Some connections between Liber LXV and Liber Aleph

 Crowley, Holy Books, Holy Guardian Angel, Philosophy, Sex Magick, Stele of Revealing, Thoth Tarot  No Responses »
Jun 032012
 

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

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Liber LXV I:44-46:

Thou strivest ever; even in thy yielding thou strivest to yield — and lo! thou yieldest not. Go thou unto the outermost places and subdue all things. Subdue thy fear and thy disgust. Then — yield!

Liber Aleph 152:

This then is the Adept, who doth Will with solid Energy as the Bull, doth dare with fierce Courage as the Lion, doth know with swift Intelligence as the Man, and doth keep Silence with soaring Subtlety as the Eagle or Dragon. Moreover, this Sphinx is an Eidolon of the Law, for the Bull is Life, the Lion is Light, the Man is Liberty, the Serpent Love. Now then this Sphinx, being perfect in true Balance, yet taketh the Aspect of the Feminine Principle that so She may be partner of the Pyramid, that is the Phallus, pure Image of Our Father the Sun, the Unity Creative. The Signification of this Mystery is that the Adept must be Whole, Himself, containing all Things in true Proportion, before he maketh himself Bride of the One Universal Transcendental, in its most Secret Virtue.

Liber LXV I:47-48:

There was a maiden that strayed among the corn, and sighed; then grew a new birth, a narcissus, and therein she forgot her sighing and her loneliness. Even instantly rode Hades heavily upon her, and ravished her away.

Crowley, in his commentary on this passage, writes that Persephone is “the earth-bound soul;” that the corn represents “material nourishment,” the result of which is “sorrow” (Dukkha, the first Noble Truth of Buddhism: see the 3 of Swords and its commentary in The Book of Thoth); and that the narcissus is “the sexual instinct flowering as Beauty” (i.e., Tiphareth). He calls Hades “the lord of ‘Hell,’ i.e., the dark and secret but divine Soul within every man and woman.”

The earth-bound soul forgets the corn and desires the Beauty of the narcissus. This is the “yielding” of the lower self (generally conceived of as feminine in Western mysticism) to the higher (represented by the creative unity of “Our Father the Sun”). Compare also chapter 69 of The Book of Lies.

The word transliterated “Khabs” in Crowley’s poetic paraphrase of the Stele of Revealing is one of the two Egyptian words for “shadow.” In a sense, then, the shadow is simultaneously a star. This identification renders at least one interpretation of the passages quoted above.

Love is the law, love under will.

 

Thoth Tarot: The Lovers Trump

 Alchemy, Book of the Law, Crowley, Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, Events, Gnostic Mass, Magical Practice, OTO, Ritual, Sex Magick, Theurgy, Thoth Tarot  No Responses »
Sep 192011
 

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

I will never look at this card in the same way again after taking on the role of a Child in the Gnostic Mass this past weekend. Experience of this nature is difficult to communicate in words. I can only recommend the experience to everyone who has the opportunity. Mad props to Sword and Serpent Encampment, O.T.O., for hosting a terrific event with an excellent turnout. And thank you to Soror MahaDevi and Frater Apollon for allowing me to be part of the Mass team, and for their excellent guidance.

Crowley writes of this card in The Book of Thoth (p. 81): “The key is that the Card represents the Creation of the World,” which immediately brings to mind the following verses of The Book of the Law: “For I am divided for love’s sake, for the chance of union. This is the creation of the world, that the pain of division is as nothing, and the joy of dissolution all” (Liber AL I:29-30). These lines have me speculating that the Gnostic Mass can be seen as an elaborate theurgic rite, in that it uses ritual to reenact primordial creation. Gregory Shaw has much to say on this topic in “Chapter 4: Theurgy as Demiurgy” of his book, Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus. I will have much more to say on this in future posts to this blog.

The ancient Hermetic text Asclepius makes interesting comparative reading here, specifically the two adjacent chapters (20 and 21, see especially the latter) on the androgynous nature of the highest divinity and the mysteries of sexual union that are the microcosmic parallel to macrocosmic divine androgyny.

Love is the law, love under will.

 

Thoth Tarot: The Moon Trump

 Crowley, Initiation, Magical Theory, Philosophy, Qabalah, Thoth Tarot  No Responses »
Sep 082011
 

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

These are several passages I found fascinating when studying The Moon. First, some highlights of Crowley’s commentary on the card from The Book of Thoth:

This is the waning moon, the moon of witchcraft and abominable deeds. She is the poisoned darkness which is the condition of the rebirth of light….

The knight upon this quest has to rely on the three lower senses: touch, taste, and smell. Such light as there may be is deadlier than darkness, and the silence is wounded by the howling of the wild beasts….

This is the threshold of life; this is the threshold of death. All is doubtful, all is mysterious, all is intoxicating. Not the benign, solar intoxication of Dionysus, but the dreadful madness of pernicious drugs; this is a drunkenness of sense, after the mind has been abolished by the venom of the Moon…. One is reminded of the mental echo of subconscious realization, of that supreme iniquity which mystics have constantly celebrated in their accounts of the Dark Night of the Soul. But the best men, the true men, do not consider the matter in such terms at all. Whatever horrors may afflict the soul, whatever abominations may excite the loathing of the heart, whatever terrors may assail the mind, the answer is the same at every stage: “How splendid is the Adventure!”

The following brief poem from chapter 82 of the The Book of Lies expands on the journey through the Path of the Moon (associated with the Hebrew letter Qoph, and connecting Netzach to Malkuth on the Tree of Life). Crowley comments that verse 1 asks, “How can we baffle the Three Characteristics” [i.e. "no I, no joy, no permanence"]. Verse 2 “shows that death is impotent against life,” and verse 3 “offers the solution of the problem,” which is “to accept things as they are, and to turn your whole energies to progress on the Path” (p. 175).

Witch-moon that turnest all the streams to blood,
      I take this hazel rod, and stand, and swear
      An Oath-beneath this blasted Oak and bare
That rears its agony above the flood
      Whose swollen mask mutters an atheist’s prayer.
What oath may stand the shock of this offence:
“There is no I, no joy, no permanence”?

Witch-moon of blood, eternal ebb and flow
      Of baffled birth, in death still lurks a change;
      And all the leopards in thy woods that range,
And all the vampires in their boughs that glow,
      Brooding on blood-thirst-these are not so strange
And fierce as life’s unfailing shower. These die,
      Yet time rebears them through eternity.

Hear then the Oath, witch-moon of blood, dread moon!
      Let all thy stryges and thy ghouls attend!
      He that endureth even to the end
Hath sworn that Love’s own corpse shall lie at noon
      Even in the coffin of its hopes, and spend
All the force won by its old woe and stress
In now annihilating Nothingness.

Love is the law, love under will.

Thoth Tarot: The Adjustment Trump

 Alchemy, Book of the Law, Crowley, Magical Theory, Qabalah, Sex Magick, Thoth Tarot  1 Response »
Sep 022011
 

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

Yesterday I studied the Fool and the Magician of the Thoth Deck as my daily tarot meditation. Today I consciously jumped to the Adjustment card, Atu VIII, because I haven’t yet closely studied it. I found the following passages interesting from Crowley’s Book of Thoth.

First, this card is the Hebrew letter Lamed, which is “the feminine complement of the Fool, for the letters Aleph Lamed [ = 31] constitute the secret key of the Book of the Law.” The scales held by the goddess are balanced by the Alpha and the Omega [ = 801 ], the First and Last (letters of the Greek alphabet). Crowley calls these the “Judex and Testes of Final Judgment; the testes, in particular, are symbolic of the secret course of judgment whereby all current experience is absorbed, transmuted, and ultimately passed on. This all takes place within the diamond [daemons are a girl's best friend] formed by the figure which is the concealed Vesica Piscis through which this sublimated and adjusted experience passes to its next manifestation.” The two pans of the balanced scale, and their contents, are “the Two Witnesses in whom shall every word be established.”

Crowley further posits:

One must go more deeply into philosophy; the Trump represents The Woman Satisfied…. From the cloak of the vivid wantonness of her dancing wings issue her hands; they hold the hilt of the Phallic sword of the magician. She holds the blade between her thighs. This is again a hieroglyph of “Love is the law, love under will.” Every form of energy must be directed, must be applied with integrity, to the full satisfaction of its destiny.

Love is the law, love under will.