THE EQUINOX Vol. I. No. VII 3rd part of three. ASCII VERSION January 4th, 1991 e.v. key entry and first proofreading against the 1st Edition 6/9/91 e.v. by Bill Heidrick, T.G. of O.T.O. --- could benefit from further proof reading Copyright (c) O.T.O. disk 3 of 3 O.T.O. P.O.Box 430 Fairfax, CA 94978 USA (415) 454-5176 ---- Messages only. Pages in the original are marked thus at the bottom: {page number} Comments and descriptions are also set off by curly brackets {} Comments and notes not in the original are identified with the initials of the source: AC note = Crowley note. WEH note = Bill Heidrick note, etc. Descriptions of illustrations are not so identified, but are simply in curly brackets. (Addresses and invitations below are not current but copied from the original text of the early part of the 20th century) All footnotes have been moved up to the place in text indexed and set off in double wedge brackets, viz. <> LIMITED LICENSE Except for notations added to the history of modification, the text on this diskette down to the next row of asterisks must accompany all copies made of this file. In particular, this paragraph and the copyright notice are not to be deleted or changed on any copies or print-outs of this file. With these provisos, anyone may copy this file for personal use or research. Copies may be made for others at reasonable cost of copying and mailing only, no additional charges may be added. **************************************************************************** THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON THE KING ("Continued") {355} A.'. A.'. Publication in Class B. Imprimatur: N. Fra.'. A.'. A.'. THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON THE KING ("Continued") THE PRIEST IN opening this the most important section of Frater P.'s career, we may be met by the unthinking with the criticism that since it deals rather with his relation to others than with his personal attainment, it has no place in this volume. Such criticism is indeed shallow. True, the incidents which we are about to record took place on planes material or contiguous thereto; true, so obscure is the light by which we walk that much must be left in doubt; true, we have not as yet the supreme mystical attainment to record; but on the other hand it is our view that the Seal set upon Attainment may be itself fittingly recorded in the story of that Attainment, and that no step in progress is more important than that when it is said to the aspirant: "Now that you are able to walk alone, let it be your first care to use that strength to help others!" And so this great event which we are about to describe, and event which will lead, as time will show, to the establishment of a New Heaven and a New Earth for all men, wore the simplest and humblest guise. So often the gods come clad as peasants or as children; nay, I have listened to their voice in stones and trees. {357} However, we must not forget that there are persons so sensitive and so credulous that they are convinced by anything. I suppose that there are nearly as many beds in the world as there are men; yet for the Evangelical every bed conceals its Jesuit. We get "Milton composing baby rhymes," and "Locke reasoning in gibberish," divine revelations which would shock the intelligence of a sheep or a Saxon; and we find these upheld and defended with skill and courage. Therefore since we are to announce the divine revelation made to Fra. P., it is of the last importance that we should study his mind as it was at the time of the Unveiling. If we find it to be the mind of a neurotic, of a mystic, of a person predisposed, we shall slight the revelation; if it be that of a sane man of the world, we shall attach more importance to it. If some dingy Alchemist emerges from his laboratory, and proclaims to all Tooting that he has made gold, men doubt; but the conversion to spiritualism of Professor Lombroso made a great deal of impression on those who did not understand that his criminology was but the heaped delusion of a diseased brain. So we shall find that the A.'. A.'. subtly prepared Fra. P. by over two years' training in rationalism and indifferentism for Their message. And we shall find that so well did They do Their work that he refused the message for five years more, in spite of many strange proofs of its truth. We shall find even that Fra. P. had to be stripped naked of himself before he could effectively deliver the message. The battle was between all that mighty will of his and {358} the Voice of a Brother who spoke once, and entered again into His silence; and it was not Fra. P. who had the victory. * * * * * We left Fra. P. in the autumn of 1901, having made considerable progress in Yoga. We noted that in 1902 he did little or nothing either in Magic or Mysticism. The interpretation of the occult phenomena which he had observed occupied him exclusively, and his mind was more and more attracted to materialism. What are phenomena! he asked. Of noumena I know and can know nothing. All I know is, as far as I know, a mere modification of the mind, a phase of consciousness. And thought is a secretion of the brain. Consciousness is a function of the brain. If this thought was contradicted by the obvious, "And what is the brain? A phenomenon in mind!" it weighed less with him. It seemed to his mind as yet unbalanced (as all minds are unbalanced until they have crossed the Abyss), that it was more important to insist on matter than on mind. Idealism wrought such misery, was the father of all illusion, never led to research. And yet what odds? Every act or thought is determined by an infinity of causes, is the resultant of an infinity of forces. He analysed free will, found it illusion. He analysed God, saw that every man had made God in his own images, saw the savage and cannibal Jews devoted to a savage and cannibal God, who commanded the rape of virgins and the murder of little children. He saw the timid inhabitants of India, races continually the prey of every robber tribe, inventing the effeminate Vishnu, while {359} under the same name their conquerors worshipped a warrior, the conqueror of demon Swans. He saw the flower of the earth throughout all time, the gracious Greeks, what gracious gods they had invented. He saw Rome, in its strength devoted to Jupiter and Hercules, in its decay turning to emasculate Attis, slain Adonis, murdered Osiris, crucified Christ. He could even trace in his own life every aspiration, every devotion, as a reflection of his physical and intellectual needs. He saw, too, the folly of all this supernaturalism. He heard the Boers and the British pray to the same Protestant God, and it occurred to him that the early successes of the former might be due rather to superior valour than to superior praying power, and their eventual defeat to the circumstance that they could only bring 60,000 men against a quarter of a million. He saw, too, the face of humanity mired in its own blood that dripped from the leeches of religion fastened to its temples. In all this he saw man as the only thing worth holding to; the one thing that needed to be "saved," but also the one thing that could save it. All that he had attained, then, he abandoned. The intuitions of the Qabalah were cast behind him with a smile at his youthful folly; magic, if true, led nowhere; Yoga had become psychology. For the solution of his original problems of the universe he looked to metaphysics; he devoted his intellect to the cult of absolute reason. He took up once more with Kant, Hume, Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall, Maudsley, Mansel, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and many another; while as for his life, was he not a man? He had a wife; he knew his duty to the race, and to his own ancient graft thereof. He was a traveller and a sportsman; very well, then, live it! So we {360} find that from November 1901 he did no practices of any kind until the Spring Equinox of 1904, with the exception of a casual week in the summer of 1903, and an exhibition game of magic in the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid in November 1903, when by his invocations he filled that chamber with a brightness as of full moonlight, <> only to conclude, "There, you see it? What's the good of it?" We find him climbing mountains, skating, fishing, hunting big game, fulfilling the duties of a husband; we find him with the antipathy to all forms of spiritual thought and work which marks disappointment. If one goes up the wrong mountain by mistake, as may happen, no beauties of that mountain can compensate for the disillusionment when the error is laid bare. Leah may have been a very nice girl indeed, but Jacob never cared for her after that terrible awakening to find her face on the pillow when, after seven years toil, he wanted the expected Rachel. So Fra. P., after five years barking up the wrong tree, had lost interest in trees altogether as far as climbing them was concerned. He might indulge in a little human pride: "See, Jack, that's the branch I cut my name on when I was a boy"; but even had he seen in the forest the Tree of Life itself with the golden fruit of Eternity in its branches, he would have done no more than lift his gun and shoot pigeon that flitted through its foliage. Of this "withdrawl from the vision" the proof is not merely deducible from the absence of all occult documents in his dossier, and from the full occupation of his life in external and (361} mundane duties and pleasures, but is made irrefragible and emphatic by the positive evidence of his writings. Of these we have several examples. Two are dramatisations of Greek mythology, a subject offering every opportunity to the occultist. Both are markedly free from any such allusions. We have also a slim booklet in which the joys of pure human love are pictured without the faintest tinge of mystic emotion. Further, we have a play in which the Origin of Religion, as conceived by Spencer or Frazer, is dramatically shown forth; and lastly we have a satire, hard, cynical, and brutal in its estimate of society, but careless of any remedy for its ills. It is as if the whole past of the man with all its aspiration and attainment was blotted out. He saw life (for the first time, perhaps) with commonplace human eyes. Cynicism he could understand, romance he could understand; all beyond was dark. Happiness was the bedfellow of contempt. As to miracles and prophecies, he was as sceptical as the famous Pope of Rome who "didn't believe in them; he had seen too many." If an angel had appeared to him, he would have explained him away as cheerily as the late Frank Podmore. He was as ready to acquiesce in the unhistoricity of Gotama as in that of Jesus. If he called himself a Buddhist, it was the agnostic and atheistic philosophy and the acentric nominalist psychology that attracted him. The precepts and practices of Buddhism earned only his dislike and contempt. We learn that, late in 1903, he was proposing to visit China on a sporting expedition when a certain very commonplace communication made to him by his wife caused him to postpone it. "Let's go and kill something for a month or two," said he, "and if you're right, we'll get back to nurses and doctors." {362} So we find them in Hambantota, the south-eastern province of Ceylon, occupied solely with buffalo, elephant, leopard, sambhur, and the hundred other objects of the chase. We here insert extracts from the diary, indeed a meagre production --- after what we have seen of his previous record in Ceylon. Whole weeks pass without a word; the great man was playing bridge, poker, or golf! The entry of February 19th reads as if it were going to be interesting, but it is followed by that of February 20th. It is, however, certain that about the 14th of March he took possession of a flat in Cairo --- in the Season! Can bathos go further? So that the entry of March 16th is dated from Chiro. [Our notes given in round brackets.] FRATER P.'S DIARY (This diary is extremely incomplete and fragmentary. Many entries, too, are evidently irrelevant or "blinds." We omit much of the latter two types.) "This eventful year 1903 finds me at a nameless camp in the jungle of Southern Province of Ceylon; my thoughts, otherwise divided between Yoga and sport, are diverted by the fact of a wife ..." (This reference to Yoga is the subconscious Magical Will of the Vowed Initiate. He was not doing anything; but, on questioning himself, as was his custom at certain seasons, he felt obliged to affirm his Aspiration.) "Jan." 1. ... (Much blotted out) ... missed deer and hare. So annoyed. Yet the omen is that the year is well for works of Love and Union; ill for those of Hate. Be mine of Live! (Note that he does not add "and Union"). "Jan." 28. Embark of Suez. "Feb." 7. Suez. "Feb." 8. Landed at Port Said. "Feb." 9. To Cairo. "Feb." 11. Saw b. f. g. b. f. b. (This entry is quite unintelligible to us.) {363} "Feb." 19. To Helwan as Oriental Despot. (Apparently P. had assumed some disguise, probably with the intention of trying to study Islam from within as he had done with Hinduism.) "Feb." 20. Began golf. "March" 16. Began INV. (invocation). Iota-Alpha-Omega. "March" 17. Theta-omega-omicron-upsilon-Theta appeared. "March" 18. Told to INV. (invoke) Saturn omega-omega-rho-iota as Sun by new way. "March" 19. Did this badly at noon 30. "March" 20. At 10 p.m. did well --- Equinox of Gods --- omicron-upsilon mu-eta Nev ("?" new) C.R.C. (Christian Rosy Cross, we conjecture.) Hoori now Hpnt (obviously "Hierophant"). "March" 21. Sun in Aries. I.A.M. ("?" one o'clock.) "March" 22. X.P.B. {Arabic name, difficult to make out. First and last letters Alif, five letters long, second and fourth letters the same --- possibly He or Khe, middle letter possibly Sin but unclear. It may be a rendering of Crowley's atypical Hebrew spelling for the word "Beast" into Arabic --- see page 384.} (May this and the entry March 24 refer to the Brother of the A.'. A.'. who found him?) E.P.D. in 84 m. (Unintelligible to us: possibly a blind.) "March" 23. Y.K. done ("?" His work in the Yi King.) "March" 24. Met {same Arabic name} again. "March" 25. .---. :823: Thus :461: " " = p f l y 2 b z :218: .---. (Blot) wch trouble with ds. (Blot) P.B. (All unintelligible; possibly a blind.) "April" 6. Go off again to H, taking A's p. (This probably a blind.) Before we go further into the history of this period we must premise as follows. Fra. P. never made a thorough record of this period. He seems to have wavered between absolute scepticism in the bad sense, a dislike of the revelation, on the one hand, and real enthusiasm on the other. And the first of these moods would induce him to do things to spoil the effect of the latter. Hence the "blinds" and stupid meaningless cyphers which deface the diary. And, as if the Gods themselves wished to darken the {364} Pylon, we find that later, when P.'s proud will had been broken, and he wished to make straight the way of the historian, his memory (one of the finest memories in the world) was utterly incompetent to make everything certain. However, nothing of which he was not certain will be entered in this place. We have one quite unspoiled and authoritative document "The Book of Results," written in one of the small Japanese vellum note-books which he used to carry. Unfortunately, it seems to have been abandoned after five days. What happened between March 23rd and April 8th? THE BOOK OF RESULTS "March" 16"th". Die Mercury, I invoke Iota-Alpha-Omega. (Fra. P. tells us that this was done by the ritual of the "Bornless One," <> merely to amuse his wife by showing her the sylphs. She refused or was unable to see any sylphs, but became "inspired," and kept on saying: "They're waiting for you!") W. says "they" are "waiting for me." 17. Jupiter. It is "all about the child." Also "all Osiris." (Note the cynic and sceptic tone of this entry. How different it appears in the light of Liber 418!) Thoth, invoked with great success, indwells us. (Yes; but what happened? Fra. P. has no sort of idea.) 18. Venus. Revealed that the waiter was Horus, whom I had offered and ought to invoke. The ritual revealed in skeleton. Promise of success Saturn or Sun and of Samadhi. {365} (Is this "waiter" another seer? We are uncertain.) The revealing of the ritual (by W. the seer) consisted chiefly in a prohibition of all formulae hitherto used, as will be seen from the text printed below. It was probably on this day that P. cross-examined W. about Horus. Only the striking character of her identification of the God, surely, would have made him trouble to obey her. He remembers that he only agreed to obey her in order to show her how silly she was, and he taunted her that "nothing could happen if you broke all the rules." Here therefore we insert a short note of Fra. P. How W. knew R.H.K. (Ra Hoor Khuit). 1. Force and Fire (I asked her to describe his moral qualities). 2. Deep blue light. (I asked her to describe the condition caused by him. This light is quite unmistakable and unique; but of course her words, though a fair description of it, might equally apply to some other.) 3. Horus. (I asked her to pick out his name from a list of ten dashed off at haphazard.) 4. Recognised his figure when shown. (This refers to the striking scene at the Boulak Museum, which will be dealt with in detail.) 5. Knew my past relations with the God. (This means, I think, that she knew I had taken his place in temple, etc., and that I had never once invoked him.) 6. Knew his enemy. (I asked, "Who is his enemy?" Reply, "Forces of the waters --- of the Nile." W. knew no Egyptology --- or anything else.) 7. Knew his lineal figure and its colour. (A 1/84 chance.) {366} 8. Knew his place in temple. (A 1/4 chance, at the least.) 9. Knew his weapon (from a list of 6). 10. Knew his planetary nature (from a list of 7 planets.) 11. Knew his number (from a list of the 10 units). 12. Picked him out of ("a") Five . : indifferent, "i.e." arbitrary ("b") Three. symbols. (This means that I settled in my own mind that say D of A, B, C, D, and E should represent him, and that she then said D.) We cannot too strongly insist on the extraordinary character of this identification. We had made no pretension of clairvoyance, nor had P. ever tried to train her. P. had great experience of clairvoyants, and it was always a point of honour with him to bowl them out. And here was the novice, a woman who should never have been allowed outside a ballroom, speaking with the authority of God, and proving it by unhesitating correctness. One slip, and Fra. P. would have sent her to the devil. And that slip was not made. Calculate the odds! We cannot find a mathematical expression for tests 1, 2, 4, 5, or 6. But the other 7 tests give us 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 -- x -- x - x - x - x -- x -- = ---------- 10 84 4 6 7 10 15 21,168,000 Twenty-one millions to one against her getting through half the ordeal! Even if we suppose what is absurd, that she knew the {367} correspondences of the Qabalah <> as well as Fra. P., and had knowledge of his own secret relations with the Unseen, we must strain telepathy to explain test 12. But we know that she was perfectly ignorant of the subtle correspondences, which were only existing at that time in Fr. P.'s own brain. And even it it were so, how are we to explain what followed --- the discovery of the Stele of Revealing? To apply test 4, Fra. P. took her to the museum at Boulak, which they had not previously visited. She passed by (as P. noted with silent glee) several images of Horus. They went upstairs. A glass case stood in the distance, too far off for its contents to be recognized. But W. recognised it! "There," she cried, "There he is!" Fra. P. advanced to the case. There was the image of Horus in the form of Ra Hoor Khuit painted upon a wooden stele of the 26th dynasty --- "and the exhibit bore the number 666"! (And after that it was five years before Fra. P. Was forced to obedience.) This incident must have occurred before the 23rd of March, as the entry on that date refers to Ankh-f-n-khonsu. Here is P.'s description of the stele. "In the museum at Cairo, No. 666 is the stele of the Priest Ankh-f-n- khonsu. Horus has a red Disk and green Uraeus. {368} {Illustration facing page 368 identified: This is a color reproduction of the obverse of the stele cited in the text. It will not be described here in view of the fact that reproductions are widely available, and it is described in the text. The back of this page contains the following: "A PARAPHRASE OF THE INSCRIPTIONS UPON THE OBVERSE OF THE STELE OF REVELLING" "Above, the gemmed azure is The naked splendour of Nuit; She bends in ecstasy to kiss The secret ardours of Hadit. The winged globe, the starry blue Are mine, o Ankh-f-n-Khonsu. "I am the Lord of Thebes, and I The inspired forth-speaker of Mentu; For me unveils the veiled sky, The self-slain Ankh-f-n-Khonsu Whose words are truth. I invoke, I greet Thy presence, o Ra-Hoor-Khuit! "Unity uttermost showed! I adore the might of Thy breath, Supreme and terrible God, Who makest the gods and death To tremble before Thee: --- I, I adore thee! "Appear on the throne of Ra! Open the ways of the Khu! Lighten the ways of the Ka! The ways of the Khabs run through To stir me or still me! Aum! let it kill me! "The Light is mine; its rays consume Me: I have made a secret door Into the House of Ra and Tum, Of Khephra, and of Ahathoor. I am thy Theban, o Mentu, The prophet Ankh-f-n-Khonsu! "By Bes-na-Maut my breast I beat: By wise Ta-nech I weave my spell. Show thy star-splendour, O Nuit! Bid me within thine House to dwell, O winged snake of light, Hadith! Abide with me, Ra-Hoor-Khuit!" facing this: "A PARAPHRASE OF THE HIEROGLYPHS OF THE 11 LINES UPON THE REVERSE OF THE STELE" "Saith of Mentu the truth-telling brother Who was master of Thebes from his birth: O heart of me, heart of my mother! O heart which I had upon earth! Stand not thou up against me as a witness! Oppose me not, judge, in my quest! Accuse me not now of unfitness Before the Great God, the dread Lord of the West! For I fastened the one to the other With a spell for their mystical girth, The earth and the wonderful West, When I flourished, o earth, on thy breast! "The dead man Ankh-f-n-Khonsu Saith with his voice of truth and calm: O thou that hast a single arm! O thou that glitterest in the moon! I weave thee in the spinning charm; I lure thee with the billowy tune. "The dead man Ankh-f-n-Khonsu Hath parted from the darkling crowds, Hath joined the dwellers of the light, Opening Duant, the star-abodes, Their keys receiving. The dead man Ankh-f-n-Khonsu Hath made his passage into night, His pleasure on the earth to do Among the living." The back of this page contains the following: A color reproduction of the reverse of the Stele. Not described as commonly available and loosely translated in the text. NB: the second page of text and the second color reproduction are reversed in the Weiser re-print edition. This is the order from the 1st Edition --- WEH.} His face is green, his skin indigo. His necklace, anklets, and bracelets are gold. His nemyss nearly black from blue. His tunic is the Leopard's skin, and his apron green and gold. Green is the wand of double Power; his r.h. is empty. His throne is indigo the gnomon, red the square. The light is gamboge. Above his are the Winged Globe and the bent figure of the heavenly Isis, her hands and feet touching earth. [We print the most recent translation of the Stele, by Messrs Alan Gardiner, Litt.D., and Battiscombe Gunn. It differs slightly from that used by Fra.'. P., which was due to the assistant-curator of the Museum at Bulak.] STELE OF ANKH-F-NA-KHONSU. OBVERSE. "Topmost Register (under Winged Disk)." Behdet (? Hadit ?), the Great God, the Lord of Heaven. "Middle Register." "Two vertical lines to left: ---" Ra-Harakhti, Master of the Gods. "Five vertical lines to right: ---" Osiris, the Priest of Montu, Lord of Thebes, Opener of the doors of Nut in Karnak, Ankh-f-na-Khonsu, the Justified. {369} "Below Altar: ---" Oxen, Geese, Wine, (?) Bread. "Behind the god is the hieroglyph of Amenti." "Lowest Register." (1) Saith Osiris, the Priest of Montu, Lord of Thebes, the Opener of the Doors of Nut in Karnak, Ankh-f-na-Khonsu, (2) the Justified: --- "Hail, Thou whose praise is high (the highly praised), thou great- willed, O Soul ("ba") very awful ("lit." mighty of awe) that giveth the terror of him (3) among the Gods, shining in glory upon his great throne, making ways for the Soul ("ba"), for the Spirit ("yekh") and for the Shadow ("khabt"). I am prepared, and I shine forth as one that is prepared. (4) I have made way to the place in which are Ra, Tom, Khepri and Hathor." Osiris, the Priest of Montu, Lord of Thebes, (5) Ankh-f-na-Khonsu, the Justified; son of MNBSNMT<>; born of the Sistrum-bearer of Amon, the Lady Atne-sher. REVERSE "Eleven lines of writing." (1) Saith Osiris, the Priest of Montu, Lord of Thebes, Ankj-f-(2)na- Khonsu, the Justified: --- "My heart from my mother, my heart from my mother, my heart<> of my existence (3) upon earth, stand not forth against me as a witness, drive me not back (4) among the {370} Sovereign Judges,<> neither incline against me in the presence of the Great God, the Lord of the West.<> (5) Now that I am united with Earth in the Great West, and endure no longer upon Earth. (6) Saith Osiris, he who is in Thebes, Ankh-f-na-Khonsu, the Justified: --- "O Only-(7)One, shining like ("or" in) the Moon; Osiris Ankh-f-(8)na-Khonsu has come forth upon high among these thy multitudes. (9) He that gathereth together those that are in the Light, the Underworld ("duat") is [also] (10) opened to him; lo, Osiris Ankh-f-na-Khonsu, cometh forth by (11) day to do all that he wisheth upon earth among the living." There is one other object to complete the secret of Wisdom --- or, <> it is in the hieroglyphs. This last paragraph is, we suppose, dictated by W.) We now return to the "Book of Results." 19. Saturn The ritual written out and the invocation done --- little success. 20. Sun Revealed<> that the Equinox of the Gods is come. Horus taking the Throne of the East and all rituals, etc., being abrogated. (To explain this we append the G.D. ritual of the Equinox, which was celebrated in the spring and autumn {371} within 48 hours of the actual dates of Sol entering Aries and Libra.) FESTIVAL OF THE EQUINOX (Temple arranged as for 0 = 0) "Ht." ("knocks"). Fratres and Sorores of all grades of the Golden Dawn in . Vernal . the Outer, let us celebrate the Festival of the : : Equinox.! .Autumnal. "All rise." "Ht." Frater Kerux, proclaim the fact, and announce the abrogation of the present Pass Word. "K." ("going to Ht.'s right, saluting, and facing West"). In the Name of the Lord of the Universe, and by command to the V.H.Ht., I proclaim the . Vernal . : : Equinox, and declare that the Pass Word ------ is abrogated. .Autumnal. "Ht." Let us, according to ancient custom, consecrate the return of the . Vernal . : : Equinox. .Autumnal. Light. "Hs." Darkness. "Ht." East. "Hs." West. "Ht." Air. "Hs." Water. "Hg." ("knocks"). I am the Reconciler between them. "All give signs." D. Heat. S. Cold. D. South. S. North. D. Fire. S. Earth. "Hg." ("knocks"). I am the Reconciler between them. "All give signs." "Ht." ("knocks"). One Creator. D. One Preserver. "Hs." ("knocks"). One Destroyer. {372} S. One Redeemer. "Hg." ("knocks"). One Reconciler between them. "All give signs." "Each retiring Officer in turn, beginning with Ht., quits his post by the left hand and goes to foot of Throne. He there disrobes, placing robe and lamen at foot of Throne or Dias. He then proceeds with the Sun's course to the Altar, and lays thereon his special insignia, viz.: --- Ht., Sceptre: Hs., Sword: Hg., Sceptre: K., Lamp and Wand: S., Cup: D., Censer: repeating out-going Password as he does so. "Ht., taking from the Altar the Rose, returns with the Sun to his post: "Hs. takes Cup of Wine: "Hg. waits for the Kerux and takes his Red Lamp from him: "K. takes nothing: "S. takes platter of Salt: "D. takes emblem of Elemental Fire: "Returning each to his place. "All Officers except K. now keep their places. "The remaining members form a column in the North and, led by Kerux, proceed to the East; when all are in column along East side each turns to left and faces Hierophant." "Ht." Let us adore the Lord of the Universe. Holy art Thou, Lord of the Air, who hast created the Firmament. ("Making with the Rose the Sign of the Cross in the Air towards the East.). "All give signs. Procession moves on to the South, halts, and all face South." D. ("facing South"). Let us adore the Lord of the Universe. Holy art Thou, Lord of the Fire, wherein Thou hast shown forth the Throne of Thy Glory. ("Making with the Fire the sign of the Cross toward the South.") "All give signs. Procession moves on to the West, halts, and faces West." "Hs." ("facing West"). Let us adore the Lord of the Universe. Holy art Thou, Lord of the Waters, whereon Thy Spirit moved at the Beginning. ("Making with the Cup the sign of the Cross in the Air before him.") "All give signs. Procession passes on to the North. All halt and face North." S. ("facing North"). Let us adore the Lord of the Universe. Holy art Thou, Lord of the Earth, which Thou hast made Thy footstool. ("Making with the platter of Salt the sign of the Cross toward the North.") "All give signs. "All resume their places and face the usual way." {373} "Hg." Let us adore the Lord of the Universe. Holy art Thou, Who art in all things, in Whom are all things; If I climb up into Heaven, Thou art there; If I go down into Hell, Thou art there also; If I take the Wings of the Morning and remain in the uttermost parts of the Sea, even there shall Thy hand lead me and Thy right hand shall hold me; If I say "Peradventure the Darkness shall cover me," even the Night shall be Light unto Thee; Thine is the Air with its Movement, Thine is the Fire with its flashing Flame, Thine is the Water with its Flux and Reflux, Thine is the Earth with its Eternal Stability. ("Makes the sign of the Cross with Red Lamp.") "All give signs. "Ht. goes to Altar and deposits the rose. "Imperator meanwhile assumes the Throne. "Ht. returns to a seat on immediate left as Past Hierophant. "Each old Officer now proceeds in turn to the Altar and places upon it the ensign he had taken therefrom, returning to places of their grade, not their Thrones, with nothing in their hands: they sit as common members, leaving all offices vacant." "Imperator." By the Power and Authority in me vested, I confer upon you the new Password. It is ------. The Officers of this Temple for the ensuing half-year are as follows: --- ("Reads list of new Officers.") "New Officers come up in turn and are robed by the Imperator. "Each new Officer in turn passes to the Altar and takes his insignia therefrom, repeating aloud:" --- By the Password ------ I claim my ----. "S., after claiming his Cup, purifies the Hall and the Members by Water, without a word spoken by the Ht. unless he fails in this duty." "D., after claiming his Censer, consecrates the Hall and the Members by Fire, without unnecessary word from the Ht." "THE MYSTIC CIRCUMAMBULATION" "This should take place in Silence, but if the Members be unprovided with Rituals, the Ht. may order it as follows:" --- "All form in North, K., Hg., Members, Hs., S., D. "Each member as he passes the Throne repeats the Password aloud." {374} "Ht." Let us invoke the Lord of the Universe. Lord of the Universe, Blessed by Thy Name unto the Eternal Ages. Look with favour upon this Order, and grant that its members may at length attain to the true Summum Bonum, the Stone of the Wise, The Perfect Wisdom and the Eternal Light, To the Glory of Thine Ineffable Name, AMEN. "All salute." "Ht." Frater Kerux, in the Name of the Lord of the Universe, I command . Vernal . you to declare that the : : Equinox has returned, and that ----- is .Autumnal. the Password for the next six months. "K." In the Name of the Lord of the Universe and by command of the .Aries., V.H.Ht. I declare that the Sun has entered : :, the Sign of the .Libra. . Vernal . : : Equinox, and that the Password for the ensuing half-year will .Autumnal. be -------. "Ht." Khabs. Pax. In. "Hs." Am. Konx. Extension. "Hg." Pekht. Om. Light. 20. ("contd.") --- Great success in midnight invocation. (The other diary says 10 P.M. "Midnight" is perhaps a loose phrase, or perhaps marks the climax of the ritual.) I am to formulate a new link of an order with the solar force. (It is not clear what happened in this invocation; but it is evident from another note of certainly later date, that "great success" does not mean "Samadhi." For P. writes: "I make it an absolute condition that I should attain Samadhi, in the god's own interest." His memory concurs in this. It was the Samadhi attained in October 1906 that set him again in the path of obedience to this revelation. But that "great success" means something very important {375} is clear enough. The sneering sceptic of the 17th of March must have had a shock before he wrote those words.) 21. Moon. Sun enters Aries, 22. Mars. The day of rest, on which nothing whatever of magic is to be done at all. Mercury is to be the great day of invocation. (This note is due to W.'s prompting, or to his own rationalising imagination.) 23. Mercury. The Secret of Wisdom. (We omit the record of a long and futile Tarot divination.) At this point we may insert the Ritual which was so successful on the 20th. INVOCATION OF HORUS ACCORDING TO THE DIVINE VISION OF W. THE SEER To be performed before a window open to the E. or N. without incense. The room to be filled with jewels, but only diamonds to be worn. A sword, unconsecrated. 44 pearl beads to be told. Stand. Bright daylight at 12.30 noon. Lock doors. White robes. Bare feet. Be very loud. Saturday. Use the Sign of Apophis and Typhon. The above is W.'s answer to various questions posed by P. * * * * * Preliminary. Banish. L.B.R. Pentagram. L.B.R. Hexagram. Flaming Sword. Abrahadabra. Invoke. As before. [These are P.'s ideas for the ritual. W. replied, "Omit."] The MS. of this Ritual bears many internal marks of having been written at white heat and left unrevised, save perhaps for one glance. There are mistakes in grammar and spelling unique in all MSS. of Fra. P.; the use of capitals is irregular, and the punctuation almost wanting.] {376} CONFESSION Unprepared and uninvoking Thee, I, omicron-upsilon mu-eta, Fra. R. R. et A. C., am here in Thy Presence --- for Thou art Everywhere, O Lord Horus! --- to confess humbly before Thee my neglect and scorn of Thee. How shall I humble myself enough before Thee? Thou art the mighty and unconquered Lord of the Universe: I am a spark of Thine unutterable Radiance. How should I approach Thee? --- but Thou art Everywhere. But Thou hast graciously deigned to call me unto Thee, to this Exorcism of Art, that I may be Thy Servant, Thine Adept, O Bright One, O Sun of Glory! Thou hast called me --- should I not then hasten to Thy Presence? With unwashen hands therefore I come unto Thee, and I lament my wandering from Thee --- but Thou knowest! Yea, I have done evil! If one <> blasphemed Thee, why should I therefore forsake Thee? But thou art the Avenger; all is with Thee. I bow my neck before Thee; and as once Thy sword was upon it, <> so am I in Thy hands. Strike if Thou wilt: spare if Thou wilt: but accept me as I am. My trust is in Thee: shall I be confounded? This Ritual of Art; this Forty and Fourfold Invocation; this Sacrifice of Blood <> --- these I do not comprehend. {377} It is enough if I obey Thy decree; did thy fiat go forth for my eternal misery, were it not my joy to execute Thy Sentence on myself? For why? For that All is in Thee and of Thee; it is enough if I burn up in the intolerable glory of Thy presence. Enough! I turn toward Thy Promise. Doubtful are the Words: Dark are the Ways: but in Thy Words and Ways is Light. Thus then now as ever, I enter the Path of Darkness, if haply so I may attain the Light. Hail! GR:alpha I HB:A Strike, strike the master chord! Draw, draw the Flaming Sword! Crowned Child and Conquering Lord, Horus, avenger! 1. O Thou of the Head of the Hawk! Thee, Thee, I invoke! ["At every "Thee I invoke," throughout whole ritual, give the Sign of Apophis."] A. Thou only-begotten-child of Osiris Thy Father, and Isis Thy Mother. He that was slain; She that bore Thee in Her womb, flying from the Terror of the Water. Thee, Thee, I invoke! 2. O Thou whose Apron is of flashing white, whiter than the Forehead of the Morning! Thee, Thee, I invoke! B. O Thou who hast formulated Thy Father and made fertile Thy Mother! Thee, Thee, I invoke! {378} 3. O Thou whose garment is of Golden glory, with the azure bars of sky! Thee, Thee, I invoke! C. Thou who didst avenge the Horror of Death; Thou the slayer of Typhon! Thou who didst lift Thine arms, and the Dragons of Death were as dust; Thou who didst raise Thine Head, and the Crocodile of Nile was abased before Thee! Thee, Thee, I invoke! 4. O Thou whose Nemyss hideth the Universe with night, the impermeable Blue! Thee, Thee, I invoke! D. Thou who travellest in the Boat of Ra, abiding at the Helm of the Aftet boat and of the Sektet boat! Thee, Thee, I invoke! 5. Thou who bearest the Wand of Double Power! Thee, Thee, I invoke! E. Thou about whose presence is shed the darkness of Blue Light, the unfathomable glory of the outmost Ether, the untravelled, the unthinkable immensity of Space. Thou who concentrest all the Thirty Ethers in one darkling sphere of Fire! Thee, Thee, I invoke! 6. O Thou who bearest the Rose and Cross of Life and Light! Thee, Thee, I invoke! The Voice of the Five. The Voice of the Six. Eleven are the Voices. Abrahadabra! {379} GR:beta II HB:B Strike, strike the master chord! Draw, draw the Flaming Sword! Crowned Child and Conquering Lord, Horus, avenger! 1. By thy name of Ra I invoke Thee, Hawk of the Sun, the glorious one! 2. By thy name Harmachis, youth of the Brilliant Morning, I invoke Thee! 3. By thy name Mau, I invoke Thee, Lion of the Midday Sun. 4. By thy name Tum, Hawk of the Even, crimson splendour of the Sunset, I invoke Thee! 5. By thy name Khep-Ra I invoke Thee, O Beetle of the hidden Mastery of Midnight! A. By thy name Heru-pa-Kraat, Lord of Silence, Beautiful Child that standest on the Dragons of the Deep, I invoke Thee! B. By thy name of Apollo, I invoke Thee, O man of strength and splendour, O poet, O father! C. By thy name of Phoebus, that drivest thy chariot through the Heaven of Zeus, I invoke Thee! D. By thy name of Odin I invoke Thee, O warrior of the North, O Renown of the Sagas! E. By thy name of Jeheshua, O child of the Flaming Star, I invoke Thee! F. By Thine own, Thy secret name Hoori, Thee I invoke! {380} The Names are Five. The Names are Six. Eleven are the Names! Abrahadabra! Behold! I stand in the midst. Mine is the symbol of Osiris; to Thee are mine eyes ever turned. Unto the splendour of Geburah, the Magnificence of Chesed, the mystery of Daath, thither I lift up mine eyes. This have I sought, and I have sought the Unity: hear Thou me! GR:gamma III HB:G 1. Mine is the Head of the Man, and my insight is keen as the Hawk's. By my Head I invoke Thee! A. I am the only-begotten child of my Father and Mother. By my Body I invoke Thee! 2. About me shine the Diamonds of Radiance white and pure. By their brightness I invoke Thee! B. Mine is the Red Triangle Reversed, the Sign <> given of none, save it be of Thee, O Lord! By the Lamen I invoke Thee! 3. Mine is the garment of white sewn with gold, the flashing abbai that I wear. By my robe I invoke Thee! C. Mine is the sign of Apophis and Typhon! By the sign I invoke Thee! 4. Mine is the turban of white and gold, and mine the blue vigour of the intimate air! {381} By my crown I invoke Thee! D. My fingers travel on the Beads of Pearl: so run I after Thee in thy car of glory. By my fingers I invoke Thee! [On the Saturday the string of pearls broke: so I changed the invocation to "My mystic sigils travel in the Bark of the Akasa, etc. By the spells I invoke Thee! --- P.] 5. I bear the Word of Double Power in the Voice of the Master --- Abrahadabra! By the Word I invoke Thee! E. Mine are the dark-blue waves of music in the song that I made of old to invoke thee --- Strike, strike the master chord! Draw, draw the Flaming Sword! Crowned Child and Conquering Lord, Horus, avenger! By the Song I invoke Thee! 6. In my hand is thy Sword of Revenge; let it strike at Thy Bidding! By the Sword I invoke Thee! The Voice of the Five. The Voice of the Six. Eleven are the Voices. Abrahadabra! GR:delta IV HB:D [This section merely repeats GR:alpha I HB:A in the first person. Thus it begins: {382} 1. "Mine is the Head of the Hawk! Abrahadabra!", and ends: 6. "I bear the Rose and Cross of Life and Light! Abrahadabra!" giving the Sign at each Abrahadabra. Remaining in he Sign, the invocation concludes:] Therefore I say unto Thee: Come Thou forth and dwell in me; so that every my Spirit, whether of the Firmament, or of the Ether, of the Earth or under the Earth; on dry land or in the Water, or Whirling Air or of rushing fire; and every spell and scourge of God the Vast One may be THOU. Abrahadabra! The Adoration -- impromptu. Close by banishing. [I think this was omitted at W.'s order. --- P.] * * * * * During the period March 23rd --- April 8th, whatever else may have happened, it is at least certain that work was continued to some extent, that the inscriptions of the stele were translated for Fra. P., and that he paraphrased the latter in verse. For we find him using, or prepared to use, the same in the text of Liber Legis. Perhaps then, perhaps later, he made out the "name-coincidences of the Qabalah" to which we must now direct the reader's attention. The MS. is a mere fragmentary sketch. Ch = 8 = Ch I Th = 418 = Abrahadabra = RA-HVVR (Ra-Hoor). Also 8 is the great symbol I adore. (This may be because of its likeness to Infinity or because of its (old G.'. D.'.) attribution to Daath, P. being then a rationalist; or for some other reason.) {383} So is 0. 0 = A in the Book of Thoth (The Tarot). A = 111 with all its great meanings, Sun = 6. Now 666 = My name. = the number of the stele. = the number of the Beast. (See Apocalypse.) = the number of the Sun. The Beast A Ch I H A = 666 in full. (The usual spelling is ChIVA.) (A = 111 Ch = 418 I = 20 H = 6 A = 111.) HRV-RA-HA. 211 + 201 + 6 = 418. (This name occurs only in L. Legis, and is a test of that book rather than of the stele.) ANKH-P-N-KHONS"h"V-T = 666. (We trust the addition of the termination T will be found justified.) Bes-n-maut B I Sh-NA-MAVT . = 888 Ta-Nich TA-NICh. . = Ch x A. Nuteru NVThIRV = 666. Montu MVNTV = 111. Aiwass AIVAS = 78, the influence or messenger, or the Book T. Ta-Nich TA-NICh = 78. Alternatively, Sh for Ch gives 370, O Sh, Creation. So much we extract from volumes filled with minute calculations, of which the bulk is no longer intelligible even to Fra. P. His memory, however, assures us that the coincidences were much more numerous and striking than those we have been able to reproduce here; but his attitude is, we understand, that after all "It's all in Liber Legis. 'Success is thy proof: argue not; convert not; talk not overmuch!'" And indeed in the Comment to that Book will be found sufficient for the most wary of inquirers. Now who, it may be asked, was Aiwass? It is the name given by W. to P. as that of her informant. Also it is the name given as that of the revealer of Liber Legis. But whether {384} Aiwass is a spiritual being, or a man known to Fra. P., is a matter of the merest conjecture. His number is 78, that of Mezla, the Channel through which Macroprosopus reveals Himself to, or showers His influence upon, Microprosopus. So we find Fra. P. speaking of him at one time as of another, but more advanced, man; at another time as if it were the name of his own superior in the Spiritual Hierarchy. And to all questions Fra. P. finds a reply, either pointing out "the subtle metaphysical distinction between curiosity and hard work," or indicating that among the Brethren "names are only lies," or in some other way defeating the very plain purpose of the historian. The same remark applies to all queries with regard to V.V.V.V.V.; with this addition, that in this case he condescends to argue and to instruct. "If I tell you," he once said to the present writer, "that V.V.V.V.V. is a Mr Smith and lives at Clapham, you will at once go round and tell everybody that V.V.V.V.V. is a Mr Smith of Clapham, which is not true. V.V.V.V.V. is the Light of the World itself, the sole Mediator between God and Man; and in your present frame of mind (that of a poopstick) you cannot see that the two statements may be identical for the Brothers of the A.'. A.'.! Did not your great-grandfather argue that no good thing could come out of Nazareth? "Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things? And they were offended in him." Similarly, with regard to the writing of Liber Legis, Fra. P. will only say that it is in no way "automatic writing," that he {385} heard clearly and distinctly the human articulate accents of a man. Once, on page 6, he is told to edit a sentence; and once, on page 19, W. supplies a sentence which he had failed to hear. To this writing we now turn. It must have been on the 7th of April that W. commanded P. (now somewhat cowed) to enter the "temple" exactly at 12 o'clock noon on three successive days, and to write down what he should hear, rising exactly at 1 o'clock. This he did. Immediately on his taking his seat the Voice began its Utterance, and ended exactly at the expiration of the hour. These are the three chapters of Liber Legis, and we have nothing to add to the comment prepared by Fra. P. himself while the sun was in the sign of the Virgin, Anno V from this first revelation. Note, however, the 65 pages of MS., and the 220 verses. The reproduction of Liber Legis has been done thus minutely in order to prevent the casual reader from wasting his valuable time over it. The full title of the book is LIBER L vel LEGIS svb figvra CCXX as delivered by LXXVIII to DCLXVI and it is the First and Greatest of those Class A publications of A.'. A.'. of which is not to be altered so much as the style of a letter. {386} {Special gate-fold insert described. This is absent in the Weiser reprint, being replaced by 18 unnumbered pages, printed on obverse only with the MS pages mostly four to a page (less at chapter breaks). In the 1st edition, this is long plate of black on white clay-coat paper, heavy and folded twice accordion style to lay piled flat in the closed book. The holograph MS pages of "Liber L" are arranged from right to left, five across and thirteen down without break. The first row goes therefore: 5 4 3 2 1. The plate has a very wide margin all around, and the head of the writing is oriented toward the binding of the book. The quality of the reproduction is medium to poor, with some of the lighter writing utterly illegible. Since this cannot be exactly reproduced in word-processed format, the pages will be represented by the TS text of "Liber AL" with some notations of variance and appearance: 1 Had! The manifestation of Nuit The unveiling of the company of heaven Every man and every woman is a star Every number is infinite; there is no difference Help me, o warrior lord of Thebes, in my unveiling before the Children of men Be thou Hadit, my secret centre, my heart & my tongue! Behold! it is revealed by Aiwass the minister of Hoor-paar-kraat The Khabs is in the Khu, not the Khu in the Khabs Worship then the Khabs, and behold my light shed over you. 2 Let my servants be few & secret: they shall rule the many & the known. These are fools that men adore; both their Gods & their men are fools. Come forth, o children, under the stars & take your fill of love. I am above you and in you. My ecstasy is in yours My joy is to see your joy V. 1. of Spell called the Joy {Reading difficult, in TS this line is replaced by: "Above, the gemmed azure is The naked splendour of Nuit; She bends in ecstasy to kiss The secret ardours of Hadit. The winged globe,the starry blue, Are mine, O Ankh-af-na-khonsu!"} Now ye{?} shall know that the chosen priest & apostle of infinite space is the prince-priest the Beast; and in 3 his woman; called the Scarlet Woman, is all power given. They shall gather my children into their fold: they shall bring the glory of the stars into the hearts of men. For he is ever a sun, and she a moon. But to him is the winged secret flame and to her the stooping starlight. But ye are not so chosen Burn upon their brows, o splendrous serpent! O azure-lidded woman, bend upon them! The key of the rituals is in the secret word which I have given unto him. 4 With the God & the Adorer I am nothing: they do not see me. They are as upon the earth I am Heaven, and there is no other God than me, and my lord Hadit. 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 & any 5 other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt. But whoso availeth in this, let him be the chief of all! I am Nuit, and my word is six and fifty Divide, add, multiply, and understand. Then saith the prophet and slave of the beauteous one. Who am I, and what shall be the sign. So she answered him, bending down, a lambent flame of blue, all-touching all penetrant, her lovely hands upon the black earth, & her lithe body arched for love and her soft feet not hurting the 6 little flowers Thou knowest! And the sign shall be my ecstasy, the consciousness of the continuity of existence, the {Crossed out: "the non-atomic the unsegmentiary"{?}} omnipresence of my body. {Written in different style. Under this, crossed out: "non-atomic fact of my universality."} {two lines crossed out: "(Write this in whiter words)" "(But go forth on )" To the right of these lines is a note in a different style: ": Done later as : above."} Then the priest answered & said unto the Queen of Space, kissing her lovely brows and the dew of her light bathing his whole body in a sweet-smelling perfume of sweat O Nuit, continuous one of Heaven, let it 7 be ever thus that men speak not of Thee as One but as None and let them speak not of thee at all since thou art continuous! None, breathed the light, faint & faery, of the stars, and two. For I am divided for love's sake, for the chance of union. This is the creation of the world, that the pain of division is as nothing and {"division" written over a word crossed out, possibly "distance"} the joy of dissolution all. For these fools of men and their 8 woes care not thou at all! They feel little; what is, is balanced by weak joys; but ye are my chosen ones. Obey my prophet! follow out the ordeals of my knowledge! seek me only! Then the joys of my love will redeem ye from all pain. This is so: I swear it by the vault of my body; by my sacred heart and tongue; by all I can give, by all I desire of ye all. Then the priest fell into a deep trance or 9 swoon, & said unto the Queen of Heaven Write unto us the ordeals write unto us the rituals write unto us the law. But she said: the ordeals I write not the rituals shall be half known and half concealed: the Law is for all This that thou writest is the threefold book of Law. My scribe Ankh-af-na-khonsu the {The "k" of "khonsu" looks re-touched.} priest of the princes shall not in one letter change this book; but lest there be folly, he shall comment thereupon by the wisdom of Ra-Hoor-Khu-it. 10 Also the mantras and spells; the obeah and the wanga; the work of the wand and the work of the sword: these he shall learn and teach. He must teach; but he may make severe the ordeals. The word of the Law is Theta-epsilon-lambda-eta-mu-alpha. {"Thelema" is in Greek letters in the MS} Who calls us Thelemites will do no wrong, if he look but close in to the word. For there are therein Three {"therein" looks retouched} Grades, the Hermit and the Lover and the man of Earth. Do what thou wilt 11 shall be the whole of the Law. The word of Sin is Restriction. O man! refuse not thy wife, if she will. O lover, if thou wilt, depart. There is no bond that can unite the divided but love: all else is a curse. Accursed! Accursed! be it to the aeons. Hell. Let it be that state of manyhood bound and loathing. So with thy all thou hast no right but to do thy will Do that and no other shall say nay. For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, 12 delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect The Perfect and the Perfect are one Perfect and not two; nay, are none! Nothing is a secret key of this law Sixty-one the Jews call it; I call it eight, eighty, fourhundred & eighteen. But they have the half: unite by thine {"have" is retouched.} art so that all disappear. My prophet is a fool with his one one one; are not they the Ox, and none by the Book. 13 Abrogate are all rituals, all ordeals, all {"are" is above line, and a carat between and below "Abrogate" and "all".} words and signs. Ra-Hoor-Khuit hath taken his seat in the East at the Equinox {"at" is retraced.} of the Gods and let Asar be with Isa who also are one. But they are not of me Let Asar be the adorant, Isa the sufferer; Hoor in his secret name and splendour is the Lord initiating. There is a word to say about the Hierophantic task. Behold! there are three ordeals in one, and it may be given in three ways. The gross must pass through fire; let the 14 fine be tried in intellect, and the lofty chosen ones in the highest. Thus ye have star & star system & system let not one know well the other! There are four gates to one palace; the floor of that palace is of silver and gold, lapis lazuli & jasper are there, and all rare scents jasmine & rose, and the emblems of death. Let him enter in turn or atonce the fourgates; let him stand on the floor of the palace. Will he not sink? Amn. Ho! warrior, if thy {"Amn" is underlined.} servant sink? But there are means 15 and means. Be goodly therefore: dress ye all in fine apparel eat rich foods and drink sweet wines and wines that foam. Also, take your fill and will of {Word crossed out at head of line, possibly "last".} love as ye will, when, where and with whom ye will. But always unto me. If this be not aright; if ye confound the space-marks, saying: They are one or saying They are many; if the ritual be not ever unto me: then expect the direful judgments of Ra Hoor Khuit! This shall regenerate the world, the little 16 world my sister, my heart & my tongue, {"world" has been rewritten over a different word, not clear.) unto whom I send this kiss. Also, o scribe and prophet though thou be of the princes it shall not assuage thee nor absolve thee. But ecstasy be thine and joy of earth: ever To me To me Change not as much as the style of a letter; for behold thou, o prophet shalt not behold all these mysteries hidden therein. The child of thy bowels, he shall behold {"he" is underlined.} them. Expect him not from the East nor from 17 the West, for from no expected house cometh that child. Aum! All words are sacred and all prophets true; save only that they understand a little; solve the first half of the equation, leave the second unattacked But thou hast all in the clear light, and some though not all in the dark. Invoke me under my stars. Love is the law, love under will. Nor let the fools mistake love; for there are love and love. There is the dove and there is the serpent. Choose ye well! He, my prophet, hath 18 chosen, knowing the law of the fortress and the great mystery of the House of God All these old letters of my Book are aright; but * is not the Star. This {Where "*" has been placed in this line, the MS has a much retouched mark, commonly taken to be the Hebrew letter Tzaddi} also is secret: my prophet shall reveal it to the wise. I give unimaginable joys on earth: certainty, not faith, while in life, upon death; peace unutterable, rest, ecstasy: nor do I demand aught in sacrifice. My incense is of resinous woods & gums and there is no blood therein: because of my hair the trees of Eternity. 19 My number is 11, as all their numbers who are of us. My colour is black to the {Between and above "us." and "My" is a parentheses holding "Lost phrase" Below this is a carat and under that in a thin pen "The shape of my star is -". This is followed in a very different pen by: "The Five Pointed Star, with a Circle in the Middle, & the circle is Red"} blind, but the blue & gold are seen of the seeing. Also I have a secret glory for them that love me. But to love me is better than all things: if under the night-stars in the desert thou presently burnest mine incense before me invoking me with a pure heart and the Serpent flame therein, thou shalt come a little to lie in my bosom. For one kiss wilt thou then be willing to give all; 20 but whoso gives one particle of dust shall lose all in that hour. Ye shall gather goods and store of women and spices; ye shall wear rich jewels; ye shall exceed the nations of the earth in splendour & pride; but always in the love of me, and so shall ye come to my joy. I charge you earnestly to come before me in a single robe and covered with a rich headdress. I love you I yearn to you. Pale or purple, veiled or voluptuous I who am all pleasure and purple 21 and drunkenness of the innermost sense desire you. Put on the wings and arouse the coiled splendour within you: come unto me At all my meetings with you shall the priestess say - and her eyes shall burn with desire as she stands bare and rejoicing in my secret temple - To me! To me! calling forth the flame of the hearts of all in her {"flame of the" is added above the line with a carat to mark below.} love-chant. Sing the rapturous love-song unto me! Burn to me perfumes! Wear to me jewels! Drink to me, for I love you! I love you! 22 I am the blue-lidded daughter of Sunset; I am {"lidded" is retouched.} the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night sky. To me! To me! The Manifestation of Nuit is at an end. 1 {all verses in this chapter are numbered in a lighter writing} 1 Nu! the hiding of Hadit. 2 Come! all ye, and learn the secret that hath not yet been revealed. I Hadit am the complement of Nu my bride. I am not extended, and Khabs is the name of my House. 3 In the sphere I am everywhere, the centre, as she, the circumference, is nowhere found. 4 Yet she shall be known & I never. 5 Behold! the rituals of the old time are black. Let the evil ones be cast away; let the good ones be purged by the prophet! Then shall this Knowledge go aright. 6 I am the flame that burns in every heart of man, and in the core of every star. I am 2 Life, and the giver of Life, yet therefore is the knowledge of me the knowledge of death. 7 I am the Magician and the Exorcist. I am the axle of the wheel, and the cube in the circle. "Come unto me" is a foolish word; for it is I that go. 8 Who worshipped Heru-pa-kraath have worshipped me; ill, for I am the worshipper. 9 Remember all ye that existence is pure joy; that all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass & are done; but there is that which remains. 10. O prophet! thou hast ill will to learn this writing. 11. I see thee hate the hand & the pen; but I am 3 stronger. 12. Because of me in Thee which thou knewest not 13. for why? Because thou wast the knower, and me. 14. Now let there be a veiling of this shrine: now let the light devour men and eat them up with blindness! 15. For I am perfect, being Not; and my number is nine by the fools; but with the just I am eight, and one in eight: Which is vital, for I am none indeed. The Empress and the King are not of me; for there is a further secret. 16 I am the Empress & the Hierophant. Thus eleven, as my bride is eleven. 4 17 Hear me, ye people of sighing! The sorrows of pain and regret Are left to the dead and the dying, The folk that not know me as yet. 18 These are dead, these fellows; they feel not. We are not for the poor and sad: the lords of the earth are our kinsfolk. 19 Is a God to live in a dog? No! but the highest are of us. They shall rejoice, our chosen: who sorroweth is not of us. 20 Beauty and strength, leaping laughter and delicious languor, force and fire, are of us. 5 21 We have nothing with the outcast and the unfit: let them die in their misery.: For they feel not. Compassion is the vice of kings: stamp down the wretched & the weak: this is the law of the strong: this is our law and the joy of the world. Think not, o king, upon that lie: That Thou Must Die: verily thou shalt not die, but live! Now let it be understood If the body of the King dissolve, he shall remain in pure ecstasy for ever Nuit Hadit Ra-Hoor Khuit. The Sun, Strength & Sight, Light these are for the servants of the Star & the Snake. 6 22 I am the Snake that giveth Knowledge & Delight and bright glory, and stir the hearts of men with drunkenness. To worship me take wine and strange drugs whereof I will tell my prophet, & be drunk thereof! They shall not harm ye at all. It is a lie, this folly against self. The exposure of innocence is a lie. Be strong, o man, lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture: fear not that any God shall deny thee for this. 23 I am alone: there is no God where I am. 24 Behold! these be grave mysteries; for there are also of my friends who be hermits. Now 7 think not to find them in the forest or on the mountain; but in beds of purple, caressed by magnificent beasts of women with large limbs, and fire and light in their eyes, and masses of flaming hair about them; there shall ye find them. Ye shall see them at rule, at victorious armies, at all the joy; and there shall be in them a joy a million times greater than this. Beware lest any force another, King against King! Love one another with burning hearts; on the low men trample in the fierce lust of your pride 8 in the day of your wrath. 25 Ye are against the people, O my chosen! 26 I am the secret Serpent coiled about to spring: in my coiling there is joy. If I lift up my head, I and my Nuit are one. If I droop down mine head, and shoot forth venom, then is rapture of the earth, and I and the earth are one. 27 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 9 perish with the dogs of Reason. 28 Now a curse upon Because and his kin! 29 May Because be accursed for ever! 30 If Will stops and cries Why, invoking Because, then Will stops & does nought. 31 If Power asks why, then is Power weakness. 32 Also reason is a lie; for there is a factor infinite & unknown; & all their words are skew-wise. 33 Enough of Because! Be he damned for a dog! 34 But ye, o my people, rise up & awake! 35 Let the rituals be rightly performed with joy & beauty! 10 36 There are rituals of the elements and feasts of the times. 37 A feast for the first night of the Prophet and his Bride! 38 A feast for the three days of the writing of the Book of the Law. 39 A feast for Tahuti and the child of the Prophet - secret, O Prophet! 40 A feast for the Supreme Ritual, and a feast for the Equinox of the Gods. 41 A feast for fire and a feast for water; a feast for life and a greater feast for death! 11 42 A feast every day in your hearts in the joy of my rapture. 43 A feast every night unto Nu, and the pleasure of uttermost delight! 44 Aye! feast! rejoice! there is no dread hereafter. There is the dissolution, and eternal ecstasy in the kisses of Nu. 45 There is death for the dogs. 46 Dost thou fail? Art thou sorry? Is fear in thine heart? 47 Where I am these are not. 12 48 Pity not the fallen! I never knew them. I am not for them. I console not: I hate the consoled & the consoler. 49 I am unique & conqueror. I am not of the slaves that perish. Be they damned & dead! Amen. [This is of the 4: there is a fifth who is invisible, & therein am I as a babe in an egg.] 50 Blue am I and gold in the light of my bride: but the red gleam is in my eyes & my spangles are purple & green. 51 Purple beyond purple: it is the light higher 13 than eyesight. 52 There is a veil: that veil is black. It is the veil of the modest woman; it is the veil of sorrow, & the pall of death: this is none of me. Tear down that lying spectre of the centuries: veil not your vices in virtuous words: these vices are my service; ye do well, & I will reward you here and hereafter. 53 Fear not, o prophet, when these words are said, thou shalt not be sorry. Thou art emphatically my chosen; and blessed are 14 the eyes that thou shalt look upon with gladness. But I will hide thee in a mask of sorrow: they that see thee shall fear thou art fallen: but I lift thee up. 54 Nor shall they who cry aloud their folly that thou meanest nought avail; thou shall reveal it: thou availest: they are the slaves of because: They are not of me. The stops as thou wilt; the letters change them not in style or value! 55 Thou shalt obtain the order & value of the English Alphabet; thou shalt find 15 new symbols to attribute them unto. 56 Begone! ye mockers; even though ye laugh in my honour ye shall laugh not long: then when ye are sad know that I have forsaken you. 57 He that is righteous shall be righteous still; he that is filthy shall be filthy still. 58 Yea! deem not of change: ye shall be as ye are, & not other. Therefore the kings of the earth shall be Kings for ever: the slaves shall serve. There is none that shall be cast down or lifted up: all is ever 16 as it was. Yet there are masked ones my servants: it may be that yonder beggar is a King. A King may choose his garment as he will: there is no certain test: but a beggar cannot hide his poverty. 59 Beware therefore! Love all, lest perchance is a King concealed! Say you so? Fool! If he be a King, thou canst not hurt him. 60 Therefore strike hard & low and to hell with them, master! 61 There is a light before thine eyes, o prophet a light undesired, most desirable. 17 62 I am uplifted in thine heart and the kisses of the stars rain hard upon thy body. 63 Thou art exhaust in the voluptuous fullness of the inspiration; the expiration is sweeter than death, more rapid and laughterful than a caress of Hell's own worm. 64 Oh! thou art overcome: we are upon thee; our delight is all over thee: hail! hail! prophet of Nu! prophet of Had! prophet of Ra-Hoor-Khu! Now rejoice! now come in our splendour & rapture! Come in our passionate peace, & write sweet words for the Kings! 18 65 I am the Master: thou art the Holy Chosen One. 66 Write, & find ecstasy in writing! Work, & be our bed in working! Thrill with the joy of life & death! Ah! thy death shall be lovely: whoso seeth it shall be glad. Thy death shall be the seal of the promise of our agelong love. Come! lift up thine heart & rejoice! We are one; we are none. 67 Hold! Hold! Bear up in thy rapture; fall not in swoon of the excellent kisses! 68 Harder! Hold up thyself! Lift thine head! 19 breathe not so deep - die! 69 Ah! Ah! What do I feel? Is the word exhausted? 70 There is help & hope in other spells. Wisdom says: be strong! Then canst thou bear more joy. Be not animal; refine thy rapture! If thou drink, drink by the eight and ninety rules of art: if thou love, exceed by delicacy; and if thou do aught joyous, let there be subtlety therein! 71 But exceed! exceed! 72 Strive ever to more! and if thou art truly 20 mine - and doubt it not, an if thou art ever joyous! - death is the crown of all 73 Ah! Ah! Death! Death! thou shalt long for death. Death is forbidden, o man, unto thee. 74 The length of thy longing shall be the strength of its glory. He that lives long & desires death much is ever the King among the Kings. 75 Aye! listen to the numbers & the words: 76 4 6 3 8 A B K 2 4 A L G M O R 3 Y X 24 89 R P S T O V A L. What {In this line, 24 and 89 each are embraced above and below by two curved lines, convex to the outside.} meaneth this, o prophet? Thou knowest not; nor shalt thou know ever. There cometh one to follow thee: he shall 21 expound it. But remember, o chosen one, to be me; to follow the love of Nu in the star-lit heaven; to look forth upon men, to tell them this glad word. 77 O be thou proud and mighty among men! 78 Lift up thyself! for there is none like unto thee among men or among Gods! Lift up thyself, o my prophet, thy stature shall surpass the stars. They shall worship thy name, foursquare, mystic, wonderful, the number of the man; and the name of 22 thy house 418. 79 The end of the hiding of Hadit; and blessing & worship to the prophet of the lovely Star! 1 {all verses in this chapter are numbered in a lighter writing} 1 Abrahadabra! the reward of Ra Hoor Khut. 2 There is division hither homeward; there is a word not known. Spelling is defunct; all is not aught. Beware! Hold! Raise the spell of Ra-Hoor-Khuit! 3 Now let it be first understood that I am a god of War and of Vengeance. I shall deal hardly with them. 4 Choose ye an island! 5 Fortify it! 6 Dung it about with enginery of war! 7 I will give you a war-engine. 8 With it ye shall smite the peoples; and 2 none shall stand before you. 9 Lurk! Withdraw! Upon them! this is the Law of the Battle of Conquest: thus shall my worship be about my secret house. 10 Get the stele of revealing itself; set it in thy secret temple - and that temple is already aright disposed - & it shall be your Kiblah for ever. It shall not fade, but miraculous colour shall come back to it day after day. Close it in locked glass for a {"after" is retraced.} proof to the world. 11 This shall be your only proof. I forbid argument. Conquer! That is enough. I will make easy 3 to you the abstruction from the ill-ordered {"a" and "u" of = = "abstruction" are double underlined, possibly as a check on the exact word at a later date.} house in the Victorious City. Thou shalt thyself convey it with worship, o prophet, though thou likest it not. Thou shalt have danger & trouble. Ra-Hoor-Khu is with thee. Worship me with fire & blood; worship me with swords & with spears. Let the woman be girt with a sword before me: let blood flow to my name. Trample down the Heathen; be upon them, o warrior, I will give you of their flesh to eat! 12 Sacrifice cattle, little and big: after a child. 4 13 But not now. 14 Ye shall see that hour, o blessed Beast, and thou the Scarlet Concubine of his desire! 15 Ye shall be sad thereof. 16 Deem not too eagerly to catch the promises; fear not to undergo the curses. Ye, even ye, know not this meaning all. 17 Fear not at all; fear neither men nor Fates, nor gods, nor anything. Money fear not, nor laughter of the folk folly, nor any other power in heaven or upon the earth or under the earth. Nu is your refuge as Hadit your 5 light; and I am the strength, force, vigour, of your arms. 18 Mercy let be off: damn them who pity. Kill and torture; spare not; be upon them! 19 That stele they shall call the Abomination of Desolation; count well its name, & it shall be to you as 718. 20 Why? Because of the fall of Because, that he is not there again. 21 Set up my image in the East: thou shalt buy thee an image which I will show thee, especial, {MS has two l's in "especial", last one crossed out.} not unlike the one thou knowest. And it shall be suddenly easy for thee to do this. 6 22 The other images group around me to support me: let all be worshipped, for they shall cluster to exalt me. I am the visible object of worship; the others are secret; for the Beast & his Bride are they: and for the winners of the Ordeal x. What is this? Thou shalt know. {"x" is strangely shaped, like the letter "a" or Hebrew Aleph.} 23 For perfume mix meal & honey & thick leavings of red wine: then oil of Abramelin and olive oil, and afterward soften & smooth down with rich fresh blood! 24 The best blood is of the moon, monthly: then the fresh blood of a child, or dropping from the 7 host of heaven: then of enemies; then of the priest or of the worshippers: last of {"or of" has been altered. "of" was written first, "or" written over it and a second "of" entered above; carat below to show where it goes.} some beast, no matter what. 25 This burn: of this make cakes & eat unto {"unto" looks like "with"} me. This hath also another use; let it be laid before me, and kept thick with perfumes of your orison: it shall become full of beetles as it were and creeping things sacred unto me. 26 These slay, naming your enemies; & they shall fall before you. 27 Also these shall breed lust & power of lust in you at the eating thereof. 28 Also ye shall be strong in war. 8 29 Moreover, be they long kept, it is better; for they swell with my force. All before me. 30 My altar is of open brass work: burn thereon in silver or gold! 31 There cometh a rich man from the West who shall pour his gold upon thee. 32 From gold forge steel! 33 Be ready to fly or to smite. 34 But your holy place shall be untouched throughout the centuries: though with fire and sword it be burnt down & shattered, yet an invisible house there standeth and shall stand until the fall of the Great 9 Equinox, when Hrumachis shall arise and the double-wanded one assume my throne and place. Another prophet shall arise, and bring fresh fever from the skies; another woman shall awake the lust & worship of the Snake; another soul of God and beast shall mingle in the globed priest; another sacrifice shall stain the tomb; another king shall reign; and blessing no longer be poured To the Hawk-headed mystical Lord! 35 The half of the word of Heru-ra-ha, called Hoor-pa-kraat and Ra-Hoor-Khut. 10 36 Then said the prophet unto the God: 37 I adore thee in the song "I am the Lord of Thebes" &c from Vellum book Continuing to {"Continuing" doubtful} --------- "fill me" 38 So that thy light is in me & its red flame is as a sword in my hand to push thy order. There is a secret door that I shall make to establish thy way in all the quarters (these are the adorations, as thou hast written) as it is said: "The light is mine" &c from vellum book to "Ra-Hoor-Khuit" 11 39 All this and a book to say how thou didst come hither and a reproduction of this ink and paper for ever - for in it is the word secret & not only in the English - and thy comment upon this the Book of the Law {"thy comment" lightly underlined.} shall be printed beautifully in red ink and black upon beautiful paper made by hand; and to each man and woman that thou meetest, were it but to dine or to drink at them, it is the Law to give. Then they shall chance to abide in this bliss or no; it is no odds. Do this quickly! 40 But the work of the comment? That is easy; and 12 Hadit burning in thy heart shall make swift and secure thy pen. 41 Establish at thy Kaaba a clerk-house: {"clerk-house" now, but the MS has "clerkshop" or something very similar, with "shop" crossed out twice and "-house" written above.} all must be done well and with business way. 42 The ordeals thou shalt oversee thyself, save only the blind ones. Refuse none, but thou shalt know & destroy the traitors. I am Ra - Hoor - Khuit; and I am powerful to protect my servant. Success is thy proof: argue not; convert not; talk not overmuch! Them that seek to entrap thee, to overthrow thee, them attack without pity or quarter; & destroy them utterly. Swift as a trodden serpent turn. 13 and strike! Be thou yet deadlier than he! Drag down their souls to awful torment: laugh {There is a scratched out "4" at the head of this line. Probably an aborted verse mark.} at their fear: spit upon them! 43 Let the Scarlet Woman beware! If pity and compassion and tenderness visit her heart if she leave my work to toy with old sweetnesses then shall my vengeance be known. I will slay me her child: I will alienate her heart: I will cast her out from men: as a shrinking and despised harlot {There is a smudge like a false start before the = word "harlot".} shall she crawl through dusk wet streets, and {The "o" of "through" has a double line-over.} die cold and an-hungered. 14 44.But let her raise herself in pride. Let her follow me in my way. Let her work the work of wickedness! Let her kill her heart! Let her be loud and adulterous; let her be covered with jewels, and rich garments, and let her be shameless before all men! 45 Then will I lift her to pinnacles of power: then will I breed from her a child mightier than all the kings of the earth I will fill her with joy: with my force shall she see & strike at the worship of Nu: she shall achieve Hadit. 15 46 I am the warrior Lord of the Forties: the Eighties cower before me, & are abased. I will bring you to victory & joy: I will be at your arms in battle & ye shall delight to slay. Success is your proof; courage is your armour; go on, go on, in my strength; & ye shall turn not back for any! 47 This book shall be translated into all tongues: but always with the original in the writing of the Beast; for in the {The next page has a square grid, truncated diagonal line and cross in circle drawn upon it. This has been represented defectively here. The grid is represented very imperfectly. Crowley's handwriting increases its downward angle as he approaches the end of the page, and this has been crudely represented. The line is shown only by "\" marks where it crosses. The Circle with cross is shown by a "+".} a : b : c : d : e : f : g : h : : : : : : : 16 : : : : : : : -------+-chance+\shape-+of-the-+letters+-------+-------+---- 2 : : \ : : : and : their : :positio:n \ to :one ano:ther: : : : -------+-------+---\---+-------+------i+n-these+are----+--------- : : \ : : : : mys:teries 3 :that n:o \ : : : : : : : Be\ast :shall d:vine. : : -------+-------+-------+\------+-------+-------+--Let--+him------ : : : \ : : : : 4 : not se:ek to try\: b:ut one: comet:h after: : : : \ : : : : -------+-------+-------+----\--+-------+-------+-------+--------- :him, : whence: I sa\y: not, w:ho s:hall : 5 : : : \: : : : : discov:er : : : : : -------+-------+---the-+-Key of\-------+-------+-------+--------- : : : : \ it a:ll. T:hen : 6 :this l:ine d: : \ : : : : : :rawn i:s a\ : : : -------+-------+-------+-------+----\--key:----+-------+--------- : : : : \ : th:en th:is 7 :circle : sq : : \: : : : : uare:d +: : : :{"+" is circle +.} -------+-------+-------+-------+--in--i+t------+-------+--------- key als:o. : : : s fail:ure is :a 8 : : A:nd A:bra : : : b: : : : :hadabra. It : -------+e-his--+-------+-------+-------+-------+------s+hall----- : c:hild & : that s:tr : : : 9 se:e : : : ange:ly. Le:t h : : k after th : : : : im n:ot -------+-------+---is;-+-------+-------+-------+-------+---------- : : :for therby alone : : 10 fal:l : : : : can: he : : from: it. : : : : : 17 48 Now this mystery of the letters is done, and I want to go on to the holier place. 49 I am in a secret fourfold word, the blasphemy against all gods of men. 50 Curse them! Curse them! Curse them! 51 With my Hawk's head I peck at the eyes of Jesus as he hangs upon the cross. 52 I flap my wings in the face of Mohammed & blind him. 53 With my claws I tear out the flesh of the Indian and the Buddhist, Mongol and Din. 54 Bahlasti! Ompehda! I spit on your 18 crapulous creeds. 55 Let Mary inviolate be torn upon wheels: for her sake let all chaste women be utterly despised among you. 56 Also for beauty's sake and love's! 57 Despise also all cowards; professional soldiers who dare not fight, but play; all fools despise! 58 But the keen and the proud, the royal and the lofty; ye are brothers! 59 As brothers fight ye! 60 There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt. 61 There is an end of the word of the God 19 enthroned in Ra's seat, lightening the girders of the soul. 62 To Me do ye reverence; to me come ye through tribulation of ordeal, which is bliss. 63 The fool readeth this Book of the Law, and its comment & he understandeth it not. 64 Let him come through the first ordeal, & it will be to him as silver 65 Through the second, gold 66 Through the third, stones of precious water. 67 Through the fourth, ultimate sparks of the intimate fire. 20 68 Yet to all it shall seem beautiful. Its enemies who say not so, are mere liars. 69 There is success. 70 I am the Hawk-Headed Lord of Silence & of Strength; my nemyss shrouds the night-blue sky. 71 Hail! ye twin warriors about the pillars of the world! for your time is nigh at hand. 72 I am the Lord of the Double Wand of Power the wand of the {Above the break in the line: "Force of Coph Nia-" At the break "Cophni" crossed out and underlined with a wavy mark, followed by "I" underlined.} but my left hand is empty, for I have crushed 21 an Universe; & nought remains. 73 Paste the sheets from right to left and from top to bottom: then behold! 74 There is a splendour in my name hidden and glorious, as the sun of midnight is ever the son. 75 The ending of the words is the Word Abrahadabra. The Book of the Law is Written and Concealed. Aum. Ha. LIBER LEGIS THE COMMENT<> 1. Compare II. 1, the complement of this verse. In Nu is Had concealed; by Had is Nu manifested. Nu being 56 and Had 9, their conjunction results in 65, Adonai, the Holy Guardian Angel. See the Sepher Sephiroth and "The Wake-World" in "Konx Om Pax" for further details on 65. Note, however, the sixty-five pages of the MS. of Liber Legis. Or counting NV 56 HAD 10, we get 66, which is Sigma (1 - 11). Had is further the centre of the Key-Word "Abrahadabra." 2. This book is a new revelation, or unveiling of the holy ones. 3. This should not be understood in the spiritualistic sense. It means that in each person is the sublime starry nature, a consciousness to be attained by the prescribed methods. [Yet it may mean some real connection between a given person and a given star. Why not? Still, this is not in my knowledge. See Lib. 418.] 4. The limited is a mere mask; the illimitable is the only truth. 5. Nu, to unveil herself, needs a mortal intermediary, in the first instance. It is to be supposed that Ankh-f-n-khonsu, the warrior lord of Thebes, priest of Men Tu, is in some subtle manner identical with either Aiwass or the Beast. 6. The recipient of this knowledge is to identify himself with Hadit, and thus fully express the thoughts of her heart in her very language. 7. Aiwass --- see Introduction. He is 78, Mezla the "influence" from the Highest Crown, and the number of cards in the Tarot, Rota, the all-embracing Wheel. Hoor-paar-Kraat. See II. 8. Aiwass is called the minister of Hoor-paar-Kraat, the God of Silence; for his word is the Speech in the Silence. {387} 8. Here begins the text. Khabs is the secret Light or L.V.X.; the Khu is the magical entity of a man. I find later (Sun in Virgo, An VII.) that Khabs means star. In which case "cf. v." 3. The doctrine here taught is that the Light is innermost, essential man. Intra (not Extra) Nobis Regnum Dei. 9. That Khabs is declared to be the light of Nu. It being worshipped in the centre, the light also fills the circumference, so that all is light. 10. This is the rule of Thelema, that its adepts shall be invisible rulers. This, it may be remarked, has always been the case. 11. "The many and the known," both among Gods and men, are revered; this is folly. 12. The Key of the worship of Nu. The uniting of consciousness with infinite space by the exercise of love, pastoral or pagan love. But "vide infra." 13. This doctrine implies some mystic bond which I imagine is only to be understood by experience; this human ecstasy and that divine ecstasy interact. A similar doctrine is to be found in the Bhagavad Gita. 14. This verse is a direct translation of the first section of the stele. It conceals a certain secret ritual, of the highest rank, connected with the two previous verses. 15. The authority of the Beast rests upon this verse; but it is to be taken in conjunction with certain later verses which I shall leave to the research of students to interpret. I am inclined, however, to believe that "the Beast" and "the Scarlet Woman" do not denote persons, but are titles of office, that of Hierophant and High Priestess (HB:V and HB:G), else it would be difficult to understand the next verse. 16. In II. 16 we find that Had is to be taken as 11 (see II. 16, comment). Then Hadit = 421, Nuit = 466. 421 - 3 (the moon) = 418. 466 + 200 (the sun) = 666. These are the two great numbers of the Qabalistic system that enabled me to interpret the signs leading to this revelation. The winged secret flame is Hadit; the stooping starlight is Nuit; these are their true natures, and their functions in the supreme ritual referred to above. 17. "Ye" refers to the other worshippers of Nuit, who must seek out their own election. 18. The serpent is the symbol of divinity and royalty. It is also a symbol of Hadit, invoked upon them. 19. Nuit herself will overshadow them. {388} 20. This word is perhaps Abrahadabra, the sacred word of 11 letters. 21. Refers to the actual picture on the stele. Nuit is a conception immeasurably beyond all men have ever thought of the Divine. Thus she is not the mere star-goddess, but a far higher thing, dimly veiled by the unutterable glory. This knowledge is only to be attained by adepts; the outer cannot reach to it. 22. A promise --- not yet fulfilled. [Since (Sun in Sagittarius, An V.) fulfilled.] A charge to destroy the faculty of discriminating between illusions. 23. The chief, then, is he who has destroyed this sense of duality. 24. Nu HB:NV = 6 + 50 = 56. 25. Dividing 6/50 = 0.12. 0 the circumference, Nuit. . the centre, Hadit. 1 the Unity proceeding, Ra-Hoor-Khuit. 2 = the Coptic H, whose shape closely resembles the Arabic figure 2, the Breath of Life, inspired and expired. Human consciousness. Thoth. Adding 50 + 6 = 56, Nu, and concentrating 5 + 6 = 11, Abrahadabra, etc. Multiplying 50 x 6 = 300, HB:Sh and Ruach Elohim, the Holy Spirit. I am inclined to believe that there is a further mystery concealed in this verse; possibly those of 418 and 666 again. 26. The prophet demanding a sign of his mission, it is promised: a Samadhi upon the Infinite. This promise was later fulfilled --- see "The Temple of Solomon the King," which proposes to deal with the matter in its due season. 27-31. Here is a profound philosophical dogma, in a sense possibly an explanation and illumination of the propositions in "Berashith." The dyad (or universe) is created with little pain in order to make the bliss of dissolution possible. Thus the pain of life may be atoned for by the bliss of death. This delight is, however, only for the chosen servants of Nu. Outsiders may be looked on much as the Cartesians looked on animals. 32. The rule and purpose of the Order: the promise of Nuit to her chosen. 33. The prophet then demanded instruction: ordeals, rituals, law. 34. The first demand is refused, or, it may be, is to be communicated by another means than writing. [It has since been communicated.] The second is partially granted; or, if fully granted, is not to be made wholly public. The third is granted unconditionally. {389} 35. Definition of this book. 36. The first strict charge not to tamper with a single letter of this book. The comment is to be written "by the wisdom of Ra-Hoor-Khuit," "i.e." by open, not by initiated wisdom. 37. An entirely new system of magic is to be learnt and taught, as is now being done. 38. The usual charge in a work of this kind. Every man has a right to attain; but it is equally the duty of the adept to see that he duly earns his reward, and to test and train his capacity and strength. 39. Compare Rabelais. Also it may be translated, "Let Will and Action be in harmony." But Theta-epsilon-lambda-eta-mu-alpha also means Will in the higher sense of Magical One-pointedness, and in the sense used by Schopenhauer and Fichte. I suggest --- The the essential HB:ATh, Azoth, etc., = GR:Theta-epsilon. Word Chokmah, Thoth, the Logos, the Second Emanation. of the Partitive, Binah the Great Mother. the Chesed, the paternal power, reflection of the "The" above. Law Geburah, the stern restriction. is Tiphereth, visible existence, the balanced harmony of the worlds. Theta-epsilon-lambda-eta-mu-alpha The idea embracing all this sentence in a word. Or --- GR:Theta the = HB:T the Lion, "Thou shalt unite all these symbols into the form of a Lion." GR:epsilon Word = HB:H the letter of Breath, the Logos. GR:lambda of = HB:L Libra the Equilibrium. GR:eta the = HB:Ch 418, Abrahadabra. GR:mu Law = HB:M the Hanged Man, or Redeemer. GR:alpha is = HB:A the 0 (zero, Nuit, which is Existence). GR:Theta-epsilon-lambda-eta-mu-alpha the sum of all. 40. Theta-epsilon, the Hermit, HB:Y invisible, yet illuminating. The A.'. A.'. lambda-eta, the Lover, HB:Z visible as is the lightning flash. The College of Adepts. mu-alpha, the Man of Earth, HB:P the Blasted Tower. The 3 Keys add up to 31 = HB:LA Not and HB:AL God. Thus is the whole of Theta-epsilon- lambda-eta-mu-alpha equivalent to Nuit, the all-embracing. {390} See the Tarot Trumps for further study of these grades. Theta-epsilon = 14, the Pentagram, rule of Spirit over ordered Matter. Strength and Authority (HB:T and HB:H) and secretly 1 + 4 = 5, the Hierophant HB:V. V. Also: Leo Aries, the Lion and the Ram. "Cf." Isaiah. It is a "millennial" state. lambda-eta = 38, the Key-word Abrahadabra, 418, divided by the number of its letter, 11. Justice or Balance and the Charioteer or Mastery. A state of progress; the church militant. mu-alpha = 41, the Inverted Pentagram, matter dominating spirit. The Hanged Man and the Fool. The condition of those who are not adepts. "Do what thou wilt" need not only be interpreted as licence or even as liberty. It may for example be taken to mean Do what thou (Ateh) wilt; and Ateh is 406 = HB:ThAV = T, the sign of the cross. The passage might then be read as a charge to self-sacrifice or equilibrium. I only put forward this suggestion to exhibit the profundity of thought required to deal even with so plain a passage. All the meanings are true, if only the interpreter be illuminated; but if not, they are all false, even as he is false. 41, 42. Interference with the will of another is the great sin, for it predicates the existence of another. In this duality sorrow consists. I think that possibly the higher meaning is still attributed to "will." 43. "No other" shall say "nay" may mean --- No-other (= Nuit) shall pronounce the word No, uniting the aspirant with Herself by denying and so destroying that which he is. 44. Recommends "non-attachment." Students will understand how in meditation the mind which attaches itself to hope of success is just as bound as if it were to attach itself to some base material idea. It is a bond; and the aim is freedom. I recommend serious study of the word "unassuaged" which appears not very intelligible. 45. Perhaps means that adding perfection to perfection results in the unity and ultimately the Negativity. But I think there is much more than this. 46. 61 = HB:AYN. But the True Nothing of Nuit is 8, 80, 418. Now 8 is HB:Ch, which spelt fully, HB:ChYTh, is 418. And 418 is Abrahadabra, the word of Ra-Hoor-Khuit. Now 80 is HB:P, the letter of Ra-Hoor-Khuit. [Qy. this.] 47. Let us, however, add the Jewish half 61. 8 + 80 + 418 = 506. "Cf." verses 24, 25. 506 + 61 = 567 = 27 x 21 = ? But writing 506 qabalistically backwards we get 605, and 605 + 61 = 666. {391} 666 = 6 x 111, and 111 = HB:A = 0 in Taro = 1 + 2 + ... + 36, the sum of the numbers in the Magic Square of Sol. = the Number of the Beast Or, taking the keys of 8, 80, 418, we get vii., xvi., vii., adding to 30. 30 + 61 = 91 = HB:AMN, Amen. This may unite Nuit with Amon the negative and concealed. Yet to my mind she is the greater conception, that of which Amoun is but a reflection. 48. See above for 111. "My prophet is a fool," "i.e." my prophet has the highest of all grades, since the Fool is HB:A. I note later (An V., Sun. in Aquarius) that "v." 48 means that all disappears when 61 + 8, 80, 418 are reduced to 1. And this may indicate some practical mystic method of annihilation. I am sure (Sun in Libra, An VII.) that this is by no means the perfect solution of these marvellous verses. 49. Declares a New System of Magic and initiation. Asar --- Isa --- is now the Candidate, not the Hierophant. Hoor --- see Cap. III. --- is the Initiator. 50. Our system of initiation is to be triune. For the outer, tests of labour, pain, etc. For the inner, intellectual tests. For the elect of the A.'. A.'., spiritual tests. Further, the Order is not to hold lodges, but to have a chain-system. 51. The candidate will be brought through his ordeals in divers ways. The Order is to be of freemen and nobles. 52. But distinctions must not be made before Nuit, either intellectually, morally, or personally. Metaphysics, too, is intellectual bondage; avoid it! Otherwise one falls back to the Law of Hoor from the perfect emancipation of Nuit. This is a great mystery, only to be understood by those who have fully attained Nuit and her secret Initiation. 53. The prophet is retained as the link with the lower. Again the word "assuage" used in a sense unintelligible to me. 54, 55, 56 to the word "child." A prophecy, not yet (May 1909 O.S.) fulfilled, so far as I know. I take it in its obvious sense. 56 from the word "Aum." All religions have some truth. We possess all intellectual truth, and some, not all, mystic truth. 57. Invoke me, --- etc. --- I take literally. See Liber NV for this ritual. {392} Love under will --- no casual pagan love; nor love under fear, as the Christians do. But love magically directed, and used as a spiritual formula. The fools (not here implying HB:A fools, for III., 57 says, All fools despise) may mistake. This love, then, should be the serpent love, the awakening of the Kundalini. The further mystery is of HB:P and unsuited to the grade in which this comment is written. The last paragraph confirms the Tarot attributions as given in 777. With one secret exception. 58. The Grace of our Lady of the Stars. 59. "Because," etc. This mystical phrase doubtless refers to some definite spiritual experience connected with the knowledge of Nuit. 60. Nu = 56 and 5 + 6 = 11. The Circle in the Pentagram? See Liber NV. The uninitiated perceive only darkness in Night: the wise perceive the golden stars in the vault of azure. Concerning that Secret Glory it is not here fitting to discourse. 61. Practical and literal, yet it may be doubted whether "to lose all in that hour" may not refer to the supreme attainment, and that therefore to give one particle of dust (perhaps the Ego, or the central atom Hadit her complement) is the act to achieve. 62, 63. Again practical and literal. Yet the "Secret Temple" refers also to a knowledge incommunicable --- save by experience. 64. The supreme affirmation. 65. The supreme adjuration. 66. The end. II 1. "Cf." I. 1. As Had, the root of Hadit, is the manifestation of Nuit, so Nu, the root of Nuit, is the hiding of Hadit. 2. Nuit is Infinite Extension; Hadit Infinite Contraction. Khabs is the House of Hadit, even as Nuit is the house of the Khu, and the Khabs is in the Khu (I, 8). These theologies reflect mystic experiences of Infinite Contraction and Expansion, while philosophically they are the two opposing Infinites whose interplay gives Finity. 3. A further development of higher meaning. In phrasing this verse suggests an old mystical definition of God: "He Whose centre is everywhere and Whose circumference nowhere." 4. The circumference of Nuit touches Ra-Hoor-Khuit, Kether; but her centre Hadit is for ever concealed above Kether. Is not Nu the "Hiding" of {393} Hadit, and Had the "Manifestation" of Nuit? [I later, Sun in Libra, An VII., dislike this note; and refer the student to Liber XI. and Liber DLV.] 5. A reference to certain magical formulae known to the scribe of this book. The purification of said rituals is in progress at this time, An V. 6. Hadit is the Ego or Atman in everything, but of course a loftier and more secret thing than anything understood by the Hindus. And of course the distinction between Ego and Ego is illusion. Hence Hadit, who is the life of all that is, if known, becomes the death of that individuality. 7. Hadit is both the Maker of Illusion and its destroyer. For though His interplay with Nuit results in the production of the Finite, yet His withdrawing into Himself is the destruction thereof. "The axle of the wheel," another way of saying that He is the Core of Things. "The cube in the Circle." "Cf." Liber 418, "The Vision and the Voice," 30th AEthyr. "Come unto me" is a foolish word; for it is I that go. That is, Hadit is everywhere; yet, being sought, he flies. The Ego cannot be found, as meditation will show. 8. He is symbolised by Harpocrates, crowned child upon the lotus, whose shadow is called Silence. Yet His Silence is the Act of Adoration; not the dumb callousness of heaven toward man, but the supreme ritual, the Silence of the supreme Orgasm, the stilling of all Voices in the perfect rapture. 9. Hence we pass naturally and easily to the sublime optimism of Verse 9. The lie is given to pessimism, not by sophistry, but by a direct knowledge. 10. The prophet who wrote this was at this point angrily unwilling to proceed. 11. He was compelled to do so, 12. For the God was in him, albeit he knew it not. 13. For so long as any knower remains, there is no thing known. Knowledge is the loss of the Knower in the Known. "And me" (not "and I"), Hadit was the passive, which could not arise because of the existence of the Knower; "and" implying further the duality --- which is Ignorance. 14. Enough has been said of the Nature of Hadit, now let a riddle of L.V.X. be propounded. 15. I am perfect, being Not (31 HB:LA or 61 HB:AYN). My number is Nine by the fools (IX. the Hermit of Virgo and Mercury). With the just I am Eight. VIII., Justice Libra Maat HB:L, and One in Eight, HB:A. Which is Vital, for I am None indeed, HB:LA. The Empress HB:D III., the King HB:H IV., are not of me. III. + IV. = VII. {394} 16. I am the Empress and the Hierophant (HB:V V.) III. + V. = VIII., and VIII. is XI., both because of the 11 letters in Abrahadabra ( = 418 = HB:ChYTh = HB:Ch = 8), the Key Word of all this ritual, and because VIII. is not Leo, Strength, but Libra, Justice, in the Tarot (see Tarot Lecture and 777). 17-21. This passage was again very painful to the prophet, who took it in its literal sense. But "the poor and the outcast" are the petty thoughts and the qliphothic thoughts and the sad thoughts. These must be rooted out, or the ecstasy of Hadit is not in us. They are the weeds in the Garden that starve the Flower. 22. Hadit now identifies himself with the Kundalini, the central magical force in man. This privilege of using wine and strange drugs has been confirmed; the drugs were indeed revealed. Follows a curse against the cringing altruism of Christianity, the yielding of the self to external impressions, the smothering of the Babe of Bliss beneath the flabby old nurse Convention. 23. The Atheism of God. "Allah's the Atheist! he owns No Allah." Bagh-i-Muattar. To admit God is to look up to God, and so not to be God. The curse of duality. 24. Hermits --- see "v." 15. Our ascetics enjoy, govern, conquer, love, and are not to quarrel (but see vv. 59, 60 --- Even their combats are glorious). 25. The cant of democracy condemned. It is useless to pretend that men are equal; the facts are against it. And we are not going to stay, dull and contented as oxen, in the ruck of humanity. 26. The Kundalini again. The mystic Union is to be practised both with Spirit and with Matter. 27. The importance of failing to interpret these verses. Unspirituality leads us to the bird-lime of Intellect. The Hawk must not perch on any earthly bough, but remain poised in the ether. 28-31. The great Curse pronounced by the Supernals against the Inferiors who arise against them. Our reasoning faculties are the toils of the labyrinth within which we are all caught. "Cf." Lib. LXV. V. 59. 32. We have insufficient data on which to reason. This passage only applies to "rational" criticism of the Things Beyond. 33. We pass from the wandering in the jungle of Reason to {395} 34. The Awakening. 35. Let us be practical persons, not babblers of gossip and platitude. 36-43. A crescendo of ecstasy in the mere thought of performing these rituals; which are in preparation under the great guidance of V.V.V.V.V. 44. Without fear rejoice; death is only a dissolution, a uniting of Hadit with Nu, the Ego with the All, HB:Y with HB:A. (Note HB:Y 10 + HB:A 1 = 11, Abrahadabra, the Word of Uniting the 5 and the 6.) 45. Those without our circle of ecstasy do indeed die. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. 46. The prophet was again perplexed and troubled; for in his soul was Compassion for all beings. But though this Compassion is a feeling perhaps admirable and necessary for mortals, yet it pertains to the planes of Illusion. 47. Hadit knows nothing of these things; He is pure ecstasy. 48. Hadit has never defiled His purity with the Illusions of Sorrow, etc. Even love and pity for the fallen is an identification with it (sympathy, from sigma-upsilon-nu pi-alpha-theta-epsilon-iota-nu), and therefore a contamination. 49. Continues the curse against the slave-soul. "Amen." This is of the 4, "i.e." should be spelt with 4 letters (the elements), HB:AMThSh not HB:AMN. The fifth, who is invisible, is HB:a'a, 70, the Eye. Now HB:AMThSh = 741 + 70 = 811 = IAO IN GREEK, and IAO is the Greek form of HB:YHVHH, the synthesis of the 4 elements HB:ABThSh. (This HB:a'a is perhaps the O. in N.O.X., Liber VII. I. 40.) 50 "Cf." I. 60. 51. Purple --- the ultra-violet ("v." 51), the most positive of the colours. Green --- the most negative of the colours, half-way in the spectrum. The Magical Image of Hadit is therefore an Eye within a coiled serpent, gleaming red --- the spiritual red of HB:Sh and not mere Fire --- at the apex of the Triangle in the half circle of Nuit's Body, and shedding spangles as of the spectrum of eight colours, including the ultra-violet but not the ultra- red; and 52. Set above a black Veil. This verse is very difficult for anyone, either with or without morality. For what men nowadays call "Vice" is really virtue --- virtus, manliness --- and "Virtue" --- cowardice, hypocrisy, prudery, chastity, and so on are really vices --- vitia, flaws. 53. But the prophet again disliked the writing. The God comforted him. Also he prophesied of his immediate future, which was fulfilled, and is still being fulfilled at the time (An V., Sun in 20 Degree Cancer) of this writing. Even more marked now (An VII., Sun in Libra), especially these words, "I lift thee up." 54. The triumph over the rationalists predicted. {396} The punctuation of this book was done after its writing; at the time it was mere hurried scribble from dictation. See the MS. facsimile. 55. done. See Liber Trigrammaton, Comment. 56. The God again identifies himself with essential ecstasy. He wants no reverence, but identity. 57. A quotation from the Apocalypse. This God is not a Redeemer: He is Himself. You cannot worship Him, or seek Him --- He is He. And if thou be He, well. 58. Yet it does not follow that He (and His) must appear joyous. They may assume the disguise of sorrow. 59. Yet, being indeed invulnerable, one need not fear for them. 60. Hit out indiscriminately therefore. The fittest will survive. This doctrine is therefore contrary to that of Gallio, or of Buddha. 61. At the ecstasy of this thought the prophet was rapt away by the God. First came a new strange light, His herald. 62. Next, as Hadit himself, did he know the athletic rapture of Nuit's embrace. 63. Each breath, as he drew it in, was an orgasm; each breath, as it went out, was a new dissolution into death. Note that throughout these books death is always spoken of as a definite experience, a delightful event in one's career. 64. The prophet is now completely swallowed up in the ecstasy. Then he is hailed by the Gods, and bidden to write on. 65, 66. The division of consciousness having re-arisen, and been asserted the God continues, and prophesies --- of that which I cannot comment. The ecstasy rekindles, 67, 68. So violently that the body of the prophet is nigh death. 69. The prophet's own consciousness re-awakens. He no longer knows anything at all --- then grows the memory of the inspiration past; he asks if it is all. [It is evidently his own interpolation in the dictation.] 70. Also he has the human feeling of failure. It seems that he must fortify his nature in many other ways, in order that he may endure the ecstasy unbearable of mortals. There is also a charge that other than physical considerations obtain. 71. Yet excess is the secret of success. 72. There is no end to the Path --- death itself crowns all. 73, 74. Yet death is forbidden: work, I suppose, must be done before it is earned; its splendour will increase with the years that it is longed for. {397} 75, 76. A final revelation. The revealer to come is perhaps the one mentioned in I. 55 and III. 47. The verse goes on to urge the prophet to identify himself with Hadit, to practise the Union with Nu, and to proclaim this joyful revelation unto men. 77, 78. Though the prophet had in a way at this time identified himself with the number 666, he considered the magic square drawn therefrom rather silly and artificial, if indeed it had yet been devised, on which point he is uncertain. The true Square is as follows: [It follows when it is discovered!] The House of the Prophet, not named by him, was chosen by him before he attached any meaning to the number 418; nor had he thought of attaching any importance to the name of the House. He supposed this passage to be mystical, or to refer to some future house. Yet on trial we obtain at once HB:BVLShKY = 418 79. So mote it be! III 1. Abrahadabra --- the Reward of Ra-HoorKhuit. We have already seen that Abrahadabra is the glyph of the blending of the 5 and the 6, the Rose and the Cross. So also the Great Work, the equilibration of the 5 and the 6, is shown in this God; fivefold as a Warrior Horus, sixfold as the solar Ra. Khuit is a name of Khem the Ram-Phallus-two-plume god Amon; so that the whole god represents in qabalistic symbolism the Second Triad ("whom all nations of men call the first"). It is the Red descending Triangle --- the sole thing visible. For Hadit and Nuit are far beyond. Note that Ra-Hoor HB:RAHVVR = 418. 2. Suggested by a doubt arising in the mind of the prophet as to the unusual spelling. But the "I" makes a difference in the qabalistic interpretation of the name. 3 --- end. This whole books seems intended to be interpreted literally. It was so taken by the scribe at the time. Yet a mystical meaning is easy to find. Exempli gratia; vv. 4-9. 4. An Island = one of the Cakkrams or nerve-centres in the spine. 5. Fortify it! = Concentrate the mind upon it. 6. = Prevent any impressions reaching it. 7. = I will describe a new method of meditation by which 8. Ye shall easily suppress invading thoughts. {398} 9. May mystically describe this method ["e.g.", Liber HHH, Section 3]. But the course of history will determine the sense of the passage. 10. The stele of revealing --- see illustration. That temple; it was arranged as an octagon; its length double its breadth; entrances on all four quarters of temple; enormous mirrors covering six of the eight walls (there were no mirrors in the East and West or in the western halves of the South and North sides). There were an altar and two obelisks in the temple; a lamp above the altar; and other furniture. Kiblah --- any point to which one turns to pray, as Mecca is the Kiblah of the Mahometan. "It shall not fade," etc. It has not hitherto been practicable to carry out this command. 11. "Abstruction." It was thought that this meant to combine abstraction and construction, "i.e.", the preparation of a replica, which was done. Of course the original is in "locked glass." 12-15. This, ill-understood at the time, is now too terribly clear. The 15th verse, apparently an impossible sequel, has justified itself. 16. Courage and modesty of thought are necessary to the study of this book. Alas! we know so very little of the meaning. 17. The infinite unity is our refuge, since if our consciousness be in that unity, we shall care nothing for the friction of its component parts. And our light is the inmost point of illuminated consciousness. And the great Red Triangle is as a shield, and its rays are far-darting arrows! 18. An end to the humanitarian mawkishness which is destroying the human race by the deliberate artificial protection of the unfit. 19. 718 is upsilon-pi-omicron-mu-omicron-nu-eta, the abstract noun equivalent to Perdurabo. (Sun in 3 Degree Cancer, An. VII.) 20. In answer to some mental "Why" of the prophet the God gives this sneering answer. Yet perhaps therein is contained some key to enable me one day to unlock the secret of verse 19, at present (Sun in 20 Degree Virgo, An. V.) obscure. [Now (Sun in Libra, An VII.) clear.] 21. This was remarkably fulfilled. 22. This first charge was accomplished; but nothing resulted of a sufficiently striking nature to record. The Ordeal "X" will be dealt with in private. 23-25. This incense was made; and the prediction most marvellously fulfilled. 26, 27, 28, 29. These experiments, however, were not made. {399} 30. Not yet accomplished (Sun in 20 Degree Virgo, An V.) 31. Not yet accomplished (Sun in 20 Degree Virgo, An V.) 32, 33. Certainly, when the time comes. 34. This prophecy, relating to centuries to come, does not concern the present writer at the moment. Yet he must expound it. The Hierarchy of the Egyptians gives us this genealogy: Isis, Osiris, Horus. Now the "pagan" period is that of Isis; a pastoral, natural period of simple magic. Next with Buddha, Christ, and others there came in the Equinox of Osiris; when sorrow and death are the principal objects of man's thought, and his magical formula is that of sacrifice. Now, with Mohammed perhaps as its forerunner, comes in the Equinox of Horus, the young child who rises strong and conquering (with his twin Harpocrates) to avenge Osiris, and bring on the age of strength and splendour. His formula is not yet fully understood. Following him will arise the Equinox of Ma, the Goddess of Justice, it may be a hundred or ten thousand years from now; for the Computation of Time is not here as There. 35. Note Heru-ra-ha = 418. 36-38. Mostly translations from the stele. 39. This is being done; but quickly? No. I have slaved at the riddles in this book for nigh on seven years; and all is not yet clear (Sun in Virgo 20 Degree, An. V.). Nor yet (Sun in Libra, An VII.). 40. I do not think it easy. Though the pen has been swift enough, once it was taken in hand. May it be that Hadit hath indeed made it secure! [I am still (An VII., Sun in Libra), entirely dissatisfied.] 41. This shall be done as soon as possible. 42. This shall be attended to. 43-45. The two latter verses have become useless, so far as regards the person first indicated to fill the office of "Scarlet Woman." In her case the prophecy of v. 43 has been most terribly fulfilled, to the letter; except the last paragraph. Perhaps before the publication of this comment the final catastrophe will have occurred (Sun in 20 Degree Virgo, An V.). It or an even more terrible equivalent is now in progress (Sun in Libra, An VII.). ["P.S." --- I sealed up the MSS. of this comment and poste d it to the printer on my way to the Golf Club at Hoylake. On my arrival at the Club, I found a letter awaiting me which stated that the catastrophe had occurred.] Let the next upon whom the cloak may fall beware! 46. I do not understand the first paragraph. 47. These mysteries are inscrutable to me, as stated in the text. Later {400} (Sun in Capricorn, An V.) I note that the letters of the Book are the letters of the Book of Enoch; and are stars, or totems of stars. (See 15th Aire in Lib. 418.) So that he that shall divine it shall be a Magus, 9=2. 48-62. Appears to be a plain instruction in theology and ethics. I do not understand "Din." Bahlasti = 358, and Ompehda perhaps 210. 63. A fact. 64-67. This too shall be proven to him who will and can. 68. A fact. 69. I take this as a promise that the Law shall duly be established. 70-72. A final pronouncement of His attributes. I do not know the exact meaning of v. 71. [Later, Sun in Libra, An VII. Yes: I do.] Coph Nia. I cannot trace this anywhere; but KOPhNIA adds to 231. Nia is Ain backwards; Coph suggests Qoph. All very unsatisfactory. 73. Done. See illustration. (See Comment on III. 47.) 74. Perhaps refers to the addition of the name to 418. But Khephra is the "Sun" at midnight in the North. Now in the North is Taurus, the Bull, Apis the Redeemer, the "Son." 75. The ending of the words is the ending of the Work --- Abrahadabra The Book is written, as we see; and concealed --- from our weak understanding. Aum-Ha, HB:Aa'aM = 111, HB:HA = 6, 111 x 6 = 666, the Seal of the Beast. Note well that HB:Aa'a Mwith a HB:M final adds to 671, Throa, the Gate, Adonai spelt in full, etc. etc. Using the Keys of Aum Ha, we get XII. + XV. + 0, and IV. + 0, their sum, 31 = HB:LA, Not. We defer consideration of the sequel to this revelation, and our account of Fra. P's further progress, until the next chapter. This appointment to the Priesthood constituted him --- even had he no other claim --- a member of the grade of Exempt Adept; it was a long and terrible journey of death thence to rebirth as a Babe of the Abyss, and to the final chapter of our work, which must describe his attainment of the Grade of Master of the Temple. {400 "a"} MY CRAPULOUS CONTEMPORARIES NO. V THE BISMARCK OF BATTERSEA {401} THE BISMARCK OF BATTERSEA DANTE perhaps thought when he descended the fifth round of Hell that there was some consolation in the fact that he was getting near the bottom. To us, as we explore the glories of Edwardian literature, such consolation is denied. Abyss after abyss yawns beneath our feet; deep into the gloom we peer and our ears are poisoned with the fetid vapours of the ineffable slime --- with the callow crapulosities of a Corelli, the slobbering senilities of a Sims, the unctuous snivellings of a Caine. But we do not propose to descend so far --- there is a limit. But stay! what is that glimmer on yonder ledge? That ledge where the Brown Dog of the Faddist fights its eternal battle with the Yellow God of Socialism. The ledge labelled "Battersea," supreme word of malignity in the tongue of the pit? Our laurelled guide quickly lowers us thither. What is that bloated and beery buffoon who stands upon his head to attract attention! we ask. Bismarck, it appears, is his name. Blood and iron is his motto. 'S death! but I suspect a paradox. Maybe that by blood he means beer, by iron ink. "Maybe this Nonconformist plum-pudding has been dipped in whale oil --- and why have they stuffed it with onions?" How shall I find the key to this mystery! So portentous a sentence --- and its meaning? "Christianity is only tenable through Literalism and Ritualism." Not so I read it --- and my own {403} secret interpretation sends a guffaw through the black shining sides of the prison. With that I awoke; 'twas all a dream; I must begin again --- that opening will never do. Here, therefore, beginneth the third lesson. How shall we catch the great gray water-rat "That strikes the stars ("sublimi vertice") on Campden Hill?" Quoth the famous consort of a famous judge, on being advised to abate the rat nuisance by plugging their holes with a mixture of tallow, arsenic, and brown paper: "Yes, but you've got to catch them first." So we, accepting her wisdom, shall not attempt to suppress the News (plain or illustrated) --- we shall rather cope with the stench at its source. This pot-bellied Publicola must be not only scotched, but killed. This megalomaniac Menenius must be put through the medicinal mangle of criticism --- a thing which he has hitherto escaped, for as from the porpoise hides of the portly Monitor the round shot of the Merrimac rebounded, so has the oily evasiveness of this literary porpoise served to protect him from his foes, and now he clumsily gambols through the sea, unaware of the pursuing sword-fish. But a greater than the sword-fish (or shall I say the Sword- of-Song-fish) is here. Just as a balloon is difficult to crush but easy to prick, so shall it be in these days. This fellow is simply a trimmer. This seeming porpoise is only a jelly- fish; and the great black curves we saw were but the inkiness of the creature. We draw out this leviathan with an hook, and he goes conveniently into a beer-mug. We calculate the mass of this brilliant comet, and we find it is not to exceed that of a barrel of butter. {404} We are appalled by the bellowing of this Bull of Phalaris, and find that it is but an ingenious mechanism worked by the gaspings of an emasculate oyster. Surely never in all the history of thought --- and its imitations --- has such a widow's curse supplied the world with such a deluge of oil. Croton oil. As a man who orders roast beef and gets hash, so do we look for literature and get mixed dictionary. How do we do it? We stifle the groans of our armchair by continued session and open the Encyclopedia at random. Hullo! what's this? "Schopenhauer, famous pessimist philosopher." (To the stenographer): "The splendid optimism of Schopenhauer ---" (Sotto voce) "Let's see what a philosopher is!" (turns it up after a vain search through letter F) "philosopher --- lover of wisdom," etc. (To stenographer) "manifests itself in a positive loathing of all wisdom." (Another turn.) "Reprehensible --- to be condemned." (Dictating) "and is therefore to be condemned --- no! no! please, miss --- "not" to be condemned." (Another turn.) "Catamaran" --- a surf-boat used in Madras, hm! --- (to stenographer) --- "by all Hindoo speculative mystics." (Speculative mystics --- one of our best stock lines.) We are now fairly started on our weekly causerie, the subject being probably Home Rule. You see, nobody can get hurt. The invertebrate cannot maul the vertebrate --- so we are safe from the chance of their fury. They pay us to defend the doctrine of original sin --- so we escape by defending it upon the ground that it is "Jolly." They pay us to attack Free Thought, so we label it "narrow {405} sectarianism," and please the Hard-Shell Baptists --- with the purses --- without annoying the Freethinker, who is naturally not hit. The Romans crucified St. Peter head downwards; but it was reserved for this oleaginous clown to offer that last indignity to his Master. We are paid to shore up the rotting buttresses of Christianity, and we begin our article, "A causal carpenter" --- But, let us change the subject! There was a man --- a great man --- who some years ago wrote a magnificent philosophical story called the "Napoleon of Notting Hill. More lucid and a thousand times more entertaining than Bunyan, deeper than Berkeley, as full of ecstasy of laughter as Rabelais, and of mystic ecstasy as Malory, a book of the Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosencreutz with Voltaire. I thing those summits are not unattainable by the subject of our essay --- for God's sake, man, forswear sack and live cleanly, and give us something like that! A. QUILLER, JR. {406} ARTHUR IN THE AREA AGAIN! Oh, Allah be obeyed! How infernally they played! I remember that they called themselves the Waites. "W. S. Gilbert." MR. WAITE is at the area door again! It is not altogether unphilosophical to judge a man by the company he keeps, and I have reluctantly decided to dismiss Mr. Waite. He must consider himself no longer my disciple. It has been a painful step, more painful even than when I was obliged to expel him in 1900 from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. For he shows himself this last time in a quite impossible avatar --- that of a Satanic colporteur eating rabbit pie in the kitchens of South Ealing. I have before me a "Special Catalogue of Occult Books," published by a gentleman giving the name of Foulsham, which I hope shortly to see in "Punch" under the heading "MORE COMMERCIAL CANDOUR." Item No. 1 is a "talisman." "The key to unlock the mysteries of the Universe." We hear that "charms and talismans ensure success." "This talisman is worn to bring Health, Happiness, and Success," a combination which I regard as remarkably cheap at 4"s." 3"d." post free. But if you haven't got 4"s." 3"d.", or are less ambitious, you {407} may still get a Parchment Talisman for wearing on the breast, from the Great Book by Rabbi Solomon with silk bag and cord for 1"s." 3"d." There are several; one for honour and riches, one for health, one for "Success in Hazard (betting --- cards --- games of chance)" which looks to me like cheating, one for Success in Trade, and then a set of three to which I call the particular attention of Professor von Kraft-Ebbing and Sir Charles M athews. They are: For Man's Love. For Woman's Love. For Love of Opposite Sex. At the other end the catalogue turns from the psychopath to the servant- girl. All about the mystic meaning of moles, "love signs," and birthmarks, together with works on obstetrics (home-made), cure of Epilepsy, Worms, falling hair, and consumption, Old Moore's gazing Crystals, "Ye Witches Fortune-Telling Cards," and the rest of the rag-bag. The ham of this exquisite sandwich is Mr. Waite's "Book of Black Magic and of Pacts" as was, "Book of Ceremonial Magic" as is. But for this "clientele" of Mr. Foulsham the title is simply "The Book of Magic, including Black magic, the rites and mysteries of Goethic ("sic!") Theurgy, Sorcery, and Infernal Necromancy." Rather tempting for the people who wear talismans "for agricultural prosperity"! I say fearlessly that this advertisement is a crude appeal to the vilest passions of the most wretched of humanity, to the people who would really love to bewitch their neighbour's cow. It is no reply to this charge to point out that the book is absolutely harmless. It is sold on the pretext that it is {408} poison: if Locusta cheats her clients she is no less infamous: rather more. If Mr. Waite thought to escape my eagle eye by omitting his name, this note will undeceive him; I repeat that I can no longer consider him as one of my disciples; and if he continues to adopt my ideas and phrases, and to republish them as his own, I shall really be obliged to do something hardly distinguishable from taking public notice of the fact. ALEISTER CROWLEY. {409} THE BIG STICK {411} REVIEWS THE SECRET TRADITION IN FREEMASONRY. By A. E. WAITE. London. 2 vols, 4to. 1911. 42"s." This is a work of over 900 pages, with twenty-eight plates, and numerous interesting head and tail pieces, sumptuously issued by the publishers. The author may be masonically justified in issuing "ex cathedra," from his study chair, a new and mystic version of our old rites, but such, to be of value, must be grounded upon historic facts, and not upon the nonsense of garbled masonic histories. In the first volume the author shows an extraordinary lack of knowledge, and hence is unable to fix his theory of an Inner and Secret Tradition upon any solid basis, and the volume, with its inflated diction, and troubled reasoning, is very unsatisfactory. The second volume is much better, and is really an interesting study. In both however he does not seek to hide his contempt, often expressed in uncourteous language, against all who are opposed to his views, or otherwise against those degrees from which nothing could be extracted to support his theorizing, and the writer of this review comes in, with many better men, for a slating. In September 1910 my attention was called to a Review of my ARCANE SCHOOLS in the London "Equinox," in which I find the following: "It is true he occasionally refers to people like Hargreave Jennings, A. E. Waite, and H. P. Blavatsky as if they were authorities, but whoso fishes with a net of so wide a sweep as brother Yarker's must expect to pull in some worthless fish. This accounts for Waite's contempt of him. Imagine Walford Brodie reviewing a medical book which referred to him as an authority on p aralysis!" In spite of this mild castigation he still refers to me with some contempt, and as he has so little regard for the feelings of others, generally, I may be pardoned for following suit. I fancy, to say the least, that I am quite as able to judge evidence as Bro. Waite is; and I may say that for about sixty-five years I have made a constant study of Freemasonry, in my leisure hours, and I conceive that I have forgotten more of real Masonry than Waite ever knew, or is ever likely to know. In the first place, he seems to be utterly ignorant of the Jacobite Ecossaisism of the Chapter of Clermont, yet it is only in their Pre-grand Lodge Harodim {413} that he could find foundation for his theorizing. My views on this subject occupy about eighty pages, now appearing in "The American Freemason," Salt Lake, Iowa, and to which I must refer my readers. He cannot find what he seeks in the Hanoverian G. L. of London, --- 1717; or if he finds anything in the ritual of that body it will be trifling, following the religious training of the two clergymen, Anderson and Desaguliers, who founded it. On the Craft system he ought to have directed his attention to the old York ritual, and that of the Ancient Masons, which in that of York may date from 1726 (see my "Guild Charges"). The Royal Arch degree, when it had the "Three Veils" must have been the work, even if by instruction, of a Kabalistic Jew about 1740, and from this time we may expect to find a Secret tradition, grafted upon Anderson's system; the Arch degree was, undoubtedly, developed out the the Knight of the Sword, or Red Cross, by the Harodim Templars of Clermont, and that out of the operative Harodim. Any stupid assertion, however historically untenable, but which is supported by a large majority, is a safe stock in trade for all such writers as Bro. Waite; it pays to tickle the palate of the crowd. It would take up too much space to carry this further, but I will ask to point out, firsthand, some matters of general interest. (I, p. 4). The A. and A.S. Rite "was not" invented in America, it was known in Geneva several years before 1802, when Charleston found out that it was of 33 Degree, and began to trade upon it. They had, however, some years before, the "Morinite" Rite of 25 Degree founded at Jamaica in 1767, and not 1761- 2, hence anything referring to that date is false. (P. 10). "Heredom" is a French modification of "Harodim"; even Barruel knew this. It is a term used by the Comicini builders of London, and is still in use with operative Lodges hailing from Durham. It was known to the operative Lodges of the Co. of Durham in 1735, when two of them went under the G.L. of Lodon, and may be ages older than that, and identical with the "Quarter Masters" of Kelwinning, etc., under the Schau Statutes of 1598 and with the "Warden Courts" of Scotland and France, existing in 1622, as Laurie points out. I can provide first-hand light as to the transliteration of the word into Heredomus, or Holy House. Many years ago, or about 1870, I was in correspondence with Mr. J. W. Papworth on the subject, and he put the question to a very learned friend whom he knew at the British Museum, and who suggested to him the above derivation. As he requested that his name should not appear I sent it to the "Freemason's Magazine," under the signature of GR:Delta, and it was at once adopted by P ike; hence the term "Holy House" is about forty years old. I may mention that the Duke of Leinster's "Prince Mason" of Ireland, {414} which is an amplified version of the London Rosecroix of 1770, but very much older than that, uses the following words in presenting the Jewel of a Pelican, "You are still a Harodim, or Master of the workmen of the Temple," --- a Clermont echo. It seems to be everywhere kept out of sight that the Pelican feeding its young with its blood was the war banner of James III when England was invaded by him in 1715. (P. 40). Ramsay did no more in 1737, than put his own gloss on what he learned in the Chapter of Clermont. It is true that in 1754 a change was made in the "Illustrious Knight" (Templar and Sepulchre), and an additional degree then added by an unknown de Bonneville, which may be a Jesuit pseudonym, which in 1758 became the 25th degree, by adding the system of the Knights of the East, etc., and later the 32 Degree, and to which some of Ramsay's views were added; he could not have been a member of the En glish G.L., but was a Jacobite Scotch Mason, and according to his own statement, made to his friend Gensau in 1741, was born in 1680-1681, and not in 1668 as given by Waite; such of these members as were voted Scotch rank by their Lodges, received the Harodim rank of Clermont. Thory says that these Scotch Masons in 1736 had four Lodges, and in ten years received 5,600 members. Personally, I think it likely that the Clermont claims from the Templars (Albigensian) may be just from their own operative Lodges . Fludd, rather than Ashmole, may have indoctrinated the London Masons, and I have given my reasons for this view in my American papers. (P. 295). Waite is mistaken in supposing that the "Ordre du Temple" was not established in England. There was a Convent in 1838 at Liverpool, and its members' names are preserved. The same at London, and Sussex's consent was necessary for Reception; Dr. Robert Bigsby was a member of it, as also of Burnes' revisal of Deuchar's Masonic Knight Templar, which forms the basis of our 1851 ritual, which is not that of Dunckerley who worked the Clermont Templar Kadosh. There was also a Convent under the Duke of Sussex in India. (P. 312). In reference to Clermont Waite is floating on his own imaginary sea. Between 1688 and 1753, Clermont had three well-known degrees of Harodim, and in 1754 a fourth was added. He quotes a garbled extract from Fratre Kristner, who is reliable, and adds a sneer against me. The Swedish Rite has knowledge that Count Scheffer was received by Derwentwater; Graf von Schmittau; Count Posse, were Received 1737, 1743, 1747. But Waite claims to be the infallible Pope, who is to judge evidence!!! (P. 322). "Prince Adept" was added to Knight of the Sun at Kingston in 1767, in order that Morin might put in its place, the Prussian "Noachite" to give countenance to his frauds. {415} (P. 409). My view of HRDM-RSYES. is that, as it now stands, it is the French Lectures of Clermont's three grades. I give my reasons for this in the "American Freemasons" papers. (II. p. 1). This volume, referring as it does, to more recent times, has fewer errors. It might even be extended, and earlier Hermetic details added. (P. 36). We here read in Waite's words of The thing called "Co-Masonry." I am not a Co-Mason myself, but I occasionaly send things to the independent private quarterly termed "Co-Mason," they are usually articles unsuited to the taste of mentally deficient Masons, or things that better informed Masons desire to hide. Again the system comes in for sarcasm owing to a supposed affinity with the Count St. Germain. We may not like Co-Masonry, for one thing, it affords less opportunity for the convivial Ma son, who has no room for the intellectual part; but the system has come to stay, and we may as well treat it with civility. (P. 92). The reduced Rite of Memphis has never been so numerous as to receive respect, and Freemasons are too ignorant to understand it, and to attack it --- as in Co-Masonry --- may prove profitable. As a matter of fact, some mistake was made in America as to the alleged reduction, but Egypt always held to the revised system of 1862-1866; at this time the Gd. Orient and the Chief of the Rite revised the whole system, mainly on an Hermetic basis, and gave to thirty-three leading ceremonies the power to confer, at intervals, the remaining sixty-two degrees which are generally added verbally in their relative places, and recently I furnished to America the necessary changes in a MS. of 200 pages. America had the Chapter degrees, 11 Degree - 18 Degree, carefully edited, but the higher section was somewhat chaotic, and in 1872 I did not feel justified in making any great change. Bro. Waite thrice gives plates of its 90-95 Degree Jewel --- the winged egg --- but without identification. (P. 230). "Rite of Swedenborg." Of this Kenneth Mackenzie was Grand Secretary from its introduction till his own death. Bro. Waite is quite mistaken in supposing that he had any hand in compiling the ritual; that and the Charter are in my hands as they came from Canada; the Charter is in the engrossment of Colonel Moore, and carries the following names: Colonel W.J.B.McLeod Moore, Gd. Master of Templars, and 33 Degree; T.D.Harrington, Pt.G.M. of the G.L. of Canada, and 33 Degree; George Canning Longle y, 33 Degree; The two first names were 33 Degree Masons of the S.G.C. of Canada, then little esteemed, but founded by the Golden Square body of London; but Longley and myself were of the "Martin-Cerneau" body, though I have several 33 Degree Patents of the "Morinite" Sect. Founded, as the Rite is, on a version of Ancient Masonry, carried back to a Feast of the Tabernacles, 5873 B.C., it is most interesting, but too lengthy for general use; under these circumstances I might feel inclined to print it for {41 6} Master Masons, if Freemasonry was an intellectual body, but the needs of English Freemasonry, that in the best and most elaborate of works it is only working for the printer. The Rite was carried from London to the Americas, by Samuel Beswick, a Swedenborgian Minister, who wrote a book on the subject, and he informed me that they had rejected the matter added by Chastannier, and that what was left was the work of Swedenborg. Hence Bro. Waite's description of two secret and unnamed degrees, are of inter est at this point. (P. 368). Knight or "Priest of Eleusis." I have this skeleton ritual of the Early Grand; and suppose it may be the old 1838 work of Memphis, of which Dr. Morison de Greenfield was an early member. As I look upon it the degree is intended to teach that early christianity absorbed the mysteries of Eleusis, and I mention this because I hear from New York that an eminent scholar, learned in Hermetic Greek, is making a translation in which he will prove that the Gospels and Epistles are pure Greek of the E leusinian cult, and that the Jewish references are added to give a Semitic colouring. But I must conclude: I could make a decent sized volume in criticising and contesting Bro. Waite's book. JOHN YARKER, 33 Degree, 90 Degree, 97 Degree. WEST DIDSBURY, 12/12/11. SHE BUILDETH HER HOUSE. By WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT. J. B. Lippincott Co. HEALTH FOR YOUNG AND OLD. By A. T. SCHOFIELD, M.D. Rider and Son. 3"s." 6"d." net. KABALA OF NUMBERS. By SEPHARIAL. Rider and Son. 2"s." net. BYWAYS OF GHOSTLAND. By ELLIOT O'DONNELL. Rider and Son. 3"s." 6"d." net. IN THE GRIP OF THE WHITE SLAVE TRADER. M. A. P. 6"d." net. CONTEMPORARY BELGIAN POETRY. Walter Scott Publishing Co. 1"s." THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM. By BRAM STOKER. Rider and Son. 6"s." A BED OF ROSES. THE SECRET TRADITION OF FREEMASONRY. By A. E. WAITE. My previous remark calls for no modification. MARECHAL DE CAMBRONNE. {417} A BIRTHDAY "Aug." 10, 1911. FULL moon to-night; and six and twenty years Since my full moon first broke from angel spheres! A year of infinite love unwearying --- No circling seasons, but perennial spring! A year of triumph trampling through defeat, The first made holy and the last made sweet By this same love; a year of wealth and woe, Joy, poverty, health, sickness --- all one glow In the pure light that filled our firmament Of supreme silence and unbarred extent, Wherein one sacrament was ours, one Lord, One resurrection, one recurrent chord, One incarnation, one descending dove, All these being one, and that one being Love! You sent your spirit into tunes; my soul Yearned in a thousand melodies to enscroll Its happiness: I left no flower unplucked That might have graced your garland. I induct Tragedy, comedy, farce, fable, song, Each longing a little, each a little long, But each aspiring only to express Your excellence and my unworthiness --- {419} Nay! but my worthiness, since I was sense And spirit too of that same excellence. So thus we solved the earth's revolving riddle: I could write verse, and you could play the fiddle, While, as for love, the sun went through the signs, And not a star but told him how love twines A wreath for every decanate, degree, Minute and second, linked eternally In chains of flowers that never fading are, Each one as sempiternal as a star. Let me go back to your last birthday. Then I was already your one man of men Appointed to complete you, and fulfil From everlasting the eternal will. We lay within the flood of crimson light In my own balcony that August night, And conjuring the aright and the averse Created yet another universe. We worked together; dance and rite and spell Arousing heaven and constraining hell. We lived together; every hour of rest Was honied from your tiger-lily breast. We --- oh what lingering doubt or fear betrayed My life to fate! --- we parted. Was I afraid? I was afraid, afraid to live my love, Afraid you played the serpent, I the dove, Afraid of what I know not. I am glad {420} Of all the shame and wretchedness I had, Since those six weeks have taught me not to doubt you, And also that I cannot live without you. Then I came back to you; black treasons rear Their heads, blind hates, deaf agonies of fear, Cruelty, cowardice, falsehood, broken pledges, The temple soiled with senseless sacrileges, Sickness and poverty, a thousand evils, Concerted malice of a million devils; --- You never swerved; your high-pooped galleon Went marvellously, majestically on Full-sailed, while every other braver bark Drove on the rocks, or foundered in the dark. Then Easter, and the days of all delight! God's sun lit noontide and his moon midnight, While above all, true centre of our world, True source of light, our great love passion-pearled Gave all its life and splendour to the sea Above whose tides stood our stability. Then sudden and fierce, no monitory moan, Smote the mad mischief of the great cyclone. How far below us all its fury rolled! How vainly sulphur tries to tarnish gold! We lived together: all its malice meant Nothing but freedom of a continent! It was the forest and the river that knew The fact that one and one do not make two. {421} We worked, we walked, we slept, we were at ease, We cried, we quarrelled; all the rocks and trees For twenty miles could tell how lovers played, And we could count a kiss for every glade. Worry, starvation, illness and distress? Each moment was a mine of happiness. Then we grew tired of being country mice, Came up to Paris, lived our sacrifice There, giving holy berries to the moon, July's thanksgiving for the joys of June. And you are gone away --- and how shall I Make August sing the raptures of July? And you are gone away --- what evil star Makes you so competent and popular? How have I raised this harpy-hag of Hell's Malice --- that you are wanted somewhere else? I wish you were like me a man forbid, Banned, outcast, nice society well rid Of the pair of us --- then who would interfere With us? --- my darling, you would now be here! But no! we must fight on, win through, succeed, Earn the grudged praise that never comes to meed, Lash dogs to kennel, trample snakes, put bit In the mule-mouths that have such need of it, Until the world there's so much to forgive in Becomes a little possible to live in. God alone knows if battle or surrender Be the true courage; either has its splendour. {422} But since we chose the first, God aid the right, And damn me if I fail you in the fight! God join again the ways that lie apart, And bless the love of loyal heart to heart! God keep us every hour in every thought, And bring the vessel of our love to port! These are my birthday wishes. Dawn's at hand, And you're an exile in a lonely land. But what were magic if it could not give My thought enough vitality to live? Do not then dream this night has been a loss! All night I have hung, a god, upon the cross; All night I have offered incense at the shrine; All night you have been unutterably mine, Miner in the memory of the first wild hour When my rough grasp tore the unwilling flower From your closed garden, mine in every mood, In every tense, in every attitude, In every possibility, still mine While the sun's pomp and pageant, sign to sign, Stately proceeded, mine not only so In the glamour of memory and austral glow Of ardour, but by image of my brow Stronger than sense, you are even here and now Miner, utterly mine, my sister and my wife, Mother of my children, mistress of my life! O wild swan winging through the morning mist! The thousand thousand kisses that we kissed, {423} The infinite device our love devised If by some chance its truth might be surprised, Are these all past? Are these to come? Believe me, There is no parting; they can never leave me. I have built you up into my heart and brain So fast that we can never part again. Why should I sing you these fantastic psalms When all the time I have you in my arms? Why? 'tis the murmur of our love that swells Earth's dithyrambs and ocean's oracles. But this is dawn; my soul shall make its nest Where your sighs swing from rapture into rest Love's thurible, your tiger-lily breast. ALEISTER CROWLEY. {424} {Illustration to this page described: The top 1/5th of this page has a black and white rendering of the Khephra scarab beetle. It shows a scarab beetle holding a sun disk between its hind legs at top and a smaller moon disk between its front legs at the bottom. The body of the scarab is upside-down, even though the legs are as described. Horizontally to left and right are two wings, very stylized, with primaries, secondaries and coverlet feathers depicted.} THE WINGED BEETLE By ALEISTER CROWLEY PRIVATELY PRINTED: TO BE HAD THROUGH "THE EQUINOX" 300 copies, 10"s." net 50 copies on handmade paper, specially bound, " Pounds"1 1"s." net --+-- CONTENTS ROSA Coeli --- Abjad-i-al'ain --- The Hermit --- The Wizard Way --- The Wings --- The Garden of Janus --- The Two Secrets --- The Priestess of Panormita --- The Hawk and the Babe --- The Duellists --- Athor and Asar --- After Judgment --- The Five Adorations -- Telepathy --- The Swimmer --- The Muse --- The God and the Girl --- Rosemary --- Au Bal --- Disappointment --- The Octopus --- The Eyes of Dorothy --- Bathyllus --- The Mantra-Yogi --- The Poet and his Muse --- Lilith --- Sport and Marriage --- The T wins --- The Convert --- The Sorceress --- The Child --- Clytie --- A Slim Gilt Soul --- The Silence of Columbine --- The Archaeologist --- The Ladder --- Belladonna --- The Poet at Bay --- Ut --- Rosa Decidua --- The Circle and the Point --- In Memoriam --- Ad Fidelem Infidelem --- The Sphinx --- The Jew of Fez --- The Pentagram --- Song --- An Hymn --- Prologue to Rodin in Rime --- The Camp Fire --- Ave Adonai --- The Wild Ass --- The Opium-Smoker --- In Manu Dominae. Mr. Todd: a Morality. TRANSLATIONS: L'Amour et le Crane --- L'Alchimie de Douleur --- Le Vampire --- Le Balcon --- Le Gout de L'Infini --- L'Heautontimoroumenos --- Le vin de L'Assassin --- Woman --- Tout Entiere --- Le vin des Amants --- Le Revenant --- Lola de Valence --- Le Beau Navire --- L'Invitation au Voyage --- Epilogue to "Petits Poemes en Prose" --- Colloque Sentimental --- En Sourdine --- The Magician. MR. NEUBURG'S NEW VOLUME OF POEMS. "Imperial" 16mo, pp. 200 ---------------- "Now ready. Order through" The Equinox, "or of any Bookseller." THE TRIUMPH OF PAN. POEMS By VICTOR B. NEUBURG. This volume, containing many poems, --- nearly all of them hitherto unpublished --- besides THE TRIUMPH OF PAN, includes THE ROMANCE OF OLIVIA VANE. The First Edition is limited to Two Hundred and Fifty copies: Two Hundred and Twenty on ordinary paper, whereof less than Two Hundred are for sale; and thirty on Japanese vellum, of which Twenty-five are for sale. These latter copies are numbered, and signed by the Author. The binding is half-parchment with crimson sides; the ordinary copies are bound in crimson boards, half holland. The price of ordinary copies is Five Shillings net; of the special copies, One Guinea net. EXTRACTS FROM FIRST NOTICES. "Not everyone will care for Mr. Neuburg's tone in all the pieces, but he is undoubtedly a poet to be reckoned with, and a volume so original as this is should create no small stir. It is superbly produced by the publishers." --- "Sussex Daily News." "When one comes to the poems ... it is evident that they are written in English.... In a certain oblique and sub-sensible sense, eloquent and musical....Distinctly Wagnerian in their effects...." --- "Scotsman." "It is full of 'the murmurous monotones of whispering lust,' 'the song of young desire,' and that kind of poppycock." --- "London Opinion." "A competent master of words and rhythms. ... His esoteric style is unreasonably obscure from an intelligent plain poetry-lover's standpoint." --- "Morning Leader." "A charming volume of poems. ... Pagan glamour. ... passion and vigour. ... 'Sigurd's Songs' are commendable for dealing with the all too largely neglected Scandinavian Theology. ... A scholarly disciple. ... The entire volume is eminently recommendable." --- "Jewish Chronicle." "A gorgeous rhapsody. ... Fortunately, there are the police. ... On the whole, we cannot help regretting that such splendid powers of imagination and expression are flung away in such literary rioting." --- "Light." "Sometimes of much beauty of rhythm and phrase. ..." ---"Times." "Poets who have any originality deserve to be judged by their own standard. ... A Neo-mystic or semi-astrological pantheist. ..." --- "Liverpool Echo." "Love-making appears to have an added halo in his eyes if it is associated with delirium or bloodshed. ... Mr. Neuburg has a 'careless rapture' all his own; the carelessness, indeed, is just the trouble. His versification is remarkable, and there is something impressive in its mere fluency. ... So luxurious, so rampant, a decadence quickly palls. ... On the whole, this book must be pronounced a quite grievous exhibition of recklessness and folly." --- "Manchester Guardian." "...We began to be suspicious of him. ... Hardly the sort of person we should care to meet on a dark night with a knobby stick in his hand. ... This clever book." --- "Academy." "A vivid imagination fostered by a keen and loving insight of nature, and this allied to a command of richly adorned language ... have already assured for the author a prominent place amongst present-day poets. ... An enthusiastic devotion to classic song ... sustained metrical charm. From first to last the poet's work is an important contribution to the century's literature." --- "Publishers' Circular." "This [book] contains the answer to a very well-known riddle propounded by the late Elizabeth Barrett Browning. You remember she asked in one of her poems, 'What was he doing to Great God Pan: Down in the reeds by the River?' Well, Mr. Victor Neuburg has discovered the answer, for he was obviously wandering near the river if he was not hidden in the reeds. ..." --- "ROBERT ROSS in "The Bystander." "There is no question about the poetic quality of much of Mr. Neuburg's verse. ... We are given visions of love which open new amorous possibilities." --- "Daily Chronicle." The Star in the West BY CAPTAIN J. F. C. FULLER "FOURTH LARGE EDITION NOW IN PREPARATION" THROUGH THE EQUINOX AND ALL BOOKSELLERS SIX SHILLINGS NET ===================================== A highly original study of morals and religion by a new writer, who is as entertaining as the average novelist is dull. Nowadays human thought has taken a brighter place in the creation: our emotions are weary of bad baronets and stolen wills; they are now only excited by spiritual crises, catastrophes of the reason, triumphs of the intelligence. In these fields Captain Fuller is a master dramatist. ===================================== KONX OM PAX THE MOST REMARKABLE TREATISE ON THE MYSTIC PATH EVER WRITTEN Contains an Introduction and Four Essays; the first an account of the progress of the soul to perfect illumination, under the guise of a charming fairy tale; The second, an Essay on Truth, under the guise of a Christmas pantomime; The third, an Essay on Magical Ethics, under the guise of the story of a Chinese philosopher; The fourth, a Treatise on many Magical Subjects of the profoundest importance, under the guise of a symposium, interspersed with beautiful lyrics. No serious student can afford to be without this delightful volume. The second edition is printed on hand-made paper, and bound in white buckram, with cover-design in gold. PRICE TEN SHILLINGS WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO. LTD., and through "THE EQUINOX" -------------- Some Press Opinions Dr. M. D. EDER in "The New Age" "Yours also is the Reincarnation and the Life, O laughing lion that is to be! "Here you have distilled for our delight the inner spirit of the Tulip's form, the sweet secret mystery of the Rose's perfume: you have set them free from all that is material whilst preserving all that is sensual. 'So also the old mystics were right who saw in every phenomenon a dog-faced demon apt only to seduce the soul from the sacred mystery.' Yes, but the phenomenon shall it not be as another sacred mystery; the force of attraction still to be interpreted in terms of God and the Psyche? We shall reward you by befoulment, by cant, by misunderstanding, and by understanding. This to you who wear the Phrygian cap, not as symbol of Liberty, O ribald ones, but of sacrifice and victory, of Inmost Enlightenment, of the soul's deliverance from the fetters of the very soul itself --- fear not; you are not 'replacing truth of thought by mere expertness of mechanical skill.' "You who hold more skill and more power than your great English predecessor, Robertus de Fluctibus, you have not feared to reveal 'the Arcana which are in the Adytum of God-nourished Silence' to those who, abandoning nothing, will sail in the company of the Brethren of the Rosy Cross towards the Limbus, that outer, unknown world encircling so many a universe." "John Bull," in the course of a long review by Mr. HERBERT VIVIAN "The author is evidently that rare combination of genius, a humorist and a philosopher. For pages he will bewilder the mind with abstruse esoteric pronouncements, and then, all of a sudden, he will reduce his readers to hysterics with some surprisingly quaint conceit. I was unlucky to begin reading him at breakfast and I was moved to so much laughter that I watered my bread with my tears and barely escaped a convulsion." "The Times" "The Light wherein he writes is the L.V.X., of that which, first mastering and then transcending the reason, illumines all the darkness cause by the interference of the opposite waves of thought. ... It is one of the most suggestive definitions of KONX --- the LVX of the Brethren of the Rosy Cross --- that it transcends all the possible pairs of opposites. Nor does this sound nonsensical to those who are acquainted with that LVX. But to those who do not it must remain as obscure and ridiculous as spher ical trigonometry to the inhabitants of Flatland." "The Literary Guide" "He is a lofty idealist. He sings like a lark at the gates of heaven. 'Konx Om Pax' is the apotheosis of extravagance, the last word in eccentricity. A prettily told fairy-story 'for babes and sucklings' has 'explanatory notes in Hebrew and Latin for the wise and prudent' --- which notes, as far as we can see, explain nothing --- together with a weird preface in scraps of twelve or fifteen languages. The best poetry in the book is contained in the last section --- 'The Stone of the Philosophers.' Here is some fine work." The PHOTOGRAPHS OF ASANA AND OF PRANAYAMA IN THIS MAGAZINE WERE TAKEN BY THE DOVER STREET STUDIOS DOVER STREET, LONDON, W. A GREEN GARLAND BY V. B. NEUBURG ------------- Green Paper Cover 2s. 6d. net ------------- "As far as the verse is concerned there is in this volume something more than mere promise; the performance is at times remarkable; there is beauty not only of thought and invention --- and the invention is of a positive kind --- but also of expression and rhythm. There is a lilt in Mr Neuburg's poems; he has the impulse to sing, and makes his readers feel that impulse" --- "The Morning Post." "There is a certain grim power in some of the imaginings concerning death, as 'The Dream' and 'The Recall,' and any reader with a liking for verse of an unconventional character will find several pieces after his taste." --- "The Daily Telegraph." "Here is a poet of promise." --- "The Daily Chronicle." "It is not often that energy and poetic feeling are united so happily as in this little book." --- "The Morning Leader." "There is promise and some fine lines in these verses." --- "The Times." ------------- To be obtained of PROBSTHAIN & CO. 44 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, LONDON, W.C. And all Booksellers {Illustration on center top third by horizontal: This is an equilateral triangle circumscribed in a white ring. The triangle is of wide and white bars. The field within ring and triangle is solid black. To the left: PRICE ONE GUNIEA NET. To the right: To be had of The Equinox, 3 Gt. James St., W.C. and through all Booksellers} GOETIA vel Clavicula SALOMONIS REGIS (The Lesser Key of Solomon the King.) The best, simplest, most intelligible and most effective treatise extant on CEREMONIAL MAGIC Careful and complete instruction; ample illustration; beautiful production. This books is very much easier both to understand and to operate than the so-called "Greater" Key of Solomon. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ONLY A FEW COPIES REMAIN FOR SALE. "to be obtained of" THE EQUINOX, 3 Great James St. W.C. ======================= "Crown 8vo, Scarlet Buckram, pp. 64." PRICE 10s. net Less than 100 copies remain. The price will shortly be raised to one guinea net. A.'. A.'. PUBLICATION IN CLASS B. ======================= BOOK 777 THIS book contains in concise tabulated form a comparative view of all the symbols of the great religions of the world; the perfect attributions of the Taro, so long kept secret by the Rosicrucians, are now for the first time published; also the complete secret magical correspondences of the G.'. D.'. and R. R. et A. C. It forms, in short, a complete magical and philosophical dictionary; a key to all religions and to all practical occult working. For the first time Western and Qabalistic symbols have been harmonized with those of Hinduism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Taoism, etc. By a glance at Tables, anybody conversant with any one system can understand perfectly all others. The "Occult Review" says: "Despite its cumbrous sub-title and high price per page, this work has only to come under the notice of the right people to be sure of a ready sale. In its author's words, it represents 'an attempt to systematise alike the data of mysticism and the results of comparative religion,' and so far as any book can succeed in such an attempt, this book does succeed; that is to say, it condenses in some sixty pages as much information as many an intelligent reader at the Museum has been able to collect in years . The book proper consists of a Table of 'Correspondences,' and is, in fact, an attempt to reduce to a common denominator the symbolism of as many religious and magical systems as the author is acquainted with. The denominator chosen is necessarily a large one, as the author's object is to reconcile systems which divide all things into 3, 7, 10, 12, as the case may be. Since our expression 'common denominator' is used in a figurative and not in a strictly mathematical sense, the task is less complex than appears at first sight, and the 32 Paths of the Sepher Yetzirah, or Book of Formation of the Qabalah, provide a convenient scale. These 32 Paths are attributed by the Qabalists to the 10 Sephiroth, or Emanations of Deity, and to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, which are again subdivided into 3 mother letters, 7 double letters, and 12 simple letters. On this basis, that of the Qabalistic 'Tree of Life,' as a certain arrangement of the Sephiroth and 22 remaining Paths connecting them is termed, the author has constructed no less than 183 tables. "The Qabalistic information is very full, and there are tables of Egyptian and Hindu deities, as well as of colours, perfumes, plants, stones, and animals. The information concerning the tarot and geomancy exceeds that to be found in some treatises devoted exclusively to those subjects. The author appears to be acquainted with Chinese, Arabic, and other classic texts. Here your reviewer is unable to follow him, but his Hebrew does credit alike to him and to his printer. Among several hundred words, m ostly proper names, we found and marked a few misprints, but subsequently discovered each one of them in a printed table of errata, which we had overlooked. When one remembers the misprints in 'Agrippa' and the fact that the ordinary Hebrew compositor and reader is no more fitted for this task than a boy cognisant of no more than the shapes of the Hebrew letters, one wonders how many proofs there were and what the printer's bill was. A knowledge of the Hebrew alphabet and the Qabalistic Tree of Life is al l that is needed to lay open to the reader the enormous mass of information contained in this book. The 'Alphabet of Mysticism,' as the author says --- several alphabets we should prefer to say --- is here. Much that has been jealously and foolishly kept secret in the past is here, but though our author has secured for his work the "imprimatur" of some body with the mysterious title of the A.'. A.'., and though he remains himself anonymous, he appears to be no mystery-monger. Obviously he is widely read, but he makes no pretence that he has secrets to reveal. On the contrary, he says, 'an indicible arcanum is an arcanum which "cannot" be revealed.' The writer of that sentence has learned at least one fact not to be learned from books. "G.C.J." WILLIAM NORTHAM, "Robemaker," 9 Henrietta Street, Southampton Street, Strand TELEPHONE -- 5400 Central ======================= MR. NORTHAM begs to announce that he has been entrusted with the manufacture of all robes and other ceremonial apparel of members of the A.'. A.'. and its adepts and aspirants. No. 0. PROBATIONER'S ROBE . . . . . Pounds5 0 0 1. " " superior quality . . 7 0 0 2. NEOPHYTE'S . . . . . . . 6 0 0 3. ZELATOR Symbol added to No. 2 . . 1 0 0 4. PRACTICUS " " 3 . . 1 0 0 5. PHILOSOPHUS " " 4 . . 1 0 0 6. DOMINUS LIMINIS " " 5 . . 1 0 0 7. ADEPTUS (without) " " 0 or 1 . . 3 0 0 8. " (Within) . . . . . . 10 0 0 9. ADEPTUS MAJOR . . . . . . 10 0 0 10. ADEPTUS EXEMPTUS . . . . . . 10 0 0 11. MAGISTER TEMPLI . . . . . . 50 0 0 The Probationer's robe is fitted for performance of all general invocations and especially for the I. of the H. G. A.; a white and gold nemmes may be worn. These robes may also be worn by Assistant Magi in all composite rituals of the White. The Neophyte's robe is fitted for all elemental operations. A black and gold nemmes may be worn. Assistant Magi may wear these in all composite rituals of the Black. The Zelator's robe is fitted for all rituals involving I O, and for the infernal rites of Luna. In the former case an Uraeus crown and purple nemmes, in the latter a silver nemmes should be worn. The Practicus' robe is fitted for all rituals involving I I, and for the rites of Mercury. In the former case an Uraeus crown and green nemmes, in the latter a nemyss of shot silk, should be worn. The Philosophus' robe is fitted for all rituals involving O O, and for the rites of Venus. In the former case an Uraeus crown and azure nemmes, in the latter a green nemmes, should be worn. The Dominus Liminis' robe is fitted for the infernal rites of Sol, which must never be celebrated. The Adeptus Minor's robe is fitted for the rituals of Sol. A golden nemmes may be worn. The Adeptus' robe is fitted for the particular workings of the Adeptus, and for the Postulant at the First Gate of the City of the Pyramids. The Adeptus Major's Robe is fitted for the Chief Magus in all Rituals and Evocations of the Inferiors, for the performance of the rites of Mars, and for the Postulant at the Second Gate of the City of the Pyramids. The Adeptus Exemptus' robe is fitted for the Chief Magus in all Rituals and Invocations of the Superiors, for the performance of the rites of Jupiter, and for the Postulant at the Third Gate of the City of the Pyramids. The Babe of the Abyss has no robe. For the performance of the rites of Saturn, the Magician may wear a black robe, close-cut, with narrow sleeves, trimmed with white, and the Seal and Square of Saturn marked on breast and back. A conical black cap embroidered with the Sigils of Saturn should be worn. The Magister Templi Robe is fitted for the great Meditations, for the supernal rites of Luna, and for those rites of Babylon and the Graal. But this robe should be worn by no man, because of that which is written: "Ecclesia abhorret a sanguine." ---------------------- "Any of these robes may be worn by a person of whatever grade on" "appropriate occasions." George Raffalovich's new works -------------------- THE HISTORY OF A SOUL. "Price "3"s. "6"d. Edition strictly limited." -------------------- THE DEUCE AND ALL. A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES. 1"s. net" -------------------- READY. Through THE EQUINOX and all booksellers. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- - "READY SHORTLY. --------------" THE WHIRLPOOL BY ETHEL ARCHER WITH A COVER SPECIALLY DESIGNED BY E. J. WIELAND; A DEDICATORY SONNET BY VICTOR B. NEUBURG; AND AN INTRODUCTION BY ALEISTER CROWLEY. ------------- Price One Shilling net A. COLIN LUNN, Cigar Importer and Cigarette Merchant. 3 BRIDGE STREET; 19 KING'S PARADE; & 31 TRINITY ST., CAMBRIDGE Sole Agent for Loewe & Co.'s Celebrated Straight Grain Briar Pipes. YEVIDYEH CIGARETTES, No. 1 A. --- "A CONNOISSEUR'S CIGARETTE." These are manufactured from the finest selected growths of 1908 crop, and are of exceptional quality. They can be inhaled without causing any irritation of the throat. Sole Manufacturer: A. COLIN LUNN, Cambridge. MESSRS. LOWE AND CO., 8 STAFFORD STREET, BOND STREET beg to announce that they have been entrusted for thirteen years past with the preparation of the OILS, PERFUMES, UNGUENTS, ESSENCES, INCENSES, and other chemical products useful to members of all the lesser grades of the A.'. A.'. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- - MR. GEORGE RAFFLOVICH'S charming volume of Essays and Sketches entitled ON THE LOOSE: PLANETARY JOURNEYS AND EARTHLY SKETCHES. "A new popular edition. Price "1"s. net" "Crown "8"vo. Pp." 164. May be obtained through THE EQUINOX A. CROWLEY'S WORKS The volumes here listed are all of definite occult and mystical interest and importance. "The Trade may obtain them from" "The Equinox," 3 Great James Street, W.C. Tel.: City 8987; and Messrs. Simpklin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., 23 Paternoster Row, E.C. "The Public may obtain them from" "The Equinox," 3 Great James Street, W.C. Mr. Elkin Matthews, Vigo Street, W. The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Paternoster Square, E.C. Mr. F. Hollings, Great Turnstile, Holborn. And through all Booksellers. ACELDAMA. Crown 8vo, 29 pp., " Pounds"2 2"s." net. Of this rare pamplet less than 10 copies remain. It is Mr. Crowley's earliest and in some ways most striking mystical work. JEPHTHAH AND OTHER MYSTERIES, LYRICAL AND DRAMATIC. Demy 8vo, boards, pp. xxii. + 223, 7"s." 6"d." net. SONGS OF THE SPIRIT. Pp. x. + 109. A new edition. 3"s." 6"d." net. These two volumes breathe the pure semi-conscious aspiration of the soul, and express the first glimmerings of the light. THE SOUL OF OSIRIS. Medium 8vo, pp. ix. + 129, 5"s." net. A collection of lyrics, illustrating the progress of the soul from corporeal to celestial beatitude. TANNHAUSER. Demy 4to, pp. 142, 15"s." net. The progress of the soul in dramatic form. BERASHITH. 4to, china paper, pp. 24, 5"s." net. Only a few copies remain. An illuminating essay on the universe, reconciling the conflicting systems of religion. THE GOD-EATER. Crown 4to, pp. 32, 2"s." 6"d." net. A striking dramatic study of the origin of religions. THE SWORD OF SONG. Post 4to, pp. ix + 194, printed in red and black, decorative wrapper, 20"s." net. This is the author's first most brilliant attempt to base the truths of mysticism on the truths of scepticism. It contains also an enlarged amended edition of "Berashith," and an Essay showing the striking parallels and identities between the doctrines of Modern Science and those of Buddhism. GARGOYLES. Pott 8vo, pp. vi. + 113, 5"s." net. ORACLES. Demy 8vo, pp. viii. + 176, 5"s." net. Some of Mr. Crowley's finest mystical lyrics are in these collections. KNOX OM PAX. See advt. Collected Works (Travellers' Edition). Extra crown 8vo, India paper, 3 vols. in one, pp. 808 + Appendices. Vellum, green ties, with protraits, "Pounds"3 3"s."; white buckram, without portraits, " Pounds"2 2"s." This edition contains "Qabalistic Dogma," "Time," "The Excluded Middle," "Eleusis," and other matter of the highest occult importance which are not printed elsewhere. AMBERGRIS. Medium 8vo, pp. 200, 3"s." 6"d." (Elkin Mathews.) A selection of lyrics, containing some of great mystical beauty. Household Gods A COMEDY By ALEISTER CROWLEY Privately Printed by the Chiswick Press and bound in White Buckram with Gold Lettering ---------------- PRICE HALF A GUINEA ---------------- Copies may be obtained on application to the Author at the offices of "The Equinox" --------------------------------------------------------------------- Thirty copies of the Sketch of ALEISTER CROWLEY by AUGUS- TUS JOHN have been pulled on Special Paper, and are for sale, framed, at the Price of One Guinea Net. Application should be made at once to the Offices of this Magazine LOOK OUT! FOR THE FOURTH COMING PUBLICATIONS -------------- BOOK FOUR A TREATISE ON MAGIC AND MYSTICISM FOR BEGINNERS BY Frater Perdurabo AND Soror Virakam -------------- AHA! Reprinted from Equinox III. SIR PALAMEDE THE SARACEN Reprinted from Equinox IV. LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE By CHARLES BAUDELAIRE Translated by ALEISTER CROWLEY ERCIL DOUNE A Novel by Aleister Crowley OCCULTISM To the readers of "THE EQUINOX." --- All who are interested in "curious old" Literature should write to FRANK HOLLINGS for his Catalogue of over 1000 items. Sent post free on receipt of name and address, and all future issues. A few selected items below. THE BOOK OF CEREMONIAL MAGIC, including the Rites and Mysteries of Goetic Theurgy, Sorcery, and Infernal Necromancy. In Two Parts. I. An Analytical and Critical Account of the chief MAGICAL RITUALS extant. II. A Complete GRIMOIRE of Black Magic. By ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE. The two chief sections are subdivided as follows: ("a") Studies on the Antiquity of Magical Rituals; ("b") The Ritual of Transcendental Magic, so-called; ("c") Composite Rituals; ("d") The Rituals of Black Magic; ("e") The descending Hierarchy of Spirits; ("f") The Lesser Key of Solomon the King; ("g") The Mystery of the "Sanctum Regnum"; ("h") The Rite of "Lucifuge"; ("i") The Method of Honorius, etc., etc., etc. The main objects of the work are: (1) To determine the connection, if any, between the literature of CEREMONIAL MAGIC AND THE SECRET TRADITION IN CHRISTIAN TIMES; (2) To show the fantastic nature of the distinction between White and Black Magic, so far, at least, as the texts are concerned. The work is issued in crown 4to, and includes about 180 engravings, some of which are full-page plates. Price 15"s. net." Post free. Handsomely bound. "JUST PUBLISHED." WAITE (A. E.). The Secret Tradition in Freemasonry, and an Analysis of the Inter-Relation between the Craft and the High Degrees, in respect of their term of Research, expressed by the way of Symbolism, 2 vols. large 8vo, "with" 26 "full-page Portraits, and other illustrations, cloth extra t.e.g." 42"s." Book I. Fundamental Relations of the Craft and the High Grades. II. Development of the High Grades in respect of the Ancient Alliance. III. Of the New Alliance in Freemasonry. IV. The Masonic Orders of Chivalry. V. Of Alchemy in Masonry. VI. Of Magical and Kabalistical Degrees. VII. Of the Mysteries on their Mystical Side, and of this Subject in its relation to Masonry. THE KABBALAH UNVEILED, containing the following Books of the Zohar: (1) The Book of Concealed Mystery; (2) The Greater Holy Assembly; (3) The Lesser Holy Assembly; translated into English from the Latin Version of Knorr von Rosenroth, and collated with the original Chaldee and Hebrew text, by S. L. MACGREGOR-MATHERS. New and cheaper edition, demy 8vo. 7"s". 6"d". net The Bible, which has been probably more misconstrued than any other book ever written, contains numberless obscure and mysterious passages which are utterly unintelligible without some key wherewith to unlock their meaning. "That key is given in the Kabbalah." ISIS UNVEILED: A Master Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology. By H. P. BLAVATSHY. In two volumes. Vol. I. Science, pp. xlv., 628. Vol. II. Theology, pp. iv., 640 and Index 52. " Pounds"1, 1"s. net." Vol. I. --- Before the Veil --- I. Old Things with New Names --- II. Phenomena and Forces --- III. Blind Leaders of the Blind --- IV. Theories respecting Psychic Phenomena --- V. The Ether, or "Astral Light" --- VI. Psycho-Physical Phenomena --- VII. The Elements, Elementals, and Elementaries --- VIII. Some Mysteries of Nature --- IX. Cyclic Phenomena --- X. The Inner and Outer Man --- XI. Psychological and Physical Marvels -- XII. The "Impassible Chasm" --- XIII. Realities and Illusion --- XIV. Egyptian Wisdom --- XV. India the Cradle of the Race. Vol. II. --- I. The Church; Where is it? --- II. Christian Crimes and Heathen Virtues --- III. Divisions amongst the Early Christians --- IV. Oriental Cosmogonies and Bible-Records --- V. Mysteries of the Kabala --- VI. Esoteric Doctrines of Buddhism Parodied in Christianity --- VII. Early Christian Heresies and Secret Societies --- VIII. Jesuitry and Masonry --- IX. The Vedas an the Bible --- X. The Devil Myth --- XI. Comparative Results of Buddhism and Christianity --- XII. Conclusions and Illustrations. TRANSCENDENTAL MAGIC: Its Doctrine and Ritual. By ELIPHAS LEVI (a complete Translation of "Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie"), with a Biographical Preface by ARTHUR E. WAITE, author of "Devil Worship in France," etc., etc. "Portrait of the Author, and all the original engravings." 8vo, 406 pp. "cloth" 1896. (Pub. 15"s."). Postage Free. 10"s." 6"d." The Pillars of the Temple, Triangle of Solomon, The Tetragram, The Pentagram, Magical Equilibrium, The Fiery Sword, Realsation, Initiation, The Kabbalah, The Magic Chain, Necromancy, Transmutations, Black Magic, Bewitchments, Astrology, Charms and Philtres, The Stone of the Philosophers, The Universal Medicine, Divination, The Triangle of Pantacles, The Conjuration of the Four, The Blazing Pentagram, Medium and Mediator, The Septenary of Talismans, A Warning to the Imprudent, The Ceremonial of Initiates, The Key of Occultism, The Sabbath of the Sorcerers, Witchcraft and Spells, The Writing of the Stars, Philtres and Magnetism, The Mastery of the Sun, The Thaumaturge, The Science of the Prophets, The Book of Hermes, etc. BOOK OF THE SACRED MAGIC (The) OF ABRA-MELIN THE MAGE, as delivered by Abraham the Jew unto his Son Lamech, A.D. 1458. Translated from the Original Hebrew into French, and now rendered into English. From a unique and valuable MS. in the "Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal" at Paris; with copious Notes and Magical Squares of Letters. By L. S. MACGREGOR- MATHERS. 4"to, black cloth, Magical Square on side in gold." 1900. (Pub. at 21"s.")., Postage free. 10"s." 6"p." The original work, of which this is a translation, is unique, no other copy being known, although both Bulwer Lytton and Eliphas Levi were well aware of its existence; the former having based part of his description of the sage Rosicrucian une junier {WEH NOTE: "sic", s.b. "Mejnour"} on that of Abra-Melin, while the account of the so-called Observatory of Sir Philip Derval in the "Strange Story" was, to some extent, copied from that of the Magical Oratory and Terrace given in the present work. There are also other interesting points too numerous to be given here in detail. It is felt therefore that by its publication a service is rendered to lovers of rare and curious Books, and to Students of Occultism, by placing within their reach a magical work of so much importance, and one so interestingly associated with the respective authors of "Zanoni" and of the "Dogma and Ritual of Transcendental Magic." The Magical Squares or combinations of letters, placed in a certain manner, are said to possess a peculiar species of automatic intelligent vitality, apart from any of the methods given for their use; and students are recommended to make no use of these whatever unless this higher Divine Knowledge is approached in a frame of mind worthy of it. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- WANTS SUPPLIED. NEW PUBLICATIONS SUPPLIED TO ORDER. "Out of Print Books sought for and reported." Visitors to London who are interested should make a point of calling. ------------------ FRANK HOLLINGS, 7 GREAT TURNSTILE, HOLBORN, W.C. Near to Chancery Lane, the Inns of Court, and First Avenue Hotels. {Back cover, in a border of wavy lines cornered by small three-leafed apples, fruit to outside. All set in red.} NOW READY PRICE ONE SHILLING --------------- HAIL MARY! BY ALEISTER CROWLEY THE DAILY MAIL, says --- "This is a garland of some fifty or sixty devotional hymns to the Virgin, in which the author, whole not exceeding the bounds of Catholic orthodoxy, fills his verses with quaint and charming conceits, very much in the style of the 'meta- physical' poets of the seventeenth century. Indeed, in turning over the pages of 'Amphora' as the little volume was entitled when published anonymously two years ago, by Burns & Oates, we fell them to be the work of a recipient of the tradition of Vaughan the Silurist, George Herbert, and Crashaw, although Mr Crowley is smooth where they are rugged, plain where they are perplexing. "These poems indicate a mind full of earnest aspiration towards his spiritual Queen, a mind of an engaging naivete, untroubled by the religious and philosophical problems which weary more complex intelligences. This little work can be cordially recommended to Catholic readers." WEILAND & CO. Telephone 8987 3 GREAT JAMES STREET, W.C. Central