A religious rite ought to form a religious community around a common ethos: a set of commonly held values that are both cause and effect of the commonly recognized highest power.
The Gnostic Mass as a Religious Rite
When interpreting the Mass, it’s important to keep in mind that it’s a religious rite, and so it’s not possible to capture the main idea behind it simply with categories that apply to magic(k), mysticism, or the mysteries of OTO.
This is a slide from my Minerval lecture summarizing Stephen Skinner’s treatment of these categories in Introduction to Techniques of Graeco-Egyptian Magic. I use this to show what is distinctive about initiation into a mystery school (such as M∴M∴M∴) versus attending Mass or doing private ritual at home. But it’s also useful for seeing what is distinctive about the Mass as a religious rite.
One of the main objectives of the Mass is implied by the Priest right at the start of the ritual: it’s to administer the virtues to the breathren. I think the simplest, most direct interpretation of that statement is that the ritual imparts the spirit of Thelema or the New Aeon to the public, both through its liturgy and through the eucharist itself.
To put a finer point on it, I disagree with an interpretation of the Mass according to which the Priest is exemplifying communing with his Holy Guardian Angel or Crossing the Abyss. That would be a mystical or magical interpretation. I think that renders the actions of the clergy excessively personal and private and tends to obscure the public cultic dimension. I think it also leads to the conclusion that the Priest is feeding his Holy Guardian Angel to the congregants (eww).
I have a long, detailed argument about what exactly is embodied in the eucharist. The short, simple answer is that it embodies the spirit that gave rise to the Book of the Law. So in yet another sense, the Book of the Law becomes your sustenance and comfort when you consume the bread and wine.
Now the spirit that gave rise to the Book of the Law is also the Holy Guardian Angel. (Crowley calls it Aleph, Harpocrates, and a bunch of other names.) So it’s easy to see why one would think that the Mass involves the Priest communing with his HGA. It’s actually not a stupid interpretation. And I could even accept an interpretation which said that the Priest communed with his HGA somewhere along the way in the ritual—or even that the congregants are there to do something similar. It’s not going to detract from it.
I just don’t think it’s the main objective of the ritual. It’s clear from the liturgy, from the presence of a congregation, from the ritualists taking up ecclesiastical roles, and just from things that Crowley said about the ritual when he was alive that the ritual is not meant to be simply mystical or magical, it’s meant to impart a particular kind of spirit (for lack of a better word) to the public. It’s meant to serve and help structure the self-understanding of a community.
Babalon and the Mass
In the Gnostic Mass, the Priest takes up the role of CHAOS, who is associated with Chokmah. He serves the function of the logos or the word, which is also the phallus or the creative aspect of the Father. From his own body, he produces the seed (sperma). By means of an alchemical process, this seed will be transformed into the Mercurial Serpent, the Baphomet or Christos, the Philosopher’s Stone, etc. This product of the first operation is strongly associated with the Sun, with the path of Ayin, with Hod, but also with Kether and even the entire Tree of Life (if you draw the number 8 on it). But before diving deeper into the nature of the product, I’d like to first examine the process itself, in particular the role played by the Priestess.
If the Priest is taking up the work of CHAOS and the spiritual significance of Chokmah, then his counterpart the Priestess takes up the role of BABALON and the spiritual significance of Binah. What is her contribution, and what does that contribution imply about the nature of the God-Man produced by the operation?
In the Creed we recite, “And I believe in one Earth, the Mother of us all, and in one Womb wherein all men are begotten, and wherein they shall rest, Mystery of Mystery, in Her name BABALON.”
As compared with the treatment BABALON gets in The Vision and the Voice, this is rather terse and tends to understate her importance in the spiritual system of Thelema. But I think that has less to do with the importance of BABALON herself than the context. In The Vision and the Voice, Crowley was documenting his ascent across the Abyss to the grade of Magister Templi. There, BABALON is considered initiator. In the Gnostic Mass, by contrast, she serves as a cosmological or metaphysical principle which is relied upon in the context of a discrete alchemical operation.
This remark will make no sense to those who think the Gnostic Mass is a crossing-the-Abyss allegory culminating in the candidate (the bread particle) merging with the all-mother (the wine in the cup). But it will make perfect sense if you accept that, by at least Part VI of the Mass, the Priest is not a candidate aspiring to Binah but rather the representative of CHAOS performing a magical operation with the Priestess in her role as BABALON, with the desired effect being the production of a Divine Being at Tiphareth. In other words, the operation of the Mass is meant to move the Word down the Tree of Life from Chokmah to Tiphareth where it becomes incarnated as God Manifest. If the particle is consciousness as such, then it is consciousness-in-time (the Sun) in its finished state in the cup. But then what is it about the cup—the symbol of Our Lady—that allows this to take place?
From the article of the Creed, we find BABALON identified with Earth, Mother, and Womb. The wording suggests she is the sub-lunary context into which we are born, wherein we live, and which we eventually pass away into. In other words, she is nature.
But what is nature from a Thelemic perspective? I would like to suggest that it is neither the object studied in the field of physics, nor is it merely inert matter. Neither of these designations fits with the spiritual function of Binah, which BABALON is also associated with. The function of Binah in Kabbalah is to transform pure thinking as such (associated with Chokmah) into something like a determinate set of concepts of creation. So if we think of Chokmah as corresponding with the neoplatonic idea of nous or of pure mind, then Binah corresponds with the concept of the world-soul, nature inwardly considered as a hierarchical system of ideas or categories of existence.
Importantly, Binah represents the first point in the movement from out of Ain/Ain Soph where limitation and hence form are introduced. Ain, Ain Soph, and Kether are words for a formless All or One or None. Chokmah is this pure (N)one reflected in thinking. Binah is where differentiation is first introduced. The thought of creation (which is something like a mere urge at Kether and Chokmah) now receives articulation. It is presumably for this reason that Crowley associates Binah with the Vissudha chakra which is at the throat. It is at the throat that thoughts are articulated into speech.
So in the figure of BABALON, we see the union of the concept of nature with the concept of form or formation. While this appears to be an odd pairing, it in fact harkens back to the ancient Greek concept of nature which Aristotle articulated in the Physics, particularly in Book B.
The ancient Greek word for nature was phusis, from which we get our word physics. While we tend to think of nature as various stuff (natural things, things of nature, etc.), Aristotle said that phusis is first and foremost a principle of development (arche kineseus). The function of this principle in each natural thing (phusei onta) was to cause it to change in such a way that it comes into its end (telos). This end or finished state was understood as a particular kind of appearance (eidos) or form (morphe).
So for example, the function of the nature of an oak tree is to guide the development of an acorn into a full-grown oak by way of its intermediate stages. The nature of the oak (the image or form of the full-grown oak) serves as a kind of blueprint (paradigma) for change, so that the change is not chaotic but is rather orderly and results in the proper end (the full-grown tree). To put it another way, the nature of the tree is responsible for delivering it into its final form or appearance, which is the full expression of its being as an oak. This makes natural growth a circular process from form (implicit) to form (explicit) back to form (implicit) again in the appearance of the new acorn.
This explains why Aristotle said that the being of a natural thing is its form or appearance (morphe) and not the matter (hule) composing it. Things are intelligible to us by virtue of their ends. What differentiates an action such as running from another action such as rhetoric is the end it aims at. The same thing goes for growing things. They’re differentiated by the final form or appearance they aim at in their growth. Matter is only of secondary importance here. The delivery of the thing into its final form requires the presence of things like food, air, water, and sunlight, but these are merely enabling conditions. The essence or being of the thing is always its form or final, outward, full-grown appearance. It is that image “lurking in the background” which drives change in a particular direction and hence constitutes the characteristic movement or development of the thing which differentiates it from other things.
Incidentally, this is why Aristotle makes the rather odd proclamation that actuality precedes potentiality. On the face of it, the statement is false. It makes more sense when you realize that the word Aristotle uses for actuality (energeia or entelecheia) actually means something like “being in the work [ergon]” or “being in the end [telos],” whereas the word for potentiality—dunamis—has the connotation of matter (hule) or the workshop that something is made in where there are tools and raw materials laying around. Placing something into its end always takes priority (ontologically) over the means or circumstances under which it is done, and therefore “actuality precedes potentiality”.
Now we’re in a position to understand much better the spiritual function served by the Priestess in the Gnostic Mass—as well as “the feminine” in any magical operation.
While the Priest provides the material (hule) for the operation in the form of the seed or particle, it is the function of the Priestess to give that seed form (morphe)—to in-form it—in the “womb”. She is responsible for taking the seed and “delivering” it (like a mother or midwife) into appearance (eidos). In the context of the Mass, that which is delivered into manifestation is the God-Man, which is associated with Tiphareth, the point on the Tree of Life where God is manifest for the first time. So while the Priest is responsible for the potentiality or potency of the Christos, it is the Priestess who delivers Him into appearance or form, and therefore she is responsible for His being.
You can see this on a very concrete level in the Mass itself. The particle is crumbly. It lacks integrity. The cup has definite borders. It provides integrity.
(For that matter, compare the oaths of the Minerval and I°s, which correspond with Chokmah and Binah respectively by their chakra attributions. It’s the exact same thing, only now the candidate is the crumbly particle being supplied with integrity and therefore with the possibility of fulfilling an end.)
But by delivering the seed into manifestation, BABALON or the Priestess also delivers it to death. This is because there is no way to deliver into manifestation without also introducing becoming as a condition. A beginning (genesis) is a change from one thing into another. While things abide in beingness, they also keep changing. This change tends toward decay and ultimately death or passing back out of existence. As the German philosophers Hegel said in his Science of Logic, for finite beings “the hour of their birth is the hour of their death.” Due to the conditions that must be put into place for the introduction of something into the world, to enter the world is to immediately incur the penalty of death. This is captured in the nature of BABALON herself as feminine creator-destructor. It is also captured in the two-sided nature of the “sword” leading from Tiphareth up to Binah.
What this means is that the product of the Mass—the eucharist—has both the qualities of life and death, as these are unified in every manifest being. But it is more than this. For while Christ comes from blood and water, there is also the Holy Spirit, the third witness on Earth. This dove-serpent which deifieth man is subject to conditions of life and death. But by means of gross generation (biological reproduction), this spirit is able to utilize the process of life-death for the purpose of its own self-expression and manifestation down through the ages, thereby transcending those very same conditions. Like the example of the eidos of the oak tree moving from implicit to explicit and back again, we are witnessing here another circular process. The Holy Spirit separates from itself in its transmission, yet this separation is the very act by which it maintains its transcendental integrity. “The secret of generation is death.”
And while the blood is a reflection or image of the Father, and the water is a reflection or image of the Mother, the Holy Spirit is a reflection or image of God. It is an image or eidos which, just like the image or eidos of an oak tree, has paradigmatic power over the being it stands in relationship to. It calls it forth into its full-blown, most true configuration. While for an oak tree, that image is merely the fully grown oak, for an individual it is their true self. In other words, the serpent-Christ emerging from the Eucharistic operation is the Augoeides. By consuming the eucharist, you unite yourself with your genius or Angel. This is why Crowley says continually doing Eucharistic magic will inevitably lead toward Knowledge and Conversation.