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Page 1 of 21996 · PDF PAGE 107
108 The Law is for All And he must love this chosen Form, love it with fearful fer vour; it is the face of his Fate that craves his kiss, and in her eyes Enigma blazes and smoulders; she is his death, her body his coffin where he may rot and stink, or writhe in damned dreams, self slain, or rise in incorruption self-renewed, immortal and identical, fulfilling himself wholly in and by her, splashing all space with sparkling stars his sons and daughters, each star an image of his own infinity made manifest, mood after mood, by her magick to mou…
1996 · PDF PAGE 106
… Soul, having penetrated thus far, should discover in its “Name” that it is a Son truly begotten by the Spirit of Being upon the Body of Form, and that it has power to understand itself and its Father, with all that such heirship implies. Suppose further that it be come to puberty, will it not be impelled to assert itself as its Father’s son? Will it not shake itself free from the Form that bore and nourished and trained it, and turn from its brothers and sis ters and playmates? Will it not glow and ache with the impulse to be utterly itself, …
1996 · PDF PAGE 29
…iphues, male and female in one, bearing the Thyrsus-rod, and a cluster of grapes or a wineskin, while a tiger leaps up by his side. This form is sug gested in the Tarot card, where “The Fool” is shown with a long wand and carrying a sack; his coat is motley. Tigers and croco diles follow him, thus linking this image with that of Harpocrates. Almost identical symbols are those of the secret God of the Templars, the bisexual Baphomet, and of Zeus Arrhenothelus, equally bisexual, the Father-Mother of All in One Person. (He is shown in this full …
1996 · PDF PAGE 91
…he Osirian Rituals inculcating self-sacrifice to an abstract ideal, mutilation to appease an ex cathedra' morality, fidelity to a priori formulas, etc., teach false and futile methods of acquiring false Knowledge; they must be “cast away” or “purged”. The Schools of Initiation must be reformed. 6. I am the flame that burns in every heart of man, and in the core of every star. I am Life, and the giver of Life, yet therefore is the knowledge of me the knowledge of death. Commentary: It follows that, as Hadit can never be known, there is no death.…
1996 · PDF PAGE 31
…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…
1996 · PDF PAGE 93
…by the way, to find that modern mathematics says “Spherical space is not very easy to imagine”1 2 and prefers to attribute a geometrical form whose resemblance to the kteis3 is most striking. For Nuit is, philosophically speaking, the archetype of the kteis, giving appro priate Form to all Being, and offering every possibility of fulfil ment to every several point that it envelops. But Nuit cannot be symbolized as three-dimensional, in our system; each unit has position by three spatial, and one temporal, coordinates. It cannot exist, in our …
1996 · PDF PAGE 82
…t would be quite impracticable to go fully into the subject of this vision of the Star-Sponge, if only because its ramifications are omniform. It must suffice to reiterate that it has been the basis of most of my work for the last five years, and to remind the reader that the essential form of it is “Nothingness with twinkles.” 60. My number is 11, as all their numbers who are of us. The Five Pointed Star, with a Circle in the Middle, & the circle is Red. My colour is black to the blind, but the blue & gold are seen of the seeing. Also I have a…
1996 · PDF PAGE 20
Commentary on Title In the first edition this Book is called L.1 L is the sacred letter in the Holy Twelve-fold Table which forms the triangle that stabilizes the Universe. See Liber 418.1 2 L is the letter of Libra, Balance, and “Justice”3 in the Tarot. This title should probably be AL, “El,” as the “L” was heard of the Voice of Aiwaz, not seen. AL is the true name of the Book, for these letters, and their number 31, form the Master Key to its Mysteries. 1 [“Liber L vel Legis sub figura CCXX,” in OEAHMA [London: pri vately printed for initiat…
1996 · PDF PAGE 113
…uted by any particular environment. He accepts and enjoys everything that is proper to his nature. Thus, a man’s sexual character is one form of his self-expression; he unites Hadit with Nuit sacramen tally when he satisfies his instinct of physical love. Of course, this is only one partial projection; to govern, to fight, and so on, must fulfil other needs. We must not imagine that any form of activity is ipso facto incapable of supplying the elements of an Eucharist; suum cuique) Observe, however, the constant factor in this enu meration of…
1996 · PDF PAGE 103
…erable after a month; and marrons glacés pall after the first five or six kilograms have been consumed. But the “Happiness,” eternal and formless, is not less enjoyable because these forms of it cease to give pleasure. What happens is that the Idea ceases to find its image in those particular images; it begins to notice the limitations, which are not itself and indeed deny itself, as soon as its original joy in its success at having become conscious of itself wears off. It becomes aware of the external imperfection of marrons glacés; they no lo…
1996 · PDF PAGE 152
…74-79 153 he is. He shams dead, like other vile insects, at the approach of danger; he tries to escape notice by assuming the colour and form of his surroundings, using “protective mimicry” like certain other invertebrates. He exudes stink or ink like the skunk or the cuttle-fish, calling the one Morality and the other Decency. He is slippery with Hypocrisy, like a slug; and, labelling the totality of his defects Perfection, defines God as Faeces so that he may flatter himself with the epithet divine. The whole manœuvre is described as Religion…
1996 · PDF PAGE 3
…ver Marlow Wilkinson All rights reserved. No part of this book, in part or in whole, may be reproduced, transmitted, or utilized, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except for brief quotations in critical articles, books and reviews. International Standard Book Number: 1-56184-090-4 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-68645 First Edition 1996 Second Printing 1998 Published in cloth …
1996 · PDF PAGE 286
…ew photography in (4). The Old Commentary first appeared in (9.g), and appears with the New Commentary in (19), (15), and in an abridged form in (8). Works by Aleister Crowley Cited These books and papers are cited or quoted by Crowley in the text of the abridged Commentaries to The Book of the Law; see the General Index for page references. They are listed here alphabetically or by their number in the A.’.A.’. and O.T.O. canon. Except where noted, all were written (or received) by Crowley. Parenthetical numbers refer to books in the reference …
1996 · PDF PAGE 186
…ook for wood, water, perhaps shelter, perhaps game. In another planet he might not need any of these. The “girders” which determine the “form” of our souls are therefore limitations to our thought, as well as supports. In the same way, rails help a train to run easily, but confine it to a definite direction. The “laws” of Nature and Thought, Mathematics, Logic, and so on, are “girders” of this sort. Our race-inherited conceptions of space prevented men, until quite recent years, from conceiving a non-Euclidean geometry, or the existence of a fo…
1996 · PDF PAGE 32
…are not to worship the Khu, to fall in love with our Magi cal Image. To do this—we have all done it—is to forget our Truth. If we adore Form, it becomes opaque to Being, and may soon prove false to itself. The Khu in each of us includes the Cos mos as he knows it. To me, even another Khabs is only part of my Khu. Our own Khabs is our one sole Truth. 10. Let my servants be few & secret: they shall rule the many & the known. Commentary: The nature of magical power is quite incom prehensible to the vulgar. The prophet Ezekiel besieging a tile i…
1996 · PDF PAGE 23
…upies Space. It will however appear later that these two ideas may be resolved into one, that of Matter; with Space, its “Condition” or “form,” included therein. This leaves the idea of “Motion” for Hadit, whose interplay with Nuit makes the Universe. Time should perhaps be considered as a particular kind or dimension of Space.1 2 1 [Antoine Fabre-d’Olivet, Hermeneutic Interpretation of the Origin of the Social State of Man, tr. Redfield (1921), ch. 1; see Works Cited.] 2 In Berashith all qualities soever are considered as so many dimensions. I…
1996 · PDF PAGE 24
…r awhile disguised, even from itself. Analogously, an atom of carbon may pass through myriad Proteus-phases, appearing in Chalk, Chloro form, Sugar, Sap, Brain and Blood, not recognizable as “itself” the black amorphous solid, but recoverable as such, unchanged by its adventures.
1996 · PDF PAGE 185
…ord of the God enthroned in Ra’s seat, lightening the girders of the soul. Commentary: Note that Heru-ra-ha is not merely a particu lar form of Ra, but the God enthroned in Ra’s seat. That is, His Kingdom on earth is temporary, as explained in verse 34. And he is here conceived as the Hierophant, “lightening the girders of the soul”, that is, bringing man to initiation. These “girders” imply the skeletal structure on which the soul is supported, the conditions of its incarnation. Man is the heir of ages of evolutionary experience, on certain l…
1996 · PDF PAGE 27
…, an independent and absolute Unit. They differ as Carbon and Calcium differ, but each is a sim ple “immortal” Substance, or at least a Form of some simpler Substance. Each soul is thus absolute, and “good” or “evil” are merely terms descriptive of relations between destructible combi nations. Thus Quinine is “good” for a malarial patient, but “evil” for the germ of the disease. Heat is “bad” for ice-cream and “good” for coffee. The indivisible essences of things, their “Souls,” are indifferent to all conditions soever, for none can in any wa…
1996 · PDF PAGE 87
…. R (Ra-Hoor-Khuit), Kether, Unity, is always itself; but we may suppose that a number of such homogeneous positive manifesta tions may form groups differing from each other as to size and structure so as to create the illusion of diversity.