Harpocrates and the Gnostic Mass

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Harpocrates occupies an ambiguous spot in Thelemic theology. On the one hand, he is Aleph or Kether: spirit in its most transcendent form. On the other hand, he is Heh-final or Malkuth: spirit in Assiah. Kether is in Malkuth and vice versa—As Above, So Below, etc.

Kether is the “Child” of Nuit and any Hadit. “Nu being 56 and Had 9, their conjunction results in 65, Adonai, the Holy Guardian Angel.” (Old Comment on AL I.1)

In Liber LXV, V:65, we read:

So also is the end of the book, and the Lord Adonai is about it on all sides like a Thunderbolt, and a Pylon, and a Snake, and a Phallus, and in the midst thereof he is like the Woman that jetteth out the milk of the stars from her paps; yea, the milk of the stars from her paps.

Thus we may attribute each of the four elements to a letter of the formula ADNI in the following fashion:

Aleph = Air
Daleth = Fire
Nun = Water
Yod = Earth

If we assign these counterclockwise starting in the east, we get the usual attributions from the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram.

If we place Heh-final (Harpocrates) in the midst thereof, we get a pentagrammaton enumerating to 70, the value of Ayin, which is attributed to the Lord of the Gates of Matter, the Devil, and Baphomet. (See Gunther, Initiation in the Aeon of the Child (2009), p.152.) This matches with Crowley’s claim in The Book of Thoth that, “There is no doubt that this mysterious figure [Baphomet] is a magical image of this same idea [embodied in figures like the Fool and Harpocrates].”

Thus we might think of Baphomet (the “product” of the Gnostic Mass) as the form taken by the Holy Guardian Angel in Malkuth or perhaps in Assiah.

There is some further justification for this idea in Magick in Theory and Practice, Chapter V:

The first process is to find the I in the V — initiation, purification, finding the Secret Root of oneself, the epicene Virgin who is 10 (Malkuth) but spelt in full 20 (Jupiter).

This Yod in the “Virgin” expands to the Babe in the Egg by formulating the Secret Wisdom of Truth of Hermes in the Silence of the Fool. He acquires the Eye-Wand, beholding the acting and being adored. The Inverted Pentagram — Baphomet — the Hermaphrodite fully grown — begets himself on himself as V again.

If the particle the Priest breaks off the bread is I, Yod, or his Secret Root, then putting it in the cup of wine (“the essence of the joy of the Earth” or Malkuth) would be equivalent to creating the “Yod in the ‘Virgin'”. And indeed, this is the very process Crowley describes as leading to the formation or expression of this Yod as Baphomet.

Interestingly the colors attributed to spirit in Assiah are red, blue, yellow, black, and white, the colors worn by the five officers of the Gnostic Mass.

This is another way in which the Gnostic Mass can be seen as an invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel on the material plane (i.e., in a physical talisman like the Eucharist).

lamen of OTO depicting a dove descending into a flaming cup from an eye in the triangle

The Symbolism of the O.T.O. Lamen

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lamen of OTO depicting a dove descending into a flaming cup from an eye in the triangle

I spent a lot of time this weekend contemplating the lamen of O.T.O. (I was at a Kaaba Colloquium and seated much of the time in front of the podium.) It gave me some time to think about the symbols that appear in it.

One of the things that really struck me is how much symbolism of the Anahata chakra there is in the cup at the bottom of the sigil. The rose in the cup has two rows of six petals. The Anahata chakra is often represented as a lotus flower with twelve petals.

depiction of the anahata chakra as a lotus of 12 petals

In the center of the rose is a flaming heart. The Anahata chakra is located in the center of the chest and is referred to the heart.

In Liber 777 column CXVIII, “Anahata (Heart)” is assigned to keys 4, 5, and 6, the Sephiroth Chesed, Geburah, and Tiphareth. Tiphareth is the 6th Sephira, and there are two rows of six petals each in the cup. In the center of the heart in the center of the rose, we see the cross. The mysteries of the Rose and the Cross are also associated with Tiphareth.

These three Sephiroth—Chesed, Geburah, and Tiphareth—form a downward pointing triangle, the interconnecting paths of which (Teth, Lamed, and Yod) add up to 49. The number 49 has a few occult meanings in Thelema. For example 49 is 72. Seven 7s appear in the sigil of A∴A∴. See also The Book of Lies, Chapter 49, where it is associated directly with Babalon.

This triad is also called “The Second Triad which is GOD” in Book of Lies chapter 0. The Tiphareth portion in particular is God in manifestation or Microprosopus, which we will return to later.

It’s also in this connection worth pointing out that the triangle formed by connecting Chesed, Geburah, and Tiphareth has the shape of a cup. This further strengthens its connection with Babalon and by extension the Priestess in the Gnostic Mass who fulfills the office of Babalon.

This grail of Babalon is also associated with Cheth, Cancer, and the number 69. In chapter 69 of The Book of Lies, we see this number associated with the Heavenly Hexagram, which we will return to shortly.

Switching focus to the Eye in the Triangle, we might associate it with the supernal triad of Kether, Chokmah, and Binah. They form a triangle whose interconnecting paths (Aleph, Beth, and Daleth) also add up to 7.

The eye itself can be thought of as the Eye of the Father, Horus. So while the lower portion of the lamen might be referred to the Priestess (by means of Babalon and the cup), the upper portion may be referred to the Priest.

The eye is also linked to the path of Ayin (which means “eye”). Like Cheth, Ayin also contains masculine and feminine archetypes, being associated with the hermaphroditic Baphomet. Neither the lamen of O.T.O. nor the offices of the Gnostic Mass imply strict gender dualities. This is in keeping with Crowley’s assertion in The Book of Thoth that

At first sight it would appear that the formula [of tetragrammaton] is the union of the extremely masculine, the big blond beast, with the extremely feminine, the princess who could not sleep if there was a pea beneath her seven feather beds. But all such symbolism defeats itself; the soft becomes the hard, the rough the smooth. The deeper one goes into the formula, the closer becomes the identification of the Opposites. The Dove is the bird of Venus, but the dove is also a symbol of the Holy Ghost; that is, of the Phallus in its most sublimated form. There is therefore no reason for surprise in observing the identification of the father with the mother.

We will return to his passage and the symbolism of the dove shortly.

The addition of Ayin (70) to the triangle itself (7) gives us 77, which has some significance in the context of O.T.O. being the enumeration of OZ, a goat.

So what we see in the two extremes of the lamen are the supernal triad of Kether, Chokmah, and Binah opposed to the triad of Chesed, Geburah, and Tiphareth. While the upper triangle refers to an active masculine-feminine (Ayin, OZ, the goat), the bottom triad refers to a passive masculine-feminine (Babalon, who receives every drop of blood in her cup). What about the dove between the two of them, seen descending from the Eye in the Triangle into the cup?

The dove has lots of significance loaded into it. By column XXXVIII in Liber 777, it is associated with the path of Daleth. The dove would then signify the divine love uniting the active masculine-feminine magical pole of the Priest (in his role as Chaos or Yod tetragrammaton) with the passive masculine-feminine magical extreme of the Priestess (in her role as Babalon or Heh tetragramaton). This unification occurs at the HRILIU moment of the Gnostic Mass. According to Liber 418, HRILIU is the “shrill scream of orgasm”. In The Heart of the Master it is described as “The Voice of the Dove”.

The dove is also symbolic of the Holy Spirit. (See Matthew 3:16, Mark 1:10, Luke 3:22, and John 1:32.) This same equation between the dove and the Holy Spirit shows up in the Anthem of the Mass. (“Glory and worship in the highest, Thou Dove, mankind that deifiest”) (This analysis is extended here.) Like the two extremes of the lamen, it is a symbol containing both male and female aspects.

For of the Father and the Son
The Holy Spirit is the norm;
Male-female, quintessential, one,
Man-being veiled in Woman-form.

Crowley extends the analysis in the passage from the Book of Thoth quoted above when he says, “The Dove is the bird of Venus, but the dove is also a symbol of the Holy Ghost; that is, of the Phallus in its most sublimated form.”

So we can think of the dove not only as the divine love uniting the supernal father with the supernal mother, but also as the male-female creative force or word of the Father—his seed or sperma—transmitted into the womb of the Mother. This is reflected in the Mass when, breaking a particle off of the host and elevating it, the Priest declares, “TOUTO ESTI TO SPERMA MOU. HO PATÊR ESTIN HO HUIOS DIA TO PNEUMA HAGION.” (“This is my Seed. The Father is the Son through the Holy Spirit.”)

As I have shown previously, the particle of bread represents the Iota, Yod, or “Secret Seed” of the Priest himself. It is identical with the Lord Secret and Most Holy of the Mass, whose office is represented by the serpent crown. When this seed is depressed into the cup, it becomes the Holy Spirit, Harpocrates, the Babe in the Egg, the creative breath, all of which are captured in the symbol of the dove. But just as importantly, Harpocrates or the Secret Self is also the Holy Guardian Angel.

This is an important point of doctrine for our Church, as the Holy Spirit of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica is not the Holy Spirit of Christianity. Rather, it is a symbol of the Holy Guardian Angel of each person.

This interpretation is supported if we extend the Tree of Life symbolism implicit in the lamen. If the Eye in the Triangle represents the supernal triad of Kether, Chokmah, and Binah, and if the flaming cup represents the triangle of Chesed, Geburah, and Tiphareth, then the path connecting the two of them, by means of which the dove descends, would be Gimel. Of this path, Crowley, in The Book of Lies chapter 42, says:

The Masters of the Temple … come from the Great Sea, Binah, the City of the Pyramids. V.V.V.V.V. is indicated as one of these travelers; He is described as a camel … because “camel” is in Hebrew Gimel, and Gimel is the path leading from Tiphareth to Kether, uniting Microprosopus and Macroprosopus, i.e., performing the Great Work. The card Gimel in the Tarot is the High Priestess, the Lady of Initiation; one might even say, the Holy Guardian Angel.

upper portion of the tree of life showing gimel connecting the supernal triad with the triad of god-man

In this passage we have Crowley linking the path of Gimel not only with V.V.V.V.V. but also with the Holy Guardian Angel and the initiator. S/he (again, we see the masculine and feminine combined) is the One who mediates between the divine individual (microprosopus) and the supernal divine (macroprosopus), thereby enabling the candidate to perform the Great Work. This is the upward path, the Path of Return described in “One Star in Sight,” whereby the Son (the Angel) sets the Daughter (the aspirant) on the throne of the Mother (Binah).

But in the symbolism of the O.T.O. lamen, we do not see a journey upward. Instead, we see a journey downward. We see the dove of the Holy Spirit or the Holy Guardian Angel descending from the supernal triad of the Father into the cup, which is symbolic of microprosopus, God in manifestation. And again, this mirrors the symbolism of the Holy Hexagram we see described in The Book of Lies chapter 69: “Plunge from the height, O God, and interlock with Man!” The whole figure is described as a glyph of “the Great Work”.

So in other words, in the lamen of the O.T.O., we are witnessing a symbol of the Great Work, this time not from the point of view of the candidate aspiring to Binah, but rather from the point of view of macroprosopus incarnating by means of the Holy Guardian Angel. Again, “This is my Seed. The Father is the Son through the Holy Spirit.”

This symbolism further reflects and reinforces my interpretation of Part VIII of the Gnostic Mass. Assuming the O.T.O. lamen has any connection with the central private and public rite of O.T.O., then the lamen indicates the same process at play in the Gnostic Mass where, by isolating the Secret Seed of himself, the Priest, in his role as Chaos, is incarnating his own Holy Guardian Angel. By consuming it, he is uniting himself with his HGA. The congregants are doing the same thing except perhaps in a more attentuated way. This seems to me the best way to make sense of Crowley’s claim in Magick in Theory and Practice chapter XX that:

[By doing eucharistic magick t]he magician becomes filled with God, fed upon God, intoxicated with God. Little by little his body will become purified by the internal lustration of God; day by day his mortal frame, shedding its earthly elements, will become in very truth the Temple of the Holy Ghost. Day by day matter is replaced by Spirit, the human by the divine; ultimately the change will be complete; God manifest in flesh will be his name.

This is the most important of all magical secrets that ever were or are or can be. To a Magician thus renewed the attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel becomes an inevitable task; every force of his nature, unhindered, tends to that aim and goal of whose nature neither man nor god may speak, for that it is infinitely beyond speech or thought or ecstasy or silence. Samadhi and Nibbana are but its shadows cast upon the universe.

But then if this same process is also reflected in the O.T.O. lamen, then it stands to reason that the central secret of O.T.O. probably also involves this same mystery of the incarnation of the Angel.

On the Dual Aspects of the Priest and the Eucharist in the Gnostic Mass

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ABSTRACT
The Lord Secret and Most Holy in the Gnostic Mass is the Secret Root of the self, symbolized in the Mass by the serpent crown and the particle broken off the host. It is represented by I/Yod in the magical formula VIAOV. By being depressed into the cup of wine (the priest’s “blood”), it passes into pure potentiality or spirit, represented by the letter A in VIAOV. This is identical with it becoming Harpocrates or the Holy Guardian Angel. From there it moves back into manifestation, now with an added solar character. This is represented by O in VIAOV and is called the Lion-Serpent or BAPHOMET. BAPHOMET is therefore an eidolon of the Holy Guardian Angel of each, having an extroverted, solar nature and an introverted, serpentine nature. While the introverted aspect, the Lord Secret and Most Holy, reflects the Secret Self of the individual, the extroverted aspect, the Lord Visible and Sensible, represents that very same principle in manifestation, utilizing the process of life and death for its expression down the generations. It is by virtue of the Priest embodying both of these aspects (as symbolized by the mantles granted him by the Priestess) that he is able to transform a symbolic part of his own body into this eidolon for public use.

One of the curious features of Liber XV: The Gnostic Mass is the mention and invocation of two Lords. One of these two Lords corresponds with the Sun.

By the power of ☩ Iron, I say unto thee, Arise. In the name of our Lord the ☩ Sun

Thou that art One, our Lord in the Universe the Sun

Lord visible and sensible of whom this earth is but a frozen spark turning about thee with annual and diurnal motion

Let this offering be borne upon the waves of Æthyr to our Lord and Father the Sun that travelleth over the Heavens in his name ON.

Alongside this Lord Visible and Sensible, sometimes in the same passage, we find reference made to a Secret and Ineffable Lord.

I believe in one secret and ineffable LORD

By the power of ☩ Iron, I say unto thee, Arise. In the name of our Lord the ☩ Sun, and of our Lord ☩ …

Lord secret and most holy, source of light, source of life, source of love, source of liberty

Lord most secret, bless this spiritual food unto our bodies

The Priest of the Gnostic Mass represents both of these Lords and acts on behalf of both of them in the ceremony. We know this, because the Priestess bequeaths two mantles to the Priest at the beginning of the ceremony: the robe and the crown. Donning him with the robe, she says, “Be the flame of the Sun thine ambience, O thou PRIEST of the SUN!” Then placing the crown upon his forehead she says, “Be the Serpent thy crown, O thou PRIEST of the LORD!” By making him the Priest of the Sun, the Priestess is arguably also placing him in the role of CHAOS, who we learn from the first article of the Creed is “the sole viceregent of the Sun upon the Earth”. By making him Priest of the Lord (Ineffable), the Priestess now also associates the Priest with those qualities of the Lord mentioned in the second Collect: “Lord secret and most holy, source of Light, source of Life, source of Love, source of Liberty”.

In chapter V of Magick in Theory and Practice, Crowley indirectly associates this Lord Secret and Most Holy with the I of the VIAOV formula by means of these four attributes, and by extension with Yod .

Iota is the secret Life ………….. Serpent
— Light …………. Lamp
— Love ………….. Wand
— Liberty ……….. Wings
— Silence ……….. Cloak”
These symbols are all shewn in the Atu “The Hermit”.

They are the powers of the Yod, whose extension is the Vau.

Yod is the Hand wherewith man does his Will.

Crowley expands on the relationship between this Secret and Ineffable Lord and the individual later in the same chapter:

The first process is to find the I in the V—initiation, purification, finding the Secret Root of oneself, the epicene Virgin who is 10 (Malkuth) but spelt in full 20 (Jupiter).

This can be understood as a brief description of the process of initiation in the context of A∴ A∴ whereby one attains to the Knowledge and Conversation of one’s Holy Guardian Angel. But this formula also has special significance for the Mass. In Part VI of the Mass, the Priest had declared the host to be his own body with the words “TOUTO ESTI TO SÔMA MOU” (“this is my body”). Then in Part VIII of the Mass, he breaks off a piece of this host and declares it to be his “seed”: “TOUTO ESTI TO SPERMA MOU” (“this is my seed”). This should be understood as an example of the Priest (V) isolating the Secret Root of himself (I) as symbolized by the bread particle. But this Secret Root or sperma of the Priest is identical with the Lord Secret and Most Holy. It is by virtue of his office of Priest of the (Ineffable) Lord that the Priest is able to perform this function in the ceremony. The symbol of this office further strengthens this association, as the serpent is in the shape of a spermatozoon.

The particle is placed on the tip of the lance, and, the Priest clasping the cup, the Priest and Priestess together depress the tip of the lance with the particle into the wine in the cup. Shortly thereafter, the Priest says, “O Lion and O Serpent that destroy the destroyer, be mighty among us.” From the third article of the Creed, we know that the Lion-Serpent invoked here is none other than BAPHOMET. Crowley’s commentary on the formula of VIAOV sheds light on this section of the Mass as well:

This Yod in the “Virgin” expands to the Babe in the Egg by formulating the Secret Wisdom of Truth of Hermes in the Silence of the Fool. He acquires the Eye-Wand, beholding the acting and being adored. The Inverted Pentagram—Baphomet—the Hermaphrodite fully grown—begets himself on himself as V again.

The bread particle or sperma—the Lord Secret and Most Holy—upon being depressed into the “blood” of the Priest in the cup “expands to the Babe in the Egg,” which earlier in this chapter Crowley associates with Harpocrates. In the New Comment on AL I.7, Crowley states:

Hoor-paar-Kraat or Harpocrates, the “Babe in the Egg of Blue”, is not merely the God of Silence in a conventional sense. He represents the Higher Self, the Holy Guardian Angel. The connexion is with the symbolism of the Dwarf in Mythology. He contains everything in Himself, but is unmanifested

In other words, the isolated “Secret Root” of the Priest—his sperma—has become a Holy Guardian Angel. This was accomplished “by formulating the Secret Wisdom of Truth of Hermes in the Silence of the Fool”. Hermes or Thoth is associated with the path of Beth on the Tree of Life, whereas the Fool is associated with the path of Aleph. Both extend from/lead into Kether. Crowley explains the connection between Harpocrates, Aleph, Beth, and Kether in a passage from the Book of Thoth:

Arriving at highly sophisticated theogony, there appears a perfectly clear and concrete symbol of this doctrine. Harpocrates is the God of Silence; and this silence has a very special meaning. (See attached essay, Appendix.) The first is Kether, the pure Being invented as an aspect of pure Nothing. In his manifestation, he is not One, but Two; he is only One because he is 0. He exists; Eheieh, his divine name, which signifies “I Am” or “I shall Be”, is merely another way of saying that he Is Not; because One leads to nowhere, which is where it came from. So the only possible manifestation is in Two, and that manifestation must be in silence, because the number 3, the number of Binah-Understanding-has not yet been formulated. In other words, there is no Mother. All one has is the impulse of this manifestation; and that must take place in silence. That is to say, there is as yet no more than the impulse, which is unformulated; it is only when it is interpreted that it becomes the Word, the Logos. (See Atu I.)

We might say that the Holy Spirit or Holy Guardian Angel—represented here by Aleph—is released from the sperma—represented by I or Yod—upon its dissolution in the “blood” or wine. This resultant Holy Spirit is identical with Kether, which itself represents All (Ain Sof) = None (Ain). It is pure potentiality which can only be turned into some state of affairs by means of the utterance of the Word. To put the same thing another way, the Holy Spirit has been created by the movement from 2 to 0, which we might call the process of mysticism. It can now be turned into a state of affairs by the opposite movement from 0 to 2, which is called magick. The first process is comprehended in the path of Aleph (the Fool), the second in the path of Beth (the Magus). The first requires silence, the second incantation or the Word.

In connection with the same passage from The Book of Thoth we read:

The Fool is also, evidently, an aspect of Pan; but this idea is shewn in his fullest development by Atu XV, whose letter is the semi-vowel A’ain, cognate with Aleph.

This is mirrored in the passage from MITAP we were just considering:

He acquires the Eye-Wand, beholding the acting and being adored. The Inverted Pentagram—Baphomet—the Hermaphrodite fully grown—begets himself on himself as V again.

That the Gnostic Mass is aimed at the production of such a being is given in its title of Liber XV, XV being the Roman numeral associated with the Devil card depicting Baphomet. Baphomet is described in the Creed and in Part VIII of the Mass as the Lion-Serpent. In his commentary to AL II.8, Crowley says, “Harpocrates is also the Dwarf-Soul, the Secret Self of every man, the Serpent with the Lion’s Head.” Again, we see the close association between the Holy Guardian Angel and the Eucharist of the Mass, but rather than being in its unmanifest form as Aleph, it has now developed into its manifest form of Baphomet or the Lion-Serpent. The original serpent or spermatozoon of the Priest dissolved into (N)one, only to reemerge with an added leonine (solar) aspect. It was reduced to 1 (the particle), then to none (at HRILIU becoming Aleph), now to reemerge as 2 with the dual form of Lion-Serpent.

The Lion is associated with Leo, which is ruled by the Sun (Lord Visible and Sensible). This is Horus or the extroverted aspect of Heru-Ra-Ha or the Holy Guardian Angel. The serpent is one of three emblems associated with Scorpio (the others being the eagle and the scorpion). Scorpio is attributed to the path of Nun, to which is assigned Atu XIII, Death. Death is the ordeal of the Second Grade of A∴ A∴, Adeptus, wherein Knowledge & Conversation occurs. The serpentine aspect of the Eucharist therefore represents the destructive or corrosive influence of the Holy Guardian Angel on the aspirant. “Serpent” is also the meaning of “Teth,” the path on the Tree of Life associated with Leo and Atu XI which depicts Beast and Babalon conjoined. This is the introverted or Harpocrates aspect of Heru-Ra-Ha. The union of these two symbols in the path of Teth strongly implies that we are not dealing here with two separate individuals (Lords) but rather with the same principle under two descriptions.

Notice how the dual character of the Eucharist as Lion-Serpent reflects the dual roles of the Priest as Priest of the Sun and Priest of the Lord. It is only by virtue of serving both of these roles that the Priest is able to create a Eucharist embodying both of these principles.

I would like to suggest that while the Lord Secret and Most Holy is the Secret Self or Secret Root of each individual, the Lord Visible and Sensible is the outward, visible, characteristic effect of that very same Self as it utilizes life and death for its own continuance “from generation to generation”. From the other side, while the Sun represents the Word Made Flesh, consciousness in time, or God manifest as sexual generation, the Secret Lord represents the utterly transcendent aspect of that process, that which maintains and promotes its self-identity paradoxically through the very same power of death which nullifies its vehicle of manifestation.

As we have seen previously, that BAPHOMET is an eight-lettered name is significant, as 8 is the number associated with Hod on the Tree of Life. This associates the Eucharist of the Mass with Mercury or Christ. This Mercurial Eucharist is a reflection of the original Mercury which served as the seed or sperma of the operation. It is precisely by virtue of its mercurial function that the Lord Secret and Most Holy is able to “continue knowledge from generation unto generation” as described in the fifth Collect. Since each one of us exists by virtue of such a transmission, the Eucharist is able to serve as an eidolon of the saving power of the Holy Spirit within each of us. Hence BAPHOMET as Lion-Serpent or God Made Flesh serves as an appropriate Christ figure for our cult.

Babalon and the Mass

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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.

What is Thelema?

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Thelema is a religion founded in 1904 by the English poet and mystic, Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), who is regarded as its prophet. Those who follow the path of Thelema are called Thelemites.1

Thelema (Θελημα) is a Greek word for will, and the essential teaching of Thelema is “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” Of this teaching Crowley said,

“Do what thou wilt…” is to bid Stars to shine, Vines to bear grapes, Water to seek its level; man is the only being in Nature that has striven to set himself at odds with himself.2

From this we may infer that the essential teaching of Thelema is that each person ought to live in accordance with nature as expressed through their individual being. In this respect, Thelema is similar to Stoicism, Buddhism, or other religions which teach us to live according to the laws set by nature rather than God or human beings. Yet the Thelemic view of the universe according to Crowley differs in fundamental respects from what is taught in other religions and philosophies.

“Had! The manifestation of Nuit. The unveiling of the company of heaven.” (AL I.1-2)3

The foundation of Thelema is Liber AL vel Legis, which is Latin for Book AL or the Book of the Law.4

The Book of the Law was dictated to Aleister Crowley in Cairo, Egypt in 1904 by a spiritual being that called itself Aiwass. This book declared a new age for humanity, the Aeon of the Child, and proclaimed a new law for the conduct of all human beings: Do what thou wilt.

The universe described by the Book of the Law consists in two irreducible entities or concepts: the totality of possibilities of all kind, and any point of view on those possibilities. The first is symbolized by the Egyptian sky goddess, Nuit, and the second is represented by the Egyptian sun god, Hadit.5

“Every man and every woman is a star.” (AL I.3)

Experience arises when Hadit (the self of each individual) unites with some possibility inherent in Nuit (the spatiotemporal universe). Each person is “an aggregate of such experiences, constantly changing with each fresh event” or a star.6

Crowley describes each individual star or consciousness as an absolute monad: simple, utterly indestructible, as well as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. These are characteristics usually attributed to God, and indeed, Crowley taught that each star was the center and origin of its own universe.7

“For I am divided for love’s sake, for the chance of union.” (AL I.29)

Throughout our lives, and even throughout the course of a day, many events occur that imply oppositions or dualities. We experience pleasant versus unpleasant sensations, sorrowful versus happy occurrences, success versus failure in our endeavors, cruelty versus kindness in our actions, self versus world, self versus others, and many more. But the universe appears to us this way, because it is only by means of opposition that our Hadit or god-self can have experience and learn about itself. While each of us encounters constant opposition from the world and others, this opposition is both necessary and willed.8 From this, the supreme teaching of Thelema follows:9

“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” (AL I.40)

Crowley speaks of the will in two basic senses. On the one hand, each person has to discover for themselves what their purpose in life is. This could involve discovering which particular career or form of service suits your personality best and dedicating yourself wholeheartedly to it.10 It also means being free to express one’s individuality artistically and sexually, to work and to play as suits one’s own nature, and even to move across the face of the earth without interference from others.11 Crowley calls this the finite will or your will in the context of this life.12

Then there is your will in eternity or your infinite will, which is the will of Hadit—your true self—to explore every possibility available to itself, even across many incarnations. Crowley calls this the Great Work or the union of Hadit with Nuit.13

These need not be seen as two separate wills but rather two perspectives on the same will: the will seen from the perspective of this incarnation, where each moment presents us with the choice between doing our will versus not doing it, and the perspective of eternity, wherein every occurrence accords with our will, because every moment is necessary and perfect in and of itself.14

“Love is the law, love under will.” (AL I.57)

Every event whatsoever is an act of love, as each consists in the uniting of Hadit or the divine self of each individual with a possibility inherent in Nuit.15 While it is technically impossible not to do your will (seen from the infinite perspective), it is possible (from the finite perspective) to desire not to do your will, and from this arises suffering.16 It is therefore up to each of us to discover for ourselves what our true will is and to accept and desire to fulfill it rather than thwart it. Crowley calls the methods for achieving this magick.17

“Remember all ye that existence is pure joy; that all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass & are done; but there is that which remains.” (AL II.9)

Since all events are acts of love under will, it follows that, at its very foundation, existence is joyful. Sorrow arises when we think of any two things as opposed to one another. Some one event pleases us so we call it “good,” and another is unpleasant so we call it “bad”. But they are all fundamentally “good,” because they are all the effect of Hadit loving Nuit, which itself is the natural result of each of us doing our will.18 This love of Hadit for Nuit eventually culminates in the union between the two which occurs at death, and therefore “death is the crown of all.”19

While there is more to Thelema than what is presented here, the rest are largely implications or practices intended to achieve these ideals. For further information, the reader is encouraged to explore the resources footnoted in this section.

1 https://oto-usa.org/thelema/
2 “Notes for an Astral Atlas,” in Magick in Theory and Practice (MITAP), Appendix III.
3 Chapters and verses of the Book of the Law are notated AL Chapter.Verse
4 AL is a Hebrew name for God.
5 Introduction to The Book of the Law (Intro).
6 Intro.
7 Intro and New Comment (NC) on AL I.3.
8 NC to AL I.29.
9 NC on AL I.3
10 MITAP (Introduction) and Liber CL (Section I).
11 Liber LXXVII.
12 Liber CL (Section I).
13 Ibid.
14 Intro.
15 Ibid.
16 NC on AL 1.51 and Liber CL.
17 Intro.
18 Djeridensis Comment on AL II.9.
19 NC on AL II.72.

References

Four of wands from the Thoth deck

Four Thelemic Noble Truths

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Four of wands from the Thoth deck

  1. Now, this is joy. It is a preeminent reality. Coming into being is joyful. Enduring is joyful. Passing out of being is joyful.
  2. This is the origination of joy. It is a preeminent reality. It is this love of Nuit that leads to further being, accompanied by passion and delight, seeking pleasure here and there. It is, namely, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for being, and craving for non-being. Every day is the seventh day of creation.
  3. This is the invigoration of joy. It is a preeminent reality. It is the complete dissolution and cessation of precisely that desire that things be other than as they are, for each moment is, in truth, joy.
  4. This is the way leading to the cessation of desire that things are other than as they are. It is a preeminent reality. It is the preeminent course, namely, the knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel and the crossing of the abyss.
Image of a homeless person seeking kindness.

The argument against compassion

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Image of a homeless person seeking kindness.

Please Note: It is up to each individual to decide this question (and all questions regarding Liber AL vel Legis) for themselves by appeal to Crowley’s writings (or however they see fit).

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Crowley’s condemnation of compassion. This condemnation is in the Book of the Law itself (AL II.18-21), and Crowley himself elaborates on it in many places. Here are just two examples:

Compassion, the noblest virtue of the Buddhist, is damned outright by Aiwass. To “suffer with” some other being is clearly to cease to be oneself, to wander from one’s Way. It always implies error, no Point-of-View being the same as any other: and in Kings—leaders and rulers of men—such error is a vice. For it leads straight to the most foolish Rule ever laid down, “Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you.” (Djenerensis Comment to AL II.21)

And:

Of what use is it to perpetuate the misery of Tuberculosis, and such diseases, as we now do? Nature’s way is to weed out the weak … We must therefore go back to Spartan ideas of education; and the worst enemies of humanity are those who wish, under the pretext of compassion, to continue its ills through the generations … Let weak and wry productions go back into the melting-pot, as is done with flawed steel castings. Death will purge, reincarnation make whole, these errors and abortions. Nature herself may be trusted to do this, if only we will leave her alone. (New Comment on AL II.21)

But the condemnation of compassion does not necessarily entail indifference toward the distress of others:

Pity, sympathy and like emotions are fundamentally insults to the Godhead of the person exciting them, and therefore also to your own. The distress of another may be relieved; but always with the positive and noble idea of making manifest the perfection of the Universe. Pity is the source of every mean, ignoble, cowardly vice; and the essential blasphemy against Truth. (“Duty”)

In other words, acts of kindness are permissible if they are carried out for reasons other than pity. It’s not the effect that is condemned but the passion that could motivate it.

Of course one can cavil endlessly over what words mean, but these statements do not strike me as any more ambiguous than statements Crowley makes on subjects such as individual liberty and sexual freedom that many Thelemites take for granted.

The condemnation of compassion is not a standalone claim, something merely tacked on as an afterthought to Thelema. Crowley presented an argument against compassion that proceeds from premises accepted by many Thelemites, viz., love under will and the joyous nature of existence:

(1) “All Events are Acts of Love Under Will.” (DC on AL II.9)

(2) “[Therefore] Hadit now sayeth to all that they should be mindful of the Nature of that which exists; it is pure joy” (Ibid)

(3) “The highest are those who have mastered and transcended accidental environment. They rejoice, because they do their Will; and if any man sorrow, it is clear evidence of something wrong with him.” (NC on AL II.19)

(4) “[Those who suffer] had better “die in their misery”; that is, cease once and for all to react so feebly and wrongly as they do: for such a Point-of-View as they shew forth is not to be endured. It is not truly Hadit at all; not any one Point, but a shifting fulcrum: let it be no more counted among True Things.” (DC on AL II.21)

The argument is a little obscure between (2) and (3). A generous reconstruction might be:

  1. Any change from one thing into another is willed on the part of Hadit. But this is the same thing as Hadit once again loving Nuit, thereby dissolving the previous moment into ecstacy.
  2. So despite appearances, each moment is joyful or blissful. Dukkha is not the preeminent reality; ananda is.
  3. If one fails to perceive this, the fault lies with the individual who is misperceiving things, not with reality itself.
  4. Therefore, don’t feel sorry for the person who is miserable. They’re doing it to themselves.

Leaving aside whether the argument is sound, it is simple and clear enough to understand. That being the case, these seem to be the possible responses to it:

(1) There’s something wrong in AC’s argument here, either the premise or the inferences connecting the premise to the conclusion.

  1. Since the premise is love under will—in other words, a part of Thelema many Thelemites agree is its essence—then if the problem is with the premise, Thelema (at least as many Thelemites seem to understand it) is nonsense. One should probably not be a Thelemite.
  2. If it’s the inferences, then the condemnation of compassion in Liber AL is not what AC thought it was. This challenges the notion, oft repeated by AC himself, that he was in a unique, privileged position to interpret the BotL. (Crowley also denied he was able to exhaust the meaning of the book by means of his own analysis.) It also challenges at least the literal interpretation of The Comment, a Class A text, which O.T.O. policy and the behavior of a lot of Thelemites is based on.
  3. The premise (also) does not mean what AC thought it meant. This leads to the consequences of 1(b) and the additional consequence that there is no reason to agree on what the essence of Thelema even is. Some would undoubtedly celebrate this result.

(2) Both the premises and the inferences are correct. The problem is with those of us who still “suffer with others”. We’re not living in accordance with nature. We can either:

  1. Get our act together and “be Hadit” and “be kings,” or
  2. Choose not to. We’re always free to do that. Aiwass’ word for such people is “slaves”.

(3) Both the premises and the conclusion are correct, but one will just not be consistent on this point. Most followers of most religions aren’t consistent, and cognitive dissonance isn’t exactly rare, so this wouldn’t be anything new. Depending on how they interpret AL II.32, one might choose to fall back on Aiwass’ condemnation of reason.

While I present (2b) and (3) as separate, I think they’re effectively the same. In other words, I think being inconsistent on this particular point is just what AC (and for that matter Aiwass) meant by being a slave.

Another possibility is that there is no good reason to condemn compassion, but you had better do it anyway, because Aiwass commands it.

You disagree with Aiwass—so do all of us.  The trouble is that He can say: “But I’m not arguing; I’m telling you.” (Magick Without Tears, XLVIII)

But I am assuming for the sake of discussion that there is an argument in favor of the position. Crowley seems to agree, otherwise he wouldn’t have presented the argument in the first place.

While I consider it of service to others to show what Crowley said about this issue, why he said what he said, what I perceive to be possible responses to this issue, and what I perceive to be the likely consequences of those responses, I have made an effort not to tell anyone what the best response is. If it appears as though I have attempted to tell anyone what they should do, then that is the result of accident rather than design. It is ultimately up to each individual to decide this question (and all questions regarding Liber AL vel Legis) for themselves by appeal to Crowley’s writings (or however they see fit).

2 of disks from the Thoth deck

Change and Stability

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2 of disks from the Thoth deckHadit’s raison d’être is to explore itself through the artifice of duality. According to the commentaries, this is why the nature of existence is pure joy, and why the character of all change is love. The cardinal sin is to take the presentation of duality as a restriction of my will rather than a vehicle for the exploration of it. For example, we prefer this change and call it good, we dislike that change and call it bad, or we find that change too slow so we call it boring. Yet to understand the universe perfectly and to resist its pressures constitute the virtues of a Master of the Temple. This is analogous to the arahant overcoming greed, hatred, and delusion. But the motivation here is not the cessation of all change (as of parinibbāna) but rather the enjoyment of all change for its own sake, action directed solely unto Nuit, each moment without lust of result. One might think of it on analogy with inertial change of position—which is experimentally indistinguishable from rest.

Orange reflecting glass

On the relation between the finite will and the infinite will

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Orange reflecting glassIt’s in the nature of the human mind to always be in the process of bringing about some new state of affairs. There is a general, indeterminate desire to live, to be, to become, that exists outside of conscious choice. You can call it “conatus” as Spinoza did, “fabrication” as the Buddha did, or “true will” as Crowley did, but I think they’re pointing at the same basic phenomenon. This is why, even though so many people have noticed that life is miserable and full of suffering, suicide is (relatively) rare. Even a person who kills themselves out of despair is operating under the illusion that doing so will bring about a state of affairs better than the one they currently occupy.

But the will does not operate in a vacuum. It operates in a body, through a nervous system, in a context established by genetics and environment. So when we look upon ourselves, we never find ourselves just doing nothing at all. It’s always under some description. We’re usually desiring something at the moment.

(The exceptions—like ennui or angst—are interesting. I don’t know if anyone has ever tried giving a Thelemic interpretation of those experiences.)

“This will (as such) is not conscious. We can only become aware of it, and thus enjoy and learn from the Event, by making an Image of it. Reason is the machine whose function it is to do this.” (Djeridensis Comment on AL II.28-31)

Will informs the Ruach in two senses. Will is the content given to the Ruach, and then the latter must make sense of the former, turning it into concrete programs of action. And then in a deeper sense, the Ruach itself is willed, i.e., it is an expression of true will (as any occurrence of life is). This means that the discovery of one’s true will—or more accurately, the understanding of the operation of true will in one’s own life—requires self-reflection and self-consciousness.

Now when the Ruach reflects itself and attempts to form a concept of this true will, from a certain perspective, it has to fail. For one thing, the very act of reflecting is itself willed and not adequately captured in the reflection. For another, if you’re looking for a representation of the true will, you’ll never produce it, because the true will is infinite. But you can form an idea of it, and that idea consists in what one ideally wants.

There are two senses of this concept. In one sense, you’re thinking about who you would like to be. This is the aspirational concept of will, what Crowley bashes as the “higher self” concept. But there’s another way to use the concept, and that’s in a descriptive capacity. You look at what you actually do and generalize a statement or a word from it. This is hard to accomplish, because we’re not set up to be objective about ourselves. But if you work with another person, you might be able to distill this operation of will in the context of your life—your reason for existing, so to speak—into a statement. And then you can use that statement to help filter your choices in life.

For the individual formulating it, such a statement must, to use Plato’s words, be a moving image of eternity. It has to give a sense or a feeling in the here and now of the basic urge of Hadit toward Nuit, which is beyond all concepts. But it also has to get at that dimension of finite action that strives for the indeterminate. In order to serve this function, it must be (a) actionable but (b) not aimed toward any particular thing like a set of steak knives or a Cadillac El Dorado. It’s a gift you are naturally bringing which has the power to transform the world.

So for example, my own statement along these lines is, “To guard against what is arbitrary so that the true light may shine forth.” At a deep level, I want and have always wanted to live in a world where things and people are free to show themselves exactly as they are, where they are released to themselves to be themselves. But there are many ways to bring this about. The characteristic way I do this is by clearing away what is arbitrary and keeping it at bay. Sometimes this comes out as listening carefully and not judging; other times it comes out as irreverence toward the sedimented layers of custom. But I do it naturally, basically without thinking, thus fulfilling the Thelemic idea of the relationship between the will and reason:

When reason usurps the higher functions of the mind, when it presumes to dictate to the Will what its desires ought to be, it wrecks the entire structure of the star. The Self should set the Will in motion, that is, the Will should only take its orders from within and above. It should not be conscious at all.  (Ibid.)

So my claim is that, in the context of this nervous system, in the context of what we conventionally call “Frater Entelecheia,” this is how infinite will operates. This is how the impersonal pulse of life manifests as a particular person. It takes a different form in other bodies, for other lives, on other planets, etc.

Technically speaking, the world could change such that things and people were always showing themselves for what they are. But it’s not feasible. So in effect, the statement describes an infinite task, a never-ending project which is nevertheless enjoyable, and so it functions as a moving image of eternity, which again, gives an adequate feeling (at least) of the interaction of Hadit and Nuit.

So in a nutshell, that’s how I imagine the philosophical or mystical dimension of Thelema linking up with the practical dimension. If you have no interest in things like Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, but you wanted to know how the concept of true will could help inform your life, this is sort of the stereo manual version of that.

Though it’s worth pointing out, in conclusion, that the two things are not disconnected, either:

“Far better, let him assume this Law to be the Universal Key to every problem of Life, and then apply it to one particular case after another. As he comes by degrees to understand it, he will be astounded at the simplification of the most obscure questions which it furnishes. Thus he will assimilate the Law, and make it the norm of his conscious being; this by itself will suffice to initiate him, to dissolve his complexes, to unveil himself to himself; and so shall he attain the Knowledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel.” (New Comment on AL III.60)

For more on the process of formulating a statement of your finite true will, see my article on Thelemic Union about individual why discovery.

Star spiral

The ground of the distinction between the finite will and the infinite will

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Star spiral1. “[Hadit] hath no Nature of His own, for He is that to which all Events occur.” (Djeridensis Comment on AL II.2)

2. The nature of something is its characteristic behavior, the way it tends to act.

3. Actions are intelligible in terms of their ends. Running and cooking are differentiated by the results they tend to realize. (It’s not necessary for the result to be separate from the doing. Consider the action “standing up.”)

4. Having no nature, Hadit has no characteristic end. (“For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.” AL II.44)

5. But Hadit is not for that reason without activity. (“‘Come unto me’ is a foolish word: for it is I that go.” AL II.7)

6. Hadit is pure going—action done for its own sake. This is the same thing as Hadit having Nuit for his end. “But to love me is better than all things” (AL I.61) “Now Hadit knows Nuit by virtue of his ‘Going’ or ‘Love.’ It is therefore wrong to worship Hadit; one is to be Hadit, and worship Her.” (New Comment to AL II.8)

7. Hadit is the true self of the aspirant. (“Thou who art I beyond all I am, who hast no nature and no name…” Liber XV)

8. The activity of the true self is the true will. (“…the Adept will be free to concentrate his deepest self, that part of him which unconsciously orders his true Will…” Liber Samekh)

9. My true will being infinite—having no goal other than Nuit—it cannot be captured by any finite expression, not even a single word.

10. This is the ground for the distinction between finite will and infinite will which Crowley makes in Liber CL: “And to each will come the knowledge of his finite will, whereby one is a poet, one prophet, one worker in steel, another in jade. But also to each be the knowledge of his infinite Will, his destiny to perform the Great Work, the realization of his True Self.”

11. But the distinction between the finite will and the infinite will is a distinction of thought, not a real distinction. In other words, the difference between the infinite will and the finite will is a difference made only by the finite will. This is because the infinite will—almost by definition—can’t have anything to do with other than itself or its own pure activity.