TWO FRAGMENTS OF RITUAL

I

THE SUPREME RITUAL

“A feast for the Supreme Ritual”
“But to him is the winged secret flame, and to her the stooping starlight.”

Liber AL vel Legis, the Book of the Law

Let a feast be made by the Officers of the Temple. This Temple, into which they then retire, may be any convenient place. An altar is necessary; also a vessel of wine; otherwise as may be appointed by them; eg the robes, etc, as said in [Liber Legis]. The Officers are two in number and they seek Nuit and Hadit through Babalon and the Beast.* To conceal themselves they are disguised as Isis and Osiris.

(The officers meet and clasp hands above the altar. Any preliminary operations, such as opening, banishing, etc, are now done by I†, who returns, and they again greet, but as initiates.)

* This is the nearest idea I gan give of the text, which is in hieroglyph impossible to reproduce.
† It is clear that this ritual is full of intentional blinds.2

O. and I. (face to face).

(Gives the S[ign] of a B[abe] of the A[byss], which I. destroys by the S[ign] of M[en] T[u] the God.3)

(I. repeats S[ign] of M[en] T[u] and O. gives S[ign] of Baphomet.)

(I. seats O. upon the Altar.)

(O. gives wine. They drink.)

(They exchange the holy greeting by a kiss)

(O. plays music while I. worships in silence.)

(They dance together. A pause of perfect stillness and silence follows; until O., sua sponte4 advances and places I. upon the altar.)

(O. draws the dagger from her hair.)

(O. cuts a <inverted Tau>, or if possible, the sigil of N.O.X.,5 on I.'s breast.)

(They drink, then dance.)

(I. returns and takes seat thereon.)

(O. does so, plays music if so inclined, and continues as necessity or inclination may dictate.)

(The Ritual of the S. . . . of R. . . .7 is in silence accomplished.)

IX°8

CLOSING

(They greet, as before, and depart.)

II

A RITUAL TO INVOKE
HICE
OR ANY OTHER DIVINE ONE

The Opening

The assistants being all without, N. and H. perform the ritual appropriate. The doors are unlocked, and the assistants, led by R., enter.

Let the symbol or image of {HICEst9 / the god} be in the East of the Temple.

Let incense burn before her / it.

Let there be two other thrones; on her right that of Nuit, on her left that of Hadit; the child is Ra Hoor Khuit.

Nuit is dressed in blue; Hadit in Red; the child is naked at first.10

The Lamp shall be burning above R.H.K., who crouches in the centre, in the prescribed posture. If there be assistants, they shall all wear the robes of their grade; they shall be seated in balanced equiposition about the temple; and they shall enter only after the opening.

THE OPENING

The Death of Osiris

H. and N. divest themselves of their blue and red robes, appearing merely in their magick robes of red and green as the temporal and spiritual powers,12 Typhon and Apophis.

(N. forces R. back, and they stretch out his arms.)

(Wounds brow, hands and feet with the dagger.)

(Wounds breast with sword.)

(They embrace, leaning across the corpse. N. returns to her throne, and dons the blue robe, thus assuming the power of Isis. H. remains, his sword upon the heart of R.)

The Arising of Horus

N. chants the Dirge of Isis.* After “tomb” in verse 4 she rises (and H. falls back to his knees), and at verse 5 comes down to the corpse, and raises it with kisses upon the stigmata, wrapping it then in her blue robe. She then clothes it in the white robe (of a Probationer? – Trans) R. takes the sword of H. and pins13 his throat therewith. N. returns to the throne and H. rises and puts on his red robe.

The Awakening of the Divine Force.

(The remaining sheets of MSS. are missing or indecipherable.)

* MS. not to be found.14

Source
Both rituals were first published with a number of omissions (words replaced by rows of dots) in Equinox I (10). A full version of the “Supreme Ritual.” transcribed from various manuscripts in private collections (one in the hand of Victor Neuberg) appeared in Francis X. King's Sexuality, Magic and Perversion (Neville Spearman, 1971).  The second “fragment” is transcribed from a copy of the MS in the O.T.O. archives (the original is in the collection of Syracuse University).

Editorial conventions
Words partly in square brackets, e.g. “the S[ign] of a B[abe] of the A[byss]” were given as initial letters and dots in the Equinox publication. “Stage directions” are given in round brackets and italics. Text in angle brackets – <these things> represents symbols that cannot readily be rendered in HTML.

Footnotes indicated by *, †, ‡ etc., are Crowley's and are taken from the Equinox publication. Those indicated by numbers are by the present editor.

Footnotes

1: Adam Weishaupt was the founder of a secret society known as the Illuminati, which was founded in 1776 e.v., surpressed by the Bavarian government nine years later, and has since provided much fodder for conspiracy theorists. Weishaupt is cited as a Saint in the Gnostic Mass.  In any case, the citation is completely spurious and the Index to Equinox vol I unsurprisingly gives the author of the rituals as Crowley.

2: A careful reading of the script should indicate that 'I' and 'O' when used to indicate the officers do not stand for 'Isis' and 'Osiris'.

3: The grade signs of Crowley's A.'.A.'. are identified in various notes and letters quoted in the endnotes to the “Blue Brick” edition of Magick.  The sign of a Babe of the Abyss is either Puella or Mulier from the NOX signs (see Liber V vel Reguli); but since the Sign of Baphomet, referred to later, is another name for Mulier, then Puella is probably meant.  The sign of Men Tu the God probably refers to the sign Puer from the NOX sequence, which represents the phallic god Min or Amsu.

4: Latin, “of her own accord”

5: The Sigil of N.O.X. has been identified as being an X within a circle.

6: I quote from The Vision and the Voice, 2nd Æthyr:

So sweet is this song that no-one could resist it. For in it is all the passionate ache of the moonlight, and the great hunger of the sea, and the terror of desolate places – all things that lure men to the unattainable.

Omari tessala marax
tessala dodi phornepax.
amri radara poliax
   armana piliu.
amri radara piliu son’;
mari narya barbiton
madara anaphax sarpedon
   andala hriliu.

(translation)
I am the harlot that shaketh death
This shaking giveth the Peace of Satiate Lust
Immortality jetteth forth from my skull
And music from my vulva.
Immortality jetteth forth from my vulva also
For my Whoredom is a sweet scent like a seven-stringed instrument
Played unto God the Invisible, the all-ruler,
That goeth along giving the shrill scream of orgasm.

The stress marks for the song are omitted as unreproducable in the standard character set.

7: Uncertain.  One possibility is “Star of Ruby” (see Liber LXVI; not to be confused with the Ritual of the Star Ruby which in any case is not best accomplished in silence), although elsewhere in the ritual a single dot represented a single omitted letter.

8: The reference is of course to the ninth degree of O.T.O.  Lege – iudica – atque ride.

9: HICE (thus in the Equinox publication) represents , (Ae-ise-st) a Coptic form of Isis (Aset) used in the Golden Dawn.

10: These three words crossed out and “MS. torn here.” written in.

11: See AL III, 54.  This and the above were crossed out in the MS., and in the Equinox publication were printed as “B. . . . . . .!” and “O. . . . . .!”

12: Words “Besz and” crossed out in the MS. at this point.

13: Word omitted in Equinox publication; “. . . (?)” printed instead. Some other publications of the ritual erroneously give “slits” at this point instead.

14: The Dirge of Isis is probably Crowley's poem “ΛΙΝΟΣ ΙΣΙΔΟΣ” from Equinox I (4).  (Linos, a mythical Greek minstrel; the word subsequently used in a transferred sense for a lament or mournful dirge.)  It runs as follows:

Lo!  I lament.  Fallen is the sixfold Star:
Slain is Asar.
O twinned with me in the womb of Night!
O son of my bowels to the Lord of Light!
O man of mine that hath covered me
From the shame of my virginity!
Where art thou?  Is it not Apep thy brother,
The snake in my womb that am thy mother,
That hath slain thee by violence girt with guile,
And scattered thy limbs on the Nile?

Lo!  I lament.  I have forged a whirling Star:
I seek Asar.
O Nepti, sister!  Arise in the dusk
From thy chamber of mystery andmusk!
Come with me, though weary the way,
To bring back his life to the rended clay!
See! are not these the hands that wove
Delight, and these the arms that strove
With me?  And these the feet, the thighs
That were lovely in mine eyes?

Lo!  I lament.  I gather in my car
Thine head, Asar.
And this—is this not the trunk he rended?
But—oh! oh! oh!—the task transcended,
Where is the holy idol that stood
For the god of thy queen's beatitude?
Here is the tent—but where is the pole?
Here is the body—but where is the soul?
Nepti, sister, the work is undone
For lack of the needed One!

Lo!  I lament.  There is no god so far
As mine Asar!
There is no hope, none, in the corpse, in the tomb.
But these—what are these that war in my womb?
There is vengeance and triumph at last of Maat
In Ra-Hoor-Khut and in Hoor-pa-Kraat!
Twins they shall rise; being twins they are one,
The Lord of the Sword and the Son of the Sun!
Silence, coeval colleage of Voice,
The plumes of Amoun—rejoice!

Lo!  I rejoice.  I heal the sanguine scar
Of slain Asar.
I was the Past, Nature the Mother.
He was the Present, Man my brother.
Look to the Future, the Child—oh pæan
The Child that is crowned in the Lion-Æon!
The sea-dawns surge and billow and break
Beaneath the scourge of the Star and the Snake.
To my lord I have borne in my womb deep-vaulted
This babe for ever exalted!

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