6 September (Spirit) Liber LXV, 5:58-59
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58. Moreover, I heard the voice of Adonai: Seal up the book of the Heart and the Serpent; in the number five and sixty seal thou the holy book.
As fine gold that is beaten into a diadem for the fair queen of Pharaoh, as great stones that are cemented together into the Pyramid of the ceremony of the Death of Asar, so do thou bind together the words and the deeds, so that in all is one Thought of Me thy delight Adonai.
59. And I answered and said: It is done even according unto Thy word. And it was done. And they that read the book and debated thereon passed into the desolate land of Barren Words. And they that sealed up the book into their blood were the chosen of Adonai, and the Thought of Adonai was a Word and a Deed; and they abode in the Land that the far-off travellers call Naught. -
58. Moreover, I heard the voice of Adonai: Seal up the book of the Heart and the Serpent; in the number five and sixty seal thou the holy book.
As fine gold that is beaten into a diadem for the fair queen of Pharaoh, as great stones that are cemented together into the Pyramid of the ceremony of the Death of Asar, so do thou bind together the words and the deeds, so that in all is one Thought of Me thy delight Adonai.Word is action, the direct expression of intent. Magical technique.
59. And I answered and said: It is done even according unto Thy word. And it was done. And they that read the book and debated thereon passed into the desolate land of Barren Words. And they that sealed up the book into their blood were the chosen of Adonai, and the Thought of Adonai was a Word and a Deed; and they abode in the Land that the far-off travellers call Naught.
@Jim Eshelman said
"The simple instruction is to meditate on the verse and "get what you get." You can approach this from many different points of view, and one of the most obvious (and probably most typical) is using it to forge or fortify a highly personalized linkage. After all, it was created to be specifically a bhakti practice, a way to keep ongoing active recolleciton of one's relationship to the Belovéd. (The risk of a forum such as this is that it turns into a gnana practice instead, people trying to forge interpretation out of it or leverage the intellect to break through into a different level. I suppose that, if that serves someone, then one should hardly object! - But I mention it in contrast to distinguish that sort of approach from the bhakti for which it was originally created.)"
I know for myself that I will rarely repeat an effort exactly. To justify a repetition I have to find something new each time through. There are several plays in the canon of Western literature with which I have this kind of a relationship. And then there are many things I will simply do over, but still with the idea that something is changing, deepening at the very least, even if I am not actually finding a new angel to explore. In this instance, it is often an article of faith for me that change is happening even when I am not conscious of it all the time.
These words of LXV are pretty unequivocal imho: it claims to have an intrinsic virtue capable of changing the reader. The question, the answer to which can most likely only be discerned through experience but that I m asking now is this: to what extent is this virtue the result of the generalized rules and principles that seem to govern a successful Bhaki practice, or is there something more, something that misses the reasonable mind to ferret out—a mystery that is also a force of nature—not purely the result of technique?
If I were to do this again I would prescribe for myself a half hour of silence for each day, refusing the call to treat the various phrases and words as puzzles. As if each day was a forked path and this time through I decided to always choose the right fork. It would be more like wading into a hot spring. And then I would give thanks for the temporary release from the mental ejaculations that usually accompany my sense of self.
3 days.
Love and Will
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I have always felt that this verse 59 was referring to the one practice concerning Liber LXV required by A.'.A.'.: memorizing it.
In my own observations, and from conversations with Phyllis Seckler and Israel Regardie (both of whom memorized the whole thing), word-for-word memorization of one chapter (or all of the chapters) of this book is what "seals it up in the blood." It makes a biological change.
Today, we know that this is literally possible through the RNA modifications arising out of the process of memorization.
PS - Four more days... until Liber VII!
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"sealed up the book into their blood"
I always had the impression that this meant - make it a part of you and your life. (Which is what sometimes happens when you memorize something - though not the level of memorization one uses to pass a test - not passive, but active memorization; is that a thing?)
I see, in these lines, the same sentiment being extolled again and again.
Words AND Deeds.
Book IN Blood.Question about the 5 and 60...
5 and 60...
65 is Adonai... sure, but why 5 and 60; as in, why not just say 65? Is this pure poetry, or is something MORE happening here.6+5=11
"The general significance of the number 11 is Magick, particularly that form of it which is Love under Will; for it unites the 5 and the 6."
Nu, in the BOL, is 50 & 6, and we are asked to do some math to see how it all works out... doing the same with 5 and 60 gets you similar numbers...
5 = Heh = Star
60 = Samekh = ArtStar Art - I like that
Heart & Serpent... boy the organizer in me wants to relate these 2 pairs but I don't readily see it.
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Why specifically 5 and 60? Well, that does specifically point to Heh and Samekh, The Star and Art.
Now, what that means is a separate discussion. I do note that it is a continuous open fromc Yesod to Chokmah. And there is the word HS, has, "silence."
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Just a note on the power of memorization.
There is memorization that is a kind of survival variety—"whew I manged to say the whole thing without any hints or cheating!"
Then there is the memorization that passes into a kind of fluid improvisation, where it is wedded to your breathing or the rhythm of the beating heart. By improvisation I don't mean playing with word order or adding new words or willfully leaving out others. I mean a kind of improvisation that is strictly about the flow of life, filing the fixed text in unexpected and provocative ways. This later is only possible when the order of the words has been mastered, perfectly.
This is not a cold thing, not a technical achievement. It is an unleashing of the latent power in the words. If you can repeat the text backwards, pick up the narrative anywhere in the text, twist and turn the phrasings and stresses without any fear of losing the thread, the order of the words, then the words can catch fire.
Love and Will