Eight Magi
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(In response to questions on another thread about the 8 Magi reocnigzed through history, here is an excerpt from an article I wrote about 15 years ago. It is heavily indebted, for its core ideas, to Crowley, especially in Liber Aleph.)
Most ancient of these eight is KRISHNA, who dates from an unknown antiquity in India. His Word, Aum, is the oldest and most catholic spiritual formula known to us, from which all others ultimately derive. Aum is the first letter of the Sanskrit alphabet. Its triliteral structure expresses the entire course of sound in the mouth, from the unconditioned expression of voice (from deep in the throat) of the “A,” through an intervening focused and sustained vowel, to its termination in the labial “M,” ending in silence. Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer. Therefore, Swami Vivekananda rightly called Aum a sound which is “the basis of all sounds... It denotes the whole range and possibility of all the words that can be uttered.” As the metaphorical root of all possible words, it expresses the first primitive articulation of ideas, potentially containing all thoughts and expressions whatsoever.
The classic work recording Krishna’s teachings is the Bhagavad-Gita (“Song of the Lord”), a Sanskrit work dating from no earlier than c. 300 BCE, generally considered the most essential text of Hinduism, and founded primarily on the Samkhya philosophy and the much older Upanishads. It is foremost an instruction in union with the Divine through devotion (Bhakti Yoga). In Krishna’s insistence that one must first be true to one’s duty and intrinsic role in life are the roots of the later Thelemic philosophy.
The Aum of Krishna became the Amoun of TAHUTI or THOTH, who is credited as the creator of writing and (based thereon) of science, including magick. Following upon Krishna, he represents a more complete emergence of self-conscious thought and mental capacity from the sea of preverbal consciousness. It is in the inventing of writing - the recording of ideas, the preservation of words - that he is deemed founder of civilization. “He shewed,” Crowley wrote in Liber Aleph, “how by the Mind it was possible to direct the Operations of the Will.” He is thus more of a magical than mystical expression of Wisdom. By inventing mathematics, he is credited with establishing the mystical rudiments on which the Qabalah was later founded, and is the “Hermes” later titled Trismegistus (“Thrice-Great”), after whom all of the “Hermetic” sciences are named.
Amoun (Amon), from very ancient times, was the name of a god of reproduction, consolidating the powers of solar force with procreative energies. His name means “hidden.” He is “the Concealed One,” symbolizing that Hidden Seed within us, that essence of Self often best symbolized by the Sun or by symbols of sexual fertility. Thus, Thoth “made Men to understand their secret Nature,” Crowley wrote; “that is, their Unity with their True Selves, or, as they then phrased it, with God.”
Upon this Egyptian magical and mathematical foundation, an Egyptian-born Isrælite named MOSHEH or MOSES (c. 13th Century BCE) built his Word, Y.H.V.H. Called “Tetragrammaton,” or “four-lettered,” this Word is the framework and source of all the doctrines of Qabalah. As such it is the basis of nearly all of the mysticism and magick we teach. Mosheh therefore accomplished a substantial advance in the development of magick, especially through the careful mapping of symbols, and in providing a cohesive model for the scientific exploration of the human mind.
In the late Fifth Century BCE emerged two Asian figures of vast, interrelated importance. The first is LAO-TZE, whose word was Tao. The second is SIDDHARTHA, whose word was Anatta.
LAO-TZE (China, 570?-490 BCE) is the reputed author of the Tao-te Ching, a small work (of 81 chapters, each only a few sentences in length) which, nonetheless, has had an enormous impact on Chinese thought and civilization. (N.B. It is disputed whether Lao-Tze actually wrote the work, since the book itself is usually dated from the Second Century BCE.) His Word, Tao, most commonly translated “the Way,” expresses a doctrine of frictionless “going” or movement in nature. To understand Lao-Tze’s primary message, it is necessary to know something of Chinese culture at the time. Confucianism held sway, teaching an idealized (and artificial) social system to which each individual was expected to conform. In humanity’s increasingly structuralized emergence of ego-consciousness, Confucianism valued the systemmry of civilization and the dictates of society above the path of nature. Lao-Tze contradicted this view, reasoning that society’s artificial dictates should be ignored; that the pattern to which a person should conform, and in which one would find reflected the truth of oneself, was the organic flowing of the Universe, which can only be perceived by silent witnessing. Lao-Tze’s injunction to “do nothing” is often misinterpreted as advising indolence. Rather, it is counsel to set aside artificiality, and to respond instead, without resistance, to the silent currents of one’s own Way (Tao) which prompt and move from within.
SIDDHARTHA (India, 563?-483? BCE) is best known to succeeding millennia by his title, Buddha, “the Enlightened One.” He left no writings; all Buddhist literature is the work of his students and their successors, much of which professes to record his oral teachings. Of these works, the Dhammapada is probably the most highly regarded. Siddhartha, like Lao-Tze, taught a way of movement or going. His Word was Anatta, “no self.” A companion doctrine was anikka, “change;” so that his primary message was that there is no distinctive “self”(Atman) which is unchanging and immutable. He also taught the stringent application to the mind of self-reflective analysis. Thus, he continued the work begun by Mosheh and others in defining the framework of the universe.
DIONYSUS is the name by which we identify several embodiments of emerging spiritual truth, especially in the eastern Mediterranean region, in the centuries surrounding and succeeding the time of Lao-Tze and Siddhartha. This “Dionysus” - a god who, like the Sun, was annually slain in winter and reborn in the spring - uttered that Word which has come down to us as I.N.R.I., with its concealed cognate, IAO.
As Aleister Crowley wrote in his visionary work, The Heart of the Master: “Lao-Tse, Gautama [Siddhartha], Zerdusht [Zoroaster], Pythagoras, Dionysus, Osiris. These were sent forth at the same time - and Dionysus under several diverse forms - to enlighten Six Great Civilizations, about to be drawn together by the opening up of communications over the planet by the expansion of the Roman Power.”
I.N.R.I. is the anagram of various phrases expressing the sublimity of Nature and Her continual renewal. Its most profane (that is, popularized) expression is in the phrase, Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudæorum, said to have adorned the instrument of execution of the legendary Jesus; for in “Dionysus” we include that entire category of “slain-god” avatars that dominated Western civilization’s popular religions for over two thousand years, of which Christianity’s Jesus is the foremost example. IAO, a Greek name of the Divine, has a complex symbolism; it will perhaps suffice, for now, to say it is a Formula of the Sun.
In Crowley’s view, I.N.R.I./IAO, “is the Formula of Magick whereby all Things reproduce and recreate themselves.” Where Aum served Krishna as a formula of natural change, IAO expresses willed change; that is, causing change itself to occur conformed to Will, or Truth.
MUHAMMAD (Arabia, 570?-632 CE) next emerged, as a force of justice to set aright imbalances from the heritage of Dionysus; and it was the followers of Muhammad and of Mosheh who kept learning alive and science progressing during Europe’s Dark Ages. His Word was Allah, by which Name (merciful and compassionate) he knew his God. His central doctrine was that God is One. His purpose, correctly summarized by Crowley, was, “to unite all Men in One Reasonable Faith: to make possible Co-operation of all Races in Science.” Islam, the name of his religion, means, “surrender.” In context, it means, “surrender to God’s will.” It not yet being recognized by humanity that by “God” is meant the spiritual source and root of each person, it was not yet understood that this meant surrender to the inmost Will, or Truth, of oneself.
According to the premises of Thelema, the most recent in this series of Magi was TO MEGA THERION, the man named Aleister Crowley (England, 1875-1947 CE). In 1904 CE, he received a channeled work called Liber Legis, or The Book of the Law, in which was articulated the Word Thelema. But the true Word of this present Æon is Abrahadabra, a Word that encodes the Mystery and method of spiritual progress. These words Thelema and Abrahadabra incorporate, and give a more mature expression to, many of the seed-ideas of the Magi of millennia past.
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This was very informative; thank you Jim.
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Informative and well written.
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Thanks for posting. Lots of interesting ideas there, I enjoyed that.
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thanks.
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ditto.
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A digression from this thread has been moved to this location:
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