A Petition on please-do-not-change-the-book-of-the-law
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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)".
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@Bereshith said
"I understand that possibility and concern. I'm neither a fundamentailist nor Crowley worshipper though."
I did not mean you, Bereshith. I meant I can see the general danger in it, and that it has already started to happen.
@Bereshith said
"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?"
Upon a copy of the handwritten version.
@Bereshith said
"Disorder."
Crowley often said that he wanted his stuff developed further, that he abhorred believers into his cause - and, there is no eternal order. Just evolution. And evolution changes stuff, aeon after aeon after aeon.
@Jim Eshelman said
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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)"."
My word
Regards
Simon
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@Archaeus said
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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."
Yes, time will tell, which is exactly what my point was. And no, as of this moment there have been no official, public rulings on the subject by O.T.O. The periodic "News from IHQ" posts are not official statements of policy. Whatever you have "on good authority" regarding printing is clearly not public or official. -
@Iamus said
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@Archaeus said
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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."
Yes, time will tell, which is exactly what my point was. And no, as of this moment there have been no official, public rulings on the subject by O.T.O. The periodic "News from IHQ" posts are not official statements of policy. Whatever you have "on good authority" regarding printing is clearly not public or official."Printing, yes, so far I agree - we do not know (but it was implied in the blog that Breeze posted). Plus, it does exist in the new form on the Official Grand Lodge Website. Tell me what you think that means.
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@kasper81 said
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@Archaeus said
"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."
Well I guess at this stage it would be a good move to spread that Facebook petition everywhere to try and do something abouit it"
That's generally the plan. I've even had a few non-occultist friends sign it on purely ethical grounds.
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"Back when I was in seminary school there was a young man there who put forth the proposition you could petition the OTO as if it were a democracy.... petition the OTO as if it were a democracy.... petition the OTO as if it were a democracy.....
YOU CANNOT PETITION THE OTO AS IF IT WERE A DEMOCRACY!"
Good luck with your petition, but it isn't as if William Breeze didn't already expect a rebellion to rise up. No one can prevent him, the outer head of the OTO, from doing whatever he wants. He's the King of Kings for jism's sake!
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@Takamba said
""Back when I was in seminary school there was a young man there who put forth the proposition you could petition the OTO as if it were a democracy.... petition the OTO as if it were a democracy.... petition the OTO as if it were a democracy.....
YOU CANNOT PETITION THE OTO AS IF IT WERE A DEMOCRACY!"
Good luck with your petition, but it isn't as if William Breeze didn't already expect a rebellion to rise up. No one can prevent him, the outer head of the OTO, from doing whatever he wants. He's the King of Kings for jism's sake!"
We know that; HB has all the cards and I don't think he really cares what the few MoE that have the balls to disagree openly have to say. He probably regards this as a way of losing what he regards as undesirable elements.
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@Uni_Verse said
"Anyone able to corroborate the information?"
It is incorrect that Crowley published "kill" in an edition of The Book of the Law more times than he published it as "fill."
There is no edition of The Book of the Law ever published by Crowley using "kill" in this place.
Following simply the examples given in the article you cite:
The original manuscript, though broadly referring to the inclusion from a vellum notebook, does specifically include the word "fill".
The Temple of Solomon and Equinox of the Gods references are the same item, since the latter was simply reproducing the former. IIRC the "kill" there was in the poetic paraphrase of the text of the stele, but NOT in The Book of the Law per se. (I don't care at all how he originally wrote it. I care about how it appears in Liber L.)
The original manuscript and (as far as I can recall without checking) every single time Crowley published Liber L. from 1909 through the climactic "I got it right this time!" 1938 edition, the word "fill" was used.
It is untrue that, "...the current printing of 'fill' that so many are acting as if it were canon derives from previous editorial decision in 1983 by Mr. Breeze for the publication of The Holy Books of Thelema," pushing aside Crowley's subsequent changes. Rather, that edition followed ever publication by Crowley of Liber L. and, especially, relied on the definitive 1938 edition with a small number of further typographic corrections from simple proofreading.
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The more I discover about all that has gone before, the more I think, if he is considering all the factors, that it must be a very difficult decision.
I personally lean toward accepting "fill," which is technically, but very literally in the original manuscript of the Law, as that represents the inspiration at the moment of the dictation even if technically an incorrect mental inclusion from the poetic translation of the stele. There are other reasons, but this is primary for me. It best captures that moment in time, and for me, the inspiration of that particular moment in time, even in its accidents, carries more weight than consistency of information with the other source document.
But me, I'm primarily a mystic, so that's my bias.
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@Uni_Verse said
"What about this fellow who believes "kill" has been used more than "fill" overall?
markluskin.blogspot.com/2013/05/hegemonic-holy-books.html
Anyone able to corroborate the information?"
@Mark Luskin said
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If you look at the variations on this during Crowley's lifetime and overseen publications it runs something like this:"1904 ??? in the missing and presumed lost vellum notebook
1904 “fill” in Liber Legis MS
1909 “fill” in Thelema / The Holy Books of Thelemaaft
1909 – bef 1913 “fill” hand corrected via marginal note to “kill” in θέλημα
1912 “kill” in The Priest from The Temple of Solomon the King, Eq I vii
1936 “kill” in The Equinox of the Gods"(summary from "My Life With the Fill Kill Kult")"
The problem as I see it is that the "kill" was published by Crowley (1912 & 1936) in works apocryphal to Liber Legis. Liber Legis, it appears, has always had "fill" (with the exception of the copy of Liber Legis in Thelema that Crowley allegedly added the handwritten "k" in a margin near the crossed out "f."
As I am not mistaken that "The Temple of Solomon the King" is not Liber Legis, but a telling of how (among other things) Liber Legis came about and The Equinox of the Gods is similar in that vein. The portions of those writing where "kill" is inserted instead of "fill" aren't actually within "The Book of the Law" themselves, but in the versification of the Stele and in a separate context. In other words, Crowley was happy to change his verse where and when he pleased, but he never did so within the actual text of Liber Legis.
see Equinox Vol. I, No. 7 : the page labeled A PARAPHRASE OF THE INSCRIPTIONS UPON THE OBVERSE OF THE STELE OF REVEALING (not numbered but between pages 368 and 369). It does say "kill" there - but again, this is not a class A text, this is a poetic revision of a historic artifact.
The Equinox of the Gods version appears to me to be nothing more than a reprinting of this exact copy. Again, I point out that this is not taking place in a Class A text, not within Liber Legis itself, but regarding a poem Crowley had every right to tinker with (outside of its placement in a Class A text) as he so desired.
So these instances of "controversy" regarding Crowley's opinion about "kill" and "fill" seem meaningless to me. He clearly never made a change to the actual text within Liber Legis (unless this marginal note is in the section of the Holy Books that is Liber Legis and not the section of the Holy Books that is yet another copy of the above mentioned PARAPHRASE).
You see, Breeze, in his blog, didn't make clear to me where he found this Effin Kay. He could have found it in Liber Legis of the Holy Books or he could have found it in the Paraphrase of the Stele portion of the Holy Books. In any case, the real question is how many printings of Liber Legis did Crowley sign off on after 1913 and not himself make this "correction?"
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@Bereshith said
"I personally lean toward accepting "fill," which is technically, but very literally in the original manuscript of the Law, as that represents the inspiration at the moment of the dictation even if technically an incorrect mental inclusion from the poetic translation of the stele."
I too lean toward "fill".
But it's not altogether clear that the word in question is actually part of the "inspiration at the moment." Although it's hard to tell from B&W scans, it does appear that the word (and associated lines) are written in pencil. Whether this 'editorial clean up' occured in the immediate aftermath of the dictation or at some later date is unknown.
Maybe Rose walked off with the pen after filling in the blanks in verse 72.
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Well, that's ultimately the point, though. What's actually there in the original manuscript is as close as it is possible for certainty to get to recovering the original inspiration. The rest is pure guesswork. That's the record, and that's what's in it. You don't get closer to the original inspiration by deviating from the actual record, even if that particular inclusion came a little later. That's still as close as you can get.
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IMVHO...
The fact that "kill" is in a non-CCXX source document matters as little to me as the fact that the name "Hadit" is nowhere to be found in
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