College of Thelema: Thelemic Education

@zeph Yes, I may have caught myself in answering my own question, yet failing to leave it at that. Because it was nagging at me for some reason, I wanted to see first if it was something of import to others. I'm no stranger to kismet, so the nag needed to be answered. Appreciate your input.

@ReverendJones Yes, he re-created two decks, the Jean Noblet and Viéville tarot. Both are sold out from the site but I do see them both pop up here and there on other sites for sale. Fine pieces, both.

@jjones 93 Well said. I was unsure how to address the word conspiracy and you did a grand job of it. Here's to more joy and love ... love under will. 93 93/93

It seems to me, nothing is geekier than a ceremonial magician Honestly, I have found GNU/Linux systems and Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) like TeX and LaTeX publishing tools are very powerful and freeing for the student of the occult. There are a wide number of applications written by devotees of the Great Work within this ecosystem. Please do let us know when the library is ready. I am working on a project for occult publishing (inspired by the work done by Joseph H. Peterson) that provides a platform for magicians to easily publish writing using templates. Perhaps some inclusion of these fonts could be agreed to... And, yes, it is for Emacs, and I am calling it Thelemacs

93 In "Eight Lectures on Yoga" Uncle Al states: Music has no expressed intellectual content whatever, and the sole test of music is its power to exalt the soul. It is then evident that the composer is himself attempting to express in sensible form some such sublimities as are attained by those who practise Magick and Yoga as they should. [1] Throughout his works he highlights balance and avoiding un-Willed action as essential traits of a the devoted magician. For me, I approach music as I approach anything that has an effect upon me that I do not initially seem to have control over. I ask whether it furthers the specific goal I am trying to achieve. Does it enhance me or does it diminish me? Throughout the day while I work there is a constant stream of trance music playing. EDM in general locks me into a focused state that, without, I can not get through even an hour of work successfully. It is somewhat akin to meditation, but for a purpose. It enhances me during a time that I need it. However, during actual meditation, I personally am unable to reach a state of liberation from my body (unmanifest) such that real Work can be done with any material distractions, such as music or generated sound. Ultimately you are the one who must answer that question. As with any work of magic, it is answered through trial and error. Is the goal achieved via this system, or via the other? If you keep a magical record, this should be a part of your documentation, such as what you are trying to achieve, what happens when you listen to music and what type of music (or generated sound), and then document what happens when there is none. 93 93/93

@augur Absolutely. I have great respect for that effort. Many do not have the opportunity to shelve The Equinox otherwise and these print editions are very readable. The videos on their process show what a little dedication can produce.

I updated the project with the extended template and it is ready for use. Here are some screenshots. It's just out of testing and there is only one record in the index, but hopefully you get the idea. I will add a screenshot to the project site of the HTML-exported entries at some point when there are a number of entries with content. You can export your whole magical record into an HTML package with an index.html in case you wish to read it in that format. Main menu: [image: john-st-john-01.png] Entry categories: [image: john-st-john-02.png] Expanded categories: [image: john-st-john-03.png] Editor commands: [image: john-st-john-04.png] Magical record index: [image: john-st-john-05.png]

Eshelman's translation of Sepher Yetzirah is no longer available to purchase in physical form, but can be downloaded as a PDF here.

93 Thank you, @zeph I have been reading posts these last few days and there are worthwhile conversations happening here. While I wish I had deep responses to all of them, I suspect for the most part I will be asking questions more often than not. I will admit a few are topics close to my heart, however! 93 93/93

@fiatyod 93 This one has a delicious Crowley-paradox baked in. Ra-Hoor-Khuit is anti-“Buddhist religion” in Liber AL rhetoric, but not anti-Buddhist technique or realization. Crowley attacks Buddhism as an old-aeon creed, while still using Buddhist method, vocabulary, and attainment-models as some of his best technical comparators. Wrapping a description of Ra-Hoor-Khuit with an analysis of how Buddhism overlaps with Thelema may help. Any failure to that end is entirely mine and not a reflection of Thelema or Uncle Al. Ra-Hoor-Khuit is the active, outward, conquering form of Horus in the New Aeon. Crowley treats him not merely as an Egyptian god-name, but as a magical formula: the visible, operative result of the union of Nuit and Hadit. In Magick in Theory and Practice, Crowley gives the cleanest metaphysical definition: Nuit is infinite space, Hadit is the infinitely small omnipresent point, and the conjunction of these infinities is called Ra-Hoor-Khuit, “a unity which includes and heads all things.” In plain language: Ra-Hoor-Khuit is the universe becoming active as Will — the infinite field and the point of experience suddenly expressed as force, direction, and event. [1] Crowley also identifies him as part of the double god Heru-Ra-Ha. In Book of Thoth, he says Heru-Ra-Ha has two forms: Ra-Hoor-Khuit, the extroverted or active form, and Hoor-pa-kraat, the passive or introverted form. The same passage says he is solar in character, coming forth in golden light. [2] So, simplified: Hoor-pa-kraat is the silent seed; Ra-Hoor-Khuit is that seed bursting forth as action. Crowley says almost exactly that in the New Comment to Liber AL: Hoor-pa-kraat is the “Babe in the Egg of Blue,” the unmanifest Higher Self or Holy Guardian Angel; when he appears, he takes the active twin-form of Ra-Hoor-Khuit. Crowley’s phrase is that the “Concealed Child becomes the Conquering Child,” and he equates this with the hidden Silent Self springing forth as the Word of one’s True Will. [3] That gives us the psychological definition: Ra-Hoor-Khuit is the awakened Will, no longer latent, silent, or gestating. He is the “child” because he belongs to the new Aeon; he is “crowned and conquering” because this Will does not ask permission from old moralities, old gods, or old formulas. Crowley’s aeonic definition is just as important. In his early commentary material, he says the Isis period was pastoral and natural, the Osiris period was characterized by sorrow, death, and sacrifice, and the Horus period brings the “young child” who rises strong and conquering with his twin Harpocrates. He explicitly places Buddha and Christ in the Osirian period, not the Horus period. [4] So Ra-Hoor-Khuit is Crowley’s name for the ruling god-form of the post-Osirian Aeon: no longer salvation by suffering, but realization by force, fire, joy, ordeal, and Will. Crowley’s qabalistic gloss adds another layer. In the Old/New Comment to Liber AL III:1, he says Abrahadabra is the reward/formula of Ra-Hoor-Khuit; he connects the god with the Great Work, the balancing of 5 and 6, the Rose and Cross. He glosses Ra as solar, Hoor as warrior/Mars, and Khu as the magical ego of a star, with the inserted i/yod transmuting the name into godhead. [5] That is very Crowley: half Egyptian, half qabalistic engine-room. In Liber V vel Reguli, he compresses Ra-Hoor-Khuit into the formula ShT: Shin as fire, Teth as force, conjoined to express Ra-Hoor-Khuit. He then links this formula with the Aeon, magic, the Sun, the Lion, the Serpent, courage, and sexual love. [6] So practically, Ra-Hoor-Khuit is not merely “war” in the crude military sense; he is force-fire applied through the magical formula of the Aeon. And yes, the war imagery is real. Liber AL III has Ra-Hoor-Khuit speak as a god of war and vengeance, and Crowley’s New Comment interprets this not only literally but mystically: the “god of War and Vengeance” is one who causes people to do their Wills by “Going as Gods do,” instead of checking the course of Nature. [6] That is the key softener: Crowley’s “war” is often cosmological and initiatory before it is political. It is the violence of manifestation itself, the strike of Will through inertia. Not exactly cozy. Very much not chamomile tea. Thus, Ra-Hoor-Khuit is Crowley’s active Horus: the solar-martial, crowned-and-conquering Child of the Aeon, born from the union of Nuit and Hadit, representing the awakened True Will as force, fire, joy, ordeals, and victorious magical action. Some have wondered if Ra-Hoor-Khuit overlaps with Buddhism. Directly, as a named Buddhist figure? No. Crowley does not identify Ra-Hoor-Khuit with Buddha, a Bodhisattva, a Dharmapāla, Heruka, Mahākāla, or any Buddhist deity in the sources I've read. In fact, Liber AL III explicitly includes “the Buddhist” among the old religious forms attacked by the Hawk-headed Lord, and Crowley’s New Comment says roughly that the same criticisms he makes of religion in India apply to Buddhism as practiced. [7] Functionally and technically, yes, there are overlaps — mostly at the levels of meditation, ego-destruction, wrathful enlightened energy, and the transition from silence to action. First, Crowley deeply respected Buddhist method. In Book 4, he says Buddha is the only great religious founder who explains his system thoroughly and is “not dogmatic,” and he calls the Buddhist system the best document for studying mystical attainment. He then reduces prayer and meditation to the same essential act: restraining the mind to a single act, state, or thought. [8] That matters because Ra-Hoor-Khuit’s twin, Hoor-pa-kraat, is the silent interior form; the RHK formula only becomes meaningful after the silent center has been found. Second, Crowley explicitly treats Buddha’s conquest of Mara as a model of magical vow and concentration. In Book 4, he describes Buddha under the Bo-tree taking the oath not to rise until attainment, even when Mara and the temptresses appear; then Crowley says Buddha attacked the ego first. [9] That has a real structural overlap with Ra-Hoor-Khuit: both are “conquering” images, but the real enemy is not merely external. It is inertia, ego, fear, false selfhood, and the old spell of “Because.” Third, Crowley connects his own Egyptian-Thelemic cosmology to Samadhi. In Eight Lectures on Yoga, he says Nuit as Space and Hadit as point-of-view unite and produce Heru-Ra-Ha, combining Ra-Hoor-Khuit and Hoor-pa-kraat, and then says this system corresponds closely to a great state of mind reflecting the experience of Samadhi. [10] That is probably the strongest Crowley-internal bridge to Buddhist and yogic traditions: Ra-Hoor-Khuit is not a Buddhist deity, but the Heru-Ra-Ha formula maps onto states of consciousness that Crowley discusses in the same technical neighborhood as Samadhi. Fourth, there is an overlap with the Bodhisattva / compassionate activity problem, though Crowley handles it in his own acid-soaked way. In his commentary on The Voice of the Silence, Crowley says the Master of the Temple has learned that “Everything is sorrow” and that there is no separate existence; therefore his task is not complete while any fragment of consciousness remains unemancipated from illusion. That is very close to a Mahayana-style logic of non-separate liberation. But Crowley immediately strips it of sentimentalism. For him, the Master acts not because he is “nice,” but because it is his nature/function to do so. [11] That is a very Ra-Hoor-Khuit spin on compassion: not pity, but necessity under Will. Fifth, there is a partial analogy to wrathful Buddhist forms, especially in Tibetan/Vajrayana material — but this is my comparison, not Crowley’s explicit identification. Sacred-texts material on Tibetan Buddhism describes wrathful deities as changed aspects of peaceful deities, and other sacred-texts material describes fierce meditational deity imagery with weapons, blood, skulls, and demon-conquest. [12] That resembles Ra-Hoor-Khuit only in function: terrible form as awakened energy, not evil. But Crowley himself does not say “Ra-Hoor-Khuit is a Buddhist wrathful deity,” so I would treat this as a comparative resonance, not a doctrinal equation. The biggest difference is Nibbana/Nirvana versus Thelemic manifestation. Crowley’s Science and Buddhism treats Buddhist Nibbana/Nirvana as a serious technical problem of cessation, not as a disguised heaven. [13] But in Magick Without Tears, he says Thelemites cannot practically accept a plan that treats perfection as mere absence or cessation; Thelemic Nothing wants to enjoy itself by realizing all possibilities in manifestation. [14] This is the philosophical fork in the road. Buddhist attainment, as Crowley understood it, moves strongly toward cessation, ego-extinction, non-attachment, and release from illusion. Ra-Hoor-Khuit accepts the “Nothing” behind things, but insists that Nothing express itself as force, joy, creation, ordeal, love, and Will. That is why Ra-Hoor-Khuit can sound anti-Buddhist while still using Buddhist machinery. He is not the Buddha; he is more like Crowley’s answer to what comes after the Buddha’s silence: the awakened point rises from the egg and acts. Crowley’s Ra-Hoor-Khuit only makes sense when paired with Hoor-pa-kraat, the silent form. Crowley says the dual character of the god is vital: the Sign of the Enterer must be followed by the Sign of Silence. [15] That is almost a ritual theorem: every projection of force must be rooted in silence; every magical strike must return to stillness. That is where the Buddhist correlation is strongest. Crowley admired Buddhist discipline because it knows how to still the mind, attack ego, and reach the threshold where reason fails. But Ra-Hoor-Khuit is what happens when Crowley refuses to stop at stillness. He wants the silence to become a Word, a child, a sword, a solar act. Ra-Hoor-Khuit is the active face of awakened consciousness in Thelema: the silent Self of Hoor-pa-kraat released into manifestation as solar-martial Will. He overlaps with Buddhist traditions not as a named deity, but as a technical cousin to Buddhist conquest of ego, meditative attainment, and wrathful enlightened activity. The difference is that Buddhism, especially as Crowley frames it, tends toward cessation or release, while Ra-Hoor-Khuit is the ecstatic eruption of Nothing into all possible acts. 93 93/93

@infernalwitch 93 Crowley’s “Holy Ring” is the Adept’s secret magical ring understood as the symbol of Nuit: the closed circumference of infinite possibility, continuity, and initiatory authority. In the 10th Aethyr, it becomes the instrument by which the Adept writes BABALON into the Abyss, sealing dispersion with the formula of totality. That sounds a little grand, but Crowley gives enough internal evidence for it. In The Vision and the Voice, the “Holy Ring” appears at the climax of the Choronzon episode. After the scribe has defended the circle and Choronzon’s manifesting form collapses, Crowley writes: “Then the Seer took the Holy Ring, and wrote the name BABALON, that is victory over Choronzon.” The important thing is that the ring does not merely protect him; it inscribes the victorious name. The ring is the implement that turns the Abyssal crisis into the formula BABALON over Choronzon. [1] Crowley’s clearest technical definition of the Ring is actually in Book 4. He says the Ring had not been described in the earlier magical-weapon section, then defines it directly: “It is the symbol of Nuit, the totality of the possible ways in which he may represent himself and fulfill himself.” That is probably the single most important Crowley passage for understanding the “Holy Ring.” It is not primarily a talisman of one planet, one angel, or one Solomonic authority; it is the circular sign of Nuit as total possibility. [2] That fits Crowley’s metaphysics of Nuit and Hadit. In Liber AL, Hadit says, “In the sphere I am everywhere the centre, as she, the circumference, is nowhere found.” In Liber NU, Crowley glosses this as Nuit = circumference / zero, and Hadit = center / point. So the ring is a miniature, wearable circumference: a small magical image of infinite space, continuity, and the field in which every possible act of Will can appear. [3] This also explains why the Ring is paired with the Wand in Book 4. Crowley says that if the magician holds the Wand in the right hand, the Ring should be on the left, as part of the general magical law of equilibrium. The Wand is the instrument of Will; the Ring is the counterbalancing symbol of Nuit, the total field of possible fulfillment. In plainer terms: Wand = directed Will; Ring = infinite space in which Will is fulfilled. [4] Crowley’s autobiographical retelling in Confessions confirms that the “Holy Ring” in the 10th Aethyr was a concrete magical implement, not merely a visionary metaphor. Describing the same episode, he says he wrote the holy name of BABALON in the sand “with my magical ring.” So “Holy Ring” and “magical ring” appear to refer to the same object in that operation. [5] There is another layer in John St. John. Crowley distinguishes the Ring of an Exempt Adept from a Secret Ring entrusted to him by the Masters. Later, when he symbolically renounces robes, weapons, dignities, and grades, he says he keeps only that Secret Ring, because “from that he cannot part,” and calls it his “Password into the Ritual itself.” This makes the ring not just jewelry and not just a weapon, but an initiatory credential: a sign of continuity with the Masters and with the Great Work itself. [6] So in the 10th Aethyr, the Holy Ring has a very specific job. Choronzon is the demon of the Abyss, and Crowley’s own note defines him as the metaphysical contrary of the whole process of Magick. In the same vision, Choronzon is explicitly associated with dispersion. The ring, as Nuit, represents the opposite principle: not fragmentation, but the all-containing circumference in which fragments are held as possibilities within one continuity. [7] That is why the ring writes BABALON. In Crowley’s later Book of Thoth treatment of BABALON, she receives the blood of the saints into her cup; every thought is destroyed and transformed into pure understanding; she yields herself to everything and thereby becomes mistress of all. That is almost the exact antidote to Choronzon. Choronzon scatters identity into dust; BABALON receives all selfhood, all blood, all thought, and integrates it into Understanding. [11] There is also a strong symbolic resonance in Book of Thoth where Crowley speaks of BABALON’s seven-lettered name as “the Seal upon the Ring.” I would not identify that ring simplistically with the physical Holy Ring of the 10th Aethyr, but it reinforces the same symbolic complex: BABALON, seal, ring, death, tomb, and the mystery of the name written or impressed as magical authority. [12] The Holy Ring is the Adept’s secret ring of Nuit: a portable magical circumference, the sign of infinite continuity and initiatory authority. In the Choronzon working, it functions as the seal by which the Adept inscribes BABALON — the formula of total surrender, Understanding, and integration — against the Abyssal force of dispersion. What it is not, at least from Crowley’s own available writings, is also important. Crowley does not appear to give a clear material recipe for it: no metal, stone, engraving, or construction details comparable to his instructions for the Wand, Cup, Dagger, Pantacle, or Lamp. In fact, Book 4 explicitly notes that the Ring had not been described in that weapon section. That omission feels deliberate: its meaning is not elementary or instrumental in the ordinary sense; it belongs to the higher formula of Nuit and the Adept’s relation to the Masters. [13] [14] Put more poetically but still Crowley-faithfully: the Holy Ring is the circle carried on the body — the Abyss-crossing Adept’s sign that no dispersion can finally escape the body of Nuit. 93 93/93

93 The swap is often contrasted against Jewish Kabbalah and the Jewish tradition of gematria. There is a technical logic to Crowley’s swap, but it is mostly Thelemic / Golden Dawn tarot-system logic, not a clean Hebrew-gematria or Jewish-kabbalistic logic. Crowley’s own stated move is clear: the line in Liber AL says “Tzaddi is not the Star,” and in the New Comment he resolves it by saying Tzaddi is The Emperor, and Heh is The Star; therefore Aries and Aquarius are counterchanged, producing what he calls “perfectly, flawlessly symmetrical” tarot attributions. [1] In Book of Thoth, he implements that literally: The Emperor is assigned to Tzaddi and Aries, while The Star is assigned to Heh and Aquarius. [2] The problem is that this does not preserve the older Hebrew-letter astrology found in Sefer Yetzirah. In the Sefaria text, the twelve simple letters are tied to the zodiac, with Heh forming Aries and Tzadi forming Aquarius. [3] That same structure is echoed in Crowley’s own 777 table before the swap: Heh = 5 = Aries = tarot IV, and Tzaddi = 90/900 = Aquarius = tarot XVII. [4] So from the standpoint of Hebrew alphabet order and classical letter-zodiac attribution, the old system is actually cleaner. Where Crowley’s move becomes “mathematical” is not gematria in the usual Jewish sense, but symmetry of tarot/zodiac geometry. He compares the Emperor/Star swap to the earlier Strength/Justice swap: Leo and Libra rotate around Virgo; Aries and Aquarius rotate around Pisces. His wording is explicit: Aries and Aquarius flank Pisces, just as Leo and Libra flank Virgo. [5] In other words, he is treating the zodiac as a loop and introducing a second “twist” to balance the first one. That is elegant inside his tarot architecture, a bit like making the graph prettier after discovering one edge is crossed. But as gematria, it is weak. Heh has the value 5; Tzaddi has 90 or final 900 in Crowley’s own table. [6] The Emperor is IV, The Star is XVII. There is no obvious Hebrew numerical equation where 5 or 90 “proves” Emperor or Star. In fact, before the swap, the ordinal structure is elegant: Fool = 0, Magus = I, Empress = III, Emperor = IV, so Heh, the 5th Hebrew letter, naturally falls on the 5th trump if the Fool is counted as zero. Likewise Tzaddi, the 18th letter, naturally falls on Trump XVII as the 18th trump. Crowley’s swap breaks that. There is one cute gematric coincidence, though: the Hebrew zodiac names for Aries and Aquarius both total 44 in standard gematria. Aries, טלה, is 9 + 30 + 5 = 44; Aquarius, דלי, is 4 + 30 + 10 = 44. Crowley’s own table gives these Hebrew sign spellings and the component letter values. [6] That makes Aries/Aquarius a surprisingly “legal-looking” pair to exchange at the level of sign-names. But that is a supporting curiosity, not a derivation. It does not explain why Tzaddi, specifically, should become Aries. From a Jewish mystical standpoint, the swap is hard to defend as traditional Kabbalah. Sefaria’s Sefer Yetzirah material gives the basic letter-zodiac map, and Rabbeinu Bahya also describes the 22 Hebrew letters as corresponding to wind/water/fire, the seven fixed stars/planets, and the 12 zodiac signs. [7] None of that requires tarot, and none of it suggests swapping Heh and Tzaddi. So if the test is “does this preserve Hebrew/Kabbalistic letter attribution?” the answer is no. Crowley’s swap is important and logical within Crowley’s initiatory tarot system, because it makes the Thoth deck’s symbolic architecture line up with his reading of Liber AL and with his desired zodiacal symmetry. But it is not logically compelled by Hebrew gematria or classical Jewish mysticism. It is a deliberate Thelemic override of the older Sefer Yetzirah-style correspondences — elegant as occult engineering, but not “kosher” as Hebrew-letter tradition. Crowley’s stated reason is this: Liber AL forced him to re-examine the inherited Golden Dawn tarot attributions. In Book of Thoth, he says the phrase “Tzaddi is not the Star” answered his own mental doubt about whether the old attributions were right. He says he tried for years to solve the problem, and only much later saw that The Star must be exchanged with The Emperor. The New Comment gives the same solution: Tzaddi = Emperor, Heh = Star, with Aries and Aquarius counterchanged. [8] The strongest technical reason he gives is zodiacal symmetry. Crowley says the earlier Golden Dawn correction had already swapped Justice and Strength, producing a balanced rotation around Virgo: Leo and Libra on either side of Virgo. His Emperor/Star swap creates a matching symmetry around Pisces: Aries and Aquarius on either side of Pisces. So the “why” is not primarily gematria; it is a structural correction to the zodiacal sequence of the tarot trumps. [9] The more interesting clue is that the command “Tzaddi is not the Star” appears in Liber AL immediately after language about the “law of the fortress” and the “House of God.” Crowley identifies the House of God with the Tower, Atu XVI, and in Book of Thoth he explicitly connects the Tower card to that verse. That matters because the Tower is Mars, while the Emperor is Aries, a Mars-ruled sign. So the hidden trail may run: House of God / Tower / Mars → Aries → Emperor, rather than simply “Star is wrong, swap two labels.” That is an inference, but it is a pretty strong one inside Crowley’s own symbolic map. [10] Crowley also gives a symbolic reason for why The Star becomes Heh. In Book of Thoth, The Star is Nuit, the Lady of the Stars, pouring from two vessels; he links the imagery to the Great Mother, Binah, the Sea, and Babalon as a materialization of Nuit. Elsewhere in the same chapter, he says it is natural for the Great Mother to be attributed to Heh, because Heh is “her letter” in Tetragrammaton. That is probably the most coherent internal reason for removing Heh from the Emperor and giving it to the Star. [11] For the opposite half, Crowley tries to justify why The Emperor becomes Tzaddi by phonetics and rulership imagery. In Book of Thoth, the Emperor is Aries, fiery authority, paternal creative force, and power descending from Chokmah to Tiphareth. He then says the sound-root TZ / TS appears in words of rulership such as Tsar, Czar, Caesar, Senior, Seigneur, Signor, and Sir. This is not traditional Hebrew gematria; it is Crowley’s comparative-philological occult wordplay. But within his system, it gives Tzaddi a “ruler” flavor rather than an “Aquarian Star” flavor. [12] There is also a striking breadcrumb in Book of Lies. In the commentary to “Ninety-One,” Crowley says 90 is the number of Tzaddi, and then describes “the Star” in its exoteric sense as the naked woman by the stream. That is fascinating because it suggests he already regarded the Tzaddi-Star attribution as a surface-level or outward meaning, not necessarily the final secret one. It is not the full solution, but it is exactly the kind of sideways hint one would expect from Crowley. [13] A second possible hidden clue appears in Liber Arcanorum. In the stanza numbered 4, corresponding to the Emperor position, Crowley writes of dominion being established in the “Star of the Flame.” That does not explicitly say “Tzaddi is the Emperor,” but it does entangle Emperor-number symbolism, dominion, star imagery, and fire/Horus imagery before the later Book of Thoth exposition. The stanza for 17, the Star position, also makes the “holy virgin” undergo a fiery transformation rather than presenting the Star as merely passive or watery. [14] But the cross-referencing also reveals a real problem. In Crowley’s older 777-style tables, the pre-swap system is clean: Heh = Aries = Emperor, and Tzaddi = Aquarius = Star. The Tree of Life paths also fit that older arrangement: the Aries/Emperor path joins Chokmah to Tiphareth, while the Aquarius/Star path joins Netzach to Yesod. Yet in Book of Thoth, after the swap, Crowley still describes the Emperor’s authority as descending from Chokmah to Tiphareth — the old Heh/Aries/Emperor path. So the swap is not a simple “put Emperor onto Tzaddi’s old Tree path.” It is more like Crowley is correcting the tarot-letter keys while preserving zodiacal and Tree-of-Life functions in a more complicated double register. [15] And there is one more complication from Liber Aleph: Crowley elsewhere says the “Letter of the Man” is Tzaddi, whose number is 90, and links it with Maim, water. That sounds much closer to the older Aquarius/man/water symbolism than to Aries/Emperor/fire. So across Crowley’s corpus, Tzaddi does not become purely “Emperor-like.” It retains older Aquarian and watery resonances even after the formal tarot correction. [16] Crowley’s real reason was not gematria. It was a Thelemic correction of tarot’s zodiacal architecture, triggered by Liber AL and solved through symmetry. The swap allowed him to make The Star into a more perfect image of Nuit / Heh / Great Mother, and The Emperor into Tzaddi / rulership / Aries / Horus-force. But the deeper one digs into his own symbolic tables, the more it looks like a deliberate esoteric override rather than a clean restoration of Hebrew-letter tradition. In other words: Crowley’s swap is internally meaningful, and (likely) not random. But it is “logical” in Crowley’s sense of symbolic Qabalah — poetic, geometrical, phonetic, initiatory — not in the stricter sense of Hebrew gematria or inherited Jewish letter astrology. In that is Thelema. Do What Thou Wilt, indeed. 93 93/93

Since brain machines tend to be pretty expensive, an alternative to this experiment consists of headphones, some kind of device that can access YouTube or Spotify or Apple Music or some such streaming website, and using binaural beats or other recordings people have made of different frequencies. I've had some experience of this exercise using Theta Wave binaural beats. Not that I've tried to do PSI Research like that, but I've gotten into some interesting headspace. Theta Waves tend to bring me into that space between sleep and wakefulness, where lucid dreaming can occur. It's a cheat code for having psychedelic experiences without psychedelics haha

Statements to live by (and possibly drive you insane): "Please remember that we deal always with probabilities, not certitudes..." (Page 178) "'Existence precedes essence,' remember?" (Page 179) "(1) We cannot make meaningful statements about some assumed 'real universe', or some 'deep reality' underlying 'this universe,' or some 'true reality', etc. apart from ourselves and our nervous systems and other instruments. Any statements we do make about such a 'deep' reality separate from us can never become subject to proof, or to disproof, and that makes them 'meaningless' (or 'noise'). (2) Any meaningful scientific or existential or phenomenological statement reports on how our nervous systems or other instruments have recorded some event or events in space-time." (Page 180) "Non-Aristotelian logic deals with existential/operational probabilities. Aristotelian logic deals with certainties, and in the lack of certainties throughout most of life, Aristotelian logic subliminally programs us to invent fictitious certainties." (Page 182) Unfortunately, if you accept and possibly even believe these statements, they make most conversation with most people entirely meaningless haha

I've been trying to come up with a response to this chapter. I've struggled to understand this chapter in the past, and while I appreciate RAW's explanation of Bell's theorem, I never quite feel like I understand what he's getting at. That being said, please tell me if you disagree, as I might still be misunderstanding. After having sat on it, RAW seems to be getting at the idea that particles in the Quantum Realm do not "contain" their function physically. In other words, a scientist cannot seem to physically find anything intrinsic or physical that points to a particle's purpose. Nonetheless, when we look at the Universe, since we can only perceive the Universe from the reality tunnel of humankind, the Universe appears to be generated for humankind. This can be used as evidence for the existence of a Creator, or can be evidence that our measuring instruments have a bias towards human understanding (having been made by humans). I suppose this chapter can be that simple, but I still feel like I'm missing something. One of RAW's most famous aphorisms is that he doesn't believe anything but has some suspicions. I think this chapter really embodies that. He seems to present some theories about how Bell's theorem affects our understanding of the Universe, but then seemingly refutes those same understandings. His goal for the chapter seems to be that both a "Creator" of reality and a "Created" reality (by humans and their Understanding) can be equally valid points of view since we cannot prove one or the other. Personally, I am happy to believe in a "Creator" since the amount of complexity in the Universe seems to be well beyond what I believe myself to be capable of processing (though I tend to hold the same opinion as that of Vodou, that if there "is" a Creator, the Creator "is" too far removed from the world to intervene). It can be easy for me to fixate on the idea that everything we can understand "is" still solipsistic to some degree. It can be easy to assume that our instruments have forced us to conceptualize reality in a particular way (that comes with its own limitations) and that we cannot actually "know" the Universe. I think this can be seen as a basis for Nihilism, and even further, an entryway for Choronzon. I also think that this can be taken as a "Bad Faith" approach to the Universe that closes an individual off from the Hermetic virtues of Thauma & Eusebeia. It can be easier for me to access Thauma and Eusebeia when I take the approach that a Creator "made" the Universe. This seems loosely related to Pronoia, or the suspicion that the Universe "is" secretly conspiring to help and support you (AKA the Good Faith approach to the Universe). Because there appears to be Order in the Universe, and that Order seems to be accessible by humankind, it could almost seem like the Universe was "made" for us to understand it. Since Bell's Theorem argues that there "is" no intrinsic instruction in any given thing, reality can be more multiple choice than we realize. The piece that sticks out to me (that I don't feel I'm understanding properly) is when he talks about particles that have contacted each other being correlated and therefore connected to each other. Part of my confusion is that it seems like a given, since a significant correlation inherently means that there "is" a connection (though it doesn't mean causation). He likens it to Shamanic Magick while also saying that it "is not" like Shamanic Magick, since Shamanic Magick implies some kind of causation. He makes the claim that this non-locality "is" weirder than Magick. I disagree. I'm not entirely sure what RAW wants to point to when he makes this claim. I disagree that Magick requires a causative principle. I also disagree with his claim that synchronicity "is" accepted by most Jungians and psychologists. Most of the Jungians I encounter like to hide from synchronicity (since it tends to be held as one Jung's crazier ideas that the hard sciences make fun of) and most psychologists will diagnose you with schizophrenia or apophenia (assuming they know the word apophenia) if you tell them about the synchronicities you experience. What I think RAW tries to point to in this chapter "is" Chaos Theory. Chaos Theory argues that in a system that has achieved a certain level of complexity, the basic rules that the system initially followed no longer guarantee the outcomes that the rules once promised. Instead, when the system achieves this level of complexity, seemingly insignificant actions might have much more impact than anything that the rules try to enforce. To use a basic example, let's say someone wants to start a music career. In the past, the "rules" of the music industry said that you start a band, write some songs, record a demo, play enough shows to get exposure, and then achieve a record contract that pays a professional salary. Since there are so many people trying to do this same thing at once (be a professional musician), these "rules" no longer create an obvious pathway towards that goal. Instead, something as simple as a Tik Tok post or telling the right person may lead a band to stardom, even if they suck and don't have the same level of investment that other bands do. A well timed, seemingly insignificant social media post held more weight in that scenario than following the traditional pipeline. Chaos Theory helps explain why no two people can follow the same exact orbit as they enact their True Will in the Universe. It does not matter if you believe your True Will to be identical to someone else’s. Your orbit will inherently follow a different path than those before since that path becomes more complex and refined with each pass. It also helps explain why synchronicity can be a "real" thing. Chaos Theory does not argue that everything "is" chaos, but rather that what appears to be chaotic on the surface masks a hidden Order to things, an Order that no longer follows traditional rules to achieve your goal. Hence why people who follow the rules too much seem to miss the point of anything haha. Instead, if you can follow the "golden thread" of synchronicity, you can connect seemingly disconnected events that culminate in a seemingly random accomplishment when measured against the traditional rules of the system. This "is" a foundational idea of Chaos Magick. To go back to RAW, I hesitate to find significance in his example of the person changing socks in one country and the other changing socks in another country at the same. Statistically speaking, changing socks "is" such a common action amongst the billions of people in the world that it seems statistically impossible for people not to change socks at the same time. This "is" where correlation does not mean causation. In all my psychology classes, they hammered that into my head. You can take any variables you want to test a connection between and attempt to statistically measure the significance of the correlation. Without plugging any data into statistics software, the socks example does not seem like a significant enough correlation to me that I would think it relevant (much less something we can generalize data from). I also don't believe that what RAW says about Magick requiring a causative principle. Certainly, a magician would love to believe the illusion that by doing said ritual we cause the Universe to change and enact our Will. However, in the same way that the Universe can appear to be created by God or seemingly random, the number of variables in any given Magickal working makes me skeptical to claim that a Magickal ritual does in fact cause change. Instead, assuming we are referring to the purely physical causative side of Magick (and, if it’s possible, ignoring the mental aspects that can’t be measured) I think Magickal ritual can help us identify those golden threads of synchronicity that allow us to string together seemingly disconnected events into substantial changes. Whether one believes my theory or the theory that Magick causes change, the outcome "is" the same (the relative success of the working). When Magick "is" more successful, I believe we have successfully leveraged one of those points in the Chaotic system whose impact weighs more than any given cause or rule. Given that magicians already believe that everything "is" hyper connected (beyond even our comprehension) and that the Universe can be likened to one giant body and/or mind (though he “is” not writing for that audience), it only makes sense that things couldn't be a domino effect. Instead, I prefer to look at it as a body achieving homeostasis. If one part of the overall body/mind changes, then the rest must change in order to find a new center of homeostasis (not unlike the Pantheists and the Panentheists). In a simpler system, this might appear as one wave that causes change across the Divine Mind like the domino effect. But considering changes occur all over the Divine Mind all the time, this appears overly simplistic. Instead, I think that multiple waves occur all the time and depending on whether these waves harmonize with each other or not, the waves can become turbulent and stormy, or they can become modulated and rhythmic. The level of Unity expressed by this Divine Mind seems to be a measurement of the relative turbulence Vs. rhythmic modulation at any given moment. When things appear more rhythmic and modulated, they appear more isomorphic and more easily predictable. The modulation creates a predictable structure that the human mind perceives as order. Needless to say, I think what RAW brings up “are” non-issues. Perhaps this “is” why I’m not one of the scientists out there debating these things. I “am” reminded that Academics come up with all kinds of strange ramifications and justifications for any given Academic doctrine and/or dogma. Academics become just as blind to reality as the average Bible thumper, it’s just that Academia becomes an Academic’s Bible to thump. Perhaps RAW would’ve agreed with my perspective. Perhaps he would’ve laughed at my perspective. He most definitely would’ve responded to everything I’ve said with a big fat, “Maybe!” Perhaps my reactions to this chapter are precisely what RAW wanted to trigger with his agnosticism hahaha I have no regrets if that "is" the case, since this forced me to write out a bunch of ideas in this essay of a response hahaha

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