A Petition on please-do-not-change-the-book-of-the-law
-
It is my birthday, so I'm not working - but I will later find the quote for you and if you can't accept that somethings are predictions and some things come true because they shouldn't, it isn't "prediction" you should blame, I can't talk with you. It isn't reasonable.
-
@Takamba said
"
@Jason R said
"
I respectfully disagree Takamba about what qualifies a "prediction". Nostradamus made plenty of predictions, and many regard them as such, and there were no formal declarations for these from him etc."I don't need to read any more of what you posted (I will, and if it deserves response I will give it) because if this is your thesis (good essay form, it should be your thesis), you are mistaken. Perhaps you haven't fully read the quatrains so popularly quoted, the first page describes the method and purpose (ergo, all other quotable lines pertain to this purpose) as astrological and predictive. So there, you are wrong in this regard. Nostradamus claimed he was being predictive."
Well I'm sorry. I never bragged about my ability as an accomplished, or even passable essay writer. I'm trying to work on my writing. I have my weaknesses, but I'm honest about them, and no where do I ever disregard another based on their ability to write.
Regardless, my point was that I don't think there are any agreed upon rules of what qualifies something as a prediction. The prediction in Liber L, in regards to this letter situation, I think is shown in his ability to KNOW what situation would arise. It's very ironic, that it warns against changing a "single letter", and here we are dealing with a single letter. The authors seemingly uncanny ability to know what would arise is significant to me. That's all.
-
@Jason R said
"Happy Bday.
I said the verse was a direction.
I feel the authors knowledge to include this direction was based on an ability to PREDICT what would arise."
Nice turn of phrase. It was a direction, and the author was Aiwass (if we believe Crowley's description of how the text was received). BUT it was not declared a prediction, so we should not. That minimalizes the direction since it has now already occurred (as a prediction, it's occurrence would be a fulfillment, and thus need no further warrant). It is a direction that Crowley was required to heed and we are all further designed to heed. It was not a "prediction." And regardless of your agreement of what defines a prediction versus not a prediction, I'm telling you that Crowley himself had a definition and according to his definition, this declaration of Aiwass to "change not so much as the style of a letter" WAS NOT a prediction. Why is that worth arguing over?
-
@Takamba said
"
@Jason R said
"Happy Bday.I said the verse was a direction.
I feel the authors knowledge to include this direction was based on an ability to PREDICT what would arise."
Nice turn of phrase. It was a direction, and the author was Aiwass (if we believe Crowley's description of how the text was received). BUT it was not declared a prediction, so we should not. That minimalizes the direction since it has now already occurred (as a prediction, it's occurrence would be a fulfillment, and thus need no further warrant). It is a direction that Crowley was required to heed and we are all further designed to heed. It was not a "prediction." And regardless of your agreement of what defines a prediction versus not a prediction, I'm telling you that Crowley himself had a definition and according to his definition, this declaration of Aiwass to "change not so much as the style of a letter" WAS NOT a prediction. Why is that worth arguing over?"
To me, it's is as if I were to tell you before you left, "watch out for a green car", and as your walking along you get hit by a green car lol. Stupid example, but the point I'm trying to make is that the line is a direction, but WHY did I know to make it? Why "green"? The BOL gives us a direction sure, but we can say it seems to uncannily PREDICT that it was needed, and needed in a situation for a single letter. Savvy? So, yes, its a direction, and not a classic definition of a prediction, but the verse seems to perfectly predict this single letter issue. Maybe I'm just not getting it, but I can't seem to understand how this isn't perfectly clear. Anyway, to me it's not a big deal. If you or anyone else do not feel it predicts anything fine.
-
Thing is though Jason, Crowley didnt have to be psychic to understand the work would be, or an attempt would be made eventually.. to redact it, no matter how insignificantly...
He just looked to the past to what has happened with other works. -
@chris S said
"Thing is though Jason, Crowley didnt have to be psychic to understand the work would be, or an attempt would be made eventually.. to redact it, no matter how insignificantly...
He just looked to the past to what has happened with other works."Yes, I agree. So, I guess your saying then that the verse alone is simply to prevent such future changes; but the fact this situation arose and seems to perfectly match the "single letter" warning, is a only coincidence. Could be. My point was only that this seems to predict the situation. Couldn't we argue that the verse was included for both reasons? Awaiz knew this particular situation would arise, and so articulated the verse to suit both the overall warning, and a general meaning, and also sort of prove his power and knowledge by using the "single letter" phrasing? You know what I mean?
-
@Jason R said
"
@chris S said
"Thing is though Jason, Crowley didnt have to be psychic to understand the work would be, or an attempt would be made eventually.. to redact it, no matter how insignificantly...
He just looked to the past to what has happened with other works."Yes, I agree. So, I guess your saying then that the verse alone is simply to prevent such future changes; but the fact this situation arose and seems to perfectly match the "single letter" warning, is a only coincidence. Could be. My point was only that this seems to predict the situation. Couldn't we argue that the verse was included for both reasons? Awaiz knew this particular situation would arise, and so articulated the verse to suit both the overall warning, and a general meaning, and also sort of prove his power and knowledge by using the "single letter" phrasing? You know what I mean?"
Actually not a coincidence, an inevitability.
Though i feel that the "single letter" phrase was dramatic literature employed to emphasise that the work was received.
Personally i dont think it should be changed, it's dross and pedantic.. which is why it was so easy to predict and advise against.
..imo. -
@chris S said
"
Actually not a coincidence, an inevitability. "I would say it's a necessary stage in the life cycle of a religion. As a delightfully heretical Pentacostal minister I knew once described the life cycle of his churches: "The First Generation has the vision. The Second Generation is taught the vision with the witness of their father's conviction. The Third generation recieves the vision only as words, and so has decide between accepting it as scriptural authority, or seeking a new vision by which to get the revelation first hand again."
In other words, interpretation of scripture has to arise as time changes the context of the original revelation so that it's no longer clear, and as the organizational pressures of the external structure impose their own demands/Wills on the individual needs within it. (And here, I'm speaking of the energetic Will of the organizational entity itself, or egregore, if you want to call it that - it wants to live and grow as much as anything else.) The decision by the OHO of the OTO marks the point where a religious authority feels justified in adjusting the valves...because you're really not just swapping out a letter in the text here. There's many other things going on, not the least of which is the affirmation of religious authority "in the name of the Founder" vs. by the Founder's direct instructions. This allows the organization or religion to make whatever continued updates are necessary to stay viable.
But this distances the external religion from the central Mystery that connects it to the Interior. The Book of the Law proposes a solution to this problem. If you take the view that the original text should be preserved as commanded "for in the chance shape of the letters and their position to one another: in these are mysteries that no Beast shall divine", then the Mystery is extended indefinitely, and each person can work it out themselves based on whatever they receive through working with it. It's not possible or necessary to know what the Prophet meant to say or intended to transmit, because - like the little fairy chick says: "Prophets don't know everything!" And in the Book of the Law, the Prophet is clearly designated the scribe, not the author. Once squabbling over interpretation (literally "what should be there instead of what's actually there") sets in, the primacy of the Mystery and the individual relationship to it are very quickly lost, as is the ability to peacefully "break bread together." (Bread=Word, of course.) Crowley's Plymouth Brethren upbringing would have very empahtically taught him this - no prophetic ability even needed here.
-
I just don't understand why this change has to be made. Why this insistence on textual uniformity, when the tradition says there are two versions of the Paraphrase? One version was consistently used in The Book of the Law and sometimes in outside contexts, and the other consistently used in the Paraphrase as a stand-alone poem, and sometimes in outside contexts.
There is one piece of evidence that Crowley once thought of changing "fill me" to "kill me" in CCXX, but he never implemented it. Crowley didn't make it, in any of the printings of CCXX, so why does HB think he should make it? Crowley's example is clear and the conclusion indisputable, I think - he didn't want it, whatever the Windram "K" means.
The explanation for the two versions of the final line of obverse of the stele is that Crowley revised the poem. He didn't make a "mistake" when quoting it in XXXI or the Cairo typescript, this is what the poem said and it was his preferred version when he wrote it in XXXI and had the typescript made. Later he changed it to "kill me" and this is what was used in the printed version of the poem in 1912, in the Great Invocation, and in Liber CXX (Cadaveris).
Why does one version have to be wrong, and the other right? There is no more justification in "correcting" the Paraphrase to read "fill me" (as HB did), than there is to "correct" Liber Legis to read "kill me" (which he is about to do). It is just a case of two variants, used consistently in different contexts.
Historically, "fill me" has priority, both in manuscript and printed forms, in Libers XXXI and CCXX.
-
To implications:
It's been so interesting and difficult here, during the course of morphing from Christian/Osirian mystery to that of the New Aeon, to be brought back again and again to the idea that it's all the same Logos-energy and heart under a different primary metaphor.
It's no longer dying to be raised, it's living and pouring out one's life-blood into Babalon's cup. The change in metaphor is the primary emphasis of the New Aeon. Over and over again, it has been emphasized that the spiritual metaphor has to be changed in order for the instruction to be consistent, for the New Aeon to actually represent a change - something really new that departs from Osiris..
Yet this departs from that consistent presentation and places the metaphor of spiritual death and rebirth right there in RHK's chapter.
It honestly has me dumbfounded. It makes all the other emphasis on living and killing seem so pointlessly illusory.
For what did Christ do in knowingly, willfully going to Jerusalem but pour out his life-blood into Babalon's cup? It was a supreme act of Will.
It has me pondering the point of being all these years out of the fellowship and the vocation of my early training and my native spiritual tongue. For what? To serve a smoke and mirrors version of the same old, old story for the instinct-driven and skeptical? For whose sake? No one I come into conract with, that's for sure.
"Aum let it kill me." Ankh-af-khonsu, thou art Jesus the Christ.
-
@Sr_MNA said
"
@chris S said
"
Actually not a coincidence, an inevitability. "I would say it's a necessary stage in the life cycle of a religion. As a delightfully heretical Pentacostal minister I knew once described the life cycle of his churches: "The First Generation has the vision. The Second Generation is taught the vision with the witness of their father's conviction. The Third generation recieves the vision only as words, and so has decide between accepting it as scriptural authority, or seeking a new vision by which to get the revelation first hand again."
"
I agree it's inevitable and necessary that this will happen. Fortunately this time it is not (much of?) a doctrinal issue, just a textual one. That's all that bothers me - the ambiguity, the tension - playful tension even - of the two versions of that line of the poem is getting conformed to a single meaning. HB is trying to drive out "fill me" with "kill me", as if the former is a mistake of Crowley's in the manuscript of XXXI. Previous to the Windram K, it was "kill me" that was wrong and had to be driven out.
I know people on both sides of this, but I must say that those who side with HB all seem to be bound to him by friendship or oaths of loyalty. It is submission to authority or sentiment, not evidence and independent judgment.
I try to prove my neutrality in every post - I have nothing personal in this. It is, you might say, a professional judgment.
In another field, my only true speciality, the history of the Tarot, I am the big bad scholarly consensus. The Tarot is like a Bible to many people, and the mystique of its origins and meanings has to be preserved at any cost. I am on the same side in this debate, where submission to Secret Chief authority takes the place of a decision based on evidence and reason.
-
I'm more in a mood today than anything else...
Ultimately... Sides? Really? Do numbers have sides? See 358.
But in the world of words and their divisions, just... let the freakin' Book of the Law be at least* internally* consistent with* itself*.
Too many deals being made...
-
@belmurr said
"Historically, "fill me" has priority, both in manuscript and printed forms, in Libers XXXI and CCXX."
Belmurru
There is absolutely no evidence that "fill me" has priority over "kill me." Threefold31 notes the following about The Great Invocation:
TGI – The Great Invocation – A ritual that includes the third and fourth verses from the obverse Stele Versifications, (including the reading "kill me!"), as well as the whole of the versifications from the reverse of the Stele. Composed probably during the 1904 Cairo period, but after Liber L vel Legis was received, as it includes terms unique to that book. This was never published, but appears in galley proofs in the Appendix to CW III. The original manuscript copy is no longer extant.
The aide-memoire "fill me" was written in the margins of Liber 31 following the reception of Liber Legis, possibly a few days afterwards.
The Great Invocation containing "kill me" was probably written during the Cairo Working, but following the reception of Liber Legis.
The above facts demonstrate ZERO evidence that "fill me" has priority over "kill me."
While I seriously do not care if one chooses "fill" over "kill," I do care about the truth. You have tried to continually minimize the impact of Crowley's correction in the margins of Windram's Thelema and to shape the evidence in favor of "fill." But this Windram correction is not an isolated incident that occurred without context. There is a history behind this correction, namely the "longstanding textual uncertainty" over fill/kill. Moreover, it is absurd to claim this "uncertainty" is a manufactured problem on the part of HB. There is ZERO evidence that Crowley meant to generate two readings of the paraphrase. One is tempted to conclude Crowley wanted "fill me" for *Liber Legis *and "kill me" for initiatory ritualistic purposes, but there is no evidence for such interpretation.
It's important to keep in mind that HB 1) has priviledged access to Crowley material and 2) has been deeply involved in editing his writings for decades. Until HB brought it to our attention a month ago, most of us were not even aware of this uncertainty over fill/kill.
