One of the most prevalant memes within Consensus Thelema is the idea that Crowley changed his mind so many times on so many different issues, it’s pointless to try to isolate any invariant “truth” within his thought. (Therefore it’s up to each individual to define for themselves what Thelema is blah blah blah let’s open another bottle of Apothic Red.)
But Crowley wasn’t that much of a creative genius. He had two insights, one theoretical, one practical.
The theoretical insight comes from the Kabbalah, mainly Samuel Mathers’s “Introduction” to Kabbalah Unveiled, his translation of Kabbalah Denudata. In particular, Crowley takes the idea of Ain, makes it the centerpiece or first principle of his world outlook, and draws implications from it that Mathers himself didn’t seem very interested in but which are reminiscent of how this idea was received in German language philosophy of the previous two centuries. By the time Crowley seriously engages with eastern philosophy, he has this Ain idea firmly fixed in his head, and he has a tendency to conform eastern philosophy (particularly Taoism) to it.
The practical insight—what I have called erotic liberation—probably comes from the fin de siècle decadent movement. It’s already on display in his 1898 poem, “Jezebel”. There you can see the mix of sadomasochism, cannibalism, and destruction (moral and physical) through eroticism that comes to define a lot of Crowley’s own spiritual praxis.
The practical insight probably precedes the theoretical insight, although the spiritual importance of the practical side lies in the fact that it reveals or discloses the first principle which organizes the theoretical side. In other words, Crowley may have insisted upon a mathematical deduction of his first principle in “Berashith” and Magick Without Tears, but neither mathematics nor reason in general are the main means by which one encounters the first principle in its fullness. That only comes about through the ecstastic practices Crowley eventually calls magick.
These ideas were formed whole in Crowley’s mind by the time he was 25 or so. Anything he encountered after that, he tended to wrap around or conform to these ideas.
As an aside, this is why it’s wrong to treat Thelema as a mere appurtenance to ceremonial magick, as though Thelemic magick is basically Golden Dawn ceremonial magic but done with a badboy attitude. While drawing shapes in the air and mispronouncing Hebrew are certainly aspects of the Thelemic magical tradition, that’s not the center of gravity of Thelemic praxis. One would be closer to the mark emphasizing transcendence through the encounter with potent (sexual) disgust—through the Pe in particular.
Thelema includes both monistic and dualistic doctrines, and Crowley makes monistic and dualistic pronouncements throughout his writings.
For our purposes, monismwill mean any theory or doctrine that in some sense denies the existence of a distinction or duality in some sphere, either in fact or in thought.
An example of one of Crowley’s monistic pronouncements can be found in Liber DXXXVI.
The Universe is one, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. Its substance is homogeneous, and the substance cannot be said to possess the qualities of Being, Consciousness and Bliss, for these are rather the shadows of it, which are apprehended by the highly illuminated mind when it comes near thereto. Time and space themselves are but illusions which condition under veils.
Liber DXXXVI, Ch V, Sec 1
In general Crowley describes the Thelemic path of spiritual liberation in monistic terms, as a transcending of duality.
[…]Love is the enkindling in ecstacy of Two that will to become One. It is thus an Universal formula of High Magick. For see now how all things, being in sorrow caused by dividuality, must of necessity will Oneness as their medicine.Liber CL, Section II: Of Love
Dualism on the other hand shall mean any division of something—either in thought or in fact—into two opposed or contrasted aspects.
A prominent example of dualism in Thelema can be found in its foundational text, Liber AL vel Legis (AL).
I am Heaven, and there is no other God than me, and my lord Hadit.
AL I.21
This statement assumes there are two fundamental divine principles, not just one.
There are also numerous pluralistic statements throughout Crowley’s writings. For our purposes pluralism will mean any condition or system in which two or more states, groups, principles, sources of authority, etc., coexist. Any statement in support of pluralism, therefore, is by definition a statement in support of dualism.
Any of Crowley’s numerous statements in support of a multiplicity of unique, irreducible individuals is pluralistic (and hence dualistic) in the sense just described.
[E]ach ‘star’ is the Centre of the Universe to itself […] Therefore you have an infinite number of gods, individual and equal though diverse, each one supreme and utterly indestructible […] If we presuppose many elements, their interplay is natural. It is no objection to this theory to ask who made the elements—the elements are at least there; and God, when you look for him, is not there.New Comment on AL I.3
On the one hand, Thelema is unabashedly individualistic. Crowley defined the Thelemic Age—the New Æon of Horus—as one in which “the individual [is] the unit of society.” The individual requires no social, political, or religious contextualization but is instead absolutely self-justifying. “There is no god but man.”
On the other hand, the Thelemic understanding of the universe unambiguously denies duality, and the Thelemic path of liberation necessarily includes transcending the illusion of duality.
The purpose of this essay—which will be published in multiple parts—is to resolve these apparent contradictions by showing how Crowley incorporated dualistic and non-dualistic or monistic truths into a coherent account of the universe and the individual’s relationship to it.
I will begin by providing a conceptual framework for more precisely discussing monism and dualism. I will then apply that framework to four distinctions:
The distinction between Nuit and Hadit.
The distinction between Nuit, Hadit, and the Star.
The distinction between the Khabs and the Khu of any Star.
The distinction between Stars.
In each instance we will analyze the precise manner in which parts or individuals are related or separated, and which relationships might be considered monistic and in what way(s). This will help make sense of Crowley’s seemingly contradictory statements about monism and dualism by incorporating those statements into a coherent account.
The first noble truth is often glossed as “all is suffering,” but that’s not what the Buddha said.
Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.
Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta
He’s explicit in the summary that it’s the five clinging aggregates that are sources of suffering, not existence itself. This is drawn out in the second noble truth.
Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of the origin of suffering: it is this craving which leads to re-becoming, accompanied by delight and lust, seeking delight here and there; that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for becoming, craving for disbecoming.
Ibid.
In other words it’s the craving for the things, not the things themselves, that generates the suffering. If this weren’t true, if it were existence itself rather than the clinging or the craving that were causing the suffering, then there would be no way to achieve liberation in this life time. Becoming an Arahant would be meaningless, since one would still be embodied and experience aging and death. One would presumably have to wait until death to experience liberation. Instead it’s clear from the doctrine that while full liberation occurs at death (paranibbana) there is a kind of relative liberation that occurs in this life time. That’s the third noble truth.
Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering: it is the remainderless fading away and cessation of that same craving, the giving up and relinquishing of it, freedom from it, non-reliance on it.
Ibid.
It’s interesting to compare this with Thelema, since there’s a lot of overlap in assumptions.
Following AL II.9, Crowley rejects the idea that existence is suffering. It is ultimately pure joy. But the Buddha also rejects the idea that existence in and of itself is suffering. In other words they both view suffering as based in conditions arising in the subject which can be overcome.
Like the Buddha, Crowley—folllowing AL I.44—views the resolution of suffering as depending upon the cessation of craving or lust. But how is that suffering to cease? For the Buddha, it depends upon understanding the true nature of the things lusted after—that they are impermanent and cannot provide lasting satisfaction—and thereby becoming disillusioned with them and ultimately dispassionate toward them.
Seeing thus, the well-instructed disciple of the noble ones grows disenchanted with form, disenchanted with feeling, disenchanted with perception, disenchanted with fabrications, disenchanted with consciousness. Disenchanted, he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion, he is fully released. With full release, there is the knowledge, ‘Fully released.’ He discerns that ‘Birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world.’
Pañcavaggi Sutta
Crowley accepts the Buddha’s reasoning with regard to the fundamental impermanence of all conditioned phenomena, but he goes in the exact opposite direction from them that the Buddha goes. Instead of unconditionally retreating from all conditioned phenomena in favor of a purely transcendent unconditioned, the Thelemic path is an unconditional move toward impermanent, conditioned phenomena.
For see now how all things, being in sorrow caused by dividuality, must of necessity will Oneness as their medicine.
Liber CL, Part II
What Crowley is doing is clever. He’s not disagreeing with the Buddha when it comes to the fundamental nature of reality. The Buddha sees two possible attitudes of relating to this reality: one can either be lost in it, subject to craving, hatred, and ignorance, or one can dispassionately relinquish it. Crowley sees a third option: one can unconditionally unite with it.
Every operation of Love is the satisfaction of a bitter hunger, but the appetite only grows fiercer by satisfaction; so that we can say with the Preacher: ‘He that increaseth knowledge increaseth Sorrow.’ The root of all this sorrow is in the sense of insufficiency; the need to unite, to lose oneself in the beloved object, is the manifest proof of this fact, and it is clear also that the satisfaction produces only a temporary relief, because the process expands indefinitely. The thirst increases with drinking. The only complete satisfaction conceivable would be the Yoga of the atom with the entire universe. This fact is easily perceived, and has been constantly expressed in the mystical philosophies of the West; the only goal is ‘Union with God’.
Eight Lectures on Yoga, “Yoga for Yahoos: First Lecture”
This “Yoga of the atom [the individual consciousness] with the entire universe” is achieved upon crossing the Abyss and becoming a Master of the Temple, who “understand[s] the Universe perfectly [and is] utterly indifferent to its pressure.” (New Comment on AL II.9) For this reason Crowley is justified in regarding the Master of the Temple as the “Master of Sorrow” and equivalent to the Arahant. (See Liber B vel Magi and “One Star in Sight”.)
However, the methods are different. The fourth noble truth—the path to the cessation of suffering—is the noble eightfold path, which is a renunciate path. Craving is overcome by training oneself to see the downside of the things that one craves, starting with “gross” or sensual pleasures and moving toward more refined pleasures such as the craving for any change whatsoever.
By contrast, the path Crowley establishes to the cessation of suffering is not a renunciate path. One remains fully engaged with both gross and fine sources of pleasure or change; however, the training consists in not lusting after any particular change. Rather, one is to embrace every change, every event, equally, understanding it to be an expression of Self or “pure will”. Crowley refers to this spiritual path as “magick.”
These two paths—the renunciate path of Theravada Buddhism and the worldly path of Crowley’s Thelema—go in opposite directions from one another, but they end at similar places where one does not crave for any particular outcome. The Buddhist path ends in nibbana, and the Thelemic path ends in pure will, delivered from the lust of result (i.e., love under will).
But the phrase may also be interpreted as if it read ‘with purpose unassuaged’—i.e., with tireless energy. The conception is, therefore, of an eternal motion, infinite and unalterable. It is Nirvana, only dynamic instead of static—and this comes to the same thing in the end.
They both involve the cultivation of dispassion. But while the Buddhist path can be thought of as an unconditional withdrawal from involvement in All, the Thelemic path can be thought of as unconditional embrace or acceptance of All.
This is important to understand. Thelema is not the assertion that existence is pure joy in the face of Buddhism or common sense. Crowley accepts at least some of the Buddha’s assumptions about the fundamental nature of reality. He just recognizes a way of dealing with that reality which the Buddha either wasn’t aware of or didn’t consider viable. It is the exploitation of this additional possibility—a path which Crowley eventually calls magick—that leads one to the realization that existence is pure joy. In other words, it’s not just an assertion or a little shift in attitude. It’s a training which is just as rigorous and demanding as the Noble Eightfold Path.
I spent some time recently looking closely at Liber V vel Reguli along with the commentary and the early draft notes, and feel like I have come to a few insights which could be of use to others.
As I’ve shown before, one of the main themes of Crowley’s spirituality is the movement from speech to silence and back again. This could also be viewed as the expression of nullity (Ain of Kabbalah) into manifestation (the Tree of Life itself) and the individual’s path of return back to nullity. The first part of this equation expresses Thelemic cosmology, the latter Thelemic soteriology.
In Reguli these movements are dramatized and expressed in the formula LAShTAL. LA means “not,” while AL means “God”. LA and AL represent nullity in concealment and manifestation respectively, while ShT is the process that mediates between them.
In order for ShT to mediate between LA and AL, they have to conjointly share something in common between LA and AL while also adding new information.
LA and AL both add to 31 by gematria. ShT also adds to 31 by way of the tarot cards these letters are attributed to. Sh or Shin is the Hebrew letter assigned to The Aeon, Atu XX, and T or Teth is assigned to Lust, Atu XI.
As someone recently pointed out to me, there is a tradition in the Golden Dawn, recorded in the Z1 document, of ST denoting an influence from Kether. ST is the Coptic letter ⲋ (“ⲥⲟⲟⲩ” or “soou”). Crowley continues this tradition by assigning this letter to Kether in 777, Column LI.
So by means of its association with 31 and Kether, ShT is identical with the (N)One at the foundation of Thelemic ontology and theology.
But ShT has an additional function. It also indicates the Beast and Babalon conjoined. It is a sexual formula. This sexual formula is indicated by how it is represented in Reguli on the human body and on the Tree of Life.
In the ritual, Aiwass, Therion, and Babalon are attributed to the cross paths of the Tree of Life: Daleth, Teth, and Pe respectively. The cross paths are important as they mediate between the Pillar of Severity and the Pillar of Mercy.
As taught in the Golden Dawn 4°=7□ ritual, the left pillar, the Pillar of Severity, is associated with the letter Shin, which is assigned to elemental fire, while the right pillar, the Pillar of Mercy, is Mem or elemental water. The Middle Pillar is then Aleph, which is elemental air. Fire is archetypally masculine, water feminine, and air androgyne.
However, these sexual characteristics are not assigned to the pillars in a straightforward way. While the Pillar of Severity is fiery and masculine, the topmost sephira, Binah, is archetypally feminine. She is the supernal Mother. And opposite her, on the Pillar of Mercy, we find Chokmah, which is archetypally masculine, the supernal Father. They are “reflected” in Netzach (masculine-feminine) and Hod (feminine-masculine) respectively, as Kether is reflected in Tiphareth. This reflection occurs both horizontally across the Tree (Binah and Netzach and Chokmah and Hod are opposite each other across the Middle Pillar) and vertically down the Tree (they are opposite Tiphareth). The vertical and horizontal “components” of Liber V vel Reguli work with this double-reflection of sexual energy.
One can view this double-reflection of magical sexual polarity taking place on the Tree as a movement of energy down the Tree of Life from Kether into the subsequent Sephiroth along the paths. One androgyne current emerging from Kether, represented by the path of Aleph, becomes masculine upon reaching Chokmah. There it progresses down the tree along the archetypally masculine paths of Vau, Yod, Ayin, and Resh, into Yesod. In Yesod it is met by a complementary feminine path, originating with Beth’s entry into Binah, and progressing down the Tree along the paths of Cheth, Lamed, Nun, and Tzaddi.
This exchange and “mixing in Yesod” is represented on the Art card, Atu XIV. Art is a hieroglyph of the path of Samekh, which links Yesod with Tiphareth. Here we see the Lion and the Eagle which have exchanged their colors as represented earlier on the Lovers card, Atu VI. If the paths on the Tree represent these essences or potencies, then they were exchanged at Tiphareth, a sphere which, among other things, is the site in which the Rose (Kteis) and Cross (phallus) are conjoined. The caldron is Yesod, which is linked with the sexual organs and the Muladhara cakra. We see spiritual air—presumably the Medicine of Metals—rising out of the caldron, represented by the arrow, as the Caput Mortuum (skull) drops to the bottom.
The cross paths are important to this process, because they are mediating the exchange of energies down the Tree. They are in a sense guiding and determining the separation and mixing of these sexual polarities. That these paths add up to 93 is significant. It tells us that the 93 magical current has something essential to do with the production of sexual polarity from out of androgyny and back again. It has to do with the movement of 0 to 2 (magick) and from 2 to 0 (mysticism), both as a personal spiritual journey and as a cosmological process. Aiwass, Therion, and Babalon are personages representing these governing principles.
For me personally, this is not simply theory. When I’m serving as Priest in the Gnostic Mass, I picture this exchange of energy occurring—moving down and wrapping around and joining mine and the Priestess’s hearts—at the consummation of the eucharist. We are linked energetically at the levels of mind (Daleth and Kether), heart (Teth and Tiphareth), and body (Peh and Yesod). The Tree of Life with the cross-paths can also be used as scaffolding for visualizations during sex magick workings.
If the horizontal component is governed by Aiwass, Therion, and Babalon, the vertical component is governed by Nuit, Ra-Hoor-Khuit, and Hadit. Nuit is associated with the Sahasrara cakra/Kether/the Three Negative Veils; Ra-Hoor-Khuit is linked specifically with the Anahata cakra and the paths of Teth, Yod, and Lamed (which add to 49), but also arguably with the entirety of the Tree in manifestation (hence Microprosopus); and Hadit is linked with the Muladhara cakra and Yesod and/or Malkuth (Crowley refers to this as the “seed” in his commentary).
The conjunction of Nuit and Hadit produces the godhead, Ra-Hoor-Khuit (or Heru-Ra-Ha, so as to include Hoor-paar-kraat). Hadit, as the consciousness or point of view of the individual, is implanted in Malkuth as a seed represented by Heh-final, the Virgin Daughter whose destiny is to be seated upon the Throne of the Mother (Binah). Crowley consistently related the three deities of the Book of the Law to the Tree of Life this way.
So one thing to take note of when attempting to understand LAShTAL is that it shares the same form or structure taken by these three personages in relation to the Tree of Life. You have two simple extremes mediated by a complex third thing sharing characteristics with both of the extremes. Indeed, the entire Tree of Life itself—or Ra-Hoor-Khuit—could be seen as a means of mediating between these oppositions.
But how does the introduction of the horizontal component modify or inform this cosmological and theological process of the implantation, germination, and return of Hadit to the source?
The cross-paths enter into this as they are involved in the drawing of the Hexagram of Nature on the Tree of Life. Generally speaking, the hexagram is the symbol of the union of the individual with the divine, with the mirroring in the microcosm of the structure of the macrocosm. As such it is symbolic of the individual who has become divine. The cross-paths of Teth and Pe are involved in this hexagram—in fact are the only actual paths involved—as they form bases of the two interlocking triangles.
Typically the upward-pointing triangle represents fire and is therefore masculine, while the downward-pointing triangle is water and feminine. But a different connotation is suggested in Reguli where the base of the upward-pointing triangle is assigned to Babalon, and the base of the downward-pointing triangle is Therion. The polarities are reversed.
This suggests not so much the familiar Hexagram of Nature but rather the Magical Hexagram as described by Crowley in the Book of Lies, where fire points down and water up.
In the ordinary Hexagram, the Hexagram of nature, the red triangle is upwards, like fire, and the blue triangle downwards, like water. In the magical hexagram this is reversed; the descending red triangle is that of Horus, a sign specially revealed by him personally, at the Equinox of the Gods. (It is the flame desending upon the altar, and licking up the burnt offering.) The blue triangle represents the aspiration, since blue is the colour of devotion, and the triangle, kinetically considered, is the symbol of directed force.
Book of Lies, Chapter 69
Crowley explicitly associates force with the path of Teth in Reguli, as he associates fire with Shin. Hence ShT represents “force and fire”. In the context of the ritual, these triangles would interlock and interpenetrate around Tiphareth, representative of the Anahata cakra, Ra-Hoor-Khuit, and, as we saw earlier, Kteis-Phallus or the Rose-Cross.
As the upward-pointing blue triangle represents Babalon, the Mother, we could attribute the three Mother Letters (Aleph, Mem, and Shin) to its three points, as we might attribute the masculine trinity, IAO, to the three points of the downward-pointing red triangle. Their conjunction gives us the word AShIAVM, which has the same value as MShICh (Messiah) and NChSh (Nechesh, Serpent).
The Messiah or Anointed One affects the union between the individual and the divine. The Serpent in the Garden of Eden is the initiator of mankind into knowledge or gnosis. In Thelemic soteriology, this saving, initiating power is not one individual but rather the conjoining of two individuals, Therion (666) and Babalon (156). And the way in which this union between the divine and the individual is affected is sexual in nature.
In this formula AShIAVM, the three mother letters are concealed by the letter Heh, giving us AHIHVH, the Great Name which is the conjunction of AHIH and IHVH.
AHIH is the godname of Kether. It represents existence in is most abstract quality or Macroprosopus. In the context of Reguli, it is LA, Nuit and Hadit conjoined.
IHVH represents god in manifestation or Microprosopus. It enumerates to 26 by gematria, which is 13 x 2. 13 is the enumeration of AChD or unity. IHVH therefore expresses unity (AL) by means of duality (ShT or Beast and Babalon conjoined). It is the way in which nullity expresses itself in manifestation or as the Tree of Life or 0=2.
The conclusion would be that all the points of the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram (32) on the whole create another Hexagram that symbolizes the Qabalistic Zero, radiating from the center of the Column and flooding the whole Circle with the Limitless Light of Ain Soph Aur. And the Hexagram is the formula of unifying opposites (positive and negative, active and passive, male and female), by the 0=2 Equation.
This sheds light on what it means that Reguli is meant to “invoke the energies of the Aeon of Horus.” The “first gesture” of the ritual—the drawing of the Elevenfold Seal—is depicting the unfolding process leading to the creation of the cosmos. It is also establishing the scaffolding—the cross-paths—that allow for the process of return. The “second gesture”—in which the Son raises the Daughter to the Throne of the Mother—is the familiar process of Tetragrammaton which, by means of sexual interaction between Son and Daughter, the process of return takes place. What Reguli adds to this conception is the idea that Nuit and Hadit (Daughter and Son) must become “sexually mature” as Babalon and Therion on their way of return.
AHIHVH is important for other aspects of Crowley’s spirituality. He relates it to the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram. By means of the LRP it is indirectly connected with the production of the Medicine of Metals. The connection with the Medicine of Metals is made explicit through Crowley’s discussion of the production of the Eucharist of Six Elements in Magick in Theory and Practice Chapter 20. The production of this medicine is a secret guarded by the Sanctuary of the Gnosis of O.T.O. This formula is also the guiding structure behind Liber HHH, which describes some of the work of the Outer College of A∴A∴. At least one Thelemic author, J. Daniel Gunther, has made an extensive case for the AHIHVH formula being essential to a comprehension of Thelemic initiation in general. (See Initiation in the Aeon of the Child and The Angel and the Abyss.)
As I said in my recent talk on art and magick, when a magical formula is involved in so many disparate aspects of Crowley’s magick—especially when it illuminates mysteries of both A∴A∴ and O.T.O.—you can bet it is essential to an understanding of Thelemic spirituality generally. I hope to deal with this formula in greater depth in subsequent writings, exploring more fully its importance for Thelemic magick generally.
As for Reguli, my treatment of it here is not exhaustive. I have hardly dealt with the function of the cross-path of Daleth or how Aiwass figures into all of this. (There’s another hexagram that uses the path of Daleth as the base of a triangle.) I didn’t even touch on the elemental attributions of the deities/quarters, and I barely dealt with the significance of the cakras. But hopefully this shows the way in which Reguli is expressive of the underlying ontology and theology of Thelema and how the sex magick implicit in it relates to Crowley’s broader spiritual concern as expressed in the AHIHVH formula.
Those who regard this ritual as a mere device to invoke or banish spirits, are unworthy to possess it. Properly understood, it is the Medicine of Metals and the Stone of the Wise.
—Aleister Crowley, The Palace of the World
This is a visual representation of the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram.
In the center is the Kabbalistic Cross with the Hebrew words Ateh, Malkuth, ve-Geburah, ve-Gedulah, le-Olahm, Amen. Ateh is white to represent Kether, Malkuth is yellow to represent Malkuth, ve-Geburah is orange to represent Geburah, ve-Gedulah is deep violet to represent Chesed, and le-Olahm/Amen is clear pink rose to represent Tiphareth.
Around the center are four orange scarlet pentagrams, one drawn in each quarter.
Arranged around that are the godnames, beginning at the top in the east and moving clockwise: YHVH, ADNI, AHIH, and AGLA.
Around that are the names of the Archangels invoked in each quarter: Raphael, Michael, Gabriel, and Auriel.
Each quarter is colored according to the element associated with it: air, fire, water, and earth.
[The six-rayed star] flames both above and beneath the magus, who is thus in a cube of 4 pentagrams and 2 hexagrams, 32 points in all. And 32 is [AHIHVH], the sacred word that expresses the Unity of the Highest and the Human.
For more on the significance of this hexagram, see Sepher Sephiroth, entries for 32 and 358, as well as Crowley’s introduction to Liber HHH in Magick.
Is the Holy Guardian Angel part of ourselves? Is it outside of ourselves? Is it outside of ourselves but still part of ourselves? Is it the whole universe? Is it just the higher part of my soul? These sorts of questions come up all the time.
In one respect the question is very easy to answer, in another extraordinarily difficult. It’s difficult because Crowley’s idea of the Holy Guardian Angel—he gets the term from Abramelin but gives it legs and makes it the center of his spirituality—is a contribution to a larger discussion about the divine individual which has been going on in Europe and the Near East for over two thousand years. It’s easy because, as far as formulations of the phenomenon go, Crowley’s was pretty straightforward.
The quickest way to understand this doctrine is to just take a look at reality. Are you a spiritual seeker? If you are reading this, odds are extraordinarily high that you are. You are responding to some inchoate prompting from within yourself, a prompting which you probably became acutely aware of during adolescence, which you began to attempt to satisfy through spirituality, philosophy, psychedelic drugs, or other devices that would allow you to experience other worlds.
All of that movement toward some other world of light or secrets, all that spiritual practice toward a state of illumination in the future, is driven by a sense of something lacking or being absent in the present.
There are a lot of different ways you can think about what that something is, and there are different names you can choose for it. You can think of it as Buddha. You can think of it as Jesus Christ. You can think of it as a dead ancestor. You can think of it as God. You can think of it as a nebulous spirit. You can think of it as a Secret Chief of A∴A∴. You can think of it as your yoga teacher.
Crowley’s term for this something is Holy Guardian Angel. He chose that term because he felt it was sufficiently vague but also that a child could understand it. But there are really only two things you need to understand about it:
Whether you call it Holy Guardian Angel, Jesus, Buddha, God, the Divine, the Universe, or whatever other name, you are dealing only with a name, a concept, an appearance, an illusion—not reality. You need to understand the concept well enough to use it, but understanding the concept perfectly is not the most important thing. The most important thing is that you are effectively seduced by the image.
When I say “seduced,” I mean that you are sufficiently attracted to the image such that you are willing to pursue it, to go all in for it. In other words, it matters less what the image is, just that it matches closely enough the shape of the absence in your heart.
When I say “image,” I don’t just mean the particular object you are pursuing, be it “union with the divine,” “samadhi” or whatever. I also mean the entire system of practices and beliefs you submit yourself to. This is probably the most difficult part of this to grasp. Practices like meditation and magic are also “images” in the sense that I’m using the term, and it is important that you are seduced by them as well. Theories like Kabbalah or systems like A∴A∴ are also images.
What I’m saying is, you don’t need to pick the right system, and you don’t need to pick the right set of practices, at least not in any abstract sense. You just need to find one and fall in love with it.
Am I implying that you will eventually become disillusioned and fall out of love with it? Not necessarily. That depends on more factors than I can cover here.
The first responsibility of any spiritual teaching is to honor the illusion of separateness between you and the divine. It’s to begin from who and where the student is: a seeker seeking spiritual experience, illumination, realization, wisdom, what have you.
Even if the system you’re working in says that everyone is already divine, and even if you already believe that on some abstract, philosophical level, you don’t really believe it, not in the core of your being. Otherwise why would you be seeking? There is some still absence working on you, and your actions show this even if your words do not.
So in that sense, it’s very easy to answer whether the Holy Guardian Angel is you or part of you, etc. It is not.
Even if you believe on a theoretical or philosophical level that the Holy Guardian Angel is part of you—your Jechidah or True Self or whatever—the actual experience to go along with that concept still lies somewhere in the future for you. So it is still “other”.
You may get to a point where you realize that the Holy Guardian Angel was with you at certain moments in the past, but you just weren’t aware. But that retrospective experience still lies for you somewhere in the future. So it is still other.
Some people have gotten upset because there is a particular Thelemic teacher and author who has said that not everyone automatically has a Holy Guardian Angel, and that they must first prove themselves worthy of one. They reference some remarks Crowley made about the Angel being an “objective being,” perhaps a dead adept of A∴A∴.
Here’s the truth about that idea: there is nothing in principle wrong with it. The idea of spiritual ancestors as teachers is an idea that goes back thousands of years. It’s even arguably at the root of shamanism. People have achieved realization using that idea for a very long time—much longer than the idea du jour that everyone is equally divine and great the way they are.
There is a truth indicated in that idea: the acknowledgment of the appearance of separateness. It is an idea which attempts to reflect the reality that the student starts with, which is that divinity is outside of them spatially, temporally, or both. The experience they are seeking is yet to be—otherwise why use a strategy (teachings, practices, etc.) to attempt to bring it about?
The falsity of the idea lies, not in the fact that it doesn’t represent reality, but that it is an idea or an image at all.
You might think it is so much less absurd to think things like “consciousness is God,” “the universe is divine,” “every person is born with an HGA in their heart,” “the HGA is the Higher Self,” “my sexuality is divine,” “everyone is already enlightened,” “God is all around me,” “I am God,” or even “Every man and every woman is a star.” But I assure you, those notions are just as deluded as the idea that Marcelo Motta is one’s Holy Guardian Angel. And actually the more quickly you realize that, the more quickly you will make spiritual progress.
In fact, my first spiritual awakening happened shortly after having almost that exact thought.
If you don’t like an image, if you’re not sufficiently seduced by it, then just move on to a different metaphor. Find something that better reflects the sense of longing in your heart. But time spent trying to refute some idea or make fun of it is time wasted—which ultimately says more about you than the idea itself.
Crowley honors the appearance of separateness by supplying you with the idea of the Holy Guardian Angel, the idea of an experience that lies in your future called Sacred Marriage or Knowledge and Conversation, and a structure—like a ladder, a mountain, or a bridge—that gets you from here to there through stages.
In a certain sense it is very structured. You’ve got the sephiroth on the Tree of Life with tasks you have to complete at each grade. In another sense it is very vague. The idea of the HGA itself is vague. The idea of exactly how to get there—i.e., the particular act that will bring about the Marriage—is undefined and left up to each person. This reflects Crowley’s realization that, although the term Holy Guardian Angel comes from the western occult tradition, the ultimate aim of spiritual practice is non-secular.
Once one achieves Knowledge and Conversation—which is basically samadhi—the metaphor shifts. The Angel is still separate, but one is now also “pregnant” by the Angel. This is illustrated in The Wake World where Lola becomes pregnant in the house of Netzach which Crowley associates with ananda or bliss. The idea of the soul becoming pregnant through bliss is an old one. See Plato’s Symposium.
At the risk of putting too fine a point on this: The aspirant is Heh-final, the Virgin Daughter, whose spiritual longing—which I am speaking of as a heart with a hole in it—is presented as an empty womb in Crowley’s version of Tetragrammaton. The Angel—Vau of Tetragrammaton—fulfills that emptiness, penetrates it, puts a child in it, which it is now the Adeptus’s destiny to deliver.
Crossing the Abyss requires, among other things, clearly seeing the nature of the aggregates or skandhas. One sees that body, mind, thoughts, feelings, habits, and even consciousness are not self and are impermanent. There is the symbolic “delivery” of the pregnancy at Binah. In The Wake World there is now a new “fairy prince” (Holy Guardian Angel) in Tiphareth.
There is a lot of doctrine packed into this symbolism, but here are a few ideas to help work through it.
With the pregnancy, the divine is now “within”. However, with Crossing the Abyss, the idea of “within” and “without” is permanently complicated—which is the same as saying it is completely simplified. Whether the Angel is part of the self, other than the self, was part of the self but not realized, was sometimes part of the self or not—all seen as the wrong questions.
This also permanently changes the meaning of awakening or realization. Crowley uses the metaphor of the self being destroyed as it crosses the Abyss. This makes it sound more dramatic or histrionic than it needs to be. It’s enough to say that awakening does not belong to an individual—maybe in the same way it makes sense to say that pregnancy does not belong to a mother but is rather a moment in the process of the generation of the species. One is not getting something for oneself by waking up but rather completing part of the cosmological cycle. It’s this understanding of the cosmological process which defines Thelema, not “doing my will” or getting anything else for myself.
Therefore the idea of my Angel, my illumination, my Knowledge and Conversation was never part of fundamental reality. That was actually a misunderstanding that had to be worked through. Why? Because reality is such that truth is only ever found in and through falsehood. This is why the notion of the “Angel” as “other” is as necessary as it is false.
The reason there is a new Fairy Prince or HGA down in Tiphareth is because the person who has crossed the Abyss is now a divinely realized being who must teach others. They must now become the image for a student. They must now honor the appearance of separateness for someone else. This is how they continue to serve the cosmological process, which is now understood as impersonal and not about them. But there is another reason they do this which you can guess if you carefully read the paragraph before this.
The student looks with longing at the teacher. They think the teacher is someone who can help them fulfill the absence in their heart. They want to feel God’s heart in theirs, and the teacher is the one who can help them do this, because the teacher has accomplished this for themselves. (The last two words here are delusional—they didn’t do anything for themselves.)
And when the teacher looks at the student, they see the hole in the student’s heart. So they are able to acknowledge the student’s sense of loss. They are able to honor the student’s sense of separation in a way which makes sense to the student, which seduces them. These are the teachings and practices the teacher offers the student to satisfy the longing.
But there is something the teacher sees in the student’s heart which the student cannot.
The hole in the student’s heart is letting through the most brilliant light they have ever seen.
In my opinion what makes Thelema distinctive is not the occultism, not the ontology, not the ethics, not the individualism. It’s that he took the western occult tradition with its God as a creative artist and inflected it through a Nietzschean understanding of life.
Renaissance occultism is based upon a view of the cosmos where everything is ordered into spheres or levels with Earth as the focus. Natural magic is about drawing power or spiritus down from higher spheres into lower ones. “Cabalistic” magic is about ascending to superluminary spheres and mastering the angelic forces there—which tips over very easily into mysticism, as it does in Thelema. In short it’s based on a hierarchical, anthropocentric view of the universe as a kind of container focused on human affairs, and the container is overall not that large.
Angelic Hierarchies, Spheres, and the Hebrew Alphabet. From Robert Fludd, Utriusque cosmi, maioris scilicet et minoris, metaphysica, physica atque technica historia.
This view was largely replaced by the natural philosophy in the 17th and 18th centuries. According to this new view, the universe does not behave according to purposes but rather mechanisms. There are no “pulls” in the universe, only “pushes”. And the universe in which these abstract mathematical laws operate is vast enough to overwhelm the imagination and the human perspective all together. The picture of the universe generated by this natural philosophy ultimately left up in the air the place of humans in it. And with this disenchanted view of nature came a challenge to both religion and magic.
Rather than recoiling from this picture of nature into a kind of reenchanted fantasy about life, Crowley instead embraces it. The sheer enormity of the cosmos is one of the premises of Crowley’s view of reality, embodied in the goddess Nuit. The pure mathematical view of reality is not rejected either but embraced. Mathematics was part of occultism going back at least to Pico, but Crowley really makes it one of the main themes of his spirituality. So in other words rather than trying to hide from the implications of modernism, Crowley leans into them.
And he understands the fundamental spiritual problem in a very modernist way. The problem we face is not suffering, and it’s not ethics. These are pre-modern or early modern ways of looking at the problem. No, the main problem is meaning. It’s the senselessness of the world. Crowley was motivated by this experience of senselessness at least since he was a student at Cambridge, and he writes about it at least as late as Little Essays Toward Truth.
What then determines Tiphareth, the Human Will, to aspire to comprehend Neschamah, to submit itself to the divine Will of Chiah?
Nothing but the realisation, born sooner or later of agonising experience, that its whole relation through Ruach and Nephesch with Matter, i.e., with the Universe, is, and must be, only painful. The senselessness of the whole procedure sickens it. It begins to seek for some menstruum in which the Universe may become intelligible, useful and enjoyable. In Qabalistic language, it aspires to Neschamah.
Aleister Crowley, Little Essays toward Truth, “Man”
The way he understands a possible solution to senselessness is very modernist as well. The solution cannot be sought in reason. Reason operates according to the principle of sufficient reason, i.e., for any proposition F, there must be a ground G for it, or for any event B, there must be a sufficient explanation A. Putting the principle of sufficient reason at the center of human relating to the world is what generated the picture of a senseless, purely mechanical world in the first place. Therefore, reason—specifically the application of the principle of sufficient reason—must be limited, but to limit reason it must be transcended.
But—the transcendence of reason cannot interfere with the legitimate operation of reason within its own domain. Crowley is not looking to reenchant nature in some naive way. He accepts the findings of the scientific view of reality and even holds them to be axiomatic for his spirituality. Nor can the transcendence of reason be a mere animalistic “overcoming” of reason. One cannot simply will oneself to be irrational, for instance. Both of these avenues would represent a kind of fanaticism.
So Crowley has to manuever somehow between the Scylla of rationalism on the one hand and the Charybdis of dogmatism or fanaticism on the other.
This is a very modernist—specifically German Idealist—way of looking at things. When a person with a background in the philosophy of Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Nietzsche hears Crowley talking about transcending “because,” they’re hearing a tune they could hum in their sleep.
And Crowley’s proposed solution to this problem is will. Will transcends reason. You cannot ask “why” of will. In and of itself it prevents the questioning but instead gives orders. It’s authoritative. This is how he avoids rationalism.
But will also represents the “true” self of the individual. It is not a mere replacement for Jehovah. It is not a projection of the law of the father. Nor is it exactly bodily or animal instinct. This is how Crowley avoids fanaticism.
One of the conspicuous features of the coronavirus pandemic is how little control we have over the situation.
We’re facing a novel virus, one which has never infected human beings before. We have no vaccine. We have no treatments.
The one non-pharmacological intervention we do have—social distancing—is leaving a lot of people feeling powerless. They can’t engage in the activities that bring them pleasure. They can leave their houses only sparingly. All we’re left to do now is wait, and that can feel disempowering.
But even in situations that feel disempowering, we are duty-bound to understand circumstances as best we can and to bring them under our control.
Learn to understand clearly how best to manipulate the energies which you control to obtain the results most favourable to it from its relations with the part of the Universe which you do not yet control. Extend the dominion of your consciousness, and its control of all forces alien to it, to the utmost. Do this by the ever stronger and more skilful application of your faculties to the finer, clearer, fuller, and more accurate perception, the better understanding, and the more wisely ordered government, of that external Universe.
—Aleister Crowley, “Duty”
If you’re not a virologist or a physician, chances are it may feel as though there is very little to exert your control over. But times like this, when so much control has been taken away, it makes sense to concentrate on those things over which we still do have some or even complete control. One of those things is our dwellings.
As I said in my recent video, in order to keep your body safe, you need to keep the virus out of your home. Another way of saying this is that you must expand your sense of self so that it also includes the place where you dwell.
This is not a dimension of doing one’s will that should be taken lightly in any case. Commenting on the Magus card in the Book of Thoth, Crowley says:
This card therefore represents the Wisdom, the Will, the Word, the Logos by whom the worlds were created. (See the Gospel according to St. John, chapter I.) It represents the Will. In brief, he is the Son, the manifestation in act of the idea of the Father. He is the male correlative of the High Priestess. Let there be no confusion here on account of the fundamental doctrine of the Sun and Moon as the Second Harmonics to the Lingam and the Yoni; for, as will be seen in the citation from The Paris Working, (see Appendix) the creative Mercury is of the nature of the Sun. But Mercury is the Path leading from Kether to Binah, the Understanding; and thus He is the messenger of the gods, represents precisely that Lingam, the Word of creation whose speech is silence.
Here we find Crowley binding together several concepts:
The will (the central theme of the spiritual system of Thelema).
The Son, which as part of the Holy Trinity represents the manifestation in act of the idea of the Father. Crowley here explicitly references John I where we read,
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
In other words the Son—and hence the will—is not to be thought of as just a particular person (say, Jesus of Nazareth) but something more akin to the invariant structure of the cosmos. It is that act of the Father (the principle of consciousness) whereby the universe becomes intelligible.
To say that the Son renders the universe intelligible to us is to say that it is by virtue of the Son that the universe is anything at all to a consciousness like ours. It is that which allows things to be what they are, to shine forth as phenomena in their own right. Thus the creative Mercury or Son is of the nature of the Sun (that by means of which the sensible is made sensible).
This relationship between manifestation or shining forth and speech or the Word is given in the Greek word, logos. Logos is related to légō, which means “I put in order, arrange, gather.” Logos or the Son is the speech that gathers, and by gathering things marshals them forth into visibility.
“But Mercury is the Path leading from Kether to Binah, the Understanding”. In other words, it is attributed to the path of ב or Bet.
Bet means house.
Tying this complex strand of ideas together we might say that the Magus or the magician is that individual whose characteristic mode of action is to call beings forth into the light so that they may be what they are and understood as they are. The magician accomplishes this by “speaking” a certain way, by gathering them and showing them. And this mode of speech—this evocation—is intimately tied up with houses, with a particular mode of dwelling on the face of the Earth.
In other words, magic is the transformation of nature into a home. As God the Father speaks nature into intelligible existence by calling it forth into his own radiance, so do we make our lives meaningful when we order the circumstances we find ourselves in in such a way as to suit our own purposes.
Thus Magick is the Science and art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.
God the Father in manifestation is the Sun, Tiphareth. The Light or Speech given off by the Father—the Son—is Mercury, Hod. This Speech returns to the Father by means of the Holy Spirit, symbolized by the dove which is Venus or Netzach. It issues back into the House of the Sun, Tiphareth, whose meaning in English is beauty.
This is why the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel (i.e., the Holy Spirit) results in the beatific vision. This is a vision of the oneness, beauty, and effulgence of all things, which Crowley also equates with atmadarshana.
The three paths connecting Tiphareth, Hod, and Netzach—Ayin, Peh, and Nun—add up to 200, the enumeration of Resh, which means head. The card The Sun is attributed to the path of Resh on the Tree of Life.
But from a microcosmic point of view, we might say that we imitate the act of the Father when we dwell in our abodes in a way which is beautiful. It is not the purely instrumental act of dwelling which matters so much as the excessive and playful mode of dwelling—dwelling for its own sake, i.e., aesthetic enjoyment.
Thus Crowley also says of magick that it is the Art of Life Itself.
So if you’re looking to perform magick in the face of the coronavirus pandemic you might try two things:
Expand your sense of self to fill the place where you currently live. Get to know every little nook and cranny of the physical building you occupy. Purge it of everything alien. Rearrange it—speak order into it—so that it reflects as closely as possible the divine order, i.e., consecrate it to the accomplishment of your will.
Beautify it to the extent you can. Don’t just be stuck here. Make sure what you see when you open your eyes every day is what you want to see. Think of your home as the House of the Sun, i.e., Tiphareth. The House of God is the beautiful house. Make sure it remains that way.
I wanted to elaborate a little bit on something I mentioned quickly in my recent video, Love, Will, and the Angel.
In that video I suggested a more-or-less traditional means of interacting with the Holy Guardian Angel, namely, prayer.
When I was a child, I prayed frequently to God, usually asking for some favor or another but also just for the purposes of ordinary conversation. After many decades, I have returned to prayer of this sort but with an important difference.
I never ask anything for myself when I pray.
I don’t ask to win the lottery. I don’t ask for a job interview to go well. I don’t ask for someone’s illness to be cured. I don’t ask for Bernie to win Michigan. (This last one might be reverse psychology.)
All I ever really ask for is to be a better servant of the divine in this world.
I ask for assistance to have my ignorance lifted. I don’t want to be ignorant about my nature. I don’t want to be ignorant about how the world works. I pray for the light of divinity to work through me in an uninterrupted fashion, unoccluded by false notions about who I am or what I should be doing.
Or as I suggested in the video, if I find myself in a difficult situation, I ask for help seeing how it is that I got myself into that mess and how to find my way out.
I understand that this is not how many occultists think about the Holy Guardian Angel. They think of conversation with the Angel more along these lines. And that’s fine. I wish people acted that way all the time, honestly. At the same time, I think my view on the Angel is consistent with Thelema as a doctrine.
The Angel is not here to rapture you, as the art on the Judgment card of the Coleman-Waite deck would suggest. Insofar as the concepts of salvation or redemption make any sense in a Thelemic context, they seem to entail something more like a change in perspective rather than a miracle.
Crowley’s two favorite metaphors for this seem to be inversion and unveiling.
You can find evidence of inversion or reversal of perspective all over the place. This is largely what the transition from Man of Earth to Hermit is about. It is captured in the imagery of the Beast 666. It’s in the idea of the Lion-Serpent as that which “destroys the destroyer” (i.e., inverts the inversion). It’s ritualized in Liber V vel Reguli. Basically the idea here is that we have an upside-down view on things. We need to be set on our own two feet for the first time, oriented toward the real foundation of things. From an outside perspective this will appear “demonic,” but it is in fact an orientation toward the transcendent and most high.
And then unveiling is the idea of the Khu as a “magical garment” that occludes the divine light within.
Our minds and bodies are veils of the Light within.
New Comment on AL I.8
The idea of the Khu and the “solution of complexes” has always seemed somewhat obscure to me, but the way I’ve come to think of it is that the Khu is like the khandhas or “clinging aggregates” of Buddhism. The Khu is the manifest universe you appear in, or at least the part of it that you consider to be you. There is nothing inherently wrong with manifest existence. There is no “fallen” state to be “redeemed” in other words.
But problems arise when we look at manifest existence as something which we can control or own or call “my,” “me,” or “mine”. To understand the nature of manifest existence means understanding that it changes constantly according to conditions that are beyond our control. This gives rise to detachment and a more balanced, equanimous perspective on reality—and ultimately a happiness that lasts apart from external circumstances.
The Khu remains, but now it no longer occludes the divine light within. This light is not “me” in the ordinary sense but is rather Hadit or Harpocrates. Everything else that I previously called “me” is now seen and correctly understood as an instrument for the expression of that divine light.
But this is essentially what I pray for—to understand nature in precisely this way and thereby to become a more perfect instrument for this divine light.
This is a way in which Thelema is far more like Buddhism than Christianity in my opinion. Buddhism begins from the notion that the main problem is not so much the nature of things themselves but rather avijjā or ignorance. This means that the solution to life’s difficulties is to develop sammā-diṭṭhi or right view, not to be “saved” by the gods or anyone else. I see Thelema has approaching the problem in a similar fashion.
Of course it should be pointed out that neither in Thelema nor in Buddhism can anyone or anything else alleviate your ignorance. It is up to you to do that through your own applied effort. But this mode of prayer can be thought of as practice for surrender of the ego or illusory self to the universal life.
So in short I would say that it does work to pray to the Angel—if the purpose of your prayer is to dispel illusion and to become a more effective instrument of the divine. But I am not of the opinion that the Angel can perform miracles for you like curing disease or putting someone in the White House like Christians think.
Two of the most important patterns in Crowley’s spirituality are the relationship between speech and silence and the relationship between the word and life and death.
You see the speech-silence pattern crop up everywhere. The Book of the Law itself is delivered by Aiwass, who announces himself as the minister of Hoor-Paar-Kraat, the god of silence. So the Book of the Law could be understood as the speech of the god of silence.
The god of silence is absent, unmanifest. Any attempt to objectify the god of silence inevitably fails. So the issue of speech and silence is simultaneously the issue of presence versus absence. Absence can only be manifest through presence by means of various detours or blinds—basically illusions. Magic deals principally in illusions, the magician being a Master of Illusions. This is why all the powers of the magician revolve around silence.
Absence is also worked with through Crowley’s pseudonyms: Perdurabo, To Mega Therion, V.V.V.V.V., Chioa Khan, etc. (I’ve never actually seen anyone attempt this analysis for some reason…)
The speech-silence pattern shows up in the Mass. “Silence” is indicated at two crucial points in the script. Also, if you’ve read any of my stuff on the Mass, I’ve indicated how essential Hoor-paar-kraat is to that ritual. The Mass itself is a ceremony of implantation of the god of silence into the soil of the Earth.
The drama of the Mass moves from the silence of the tomb, out into manifestation, and then back into the silence of the tomb.
AUMGN—the formula most often vibrated through the Mass—is itself a formula representing the movement of the silent seed into manifest speech and back out into non-existence.
The neophyte formula of A∴A∴ encapsulates exactly the same idea in slightly different form. In Pyramidos, it is described as the path of HUA or IAΩ—in other words of the Holy Guardian Angel itself.
The Man of Earth degrees form a cycle which expresses the same idea. In the Minerval degree, the candidate manifests out of silence or nothingness, is brought into manifestation in the 1st and 2nd degrees, passes out of existence in the 3rd, and passes back into silence or nothingness as a Perfect Initiate.
If you’ve read my stuff, you know I think the MoE candidate is actually the HGA for pretty much exactly this reason. If you’ve read my stuff on the Mass, you know I think it involves the HGA in exactly this way.
“Oh so what? You think everything Crowley ever did was about the HGA, huh?”
How many times did he himself say that? He couldn’t have been kidding all those times.
And then the other pattern has to do with the word—which is the HGA in manifestation—as it relates to life and death.
So the first thing to notice is that the word uses life and death to manifest itself down the generations. It’s how it gets spoken in the first place.
So the word in the macrocosmic sense is the Sun and basically all the things the Sun represents. In the Mass, we refer to the Sun as ON, which represents the Beast 666 who is also the Logos (word) of the current Aeon. And since most magical formulae represent not only a thing but also a process of attainment, ON also represents two paths of deification of the individual, one corresponding with Ayin, the other with Nun. (I’ve written about this elsewhere.)
But the word in the microcosmic sense—where it relates directly to life and death—is the phallus. This is the word utilizing the process of life and death or incarnation or becoming or suffering or what have you in order to manifest itself. This is the 5th collect of the Mass. This is the Anthem. This is the production of the seed which goes into the soil which becomes Baphomet. It’s the whole magic of the Mass, really: manifestation of the macrocosm in the microcosm.
Now when it manifests, it also transcends those conditions or reveals itself as transcending those conditions. Hence, Baphomet “destroys the destroyer”. This is the redemptive aspect of the word. This is why you would want to hear the word. This is why you would want to know God or to experience Knowledge and Conversation. It’s because it’s that within you which is using you or using your conditioned existence in order to be. It’s that for the sake of which all this is happening. It’s the impersonal vibration left over at the end of AUMGN from which existence will once again spring forth.
You find the same issue at work in the 3rd degree of M∴M∴M∴.
You see it in the IAO formula.
You see it in the Neophyte ritual of A∴A∴.
So if you ever find yourself lost in the weeds of Crowley’s writings, these are the two patterns I would try to focus on. One pattern has to do with how speech and silence relate. This is the life-cycle of the Word, the Logos, the HGA. The other pattern has to do with the life of the Word. This is how the Word uses life-death to manifest itself and how in the process it redeems becoming.
