32
The Law is for All
side by the letter of Air, and followed by the letter of Fire twice 
over.
8. The Khabs is in the Khu, not the Khu in the Khabs.
Commentary: We are not to regard ourselves as base beings, 
without whose sphere is Light or “God.” Our minds and bodies 
are veils of the Light within. The uninitiate is a “Dark Star,” and 
the Great Work for him is to make his veils transparent by “puri­
fying” them. This “purification” is really “simplification”; it is 
not that the veil is dirty, but that the complexity of its folds makes 
it opaque. The Great Work therefore consists principally in the 
solution of complexes. Everything in itself is perfect, but when 
things are muddled, they become “evil.” (This will be understood 
better in the Light of “The Hermit of AEsopus Island,” q.v.)1 The 
Doctrine is evidently of supreme importance, from its position as 
the first “revelation” of Aiwass.
1 [Only fragments survive of this document; see The Equinox IV(2) 
(1996), and his Confessions, abridged ed., p. 840.]
2 [Usually akh or yekh in modern Egyptian transliteration.]
3 [See the quotation from “The Book of the Great Auk” in the Commen­
tary to verse 3 on p. 26.]
4 [Grk. rrXqp(i)iia. In Gnosticism, the “invisible spiritual fullness” that 
hypostases into progressive manifestation (æons), and to which Gnos­
tics seek to return through the “perfection” of the Self.]
This “star” or “Inmost Light” is the original, individual, eter­
nal essence. The Khu1 2 is the magical garment which it weaves for 
itself, a “form” for its Being Beyond Form, by use of which it can 
gain experience through self-consciousness, as explained in the 
note to verses 2 and 3.3 This Khu is the first veil, far subtler than 
mind or body, and truer; for its symbolic shape depends on the 
nature of its Star.
Why are we told that the Khabs is in the Khu, not the Khu in 
the Khabs? Did we then suppose the converse? I think that we are 
warned against the idea of a pleroma, a flame of which we 
are Sparks, and to which we return when we “attain.”4 That 
would indeed be to make the whole curse of separate existence