I am Isis

Did you ever make a blunder by being impatient? I defaced a beautiful copy of Liber 440 that was printed on handmade paper and bound in kidskin. However, my mistake brought one of Aleister Crowley’s revelations into relief.

The handwritting of Crowley’s 1904 Liber AL vel Legis sub figurâ CCXX, the Book of the Law, consists of sixty-five 8″ × 10″ hand written pages. Each verse is numbered in the second and third chapters of the handwritting, but not in the first chapter. Crowley added verse numbers to Nuit’s chapter for printed versions.

When 93 Publishing’s Frater Altzba produced the first edition of Liber 440, The Book of Perfection, he tried to fulfil at least part of the prophecy given in 220,3:39: “… the Book of the Law shall be printed beautifully in red ink and black upon beautiful paper made by hand.” Frater Altzba decided to remove chapter one’s verse numbers — that the amanuensis had added to the printed text of Liber 220 — in order most closely to represent the original handwritten version.

Of the 718 numbered copies of Liber 440 published in the summer of 1977, 625 were printed on high-quality book paper and 93 were printed, at great expense, on handmade paper.

I have two of the handmade editions, one of which I designated — way back when — as my everyday working copy. But I was frustrated that the verse numbers were missing in chapter one, making it difficult to reference specific passages.

So… I took a pen and wrote them in.

Too late, I realised that Crowley’s verse numbering for Nuit’s chapter of the Book of the Law was not at all straight forward. I had misnumbered some of the verses on irreplaceable handmade paper in indelible ink!

Where did I go wrong when numbering the first chapter of the Book of the Law, and why did Aleister Crowley feel it necessary to institute such unintuitive verse numbering?

220,2:54. Book of the Law,
chapter 2: verse 54
Nor shall they who cry aloud their folly
that thou meanest nought avail; thou
shall reveal it: thou availest: they are
the slaves of because: They are not of
me. The stops as thou wilt; the letters?
change them not in style or value!

The star-god Hadit voices the second chapter of the Book of the Law and, here, is addressing the amanuensis. Crowley could punctuate the Book of the Law and divide it into verses as he chose, but not change the letters.

It starts with verses 12 and 13 of Nuit’s chapter, the first chapter of the Book of the Law. Note in the handwritting that verse 13 is numbered in the middle of a short written paragraph.

What would have been verse 13, if Crowley had followed the pattern of a separate verse number for each paragraph, is now 14. This numbering continues in the normal way until we get to verse 22.

Here we have two clearly separated, relatively long paragraphs grouped under the same verse number. What would have been verses 21 and 22 are now joined under the number 22.

220,1:22. Book of the Law,
chapter 1: verse 22
Now, therefore, I am known to ye by my
name Nuit, and to him by a secret name
which I will give him when at last he
knoweth me.

Since I am Infinite Space, and the Infinite
Stars thereof, do ye also thus. Bind
nothing! Let there be no difference made
among you between any one thing & any
other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt.

The words Infinite, Space, Infinite, and Stars are unambiguously capitalised in the handwriting. The sky-goddess Nuit promises to give the reader her secret name at the beginning of what is now verse 22, then spells it out as an acronym in the second part of the verse: ISIS, the Greek version of the Eyptian sky-goddess Ast or Aset.

Nuit says, “I am Isis.”

I did not notice that Nuit had provided her secret name in the very next paragraph. Kenneth Grant pointed it out on page 64 of his 1972 book The Magical Revival. He even named his O.T.O. lodge: Nu-Isis.

Mindful of the caveat “when at last he knoweth me,” Crowley asserted the irrational verse numbering to subtly point to the acronym without giving the secret away.

Adepts see the world from points of view in which the obscure metaphors found in Liber 440 become progressively more clear, while non-adepts are flummoxed by often frightening absurdities.

But wait. There’s more.

In Aleister Crowley’s own comments on 220,1:22Book of the Law,
chapter 1: verse 22 he wrote:

The Secret name was revealed in the Sahara desert — see Liber 418, 12th Aethyr, The Equinox I, V, pp. 82 – 87.
– Magical and Philosophical Commentaries on the Book of the Law, ed. Symonds & Grant: Crowley’s comment on 220,1:22.

The 12^th Aethyr is actually on pages 81 to 87 of Liber 418, The Vision and the Voice, a “Special Supliment” to The Equinox volume one, number five. Crowley is saying that the secret name of Nuit is “Babalon.”

However, even this revelation is not quite as simple and straightforward as one might hope.

The Vision and the Voice is a collection of visions resulting from Enochian magic, experienced by Aleister Crowley, and recorded in notebooks by Victor Neuburg while they were travelling in the desert of northern Algeria. They stayed in Bou Saâda, between 30 November and 8 December 1909, where the vision of the 12^th Aethyr was recorded.

The circumstances surrounding the writing of Liber 418, The Vision and the Voice are recounted in chapter 66 of The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, pages 611 to 624.

There are nineteen of these Keys: the first two conjuring the element called Spirit; the next sixteen invoke the four Elements, each subdivided into four; the nineteenth, by changing two names, may be used to invoke any one of what are called the thirty ‘Aethyrs’ or ‘Aires’.
– The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, ed. Symonds & Grant, page 612.

The visions of the thirty Aethyrs appear in reverse order in The Vision and the Voice. The name Babalon does not appear in the first eighteen Aethyrs, from 30 to 13. Then it appears only as Babylon — the biblical spelling, with a “y” — in the 12^th Aethyr, but spelled out once in Hebrew as באבאלעןBet (2)
Aleph (1)
Bet (2)
Aleph (1)
Lamed (30)
Ayin (70)
Nun (50)
BABALON (156) (BABALON), which sums to 156 by gematria. (Note: there are 156 verses in Liber 718, the Book of Codes.)

The biblical spelling appears twice in the 11^th Aethyr, then not again. The spelling “Babalon” appears 18 times in the visions of the remaining ten Aethyrs.

Aleister Crowley’s Exclusive Plymouth Brethren childhood included restriction at every turn, rigorous bible study, and the usual physical and psychological humiliations of an Evangelical Christian upbringing.

The aesthetic motif of the Book of the Law is that of ancient Egypt, the Sun-worshipping villains of Exodus. Babylon was the capital city of the second Babylonian Empire, which conquered the Kingdom of Judah, including Jerusalem, in 597 b.c.e, leading to the Babylonian exile. The Babylonians were the bad guys of Old Testament 2 Kings, 2 Cronicles, Ezra, Psalms — notably Psalm 137 — Isaiah, particularly Jeremiah, Daniel, and occasionally in the New Testament.

Babylon, as a symbolic woman, though still a city, was a creation of John of Patmos who wrote the Apocalypse (Revelation). See Revelation XVII in the King James Version bible. Apo means ‘from’ and -calypse comes from a word meaning ‘hiding’, so from-hiding, uncovering, or revelation.

The revelation that is destroying religion around the world is: The supernatural does not exist in reality. Real objects or events cannot have supernatural causes, and supernatural objects or events cannot exist in reality.

Ishtar, Queen of Heaven, was the supreme goddess of Babylon, and, as Ianna, the ur-goddess of Mesopotamia, is identified with Nuit and Isis.

Note the symbolic similarities of the image above with the Crowley/Harris Tarot Atu XI Lust, riding the Lion-Serpent (Leo-טSerpent
Tet (9)
Yod (10)
Tav (400)
Tet (419)).

Whether a person, a city, or a nation, Babylon’s place in Judaeo-Christian mythology is that of transgressor, one who exceeds limits.

Is Nuit’s secret name Isis, as the Book of the Law clearly indicates, or is it Babalon, as Aleister Crowley pointed to in his comments on chapter one, verse twenty-two of the Book of the Law?

220,1:22-23Book of the Law,
chapter 1: verse 22 provides an answer: It is both, and more.

220,1:22. Book of the Law,
chapter 1: verse 22
… Bind
nothing! Let there be no difference made
among you between any one thing & any
other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt.

220,1:23. Book of the Law,
chapter 1: verse 23
But whoso availeth in this, let him be
the chief of all!

Chief of all what? All themself.

Gods and goddesses can only be subjectively real. They do not exist for us unless we create them. We create them by repeatedly returning our attention to them. They are psychological touchstones which give us a sense of internal control amid chaos.

Traditionally, gods have been used by priests to assert control over populations in the service of tyrants (aristocrats). Gods used for oppression and slavery are invariably permanent and unchanging.

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
– Thomas Jefferson

They treat nature’s ever-changing vagaries as impure, corrupt, of low status, even definitively evil.

Nuit, Isis, and Babalon form a polymorphous symbol: the same symbol in different shapes depending on point of view.

Nuit is secret, per 220,3:22. 718,1:22 says “The knowledge of Hadit and Nuit is reserved for the initiate.” Nuit represents femaleness in its most essential form.
Isis, daughter of Nuit in the Ennead of Heliopolis, is the mother of the Sun god Horus who is “the visible object of worship.” She is also magician and healer. Isis represents femaleness in its social form.
Babalon will not be limited by patriarchy or moral restrictions. She is self-directed, the mistress of her fate. Babalon represents femaleness in its worldly physical form. The Cup of Babalon is the vagina, both physical and conceptual.

The Scarlet Woman is a rôle, not a particular person. She provides Alchemical Salt (see Crowley’s Tarot Atu III The Empress), which is the power of manifestation. The rôle of Beast provides Alchemical Sulphur (see Atu IV The Emperor), the power of destruction and creation.

718,2:15. Book of Codes,
chapter 2: verse 15
All power is given to the Beast and his Whore, and let it be understood that all my serpents are of this type. They shall rule the many and the known; they shall rule the All and the None. Let them be secret, they must be secret, for their power is in the word of the Will. The multitudes shall look upon their faces, but no fool can see what lies within. This calls for Wisdom, and all the wise are of the same number in secret.

Ra-Hoor-Khuit’s war-engine, a sex-magic (magick) ritual, smites your own “peoples,” the neuroses and fragmented identities which clutter your subconscious mind and distract you from finding the temple of your Holy Guardian Angel in your unconscious mind.

Do I regret defacing my beautiful copy of Liber 440 many years ago? No. It lead me to learn something more valuable.

I am Isis

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