"Low men" and Kings
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I figure ch 1 tells us where we have come from ch 2 tells us where we are and gh 3 tells us where we are going.
Than is we can read libel Al as descriptive rather than perscriptive.
each chapter is a description of an Aeon. that is not a prescribed law for any particular individual to obey.
much like newtons physics explain nature but no book on newton defines a command to any individual or particular object etc. The laws must be discovered and applied in each case. And Relativity then quatum physics ar. analogous to changes in aeons.
Likewise liber Al describes the three aeons and the general character of each but one must apply those to each individual event and person.
Our primary concern is with Chapter three but aeons build one on the other such that as the cosmos consists of layers of aeons so too does the micro-cosm.
Thus chapters 1 and 2 are as necessary to the third as are newton and Einsteins physics to quantum mechanics
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@Froclown said
"each chapter is a description of an Aeon. that is not a prescribed law for any particular individual to obey."
While I can see the vague and general equation of Nuit and Hadit to Isis and Osiris, respectively, I think it is, at best... well, vague and general.
More to the point, I quite disagree with your statement that I've quoted. Chapters 1 and 2 are as descriptive of the current Aeon as is Chapter 3. (Heck, the three most important sentences of the whole Book are in Chapter 1! - in vv. 3, 40, and 57.
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And perhaps the most important elements or systems in the human body are those that form from our most ancient DNA that we share with lizards and amoebas?
The most fundamental elements of our technology are the simple machines discovered in the stone age. Hell our most advances travel machines are powered by liquid dinosaurs.
Thus Nuit teaches what we are in substance Hadit teaches what we do in motion and Ra-Hoor-Kuit teaches us to unite substance with motion to a focused goal. The union is represented in ABRAHADABRA.
Thus we have the method of thelema which is scientific self observation to discover ones eternal common in substance as well as the principle of motion that stirs oneself to motion then to unite these two in love under WILL.
Aleph Lamed
The ox and tho goad
Nuit = 0 = fool = Aleph = ox
Hadit = Lamed = goad
Thus we have the aeon of Isis who is in Binna and as such the inert substance that is goaded by chockmah. In this aeon we learn what we are in substance as part of nature. Then in Osiris we discover the principle of motion the sun and we turn to it. We are goaded. we learn what we are capable of doing and our gods represent this force that drives us on. The Gods defy death become more than inert substance more than nature. God animates the substance.
Now is a new Aeon were this animative force is internalized as TRUE WILL and the duality created by ill worship of hadit (for I am the worshiper) is transcended. The God out there becomes the HGA and unties with the flesh.
Thus the flesh of man is anointed with the divine life force and as anointed ones we are all "christs"
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@Froclown said
"Hadit = Lamed"
"the aeon of Isis who is in Binna"
Well, not Binah in the Aeon of Isis! - She was Malkuth-Yesod, the object of worship within earth and lunar religions.
In any case, I continue to be in awe of the way that words so often comment upon themselves.
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I don't have any fancy "devils tricks" to equate Hadit to lamed.
But Lamed is the goad and Hadit is the principle of spirit that stirs inanimate substance to life. and thus Hadit Goads Nuit to action.
as far as Malkuth vs Binah it seems to me that Binah is the mother and Malkuth the daughter. That is Malkuth is the outer manifestation of Binah. As the pagans do not believe the idol is the God but is a manifest appearance of the God, so to is the world of Malkuth (nature) the manifestation of Isis in Binah.
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yes Nuit is inert matter
Golems are made of inert passive clay that is goaded by the spirit in the form of the name of God that is infused into it.
nuit is the clay and hadit the spirit
ox and goad
The point anyway is that being that Thelema is not a demand or a calling to be a king but a description of different possible ways of thinking.
A thelemite may be a king or a slave depending on his True WILL the difference between a Thelemite and a non-thelemite is that the thelemite is not spiritually defeated as a slave of as a king because kings are kings and slaves serve.
when slaves are made kings they are as unhappy as kings dethroned.
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@Froclown said
"A thelemite may be a king or a slave depending on his True WILL the difference between a Thelemite and a non-thelemite is that the thelemite is not spiritually defeated as a slave of as a king because kings are kings and slaves serve.
when slaves are made kings they are as unhappy as kings dethroned."
Gad, you're so much into this conventional and Old Aeon ideas of king and slave. You're missing the whole point.
Service is the fundamental type of mindful action, as well as the essence of True Will. Kings (which, in Liber L., means adepts) are the purest servants - and (so promises The Book), even the slaves shall serve! Slaves aren't defeated - they're just slaves! None shall be cast down nor lifted up because there's no up or down, no place to cast to or from which to lift up - all are who they are - whoever that may be.
(Still, a beggar cannot hide his poverty.)
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Do what I say or else means you are coersed to not do what you WILL dictates.
If it is you WILL to serve me then I can drop the or else and just ask you politely.
Thus and coersion by force or by trickery is a violation of another's WILL.
thus the salves serve as a personal choice therefore they are not slaves
however those who want to be bossed around because they refuse to accept their own WILL are weak and you might as well kick them arround and put them to use.
hell kill them if they interfel with you WILL they are just in the way anyhow.
The spiritually weak and down trodden have no place in the new aeon, leave tham be and the will most likely kill themselves and spare us of their wretched company.
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@Froclown said
"If it is you WILL to serve me then I can drop the or else and just ask you politely... thus the salves serve as a personal choice therefore they are not slaves "
Precisely! And "the slaves shall serve".
"however those who want to be bossed around because they refuse to accept their own WILL are weak and you might as well kick them arround and put them to use. "
Obviously put them to use! (And who is to say that isn't exactly consistent with their Wills, i.e., selecting the position where they want to be put to a particular use.) The biggest, deepest gripes of employees aren't usually that they are worked to hard, but rather some variation of the complaint that they aren't allowed to really work - to really contribute, serve, use their skills, etc. People, as a whole, want to contribute and want direction to help them do so.
"hell kill them if they interfel with you WILL they are just in the way anyhow."
That's as un-Thelemic a statement as I have ever heard or read in my life.
"The spiritually weak and down trodden have no place in the new aeon, leave tham be and the will most likely kill themselves and spare us of their wretched company."
Everyone has a place in the New Aeon - it subsumes every dust mote, and certainly all living things.
Changing the subjects... Liber Legis uses the word "slave" four times and not always with the same inferred meaning. Note the following:
1:26 - "Then saith the prophet and slave of the beauteous one..." The word describes the relationship of the highest officer of the Aeon to Nuit.
2:49 - "I am unique & conqueror. I am not of the slaves that perish. Be they damned & dead! Amen." the "slaves that perish" are apparently a particular variety of slave (showing us syntactically that the word has a broader general meaning in the Book). And even this - per the remainder of verse 49 - is only true in the phenomenal world of the elements, not in the essential (or quintessential) level characterized by Hadit. ("This is of the 4: there is a fifth who is invisible, & therein am I as a babe in an egg.")
2:54 - "Nor shall they who cry aloud their folly that thou meanest nought avail; thou shall reveal it: thou availest: they are the slaves of because: They are not of me." Apparently "the slaves of because" are a special variety of slave, hence the modifying phrase.
2:58 - "Yea! deem not of change: ye shall be as ye are, & not other. Therefore the kings of the earth shall be Kings for ever; the slaves shall serve." etc. The verse more or less under discussion.
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I think I agree with Froclown in a milder sense.
I thought the "slaves" (in those last three instances) referred to those who do not wish to work on themselves/see anything--those who will never know or have any Will at all.
(also called, the cows, the cabbages, the masses, "the sleeping ones", in other circles
you know who i'm talking about--99% of the world population? ).The slaves shall serve because they have no (conscious) will, and don't want to have one, so any will at all can move them in the desired direction. Maybe before working on ourselves every one of us is a slave until we know our own will. I am a slave in many ways. I wish to not be a slave so I am Working on myself. I believe I am capable of this and will succeed because I can put effort (will?) into work. Some people will never do this. They will be slaves forever.
Maybe I'm deluded, but when I first read the Book thats what I got out of it. You all have probably put more thought into it than me--but doesn't this make any sense?
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@SophiaLux said
"I thought the "slaves" (in those last three instances) referred to those who do not wish to work on themselves/see anything--those who will never know or have any Will at all. "
Soror Meral used to regularly ask those working under her, "What are you a slave to?" We're all probably a slave to something (usually several somethings), and a major part of working on oneself is to identify and address these things.
"The slaves shall serve because they have no (conscious) will, and don't want to have one, so any will at all can move them in the desired direction."
This is the crux of the point I want to make on this. I think the usual (simplest) way of reading this is misleading because it arises out of Old Aeon social models of kings and slaves.
Polarizing kings against slaves because the latter serve entiely misses the point that service is the essence of kingship. To miss this point is to assert the historic position of ruling kings over ruled (dominated) slaves, and I have no reason to believe Liber Legis is recommending anything of the kind - it's against its essential message.
Not only does that approach miss that kingship is service, it misses a more important point: Saying that the slaves shall serve doesn't promise to keep them down in the mushroom farms; rather, it is a promise of success, of liberation - real liberation! Those who are slaves shall become servants. That is, those who work against their conscious choice, as if in violation of (apparent) will, shall, instead, work (the same work!) consistent with their conscious choice - their personality choices in alignment with True Will.
In some senses, the kings and the slaves are equal - properly enacted, each role is a role of service.
Since "king" throughout Liber Legis surely refers to Adepts per se, it may actually be that "slaves" refer to "Men of Earth" (pre-adepts) per se - anyone who has not attained to the Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. Historically I've been hesitant to suggest this, because I think many who embrace it would interpret it in terms of old-school ideas about slaves - which isn't at all what I mean.
"Maybe before working on ourselves every one of us is a slave until we know our own will."
Yes, I'm sure of it. (And, for that matter, we're still slaves for a long time after starting to work on ourselves because not all 'masters' are dislodged quickly.)
"Maybe I'm deluded, but when I first read the Book thats what I got out of it."
Actually, that's way better than what I got out of it on my first reading!**
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[a response of mine to a similar thread elsewhere]
Crowley addresses the external dealing of Kings and slaves, in chapter 46 of MWT on "Selfishness": "You should treat everybody as a King of the same order as yourself. Of course, nine people out of ten won't stand for it, not for a minute; the mere fact of your treating them decently frightens them; their sense of inferiority is exacerbated and intensified; they insist on groveling. That places them. They force you to treat them as the mongrel curs they are; and so everybody is happy!"
Despite the cheekiness of the statement, it does explain the relationship of King and slave. That is, in the external philosophy of Thelema, the slave enslaves themselves to the King. The attitude of the King should be to continue to treat this other person as a King, otherwise he is supporting the wretched & weak character both in the individual at hand, an in society at large (and by extension the weak character in one's self). Promotion of the slave to a King is given here:
"See! he has summoned us to the Imperial dais. The night falls; it is a great orgy of worship and bliss. // The night falls like a spangled cloak from the shoulders of a prince upon a slave. // He rises a free man! // Cast thou, O prophet, the cloak upon these slaves! // A great night, and scarce fires therein; but freedom for the slave that its glory shall encompass." Lapidus Lazuli VI:21-25
The spangled cloak imagery echoes Legis II:62 "...the kisses of the stars rain hard upon thy body" which is described in Book 4 as a meme of "consecration".
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@jw said
"Crowley addresses the external dealing of Kings and slaves, in chapter 46 of MWT on "Selfishness": "You should treat everybody as a King of the same order as yourself. Of course, nine people out of ten won't stand for it, not for a minute; the mere fact of your treating them decently frightens them; their sense of inferiority is exacerbated and intensified; they insist on groveling. That places them. They force you to treat them as the mongrel curs they are; and so everybody is happy!""
I love that quote!
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yes but how does one treat a king?
he does not presume the king needs help of a handicap on life. He does not curb his tongue least the he offend the king nor does he pull his punches.
Thus if one serves because it is his will to contribute to a goal as a brute labor or even in support of another personage, he is still a king.
Even if one is enslaved but not spiritually brken one is not truly a slave. Their are amongst the most beaten and deprived slaves those individuals who are happy with their lot and live as kings amongst the vagrants and outcasts.
Satan is a kingly persona who refuses to suffer or look down upon himself even while GOD himself degraded him and sent him to live in the pits of hell.
or the Sysiphis of Camus how who can not be broken and rejoices with merriment as he rolls his stone.
The true slave is one who always suffers, the anti-Job. the angel how lives in paradise any spends eternity moping about.
Thus we the lines say to treat all ai kings, to strike them low and hard with all your might and if they are of good spirits you can knock them down but never off their horse.
If they are slaves then don't offer a hand te help them back up because they will only try to drag you down. instead leave them to die in their misery.
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@Froclown said
"yes but how does one treat a king?"
A good place to start would be r-e-s-p-e-c-t.
"he does not presume the king needs help of a handicap on life. He does not curb his tongue least the he offend the king nor does he pull his punches. "
Kings often curb their tongues when that best serves their purposes. For example, the art of diplomacy is a major part of even traditional kingship. One is reminded of Crowley's observation that, in one Thelemic fellowship, good manners were likely to be a far better mark of one's readiness to pass on than any amount of technical magical knowledge or skill. The bearings of aristocracy demand graciousness as a baseline, even when one has to occasionally wander from it to make a point.
"Even if one is enslaved but not spiritually brken one is not truly a slave. Their are amongst the most beaten and deprived slaves those individuals who are happy with their lot and live as kings amongst the vagrants and outcasts."
This might be a good time to mention where the word "slave" originated. It definitely puts a different spin on the word. The following is from The American Heritage Dictionary:
"The derivation of the word slave encapsulates a bit of European history and explains why the two words slaves and Slavs are so similar; they are, in fact, historically identical. The word slave first appears in English around 1290, spelled sclave. The spelling is based on Old French esclave from Medieval Latin sclavus, "Slav, slave," first recorded around 800. Sclavus comes from Byzantine Greek sklabos (pronounced sklävōs) "Slav," which appears around 580. Sklavos approximates the Slavs' own name for themselves, the Slověnci, surviving in English Slovene and Slovenian. The spelling of English slave, closer to its original Slavic form, first appears in English in 1538. Slavs became slaves around the beginning of the ninth century when the Holy Roman Empire tried to stabilize a German-Slav frontier. By the 12th century stabilization had given way to wars of expansion and extermination that did not end until the Poles crushed the Teutonic Knights at Grunwald in 1410. · As far as the Slavs' own self-designation goes, its meaning is, understandably, better than "slave"; it comes from the Indo-European root *kleu-, whose basic meaning is "to hear" and occurs in many derivatives meaning "renown, fame." The Slavs are thus "the famous people." Slavic names ending in -slav incorporate the same word, such as Czech Bohu-slav, "God's fame," Russian Msti-slav, "vengeful fame," and Polish Stani-slaw, "famous for withstanding (enemies).""
"If they are slaves then don't offer a hand te help them back up because they will only try to drag you down. instead leave them to die in their misery."
When you make comments like this, do you also keep in mind that there is no real separation between you and they? That you are the same being they are?
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everything is the same being
Dishes and jugs are made of the same clay, but the form makes all the difference.
The flag of triumph is cut from the same cloth as the white flag of defeat.
and if it turns out that my spirit is broken and I lie defeated in misery then shall I know that Ra-Hoor-Kuit has forsaken me and perhaps my corpse will make a pleasing mat for the feet of someone who may carry on the great work where I left off.
However Though I may be trampled upon my attitude is that of a king who is not defeated even in death and disgrace. As my WILL un-defeated, goes on and with my last breath my final act of WILL, I consecrate my mortal remains to the great work.
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"and if it turns out that my spirit is broken and I lie defeated in misery then shall I know that Ra-Hoor-Kuit has forsaken me and perhaps my corpse will make a pleasing mat for the feet of someone who may carry on the great work where I left off.
However Though I may be trampled upon my attitude is that of a king who is not defeated even in death and disgrace. As my WILL un-defeated, goes on and with my last breath my final act of WILL, I consecrate my mortal remains to the great work."
These are selfish statements. If one gets wrapped up in the glory of their own Kingliness then they are no better than the beggar in the King's robe. Something which might be helpful: Try visualizing other people as Sun-Gods on Earth, especially the difficult people.
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I like what most people have said here. I do think its good to remember not to be a slave to material things or to let yourself become weak either. I think I don't want to be among the "dead and the dying".
Christ said something similar about letting the dead bury the dead.
Respect is good when you deal with others, but I try to be brutally honest with myself and let myself know when I am wallowing or letting myself get away with things. I think maybe all of these passages can be taken both ways--i.e. slaves are okay in the sense that they are servants, but one wants to remember to be about One's Own Work. Slaves don't get to do their own work.
I like some of the harsh wording in Book II a lot. It reminds you not to be soft on yourself and to get up and Do Something instead of rolling around in your own filth like most people.
