Aleister Crowley Section
Online Version - The Book Of The Law (Liber AL
vel Legis)
Central to Crowley's
system is a curious and enigmatic book known as the Book
of the Law, also called Liber AL, Liber Legis, Liber L,
or CCXX (220). It is fairly short and has often been issued
in pamphlet form. Crowley said it was revealed to him during
his 1904 vacation with his wife Rose in the Boulaq neighborhood
of Cairo, Egypt, by the audible dictation of a spiritual
being called Aiwass, who was both the messenger of the
new deities set over this æon and Crowley's
own Holy Guardian Angel. In a series of trance visions, Rose
indicated a number of symbols related to the Egyptian god
Horus, according to the system Crowley had gotten and augmented
from the Golden Dawn. She pointed out Stele 666 in the Boulaq
Museum, which has since come to have a meaning in Thelemic
mythology as an alternate form of the Book of the Law. Following
Rose's instructions, he went to one of their rented rooms
at an arranged time and took an hour of dictation from an
unseen voice on each of three successive days.
The phrase "Book of the Law" comes from Freemasonry,
as an alternative form of "Volume of the Sacred Law" (VSL).
In a Christian Lodge this would be the Bible open on the
altar; in a Jewish Lodge it would be the Torah, which means
the scroll of the Law; and in a religiously mixed Lodge there
might be more than one open sacred book on the altar. In
Lodges, Temples, and other ritual bodies in Thelema, Crowley's
Book of the Law is used for swearing initiatory oaths and
for ritual connection to tradition, like the VSL in Freemasonry
or the Book of Shadows in Witchcraft. Of course many religions
have a central scripture and in Thelema the role is filled
by the Book of the Law.
The book has three chapters, one chapter for each member
of a trinity of ruling deities. Its phrasing is often ambiguous
and it employs an odd, unearthly prose-poetic style which
many people find beautiful. Various interpretations of its
meaning are possible and Crowley wrote several commentaries
during his life, some of them interpreting its verses in
very different ways from his other commentaries or in ways
at odds with the surface meaning.
The trinity of the Book of the Law or Liber
AL is composed of three reinterpreted Egyptian deities.
First is Nuit (Nut), the goddess of the night sky, closely
linked in Egyptian religion with Hathor, also known as
the Egyptian Venus. Her message is of freedom, love and
the mystical bliss of union, as expressed in the curious
equation 0=2. Nuit reveals the Law of Thelema and declares
that the æons have turned in the Equinox of the Gods.
She is represented imagistically as space and the stars
of space. Nuit has been interpreted as the space-time continuum,
or as the infinite potential containing all things real
and unreal.
Second is Hadit (Heru-Behdeti or Horus of Edfu),
the winged solar globe, symbol of divine authority. This
form of the Egyptian god Horus, originally local to Bedheti,
had influence throughout ancient Egypt. Hadit symbolizes
the secret individuality within each of us, the star that
each person is, the invisible, ineffable and unmanifest divine
spark which moves each of us on our self-appointed path of
will. As such Hadit also represents the underworld, the infinitely
small point, the capacity for knowledge, the partner of Nuit,
and the fiery nature of underworld deities such as Blake's
Los, the Greek Hekate and Hades, and the Christian Lucifer.
Their aspect of wrathfulness is often interpreted as a form
of great energy usable for many purposes. Themes of kingship
are central to the message of Hadit.
Third in the
trinity is the child produced by the union of Nuit and
Hadit, the lord of the new æon, alternately
expressed by two different forms of Horus. One form is Ra-Hoor-Khuit
(Ra-Horakhty), a military aspect of Horus as conqueror and
warrior. Ra-Hoor-Khuit extends the inwardly-turned energy
of Hadit outwards into the world. Whether the urgings to
war and violence found in the third chapter of the Book of
the Law, and to a lesser extent in the second chapter, are
meant as metaphorical magical formulae of fiery energy, or
are actual exhortations to conquer on the plane of political
and temporal power, or both, is a controversial issue. Many
Thelemites find any literal interpretation of the warlike
material repugnant, while others embrace it as a necessary
part of the world's transition to the new æon.
The other form of Horus in the third chapter is Hoor-Paar-Kraat
(Harpocrates), Horus the child, traditionally the child of
Isis and Osiris. Starting with the English occult group known
as the Golden Dawn, to which Crowley belonged early in his
life, ceremonial magicians attached to Harpocrates an attribute
he probably did not possess in ancient Egyptian religion
-- his finger pressed to his lips seemed to be a hushing
gesture, making him the god of silence, which is an important
mystical principle. The finger at the lips is now considered
by scholars to have been akin to a thumb-sucking gesture
of childishness. When Crowley revised the Tarot trump Judgment
in the last few years of his life he reflected this change
in scholarly consensus, making the finger at the lips of
Harpocrates a gesture of childlike wonder at new adventures
and possibilities.
Throughout the
book two other mythic figures stand out, the Great Beast
and Scarlet Woman named Babalon. These characters are familiar
in Western culture from the Biblical Apocalypse of John,
where they appear as evil spirits in animal and human form
whose coming marks the end times. Crowley said that the
Apocalypse of John was an authentic prophecy but that it
had been distorted by the point of view of the previous æon,
so that the visionary author of the Apocalypse had misrepresented
the benign and world-freeing nature of the Great Beast and
Scarlet Woman who are the human officers of the Æon
of Horus. They are avatars of solar power and sexual force.
Crowley was himself the holder of the Beast office and Rose
was his original Scarlet Woman.
Simply to list all the themes of the Book of the Law would
be a lengthy and difficult task. The subject requires individual
study. To Crowley the book is central and regardless of one's
own relationship to it, Crowley's work and his curriculum
of practices can only be understood with respect to his ongoing
process of interpretation of Liber AL.
The Literalist might say this: Liber
AL vel Legis numbered CCXX is a direct transmission from
the new gods appointed to stand over the current Æon. The Æon
of Osiris was cursed by the failings and horrors of Christianity,
a religion that perverted the formula of the Dying and Reborn
God first prophesied by the ruling Egyptian God Osiris. In
1904 the two-thousand-year cycle ended with the new Prophecy.
Now Christianity and other remnants of Osiris have only the
unholy clutch on continued existence that is the province
of the undead, and like zombies they are crumbling away with
the loss of their vital force. Soon they will be gone and
the true era of Freedom will reach fruition. The two World
Wars were caused by the publication of the Book of the Law
with its superhumanly intelligent predictions of war.
The Chaotic might say this: The
Book of the Law is a powerful spellbook and meditation
focus. It engages many deep parts of the unconscious mind.
So do A. O. Spare's works, though, and other systems for
other people -- there is a lot more to occultism than Crowley.
Alternative historical models may be better than Crowley's æons, like the
Chaos Magic psychohistorical model, the Typhonian/Achadian Æon
of Ma'at, or the personal Word of each Magus in the Temple
of Set. Crowley's æons were valid for him and for his
personal mythology but there are a lot of different stories
you could tell about history. They are all myths and myths
are important in magic but it would be a mistake to take
any of them too literally.
The Skeptic might say this: One
can take an approach to Thelemic myth like that of liberal
Christianity toward Genesis, using it as mythic material
for philosophy, ritual and worship without affirming its
literal truth. The æonic
model is a mistake if examined as history, but so are most
cosmological myths. Cultural prejudices in the Christian
West created a mistaken scholarly consensus that held that
the Christ myth had been echoed and prefigured throughout
pagandom as the myth of the Dying and Reborn God. They also
gave Osiris a status as ruler of Egypt that he did not actually
hold. While Osiris was important, the ruling deity of ancient
Egypt throughout most of its history was Horus. Osiris and
Christ are not similar, and they are not similar to other
gods who were forced into the Christian mold, such as Dionysus,
Orpheus, Attis and Tammuz. The Thelemic myth of æons
is interesting as a new myth related to traditional Zodiacal
myths involving the Gnostic deity Æon, such as the
myth of Mithraism that celebrated the passing of the age
of Taurus in favor of Pisces.
The Mystic might say this: The Æons bring with
them characteristic Formulae of Initiation. In the Æon
of Osiris the Formula was Crucifixion and Self-Sacrifice.
This had an esoteric meaning related to but different from
mundane Christianity. The meaning was preserved through the
ancient Mysteries and the Secret Tradition of Occultism.
In the Æon of Horus, Sacrifice is replaced by the natural
and progressive Growth of the Child. The Attainment of mature
powers and Solar glory assume the place previously held by
a death-and-rebirth Ordeal. Accordingly Initiations are today
to be seen not so much as Deaths but as Births or Conceptions.
Aleister
Crowley Section
Online
Version - The Book Of The Law (Liber AL vel Legis) |
