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CHAPTER ONE
THE MAGICK OF WILL
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Magick is the Science and Art of causing change to
occur in conformity with Will.
—MAGICK IN THEORY AND PRACTICE
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The above definition of Magick can be as misleading in its simplicity as it is in its complexity. The key word is of course Will, 1 in Greek, and according to this definition, any willed action is an act of Magick: brushing your teeth, walking the dog, or even paying your taxes.
Conversely any unwilled action is an unmagical act: reaching for a cigarette; ordering that fourth Martini; or any habitual or reactive behavior that overrides the momentum of one’s life focus could fall into the category of an unmagical act.
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The great majority of successful Magicians do not even realize (nor should they care) that they are Magicians, or that there is a name for what they do so well. They just go through life striving to cause change to occur in conformity with their Wills and that’s that. They have made a science out of their lifestyle and they execute it with great art. They work hard, but for them the work is not a burden it is a labor of love and a continuing expression of the purpose of their existence.
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Obviously most of us do not, without great effort, fall into this fortunate category of human being. Our Magick falls somewhere between competence and incompetence. Occasionally we become aware of what our Will is (or might be) and try to work the Magick. But more often than not, we find ourselves simply responding to an endless chain reaction of external events and circumstances over which we have little or no control.
Out of fear, frustration, or what might be called spiritual fatigue, many of us turn to religions whose champions are more than happy to tell us, in no uncertain terms, exactly where our place in the universe is.
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The religions that Westerners most frequently are attracted to (Christianity, with its many sects, Judaism, and Islam) postulate a Supreme Being who personifies and manifests the order of the universe. The mechanism of this order is often termed the “Will of God.” By surrendering the individual will to Will of God, the religious devotee can theoretically harmonize his or her life with that of the Deity’s. Not my will, but Thine be done.
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In order for us to know God’s Will, these religions offer, for our great comfort (and often from ancient and “infallible” sources), rules, commandments, and assorted scriptural injunctions to guide the thoughts and behavior of the faithful. As an added safeguard that these scriptures be “correctly” interpreted, a priestcraft of some form or another invariably evolves and assumes the role of a visible mediator between the worshiper and the Deity.2 For those who dutifully comply with the dictated formulae and surrender their wills to the prescribed Will of God, a great burden is lifted from their shoulders. They no longer feel the need for direct spiritual experience, and faith in the infallibility of the dogmatists makes even intellectual investigation unnecessary. The reward for such spiritual collaborators is the smug comfort of knowing that those who haven’t submitted to the formula will suffer after death, and that they who have, will not.
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Magick also postulates a universal order—call it God, Nature, the Supreme Being, the Grand Architect of the Universe, the Tao, or just the-way-things-are. But the Magician knows that the pure Will of every man and every woman is already in perfect harmony with the divine Will; in fact they are one and the same. It is the Magician’s Great Work to endeavor to remove the obstacles that hinder his or her perfect realization of that Will and then proceed to execute it.
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We perceive in the world around us a vast cosmic orderliness (or at least a glorious systematized chaos). Galaxies, stars, planets, atoms, electrons, and other sub-atomic particles all seem to have found their niche in the grand scheme of things and behave themselves accordingly. By realizing our True Wills we find our place…our orbit. By doing our True Will, we have the inertia of the entire universe to assist us.
The Magician does not necessarily want the burden of existence lifted from his shoulders; he wants to understand why he is carrying it and where.
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CHAPTER TWO
THE EVOLUTION OF MAGICAL FORMULAE
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Amagical formula is a statement of perceived cosmological fact or theory It can be as simple as an axiom:
Love thy neighbor as thyself. An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
It can be a statement or a set of symbols revealing the mechanism of a natural law:
As above, so below. All is sorrow. Love is the law, love under will.
E = MC2. YHVH. INRI. AUM.
It can even be a single word that initiates an entire age:
TAO; ANATTA; IAΩ; Θελημα
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Magical formulae evolve from older magical formulae as humanity’s ability to perceive itself and the universe increases. A change in the consciousness of the race necessitates a change in magical formula. It’s not that the old formula doesn’t work anymore, it’s just that the new one works so much better. Obsolete formulae of the past aren’t necessarily discarded completely but are often amended or fine-tuned to better harmonize with a new, expanded understanding of natural or spiritual law.
To use an apparently unmagical example, an ancient carpenter or craftsman seeking to determine the area of a small circle might venerate the great Magician who revealed to him that the area could be determined by measuring the radius of the circle, then multiplying that figure by itself, then multiplying that figure by the sacred number 3. For the rough calculations required by our primitive ancestors, this crude formula served quite adequately. But for larger, more complex projects (such as temples, pyramids, etc.) requiring precise computations, the world had to wait for the “Magick” of π. Once this new bit of information became general knowledge the world was never the same.
While this is a very crude analogy, I am confident that the reader can see how it applies to our ever evolving perception of ourselves and our place in the universe.
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The Formula of the New Age
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Great spiritual periods (ages or aeons) are characterized by their magical formula. This is very important and fundamental to the understanding of Magick in general and Thelemic Magick in particular, for the planet has just recently (relatively speaking) entered a new period; a new age; a new aeon.
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Yes, this is coincidental to what astrologers and songwriters call the Age of Aquarius1 and what millions of others refer to simply as the New Age. But it would be a mistake to view this new aeon as simply another tick on a great cosmic clock. The Age of Aquarius, profoundly significant as it is, is only one aspect of a far greater new spiritual age. (Such magical aeons do not necessarily coincide with the astrological periods and, according to Crowley2, may be of any length.) A more intimate, more magical perspective may be had if, rather than considering the ages as merely astrological epochs, we instead view them as gods.
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2 Magical and Philosophical Commentaries on THE BOOK OF THE LAW (Montreal: 93 Publishing 1974), p. 271.
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Crowley recognized in the three principal gods of Egypt Isis, Osiris, and Horus the characteristic formulae of the last three magical aeons.
The present aeon is that of Horus, which has followed the Aeon of Osiris, which followed the Aeon of Isis. Each aeon is characterized by the level of understanding of nature and of self contemporarily prevalent, and dictates the variety of magical and religious expression that dominate these periods.
Here it will be necessary to take a moment to review the myth of Isis, Osiris, and Horus, for it is vitally important to the understanding of the evolution of magical formulae and the Magick of Thelema. Please keep in mind that this is only the briefest sketch of a story that has undergone over four thousand years of revision.
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3 Spelled “Nuit” in Liber AL vel Legis, chapter I, verse 1.
4 Later identified with the Greek goddess Demeter.
5 Set, later identified with Apophis and the Greek devil-god Typhon.
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THE MYTH OF OSIRIS
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The images of this simple passion play are imbedded deeply in the collective consciousness of the human race. We see it retold almost verbatim by the Greeks as the story of Demeter and Persephone, and Orpheus and Eurydice. IAO, the great God of the Gnostics, even announces the magical formula of life, death, and resurrection in the letters of its name: Isis (Nature) is ruined by Apophis (the forces of destruction and decay), but is cyclically resurrected in Osiris.
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Most striking to the Western mind are the similarities between the story of Osiris and the central myth of Christianity: Through treachery a wise young savior is murdered…nailed to His death; the tree whereon the body is affixed; the mourning devotee who begs the return of His body in order to give it proper burial; the resurrection of the God which also provides the formula for the eternal salvation of the world, etc. All very Osirian.
But I am getting ahead of myself. To understand where we are, we must first understand where we have been, so let us first examine the conditions that characterized the last two aeons.
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The Aeon of Isis
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The Formula of the Great Goddess: It is difficult to speculate precisely when the aeon of the formula of Isis began for its foundations were laid in the nebulousness of prehistory. However, we can with relative confidence venture to pinpoint its zenith as being approximately 2400 B.C.7
This was the Age of the Great Goddess, and nowhere at this time was Her worship more conspicuous than in the Sumerian city of Uruk where the magnificent temple of Innana (Ishtar) dominated civilization’s first great city. For us to focus exclusively upon Sumeria, however, would be a grave error for, indeed, the cult of the Great Goddess was truly universal. She was worshiped by countless cultures under myriad names and forms. It would also be a mistake for us to conclude that the magical formula of this period manifested exclusively through the worship of any particular anthropomorphic female deity. For, like every aeon, the magical formula of the Aeon of Isis was founded upon mankind’s interpretation of the “perceived facts” of nature, and our Isian-age progenitors perceived nature as a continuous process of spontaneous growth.
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7 This date, coincidentally, also marked the beginning of the astrological Age of Aries.
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In the dim beginnings of the aeon, humans were ignorant of the cause and effect mysteries of sex and birth. Life appeared to come from woman alone. Blood flowed inexplicably from her body with the same cycle as that of the moon. And when the cycle of bleeding was interrupted, her belly swelled for nine moons until she burst with new life. She then continued to nourish this life with her milk, the white blood of her breasts, and without this nourishment, drawn directly from her body, the new life would die.
Nothing could match the power of woman. From her all life proceeded and without her nourishment no life could survive. Like the moon itself, she lived a three-fold life cycle of maid, mother, and crone; fertility, sustenance, and wisdom.
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Once the child was weaned, the Earth itself became surrogate mother, directly providing the flesh and blood of animals and plants for sustenance. Mother was life. Earth was Mother. God was Woman. Death was a mystery that could not be solved nor overcome.
This fundamental perception of nature persisted long after the mystery of where babies came from had been solved. Matriarchies and cannibalism dominated much of this period, but even after the ascent of the male warrior gods, the essential formula of the Goddess lived on.
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There exist to this day tribes of hunter-gatherers8 whose social and religious lives exemplify the formula of Isis, but the Aeon of Isis survived only as long as the spirit of humanity was dominated by the perception that life and its requisite nourishment came directly from the Earth and from the woman.
A clearer perception of the universe would evolve that would usurp the formula of Isis and initiate a new cultural and religious age. We are painfully familiar with this period for it lasted until the turn of the twentieth century. Its formula is still the consensus of the so-called “Great Religions” and continues to dominate the spiritual lives of the majority of the inhabitants of our planet.
In this age the focus was shifted from the Earth to the Sun as the source of all life, and from the mysteries of birth to the mysteries of death. We figured out where babies came from; now we were to ponder where we go when we die.
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The Aeon of Osiris
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The Formula of the Dying God: It could be said that the Aeon of Osiris began when men and women first became cognizant of the Sun, and recognized that the fertility of the Earth (and consequently their lives) depended directly upon the vitalizing power of sunlight. The secret of life was now perceived as a partnership of Sun and Earth, and our ancestors saw this partnership reflected in themselves: man and woman, phallus and kteis, father and mother.
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When it became universally acknowledged that without the Sun, the Earth would perish, and without the semen of man, woman would remain barren, the great pendulum of racial consciousness and attitude took a radical swing. The formula of Isis was altered: woman brings forth life, but life comes from the Sun. God was now Father.
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This new “illumination” resulted in unprecedented advances in civilization. Armed with the solar knowledge of the cycles of seasons, Osirian-age farmers began the organized cultivation of crops. Cities arose, and with them the economies and armies of great nation-states. Patriarchies supplanted matriarchies as the goddesses of countless cultures became “wives” to the new male deities.
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But inherent in this new formula was a terrible mystery; a factor that was not a part of the formula of the innocent Aeon of Isis; a dark reality that would become an all-consuming (and some say, unhealthy) preoccupation of the Aeon of Osiris: death.
It was perceived as an undeniable fact that the Sun, the source of all life, was born each day on the eastern horizon and traveled across the sky, bestowing His warm blessings of light and life upon all the Earth. It was also observed this great pangenetor “died” each day in the West, plunging the entire world into a cold darkness—a darkness that evoked introspection and fear. Where did the Sun go? Would a new one ever reappear?
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Each night after the death of the Sun, our early Osirian-age ancestor fell into an uneasy slumber, and in that sleep lived another life—a strange life, peopled with other men and women, and filled with impossible wonders and horrors. Animals killed in the hunt, dead relatives, enemies, and comrades, all came alive again in this other world of dream. Was this where the Sun went at night? Was this the Land of the Dead?
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Of course the fearful night did not last forever and a “new” Sun appeared with comforting regularity each morning to conquer the darkness and assure the continuity of life. But later, more sophisticated Sun watchers would experience an even greater insecurity crisis when they observed the dwindling periods of sunlight (as summer moved toward winter) resulted in the decrease or actual cessation of the fecundity of the Earth. No sunlight, no crops. This was serious.
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The daily solar cycle showed them that the Sun is capable of totally disappearing from the sky. But unlike the relatively short period of darkness of the daily cycle, there was no telling how long a great night would last if the Sun ever experienced a yearly death. Surely all life would end in the frozen darkness of an eternal (or even a lengthy) night.
Unfounded as these fears were, they were based solidly upon a perceived reality, and the trauma became indelibly imprinted upon the psyche of the human race. This “reality” in turn, formed the foundation of the magical formula of the Aeon of Osiris, the formula of the Dying God.
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The Sun, the Father of all Life, goes through a three-fold cycle of birth (life), death, and resurrection. Humankind, knowing themselves also subject to death, believed that by following the magical or religious formula of the Sun, they too could be made eligible for resurrection. What was this formula?
Everywhere our Osirian-age ancestors looked, they saw the drama of the Dying God enacted. The farmer observed the fertilizing effects that blood and decaying flesh had upon the soil; and that seeds (which came from living plants in the summer and autumn) could lie dead and buried throughout the winter months, and then miraculously resurrect as new plants in the spring. It was an obvious and inescapable truth: without death there is no life.
Did not the Sun suffer death each night and each winter so it might be reborn? Did not the seed offer itself to the Earth so that it might resurrect as a new plant? After ejaculation did not the penis sacrifice its potency to fertilize the ovum and perpetuate the race?
Life from death was a fact, and to assure that the blessings of life would continue to come out of death, our Osirian-age ancestors believed they must take an active part in the great life/death ritual. To this end they took themselves to mountain tops and high places. They gathered stones and proceeded to build altars and offer up sacrifice to the gods.
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Obviously the great cultural/religious myth of the Egyptians was literally Osirian in nature, but by the dawn of the astrological Age of Pisces (approximately 260 B.C.), the formula of the Dying God had crystalized itself as the central myth of countless cultures and civilizations. The gods of the great mystery cults—Orpheus, Hercules, Dionysus, Attis, Adonis, and later Christ—all were slain and resurrected. The story of Persephone, the central figure of the Eleusinian Mysteries which flourished for over two thousand years, is a perfect example of the evolution of the formula of the Great Goddess to that of the Dying God.
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These cults were wildly popular. To assure one’s own resurrection it was necessary to be an initiate and follow the god’s formula of catastrophe, love, death, and resurrection. Partially patterned after these mystery schools, orthodox Christianity arose to become the dominant spiritual and political influence of the world for the last two thousand years.
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The formula of sacrifice was born of the mistaken belief that the Sun came up in the morning and went down in the evening. A more accurate perception of the universe is now enjoyed by humanity. We know the Sun does not come up nor does it go down. It does not travel North in the summer nor does it move toward extinction in the South in the winter. The Sun stays “on” all the time. The light is continuous. The death of the Sun is merely an optical illusion, a shifting of shadow.
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So universally accepted is this simple fact of nature that today we seldom give it a second thought. Yet the archetypes that influence the great cultural and religious forces of today were formulated during those eras of profound ignorance and superstition. The stories of the dying Sun and the Dying God were myths created, in part, to help our ancestors overcome their fear of the dark and their fear of death. The perception of the universe that initiated the Aeon of Osiris has been forever changed. The formula has been amended. There is no need to fear the dark. There is no need to fear death.
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The Aeon of Horus
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The Formula of the Crowned and Conquering Child: As the child is the physical and genetic product of both its parents, so too the Aeon of Horus reconciles and transcends the formulae of the two previous Ages. Since the turn of the century we have seen the fall of colonialism and the destruction of the last vestiges of the overtly patriarchal rule of kings in Europe. The temporal power of the Pope is gone, and the illusion of the omnipotent spiritual power of the Church has become diluted beyond hope of revival.
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The earth-mother worshiping formula of the Aeon of Isis (violently repressed during the Aeon of Osiris) has been transformed by the evolution of our consciousness, and resurrected as the earth-respecting environmental movement, the Woman’s Movement, and the resurgence of the cult of the Goddess.
These developments are seen by the established institutions as blasphemous examples of spiritual and the unholy degeneration of humanity. They grossly misinterpret their own scriptures to warn of an inevitable cleansing conflagration that will reestablish an even greater Osirian rule.
Note: bro there’s no way 3301 is conservative lol
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While a certain amount of conflict probably is inevitable (as it is at the beginning of every age), the result most certainly will not be a return to the formulae of the past. Standing, as we are, upon the threshold of the Aeon of Horus, what we observe happening in the world is rather unsettling. But it is the natural result of the vested interests of the old aeon resisting the establishment of the new. It is very much like the strife families experience when a child grows up and finally leaves home. Eventually the parents accept the inevitable and, in most cases, form a new and supportive relationship with their child.
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We are the child who has just become self-aware. We still love our mother and father but we know we will never be happy as long as we exist only as an extension of their lives. Now that we are conscious of the continuity of existence, now that we perceive the universe as a process of continual growth, now that we recognize the individual as the basic unit of society, we will never return to the flawed and incomplete perceptions of the past.
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CHAPTER THREE
THE BOOK OF THE LAW
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The above “Comment in Class A” appears at the end of all authorized editions of The Book of the Law and is an ominous warning to those who would presume to define or interpret the contents of the primary Holy Book of Thelema.
Note: sounds kind of like how koans should be treated
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The deities and magical formulae revealed in this small volume are the very essence of the Aeon of Horus.
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In 1903 Crowley had all but suspended magical workings and had taken his new wife Rose3 on an extended honeymoon to a score of exotic locations including Ceylon and Egypt. In December they discovered Rose was pregnant. Rather than returning to their cold home in Scotland, they chose to travel back to Cairo where the weather was pleasant. Assuming romantic identities, they checked into their hotel apartment as Prince Chioa Khan (Beast) and Princess Ouarda (Rose) and settled in.
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Perhaps out of boredom, Crowley performed the “Preliminary Invocation of the Goetia,” purposing to show Rose the sylphs. (It must be remembered that Rose had no training or interest in magick.) She did not see the sylphs but instead fell into a “strange state of mind.” She began repeating as if in a trance, “They are waiting for you…it is all about the Child…All Osiris.”4
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3 Rose Kelly, the sister of his friend Gerald Kelly.
4 The Equinox of the Gods, (New York: 93 Publishing, 1992).
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She then informed her husband that the God Horus was angry with him for ignoring Him. Irritated by what he at first thought was Rose’s childish behavior, Crowley began to interrogate her as to the technical attributes of this “God.” To his great surprise, Rose, who had absolutely no knowledge of Egyptology or Magick, answered even the most technical and esoteric questions with 100 percent accuracy.
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The next day they visited Cairo’s Boulak museum. It was Crowley’s intention that Rose point out this God who wanted to talk with him. He sniggered as she ignored and passed by the most common images of Horus, but he was quite surprised when she excitedly identified an obscure wooden funeral stélé of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty as the source of her communications. Even more stunning was the museum exhibit number…666. Crowley could not ignore this curious chain of events. He had the stélé reproduced and began systematically working with Rose as his magical assistant. (See color images, front and back covers.)5
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Space forbids us to detail what followed, and the reader is again referred to the previously mentioned texts. Suffice to say, that through Rose’s unexpected mediumship, contact was established with a praeter human intelligence calling itself Aiwass, a messenger of Hoor-Paar-Kraat,6 who announced the Equinox of Gods (the changing of the age) and the intention of the “gods” to use Crowley to receive a book that was to be the fundamental revelation of the new age.
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5 The Photographs of the front and back of the Stélé Revealing, along with Crowley’s paraphrase were taken from Volume I, Number VII of The Equinox (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1990) p. 368.
6 Horus in his aspect as the innocent babe; often depicted fearlessly standing upon two crocodiles, holding his finger or thumb to his lips.
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On March 20, 1904, Crowley performed the Supreme Invocation of Horus which formally initiated the Aeon of Horus. Per instructions, between noon and one o’clock on April 8, 9, and 10, he entered the same temple, sat down at a writing table, and wrote what was dictated to him by an audible voice. The results of these three hours of dictation are the three chapters of The Book of the Law.
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The reader is neither asked nor expected to believe the story. Each must judge for himself or herself the value of the book. As I mentioned earlier, it is a fundamental proscription of the text to offer to interpret or even discuss The Book of the Law. It is entirely up to each of us to fathom its meaning in relationship to our individual lives.
Note: believe nothing from this book except what you know to be true
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THE COMMENT
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
The study of this Book is forbidden. It is wise to destroy this copy after the first reading.
Whosoever disregards this does so at his own risk and peril. These are most dire.
Those who discuss the contents of this Book are to be shunned by all, as centres of pestilence.
All questions of the Law are to be decided only by appeal to my writings, each for himself.
There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.
Love is the law, love under will.
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—THE PRIEST OF THE PRINCES
ANKH-AF-AN-KHONSU
A PARAPHRASE OF THE INSCRIPTIONS UPON THE OBVERSE OF THE STÉLÉ OF REVEALING
Above, the gemmèd azure is
The naked splendour of Nuit;
she bends in ecstasy to kiss
The secret ardours of Hadit.
The wingèd globe, the starry blue
Are mine, o Ankh-af-na-Khonsu.
I am the Lord of Thebes, and I
The inspired forth-speaker of Mentu;
For me unveils the veilèd sky,
The self-slain Ankh-af-an-Khonsu.
Whose words are truth. I invoke, greet
Thy presence, O Ra-Hoor-Khuit
Unity uttermost showed!
I adore the might of Thy breath,
Supreme and terrible God,
Who makest the gods and death
To tremble before Thee:—
I, I adore thee!
Appear on the throne of Ra!
Open the ways of the Khu
Lighten the ways of the Ka!
The ways of the Khabs run through
To stir me or still me
Aum! let it fill me!
The Light is mine; its rays consume
Me: I have made a secret door
Into the House of Ra and Tum,
Of Khephra, and of Ahathoor.
I am thy Theban, O Mentu,
The prophet Ankh-af-an-Khonsu!
By Bes-na-Maut my breast I beat;
By wise Ta-Nech I weave my spell.
Show thy star-splendour, O Nuith
Bid me within thine House to dwell,
o wingèd snake of light, Hadit!
Abide with me, Ra-Hoor-Khuit!
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A PARAPHRASE OF THE HIEROGLYPHS OF THE 11 LINES UPON THE REVERSE OF THE STÉLÉ
Saith of Mentu the truth-telling brother
Who was master of Thebes from his birth:
O heart of me, heart of my mother!
O heart which I had upon earth!
Stand not thou up against me a witness!
Oppose me not, judge, in my quest!
Accuse me not now of unfitness
Before the Great God, the dread Lord of the West!
For I fastened the one to the other
With a spell for their mystical girth,
The earth and the wonderful West,
When I flourishied, O earth, on thy breast!
The dead man Ankh-af-an-Khonsu
Saith with his voice of truth and calm:
O thou that hast a single arm!
O thou that glitterest in the moon!
I weave thee in the spinning charm;
I lure thee with the billowy tune.
The dead man Ankh-af-an-Khonsu
Hath parted from the darkling crowds,
Hath joined the dwellers of the light,
Opening Duant, the star-abodes,
Their keys receiving.
The dead man Ankh-af-an-Khonsu
Hath made his passage into night,
His pleasure on the earth to do
Among the living.
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1 Aleister Crowley, The Equinox, Vol. I, No. 1 (London: 1909; reprinted: York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1992), p. 17.