The idea of “nothingness” as a creative first principle is often assumed to have an “eastern” (e.g., Chinese or Indian) origin. For instance, Pierre Bayle made this claim about the first principle of Kabbalah (Ain) in the 17th century, and Jacob Brucker made a similar claim in the 18th century. Recently I was saw someone remark that Crowley’s opening to the Book of Lies (“Nothing is – Nothing becomes – Nothing is not”) was “Taoist”.
Apparently the idea still has legs!
By Crowley’s own admission, he based his first principle on that of the Kabbalists, but the Kabbalists’ first principle is just the synthesis of two ideas which have been common in the west since antiquity. The first is the idea of creation ex nihilo, a power attributed (controversially) to the God of the Bible (see 2 Maccabees 7:28); the other is the idea that “nothing comes from nothing,” a formulation Aristotle gave to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (see Physics 1.8.191a28).
These ideas were usually seen to contradict one another. For example, Benedict Spinoza’s assertion of the latter principle was taken as proof of his atheism. (Though the aforementioned Pierre Bayle also used it as evidence in favor of Spinoza’s Kabbalism, even though Spinoza seems not to have had any interest in the subject.)
In his Historia Critica Philosophiae, Brucker noted that Kabbalah, “Oriental” thought, and Middle Platonism all shared in common the idea of nothingness as a substantive first principle. From this he concluded that both Kabbalah and Middle Platonism had origins in the east.
A half century or so later, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel discussed Kabbalah in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy. Interestingly his discussion of Kabbalah occurs in the section on Neoplatonism. He concluded that Philo of Alexandria’s philosophy already contained most of the presuppositions of Kabbalah.
A few noteworthy points:
- Hegel discusses Kabbalah in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, not in Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion! He regards Kabbalah as philosophy, as do I.
- He recognizes—correctly, I think—that there is nothing necessarily “eastern” about Kabbalah’s first principle. There has been ample fuel in the west since antiquity for thinking of nothingness as a substantive first principle.
- He discusses Kabbalah—again, correctly—as a branch of Neoplatonic thought.
In other words, Hegel is noticing that the esoteric concept of creative nothingness comes from the Platonic tradition, not from Confucianism (as Bayle thought) or from Taoism (as some today have said).
Crowley of course assumes the exact same first principle as the Kabbalists. He even says, “I assert the absoluteness of the Qabalistic Zero.” If you’re looking for a constant in Crowley’s thinking, this was it. He asserts or implies it in Berashith, The Book of Lies, Magick in Theory and Practice, the Book of Thoth, Magick Without Tears, and—yes—the Book of the Law. (See AL I.46 inter alia.)
But Crowley didn’t get the idea from his encounters with eastern schools of philosophy. He states plainly where he got it from. He got it from the exact same place Bayle, Brucker, and Hegel got it: Kabbala Denudata, which Samuel Mathers translated into English in 1887 (with a lengthy introduction) and used as one of the bases of the work of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
Crowley didn’t just take this principle over, though. He applied it rigorously in a way I doubt Mathers ever did but which in some ways parallels Hegel’s use of it. And so it is infused throughout Thelema. Here’s just one example among many:
Thou must (1) Find out what is thy Will. (2) Do that Will with a) one-pointedness, b) detachment, c) peace.
—Liber II: The Message of The Master Therion
Then, and then only, art thou in harmony with the Movement of Things, thy will part of, and therefore equal to, the Will of God. And since the will is but the dynamic aspect of the self, and since two different selves could not possess identical wills; then, if thy will be God’s will, Thou art That.
The will is the dynamic aspect of the true self, Hadit. But Hadit is not the personality. Hadit is impersonal (i.e., indeterminate) identity. Another way to say “indeterminate” is “not-a-thing”. So to take up the standpoint of Hadit is to take up the standpoint of the first principle of Thelemic philosophy—but this is just the substantive nothingness which the Kabbalists called “Kether” or “Ain,” or God in His most esoteric form.
If the principle is essential to Crowley’s understanding of true will and his solution to the problem of determinism versus free will, then it’s obviously foundational to his thought in general.