College of Thelema: Thelemic Education

Verse II:16 of the Book of the Law contains what seems to be an impossible challenge: to combine the numeric qualities of the tarot trumps The Empress & The Hierophant in order to make them equal eleven. The Hebrew letter attributed to the Empress is Daleth, which has a value of four; the letter attributed to the Hierophant is Vau, with a value of six; when added together the sum of 4 and 6 is 10, which appears to be incorrect.

The reality of the statement made by Hadit is that he is 100% correct when a clue provided in last of the statement is taken into consideration: Thus eleven, as my bride is eleven. In base11 mathematics, the numerals 10 are the number 11. As an added bonus, in base11 the number 10 is written as 1A; when 1A is converted into numerals using Hebrew gematria, 1A becomes 11, so it can be said that in base11 mathematics, 10 is 11, and in base10 mathematics, 1A (10) is 11.

@Los said

"
@Simon Iff said
"And Los: These people are out there. But you won't find them if you are not looking."

And what makes you think that Secret Chiefs are "out there"?"

I posted a version of the following account on Lashtal some time ago, and received nothing in response but the typical "spooks and goblins" criticism from Los he is known for. I have rewritten the story in order to shorten it for easier reading. I suspect Los will be at a loss to provide an explanation of the events other than to simply call me a kook, but I'm willing to give him or anyone else a shot at forming a theory on what actually happened.

www.thelima.org/Presence.html

@Shadow Self said

"I've been wondering if anyone thinks that skeptics cause certain feats of magick to not work when they are around. "

The expression 'feats of magick' is pretty broad, and while tenable in some areas is utterly defenseless in others, so it all comes down to specific examples.

The topic touches on an aspect of the Cairo Working that is profound, and in a roundabout way answers the question asked. Aleister Crowley stated the events of the Cairo Working occurred despite his cynicism and skepticism; if it had not been for his wife communicating to Crowley on the behalf of Aiwass, it is unlikely the Cairo Working could have occurred. It seems obvious that any effort to communicate with Crowley directly by Aiwass without using Rose as an intermediary would have failed due to his skepticism. The mindset of the skeptic creates a barrier that foils attempts at being communicated with by a god or other extraordinary beings. Case in point, Los has stated that if he ever starts hearing voices he will seek mental health treatment. If you were a god, would you attempt communicating with someone if it resulted in a belief of insanity?

One of the more interesting things Rose Crowley communicated to her husband on the behalf of Ra-Hoor-Khuit is the god was offended that Crowley had not invoked him. If gods can be offended or otherwise put off by human beings, claiming they do not exist is probably not a sound method for attempting communications with them, and likely a barrier for proving whether they exist or not.

@Jim Eshelman said

"

"Glory unto the Scarlet Woman, Babylon the Mother of Abominations, that rideth upon the Beast, for she hath spilt their blood in every corner of the earth, and lo! she hath mingled it in the cup of her whoredom."

(He didn't yet have the correct spelling of "Babalon.") He is mentioned in the same aethyr as "the crowned beast" that she rides. And then a powerful statement:"

"And the Beast whereon she rideth is the Lord of the City of the Pyramids."

Actually, there is evidence Crowley was aware of, and used the spelling Babalon five years before the work documented in The Vision & The Voice.

In the notebook titled Invocation of Hoor, which was started while in Cairo in the spring of 1904, a 36 card Tarot spread dealt in the summer of 1904 ends the notebook; in the written interpretation of the cards, Crowley associates the 2 of cups with** Babalon**, and also uses the term City of the Pyramids in the interpretation of another card: both terms are featured prominently in the The Vision & The Voice as shown in your previous post.

@ViaLuxInTenebresEs said

"I am nuit and my word is 6 and 50."

The Hebrew letters Nun-Vav enumerate as the sum 56; the approximate transliteration into English letters is NU, one of the names of Nuit in TBOTL.

"divide, add, multiply, understand."

The math operations are discussed in the commentaries on TBOTL produceed by Crowley.

6 / 50 = .012: Crowley thought this result indicative of his "0=2" formula, which stated simply, holds that from the negative emerges two polarized opposites, with the negative representing the divine; the goal of the initiate is to combine the two opposing pairs, reducing them to nothing through cancellation, in order to achieve union with the divine. It could argued this equation expresses the formula of mysticism.

6 + 50 = 56: 5 + 6 = 11. Crowley equated the number 11 with magick, a number that results from combining the five with the six, numbers he considered symbolic of the microcosm and macrocosm; it could be argued this equation expresses the formula of magick. The number five is equated with man / the microcosm through the five senses, which relate to the five elements; the core teaching of western ceremonial magick is the need to construct five elemental weapons to be used while performing ritual magick. The number six signifies the macrocosm, which can be demonstrated a number of different ways. Significant to the union of the five and the six is the word of power Abrahadabra, which contains five vowels and six consonants (which relates more to an English configuration of letters than Hebrew), expressing the combining of opposites, adapted by Crowley from the word Abracadabra for that purpose.

Arriving at 300 / Shin by multiplying 6 & 50 is the intended result, with Shin signifying the element of Spirit, or "nothing."

"further verse 46. the jews call it 61 I call it 8, 80, 400, 18

47 but they have half and unite by art so all disappear?"

The value 61 is the enumeration of the Hebrew word Ain, which means not or nothing, consisting of the first word in the well-known qabalistic expression Ain Soph Aur, which means "the limitless light."

While it's true the number 8 and 418 can be linked together through the Hebrew letter Cheth based on the ideas formed by Crowley on the subject, such as Cheth having a gematria value of 8 and the word Chith having an enumeration of 418, no one has explained how the numbers 8, 80, or 418 specifically relate to the idea of nothing as expressed in the verse. C.S. Jones added the numbers together to arrive at a sum of 506, the enumeration of ShVR in Hebrew, a word that means bull or ox, the animal and idea that correlates to the letter Aleph, a letter linked to the element of Air and the Fool of the Tarot, concepts that correlate to "nothing." Jones theories are interesting, but simplistic and very circular, seeming to lead nowhere as far as new insight into TBOTL is concerned; all of Jones' conclusions achieved through his working of the symbols are stated in the book in the plainest of language.

@Lykathea said

"

  I want you guys to challenge me, and to prove to me that Crowley is a prophet on the level of Moses, "

I accept your challenge, but first you must prove to me that Moses ever existed at all apart from being a fictional character in a book of ancient folktales.

@Takamba said

"Hrumachis is not a Lord of any Aeon, he is an officer initiating. I refer you to this thread found by searching the word "Hrumachis" with the forum's search feature.

www.heruraha.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=6285&p=38368&hilit=Hrumachis#p38368"

I find it interesting how some theories about the meaning of verses in the Book of the Law rely on elements of Egyptian myth, while others seem to be made up, and even contradict or ignore established myth. in verse III:72, Ra-Hoor-Khut establishes that he is the lord of the double wand of power, or the double-wanded one. Assuming Ra-Hoor-khut is the same god depicted on the Stele of Revealing, commonly known as Ra-horakhty, he represents the both the rising and setting sun, as determined by the meaning of his name, Ra-Horus of the horizon, or Horus of the two horizons, hence the need for a double wand of power.

Hrumachis appears to be a variation of Harmachis, the hellenized spelling of Hor-em-akhet, which means Horus in the horizon; based on established myth, Harmachis and Ra-Hoor-Khut are the same god. According to Gerald Massey, Harmachis represents the setting sun and the autumnal equinox; based on the orientation of the Sphinx at Giza, which is named Hor-em-akhet on the Dream Stela, and positioned in the west, Harmachis is indeed symbolic of the setting sun. In order for Harmachis to rise, he must become Ra-Harmachis, god of the vernal equinox, completing the cycle in which the elder Horus abdicates his thrown to his son, Horus the child, who appears as the rising sun in the east, renewing the endless solar cycle.

Massey states that Ra-Harmachis was linked to double weaponry, such as the double-axe, which is quite similar to the concept of the double wand; based on the evidence, there is every reason to believe Ra-Harmachis is the double-wanded one who is to arise at the Fall of the Great Equinox, an expression that denotes the arrival of the vernal equinox. My conclusion is the fall of the Great Equinox marks the arrival of the Child of the Prophet predicted in the Book of the Law, an event meant to symbolize the passing of the solar force from the father to the son.

@Frater Aster Lux said

"

Quite simply, I was wondering if any one had ever thought to use a computer (any kind of computer) in an aspect of their magick... Also, how they have thought to do this?"

My interest in computers was born of the possibility of using them to calculate gematria at a time when there was almost no software available of any sort, so I had to learn to program, and I still do. I have written countless programs for analyzing the text of the Book of the Law in unusual ways. The current gematria program I use is quite remarkable in what it shows from any number of perspectives. The most significant thing I have done, and one of the simplest, is write a program that counts the occurrences of letters in the Book of the Law, which I currently using as the basis for an English gematria system.

I also started writing I-Ching programs many years ago, and recently wrote one that I use for divination. I am of the opinion that pressing a key on a computer to generate a hexagram is essentially the same as tossing coins or sticks to generate one. The program will also generate hexagrams at random, a function that I use in a 'hands-off' approach by concentrating on the question until a new hexagram is generated.

" Is it possible to channel magic/psychic energies into a computer? Could computers be used somehow to scry, or communicate with "spirits", like a crystal ball? Maybe new computer programs could be developed for this reason. I'm sure there may be other applications, but stuff like this should give an example of what I mean.
"

I can think of several applications that might be developed. Imagine a program that creates high resolution images similar to fractal art that utilizes specific numeric patterns and colors to generate images on a large monitor screen; it could work similar to dark mirror techniques for skrying.

The Short Comment is problematic for any number of reasons, the least of which is Crowley violating his own directives. The first question that should be asked is just how many comments was Crowley supposed to write? The first one was published in the Equinox, long before the Short Comment was conceived. There are four verses in the Book of the Law that mention the comment, with two of them using the words **swiftly **and **quickly **in urging him to write it; the Short Comment was penned over 20 years after the Cairo Working, which makes it anything but quickly executed. It also appears that Crowley pondered forbidding discussion of the Book of the Law for years before penning the Short Comment, mentioning his desire to do so in his 1923 diaries.

There is ample evidence the Short Comment was ill-conceived, with the worst circumstance being the frequent references to the Book of the Law in the writings of Crowley, such as 'see Liber CCXX', or 'compare with Liber CCXX', or the instruction to memorize a chapter from the Book of the Law, which most certainly requires studying it. Then there are the two contradictions in Magick Without Tears, where Crowley instructs one of his pupils to make the Book of the Law her constant study companion, while relegating someone else to the status of center of pestilence for discussing the contents of it.

The positive side of the Short Comment, and what it was probably meant to achieve, is it keeps any one individual from being the sole authority on the Book of the Law, providing individuals with the leverage needed to ignore all other interpretations, making it possible for each person to be reliant on his or her own conclusions about it.

Robert Allen:

*Many years later, in the eighties, I co-wrote an article about him that appeared in the now defunct Gnosis Magazine . It was called the Best of the Beast. I was surprised by the one detractor who wrote a critical letter attacking the perspective of the article, which portrayed Crowley in a positive light despite his personal failings. Stephen Bodian (spelling may be wrong), the then editor of Yoga Journal, felt it was his mission to point out that Crowley advocated the blood sacrifice of young children in magical rites. How do you defend someone against charges like that?
*

I finding it surprising that an editor of any magazine could fall into the literary trap set by Crowley about his experiments with the bloody sacrifice so-called:

It appears from the magical Records of Frater Perdurabo that He made this particular sacrifice on an average about 150 times every year between 1912 e.v. and 1928 e.v....

When I read the footnote the first time I was a little startled, but then I did the math, and understood what Crowley meant without question, and that is the way to properly defend against accusations of child sacrifice. If Crowley had sacrificed a child 150 times per year for 16 years, he would have sacrificed 2400 children, making him the most prolific, notorious serial killer in the history of man, and in every area of the world that he lived in for those years, which of course there is no record of. Anyone with the most rudimentary analytical abilities would have to conclude Crowley was either lying, or making a veiled reference to masturbation.

**Tarotica:

Liber AL doesn't encourage it. It commands child sacrifice, and Crowley plainly said this was the case.**

The only thing I see plainly is the author of Liber AL has a sense humor and wit, having set up a grammatical trap to see how many fools he could get to cry "Child sacrifice!" The sentence is verse III:12, referenced in your nasty little piece on the subject as a sentence that could have several meanings, and in this thread you plainly state the verse in question commands child sacrifice, even though the rules of grammar strictly limit the possible interpretations. A colon is used to separate two independent clauses, or an independent clause and a fragment where one element elaborates on the other, depending on the arrangement. In the case of this statement: "Sacrifice cattle, little and big: after a child", the only possible function of the incomplete clause is to elaborate on the complete one, and based on its structure is limited to informing when the cattle should be sacrificed, expressing no other idea. To claim that verse III:12 encourages child sacrifice is a certain sign of ignorance of the rules of English Grammar.

What I recall Crowley stating plainly about verse III:12 is that it foretold the death of his first child, which is a correct grammatical interpretation of the sentence.

Evidently the grid was not present in 1912 when the Book of the Law was first published commercially, so it must have been added by Aleister Crowley years after the book was received.

The line appears to intersect the letters STBETISAYFA. There are 334 letters on the grid page, and 84 words (excluding the added graph): 334 + 84 = 418.

@Arsihsis said

"To anyone's knowledge has Liber Legis ever been searched for equal distance letter sequences?

729"

I wrote a program that will do it, but as one might expect, and as has been shown with other similar efforts, any text will produce quasi-encrypted patterns when analyzed with ELS. The significance is analogous to applying serial gematria systems to texts: all of them will produce a slew of results, which means that an extraordinary performance will be necessary to show Aiwass actually used the system to encode cryptic passages in TBOTL. In the case of ELS, specifying a skip value that produces a long intelligible paragraph without any contriving would be necessary to show the process has produced results that are anything but random.

@Tarotica said

"See Onion-Peelings.

(jk)"

Jk I consider your blog on the subject to be shitty, one-sided journalism. You invested several lengthy paragraphs defining the nature of Satan as conceived by Christians in an effort to make it appear Crowley worshipped the Satan of Christianity, while failing to quote anything Crowley wrote on the subject. Your blog is also factually incorrect in several places.

This is what Crowley thought of the Devil of Christianity: From page 277 of Magick:

"The Devil does not exist; it is a false name invented by the Black Brothers to imply unity in their ignorant muddle of dispersions."

From page 163 of Magick:

"This 'Devil' is called Satan or Shaitan, and regarded with horror by people who are ignorant of his formula, and imagining themselves to be evil, accuse Nature herself of their phantasmal crime. Satan is Saturn, Set, Abraxas, Adad, Adonai", etc.

More specifically, Crowley was interested in the Shaitan / Satan that was worshiped in ancient Sumer, and currently by the Yezidis, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the contemporary Christian view of Satan.

You state that Satan & Satanic thinking are central to Thelema as determined by the study of Liber Al, when there is no mention of Satan in Liber Al---an invented falsehood on your part.

Also, you state that Aiwass commands Thelemites to throw the Christians to the lions: Liber Al is the only Book attributed to Aiwass as an author, and in it he states no such thing--you've confused the commentary made by Crowley on Liber Al for the text itself, which underscores your poor research skills.

@Tamara_Tornad said

"
@RifRaf said
" There are people who think there is a problem with how the name Hadit was delivered to Crowley by Aiwass, and this, for some, "disproves" that Aiwass was a preternatural intelligence and thus destroying the legitimacy (is that even a real word?) of Liber AL."

"Hadit" is probably one of the worst misinterpretations from an egyptological viewpoint. He is more properly called "Horus of Behedet" Behedet being a town where he was worshipped.

I do not believe that the terms or ideas have to be historically accurate in order for the magick to work.

I am interested in historical Egypt, so I am bouncing back and forth between Thelema and ancient Egypt here."

There has been quite an issue made of the fact the current interpretation of the name of the winged disk bHdt ("Bhedet") is correct, and that Hadit is incorrect. At the time the Book of the Law was dictated, Hudit/Huditi/Houdit was the most widely-accepted interpretation of the name of the winged disk written on the Stele of Revealing. The literal accuracy of the name in regard to its ancient use, or future changes in interpretations of Egyptian signs are irrelevant to the use of Hadit as a name in the Book of the Law. The author of TBOTL used available conventions of language to express the concepts presented in the book, which is all that needs to be understood in order to accept the value and logic of the terms used.

The amusing thing about the criticisms generated about Hadit not being an Egyptian word, is there are numerous examples in the Egyptian language that contradict the criticisms, and help in defining the qualities of Hadit. Written in MDC, here is a nice selection:

hd - assault, attack, prevail, oppose.
HAd - lust.
HADt - excitement.
HD - white, bright, light.
HDt - daylight.

*Crowley was the first Thelemite. I think that is often overlooked. *

Actually, Rabelais was the first Thelemite in spirit since he coined the term Thelemite, but in practice, the Monks of Medmenham, A.K.A. The Hellfire Club were probably the first practicing Thelemites.

@Nudor said

"Maspero mentioned Nuit in his L'Archéologie égyptienne published in 1907.

So who really wrote of Nuit first? If we are going by published dates, then Crowley has him beat by several years."

Well, I was a little misleading when I wrote that Maspero used the spelling Nuit; it was actually Amelia B. Edwards in her translation of Maspero's Manual of Egyptian Archaeology, published in 1887, but she does point out that Maspero supervised and approved the spellings used for Egyptian names in her translation of the book. Maspero used the spellings Nouit, and Houdit. At any rate, the spelling **Nuit **precedes any of the published writing of Crowley by at least a decade.

@Jim Eshelman said

" I disagree entirely (vide infra). Nuit, for example, has essentially nothing to do with the Egyptian goddess Nut. Or, rather, She has no more to do with Nut than she does with, say, the Christian Madonna.

I should mention that the form Nuit was used by Crowley in his poetry from IIRC ~1901."

As a side note, the thought that Nuit is a new diety/concept, is contradicted by A Litany, the work you referred to from the Collected Works, published in 1905. Crowley mentions Nuit, Hathoor, and Tahuti in the work, but in his footnotes, he describes Nuit as the arched figure depicted in Egyptian art. If A Litany was written before the Cairo Working, the reference to Nuit in it would have to be of the Egyptian goddess Nut.

The strange thing about the description of Nuit in A Litany, is it contradicts the name Crowley attributed to the arched figure on the Stele of Revealing in his intial description of the figure, whom he calls Isis. It all makes me suspect that A Litany might have been written after the Cairo Working, and thrown into the pot for publication with earlier writings. Is there any evidence of the date of authorship of A Litany?

Crowley did not concoct the name Nuit, it was used by Maspero as the name for the Egyptian goddess Nut.

To assume that Crowley concocted the name Hadit discounts the possibility of the central figure of the Cairo Working, Aiwass, having a part in determining the name, through direct influence on Crowley, or using Rose as a medium for communicating the spellings used in the paraphrases of the Stele of Revealing. The fact is, no one knows for sure, but considering the end result of the Cairo Working, I doubt there is any portion of Liber Legis that was not a product of the influence of Aiwass.

I wrote:

It seems likely that Crowley received the title to the book either from Rose or through Aiwass several days prior to the actual dictation, which resulted in Crowley abusing the first blank sheet of paper in the stack that later became the manuscript.

Jim replied:

But you're making that up! It isn't good policy to make up stories you like better in the face of uncontroverted first person testimony on what happened.

I was speculating, I make no claim of certainty.

Jim wrote:

And, of course, the title page is collated among his papers with the original manuscript and is at least written with the same pen and therefore probably concurrent with or very close to the same time.

I wrote it was likely that the events unfolded as I theorized, while you wrote that the events probably unfolded as you stated. Your conclusion is just as speculative as mine based on your choice of words.

If AC provided a commentary on the cover page it should have been published along with the other commentaries. If the caretakers of the Crowley corpus were doing their jobs there would be no need for speculation.

@Jim Eshelman said

"
@Wizardiaoan said
"I think it may be at least possible that Crowley's memory failed him concerning the title of Liber Legis. It may be that the title was not heard from Aiwass, and that Crowley simply latinized the English title for the Book that was given in the Book itself..."

But the title was part of the dictation.

We have both the title page with the original manuscript, and his statement that this is how it happened."

Where does Crowley provide details of receiving the title page as dictation? The trouble I have with believing that is the lack of care given to the title page--there are noodlings, doodlings, scribblings, and what appears to a coffee cup stain on the title page. It seems likely that Crowley received the title to the book either from Rose or through Aiwass several days prior to the actual dictation, which resulted in Crowley abusing the first blank sheet of paper in the stack that later became the manuscript.

Tim