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MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS |
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Chapter XXXVI: Quo Stet Olympus: Where the Gods, Angels, etc. LiveCara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. We settled what Gods, angels, demons, elementals were some little while ago; we also wrote of how they live, so now, insatiable Seeker, you ask where. But surely, even as a child—did you not sing that immemorial Gregorian plain-chant "There's a Friend for little children Simple enough. A nice flat earth: sun, moon, stars, planets, satellites hung up to dry, with occasional meteorites and comets jazzing about to vary the monotony; above all that, this bright blue floor based upon Reckitts' and advertisements for the Riviera. Just like that. And above that again, the Jew Jeweller's hashish dream of heaven: see the Apocalypse. A vulgarization of Baudelaire's still, shining, mirror world! How right Rome was when she put her foot down on great Galileo and his upstart kind! But she did not do the job properly. She should have brewed a bogus bogey-tale to frighten people off astronomy for ever. But perhaps it was already too late! The mischief had struck roots too deep for her. What had these wizards wrought? Those lovely mediaeval Charts Celestial that still enchant us by sheer beauty and sublimity had been made mockery by those sinister adepts of sorcery! No more flat earth on four pillars—on?— In India the earth was supported by an elephant who stood on a tortoise—who . . . ? No floor above. Nothing but empty space with swarming galaxies; no room for "heaven." Simpler to call Olympus or Meru the home of the Gods—believe it or not! don't ask questions! Yet all the time the difficulty is of our own silly making. The most elementary consideration of the nature of Gods, angels, demons, and the rest, as shown by their peculiar faculties, stamps them all instantly as Beings pertaining to more than three dimensions! Just as no number of lines is enough to produce the smallest plain, as a cube is capable of containing an infinite number of squares, so, far from there being no room for heaven, there is absolutely nothing but room! Yet of course the nature of that space is for ever incomprehensible, nay inconceivable, by any being of a lower dimension. Only when we have succeeded in uniting our Conscious (three-dimensional) with our Unconscious (four-dimensional) Self can we expect even a symbolic conception of how things go on "in them furrin parts." Speculation on such points is unpardonably profitless; I have only devoted these few paragraphs to the subject because it is useful to rebut the somewhat soapbox type of critic who thinks to rebut the whole thesis "Sunt Daemones" by the snook-cocking query "Quo Stet Olympus." Love is the law, love under will. Yours fraternally, 666 Chapter XXXVII: Death—Fear—"Magical Memory"Cara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. You ask me, very naturally, for details of the promise of Nuit (AL I, 58) "...certainty, not faith, while in life, upon death; ..." In the first place, I think that it means what it says. There may be, probably is, some Qabalistic inner meaning: Those four nouns most assuredly look as if there were; but I don't feel at all sure what the Greek (or Hebrew, or Arabic) words would be; in any case, I have not yet made any attempt in this direction. To the straightforward promise, then! Certainly no word more reassuring could be given. But avoid anxiety, of course; remember "without lust of result," and AL III, 16: "Deem not too eagerly to catch the promises; ..." Now, full speed ahead! Like most promises of this type, it is, one must suppose, conditional. Such a power is clearly of the Siddhi; and my instinct tells me that it is a result of devotion to Our Lady of the Stars. Somehow I can't think of it as a sort of Birthday Present to a Favourite Nephew. "Why not?" You're right, as usual: anything may be a "Play of Nuit." Still, I feel that this would be a rare case. "But doesn't everything have to happen to everybody?" Yes, of course, in a sense; but don't keep on interrupting! I was coming to something interesting. I insist of putting forth the immediately useful point of view: "devotion to Nuit" must mean the eager pursuit of the fulfillment of all possibilities, however unpleasant. Good: now see how logical this is." For how else could one have reasonable "certainty," as contrary with "faith" (=interior conviction), otherwise than by the acquisition of the "Magical Memory"—the memory of former lives. And this must evidently include that of former deaths. Indeed "Freudian forgetfulness" is very pertinacious on such themes; the shock of death makes it a matter of displaying the most formidable courage to go over in one's mind the incidents of previous deaths. You recall the Buddhist "Ten Impurities;"—The Drowned Corpse, the Gnawed-by-wild-beasts-Corpse, and the rest. Magick (though I says it as shouldn't) gives a very full and elaborate account of this Memory, and Liber CMXIII (Thisarb) a sound Official Instruction on the two main methods of acquiring this faculty. (None of my writings, by the way, deal with the First Method; this is because I could never make any headway with it; none at all. F.'. Iehi Aour, on the other hand, was a wizard at it; he thought that some people could use that way, and others not: born so. If it should happen that you have that faculty, and no gift at all for the other, it's just too bad; you'd better buzz off, and get another Holy Guru less one-legged.) There are, however, as I find on reading over what I have written else- where, quite a few lacunae in the exposition; and I may as well now do my best to stop one or two obvious gaps. The period of my life which was the climax of my work on this subject is those weeks of Thaumaturgy on the Hudson River—I fear the Magical Diary The Hermit of Aesopus Island is irretrievably lost—when I was shown the Codex of the Tao Teh King from which my (still unpublished) translation is taken, and when the veil was no more than a shimmering, scintillating gossamer, translucent to the ineffable glory that glows behind it. For in those weeks I was able to remember and record a really considerable number of past lives. (I half believe, and hope, that the relevant passages were copied into one of my Cefalu diaries; but who will struggle through those still extant on the chance?) "But what about the intervals?" you ask, Shabash! Rem acu tetigisti.1 It strikes me with immense and poignant power a right shrewd blow—what of the other side? What of the periods between successive incarnations? Let us look back for a moment to Little Essays Toward Truth and see what it says about the Fabric of a man. (No, I'm not dodging your query: I'll get there in my own good time. Let a fellow breathe!) Nothing to our purpose, as your smiling shake of the head advises me. And yet—The theory is that the Supernal Triad constitutes (or, rather, is an image of) the "eternal" Essence of a man; that is, it is the positive expression of that ultimate "Point of View" which is and is not and neither is nor is not etc. Quite indestructible. Now when a man spends his life (a) building up and developing the six Sephiroth of the Ruach so that they cohere closely in proper balance and relation, (b) in forging, developing and maintaining a link of steel between this solid Ruach and that Triad, Death merely means the dropping off of the Nephesch (Malkuth) so that the man takes over his instrument of Mind (Ruach) with him to his next suitably chosen vehicle. The tendency of the Ruach is of course to disintegrate more or less rapidly under the impact of its new experiences of after-death conditions. (Hence the supposed Messages from the Mighty Dead, usually Wish-phantasms or outbreaks of the during-life-suppressed Subconscious, often very nasty. The "Medium" gets into communication with the "Shells of the Dead"—Qliphoth, the Qabalah calls them. A month or so, perhaps a year or so in the case of minds very solidly constructed or very passionately attached, and the Shells' "Messages" begin to be less and less coherent, more and more fragmentary, more murderously modified by the experiences it has met in its aimless wanderings. Soon it is altogether broken up, and no more is heard of it.) It is therefore of the very first importance to train the mind in every possible way, and to bind it to the Higher Principles by steady, by con- stant, by flaming Aspiration, fortified by the sternest discipline, and by continuously reformulated Oaths. Such a man will be fully occupied after his death with the unremitting search for his new instrument; he will brush aside—as he has made a habit of doing during life—the innumerable lures of "Reward" and the like. (I am not going to ask you to waste any time on the fantastic fairy tales of Devachan, Kama Loka and the rest; this must come up if you want to know about Paccheka-Buddhas, Skooshoks, the Brahma-lokas and so on—but not now, please!) There is one Oath more important than all the rest put together, from the point of view of the A.'. A.'. You swear to refuse all the "rewards," to acquire your new vehicle without a moment's delay, so that you may carry on your work of helping Mankind with the minimum of interruption. Like all true Magical Oaths, it is certain of success. So then we have a man not only very well prepared to reincarnate at once—this means about six months after his death, for his vehicle will be a foetus about three months old, but to extirpate more deliberately all impressions that may assail its integrity. Alternatively, there may be something in the nature of such impressions that is unsuitable for carrying over into the conscious mind of the new man. Or there may be a rule—e.g. the draught of the waters of the River Lethe—and it might be possible for some Adept (whose initiation is of a higher degree than, or of a different type to, mine) to make his way through that particular barrier. Enough of may, might, perhaps, and all that harpy brood! The plain fact is that I remember nothing at all of any Post Mortem experiences, and I have never known anyone else who does. There is one exception. I do remember the _first_, almost momentary, reaction. I am in my Astral Form, in my best Sunday-go-to-meeting Ceremonial Vestments, and with my Wand I seem to hold this raised, attaching great importance to the act—looking down upon the corpse, exactly as one does at the outset of an "Astral Journey" in one's days of learning how to do it. I recall no impression at all made by this sight; neither regret nor relief nor even surprise. But there is one intensely strong reaction—I fancy I have mentioned this already—when one first remembers one of one's deaths: "By Jove! that was a narrow squeak!" What was it that one feared? I haven't the foggiest. And that is what I had to tell you about the Magical Memory.
No: just one point to go to sleep on: suppose two or more people claim simultaneously to have been Julius Caesar, or Shakespeare, or—oh! always one very great gun! Well, fifty or sixty years ago or more there was a regular vogue for this sort of thing, especially among women. It was usually Cleopatra or Mary Queen of Scots or Marie Antoinette: something regal and tragic preferred, but unsurpassable beauty the prime essential as one would expect. Of the Mary Queen of Scots persuasion was old Lady Caithness, who seems moreover to have had a sense of humour into the bargain, for she gave a dinner-party in Paris to twelve other ladies, each of whom had also been the luckless victim of Henry VIII's failure to produce of his own loins a durable male succession. (His marriages were so many desperate efforts to save England from a second innings of the devastation of the Wars of the Roses, from which his father, who was not a miser, but a sound financier and economist, had rescued the country. You must understand this if English History is to be at all intelligible to you. The tragedy began with the early death of the Black Prince; the second blow, that of Henry V coupled with the futility of his son and the murder of Prince Edward at Tewkesbury.) Well, that was a big laugh, of course; it tended to discredit the whole theory of Reincarnation. Quite unnecessarily, if one looks a little deeper. What do I mean when I say that I think I was Eliphaz Lévi? No more than that I possess some of his most essential characteristics, and that some of the incidents in his life are remembered by me as my own. There doesn't seem any impossibility about these bundles of Sankhara being shared by two or more persons. We certainly do not know enough of what actually takes place to speak positively on any such point. Don't lose any sleep over it. Love is the law, love under will. Yours fraternally, 666 1: Lat., "You've hit the nail on the head" (lit. "touched the matter with a pin." Chapter XXXVIII: Woman—Her Magical Formula
Cara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. "Pibrock of Dhonuil Dhu, for this letter is to put Woman once and for ever in her place.1 But (as usual!) let us first of all make clear what we are to mean by Woman. Not that amorphous (or rather, as the poet says, "oniscoid with udders") dull and clamorous lump, bovine, imbecile, giggling, truthless, nymphomaniac yet sexless, malignant, interminable, of whom Schopenhauer rhapsodized in his most famous panegyric: apparently his sentimental softness understood only the best side of her.2 No! let us observe, shudder, and lay down the pen. That makes me feel better; my duty to conscience is done.
The eternal antagonism between the sexes is mere illusion. As well suppose the male the enemy of the female screw. Understand the spiritual reality of each, grasp their magical formulae; the sublime necessity of the apparent opposition will be apparent. The ultimate of Woman is Nuit; that of Man, Hadit. The Book of the Law speaks very fully and clearly in both cases. I quote the principal passages. A. Nuit.
* Dictated: "the unfragmentary non-atomic fact of my universality . . . (Write this in whiter words, But go forth on)." Ouarda4 wrote into the MS, later, the five words as in text. B. Hadit.
Lest it should all prove too difficult, I have not quoted several passages which are completely beyond my comprehension; even in those here set down, there is quite a little that I should not care to boast that I had altogether clear in my own mind. Leaving out nearly everything, the only way to simplify it is to call Hadit the "Point-of-view," and "Anywhere" to be the radix of all possible "Point-Events," or "experiences," or "phenomena;" Nuit is the complement, the total possibilities of any such radix. You can only get this properly into that part of your mind which is "above the Abyss," i.e. Neschamah: even so, Neschamah must be very thoroughly fertilized by Chiah, and illuminated by Jechidah, to make any sort of a job of it. But to come down from the contemplation of Abstract Reality (which, being static and "infinite," is ultimately immeasurable) to these Ideas in their interaction (and thus directly observable), it is easy enough to understand the Magical Formula of their interaction. Of course, whatever I say can be no more than a rough approximation, even a suggestion rather than a statement; but I cannot help the nature of the case. Nuit is the centripetal energy, infinitely elastic because it must fit over the hard thrust directed against it; Hadit, the centrifugal, ever seeking to penetrate the unknown. Nuit is not to dissimilar from the Teh described in Lao-Tze. Nor would it be proper to ignore the Book of Lies:
I want you to realize that this collaboration of the equal opposites is the first condition of existence in any form. The trouble (I think) has always been that nobody ever looked at things from outside; they were always at one end or the other. This is because one haphazard collection of Point-Events chooses to think of itself as a Male; another, as a Female. It is totally absurd to think of Winnie as a woman, and Martin as a man. The quintessence of each is identical: "Every man and every woman is a star." It is only a superficial accident that has made one set determine to function in one particular incarnation as the one or the other. I say function; for there is no difference in the Quintessence. Yet, since it is with a Being in its present function that one has to deal, it needs must that one acts in practice as if "does" were the same as "was." You might be described as one instance of the 0 = 2 equation, and I as another; and any 0 = 2 is indistinguishable from any other. Yet you and I are not identical, because all that I can know of you, or you of me, is a presentation of a part of that 0 = 2 "Universe;" if we were both equally conscious of that Whole, there would be no means of becoming aware, as we are in fact aware, of that distinction. Somewhat of this is perhaps intended in The Book of the Law:
Whoso availeth (i.e. can put to practical service) is of "presidential timber," so to speak, because he is able to understand the Being behind the Function, and is accordingly not liable to be deceived by the facet that happens to be presented to him in his Function corresponding. The case is not wholly unlike that of a man on a mountain who should see two other peaks jutting up from a paten of cloud. Those tips give little indication of the great mass that supports each; both are equally of the one same planet; they are in fact identical save for the minute spire visible. Yet he, reconnoitering with intent to climb them observes closely only that function of each crag and icefall which is relevant to his plan to reach their summits. He also is of that One Quintessence; but he must fit himself adroitly to each successive incident of the respective Functions of these mountains if he is to make the contacts which will finally enable him to realize the Point-Events which he will summarize as "I climbed Mount Collon and the Aiguille de la Za." I don't believe I can put it much better than that, and I'm too lazy to try; but I do want to emphasize that Weininger (in Sex and Character) merely scratched the surface. All of us, whether we are "full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard" or "in our hours of ease Uncertain, coy, and hard to please" do in every most minuscule sort of act exercise both the male and female functions almost equally; the determination is rarely more than a matter of a casting vote. It is so even in the embryo. It is much less than 1/10 of 1% that decides whether the foetus will turn out an Alexander or an Alice. Nature delights in delicate touches of this sort; it is one part of Sulphuric Acid in I don't remember how many million parts of water that is enough to turn blue litmus red; and even with our own gross apparatus we can arrange for a ten-thousandth part of a grain to send a scale down with a bang. Think of a roulette ball hovering on the edge at the end of a long spin! Think of Buridan's ass! So, once for all, shut up, you screaming parrot! Gabble, gabble, gabble, it's enough to break one's tympana, and drive a man stark staring mad. Shut up! These women! Love is the law, love under will. Yours fraternally, 666 P.S. One ought, perhaps, to give an outline of how these facts work out in the social system of Thelema. It may be useful to classify women in three groups, (I exclude the fourth, which while anatomically woman, does not function in that capacity: the "spinster.") corresponding to Isis, Osiris and Horus. The Isis-Class consists of the mother-type. To them the man is no more than the necessary creator and sustainer of her children. The Osiris-Class comprises those women who are devoted to their man qua man, and to his career. Her children, if any, she values as reproductions of the Beloved; they carry him on into futurity by virtue of her deathless love. The Horus-Class is composed of those women who remain children, the playgirls, who love only for pleasure. To them a child is dull at the best, at the worst a nuisance. Each of these classes has its qualities and its defects; each should be held in equal, although dissimilar, honour. And what, you ask, has the man got to say about all this? Nothing simpler; all women are subordinate to his True Will. Only the Osiris-Class, provided he can find one of them, are of more than transient use to him; and even in this case, he must be careful to avoid being ensnared. But the really important issue is the recognition of each type of True Will in woman. 1: Develop something here about Benny Hill to orient people toward Crowley's sense of humor, et al. – WEH. I have left this note as I found it in the plaintext. I am not familiar with the works of Benny Hill (British comedian, fl. 1970s I believe) – T.S. 2: Arthur Schopenahauer (1788-1860), German philosopher. One of the first Western philosophers to emphasise the notion of the Will, he may have been an influence on Crowley's development of the concept of Thelema, although contra Crowley, Schopenhauer believed that the Will was evil and should be denied. The reference in this instance is probably to the essay "On Women" (in Schopenhauer's Parerga und Paralipomena) one of the most notoriously misogynistic rants in the history of Western philosophy. Crowley is presumably being ironic here – T.S. 3: In the MS the word "disunion" appears at this point but it has been crossed out and "division" written in above – T.S. 4: Actually the amended reading is in the same hand as the original. There are two points in the MS where Ourada (Crowley's wife Rose) has supplied a missing or indistinctly heard phrase, and the first is in one of the lines here quoted, to wit I.60 where before "My colour is black &c." is an insertion mark, with "(Lost 1 phrase)" in Crowley's hand above, and below, "The shape of my star is —" also in Crowley's hand, then in another hand "The Five Pointed Star, with a Circle in the Middle, and the circle is Red." (I am not convinced that the initial 'f' of 'five' is actually a capital, but it is impossible to be certain given the small sample of Rose's handwriting on the MS of AL, and it is the same shape as the initial 'f' in 'force' (III, 72) which is also transcribed as a capital) – T.S. 5: Cap. Δ (4); p. 18 of the second edition. Chapter XXXIX: ProphecyCara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Now, now, now! I really had hoped that this at least you might have spared me. Still, I have to admit that your reason for asking me to go all pontifical about Prophecy is a good one; you want a chucker-out for the loafers that come cadging into your Taverne de la Belle Sibylle, and waste your time with piffle about Pyramids. What a game! So naturally you need a Book of the Rules, and a list of the classes of offensive people, whether prostitutes, policemen, or verminous persons. (I quote from the Regulations for secular Pubs!) who think the easiest of all possible refuges from their Fear (see other letters!) is reliance upon the mouldy mumblings of moth-eater mountebanks. Perhaps it will be best to begin by setting down the necessary conditions for a genuine prophecy. We shall find that most of the famous predictions are excluded without need of more specific examination. But—priority, please, as usual, for the etymology. Prophesy means "forth-speaking," more or less equal to "inspired." It has nothing to do with foretelling the future, though it may do so, as it may do anything, being only the ravings of a poet, drunkard, or madman. (You remember how Saul came upon a company of youths all prophesying away together to beat the hand, and joined the merry throng. So people said, "Is Saul also among the Prophets?" meaning a man capable of the "divine" intoxication of love, song, eloquence, or whatever else enthusiastic might possess him. Men seized by the afflatus were found to be capable of extraordinary exploits; hence the condition was admired and envied by the average clod. Also, imitated by the average crook!) For all that, I am going for once to yield to popular clamour, and use words in their popular sense. That seems to me, roughly this: Prediction is a forecast based on reason, prophecy one which claims the warrant of "magical" powers. You agree? Then we can get on. 1. The prophecy must announce itself as such. We cannot have people picking up odds and ends which may be perfectly irrelevant, and insisting that they conceal forecasts. This excludes Great Pyramid lunatics; it would be quite simple to do the same sham calculations with the Empire State Building; when the architects protested, it is simple to reply: why, but of course! God was most careful not to let them know what they were really doing, or they would have died of fright! This argument was actually put forward by the Spiritists when Zancig confessed that his music-hall exploits* were accomplished by means of a code. It is quite useless to get any sense whatever into the heads of these bigoted imbeciles. Here, A.C! don't forget your best-beloved Browning! In Mr. Sludge the Medium, the detected cheat—it was D.D. Home in real life—offers this silly subterfuge: Why, when I cheat 2. The date of the prophecy must antecede that of its fulfilment. The very greatest care must be taken to insure this. When both dates are remote, as in the case of "fulfilled" Biblical prophecies, this is often impossible. 3. The prophecy must be precise. This rules out cases where alternative verifications are possible. 4. The prophecy must be more than a reasonable calculation of probability. This rules out stuff like "The Burden of Nineveh"1 and the like. Incidentally, "The Burden of Damascus" does not seem to have had much luck so far! By latest accounts, the old burg wasn't feeling too badly. We may also refer to the Second Advent: "Behold! I come quickly."2 There have been quite a few false alarms to date. (It began with Jesus himself, snapping off the disciple's head: "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?" Well, somebody was disappointed.) * Mrs. Zancig sat on the stage, blindfolded. Her husband wandered about the audience, taking one object or another from one or another of them, and asking her "Ready?" "What is this?" "And this?" "This now?" "Right, what's this?" and so on. They had worked out a list of some hundreds of questions to cover any probable article, or to spell its name, or give a number, as when asked the number of a watch or 'bus ticket—and so on. One evening at Cambridge, I was explaining this to a group of undergraduates; being doubted, I offered to do the same trick with the help of one of them—a complete stranger. I only stipulated to ten minutes alone with him "to hypnotize him." Of course I won easily. They cut out one possible way of communication after another; but I always managed to exchange a few words with my "medium" or slip him a note, so as to have a new code not excluded by the latest precaution. 5. The verification must be simple, natural, unique and unmistakable. Forced and far-fetched explanations, distortions of Qabalistic or other mathematical reasoning, are barred. 6. The prophecy itself must
possess the complement of this precision. I feel that this condition is itself expressed in a somewhat oracular form; I will try to clarify by citing what I consider a perfect example. Perfect, I say, because the "must" is a little too strong; there are degrees of excellence. "That stele they shall call the Abomination of Desolation; count well its name, & it shall be to you as 718." (AL III, 19) (The Stélé is that whose discovery culminated in the writing of The Book of the Law.) Here the first part is still quite unintelligible to me: I have tried analysis of the original phrase in "Scripture,"3 and nearly everything else: entirely in vain: One can see dimly how people, recognizing that Stélé as the Talisman responsible for reducing half the cities of Europe to rubble, might very well make reference to those original prophecies. But, at the best, that's nothing to cable to Otaheite about! Now the second part. This was even more baffling than the other. "Count well its name"? how can I? it never had a name! So I tried all sorts of experiments with 718. Shin, 300, the letter of Spirit, with our key-number 418, looks promising. Only one more pie-crust! I kept attacking, off and on, for many a long year, got out all sorts of fantastic solutions, complex and confused; they simply shouted their derision at me. It was one glorious night in Cefal, too utterly superb to waste in sleep; I got up; I adored the Stars and the Moon; I revelled in the Universe. Yet there was something pulling at me. It pulled eftsoons my body into my chair, and I found myself at this old riddle of 718. Half-a dozen comic failures. But I felt that there was something on the way. Idly, I put down Stélé in the Greek, 52,4 and said, "Perhaps we can make a 'name' out of the difference between that and 718." I jumped. 718 - 52 = 666 My own name! Why, of course, quoth he, in glee; it is in fact the Stélé of 666; for it is the Stélé of Ankh-f-n-khonsu, my name in those past days. Oh, no! said Something, that's not good enough! "Count well its name"—the Stélé of Ankh-f-n-khonsu: a name is something to which it answers, quite different from a title. That solution is clever, but it just won't do, because that Stélé never had a name! You lie! I shouted, as the full light broke through the mists of my mind: In these three Thousand years it has once, if only once, had a name, by invoking which you could bring it up before you; its name is "Stélé 666" in the Catalogue of the Museum at Boulak! A single simple hammerstroke, and the nail is driven home to the head! Compare this with the chaotic devices of the "bilateral-cipher" maniacs, by the application of which it is easy to prove that Bernard Shaw wrote Rudyard Kipling. Or anything else! you pay your money, and you take your choice. 7. Another strong point is that the prophecy should on the surface mean something vague and plausible, and, interpreted, possess this same quality of unique accuracy. For instance (although it is not prediction) consider "Love is the law, love under will." Yes, that sounds very well; I dare say that is an excellent point of philosophy.—But! well, anyone might say that. Oh, no! For when we use the Greek of the technical terms, we find ΑΓΑΠΗ, Love, and ΘΕΛΗΜ&Alpha, Will, both of the value of 93—and these only two blossoms of the Tree whose root is 31, and the entire numerical-verbal system based thereupon organized with incredibly simple intricacy; well, that is an Eohippus of an entirely different tint! It is no more the chance (if happy) statement of any smooth-tongued philosopher, but the evidence of, and the key to, an incalculably vast design. As well attribute the Riemann-Christoffel Tensor to the "happy thought" of some post-prandial mathematician. Here is another case. Now then this two-in-One letter And one more, this time an actual prediction. Here again is what might at first seem almost an evasion! "...one commeth after him,..." indeed! I suppose so. It fits anybody who discovers it or claims to have done so. Not one little bit! For when the time came, and the Key was found, the finder's name in the Order was—and had been from the moment of his admission as a probationer—Achad, the Hebrew word for "One." And he came "after him" in the precise technical sense, that he was in fact the next person to undertake the Adventure of the Abyss. I hope you are not getting the idea that my Prophetic ambit is limited to these high-falutin' metaphysical masterpieces of Runic Lore. In case you do, I now propose to break your "seven green withs that were never dried" altogether, Delilah; for I shall keep my hair on. I shall go forth to war! From 1920 to 1923 my abode for a season was the house called the Horsel of the Abbey of Thelema that lieth upon Santa Barbara, overlooking the town of Telepylus—see Homer and Samuel Butler II, but called later by the Romans Cephaloedium, and now Cefal. There did I toil to expand my little Part III of Book 4 to the portentous volume now more generally known as Magick in Theory and Practice. After numerous misadventures, it was published in 1928.8 I refer you to that book, page 96.
(It is a pity that I cannot prove my footnote, but this Chapter XII was part of the original MS, advertised as to be published in 1912. You may take my word for it, for once. And in any case we have the prophecy of Bartzabel, the Spirit of Mars, in the early summer of 1910 that wars involving the disaster of (a) Turkey and (b) Germany would be fought within 5 years. 10 See the New York World, December, 1914.) We now proceed to Magick, page 112. But now observe how the question of the Magical Link arises! No matter how mighty the truth of Thelema, it cannot prevail unless it is applied to and by mankind. As long as The Book of the Law was in Manuscript, it could only affect the small group amongst whom it was circulated. It had to be put into action by the Magical Operation of publishing it. When this was done, it was done without proper perfection. Its commands as to how the work ought to be done were not wholly obeyed. There were doubt and repugnance in FRATER PERDURABO's mind, and they hampered His work. He was half-hearted. Yet, even so, the intrinsic power of the truth of the Law and the impact of the publication were sufficient to shake the world so that a critical war broke out, and the minds of men were moved in a mysterious manner. The second blow was struck by the re-publication of the Book in September 1913, and this time the might of this Magick burst out and caused a catastrophe to civilization. At this hour, the MASTER THERION is concealed, collecting his forces for a final blow. When The Book of the Law and its Comment is published with the forces of His whole Will in perfect obedience to the instructions which have up to now been misunderstood or neglected, the result will be incalculably effective. The event will establish the kingdom of the Crowned and Conquering Child over the whole earth, and all men shall bow to the Law, which is "love under will." This should be plain enough, and satisfactory. However, I thought it was time to draw public attention to these matters more emphatically. In fulfillment of my pledge given above, and of the instructions originally given to me by the Masters, I got out The Equinox of the Gods at 6:22 a.m., Dec. 22. 1937, e.v.; and, to fulfill my condition No. 1 (above) of a Prophecy, as well as to establish the date, I got a reporter on the spot, with the result following:
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." Then I issued a prospectus for the book, giving the facts as to previous publications and their results, and leaving blank a space after "The Fourth Publication" to wait the event.
This series of actions complies perfectly with the condition of Prophecy. Nine months elapsed, and I was able to overprint, also to reprint, enlarged to four pages my remaining prospectuses in red ink. As follows: nine months before the Betrayal, which stripped Britain of the last rags of honour, prestige and security, and will break up civilisation. I have always maintained that Munich marked the true outbreak of the war, because Hitler's rape of Czecho-Slovakia, however justifiable, was irreconcilably incompatible with our Foreign Policy; and Munich is Nine Months to a day after my Gesture. This then I consider a completely documented case of Prophecy. And I shall be a completely documented case of Brain-Fag unless I shut up NOW. Love is the law, love under will. Yours fraternally, 666 1: Nahum I.1 2: Apocalypse, XXII, 20. 3: See First Maccabees, I. 54, and the back-dated "prophecies" of pseudo-Daniel (XI. 31, XII. 11); the reference was to the erection of a statue to Zeus-Serapis in the Temple of Jerusalem by Antiochus Epiphanes following his conquest of Judea – T.S. 4: This enumeration depents on reading ST as the obsolete letter Stau or Stigma which has the value 6 – T.S. 5: AL III. 47. 6: Spelt in Hebrew letters in the original. 7:
This Sun & Moon symbolism flows from Crowley's work with Greek, Tarot
and Hebrew. "Set" as Sigma-Theta or as Shin-Teth. Taking the numbers
for the corresponding Tarot Trumps from the Thoth Deck, we get XX + XI =
31. See O.T.O. Newsletter, No. 7-8, p. 9 ff, "Liber MCCLXIV
The Greek Qabalah" and No. 9, p. 31 – WEH. 8: sic., should be 1930 – T.S. 9: The postscript was apparently hand-written by Crowley into one of his copies of Magick in Theory and Practice. 10: See "An Evocation of Bartzabel the Spirit of Mars" in Equinox I (9), and "The Bartzabel Working" (Liber CCCXXV) in Equinox IV (2) – T.S. Chapter XL: CoincidenceCara Soror, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. When I was writing that letter about prophecy, I was hot and bothered all the time by my faithful sentinel, the well-greaved Hoplite that stands at the postern of my consciousness, ready to challenge every thought—and woe to the intruder who cannot give the countersign! This time the dear old ruffian thought the matter serious enough to report Higher Up. "It is put plainly enough, emphatically enough, incontrovertibly enough" was the gist of his communication "that the first and most irretrievable trick of the enemy is to dupe you into passing Captain Coincidence as 'Friend,' whereas he is naturally the most formidable of all your foes when it comes to a question of proof." Quite right, Sergeant-Major! But it is not only about prophecy, but about all sorts of things, in particular, of course, the identification of angels and similar problems. Well, we have captured quite a few lads of the company of Captain Coincidence; let us have them up for examination and learn what we can about their weapons and other warlike matters! I take our first prisoner from Magick. The most famous novel of Fielding is called Tom Jones. It happened that FRATER PERDURABO was staying in a hotel in London. He telephoned a friend named Fielding at the latter's house, and was answered by Mr. Fielding's secretary, who said that his employer had left the house a few minutes previously, and could only be reached by telephoning a certain office in the City at between 11 o'clock and a quarter past. FRATER PERDURABO had an appointment at 11 o'clock with a music-hall star, the place being the entrance to a theatre. In order to remind himself, he made a mental note that, as soon as he saw the lady, he would raise his hand and say, before greeting her: 'Remind me that I must telephone at once to Fielding,' when he met her. He did this, and she advance toward Him with the same gesture, and said in the same breath, 'Remind me that I have to telephone to Tom Jones'— the name of a music-hall agent employed by her. Here comes another, this time completely crazy! Nothing "Literary" about it; no sense anywhere; a pure freak. A friend of mine, A, rang up a friend of hers, B, at her flat in Holland Park, some 3 or 4 miles west, and a p'int to the Nor'rard, of Piccadilly Circus. After the usual series of "they don't answer", "line's engaged", "unobtainable", "line's out of order", "line's temporarily disconnected at the subscriber's request", an appeal to "Supervisor" got her connected instantly. Yet another girl friend, C, appears in, and vanishes from, the story; she said "Oh, what a pity, you've just missed her; she went out five minutes ago. I think she'll be back in an hour's time, try then."A waited impatiently, and rang up once more. Again the series of nonsense-difficulties about getting the connection. At last the answer came. This time yet one more girl friend D. "Oh, what a pity! You've just missed her; she left the box not five minutes ago." "Box," screamed A, "what box? Have I got mixed up in a Trunk Murder?" "Why, this box," replied D, calmly. "What — — box?" shouted A. "Isn't that her flat?" "Her flat! are you crazy? This is a call-box in Shaftesbury Avenue." Collapse of A's confidence in the sanity of Nature. One may note that there was no similarity in the names of the exchanges, or in the numbers. It is the most grotesquely impossible case of "wrong number" that ever came my way. Now for one or two oddities. Recently, needing to relax, I borrowed three "thrillers" from different sources. In every case, the plot turned on two men being so alike that no one could tell them apart. (Rupert of Hentzau, John Chilcote, M.P., Melander's Millions.) I traveled from Louisville to Detroit by a railroad whose nickname was the "Big Four", my object being some business connected with my Book 4. The name of my express was the "Big Four"—it left from No. 4 platform at 4 p.m. My sleeping berth was No. 4 in Car No. 4; and my ticket was No. 44,444. I ought to have been April 4, I suppose; but it wasn't. Last week a letter from me appeared in the Sunday Dispatch with regard to the Everest Mystery of 1921. I expressed my view that the two lost climbers, last seen on an easy snow-slope near the summit, had simply been blown into the air by one of the sudden gusts of incredible fierce winds which are common at those heights, and dashed to earth perhaps a mile away. After reading this, I went to a friend's room to borrow a book, picked up her Shakespeare's Histories, and, opening it at random, came upon:
Now here's a story that's too good to lose; not the mistiest phantasm of an ideogram how to class it; for one thing, it's chock-a-block with moral lessons and economic theories and political summits; but there's coincidence in it somewhere, and under coincidence down it shall go. Even if only by coincidence. From 1895 e.v. onwards I dealt with Colin Lunn. "Of all the tobacconists under the sun, of Sidney Street, Cambridge. When I started round the world, alas for fidelity! I began to forget him. By 1906 e.v. the operation was practically complete. In '42 e.v. I spent a few days with friends in Cambridge. Sauntering along K.P. (King's Parade to you, madam!) on my way back to the station with half an hour or so to kill, I thought I would pop in to Lunn's new shop there, and pass the time of day. He might have something to take my fancy. So I did. Needless to say, I didn't know the shopman from Adam, as he did not offer me a view of his identification mark. I asked after old friends; we gossiped of old times and new; presently he observed, putting a hand under the counter: "I think this is yours sir." "How do you know who I am? I've never seen you before." "Oh, yes sir, I was the odd-job boy at the old Sidney Street shop; I remember you quite well." By this time there lay on the counter a strange familiar-unfamiliar object—a pipe that I had left for some minor repair before hurrying off to the East 37 years before! I am smoking it now. And you can draw your own beastly conclusion! Here is a last, a passing strange account of a coincidence—or should it come under "Answers to Prayer." A young enthusiastic "Heaven Born" (=I.C.S.)* parlous pious, was engaged to an exquisite chaste damosel in Lutterworth. Praised and promoted by his appreciative chiefs in Bombay, he felt his future sure enough to go home on leave, marry her, and bring her out to India. At their parting, she had given him a ring; naturally, he set great store by it." But the climate had thinned him; it was loose; playing with it as he talked with a friend on the ship, it slipped from his finger, and fell into the harbour." He suppressed an expression of annoyance. "Well that's past praying for," laughed the friend—unhappily an infidel, not a true friend at all. The young man stiffened. "It is?" he answered solemnly and emphatically; "We shall see." And he retired to his cabin to lay his grief before the Lord. The ship arrived at Aden without incident. While she was coaling, it was the idle habit of some sailors to bait a hook with a large piece of pork, and fish for sharks. An hour later they caught a fine specimen, and hauled it aboard. They cut it open. No ring. I hope you don't think I'm letting my pen run away with me: "Pens! Good Lord, * Indian Civil Servant. No, I have not forgotten that I am here to instruct as well as to amuse: also, to make certain observations which will, I flatter myself, be rather new to you. I plunge headlong. Everything that happens, no matter what, is an inconceivably improbable coincidence. You remember how you had to begin when you first came to me for help. I said to you, "Here are you, and no other person, come to see me, and no other person, in this room, and no other room, at this time, and not other time. Hod did that come about?" The answer to that question is the first entry in your Magical Diary: and, with a slightly different object in view, the first step in the practice of Liber Thisharb and the acquisition of Magical Memory. Why, hang it all; the events of the last hour, even, might have gone just an infinitesimally little bit different, and the interview would not have taken place as it did. Consider then, that factors stretching back into Eternity—all the factors there are!—have each one contributed in its degree to bringing this interview about. What a fantastic improbability! Yet here we are. Chance blindly rules the Universe. But what is Chance? And where does purpose intervene? To what extent? I shall now conduct you, no less firmly than Mr. E. Phillips Oppenheim, to Monte Carlo. (Excuse me! I was just called to the telephone. Somebody of whose existence I was not aware has fallen ill in Ireland—and bang went my plans for tomorrow.) You walk quietly into the Casino; it seems to you that the excitement is even more noticeable than usual. You see a friend at the table "Here in the nick of time!" he gasps. "Black has just turned up for the 24th time running." You press forward to plank the maximum on Red. The wheel spins; Black again! "Forty thousand she-devils in the belfry of St. Nicholas Rocambole-de-Ronchonot!" "But --- but" (you stammer when spirits of hartshorn have revived you) "in the whole history of the tables a colour has never turned up more than 24 times running!" My poor friend, what has that got to do with it? True, from the start it is countless millions to 1 that there will not be a run of 24 on the red or the black; but the probability on any single spin (ignoring zero) is always one to one. The black compartments do not contract because the ball has fallen into any one of them. Anyone who gambles at all is either a dilettante, a crook, or a B.F. If you could get the B.F.'s to understand the very elementary mathematics set forth above, good-night to gambling! And a good riddance, at that! Well, there is one advantage in the system; it does help the intelligent man to steal a march on his neighbours! In all this the important point for my present purpose is to show you how entirely this question of probability and coincidence is dependent on your attention. The sequence B B B B B B B at roulette is most unlikely to occur; but so, in exactly the same degree, is the sequence B R B R R B R or any other sequence. The one passes unnoticed, the other causes surprise, only because you have in your mind the idea of "a run on black." Extend this line of thought a little, and link it up with what I was saying about the Magical Diary; you realize that every phenomenon soever is equally improbably, and "infinitely" so. The Universe is therefore nothing but Coincidence! How then can any event be more improbable than any other? Why, very simply. Go back to Monte; proclaim that at Table No. 3 Black will turn up 7 times running, after this next spin. (Or, of course, any other series of 7.) Now you see how Coincidence links up with Prophecy! A fortiori, Coincidence is destroyed by Purpose, if, wishing to enlighten you on the subject, I write this letter and post it to your address, your receipt of it is no longer Coincidence. So then coincidence must be entirely both unforeseen and unintentional; in other words, absolutely senseless. But we have just proved that the Universe is nothing but Coincidence; it therefore is senseless. So, having established the asymptote of our hyperbolic hyperbola, and shewn it to be asynartete, why should we not acquiesce, and say olive oil? Love is the law, love under will. Yours fraternally, 666
|
,
is the third Key to this Law; and on the discovery of that fact,
after years of constant seeking, what sudden splendours of Truth,
sacred as secret, blazed in the midnight of my mind! Observe now;
"...this circle squared in its failure is a key also."5
Now I knew that in the value of the letters ALHIM,6
'the Gods', the Jews had concealed a not quite correct value of π,
the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, to 4 places
of decimals: 3.1415; nearer would be 3.1416. If I prefix our Key,
31 putting
,
Set or Satan, before the old Gods, I get 3.141593, π correct to six
places, Six being my own number and that of Horus the Sun.7