Copyright: V1.0 by robin@millcomm.com


Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente vel LXV
LIBER CORDIS CINCTI SERPENTE VEL LXV SUB FIGURÂ ADNI

A.'.A.∋.

Publication in Class A.

Commentary in Class B.

Frater O. M. 6 = 5

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

The five chapters refer to the five Elements.  1-Earth, 2-Air, 3-Water, 4-Fire, and 5-Spirit.  Each shows its  Element in the light of the relation between the Adeptus Minor  and his Holy Guardian Angel.  Thus in Chapter I the material world or sensible aspect of Nature is shown to be a mere symbolic picture of something altogether different.

CHAPTER I

  1.  I am the Heart; and the Snake is entwined

 About the invisible core of the mind.

 Rise, O my snake!   It is now is the hour

 Of the hooded and holy ineffable flower.

 Rise, O my snake, into brilliance of bloom

 On the corpse of Osiris afloat in the tomb!

 O heart of my mother, my sister, mine own,

 Thou art given to Nile, to the terror Typhon!

 Ah me! but the glory of ravening storm

 Enswathes thee and wraps thee in frenzy of form.

 Be still, O my soul! that the spell may dissolve

 As the wands are upraised, and the æons revolve.

 Behold! in my beauty how joyous Thou art,

 O Snake that caresses the crown of mine heart!

 Behold! we are one, and the tempest of years

 Goes down to the dusk, and the Beetle appears.

 O Beetle! the drone of Thy dolorous note

 Be ever the trance of this tremulous throat!

 I await the awaking!   The summons on high

 From the Lord Adonai, from the Lord Adonai!

Invocation of Kundalini

The adept ``dies'' to the natural world and blooms as a Lotus.  He ceases: and enters the midnight silence where he adores Khephra.  Then he awaits  the coming of his Lord.

______________________________________________________________

 2.  Adonai spake unto V.V.V.V.V., saying: There must

ever be division in the word.

 3.  For the colours are many, but the light is one.

 4.  Therefore thou writest that which is of mother of

emerald, and of lapislazuli, and of turquoise, and of alexan-

drite.

 5.  Another writeth the words of topaz, and of deep

amethyst, and of gray sapphire, and of deep sapphire

with a tinge as of blood.

 6.  Therefore do ye fret yourselves because of this.

 7.  Be not contented with the image.

 8.  I who am the Image of an Image say this.

 9.  Debate not of the image, saying Beyond! Beyond!

  One mounteth unto the Crown by the moon and by

the Sun, and by the arrow, and by the Foundation, and

by the dark home of the stars from the black earth.

10.  Not otherwise may ye reach unto the Smooth Point.

11.  Nor is it fitting for the cobbler to prate of the Royal

matter.  O cobbler! mend me this shoe, that I may walk.

 O king! if I be thy son, let us speak of the Embassy to

the King thy Brother.

The Angel says:  Each men sees Nature in his own particular way.  What he sees is only an image.  All images must be ignored; the adept must aspire singleheartedly to the Smooth Point.  This matter cannot be discussed in common language; the king must speak of kingly things in a kingly way.

______________________________________________________________

12.  Then was there silence.  Speech had done with us

awhile.

  There is a light so strenuous that it is not perceived

as light.

Silence.  The Adept reports his impressions.  (a) The highest degree of any given kind of energy surpasses the receptive power of the observer.  This it appears as if of some other order.

______________________________________________________________

13.  Wolf's bane is not so sharp as steel; yet it pierceth the

 	body more subtly.

The subtler the form of energy, the more potent, but it is less easily observed.

______________________________________________________________

14.  Even as evil kisses corrupt the blood, so do my words

devour the  spirit of man.

Truth destroys the reason.

______________________________________________________________

15.  I breathe, and there is infinite disease in the spirit.

Life disturbs the placidity of the mind's acceptance of dead symbols as reality.

______________________________________________________________

16.  As an acid eats into steel, as a cancer that utterly

corrupts the body; so am I unto the spirit of man.

The Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel gives a new and higher form of energy which destroys the grosser types of exis-tence.

______________________________________________________________

17.  I shall not rest until I have dissolved it all.

The process continues until complete.

______________________________________________________________

18.  So also the light that is absorbed.  One absorbs little

and is called white and glistening; one absorbs all and is

called black.

Phenomena result from resistance to ``love.''  Perfect union is silent.

______________________________________________________________

19.  Therefore, O my darling, art thou black.

20.  O my beautiful, I have likened thee to a jet Nubian

slave, a boy of melancholy eyes.

21.  O the filthy one! the dog! they cry against thee.

Because thou art my beloved.

V.V.V.V.V. being perfectly Adeptus Minor appears evil.

______________________________________________________________

22.  Happy are they that praise thee; for they see thee with

Mine eyes.

Those who understand all this Work praise V.V.V.V.V.

______________________________________________________________

23.  Not aloud shall they praise thee; but in the night watch one

shall steal close, and grip thee with the secret grip;

another shall privily cast a crown of violets over thee; a

third shall greatly dare, and press mad lips to thine.

24.  Yea! the night shall cover all, the night shall cover all.

They do so in secret ways.

______________________________________________________________

25.  Thou wast long seeking Me; thou didst run forward so

fast that I was unable to come up with thee.

   O thou darling fool! what bitterness thou didst crown

thy days withal.

Perdurabo hindered his own success by over eagerness.

______________________________________________________________

26.  Now I am with thee; I will never leave thy being.

27.  For I am the soft sinuous one entwined about thee, heart

of gold!

Union once made is permanent.

______________________________________________________________

28.  My head is jewelled with twelve stars; My body is white

as milk of the stars; it is bright with the blue of the

abyss of stars invisi-ble.

The Angel is crowned with the Zodiac.  His body is that of Nuit.

______________________________________________________________

29.  I have found that which could not be found; I have

found a vessel of quicksilver.

Stability has been found on a basis of change.

______________________________________________________________

30.  Thou shalt instruct thy servant in his ways, thou shalt

speak often with him.

Seems an injunction to the Holy Guardian Angel to keep in close touch with the Adept.

______________________________________________________________

31.  (The scribe looketh upwards and crieth) Amen!   Thou

hast spoken it, Lord God!

The Adept accepts this as a definite promise.

______________________________________________________________

32.  Further Adonai spake unto V.V.V.V.V. and said:

33.  Let us take our delight in the multitude of men!

  Let us shape unto ourselves a boat of motherofpearl

from them, that we may ride upon the river of Amrit!

Proposal to view phenomena from the new standpoint.

______________________________________________________________

34.  Thou seest yon petal of amaranth, blown by the wind

from the low sweet brows of Hathor?

35.  (The Magister saw it and rejoiced in the beauty of it.)

Listen!

36.  (From a certain world came an infinite wail.)

  That falling petal seemed to the little ones a wave to

engulph their continent.

Two points of view:  as a girl's smile involves the death of many cells in her body.

______________________________________________________________

37.  So they will reproach thy servant, saying: Who hath set

thee to save us?

The above explains why men should resent their savior.  They misinter-pret his acts as destructive.

______________________________________________________________

38.  He will be sore distressed.

He in his human mind, is distressed at this.

______________________________________________________________

39.  All they understand not that thou and I are fashioning a

boat of motherofpearl.  We will sail down the river of

Amrit even to the yewgroves of Yama, where we may

rejoice exceedingly.

40.  The joy of men shall be our silver gleam, their woe our

blue gleam--all in the motherofpearl.

But the whole relation is illusion.  In reality the Angel and the Adept are simply arranging to sail through eternity together; the Work of the Adept in redeeming Mankind is only an image seen as he fashions his motherofpearl.

______________________________________________________________

41.  (The scribe was wroth thereat.   He spake:

        O Adonai and my master, I have borne the inkhorn

and the pen without pay, in order that I might search

this river of Amrit, and sail thereon as one of ye.   This

I demand for my fee, that I partake of the echo of your

kisses.)

42.  (And immediately it was granted unto him.)

The human mind demands to be relieved of its sorrow by seeing Nature in this light on the ground that it has served the Masters with unselfish devotion.

______________________________________________________________

43.  (Nay; but not therewith was he content.  By an infinite

 	abasement unto shame did he strive.  Then a voice:)

44.  Thou strivest ever; even in thy yielding thou strivest to

yield--and lo! thou yieldest not.

45.  Go thou unto the outermost places and subdue all things.

46.  Subdue thy fear and thy disgust.   Then--yield!

The mind demanded complete relief.

______________________________________________________________

47.  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.

48.  Even instantly rode Hades heavily upon her, and ravished her

away.

Persephone, the earthbound soul.  Corn = material nourishment; its result is sorrow.

Narcissus = the sexual instinct flowering as Beauty.

Instantly the soul forgets the ``corn'' and desires the flower, Hades comes and carries her off.  Hades is the lord of ``Hell,'' i.e. the dark and secret but divine Soul within every man and woman.  The rape thus means that the desire for Beauty awakes the Unconscious Self who then takes possession of the Soul, and enthrones her, only allowing her return to earth (Knowledge of the material world) at certain seasons, in order to attend to the welfare of mankind.

______________________________________________________________

49.  (Then the scribe knew the narcissus in his heart; but

because it came not to his lips, therefore was he shamed and 	spake

 no more.)

I was seized by the impulse to adore Beauty, and felt ashamed at my inability to write a poem on the spot which should be worthy of the theme.

______________________________________________________________

(50-58)  An elaborate Parable in dialogue:

50.  Adonai spake yet again with V.V.V.V.V. and said:

        The earth is ripe for vintage; let us eat of her grapes,

and be drunken thereon.

The Angel bids the Adept rejoice in certain events which are about to occur on earth.

______________________________________________________________

51.  And V.V.V.V.V. answered and said: O my lord, my

dove, my excellent one, how shall this word seem unto

the children of men?

The Adept doubts whether his doctrine will be understood rightly by mankind.

______________________________________________________________

52.  And He answered him: Not as thou canst see.

        It is certain that every letter of this cipher hath some

value; but who shall determine the value?   For it varieth

ever, according to the subtlety of Him that made it.

The Angel agrees; but is more sceptical still, suggesting that any event may be taken as meaning anything one chooses.

______________________________________________________________

53.  And He answered Him: Have I not the key thereof?

        I am clothed with the body of flesh; I am one with the

Eternal and Omnipotent God.

The Adept claims to be able to interpret phenomena rightly; that there is one special relation which is true, and all others false.  He reminds the Angel that he realises Himself (as an unique Being always identical with Itself) alike in the lowest matter and the highest spirit.

______________________________________________________________

54.  Then said Adonai: Thou hast the Head of the Hawk,

and thy Phallus is the Phallus of Asar.  Thou knowest the

white, and thou knowest the black, and thou knowest that

these are one.  But why seekest thou the knowledge of their

equivalence?

The Angel asks why one who possesses absolute Sight and Lordship and power to soar (the Head of the Hawk) who has creative energy able to fertilize Nature, his mother, sister, and wife (The Phallus of Asar) one who knows the pairs of opposites, and the fact of their identity, should trouble to calculate the equations which express the relations between the illusory symbols of diversity.

______________________________________________________________

55.  And he said: That my Work may be right.

The Adept replies that he must understand the laws of illusion in order to work in the world of illusion.

______________________________________________________________

56.  And Adonai said: The strong brown reaper swept his

swathe and rejoiced.  The wise man counted his muscles,

and pondered, and understood not, and was sad.

       Reap thou, and rejoice!

The Angel replies that such calculations lead one to believe in the reality of the illusions, to become confused by their complex falsi-ties, and ultimately, mistrusting one's own powers, to fail to act for fear of making mistakes; whereas it does not really matter what one does, since one set of illusions is just as good as another.  The business of the Adept is to do his Work manfully and joyously, without lust of result or fear of acci-dent.  He should exercise his faculties to the full; the free fulfilment of their functions is sufficient justification.  To become conscious of any organ is evidence that it is out of order.

______________________________________________________________

57.  Then was the Adept glad, and lifted his arm.

       Lo! an earthquake, and plague, and terror on the

earth!

        A casting down of them that sate in high places; a

famine upon the multitude!

The Adept takes this advice, and puts forth his energy.  The apparent result of his Work is disaster.

______________________________________________________________

58.  And the grape fell ripe and rich into his mouth.

But the whole idea of his relation with Mankind as a Redeemer proves phantasmagoric.  The truth of the matter is that he has ``eaten a grape.'' i.e. begun to enjoy the banquet with his Angel proposed in Verse 50.  (Cf. CCXX, I, 31)>

______________________________________________________________

59.  Stained is the purple of thy mouth, O brilliant one, with

the white glory of the lips of Adonai.

Every act of the Adept is really the kiss of his Angel.

______________________________________________________________

60.  The foam of the grape is like the storm upon the sea; the

ships tremble and shudder; the shipmaster is afraid.

The ecstasy of the relation between the Adept and his Angel disperses ``normal'' thoughts; the Ego fears to lose control of the course of the mind.  This (of course) occurs in a less real sphere, that of normal consciousness.  The Ego is justly appre-hensive, for this ecstasy will lead to a situation when its annihilation will be decreed so that the Adept may cross the Abyss and become a Master of the Temple.  Remember that the Ego is not really the centre and crown of the individual; indeed the whole trouble arises from its false claim to be so.

______________________________________________________________

61.  That is thy drunkenness, O holy one, and the winds

whirl away the soul of the scribe into the happy haven.

The ecsatsy of the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel brings peace to ``the soul of the scribe'' (his conscious mind) by impressing such energy on his thoughts that their normal conflict (which causes sorrow) becomes negligible, just as the personal antagon-isms in a cavalry regiment are forgotten in the excitement of a change.

______________________________________________________________

62.  O Lord God! let the haven be cast down by the fury of

the storm!  Let the foam of the grape tincture my soul

with Thy light!

But the mind, knowing that the old quarrels will revive when the

ecstasy has passed, asks that this anaesthesia may be removed.  It aspires to enter into the rapture with every element of its being, no matter of the pain.  It knows that it can never be truly content until each separate fibre thrill harmoniously to that supreme enchantment.

______________________________________________________________

63.  Bacchus grew old, and was Silenus; Pan was ever Pan

for ever and ever more throughout the æons.

It knows that the lower types of intoxication were excitements, and in stupor and senility.  It demands the Madness of Pan, the building up of every particle of its being into a single symbol to include All.  This symbol is to combine the intelligence (omni-science) of Man with the omnipotence typified by horns, and the creative rapture of the leaping Goat.  This Pan is not intoxicated, but wholly insane, being beyond distinction (know-ledge) as including all in itself; he is also immune to time, since whatever happens can only be within himself; that is, all events are equally the exercise of his functions, and therefore accompanied by rapture, since He has included all possibilities in His unity so that any change is part of His life, an act of love under will.

______________________________________________________________

64.  Intoxicate the inmost, O my lover, not the outermost!

This is presumably once more the voice of the Angel.  He bids the Adept pay less attention in the future to the transmutation of gross impres-sions into the raptures of union.  The greater work is to cause the Unconscious to interpenetrate with the Angel.  For such is the ultimate Sacrament[. it?] is only too liable to be contented with the conscious joy of causing just those  thoughts which have always been the source of error to glow with purity and splendour at the touch of the Angel.  But it is far more important to renounce those rewards, ineffably holy and delight-ful though they be in order to perfect the Inmost Self, to purge it of personality and unite it with the Universe, though such Attain-ment lie too deep for direct conscious apprehension.

______________________________________________________________

65.  So was it--ever the same!   I have aimed at the peeled

wand of my God, and I have hit; yea, I have hit.

In a secret code the Adept affirms that he is of the same vox; (so to speak) as his Angel.  It is not a union of opposites to produce a Tertium quid, but a realization of identity, like the return to consciousness from delirium, whose ecstasy bears no fruit involving new responsibilities, new possibilities of sorrow, but is allsuf-ficient to itself, with neither past nor future.

The ``peeled wand'' is the creative Energy of the Angel, stripped of all veils, pointing to the Zenith, ready and eager to act.  The Adept exclaims with joy that he has aspired to unite himself with this Idea, and has attained.

This concludes the description of the relations of the Adept and his Angel so far as the element of Earth, the concrete and manifest aspect of Nature, is concerned.  The whole illusion has been destroyed; the bread has become the body of God.  Yet this is but the lowest form of existence; in the next chapter we shall understand how the mind  as distinct from the matter of thought is concentrated and sanctified by the Magick of the Angel.

CHAPTER II

The previous chapter describes the effect wrought by the Know-ledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel upon the outward appearances of things and the sensations caused within the corresponding part of the Soul, Nephesch.  We now turn to the element of Air, the faculties called Ruach, that is, the mind, considered as an instrument of intellectual apprehension, a machine proper to the analysis of impres-sions and their interpen-etration in terms of conscious thought.  The Work of attaining to the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel being in Tiphareth, the Centre of the Ruach, the result of success is to harmonise, concentrate, and glorify the medley of loose ideas which are suggested by the meaningless multiplicity of mental concepts.

______________________________________________________________

 1.  I passed into the mountain of lapislazuli, even as a green

hawk between the pillars of turquoise that is seated upon

the throne of the East.

Describes the passage of the Divine Consciousness (the Hawk), coloured by love (green), into the world of starry space (lapis lazuli, which is blue with specks of gold) by a balanced path from earth to heaven (the pillars of turquoise).  The East is the quarter attributed to Air, and the Hawk is there "seated" stable, not to be distracted by whatever thoughts arise in the mind.

______________________________________________________________

 2.  So came I to Duant, the starry abode, and I heard voices

crying aloud.

Being now open to the whole Universe, the Soul hears whatever is spoken (air is the vehicle of sound).                             ______________________________________________________________

 3.  O Thou that sittest upon the Earth! (so spake a certain

Veiled One to me) thou art not greater than thy mother! Thou

speck of dust infinitesimal!

        Thou art the Lord of Glory, and the unclean dog.

A "Veiled One" (Isis) explains that no individual consciousness can be more than the sphere of which it is born and which con-stitutes its environment.  It is equally supreme and vile, these qualities being illusions produced by artificial relations, which may be chosen at will.

______________________________________________________________

 4.  Stooping down, dipping my wings, I came unto the darkly

 splendid abodes.  There in that formless abyss was I made a

partaker of the Mysteries Averse.

The Godhead, in order to realize itself, must involuntarily

submit to undergo the experience of imperfection.  It must take

the Sacrament which unites it with the dark glamour of "Evil,"

the counterpart of that which exalts the "Sinner" to Godhead.

_____________________________________________________________

 5.  I suffered the deadly embrace of the Snake and of the Goat;

I paid the infernal homage to the shame of Khem.

It accepts the formulae of:

(a)	Duality; life as vibration.

           (a1)Death.

      (a2)The illusion of Knowledge.

 (b)	 Exile.

      (b1)The Hunger of Lust.

      (b2)Labour.

It acquiesces in the shame of being a God concealed in animal form.

______________________________________________________________

 6.  Therein was this virtue, that the One became the all.

The object of this act is to realize the possibilities of one's unity by representing its wholeness as an infinite number of particular cases, just as one might try to get an idea of the meaning of "poetry" by studying all available poems.  None of these can be more than one imperfect illustration of the abstract idea; yet only through these concrete images can one get any understand-ing of what it means.

______________________________________________________________

 7.  Moreover I beheld a vision of a river.  There was a little

boat thereon; and in it under purple sails was a golden

woman, an image of Asi wrought in finest gold.  Also the

river was of blood, and the boat of shining steel.  Then I

loved her; and, loosing my girdle, cast myself into the

stream.

The river is the stream of thought.  The boat is the conscious-ness.  The purple sails are the passions that direct its course, and the woman is the pure Ideal which one seeks to make the constant occupant and the guiding principle of one's conscious life.  Thus "woman," though of gold, is only a lifeless image.  The river is of blood; that is, the current of thought must be identified with the object of one's life, not a mere medium for reflecting every casual impression.  The boat is of steel; that is, the consciousness must be able to resist the intrusion of all undesired thoughts.

Loving this ideal, the Aspirant frees himself from all that binds him (shame, selfishness, etc.  "loosing my girdle") and loses his ego in Thought itself (cast myself into the stream).

    ______________________________________________________________

 8.  I gathered myself into the little boat, and for many days

and nights did I love her, burning beautiful incense before

her.

He identifies himself with pure consciousness, immune from, yet floating upon, the course of Thought, and devotes himself to this Ideal, with poetical and religious fervour.

______________________________________________________________

 9.  Yea!  I gave her of the flower of my youth.

He consecrates his creative energy to the Ideal.

______________________________________________________________

10.  But she stirred not; only by my kisses I defiled her so that

she turned to blackness before me.

This process destroys the superficial beauty of the Ideal.  Its purity is corrupted by the contact of mortality.

______________________________________________________________

11.  Yet I worshipped her, and gave her of the flower of my

youth.

Despite the disappointment, the Aspirant persists in "love under will."  He gives himself up utterly to Truth, even now when it seems so dark and dreadful.

______________________________________________________________

12.  Also it came to pass, that thereby she sickened, and

corrupted before me.  Almost I cast myself into the stream.

The Ideal now breaks up into loathsome forms, no longer recogniz-able as the object of his love.  He is tempted to abandon her, and to seek refuge from Consciousness by drowning himself in those distracting thoughts which surround him.

______________________________________________________________

13.  Then at the end appointed her body was whiter than the milk

of the stars, and her lips red and warm as the sunset, and

her life of a white heat like the heat of the midmost sun.

This despair suddenly vanishes.  His ideal appears in its true form, a living woman instead of a dead image of gold.  His substance is now purer than starlight itself; her lips  the instruments of her speech and her caresses  are full of life and warmth as the sunset  they promise repose, love and Beauty (Hathor, goddess of the West).  She is alive with the pure energy of the centre of the system to which the Aspirant belongs; she is the realization of the creative idea of which he has till now been only one part.

______________________________________________________________

14.  Then rose she up from the abyss of Ages of Sleep, and her

body embraced me.  Altogether I melted into her beauty and

was glad.

The darkness of the past disappears as his Ideal possesses the Aspir-ant; and his Ego dissolves in the ecstasy of union with Her; he becomes the essence of all Joy.

______________________________________________________________

15.  The river also became the river of Amrit, and the little

boat was the chariot of the flesh, and the sails thereof the

blood of the heart that beareth me, that beareth me.

Now then do his thoughts themselves become immortal; his con-sciousness is understood to be the vehicle of his physical life   instead of viceversa, as the uninitiate supposes.  His passions are no longer symptoms of discontent, but identical with his individual life.  There is thus no conflict with Nature. The Will is itself the Self.

______________________________________________________________

16.  O serpent woman of the stars!  I, even I, have fashioned

Thee from a pale image of fine gold.

My own conception of Nuit is the result of the Magical Operation which I performed to give life to the ideal which I originally had in my heart, adored, and resolved to realise.   The whole passage describes the process of dealing with any given idea so as to bring it to perfection.

______________________________________________________________

17.  Also the Holy One came upon me, and I beheld a white swan

floating in the blue.

The swan is the ecstatic Consciousness of the Adept.  It is poised in infinite  space, supported by Air  the medium of thought.

______________________________________________________________

18.  Between its wings I sate, and the æons fled away.

In Ecstasy time does not count.

______________________________________________________________

19.  Then the swan flew and dived and soared, yet no whither we

went.

The Ecstasy moves from one sublimity of Joy to another; but there is no progress possible in perfection, therefore no aim to be attained by such movements.

______________________________________________________________

20.  A little crazy boy that rode with me spake unto the swan,

and said:

The boy is the human reason, which demands measurement as the first condition of intelligible consciousness.  Aware of time, he cannot understand why all this motion has not brought the swan nearer to some fixed point, or how the relation of the point of origin to its present position is not an everpresent anxiety.  He cannot conceive of motion without reference to fixed axes.

__________-____________________________________________________

21.  Who art thou that dost float and fly and dive and soar in

the inane?  Behold, these many æons have passed; whence

camest thou?  Whither wilt thou go?

22.  And laughing I chid him, saying: No whence!  No whither!

I reply that, apprehending the continuum (Nuit) as such, no "space-marks" exist.

______________________________________________________________

23.  The swan being silent, he answered: Then, if with no goal,

why this eternal journey?

The swan is of course silent: Ecstasy transcends expression. Reason asks the motive of motion, in the absence of all destina-tion.

______________________________________________________________

24.  And I laid my head against the Head of the Swan, and

laughed, saying: Is there not joy ineffable in this aimless

winging?  Is there not weariness and impatience for who

would attain to some goal?

The Adept bringing this thought close to Ecstasy, laughs, both for pure joy, and as amused by the incongruous absurdities of "ration-al" argu-ments from which he is now for ever free, expres-ses his idea thus: Thus free exercise of some object thereby, it would imply the pain of desire, the strain of effort, and the fear of failure.

______________________________________________________________

25.  And the swan was ever silent.  Ah! but we floated in the

infinite Abyss.   Joy!   Joy!

        White swan, bear thou ever me up between thy wings!

Ecstasy remains undisturbed.  But the dialogue has caused the Adept to reflect more deeply on his state of bliss, so that the Ecstasy becomes motionless, realising its perfect relation to the Infinity of the continuum.

The Adept demands that ecstasy shall be constant.

______________________________________________________________

26.  O silence!   O rapture!   O end of things visible and

invisible! This is all mine, who am Not.

Silence ends the imperfection implied in speech  all words being evidence of duality, of a breach in Perfection.

Rapture: the end of the conflict between any two things; they are dissolved by Love; and, losing the sense of the Ego which caused the pain of feeling its separateness from the All, its imperfec-tion, the release from strain is expressed as rapture.

"O end of all things visible and invisible!"  This not only means that all things  being imperfect  are destroyed, but that this is their true end  their perfection.

"This is all mine, who am Not." The Adept is now possessed of all things, being come to the state called "Not" which contains them all, and of which they are merely images.

So long as he was a positive Ego, he was one of them, and opposed to them; they were not his.  To make them his he must become the continuum in which all things exist potentially as members of any series that may be selected to illustrate any desired properties of its Nature.

______________________________________________________________

27.  Radiant God!   Let me fashion an image of gems and gold for

Thee! that the people may cast it down and trample it to

dust!  That Thy glory may be seen of them.

The Adept is moved to manifest the Godhead which he has beheld by means of poetry.  He foresees that the vulgar will be enraged, despise his books and stamp them under foot; but by their thus acting, their eyes will be opened to the glory of the God.  This may mean that my work may reawaken real religious fervour in those who have lost all faith and vision; their wrath against me will arouse them to realize that at the bottom of their hearts there is the instinct that they are spiritual beings.

______________________________________________________________

28.  Nor shall it be spoken in the markets that I am come who

should come; but Thy coming shall be the one word.

My religious work will not result in my being acknowledged as the Redeemer: but men will admit that the Spirit of the Sun God Horus has breathed upon them and infused their clay with life.

______________________________________________________________

29.  Thou shalt manifest Thyself in the unmanifest; in the secret

places men shall meet with thee, and Thou shalt overcome

them.

Horus will be recognised as the explanation of all those energies of the Universe which we know must exist, although our senses cannot perceive them.

Men shall perceive Horus when they explore the mysteries of Nature  the Unconscious in Man, or the structure of the Atom.  He shall compel them to admit that He is the ultimate principle underlying all manifes-tation, against their old theories.

(The exact meaning of "Horus" in this passage must be drawn from CCXX Cap; III.)

______________________________________________________________

30.  I saw a pale sad boy that lay upon the marble in the

sunlight, and wept.  By his side was the forgotten lute.

Ah! but he wept.

(30-36)  The Boy is Ganymede, the eagle, the bird of Jupiter.  Here he is an image of the Adept.

(30)  He is pale, as having given his blood to his Work.  He is sad, as understanding the Sorrow of the Universe. (His Work has itself made him aware of this).  He is lying down, as weary and in doubt whether it be worth while to work.  He is on the marble; that is, the hard bare facts of existence, despite all polish, hurt his flesh.  He is in the sunlight; he sees only too clearly into Nature.  His Angel shines upon him, but from inaccessible heights.  He weeps; he whose duty is to pour wine for the Gods, can but shed forth salt water upon the bare ground.  He has laid down and even forgotten his lute.  He cannot make music; he has even lost the memory that he could do so of old.

______________________________________________________________

31.  Then came an eagle from the abyss of glory and overshadowed

him.  So black was the shadow that he was no more visible.

The Eagle symbolizes the influence of the Father of the Gods, also the highest form of Magical Life, and the Lordship of Air; the power to rule the world of thoughts.  This overshadows him so as to conceal his personality from sight.

______________________________________________________________

32.  But I heard the lute lively discoursing through the blue

still air.

Thus inspired, he resumes his music joyfully; the air itself becomes still, that is, no thoughts disturb him, and it is blue, being filled with the spirit of holiness, love and purity.

______________________________________________________________

33.  Ah! messenger of the beloved One, let Thy shadow be over me!

The Adept invokes the Word of his Angel to silence all personal thoughts.

______________________________________________________________

34.  Thy name is Death, it may be, or Shame, or Love.

        So thou bringest me tidings of the Beloved One, I shall

not ask thy name.

He will accept this in whatever form it may appear; whether death itself be necessary to end the annoyance of the Ego, or Disgrace to make it ashamed to assert itself, or Love to destroy its ambitions.

______________________________________________________________

35.  Where is now the Master? cry the little crazy boys.

        He is dead!  He is shamed!  He is wedded! and their

mockery shall ring round the world.

His "rational" prejudices will presumably ask  in such a case  "What of your magical ambitions?  You are not the Master that you wanted to be; you are simply the slave of this Angel of yours  whatever that may mean  your personality smothered, your ambitions crushed, your sole occupation to echo his remarks, of which you do not even approve."

"You have destroyed your Self; you have earned the abuse of your friends; you have abandoned your career, and tied yourself to a woman's whims."

______________________________________________________________

36.  But the Master shall have had his reward.

        The laughter of the mockers shall be a ripple in the hair

of the Beloved One.

The Adept admits that his body and mind, left to their fate, have met with those disasters.  But the intimacy with his Angel to attain which he deliberately dismissed all care of his personal affairs justifies his conduct; and the reproaches of his intel-lectual ideas are not realised as such: they are to him a stirring of the hair of the Beloved One (radiant energies of the in-dividuality of the Angel) that is, they call his attention to one of His Glories.

______________________________________________________________

(37-44)  This passage is a parable with several applications:

1. It describes the method of attaining Concentration by "the Ladders" (See Liber Aleph).

2. It indicates how to deal with people whom one wishes to initiate.

3. It gives a method for passing from one state of mind to another at Will.

The main idea in all three matters is that one must apply the appropri-ate remedy to whatever malady may actually exist, not some ideally perfect medicine.

The first matter must be brought step by step through each stage of the process; it is useless to try to obtain the Perfect Tincture from it by making the Final Projection.

4. It describes the whole course of Initiation.

These four meanings demand detailed exposition, verse by verse.

DEMONSTRATION I:

Application of the First [interpretive] Principle.

37.  Behold! the Abyss of the Great Deep.  Therein is a mighty

dolphin, lashing his sides with the force of the waves.

The Abyss is the Mind; the Dolphin the uneasy Consciousness.

______________________________________________________________

38.  There is also an harper of gold, playing infinite tunes.

The harper is the teacher whose praise of the Path of the Wise induces the profane to seek initiation; he is the Guru who stills the mind by making it listen to harmonious sounds, instead of torturing itself by thinking of its pains and its passions.  These sounds are produced by mechanical means; they refer to practices like Asana, etc.

______________________________________________________________

39.  Then the dolphin delighted therein, and put off his body,

and became a bird.

Freed from its grossness and violence, the consciousness aspires to lofty ideals.  It is, however, unable to keep quiet, and has little intelligence.  It is trained by hearing the harmony of life  breath inspiring a reed, instead of muscle agitating metal. This refers to Pranayama, but also to apprehending that inspiration is in itself more fluttering; it must learn the art of using every breath to produce harmony.

______________________________________________________________

40.  The harper also laid aside his harp, and played infinite

tunes upon the Panpipe.

41.  Then the bird desired exceedingly this bliss, and laying

down its wings became a faun of the forest.

42.  The harper also laid down his Panpipe, and with the human

voice sang his infinite tunes.

The consciousness now acquires divine and human completeness. The faun symbolized firm aspiration, creative power, and human intelligence. The wings of ideal longing are laid down; the thought accepts the fact of its true nature, and aims only at possible perfections.

It now hears the harmony of the Universe as expressed in the human voice; that is, as articulate and intelligible, so that every vibra-tion, besides its power to delight the senses, appeals to the soul.  This represents the stage of concentration when, being fixes in meditation upon any subject, one penetrates the superficial aspect and attempts to reach its reality, the true meaning of its relation with the observer.

_______________-_______________________________________________

43.  Then the faun was enraptured, and followed far; at last the

harper was silent, and the faun became Pan in the midst of

the primal forest of Eternity.

The final stage is reached.  All possible positives are known to be errors from the Negative.  There is Silence.  Then the faun becomes the All.  Gone is the limited forest of secondary ideas in which he once dwelt, and left in order to follow the Word that enchanted him.  He is now in the world of Ideas whose nature is simple (primal) and are not determined by such conditions as Time.

(A tree is an idea, being phallic and bearing branches.)

______________________________________________________________

44.  Thou canst not charm the dolphin with silence, O my prophet!

Practice Elementary Yoga until you are perfect: do not try to attain Nibbana till you know how.

Application of the Second [Interpretive] Principle.

37.  Behold! the Abyss of the Great Deep.  Therein is a mighty

dolphin, lashing his sides with the force of the waves.

38.  There is also an harper of gold, playing infinite tunes.

Men are ruled by pride and other passions.

______________________________________________________________

39.  Then the dolphin delighted therein, and put off his body,

and became a bird.

40.  The harper also laid aside his harp, and played infinite

tunes upon the Panpipe.

When taught to aspire, and clean of the baser appetites, teach

them the seven sciences.

______________________________________________________________

41.  Then the bird desired exceedingly this bliss, and laying

down its wings became a faun of the forest.

42.  The harper also laid down his Panpipe, and with the human

voice sang his infinite tunes.

Having instructed them till they are really complete and ready for true initiation, tell them Truth.

______________________________________________________________

43.  Then the faun was enraptured, and followed far; at last the

harper was silent, and the faun became Pan in the midst of

the primal forest of Eternity.

Once they are on the Path, be silent; they will naturally come to Attainment.

______________________________________________________________

44.  Thou canst not charm the dolphin with silence, O my prophet!

Many are the virtues of Silence: but who so is vowed to help men

must teach them the Next Step.

Application of the Third [Interpretive] Principle.

37.  Behold! the Abyss of the Great Deep.  Therein is a mighty

dolphin, lashing his sides with the force of the waves.

The dolphin signifies any state of mind that is uneasy, ill content, and unable to escape from its surroundings.

______________________________________________________________

38.  There is also an harper of gold, playing infinite tunes.

Cure this by reflecting that it is the material of Beauty, just

as Macbeth's character, Timon's misfortunes, etc., gave

Shakespeare his chance.  Make your own trouble serve your sense

of your own life as a sublime drama.

______________________________________________________________

39.  Then the dolphin delighted therein, and put off his body,

and became a bird.

Your thought will thus become lyrical; but this will not satisfy your need. You will feel the transitory nature of such a thought.

______________________________________________________________

40.  The harper also laid aside his harp, and played infinite

tunes upon the Panpipe.

Transform it by looking at it as a necessary and important fact in the framework of the Universe.

______________________________________________________________

41.  Then the bird desired exceedingly this bliss, and laying

down its wings became a faun of the forest.

The lyrical exaltation will now pass into a deep realization of yourself and all that concerns you as an Inhabitant of Nature, contain-ing in your own consciousness the elements of the Divine, and the Bestial, both equally necessary to the Wholeness of the Universe.  Your original discomfort of mind will now appear as pleasant, since, lacking that experience, you would have been eternally the poorer.

______________________________________________________________

42.  The harper also laid down his Panpipe, and with the human

voice sang his infinite tunes.

Now interpret that experience "as a particular dealing of God with your soul." Discover an articulate explanation of it: compel it to furnish an intelligible message.

______________________________________________________________

43.  Then the faun was enraptured, and followed far; at last the

harper was silent, and the faun became Pan in the midst of

the primal forest of Eternity.

Follow up this train of thought until you enter into Rapture, caused by the recognition of the fact that you  and all else  are ecstatic expressions of a sublime Spiritual spasm, elements of an omniform Eucharist.  Truth, no matter how splendid, will now lose all meaning for you.  It belongs to a world where discrimina-tion between Subject and Predicate is possible, which implies imperfec-tion; and you are risen above it.  You thus become Pan, the All; no longer a part.  You thrill with the joy of the lust of creation, become a virgin goddess for your sake.  Also, you are insane, sanity being the state which holds things in proper proportion; while you have dissolved all in your own being, in ecstasy beyond all measure.

______________________________________________________________

44.  Thou canst not charm the dolphin with silence, O my prophet!

Do not attempt to cure a fit of melancholy by lofty ideas: such will seem absurd, and you will only deepen your despair.

Application of the Fourth [Interpretive] Principle.

37.  Behold! the Abyss of the Great Deep.  Therein is a mighty

dolphin, lashing his sides with the force of the waves.

The dolphin is the profane.

______________________________________________________________

38.  There is also an harper of gold, playing infinite tunes.

39.  Then the dolphin delighted therein, and put off his body,

and became a bird.

Realizing his evil state, and delighting in the prospects offered by initiation, he renounces all and becomes a pure Aspirant.

______________________________________________________________

40.  The harper also laid aside his harp, and played infinite

tunes upon the Panpipe.

He learns that the Adept is not a perfection of what he feels to

_______________________________________________________________

41.  Then the bird desired exceedingly this bliss, and laying

down its wings became a faun of the forest.

He completes the formation of himself as an image of the All.

______________________________________________________________

42.  The harper also laid down his Panpipe, and with the human

voice sang his infinite tunes.

43.  Then the faun was enraptured, and followed far; at last the

harper was silent, and the faun became Pan in the midst of

the primal forest of Eternity.

He then understands all Things, and at last becomes the All.

______________________________________________________________

44.  Thou canst not charm the dolphin with silence, O my prophet!

The profane cannot imagine what the Masters mean when they work with those nearest to them.

(45-49)  This passage describes the Adept's reaction to Rapture.  The main point is that all articulate description is futile.

45.  Then the adept was rapt away in bliss, and the beyond of

bliss, and exceeded the excess of excess.

Extravagant phrases attempt to record the Event.

______________________________________________________________

46.  Also his body shook and staggered with the burden of that

bliss and that excess and that ultimate nameless.

The Physical body, its nerves trying to react sympathetically to the experience, and being charged beyond their capacity is striking.

47.  They cried He is drunk or He is mad or He is in pain or He

 	is about to die; and he heard them not.

The observer (others, or his own rational mind) misunderstands what is happening.

______________________________________________________________

48.  O my Lord, my beloved!  How shall I indite songs, when even

the memory of the shadow of thy glory is a thing beyond all

music of speech or of silence?

All this is altogether beyond expression.

______________________________________________________________

49.  Behold!  I am a man.  Even a little child might not endure

Thee.  And lo!

Even the innocence of a child could not endure the impact of the Angel.  A man, having fixed ideas of truth, finds it terrible when they are all shattered, as they are in this experience. See verse 20.

______________________________________________________________

50.  I was alone in a great park, and by a certain hillock was a

ring of deep enamelled grass wherein greenclad ones, most

beautiful, played.

The park is the world of wellplanted and carefully tended Ideas: such as the scholar and the Man of Letters enjoy.  Here I found a place where I could exalt myself (the hillock).  Thereby was a ring (my poetry) in which were fairies (my character, my phrases, my rhythm, etc.).

______________________________________________________________

51.  In their play I came even unto the land of Fairy Sleep.

        All my thoughts were clad in green; most beautiful were

they.

Playing thus, I reach a state of poetic ecstasy (Fairy Sleep).  Here I was happy.

______________________________________________________________

52.  All night they danced and sang; but Thou art the morning, O

my darling, my serpent that twinest Thee about this heart.

But all this took place during the night: my highest poetic rapture is as darkness to the light of the Knowledge and Conver-sation of the Holy Guardian Angel.

______________________________________________________________

53.  I am the heart, and Thou the serpent.  Wind Thy coils closer

about me, so that no light nor bliss may penetrate.

I am the feminine sense that accepts the embrace of the male H.G.A..  I demand closer contact: even the light and bliss of Rapture distract me from the Union with him.

______________________________________________________________

54.  Crush out the blood of me, as a grape upon the tongue of a

white Doric girl that languishes with her lover in the

moonlight.

His presence must leave me no light of my own.

______________________________________________________________

55.  Then let the End awake.  Long hast thou slept, O great God

Terminus!  Long ages hast thou waited at the end of the city

and the roads thereof.

        Awake Thou! wait no more!

The End means "The True Self."  Terminus is the Phallic Stone which lies beyond the mind (city) and its thoughts (roads).  By this Union with the Angel I hope to come to the True Self, the fixed eternal creative individual.

______________________________________________________________

56.  Nay, Lord! but I am come to Thee.   It is I that wait at

last.

Having attained the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel (by a male effort so to speak) the Adept become receptive, feminine, patient, surrendering his will wholly to that of his Angel.

______________________________________________________________

57.  The prophet cried against the mountain; come thou hither,

that I may speak with thee!

58.  The mountain stirred not.  Therefore went the prophet unto

the mountain, and spake unto it.  But the feet of the

prophet were weary, and the mountain heard not his voice.

59.  But I have called unto Thee, and I have journeyed unto Thee,

and it availed me not.

60.  I waited patiently, and Thou wast with me from the begin-

ning.

It is equally vain to summon what one wants, or to go to seek it.  To do so is to assert its absence, and the truth is that it is with one all the time, if one will but kill out one's restless-ness.

______________________________________________________________

61.  This now I know, O my beloved, and we are stretched at our

ease among the vines.

Realizing this, effort is at an end: one has only to enjoy.

______________________________________________________________

62.  But these thy prophets; they must cry aloud and scourge

themselves; they must cross trackless wastes and unfathomed

oceans; to await Thee is the end, not the beginning.

As things are, though, one is so constituted as to be unable to rest in simplicity.  One must go through the mill in order to learn how to wait!

______________________________________________________________

63.  Let darkness cover up the writing!   Let the scribe depart

among his ways.

The consciousness of the scribe, hitherto required that he might record the sayings of that part of his Being which we call "the Adept" and of his Angel, is now released to attend to its normal affairs.

______________________________________________________________

64.  But thou and I are stretched at our ease among the vines;

what is he?

The Adept and his Angel remain reposing in Rapture: they do not cease to exist when the scribe no longer perceives them.  On the contrary, he seems rather unreal to them.

______________________________________________________________

65.  O Thou beloved One! is there not an end?  Nay, but there is

an end.  Awake! arise! gird up thy limbs, O thou runner;

bear thou the Word unto the mighty cities, yea, unto the

mighty cities.

Union with his Angel is not the sole goal of the Adept.  There is "an end," a Purpose proper to his individuality.  The Angel therefore bids him withdraw from the Trance of Union.

He is to assume the form of Hermes (runner  Wordbearer) and deliver the Word entrusted to him to the "Mighty cities."  This may mean "to the greatest minds of the world."

CHAPTER III

This chapter is attributed to Water; it deals with the prelimin-ary reflections of Truth as apprehended by intuition, beyond any intellec-tual apprehension; and with the nature of the Understand-ing and the sexual instinct.

______________________________________________________________

 1.  Verily and Amen!  I passed through the deep sea, and by the

 rivers of running water that abound therein, and I came unto

the Land of No Desire.

 2.  Wherein was a white unicorn with a silver collar, whereon

was graven the aphorism Linea viridis gyrat universa.

The sea is the Sensorium of the Soul, and the currents his tendenciesthose activities in which he finds pleasure. Until one has passed through the totality of possible experience (as divined by estimation of the actualities available in one's own case) one cannot reach the state in which all Desire is recog-nized as futile. Only when this is fixed can one perceive the Unicornde Astris-the single pure Purpose (it is white) whose name is written in the way now to be explained.

The collar represents completenessthe ``infinity'' or ``eternity'' symbolized by a ring. It is round the neck, i.e., the seat of knowledge (Deaththe Visuddhi cakkra) and made of silverthe metal of the Virgin IsisUrania, who informs Pure Aspirations.

The name of this Unicorn (whose horn signifies the creative power) is ``The Green Line winds about the Universe.'' Note the etymology of Viridis, connected with vir and vis; also the idea of gyrat, reminding one of the aphorism ``God is He with the Head of the Hawk, having a spiral force.''

The Green Line, here chosen to connote the Limit of the Universe, suggests the Girdle of Venus. The boundary of Existence is thus not a fixed idea, but an evergrowing Vegetable Principle of Life, of the nature of Love. Summing up the doctrine, one may say that the intelligible expression of the pure creative Idea is the omniform principle of Growth.

______________________________________________________________

 3.  Then the word of Adonai came unto me by the mouth of the

Magister mine, saying: O heart that art girt about with the

coils of the old serpent, lift up thyself unto the mountain

of initia-tion!

The Angel then speaks to the human consciousness of the Adept through the medium of his Initiated Selfotherwise he could not understand so exalted a message. He bids the man as a man (the heart, Tiphereth, the seat of the conscious Ego) acquire the point of view of the Initiate. The old serpent represents the natural Desire, which is the ``cause of Sorrow,'' binds man to grovel in the dust, and unites him with base animal life.

______________________________________________________________

 4.  But I remembered.  Yea, Than, yea, Theli, yea, Lilith! these

three were about me from of old.  For they are one.

Than, Theli, and Lilith are three serpentine forms described in the Qabalah. Than is really Tanha  no pun is suggested, but Th is the letter of Matter, and N represents the reptilian or piscian idea of Life. It is connected with the ``Gluten in the blood'' which von Eckharthausen calls ``the body of sin.''

Theli: li means secret satisfaction  an idea connected with shame.

Lilith: li reduplicated and so become tedious ending in material darkness.

______________________________________________________________

 5.  Beautiful wast thou, O Lilith, thou serpentwoman!

 6.  Thou wast lithe and delicious to the taste, and thy perfume

was of musk mingled with ambergris.

 7.  Close didst thou cling with thy coils unto the heart, and it

was as the joy of all the spring.

 8.  But I beheld in thee a certain taint, even in that wherein I

delighted.

 9.  I beheld in thee the taint of thy father the ape, of thy

grandsire the Blind Worm of Slime.

10.  I gazed upon the Crystal of the Future, and I saw the horror

of the End of thee.

11.  Further, I destroyed the time Past, and the time to Come--

had I not the Power of the Sandglass?

12.  But in the very hour I beheld corruption.

The Adept analyses this DemonQueen of his Nephesch. He recalls her sensory appeal, and notes that, the dissolution of all things being inevitable, the love of them leads to sorrow and destruc-tion. In verses 1112, furthermore, he shows that apart from all consider-ations of time, the nature of this Desire, properly apprehended, is corruption.

______________________________________________________________

13.  Then I said: O my beloved, O Lord Adonai, I pray thee to

loosen the coils of the serpent!

14.  But she was closed fast upon me, so that my Force was stayed 	in

its inception.

It is useless to ask the Angel to free the Adept from such coercion; his magical force, which is necessary for this Work, is prevented by Desire from so much as beginning.

______________________________________________________________

15.  Also I prayed unto the Elephant God, the Lord of Beginnings,

who breaketh down obstruction.

The Adept invokes Ganesha, who represents the power of breaking down obstructions. The elephant, ``the halfreasoner with the hand,'' is the moral force in man, partly intelligent and docile to the control of its Spiritual Master.

______________________________________________________________

16.  These gods came right quickly to mine aid.  I beheld them; I

joined myself unto them; I was lost in their vastness.

This moral force brought into action, the Angel also becomes an efficient assistant, and the constraint of Desire disappears altogether.

______________________________________________________________

17.  Then I beheld myself compassed about with the Infinite

Circle of Emerald that encloseth the Universe.

The Adept now realizes himself as bounded only by the Green Line of verse 2.

______________________________________________________________

18.  O Snake of Emerald, Thou hast no time Past, no time To Come.

Verily Thou art not.

This Line is recognized as equivalent to the Negative  to Nuith Herself.

______________________________________________________________

19.  Thou art delicious beyond all taste and touch, Thou art

nottobebeheld for glory, Thy voice is beyond the Speech

and the Silence and the Speech therein, and Thy perfume is

of pure ambergris, that is not weighed against the finest

gold of the fine gold.

This idea of Pure Love is free from all bonds; it gives the true utmost gratification; its perfume (spiritual significance) is not mingled with any imperfect conception. (Ambergris is the perfume of Kether; musk refers to Love in a somewhat animal sense.)

______________________________________________________________

20.  Also Thy coils are of infinite range; the Heart that Thou

dost encircle is an Universal Heart.

The Angel also is identified with this Green Line, and thereby the consciousness of the Adept expands to include the Universe.

______________________________________________________________

21.  I, and Me, and Mine were sitting with lutes in the marketplace

of the great city, the city of the violets and the

roses.

22.  The night fell, and the music of the lutes was stilled.

23.  The tempest arose, and the music of the lutes was stilled.

24.  The hour passed, and the music of the lutes was stilled.

25.  But Thou art Eternity and Space; Thou art Matter and Motion;

and Thou art the negation of all these things.

26.  For there is no Symbol of Thee.

The idea of the Ego must not be used to unite the experience of the Adept. The music of life ceases (in such a case) whenever doubt darkens, trouble disturbs, or time wearies the conscious-ness. The Adept must lose himself wholly in the consciousness of his Angel, which is beyond all such limitations and immune to all attach-mentsfor He is not to be expressed by any fixed Image, such as might be destroy-ed.

______________________________________________________________

27.  If I say Come up upon the mountains! the celestial waters

flow at my word.  But thou art the Water beyond the waters.

The Adept learns to control all varieties of image which present themselves, and to create any he may wish, but his Angel repre-sents the Ideal which is his limit in this matter. All ideas of which he may be capable are comprised in the nature of his Angel.

______________________________________________________________

28.  The red threeangled heart hath been set up in Thy shrine;

for the priests despised equally the shrine and the god.

29.  Yet all the while Thou wast hidden therein, as the Lord of

Silence is hidden in the buds of the lotus.

30.  Thou art Sebek the crocodile against Asar; thou art Mati,

the Slayer in the Deep.  Thou art Typhon, the Wrath of the

Elements, O Thou who transcendest the Forces in their

Concourse and Cohesion, in their Death and their Disruption.

Thou art Python, the terrible serpent about the end of all

things!

These verses are especially obscure, and must to a certain extent so remain. For they contain an allusion to the most secret and critical issue of the Magical career of TO MEGA ThERION. ``The red three-angled heart'' is the peculiar symbol of RaHoorKhuit; and the Prophet objected to accepting the Book of the Law, which proclaims Him, as being incompatible with his Oath to attain the Knowledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel. Not until nineteen years later did he fully realize that the Holy Guardian Angel was concealed in this symbol R.H.K. but with ostensibly hostile glyphs. He is to be found in all phenomena soever.

______________________________________________________________

31.  I turned me about thrice in every way; and always I came at

the last unto Thee.

32.  Many things I beheld mediate and immediate; but, beholding

them no more, I beheld Thee.

In whatever direction the Adept chooses to move, he must come eventually to his Angel. All that he sees is but a veil upon His Face.

______________________________________________________________

33.  Come thou, O beloved One, O Lord God of the Universe, O Vast

One, O Minute One!  I am Thy beloved.

34.  All day I sing of Thy delight; all night I delight in Thy

song.

35.  There is no other day or night than this.

36.  Thou art beyond the day and the night; I am Thyself, O my

Maker, my Master, my Mate!

This passage, purely lyrical, requires no special comment. It asserts the ultimate identity of all Ideas with the Angel, including himself, whom he recognizes as united with Him in the triune relation of Father, Ruler, and Bridegroom, the source of his Being, the determinant of his Will, and the inspiration of his Joy and his Fertility.

______________________________________________________________

37.  I am like the little red dog that sitteth upon the knees of

the Unknown.

The dog is the base animal nature``red'' the symbol of its energy, sensibility, and power to love. It is helpless (on the knees of) the surrounding Mystery of Existence (the Unknown) but it remains still and trusts.

______________________________________________________________

38.  Thou hast brought me into great delight.  Thou hast given me

of Thy flesh to eat and of Thy blood for an offering of

intoxication.

The Angel replaces this attitude by full satisfaction and nourish-ment. It is in Him that the Adept lives, and His life that intoxicates him.

______________________________________________________________

39.  Thou hast fastened the fangs of Eternity in my soul, and the

Poison of the Infinite hath consumed me utterly.

The enemy Time has been devoured, and the limited Ego dissolved in Infinity.

______________________________________________________________

40.  I am become like a luscious devil of Italy; a fair strong

woman with worn cheeks, eaten out with hunger for kisses.

She hath played the harlot in divers palaces; she hath given

her body to the beasts.

(40-44)  The reference is to the Marquise de Brinvilliers; she represents the Nephesch or animal Soul. This Soul has tried to satisfy its passions in various strange ways.

______________________________________________________________

41.  She hath slain her kinsfolk with strong venom of toads; she

hath been scourged with many rods.

Hatred for other souls-pain of receiving truths.

______________________________________________________________

42.  She hath been broken in pieces upon the Wheel; the hands of

the hangman have bound her unto it.

This ends in her unity being destroyed by Change. She has been bound to the cycle of Samsara by the Minister of Justice.

______________________________________________________________

43.  The fountains of water have been loosed upon her; she hath

struggled with exceeding torment.

Her solidity can no longer resist the action of Purity; her complexes are invaded by the Universal Solvent. Her resistance is extreme torment.

______________________________________________________________

44.  She hath burst in sunder with the weight of the waters; she

hath sunk into the awful Sea.

Finally it breaks up her coherence, and her sense of self crumbles and dissolves in the boundless Ocean of Love.

______________________________________________________________

45.  So am I, O Adonai, my lord, and such are the waters of Thine

intolerable Essence.

46.  So am I, O Adonai, my beloved, and Thou hast burst me

utterly in sunder.

The text confirms this interpretation of Initiation as equivalent to extended psychoanalysis.

______________________________________________________________

47.  I am shed out like spilt blood upon the mountains; the

Ravens of Dispersion have borne me utterly away.

The life of the Ego is dispersed over all salient ideas. The ravens are the birds of Netzach the sphere of Venus, i.e., the life of the Adept is carried away aloft by Universal Love.

______________________________________________________________

48.  Therefore is the seal unloosed, that guarded the Eighth

abyss; therefore is the vast sea as a veil; therefore is

there a rending asunder of all things.

This process leads to the full crossing of the Abyss  for which see Liber 418 and Liber VII.

______________________________________________________________

49.  Yea, also verily Thou art the cool still water of the wizard

fount. I have bathed in Thee, and lost me in Thy still-

ness.

50.  That which went in as a brave boy of beautiful limbs cometh

forth as a maiden, as a little child for perfection.

The above ideas are here repeated in another symbol. The ``fount'' is Salmacis. The positive Individuality becomes the Universal and perfect Virgin of the World. See again Liber 418.

______________________________________________________________

51.  O Thou light and delight, ravish me away into the milky

ocean of the stars!

52.  O Thou Son of a lighttranscending mother, blessed be Thy

name, and the Name of Thy Name, throughout the ages!

A lyrical outburst on this theme. Note Nuit, and the new True Self born of Her, not the old False Ego which is annihilated.

______________________________________________________________

53.  Behold!  I am a butterfly at the Source of Creation; let me

die before the hour, falling dead into thine infinite

stream!

The reference is to Atu XVII. The butterfly is the Neschamah (pure «Grk» PsiUpsilonChiHeta» [psyche]). Its nature is that of a being separated momentarily and painlessly from Nuit.

______________________________________________________________

54.  Also the stream of the stars floweth ever majestical unto

the Abode; bear me away upon the Bosom of Nuit!

The stream of souls (stars) flows ever toward Nuit; i.e., each man and woman has the same True Will  to regain its original Mother.

______________________________________________________________

55.  This is the world of the waters of Maim; this is the bitter

water that becometh sweet.  Thou art beautiful and bitter, O

golden one, O my Lord Adonai, O thou Abyss of Sapphire!

The above is declared to be a Mystery of the Atu XII. The ``drowning-'' of the Adept transforms the Trance of Sorrow into that of Love. The Angel is seen as a positive symbol of this ``Great Sea.''

______________________________________________________________

56.  I follow Thee, and the waters of Death fight strenuously

against me.  I pass unto the Waters beyond Death and beyond

Life.

By His Knowledge and Conversation this transmutation is accompli-shed.

______________________________________________________________

(5759)  The ``foolish man'' is the natural man, the uninitiate. ``Fool-ish'' is empty, vain full of wind (A = [hebrew]A = the Fool). He is contrasted with ``The Great Fool'' Atu 0, [Hebrew] A who is the first path from Kether. (Explain and give references).

57.  How shall I answer the foolish man?  In no way shall he come

to the Identity of Thee!

This man cannot be brought to perfection, for he is composed of Qliphoth or excrement. His emancipation is from just such parts of his being; they are not of his essence.

______________________________________________________________

58.  But I am the Fool that heedeth not the Play of the Magician.

Me doth the Woman of the Mysteries instruct in vain; I have

burst the bonds of Love and of Power and of Worship.

The Adept identifies himself with this Pure Fool. He is indiffer-ent to the Illusion of Phenomenal existence caused by the Magician (Pekht, Extension, Atu I, Beth--2--Mercury, Mayan).

The woman of the Mysteries (Isis, Atu II, Gimel--3--Moon) does not spoil his purity with her phantastic reflections of Truth.

He is no more at the mercy of the Empress Atu III, The Emperor Atu IV, Tzaddi--90--Aries and the Hierophant Atu V, Vau--6--Taurus.

That is, neither the subtle distinctions (I, II) of Truth nor their gross images (III, IV, V) injure his perfection of Zero.

______________________________________________________________

59.  Therefore is the Eagle made one with the Man, and the

gallows of infamy dance with the fruit of the just.

It follows that the symbols of Royalty and Spirituality are now equivalent to those of plastic life (Aries and Scorpio) and vibratory manifestation.

The gallows is found in Atu XII, Mem--40--Water (Cf verse 55) and on it is suspended, free from earth, the joyously moving (''dance'') form of the extended or manifested man (Atu VIII, Sun [Lamed-Libra?]--30--Libra the positive or expressed form of Atu 0, Aleph and Lamed the Key of CCXX).

______________________________________________________________

60.  I have descended, O my darling, into the black shining

waters, and I have plucked Thee forth as a black pearl of

infinite preciousness.

61.  I have gone down, O my God, into the abyss of the all, and I

have found Thee in the midst under the guise of No Thing.

(These verses might be read as Strophe and Antistrophe; but before when the Angel speaks, we are told so.)

The ``black shining waters'' are those of the Akasa, the men-struum of manifestation: the ``pearl'' is the rounded perfec-tion of the Angel, who is thus a tangible symbol of the Formless-ness of Nuit. (For ``black,'' again, see I:1820.)

______________________________________________________________

62.  But as Thou art the Last, Thou art also the Next, and as the

Next do I reveal Thee to the multitude.

Although thus ultimate, the Angel is also in close tough with the Man.  This explains the policy of 666, as outlined below. (Quote China Record, my G[reat?].W[ork?].)

______________________________________________________________

63.  They that ever desired Thee shall obtain Thee, even at the 	End

of their Desire.

The Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel represents the supreme need, and its attainment coincides with the final destruction of Desire (in the Buddhist sense).

______________________________________________________________

64.  Glorious, glorious, glorious art Thou, O my lover supernal,

O Self of myself.

65.  For I have found Thee alike in the Me and the Thee; there is

no difference, O my beautiful, my desirable One!  In the

One and the Many have I found Thee; yea, I have found Thee.

The chapter ends with an outburst of lyrical exaltation. ``Every number is infinite; there is no difference.'' ``Now therefore I am known to ye by my name Nuit, and to him by a secret name which I will give him when at last he knoweth me. Since I am Infinite Space, and the Infinite Stars thereof, do ye also thus. Bind nothing! Let there be no difference made among you between any one thing and any other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt.'' (Liber CCXX I:4 and 22.)

The Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel resolves all thought into the identity of insignificance. He exists equally in the Unity of RaHoorKhuit and in every detail of phenomenal manifes-tation.

CHAPTER IV

This Chapter is attributed to Fire. It deals with the salient rays of Positive Idea, beyond any intuition to appre-hend, and with the nature of the Will and the sexual energy, the dynamic shape of the Self.

Being thus actually beyond Understanding, being the Utter-ance of the Unconscious, it becomes naturally impossible for even the Initiate to apprehend the chapter as it stands. It deals with the Original Unities; and it is for the Master of the Temple (the Adept in Tiphereth cannot understand the Chapter at all) to receive, interpret, bring to birth and conscious expression Their sublime gesture.

______________________________________________________________

(1-10)  This section is the address of the Angel. He explains His Knowledge and Conversation from His own standpoint. The aspiration towards Him is masculine. At the moment of achieve-ment it is replaced by passivity as explained in previous chapters. The aspiration has its parallel in the will of the Angel to communi-cate. But this will is superficially of a different character. Its nature is now explained.

______________________________________________________________

 1.  O crystal heart!  I the Serpent clasp Thee; I drive home

mine head into the central core of Thee, O God my beloved.

He calls the Adept ``Crystal heart'' implying that he is a concentration of light, energy, love, lucidity, and purity. It

is these qualities in the Adept with which he communicates. This is the object of the preparation. The Adept must present this image perfectly before the Knowledge and Conversation can operate. That is, purification and consecration must precede invocation. It is extremely difficult even for a Master of the Temple even after years of contemplation to get it firmly into his consciousness that his material part is not he at all any more than any other collection of phenomena.

The Angel describes Himself as the serpent. The serpent is, of course the symbol of wisdom, immortality, royalty, and other similar qualities.

The Angel not only winds himself about the heart of the Adept but drives His head into the centre. He addresses the Adept as ``God my beloved'' obviously any member of so high an order of being has long assimilated the truth of Pantheism.

______________________________________________________________

 2.  Even as on the resounding windswept heights of Mitylene

some godlike woman casts aside the lyre, and with her

locks aflame as an aureole, plunges into the wet heart of

the crea-tion, so I, O Lord my God!

The reference is to Sappho who was in love with the Sun, and threw herself into the sea to attain him. She is here the symbol of the Angel as represented by the Path of Gimel where is ``The High Priestess.'' This Path connects Macroprosopus (Kether) and Microprospus (Tiphereth), the supreme divinity and its human manifestation. The Sun is attributed to Tiphereth and so symbol-izes the Adept. The Angel thinks of Himself as ``plunging into the wet heart of the Creation,'' i.e., the reflection in matter of the True Self of the Adept whom He loves.

______________________________________________________________

 3.  There is a beauty unspeakable in this heart of corruption,

where the flowers are aflame.

The Angel finds beauty in ``this heart of corruption'' by which he means the life of mutability. ``The flowers are aflame.'' Phenomena blossom and enkindle, i.e., touch.

______________________________________________________________

 4.  Ah me! but the thirst of Thy joy parches up this throat, so

that I cannot sing.

 5.  I will make me a little boat of my tongue, and explore the

unknown rivers.  It may be that the everlasting salt may

turn to sweetness, and that my life may be no longer

athirst.

The intensity of the passion of the Angel is so great that He cannot express it even in music. The boat is here the symbol of consciousness, as in II:716. The tongue is the Logos of the Angel, and the unknown rivers new spheres of thought. The everlasting salt is the sorrow which tinctures the great sea of Binah, and the hopes by the above method to transcend the Trance of Sorrow in reference to all these possibilities.

______________________________________________________________

 6.  O ye that drink of the brine of your desire, ye are nigh to

madness!  Your torture increaseth as ye drink, yet still ye

drink.  Come up through the creeks to the fresh water; I

shall be waiting for you with my kisses.

He is reminded of the parallel but contrary custom of men to seek satisfaction in the object of desire. Water is a symbol of pleasure, and desire is impregnated with sorrow. To act in this way maddens the deluded race of men. He bids them ``Come up through the creeks,'' i.e., the narrow passages of thought, the con-centrated currents of thought which lead to pure pleasure-`-`the fresh water.'' When men succeed in travelling by means of controlled will to true pure pleasure they find him waiting to administer the Sacrament.

______________________________________________________________

 7.  As the bezoarstone that is found in the belly of the cow,

so is my lover among lovers.

 8.  O honey boy!  Bring me Thy cool limbs hither!  Let us sit

awhile in the orchard, until the sun go down!  Let us feast

on the cool grass!  Bring wine, ye slaves, that the cheeks

of my boy may flush red.

The bezoarstone is a ball composed chiefly of hairs which represent closelywoven forces. He compares the Adept to this stone seeing him as a complex of diverse energies. The limbs of the Adept are the instruments of his activity. The Angel invites him to repose with Him in the orchard, i.e., in the place where natural processes have culminated in fructifying. The cool grass seems to be a symbol of vegetative life, and the Angel proposes to use this evergreen freshness of Nature as the field for rejoicing and nourishment. He calls to the slaves, that is, to the instruments of action, controlled and put to use to bring wine, i.e., to furnish the means of ecstasy, for He wishes the Adept to be enkindled with rapture and manifest its glow in his face, i.e., his outer consciousness.

______________________________________________________________

 9.  In the garden of immortal kisses, O thou brilliant One,

shine forth!  Make Thy mouth an opiumpoppy, that one kiss

is the key to the infinite sleep and lucid, the sleep of

Shiloham.

A garden usually symbolizes a place of cultivated beauty; Oriental poets use it to express a collection of poems or wise sayings. The immortal kisses are the tokens of the operation of ``love under will'' which is perpetual. The Angel calls upon the Adept to display his brilliance as if the Knowledge and Conver-sation were a transcendental sacrament beyond that implied in all acts.

The opium poppy is a symbol of peace, exaltation, and delight, the giver of sleep, by which is meant the silencing of all possible distractions. The mouth of the Adept, the organ by which he is nourished, expresses his thoughts, and symbolizes his passions; by the kiss of this mouth is meant its surrender to the Angel, the act of marriage, and this is the key to the infinite sleep and lucid. Sleep has been explained above. It is infinite, being freed from the limitations of condition, and lucid as being characterized by pure vision. Shiloham: the word means peace. Sh = Fire, Lamed = Libra, Mem = Water: [Hexagram drawn here-two triangles]

______________________________________________________________

10.  In my sleep I beheld the Universe like a clear crystal

without one speck.

The Angel explains that (in the reposeful ecstasy of love, I might even say in the orgasm of love, the reference is to the particular Samadhi of the attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel) in his ``sleep'' he obtained the vision of the Universe as a continuous and immacul-ate phenomenon. This is contrasted implicitly with the effect of the same act on the Adept, to whom it simply means union with Godhead. The Angel has found perfection in his own Adept: this completes Perfection.

______________________________________________________________

(1114)  The Adept now speaks, or rather, the Master of the Temple speaks.

11.  There are purseproud penniless ones that stand at the door

of the tavern and prate of their feats of winebibbing.

The tavern is the temple of spiritual intoxication. Without it are the Black Brothers boasting of their own attainments.

______________________________________________________________

12.  There are purseproud penniless ones that stand at the door

of the tavern and revile the guests.

They are purseproud, i.e., mean and selfish, yet penniless, i.e., their attainments are worthless. They also revile those who have attained the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel: the Black Brother for all his arrogance is aware like Klingsor of his real condition, and he therefore blasphemes the White Lodge.

______________________________________________________________

13.  The guests dally upon couches of motherofpearl in the

garden;

the noise of the foolish men is hidden from them.

The couches symbolize repose. The motherofpearl the opales-cence of phenomena, when observed by the Initiate.  (Compare the symbolism of the Rainbow.) Note that they are in the garden, not the tavern. This may mean that they have passed beyond the stage where the act is unique with one such as described in vv. 89. The foolish man: see II:37. Noise is a symbol of distraction and lack of harmony. It is ``hidden from them''-a stronger phrase than ``unheard by them.''

______________________________________________________________

14.  Only the innkeeper feareth lest the favour of the king be

withdrawn

from him.

The innkeeper is the Guardian of the Mysteries, and the king the Authority by which men's lives are governed. It is his business to protect the guests from the arrogance of the Black Brothers, but also to prevent their malice from making the sacrament unlawful. (Levi has a passage on this point. He says that when the arcanum was divulged in the time of the French Revolution it became impossible to put it into practice. The adepts conse-quently quarreled among themselves and chaos resulted. We must not suppose that this is a mere matter of the vow of secrecy. Nor does it imply that the publication of the means of attain-ment may lead to disaster. It is the fourth power of the Sphinx which was somehow lost.) It seems strange that the Magister in the midst of his rapture with the allocution of his Angel yet ringing in his ears should find nothing less incongruous in reply. The diffi-culty is easily explained. For one thing his ecstasy is ineffa-ble. For another, it is perfect, so that he cannot possibly speak about it. Thirdly, he is aware that part of the price of his attainment is his responsibility as Guardian of the Mysteries. He therefore calls the attention of his Angel to what I may describe as the political situation.

______________________________________________________________

(1521)  The above peculiarity of the previous dialogue is the subject of part of this passage. Generally it discusses the question of the relations between certain powers of Nature.

15.  Thus spake the Magister V.V.V.V.V. unto Adonai his God, as

they played together in the starlight over against the deep

black pool that is in the Holy Place of the Holy House

beneath the Altar of the Holiest One.

The circumstances of the dialogue are carefully explained. He is the Master of the Temple, V.V.V.V.V., not merely the Adept, who has simply attained union. The Angel is moreover identified specifically with the symbol of Adonai. They are playing togeth-er, i.e., in conscious communion; in the starlight, i.e., in the presence of Nuit; and the place of their meeting is the ``deep black pool'' symbolic of Binah, the sphere of the sorrow of Motherhood, the place of conception and the abode of Under-standing. The holy place is the three first Sephiroth, i.e., above the Abyss. The holy house is the Tree of Life. And the Altar of the holiest one is Kether.

______________________________________________________________

16.  But Adonai laughed, and played more languidly.

The Adept replies to the passage verses 1114 by simply changing the rhythm of his music to a more languid measure. In this way he implies that there is no need for haste or anxiety.

______________________________________________________________

17.  Then the scribe took note, and was glad.   But Adonai had no

fear of the Magician and his play.

   For it was Adonai who had taught all his tricks to the

Magician.

The scribe who is the conscious human being charged to report these matters understands by this that all is well. The Magician is Atu I, Mayan (see II:58) and the references in Liber 418. The Angel has no fear that the forces of illusion can ever interfere with the Great Work. He is himself Macroprosopus.

This phrase needs explanation. Just as a man aspires to the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel and attains it, so too does the Angel aspire to the ``unity utter-most showed;'' for his position is the Path of Gimel. In his attain-ment he has therefore reached Kether, from which spring not only his own Path Gimel (leading to Tiphereth) but that of Beth (leading to Binah). To understand properly the full nature of Binah we must remember this point. The sorrow connected with the idea of this Sephira is due to the fact that she is the recipient of the original illusion. There is no sorrow in the other current, the Path of Daleth through which her lord communicates his essence.

______________________________________________________________

18.  And the Magister entered into the play of the Magician.

When the Magician laughed he laughed; all as a man should

do.

The Magister whose abode is Binah now uses illusion itself as a means of enjoyment. He behaves naturally like a child without fear that there may be some sinister significance in the opera-tions of Nature.

______________________________________________________________

19.  And Adonai said: Thou art enmeshed in the web of the

Magician.  This He said subtly, to try him.

To test him the Angel suggests that his enjoyment of illusion is identical with that of the profane.

______________________________________________________________

20.  But the Magister gave the sign of the Magistry, and laughed

back on Him: O Lord, O beloved, did these fingers relax on

Thy curls, or these eyes turn away from Thine eye?

21.  And Adonai delighted in him exceedingly.

The Magister replies that although apparently enjoying the good things of life (so to speak) he has never for one instant forgotten that he is enjoying the love of his Angel. Neither by action of the fingers which grasp the curls or spiral energies of the Angel, nor by loss of concentration upon the eye (symbol of sight, creative energy, unity, etc. See also ``Eye of Horus'') of his lover did he fall from the summit of his Samadhi.

The Magister is therefore shown as perfectly initiated: he deliberately embraced the terrible illusion which is the source of all sorrow, and made it part integrally of the Great Work. There being no other direction from which misfortune might touch him, since he is protected by the Guardians of the Abyss from the interference of the Paths of Zayin and Cheth, he is hence-forth immune.

______________________________________________________________

22.  Yea, O my master, thou art the beloved of the Beloved One;

the Bennu Bird is set up in Philæ not in vain.

The Bennu bird refers to the currents and subcurrents set in motion by the A...A..., every 600 years approximately, that is, twice in the course of each Aeon.

«Grk»PsiChi 1900	Aiwass.

 151600	Dee and Kelly, Christian Rosencreutz,

Luther, Paracelsus 14901541.

 1300	Jacobus Burgundus Molensis.

 91000	[Arthur or Charlemagne?]

 6700	Mohammed.

 3400	[Constantine?]

 0	Apollonius of Tyana.

 BX 300	Gautama Buddha.

NOTE. Scale of Timeresolved images dilated presentation.

Racehorse legs. In a series of m events, none of which suggest n. Cf. glyphs of A. spelling of words, etc.

Therefore no gauge of reality. (LXV I:32 seq.)

Philae is an island in the Nile, now submerged by industri-alism famous for its Temple of Ahathoor.

In Liber VII:27, the Bennu Bird is identified definitely with the Phoenixor Set the Wild Assthrough the symbolism of the Wand of the Second Adept in the Ritual of Adeptus Minor of R.R. et A.C.

The reminder of this chapter concerns in great part the relation of this scribe with the Adept and the Angel who complete and crown his personality. The following verses describe the Equinox of the Gods, and the Attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. They indicate the effect thereof upon the individual; for this chapter refers to Fire, the God of Tetragrammaton, that is, to the essence of the personality of the man concerned as a man. The Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel represents the descent of the element Spirit into the midst of his being, according to the regular formula of the formation of the Pentagram [Hebrew]IHShVH from [Hebrew]IHVH. The chief difficulty of interpretation lies in the complication introduced by the Equinox of the Gods.

2227	describes this Event.

2829	describes the state of the scribe.

3032	describes the preparation of the scribe for

his Attainment.

3337	describes the Threshold of his Initiation.

3841	describes the Initiation itself.

4244	describes the Understanding thereby given of

the necessary relations of Spirit and

Matter.

4553	describes the results of Initiation.

5456	brings together the Attainment and the

Equinox of the Gods.

5760	answers the question thus propounded.

6165	a prophecy concerning the future of the

individual scribe, the circumstances in

which he shall come to the Perfection of his

Attainment.

______________________________________________________________

23.  I who was the priestess of Ahathoor rejoice in your love.

Arise, O NileGod, and devour the holy place of the  Cow of

Heaven!  Let the milk of the stars be drunk up by Sebek the

dweller of Nile!

The scribe recalls his incarnation as a priestess of Ahathoor, goddess of Love and Beauty.

He calls upon the forces of the Nile and of Sebek the crocodile that is dweller thereof. They are to put an end to the regimen of the Mother (Aeon of Isis).

______________________________________________________________

24.  Arise, O serpent Apep, Thou art Adonai the beloved one!

Thou art my darling and my lord, and Thy poison is sweeter

than the kisses of Isis the mother of the Gods!

Apophis replaces Isis.

______________________________________________________________

25.  For Thou art He!  Yea, Thou shalt swallow up Asi and Asar,

and the children of Ptah.  Thou shalt pour forth a flood of

poison to destroy the works of the Magician.  Only the

Destroyer shall devour Thee; Thou shalt  blacken his

throat, wherein his spirit abideth.  Ah, serpent Apep, but

I love Thee!

AIWASS (identified with the Holy Guardian Angel of Aleister Crowley) is to destroy the formulae of Isis and Osiris (Aeon of the Dying God). There is here a reference to the Legend of Shiva who drank up the poison caused by the churning of the ``Milk of the Stars'' or manifes-tation of Phenomenal Existence. His throat became black (or indigo blue) as a result. AIWAZ has thus turned Apophis against himself, to make way for the Aeon of Horus, the Crowned and Conquering Child. Apophis loved; i.e., vanishes in ecstasy at the caress of AIWAZ the ``mighty serpent'' of verse 26 (the throat is the seat of the element of SpiritAkasha dwells in the Visuddhi Cakkram). The meaning is that the formula given by AIWAZ destroys the idea of Destruction as such. What was until now called ``Death.'' the means of resurrection in the Formula of Osiris IAO, is to be understood henceforth as ``love under will.''

______________________________________________________________

26.  My God!  Let Thy secret fang pierce to the marrow of the

little secret bone that I have kept against the Day of

Vengeance of HoorRa.  Let KhephRa sound his sharded

drone! let the jackals of Day and Night howl in the wilder-

ness of Time! let the Towers of the Universe totter, and the

guardi-ans hasten away!   For my Lord hath revealed  Himself

as a mighty serpent, and my heart is the blood of His body.

This Day of Vengeance is the Aeon of Horusbeginning with the Spring Equinox of 1904 E.V. (Note CCXX III:3 «Grk»ALASTOR» the Avenger.) The ``little secret bone'' is found in the Phallus of the Bear. (Heb 6). This is an anatomical fact. The Bear is symbolic of part of [Greek: TO MEGA ThERION] 666 according to the descrip-tion given of Him in the Apocalypse:

I saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his hands the name of blasphe-my.

And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.

And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.

And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast; and they worshipped the beast, saying Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war with him?

And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphe-mies, and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.

And he opened his mouth and blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.

And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kin-dreds, and tongues and nations.

And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

If any man have an ear, let him hear.

He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivi-ty: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.

And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth: and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.

And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and all which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.

And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men.

And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.

And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their fore-heads:

And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man: and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. (Rev: Cap: XIII.)

This bone is consequently the Quintessential Individuality of the Unconscious of Aleister Crowley; he having retained his human personal-ity in order to serve as the Instrument of the Logos of this Aeon. He now demands that the ``fang'' (tooth Spirit) of his Angel shall penetrate to his inmost self.

Khephra, the Scarabaeus Beetle, is the Sun at midnight. He appears in Atu XVIII (The Moon, referred to Pisces in the Zodiac) at the bottom of the hieroglyph, in a pool (the firma-ment of the Nadir). Above this is a path leading between two mountains crowned by towers. Beneath the Moon symbolic of glamour and illusion as opposed to the Moon of the Path of Gimel symbolic of Purity, Aspiration, etc., where goes the Holy Guardian Angel. This Path is guarded by two dogs or jackals symbolic of Anubis, guarder of the Threshold (see verse 34).

The meaning of the verse is thus that AIWAZ (revealed ``as a mighty serpent''  see above) has destroyed the principle of illusion. In particular, the belief of man that he is mortal (Osiris) must yield to the consciousness that he is the Crowned Child (Horus). My ``heart''  i.e. the human will and con-scious-ness of Aleister Crowley is identified with the essence of the life of AIWAZ (the blood of His body is used by Him as the physical basis of His manifestation in CCXX).

______________________________________________________________

27.  I am like a lovesick courtesan of Corinth.  I have toyed

with kings and captains, and made them my slaves.  Today I

am the slave of the little asp of death; and  who shall

loosen our love?

Aleister Crowley has abandoned all his personal ambitions to ``die'' at the caress of AIWAZ in His function as his Holy Guardian Angel. (The little Microcosmic ``little asp'' as opposed to the ``mighty serpent'' who is responsible for the Macrocosmic Event the Equinox of the Gods). The images of the lovesick courtesan and of Cleopatra show the implication of the Nephesch or ``animal soul'' of Aleister Crowley in this matter.

______________________________________________________________

28.  Weary, weary! saith the scribe, who shall lead me to the

sight of the Rapture of my master?

The scribe confesses the utter weariness of his human conscious-ness so far as it is divorced from communion with the rapture of the Adept (''my master'') who controls him.

______________________________________________________________

29.  The body is weary and the soul is sore weary and sleep

weighs down their eyelids; yet ever abides the sure

conscious-ness of ecstacy, unknown, yet known in that its

being is certain.  O Lord, be my helper, and bring me to

the bliss of the Beloved!

The ``soul'' means Nephesch. The scribe is supported, even in his conscious weariness, by the certainty of his ``Unconscious'' that he has come to his Attainment, despite his human conscious forgetfulness of the fact.

He appeals to the Angel to flood the human consciousness with the ``Bliss of the Beloved,'' as heretofore expressed in this Book.

______________________________________________________________

30.  I came to the house of the Beloved, and the wine was like

fire that flieth with green wings through the world of

waters.

This is granted: the human consciousness enters into the pleas-urehouse of Adeptship. The wine of spiritual rapture which intoxicates him is likened to ``fire that flieth'' with green wings (love) ``through the world of waters.'' Previous passages should enable the aspirant to understand this symbolism quite thoroughly. [...] is in the Qabalah ``The Name'' and ``Heaven'' means ``-Almighty Power,'' and means ``Blood.'' These symbols thus explain the text in detail.

______________________________________________________________

31.  I felt the red lips of nature and the black lips of

perfec-tion.  Like sisters they fondled me their little

brother; they decked me out as a bride; they mounted me for 	Thy

bridal chamber.

Nature and perfection are Isis and Nephthys, who prepare Osiris (see Papyrus of Ani and The Book of the Dead generally) for Initiation. The Candidate is here represented as their brother (Aleister Crowley is Vau of [Hebrew]IHVH, ``the stone,'' the human consciousness in Tiphereth  male) but decked out as a bride (for he is symbolically feminine towards his Holy Guardian Angel, the Heart about to meet the Embrace of the Serpent. See, too, III:49-50).

______________________________________________________________

32.  They fled away at Thy coming; I was alone before Thee.

The Ego is deprived of its attributes before it can receive the impact of the Holy Guardian Angel. It must be the pure Human Self as an Individual independent of its manifestations as such, the phenomena of its relation with its environment.

______________________________________________________________

33.  I trembled at Thy coming, O my God, for Thy messenger was

more terrible than the Deathstar.

The Ego realizes that the Holy Guardian Angel will annihilate it. It trembles, and this shaking of its identity is the token of its surren-der (Compare the ecstasy of fear of Amfortas at the onset of his Healing; and see II:60 and 62 with several similar passages elsewhere. The doctrine is everywhere implicit; but compare also Liber 418, 14th Aethyr, etc.)

Also, the first appearance of the Angel is necessarily misunder-stood; for while the human Ego exists, it is bound by the conditions of its being; and this implies a certain falsity of apprehension, the root of which is in the very illusion of Separateness which makes the Idea of an Ego possible.

______________________________________________________________

34.  On the threshold stood the fulminant figure of Evil, the

Horror of emptiness, with his ghastly eyes like poisonous

wells.  He stood, and the chamber was corrupt; the air

stank.  He was an old and gnarled fish more hideous than

the shells of Abaddon.

The ``threshold'' is before the ``door'' or ``pylon'' of Daleth. (Daleth means a door; its attribution is Venus, pure Love, and its Path is from Chokmah to Binah, the base of the Triangle of the Supernals. This ``door'' is thus in all ways a fit symbol of the entrance to Initiation). The ``threshold'' is then below the Path of Daleth on the Tree of Life; i.e., it is in the Abyss.

The above symbolism refers strictly to the Attainment of Master of the Temple; but its Truth is reflected into the techni-cally correct account of the Initiation of the Dominus Liminis to Adeptus Minor. Here the ``door'' is the third Reciprocal or Transverse Path (Daleth is the first) Pe which means a mountthe door of the vital organs. Pe is the letter of Atu XVI the ``House of God'' or ``Blasted Tower.'' The Hiero-glyph represents a Towersymbolic of the Ego in its Phallic Aspect, yet shut up, i.e., separate. This Tower is smitten by the Lightning Flash of Illumination, the impact of the Holy Guardian Angel and the Flaming Sword of the Energy that proceeds from Kether to Malkuth. Thence are cast forth two figures forming by their attitude the letter Ayin; these are the twins (Horus and Harpocra-tes) born at the break-ingopen of the Womb of the Mother (the second aspect of the Tower as a ``spring shut up, a fountain sealed''). They represent in respect of the male aspect of the Pe Tower the sperma-tozoa (Ayin is Capri-corn the sign in which is the Sun at the Winter Sols-tice, when the New Year begins) emitted when the Phallus is smitten by the ecstasy of the Orgasm (Light-ning Flash) and ``blasted'' by losing its erection.

On the ``threshold'' the Dominus Liminis is menaced by the Paths Nun of Samech and Ayin the Atus XIII, XIV, XV. (Temper-ance or Restriction, Death, and the Devil, which issue from Tiphereth the abode of His Angel to ward off the profane of the Outer Order of G...D...

The main difference (in essence) between the formulae of the two Initiations, into the R.R. et A.C. and the A...A..., respec-tive-ly, are that the Adeptus Exemptus is below Daleth altogether, though he has crossed the Second Reciprocal Path Teth on his way to become an Adeptus Exemptus, and has no Path by which he may travel (save Gimel, which leads from Tiphereth to Kether, not from Chesed, to Binah, whither he is bound. This is to ward off the profane of the Inner Order of R.R. et A.C.) while the Dominus Liminis has already traversed the Path of Pe to attain the Grade of Philosophus, and the threshold is within, instead of without, the Pylon.

In crossing the Abyss the aim is to annihilate the Ego and its appurte-nances altogether. In Qabalistic symbolism to attain to Zero. The peril is therefore that of identification with any of the products of disintegration. Choronzon, therefore, by which name we signify the idea of Dispersion, has no place within the Supernal Triad. The threshold of initiation, the Abyss, lies wholly without the door Daleth. The completeness of the disinte-gration, the impotence «Grk» AKRATOR and idleness «Grk» AERUIA is guaranteed by the absence of the love (Daleth) which might otherwise bind together the dissipated events to form a unity (in the 7th Aethyr, Liber 418, we learn that if the Black Brothers were only able to look up to the Goddess of Love (Daleth) above them they might yet attain to Understanding.)

In the Initiation to Adeptus Minor, the conditions are altoge-ther other. The aim is the attainment of unity not negativity, and there is no such perfection in the Sephiroth of the Ruach, Chesed, Geburah, Tiphereth, which compose the Grades of the Inner Order (R.R. et A.C.) as necessarily excluding Choronzon from the three Grades of the A.'.A.'. The student is now referred to the Elemental WatchTowers of Sir Edward Kelly (See The Equinox I:78). The four Elemental Tablets (12 X 13) are bound together by the little Tablet of Spirit (4 X 5), or, when the Tablets are arranged to show them each as a subsection of the unity of Tetragrammaton by a black cross containing the letters of this little Tablet of Spirit. The names of evil demons are found notably by taking some imperfect and unbalanced symbol for the Watch-Towers such as a bilateral name from beneath the bar of the Calvary Cross in any of the Lesser Anglesand prefixing the appropriate letter from the Black Cross.

The doctrine implied is that the nature of Spirit is not only represen-ted by Shin, the Holy Spirit, whose descent into the midst of Tetra-grammaton sanctifies and illuminates the blind forces of the Elements, but is also soulless matter, dark, formless and void, the mere basis or background for the manifes-tation of all phenomena indifferently; and this truth is also symbolized by the blackness and undeveloped potenti-ality of Akasa as explained by the legend of Shiva mentioned in a previous paragraph.

Spirit may therefore be manifested either as the Holy Guardian Angel or as the Evil Persona, the Dweller on the Threshold, portrayed sensation-ally for trade by Sir Edward BulwerLytton in his romance Zanoni. The doctrine is also frequently found in folklore, where man is represen-ted as attended by both a good and an evil genius. The horror of the latter is intensified by his function as the alternative to the Holy Guardian Angel. Now, in the case of Exempt Adept, should he be beaten back from the City of the Pyramids by failure to comply perfectly with the formula of ``love under will'' he remains lost in the Abyss with no future possibili-ty than to identify himself in turn with each incoher-ent and unintelligible phenomenon that appears in the sensorium of the man, who has been disintegrated as the first to each and every imper-fection which claims to be. Entirely differ-ent is the case of the Dominus Liminis whose operation, if unsuccessful, may be a simple failure perhaps due to no serious error of his own. Apart from slight discouragement he should be able to try again without disadvantage. Indeed he should have used his failure as a means of instruction. But he may also fail from not having thoroughly assimilated the injunction of the Hieraeus in the ceremony of his initiation into the Grade of Neophyte: ``Fear is failure and the forerunner of failure. Be thou therefore without fear! for in the heart of the coward Virtue abideth not!''

Similarly, he may have been unable to fulfil the formula of the Hierophant in that ceremony: ``Remember that Unbalanced Force is evil. Unbalanced Mercy is but weakness: Unbalanced Severity is but oppres-sion.'' Once more the fascination of evil may be no less perilous than the fear. In any case he may expect to be confronted first of all by his Evil Genius (cf., further, the ceremony of Zelator in G...D...the appearance of the Angels Samael, Metatron, and Sandalphon). He may fail to abide the onslaught. He may be thrust back from the threshold, and his defeat may be more or less damaging according to circumstances. But his fear may be so great as to induce him to transform it into fascination, or his exhaus-tion so complete that he is prepared to purchase rest at any price. In either case the result may be that he accepts his Evil Persona as his Guardian Angel. I should be loth to assert that even so fearful a form of failure is necessarily fatal and final although evidently it must always create a disastrous Karma as involving the assertion fortified by the most solemn oaths and sealed by the most intense ecstasy of the absolute existence of evil, in a sense of the word, actually and ad hoc defined by himself, i.e., he has acquiesced in duality, established an interior conflict in himself, and ceremonially blasphemed and denied the unity of his own True Will. Appalling as is such a catastrophe, it lacks the element of finality since the principles involved do not extend above Tiphereth.

He has become a Black Magician no doubt, but this is far indeed from being a Black Brother. It cannot even be said that such an one thereby  manifests any tendency to become a Black Brother when the time is ripe; for his union even with the personification of Evil is also an act of love under will, though that will be false and vitiated by every conceivable defect and error. His chief danger is presumably that the intensity of the suffering which results from his «Grk»AMARTIA may, as in the case of Glyndon in Zanoni, lead him to seek to escape altogether from Magick, to refrain from any act of love for fear lest he stray still farther from his true path. Let him remember the words of my brother: ``If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.'' Let him resolutely continue in iniquity, invoking the vengeance of the Gods, so that at the end the excess of his love and its transcen-dence of anguish may bring him back into the way of truth.

From the above it should have become clear how it is that the Evil Genius is within the Sanctuary of the Temple of the Rosy Cross whose formula is ``love under will,'' while Choronzon is excluded alike from that shrine and from the City of the Pyramids whose law, although still ``love under will,'' under-stands both those terms as without limit.

______________________________________________________________

34.  On the threshold stood the fulminant figure of Evil, the

Horror of emptiness, with his ghastly eyes like poisonous

wells.  He stood, and the chamber was corrupt; the air

stank.  He was an old and gnarled fish more hideous than

the shells of Abaddon.

The Evil is now described. The language is of course symbolic. At the same time the appearance here given might correspond very closely with

the actual expressions of experience.

We are twice told that he ``stood'' which is to be contras-ted with the activity of ``going'' of the Holy Guardian Angel (see verses 37-41). It is the peculiar token of any God that he should go. For this reason he bears the Ankh or sandalstrap in the Egyptian monuments. This antithe-sis is connected with the concep-tion of the Black Brothers as shutting themselves up, or resenting change. The thelemic conception of the Universe is dynamic, so that stasis is inevitably the symbol of conflict with Nature. It is the equivalent of Death; for Death being a change, it is an event, i.e., a phenomenon of activity of life. This doctrine should be studied very thoroughly in CCXX.

Let the student attend, moreover, to the contrast between the symbols of the Holy Guardian Angel and those of the Evil Genius. The former, (See verses 38-41) are positive, active, solid, dynamic; of chariots, horseman, spearmen, the weapons of Jupiter and Pan are tremendously vital in his hands. Per contra the Evil Genius is vague, unreal and inactive. His characteris-tics are horror and emptiness. His eyes are ghastly, which I take in its strict sense as connected with geist. And this epithet is peculiar-ly abhorrent since the sense of sight is attributed to Fire, and should be clearcut and luminous. Such activi-ties as he commands are slow, cozy and vermicular. They resemble wells of poisoned water, i.e. they lurk and receive as little light as possible, whereas the ideal eye should dart forth flame. He causes even the air about him to stagnate and stink. Anatomi-cally he resembles a fish, a coldblooded inhabit-ant of the passive element. (Note the fish as the accepted symbol of Jesus). Even so, he is old, slowmov-ing, while the chief virtue of fish is to be quickly gliding. And he is gnarled, offering unnecessary resistance to his own movement, and increasing its friction. Hideous!

Shells or Qliphoth are lifeless excrement; and Abaddon is the destroyer or disperser  the destroyer by dispersion.

______________________________________________________________

35.  He enveloped me with his demon tentacles; yea, the eight

fears took hold upon me.

His method of combat as distinct from that of the Angel which is to pierce with a spear or smite with a thunderbolt is to envelope with his demoniacal and therefore illusory tentacles. This method is to restrict the Aspirant well knowing that ``the word of Sin is restriction.'' He succeeds in communicating the ``eight fears,'' which are connected with the eight heads of the stooping dragon. (See, for this symbolism, ``The Temple of Solomon the King,'' The Equinox I:13) They are the restric-tions to the Supernal Triad attempted by the seven lower Sephiroth and Da'ath. Hence the Stooping Dragon is shown on the Tree of Life below the Abyss after the Fall, and on the floor of the Vault of Christian Rosencreutz. In the older symbolism they are the eight Kings of Edom.

______________________________________________________________

36.  But I was anointed with the right sweet oil of the Magis-

ter; I slipped from the embrace as a stone from the sling

of a boy of the woodlands.

The Aspirant is ``anointed with the right sweet oil of the Magister.'' The Magister pertaining to Binah, this oil may be taken to symbolize his Neschamah or aspiration. See the account of the Holy Oil given in Book 4, Part II. (The Holy Oil is the Aspiration of the Magician; it is that which consecrates him to the perfor-mance of the Great Work; and such is its efficacy that it also consecrates all the furniture of the Temple and the instruments thereof. It is also the grace or chrism; for this aspiration is not ambition; it is a quality bestowed from above... It is the pure light translated into terms of desire. It is not the Will of the Magician, the desire of the lower to reach the higher; but it is that spark of the higher in the Magician which wishes to unite the lower with itself.) Also the essential property of oil is to diminish friction and increase ease of movement. It is therefore the precisely right reply to this type of attack.

Furthermore, the Aspirant compares himself to a stone, which refers to the cubic stone symbolic of perfect adeptship, being the squared and equilibrated perfection of the spiritual Masonry; it is bounded by six squares which signify protection by Macro-prosopus. See also the symbolism of the Stone in the Zohar, a subject far too extensive to make more than this single indica-tion practicable. There is, further-more, an identification of the Stone with the Sacred Phallus and of the Sun as worship-ped in the Temple of Diana at Ephesus and in the word ABRASAX. In our own holy books, see V:6 and 58 of this Book and Liber VII V:2. (We made as a temple of stones in the shape of the Uni-verse, even as thou didst wear openly and I concealed). In this last connec-tion note the proper juxtapo-sition of stones as symbolic of the Great Work. This is to be found also in The Voice of Silence, where those who have attained build themselves into a wall to protect mankind.

See also Liber VII VII:6. (We know why all is hidden in the stone, within the coffin, within the mighty sepulchre, and we too answer Olalam! Imal! Tutulu! as it is written in the ancient book).

This stone is a missile in the ``sling of a boy of the wood-lands'' who may be taken to represent the most youthful and active form of Pan, i.e. the aspirant considers himself as flung forth from the infinite and released from his swathings. (Cf. Liber VII, VII:35) that he may perform the Great Work.

______________________________________________________________

37.  I was smooth and hard as ivory; the horror gat no hold.

Then at the noise of the wind of Thy coming he was dissolv-ed

away, and the abyss of the great void was unfolded before me.

The aspirant is smooth; his qualities have been perfectly har-monised.  He is hard, having perfected his resistance to extreme pressure. The analogy is with ivory. Ivory is the substance of the tooth, the letter Shin of the Holy Spirit and also of the substance of the skeleton on which his being is being built. The sound "Sh" moreover represents the power of silence as well as the activity and alertness which accompany

the will to manifest oneself through one's True Will. I here quote from my original notes on the intrinsic meaning of the letter: "S" is the serpenthiss, the sharp breath, teeth bared yet clenched, which is the natural token of alarm, hate, defi-ance, natural to a man who meets his fellowaberration from legitimate monkeyhood. By it he recognizes his brother, and names him accordingly, when need was. (Later, when alarm had died, we have still ``sh!''-Hush!not a call for Silence, which it breaks, but a claim on the Attention of other men.) In S is this idea of fear and anger, combines these ideas; so the first Sgods were stormgods.

Later, this breath, air moving in men, might be known for a proof that he lived; then this breathletter, S, might come to mean "life." For instance, God breathes on Adam to make him a "living soul," and Elisha raises a boy to life by breathing on him. The Ruach Elohim again is a Breath that broods Chaos. At last we find a Holy Ghost begetting by dint of a breath. And was not Maut the MotherVulture impregnated by the wind? Perhaps too the hiss of the rain which fertilizes earth, as even a savage must observe in tropical lands where the result is so swift, may have helped him to the convention that S should mean life.

This rain comes from the air which he breathes, though from beyond him; it seems then to him natural to make Zeus or Shu raingods and life-gods as well as airgods, stormgods, names for the fierce, the fearful anger which at first only meant "an enemy"-his fellowman!' (Diary, June 1920).

The Evil Genius is accordingly unable to dominate the aspirant. He having proved his virtue is now ready to receive the Holy Guardian Angel. Firstly is the noise of His coming. ``For the Lord shall descend from Heaven, with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel, and with the trump of God.'' ``The Lord'' is Adonai-which is the Hebrew for `my Lord'; and He descends from Heaven, the supernal Eden, the Saha-srara Cakkra in man, with a `shout,' a `voice' and a `trump,' again airy symbols, for it is air that carries sound. These sounds refer to those heard by the Adept at the moment of rapture.'' (Book 4, Part II). This by itself is sufficient to destroy the illusion of the Evil Genius. The ``abyss of the great void'' is unfolded before the aspi-rant, i.e., all positive phenomena disappear. What remains is the ``infinite space'' of Nuit. The continuous body of infinite possibili-ties.

______________________________________________________________

38.  Across the waveless sea of eternity Thou didst ride with

Thy captains and Thy hosts; with Thy chariots and horsemen

and spearmen didst Thou travel through the blue.

"The waveless sea of Eternity" repeats this idea. It is the timeless menstruum of action, unstirred by any vibration, while ready to receive and transmit that which is imposed thereupon by the will. The Holy Guardian Angel approaches rapidly ('rides') accompanied by his hosts (Note [Hebrew]TzBA, an host = 93).

______________________________________________________________

39.  Before I saw Thee Thou wast already with me; I was smitten

through by Thy marvellous spear.

The arrival of the Angel is too rapid for the perception of the Adept. Cf. II:60 etc. The symbolism of the spear should be studied in the legends of the Crucifixion, of Parzifal, and others. The matter is further elucidated in BaghiMuattar.

______________________________________________________________

40.  I was stricken as a bird by the bolt of the thunderer; I

was pierced as the thief by the Lord of the Garden.

The Thunderer is Jupiter, here considered as the creative paternal, and warrior Lord of the Air. The bolt is the Swastika, or Disc of Zeus. Its symbolism is ultimately identical with that of the sphere. The bird is the natural symbol of the aspiring soul. Cf. II:3941. The Swastika has the shape of the letter Aleph whose Temurah is [Hebrew]PLA, (see Sepher Sephiroth) by which we mean the instantaneous destruction of the Ego in Samadhi. The second phrase echoes the two former. The Lord of the Garden is Pan or Priapus whom my brother Catullus constantly represents as punishing thieves in his peculiar manner. There is a special symbolism of the thief in which perhaps we find traces of the Legend of the Crucifixion and the ritual of the priest of Nemi but its detailed signification has been to a great extent lost or abandoned.

______________________________________________________________

41.  O my Lord, let us sail upon the sea of blood!

Cf. II:15, similar passage. I:3341 especially verses 33 and 39.

Immediately the Adept has attained to the Knowledge and Con-versa-tion of his Holy Guardian Angel he loses no time, but goes on the way of his True Will, borne upon the flood of the physical life which he has spilt in order to enjoy the imper-sonal and effortless life in communion with his Angel.

______________________________________________________________

(42-44)  Present a lyrical picture of the Mystery of Evil.

42.  There is a deep taint beneath the ineffable bliss; it is

the taint of generation.

The bliss of the union of the Adept and his Angel appears to contain a flaw, in that being an operation of change ``the taint of generation'' it shares the impermanence of all complex phenomena and therefore the liability to sorrow. See III:21-25.

______________________________________________________________

43.  Yea, though the flower wave bright in the sunshine, the

root is deep in the darkness of earth.

Admits that the most admirable manifestations spring from deep-seated mysteries. Corruption lies at the heart of all things.

______________________________________________________________

44.  Praise to thee, O beautiful dark earth, thou art the mother

of a million myriads of myriads of flowers.

No attempt is made to contradict the above or to explain it away. The solution comes from looking at the other side of the matter. Corruption itself and all the mysteries of sorrow are to be held matters for rejoicing, since they are the engines whose work results in truth and beauty. Cf CCXX I:2930.

______________________________________________________________

(4553) This passage is the most difficult in the Chapter. It is difficult to consider its verses separately. Yet there seems to be no proper coherence in them, no single orderly idea is their diversity.

The solution seems to be in the direction of a realisation that the passage is in the nature of progressive discovery. It resembles the account of a mental journey. One of the keys to it is the sudden shifting of the point of view noted above, vv. 4344. The contemplation of Beauty leads to the reflection upon the elements of Beauty which we do not recognise as beautiful because our sensorium is not adjusted to that stage of exist-ence. Cf. my poem on ``Ovariotomy'', where the plastic beauty of woman seems to be destroyed by cutting her up. Yet the beauty reappears in a different form when the cells of which she is composed are examined under the microscope. Let us apply this key to the passage here under consideration.

______________________________________________________________

45.  Also I beheld my God, and the countenance of Him was a

thousandfold brighter than the lightning.  Yet in his heart

I beheld the slow and dark One, the ancient one, the

devourer of His children.

In the first sentence attention is called to the brilliance of the appearance of the Angel. The second sentence recognises that beneath this appearance is a symbol of terror, viz., Saturn, who is here understood by his astrological and legendary attribu-tions. We must be at pains to note that Saturn is the god of generation. This establishes a reference to verse 42. Saturn is called the devourer of his children because he is Time who conceals in oblivion the phenomena he has brought forth from the inane. But there is a further meaning which is that he is not bound by the results of his action. Whatever he does results only in a tran-sitory phenomenon which vanishes automatically as time goes on. Shallow minded people are accustomed to regret imperma-nence. They fail to realize that if everything that happened remained in existence the burden of facts would soon become intolerable. Nature requires an excretory system or she would soon become clogged with the multiplicity of her own illusions. The progress of the human mind depends upon its power to assimilate the details of any work. They constitute the finished product and appear therein only in a changed form. The rough working must be destroyed. The process is continuous. The art of progress is to compose constantly more complex and more comprehensive synthesis; just as the words of a poem surrender their intrinsic meaning in order to compose the unity of the impression made by the poem as a whole, so again the poems of the poet. This formula is universal-ly applicable. It is particu-larly the subject of biology.

______________________________________________________________

46.  In the height and the abyss, O my beautiful, there is no

thing, verily, there is no thing at all, that is not

al-together and perfectly fashioned for Thy delight.

The work of Saturn seems no longer mysterious and terrible because its nature changes and is lost in the admirable result of its operation.

______________________________________________________________

47.  Light cleaveth unto Light, and filth to filth; with pride

one contemneth another.  But not Thou, who art all, and

beyond it; who art absolved from the Division of the

Shadows.

Cf.. CCXX, I:2223 and similar passages. It is natural to us to make a distinction between things, to prefer one thing to another. But the Angel is above such duality. All things equally contribute to his perfection. He is said to be ``absolved from the Division of the Shadows'', i.e. from the illusion of dividu-ality. It is only an illusion that difference is apparent between diverse phenomena. The most fatal mistake that the Adept can make is to emphasise the desira-bility of one set of things and the un-desirability of another. If he persist in so doing his sectari-anism will thwart his ideal so  that his Angel, instead of being complete, comprehensive, and perfect, will represent his personal prejudices. In such a case the Adept will suffer whenever his attention is called to any idea in Nature which is not success-fully transmuted and included in the scope of his aspiration.

______________________________________________________________

48.  O day of Eternity, let Thy wave break in foamless glory of 	sapphire

upon the laborious coral of our making!

This doctrine is restated. The coral is the Karma produced by the accumulation of our acts. This construction has taken place in time and its need is to be covered by the rhythm of Eternal Delight. The Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel set as a point of contact between two continua. Neither is comprehensive without the other.

______________________________________________________________

49.  We have made us a ring of glistening white sand, strewn

wisely in the midst of the Delightful Ocean.

The symbolism of the previous verse is carried on. The ring indicated the perfection of our own being on the synthesis of our actions. We have constituted ourselves as a positive phenomenon situated in a realm of infinite possibilities, with which we can make contact, as we choose. To understand this passage properly we must keep in mind the teaching of CCXX about the nature of existence. The appearance of the Khu, a series of marriages of Hadit and Nuit, lead to the congregation of what may be called a positive individuality of the Second Order which is ready to act as a unit, and to invoke Nuit.

______________________________________________________________

(5051)  Show the two forms in which this plan can be executed.

50.  Let the palms of brilliance flower upon our island; we

shall eat of their fruit, and be glad.

51.  But for me the lustral water, the great ablution, the

dissolving of the soul in that resounding abyss.

Acts of love under will may be directed to the creation of masterpiec-es. There are the ``palms'' whose flower delights, whose fruit nouri-shes our personality. Such acts may also be directed inwardlythe mystical process as opposed to the magical, the dissolution of the personality regarded as imper-fec-tion. The indicates a preference for the latter process. This is natural, the work at issue being the Knowledge and Conversa-tion of the Holy Guardian Angel, and this is primarily a work of dissolution rather than of further construction.

______________________________________________________________

52.  I have a little son like a wanton goat; my daughter is like

an unfledged eaglet; they shall get them fins, that they

may swim.

53.  That they may swim, O my beloved, swim far in the warm

honey of Thy being, O blessed one, O boy of beatitude!

The symbolism is here particularly obscure. The son is presum-ably Ruach and the daughter Nephesch. The former seems to be described in respect of its capriciousness and the latter of its poor undevelopment in the matter of aspiration. They are to be furnished with the means of rhythmical motion. The defect of the goat of the Nephesch is its idleness, its lack of wings. They are then to be rendered capable of ordered movement within the element of the nature of the Angel.

______________________________________________________________

54.  This heart of mine is girt about with the serpent that

devoureth his own coils.

The symbols of the heart and the serpent are retained to repres-ent the Adept and the Angel, but the Angel is now shown as identical with the great Snake, Anata, which surrounds the Universe and by constantly devouring its own coils gradually restricts the manifested Cosmos.

______________________________________________________________

55.  When shall there be an end, O my darling, O when shall the

Universe and the Lord thereof be utterly swallowed up?

The Adept enquires with regard to the process. (The answer is apparen-tly given in verse 65.) Despite the perfection of his rapture, the Adept appears to recognise that it is only so to speak an oasis in the desert. He extends his aspiration from the personal problem of his own sorrow to the contemplation of the Universal Sorrow.

______________________________________________________________

56.  Nay! who shall devour the Infinite? who shall undo the

Wrong of the Beginning?

The Adept appears to be overwhelmed by this consideration. It seems to him theoretically impossible to ``undo the wrong of the Beginning.'' This means that he has now understood the doctrine that the beginning (Berashith) is necessarily of the nature of error. Any separateness, any sense of finitude represents imperfec-tion. It is a matter of plain logic that it should be so. He has of course succeeded in making his personal imperfec-tion the means of attaining selfconsciousness and  thereby a spirit-ual state beyond anything of which he seemed capable. But his attainment having made him aware of the whole Universe and identified it with the conditions of his own sublime being he experien-ces the Trance of Sorrow.

It must be borne in mind that Qabalastically the Adept has no special cognisance of any Sephira above Tiphereth until he has attained thereto. This postulate is promulgated simply for convenience of calculation. In actual practice it is of course usual for the aspirant to be imbued by wiser motives than those determined by his recognition of his personal imperfections.

The point of the passage is to show how the attainment, instead of being as the postulate was apt to image the comple-tion of the Great Work, may extend his conception of that work from a personal to an impersonal sphere. The first lesson that he learn in fact is that he must apply himself immediately to fitting himself to enter the Third Order, now that at least he is admitted to the Second. I quote Liber 418, the 14th Aethyr. It states the doctrine with singular insight and eloquence.

______________________________________________________________

57.  Thou criest like a white cat upon the roof of the Universe;

there is none to answer Thee.

This verse throws light on the three previous. The Angel is now clearly understood as only concerned with the Adept as such in total fraction of his whole function. He is no longer the goal and crown of the Adept. That work being accomplished it is seen in proper perspective. The Adept begins to apprehend the nature of the Angel as he is in himself, i.e., as he is a relation of the Macrocosm. Now in the particular case of 666, the Angel being Aiwass, the pertinence of verses 5456, which  were at first sight rather puzzling, as indicating a new and unfamiliar aspect of the Angel, is seen to be absolute. Aiwass is the Logos of the Aeon, his number being 93, like that of Thelema the word of the Law. 666 is the instrument of which he and the Secret Chiefs of the A.'.A.'. prepared and employed as an instrument by which the Law might be proclaimed. 666 is the 4th number of Sol whose House is Leo, the Lion, which again is the Sign of the man 666 (rising at his birth). This man therefore apprehending his Angel as the perfect-ion of his own symbol likened him to a white (Kether) cat (lion) and, since he is the Logos, says to Him ``Thou criest.'' This is the link with verses 5456, for 666 looks to Aiwass to undo the Wrong of the Beginning by the utterance of a Word. It seems, however, to the nature of the Word is altogether sublime. The roof of the Universe is a symbol of Kether, or of Kether with the Paths Aleph and Beth which issue from it forming symbolically a roof to the Tree of Life. ``There is none to answer Thee''. Above Kether is None or the Negative, the three kinds of Ain or Nothing. The complaint of 666 is therefore that this Word will find no echo save in the heart of Nuit.

______________________________________________________________

58.  Thou art like a lonely pillar in the midst of the sea;

there is none to behold Thee, O Thou who beholdest all!

Repeats the idea of verse 57. The ``lonely pillar'' represents Chokmah, the Creative Word, the Phallic Mercury, the Wisdom by which the world were created. The sea is Binah, the natural abode of Chokmah. The nature of Binah though indeed to under-stand is to be the great dark-ness. This is the conventional symbolism. Many examples of it are given in this and other sacred books. But see in particular Liber 418:

This is the Mystery of Babylon, the Mother of Abomina-tions, and this is the mystery of her adulteries, for she hath yielded up herself to everything that liveth, and hath become a partaker in its mystery. And because she hath made herself the servant of each, therefore is she become the mistress of all. Not as yet canst thou comprehended her glory.

Beautiful art thou, O Babylon, and desirable, for thou hast given thyself to everything that liveth, and thy weakness hath subdued their strength. For in that union thou didst understand. There-fore art thou called Under-standing, O Babylon Lady of the Night!

This is that which is written, ``O my God, in One last rapture let me attain to the Union with many.'' For she is Love, and her love is one, and she hath divided the one love into infinite loves, and each love is one, and equal with The One, and there-fore is she passed ``from the assembly and the law and the enlightenment unto the anarchy of solitude and darkness. For ever thus must she veil brilliance of Her Self.''

O Babylon, Babylon, thou mighty Mother, that ridest upon the crowned beast, let me be drunken upon wine of thy fornica-tions; let thy kisses wanton me unto death, that even I, thy cupbear-er, may understand.

Now, through the ruddy glow of the cup, I may perceive far above, and infinitely great, the vision of Babylon. And the Beast whereon she rideth is the Lord of the City of the Pyra-mids, that I beheld in the fourteenth Aethyr. (Twelfth Aethyr)

O thou that art master of the fifty gates of Under-standing, is not my mother a black woman? O thou that art master of the Pentagram, is not the egg of spirit a black egg? Here abideth terror, and the blind ache of the Soul and lo! even I, who am the sole light, a spark shut up, stand in the sign of Apophis and Typhon. (Four-teenth Aethyr).

I am the One beyond these all; and I bear the symbols of the mighty darkness.

There shall be a sigil as of a vast black brooding ocean of death and the central blaze of darkness, radiating its night upon all.

It shall swallow up that lesser darkness. But in that profound who shall answer: What is? Not I.

Not Thou, O God! (Liber VII VII:28-33.)

A principal symbol of Chokmah as the Phallic Mercury is the eye I quote from the vision of Him as observed in The Paris Working:

``He (Mercury) is essentially phallic, but he has a book in his hand, the Book which has one hundred and six pages. On the last page, as a colophon, is a fourpointed star, very luminous, and this is to be identified with the eye of Shiva, and the book pertains to the Grade of 7o = 4o. The Subtitle of the Book is BIA, which is said to mean `force' [th]''.

In this aspect although Chokmah is the Word he sees and does not speak. The Word is in fact Act itself, rather than any intelli-gible utterance. The complaint of 666 seems then to be that neither by word nor deed can Aiwass undo the Wrong of the Beginning. Thelema which is itself an absolute symbol of Chokmah is beyond the comprehension of the Universe whose imperfection its function is to remedy.

______________________________________________________________

59.  Thou dost faint, thou dost fail, thou scribe; cried the

desolate Voice; but I have filled thee with a wine whose

savour thou knowest not.

The epithet `desolate' attracts the attention immediately. The word is derived from desolare, de having an intensive force, so that desolate means ``utterly alone.'' The Hierophants have however been accustomed to communicate arcana in the presence of the profane by taking advan-tage of the similarity of sound between Sol and solus, especially in such parts of the declen-sion as soli which is genitive singular of solus and dative singular of Sol, and  solis, genitive singular of Sol and ablative plural of solus. The word desolate may therefore be intended to indicate the attribution of the Angel both to Kether (Solus) and to Tiphereth (Sol). The de may imply a reference to his relation with the adept through the Path of Daleth, Love, especially in view of the fact that His word Thelema, 93, contains the idea of Agape, 93.

The verse is a direct reply of Aiwass to 666 who was actually very disheartened at realising that the Great Work which he had accompli-shed, for all its raptures of his personal sorrow, was but the gateway of the Path of the stupendous task of rediscover-ing the Universe as he had done for himself. Aiwass explains that he has actually made the magical link necessary between Himself and the World through the man 666. My fainting under the sense of my responsibility, my feeling that my work for the world was foredoom-ed to failure, were due to my ignor-ance of what Aiwass had done.

He claims that he has filled me with ``a wine whose savour thou knowest not''. Wine is the universal symbol for spiritual ecstasy and the means of producing it. 666 does not know precisely how this ecstasy which throbs his life will affect others.

______________________________________________________________

60.  It shall avail to make drunken the people of the old gray

sphere that rolls in the infinite Faroff; they shall lap

the wine as dogs that lap the blood of a beautiful courtesan

pierced through by the Spear of a swift rider through the

city.

``The old gray sphere that rolls in the infinite Faroff'' is the earth; for the place into which the Adept is caught up to hold commu-nion with his Angel is remote from the material Universe. Nevertheless this wine which may symbolise CCXX itself or even the poetry or the biography of the man 666 is guaranteed to posses the virtue of intoxi-cating the inhabitants of this planet.

The final symbol is strangely and even formidably vivid. The reference to the dogs, the blood, and the swift rider suggest the story of Jehu and Jezebel, but the allusion is not accurate or altogether intelligi-ble. The general symbolism is nevertheless sufficiently clear.  Cf., in the first place, III:40, V:8, Liber VII VII:1516. Cf. also the uniform represen-tation of the Adept as a maiden or harlot. For the swift rider Cf. IV:3839 and the general symbolism of the Angel as bearer of the sacred lance or phallus and as mounted on a horse to indicate his swiftness and his power over the animal nature. Blood is constantly used as a symbol of the flowing life the vehicle of animal energy.

The meaning of the verse is then that this spilth of the orgia of the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel becomes the nourishment and the means of intoxication of the dogs, i.e. of animals of a lower stage of evolution. It is however, hinted that they contain in themselves the hidden godhead. See CCXX II:19. They have only to reverse their magical formula to attain the divini-ty. Note also the use of the word `lap' which suggests their thirst, eagerness and enjoyment, but also is connected with the symbolism of the number 111. This implies the `thick darkness' and the `sudden death' involved in the process of Initiation. There is also the whole doctrine of ``The Fool.'' Besides all this, the word `lap' is in the Angelic Language. (See The Equinox I:8, The 48 Calls or Keys.'') Because thus indicating that the limitation and sorrow of these dogs is due to their subservi-ence to the faculty of reason.  ``There is great danger in me; for who doth not understand these runes shall make a great miss. He shall fall down into the pit called Because, and there he shall perish with the dogs of Reason. Now a curse upon Because and his kin! May Because be accursed for ever! If Will stops and cries Why, invoking Because, then Will stops and does nought. If Power asks why, then is Power weak-ness. Also reason is a lie; for there is a factor infinite and unknown; and all their words are skewwise. Enough of Because! Be he damned for a dog! (Liber CCXX II:2733.)

The student should mediate upon these considerations until he has thoroughly assimilated them, severally and in combina-tion. He should then construct a visual projection of the scene described in this verse. In this way he should eventually arrive at a direct intuitive apprehension of the way in which the life work of 666 may avail him to become partaker of the sacrament of initiation. Cf. also Liber VII III:16, 2025 (241), 4950, 5660, IV:1724, VII:4749. I have emphasi-sed the importance of this passage on the following consideration:

My own magical career began by my taking an oath to attain Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel on entirely selfish and personal grounds. I had, it is true, experienced the Trance of Sorrow, but the motive power in this Trance to formul-ate the oath was strictly confined to my individual dissa-tisfaction with the situation in which I found myselfas far as I know without any intention of my own. In  the course of preparing to carry out the Operation of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, I discovered that my interests were in-separable from those of humanity at large. I however formul-ated my True Will in this way. My mission on earth was to teach men ``the next step,'' i.e. to induce them to devote themselves to attain the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel as opposed to more philosophic-ally universal tasks such as the Hindu and Buddhist sages proposed. It was my own attainment that compelled me to extend the scope of my Work to the function of the Logos of the Aeon much as has been explained in the passages of this Chapter just discussed. The two most important works of strictly inspired origin which I have produced are LXV and VII and it now becomes clear that it is natural and neces-sary that this should be so. For Liber LXV covers every possible point that may arise in connection with the Grade of Adeptus Minor, and Liber VII of Magister Templi.

______________________________________________________________

(61-63)  Beginning with verse 54 the subject of this Chapter and indeed of the whole book has undergone a process of modifica-tion. Previ-ously it had been concerned almost exclusively with the relation between the Angel and the man, the only variety being due to the division of the man for convenience into Nephesch, Ruach, and so on. Indeed if we identify the Angel with Yechidah it might be fair to say that Liber LXV is nothing but an extended comment upon Column LXVII of Liber 777. But now we reach firstly the consciousness of the Universe in its totality and then the peculiar relation of 666 with his fellow men. We have seen that his function in the life of the Planet has been defined, and it is consequently not unnatural that the Angel should indicate the actual physical condition of His future relations with 666.

61.  I too am the Soul of the desert; thou shalt seek me yet

again in the wilderness of sand.

62.  At thy right hand a great lord and a comely; at thy left

hand a woman clad in gossamer and gold and having the stars

in her hair.  Ye shall journey far into a land of pestil-ence

and evil; ye shall encamp in the river of a foolish city

forgotten; there shall ye meet with Me.

63.  There will I make Mine habitation; as for bridal will I

come bedecked and anointed; there shall the Consummation be

ac-complished.

The Angel declares Himself to be the Soul of the Desert. This remark may be taken generally as a reference to His attribution to the Path of Gimel which joins Kether and Tiphereth crossing the Abyss or Desert whose essential characteristic is the absence of a soul. See Liber 418, 10th Aethyr. Choronzon is defined as soulless-ness. Protean as are the forms of his appearance this quality is common to them all that there is no essence behind them. They are the Qliphoth (shells or husks), devoid of meaning or substance because mere categories uninfor-med by any individu-ality. Gimel incidentally means a camel `the ship of the desert'. Cf. Liber VII VII:2223, and Liber 333

  THE DEVIL, THE OSTRICH, AND THE ORPHAN CHILD.

                  CHAPTER 73

Death rides the Camel of Initiation.

Thou humped and stiffnecked one that groanest in

  Thine Asana,  death will relieve thee!

Bite not, Zelator dear, but bide! Ten days didst

  thou go with water in they belly? Thou shalt go

  twenty more with a fire brand  at they rump!

Ay! All thine aspiration is to death: death is the

  crown of all thine aspiration. Triple is the cord of

  silver moon-light; it shall hang thee, O Holy One,

  O hanged Man, O CamelTerminationofthe

  thirdpersonplural for thy multiplicity, thou

  Ghost of a NonEgo!

Could but Thy mother behold thee, O thou UNT!

The Infinite Snake Anata that surroundeth the

  Universe is but the CoffinWorm!

[V.V.V.V.V. is the Motto of 666 in his Grade of Magister Templi. See Liber LXI 2930. The function of the Magister Templi is to cause the desert to blossom by transmitting the Logos of the Aeon to those that are below the Abyss.]

Apart from this general signification there is a personal allusion to 666 who is Alastor, the Spirit of Solitude. Foolish Rabbins have included this symbol in their list of demons. To the wellfed Pharisee as to the modern bourgeois nothing seems more frightful than solitude in which the mind is compelled to face reality. Such people fear nothing so much as the wilder-ness. The very legend of their tribe deals with the ``land of milk and honey'', the Promised Land, the wish phantasm of the sensual.

Observe that this is merely a matter of point of view. V:5962. What is to the smug Jew with his Oedipus complex the extreme abomination is to us a ``land beyond honey and spice and all perfection,'' though we call it `Naught.' We consider them `weary ones' and their ideal of comfort and civilisation as `old grey land'. De gustibus non est disputandum. But there is a criterion in this case by which we can determine whether we or they have chosen the better part. For it is evident that no condition of existence can be really satisfactory if its joy is liable to be disturbed. The question is whether its nature is harmonious with that of the Universe. For stability depends thereon. We should find consequently that the ideal of the bourgeois is repose and his concep-tion of the Cosmos static. Now we find that this is not the case. The Universe is a constant flux. To desire repose is thus contrary to Nature herself. We accept this fact and define the Black Brothers directly as those who seek to check the course of events. The bourgeois is for us therefore a clumsy ignorant amateur Black Magician. Our idea of joy is unchecked free motion, and the stability of our joy is assured by our very conception of Yesod. We find the change the more fixed we are in our joy. (Refer to the 11th and 3rd Aethyrs, and several similar passages in the Holy Books.) We are guaran-teed by the nature of things in themselves whereas the bourgeois is constantly upset by such trivial matters as the efflux of time and the rate of exchange.

The hardships of desert life and in particular its psycho-logical horror indicate the correspondence emphatically.

Apart from this reference to Alastor the word again recalls the historic events of the 3rd of December, 1909 E.V. at Bou Saada when 666 ceremonial underwent the Initiation into the Grade of Magister Templi. This points the allusion. From this it is evident that the import of these verses is entirely practi-cal. They are not to be taken in a mystical sense, but as definitely predicting a Great Magical Retire-ment, to be underta-ken by 666 at some period in the future. There do not seem to be any clear indications as to the date of this journey, but its conditions are laid down with considerable precision and the actual place the `consummation' is described in terms which should leave no room for doubt.

The student should refer to the accounts of such events as the finding of the Villa Caldarezzo if he would learn to interpret the instructions communicated by means of visions and oracles.

I have always taken this passage in this sense. I have expected to find sooner or later that my circumstances were such that afterwards it would be found to have been a precise and exact fulfilment of this prediction. At the moment of writing this Comment some such journey is actually in contemplation and it may be part of the preparation for that journey that I should have been moved to devote my energies to the analysis of this Book. It is therefore immediately pertinent to my own work and should be exceedingly useful in the most practical way to the  student to trace out as minutely as possible the probable bearings of the symbolism of the text.

In view however of the extreme importance of this Great Magical Retirement it would be in the last degree improper to discuss it coram populo while yet inchoate. Moreover it is a wellknown characteristic of all true prediction that while some of the allusions should be intelligible at the time of utterance so that its general bearing should be unmistakable there should be other passages altogether beyond the possibility of interpre-tation until the occur-rence of the event foretold. In Macbeth and Part II of Henry VI, Act I, Scene 4 and Act IV, Scene 1, lines 3035, and Act V, Scene II, lines 6769 illustrate this condition. The student is also referred to the interpretation and fulfilment of CCXX III:47. (Put in a short account.) No amount of investigation would have enabled me to say in what sense the words of the prediction would justify themselves.

In the case of the Great Magical Retirement indicated in these verses the data are singularly precise. Even in the matter of the effect of the Work, verse 63, there are a number of unusual expressions`bedecked', `anointed', `Consummation'-which are at present and must be, until the event, perfectly obscure. The verse is superficially the maximum of vagueness. These expressions might apply to almost any form of intercourse between Aiwass and the Beast. When the Retirement is a matter of history it will appear that these express with the almost mathematical precision the nature of the orgia, and that no other words exist which could replace them adequately. This circumstance should be irrefutable proof to those who understand anything of the laws of Nature especially in regard to the doctrine of probability that Aiwass possesses the power of foretelling future events and bringing them to pass in conform-ity with His plans. The vagueness of the expression at  present is evidently an essential part of this proof. For if I were able to interpret them with certainty in the striking and convincing way which time will permit me to do, I should be able by the exercise of prudence to arrange for the fulfilment of the prediction and thereby destroy its eviden-tial character.

This paragraph was dictated by me to Frater O.P.V. on the evening of 17th July, 1923, E.V. (In fact 1010.20 p.m. Tuesday, 17th July, 1923, at the Hotel Au Souffle du Zephir, Marsa Plage, Tunisia). (An XIX, Sol in 24o Cancer, Luna in 14o Virgo). The passage will be shown for confirmation to Eddie.

______________________________________________________________

64.  O my darling, I also wait for the brilliance of the hour

ineffable, when the universe shall be like a girdle for the

midst of the ray of our love, extending beyond the permit-

ted end of the endless One.

The language of this verse is curiously extravagant yet curious-ly exact. The impression is that the Angel is doing violence to the language by compelling ambiguous glyphs to assume definite form.

Refer to III:12 and my Comment upon them. Verses 6465 apparent-ly fix the connotation of the word `consummation' in verse 63.

It is difficult to assign any exact reason for my impres-sion, but that impression is that the love will extend no more as hitherto merely to Tiphereth (Liber LXV) or to Binah (Liber VII) but to Kether and the Ain Soph (Limitless). The endless One seemed to be Kether. At least, I cannot think of any alterna-tive. It may legitimately be described as endless on account of its unity. But in that case what meaning can we  assign to `permitted end'? The suggestion is that there are really two ends, one permitted, i.e., arbitrarily assigned, the other inherent in its nature. The reference might then be either to Malkuth or to the Ain.

Alternatively `end' may not represent `finis' but TELOS.  The permitted end may be paraphrased the lawful goal.

Again `endless' might be taken as equivalent to objectless. The canon of perfection of will is given in CCXX, I, 44:  For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is in every way perfect.''

Kether as unity may be described as endless because it is itself a result, a product of `love under will,' the resolution of the Dyad.  The Universe is compared to a `girdle for the midst of the ray of our love,' as if that ray were a limitless line of light. The totality of manifested existence would then be the boundary of the simple SECTION of this love. central

This state of things will arise when each of the two lovers has become identified with the infinite idea of which he is natural-ly a (centrali-zed or constricted) particular case. In other words, the Angel and the Adept will each have attained to selfan-nihila-tion or dissolution in the being of Nuit and Hadit respec-tively, and thus the point of junction, the bridal chamber, will be in the midst of the Universe of the finite phenomena precipita-ted by the union of the infinite comple-mentaries. The Universe will in fact be determined by the ray which represents the will to love of these two. The phenomenon is therefore parallel with that of the fundamental act of creation. This formula is so profound and important that it must be apprehended and assimilated by study of the theories concern-ing it in CCXX before the student can expect to attach any truly definite meaning to the ideas which I have endeavoured to translate into the language of intellectual concepts.

Besides all this there is undoubtedly a Neschamic or Samadhic meaning to verse 64 which is not in any way susceptible of intellectual interpretation unless by a Magister Templi who has made a special effort to construct a language capable of being the Abyss between Neschamah and Ruach, between the Samadhic and the normal conditions of consciousness.

______________________________________________________________

65.  Then, O thou heart, will I the serpent eat thee wholly up;

yea, I will eat thee wholly up.

The conclusionand be it remembered that this whole chapter concerns itself with the expression of the Unconscious Willis that the 'Consummation' of the K. and C. of the H.G.A. whose connotation is fixed by verse 64 is the complete and irrevocable absorption of the human consciousness of the Adept in that of his H.G.A. The symbol of the heart i.e. of the passive passion-ate life of the Adept is consumed (consummation) in the divine and eternal life represented by the serpent. The serpent is a vibration of energy whose complementary curves appear as death and life. It is the change of direction at the solstitial points of the curves which produce the illusion of stasis and therefore invite nomencla-ture on the part of those who fail to understand the continuity of the line, seeing as they do only a minute arc of it. The idea is cognate when the serpent is taken as in verse 54. Whatever glyph be chosen the thought is the same. The consummation implies the transformation of the reverberatory vibration of human life into the continuous serpentine spiral vibration of that pure energy which is not assuaged by its results, which neither lusts for its results nor is assuaged by them.

CHAPTER V

This Chapter is attributed to the element of Spirit; it deals conse-quently with the harmonization, in terms of humanity, of the Four Blind Forms of Energy. In previous chapters the man 666, being so gross and complex an idea, had no natural right to any place in the relations of his Angel, and the Adept which he has selected and perfected in himself. 666, `the scribe' (etc., as he is called in various passages) must formulate a link between himself and those others. (See I:4149, etc.)

But as Spirit, descending into the midst of Fire, Water, Air and Earth, constitutes them an Unity, Microprosopus, so this Chapter resumes the previous four; it applies them to 666. It explains how the Chymical Marriage of his Magical Self with his Angel affects the totality of his being. The language is conse-quently less technical; indeed, some passages are intelli-gible as they stand to quite uniniti-ated minds.

______________________________________________________________

 1.  Ah! my Lord Adonai, that dalliest with the Magister in the

TreasureHouse of Pearls, let me listen to the echo of your

kisses.

666 has begun to understand his relation with the Marriage in Chapter IV:54 seg. For the root of Yod (in Tetragrammaton) is in the `Uncons-cious' which connects the human consciousness with the Magical. Cf. Chapter I:41, `the echo of your kisses'; because the reality of such relations is beyond articulate apprehension; one can be conscious only of the reflection (in terms of the Ruach) of Neschamic intuition. The fact accounts for the impotent babble of the Mystics of old time: they are compelled to rely on rhetorical devices like the use of such words as `ineffable' and of mag-nificently mysterious metaphors. But now at last S.H. Frater V.V.V.V.V., 8o = 3, has collabora-ted with G.H. Frater O.M., 7o = 4, to construct a true language with accu-rately defined symbols in which the gesta of the A...A... (above the Abyss) may be translated into those of the R.R. et A.C. (below the Abyss). See Liber DCCXIII vel Ararita: several passages, but espe-cially V:18. The bulk of my writings upon the Orgia of the Holy Spirit of Man, from the Sword of Song, Konx Om Pax, and 777, to the BaghiMuat-tar and my Magical Records are perhaps princi-pally valuable to mankind as the first systematic essays in the interpretation of the Intuition of Neschamah to the Intellect of Ruach.

``The TreasureHouse of Pearls''See 777, Column 127, where Pearls are attributed to the First Palace (The Three Supernals) and to the Seventh (Yesod and Malkuth). But the symbolism of the Pearlor of Dewis peculiarly appropriate to descriptions of the Chymical Marriage. The Pearl is zro (see the BaghiMuat-tar; The Lost Conti-nent, etc. a cloudy Nebula containing the RashithhaGi-lgalim of the new Universe created of the Quintes-sence of the Substance of the Unity of the Angel and the Adept, expressed therefrom by virtue of ``love under will'' at the moment of Rapture.

In Chapter I, the Chapter of Earth, the scribe or prophet 666 is wroth, importunate, laborious, and ashamed. He had not succeeded in establishing the proper relations. He has now succeeded: ``let me listen'' is not a demand or request. It implies the power as in a true subjunctive. Cf. ``Let there be light.'' He does not wait for an answer.

______________________________________________________________

 2.  Is not the starry heaven shaken as a leaf at the tremulous

rapture of your love?  Am not I the flying spark of light

whirled away by the great wind of your perfection?

He continues with absolute confidence to indicate the source of his powers. He notes that the starry heaven (Nuit) is `shaken' i.e., its continuum is disrupted by the Chymical Marriage. At the other extreme his own static condition is destroyed. He under-stands himself not as a fixed being of wrath but as the ``the flying spark of light''a pure dynamic vibration. This concep-tion, first formulated in Liber CCXX, and explained already in this Comment, is in fact the first condition of what the Bud-dhists call Samma Dithiright views. So long as a man thinks of himself as a being rather than as an energy he attri-butes to himself not, as the profane suppose stability, but stagnation, which is death. Moreover this spark is practically identified with the rapture of the Chymical Marriage.

______________________________________________________________

 3.  Yea, cried the Holy One, and from Thy spark will I the Lord

kindle a great light; I will burn through the great city in

the old and desolate land; I will cleanse it from its great

impurity.

It has been explained that the absolute surrender of the false self is the first condition of the existence of the True Self.  While 666 seemed to himself a separate existence he remained impotent. Immedi-ately he understands himself as ``whirled away by the great wind of your perfection.'' The Angel tells him of his success on just that plane of illusion which he has abandon-ed. The sorrow and failure of 666 arise from his contemplation of his fellow men, of the imperfec-tion and wretchedness, the weariness of existence of this planet. He had found that his personal efforts, so far from remedying the mischief, tended rather to increase it. Now however, that his person-ality has been destroy-ed, it becomes efficient. It is impossible to change any fixed state by working upon it from the same level. At most one can rearrange its character by the formula of [Hebrew]ALIM (see Book 4, Part III, Chapter IV), the formula of witchcraft. However one may manipulate the digits of a number divisible by 9, it remains a multiple of that number. (Consider attentively the whole doctrine connected with the number 9. The references have already been indica-ted in this Comment.).

The world of Assiah is a crystallization of the Atziluthic idea Briah and Yetzirah. It can be effectively modified by the import of some other Atziluthic quintessence. It is therefore useless for 666 as being of Assiah to attempt to redress it. He can only do so by exalting himself to Atziluth by the Attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of the H.G.A., and approaching Assiah through Briah from Yetzirah.

The Angel spontaneously promises 666 that his True Will shall be made operative. The minute spark of his individuality shall be enkindled to a great light and this light shall consume the impurity of the `grey city in the old and desolate land'.

This Book was written down in London, and the apparent reference in the first instance is to that city. The text may mean that in some way or other 666 will become `a great light', a portentous phenomenon pregnant with destruction in the eyes of its inhabi-tants.

On this interpretation it is not clear what is meant by ``its great impurity'' or how the manifestation of 666 should ``-cleanse it therefrom.'' The proper method of exegesis which immediately suggests itself is to collate the passages in the Holy Books which refer to that city, and to study them in the light of the histori-cal events in which 666 has taken part. Even so, despite certain possibly signifi-cant incidents it would appear that some such event is still in the future.

There is of course no sure token that this interpretation is valid. An alternative might be sought in the numerical value of the Greek equivalent of ``grey city'' or it may transpire that some city has a peculiar right to be designated as grey.

Further, the allusion may be strictly poetic metaphor; ``grey city'' may mean no more than a place where men assemble, a gloomy, foggy place where men assemble. (Vide Chapter IV:59-60).

______________________________________________________________

 4.  And thou, O prophet, shalt see these things, and thou shalt

heed them not.

Cf. verse 21, Liber CCXX III:16, also Chapter I:44. It seems to be implied throughout that the work of 666 should be in a peculiar sense secret. See Liber CCXX I:10. I am to operate important changes in human society apart from the cardinal change affecting the onset of the Aeon of Horus and the proclam-ation of the Law of Thelema. I shall further see the results of my work at least in a certain measure, and it is important that I shall not permit myself to be disheartened by contemplation of them or satisfaction with them.

______________________________________________________________

 5.  Now is the Pillar established in the Void; now is Asi

fulfilled of Asar; now is Hoor let down into the Animal Soul

of Things like a fiery star that falleth upon the

darkness of the earth.

This verse confirms the interpretation of verse 3. There is a quite different reference to the Equinox of the Gods, ABRAHADA-BRA, the magical Formula of the Aeon (not to be confused with the Word of the Law of the Aeon) represents the establishment of the pillar or phallus of the 5 Alephs. Aleph is a void or kteis, being the Atu marked 0.

The general symbol is repeated in particular terms. Isis and Osiris govern respectively the two Aeons (of the Kether and the Dying God) through which we have passed. The fulfilment of Asi by Asar indicates that their operation is complete, their conjunc-tion having resulted in the appearance of Horus (Herura-Ha in his twin aspects (a) Force and Fire, and (b) Silence).

The verse tells us that that has come to pass which it was the Great Work of 666, in his official relation to the A...A... as opposed to his personal career as a magician, to proclaim.

The ``Animal Soul of things'', i.e., the Nephesch of the World. The Lord of the Aeon represents more than a new stage in the progressive infiltration of the darkness of matter by light. He acts directly on the World of Assiah.

Note in particular the form which he assumes  that of a ``fiery star that falleth upon the darkness of the earth.'' It is as a meteor or thunderbolt that he invades the planet. (Note that he is ``let down'' from the earth he appears as of terrific import, but from the point of view of the Gods he is imbued with all possible gentleness.

______________________________________________________________

 6.  Through the midnight thou art dropt, O my child, my conqueror,

my swordgirt captain, O Hoor! and they shall find thee as a

black gnarl'd glittering stone, and they shall worship thee.

The symbolism of midnight and of the ``black gnarled glittering stone'' suggests a reference to Atu XVIII where Khephra the Beetle, the Sun of Midnight, appears travelling in his bark under the Heaven. (The stone is everywhere conventionally accepted as a symbol of Sol.) Despite the promise of the symbol ``there is a budding morrow in midnight''this first appear-ance of Horus is obscure and frightful. Yet He is found in this form and worship-ped.

The nature of the symbol is rendered unmistakable by the addi-tional epithets; a ``child'' indicates the irresponsible and innocent mischievousness. ``My conqueror'' further defines Him as overcoming the opposition of the inertia or natural prejudice of the `old guard' of the profane. (Cf. Liber CCXX III as a whole, and in particular verses 39, II:1718, 28, 32, 42, 46, 4955, 59, 7072.)

``My swordgirt'' captain. This emphasises the warrior aspect in which Horus is to make his first appearance.

Taking these verses as having direct reference to the first publica-tion of The Book of the Law in London, observe that nine months after The Equinox I(10), the War broke out so that Horus was actually worshipped in exactly this aspect in the quite unreason-able way predicted.

______________________________________________________________

 7.  My prophet shall prophesy concerning thee; around thee the

maidens shall dance, and bright babes be born unto them.

Thou shalt inspire the proud ones with infinite pride, and

the humble ones with an ecstasy of abasement; all this

shall trans-cend the Known and the Unknown with somewhat

that hath no name.  For it is as the abyss of the Arcanum

that is opened in the secret Place of Silence.

``My prophet'', as in verse 4, refers to 666. Cf. Liber CCXX I:26, etc. This title is given to him more frequently than any other. The term `prophet' or `forthspeaker' is contrasted with `The Beast' which is connected with my function in Tiphereth, implying my manhood, kingship, my mastery of ecstacy, and as fulfilling the function referred to in the Apocalypse so far as the confusion caused by the corruption of the text of that Book permits us to calculate.

The title ``priest'' refers to the function of serving the Gods proclaimed in Liber CCXX, and administering the Sacrament (the new Magick, formula AB.....A, etc). The title ``prince'' may be connected with the attribution to Tiphereth, since Micropro-sopus is the Vau of Tetragrammaton, Vau having the value of 6, and corre-sponding to the four princes (sometimes called Emper-ors) of the Tarot.

The ``prophecy'' here mentioned is first of all CCXX Chapter III, this book itself, and various other poems, essays and rituals. Liber 418, Aethyr I.

The second paragraph indicates Horus in his active and adult aspects. The student is referred to the complete exposi-tion of the meaning of the letter Aleph, in particular to that part of it in which it is explained that `the babe in the egg of blue, Har-pocrates in whom all power is latent, he being Harpocr-ates, Bacchus Diphues, Zeus, Bapho-met, Parzifal as the `pure fool', the Great Fool of the Celtic legends, the child Hermes, etc., in the first stage of pantomorphous innocence, develops at puberty into Parzifal the Knighterrant, who obtains the Crown by winning the King's daughter (a mystery on which the actual customs of many primitive races are founded). (See J.G. Frazer in The Golden Bough.) The phallic Hermes, the Baphomet of Atu XV, Zeus who assumes the form of a beast in order to impregnate various women (the Scarlet Woman) as in Atu XI. See also the legends of Beauty and the Beast, the Devil of the Sabbath, the Minotaur, Hercules (at first disguised as weaponless and ambisexual), many Asiatic legends.

The Lord of the present Aeon, two in one (Vau, He, Atu VI, born of union of Yod and He) has thus been subject of prophecy throughout history. His nature, function, and relation with the other Gods, is thus a matter of common knowledge among initiates or even the scho-lars. At the same time his present appearance is in a sense an original phenomenon. For He is represented in CCXX as the third to Nuit and Hadit, nay rather as the first, Nuit and Hadit being wholly beyond the comprehension of any but The Beast and his Bride and ``the winners of the Ordeal X'' (CCXX III:22). He is therefore shown as springing spontaneously. There is no reference to Isis and Osiris the traditional father and mother of Horus in the Egyptian theology.

``Around thee the maidens shall dance, and bright babes be born unto them.'' One is reminded of the almost universal practice of circumam-bulating or dancing round the lingam, Maypole, or other cognate symbol of the creative faculty. The voice of scandal suggests that the women who adopted this rite made it effective by physiological precautions. But even so the aptness (congrui-ty) of the two methods is evident and philopro-genitiveness is justified of her children no less than Wisdom. The Puritans rightly asserted that the Maypole was a lingam and Mayday a Priapic festival.

The remaining section of the verse is extremely obscure. Humility seems to be discountenanced by The Book of the Law as incompati-ble with the proper understanding of oneself as a star, a king, or sovereign being, no less than the greatest of the Gods. It is further likely to lead to Sin, i.e., Restriction, since the humble are liable to fail to assert their independence and their right. From this it would appear that in some sense or other humility must be a positive virtue whose climax in an ``ecstacy of abasement'' is no less worthy of respect than any other form of trance. See Yi, Chapter XV, on the Khien Hexagram. This Hexagram is composed of the trigram of the former princi-ple<<The Trigam Khwan, attributed to 777: 3, 13. (yin, yin, yin)>> modifying the symbol<<The Trigram Kan, attributed by 777: 32 bis. (yang, yin, yin)>> of earth. See the last Trigram in Liber Trigrammaton. ``Therefore was the end of it sorrow; yet in that sorrow a sixfold star of glory whereby they might see to return unto the stainless Abode; yea, unto the stainless Abode.'' (Liber XXVII.) Abasement means movement towards the base, towards the foundation, Yesod, which represents the resolution of the antinomy Stability  Change. Observe the sympathetic harmony of all these symbols and compare them further with the doctrine of the Tao Teh King with regard to the supreme strength of water, lowlying and the apotheosis of weakness in the sense understood in the Tao Teh King throughout. I take this opportun-ity, moreo-ver, to quote The Book of Lies.

PEACHES

    CHAPTER 4

Soft and hollow, how thou dost overcome the hard

  and full!

It dies, it gives itself; to Thee is the fruit!

Be thou the Bride; thou shalt be the Mother here-

  after.

To all impres-sions thus. Let them not overcome thee;

  yet let them breed within thee. The least of the

  impres-sions, come to its perfection, is Pan.

Receive a thousand lovers; thou shalt bear One

  Child.

This child shall be the heir of Fate the Father.

  TAT

    CHAPTER 86

Ex nihilo N. I. H. I. L. fit.

N. the Fire that twisteth itself and burneth like a

  scorpi-on.

I. the unsullied everflowing water.

H. the interpenetrating Spirit, without and within.

  Is not its name ABRAHADABRA?

I. the unsullied everflowing air.

L. the green fertile earth.

Fierce are the Fires of the Universe, and on their

  daggers they hold aloft the bleeding heart of earth.

Upon the earth lies water, sensuous and sleepy.

Above the water hangs air; and above air, but also

  below fireand in allthe fabric of all being

  woven on Its invisible design, is

AIThHP (aether)

From this it is manifest that the humility and abasement referred to have no relation to the Xth ``virtue'' to which that name is given. The humility of Uriah Heep and Peck-sniff, of Tartuffe, the ``crucified Jesus'' of the Y.M.C.A., C.I.C.C.U., and similar associations of the herd, which goes with hypocrisy, envy, low, cunning, and that whole complex of fear qualities which are characteristic of those who know themselves inferior. It is curious to reflect that in England we associate this frame of mind with Christianity, especially with Romish Christianity, whereas on the Continent those precise recessions are attributed to Judaism.

The ``humble ones'' in this passage are evidently employing a definite magical formula with their absolute energy and confid-ence.

The results of the manifestation of Horus are now said ``to transcend the Known and the Unknown with somewhat that hath no name.'' It is quite clear that this is so, but far from obvious why the fact should be so firmly emphasised and explained, especially in such unusual and obscure terminology. The word ``it'' in the last sentence may refer to the nameless ``some-what'' or to ``all this''.

The ``secret Place of Silence'' is the womb of Nuit or ``egg of blue'' which conceals the babe Harpocrates.

The ``Arcanum that is opened'' may perhaps be paraphrased ``the secret truth that is manifested.'' The Abyss may always be taken to signify ``absence of ground.'' It is the form or means of manifestation of anything which is not so manifested. Alterna-tively, it may be the abyss that is opened, that is to say made available for investigation.

``All this'' has no name because it is ``the unity uttermost showed'' (see CCXX III:37) of Horus. His identity absorbs these diverse pheno-mena with equal absoluteness. In the perfect purity of the child, or pure fool, (Parzifal, asked his name, answers ``Ich weiss nicht'') all differences vanish for ever; see CCXX I:4 and 2223. This verse 7 may therefore be summarised somewhat as follows:

The proclamation of Horus by 666 will enable every person to fulfil his proper function of True Will, and by so doing to reach the perfection of his own nature, whereas the illusion of dividual-ity is entirely destroyed. As it is written in Liber CCXX I:4451.

``For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.''

``The Perfect and the Perfect are one Perfect and not two; nay, are none!''

______________________________________________________________

 8.  Thou hast come hither, O my prophet, through grave paths.

Thou hast eaten of the dung of the Abominable Ones; thou

hast prostrated thyself before the Goat and the Crocodile;

the evil men have made thee a plaything; thou hast wandered

as a painted harlot, ravishing with sweet scent and Chinese

colour-ing, in the streets; thou hast darkened thine eyepits

with Kohl; thou hast tinted thy lips with vermilion; thou

hast plastered thy cheeks with ivory enamels.  Thou hast

played the wanton in every gate and byway of the great

city.  The men of the city have lusted after thee to abuse

thee and to beat thee. They have mouthed the golden spangles

of fine dust where-with thou didst bedeck thine hair; they

have scourged the painted flesh of thee with their whips;

thou hast suffered unspeakable things.

The essence of this rhapsody is clear; yet the plane on which it may best be interpreted will differ according to the degree of initiation which the reader has attained.

Roughly, however, for all alike, it may be paraphrased ``Thy soul has undergone the contamination of material and phenomenal illusion''. Cf. II:46, 716, III:412, 4048, IV:23, 5, 3337, 4244. See also Liber VII, several passages, which may be dis-covered by the right ingenium of the Exempt Adept.

______________________________________________________________

 9.  But I have burnt within thee as a pure flame without oil.

In the midnight I was brighter than the moon; in the daytime

I exceeded utterly the sun; in the byways of of thy being I

inflamed, and dispelled the illusion.

Despite the above, the Holy Guardian Angel has always indwelt the being of the Adept, not even needing the nourishment represented by ``oil.'' (For this symbol see Book 4, Part II, Chapter 5.)

The Angel exceeds alike Sol, Luna and Agni, the three principles which (in the Hindu symbolism) come into course successively during each twentyfour hours, thus determining the character of Dhyana attained at any given period of the day. (For full explanation see [...]).

______________________________________________________________

10.  Therefore thou art wholly pure before Me; therefore thou art

My virgin unto eternity.

The relation of the man with his Angel is independent of his acts qua man. His Nephesch, considered as in relation to the nonEgo, is incapable of interfering with his true Nephesch.

______________________________________________________________

11.  Therefore I love thee with surpassing love; therefore they

that despise thee shall adore thee.

This being understood by the profane, they take the proper view of Man. They realise (e.g.) that the `vices' of Shakespeare and Shelley do not detract from their genius.

______________________________________________________________

12.  Thou shalt be lovely and pitiful toward them; thou shalt

heal them of the unutterable evil.

The profane being thus purified are capable of receiving the benefit of the Initiation of the Adept.

______________________________________________________________

13.  They shall change in their destruction, even as two dark

stars that crash together in the abyss, and blaze up in an

infinite burning.

The reference seems to be a theory (at present unfashionable) of the formation of nebulae. The point here is simply that the intimate contact of two apparently `dark' or `evil' ideas leads to their transmutation into Light. It is ``love under will.''

______________________________________________________________

14.  All this while did Adonai pierce my being with his sword

that hath four blades; the blade of the thunderbolt, the

blade of the Pylon, the blade of the serpent, the blade of

the Phallus.

Adonai: (ADNI) Aleph is the swastika or Thunderbolt by shape: Daleth means Door or Pylon: Nun refers to Scorpio, the Serpent: Yod is the Phallus (Yod of [Hebrew]IHVH  considered as the inmost and simplest idea).

______________________________________________________________

15.  Also he taught me the holy unutterable word Ararita, so that

I melted the sixfold gold into a single invisible point,

whereof naught may be spoken.

See Liber Ararita (DCCCXIII sub figura DLXX) for this. The symbolic mode of writing the Word is:

A

R	R

I

A	A

T

A separate volume might beand should be and shall be! written upon the Arcana of this Hieroglyph.

______________________________________________________________

16.  For the Magistry of this Opus is a secret magistry; and the

sign of the master thereof is a certain ring of lapislazuli

with the name of my master, who am I, and the Eye in the

Midst thereof.

The reference is to a material ring: see The Spirit of Solitude for some account of it. The lettering about the Eye is V.V.V.V-.V. See Liber LXI verses 22 seq. These are the initials of the Motto of 666 as Magister Templi, 8o = 3 ``Vi Veri Vniversum Vivus Vici'' also V is the Latin letter signifying 5, and its value (Vau or Digamma) is 6. The allusion is thus to 5o = 6, the Great Work. Again, the arrangements of the letters on the lapis lazuli indicated the Pentagram.

______________________________________________________________

17.  Also He spake and said: This is a secret sign, and thou

shalt not disclose it unto the profane, nor unto the

neophyte, nor unto the zelator, nor unto the practicus, nor

unto the philosophus, nor unto the lesser adept, nor unto

the greater adept.

18.  But unto the exempt adept thou shalt disclose thyself if

thou have need of him for the lesser operations of thine

art.

The instruction in personal and practical. Cf. CCXX, I:10 and 50. The Magister Templi communicates, as such, only with the A[dep-tus] E[xemptus] that is directly.

______________________________________________________________

19.  Accept the worship of the foolish people, whom thou hatest.

The Fire is not defiled by the altars of the Ghebers, nor is

the Moon contaminated by the incense of them that adore the

Queen of Night.

Again personal and practical to 666. I have done much mischief by insisting on making everything clear to people who were not ready for it.

Ghebers: fireworshippers in Persia. See Compte d'Gobineau: Trois Ans en Asie.

Generally, the abuse of a formula does not injure the passive party, who is unconcerned, and incurs no responsibility.

______________________________________________________________

20.  Thou shalt dwell among the people as a precious diamond

among cloudy diamonds, and crystals, and pieces of glass.

Only the eye of the just merchant shall behold thee, and

plunging in his hand shall single thee out and glorify thee

before men.

Still personal and practical. 666 is to continue to live his normal life as a man of the world, unrecognised for what He is save by the `just merchant' the man who can rightly assess values. It is the duty and privilege of some such man to bring to 666 his due measure of fame.

______________________________________________________________

21.  But thou shalt heed none of this.   Thou shalt be ever the

heart, and I the serpent will coil close about thee.  My

coil shall never relax throughout the æons.  Neither change

nor sorrow nor unsubstantiality shall have thee; for thou

art passed beyond all these.

666 will (naturally) care as little for fame as he has always done for misunderstanding, abuse, and infamy. He will be wholly absorbed in His attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. This is the sempiternal. Change, sorrow, unsubstan-tiality: Anicca, Dukka, Anatta; The Three Characteris-tics. See my ``Science and Buddhism'' and other references.

______________________________________________________________

22.  Even as the diamond shall glow red for the rose, and green

for the roseleaf; so shalt thou abide apart from the

Impressions.

Impression: Vrittis. The True Self is independent of all phenome-na. See numerous explanations of these matters in very many of my writ-ings. See, in particular, my Tao Teh King. The Magister Templi reacts with perfect elasticity to all impacts, appearing to be wholly passive to all alike, yet really uninflu-enced in the slightest degree by any.

______________________________________________________________

23.  I am thou, and the Pillar is 'stablished in the void.

Compare this refrain with verses 5, 24, 25. In verse 5 the Great Work is announced impersonally. Here it is identified with the Attainment.

______________________________________________________________

24.  Also thou art beyond the stabilities of Being and of

Consciousness and of Bliss; for I am thou, and the Pillar is

'stablished in the void.

Being, Consciousness, Bliss: Sat, Chit, Ananda. See my writings on Hindu Philosophy. Contrast with verse 21. The Attainment eman-cipates the Adept from all conditions soever.

______________________________________________________________

25.  Also thou shalt discourse of these things unto the man that

writeth them, and he shall partake of them as a sacrament;

for I who am thou am he, and the Pillar is 'stablished in

the void.

The human consciousness of Aleister Crowley is to be enlightened on this point. He is to be sanctified thereby, and `consumed' or `consum-mated'. This Chymical Marriage unites him with the Angel and the Adept, Three in One and One in Three: This is the final perfection of union. Hence the repetition of the fourth time of the symbol of the Pillar in the Void. Cf. the Four consecrations in the Neophyte Ritual of G...D....

It must not surprise the Practicus``him, even!''to find the private affairs of 666 discussed in a Class A publica-tion of A...A... purporting to deal with the Great Work of 5o = 6. This book is primarily concerned with the Attainment of 666 to that Grade; and it is only because all true Attainment is so almost wholly impersonal that its contents are actually valid for the Aspirant in general.

______________________________________________________________

26.  From the Crown to the Abyss, so goeth it single and erect.

Also the limitless sphere shall glow with the brilliance

thereof.

The Crown, Kether, the Abyss, either Da'ath or that which is beyond Malkuth. The limitless Sphere, the Ain Soph.  The general meaning is that the Attainment fills the whole Universe.

______________________________________________________________

27.  Thou shalt rejoice in the pools of adorable water; thou

shalt bedeck thy damsels with pearls of fecundity; thou

shalt light flame like licking tongues of liquor of the Gods

between the pools.

The pools, and the flame between them, refer to the Sephiroth and the Paths.

The general meaning is that the Attainment has fitted the Adept to perform creative work in all spheres.

______________________________________________________________

28.  Also thou shalt convert the allsweeping air into the winds

of pale water, thou shalt transmute the earth into a blue

abyss of wine.

It enables him, moreover, to perform transmutations: it is not clear why these special examples should have been chosen save on poetic grounds. (They are in essence Air to Water, and Earth to Fire).

______________________________________________________________

29.  Ruddy are the gleams of ruby and gold that sparkle therein;

one drop shall intoxicate the Lord of the Gods my servant.

For the colours in this and the last verse, Cf. CCXX: ``Blue am I and gold in the light of my bride: but the red gleam is in my eyes; & my spangles are purple & green.''

``Purple beyond Purple: it is the light high than eyesight-.''

``There is a veil: that veil is black. It the veil of the modest woman; it is the veil of sorrow, & the pall of death: this none of me. Tear down that lying spectre of the centuries: veil not you vices in virtuous words: these vices are my service; ye do well, & I will reward you here and hereafter.'' (II:5052.)

The lord of the Gods is presumably Jupiter; he may be chosen because the whole transmutation refer to Chesed, or because of his position as the highest Sephira of Microprosopus.

______________________________________________________________

30.  Also Adonai spake unto V.V.V.V.V. saying: O my little one,

my tender one, my little amorous one, my gazelle, my

beautiful, my boy, let us fill up the pillar of the Infinite

with an infinite kiss!

31.  So that the stable was shaken and the unstable became still.

32.  They that beheld it cried with a formidable affright: The

end of things is come upon us.

33.  And it was even so.

The identification of the various elements into which Initiation has analysed the original individual is now complete.

The Great Work  Solve et Coagula  has been accomplished. There is no distinction between the personal Attainment of Aleister Crowley and the Proclamation of the Word of the Law of Thelema through him.

Those who realise what this means rightly assume that it marks the end of an Aeon.

______________________________________________________________

(3440)  This passage is perhaps the most obscure in the whole book.

34.  Also I was in the spirit vision and beheld a parricidal pomp

of atheists, coupled by two and by two in the supernal

ecstasy of the stars.  They did laugh and rejoice exceeding-

ly, being clad in purple robes and drunken with purple wine,

and their whole soul was one purple flowerflame of holi-ness.

``Parricidal''. They have slain their fathers; i.e., they have won to manhood and the consciousness of the Independence of the Individuali-ty.

``Pomp''. They celebrate their attainment of Freedom by means of a Pageant. They manifest the Godhead which they have won. Atheists. ``Allah's the atheist! He owns no Allah!'' (BaghiMu-attar). They are free of the obsession of mortality and depen-dence. Coupled. They unite with their comrades in ``love under will'', being equal and identical despite their apparent differ-ence. (See CCXX I:14, 22, 50 etc..) By virtue of the ecstasy of their common relation to Nuit. Laugh and rejoice. (See CCXX I:26, 58, II:9, 1925, 3544, 6264, 70, III:46.)

``Purple''. See CCXX I:61, II:24, 5051. Purple is the royal colour and that of ecstasy, in particular, of the Chymical Marriage of Nuit and Hadit.

______________________________________________________________

35.  They beheld not God; they beheld not the Image of God; 	therefore

were they arisen to the Palace of the Splendour

Ineffable.  A sharp sword smote out before them, and the

worm Hope writhed in its deathagony under their feet.

This verse carries on the idea of `atheists'. Cf. too Chapter I:79, etc. Their natural place being Yesod (whose colour is purple) they, having destroyed the Foundation, are risen to Hod (whose colour is also purple). See Liber 777, Column XVII. The sword. Their weapon of Intellectual Destruction. Hope is a crawling worm, being the token of nonrealisation of one's Self as supreme Enjoyment.

______________________________________________________________

36.  Even as their rapture shore asunder the visible Hope, so

also the Fear Invisible fled away and was no more.

Cf. ``The City of Dreadful Night.''

______________________________________________________________

37.  O ye that are beyond Aormuzdi and Ahrimanes! blessèd are ye 	unto

the ages.

In Persian Theology, the principles of Good and Evil. Cf. Niet-zsche; and in our own doctrine, expressed in many ways in many places.

Unto the Ages. ``LeOlahm.'' (LOVLM) See Ritual of the Pentagram. The value of the word is 176; this is 8 x 22 or

16 x 11 and this means the Redemption of the Serpent (22 letters) or the Magical Power (11) applied to the Blasted Tower (Atu XVI) for whose significance see this Comment, above.

______________________________________________________________

38.  They shaped Doubt as a sickle, and reaped the flowers of

Faith for their garlands.

TERRIERWORK

 CHAPTER 51

Doubt.

Doubt thyself.

Doubt even if thou doubtest thyself.

Doubt all.

Doubt even if thou doubtest all.

It seems sometimes as if beneath all conscious doubt

  there lay some deepest certainty. O kill it! Slay the   snake!

The horn of the DoubtGoat be exalted!

Dive deeper, ever deeper, into the Abyss of Mind,

  until thou unearth the fox THAT. On, hounds!

  Yoicks! Tallyho! Bring THAT to bay!

Then wind the Mort!

(Liber 333, Chapter 51)

______________________________________________________________

39.  They shaped Ecstasy as a spear, and pierced the ancient

dragon that sat upon the stagnant water.

``Spear'': the weapon of Sol (and Mars).

``Dragon'': the Stooping Dragon: see ``The Temple of Solomon the King,'' diagram of the Fall, The Equinox I(2), page 283.

``Stagnant Water'': the `soul', in its uninitiated state, passive, corrupt and motionless, reflecting wrongly the imagery of the nonego. (The Buddhist idea of the Mind is identical with this). The Words ``sat'' and ``stagnant'' connect this with the doctrine of the Black Brothers, and the theory of CCXX of the Universe as Going, or Energy.

(Quote a few appropriate passages).

______________________________________________________________

40.  Then the fresh springs were unloosed, that the folk

athirst might be at ease.

The destruction of this illusion releases the soul to Purity and Motion, to `ease', which is not idleness but freedom of action, for which men thirst. Pure water is the Principle of Elasticity, the Transmitter of Energy. The Pure Soul is identified with the Moving Spirit which informs it, reflec-ting it truly with perfect under-stand-ing. See the whole symbolism of the Cup. See Book 4, Part II, Chapter VII. See in particular Chapter III and my Comment.

______________________________________________________________

41.  And again I was caught up into the presence of my Lord

Adonai, and the knowledge and Conversation of the Holy

One, and Angel that Guardeth me.

The passage 3440 was `in the spirit vision'. It follows 3033. 3440 thus become intelligible; it is my vision of mankind in the New Aeon of which I have proclaimed the Word. I now return to the contemplation of my personal relation with mine Angel.

______________________________________________________________

42.  O Holy Exalted One, O Self beyond self.   O SelfLuminous

Image of the Unimaginable Naught, O my darling, my beauti-ful,

come Thou forth and follow me.

I repeat the Invocation. He is the Image of Nuit. The propriety of these phrases becomes manifest on studying the account already given of this nature.

______________________________________________________________

43.  Adonai, divine Adonai, let Adonai initiate refulgent

dalliance!  Thus I concealed the name of Her name that

inspireth my rapture, the scent of whose body bewildereth

the soul, the light of whose soul abaseth this body unto

the beasts.

The first sentence is an acrostic of `Ada Laird'. This was one of the girls with whom I was intimate at the time of writing this Book.

In these verses I deliberately identify my sexual exhilara-tion with my spiritual ecstasy, thus finally denying any differ-ence between any two parts of my conscious being.

______________________________________________________________

44.  I have sucked out the blood with my lips; I have drained Her

beauty of its sustenance; I have abased Her before me, I

have mastered Her, I have possessed Her, and Her life is

within me.  In Her blood I inscribe the secret riddles of

the Sphinx of the Gods, that none shall under-stand,--save

only the pure and voluptuous, the chaste and obscene, the

androgyne and the gynander that have passed beyond the bars

of the prison that the old Slime of Khem set up in the Gates

of Amennti.

This constitutes a profound Riddle of Holiness. (Note H SPhIUZ GRAKOS 781 = 71 X 11.) See authorities for special meanings of these words.

(Quote something useful).

Those only understand it who combine in themselves the extremes of Moral idea, identifying them through transcen-dental overcom-ing of the antinomy. They must have gone further yet, beyond the fundamental opposition of the sexes. The male must have comple-ted himself and become androgyne; the female, and become gynander.

This incompleteness imprisons the soul. To think ``I am not woman, but man'' or vice versa, is to limit one's self, to set a bar to one's motion. It is the root of the `shut-tingup' which culminates in become ``Mary inviolate'' or a ``Black Brother.'' By ``the old Slime of Khem'' is meant the principle of stagna-tion which was symbolized in Egypt (Khem) by Sebek, the dweller in the mud of Nilesee above, and in Liber 418 for the full account. Note that this is not `evil', but merely the stoppage of the Energy of the Universe. The `contending forces' of Good and Evil are complementary, and to be united by ``love under will''as I too often do, loosely and clumsily, thanks to my education and the limitations of languageto mean ``that which is against my True Will,'' the implication is not of anything active, however, loathsome or terrible it might appear. Any such idea is to be assimilated by ``love under will'' with its contradictory, thus reaching, in ecstacy, to a new Concep-tion transcending the plane of these opposites.

Thus, my chief obstacle is the belief that any active Idea soever is `evil' and it is therefore the main tenet of the Slave Gods, `Original Sin', the existence of a Personal `Devil' opposed to an Almighty GoodnessAhrimanes and Aormuzdi as abovewhich threatens my Will.

Amenntithe Westthe Place of Deathis the quarter attributed to Osiris in his aspect as the Slain God, that is, in modern slang, to `Jesus'. To us ``The word of Sin is restric-tion.'' The only possibi-lity of `evil' is that the Will may be hampered. On the contrary, to the slaves of `Jesus', there is scarce an act which is not of the nature of `sin'. Even our ``righteousness is as filthy rags.'' ``There is none good, no, not one,'' etc., etc., ad nauseamet praetor! To us, then, `Jesus' is the very fount and origin of all possible `evil', for he synonymous with the idea of Restriction on every plane. The Christian conception of sin as the will of the natural man, the `Old Adam', is the basis of all internal conflictof moral insanity.

It is true that some writers calling themselves Christian have declared for Antinomianism; but orthodoxy has always condemned these; it is evident that these doctrines imply Pantheism. The sophisms of Paul demonstrate clearly enough how deeply false to one's self one must be, even to make the essay to disengage the mind from the dilemma implicit in the theses that `Salvation' emancipates from `Sin', and that the `Saint' is morally bound by the `laws of God'. The passages here following would be laugh-able had not History stigmatized them as atrocious.

______________________________________________________________

45.  O my adorable, my delicious one, all night will I pour out

the libation on Thine altars; all night will I burn the

sacrifice of blood; all night will I swing the thurible of

my delight before Thee, and the fervour of the orisons shall

intoxicate Thy nostrils.

There is here an intentional identification of the very words of the Invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel with those appropriate to a fervent rhapsody addressed to an whore.

______________________________________________________________

46.  O Thou who camest from the land of the Elephant, girt about

with the tiger's pell, and garlanded with the lotus of the

 	spirit, do Thou inebriate my life with Thy madness, that She

leap at my passing.

The land of the Elephant: India. The reference is to Dionysusto Bacchus Diphues. The symbol of Atu 0 has already been ex-plained in detail. Note the emphasis laid upon his attributesthe male animal lust, courage, and ferocity of the tiger, the voluptuous female passivity, sensual (garlanded) yet spiritual, of the lotus; yet from thesewhose Chymical Marriage is that of Nuit and HaditHe is immune. (He is Innocence and Silencethe Babe in the Egg of Blue).  I invoke Him to `inebriate my Life' with His `madness'; to inspire me with his essential ecstasy.

Hymn to Bacchus

  Hail, child of Somele!

  To her as unto thee

Be reverence, be diety, be immortality!

  Shame! treachery of the spouse

  Of the Olympian house.

Hers! thy grime device against the sweet carouse!

  Lo! in red roar and flame

  Did Zeus descend! What claim

To feel the immortal fire had then the Theban dame!

  Caught in that fiery wave

  Here love and life she gave

With one last kissing cry the unborn child to save.

  And thou, O Zeus, the sire

  Of Bromiushunter dire!--

Didst snatch the unborn babe from that Olympian fire:

  In thine own thigh most holy

  That offspring melancholy

Didst hide, didst feed, on light, ambrosia, and moly.

  Ay! and with serpent hair

  And limbs divinely fair

Didst thou, Dionysus, leap forth to the nectar air!

  Ay! thus the dreams of fate

  We dare commemorate,

Twinging in lovesome curls the spoil of mate and mate.

  O Dionysus start

  Be close, be quick, be near,

Whispering enchanted words in every curving ear!

  O Dionysus start

  As the Apollonian dart!

Bury thy horned head in every bleeding heart!

(``Orpheus'' Collected Works iii, 205-6)

The last phrase ``that She leap at my passing'' is peculi-arly obscure. ``She'' may be taken to refer to Ada Laird to I wot not what!

______________________________________________________________

47.  Bid Thy maidens who follow Thee bestrew us a bed of flowers

immortal, that we may take our pleasure thereupon.  Bid Thy

satyrs heap thorns among the flowers, that we may take our

pain thereupon.  Let the pleasure and pain be mingled in one

supreme offering unto the Lord Adonai!

Finally pleasure and pain themselves must be mingled, identified, in a Chymical Marriage of their own. For all possible elements of sensation must take part in the supreme Sacrament. To omit aught thereof would be to leave it imperfect and therefore `evil;' to exclude a guest from the Wedding Feast; to restrict the Universe in that particular dimension.

______________________________________________________________

48.  Also I heard the voice of Adonai the Lord the desirable one

concerning that which is beyond.

(48  52)  Once more the plane of the Communion between the Adept and his Angel changes: This passage is simple instruction. It should be read in connection with Cap: I, v. 9 and similar texts where there is question of `that which is beyond.' I am told here, as first in my Initiation of 1905 1906 (quote dates, and give essential passage in diary), that my Mission  to Mankind concerns the Next Step on Jacob's Ladder of the Spiritual Ascent of the Race. They must progress in a sane and orderly manner, not soaring Icaruslike toward illdefined perfections like Nibbana, but steadily and critically using their existing faculties to the best advantage, fulfilling each function adequately, accurately, with intelligent aspiration, not shirking the hard work of evolution, not trying to run before they can walk, making sure of every step as it is taken, and fortifying each position as it is won before proceed-ing to attach the next line of entrenchments.

Napoleon's campaign of 1812  Moscow  should warn the Aspir-ant.

In my experience, I have found this error to be the most danger-ous to which really promising young Magicians are liable; while making any progress at all.

I quote the case of Meredith Starr as instructive in the highest degree.

(Quote from `Hag').

______________________________________________________________

49.  Let not the dwellers in Thebai and the temples thereof prate

ever of the Pillars of Hercules and the Ocean of the West.

Is not the Nile a beautiful water?

Cf. Cap: II, vv. 3744 and Comment. Living in Thebes, seek your water in the Nile instead of wasting your time in vast vague vapourish vagaries about the Atlantic. In Plain English, follow out precisely and patiently the systematic course of Initiation prescribed by the A...A... BE THOROUGH. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves. Those who despise detail are eventually destroyed by these vary things which they thought trivial; and their discomfiture and disgrace are all the more humiliating.

Lord NoseintheAir stumbled over his own doorstop. (Quote W. S. Gilbert ``The Haughty Actor'' (''Bab Ballads''). Verse 50.

______________________________________________________________

50.  Let not the priest of Isis uncover the nakedness of Nuit,

for every step is a death and a birth.  The priest of Isis

lifted the veil of Isis, and was slain by the kisses of her

mouth.  Then was he the priest of Nuit, and drank of the

milk of the stars.

Every incident in life is of combined importance. No man can afford to lose the experience proper to his actual stage of initiation. Fulfil the formula of Isis  never mind, for the moment, Isis being a `Lower' manifestation of the principle Yin than Nuit is!  and you come immediately to be priest of Nuit, and receive Her infinite bounty. (See my ``Across the Gulf'' Equinox, I, vii, pp: 295354). I refer the Aspirant to the diary of S.H. Frater O.I.V.V.I.O. who instead of plodding steadily through the appointed Task of a Zelator, took advantage of a subtle Regulation of the A...A... which permits any man, whatever his grade, to declare himself a Master of the Temple, and by mere virtue of the Oath, to become one. In this case the intense purity of the aspiration of our Brother, and the Magical Neces-sityin a matter not directly connected with his personal career in the Orderthat he should take this appalling step, with his eyes open to the responsibility and danger involved, saved him from the consequences which would have smashed any arrogant, insolent, or presumptuous pretender. Nevertheless, his ignorance of the details of the intermediate Grades, led him constantly into the most deplora-ble errors, from the devastating penalties of which he was saved by the loving vigilance of his Superior in the Order, at least insofar as the more critical catastrophes were concerned.

______________________________________________________________

51.  Let not the failure and the pain turn aside the worshippers.

The foundations of the pyramid were hewn in the living rock

ere sunset; did the king weep at dawn that the crown of the

pyramid was yet unquarried in the distant land?

There is yet a third consideration to be made in connection with this doctrine of The Next Step. It does in fact seem far easier to wander in the Wonderland of the Supernal Triad than to dig one's way painfully through the Path of Tau, to make the Renunci-ation of a DhammaBuddha than to acquire Asana by dint of Anguished application and acutest agony of that detested and despised physical phantom, the very soul of Distraction, Disper-sion, Degradation, Distress, and Despair!

But this is a `damnable heresy and a dangerous delusion' arising from the simple fact that nobody can possibly form any idea soever of the Nature of the Task of any grade beyond his own and I say this with every emphasis, despite by devotion and determina-tion to describe the details of the Path of the Wise even being at the pains of inven-ting what is practically a new language for this very purpose.

True, I have succeeded thus far, that the Initiate, on arriving at any given Grade, instantly recognizes the accuracy of my account, thus confirming his confidence in my knowledge of the matter, and his assurance that he has really attained thereto and is not being fooled by his own vanity. But, until he has actual experience of this part of the Faith, he is bound to misunder-stand my plainest presentation of its most evident symptoms.

Unless the Aspirant fully comprehend and freely acquiesce in this inherent incapacity, he is only too likely to try to sneak through the dim dreary dreadful discipline of his Gradethe more loathsome precisely because it represents his actual limitation of the moment, and have a perfectly lovely time fancying himself an Exempt Adept or an Arahat or evenI have known one such unhappy expert in selfdel-usionan Ipsissimus! It was nothing to the great Him that the only reference to that Grade in all our Holy Books is to indicate a certain practice (itself beyond comprehension of any but the mightiestminded Masters of the Temple!) as ``the opening of the Grade.''

The Parable of the Pyramid requires no commentary: it is as lucid as it is sublime.

The whole passage (vv. 4851) may be summed as an appeal to ordinary Good Sense-called ``Common Sense'' (Lucus a non lucendo) as being the rarest of Human qualities. Yet the truth lies deeper than this cynical apothegm. Good sense is in reality common to all men: it is the property of the Unconscious whose Omniscience matches its Omnipo-tence. The trouble is that in practically every particular case the Intellect insists on interfering: Vanity craves to be flattered by `improving' what is by nature perfect-with uniformly disastrous results. This is one of the main interpreta-tions of the repeated diatribes in The Book of the Law against ``the Reason,'' against ``because and his kin'' (CCXX, ii, 2733, etc.) or any similar usurpation of the royalty of the Individual by his own selfcreated illusions. The intellect should be a machine whereby one can express the facts of Nature. But it cannot even interpret them; that is the function of Neschamah. Even its critical faculty is limited to the object of seeming internal coherence, of avoiding any appearance of conflict. When it arrogates to itself any further function it is ultra crepidam.

Note the word "But" in CCXX, ii, 34, marking the antithesis of the right course of action (vv. 3451) against the wrong (vv. 2733).

______________________________________________________________

52.  There was also an hummingbird that spake unto the horned

cerastes, and prayed him for poison.   And the great snake

of Khem the Holy One, the royal Uræus serpent, answered him

and said:

53.  I sailed over the sky of Nu in the car called Millionsof-

Years, and I saw not any creature upon Seb that was equal to 	me.

The venom of my fang is the inheritance of my father,

and of my father's father; and how shall I give it unto

thee?   Live thou and thy children as I and my fathers have

lived, even unto an hundred millions of generations, and it

may be that the mercy of the Mighty Ones may bestow upon thy

children a drop of the poison of eld.

54.  Then the hummingbird was afflicted in his spirit, and he

flew unto the flowers, and it was as if naught had been

spoken between them.   Yet in a little while a serpent

struck him that he died.

55.  But an Ibis that meditated upon the bank of Nile the

beautiful god listened and heard.   And he laid aside his

Ibis ways, and became as a serpent, saying Peradventure in

an hundred millions of millions of generations of my

children, they shall attain to a drop of the poison of the

fang of the Exalted One.

56.  And behold! ere the moon waxed thrice he became an Uræus

serpent, and the poison of the fang was established in him

and his seed even for ever and for ever.

The Parable of the Ibis, the HummingBird, and Uraeus Serpent.

Any comment would be impertinent: the signification of the Parable, deep though it be, is lucid as any passage in litera-ture; and the language, exquisitely ornate as it is, a sublimity and a simplicity all its own.

The moral value, in particular, challenges that of the boasted parables of the Gospels. Contrast their sectarianism, their triteness, and (too frequently) their moral obliquity with this masterpiece.

______________________________________________________________

57.  O thou Serpent Apep, my Lord Adonai, it is a speck of

minutest time, this travelling through eternity, and in Thy

sight the landmarks are of fair white marble untouched by

the tool of the graver.  Therefore thou art mine, even now

and for ever and for everlasting. Amen.

This verse completes the conception of time set forth in the Parable. In the K. and C. of the H.G.A. the divisions of time cease to imply difference. To use the Roman metaphor, every day is marked with a white stone. But there is no difference between them; they seem all alike monuments of glittering candour unsoiled by the details of life. All ordinary events cease to perturb the even brilliance.

______________________________________________________________

(5865)  The final passage summarizes the whole Book. It demands intimate study and adroit handling on the part of the Commenta-tor; for each verse, while complete in itself, is an integral and neces-sary element of the whole.

58.  Moreover, I heard the voice of Adonai: Seal up the book of 	the Heart and the Serpent; in the number five and sixty seal 	thou the holy book.

        As fine gold that is beaten into a diadem for the fair

queen of Pharaoh, as great stones that are cemented together 	into

the Pyramid of the ceremony of the Death of Asar, so do 	thou bind

together the words and the deeds, so that in all

is one Thought of Me thy delight Adonai.

``I'': the Scribe: CF. Verse 48.

The significance of the number LXV has been explained in the prefatory note. The metaphors in this text are peculiar. One is of goldfine goldbeaten with fine gold to form a circlet to adorn a bride and queen. The reference is to the Adept in this relation with Adonai.

The metaphor of the stones is, on the other hand, of Tipher-eth. (The text assumes that the Great Pyramid of Gizeh as in fact designed as a Temple of Initiation wherein right fitly he celebrat-ed the Ritual of the Slain God). For the whole symbolism of the stone, see the Qabalah, the rituals of Freemasonry, etc.

Note that words and deeds, being rightly wrought into one, lose their grossness and become pure Thought. (The capital letters, Th, M.A. may be read AMeTh Truth).

______________________________________________________________

59.  And I answered and said: It is done even according unto Thy

word.  And it was done.  And they that read the book and

debated thereon passed into the desolate land of Barren

Words.  And they that sealed up the book into their blood

were the chosen of Adonai, and the Thought of Adonai was a

Word and a Deed; and they abode in the Land that the faroff

travel-lers call Naught.

Intellectual criticism of this Book leads to barren controversy the wilderness of pedantry. It must be appreciated as a poem (sealed up into the blood) taken as the nourishment of the inmost life itself. Those who do this become chosen candidates for the K. and C. of the H.G.A. Their Aspiration (Thought) is then crystall-ized into Word and Deed: they accomplish the Operation of the Sacred Magick.

The ``Land:'' the reference is to Nuit. They become con-scious that they are Stars in Space. For the whole interpretation of this symbol as equivalent to the achievement of the Great Work see (Quote authorities).

______________________________________________________________

60.  O land beyond honey and spice and all perfection!   I will

dwell therein with my Lord for ever.

Here is the idea of the life of the Adept in itself:

______________________________________________________________

61.  And the Lord Adonai delighteth in me, and I bear the Cup of

His gladness unto the weary ones of the old grey land.

And here, in reference to his fellowmen. My own Magical career should be an adequate explanation of these two verses.

______________________________________________________________

62.  They that drink thereof are smitten of disease; the abomina-

tion hath hold upon them, and their torment is like the

thick black smoke of the evil abode.

63.  But the chosen ones drank thereof, and became even as my

Lord, my beautiful, my desirable one.   There is no wine

like unto this wine.

64.  They are gathered together into a glowing heart, as Ra that

gathereth his clouds about Him at eventide into a molten sea

of Joy; and the snake that is the crown of Ra bindeth them

about with the golden girdle of the deathkisses.

This doctrine is the most deadly poison for the unworthy (even the Christian Mystics gathered some faint idea of this ``eating and drinking damnation unto themselves'') It is strange that the text refrains from specifying the nature of the error: apparently the only point at issue is whether one is or is not ``chosen.'' (v. 63).

Note the word ``weary,'' and the symbols of stagnation and passivity (a) hath hold upon them, (b) thick, (c) black, (d) smoke, (e) abode. Contrast with these the stigmata of Attainment in v. 64 all fiery, active, and eager, even in the sphere ordinarily associated with the idea of repose``eventide.'' The Crown of the Sun himself is their girdle (Cf. the Rosicrucian adjuration ``Be thy mind open, etc.)the girdle of the ``death-kisses'' this identifying death with love, the creative energy.

The mystery becomes clear on reference to verse 59. To be ``chosen'' is a matter for one's own Will to decide. If this Book be alien to the student, it will poison him through and through; he must ``seal'' it up into his blood; then, drinking of it as a Wine which is identical with his life itself, it intoxicates them to the realization of themselves as the Lord Adonai, the Soul of the Book itself.

______________________________________________________________

65.  So also is the end of the book, and the Lord Adonai is about

it on all sides like a Thunderbolt, and a Pylon, and a

Snake, and a Phallus, and in the midst thereof he is like

the Woman that jetteth out the milk of the stars from her

paps; yea, the milk of the stars from her paps.

Cf. verse 14: meditate strictly upon the propriety of the first appearance of this particular symbol in just this place.

The symbol is now completed by the introduction of Nuit into its midst.  Compare the similar appearance of Shin in IHVH. (If this is not explained, do so fully).

What letter, then significant of Nuit, will transmute ADNI as Shin does JHVH? The usual letter is He, ``The Star,'' Atu XVII, Aquarius (Note that by the precession of the Equinoxes the sun is now in Aquarius instead of Pisces at the Vernal Equinox. In the Aeon of the Dying God men worshipped Virgo-Pisces, the Virgin and the Fish. We replace this by Aquarius--Nuit and (Babalon and the Beast conjoin-ed). But as ``Tzaddi is not the Star,'' Aries and Aquarius swing around Pisces as Leo and Libra about (Atus VIII and XI inter-chang-ed, and so Atus XVII and IV). But the Actual God worshipped has been progres-sed from Taurus the laborious slain Bull of Mithras. in the North, to Gemini the Children (R.H.K. and H.P.K.) We thus obtain a Penta-grammaton ADHNI whose value is 70, Tzaddi, the Eye, Set or Saturn, Atu XV ``The Devil.''

64.  Glorious, glorious, glorious art Thou, O my lover

supernal, O Self of myself.

65.  For I have found Thee alike in the Me and the Thee;

 there is no difference, O my beautiful, my desirable One!

 In the One and the Many have I found Thee; yea, I have found Thee.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTARIES TO LIBER LXV

An account of the relations of the Aspirant with his Holy Guardian Angel.  This book is given to Probationers, as the attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel is the Crown of the Outer College.  Similarly Liber VII is given to Neophytes, as the Grade of Master of the Temple is the next resting-place, and Liber CCXX to the Zealator, since that carries him to the highest of all possible grades.  Liber XXVII is given to the Practicus, as in this book is the ultimate foundation of the highest theoretical Qabalah, and Liber DCCCXIII to the Philosophus, as it is the foundation of the highest practical Qabalah. (from "A Syllabus of the Official Instructions of the A...A...")

This magical treatise describes particularly the relation of the Aspirant with his Higer Self.  It is, alike in conception and execution, a masterpieces of exaltation of thought, carved in Pure Beauty. (from "Præmonstance of A...A..." and "Curriculum of A...A...")

The full knowledge of the interpretation of this book is concealed from all, save only the Shining Triangle.

The Probationer must nevertheless acquire a copy and thorough-ly acquaint himself with the contents.  He must commit one chapter to memory. (from THELEMA (original edition of the Holy Books))

LXV     The number of Adonai. (from "Syllabus")

The Diary [1907, pub. by Motta in Equinox V vol 4] also records the writing of Liber LXV immediately after Liber VII's reception.  Unlike Liber VII, this book was written a chapter or two at a time over several days, from the evening of October 30 through the 3rd of November.  The following excerpt sheds further light on the process by which these books were written:

Wrote [Chapters] I & II Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente [Liber LXV] again no shadow of Samadhi; only a feeling that V.V.V.V.V. was in His Samadhi, and writing by my pen.  i.e. the pen of the scribe, and that scribe not OY MH, who reasons etc. nor a[leis-ter] c[rowley] who is a poet & selects; but of some perfectly passive person.

(The above is excerpted from the introduction by Grady McMurtry of The Holy Books of Thelema, p xix.)