her free and royal, whether Her love fight death in our arms by night, or Her loyalty ride by day beside us in the Charge of the Battle of Life.

"Let the woman be girt with a sword before me!"

"In her is all power given."

So sayeth this our Book of the Law. We respect Woman in the self of Her own nature; we do not arrogate the right to criticise her. We welcome her as our ally, come to our camp as her Will, free-flashing, sword-swinging, hath told Her, Welcome, thou Woman, we hail thee, star shouting to Star! Welcome to rout and to revel! Welcome to fray and to feast! Welcome to vigil and victory! Welcome to war with out {WEH NOTE: Some texts have "out" some "its"} wounds! Welcome to peace with its pageants! Welcome to lust and to laughter! Welcome to board and to bed! Welcome to trumpet and triumph; welcome to dirge and to death!

It is we of Thelema who truly love and respect Woman, who hold her sinless and shameless even as we are; and those who say that we despise Her are those who shrink from the flash of our falchions as we strike from Her limbs their foul fetters.

Do we call Woman Whore? Ay, Verily and Amen, She is that; the air shudders and burns as we shout it, exulting and eager.

O ye! Was not this your sneer, your vile Whisper that scorned Her and shamed Her? Was not "Whore" the truth of Her, the title of terror that you gave Her in your fear of Her, coward comforting coward with furtive glance and gesture?

But we fear Her not; we cry Whore, as Her armies approach us. We beat on our shields with our swords. Earth echoes the clamour!

Is there doubt of the victory? Your hordes of cringing slaves, afraid of themselves, afraid of their own slaves, hostile, despised and distrusted, your only tacticians the ostrich, the opossum, and the cuttle, will you not break and flee at our first onset, as with levelled lances of lust we ride at the charge, with our allies, the Whores whom we love and acclaim, free friends by our sides in the Battle of Life?

The Book of the Law is the Charter of Woman; the Word Thelema has opened the lock of Her "girdle of chastity." Your Sphinx of stone has come to life; to know, to will, to dare and to keep silence.

Yes, I, The Beast, my Scarlet Whore bestriding me, naked and crowned, drunk on Her golden Cup of Fornication, boasting Herself my bedfellow, have trodden Her in the Market place, and roared this Word that every woman is a star. And with that Word is uttered Woman's Freedom; the fools and fribbles and flirts have heard my voice. The fox in woman hath heard the Lion in man; fear, fainting, flabbiness, frivolity, falsehood -- these are no more the mode.

In vain will bully and brute and braggart man, priest, lawyer, or social censor knit his brows to devise him a new tamer's trick; once and for all the tradition is broken; vanished the vogue of bowstring, sack, stoning, nose-slitting, beltbuckling, cart's tail-dragging, whipping, pillory posting, walling-up, divorce court, eunuch, harem, mind-crippling, house-imprisoning, menial-work-wearying, creed-stultifying, social-ostracism marooning, Divine-wrath-scaring, and even the device of creating and encouraging prostitution to keep one class of women in the abyss under the heel of the police, and the other on its brink, at the mercy of the husband's boot at the first sign of insubordination or even of failure to please.

Man's torture-chamber had tools inexhaustibly varied; at one end murder crude and direct to subtler, more callous, starvation; at the other moral agonies, from tearing her child from her breast to threatening her with a rival when her service had blasted her beauty.

Most masterful man, yet most cunning, was not thy supreme stratagem to band the woman's own sisters against her, to use their knowledge of her psychology and the cruelty of their jealousies to avenge thee on thy slave as thou thyself hadst neither wit nor spite to do?

And Woman, weak in body, and starved in mind; woman, morally fettered by Her heroic oath to save the race, no care of cost, helpless and hard, endured these things, endured from age to age. Hers was no loud spectacular sacrifice, no cross on a hill-top, with the world agaze, and monstrous miracles to echo the applause of heaven. She suffered and triumphed in most shameful silence; she had no friend, no follower, none to aid or approve. For thanks she had but maudlin flatteries, and knew what cruel-cold scorn the hearts of men scarce cared to hide.

She agonized, ridiculous and obscene; gave all her beauty and strength of maidenhood to suffer sickness, weakness, danger of death, choosing to live the life of a cow -- that so Mankind might sail the seas of time.

She knew that man wanted nothing of her but service of his base appetites; in his true manhood-life she had nor part nor lot; and all her wage was his careless contempt.

She hath been trampled thus through all the ages, and she hath tamed them thus. Her silence was the token of her triumph.

But now the Word of Me the Beast is this; not only art thou Woman, sworn to a purpose not thine own; thou art thyself a star, and in thyself a purpose to thyself. Not only mother of men art thou, or whore to men; serf to their need of Life and Love, not sharing in their Light and Liberty; nay, thou art Mother and Whore for thine own pleasure; the Word I say to Man I say to thee no less: Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law!

Ay, priest, ay, lawyer, ay, censor! Will ye not gather in secret once again, if in your hoard of juggler's tricks there be not one untried, or in your cunning and counsel one device new-false to save your pirate ship from sinking?

It has always been so easy up to now! What is the blasting Magick in that Word, first thesis of the Book of the Law, that "every woman is a star."

Alas! it is I the Beast that roared that Word so loud, and wakened Beauty.

Your tricks, your drowsy drugs, your lies, your hypnotic passes -- they will not serve you.

Make up your minds to be free and fearless as I, fit mates for women no less free and fearless!

For I, The Beast, am come; an end to the evils of old, to the duping and clubbing of abject and ailing animals, degraded to that shameful state to serve that shameful pleasure.

The essence of my Word is to declare woman to be Herself, of, to, and for Herself; and I give this one irresistible Weapon, the expression of Herself and Her will through sex, to Her on precisely the same terms as to man.

Murder is no longer to be dreaded; the economic weapon is powerless since female labour has been found industrially valuable; and the social weapon is entirely in her own hands.

The best women have always been sexually-free, like the best men; it is only necessary to remove the penalties for being found out. Let Women's labour organizations support any individual who is economically harried on sexual grounds; let social organizations honour in public what their members practise in private.

Most domestic unhhappiness will disappear automatically, for its chief cause is the sexual dissatisfaction of wives, or the anxiety (or other mental strain engendered should they take the remedy in their own hands.

The crime of abortion will lose its motive in all but the most exceptional cases.

Blackmail will be confined to commercial and political offences, thus diminishing its frequency by two-thirds, at least, maybe much more.

Social scandals and jealousies will tend to disappear.

Sexual disease will be easier to track and to combat, when it is not longer a disgrace to admit it.

Prostitution (with its attendant crimes) will tend to disappear, as it will cease to offer exorbitant profits to those who exploit it. The pre-occupation of the minds of the public with sexual questions will no longer breed moral disease and insanity, when the sex-appetite is treated as simply as hunger. Frankness of speech and writing on sexual questions will dispel the ignorance which entraps so many unfortunate people; proper precaution against actual dangers will replace unnecessary and absurd precautions against imaginary or artificial dangers; and the quacks who trade on fear will be put out of business.

All this must follow as the Light the night as soon as Woman, true to Herself, finds that She can no longer be false to any man. She must hold Herself and Her Will in honour; and She must compel the world to accord it.

The modern woman is not going to be dupe, slave, and victim any more; the woman who gives herself up freely to her own enjoyment, without asking recompense, will earn the respect of her brothers, and will openly despise her 'chaste' or venal sisters, as men now despise 'milksops,' 'sissies,' and 'tango lizards.' Love is to be divorced utterly and irrevocably from social and financial agreements, especially marriage. Love is a sport, an art, a religion, as you will; it is not an ol' clo' Emporium.

'Mary inviolate' is to be 'torn upon wheels' because tearing is the only treatment for her; and RV, a wheel, is the name of the feminine principle. (See Liber D.) It is her own sisters who are to punish her for the crime of denying Her nature, not men who are to redeem her, since, as above remarked, it is man's own false sense of guilt, his selfishness, and his cowardice, which originally forced her to blaspheme against herself, and so degraded her in her own eyes, and in his. Let him attend to his own particular business, to redeem himself -- he has surely his hands full! Woman will save herself if she be but left alone to do it. I see, it, I, the Beast, who have seen - who see -- Space splendid with stars, who have seen -- who see -- the Body of our Lady Nuith, all-pervading, and therein swallowed up, to have found -- to find -- no soul that is not wholly of Her. Woman! thou drawest us upward and onward for ever; and every woman is one among women, of Woman; one star of Her stars.

I see thee, Woman, thou standest alone, High Priestess art thou unto Love at the Altar of Life. And Man is the Victim therein.

Beneath thee, rejoicing, he lies; he exults as he dies, burning up in the breath of thy kiss. Yea, star rushes flaming to star; the blaze burst, splashes the skies.

There is a Cry in an unknown tongue, it resounds through the Temple of the Universe; in its one Word is Death and Ecstasy, and thy title of honour, o thou, to Thyself High Priestess, Prophetess, Empress, to thyself the Goddess whose Name means Mother and whore!

The New Comment

If we are to have Beauty and Love, whether in begetting children or works of art, or what not, we must have perfect freedom to act, without fear or shame or any falsity. Spontaneity, the most important factor in creation, because it is evidence of the magnetic intensity and propriety of the will to create, depends almost wholly on the absolute freedom of the agent. Gulliver must have no bonds of packthread. These conditions have been so rare in the past, especially with regard to love, that their occurrence has usually marked something like an epoch. Practically all men work with fear of result or lust of result, and the 'child' is a dwarf or still-born.

It is within the experience of most people that pleasure-parties and the like, if organized on the spur of the moment, are always a success, while the most elaborate entertainments, prepared with all possible care, often fall flat. Now one cannot exactly give rules for producing a 'genius' to order, a genius in this sense being one who has the Idea, and is fortified with power to enflame the enthusiasm of the crowd, with wit to know, and initiative to seize, the psychological moment.

But one can specify certain conditions, incompatible with the manifestation of this spontaneity; and the first of these is evidently absolute freedom from obstacles, internal or external, to the idea of the 'genius.'

It is clear that a woman cannot love naturally, freely, wholesomely, if she is bound to contaminate the purity of her impulse with thoughts of her social, economical, and spiritual status. When such things restrain her, Love may conquer, as often enough it does; but the Beauty engendered is usually stunted or wried, assuming a tragic or cynic mask. The history of the world is full of such stories; it is, one may almost say, the chief motive of Romance. I need only mention Tristan, Paolo, Romeo, Othello, Paris, Edward the Second, Abelard, Tannhauser, of old, and recently Mrs. ~Asquith, Maud Allan, Charles Stuart Parnell, Sir Charles Dilke, Lord Henry Somerset, and Oscar Wilde, Down to 'Fatty' Arbuckle!

Men and women have to face actual ruin, as well as the probability of scandal and disgust, or consent to love within limits which concern not love in the least. The chance of spontaneity is therefore a small one; and, should it occur and be seized, the lawyers hasten to hide under the bridal bed, while the Families, gluing eye to chink and keyhole, intrude their discordant yowls on the Dust.

Then, when love dies, as it must if either party have more imagination than a lump of putty, the fetters are fixed. He or she must go through the sordid farce of divorce if the chance of free choice is to be recovered; and even at that the fetters always leave an incurable ulcer; it is no good playing the game of respectability after one is divorced.

Thus we find that almost the only love-affairs which breed no annoyance, and leave no scar, are those between people who have accepted the Law of Thelema, and broken for good with the tabus of the slave-gods. The true artist, loving his art and nothing else, can enjoy a series of spontaneous liaisons, all his life long, yet never suffer himself, or cause any other to suffer.

Of such liaisons Beauty is ever the child; the wholesome attitude of the clean simple mind, free from all complications alien to Love, assures it.

Just as a woman's body is deformed and diseased by the corset demanded by Jaganath Fashion, so is her soul by the compression of convention, which is a fashion as fitful, arbitrary, and senseless as that of the man-milliner, though they call him God, and his freakish Fiat pass for Everlasting Law.

The English Bible sanctions the polygamy and concubinage of Abraham, Solomon and others, the incest of Lot, the wholesale rape of captured virgins, as well as the promiscuity of the first Christians, the prostitution of temple servants, men and women, the relations of Johannes with his master, and the putting of wandering Prophets to stud, as well as the celibacy of such people as Paul. Jehovah went so far as to slay Onan because he balked at fertilizing his brother's widow, condoned the adultery, with murder of the husband, of David, and commanded Hosea to intrigue with a "wife of whoredom." He only drew the moral line at any self-assertion on the part of a woman.

In the past man has bludgeoned Woman into gratifying the lust of her loathed tyrant, and trampled the flower of her own love into the mire; making her rape more beastly by calling her antipathy Chastity, and proving her an unclean thing on the evidence of the torn soiled blossom.

She has had no chance to Love unless she first renounced the respect of society, and found a way to drive the wolf of hunger from her door.

Her chance is come! In any Abbey of Thelema any woman is welcome; there she is free to do her will, and held in honour for the doing. The child of love is a star, even as all are stars; but such an one we specially cherish; it is a trophy of battle fought and won!

The New Comment

'Jesus' himself, in the legend, 'set his face as a flint to go to Jerusalem,' with the foreknowledge of his fate. But Christians have not emphasized that heroism since the Crusades. The sloppy sentimental Jesus of the Sunday-school is the only survivor; and the War killed him, thank Ares!

When the Nonconformist Christian churches, especially in America, found the doctrine of Eternal Punishment no longer tenable, they knocked the bottom out of their religion. There was nothing to fight for. So they degenerated into tame social Centres, so that Theosophy with its Black Brothers, Mrs. Eddy with her Mental Arsenic Experts, the T.K. with his Hypnotists and Jesuits, and Billy Sunday with his Hell Fire {WEH NOTE: variation: "...Experts, and the Evangelical Revivalists with their Hell Fine..."}, made people's flesh creep once more, and got both credit and cash.

The Book of the Law flings forth no theological fulminations; but we have quarrels enough on our hands. We have to fight for Freedom against oppressors, religious, social, or industrial; and we are utterly opposed to compromise. Every fight is to be a fight to the finish; each one of us for himself, to do his own will; and all of us for all, to establish the Law of Liberty.

We do not want "professional soldiers," hired bravos sworn to have no souls of their own. They "dare not fight;" for how should a man dare to fight unless his cause be a love mightier than his love of life? Therefore they "play;" they have sold themselves; their Will is no more theirs; life is no longer a serious thing to them; therefore they wander wastrel in clubs and boudoirs and greenrooms; bridge, billiards, polo, pettie coats puff out their emptiness; scratched for the Great Race of Life, they watch the Derby instead.

Brave such may be; they may well be (in a sense) classed with the rat; but brainless and idle they must be, who have no goal beyond the grave, where, at the best, chance flings fast-withering flowers of false and garish glory. They serve to defend things vital to their country; they are the skull that keeps the brain from harm? Oh foolish brain! Wet thou not wiser to defend thyself, rather than trust to brittle bone that hinders thee from growth?

Let every man bear arms, swift to resent oppression, generous and ardent to draw sword in any cause, if justice or freedom summon him!

"All fools despise." In this last phrase the word "fools" is evidently not to be taken in its deeper mystical sense, the context plainly bearing reference to ordinary life.

But the "fool" is still as described in the Tarot Trump. He is an epicene creature, soft and sottish, with an imbecile laugh and a pretty taste in fancy waistcoats. He lacks virility, like the ox which is the meaning of the letter Aleph which describes the Trump, and his value is Zero, its number. He is air, formless and incapable of resistance, carrier of sounds which mean nothing to it, swept up into destructive rages of senseless violence from its idleness, incalculably moved by every pressure or pull. One-fifth is the fuel of fire, the corruption of rust; the rest is inert, the soul of explosives, with a trace of that stifling and suffocating gas which is yet food for vegetable, as it is poison to animal, life.

We have here a picture of the average man, of a fool; he has no will of his own, is all things to all men, is void, a repeater of words of whose sense he knows nought, a drifter, both idle and violent, compact partly of fierce passions that burn up both himself and the other, but mostly of inert and characterless nonentity, with a little heaviness, dullness, and stupefaction for his only positive qualities.

Such are the 'fools' whom we despise. The man of Thelema is vertebrate, organized, purposeful, steady, self-controlled, virile; he uses the air as the food of his blood; so also, were he deprived of fools he could no live. We need our atmosphere, after all; it is only when the fools become violent madmen that we need our cloak of silence to wrap us, and our staff to stay us as we ascend our mountain-ridge; and it is only if we go down into the darkness of mines to dig us treasure of earth that we need fear to choke on their poisonous breath.

The New Comment

"the proud:" these are the men who know themselves to be stars, and bend the knee to none. True pride prevents a man from doing aught unworthy of himself.

"the royal:" these are the men whose nature is kingly, the men who 'can.' They know themselves born rulers, whether their halidom be Art, or Science, or aught else soever.

"The lofty:" these are the men who, being themselves high-hearted, endure not any baseness.

The New Comment

There is perhaps a magical second-meaning in this verse, a reference to the Ritual of which we find hints in the legend of Cain and Abel, Esau and Jacob, Set and Osiris, et cetera. The "Elder Brother" within us, the Silent Self, must slay the younger brother, the conscious self, and he must be raised again incorruptible.

The New Comment

Far better, let him assume this Law to be the Universal Key to every problem of Life, and then apply it to one particular case after another. As he comes by degrees to understand it, he will be astounded at the simplification of the most obscure questions which it furnishes. Thus he will assimilate the Law, and make it the norm of his conscious being; this by itself will suffice to initiate him, to dissolve his complexes, to unveil himself to himself; and so shall he attain the Knowledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel.

I have myself practiced constantly to prove the Law by many and divers modes in many and divers spheres of thought, until it has become absolutely fixed in me, so much so that it appears an "identical equation," axiomatic indeed, and yet not a platitude, but a very sword of Truth to sunder every knot at a touch.

As the practical ethics of the Law, I have formulated in words of one syllable my declaration of the

RIGHTS OF MAN

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

There is no god but Man.

Man has the right to live by his own Law.

Man has the right to live in the way that he wills to do.

Man has the right to dress as he wills to do.

Man has the right to dwell where he wills to dwell.

Man has the right to move as he will on the face of the Earth.

Man has the right to eat what he will.

Man has the right to drink what he will.

Man has the right to think as he will

Man has the right to speak as he will

Man has the right to write as he will.

Man has the right to mould as he will.

Man has the right to paint as he will.

Man has the right to carve as he will.

Man has the right to work as he will.

Man has the right to rest as he will

Man has the right to love as he will, when, where and whom he will.

Man has the right to die when and how he will.

Man has the right to kill those who would thwart these rights.

This statement must not be regarded as individualism run wild. Its harmony with statecraft is demonstrated in the Chapters of Liber Aleph already quoted -- see comment on Chapter II verse 72.

Modern thought, even that of the shallowest, is compelled by AIWAZ to confirm His Law, without knowing what it is about. For instance: "God's wind from nowhere which is called the Will; and is man's only excuse upon this earth," was written by so trivial a Fat Man as Gilbert Keith Chesterton in "The Flying Inn."

The New Comment

These "girders" imply the skeletal structure on which the soul is supported, the conditions of its incarnation. Man is the heir of ages of evolutionary experience, on certain lines, so that he is organized on formulae which have determined the type of his development. Of some such formulae we are conscious, but not of all. Thus it is true for all men -- empirically -- that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points; some savages may not know this consciously, but they base their actions on that knowledge.

Now we cannot doubt that consciousness has developed elsewhere than in man; only a blind megalomaniac or a Christian divine could suppose our infinitesimal mote of a planet the sole habitat of Mind, especially as our minds are, at best, totally incompetent to comprehend Nature. It is also unlikely that our Earth's physical conditions of temperature, atmosphere, density and so on, which some still regard as essential to Life, are found frequently; we are only one of nine planets ourselves, and it is absurd to deny that life exists on the others, or in the Sun himself, just because the conditions of our own life are absent elsewhere.

Such Life and Mind may therefore be utterly different to anything we know of; the 'girders' of their souls in other spheres may be other than ours.

The above argument is a case of a "girder;" we are bound mentally by our race-experience of the environment in which our own lives flourish. A pioneer choosing a camp must look for wood, water, perhaps shelter, perhaps game. In another planet he might not need any of these.

The 'girders' which deternmine the 'form' of our souls are therefore limitations to our thought, as well as supports. In the same way, rails help a train to run easily, but confine it to a definite direction.

The 'laws' of Nature and Thought, Mathematics, Logic, and so on, are "girders" of this sort.

Our race-inherited conceptions of space prevented men, until quite recent years, from conceiving a non-Euclidean geometry, or the existence of a fourth Dimension.

The initiate soon becomes aware of the un-truth of many of these limiting laws of his mind; he has to identify Being with not-Being, to perceive Matter as continuous and homogeneous, and so for many another Truth, apprehended directly by pure perception, and consequently not to be refuted by syllogistic methods. The Laws of Logic are thus discovered to be superficial, and their scope only partial.

(It is significant in this connexion that such advanced thinkers as the Hon. Bertrand Russell have found themselves obliged to refer mathematical laws to Logic; it seems to have escaped them that the Laws of Logic are no more than the statement of the limitations of their own intelligence. I quote The Book of Lies, Kappa-Epsilon-Phi-Alpha-Lambda-Eta Mue-Epsilon

"CHINESE MUSIC.

"Explain this happening!"

"It must have a 'natural' cause." )

"It must have a 'supernatural' cause.") Let

these two asses be set to grind corn.

May, might, must, should, probably, may be, we may safely assume, ought, it is hardly questionable, almost certainly -- poor hacks! let them be turned out to grass!

Proof is only possible in mathematics, and mathematics is only a matter of arbitrary conventions.

And yet doubt is a good servant but a bad master; a perfect mistress, but a nagging wife.

"White is white" is the lash of the overseer; "white is black" is the watchword of the slave. The Master takes no heed.

The Chinese cannot help thinking that the octave has 5 notes.

The more necessary anything appears to my mind, the more certain it is that I only assert a limitation.

I slept with Faith, and found a corpse in my arms on awaking; I drank and danced all night with Doubt, and found her a virgin in the morning."

Now then consider the man whose soul has thoroughly explored its structure, is actively conscious of its 'girders' of axiom. He must find that they confine him like prison bars, when he would gain the freedom of the initiate.

In this verse therefore doth the God "enthroned in RA's seat" declare that his Word lightens (or removes) the oppression of these 'girders of the soul.'

The study of this chapter is accordingly a sound preparatory course for whosoever will become Initiate.

See also the six verses following this; the word increases in value as the reader advances on the Path, just as a Rembrandt is a "pretty picture" to the peasant, a 'fine work of art" to the educated man, but to the lover of Beauty a sublime masterpiece, the greater as he grows himself in greatness.

The New Comment

We have seen that Ra-Hoor-Khuit is in one sense the Silent Self in a man, a Name of his Khabs, not so impersonal as Hadit, but the first and least untrue formulation of the Ego. We are to reverse this self in us, then, not to suppress it and subordinate it. Nor are we to evade it, but to come to it. This is done "through tribulation of ordeal". This tribulation is that experienced in the process called Psychoanalysis, now that official science has adopted -- so far as its inferior intelligence permits -- the methods of the magus. But the 'ordeal' is 'bliss'; the solution of each complex by 'tribulation' -- note the etymological significance of the word! -- is the spasm of joy which is the physiological and psychological accompaniment of any relief from strain and congestion.

The Old Comment

The New Comment

But the above is only the secondary or hieroglyphic magical meaning. The plain English still discusses the technique of initiation. The 'fool', is one such as described in my note on verse 57. The vain, soft, frivolous, idle, mutable sot will make nothing either of this Book, or of my comment thereon. But this fool is the child Harpocrates, the "Babe in the Egg", the innocent not yet born, in silence awaiting his hour to come forth into light. He is then the uninitiated man, and he has four ordeals to pass before he is made perfect. These ordeals are now to be described.

The New Comment

The initiate will now perceive that the sum of the motions of his mind is zero, while, below their moon-like phases and their Air-like divinations, the sex-consciousness abides untouched, the true Foundation of the Temple of his body, the Root of the Tree of Life that grows from Earth to Heaven. This Book is now to him "as silver." He sees it pure, white and shining, the mirror of his own being that this ordeal has purged of its complexes. To reach this sphere he has had to pass through a path of darkness where the Four Elements seem to him to be the Universe entire. For how should he know that they are no more that the last of the 22 segments of the Snake that is twined on the Tree?

Assailed by gross phantoms of matter, unreal and unintelligible, his ordeal is of terror and darkness. He may pass only by favour of his own silent God, extended and exalted within him by virtue of his conscious act in affronting the ordeal.

The New Comment

In the last sphere he learnt that his Body was the Temple of the Rosy Cross, that is, that it was given him as a place wherein to perform the Magical Work of uniting the oppositions in his Nature. Here he is taught that his Heart is the Centre of Light. It is not dark, mysterious, hollow, obscure even to himself, but his soul is to dwell there, radiating Light on the six spheres which surround it; these represent the various powers of his mind. This Book now appears to him as Gold; it is the perfect metal, the symbol of the Sun itself. He sees God everywhere therein.

To this sphere hath the aspirant come by the Path called Temperance, shot as an arrow from a Rainbow. He hath beheld the Light, but only in division. Nor had he won to this sphere except by Temperance, under which name we mask the art of pouring freely forth the whole of our Life, to the last spilth of our blood, yet losing never the least drop thereof.

The New Comment

In the Number 6 he saw God interlocked with man, two trinities made one; but here he knows that there was never but one.

Thus now this Book is 'stones of precious water'; its Light is not the borrowed light of gold, but is shed through the Book itself, clearsparkling, flashed from its facets. Each phrase is a diamond; each is diverse, yet all identical. In each the one Light laughs!

Now to this sphere came he by the Path called the High Priestess; She is his Silent Self, virgin beyond all veils, made free to teach him, by virtue of this third ordeal wherein, passing through the abyss, he has stripped from him every rag of falsehood, his last complexes, even his phantasy that he called 'I'. And so he knows at last now the soiled harlot's dress was mere disguise; naked in Moonlight shines the maiden Body!

Beyond the one, how shall he pass on? What is this One, which is in every place the Centre of All? Indeed the logic-girders of our souls need lightening, if we would win to freedom of such Truth as this!

Now in the 'stones of precious water' the Light leapt clear indeed, but they were not themselves that Light. This sphere of the One is indeed Ra-Hoor-Khuit; is not our Crowned and Conquering Child the source of Light? Nay, he is finite form of Unity, child of two married infinities; and in this last ordeal the aspirant must go beyond even his Star, finding therein the core thereof Hadit, and losing it also in the Body of Nuith.

Here is no Path that he may tread, for all is equally everywhere; nor is there any sphere to attain, for measure is now no more.

There are no words to make known the Way; this only is said, that to him that hath passed through this fourth ordeal this Book is as 'ultimate sparks'. No more do they reflect or transmit the Light; they themselves are the original, the not-to-be-analysed Light, of the 'intimate fire' of Hadit! He shall see the Book as it is, as a shower of the Seed of the Stars!

The Old Comment

The New Comment

The sudden degradation of the style and the subject, the petulance of the point of view; what should these things intend?

It sounds as though the scribe had protested violently in his mind against the chapter, and was especially aggrieved at the first paragraph of this verse, which, taken at its face value, promises a phenomenon impossible in literature. The second phrase may then be a contemptuous slap at the scribe who was perhaps thinking "Well, it seems otherwise to me, for one!" and the hit was a bull's eye; for I was a mere liar when I thought it. I was so enraged at having engaged myself on such an adventure, so hated "the hand and the pen" which I pledged to transcribe sentiments so repugnant to mine, such a jargon of absurdities and vulgarities as seemed to me displayed in many parts of this third chapter, that I would have gone to almost any length, short of deliberate breach of my thoughtless promise to my wife to see it through, to discredit the Book. I did deface my diaries with senseless additions; I did carry out my orders in such a way as to ensure failure, I did lose the Manuscript more or less purposely. I did threaten to publish the Book 'to get rid of it'; and at this verse I was one of the 'mere liars'. For its Beauty already constrained even the world-infected man, the nigh-disillusioned poet, the clinker-clogged lover, the recusant mystic. And, as I know now, the thought that all these things were myself was a lie. Yet the Liar was at pains to lie to itself! Why did it so? It knew that one day this Book would shine out and dissolve it; it feared and hated the Book; and, gnashing its teeth, swore falsely, and denied the Beauty that bound it.

As for my true Self, silent abiding its hour, is not this Book to it the very incarnation of Beauty? What is Beauty but the perfect expression of one's own Truth? And is not this Book the Word of Aiwaz, and is not He mine Holy Guardian Angel, the master of my Silent Self, His virgin bride on whom His love hath wrought the mystery of Identity?

The Old Comment

The New Comment

The New Comment

"my nemyss" (better spelt 'nemmes') is the regular head-dress of a God. It is a close cap, but with wings behind the ears which end in lappets that fall in front of the shoulders. It is gathered at the nape of the neck into a cylindrical 'pigtail'. I think the shape is meant to suggest the Royal Uraeus serpent.

It "shrouds the night-blue sky" because the actual light shed by the God when he is invoked is of this colour. It may also mean that he conceals Nuith.

The Hawk's Head symbolizes keen sight, swift action, courage and mobility.

The Old Comment

This is a clear statement as to the War which was to come, and did come, in 1914 E.V.

I now (An XIX Sol in Libra) no longer agree with the above paragraph. I think "the pillars of the world" mean "the Pillars of Hercules" -- about the Straits of Gibraltar. And I think the really big war will start "there".

P.S. An (Sept. 8, '37, E.V.) Can "twin warriors" imply a "civil" war? The Spanish troubles started in S. Spain and Morocco.

The Old Comment

The New Comment

"Coph Nia": the original MS. has "----"; left incomplete as not having been properly heard. The present text was filled in later in her own hand by the first Scarlet Woman.

The Egyptian Gods are usually represented as bearing an Ankh, or sandal-strap, in the left hand, the wand being in the right. This ankh signifies the power to go, characteristic of a god.

But apparently Ra Hoor Khuit had an Universe in his left hand, and crushed it so that naught remains. I think this "Universe" is that of monistic metaphysics; in one hand is the "Double Wand", in the other "naught". This seems to refer to the 'none and Two' ontology outlined in previous notes.

The Old Comment

The New Comment

The Old Comment

The New Comment

The Old Comment

Aum-Ha, Aum = 111, Ha = 6, 111 x 6 = 666, the Seal of the Beast. Note well that AUM with a Mem final adds to 671, Throa, the Gate, Adonai spelt in full, etc. Using the Keys of Aum Ha, we get XII. + XV. + 0, and IV. + 0, their sum, 31 = LA, Not.

The New Comment