Wording of Liber Resh
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Crowley seems to have written most of his rituals in this sort of elevated, archaic tone. That on top of the fact he had learned his English in Victorian England. Is that what you mean? I don't find it any different in that respect from other libers.
I don't have many problems with it, except for the fact the deities are somewhat obscure to me, like Tum (and to a lesser extent Khephra), and I've read that the Egyptians placed them at different stations. I don't really care about that however.
Where in the ritual does it say morning and evening, vs. using dawn and dusk?
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Language for ritual often should be removed from language of ordinary speech. Archaic language accomplishes this. It also gives more of a sense of timelessness - participating in something that could have existed at any point across a range of centuries. In general, it takes us out of the ordinary and allows us to create a space, for a few minutes, for the extraordinary. All of these are desirable results.
This isn't the only approach, but it's one good approach.
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It's not the archaic speech I don't like, it's the fact that Resh is to be performed close to the four points in time, but morning and evening are long periods, dusk and dawn are the points, Also, uprising isn't so much archaic as wrong. Downgoing is poetic, but uprising is a civil war!
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@sethur said
"It's not the archaic speech I don't like, it's the fact that Resh is to be performed close to the four points in time, but morning and evening are long periods, dusk and dawn are the points, Also, uprising isn't so much archaic as wrong. Downgoing is poetic, but uprising is a civil war!"
Ah, I get it.
I think, though, that the "long periods" is what's intended. Think of it as leaving the entire quarter - a six-hour period. You aren't welcoming noon from the point of view of dawn, but rather from the point of view of the whole morning - the time from sunrise to sunset.
Similarly, sunset is welcomed from the range of daytime, and sunrise from the range of night. Midnight as welcomed by those who have been in the 'evening" range.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"Midnight as welcomed by those who have been in the 'evening" range."
I took it to mean that the sun had been in the abodes of evening & we were welcoming it into the abodes of midnight...how can we be in the "'evening' range" and be hailing the sun at midnight?
616
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@KRVB MMShCh said
"I took it to mean that the sun had been in the abodes of evening & we were welcoming it into the abodes of midnight...how can we be in the "'evening' range" & be hailing the sun at midnight?"
OK, I can see that. First impressions tend to stick if there's nothing to dislodge them, and, from the syntax, I'd only thought of it the other way.
You're reading it as, "Hail unto thee [who art coming] from abodes of evening." I've tended to raed it, "Hail! This is a call out to you, O Sun, from we that have been in evening."
Hmm, hadn't realized until I was writing the second paragraph - possibly it's my astrology and astronomy background - I've always unconsciously understood myself as in the boat and "rounding the bend" to where I see the next "marking post" popping up. I know that isn't what it says, and I've never visualized it that way - I just noticed that my relationship to Resh has probably always been from the angle that I'm the one doing the moving.
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...the fact that it produces results under both schemes only lends credence to the legitimacy of the ritual IMO.
616
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I have always seen, Resh at dawn as:
"in Thy rising" Ra rises from the dark
"the Uprising" Ra continues to rise
Marking a difference between the rising over the horizon and the continuing rise that occurs during the morning period.They seem awkward at first, makes you pay attention to what they are saying and how you are saying it.