War in the Context of Thelema

 

Ra-Hoor-Khuit declares Himself a God of War in the third verse of His chapter in Liber Al vel Legis. He immediately goes on to place His statement in the context of spiritual culture.

The passage from verse 3 to verse 9, chapter 3 of Liber Al vel Legis, is as follows:

220,3:3. Book of the Law,
chapter 3: verse 3

Now let it be first understood that I am
a god of War and of Vengeance. I shall
deal hardly with them.

220,3:4. Book of the Law,
chapter 3: verse 4

Choose ye an island!

220,3:5. Book of the Law,
chapter 3: verse 5

Fortify it!

220,3:6. Book of the Law,
chapter 3: verse 6

Dung it about with enginery of war!

220,3:7. Book of the Law,
chapter 3: verse 7

I will give you a war-engine.

220,3:8. Book of the Law,
chapter 3: verse 8

With it ye shall smite the peoples; and
none shall stand before you.

220,3:9. Book of the Law,
chapter 3: verse 9

Lurk! Withdraw! Upon them! this
is the Law of the Battle of Conquest: thus
shall my worship be about my secret house.

Here is Aiwass commenting on 220,3:3-9Book of the Law,
chapter 3: verses 3-9
. The Sun-god Ra-Hoor-Khuit also voices the first chapter of the Book of Codes.

718,1:15. Book of Codes,
chapter 1: verse 15

Know also that my island is my temple: most especially a particular House. Het. This is most needful, that my war-engine is of the magical kind, that the Blood of the Moon is its fuel and the priest’s Osiris is its motor. Thou mayest find thee an actual island if thou desirest, it doth not matter, but it behooves you to find out this Engine of War, perform my rituals with strength and beauty, and never to neglect the other type of battle as well. We shall be victorious; my stélé shall be placed within thy secret temple; the original writing of the Book of the Law shall be rediscovered after years of loss; the Temple of the East shall verily become the Great Western Catholic Church. (That land in the East shall give thee trouble, yet only to establish my glory in the end.)

The ‘island’ is the temple, 418. The ‘temple’, or secret house, is the incarnation and its manifested astral, or spirit, bodies. If we wish to be more specific, the House 418 is the Khu, which we access via the Anahata Chakra. The fortifications are produced on the astral plane by ritual and talismanic magic. The ‘peoples’ are the neuroses, or sophistications, which draw off energies better applied to doing the True Will. The ‘war-engine’ is a ritual and technique of sex magick, which is to say: love under will.

The practice of ritual magic is an indispensible precursor to Thelemic magick. No special equipment is needed to practice ritual magic and anyone can learn to do it. If there is no physical space in which to make a circle, the rituals can be done entirely in the body of light. Simply visualise yourself going through the ritual in detail. The training of imagination, visualisation and mental focus are beneficial in themselves and with practice the ritual has effect. It takes daily practice and determination to do ritual magic effectively. The ability to do the rituals astrally is a much more useful skill than being limited to a particular place or set of symbolic equipment. Match ritual magic with formal meditation, also practiced daily, to get the best results. Meditation with pranayama helps to gain control of the thinking processes. It is fair to say that ritual magic is meditation in motion. When the magick of the war-engine takes place within the astral vortex produced by ritual magic it is even more effective in its transcendental effects.

Anyone who has practiced the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP), with any success, will note that at first the ritual is quite easy. “Cleanliness is next to godliness, and so had better come first.” said the Master. Therefore, a concerted effort to sweep the astral temple clear of ‘filthy spirits’ is a necessary first step toward the practice of magick.

Before long the ritual starts to get difficult. The pentagrams waver and fall apart before they are fully drawn. It seems difficult to actually complete the circle as the attention is distracted by irrelevancies. And worse, events crop up to delay or prohibit the practice at its appointed hour. Strangely, a simple even innocuous practice such as the LBRP becomes a huge headache.

The little spirits or demons, you will have noticed flitting around the periphery of the circle the first few times through the ritual, don’t like having their source of nourishment cut off. They find ways to get you to stop doing the ritual because with it you are ‘smiting’ them; detaching them; scraping them off like barnacles off your hull. In psychological terms the demons are known as neuroses. They are energy blockages within the psyche. Once neuroses are exposed to the light of awareness and validated, or understood to be ‘not self’, they can be healed and the energies they blocked liberated for healthful use. If you can fight through all the distractions and persist against all odds, the astral environment is eventually swept clean of parasitic identity fragments, the ‘peoples’ in question.

This is difficult to do and one cannot expect to notice significant results until at least nine months of daily and determined practice have been accomplished. The external effects of daily ritual and meditation are noticed first. The mind is more focused, flexible and responsive to change. The body and overall health is better. Colds and flu, if they occur at all, are more easily shaken off. The unconscious effects are even more profound and significant, but harder to describe. Suffice it to say that with the practice of ever more challenging and effective rituals comes better integration of one’s spiritual awareness and energy into a stronger and more resilient incarnation. Eventually ‘none’ stands before you, instead of a plethora of partial astral identities.

More advanced, more effective, forms of the LBRP are the Star Ruby, Liber V vel Reguli, and Liber Samekh. These are all essentially the same ritual. They are increasingly thorough and effective tools for cleaning house.

An accomplished ceremonialist will regularly fill the temple with dazzling astral light at the climax of each ritual. Until the temple is well and truly swept clean of energy blocks and leaks, by whatever name you wish to call them, the Angel cannot make clear and explicit contact with the incarnation. The Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel is achieved by bringing the body/mind to a state of healthful poise that can be receptive to the inner daemon, Kenneth Grant’s “Hidden God”. It is not at all complex or complicated, but simple and innocent. It is not about good, evil, nor any other value judgement. It is about stilling the mind and being present in the here and now. Perdurabo discusses this process with great skill and clarity in his comment on Liber Samekh.

While Liber Samekh (a ritual to attain the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel) is a somewhat complex ritual, best worked up to through simpler versions starting with the LBRP, the secret key to the invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel is hidden in Liber 718,2:17. In this verse we are instructed to have sex with Ra-Hoor-Khuit’s image. Ra-Hoor-Khuit’s image is our experience of the physical Sun in the daytime sky. I stumbled upon, or was lead to, this key long before I practiced ceremonial magic or the other practices necessary to achieve the K&C of HGA. My Angel appeared to me, gave its name and posed a riddle which has taken me more than thirty years to begin to understand. Subsequent to the Angel’s appearance, I had to do the rituals, the meditations and memorise the Tree of Life anyway. There is no such thing as ‘the supernatural’ and there is no such thing as a ‘free lunch’. The riddle caused me to understand that we, all of us, create the worlds we live in and everything we are aware of. That includes the Holy Guardian Angel itself. We don’t create the Angel. We create whatever awareness we may have of the Angel, our own Eternal Self.

Aleister Crowley indicated that the Man of Earth is associated with the path on the Tree of Life attributed to the Hebrew letter Pé. What we see in Pé, The Tower of Tarot, the House of God (with Mars, God of War, as its astrological correlate), is conflict based on misunderstanding between the boy (Hod) and the girl (Netzach). Samekh overcomes this misunderstanding with magick Art, which is the path between the Moon (Yesod) and the Sun (Tiphareth). See the Tree of Life for these terms and The Book of Thoth for their meanings.

This is the initiation of the Man of Earth, the Minor Adept. Samekh is the arrow shot to the heart of the Sun from the bow, Qesheth (Qoph-Shin-Tav), which was brought to consciousness and strung by the Ordeal X. The initiation of the Man of Earth is the second major initiation in the Thelemic schema. It is the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. Its ordeal is the Ordeal R. Note that X, or Tzaddi (Tzedeq), is the path of The Emperor and R is the name, as well as the path (Resh), of The Sun. The Emperor’s astrological attribute is the sign Aries, in which the Sun is exalted. Aries is particularly associated with Ra-Hoor-Khuit, Ra Horus of the Horizon, because it is the begining of Spring and the dawn of the year after the night of Winter. So, as always, the King gets his authority from the Sun. In this case it is the Sun within, the Star or Holy Guardian Angel.

The magick of the war-engine is spiritual warfare, in precisely the same way as is ritual magic, but with practical, rather than symbolic, magical weapons. Magick is merely sex to those who treat ritual magic as merely play acting. It is difficult to harness the sex drive and direct it with purpose. The life challenges which cause a person to pursue the practical study of magick are the result of magick done unawares. The sincerity and determination needed to do effective magick can only be born of necessity. There is nothing cool or detatched about it. Those who use magick in an attempt to achieve material wealth will gain spiritual initiation instead, or be spun off to self destruction by their own arrogance. The doorway to eternity is found only in the immediate present. The ego, or separate self, cannot go here for its manifestation is extended in past and future. Thus the spiritual practices of ritual magic, mediation and Thelemic magick all have the effect of bringing awareness deeply into the here and now.

Thelemites send messages deep into the well of the present. The responses to these messages echo in our experience and understanding of what we manifest in the world and what we call to ourselves from the world around us. We cannot be “hollow tube[s] to bring down Fire from Heaven” without an open channel between waking consciousness and the occult realm of the unconscious. It is this unconscious awareness, in addition to the waking awareness, which must be healthy and as reflective as a mirror for the Holy Guardian Angel to write secrets on it with dew. The battles are primarily internal, not external in the world. Although we may project internal struggles onto external persons or events, ultimately it is we ourselves who create the world our awareness tells us is real. If we would change the world we must change ourselves.

It is perfectly natural for the uninitiate to be wary of the Book of the Law, Liber 220, for It is the philosophical and scriptural heart of Thelema. Liber Al’s world view is mysterious and vaguely frightening to those who have not come through the first ordeal, the Ordeal X. They are not yet ready to take responsibility for what they continue to believe is the will of an external God or an unknowable mystery. It is necessary for the uninitiate to despise the Book of Codes, Liber 718, for It describes the political and spiritual armamentarium of Thelema, the very structure of the Thelemic nation: Babalon. It holds practical information but It is of no use to one who cannot tap his or her Holy Guardian Angel’s perspective. Liber 718’s psychological traps alarm the ego making it blind to the secrets laying about in plain sight. A literal interpretation is insane. A rational interpretation is misleading and no amount of qabalistical analysis will unlock Its mysteries. Only the innocent, those who do their true wills, can gain access to the meanings within Aiwass’s symbolic language. The sophisticated meet absurdity at every turn. They rightly dismiss Liber 440 as irrelevant, for it is largely meaningless to them.

At the time of this writing, the nation Babalon does not have form in the world. The few who have initiation are busy learning hard lessons in these days of twilight before the dawn. The many who seek initiation are alone for lack of credible exemplars. The signs leading to an inevitable war, the ashes from which Babalon will arise, are legion. This war has been blowing hot and cold for a century and will continue for generations to come. Proponents of restriction continue to occupy positions of power in the world, yet signs of a new-aeon paradigm are showing through cracks in the old-aeon facade. Many people perceive that the human race is headed toward the edge of a cliff, but no one seems able to stop the runaway train of self-destructive cultural and religious prejudice. Some fear that it may be the end of humanity, but Aiwass depicts this war as a necessary transformation and a new beginning for the human race. In the near term, however, Aiwass needs to get humanity’s attention.

Thelema, like any freedom, is never granted. It must be struggled for and won. There are those who demand the obedience of others to their ‘loving’ God against the surety of eternal torture for non-compliance, calling this ‘Good News’. They have destroyed libraries of learning, temples of worship, raped, tortured and murdered millions in the service of a myth they call Jesus Christ. They continue their traditional behaviours today, ruling over hundreds of millions of human beings with sanctimonious contempt. Cowering slaves go along to get along, giving support to the very hate-filled sadistic fiends that continue to abuse them. Thelemites retain responsibility for the gods they project. In many ways Do What Thou Wilt means mind your own business. Thelema requires us to be self-directed. The failure to choose freedom is slavery by default. It is not necessary to choose Thelema, per se, but all ideologies which demand obedience are evil, irrespective of any benefits they may promise. It is better to decide for yourself, be wrong and suffer consequences you can learn from, than to follow someone else’s light, gain some benefit, yet remain ever beholding to another’s will. This does not mean that we cannot cooperate, but the Thelemite poles his or her True Will for direction rather than depending on chains of reasons, themselves dangling from questionable axioms, to justify or prohibit behaviour. “It is God’s will” or “The Devil made me do it” are always lies.

In truth, all human beings are slaves. The difference between a King, in the sense the term is used in Liber 440, and a slave is that the King or Queen chooses to serve the Holy Guardian Angel, the Star, the True Self or Eternal Self. The slave serves his or her temporal ego, the sense of self separate from all otherness. Material wealth and social status are desirable to the ego but they are meaningless to the Angel. Death, the end of the incarnation, is an unmitigated tragedy to the ego but orgasmic ecstasy, a cause for jubilation, to the Star. A Thelemite’s life is one of constant change and perpetual learning, for the incarnation is but a vehicle for the True Will. The ego barely gets comfortable when the rules change to accommodate the current circumstances. Slaves hate change for it causes anxiety as the ego tries to readjust to new situations. Thelemites harmonise with the cycles of nature. Abrahamists, and other old-aeon types, worship a rock of ages, an immutable God or ideology. They disparage respect for natural cycles as demonic or superstitious. Materialists try to find stability in a manifested world that is either busy being born or busy dying, which is to say: in constant flux. Nature seems chaotic but it obviates chaos by being extraordinarily prolific. The natural world does not respond well to rigid definitions of ownership and commerce. Nature posesses an uncanny genius for circumventing restriction.

There is a frightening prediction made by Aiwass in the Book of Codes: “Thou shalt see the suffering and the destruction. Is it not true that already there is nothing to hear but woe and lamentation? That which hath befallen Elvinland shall befall your own land. Thou understandest what this signifieth.” Elvinland is the astral plane of the non-human natural world. In a healthy ecosystem, Elvinland is continually accessed by the spirits of living things incarnating and excarnating according to the cycles of their existence. However, we have seen extinctions follow the loss of habitat to the rapacious human appetite for resources and disregard for ecological health. The rate of extinction is increasing rapidly as habitat destruction, global warming and rising sea levels accelerate. If it is true that what is happening to ‘Elvinland’ will happen to mankind, the human race will be radically diminished in population. Present governments will not survive the actual and perceived betrayal of their constituents. Surviving humans will initially have a much poorer world to live in than we have ever known. However, implicit in the awareness that we have the ability to damage the ecological systems of our planet is the knowledge that we can effect changes for the better as well. As a species we are leaving the insouciance of childhood and we are about to take up the responsibilities of adulthood. We are presently going through the tumultuous transition of puberty.

Apart from bloody battles over material resources, especially clean water, the contests between reincarnating spirits for bodies of any kind, let alone human, will represent a spiritual war of global proportions. One of the underlying purposes of the teachings of Aiwass is to develop superior abilities to compete for desirable incarnations when gaining rebirth. The spiritually weak and inept will have to settle for limited lives in the world, and I don’t mean limited by mere physical disabilities, which may be necessary for an individual’s spiritual growth. Some may have to make do with non-human bodies or even fail to reincarnate at all. Real spiritual initiation, as opposed to being awarded rank in the context of a social club, is a wealth of consciousness and potential energy that we take with us to subsequent lifetimes. It is this spiritual potential which not only drives initiation and ordeal in each new incarnation but gives the Thelemite a distinct advantage in the competition for a suitable human vehicle.

While it is wise to abhor Christianity and other slave-god creeds for ourselves, it is not wise to discourage their followers in their faith. If they are sufficiently sincere in their belief, they will discover the harmful effects of worshipping disowned gods soon enough. If they stay separate relative to their God, rather than uniting with that God, they will indeed go to their illusory ‘heaven’ on the lower astral plane after physical death. There they will maintain their unique identities relative to their projected God. Having fallen away from the natural cycle of their existence they will slowly but inevitably dissipate, along with their spiritual peers, never to reincarnate again. If they choose terminus, who are we to deny them?

The physical body is the powerhouse of the spirit. The material-plane biological organism is a necessary energy source for the astral bodies that house the immortal spirit. The Khu, or Akhu, is the bright shiny astral body that houses the Khabs, or Star, which in turn is the house of Hadit. Physical death is the necessary periodic renovation of the physical body and the nested astral bodies that depend on it. If we stop the cycles of our own deaths and births, in order to maintain a separate identity on the astral plane after the death of the body, we threaten our own immortality. Those who are spiritually evolved shed their astral bodies as rapidly as possible following the demise of the biological house and seek only to merge with the Clear Light. In this way they retain the maximum potential for the reincarnating spirit on every level of manifestation.

Spiritually speaking, we are our own parents. What we take with us from one incarnation to another is spiritual initiation. In each new lifetime we are impelled to awaken to our initiations and to work through the ordeals associated with each one. By undergoing the ordeals, we forge resilient links between the Holy Guardian Angel and the incarnate human vehicle. Stronger links enable us to do our true wills on earth more effectively. In this way we volitionally accelerate our spiritual evolution, leading to a continuity of consciousness across lifetimes. This is practical and effective immortality. The ego which derives its existence from the mind/body complex does not survive the decay of that biological organisation, but the consciousness which inhabited the earthly temple does survive to incarnate again and again.

In Ra-Hoor-Khuit’s war the battlefield is one’s own life. The war-engine is a technique of love. The path to immortality is love. The worst tragedy is not to achieve union between the inner spiritual consciousness and the outer physical consciousness. Love requires courage, selflessness and faith. Yes, faith. It is faith that the Angel desires success in magick as much as we desire love, and that these two, magick and love, amount to the same thing. Whether it is self love, heterosexual love or homosexual love makes no difference. Love is union. Success in love is to overcome the burden of separateness through union. We may project our love unto Nuit or evoke Hadit to fill us with love. Either way we are innocent bystanders while the universe makes love to itself through us, its consciousness. All we have to do is get out of our own way to avoid restricting love. Life and death are false distinctions, but we are human, locked in bodies of flesh, with responsibilities and tomorrows. Thus all life is war. It is war against restriction. It is war toward love. And death? Death is a final act of love for an incarnation, yet simply another act of love for an immortal Star.

In every imaginable way “There is no law beyond Do What Thou Wilt.”

 Nemo Pandragon

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Footnotes

Aiwass got the words for the Book of the Law from Aleister Crowley’s mind, though the meanings and significance are the Angel’s own. Thus the language of Liber Al vel Legis has much more in common with the language of dreams, the language of the unconscious, than with conversational English. It was quite a feat to manifest a true representation of the unimaginably deep level of awareness embodied in Aiwass, Aleister Crowley’s Eternal Self, Star, or Holy Guardian Angel. Those who communicate with their own Holy Guardian Angels recognise Crowley’s extraordinarily high degree of spiritual awareness for they find in his writings confirmation of their own hard won initiation.
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Het is the eighth letter of the Hebrew alphabet חHet (8), the eighth letter of the Greek alphabet, as Eta Ηη, and the eighth letter of the Latin alphabet we use for English, as Aitch Hh. It is spelled חיתright to left
Het-Yod-Tav
,
from right to left, Het(8)-Yod(10)-Tav(400), 418 by Gematria.

Het-Hor Hieroglyph

In ancient Egyptian, the hieroglyph Het means a house or temple. For example: Het with a falcon, the glyph of Horus, depicted inside it is the hieroglyph Het-Hoor, or Ahathoor, meaning ‘House of Horus’. Ahathoor represents the Summer solstice which begins the astrological sign Cancer, ruled by the Moon and attributed to the Tarot major arcanum Atu VII The Chariot which is the path Het (418) on the Qabalistic Tree of Life. The Secret Name of Horus is שטןShin(300)+
Tet(9)+Nun(50)=359
Satan
,
359, Satan. 418 + 359 = 777, the son. The hieroglyph of Ahathoor (Hathor) shows the Khabs, the Holy Guardian Angel, in the Khu, the House 418, the Angel’s temple in the Anahata, or Heart Chakra.
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“... one destroys a complex which in itself is ‘evil’ and puts its elements to the one right use.”
Magick in Theory and Practice by Aleister Crowley, Chapter 13: fourth footnote.
     See Aleister Crowley’s comments on 220,1:8 for his use of the word ‘complex(es)’ in this context. He calls this verse of the Book of the Law “the first ‘revelation’ of Aiwass.” The verse, and his comment on it, discuss concepts that are fundamental to understanding the context of Ra-Hoor-Khuit’s war and indeed of Thelema itself.

The larger part of it follows here:

8. The Khabs is in the Khu, not the Khu in the Khabs.

Old Comment:
Here Begins the text.
    Khabs is the secret Light or L.V.X.; the Khu is the magical entity of a man.
    I find later (Sun in Scorpio, An. VII) that Khabs means star. In which case cf.v.3. [Every man and every woman is a star. − 220,1:3]
    The doctrine here taught is that that Light is innermost, essential man.
Intra (not Extra) Nobis Regnum deI.  [INRI]

New Comment:
    We are not to regard ourselves as base things, without whose sphere is Light or “God”. Our minds and bodies are veils of the Light within. The uninitiate is a “Dark Star”, and the Great Work for him is to make his veils transparent by ‘purifying’ them. This ‘purification’ is really ‘simplification’; it is not that the veil is dirty, but that the complexity of its folds make it opaque. The Great Work therefore consists in the solution of complexes. Everything in itself is perfect, but when things are muddled, they become ‘evil’. The Doctrine is evidently of supreme importance, from its position as the first ‘revelation’ of Aiwass.
    This ‘star’ or ‘Inmost Light’ is the original, individual, eternal essence. The Khu is the magical garment which it weaves for itself, a ‘form’ for its Being Beyond Form, by use of which it can gain experience through self-consciousness, as explained in the note to verses 2 and 3. This Khu is the first veil, far subtler than mind or body, and truer; for its symbolic shape depends on the nature of its Star.

Magical and Philosophical Commentaries on the Book of the Law, pp 96 & 97
Edited and Annotated by John Symonds and Kenneth Grant
© 1974 John Symonds and Kenneth Grant
93 Publishing, Montréal, Québec. September 23, 1974 c.e.
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Magick in Theory and Practice, Appendix VII, Part IV.
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Magick in Theory and Practice, Chapter 13.
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ΚΑΚΟΔΑΙΜΟΝΟΣ ‘kakodaimonos’ are literally filthy spirits.
See Liber XXV, The Star Ruby, in Magick in Theory and Practice, Appendix VI.
The word ‘kaka’ commonly means filth or shit. The word ‘daimon’ means servant in this context (not the Latin genius). Thus kakodaimonos also may be taken to mean shitty servants. Neuroses are coping mechanisms, often established in childhood, that no longer serve us. Our attachment to them blocks energy and inhibits spiritual development. In fact, spiritual progress may be measured in terms of the “solution of complexes,” as Crowley pointed out in his comments on 220,1:8 quoted above in footnote 3. We solve complexes by becoming aware of, or validating the reality of, neuroses (shitty servants) and resolving their conflicts within the present reality. The past is not cut in stone and we are not condemned to slavishly follow our programming. The solution of complexes liberates the energies they blocked for the healthful use of the incarnation. As the veils become less opaque and more translucent they transmit ever more light, thus “lightening the girders of the soul.” See 220,3:61, which is chapter 3: verse 61 of the Book of the Law.
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“A devil who had unity would be a God.” & “It is, however, always easy to call up the demons, for they are always calling you; and you have only to step down to their level and fraternize with them. They will then tear you in pieces at their leisure. Not at once; they will wait until you have wholly broken the link between you and your Holy Guardian Angel before they pounce, lest at the last moment you escape.”
     Both of these quotes are from Magick in Theory and Practice, Chapter 21, Part II.
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See 220,3:8 quoted at the beginning of this essay.
The ‘none’ that stands before you is not the absence of anything but the presence of Nu, who is perceived as nothing:
“With the God & the Adorer I am nothing: they
do not see me. They are as upon the earth;
I am Heaven, and there is no other God
than me, and my lord Hadit.” − 220,1:21.
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Magick in Theory and Practice, Appendix VI, Liber XXV.
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Magick in Theory and Practice, Appendix VI, Liber V vel Reguli “an incantation proper to invoke the Energies of the Aeon of Horus.”
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Magick in Theory and Practice, Appendix IV.
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Aleister Crowley & The Hidden God, ©1973 Kenneth Grant, Frederick Muller Ltd., London 1973.
This book, and Grant’s Magical Revival, are well worth reading for historical details of Aleister Crowley’s work and for associated ideas found in other metaphysical systems. Grant expands on Crowley’s association of the ‘Hidden God’ with the God worshipped by the Yezidi of Mesopotamia and with Aiwass, Crowley’s own Holy Guardian Angel who gave us Liber 440. The name of this ancient God appears as the magickal formula LAShTAL. The transitions of birth (all) and death (none) are symbolised by the astrological sign Scorpio.
     Nonetheless, we are to seek our own Holy Guardian Angels. “How camest thou to the knowledge of Brahman, of Buddha, and the Ancient of Days, when all have said thou must give up this world to have that other? ’Tis my blessing and approval, the very light of Ra shone through the lens of Aiwass, minister and focal point of the swelling current. Think not to find him in philosophy or history! He is ever among you now, even as I write this message. He is the Guardian Angel, known to others as the secret name committed to them at the moment of High Initiation. He is a formula and a consciousness, yet him thou mayest evoke and invoke at will. He is particular and universal, and the Hermit may invoke him as his angel own. All have a name, and this name is not Aiwass, yet all partake of his Nature. All have a different function, for they are the limbs of the God. Mystery of Mysteries.” − 718,2:18. See Crowley’s reference to the ‘secret name’ in his comments on 220,3:74 (418 + 359 = 777).
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Magick in Theory and Practice, Appendix IV, Liber Samekh: Point III - Scholion on Sections G & Gg.
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See Magick in Theory and Practice, Appendix II, One Star in Sight
and 718,2:23, the Book of Codes, Chapter 2: Verse 23.
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“Know that the ordeals shall differ from chela to chela, and the Master shall know which will serve best. The gross must pass through fire, and it shall be to him as silver. This is the first door and its letter is X. The fine shall be tried in intellect, and it shall be to him as gold. This is the second door and its letter is R. The lofty ones shall be chosen in the highest, and it shall be to them as mercury. This is the third door and its letter is B. The one in three shall be to the Beast as the ultimate sparks of his own Daemon; he shall come to full knowledge of Godhood. He shall transcend the Three in order to become the One. He shall transcend the One to become the None. This is the fourth door, and its letter is A. Know that the Word of the ordeals is ABRAX, as it is hidden in the Book of the Law.” − 718,2:26.
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The Book of Lies, Aleister Crowley, 1913 – Chapter 15, The Gun Barrel.
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“The fool readeth this Book of the Law, and
its comment; & he understandeth it not.
     Let him come through the first ordeal, &
it will be to him as silver.
     Through the second, gold.
     Through the third, stones of precious water.
     Through the fourth, ultimate sparks of the
intimate fire.
     Yet to all it shall seem beautiful. Its
enemies who say not so, are mere liars.” − 220,3:63‑68.
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“Time will show this generation a wonder of wonders, for the old brilliant Magick shall creep gradually back into the cities of men, as the pharaoh’s mummy returning through the power of sorcery. These children shall see society transformed utterly, for the old is already being set in its grave. Cling not to false idols, such as respect and even goodness! To be respected of the old time is to be rejected by the new. To be good by Victoria’s standards, or even Roosevelt’s, is to be evil by way of the revelations of Aiwass.
     Now let it be understood that this evil is but a word to signify a lack of wholeness in the individual, as to the outer and the inner. There is no law beyond Do What Thou Wilt.” − 718,5:6&7
     “My Babalon shall be Queen of the Earth. Her merchants shall wax wealthy, her philosophers shall grow wise, her fighting men shall be undefeatable and indefatigable, her slaves shall be joyous in their labour, her Kings shall be rapturous in their Power.” − 718,1:12.
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“And many will quiver and stammer, and wonder at the sky. Few will believe; most will suffer.” − 75:74, Liber 75 vel Luciferi, Verse 74.
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“But let every Man become perfect in his own Work, not heeding the Rebuke of another, that some Way not his own is more Noble, or Profitable, but being constant in Mindfulness concerning his Business.” − Liber Aleph, The Book of Wisdom or Folly verse 189 – De Eadem Re Altera Verba, written by Aleister Crowley in 1918 c.e.
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718,4:4.
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“Abrogate are all rituals, all ordeals, all
words and signs. Ra-Hoor-Khuit hath
taken his seat in the East at the Equinox
of the Gods; and let Asar be with Isa,
who also are one. But they are not of
me. Let Asar be the adorant, Isa the
sufferer; Hoor in his secret name and
splendour is the Lord initiating.” − 220,1:49
     Asar, or Asuar, is Osiris, the original dying god. Isa, or Iesu, is Jesus. Hoor, or Hor, is Horus. Horus’s secret name is 359, Lord of the Cycles of Time. In this initiation, the aspirant comes to realise that he is Osiris/Jesus. He is not a Jesus but the one and only Jesus, and so is each other living person. Jesus is simply a symbol of incarnation, as is Osiris. By overcoming the god/worshipper duality, this initiation allows the aspirant to step out of the Aeon of Osiris the Dying God into the Aeon of Horus the Crowned and Conquering Child. The initiation is achieved by worshipping with sufficient sincerity to overcome the separation between the ego and the object of worship. Having achieved union, the initiate is whole and will not fall out of the cycles of time to perish with the dogs of reason.
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“Pity not the fallen! I never knew them.
I am not for them. I console not: I hate
the consoled & the consoler.” − 220,2:48.
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           “...I am not
extended, and Khabs is the name of my House.” 220,2:2.
“I am the flame that burns in every heart of
man, and in the core of every star. I am
Life, and the giver of Life, yet therefore is
the knowledge of me the knowledge of death.” − 220,2:6.
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“No army of mine can be defeated, no matter how small we are in comparison to the Enemy. You have my beetles: they shall not fail you. You have the fire and blood, the swords and the spears, and my own Cakes of Light. Verily, it is written that all power is given thee.” − 718,1:3.
     No army of Ra-Hoor-Khuit can be defeated because its soldiers pursue the war with conscious magickal intent lifetime after lifetime. He who is willfully ignorant, and so serves restriction, gets stuck on the lower astral plane as the result of his arrogance. Even if his identity shells eventually dissolve, thus releasing his impoverished spirit back into the natural cycle of existence, the consciousness he brings with him to his next lifetime has very little potential to affect the new incarnation. He is always a slave, having no internal direction which in the Thelemite is supplied by the consciousness of the Holy Guardian Angel. By definition, the Thelemite contacts and communicates with his or her Eternal Self, gaining both knowledge and purpose.
     Note that the weapons supplied to the Thelemite, with which to fight the war, are magickal. They affect internal levels of manifestation which are causal to the external material plane. The enemy’s weapons are of the physical world so their scope is local to externally manifested space/time. Since the enemies of Thelema are limited to the sandbox of physicality, their efforts amount to play, irrespective of how vicious or systematically murderous their games.
“Despise also all cowards; professional soldiers
who dare not fight, but play; all fools despise!” − 220,3:57
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“Now, no man shall fight if he hath not the will, and no woman shall be denied the glory of battle if she preferreth to give me worship. The ranks and the commanders shall fall to naturally, yet be it ever remembered that no man must by duty obey the word of another if it means he break his will. I forbid dissension in the ranks! If one disagreeth with his officer, let him leave and find another. There is nothing that can unite the divided but love. And if one of my soldiers finds that he must, he may leave my service without shame. Verily it is better to have no worshippers than to be lauded by all against their will. My servants shall be Kings. My slaves shall be free men.” − 718,1:7.
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