Words and a 'wordless' Aeon
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In my reading I came upon the idea, created by Fr. Achad and supported by the late Kenneth Grant, that Crowley did not in fact utter a Word for the Aeon, Thelema being the Word of the Law of the Aeon, and Abrahadabra being Crowley's Word as a Magus. Now I am fully aware of the (lack of) esteem Grant's ideas are held in around here, but could someone tell me if this is true, explain how it works, and perhaps go into some detail on the uttering of Words in the first place?
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@veritas_in_nox said
"In my reading I came upon the idea, created by Fr. Achad and supported by the late Kenneth Grant, that Crowley did not in fact utter a Word for the Aeon, Thelema being the Word of the Law of the Aeon, and Abrahadabra being Crowley's Word as a Magus. Now I am fully aware of the (lack of) esteem Grant's ideas are held in around here, but could someone tell me if this is true, explain how it works, and perhaps go into some detail on the uttering of Words in the first place?"
Crowley was quite clear that Abrahadabra was the Word of the Aeon. Additionally, Thelema is the Word he uttered as a Magus. (So there are multiple errors in the above.)
Abrahadabra was a formula he worked out in 1901 in Ceylon, already known to him (and having particular significance) when Liber L. was dictated.
I'm not quite sure what you're asking for at the end. (I have an answer poised, ready to come out... but I'm not sure it's an answer to what you're actually asking.)
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I was just wondering what it means to utter a Word, and the difference between uttering the Word of the Aeon and one's personal Word as a Magus.
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@veritas_in_nox said
"I was just wondering what it means to utter a Word, and the difference between uttering the Word of the Aeon and one's personal Word as a Magus."
The Word of the Aeon is just a word; except, it's a truly magick word, in that it potentially gives a key to pretty much everyone about pretty much everything in their lives.
It seems to me that it's easiest to compare the Word of the Aeon to the Word of the Equinox. In the traditions from which we descend (including those in which Crowley was initiated and received his training), the current moving through the world is seen to shift at each Equinox. It is customary to express this current in a word, the Word of the Equinox. The one responsible for receiving this Word of the Equinox uses methods intended to align with the currents of the time and give voice - articulation - to their nature. The resulting Word, if well-received, declares the nature of the time. It allows people (who choose to do so) to ensure that their direction and work are in alignment with natural currents and trends of the time.
The same is true on a larger scale with the Word of the Aeon.
My favorite way to describe the nature of a Magus 9=2, one who is "one with the stream of life" (Chiah), is as follows: There is one stream of life, moving through and animating all living things, dividing into innumerable branches something like a biologists map of domains, kingdoms, phyla, classes, orders, families, genuses, species, and individuals. (I'm not saying it's the same. I'm saying it's "something like" the same sort of thing.) Each of us, if we were to "explore the river of the soul, whence and in what order [we have] come," would move upstream - back along the branching streams - to however far upstream we could reach.
The Magus of the time is that individual who has moved further upstream than any other. Therefore, whatever current is passing through that individual is effectively a "root stream" to whatever passes through all others. If that individual can give voice to the nature of that current (especially at times of its change), then that Word would serve as a valuable tool for the rest of humanity, expressing the root themes that resonate most meaningfully and fundamentally within everyone else - because they are of the nature of that part of the current which isn't differentiated by branchings and sub-groupings within the species (etc.), but which is (to use the archaic language) "true for all men."
The Word of the Magus is closely related. To the extent that there is a distinction of the two kinds of Words (as there was for Crowley), it is more personal. If I were looking in as an outsider, seeing the origins of each, I'd tend to think that Thelema was the Word of the Aeon and Abrahadabra was Crowley's unique word. (This seems so from their origins.) But who am I to correct hm on that? I just take his, er, word on the matter.
An example of the personal emergence of a Word, which I have no problem sharing (and which might be useful to you or someone else here): When I was a 2=9 in A.'.A.'., I underwent a magical retirement that had very important fruit for me. On the last hour of the last day of the retirement, I gave voice to my True Will - found the sentence (which just happened to have 11 words) which entirely explained me - history, motivation, character, purpose, direction, peak moments, grossest embarassments, and all the rest - in every respect. Obviously, this phrase (which has been the one touchstone of every important choice I've made in my life since then) was the focus of much of my work in the months that followed. At some point in those months I thought to reduce it to a simple word - an encoding of the sentence, if you will, but also a tight, magical expression. I noticed that the 11 literal words readily reduced to ideas expressed by six Hebrew letters: Lamed Aleph Heh Vav Teth Yod. And then (skipping over intervening steps), I asked myself what the Word would look like if I expressed my personal "mission statement" stentence as, instead, a message to give the world. All I had to do was drop the Lamed, making the resulting "Word" I would "utter" to others: Aleph Heh Vav Teth Yod. I was pleased to discover that ahoti enumerated to 31, and therefore was consistent with the formulae of the aeon.
So: Ahoti to you.
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Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
@Jim Eshelman said
"...All I had to do was drop the Lamed, making the resulting "Word" I would "utter" to others: Aleph Heh Vav Teth Yod. I was pleased to discover that ahoti enumerated to 31, and therefore was consistent with the formulae of the aeon."
Amazing! From my MR 8/26/10, and a few notes:
...after meditation and Invocation [today], I feel that I've worked out a glyph of my Understanding of the Work, at my present location on my Path:
The Word is AYTVH = Aleph + Yod + Teth + Vau + He = 31
Aleph - Passive, babe, Harpocrates, Fool, Nuit, Self-Impregnation, Beginningless Beginning
Yod - Active, Horus, Magus, Hermit, Hadit, Father Force, Expression, Word and Will
Teth - Double-wanded, Heru-ra-ha, Lust, Conjoining of Beast and Bride, the Love attraction, Force between the Dyad, Snake
Vau - The Son, the Beast, the Heirophant, the Lovers, Uniting of the Opposites, 5/6, Microcosm with the Macrocosm
Heh - The Star/to the Redeemed Daughter/to the Exalted Mother (Malkuth to Binah), rebirth of the cycle to Aleph, 2=0A slightly different arrangement...but still cool!
I'm sure you found it first...you must have been a 2=9 AEONS ago!!!
Love is the law, love under will.