220A3-1.ASC 1. Observe firstly the word `reward', which is to be compared with the words `
220A3-1.ASC
1. Observe firstly the word `reward', which is to be
compared with the words `hiding' and `manifestation' in the
former chapters. To `re-ward' is to `guard again'; this word
Abrahadabra then is also to be considered as a Sentinel
before the Fortress of the God. Why is the name of Him spelt
Khut? We have seen that ST is the regular honorific
terminitation for a God. Ra is, as shown in the Old Comment,
the Sun, Hoor the Warrior Mars; who is Khu? He is the Magical
Ego of a Star. Without the Yod or Iota, Khu-t, we get a human
conception; the insertion of that letter makes the
transmutation to Godhead. When therefore Ra Hoor Khut is
rewarded or Re-guarded with the Magick Word of the Aeon, he
becomes God. Thus in the next verse. I `raise the spell of Ra
Hoor Khuit'. The text may also be read as follows.
Abrahadabra is the formula of the Aeon, by which man may
accomplish the Great Work. This Formula is then the `reward'
given by the God, the largesse granted by Him on His
accession to the Lordship of the Aeon, just as the
INRI-IAO-LVX formula of attainment by way of Crucifixion was
given by Osiris when he came to power in the last Aeon. (See
Book 4 Part III, and Equinox I, III, pp. 208-233). I must
here say that I find myself in the greatest difficulty, again
and again, in the comprehension of this chapter. It might be
said roughly that at the end of the first five years of
Silence (An 0-IV) I understood Chapter I; at the end of the
second five years (an X-XIV) I understood Chapter II, ---
2. `Division hither homeward'; a most dour phrase to
interpret! Such curious concatenation is sure to imply
profound meaning. Homeward must mean `toward the House of the
Speaker. He says, then, that there is `division', which (as I
take it) prevents man from being God. This is a natural and
orthodox meaning, and it goes well with `there' (I.E. in
verse 1) `is a word not known'. That Word is Abrahadabra,
which was not known, it having been concealed by the corrupt
spelling `abracadabra'. `Spelling is defunct'; this seems to
be an echo of the statement in Cap. II, v:5 `The rituals of
the old time are black'. (The word `defunct' is decidedly
curious; the implication is `no longer able to fulfil its
function'.) `Spelling' then means `making spells'. And this
is characteristic of Ra-Hoor-Khuit, that He demands not
words, but acts. (Compare `The Paris Working'). So then we
pass naturally to verse 3. `All is not aught' is an
abrogation of all previous law, on the accession of a
Monarch. He wipes out the past as with a sponge. This phrase
is also an excessively neat cipher or hieroglyph of the great
Key to this Book. All (AL) is not aught (LA). AL is LA: that
is to say, the phases of the Universe X and 0 are identical.
`Beware!' as if it were said to a soldier, `Attention!'
`Hold!', that is, `Steady! LIsten to the Proclamation!'
`Raise the spell of Ra-Hoor Khuit!' That is `Here, I, the New
God, utter my Word'.
3. Comment seems hardly necessary. The Great War is a mere
illustration of this text. The only nations which have
suffered are those whose religion was Osirian, or, as they
called it, Christian. The exception is Turkey, which
foolishly abandoned the principles of Islam to form an unholy
alliance with the Giaour. Abdul Hamid would never have made
such an ass of himself as the degenerate gang of `Liberty and
Progress'; may jakals defile the pyres of their dog fathers!
(The God of Vengeance is in Greek Aleister. For some reason
which I have not been able to trace, this God became ALASTOR,
the Desert Daemon of the Rabbins, the later the `Spirit of
Solitude' of Shelly. The attribution is appropriate enough,
the root being apparently A AOMAI, I wander. The idea of
`Going' is dreadful to the bourgeois, so that a wanderer is
`accursed'. But, me judice, to settle down in life is to
abandon the heroic attitude; it is to acquiesce in the
stagnation of the brain. I do not want to be comfortable, or
even to prolong life; I prefer to move constantly from galaxy
to galaxy, from one incarnation to another. Such is my
intimate individual Will. It seems as thou this `god of War
and of Vengeance' is then merely one who shall cause men to
do their won Wills by Going as Gods do, instead of trying to
check the irresistible course of Nature.) P. S. El OUid
Algeria An XX in The terror of Syria in the reign of
Oman was the great soldier and administrator Melekh-Al-AStar.
Possibly Jewish mothers used to scare their crying babies by
threatening them with this `demon of the desert' and the
Rabbins incorporated the `bogey man' in their averse
hierarchy.
4. 4-9. This is a practical instruction; and, as a
`military secret', is not in any way soever to be disclosed.
I say only that the plans are complete, and that the first
nation to accept the Law of Thelema Shall, by My counsel,
become sole Mistress of the World.
6. This phrase is curiously suggestive of the `mine-layer'
to those who have seen one in action.
7. This suggests the Tank, the Island chosen being
England. But this is probably a forthshadowing of the real
Great War, wherein Horus shall triumph utterly.
9. `Lurk! Withdraw! Upon them!' describes the three parts
of a certain magical gesture indicative of a formula which
has proven very powerful in practical work. (The events
beginning in An XVII Sol in Libra, know when will form a
luminous comment on the passage. There is an alternative,
taking the beginning as An X sol in Libra, and implying
larger periods).
10. The language is hereso obvious and so inane that one
is bound to suspect a deeper sense. It sounds as bad as `the
last winking Virgin' or St. Januarius.
11. The Victorious City is of course Cairo (Al-Kahira,
the victorious), and the ill-ordered house is the Museum at
Bulak. Ra-Hoor-Khu; why is the name without its termination?
Perhaps to indicate the essence of the force. The Ritual of
the Adoration of Ra-Hoor-Khuit is, as one might expect,
illustrative of His nature. It seems doubtful whether this
Ritual can ever be of the type of symbolic celebration; it
appears rather as if expeditions against the Heathen: i.e.
Christians and other troglodytes -- but most especially the
parasites of man, the Jews -- were to be His rite. And it is
to be taken that `the woman' is to take arms in His honour.
This woman might be The Scarlet Woman, or perhaps Woman
generally. Remember that in the Scarlet Woman `is all power
given'; and I expect a new Semiramis.
12. 12-15. This, read in connexion with verse 43, was then
fulfilled May 1, 1906, o.s. The tragedy was also part of mine
initiation, as described in The Temple of solomon the King.
It is yet so bitter that I care not to write of it.
16. The God wisely refrains from clear expression, so that
the event, as it occurs, may justify His word. This
progressive illumination of that word has served to keep it
alive as no single revelation could have done. Every time
that I have dulled to Liber Legis something has happened to
rekindle it in my heart. `Know not this meaning all';
another cipher for LA = AL.
17. The last paragraph is a singular confirmation of the
view which I have taken of Our Hierarchy: compare what has
been said on the subject in previous chapters.
18. What has been the net result of our fine `Christian'
phrases? In the good old days there was some sort of natural
selection; brains and stamina were necessary to survival. The
race, as such consequently improved. But we thought we knew
oh! so much better, and we had `Christ's law' and other
slush. So the unfit crowded and contaminated the fit, until
Earth herself grew nauseated with the mess. We had not only a
war which killed some eight million men, in the flower of
their age, picked men at that, in four years, but a
pestilence which killed six million in six months. Are we
going to repeat the insanity? Should we not rather breed
humanity for quality by killing off any tainted stock, as we
do with other cattle? And exterminating the vermin which
infect it, especially Jews and Protestant Christians?
Catholic Christians are really Pagans at heart; there is
usually good stuff in them, particularly in Latin countries.
They only need to be instructed in the true meaning of their
faith to reflect the false veils. An XXI in After
some years spent in Catholic countries, I wish to modify the
above. Catholics are dead alike to Spirituality and to
Reason, as bad as Protestants. And the Jew is far from
hopeless outside America, where the previous paragraph was
written.
19. The reference appears to be to the old prophecies of
`Daniel' and `John'. The first Qabalistic allusion is yet (An
XIV in ) undiscovered. An XVII in . I think it
proper to insert here the account of the true meaning of this
verse, though it more properly belongs to the Appendix. But
the circumstances are so striking that it is well worth the
while of the lay reader to become acquainted with the nature
of the reasoning which attests the praeterhuman character of
the Author of this Book. It follows, in the words in which
it was originally written, An XVII in , in
, June 8,1921 e.v., with no preliminaries, in my Magical
Diary, at the Abbey of Thelema in Cephaloedium of Trinacria.
These verses are very subtly worded. How should I understand
this allusion to the stele; how`count well its name' without
knowing it? I tried to count `Abomination of Desolation',
but that is what `they shall call' it, not its proper name.
It seemed that this name, when found, ought to add to 718, or
to be identical with some other word or phrase that did so.
More, this name when found must some how express `the fall of
Because'. For many years these two verses, despite elaborate
research, yielded no meaning soever. At last I chanced on it
as 718; it means `persistence', the Greek noun corresponding
to `Perdurabo', my first magical Motto. Of course the Stele
had persisted since the 26th Dynasty, but that scarecely
justified naming it `Persistence'; also, there was nothing
about `the fall of Because'. Now (An XVII, in , in
) I was going through the Law in order to repair any details
of omission in the rituals ordained, and found these verses
introduced among the instructions. They fascinated me; when I
had finished the work in hand, I returned to them and worked
for some hours with a Lexicon, starting from the word APXH,
Cause, 709, to find some phrase equal to 718 which would deny
Cause. I found AZA, 9, a word meaning `dryness', but most
especially the dirt or mould upon a disused object. APXH AZA
is, therefore, a precise expression of the doctrine expounded
in our Law about `Because'. So far, so good; but this is no
sense the name of the Stele. I worked on, and found XOIZA,
718, `Yesterday' which might be grasped as a straw if I sank
the third time; but I was swimming strongly enough. I found
XAIPE A..A.. 718, `Hail to the A:.A:.'. I gracefully
acknowledged the greeting to Our Holy Order, but went on with
my search. There is no such word as AXPICTA, `unchristlike
things'; only blind bigotry could be satisfied with so crude
an invention. Then came XAPA H, 713, an engraved character.
That was a true name for the Stele; if I suffixed AD, 5, it
might read `The Mark of Hadit'. But I did not feel inwardly
that thrill of ecstacy that springs in the heart or that dawn
of amazement that kindles the mind, when Truth's sheer
simplicity takes form. There is a definite psychological
phenomenon which accompanies and important discovery. It is
like First Love, at First Sight, to the one; like the
recognition of a Law of Nature, to the other. It inflames one
with Love for the Universe, and it explains all its puzzles,
in a flash; and it gives an interior conviction which nothing
can shake, a living certainty quite beyond one's argued
acquiescence in any newly acquired facts. I lacked this; I
knew that I had to seek further. The Truth uttered by Aiwaz
is hidden with such exquisite art that it is always easy to
wring out a more or less plausible meaning by torture. Yet
all such learned and ingenious fumblings reveal their own
impotence; the Right Key opens the safe in a second, so
simply and smoothly as to make it ridiculous to doubt that
the lock was made by a master smith to respond to that key
and no other. The reader will have noticed that all the
really important correspondences in this Book are so simple
that a child might understand them. There are also my own
creaking and lumbering scholar-dredgers, not one of which is
truly illuminating or even convincing. The real solution,
moreover, are almost always confirmed by other parts of the
text, or by event subsequent to the Writing of the Book. I
worked on: I asked myself for the thousandth time what the
Stele could claim with literal strictness as `its name'. I
scribbled the word CTHAH and added it up. the result is 546,
when CT counts as 500, or 52, when CT is 6, a frequent usage,
as in CTAYPOS, whose number is thus 777. Idly enough, my
tired pen subtracted 52 from 718. I started up like a
Magician who, conjuring Satan in vain till Faith's lamp
sputters, and Hope's cloak is threadbare, gropes, heavily
leaning on the staff of Love, blinking and droning along --
and suddenly sees HIm! I did the sum over, this time with my
pen like a panther. Too good to be true! I added my figures;
yes, 718 past denial. I checked my value of Stele; 52, and no
error. Then only I let myself yield to the storm of delight
and wonder that rushed up from the Hand of Him that is
throned in the Abyss of my Being; and I wrote in my Magical
Record the Triumph for which I have warred for over seventeen
years 718 CYHAH 6 6 6 No fitter name could be found, that was
sure ... --- And then came a flash to confirm me, to chase
the last cloud of criticism; the actual name of the Stele,
its ordinary name, the only name it ever had until it was
called the `Stele of Revealing', in the Book of the Law which
conceal Secret Matters were already at that time possessed of
a certain significance for me. Some unconscious co-operation
of my mind might be alleged as the determinant factor in the
choice of those numbers, their subsequent interconnexions,
and so on explained by the commentators' ingenuity, and the
confirmation of independent facts by coincidence. Similarly,
the hidden numbers such as 3,141593, 395, 31, 93, may be
ascribed to the commentators, and denied to the intention of
the text; at least, by that class of Pharisee which strains
at the Butterfly of the Soul, preferring to swallow any
hippopotamus if it be slimed thickly enough with the miasmal
swamp-mire of materialism. But 718 is expressed openly; its
nature is described sufficiently and unambiguously; and it
meant nothing to anybody in the world, either then or for
seventeen years after. And now the meaning falls so pat, so
natural, so self- justified, so evidently the unique value of
the `x' of the equation, that it is impossible to quibble.
The law of probablities excludes all theories but one. The
simple Truth is what I have always asserted. There is a
Being called Aiwaz, an intelligence discarnate, who wrote
this Book of the Law, using my ears and hand. His mind is
certainly superior to my own in knowledge and in power, for
He has dominated me and taught me ever since. But that
apart, the proof of any discarnate intelligence, even of the
lowest order, has never before been established. And lack of
that proof is the flaw in all the religions of the past; man
could not be certain of the existence of `God', because
though he knew many powers independent of muscle, he knew of
no consciousness independent of nerve.
E-Mail Fredric L. Rice / The Skeptic Tank