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"WANDERER of the Waste" was a name given by the Ancients to those stars or comets which appeared to have no precise orbit, and therefore no observable regularity. Crowley describes himself as a Wanderer of the Waste because of his apparently erratic and unpredictable career. The metaphor is apt: the ancients failed to discern any regular orbit in certain celestial bodies because their cycle of activity covered periods of time so enormously vast that systematic observation was not possible.
Crowley's orbit is similarly unpredictable from the standpoint of mundane reckoning. One has to be a fellow-wanderer to observe the total arc. Failing this, we can map out the points at which his Light comes within mundane range.
Crowley identified the heart of the Thelemic current with one particular Star. In Occult Tradition, this is "the Sun behind the Sun", the Hidden God, the vast star Sirius, or Sothis, which opened the zodiacal year of 365 days as well as the Great Year of approximately 26,000 years.1
According to Herodotus (Bk. II, 58), the Egyptians celebrated the annual return of this Star, or God, with obscene rites characterized by bestial copulation. Thus, the Dog-Star. Crowley knew that no rite of antiquity was without a magical purpose.
1 "Our Sun was thrown off from another
Sun, around which it revolves, taking 25,827 years to perform its cycle
of One Year"-the Great Year of the Egyptians.
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He performed exhaustive experiments with this formula (see The Diaries
of Aleister Crowley) and found it more effective, in many ways, than
the formula of normal sexual magick which Theodor Reuss, following Kellner,
had incorporated in the O.T.O. (Kellner had received initiation at the
hands of Oriental Adepts versed in Tantric ritual).
The Hidden God, Set (represented astronomically by Sirius, the Dog-Star) typified the peculiar formula of the Eleventh Degree of the O.T.O., which could be applied to the male or the female. It is in this sense that we must understand the symbol of the Phoenix, the title which Crowley assumed in secret conclave with Frater Achad in 1915 in connection with the Sovereign Sanctuary of the Order.
The Phoenix or Ibis is the Bird of Cyclic Return and an apt symbol of the God who administers to and by himself, his own clyster. He is thus the Double-Wanded One in a physical as well as in a mystical sense.
Dion Fortune notes that Venus is ultimately transcended in Sirius; and the only physical explanation of this phenomenon is as explained above. That Fortune was acquainted with this formula is evident from her references to the later Graeco Roman degradation of it.
In The Book of the Law appears a reference to the Egyptian god Hrumachis or Hor-Makhu. The name means Horus of the Star and Hrumachis is described by Aiwaz as being beyond the present Aeon, as Sirius is beyond the Sun, for this can be interpreted in terms other than those involving the sequential flow of time. It is probable that in this concept Crowley saw an adumbration of the Hidden God who will not therefore eventually assume my throne and place," as is written in The Book of the Law, but who is already throned, has been, and will be, forever.
This resumes the Formula of the Phoenix, already described in Chapter I. The Star of Horus is also the Star of Babalon - the seven-rayed star of the planet Saturn (or Set) which rules Aquarius, the eleventh house of the Zodiac. Aquarius is the constellation through which the influence of Horus (the Sun)
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reaches man during the present Aeon. Saturn, therefore, is the power
behind Venus,2 as Sirius is the power behind the Sun. These
two great Stars (Set and Horus) are therefore symbolically identical, and
in this way also is Venus transcended in Sirius, in a celestial sense.
Crowley unequivocally identifies his Holy Guardian Angel with Sothis (Sirius), or Set-Isis:
"Aiwaz is not a mere formula, like many Angelic names, but it is the true, most ancient name of the God of the Yezidi, and thus returns to the highest antiquity. Our work is therefore historically authentic; the rediscovery of the Sumerian tradition." I have italicized the last dozen words because they form the crux of Crowley's system, without which it is both incomprehensible and unfathom able; incomprehensible in its magical significance for the present magical revival, and unfathomable without the key supplied by the Sumerian tradition which involved the worship of Shaitan, the astronomical vehicle of which was Sirius.
Crowley, speaking for The Beast 666, declares that "Aiwaz solar-phallic-hermetic Lucifer - is His (i.e. the Beast's) own Holy Guardian Angel, and The Devil, Satan, or Hadit, of our particular unit of the Starry Universe. This serpent, Satan, is not the enemy of Man, but He who made Gods of our race, knowing Good and Evil; He bade Know Thyself and taught Initiation. He is The Devil of the Book of Thoth, and his emblem is Baphomet, the Androgyne who is the hieroglyph of arcane perfection. The number of his Atu (Key) is XV, which is Yod He,3 the Monogram of the Eternal, the Father one which the Mother, the Virgin Seed one with all-containing Space. He is therefore Life, and Love. But moreoever his letter is Ayin, the Eye; he is Light, and his Zodiacal image is ll omen at a comparatively late stage in human history. Super stitions connected with twins, doubles, and simulacra, date from remote antiquity. The primal pair of twins was Set-Horus, and it was based upon man 5 awareness of darkness and light. The alternation of night and day was the first natural phenomenon of a dual nature to be observed, and the symbols of it-wherever or whenever subsequently employed-always implied this original alternation and division. Inherent in all manifest life, this duplicity was later personified by the Light and Dark Angel, the "Good" and "Evil" Genius.
The biune glyph, or two in one, of alternating and opposite forces gave rise to the image of the Androgyne long before the drama of Jesus and Satan contending on the Mount.
In the Cult of Thelema, Therion (Beast 666) and Baphomet are two types of the "Devil", or image of the Double Power. The Double-Wanded One combines the solar and hermetic5 func tions of Therion and Baphomet, and both these functions involve the formula of the Beast and the Woman conjoined.
The Devil is the Dual One (ii or eleven), the Double-Wanded One, having the attributes of male and female potencies accord ing to the solar or hermetic nature of the rite.
The goat is the traditional, most popular, but not the sole bestial type of the Devil. This attribution relates to the ancient astrono mical reasoning. When the sun attained its ultimate declination at
Hermetic, because Baphomet is a glyph of Mercury, and therefore of the alchenncal process which includes the formula of corruption.
3~TMR
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the Winter Solstice, that is, when it sank into the abyss beneath the
horizon, it entered the constellation Capricornus, the Goat. This animal
therefore became the type of the god of the underworld, the Sun in the
Abyss which later became identified with the idea of the Devil on account
of its association with darkness and death. The Great God Pan and the Egyptian
Set are identical concepts.
The Cat was another devil-symbol; also the bat, which, like Sirius, rose when the sun set on the western horizon. The hyaena - the beast of blood - and other hybrid creatures also symbolized the devil on account of their dual nature.
But the primal type of Duality in Unity was supplied by the dog and ape merged in one image as the cynocephalus. This was the sacred dog-headed baboon used in ancient Egypt as a type of Time (Saturn; feminine; ape) and of the Holy One, or Priest (Mercury; masculine; dog). The Kaf-ape or cynocephalus over shadows the Magus in Crowley's interpretation of the second Key of The Book of Thoth. He did not publish it in his recension of the Book because it was too explicit; it revealed the essential secret of practical magick.
The Ram or Lamb of the vernal constellation, Aries, came to be identified with the sun, and the Son, as the Saviour or Redeemer from the waters of the abyss, or the darkness of the winter underworld. The ram, or lamb (of Christ) was preceded by the Bull (of Mithras), and, prior to that, the Fish (Dagon).
The animal types depended on the astronomical figures, not on the animals as such, though the latter lent their names to particular constellations owing to formal similitude.
Shaitan, Satan, or Set, is Hoor-paar-Kraat, the concealed aspect of Horus, whose manifest side is Ra-Hoor-Khuit. Shaitan is tlie God of the South, yet his votaries face North when invoking him. Dion Fortune observes that "Crowley gives the North as the holy point towards which the operator turns to invoke, instead of the East, whence light arises, as is the classical practice. Now the north is called 'the place of the greatest symbolic darkness', and is only the holy point of one sect, the Yezidees, or devil worshippers."
The explanation is that on entering Capricorn, the zodiacal House of Shaitan, the sun turns northward. Consequently, the worshipper identifies himself with the sun-Horns-which is therefore not the object of worship, for he is the god that dies and is reborn on entering the House of Set (Capricornus).
This was the god with whom the candidate for initiation identified himself in the Old Aeon of Osiris. The candidate in the New Aeon, however, identifies himself with the other Horus, the Sun behind the sun, represented by the Star of Set, Sirius, which shines perpetually in the darkness of Nuit, and which in actual fact is visible from all inhabited parts of the earth. This is the One Star in Sight which forms the title of Crowley's Manifesto of the A.'.A.'. (See Magick, pp. 234-244).
There was a time when the South had precedence and was the primary station of the Pole Star. In The Book of the Dead -the oldest book in the world - Set is hailed as having been first in glory (Chapter 175): "The powers of Set which hath departed were greater than that of all the gods."
Albert Churchward (The Origin and Evolution of Religion, p.189) notes that Set "was looked upon as the fallen leader of the angelic host because he had been the first in glory as the ruling power at the primary station of the pole (south). This is he that is worshipped by the Yezidi in Mesopotamia, who say 'there is to be a restoration as well as a fall'."
This restoration, perhaps, is the revival or rediscovery of the Cult of Shaitan which Crowley and others initiated at the beginning of the present century.
In ancient India, Dakshinamurti, which means the Southward - Facing One, was equated with the spiritual north pole, and therefore traditionally faces southward. (See Arthur Osborne, Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi, p. 122.) Dakshinamurti is the Supreme Teacher who initiates by means of Silence; his devotees faced north when venerating him, their backs to the south. Aiwaz, being the minister of Harpocrates (the Lord of
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Silence) is therefore also a form of Dakshinamurti, the God of the
North. Thus, Horns is the Lord of the North and the South and combines
within himself the two infinities, Nuti* and Hadit:
this is Shaitan, or Sat-An, which - as the name itself shows - combines South and North.
Aiwaz is not only the reflection of Set in the South, he is the concentration of energy as a concealed force illuminating the northern darkness. He is the primal astral god, Sirius, the revealer of Nuit; mystically speaking-the revealer of Nothing: and therefore the god of the Path of Supreme Attainment.
The path which Crowley has made accessible again is the path once pursued by the devotees of Shaitan - the antique god of Sumer. In what sense, then, may it be described as new?
Firstly, in the sense that since those remote times enormous advances have occurred in scientific knowledge. Secondly, the advantages deriving from the power thus accumulated over the centuries, combined with the psycho-physical modifications at tendant upon evolution, have made it possible for man to penetrate the inmost sanctuaries of Nature.
The mysteries of Time and Space will be revealed in the present Aeon. Fantastic concepts such as those described in the flood of pseudo-scientific literature appearing today, will seem dully prosaic beside the Truth.
Recent scientific developments sustain Crowley's contention that The Book of the Law contains precise indications of forthcoming events (see Chapter 9). Advances in the exploration of Space make it highly probable that Time also will yield its secret, Time and Space being twin aspects of a single continuum which is in reality No-Thing.
During the period of the earliest migrations from Egypt to Sumer, the worshippers of Set took their god with them and his name became changed to Shaitan. The Yezidi, like the Jews, were forbidden to utter the name of their god. In consequence the true name was lost.
It seems probable that as Jehovah (Jahweh) was a substitute for
the forbidden Name ~~g-;', which only initiates were able to
pronounce~ so also the Name, Shaitan, may have been a veil of the true
and most ancient god. Crowley claims that Aiwaz is this god.
In the Ritual of the Mark of the Beast Crowley gives the secret key of his worship. (See Magick, p.331 et seq.)
The numerical value of IHVH, the Unpronounceable Name of the Jews, is 26, which is the sum of the numbers of the Sephiroth constituting the Middle Pillar of the Tree of Life. (See diagram). This equates the Name (IHVH) with the Phallus.6 As Crowley observes in his Magical Record: "The Arabic word for Phallus is Aswa, which sounds like a Temurah [i.e. a permutation] of Aiwass". Twenty-six4(twice thirteen), is the number of Achad Unity; thus the number 26 is a formula of the phallus in function, extended in action.
In the Jewish and Christian recensions of the Hidden Wisdom, the name Shaitan appears as Satan. But as these recensions are distortions of earlier doctrines, the mystery of the Unpro nounceable Name remains occult.
In ancient Egypt, the first anthropomorphic representation to succeed the long procession of zoomorphic* deities, was that of Besz, or Vesz, the dwarf god. Albert Churchward notes that "up to the time of Ptah, or Besz, the human likeness was not given to any god or goddess, and Atum-Horus, or Amen, the son of Ptah, is the earliest divinity in perfect human form'.
The representation of Besz, based upon the anatomical peculiarities of a pygmy race of Nilotic origin, is the first effort ever made by man to mould his god in his own image, thus support ing overwhelming evidence that the human race emerged from lower forms of life in the equatorial regions of Africa. Upon later fanning out, the race gradually swarmed northward along the Nile valley and tlience to Mesopotamia where the first colony was founded. This was Sumer, and the dwarf god, Besz, Vesz, or Vass, was probably the original form of Ai-wass; Besz, or Betch, equates with Bitch, Bast, Bastard and Beast.
The beast is that which transforms, evolves or emerges from
6 One of the meanings of the name, Set, is "an upright stone or pillar".
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the past (cf Pasht, a form of Bast, the Mother Goddess). Besz was regarded as the Great Magician, he who transformed from the beast to the man. In Egyptian, the name Besz actually means to transform. Thus The Beast is the type of Magick or Change.
The formula of the Beast is also the formula of Set. In The Book of the Spirit of the Goat, Crowley writes:
"For two things are done and a third thing is begun. Isis and Osiris are given over to incest and adultery. Horus leaps up thrice armed from the womb of his mother. Harpocrates his twin is hidden within him. SET is his holy covenant, that he shall display in the great day of M.A.A.T.7 that is being interpreted the Master of the Temple of A.'.A.'. whose name is Truth. Now in this is the magical power known
The Formula of the god Set is paramount in Crowley's Cult It is also the formula of the IX0 of the O.T.O., which involves the identification of Spirit and Flesh, Shin and Teth; SET is the result of this process.
Like the Hindu god Siva, Set is considered to be the god of destruction. But from an esoteric point of view "absorption" is a closer approximation to the idea implied, in the sense that to be re-absorbed into primal Selfhood necessarily entails the destruc tion of the ego, the limited personality-complex. Set is therefore regarded as a god of death and destruction because he leads from Life to Death, from Being to Not-Being, from Hadit to Nuit. Crowley formulated the process qabalistically in the Word LAShTAL, which is too technical to be treated here. Its meaning is explained in Magick (p 335 et seq.) The number of LAShTAL is 93; it is the major formula of the present Aeon.
The qabalistic extension of ShT (Set) is ShTN (Shaitan), the god of the Yezidi. The final letter, N, is attributed to Scorpio which is the zodiacal glyph of the sexual process as well as being the glyph of the Draconian serpent of wisdom. The numerical value of Shaitan is 359.
The Cult of Thelema has another magical link with the Yezidi
7 Maat is the name of the Egyptian goddess of Truth. Mot, the Word; Maths, the measure; Mater, the Mother, are all derived from this word.
Tradition in the Stele of Ankh-f-n-Khonsu, the number of which is given by Aiwaz in The Book of the Law as 718, or twice 359. The Stele is thus doubly charged with the magical power of Shaitan, or Set. He is the Lord of the Double Wand of Power referred to in the third chapter of that Book. The Stele 718 is therefore the Talisman of a magical current initiated at a period vastly anterior to that of the XXVIth Dynasty (c 680 B.C.) when Crowley claims to have been incarnate as Ankh-f-n-Khonsu, a high priest of Amen-Ra. He is described in The Book of the Law as "the prince-priest the Beast", because, as shown above, Amen- Ra or Atum-Horus was the "son" of Besz, i.e. the Beast. Thus, Ankh-f-n-Khonsu, the priest of Amen Ra at Thebes was the priest and prophet of the first god in the frrm of man. "Thebes" means "the ark" or "ship"-a symbol of the Waters and of the Graal; hence a cult-centre of the Mother Goddess.
The cult of Amen-Ra in the XXVIth Dynasty was in itself a magical revival of the worship of the Star Goddess Sevekh8 who was worshipped under the form of a dragon or crocodile in the VIth, VIIIth, IXth, Xth, and again in the XIIIth-XVIth Dynasties. These were the "dark" dynasties of the Draconian or Typhonian Cult, when the worship of the Whore or Unmated Mother reigned supreme.
It is significant that the Sevekh-hepts, or devotees of Sevekh
of the XIIIth Dynasty (c. 3180 B.C.), numbered among their
pharaohs those whose names terminated with ABRA.9
This was a secret name of the Son of the Mother, which the Gnostics
later perpetuated in the name of their supreme deity, Abrasax. It re-emerges
in the XXth century in the Therionic Cult of Aiwaz, as Abra-HAD-Abra, where
it shows the two faces, or the dual aspect, of HAD, as the solar twins-Set
and Horus (Hoor-Paar Kraat and Ra-Hoor-Khuit).
8 Her name means seven . See remarks
on p.44.
9 According to the Turin Papyrus
(Fragments No.72, 7180) the following names appear in the list of kings
of South Egypt who reigned during the XIIIth Dynasty: Sept-abra
(c. 3I2~3o98), Senkh-abra C. 3o7~3o56), Sept-abra II (c. 3oS4~3oS2),
Nothemabra (c. 3041-3043), Fuabra Herwet (3037-3018), etc.
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Abra is also the sun in the form of the ram, Amen. Amen
was a title of Sevekh, the Draconian sun-god of the Typhonians, and it
was the worship of this god that was revived in the XXVIth Dynasty under
the name of Amen-Ra, whose high-priest was Ankh-f-n-Khonsu. Moreover, Amen-Ra
was called the father of Khonsu (the Moon) because the moon was
the reflector of Sevekh as the solar continuation of the earliest Star
God, Set, or Shaitan, whom the Yezidi adored.
The numeration of Yezidi is 31, which is not only the number of Set, according to the Book of Thoth, but also that of AL (God) and LA (Not), the latter being the Key of The Book of the Law, which Frater Achad discovered in 1916.
The title of the ninth Sephira, or emanation of the Tree of Life, is YSVD (Yezod). It is the Sephira of the lunar magick of Aub, or Ob, the Serpent (whence "obeah"). The Serpent is a symbol common to the Yezidi, Voodooists, Tantrics, and Thelemites. Yezod or Yesod as the secret centre of the Yezidi is an apt description of the Sephira which corresponds to the sexual centre in the human body. Yesod means "Foundation", and the Snake of the Yezidi, the Ob of the Obeah men, the Kundalini of the Tantrics, and the Hadit of the Thelemites, is the Foundation of the World, as Yesod is the foundation of the Tree of Life.
The accursed God of the South is, then, no other than the lord of the reproductive forces typified by the southernmost Sephira-Yesod.10
Yesod is attributed to the Moon, not to the Sun. The curious symbolism is explained by the connection of the Serpent or Dragon with the lunar current typified by Babalon-"for he is ever a sun, and she a moon".11 The symbolism may be fathomed at the Hindu level of mythology where Siva (the Indian Set) is called "the god with the crescent" (i.e. the moon) in the Bhagavad Gita. Also, Thoth, the Moon-god, was originally the God of Sirius, identical with the Star-God Set, before the luni-solar mode of reckoning time supplanted the stellar reckoning.
10 The tenth Sephira, Malkuth-the
Earth, is considered a mere pendant to the Scheme.
11 The Book of the Law, I, 16,
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This is the reason why the averse or southward pointing penta
hed the middle of the earth (i.e. Egypt) in their migrations from equatorial
Africa, the northbound hordes regarded Set and Horus as equal and opposite
powers striving for supremacy in the Waters of Space. Each year the sun
was vanquished by Set, and each year he rose again as Horus, until, when
Set finally slipped permanently beneath the horizon to become the Lord
of Hell, Horus was finally established as the supreme and ever-resurrecting
sun or son of the Mother (Nuit)
Thus, although Set was once the god of Summer, Horus took his place after the "fall", and caused his twin brother ever afterwards to be associated with the phenomena of darkness, winter and death.
The myth of the twins is really the myth of One God with two aspects: the God of the Double Power, South and North, ages before he became God of the Double Horizon after the establishment of the equinoctial levels-East and West. After this had occurred, the East typified the lion of light and the West became the place of the setting, dying, or "fallen" sun. Horus then became the Lord of the Eastern Horizon, and to Set was allotted the West. In The Book of the Law this change of roles is applied to the candidate for initiation: "Abrogate are all rituals, all ordeals, all words and signs. Ra-Hoor-Khuit [i.e. Horus] hath taken his seat in the East at the Equinox of the Gods". [In the year 1904].
The myth of Set slaying the father of Horns (i.e. the Sun) was evolved to account for the rise of the Horus Cult. Horus avenged his father's death by the slaying of Set, the dragon of drought and blasting heat, one of whose symbols was the ass. The meaning of the myth can be found only in the primal Cult of Set-the bastard who "formulated his father and made fertile his mother", and the child of Osiris, who replaced the original stellar deity as being of the male, or "higher", and therefore more noble lineage. Patriarchy had been established because the Father had been discreted from the herd; he was distinguished or identified in the early stages by a totem or clan, and-later-as a specific individual. In consequence, the cult of the Great Mother was degraded and the primal goddess became the whore, and, in the curious language of the ancients carried over by Crowley, virgin to all (Pan). This means that she received all comers and could not identify the father of her children; hence they were the fatherless, the bastards of Bast.
The Scarlet Woman, Babalon, was the outcome of this change in primitive sociology. When soli-lunar time-reckoning replaced the star-reckoning, and the fatherhood superseded the mother hood in mythology, religion and society, Set, too, was cast out and became the "devil" of the later cults. But there was an intermediate or lunar phase of the myth wherein Set, Sept, or Sothis, was represented as the son of the Mother-Moon, the Full Moon. In this phase he was known as Khunsu, or Khonsu, and Crowley claims to have been an avatar of this god in the XXVIth Dynasty, when he was known as Ankh-f-n-Khonsu (the Life or Child of the Moon). This was the child who waned, diminished, faded, as the losing light; while Horus, born of the new or horned moon (i.e. the moon in its male phase) waxed and grew in strength. Hence, the dark fortnight was ascribed to Set, the bright fortnight to Horus.
The dual modes of the moon are of vital importance in the magick of Thelema, and will be referred to again.
Vast cycles of time separated these various phases of the myth of Set and Horus; the lunar phase originated as follows:
The male child (the horned or new moon) waxed and impreg nated his mother, filling her with his light so that she became full. She then gave birth to the "dark" child who waned and was superseded by his twin, the new moon, who waxed strong and impregnated his mother. And so the cycle continued unceasingly.
When it was discovered that the moon was not self-luminous, was not illumined by the light of the child she bore within her, but informed by the rays of Ra (the sun), the lunar phase of mythology yielded to the solar, and the moon was degraded and cast out like the stars before it. This is the origin of the sterile moon of sorcery, of her who had once been considered as the self~renewing Light that rejuvenated itself by witchcraft; thus the goddess became the witch.
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It is significant that in The Book of the Law Aiwaz claims to be the minister, not of Ra-Hoor-Khuit but of Hoor-paar-Kraat, or Set, the Sun born at the summer solstice, the diminishing or dwarf god who withdrew, sank down, and became the God of the Deep, or hell or Amenta12 the hidden place, the place of darkness.
In the Book (first chapter), Nuit-the Star Goddess-Mother of Set, describes her Star as five-pointed "with a Circle in the Middle, & the Circle is Red". Red was the colour of Set, the child in her womb or circle. He is described (in The Book of the Dead) as having a 'reddish complexion', signifying his genesis from the red source of creation, or the mother-blood. Nuit says that her "colour is black to the blind", that is, to the blind Horus (Hoor-paar-Kraat: Set), because he had become the Lord of Darkness. And the text continues: "but the blue and gold are seen of the seeing". Blue and gold are the colours of Jupiter and Sol, both of which hide within him (i.e. Set) as Ra-Hoor-Khuit.
The eternal conflict between Set and Horus may only be understood by reverting to the oldest, pre-monumental times in Egypt, before Mena's reign began c. 5,776 B.C.
Time was first reckoned with reference to the circumpolar stars
of Ursa Major, or Typhon. She was the Goddess of the North, identical with
Nuit and Isis. This identity is revealed in The Book of the Law where
Nuit proclaimed "I am Space and the Infinite Stars thereof" She
was the Primal Goddess of the Seven Stars which were considered as her
spirits, souls, or sons. These seven were manifested by the first-born
son, Typhon, i.e. Set in the southern constellation of the Great Dog, of
which Sirius (Sothis, the soul of Isis) is the brightest star. He
was the primal God of Fire or Light in the South, and his image was the
pyramid or triangle. He concentrated the Eight or Height of Heaven
in the South, while his mother reigned supreme in the lower heaven of the
North. He manifested her light and opened the year by announcing the inundation
of the Nile which occurred at the summer solstice, when the sun entered
the sign of the Lion.
The Mother and her brood of seven culminating in Set, were the earliest and most ancient gods of chaos and night. In the later, lunar cult, the Sabean Set became the lunar Thoth, but this was aeons later. Then, when the even later solar cult attained supremacy throughout the land, the cult of the Mother was superseded and the cult of the Fatherhood held sway. It reigned upon the earth and was figured in the heavens by the sun having superseded both the stars and the moon, as a truer teller of time.
In the VIIth Dynasty (c. 4163 B.C.), however, occurred a religious revolution which reinstated the ancient worship, all traces of which had been erased from the temples and monu ments. For although the Star Goddess and her Child had given way to the solar Child, and Horus had replaced Set, to the Typhonians this sun was still the son of Isis, not Osiris. A state of constant conflict between the Osirians and the Typhonians (or Draconians) continued until - at the end of the Xth Dynasty (c. 3348 B.C.), the Osirians again effected a total overthrow of the worshippers of Set-Horus, and re-established their own God, Osiris, as the chief figure of their Supreme Triad (Osiris, Isis, Horus).
(In Crowley's Cult, the Thelemic Trinity is the earlier com plex consisting of The Beast, The Whore, and the Bastard.)
With the advent of the XIIIth Dynasty (c. 3180 B.C.), the Draconian Cult again rose to power, and from thenceforward (until the end of the XVIth Dynasty, c. 2243 B.C.), the Cult of Set reigned supreme. It was during this latter series of dynasties of the dark Typhonian gods that we see the first clearly defined signs of the Cult which Crowley revived through The Book of the Law. The black-and-gold13 (Sun-Sirius) god held sway in Ombos (the shrine of Sevekh-Ra, in South Egypt) as Set-Nubti; in Nubia he was called Set-Nahsi; in Syria, Bar-Suketkh, and in Israel, Iah or Jah.
13 One meaning of Set, or Sut, is black; it is the original of our word, soot. Set-Nubti was thus the Black-Gold One, i.e. Set being the Black One, the Sun, the Gold One.
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The Sevekh-hepts of the XIIIth Dynasty worshipped the male divinity
as the son of the mother alone. They were Typhonians, or Draconians, because
they rejected the fatherhood and con tinued the pre-monogamous mythical
types, the types re animated in The Book of the Law.
Set-Horus (Sut-Har) combines the Star-Son and Solar Son of the ancient
Goddess of the Seven Stars on the way to becoming the solar Hor-Makhu,
the double Horus of the Two Horizons- East and West-but still as the mother's
son alone.
Sut-Har is the god that appears on the Egyptian monuments as
the dual-natured One, the ass-headed Set, and the hawk-headed Horus. This
was likewise represented as Sut-Nubti, the double announcer, both of the
year and of the inundation, who com bines the Sun and Sirius in a dual
unity. This was the black and gold One; and it was because gold was here
united with the symbol of darkness that that metal became accursed in the
Osirian religion. Because of its Typhonian connections it was considered
the root of evil, and, in consequence (as Plutarch observes), at the feast
of the Sun, the worshippers were pro hibited from wearing ornaments of
gold. Yet the origin of the Golden Age, common to innumerable myths of
the old world, is to be found in the pre-monumental and pre-Osirian worship
of ancient Egypt.
The perpetual strife between the worshippers of the "virgin" mother
and her son, and the Osirians who acknowledged the individualized fatherhood,
raged and ravaged Egypt for thousands of years.
In The Book of the Law it is Horus, the son of the pre
monogamous mother Nuit, that is concentrated in the Lord of the Wand of
Double Power (Hru-Machis), the Star that com bines both Set and Horus in
One God possessing twin attributes:
Hoor-paar-Kraat and Ra-Hoor-Khuit. And it is this aspect of the "worship"
that is once more gaining ascendancy today, and one of its features is
a return to the pre-monogamous phase of society when the Beast and the
Whore "united in blaspheiiious bliss".
The twill or devil-concept, Set-Horns, forms the essential mystique
of the New Aeon. It is this duplicity at the heart of the
Therionic Cult that makes it diflicult for some people to grasp the
true significance of Crowley's doctrines.
The Ritual of the Mark of the Beast, which Crowley com posed in Cefalu in 1920, is based in part upon the Ritual of the Pentagram as practised in the Golden Dawn, but at the Four Cardinal Quarters it is the averse Invoking Star of Set that is traced by the Magician, not the upright Pentagram. Therefore, if this Ritual is performed by one who considers the downward pointing Star as symbolic of Matter dominating Spirit, he will inevitably invoke the energies of that evil congeries of forces which the Christians misnamed Satan. A Thelemite, however, free from the obsession of sin and moral evil can perform the Rite with impunity. If it is well understood that Set is the necessary complement of Horus, as subject to object, day to night, shadow to substance, the false moral accretions that have distorted it will fall away.
Set is the initiator, the Opener of man's consciousness to the rays of the Undying God typified by Sirius - the Sun in the South - even as he is, astronomically speaking the opener of the zodiacal year and the Great Cycle of 1460 years. He is the Child in the sense that man's real nature is charged with infinite potential, infinite possibilities of growth and development.
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THE magical doctrines and practices which characterized the worship
of Set have been revived or "rediscovered" by Crowley.
Several Adepts in the past attempted this rehabilitation, among them Adam Weishaupt, Cagliostro, Eliphas Levi and Helena Blavatsky. For one reason or another they all failed to effect a complete restoration of the ancient doctrines. If Crowley has succeeded it will be due to his scientific and magical use of sex and drugs, and the fact that lie received initiation of a higher order than any of the Adepts who preceded him.
Blavatsky and Levi were of the Grade of Master of the Temple (80 = 3# A.'.A.'.), and Cagliostro, like MacGregor Mathers, was an Exempt Adept (70 = 4#) Weishaupt's position is doubtful; it is quite possible that he was a Magus (90 = 2#) although he declared no historic Word in the strict magical sense. That he was far more than the revolutionary schemer he is made out to be is certain. In The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (p 839), Crowley mentions Weishaupt in a very curious passage, quoted here in full:
"Shortly before the time of Mohammed, I was present at a Council of
Masters. The critical question was the policy to be adopted in order to
help humanity. A small minority, inclujing myself, was hot for positive
action; definite movements were to be made; in particular, the Mysteries
were to be revealed. Thc majority, especially the Asiatic Masters, refused
even to discuss
the proposal. They contemptuously abstained from voting, as if to say,
'Let the youngsters learn their lesson'. My party therefore carried the
day and various Masters were appointed to undertake different adventures.
Mohammed, Luther, Adam Weishaupt, the man we knew as Christian Rosencreutz,
and many servants of science, were thus chosen. Some of these movements
have succeeded more or less; some have failed entirely. In my present incarnation
I have met several such Masters, who, having failed, are now building up
again their shattered forces. My own task was to bring oriental wisdom
to Europe and to restore paganism in a purer form...
Two significant facts emerge. To begin with, Crowley would not refer to Weishaupt as a Master unless he were indeed far advanced upon the Path in a magical or mystical sense. Secondly, there is a definite declaration of the nature of Crowley's mission in that remote incarnation. And in his most recent incarnation he expressly and unequivocally describes his Work as "the re discovery of the Sumerian Tradition". I have to a certain extent reconstructed this Tradition in the light of Crowley's researches.
From Weishaupt, Crowley undoubtedly borrowed (or continued) the term Illuminism, as also the glyph of the Point within the Circle, which Weishaupt adopted as the secret cypher of his Order. Like Weishaupt, Crowley aimed at destroying orthodox religion. He summed up his programme in the first number of The Equinox (The Review of Scientific Illuminism):
1 Not, needless to say, "historic" Christianity or any orthodox form of it
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He wrote, in Liber LXXIII (The Urn):
"While I have done my utmost to advance directly towards Truth by the regular traditional magical and mystical methods which The Book of the Law has perfected, I have constantly sought pan passu to correlate my results with those of modern intellectual progress; indeed, to demonstrate that the deepe~t thinkers are unwittingly approaching the apprehension of initiated ideas, and are in fact, despite themselves, being com pelled to extend their definitions of the Ruach [Reason] to include conceptions proper to Neschamah [Intuition], that they are, in other words, becoming Initiates in our sense of the word without suspecting that they are committing high treason against the majesty of materialism."
By a properly tempered attitude of scepticism allied to a profoundly inquiring disposition, Crowley has been able to reveal the ancient Tradition stripped of the accretions of super stition and sectarian distortion. He has shown the folly of reflec ting Aiwaz, Set, or Shaitan, through the flawed mirrors of the sin-complex, into the sphere of morals and ethics in an age bereft of the keys of initiated understanding.
The withdrawal of the genuine Magical Tradition occurred when the Gnostics, the true pre-Christian Christians, were stifled by the forgers of "historic" Christianity. A certain amount of the original Gnosis is preserved in Talmudic and Rabbinical lore but, generally speaking, the Jews, like the Greeks and Christians, did all in their power to distort and destroy all traces of the original Current.
The Knights Templars preserved some of the salient features of the ancient worship. They are said to have paid homage to an old and venerable Head. This was the symbolic Head of the Christ, the "Greased One", the Head of the One Only Creative Deity that was anointed, or greased, at puberty by the unction of its virile oil.
The roots of Christianity, as of all other religions, are sunk in the Mysteries that were, before all else, mysteries of a physical nature. They became metaphysical, or mystical, when the bodily actualities were translated into terms of mind. The genuine psycho-magical Mysteries therefore combine, but do not con found, the two systems. The one makes sense of Matter and Spirit, the other makes nonsense of both.
The Cult of Sumer represents the initiated Stellar Tradition as it was carried out of Egypt, where the primeval Cult* of Set characterized the religious modes of the dark dynasties. These were the dynasties whose monuments were mutilated and scarified by the adherents of the later Solar cults who abhorred all reminders of the sabean origins of their theology.
The desecrators of the Star and Moon cults were the Osirians, later represented by the Christians, who, in their fierce per secution of the Gnostics, played a r6le analogous to that of the Solarites against the Draconians.
The author of The Trail of the Serpent (1936) claims that features of the Star Cult can be found in all modern Mystery Schools. She cites particularly the Stella Matutina, an offshoot of the Golden Dawn, of which at one time she was a Ruling Chief Discussing the Grade of Practicus (30=8#) she says "The candidate is Horns, and receives the mystic name Monokeros de Astris - the Unicorn of the Stars. Moreover, Cabiric god-forms, built up according to the instructions of their mysterious Master in Mesopotamia, were astrally assumed by the chief officers in the ceremony.
May not this "mysterious Master" be Aiwaz, whom Crowley ranks "Ancient among the Ancient Ones, adored in tile Dawn of Man's Sun-sphere,2 even in the land of Sumer. .
The cult was carried on in the worship of Mithras. Baphomet, the name which Crowley adopted in the O.T.O. means, quite simply, "Father Mithras", i.e. the Bull-slaying deity. The Bull is the Sun, or rather, Taurus is the constellation through which the solar influence was transmitted to humanity at the time of tlie Mithraic Cult; thus Mithras-like Sirius-was a sun-slayer, for, as Churchward explains:
"The first celestial hero was not the sun, but the conqueror of the sun and solar heat. He was represented by the dog-star not Only as the fire-god, but a god over fire; and at the season when the sun was in the sign of the lion and the heat in Africa was intolerable, then Set, as Dog-Star, or Sut Har3 (Orion) arose, and as the sun had then attained its supreme height and began to descend, the Dog-Star, or Orion, was hailed as the conqueror of this cause of torment. The lion, as is apparent from its place in the zodiac, was the type of the furious summer heat. . . Out of the slain lion comes the honey."
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The god Set, who slew the solar lion, brought the inundation; he was the herald of the outfiowing waters of the Nile that saved the land from annihilation. In magical terms, Set is the Beast that leaps forth from the "slain" sun, or phallus, and rises as the phoenix from the deluge of the waters.
In one of Crowley's magical se'ances with the Wizard Abuldiz, he receives this curious answer to a question concerning sex magick: "The lion must be very dead indeed." We can now see in what sense this is meant. It is only when consciousness withdraws from the instrument of desire (the phallus) that the spirit is free to manifest itself in the form consonant with the aim of the magical rite. The phallus (the lion) is to the Magical Will what the Sun is to Sirius; it is a reflection in the mundane sphere of trans-terrestrial intelligence.
During the Amalantrah Working (1918), Crowley received the correct spelling of the name Baphomet which tradition had preserved correctly except for the missing last letter-"r"- making the orthography Baphometr (which means, as mentioned, "Father Mithras"), the type of solar-phallic energy. In his Magical Record, Crowley says: "The Greek word MITOS is the Orphic word for semen; hence Baphomet evidently means the Baptism of the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost being the Phallus in its most sublimated form [i.e. semen]." This is the Eight-fold Name (BAPhOMITR) which conceals a formula of sexual magick which the Templars employed and which they were accused of perverting in a manner reminiscent of the Greeks. Dion Fortune observes (Psychic Self Defence, p. 149) that this practice, in its debased form, was "one of the causes of the degeneration of the Greek Mysteries"'.4
4 See also, Sauc Occultism, p.130 (Dion Fortune).
Long before the Greeks or the Templars used this formula, the Tantrics of India, and, prior to them, the ancient Egyptians, employed a similar device. It still forms the substance of instruc tions pertaining to the Sovereign Sanctuary of the Gnosis, O.T.O., which Crowley took over from Theodor Reuss in 1921. Reuss himself is said to have received the formula from an Arab named Soliman ben Aifa, via Dr. Karl Kellner who revived the O.T.O. in 1895. One of the secret books of Instruction alludes to "the history of the monks and knights of O.T.O. who met and mingled with initiates in the armies of Salah'ud Din and from them obtained the secret called Baphomet, the Mystery of the measure ofHeaven and Earth".
This formula dates from remote antiquity, its Templar or Baphometic phase being modern by comparison. The fact that it is effective irrespective of the gender of the participants, has caused it to be adversely criticized by various arcane schools.
Crowley identifies Aiwaz with the image of Baphomet and claims that during his incarnation as Eliphas Levi he "drew himself as Ayin6 or Baphomet, The Devil, with Beast's Head. This is the Beast throned, crowned, exalted; the leaper, the erect, the butter-in." He goes on to say that the Scarlet Woman's womb is his city, Babel or Babalon. "This Ayin is then my Phallic-Will, my Holy Guardian Angel, Aiwaz, who was after wards called Satan." (See Levi's Baphomet, p.229 Transcendental Magic.)
The animals sacred to the Yezidi are the snake and the peacock. Levi notes the symbolic equivalence of these two animals. The snake symbolism has already been explained at some length, the peacock symbolizes all-seeing vision because of the countless "eyes" emblazoned on its out-fanned tail. The tail, the eye, and the fan, are symbols of the feminine principle, power, or sakti. In particular, the eye symbolism is connected with the Devil through its affinity with the Hebrew letter Ayin, the number 70, which, as 7 x 10 represents the most material
5 See The Diaries ofAleister
Crowley, 25th January, 1921.
6 The word Ayin means
An Eye; it is a glyph of the secret source of Light.
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aspect of the unmber Seven (Sevekh, Venus). In the Hindu tradition
-the peacock accompanies Krishna, the black or dark god. Krishna is the
Great Lover of the Puranas, and in the Srimadhbhagavata he
often appears in the form of a mischievous child, which suggests a late
and romanticized version of the khart or dwarf-god, symbolic of
the phallic power, the Silent Sel£ The khart is Hoor-paar-Kraat,
the young god of Silence seated upon a lotus, his thumb or finger in his
mouth. Krishna is credited with having had a dwarf incarnation (Vamana),
hence the symbolism of the fascinating "child" whom none could resist.
Hence, also, the connection with the sexual symbolism of the Vama, or
Left Hand Path.
In a voluminous comment on The Book of the Law, Crowley notes that "Ra-Hoor-Khuit is the Crowned and Conquering Child in ourselves; our own personal God:
"The Child is the Dwarf-Self, the Phallic consciousness, which is the true life of Man, beyond his 'veils' of incarnation. We have to thank Freud-and especially Jung-for stating this part of the Magical Doctrine so plainly, as also for their development of the connection of the Will of this 'child' with the True or Unconscious Will, and so for clarifying our doctrine of the Silent Self, or Holy Guardian Angel. They [i.e. Freud and Jung~ are, of course, totally ignorant of magical phenomena,7 and could hardly explain even such terms as Augoeides;8 and they are seriously to blame for not stating more openly that this True Will is not to be daunted or suppressed; but within their limits they have done excellent work".
According to the Mahabharata, the classic epic of Hinduism, the god Indra once attempted to seduce the wife of a renowned sage. The latter cursed the god and impressed upon him a thousand marks resembling the vagina, so that Indra became known as Sa-yoni. These marks were afterwards changed into
7 The reader is reminded that this
passage was written in 1920 before Jung had acquired the popularity
he later enjoyed.
8 A term deriving from {z~yoc},
the morning light, the dawn, and applied to the Holy Guardian Angel by
Crowley and others. It was first used by Iamblichus in his De Mysterii.
eyes and the god was then known as Netra-yoni and Sa-hasrara, "the thousand eyed". In other words, he was transformed into a peacock. This legend stems from the solar cult of ancient Egypt, for the yoni-once held scared- was later made to serve as a brand of shame. The legend supports the theory that the deity adored of the Yezidi was feminine before it was conceived in the male mould as Set or Shaitan; that Aiwaz, as the messenger, "cup-bearer", or graal (i.e. the transmitter of the Power of the Gods) preceded the masculine version of the "devil".
The peacock symbolism is implicit in the name of the A.'.A.'. itself, for in tlie secret and inner-sense version of the name of the Order, the second "A" stands for the name of a mythical character,9 having eyes all over his body. When Hermes, the god of Magick, slew him, Hera placed his eyes in the peacock's tail.
In the Black Book of the Yezidi, Shaitan exclaims: "Speak not my name nor mention my attributes, lest ye be guilty, for ye have no true knowledge thereof, but honour my symbol and image." The symbol was the peacock;10 the image was the snake. This is "the Snake that giveth Knowledge and delight and bright glory", and in order to arouse and direct upward the Kundalini or Serpent Power, Crowley was instructed by Aiwaz to employ "wine and strange drugs",11 the purpose of which was to arouse the subtle centres to activity.
It is necessary, at this stage, to say something about the subtle or occult zones of consciousness in their microcosmic and macro-cosmic aspects.
There are numberless "sacred" centres on the face of the earth, each one being the counterpart or reflection of a subtle nerve- complex in the physical organism. Seventy-two thousand nerve plexuses are referred to by the Hindus in their sacred writings.
All ancient nations had their power-centres on earth, foci of transmundane and cosmic forces. The nomes of Egypt, for
9 i.e.
Argos. See any dictionary of Classical Mythology.
10 The eyes of the peacock
represent the myriad sources of creative light; they also symbolize Nuit,
who illunlines the heavens with her "stars".
11 The Book of
the Law, I, 22.
