Posts tagged: hga

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 silence. So the Book of the Law could be understood as the speech of the god of silence.

The god of silence is absent, unmanifest. Any attempt to objectify the god of silence inevitably fails. So the issue of speech and silence is simultaneously the issue of presence versus absence. Absence can only be manifest through presence by means of various detours or blinds—basically illusions. Magic deals principally in illusions, the magician being a Master of Illusions. This is why all the powers of the magician revolve around silence.

Absence is also worked with through Crowley’s pseudonyms: Perdurabo, To Mega Therion, V.V.V.V.V., Chioa Khan, etc. (I’ve never actually seen anyone attempt this analysis for some reason…)

The speech-silence pattern shows up in the Mass. “Silence” is indicated at two crucial points in the script. Also, if you’ve read any of my stuff on the Mass, I’ve indicated how essential Hoor-paar-kraat is to that ritual. The Mass itself is a ceremony of implantation of the god of silence into the soil of the Earth.

The drama of the Mass moves from the silence of the tomb, out into manifestation, and then back into the silence of the tomb.

AUMGN—the formula most often vibrated through the Mass—is itself a formula representing the movement of the silent seed into manifest speech and back out into non-existence.

The neophyte formula of A∴A∴ encapsulates exactly the same idea in slightly different form. In Pyramidos, it is described as the path of HUA or IAΩ—in other words of the Holy Guardian Angel itself.

The Man of Earth degrees form a cycle which expresses the same idea. In the Minerval degree, the candidate manifests out of silence or nothingness, is brought into manifestation in the 1st and 2nd degrees, passes out of existence in the 3rd, and passes back into silence or nothingness as a Perfect Initiate.

If you’ve read my stuff, you know I think the MoE candidate is actually the HGA for pretty much exactly this reason. If you’ve read my stuff on the Mass, you know I think it involves the HGA in exactly this way.

“Oh so what? You think everything Crowley ever did was about the HGA, huh?”

How many times did he himself say that? He couldn’t have been kidding all those times.

And then the other pattern has to do with the word—which is the HGA in manifestation—as it relates to life and death.

So the first thing to notice is that the word uses life and death to manifest itself down the generations. It’s how it gets spoken in the first place.

So the word in the macrocosmic sense is the Sun and basically all the things the Sun represents. In the Mass, we refer to the Sun as ON, which represents the Beast 666 who is also the Logos (word) of the current Aeon. And since most magical formulae represent not only a thing but also a process of attainment, ON also represents two paths of deification of the individual, one corresponding with Ayin, the other with Nun. (I’ve written about this elsewhere.)

But the word in the microcosmic sense—where it relates directly to life and death—is the phallus. This is the word utilizing the process of life and death or incarnation or becoming or suffering or what have you in order to manifest itself. This is the 5th collect of the Mass. This is the Anthem. This is the production of the seed which goes into the soil which becomes Baphomet. It’s the whole magic of the Mass, really: manifestation of the macrocosm in the microcosm.

Now when it manifests, it also transcends those conditions or reveals itself as transcending those conditions. Hence, Baphomet “destroys the destroyer”. This is the redemptive aspect of the word. This is why you would want to hear the word. This is why you would want to know God or to experience Knowledge and Conversation. It’s because it’s that within you which is using you or using your conditioned existence in order to be. It’s that for the sake of which all this is happening. It’s the impersonal vibration left over at the end of AUMGN from which existence will once again spring forth.

You find the same issue at work in the 3rd degree of M∴M∴M∴.

You see it in the IAO formula.

You see it in the Neophyte ritual of A∴A∴.

So if you ever find yourself lost in the weeds of Crowley’s writings, these are the two patterns I would try to focus on. One pattern has to do with how speech and silence relate. This is the life-cycle of the Word, the Logos, the HGA. The other pattern has to do with the life of the Word. This is how the Word uses life-death to manifest itself and how in the process it redeems becoming.