College of Thelema: Thelemic Education

I've been long taken with the coincidence that 1888 was both the year that the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn got started, and also the year that Friedrich Nietzsche suggested should be the new "Year One" of the post-Christian era. (Two particularly important precursors of Thelema, I think.)

Specifically, September 30, 1888 was Nietzshe's suggested new year's day, since that's when he completed the first part of his "Revaluation of all Values." Of course, at the time he wouldn't know that this was also the date of two of the five main Jack the Ripper murders in London...

I'm not sure if this is the right thread to resurrect on this topic, but I thought it would be better than starting a brand new one:

I'm in Santa Fe, New Mexico at a conference, and today I saw a complete 10-volume set of Volume 1 of The Equinox for sale in a used bookstore. It's the 1993 Weiser facsimile (hardcover, white leather-bound?) edition, and it looks to be in good shape. The store wants something like $800 for it, but they may negotiate. I don't think they're willing to break up the set. Anyway, the store is "Big Star Books & Music," at 329 Garfield Street, Santa Fe, NM.

I don't have any connection with this store, but I thought that if there were any aspirants to A.'.A.'. studentship out there who are in search of a full Equinox set, this might be a good one to snap up!

Steve

Quite nice!

"a structure none the less on which to build our own Barge, our own ship to carry us to the top of the Holy Mountain and to the highest reaches of Heaven."

I'm sure the imagery above was *(http://hermetic.com/crowley/libers/lib800ship.html:pkr666vv)

There's a lot more discussion about this in an older thread.

"1. Join it and try to work within the group, through the proper channels, to pull out parts of christianity that the magician wants to emphasize to the masses, and make other, not so wanted parts, recede into the background"

Sometimes I wonder... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Osteen

@hepuck said

"Also, I have noticed an odd thing...almost all instructions I see for the Sign of Silence say use the left finger (for the shush gesture), but almost all the statues or images I see of Harpocrates have him using his right."

This may have to do with Jim's statement above about it being very Order-specific. In the original Golden Dawn, the instruction for the 0=0 sign of silence was to use the left finger. In Felkin's Stella Matutina (post-1900 offshoot of the Golden Dawn), he referred to the 0=0 sign as the "Sign of Silence Without." Somewhere around the 7=4 grade, he introduced the "Sign of Silence Within" (using the right finger). I think it was meant as a kind of bookend, which was meant to complete the sequence begun with the 0=0 signs.

Crowley most likely didn't have access to Felkin's higher grade material, but he did switch it to the right finger in Liber O. Maybe it was based on ancient Egyptian images as you mention above. (After all, none of the founders or innovators in the Golden Dawn actually visited Egypt, but Crowley did!)

@Edward Mason said

"The rationale is on the lines of: I just rose, so it's dawn."

I love it! An eminently practical application of Frater Achad's Stepping Out of the Old Aeon and Into the New: "Look at things from the point of view of the Sun."

Steve

@Jim Eshelman said

"Osirian and Christian religions came to flourish during that time, and the Arthurian legend (late 1st C. CE) is the archetypal tale of the still-young emerging Ruach (the "ever boy" Solar King etc.)."

1st century? The furthest back I've seen for historical roots of Arthur is something like 5th or 6th century. I'd be curious to know more about earlier antecedents.

"By the Reformation it was entering its very late stages, its fulfillment already laying the grouynd work for its expiration."

Definitely. I view the Italian Renaissance (Pico, da Vinci, etc) as the first rumblings of the Aeon of Horus, too...

"
"I don't see the Aeon of Horus lasting more than a couple of decades, when the Aeon of Hrumachis will arrive."

'Hrumachis' is a general symbol of the new dawn of a next aeon, not the distinctive deity of it, which we know will be Maat. I think her time is still very far away."

Horus is Hrumachis. I've probably posited this before in another thread, but isn't the most obvious interpretation of "Hrumachis shall arise" something along the lines of: Horus gets up off the Throne in the East, in order to allow Maat to sit down and occupy the Throne for the next Aeon? There are intimations of the ritual motions of officers in the GD's Equinox Ritual in AL III:34, I think.

Steve

@gmugmble said

"So where (I wonder) did people get the idea that now was the "dawning of the Age of Aquarius"?"

Some of the perceived ambiguity may come from the shapes of the constellations themselves (i.e., the connect-the-dots "stick figures" drawn between the brightest stars). If you just consider those, and ignore the standard 30-degree divisions, then we're in the middle of a vast wasteland between Pisces and Aquarius. The ecliptic hasn't touched the stick-figure of Pisces since Mohammed was walking around. It won't touch the stick-figure of Aquarius for at least another 800 years or so.

"It must have been a Golden Dawn teaching, because both Dion Fortune and P.F. Case speak of it,"

Maybe. Mathers' system defined the star Regulus as 0 degrees Leo. That creates a sidereal zodiac that is offset from the "Aldebaran = 15 degrees Taurus" zodiac by about 4.9 degrees. Offhand, I don't recall how different the latter is from the Fagan-Bradley zodiac, but I think it's close. If I did my back-of-the-envelope number crunching correctly, I think that means that we will be entering Aquarius (under Mathers' system) in just about 20 years (in approximately 2029). Any sidereal gurus care to verify?

"and while I don't remember Crowley ever using the term per se, there are a couple of places he alludes to it, and he seems to have thought that the Age of Aquarius and the Aeon of Horus were more or less the same."

I'll leave that to the EAEs (Expert Aleister Exegetes). It's probably a safe bet to predict that he made different statements at different times of his life...

Steve

@Aum418 said

"Makes that whole Aeon thing both inaccurate AND unoriginal."

Maybe, but it's still a powerful metaphor that's been firing up in people's minds over the last 150 years or so. Much like the idea of Thelema and "Do what thou wilt," Crowley built something new and unique on top of the existing antecedents.

One of my favorite manifestations of this was Nietzsche's. In a postscript to The Antichrist, he made a short declaration that September 30, 1888 is to be renamed "the first day of year one" of the post-Christian era. I think this was the date that the writing of this book was completed. (After his death, Nietzsche's sister deleted this comment in many published versions of The Antichrist, but it's often restored in more recent editions.)

Steve

Very interesting! I wonder if this is where Florence Farr got (at least partially) her ideas expressed in the Golden Dawn's Flying Roll 13:

*"Our civilisation has passed through the First Empire of pagan sensualism; and the Second Empire of mistaken sacrifice, of giving up our own consciousness, our own power of judging, our own independence our own courage. And the Third Empire is awaiting those of us who can see -- that not only in Olympus, not only nailed to the Cross, -- but in ourselves is God. For such of us, the bridge between flesh and spirit is built; for such among us hold the Keys of life and death.''
*
(Written some time between 1890 and 1900, I think.)

@Allogenes said

"Or is it more likely that the Cipher Manuscript Formulae was passed on from Kenneth Mackenzie, colleague of Rev. A. F. A. Woodford, another original Chief of the GD, as has also been claimed?"

I think the case for Mackenzie is a strong one, though I don't know if it's fair to call him a "Chief of the GD." He may have received the information in the cipher manuscript from an earlier source, but he may have also created it all himself.

R. A. Gilbert and others proposed (and gradually strengthed) the Mackenzie case throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. Some of the key articles include:

Gilbert, R. A., 1990, "Provenance Unknown: A Tentative Solution to the Riddle of the Cipher Manuscript of the Golden Dawn," in Wege und Abwege: Beitraege zur europaeischen Geistesgeschichte der Neuzeit, ed. A. Goetz von Olenhusen (Freiburg: Hochschul Verlag), p. 79. (This article was reprinted in Darcy Kuntz's 1996 The Complete Golden Dawn Cipher Manuscript book.)

Heisler, R. 1989, "Precursors of the Golden Dawn," in Cauda Pavonis: Studies in Hermeticism, vol. 8, no. 1, 1-4.

Prinke, R. T. 1987, "The Deeper Roots of the Golden Dawn," in The Hermetic Journal, 36, 16.

Some of these articles may now be online, but I haven't looked...

Steve

@gmugmble said

"in some varieties of British English, presumably including Crowley's, Hua (Arabic for "he" and used as a title of God) and Hoor would be pronounced the same."

Sounds a bit Bostonian to me...

Seriously, though, this is an interesting parallel. In the Golden Dawn, there were two angelic beings with similar names that were invoked by the Adeptus Minor in different circumstances:

HUA, the Great Avenging Angel, was imagined to be present when the new Adpetus Minor took the Obligation... ready to strike if the Oaths were broken.

HRU was the "Great Angel set over the operations of the Secret Wisdom," i.e., the Golden Dawn's lengthy Tarot divination procedure called the "opening of the key." I'm not sure why a name so clearly pointing to Horus would be assigned to this very Thoth/Hermes type of task in the Golden Dawn, though.

I've seen lots of Internet confusion between these two names. But maybe there are deeper links between them. All the sea-tossing, fire and brimstone, in that poem in Konx om Pax, can certainly relate to the Golden Dawn's Avenging Angel, but maybe also to the Ra-HRU-Khuit of Chapter III of Liber AL, as well!

Steve

@xkip93 said

"Let's say I create a cosmology/ mythology/theology/philosophy using the names from the Lord of the Rings characters. But I change them up. Sauron becomes a good guy, bringing freedom to everyone, Frodo becomes an evil spy, Gandolf a Black Magician and Gollum is the Saviour of Middle Earth, etc. etc. ad nauseum.

Can I say then that I brought to the table the "true meaning" of these characters?"

Not to move too far off-topic, but it's interesting that this very perspective was seriously discussed by David Brin, in an online article from 2002. I think that Phillip Pullman (author of the "His Dark Materials" novels) has also said similar things.

Steve

@Edward Mason said

"I've always thought the Tree of Life in its post G.'.D.'., post-Crowley state, is the closest thing to a Game matrix that we actually possess at this time. The idea of being able to take core concepts and use them to relate different workings out of ideas and symbols is inherent in this form of the Tree."

Sure. Charles Cameron used the Tree of Life as one of the possible "game boards" in the Hipbone idea-association games I linked to above. (Another one was the Pythagorean tetraktys, but that one was more boring... just interlocking triangles...)

@Scapegoa said

"related to this train, there is another book that has come to my attention after some recent internet searches. You may be the person to ask, i wonder if you are familiar with it. "Simulacra and Simulation" (The Body, In Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism) (Paperback) by Jean Baudrillard"

Sorry... the only thing I know about this is that it was the book used by Neo in The Matrix to hide his contraband computer disks inside.

Steve

@Scapegoa said

"these initiatory programs then would superficially very much resemble "Video games" on the interactive level?"

This all reminds me of another of my quasi-esoteric interests: finding real-life ways to play Hermann Hesse's sublime Glass Bead Game. This link is to Charles Cameron's old web site, which I highly recommend as an introduction to the GBG. Let me also give a short quote from the novel, which may serve to illustrate how this weird concept dovetails into both "video games of the spirit" and spiritual initiation...

@Hesse said

"I suddenly realized that in the language, or at any rate in the spirit of the Glass Bead Game, everything actually was all-meaningful, that every symbol and combination of symbols led not hither and yon, not to single examples, experiments, and proofs, but into the center, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge. Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with a truly meditative mind, nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery, where in the alternation between inhaling and exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang, holiness is forever being created."

@Scapegoa said

"I think the computer should not be viewed as separate from the human mind, but rather an extension of it, I think this is the paradigmatic shift that would enable us to best embrace this new exponential potential."

Oh, I certainly agree that technological transhumanism is something that can be valuable in the New Aeon! Many occultists ignore it at their own peril, I worry. (See this old thread.) I was just using the term "computer" as a lazy synonym for "non-messy." Maybe a reference to dessicated alien cultures like the Vulcans would be more on target. (They supposedly wiped clean the messy bits....)

My point was just that the natural language of the human mind is an ambiguous and fuzzy one. The fact that advanced mathematics is so difficult for most of us is a sign that it may not be the optimal tool for plumbing the depths of the soul. Maybe, though, we'd be more compatible with computers that run on "fuzzy logic?"

Steve

@Scapegoa said

"The Mathematician in me is repulsed by the "clumsy device" of Gematria, yet ironically and precisely for that fact it might be just what the doctor ordered! but somehow I don't think so!? I feel in a High -Speed Computer Age we have the resources to achieve almost perfect precision, and this becomes more true with every passing day!"

I guess I'd continue gmugmble's train of thought to say that the human mind (especially the unconscious parts?) can also be rather messy and jumbled. Maybe the right tool for diving into the shady, shifty world of Yetzirah is something that's not so precise and unambiguous.

And you've got to go through Yetzirah to get to Briah and Atziluth.

I'm with you, though, that I often get frustrated with the sometimes desperate attempts of people to shoehorn any given concept with their favorite Qabalistic number or word. (Particularly, my eyes glaze over at the "add up the digits of a long number" trick, especially if it has to be repeated several times until something interesting comes about!)

But which process is more like the human mind? Taking desperate shots in the dark? Or deriving computer-checked proofs?

Steve

@Jim Eshelman said

"And, of course, the Mother is not only the source of the Daughter, but is the Daughter in her later, mature state."

As embodied, I'd hazard to guess, by the evolving character of Lola Daydream in The Wake World...

@modernPrimitive said

"However the author seems to have envisioned that the current Aeon will be followed again with an Osirian-type Aeon, by mention of the fact that "Christ will return". This seems to conflict with the idea of the Aeon of Maat. Or does it?"

Not to go too far afield of Revelations, but I've always been a bit confused by the line in the Book of the Law, III:34, that says "another sacrifice shall stain the tomb." Might this imply a return to a more Osirian theology of self-sacrifice in the Aeon to follow this one?

In Crowley's new comment, he seemed to interpret it through the lens of sex magick... but he also interpreted this rhymed section of III:34 as generally referring to the present-day "revolution" that begins the Aeon of Horus. However, I wonder if it's more straightforward to interpret this part as referring to the next Aeon. (I think, for example, that Hrumachis "rising" from the throne is symbolic of Horus vacating the Hierophant's throne in the East to make way for the next Hierophant.)

I recently purchased a book on Revelations that looks at it through a Catholic lens. ("Coming Soon" by Michael Barber.) Although I disagree with nearly all of the literal conclusions, it's fascinating to read it through a symbolic filter that relates much of it to the Catholic liturgy, and not to simplistic predictions of "end-times" events.

Steve