6 January (Hadit) Liber CCXX, 2:70-72
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(v. 136) 70. There is help & hope in other spells. Wisdom says: be strong! Then canst thou bear more joy. Be not animal; refine thy rapture! If thou drink, drink by the eight and ninety rules of art: if thou love, exceed by delicacy; and if thou do aught joyous, let there be subtlety therein!
(v. 137) 71. But exceed! exceed!
(v. 138) 72. Strive ever to more! and if thou art truly mine — and doubt it not, an if thou art ever joyous! — death is the crown of all. -
Few things have enhanced my life - or, ultimately, made me better equipped for initiation - than an ever-refining capacity for appreciation and enjoyment. Whether of food, wine, film, sex, or the subtle nuances of the universe in its play, this capacity for appreciation and enjoyment unlocks life.
And strength. More life. This is the way to greet the Angel. Swami Vivekanada repeatedly emphasized (especially in his Bhakti Yoga) that strength is essential to religion. His eloquent insistence on this is surely one of the strong formative influences on Crowley, and is of real importance.
@CCXX said
"**(v. 136) 70. There is help & hope in other spells. Wisdom says: be strong! Then canst thou bear more joy. Be not animal; refine thy rapture! If thou drink, drink by the eight and ninety rules of art: if thou love, exceed by delicacy; and if thou do aught joyous, let there be subtlety therein!
(v. 137) 71. But exceed! exceed! **""Wisdom says..." That is, the instruction is from Chokmah, and especially applies thereto. Let Will be strong and sure, and thus better fit to unite through love with the object of its desire.
Furthermore, uplift your joy to the highest level. Both perfect the technical methods of obtaining the rapture, and also raise it to include as many planes of consciousness as possible. Apply science and art to your pleasure.
To "exceed" is to excel, to reach past, to transcend prior constraints. Yet this excellence - as any real Epicurean knows - is obtained in subtlety and delicacy as well as by intensity.
The real idea here is to "uplift thyself" - to raise these powerful, pleasurable experiences from the gross to the aesthetic and artistic and unto the spiritually devotional. (This cannot occur, however, unless one inaugurates the current in the first place.)
Why "eight and ninety"? I've come to think that the key is that 98 = LChYYM, le-chaim, "to life!"
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@Jim Eshelman said
"(v. 138) 72. Strive ever to more! and if thou art truly mine — and doubt it not, an if thou art ever joyous! — death is the crown of all."
The injunction to “Strive ever to more!” continues the theme of the foregoing. There is no weariness in this striving; yet nor is there any rest for the Thelemite who is a devotee of the Hidden One. Never settle for mediocrity. Never let “good enough” be good enough!
The language throughout is easiest to understand if applied to the art of sexual love. Yet it applies to all areas of life. In a life so lived, death ’ which is in almost any case lovely ’ becomes in fact the transcendence of one last barrier, one great limit.
In the course of the verse, AC is told to have no doubt that he is Hadit’s. Although the word “thou” is singular, this recognition surely extends to any who live life in this fashion. Hadit is the Self, the Center, and - at the risk of oversimplifying - one could only be not “of Hadit” if one were deeply alienated from one’s own kernel of being. Even an outer alienation would not be sufficient if - as with most people? - the deep relationship is sound. Such alienation would necessarily result in serious neurosis or even psychosis. (One pathway to such sickness is the sincere denial of the principles of Thelema, which means a sincere and deluded denial of that which is most true about oneself; and, reciprocally, the path to healing such a breach comes with accepting and affirming those principles. It is of great importance to realize that, although we have frequently encountered resistance, from newcomers or inquirers, to anything to do with Aleister Crowley, we have encountered essentially no resistance to Thelema per se. To me, this means that Crowley succeeded thoroughly in his mission - on both counts.)