This is an excerpt from a private talk I recently gave on the subject of the Creed of Liber XV.
One of the conspicuous features of the Creed is the absence from it of the major personages of The Book of the Law: Nuit, Hadit, or Ra-Hoor-Khuit. Instead we profess belief in a Secret Lord, in Chaos, in Babalon, in Baphomet, in the Saints, in the Miracle of the Mass, the Miracle of Incarnation, and the immortality of the soul. We see few mentions of them throughout the course of the ritual, the exceptions being a brief mention of Nuit and allusions to Hadit and Ra-Hoor-Khuit during part four. Instead there is a greater deal of emphasis placed on IAO, the Sun, and the Secret Lord throughout Liber XV.
Nevertheless The Book of the Law is the key to understanding the theology of the Gnostic Mass and its Creed. The Book of the Law, also known as Liber AL vel Legis sub figura 220, is the foundational document of Thelema. Crowley took The Book of the Law to describe the fundamental nature of the universe, the human being, and the path to spiritual liberation in this life. What follows are the broad strokes of that view.
The Two Elements
The Universe is explained by the interaction of what Crowley calls two “elements,” but which we can also think of as two fundamental principles or causes. These two principles are mutually opposed and mutually exclusive. In other words, they cannot be understood through one another. But they work together and complement one another to give rise to the universe or what Crowley also calls manifest existence.
The first principle is called Nuit. Crowley describes Nuit as extended substance, matter, space, all that exists, form, and the object of experience. The second principle is called Hadit. Hadit is the indivisible point, motion, the cause of change, concealed force, the unique individual, and the experiencer.
At the most general, most abstract level, Nuit is the cause of form or appearance. I’m using the terms form and appearance in ways that may seem unusual. A physical object has form. For example, the chair is a blue, soft, three-dimensional solid. It shares those qualities in common with other physical objects that are blue, soft, or three-dimensional. But as I’m using the term, a social convention such as Wednesday also has form or appearance. The form or appearance of Wednesday is that it is a day of the week. It occurs between Tuesday and Thursday. Even a thought, like my thought of the number 2, has form, because at a bare minimum, any act of thinking takes time, and duration is a quality.
Anything that is or could be something for us—anything we actually or theoretically could be conscious of, whether it’s physical or not—appears a certain way, and that appearance is caused by Nuit. Another way of saying this is that Nuit is the unity of being. To be is to be a member of the body of Nuit.
Hadit is not a being; nor is He the unity of being. Hadit is the unique individual who stands opposed to being. He is aloof and alone. As such, He has no appearance and no form. He expresses what Crowley calls unique individuality. So for example, even though this chair shares features in common with other soft, blue, three-dimensional solids, it is also a unique individual. It is also this chair here. The uniqueness of the chair cannot be explained in terms of its appearance or form, because form is what it has in common with the other chairs.
So while Nuit is the unity of being, Hadit is the unity of the unique individual. These two causes cannot be understood through one another. Hadit cannot be understood through his form or qualities, because He has none. If He had a quality, He would have to share that quality in common with something or someone else, and therefore He would not be absolutely unique. Likewise, there is nothing absolutely unique in Nuit, nor anything that stands absolutely apart. Everything in Nuit is connected to everything else.
The Central Truth of the Thelemic Theogony
While these two causes are opposed to and exclude one another at least in thought, in reality they cannot exist apart from one another. This is what Crowley refers to as the central truth of the Thelemic theogony. Any conjunction between the two is called the Khabs, which is the Egyptian term for star. If Hadit is the idea of the unique individual, and if Nuit is the idea of form or appearance, then the star—as the conjunction of the two—is the idea of a manifested individual. It is a unique individual showing itself—indirectly—through its qualities.
Nuit is the totality of being, the totality of anything that can appear in the most general sense of the term. Any interaction of Hadit with Nuit brings some subset of those total possible appearances into existence. But because Hadit is a unique individual or “this here”—or as the Book of the Law says, a “point”—Hadit is only ever realizing some particular facet of Nuit. He does not reveal her all at once. It happens over time. No sooner does an appearance arise than it passes away and is replaced by another appearance. This is a constant, ongoing, unending process. The aggregate of appearances across time for a particular Hadit is the course of a star through Nuit.
If Nuit is the unity of manifest being, and if Hadit is the unity of the unique individual or the point, then in the star—also called Ra-Hoor-Khuit—we have a third kind of unity. The star is the unity of the manifest individual. It is the unity maintained by the unique individual over the course of its changes in outer appearance or form.
Here are some helpful analogies
The gravity of Earth is a unified force that expresses itself through many objects being attracted to the center of the Earth. In this analogy, Hadit is to the attractive force of gravity as Nuit is to the objects pulled toward the center of the Earth.
A particular organism maintains its structural integrity even while its component cells are constantly dying and being replaced. In this analogy the individuality of the organism is Hadit, and the constantly changing component parts are Nuit. The totality or the organic whole is the star or Ra-Hoor-Khuit.
A company like Apple has an identity it maintains through changes in leadership and personnel.
An individual mind maintains its identity as it thinks successive thoughts.
Identity and form are different from one another, but they are interdependent. If Apple’s new leadership brings the company in a direction that no longer reflects the values of its founder, then the company will lose what we call its integrity, and it will cease to be.
Likewise, certain changes to an organism will cause it to die, and its identity will cease.
These three kinds of unities—the unity of being, the unity of the unique individual, and their combination in the unity of the manifest individual—serve as keys to understanding the Gnostic Mass and its Creed.