APO PANTOS KAKODAIMONOS!?
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All:
Thou hast no right but to do thy Will.
At the opening of the Star Ruby, the magician cries, "ΑΠΟ ΠΑΝΤΟΣ ΚΑΚΟΔΑΙΜΟΝΟΣ!" : "Away, every evil daimon!" This is often said to be derived from the Greek Orthodox liturgy. I've been unable to find a primary citation/reference for this: everyone making the claim is clearly from within the Thelemic or Crowley-derived community (including eg. heavy metal bands), rather than from within Orthodoxy. It seems to be repeated entirely on a secondary basis, on people dependent on some unknown original inside of our circles.
Can anyone point to an actual usage within the Orthodox liturgy?
Also, a commentary on the Star Ruby by EAOA claims that the grammatical construction of "ΑΠΟ" implies not just "away," but "away and behind:"
@EAOA said
This line * ... parallel to the Biblical one where on the mountaintop Satan tempts Jesus, and the response is "Get thee behind me, Satan." {This is how it's used in Luke 4:8, in response to the Adversary's offer that "If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine"; but interestingly, the earliest use is in Mark 8:33 (and used by Matthew 16:23), where Jesus is speaking to Peter, giving him hell (!) for rejecting Jesus' stated destiny/mission to fulfil the sacrificial formula of that Aeon -F93}. The line itself is a prepositional phrase with an understood verb. The word Apo implies motion behind, and takes the genitive case of that which is to be put behind, i.e. pantoc kakodaimonoc. Literally translated, it means "of every evil daemon". With an implied verb "go" or "get", the line means "Get behind me every evil daemon. ... The meaning of the line is emphasized by the action of sweeping the hand backward ...
Can anyone confirm this? Is this perhaps even the allusion in the (putative) use in the Orthodox liturgy? Yet in Mark, the Greek for "behind me" is in fact "hupago opiso mou" -- just as is used for the Teletarchai in the Ruby
.Thanks to anyone with insight!
Love is the law, love under will.
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Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
I've been advised (but haven't verified it myself) that Crowley consulted St. Basil's liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church. (That is, the one used at St. Basil's in Moscow, not one of the many allegedly written by St. Basil.)
www.newadvent.org/cathen/02321a.htm
www.friends-partners.org/oldfriends/mes/russia/moscow/history.html -
All:
Thou hast no right but to do thy Will.
@Jim Eshelman said
"I've been advised (but haven't verified it myself) that Crowley consulted St. Basil's liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church. (That is, the one used at St. Basil's in Moscow, not one of the many allegedly written by St. Basil.)"
Huh -- that's an interesting variation! What I've seen quoted in various places is a letter from WB Crow to AC, in which he says that Crowley wrote the Gnostic Mass "under the influence of the Liturgy of St. Basil of the Russian Church" -- ie, evidently "one of the many allegedly written by St. Basil". But Crow could easily have very slightly misunderstood something that AC told him ... do you believe that your source has independent and if so more reliable information on this?
I did not, IAC, find the Damned Phrase in any of the "St Basil's liturgies" that I consulted, and this version of the story would partly explain why -- tho' it would still leave my original question open.
Either version of the story would have it that AC was in some sense inspired by a performance of an Orthodox Mass, which he would've had the opportunity to do when he was touring in Russia with the "Ragged Ragtime Girls" -- which was the period when he composed the Anthem for "the Ship" which "seemed to [him] worthy to be introduced as the anthem into the Ritual of the Gnostic Catholic Church which, later in the year, [he] prepared for the use of the OTO, the central ceremony of its public and private celebration, corresponding to the Mass of the Roman Catholic Church" per Chapter 73 of . One of the things that supports this tradition is that the Orthodox Mass has a "Lance," which would have struck AC and is not used in the Roman heresy, altho' this "Lance" is really just a small knife mostly used to cut the Host.
OTOH, it seems that while he may have been inspired by an Orthodox Mass, AC largely based the actual structure and wording of the Gnostic Mass on the Tridentine Mass -- ie, the Roman heresy's pre-Vatican II liturgy. The parallels are very close (much closer than anything I've seen in Orthodox liturgy), in particular the "Minor Elevation" with the 5 Crosses made wth the Host on the Graal. And we do know that AC did study the Canon of the Roman Mass: in Chapter XX of he writes, "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" -- to which he appended the note, "Study, in the Roman Missal, the Canon of the Mass, and the chapter of 'defects.'"
Before studying the Tridentine Mass, I made myself a little crazy trying to figure out how AC could have derived Liber XV from any of the "St Basil's Liturgies" that I'd seen; the idea that he had seen such a Mass but was working from a more readily-available text of the Tridentine Mass seems the most reasonable conclusion.
Love is the law, love under will.
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I really don't have any other information that would be useful in confirming this. The provenance issue never really mattered to me one way or the other (and, actually, I can't think of a reason it matters to me now) - so I tossed in what I know, but am not likely to spend any more energy on it.
@Forever93 said
"Either version of the story would have it that AC was in some sense inspired by a performance of an Orthodox Mass, which he would've had the opportunity to do when he was touring in Russia with the "Ragged Ragtime Girls""
Exactly. And we know for sure that this is specifically when he was inspired to write the Gnostic Mass.
"OTOH, it seems that while he may have been inspired by an Orthodox Mass, AC largely based the actual structure and wording of the Gnostic Mass on the Tridentine Mass -- ie, the Roman heresy's pre-Vatican II liturgy."
I hve a note that St. Basi's form of the mass contains both Tridentine Mass and Mass of the Catechumens structures.
[quiote]Before studying the Tridentine Mass, I made myself a little crazy trying to figure out how AC could have derived Liber XV from any of the "St Basil's Liturgies" that I'd seen; the idea that he had seen such a Mass but was working from a more readily-available text of the Tridentine Mass seems the most reasonable conclusion."
I think the key is that it is not from a liturgy prepared (or even alleged to hvae been prepared) by St. Basil, but rather from the mass as practiced at St. Basil's in Russia.