Aleister Crowley mentions three ways in which a person should prepare to receive the sacrament of the Eucharist: chastity, fasting, and continual aspiration. With regard to the preparations for such Sacraments, the Catholic Church has maintained well enough the traditions of the true Gnostic Church in whose keeping the secrets are. Chastity is a condition;…
Another reason to practice Liber Resh
In the Platonic tradition, the Sun is a symbol of unity. It is the visible and sensible analog of the One Itself which gives unity in the purely intelligible realm. This One Itself transcends being and non-being. In fact it transcends all opposition whatsoever and is the sole cause of anything being whatever it is….
The Power Behind the Mass
My talk on Eucharistic magick is online now. It includes an in depth analysis of Sections VI-VIII of Liber XV: The Gnostic Mass. The claim I make about the Mass—if I were to state it as succinctly as possible—is that the Mass was intended, in part, to bring into physical manifestation the spiritual power which…
Two Essential Patterns in Crowley’s Spirituality
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…
The Food of the Gods
Ever since I had the insight that led me to write the short post on Harpocrates, the implications of it have spread like an invasive weed throughout all the rest of my thinking and perception. It made its way into my post on the upward and downward paths in the Mass. It showed up in…
The Upward and Downward Paths in the Gnostic Mass
The way up and the way down is one and the same. — Heraclitus, Fragment 60 One way to understand Thelema is as an account of the interplay between the upward path and the downward path. The path up is variously described as waking up, the union of the individual with God, Knowledge and Conversation…
AHIH and Liber V vel Reguli
When I was creating my Kether diagram, I was thinking about possible elemental attributions for AHIH, similar to how they’re attributed to ADNI and YHVH. A and I seem obvious; they could just be the same as they are in ADNI and ALHIM. A – AirH – ?I – EarthH – ? That order—air, _________,…
The Concept of “God” in Thelema
Now the multiplying of the infinitely great by the infinitely small results in SOME UNKNOWN FINITE NUMBER EXTENDED IN AN UNKNOWN NUMBER OF CATEGORIES. It happened, when this our Great inversion took place, from the essence of all nothingness to finity extended in innumerable categories, that an incalculably vast system was produced. Merely by chance,…
Harpocrates and the Gnostic Mass
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….
The Symbolism of the O.T.O. Lamen
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…