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.
Hegel was not a magician. He was a late-18th/early-19th century philosopher in the idealist tradition (a branch of thought taking influence from Descartes, Berkeley, and Hume, but which is usually seen as having its origin with the Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant).
But it was after I had been interested in Hegel for over a decade that I read Glenn Magee’s book, Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition. (You can read the introduction of the book here for free. It actually provides a pretty good orientation for how Hermetism differs from Gnostism and traditional Christianity.)
Magee persuaded me that Hegel’s philosophy of Absolute Idealism owed at least as much to Renaissance Hermetism (or Hermeticism as it’s sometimes called) as it did to rational thinkers such as Hume or Kant.
Magee understands Hermetism as a broad spiritual current which has a theological basis in the Corpus Hermeticum but which also includes currents such as Qabalah, alchemy, and magic.
Pretty much everything we consider to be the western magical tradition has its origins in Renaissance Hermetism, in particular the synthesis given to it by Cornelius Agrippa. (Really the only component missing from Agrippa’s synthesis is the tarot.)
For more on this I highly recommend Frances Yates’s Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. Certain aspects of her work are considered controversial now. I recommend reading Copenhaver, Hanegraaff, and Kingsley alongside her.
One of the main impacts Magee’s book had on me when I read it is that—oddly enough—it legitimized occultism for me.
Hegel was a philosopher I had spent over a decade studying both in and outside of academia. I considered a lot of my philosophical intuitions to be “Hegelian”. The experience was a little bit like having lived in a house for several years and then one day discovering a secret sub-basement that wasn’t on any of the building plans.
I was becoming familiar with the Qabalah right around the time I read Magee’s book (largely due to the work of my friend Daniel Ingram who also legitimized magick for me), so I recognized the Tree of Life in its usual top-to-bottom arrangement. But I was surprised to find out that there had been alternative arrangements of the sephiroth over time, including one in which they were presented as concentric circles.
For instance, Johann Jakob Brucker gave them a circular arrangement in volume 2 of his influential Historia Critica Philosophiae (1742).
This diagram was Brucker’s attempt to illustrate a concept from the Lurianic tradition of Kabbalah, according to which each new act of creation or manifestation in the world is the result of a simultaneous contraction and expansion.
Isaac Luria and his followers envisioned the Ain Sof—the limitless infinity we previously identified with Nuit—as an infinite sphere in which a smaller sphere of empty space came into being through the tsimtsum, a primordial contraction or withdrawal of God.
It is into this empty space that God injects a ray of light which differentiates itself into the classical ten sephiroth. These were thought of as concentric circles of light filling the space within God created by the primordial contraction.
The first definite being that appears in the wake of the tsimtsum is Adam Kadmon (macroprosopus in the previous post). Adam Kadmon exists above the four worlds and mediates the light of Ain Sof into them.
Adam of the Bible—Adam Ha-Rishon—is an imperfect earthly embodiment of Adam Kadmon. While Adam Kadmon is spirit outside of space and time, Adam Ha-Rishon is spirit developing in nature, from the fall in the Garden of Eden and the loss of the immediate relationship to God, eventually to the recovery of that relationship in religion and mysticism (namely, Kabbalah).
(Ra-Hoor-Khuit is to Chaos as Adam Kadmon is to Adam Ha-Rishon.)
The implication of this concentric arrangement is that the material universe, individuals, and human history are not outside of the divine. Everything is in a certain sense “in” God. It’s just there in a corrupted or fallen state which has to be rectified over time.
This sense of us being in God, of directly participating in the divine all the time whether we know it or not, can be occulted by the traditional top-down arrangement of the sephiroth, where it looks as though Kether, Ain Sof, and Ain are somehow way above us mere earthlings.
“A View from Kether” by IAO131
A few years later when I got into Thelema, I was pleased to see someone else had taken an interest in a similar arrangement. IAO131 created a diagram similar to Brucker’s in which Kether surrounds and contains the other sephiroth. My own version was inspired by his insofar as the sephiroth on the lateral pillars are depicted as semicircles rather than complete spheres.
What these concentric representations of the Tree of Life share in common is the implication that the reality we find ourselves in is one formed from an overarching, primordial, divine unity which divides itself.
There is some evidence in Crowley’s writings to support this view of our reality being the result of a self-division of God.
To know itself, each such Star, or Soul, must eat of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, by accepting labour and pain as its portion, and death as its doom. That is, it must reveal its nature to itself by formulating that nature as duality. It must express itself by a series of symbolic gestures ostensibly external to it, just as a painter reveals one facet of his Delight-Diamond by covering a canvas with colours in such a way that the picture seems at first sight to represent something outside himself. It must, in fact, repeat for itself the original Magick of Nuith and Hadith which created it.
New Comment on AL I.29 (emphasis mine)
AL I.29—of which this passage is a commentary—reads, “For I am divided for love’s sake, for the chance of union.”
We find in this passage echoes of the Lurianic idea of the fall as a temporary but necessary tragedy resulting from the diremption of an original, absolute whole (in this case the “Star, or Soul” of the individual).
The way to overcome this division is to repeat for ourselves the “original Magick of Nuith and Hadith” which created the star.
In this passage, Crowley presents the path toward liberation in artistic terms. The task is to see the world and the events in it, not as alien to our desires, but rather as vehicles for the manifestation of them. We are to view matter as (akin to) artistic medium.
The world loses its alien, painful character when it is understood and willed. When we can see the world as our own artistic creation, we have achieved liberation.
This is an interpretation of the Thelemic path of liberation I explored in my talk on the Magical Power of Art.
It was with something like this in mind that I formulated my own version of the concentric Tree of Life. However, unlike Brucker or IAO131, I reversed the order of the sephiroth. Rather than having Kether on the outside and Malkuth in the center, Malkuth is on the outside and Kether is in the center.
As it turns out, my reasons for doing this are numerous and complex. But before explaining any of them in detail, it’s worth mentioning that old adage that “the map is not the territory.”
I don’t believe sephiroth literally exist, let alone whether they are really, in any kind of metaphysical sense, related to one another externally or internally, or whether Malkuth can really be said to be at the center or not. That’s not really the point of a diagram.
In this context, the purpose of the diagram is to serve as a heuristic. It’s an attempt to convey some complex ideas in a simplified format that makes them easier to comprehend.
There could well be certain aspects of Thelema that are better captured by having Kether on the outside and Malkuth in the center, just as there are aspects that are better captured by the usual hierarchical (top-down) arrangement.
All of that being said, there are a lot of spiritual, metaphysical, theological, and soteriological assumptions packed into this simple decision to put Kether at the center and Malkuth on the outside.
Some of them require a lot of explanation and carry with them a lot of implications, so rather than go into any of them in depth right now, I’ll just list them succinctly.
Repeat = Defeat. Let’s present something familiar in an unfamiliar format to discover new things about it.
The journey is inward, out outward. Crowley described the work of A∴A∴ (in contrast with the work of O.T.O.) as a process of going inward toward the three supernal sephiroth. Without taking it too literally, that implies a certain spatial relationship. And since all the sephiroth are to be found “in” Malkuth, this links Thelema with what might be termed a chthoniccounter-current in Western mysticism.
The Khabs is in the Khu, not the Khu in the Khabs. Again, this implies a particular spatial relationship. This also implies that divine reality is not some original whole we were cut off from and have to get back to. This core spiritual idea sharply differentiates Thelema from Hegelian Idealism, Gnosticism, or even from Kabbalah. In Thelema the individual really is primary and irreducible in a way that you just don’t find in those other traditions.
Thelema is about 2, not about 1. It’s all about the relationship between Hadit and Nuit. In order for there to be a love relationship between Hadit and Nuit, Nuit must be other than Hadit. That doesn’t work if Hadit and Nuit are merely parts of a primordial, original whole.
It’s all about the going. Experience matters. Change is real. It is powerful, it is divine, and it is meaningful. The O.T.O. teaching on the Path in Eternity is as central to Thelema as are the teachings of A∴A∴ on the Holy Guardian Angel and the Abyss.
It’s magick, not just mysticism. Going implies change, change implies magick, magick implies the Will. Willing implies traditionally masculine qualities such as mastery, overcoming, and expansiveness in addition to the feminine characteristics of dissolution and surrender that are particular to mysticism. Both sides are necessary for a complete understanding of Thelema.
I don’t know yet if I’m going to write posts about all of these. If there are particular ones you definitely want to hear about, though, let me know in a comment.
In the last post we saw that the star or soul of each individual is composed of two parts: the Khabs and the Khu. The Khabs is the manifestation of a distinct individual within the context of Nuit. The Khabs is the “house” of Hadit—your individual point of view—and as such it is the spiritual essence of who you are as an individual. We also saw that the Khabs is identical with the supernal triad on the Tree of Life, and as such it takes a triadic, reflective structure.
The Khu, on the other hand, is the “magical garment” of the star.
Khabs is the secret Light or L.V.X.; the Khu is the magical entity of a man […] This ‘star’ or ‘Inmost Light’ is the original, individual, eternal essence. The Khu is the magical garment which it weaves for itself, a ‘form’ for its Being Beyond Form, by use of which it can gain experience through self-consciousness
Old and New Comments on AL I.8
Each of us is Hadit, the core of our Khabs, our Star, one of the Company of Heaven; but this Khabs needs a Khu or Magical Image, in order to play its part in the Great Drama. This Khu, again, needs the proper costume, a suitable ‘body of flesh’, and this costume must be worthy of the Play.
New Comment on AL II.70
The Khabs represents the essence of who each of us is. It is possessed of the attributes of light, originality, individuality, and immortality. The Khu on the other hand is the mode by which the Khabs interacts with Nuit. If the Khabs is monistic (completely self-sufficient), the Khu is relational. It doesn’t exist without the interaction between the Khabs and Nuit.
And for that matter, the relationship between Khabs (or Hadit) and Nuit does not exist without the Khu. In other words, experience or embodiment of some kind is the necessary condition of the love “play” between Nuit and Hadit.
One answer to the question “Why do we incarnate?” is that incarnation (whether on this plane or some other) is a necessary precondition for Hadit’s going. In a subsequent post we can look at what some of the consequences of that are.
Unlike the Khabs of an individual which cannot be seen (arguably not even by the individual whose Khabs it is), since the Khu is relational, it is also manifest and can be seen either by the individual whose Khu it is or by others.
Also, since the Khu is a function of the interaction between the Khabs and Nuit, it is experiential and elastic. It grows and shrinks and changes in complexity in accordance with how much and what kind of experiences of Nuit one chooses to have.
“Every man and every woman is a star,” that is, an aggregate of such experiences, constantly changing with each fresh event, which affects him or her either consciously or subconsciously.
“Introduction” to the Book of the Law
the more complex the Khu of the Star, the greater the man, and the keener his sense of his need to achieve it.
New Comment on AL II.74
If the Khabs is the supernal triad on the Tree of Life, the Khu is composed of the subsequent seven sephiroth.
With each incarnation, the sephiroth below Binah are recreated anew, following the path of the Flaming Sword. At death, the lower sephiroth are jettisoned, and the essence of the Khabs is completely withdrawn back into the supernal triad.
The exception to this is the individual who, through mystical and magical discipline, has opened and strengthened the pathways to their own Khabs.
[T]he Supernal Triad constitutes (or, rather, is an image of) the “eternal” Essence of a man [i.e., his Khabs]; that is, it is the positive expression of that ultimate “Point of View” which is and is not and neither is nor is not etc. Quite indestructible. Now when a man spends his life (a) building up and developing the six Sephiroth of the Ruach so that they cohere closely in proper balance and relation, (b) in forging, developing and maintaining a link of steel between this solid Ruach and that Triad, Death merely means the dropping off of the Nephesch (Malkuth) so that the man takes over his instrument of Mind (Ruach) with him to his next suitably chosen vehicle.Magick without Tears, chapter 38
Appear on the throne of Ra! Open the ways of the Khu! Lighten the ways of the Ka!
AL III.37
This is how the magical memory of a star can be built up over a series of incarnations.
This doctrine seems to imply that wisdom is not just passed down through the historical record but can also accumulate in certain stars on the Akashic plane.
Every star is already irreducibly individual and therefore unequal with any other star. But additionally it is also possible certain stars are “great beings” who, for reasons of having built up a magical memory over time, are possessed of extraordinary wisdom.
[C]ertain vast “stars” (or aggregates of experience) may be described as Gods. One of these is in charge of the destinies of this planet for periods of 2,000 years.“Introduction” to the Book of the Law
It’s possible Crowley understood this as the mechanism by which “Secret Chiefs” are created.
It would explain why he used names such as “Aiwass” and “V.V.V.V.V.” both as aspects of himself and as names of separate individuals. “Aleister Crowley” was merely the latest expression or mode (Khu) of an essence (Khabs) of which Aiwass and V.V.V.V.V. were others.
Crowley elaborates on metempsychosis inLiber Aleph, “De Adeptis R. C. Escatologia,” which should be studied closely by initiates of the III° of Mysteria Mystica Maxima.
But it is this continual extension and withdrawal of the Khu—and hence the relations of the Khabs with Nuit—which is visually depicted again and again in the movie.
Another relationship I establish at the beginning of the video is between the soul (which in Thelema is called the star) and the Tree of Life of Qabalah. (I use Kabbalah when talking about the Jewish mystical tradition itself and Qabalah when talking about the interpretation of it by the Golden Dawn and Crowley.)
Tree of Life/Qabalah Basics
That such a relationship exists shouldn’t be a surprise. The Tree of Life diagram is meant to show the relationship between the soul (the microcosm) and the four worlds (the macrocosm).
The bottom circle or sephira, Malkuth (“kingdom”), is Assiah (“the world of action”). It is often identified with the material world, although for reasons we’ll get into later, that is not necessarily the case in Thelema.
The microcosmic correlate of Malkuth/Assiah—the part of the soul that resides there—is the Nephesh. This is sometimes translated as “animal soul”. It is the part of the individual that is sentient, i.e., which experiences sensations and feelings.
Going upward from Malkuth, the next six sephiroth are Yesod (“foundation”), Hod (“splendor”), Netzach (“victory”), Tiphareth (“beauty”), Geburah (“severity”), and Chesed (“mercy”). Together they comprise the macrocosmic realm of Yetzirah (“the formed world”). Yetzirah is also known as Zeir Anpin or Microprosopus, the Lesser Countenance (in contrast with Arich Anpin/Macroprosopus).
The part of the soul that resides in Yetzirah is called the Ruach (“spirit”). It is typically identified with the moral soul or the discriminating capacity.
Above that we have Binah (“understanding”) and Chokmah (“wisdom”). Together they comprise Briah (“the world of creation”). This is analogous to the world soul of Neoplatonic philosophy.
The part of the soul that resides in Binah is called the Neschamah, the intelligence or divine intuition. The part of the soul that resides in Chokmah is the Chiah, which in Thelema it is identified with the creative will or impulse of Jechidah.
Jechidah is the “quintessential principle of the soul,” and it is identical with Kether, the uppermost sephira on the diagram, which is analogous to the One of Neoplatonic philosophy.
All three of the “supernal” sephiroth—Binah, Chokmah, and Kether—transcend time, but Kether also transcends being and non-being. It transcends opposition all-together.
“Beyond” Kether there are the purely transcendent, incomprehensible aspects of divinity, which in Kabbalah are called Ain (Nothingness) and Ain Sof (without limit/infinity). The Hermetic Qabalah of Knorr von Rosenroth and the Golden Dawn includes Ain Sof Aur (limitless light) as a third “negative veil”.
In Kabbalah Ain and Ain Sof (being and nothingness, essentially) are considered to be identical with one another, and Ain Sof is for all intents and purposes identical with Kether.
Qabalah and Thelema
Kether (Heru-Ra-Ha) as the Manifestation of the Interaction between Nuit (infinity) and Hadit(the inverse of infinity)(more…)
Thelema is not traditional Jewish mysticism, although Crowley used the terminology and the framework of Qabalah in order to express his own ideas and intentions.
So you find the same idea of a macrocosm divided up into four worlds, and there are parts of the soul which correspond to or “live” in those four worlds, so that the individual’s life or experience is divided across different realms which are ultimately (mystically) one realm.
In Thelema the macrocosm is composed of the interplay or interaction between two principles, Nuit and Hadit.
Nuit represents the sum total of all possibility. She is infinite space. Hadit represents any particular point of view on those possibilities. He is the infinitely small point.
Nuit is analogous to Ain Sof (infinity) in classical Kabbalah, and Hadit is analogous to Ain (nothingness or the inverse of infinity). Their interaction gives rise to Ra-Hoor-Khuit (sometimes also called Heru-Ra-Ha to include Hoor-paar-kraat), the Crowned and Conquering Child, who is also Ain Sof Aur or Kether.
Since Kether is “pregnant” with Tetragrammaton, you get the familiar breakdown into the remaining nine other sephiroth and the four worlds.
The Khabs and the Tree of Life
In Thelema the immortal soul of the individual is called the star. This comes from AL I.3 (The Book of the Law, chapter 1, verse 3):
Every man and every woman is a star.
Crowley subdivides the soul or star according to the usual schema of Jechidah, Chiah, Neschamah, Ruach, and Nephesh, but he introduces another subdivision based upon AL I.8-9:
The Khabs is in the Khu, not the Khu in the Khabs. Worship then the Khabs, and behold my light shed over you!
Khabs and Khu are Egyptian terms. In the context of Thelema, Khabs is the “House” of Hadit. Hadit as we saw is the individual point of view on Nuit. Khabs then is the manifestation of that unique interaction. You can think of it almost as the light given off by the energetic interaction between Hadit and Nuit. And in fact in the Golden Dawn—where Crowley would have first encountered this term—Khabs was used as synonymous with light as in the phrase Khabs am Pekht, which means “light in extension” (cf. Ain Sof Aur above).
In Thelema the whole of the supernal triad—Kether, Chokmah, and Binah—is considered to be the Khabs. Kether is the essence of the Khabs, taken in and of itself, which is also called Jechidah. Chokmah represents Chiah, the creative impulse or will of the Jechidah. In other words, Chokmah/Chiah represents the mode of going or expression which is characteristic of this particular Khabs or soul. And finally Binah represents the Neschamah of the Khabs. It is the intelligence or intuition of what the Khabs wishes to discover about itself.
It might help to translate these terms into those of ordinary self-conscious.
I have a self which seems stable over time. This is like the Jechidah or Kether. That self or subject is capable of generating thoughts and other mental states. The analog in the supernal triad would be Chiah or Chokmah. Finally, when I hear thoughts in my head, I am able (if I am not insane!) to recognize them as mine. This capacity of self-recognition is analogous to Neschamah or Binah.
Both ordinary self-consciousness and the supernal triad have this triadic or circular structure.
That’s plenty for today. Here are the main takeaways:
In Thelema the soul of the individual is called the star.
The star is divided up into the Khabs and the Khu.
The Khabs is the House of Hadit (the individual point of view on Nuit).
The Khabs is identified by Crowley with the supernal triad of the Tree of Life: Kether, Chokmah, and Binah.
Next time we’ll consider the Khu and its relationship to the Khabs and the Tree of Life.
I was recently inspired to create an animated movie based upon my understanding of the Path in Eternity and its relation to certain magical formulae.
The phrase Path in Eternity comes from a passage in Magick Without Tears where Aleister Crowley is describing the initiation rituals of the Man of Earth degree of Ordo Templi Orientis.
Let us begin at the beginning. What is a Dramatic Ritual? It is a celebration of the Adventures of the God whom it is intended to invoke. (The Bacchae of Euripides is a perfect example of this.) Now, in the O.T.O., the object of the ceremonies being the Initiation of the Candidate, it is he whose Path in Eternity is displayed in dramatic form.
Magick Without Tears, Chapter 13, The System of the O.T.O.
He then describes this Path in Eternity in relation to the six sub-degrees of the Man of Earth in the following way:
O° – Minerval – The Ego is attracted to the Solar System.
I° – Initiation – The Child experiences Birth.
II° – Consecration – The Man experiences Life.
III° – Devotion – He experiences Death.
IV° – Perfection, or Exaltation – He experiences the World beyond Death.
P.I. – Perfect Initiate – This entire cycle of Point-Events is withdrawn into Annihilation.
There are three important conclusions to draw here.
First, as in the mystery schools of the ancient world, the purpose of O.T.O. initiation—in particular, this series of six sub-degrees that comprises the Man of Earth—is to introduce a single individual or candidate to a single god. The main difference between the O.T.O. initiations and those predecessor schools is that in O.T.O., the god the candidate is being introduced to is none other than themselves. In Thelema, the term for this god—the divine part of each individual—is the Secret Self or Hadit.
Second, the purpose of the Man of Earth initiations is to dramatize the “path” taken by this god: a complete cycle in which the soul is drawn into incarnation, dies, and is withdrawn back into nothingness. The initiations are conducted in service to and with reverence toward that way of going which is characteristic of the Hadit which all of us truly is. The Path in Eternity is that toward which the entire series of rituals is oriented. The rituals derive their meanings from that Path.
Third, that path has a characteristic shape. It’s cyclical. It’s a passage from silence to speech and back to silence again. This is the exact same path as that taken by the Holy Guardian Angel which Crowley describes in Liber DCLXXI vel Pyramidos and which I quote at the beginning of the video:
For from the Silence of the Wand Unto the Speaking of the Sword, And back again to the Beyond, This is the toil & the Reward. This is the Path of HVA—Ho! This is the Path of IAO.
So one of the first points I’m making in the video is that the Man of Earth series of initiations connects at a deep level with one of the core concepts of Thelema, namely, the idea of the Secret Self aka Hadit aka the Holy Guardian Angel.
The particular way in which it connects with that core concept is to show the characteristic going of that god, and to show how that way of going makes contact with an individual human life. In other words the conditions we find ourselves subject to—birth, aging, and death—are not incidental or exterior to our divinity. In fact they are necessary components of the way our divinity expresses itself.
This helps us begin to make sense of another one of the claims Crowley makes about these rituals:
The main objects of the instruction were two. It was first necessary to explain the universe and the relations of human life therewith. Second, to instruct every man how best to adapt his life to the cosmos and to develop his faculties to the utmost advantage. I accordingly constructed a series of rituals, Minerval, Man, Magician, Master-Magician, Perfect Magician and Perfect Initiate, which should illustrate the course of human life in its largest philosophical aspect. I begin by showing the object of the pure soul, “One, individual and eternal”, in determining to formulate itself consciously, or, as I may say, to understand itself.
Aleister Crowley, Confessions
This larger, universal context in which Crowley wishes to situate or orient the individual human life is the aforementioned Path in Eternity, which in turn is the characteristic way of going of Hadit.
One of the salient differences between Thelema and the Buddhism of the Pali suttas is that in Buddhism incarnation is seen as something to be overcome and abandoned, in Thelema it serves the purpose of the self-realization of a higher, divine consciousness.
Thelema has that Buddhistic idea of seeing through the illusion of a separate self. When everything you consider to be “you”—what in Buddhism are called the aggregates or heaps—is seen to rightfully belong to Nuit, then the way is clear for the true self (Hadit) to unite with Nuit. This is what I’ve called the path of erotic liberation or surrender to the divine feminine.
But that’s only one half of the story. If we leave it there, we get a Buddhistic version of Thelema, but then you’re left wondering why Hadit would have created the sense of separation from Nuit in the first place. It’s what I referred to as hiding your car keys on yourself in my talk Light of the Shadow.
The idea in Thelema is that what you conventionally call “you” is not simply an obstacle to be overcome but instead serves a divine purpose. In the Noble Eightfold Path, you see permanently through the illusion of self, you permanently relinquish attachment, and it’s like pulling the eject lever on the cockpit. You’re off the ride. That’s not the Thelemic story.
In Thelema “you” (conventionally so-called) serve an intermediary function between the divine and itself. Once the true nature of sensation is understood, you become a daimon or a magician or a navi (a forth-speaker on behalf of the divine). But you can only serve that function once the delusion of separation from the divine has been destroyed.
As I said in “Light of the Shadow,” we sometimes operate under the delusion that the senses separate our consciousness from reality or cut us off from the truth. This is actually a common sense notion. But if the senses are themselves divine, then the problem is not that we have senses; the problem is that we don’t know how to use our senses properly—with the result that they end up using us instead. And so the path of liberation requires a kind of “aesthetic education” (after the Greek word for sense perception, aisthēsis).
Debate not of the image, saying Beyond! Beyond! One mounteth unto the Crown by the moon and by the Sun, and by the arrow, and by the Foundation, and by the dark home of the stars from the black earth. (I.9)
So also the light that is absorbed. One absorbs little and is called white and glistening; one absorbs all and is called black. Therefore, O my darling, art thou black. (I.18-19)
Then said Adonai: Thou hast the Head of the Hawk, and thy Phallus is the Phallus of Asar. Thou knowest the white, and thou knowest the black, and thou knowest that these are one. But why seekest thou the knowledge of their equivalence? And he said: That my Work may be right. (I.55-55)
But she stirred not; only by my kisses I defiled her so that she turned to blackness before me. (II.10)
Then came an eagle from the abyss of glory and overshadowed him. So black was the shadow that he was no more visible. (II.31)
I have descended, O my darling, into the black shining waters, and I have plucked Thee forth as a black pearl of infinite preciousness. (III.60)
Thus spake the Magister V.V.V.V.V. unto Adonai his God, as they played together in the starlight over against the deep black pool that is in the Holy Place of the Holy House beneath the Altar of the Holiest One. (IV.15)
For Thou art He! Yea, Thou shalt swallow up Asi and Asar, and the children of Ptah. Thou shalt pour forth a flood of poison to destroy the works of the Magician. Only the Destroyer shall devour Thee; Thou shalt blacken his throat, wherein his spirit abideth. Ah, serpent Apep, but I love Thee! (IV.25)
I felt the red lips of nature and the black lips of perfection. Like sisters they fondled me their little brother; they decked me out as a bride; they mounted me for Thy bridal chamber. (IV.31)
Through the midnight thou art dropt, O my child, my conqueror, my sword-girt captain, O Hoor! and they shall find thee as a black gnarl’d glittering stone, and they shall worship thee. (V.6)
They that drink thereof are smitten of disease; the abomination hath hold upon them, and their torment is like the thick black smoke of the evil abode. (V.62)
I don’t think comparing Thelema with Tantra or Jungian psychology is a good way to illuminate or create understanding of Thelema.
For example, I don’t necessarily think it adds to our understanding of Liber V vel Reguli to know that the Muladhara chakra is attributed to Ganesh; nor do I think it necessarily adds to our understanding of crossing the Abyss to say it involves the “reconstellation of the Ego”. This is what I’ve referred to as the “connect-the-dots” approach in my essay on erotic liberation.
Someone who really understood Thelema should be able to explain something from Tantra or depth psychology in Thelemic terms (or at the very least relate it back to Thelema and its methods). It’s not an accident that the interpretation usually goes in the opposite direction.
Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot, and you were seeking to initiate into a Tantric lineage or receive some kind of certification in Jungian analysis. Your instructor in that discipline probably would not accept as proof of your understanding of a concept if you translated it into Thelemic terms.
This is by virtue of the fact that you cannot understand an unknown or obscure concept by connecting it with another concept which is equally or more unknown or obscure. You understand it by connecting it with something simpler, and in the context of a discipline, something more fundamental to that discipline (i.e., a first principle).
But it’s also because disciplines such as Tantra and depth psychology already have an understanding of their first principles (the ultimate purpose served by the tradition and how its methods relate to the fulfillment of that purpose). They also have methods of communicating that knowledge (transmission in Tantra or institutional certification in the case of depth psychology) to ensure that the integrity of the teaching is more or less maintaining. But Thelema’s first principles are usually poorly understood by Thelemites, and its means of maintaining the integrity of its teachings are shaky to say the least. This latter fact is often even applauded as a symbol of how free Thelemites are to “do their will”.
I sometimes wonder if the reason Thelemites are always trying to translate Thelemic terms into Tantric or Jungian terms (or terms from any other tradition) is because they are reacting (consciously or otherwise) to the lack of rigor in their own spiritual tradition by trying to locate themselves in a better defined tradition.
The three feminine principles are most conspicuous in the Collects. There’s the Moon in the third Collect, the Lady in the fourth, and the Earth in the sixth.
Each feminine principle is the counterpart of a masculine principle. The Moon is the counterpart of the Sun, the Lady (ostensibly Nuit) is the counterpart of the Secret Lord (Hadit), and the Earth is the counterpart of Chaos (the sole viceregent of the Sun upon the Earth, i.e., the microcosmic counterpart of the macrocosmic Lord in the Universe).
If we assume each of the three feminine principles can be represented by each of the three mother letters of the Hebrew alphabet, then it stands to reason that the Lady (Nuit) is א, mercury, or air; the Earth is מ or salt; and the Moon is ש, sulphur, or blood.
The function of the three feminine principles—which are also the three alchemical principles—is evinced in part III of the Mass, “The Ceremony of the Introit.” In terms of the performance of the ritual, this is actually the first part. It starts when the Deacon admits the congregants and ends with the congregants saying “So mote it be” after the Priestess consecrates the lance and declares the Lord (Chaos) to be present among us.
As I showed in the previous article, the purpose of the Ceremony of the Introit is to invest the Priest with the powers of the three Lords (Hadit, the Sun, and Chaos). In particular, its most important function is to devote the will of the Priest—as represented by his lance—exclusively to the grail of the Priestess. This perfects his will and sets it on a course, the natural terminus of which is its annihilation in the Cup of Babalon. But this process of investing the Priest with these functions and devoting him to the divine feminine is carried out entirely by the Priestess herself, aided by the two Children.
After the recitation of the Creed, the Priestess enters, flanked by the two Children. The first Child enters with the ewer and the salt. Salt is מ which is also the feminine principle of Earth. Then the Priestess (here called the Virgin) enters with the sword and the paten. The sword is א, mercury, or air; the paten is a solar symbol. Then the second Child enters with the censer and perfume, indicating ש, sulphur, or fire/blood.
Facing the congregation and Deacon, the Priestess says, “Greeting of Earth and Heaven!” and all give the Hailing Sign of a Magician, which is a symbol of the sacrament of marriage. She is in a sense declaring the purpose of the ritual, which is the union of the microcosm (earth) with the macrocosm (heaven), which will be carried out by means of the formula of IAO.
The Priestess places the paten on the altar before the graal. She is not in possession of the graal at this time, since she is not performing the function of Babalon. Her first function is mercurial as indicated by the sword (א, alchemical mercury, or air) and the serpentine circumambulations. As has been pointed out, the three and a half circumambulations indicate her identity with kundalini and her power to raise the Priest to his spiritual vocation.
To understand the next part, you need to look at Magick, Part Two, chapter IV, “The Scourge, the Dagger, and the Chain.” That chapter shows that the three alchemical principles as embodied in the three magical weapons are used to prepare the magician for a magical operation. The scourge is ש, sulfur, or fire. It’s used against the body to invigorate the Nephesh, to keep one awake and ardent. The dagger is א, alchemical mercury, or air. It symbolizes alertness and is the ability of the magician to know when he is on task (concentrated) or not. Finally the chain is מ or salt. It represents fixity of attention or mindfulness of the task at hand.
The Lustral Water! Let thy flood Cleanse me—lymph, marrow, & blood! The Scourge, the Dagger & the Chain Purge body, breast & brain! The Fire Informing! Let the Oil Balance, assain, assoil!
Liber Pyramidos
Having struck herself with the scourge, let her blood with the dagger, and having put the chain around her neck, the magician would then anoint herself with the Holy Oil (see Magick, Part Two, chapter V). This consecrates the magician to the Great Work.
All of this happens in its own way in the Ceremony of the Introit.
First the Priestess draws her sword and pulls down the veil of the tomb. This is the only part of the ritual where the Priestess uses the sword. She’s using it to free the Priest from his natural condition, as represented by his entombment. As Crowley says in De Lege Libellum, that “which men call life is but a shadow of that true Life, [their] birthright, and the gift of the Law of Thelema.” In other words what we call life is more like death. We “feel little; what is, is balanced by weak joys” (AL I.31). Thelema is a spiritual path which leads us to live perhaps for the first time, but it requires a passage through what appears to most people as a kind of death. This spiritual death—erotic destruction—is what is dramatized in the Mass at the opposite side of the room at the altar. So the tomb and the altar spiritually and spatially balance one another. (See Magick in Theory and Practice, ch VIII, on how objects in a ritual ought to balance one another.)
But the journey begins with discernment. You have to know that there is something else besides the ordinary life in order to pursue the extraordinary one. That is in essence what the Priestess is doing on behalf of the Priest here. She is cutting away the veil of darkness around him and calling him forth to a new spiritual vocation. And of course this being a cultic rite, not a personal journey, his vocation is actually to administer on behalf of a congregation, i.e., “the breathren”.
When he asks how he shall be worthy to take up this vocation, she proceeds to purify him with water and the salt and consecrate him with fire and incense.
As Crowley says in Magick in Theory and Practice, “Purity means singleness.” It means fixing the mind upon the one task which must be accomplished in the magical ceremony. It is represented by the weight of the chain around the neck, which we have already seen is connected with מ (which is also elemental water) or alchemical salt.
As already mentioned, the scourge invigorates the Nephesh or the animal soul. It raises energy or generates ardency for the task. When the Priestess says, “Be the PRIEST fervent of body and soul!” the fire and incense are serving the same function as the scourge.
Then she adorns the Priest with the two mantles. The robe represents his function as Priest of the Sun; the crown represents his function as Priest of the (Secret) Lord Hadit.
At this point we might expect her to anoint him with the Holy Oil, thus signifying his readiness to unite the higher in himself with the lower. That’s not what she does, though. Instead she kneels and strokes the lance eleven times, thereby consecrating it to the Lord Adored (Chaos).
What I take from this is that the natural will thus perfected—i.e., devoted exclusively to Nuit—just is the higher part of the individual now ready to do the work of union or sacred marriage.
In other words, it’s not quite correct that the sex instinct is the Holy Guardian Angel. The sex instinct properly oriented and devoted to heaven is the means by which union with the divine will occur. A will thus perfected must inevitably cross the Abyss, thus annihilating itself and becoming its feminine opposite in the Mother Babalon.
In other words, the Priestess—who is “actually Virgo Intacta or specially dedicated to the service of the Great Order”—has now made the Priest like her through the Ceremony of the Introit. She has made him “virgin” or “chaste” unto the Lord. His sex instinct or natural will is now devoted exclusively to the most high and has thus been perfected.
Having accomplished that, the Ceremony of the Introit ends, and the Ceremony of the Opening of the Veil commences. Now their roles change. The Priestess is no longer the primary agent in the ritual; the Priest is. Taking her by the hand, he raises her. He now refers to her as “Virgin pure without spot”. Her function is no longer alchemical mercury. She is now ה final of the formula Tetragrammaton. He is no longer a natural man but now functions as ו of Tetragrammaton. Thus he seats her upon the altar, which we know from its crimson altar cloth is representative of Binah or the Throne of the Mother. She now represents Babalon, and the rest of the ritual is about how he will go about pouring all he is into her cup, thereby undergoing destruction in erotic union with her.
