A Petition on please-do-not-change-the-book-of-the-law
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@Simon Iff said
"Well, as long as the original text is always available as a photocopy in any LA book, the issue will resolve itself, and any future readers be able to judge for themselves if any given "translation" of the original handwriting is revisionist history or not, am I overlooking something?"
From a practical mystical standpoint, it could potentially be much more difficult to encourage an aspirant to approach Liber Legis from that state of mind in which even the accidental "style of a letter" may carry significance (i.e. may not be truly accidental) when, from the beginning, the aspirant is taught that "well, this one part was wrong and had to be corrected."
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@Simon Iff said
"Well, as long as the original text is always available as a photocopy in any LA book, the issue will resolve itself, and any future readers be able to judge for themselves if any given "translation" of the original handwriting is revisionist history or not, am I overlooking something?"
This is the key, and why it is written into the Book as a self-reference. It cannot be changed. Those that would try are misguided and delusional, possibly even motivated by forces that would deny the True Will. It is mathematically perfect in every way.
It is absolutely essential that every student study the handwritten manuscript and regard it as the authority of the Book. Beyond this, every student should transcribe into their own notebook The Book of the Law in its entirety. And this sacred Book that is made is the beginning of the end, not the end of the beginning.
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@P is for Pomegranate said
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@Jason R said
"I agree completely. It's not EVERY copy, it's theirs. I reject that their copy as mine, and if I see a Liber L with the change, I won't buy it etc. In addition, as long as this group is headed by those who make such decisions, I will refuse to ever participate in their order. I think it's a shame they found it wise to make this change."The problem here is that the OTO publications tend to get the most circulation in the market, therefor quite likely tampering with the first experiences of many. Seems an act without taste
"Good point. Ill sign lol.
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@Bereshith said
"...filioque...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filioque
"My worst fear is that it is meant to be point fully divisive
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It's poor textual criticism. The goal of textual criticism is to get as close as possible to the original document. But we have the original document. Not only that, but AC lived like forty years after introducing the OTO to the text of the Law and never changed it before he died. In fact, the complete opposite is true. He made members of the AA take oaths based on not changing it at all.
Based on the above, any claim that the change is what AC intended to do... You just can't successfully make that argument. In practice, he emphatically opposed changing it, no matter what the "correct" "translation" of the poem says in a non-Liber Legis manuscript.
If someone is arguing that AC refused changing the manuscript for about 40 years but should have made the change, I'd say that they were lost in the Game.
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@Bereshith said
"He made members of the AA take oaths based on not changing it at all."
Untrue. (Minor point to the present discusion, perhaps, but: Untrue, if you mean that this requirement is anywhere in any A.'.A.'. oath for any grade.)
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@Bereshith said
"Could you help clarify?
I've heard some organizations require members to accept Liber Legis as is without wanting to change anything in it. Was this AC's practice, or did it originate through other sources?"
That's in a preliminary pledge to (wait for it...) O.T.O.
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@Jim Eshelman said
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@Bereshith said
"Could you help clarify?I've heard some organizations require members to accept Liber Legis as is without wanting to change anything in it. Was this AC's practice, or did it originate through other sources?"
That's in a preliminary pledge to (wait for it...) O.T.O."
I was wondering when someone would point that out because I was oath-bound not to
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@Archaeus said
"I was wondering when someone would point that out because I was oath-bound not to
"I paused to consider the impact of my O.T.O. oaths on this point. Because the Preliminary Pledge is given to non-members (as a pre-obligation step toward membership), it's intended to be seen by non-members.
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Fascinating...
Well, the OTO predates Crowley's influence, so they can do pretty much whatever they want and still be the OTO - even remove his influence entirely if they wish.
It's still poor textual criticism to change something an author never chose to change for 40 or so years of living, working, analyzing, and teaching with the document.
It's pointlessly divisive as neither "fill" nor "kill" is in the literal translation of the Stele.
It breaks an injunction contained within the very book the correction seeks to honor.
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@Jim Eshelman said
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@Archaeus said
"I was wondering when someone would point that out because I was oath-bound not to"I paused to consider the impact of my O.T.O. oaths on this point. Because the Preliminary Pledge is given to non-members (as a pre-obligation step toward membership), it's intended to be seen by non-members."
Either way, this particular point has been one of several reasons why I could never accept such a change. What others call a correction I am calling a corruption.
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I think the reprinting of Equinox III:9 will clear up a lot of the questions of exactly what Fr. H.B. intends and what evidence he has for it. There has not yet been any public O.T.O. ruling on the issue.
And as far as it being O.T.O. doing this: it won't be O.T.O. putting the imprimatur on all those Class A documents when III:9 is reissued...
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@Iamus said
"I think the reprinting of Equinox III:9 will clear up a lot of the questions of exactly what Fr. H.B. intends and what evidence he has for it. There has not yet been any public O.T.O. ruling on the issue.
And as far as it being O.T.O. doing this: it won't be O.T.O. putting the imprimatur on all those Class A documents when III:9 is reissued..."
Again wrong; I have had it on good authority that there are already 'corrupted' editions of Liber Al on their order for distribution within the OTO. It seems pretty much a settled thing. But time will tell.
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Please scroll down and read under the heading "Archival News."
He seems to be making the decision based on a marginal note in one of A.C.'s copies of* Liber Legis *.
Crowley made the note in the margin, but he never himself made the change.
We have no idea what prevented him from doing so. Whether mere circumstance or second thoughts based on the injunction in the book not to change so much as the style of a letter.
So... there you have it. But from that article, he's making the change.
@Fr. H.B. said
"That this particular book—with corrections!—should arrive in that brief period when The Holy Books were being proofed was amazing, though not entirely unsurprising to me. I believe the Secret Chiefs are paying attention to our work and can arrange such things—if I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t be editing The Holy Books in the first place!"
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To me, it seems like the Frater Superior will need to spend some time pondering whether these events represent an intervention of the "Secret Chiefs" or a* test *of his own willingness to submit, even in his position of power, to the initial unifying pledge requried of all OTO members.
Who knows why Crowley never followed through on the change he noted in that book?
It could have been circumstances alone, or it could have been his ultimate submission to his own rule of classifying documents as Class A and not changing them once codified and published as such.
Following such a change, one could raise question after question about the nature of Class A documents and whether the authority to change them actually exists if one has good reasons, good intentions, and the "proper" authority. As such, it subverts the whole concept of Class A documents being final and truly representing the final editorial decisions of the adept who originally published them (within the flow of that particular time and personal inspiration in the decision-making process).
In my opinion, it's better to consider any alternate (even published) versions of the document originally presented and classified as "Class A" as misprints.
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If this stuff is really initiating a crisis, I would see the danger for Thelema more in going the way of fundamentalist religion - including civil wars about the wrong semicolon in the scriptures of God - than in some altering of the chance shape of a letter contained in the original handwriting copy anyways
But then, Crowley foresaw this happen anyways, it must be a tradition, or old charter, or something. There, found it:
@Alex Crowley said
" The Convert
(A Hundred Years Hence) There met one eve in a sylan glade A horrible Man and a beautiful maid. "Where are you going, so meek and holy?" "I'm going to temple to worship Crowley." "Crowley is God, then? How did you know?" "Why, it's Captain Fuller that told us so." "And how do you know that Fuller was right?" "I'm afraid you're a wicked man; Good-night." While this sort of thing is styled success I shall not count failure bitterness."Cheers
Iffy Simon
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I understand that possibility and concern. I'm neither a fundamentailist nor Crowley worshipper though.
An order's job is literally to provide an "order" or "rule of life" that fosters the ultimate goals of the order, and that's the main question for me.
Here, you have an instance of the Frater Superior of an order breaking the primary "rule" upon which membership in the "order" is intially based. It's a disordering of the original order. It creates a fundamental change in the order of the order.
I would say it doesn't apply to me at all, but since I've recently been considered affiliating with a group that also has such a preliminary pledge, will I have to ask them *which version of Liber Legis * are they asking that I accept?
Upon what should I make my own decision?
Will they, in the future, have to specify to which version they are requiring acceptance?
And who are its own chiefs affiliated with?
And how will they make their own decision if doubly affiliated themselves?
Disorder.
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@Simon Iff said
"But then, Crowley foresaw this happen anyways, it must be a tradition, or old charter, or something. There, found it:"
But he wrote that 103 years ago
Maybe we can edit the poem to read, "(A Hundred and Three Years Hence)".