Some thoughts I had last night while serving as Priest in the Gnostic Mass…
In the Priest’s second veil speech, Hadit is described as “hidden in the being of all that lives,” thus making Hadit a principle, not of consciousness or even locomotion so much as growing things. (Compare with the orders of being in Aristotle: plants, animals, and rational beings.)
Hadit is an interior depth, the compliment of the external depth of Nuit. Crowley describes them as “incommensurables and absolutes”. Hadit is the inexhaustible sacred depth within, and Nuit is the inexhaustible sacred depth without.
“Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.”
They are complimentary mysteries, the interplay between which gives rise to manifestation, symbolized by the Sun.
The Sun is the cosmic pantocrator or demiurge. That same principle within us is “mystery of mystery,” possibly an homage to Darwin who referred to the origin of species as a “mystery of mysteries”. The constant moment-to-moment fitting and re-fitting between Hadit within and Nuit without gives rise to dynamic change over time. This is the expression of “pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result,” as evolution fits no narrative structure, aims at no final result, but constantly adapts itself to new circumstances.
God in Thelema, as described in the Gnostic Mass, is apophatic, “secret and ineffable”. The Sun is the light and life ecstatically poured out from this secret source. In other words, to the same extent that God exceeds our capacity for knowledge due to being withdrawn and secret, so is His gift in excess of our capacity to comprehend. The “positive” inexhaustible sacred effulgence of the Sun is a negative image of the inexhaustible sacred depth and darkness of the Unknown God. Infinite agápē is only comprehensible on the condition of its source being incomprehensible. Ineffable gratuity requires a withdrawal of the giver into incomprehensible darkness. (This is a hard idea to express.)
To come into contact with this Unknown God is to become unknown to ourselves. It is to encounter myself, not as “I” but as “thou who art I beyond all I am, who hast no nature and no name”. To encounter the “center and secret of the Sun” is not to become unified in myself. (You have to read all the talk in Thelema about self-unification against itself to begin to understand what it’s about.) It’s about becoming split. You have to read the Gun-Barrel (ch 15 of the Book of Lies) really carefully here. It’s not about the assertion of self-contained subjectivity; it’s about its explosion through/as a result of/and leading to contact with the divine. It’s about being penetrated by the Divine Double, thereby becoming 2, not 1, and therefore unknown to oneself. (With the conclusion of the Ceremony of the Introit, the Priest in the Mass is the hexagram, a doubled figure.)
The inexhaustible, sacred depth of yourself opens up. You are revealed as light shining out of infinite, receding, “incommensurable” darkness. Everything else in the world is as well. That’s what it means for something to be real. That’s what it means for you to be real. Everything is premised on this same polarity.
I want to say more here, like how this connects with the idea that our access to the Unknown God is only in and through manifest existence, how this connects with theurgy and tantra, and what the Priest’s single-pointed devotion (chastity) to the Priestess in the Gnostic Mass means. I feel like I have a lot fermenting in me on this subject.