Wandering Stars

About Thelema

and the

Threefold Book of Law

‘The Egyptian Dispensation’

𓁞𓇽𓁟

"The word of the Law is θέλημα (Thelema)."

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."

"Love is the law, love under will."

"The law is for all."

- the Egyptian star goddess, Nuit in Liber AL vel Legis

About Thelema

and the

Threefold Book of Law

‘The Egyptian Dispensation’

by R. Shane Clayton

© 2024 Wandering Stars Publishing (excepting where noted)

All rights reserved.

(a .pdf file of this article is available in Wandering Stars Publications) 

The quotes on the facing page are the clarion calls from The Threefold Book of Law, an “automatic writing,” “channeled text,” “holy book,” or “hoax” — depending on who you talk to — upon which the Western Esoteric Tradition known as “Thelema” is founded. Written down from dictation in 1904, it was first published in 1909 by the infamous English author, mystic, and ceremonial magician Aleister Crowley, who chose “Liber AL vel Legis — The Book of the Law” as the formal title for the book. As for the name of the manuscript itself, the goddess Nuit tells us in the first chapter: “This that thou writest is the threefold book of Law;” while in the third chapter, the god Ra Hoor Khuit says: “… this, the Book of the Law.” We’ll use the former, and leave the latter to its OTO publishers. To avoid confusion and repetition, I’ll refer to “The Threefold Book of Law” as either “The Book of Law” or “Liber Legis” (LL), Latin for Book of Law, in distinction to the official redacted publications.

Indeed, the book is threefold, composed of three chapters written over three consecutive days — April 8, 9, and 10, at 1:00 p.m. in Cairo, Egypt. Each chapter is spoken in the voice of one of three Egyptian god–forms or Neteru, and was written down, Crowley tells us, from what was verbally dictated to him by a shadowy “praeter–human intelligence” he believed to be “Aiwass, the minister of Hoor–paar–kraat,” who is so named in the book, and based upon the events leading up to its writing, was presumedly “channeled” by his wife Rose. The two were in their twenties and on their honeymoon when the remarkable event took place, precipitated by an unusual encounter at Rose’s behest with a 26th Dynasty funerary stele, located in the Egyptian Museum. Featuring depictions of the three gods and a priest, Crowley would subsequently refer to it as “The Stele of Revealing.” (See The Stele of Ankh af na Khonsu.)

These three Egyptian Neteru identify themselves in The Book of Law as 1) the starry sky goddess Nut, written Nuit — The Queen of Space, 2) her lord, the “Great God” B’Hedet, written Hadit — the Winged Globe, and 3) their child, the hawk–headed solar deity Ra Herukhuti, written Ra Hoor Khuit — the noontime form of Ra Horakhty (meaning Horus of the Two Horizons) at the peak of his power as conqueror. Being unfamiliar at that time with these god forms or their anglicized Egyptian names, Crowley wrote down what he heard… spelling notwithstanding, with each god’s name ending with “it.” After all, we still know little about ancient Egyptian pronunciation. In each of their three short chapters, the deities grant the familiar Egyptian litany of blessings, protection spells, adjurations, prophecy, and warnings, such as we see in the temples, tombs, and magical papyri — but with a Qabalistic spin. The gods also promise the remembrance and accomplishment of the aspirant’s true “Thelema” or “pure will” to all earnest seekers who approach them reverently with an open heart and mind per their writings therein.

“The word of the Law is Thelema. Who calls us Thelemites will do no wrong, if he look but close into the word.” LL III:39,40

In Liber Legis the keyword Thelema is written in the Koine Greek as θέλημα (pronounced the–lee’–ma), a noun meaning "emotional will,” or “to desire, to love, and seek pleasure.” It’s derived from the verb θέλω (thélō or ethélō): "to will, wish, desire,” or more accurately in this case “volition.” The root word ethos is defined as the “guiding belief that influences behavior, emotions, and even morals,” and the English word “ethics” is derived from the related Greek ēthikós, meaning “the expression of one's moral character.” It appears (rarely) in the Classical Greek writings as related to both divine will and sexual desire. Thelema is also used repeatedly in the Septuagint or Greek Old Testament and the original Greek New Testament writings, pertaining to both human and devilish volition, but usually regarding God’s will or love. (Please see: “Will — Thelema,” a word study from the Greek concordance of the KJV.)

During the later Greek/Macedonian Ptolemaic Dynasties of Late Period Egypt, Thelema was associated with the goddess Ma’at and her Noble Ideals of truth, justice, order, the good, and the beautiful. Ma’at also represents the will to love, one’s heart’s desire for life and life’s joys and pleasures, and the volition to seek after and maintain her Noble Ideals. Ma’at, was therefore the essence of the law in ancient Egypt, and, according to Nuit, “The word of the law is Thelema. Love is the Law, love under will.” We may assume that this law is a Cosmic one coming as it does from the “Queen of Space,” the Egyptian Goddess representing the Milky Way galaxy — as Egyptologists have recently affirmed.

That being said, a perfunctory search online will bring up “Thelema” as the particular religion that Aleister Crowley established in the early 1900s. His two related religious organizations are still active today: the Astreum Argenteum or A∴A∴ and the Ordo Templi Orientis or OTO, both operating under the broad aegis of Thelema based on “The Book of the Law” as their founding document. Those seeking a more detailed history of these will do well to visit Wikipedia’s big tree of pages under the header of Thelema, which one might assume is overseen by these groups. As a side note, when using the word here, I will italicize “Thelema” for one’s will, and leave it plain “Thelema” when referring to the related belief systems.

It should also be understood that this concept is not new — many who have never heard of Liber Legis have lived according to the law of Thelema. And, of course, those who might be called “Thelemites” are not limited to the membership of the A∴A∴ and OTO, which is estimated at perhaps just over 2,500 individuals total, give or take; with the A∴A∴ numbers being impossible to know due to its one–on–one transmission schema, there being a crossover between the two groups. The number of independents like myself is unknown, but we likely at least equal the others. It might be understood that some are of the A∴A∴. Being a non–member, I cannot discuss these groups in much depth besides from a historical perspective, so use the Wiki link above to explore their world. While the OTO has been indispensable to the conservatorship and publishing of “The Book of the Law” and other important Crowley writings, I do not regard official membership in his surviving cultus as a prerequisite to the raison d’etre of Thelema. Nor do I consider them necessarily antithetical to it either… it depends. As it is written: “Do what thou wilt.” I will say here that the Thelema of Wandering Stars has very little to do with the practices of some of the contemporary heirs of Crowley’s organizations and their offshoots. The OTO attracts members that tend more towards Crowley’s specialized areas of Western Esoteric occult magick such as Enochian and Goetic Theurgy — neither of which I take any issue with, per se; but I don’t believe either is integral to Thelema as revealed in The Book of Law. My focus at Wandering Stars is on its essential Kemetic or Egyptian dispensation, first and foremost.

Lamentably, however, and I must be brutally honest, in some extreme cases over the past decades I have encountered a litany of questionable behaviors amongst certain of the latter–day OTO ranks in their misapprehension of the writings of the Book of Law; drug addiction, sexual abuse, misogyny, and gun–hoarding white nationalism being the most deplorable of them. This latter group has raised an unfortunate stink around Thelema for the rest of us — as if Crowley’s tabloid reputation hadn’t already raised a big enough smokescreen. Therefore, I will not be discussing much, if any of their various practices here. Those may be easily researched online. Speaking subjectively, I feel that the OTO deserves some of its bad rap, despite the presence of some fine occultists and magicians who are the caretakers of the Crowley legacy and corpus of writings. To be fair, I’ll discuss the most salient contemporary criticisms of Crowley and the OTO at the end of this paper.

Of course, that’s all quite a lot for most otherwise intelligent folks to digest if you’ve even gotten this far! The inscrutable source of The Book of Law is understandably questionable in the first place, with Crowley claiming he wrote down a verbal transmission “revealed” to him by a non–corporeal intelligent being who was the mouthpiece or “minister” of these three Egyptian Neteru. He fails, however, to emphasize his wife Rose’s crucial role as the channel for these entities in his writings. Aiwass is mentioned but once early in the manuscript, and that was as revealing Nuit’s axiom “the Khabs is in the Khu, not the Khu in the Khabs,” and ambiguously at best as the one “unveiling of the company of heaven.” Crowley would later downplay Rose’s crucial role and make Aiwass his singular personal protagonist in the book based on this one appearance. We will see why later. Whether it was Rose channeling Aiwass, who speaks for the gods, or Rose directly channeling the Neteru is moot — all I can say about that is, like any good pudding, the proof comes from the eating, or reading, thereof; with plenty of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person perspectives to go around.

The Egyptian Dispensation:

As opposed to the popular self–indulgent or hedonistic interpretation of “Do what thou wilt” as “do whatever you want baby,” the emphasis of Thelema in Liber Legis is concerned with acting freely and unencumbered from our innermost heart’s desire, our heart–centered “pure will” or spiritual volition as “love under will.” Its divine source has been alternately described by the wise as the inner light, a spark, a flame, or a star. Called “Khabs” by the Egyptians, this luminary “interior star” was symbolized by the hieroglyph of an incense burner or lamp brazier, appearing as an inverted heart hieroglyph 𓄣 ib or ab hanging on a tether. Khabs was usually depicted next to Ma’at’s feather of truth as a repeating decorative motif of the tomb wall friezes and “Book of the Dead” papyri:

𓊮 𓆄

Here, the Egyptians symbolized the concept of “pure will” or Thelema as Ma’at–Khabs. Similarly, Hindus and Buddhists refer to it as Dharma, with both terms being mutually defined as “acting according to cosmic equilibrium and order.” Thus, our true Thelema is “love under will” — Ma’at expressed in truth through the illuminated heart center Ab Ra, the Heart of Ra, called Had, the “centre of the sphere” and the point of the union of Hadit (the microcosm or individual), and Nuit (the macrocosm or universe). In this way, the “luminary” or “star” of the Khabs is comparable to the Hindu Atman — the divine Self. In the first chapter of Liber Legis, the goddess Nuit tells us: “Every man and every woman is a star.” She also says, “The Khabs is in the Khu, not the Khu in the Khabs. Worship then the Khabs, and behold my light shed over you.” Hadit also tells us in chapter two, “Khabs is the name of my house,” and “I am the flame that burns in every heart of man, and in the core of every star.”

Again, in the Egyptian language, Khabs — ḫꜣbs 𓊮,  means lamp, brazier, flame, star, or luminary; while Khu — ḫꜣw, is defined as abundance, many thousands, myriads. And such is the nature of the starry sky at night. Nuit says: “… I am Infinite Space and the Infinite Stars thereof.” Here we see the capitalized acronym ISIS, the pre–eminent goddess of the Silver Star Sopdet or Sirius, with whom starry Nuit understandably identifies, bidding us to “worship” and identify with the Star too, in order to “achieve Hadit.”

While it was cryptically written in English, The Threefold Book of Law is undoubtedly Egyptian in tone, with their love of hidden messages secreted in acronyms, metaphors, and homonyms, along with the inclusion of specific Egyptian divine names and spiritual or cosmological terms, such as Khabs and Khu mentioned above. A study of historical Egypt suggests that the book’s mysterious source was influenced by spiritual energies of the Late Period, possibly as late as the Ptolemaic Dynasty with its inclusion of the Greek θέλημα — Thelema, among other instances such as the use of the Greek term “orison” for prayer. The Stele of Revealing itself dates from the early 26th Dynasty, the first of the Late Period, and the last flowering of native Egyptian rulers.

The Book of Law is also concerned with the Hebrew Kabbalah and the Western Esoteric Tarot, speaking Crowley’s language as it were, expressed through several “puzzle” phrases or paragraphs. Nuit refers to the Hebrew alphabet as the “old letters of my book,” her “book” ostensibly being the Tarot itself, as well as her mentioning the Fool and Star; while Hadit speaks of the Magician, Empress, and Hierophant. This mixture of Egyptian, Greek, Hebrew, or Hermetic spirituality and magic speaks prominently of the last days of “pagan” Egypt in Alexandria, particularly the library and temple of the Serapeum, sacked by Christian zealots in 391 CE. It is an open secret amongst some adepts that Hypatia of Alexandria codified the symbolism of the Tarot as the Wisdom of the Ancients at that time. These were also, notably, the final days of active spiritual devotion to the Egyptian gods — the Neteru.

Having said that, I find it curious how Crowley got sidetracked from the book’s authentic Egyptian current, and into his “Egyptoid” concept of the “New Aeon of Horus,” which he claimed was announced by Liber Legis, succeeding the “old aeons” of the patriarchal era of Osiris that followed the matriarchal era of Isis. While he was correct about Ra Hoor Khuit being a conqueror, the Neteru themselves never expressly mention the word “aeon” themselves, much less a “new aeon;” and while the gods  “Isa” and “Asar” are noted, they aren’t identified with anything like “aeons” as Crowley asserts. Nor is this concept supported by the now well–known Egyptian cosmology. There is just one likely reference to the astrological Precessional Age as the “Great Equinox” by Ra Hoor Khuit in the book, but he says it had not yet fallen. While the prophet of Liber Legis was well within his rights to come up with his “New Aeon” hypothesis based on his experience and the knowledge at hand, contemporary astronomy, anthropology and Egyptology have academically disqualified it.

But Crowley knew for certain that he and Rose had made contact with a Horus divinity on the Equinox of 1904, and mistaking him for Horus the son of Isis, he naturally worked backward to Osiris. Ra Horakhty, however, is “Horus of the two horizons,” not the same as Horus the child of Isis and Osiris. Rather, he is the sun/son of the elder Horus, the “Great God” B’Hedet, and Nuit. To illustrate, the two hawk–headed gods Horus and Ra Horakhty both appear in Seti I’s great temple at Abydos, each having completely separate chapels, unique crowns, and functions; while B’Hedet is depicted as the winged globe over every doorway and alcove. Here we see three different god forms called “Horus” (more of a title than a name) in one place, which is understandably confusing — so we can forgive Aleister for his initial disconcertion.

The sky goddess Nuit tells us that “Ra Hoor Khuit hath taken his seat in the East at the Equinox of the Gods.” To the ancient Egyptians, that meant the place of the rising sun on the yearly Vernal Equinox marking the solar–driven rebirth of life and the rites of spring and fertility. Aleister and Rose were in Cairo for the Equinox of 1904, and having first encountered the sun god Ra Horakhty on the Stele in the Egyptian Museum, they forged a link with the god they called Horus, after midnight on the Equinox morning. Sixteen days later they received the transmission from the three Neteru over three days at noon, Ra Horakhty’s peak hour. This truly was an Equinox of the Gods; a momentous remembrance and connection with the ancient Egyptian Neteru signaling a new epoch for humanity, as we have no doubt seen unfold since then.

In Egyptian cosmology, Ra Horakhty represents the sun as Ra, seated in his boat in his daytime travel from East to West. At sunrise, he “takes his seat” in the East as Kephri or Khepra, the winged scarab beetle representing rebirth. As the noonday sun, he was called either Ra Hoor Khut, Ra Herukhuti, or simply Herukhuti “the cutter,” the wide–striding conqueror at the height of his power — as the pharaoh was often depicted on the gigantic temple pylons. Taking his seat in the West, Ra as the setting sun was called Hormakhet (Harmachis in Greek), meaning Horus of the Western Horizon (the Egyptian name for the Great Sphinx), representing the end of the day, of physical life, and of the yearly solar cycle. At nightfall, Ra Horakhty becomes Atum, the Akh or effective spirit of Ra in the underworld of the Duat, called “The Sun at Midnight.” Atum and his consort Iusasset create the Ennead of gods. Thus, Ra Hoor Khuit is Ra Horakhty’s noon aspect.

In the third chapter of Liber Legis, the god Ra Hoor Khuit tells us, “But your holy place shall be untouched throughout the centuries: though with fire and sword it be burnt down and shattered, yet an invisible house there standeth, and shall stand until the fall of the Great Equinox; when Hrumachis shall arise and the double wanded one assume my throne and place.”

This “holy place” well describes the Giza plateau and temple remains with “Hrumachis” being the Great Sphinx facing from the West toward the East, who “arises” or is aligned on the West/East axis with both the Vernal or “Spring” and the Autumnal or “Fall” Equinoxes. By extension, Hrumachis will by necessity “arise” on the “Fall” of the Precessional “Great Equinox” as well. The god Ra Hoor Khuit correctly tells us that the “fall of the Great Equinox,” i.e. the Precession into Aquarius, has yet to come; if that’s what he meant by “Great Equinox.” It could also allude to the Egyptian euphemism for death or “Westing” in Amenti, since Ra Horakhty is its gatekeeper as depicted on the Stele of Revealing (the Egyptians love metaphors). Here, Ra Hoor Khuit heralds the coming Age of Aquarius, with prophecies of the world wars that would come to pass leading up to it, spoken from the warrior’s mindset. The advent of the Anthropocene Era and the radical changes and events that have occurred since LL’s writing over 120 years ago at the time of this writing makes it clear that Ra Hoor Khuit is still truly the conquering warlord of the current age of Pisces, not Osiris as Crowley asserts, nor is this “New Aeon of Horus” the astrological age of Aquarius. Ra Hoor Khuit’s appearance was to announce its coming “fall.”

Again, the Isis–Osiris–Horus Aeon scheme is arbitrary on Crowley’s part and not supported by what we know now about the ancient Egyptian religion and its cosmology. Based on his conflation of Ra Hoor Khuit with Horus, the idea was likely inspired by the Golden Dawn with its LVX / Isis, Osiris, Apophis formula. Crowley may have borrowed from the Gnostic Aeon (Greek for “age” or “lifetime”) or Aeons, orders or spheres of being that emanated from the “absolute” or Pleroma. Comparable with the Sephiroth or “spheres” in the Hebrew Kabbalah, which Crowley knew intimately, he viewed the Ennead of Neteru as the progenitors of these and attributed Egyptian gods to them in Liber 777. Isis, Osiris, and Horus, as mother, father, and male child, are representative of the trinity motif repeated throughout the pantheon of Egyptian god–forms, i.e. Mut–Amun–Khonsu, Sekhmet–Ptah–Nefertem, and Hathor–Horus–Ihy. Nuit, Hadit, and Ra Hoor Khuit are no different. We don’t see Isis, Osiris, and Horus anywhere associated with three “ages;” and besides, there are other Neteru who measure the great spans of time, even in “millions of years” — the goddesses Seshat and Renpet.

The ancient Egyptians were astronomically savvy and had long been aware of the 2,150–year zodiacal cycle of the Precession of Equinoxes, marking the ages of Taurus as the Apis Bull of Horus and Aries as the Ram of Amun symbolically in their art and architecture. However, there is no evidence of a Precessional connection with the Isis–Osiris–Horus trinity, which is more associated with the annual flooding of the Nile, the Heliacal rising of the star Sirius, and the Festival of the New Year. Crowley quite rightly surmises, however, that his Aeon of “the dying god” is coterminous with the advent of the Precessional age of Pisces and the final demise of Dynastic Egypt. The esoteric Christian symbol of the Vesica Piscis, representing a fish, marks the Piscean age indelibly; the death of Cleopatra VII which signaled the end of Egyptian sovereignty, was followed by the birth of Jesus just 30 years later. Just like Osiris, Jesus was killed and made into a “dying god,” a transformation that led inextricably to then–Christian Rome officially closing all the so-called pagan temples of the Neteru in 380 BCE — the final death–knell of the worship of the gods. As a side note, the Egyptians viewed a certain fish as being “evil,” inasmuch that it was said to have devoured the missing 14th part of dismembered Osiris, which was thrown into the Nile by his murderous brother Set and lost forever.

The icon and inspiration of The Threefold Book of Law, the Stele of Ankh af na Khonsu, was created in the early 26th Dynasty under Psamtik I, the first pharaoh of the Late Period. This was the final flourishing of native Egyptian rulership, ending with the last native pharaoh, Nectanebo II in 342 BCE, followed by Alexander’s Greek Ptolemaic Dynasties. Most astrologers agree that the age of Pisces commenced with the death of the last Ptolemaic pharaoh Cleopatra, the rise of Imperial Rome, and the ministry of Jesus. This is telling. The subsequent Persian, Macedonian, and Roman conquests of Egypt during the Late Period, followed by the Roman Christian usurping and defacement of the remaining evacuated temples, marked the fall of the age of Amun and Aries and the dawn of the age of Pisces, ruled by the god of war Ra Herukhuti, who has been guarding the holy places and holding off the chaotic forces of Isfet ever since.

Now, after well over a century of Ra Hoor Khuit’s prophesied destructive and bloody world wars, we are fast approaching the cusp of the age of the air sign Aquarius — the water bearer, messenger, or teacher, attributed to the Tarot Atu, The Star. The Egyptian Netjer Thoth is well attributed to airy Aquarius in this role, with his sacred ibis bird often depicted in a tree on the popular images of The Star card. Correspondingly then, the next Great Equinox, or “Aeon,” if one must attribute an Egyptian god to it, would logically be that of the ibis–headed Thoth — the great record keeper, inventor of writing, and instructor of scribes, called Tahuti, or more correctly the Djehuty, depicted below. Thoth was later appropriated by the Greeks and Romans as the messenger of the gods called Hermes and Mercury respectively, all wielding the double serpent–entwined Caduceus. Recall if you will: “… the fall of the Great Equinox, when Hrumachis shall arise and the double wanded one assume my throne and place.”

Thoth’s sacred number was 8 in ancient Egypt, in concordance with the 8th Sephirah Hod in the Western Esoteric Qabalah ruling the numbers and letters, names and spells, and the planet Mercury. Khemenu, Thoth’s holy city, literally meaning "Eight–Town," is named after the Ogdoad, a group of eight primordial deities whose cult was situated there. It was later called Hermopolis “Hermes City” by the Greeks. The Star Tarot card itself is numbered 17, which reduces to Thoth’s magic number 8, and there are 8 eight-pointed stars depicted on it. Correspondingly, eight planes of the Great Pyramid, not four, are only visible on the Equinoxes.

Students of the Hermetic Mysteries and Crowley’s Book of Thoth with its accompanying Tarot should take note. Thoth is a reflective lunar god, and according to the Egyptologist Flinders Petrie in his 1917 “Ancient Egypt,” Tahuti means “he who is the moon” (or according to Budge “he who measures by the phases of the moon”) and “white metal.” He adds that this is transcribed in Hebrew as Tzahut, meaning “bright whiteness,” spelled simply צה Tzaddi Heh. These two letters are of prime interest here since Crowley exchanges them and their corresponding cards The Star and The Emperor in his Tarot attributions — all according to his take from the passage in Liber Legis where Nuit advises, “All these old letters of my Book are aright; but צ (tzaddi) is not the Star.”

Behold! The letters are all “aright.” The Hebrew letter attributed to The Star, Tzaddi, צ, is a fishhook, not the Star itself, also representing a hook–billed water bird, the ibis 𓅞. This sacred ibis is the ancient Egyptian symbol of both the “effective spirit,” the Akh 𓅜, and of Thoth/Tahuti/Djehuty 𓁟, the “thrice greatest” inventor of the hieroglyphs, and the teacher and initiator in the House of Life (Per Ankh). Therefore, Tzaddi is not the Star, but the sacred ibis of Thoth, portrayed on a tree in several important published versions of the card. The fact that attention has been directed to Thoth, the Akh, the Star, and the sign Aquarius may have some relevance then to the nature of the “Great Equinox” Ra Hoor Khuit spoke of. An interesting side note: in the Precession sequence, The Emperor as Aries and the Star as Aquarius sit on either side of our current Pisces, attributed to the card The Moon.

Crowley omits the ibis from his Thoth Tarot design of The Star, exchanging Tzaddi with Heh, something he may have reconsidered had he made the Tzahut/Tahuti connection with the Hebrew צה Tzaddi Heh. Or did he subconsciously know? Meanwhile, his unsatisfactory exchange of the positions and letters of The Star with The Emperor on the Tree of Life remains contentious among Tarot aficionados and is not incorporated into the Wandering Stars system. Tzaddi may not be the Silver Star itself, but Thoth remains integral to the transmission of its Light and Spiritual Life. Truly, Information Technology (IT) will be the lord of the immanent Aquarian Age.

The words of the Neteru of The Book of Law expressly tell us that all of the rituals of the “old–time” are “abrogate” and “black.” Crowley somewhat bitterly suggested that this referred to Christianity or even the Golden Dawn. Despite these admonitions, Crowley himself tried to pour the “new wine” of Liber Legis into the “old wine–skins” of the previous so–called “Old–Aeon” Masonic OTO, and even Catholic–flavored EGC initiations and rituals. I believe that this is why, despite having preserved Crowley’s legacy all these years, for which we should be eternally grateful, he and his heirs have failed to effectively initiate the raison d’etre of The Threefold Book of Law: To wit — to usher in an “atavistic resurgence” (borrowing from occultist Austin Osman Spare), or a “remembrance” (the Egyptians called it “sekhau”) of the magical religion and sacred science of ancient Egypt and of the beloved gods and goddesses — the Neteru who bequeathed it to us. I refer to this repeatedly as “the Egyptian dispensation,” for want of a better phrase. The words of the gods in Liber Legis are a cry of love, a revelation, and serve as a warning to prepare us for upheavals incumbent with the great global changes in store since its reception with the immanent Great Equinox. They adjure us to acquire spiritual strength by seeking our pure will or Thelema, and to find fortitude through their words and divine presence when the going gets rough. We should not doubt that it will.

While visiting Egypt, I too discovered first–hand, like so many others before me and just as Aleister Crowley and his wife Rose did, that the effective spirits of the Neteru are very real, potent, and present. They require little if any invocation — just visiting their sanctuaries seems to do the trick for some, especially if you are already familiar with them — and I challenge anyone to do the same. No one who enters their ancient homes will leave unimpressed, as others who have received direct downloads from them will attest. Honestly, the Neteru were upon me as soon as I stepped onto that downtown Cairo street at noon on March 17th, 2018. They knew that I knew them and were waiting, opening the way throughout my entire Equinox adventure.

I immediately understood that it is their will that we might remember them and that they have bequeathed to us, through the material agency of their brilliant though all–too–human prophet, this incredible document, The Threefold Book of Law. Channeled by Crowley’s wife Rose and written down by him, the holograph manuscript of Liber Legis stands as a proof, a token, and a testament to the love that the Neteru, particularly the Queen of Space Nuit, has for us. My own Thelema is to bring their message to those of you who find yourselves here still reading thus far. Crowley’s subsequent writings can come later — if it is your will. Like some few others, I know in my heart that The Book of Law is, for want of better terms, a divinely inspired transmission from three “praeter–human” Late Period Egyptian divinities.

Even though so much of it is initially incomprehensible and some is perhaps even repugnant upon the first reading, the inscrutable Egyptian terminology and the more alarming passages are softened somewhat and made easier to understand by a basic familiarization with Egyptology. As a prime example, the militant sections in the second and third chapters reflect the 26th Dynasty mindset during the final centuries of the great Egyptian civilization with the decline and fall of the age of Amun and Aries, somehow frozen in time by the Stele of Ankh af na Khonsu. We might also look at these passages through the eyes of Ra Hoor Khuit’s prophesied world wars that followed soon after its reception. Such phrasings are similar to the traditional Egyptian magical protection spells such as those carved as a warning on temple walls, the perennial martial allegory of the striding king depicted as Herukhuti, forcefully establishing Ma’at (order) over the destructive forces of Isfet (chaos), seeking justice, judging the transgressor, and meting out punishment to those who would harm Egypt. Protection from outside malefic foreigners became the core concern of Egyptian life after the Old Kingdom, but most especially after the Bronze Age Collapse, and such statements and depictions of martial strength and subjugation of their enemies established a unified protective magical link between the Neteru, the pharaoh, and the people. Imagine the effect that such a commandingly huge image, artfully carved in bas–relief on the grand temple pylons and painted in garish colors, would have on any foreigners sizing up a possible attack, and you will understand the psychological nature of Egyptian Heka, magic.

In the case of Liber Legis, I believe the bellicose and even bloodthirsty statements are a distinct hallmark of Egyptian apopotraic magic from the hyper–defensive Late Period, forging a protective spell or agreement between the Neteru and the reader who begins to know them — while sending everybody else running for the hills. Of course, one might also take these passages to heart in these latter days of the global rise of militant autocracies like Russia and of gun–brandishing Christian nationalism and its stark authoritarian threat to democracy… only time will tell. Again, one might better view these words through the lens of wartime eyes to understand. Also, it must be mentioned that warriors and wars have always been metaphoric themes for those traversing the Path of Self–Knowledge and Transcendence, in many traditions. Typical of the ancient Egyptian writings, the message applies then to different planes.

Over the years, the truly Egyptian dispensation of The Threefold Book of Law began to unfold for me through my extensive study of their sacred science of religious magic, revealing information regarding the Egyptian cosmogony in the book that even the admitted know–it–all Crowley rarely if ever addressed in his copious writings, much less even knew in the first place. And that is not meant as a dig, it is simply a fact. Reading through Egyptological eyes, as I’ve demonstrated, revealed the deeper meanings of Khabs and Khu, his conflation of the “New Aeon of Horus” with the age of Aquarius, and the related key behind his ill-advised Tzaddi/Heh switch. And those are just a few outstanding examples. Aleister Crowley wasn’t altogether Egyptologically savvy, but he had a different angle he was working from.

Following Crowley’s later writing, many contemporary Thelemites consider the Egyptian god–name variants in the book to be purely literary, i.e. the “angel” Aiwass’s “Egyptoid” metaphors, rather than actual Egyptian deities or divine energy–intelligences in their own right; except of course Ra Hoor Khuit, who Crowley claimed to have successfully invoked as “Horus” on the Equinox of the Gods in 1904. Go figure. Right or wrong, he later regarded Aiwass to be the singular messenger of Liber Legis, a “Secret Chief,” and his own Holy Guardian Angel above all, for reasons we shall see later. Be that as it may, as for Aleister and Rose in 1904 and many others, the “praeter–human” Egyptian Neteru of The Threefold Book of Law became a certainty for me after my encounters with them in their sanctuaries in the great temples in Egypt. Armed with a pretty firm grasp of Egyptology when I arrived there in the spring of 2018, my singular experiences left no doubt in my mind and heart.

Time has not been altogether kind to Crowley’s breadth of Egyptological knowledge or practice. Those who’ve studied the Egyptian hieroglyphs and religion and are privy to the archaeological evidence, simply cannot ignore the deep Egyptian spiritual current of Liber Legis. So, despite my admiration of Crowley’s erudition and his writing, his deviation from the Egyptian raison d’etre of The Threefold Book of Law is a major issue for me and some few others, one that can only be remedied with a forthright, fact–based “Kemetic” exploration. I trust that a few of the fruits of such an Egyptological concordance have been amply demonstrated in the previous paragraphs.

The Egyptians referred to their nation as Kemet, meaning “black land,” after the life–giving rich dark alluvial deposits of the annual Nile floods. Thus, I refer to my practice as “Kemetic Thelema” in contradistinction to Crowley’s magickal cultus currently recognized as the official religion. Meanwhile, the closest I’ve seen to any bonafide work with the ancient Egyptian religion from them was OTO member James Wasserman’s involvement in the publication of the beautiful transcription and reproduction of the Papyrus of Ani, “The Egyptian Book of the Dead, The Book of Going Forth by Day,” after which, and I hate to say but feel I must, he went off the deep end into the alternative reality of the NRA/MAGA/Q world before he passed. However, other independent Thelemites are laying the groundwork, such as a certain L.C.F. who published the fabulous “A Comprehensive List of the Ancient Egyptian Gods and Goddesses” in 2013, and the lovely UK Thelemite witches, author Mogg Morgan and his wife Diti, who are working diligently to reproduce Egyptian astrological magic, a hopeful sign. Again, not being a member privy to their inner workings, there may very well be a handful of other practicing Kemetic Thelemites in the Orders and Lodges, but I am not aware of them. Perhaps publishing this will connect me with them.

Meanwhile, reproductions of the Stele of Ankh af na Khonsu are reverently placed on every A∴A∴, EGC, and OTO high altar, and Ra is invoked at sunrise, noon, sunset, and midnight by all the faithful with Crowley’s daily Liber Resh ritual, in which he has two Neteru correct, but misplaced, and two incorrectly named. Their names and assignments were described earlier concerning the cosmology of the stele’s solar deity Ra Horakhty. Such unavoidable corrections are sometimes the result of applying a bit of Egyptology to The Threefold Book of Law.

Much work has yet to be done to flesh out the Egyptian concordance in Liber Legis, I only offered what I consider the most noteworthy examples. An upcoming article with some collaboration is in the works called “The Egyptian Dispensation of the Threefold Book of Law.”

Thelema Historical Background:

Having discussed the Egyptian dispensation, I’ll present the essential history of events surrounding the reception of the book, followed by a rundown of what I feel are the most important takeaways from Crowley and his Magick of Thelema. Bear in mind that Wandering Stars operates independently under the auspices of the Neteru and Liber Legis first and foremost, and is not formally associated with the aforementioned religious Orders that survived Aleister Crowley. Even so, as do they and the Neteru, I regard him as the first and preeminent prophet of The Threefold Book of Law.

For those unfamiliar with the story, I’ll bring you up to speed by first offering a brief overview of his life leading up to the writing. I’ll do my best to do so as economically as possible without losing the general oeuvre of both his Great Work and this amazing story. Those seeking additional biographical information concerning Crowley’s magickal career and his organizations will be relieved that other far more able writers (including himself) have undertaken the task — I always suggest letting his writing speak for itself first anyway.

Unfortunately, Aleister Crowley’s deservedly checkered reputation precedes him, as do the dubious and damaging claims made by his enemies and detractors who would have you believe that he was a “Satan–worshiping, drug–addicted sociopath who ruined the lives of his followers, sacrificing hundreds of babies along the way.” It’s true — he had some issues, but I’ll leave it to those readers who know me personally to decide for themselves if they think that, having been an ardent student of Crowley’s writings, The Book of Law, and Thelema for over 30 years, I have given them any substantial evidence of reflecting such socially aberrant behavior to any lesser or greater degree — and rest my case. I won’t be revisiting the sordid tales here. Hopefully, the following information will reveal a bit of the real man behind all the mystery and misinformation.

Aleister Crowley A Short Biography:

Early Years:

Edward Alexander Crowley (pronounced crow–lee, like the black bird) was born October 12, 1875 in Leamington Spa, England, an heir to a wealthy brewing business family. Two other significant occult events happened that year: Madame Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society and the Cabalist/mage Eliphaz Levi died. In the meantime, his parents were members of the Plymouth Brethren, a strict fundamentalist Christian sect, his mother being particularly fanatic in her beliefs. Because of this, Alec (his boyhood name) was raised under a strict, and we might assume harsh, biblical discipline, developing a distinct distaste for Christianity, along with a photographic memory of the Bible. As he tells it, this was not lost on his mother, who upbraided him for being a know–it–all and “smart alec,” calling him “The Beast” in her self–righteous outrage over his rebellious boyhood ways, an epithet that quite understandably stuck with him through the years as we shall see. His father died in March of 1887, leaving young Crowley the estate under the executorship of his mother and her Christian advisors. He writes in “The Equinox of the Gods,” “After the death of his father, who was a man of strong common sense, and never allowed his religion to interfere with natural affection, he was in the hands of people of an entirely contrary disposition. His mental attitude was soon concentrated in hatred of the religion which they taught, and his will concentrated in revolt against its oppressions. His main method of relief was mountaineering, which left him alone with nature, away from the tyrants.” 

Adulthood:

He attended Trinity College at Cambridge University, leaving just before completing his degree.

It was at this time that the athletic young mountain climber (a protégé of the accomplished mountaineer Oscar Eckenstein), chess master, and budding poet took the pen name Aleister, the name he would use for the remainder of his life. Soon after this, he met George Cecil Jones, who was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a London occult society with Masonic and Rosicrucian ties, into which he was initiated at the age of 23 in 1898.

The GD was founded by three “initiates,” William Wynn Wescott, the charismatic Samuel Liddell "MacGregor" Mathers, and William Kenneth Woodman circa 1880, all fellow Masons (with Wescott being a Master Mason), who were also members of the SRIA, Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, the English Rosicrucian Society. Woodman led the group until he died in 1891, with Mathers taking the reins as leader of the organization when he created the ritual for the Adeptus Minor grade of initiation. Mathers is most famous for his seminal work “The Kabbalah Unveiled,” published in 1887. The organization was created to continue the efforts of exploring the Western Mysteries after Helena Petrovna Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society turned toward the Eastern Mysteries of Vedanta and Hinduism.

The syncretic curriculum of the GD prepared the aspirants for 10 ascending “grades” of initiation based on the Tree of Life, and included Qabalah, Tarot, Astrology, Ceremonial Magic, and the invocation of several Egyptian god–forms, among other esoteric magical arts. The Order had many notable and influential members, including Arthur E. Waite (creator of the well–known Rider–Waite Tarot), Violet Firth (pen name Dion Fortune — author of The Mystical Qabalah), Bram Stoker (author of Dracula), Florence Farr, and the poet William Butler Yeats, among others from British high society. Its influence on the later development of contemporary Western Esoteric Traditions cannot be understated; accordingly, a more detailed history of the GD will be offered in my upcoming article “About The TAROT.” For the definitive exposition of its practices, Crowley’s ex–secretary Israel Regardie’s “The Golden Dawn” is the place to go for details.

Crowley studied Mathers’ “The Kabbalah Unveiled” assiduously while mountain climbing beginning in 1887, and was initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1898, taking the name Perdurabo, a Latin motto meaning "he shall endure to the end.” He ascended the system rapidly, achieving the Second Order Adeptus Minor grade in 1899. Crowley was already well known for being, as his mother said, a “know–it–all,” and his aggressive arrogance was not lost on the membership, several of whom were put off by his anti–Christian stance and “depraved” libertinism, and took Mathers to task for taking the young prodigy/savant Crowley under his wing.

Then, in 1900, the order was torn apart, perhaps due somewhat to personality conflicts between Yeats and Crowley, but more primarily precipitated by Mathers’ alcoholism and financial issues, and a scandal over the authenticity of the Order’s claimed German Rosicrucian lineage and founding “Cipher Manuscript.” Having inherited his father’s wealth a few years prior, Crowley offered Mathers financial help, but it only made matters worse. Westcott, Farr, Yeats, and others eventually voted to expel Mathers and Crowley from the Order, after which it broke up, splintering into four separate groups, one of them Crowley’s A∴A∴. He would claim later, after the reception of Liber Legis, that this was proof that the order had “failed to initiate” and to forge a link with the so–called “Secret Chiefs” of the true Rosicrucian Order.

And so, the young Aleister distanced himself from Mathers and gave up his magickal career with the Golden Dawn. Financed by his inheritance, he left England to travel the world and extensively throughout the East. While in India he met up with his beloved GD mentor, Allan Bennet, who was then calling himself Bikkhu Meteya, having the distinction of being one of the very first Westerners to convert to Tibetan Buddhism. Here, in the mountains of Kashmir, Bennet instructed Crowley in the rigorous mental and physical disciplines of Yoga, techniques which he would later integrate into his personal practice and training systems. He also gave Crowley his extensive dictionary of Hebrew words and number values, the Sepher Sephiroth in Liber 777.

According to Crowley’s accounts, in 1903 he eloped with a debutante named Rose Edith Kelly on a lark to save her from an arranged marriage (he calls her Ouarda or ‘W.’ — Arabic for Rose in his diaries), and they traveled the world for their honeymoon, winding up in Egypt in 1903. In his “Equinox of the Gods” Crowley tells us that in November of that year he performed an invocation in the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid that caused a glow of pale blue light to the amazement of the onlookers. After more traveling, they returned to Cairo in March of 1904. I will let Crowley tell the rest of the story himself from Chapter 49 of his autobiography called The Confessions:

“This chapter is the climax of this book. Its contents are so extraordinary, they demand such breadth and depth of preliminary explanation, that I am in despair. It is so serious to me that my responsibility overwhelms me. My entire previous life was but a preparation for this event, and my entire subsequent life has been not merely determined by it, but wrapped up in it.

Most of the past nine years of my life have been preoccupied, each year more fully than the last, with the problem of proving to humanity in general the propositions involved. To make the elements of my thesis as clear and distinct as possible, I shall endeavour to insulate them in sections.

Ouarda and I left Helwan for Cairo. (Date unascertained, probably on March 11th or 13th.) We had taken an apartment (Address unascertained) on Wednesday, March 16th. One day, having nothing special to do, I made the “Preliminary Invocation” referred to above. I had no more serious purpose than to show her the sylphs (spirits of elemental Air and their pale blue glow) as I might have taken her to the theatre. She could not (or refused to) see them, but instead got into a strange state of mind. I had never seen her anything at all like it before. She kept on repeating dreamily, yet intensely, “They are waiting for you.” I was annoyed at her conduct.

March 17th. I don't remember whether I repeated my attempt to show her the sylphs, but probably did. It is in my character to persist. She again got into the same state and repeated her remarks, adding, “It is all about the child.” And “All Osiris.” I think I must have been annoyed by her contumacy. Perhaps for this reason I invoked Thoth, the god of wisdom, presumably by the invocation printed in Liber Israfel (The Equinox, Vol. I, Vo. VII), which I knew by heart. I may also have been subconsciously wondering whether there was not something in her remarks, and wanted to be enlightened. The record says, “Thoth, invoked with great success, indwells us.” But this strikes me as to some extent “written up” in a spirit of complacency, if not arrogance. I remember nothing of any result.

March 18th. Possibly I repeated the invocation. The record says, “Revealed that the waiter was Horus, whom I had offended and ought to invoke.” “Waiter” sounds like a sneer. I thought it was sheer impudence of Ouarda to offer independent remarks. I want her to see the sylphs.

I must have been impressed by one point. How did Ouarda know that I had offended Horus? The troubles of Mathers were due to his excessive devotion to Mars, who represents one side of the personality of Horus, and no doubt I was inclined to err in the opposite directions, to neglect and dislike Mars as the personification of unintelligent violence.

But was her bull's–eye a fluke? Her mention of Horus gave me a chance to cross–examine her. “How do you know that it is Horus who is telling you all this? Identify him.” (Ouarda knew less Egyptology than ninety–nine Cairene tourists out of one hundred.) Her answers were overwhelming. The odds against her being right were one in many million.

From Chapter 6 of “The Equinox of the Gods:” “Here therefore we insert a short note by Fra. P. (Crowley) how W. knew R.H.K. (Ra Hoor Khuit)

1. Force and Fire (I asked her to describe his moral qualities.)

2. Deep blue light. (I asked her to describe the conditions caused by him. This light is quite unmistakable and unique ; but of course her words, though a fair description of it, might equally apply to some other.)

3. Horus. (I asked her to pick out his name from a list of ten dashed off at haphazard.)

4. Recognized his figure when shown. (This refers to the striking scene in the Boulak Museum, which will be dealt with in detail.)

5. Knew my past relations with the God. (This means, I think, that she knew I had taken his place in a temple,*1* etc., and that I had never once invoked him.)

6. Knew his enemy. (I asked, “Who is his enemy ?” Reply, “Forces of the waters — of the Nile.” (Sobek the crocodile god) W. knew no Egyptology—or anything else.

7. Knew his lineal figure and its colour. (A 1/84 chance.)

8. Knew his place in temple. (A 1/4 chance, at the least.)

9. Knew his weapon (from a list of 6.)

10. Knew his planetary nature (from a list of 7 planets.)

11. Knew his number (from a list of 10 units.)

12. Picked him out of (a)Five, (b)Three} indifferent, i,e, arbitrary symbols. (This means that I settled in my own mind that say D of A,B,C,D, and E should represent him and that she then said D.)

We cannot too strongly insist on the extraordinary character of this identification. We had made no pretension to clairvoyance ; nor had P. ever tried to train her. P. had great experience with clairvoyants, and it was always a point of honour with him to bowl them out. And here was a novice, a woman who should never have been allowed outside a ballroom, speaking with the authority of God, and proving it by unhesitating correctness.

I allowed her to go on. She instructed me how to invoke Horus. The instructions were, from my point of view, pure rubbish. I suggested amending them. She emphatically refused to allow a single detail to be altered. She promised success (whatever that might mean) on Saturday or Sunday. If I had any aspiration left at all, it was to attain Samadhi (which I had not yet ever done). She promised that I should do so. I agreed to carry out her instructions, avowedly in order to show her that nothing could happen if you broke all the rules.

March 19th. I wrote out the ritual and did the invocation with little success. I was put off, not only by my skepticism and the absurdity of the ritual, but by having to do it in robes at an open window on a street at noon. She allowed me to make the second attempt at midnight.

March 20th. The invocation was a startling success. I was told that “The Equinox of the Gods had come”; that is, that a new epoch had begun. I was to formulate a link between the solar–spiritual force and mankind.

March 21st–22nd–23rd. There seems to have been a reaction after the success of the twentieth. The phenomena faded out. I tried to clear up my position by the old methods and did a long Tarot divination which proved perfectly futile.

Now the famous episode in the Egyptian Museum where the encounter with the Stele of Ankh af na Khonsu unfolds, as Crowley continues this fascinating report of testing her on Horus in Chapter 6 of “The Equinox of the Gods:”

But we know that she was perfectly ignorant of the subtle correspondences, which were only existing at that time in Fra. P.'s own brain. And even if it were so, how are we to explain what followed — the discovery of the Stele of Revealing?

To apply test 4, Fra.P. took her to the museum at Boulak, which they had not previously visited. (He was mistaken, the museum had just moved from Boulak to the new museum, pictured above, in downtown Cairo in 1902.) She passed by (as P. noted with silent glee) several images of Horus.

 They went upstairs. A glass case stood in the distance, too far off for its contents to be recognized. But W. recognized it! “There,” she cried, ‘There he is!”

“Fra. P. advanced to the case. There was the image of Horus in the form of Ra Hoor Khuit painted upon a wooden stele of the 26th dynasty—and the exhibit bore the number 666!”

He continues in his Confessions:

On some day before March 23rd, Ouarda identified the particular god with whom she was in communication from a stele in the Boulak Museum, which we had never visited. It is not the ordinary form of Horus but Ra–Hoor–Khuit. I was no doubt very much struck by the coincidence that the exhibit, a quite obscure and undistinguished stele, bore the catalogue number 666. But I dismissed it as an obvious coincidence.

Then there is this excerpt from Crowley’s diary notes before the reception of the Book of Law — from The Equinox of the Gods:

“In the museum at Cairo, No. 666 is the stele of the Priest Ankh–f–n–khonsu.

Horus has a red Disk and green Uraeus.

His face is green, his skin indigo.

His necklace, anklets, and bracelets are gold.

His nemyss nearly black from blue.

His tunic is the Leopard’s skin, and his apron green and gold.

Green is the wand of double Power; his r.h. is empty.

His throne is indigo the gnomon, red the square.

The light is gamboge.

Above his are the Winged Globe and the bent figure of the heavenly Isis, her hands and feet touching earth.”

Crowley appears to have had no idea of the true names of the god–forms at that time, although they are indeed connected in the Egyptian religious pantheon. (See my Wandering Stars article The Stele of Ankh af na Khonsu for more technical information on the artifact.)

Back to his Confessions:

March 23rd to April 7th. I made inquiries about the stele and had the inscriptions translated into French by the assistant curator at Boulak. I made poetic paraphrases of them. Ouarda now told me to enter the room, where all this work had been done, exactly at noon on April 8th, 9th and 10th, and write down what I heard, rising exactly at one o'clock. This I did. In these three hours were written the three chapters of The Book of the Law.

The above statement is as succinct as I can make it. By April 8th, I had been convinced of the reality of the communication and obeyed my wife's arbitrary instructions with a certain confidence. I retained my skeptical attitude none the less.”

The goddess Nuit distinctly designates Aleister Crowley as her prophet in the Book of Law, referring to him, almost wryly, as "the beast" in its text. Perhaps it was humor, or even motherly, knowing the nickname his mother had given him as if to verify the museum’s 666 stele label synchronicity. It was most assuredly Qabalistic, representing the 6th sphere of Tiphareth and his GD grade of Adeptus Minor. And, of course, it all could have simply come from his own mind. Be that as it may, reluctantly at first, Crowley would spend the rest of his life working to develop and establish the philosophy and practice of Thelema per his personal understanding of The Threefold Book of Law.

From that point on he referred to himself as To Mega Therion, Τὸ Μέγα Θηρίον, Greek for The Great Beast, which in Greek numerology or isopsephy adds numerically to 666. This suited his antimonious relationship with his mother and Victorian Christianity just fine. Meanwhile, his writings serve as a singularly powerful testimonial to his Great Work after the revelation of the Book of the Law.

Crowley’s Subsequent Magickal Career:

To clarify — the term Magick, with a ‘k’, was a convention of Crowley’s, hearkening back to “olde English” magic grimoires, denoting the distinction between ritual or ceremonial magic and the Vegas magician’s sleight–of–hand stage magic or legerdemain (I discuss their merging elsewhere). According to Aleister Crowley in his magnum opus “Magick, Liber ABA, Book 4:”

"Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will."

"Magick is the method of science and the aim of religion."

"Every intentional act is a Magickal act."

"Magick is the Science of understanding oneself and one's conditions. It is the Art of applying that understanding in action."

"Magick is merely to be and to do." 

In 1906 Crowley rejoined fellow Golden Dawn member George Cecil Jones in England, where they set about the creation of a new teaching and initiating order, the “A∴A∴” (Astron Argon or Astrum Argentium — the Silver Star), to continue the Great Work of the now defunct Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, incorporating the Law of Thelema. Founded in 1907, the A∴A∴ subsequently became the primary vehicle for the transmission of Crowley's original system of initiation based on the principles of Qabalah and Eastern Mysticism, under the aegis of Thelema, often referred to as the “93 Current” since the Greek numerological value of the word Thelema is 93. This was a prolific period for Crowley, yielding his best magick, writing, and publishing, including the first editions of “Liber Al vel Legis” and “Liber 777” in 1909. He used Liber Legis as his charter manuscript and founding document, claiming that, unlike the Golden Dawn, he had forged an authentic link with the Rosicrucian Secret Chiefs through Aiwass. And now we see the light.

Rose was pregnant while they were in Cairo, and had two daughters with Crowley: Nuit Ma Ahathoor Hecate Sappho Jezebel Lilith (1904–06) and Lola Zaza (1907–90). After the tragic death of Nuit Ma from a tropical infection, Rose turned to heavy drinking in her deep depression, and she and Crowley divorced in 1909. Lola was eventually taken in by her uncle, Gerald, and in 1911 Aleister reluctantly had Rose committed to an asylum for acute alcohol dementia where she died in 1932.

In 1913 he published “Liber 333 — The Book of Lies” and was promptly contacted by Theodore Reuss, the head of a fraternal Masonic organization called the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), again with Rosicrucian ties. This group of high–ranking German Freemasons claimed to have discovered the "supreme secret" (read: of a sexual nature) of the ceremonial magic of the ancients, which was only taught in its highest degrees. As Crowley tells it, he had inadvertently revealed their "secret" as a joke in his recently published little masterwork. Based entirely upon this passage, Reuss invited him to become a member of the OTO, and he eagerly accepted, eventually taking over as head of the order after Reuss suffered a stroke in 1921.

Crowley seized the reins, reformulating the rites of the OTO to conform with the Book of Law (somewhat — though lacking emphasis on the Egyptian dispensation); vesting the organization with the ideal of establishing his cultus of Thelema throughout the world. However, due mostly to Crowley’s increasingly bad reputation and questionable claim of being a Mason, the order became divorced from Freemasonry and, like the Golden Dawn and A∴A∴, the OTO broke with the crusty fraternal tradition by opening its membership to men who were not Masons and, heaven forbid, to women. Nevertheless, he continued to successfully lead the A∴A∴ and the OTO for another 25 years.

Aleister Crowley died peacefully at the age of 72 of obstructive cardiopulmonary disease in his modest apartment in Hastings, England on December 1, 1947. His magickal career spanned a half–century, most of which, when not fighting lawsuits and exploring his hedonistic lifestyle, was spent living his adage “do what thou wilt” — enjoying life, performing his magick, overseeing his Orders, writing, publishing, and otherwise forwarding the Law of Thelema.

Crowley’s greatest supporter and the Grand Treasurer in the Order, the long–suffering Karl Germer, took over the OTO after relocating to the US from Germany having been freed from a Nazi concentration camp at the end of WW II. He immediately set upon collecting and organizing Crowley’s oeuvre and undertook the task of publishing many of his books in the 1950s. Germer died of cancer at 77 in California in 1962, leaving no official heir besides his second wife Sascha, also an OTO member. Sascha died soon after. Germer’s will provided that all of Crowley’s literary remains and materials should go to the Heads of Ordo Templi Orientis.  Despite nearly fading away after Crowley and Germer’s deaths, his Orders survived thanks to a handful of pioneering Californians in the heady mid to late sixties, most notably Germer’s student Phyllis Seckler and Crowley’s assistant Grady McMurtry, leading members of the original magickal societies who assumed control of the A∴A∴ and the OTO — which are, in testimony to their vision, still functioning as teaching and initiating orders to this day.

Crowley's legacy yet lives on in his “Liber AL vel Legis” and its Law of Thelema, which has become a religion in its own right, with thousands of adherents worldwide. His writings on the Qabalah and Tarot still serve as the backbone of nearly every 20th and 21st–century Western Esoteric Tradition you can shake a stick at, as do his writings on magick, yoga, and other mystical subjects, but most especially his Qabalistic compendium “Liber 777”, “Liber 333 — The Book of Lies,” and the indispensable “Magick, Liber ABA, Book 4.”

The Threefold Book of Law

I count myself among the fortunate in not having the myth–information and negative opinions of others thrust upon me to color my first approach to Aleister Crowley’s writings. I never had a chance to read the bad press before reading his primary works, and they were sublime; particularly The Book of Law and The Book of Lies, both filled with Qabalistic puzzles, brilliant apocryphal riddle–like verses and poetry, even including a few compelling rituals. If I had been poisoned against him without first reading for myself, I would have never known the rich legacy of his brilliant philosophical, spiritually uplifting, oftentimes divinely inspired writing. After getting to know his punctilious style well, it became even more apparent to me that his “Liber Al Vel Legis,” or at least most of it, did not come from his mind alone.

An accomplished and prolific author and poet, Crowley sorted his works into five main Classes categorizing the writings by how they were either “received” or conceived, and their function as “organs” of his A∴A∴ and OTO organizations. Any works that he considered to be a product of his “Knowledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel” are identified as Class ‘A’ and are referred to as the “Holy Books of Thelema,” with “Liber AL vel Legis — The Book of the Law” heading the list. Following the injunction from Liber Legis itself: "Change not as much as the style of a letter,” he asserts that they are not to be “reproved” or otherwise "tampered with" since, as he tells us, "… they represent the utterance of an Adept entirely beyond the criticism of even the Visible Head of the Organization."

Unfortunately, neither Crowley nor his heirs have obeyed the injunction much with “Liber Al vel Legis.” According to the Neteru, even the book’s prophet was commanded not to change a thing. Meanwhile, those entrusted with formal control of Crowley’s written works argue over “fill me” or “kill me,” offering only edited and redacted publications of “The Book of the Law.” I and many others feel this is simply untenable, contradicting the plain demands written therein. It’s unfaithful to the spirit and words of the book as a sacred text to edit out anything, and it simply isn’t the same without these sections left intact. Being virtually impossible to read the facsimiles of Crowley’s cursive manuscript, I have sought to remedy the situation with the Wandering Stars edition and publication of “The Threefold Book of Law,” a rectification and transcription of the original handwritten holograph manuscript published per the laws of the Public Domain. Again, the goddess Nuit identifies its title in the writing itself: “This that thou writest is the threefold Book of Law.”

The Wandering Stars edition of “The Threefold Book of Law” and “The Comment” is presented in red and black print, per Liber Legis III:39, “All this and a book to say how thou didst come hither and a reproduction of this ink and paper forever — for in it is the word secret & not only in the English — and thy comment upon this the Book of the Law shall be printed beautifully in red ink and black upon beautiful paper made by hand…”

In the ancient Egyptian “Book of the Dead” and other magic papyri, titles, commentary, descriptions, and instructions were written in red hieroglyphs with the body of the text black, the palettes of the scribes, called zeha (zẖꜣ), having both red and black ink wells expressly for that purpose. Following the Egyptian dispensation of the book, Crowley’s original manuscript of “The Threefold Book of Law” text is set in black using the Goudy Old Style font, including his crossed–out redactions likely done at the time of its writing. Aleister and Rose’s later insertions in ink are set in bold red, with Rose’s entries in Gabriola font (which looks remarkably similar to her handwriting). Most of these are included in all subsequent print editions. Crowley’s penciled notes, instructions, and numbering are in plain red font.

They presumably jotted them down on the manuscript together soon after the reception, amending what Crowley had missed while hurriedly taking the dictation — things they had either remembered, understood, heard, or said. This includes a passage that he was adjured to clarify later where you can see Crowley struggling to keep up and to grasp and write down what he was hearing, striking out sentences, with Rose explaining or filling in the blanks later. These are organic and show his more passive and receptive role in contrast to Rose’s active role in the reception of the book, negating assumptions that it all came from Crowley’s mind alone. And again, there are the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person perspectives throughout.

Per the instruction of the Neteru in the first and third chapters, all subsequent print versions were to insert portions of Crowley’s paraphrase of the Stele’ of Revealing, and these are included in “The Threefold Book of Law” in quotations and plain red italics. Compare these to the translation of the Stele text by Dr. Alan Gardiner and Battiscombe Gunn at:  The Stele of Ankh af na Khonsu

Lastly, a black–and–white scale photocopy of the holograph manuscript is also included per the order of Ra Hoor Khuit above.

Once you have read this, my work here will be done. My suggestion is to do so ceremoniously, one chapter at a time precisely at noon, rising at 1:00 p.m. — ideally, on the auspicious days of April 8, 9, and 10.

LL III:39 continues, “… and to each man and woman that thou meetest, were it but to dine and drink at them, it is the Law to give. Then they shall chance to abide in this bliss or no; it is no odds. Do this quickly!”

Appended to every published copy of The Book of the Law, is Crowley’s penultimate comment concerning the book, signed as Ankh–f–n–Khonsu. Nuit identified him by that title in the writing, after which Crowley believed himself to be the reincarnation of the long–dead Egyptian priest who was the owner of the stele. The comment, his response to an injunction for him to do so in Liber Legis, is often appropriately called “The Short Comment.”

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.

The priest of the princes,

On The “Short” Comment:

Looking closely into the intention of these cryptic words and flipping the perspective we can see how the study of The Book of Law would be, beyond any doubt, “forbidden.” Most Christian folks, as well as the regular mainstream secular authorities, would have you believe, based upon the flimsiest of facts, anecdotal evidence, gossip, if not outright lies, that the book was written by an all–around evil person — a child–sacrificing Satanist even — and thereby is unacceptable to the social norm. Even today, because of Crowley’s skewed negative press, Thelema has a personality crisis. His work is mostly either sensationalized in the media, or is ignored and looked down upon by almost everyone else, even by otherwise Neo–Pagan, New Age, Western Esoteric, or occult communities. Meanwhile, the “Satanic Panic” seems to be making another comeback.

If you disregard the warning by leaving a copy sitting around, or openly discussing its contents, you indeed do so at your own risk and peril, the least of which being ostracism by your community — especially if it is predominantly Christian, to which I can personally attest. What was true in Crowley’s day is certainly still true today, although the great shift is changing things in ways he never could have foreseen. War appears to be brewing between the Christian nationalists and the secular community, and things could get, well, inquisition–like if they gain authoritarian power. Add to that the invasive power of Information Technology, and, well, discretion is sometimes the better part of valor.

Notice that the comment is written by Crowley as the deceased owner of the Stele, Ankh–f–n–khonsu. While Liber Legis does identify Crowley with the priest, the only instance of his writing and signing off by the name is this one short enigmatic comment. Otherwise, the only other writings we have that are physically attributable to the priest Ankh–f–n–Khonsu are written in hieroglyphs on the Stele of Revealing itself. As for the three symbols under the signature, Egyptologists will see three Egyptian flag hieroglyphs (Netjer 𓊹 , which means “divinity”) facing right, representing the trinity of Neteru depicted on the Stele. Words and names written in hieroglyphics bestow magical powers, and if a figure faces right, it means that the text reads from left to right. Indeed, the “Short Comment,” written in English up to that point, does just that. To my knowledge, Crowley never mentions this.

On Religion and Thelema:

Despite the claims otherwise, Liber Legis is not anti–Christian, nor is it anti–Muslim, anti–Taoist, or even anti–Hindu. The fact that each is addressed in Chapter Three of the book by the powerful Egyptian solar deity Ra Hoor Khuit should be noteworthy enough to those with eyes to see. That is, Mohammed and Jesus, and the “Buddhist, mongol and djin,” are all spiritual human beings who were, in the end, equally subject to the effects of time: birth, life, and inevitable bodily death — to ultimately face the Lord of the West, Ra Horakhty, in Amenti. The elder Horus as the winged solar disc B’Hedet is the Lord of time and duration, and his name is the root of the word Hours, Horology (timekeeping), and Horoscope in Astrology. One can be a follower of the teachings of any of the great prophets and religious currents in the process of practicing Thelema — Chapter Three of Liber Legis simply tempers them with the Egyptian understanding of the hard reality of inescapable physical death for everyone, with no exceptions. “But there is that which remains.”

Neither does Liber Legis call for ritual child sacrifice, as is often claimed. Perhaps one of the most misunderstood and even reviled statements in The Book of the Law again comes from Ra Hoor Khuit when he instructs: “Sacrifice cattle, little and big: after a child.” The casual reader will think that he is telling us to literally sacrifice a human child before killing some cows, and some low–vibration or mentally compromised individuals might actually think about acting upon that if they are truly debased. The casual reader, if they have even gotten thus far, will most likely consider the passage as proof positive that the book, along with the people who promulgate its teachings, is truly evil and should be shunned.

On the other hand, especially when reading through an Egyptian lens, an enlightened person understands the meaning and punctuation well, knowing that “after a child” is to be taken in much the same spirit as “the child takes after his mother”. In other words, when we must sacrifice cattle for our life–giving sustenance and for their valuable byproducts, we should do so with the same reverence as if sacrificing a child; for indeed, they are — as are all sentient living beings, including plants — all of us together, inextricably related and connected, all children of the Great Mother/Father Spirit. The ancient Egyptians never sacrificed valuable human beings after the early Old Kingdom, and then only as retainer sacrifice, when pharaohs and occasionally other high court nobility would have servants killed after the pharaohs' deaths to continue to serve them in the afterlife. They likely went to their deaths willingly. The ancient Egyptians revered their cattle, elevating them to holiness, such as with the representatives of Horus — the Apis bulls. Horus was the child of Isis, and so to sacrifice the Apis bull was to sacrifice the child Horus, thus “sacrifice cattle… after a child”. The great goddess Hathor herself is almost always depicted with cow ears or horns and most especially represented as “the heavenly cow.” Unlike the Hindus, the Egyptians feasted on the sacred beef sacrificed to the gods, after a “reversion” ritual back to the priests, their acolytes, and sometimes high–ranking folk outside of the temple.

The Egyptian medical papyri and the Greek Magical Papyri do show evidence of Egyptian magic spells using blood, both animal and human, as is mentioned in Chapter Three, but none necessarily demand the killing of the host; except of course, the religious sacrifice of animals as practiced in ancient Egypt mentioned above, even in late antiquity. In this case, Ra Hoor Khuit offers some tame alternatives anyway. Unfortunately, this is where all the lurid tales about slitting goats' throats and crucifying frogs come from in the OTO circles. Unlike the spiritual ancient Egyptians, who performed religious ritual sacrifice of animals, Western society has a vicarious relationship with the slaughter of the meat they eat and the killing of the human “enemies” they hate, who they will likely never encounter personally.

Per our earlier discussion of the war–like passages in Chapters Two and Three being examples of apopotraic magic to avert evil, a little Egyptology goes a long way to understanding them. Such deeper meaning as is evidenced by these instances is the case for the other inscrutable sayings of the Neteru in Liber Legis as well, hidden in layers of Egyptian religious symbolism that only those with the “eyes to see and ears to hear” may catch glimmerings of.

As for the value of religion itself, unless a person is singularly fortunate, most of us have had to be taught to walk upright, speak, write, and learn life skills in this world — that, or learn the hard way in our personal school of hard knocks. The same holds for any established spiritual knowledge and practice. All being said, a simple study of comparative religion goes a long way toward understanding. From my own experience, a limited study and practice of more than just one authentic spiritual tradition was helpful, if not a prerequisite, to the ongoing development of my spiritual awareness, and was key to perceiving the fascinating correspondences secreted in the otherwise impenetrable writings in The Threefold Book of Law. Some have stayed with me most of my life, and some were more or less like ladders leading to another “level” of understanding.

There is no getting around it — reinventing the wheel is impossible if not foolhardy in this regard, as there are certain obstacles and pitfalls upon the many spiritual paths (which Gautama the Buddha tells us, with a wink and a nod, all lead to the Center). The truly authentic traditions were developed by generations of adepts and shamans and provide dependable road maps for traversing them without a great fall, until such time as one no longer needs the training wheels or the ladders that rise step by step closer to accomplishing one’s own Thelema: to “achieve Hadit” — never forgetting that the map is not the actual terrain.

As it is for any school of higher learning, retaining and passing knowledge down requires some form of symbolism and an organized infrastructure of institutions, teachers, books, and/or oral traditions, even among shamans. Recall that Thoth, the god of wisdom and inventor of the hieroglyphs, was the Lord of the Temple Library and School for scribes, called Per Ankh, the House of Life in ancient Egypt. Consider too his association with the Great Equinox of Aquarius and his presence on The Star. Many rightfully consider him to be the original benefactor of the teaching tradition of the Qabalah, the Tree of Life, and Tarot, as Crowley did. Surely his time has come in this, the New Age. Institutions that teach some form of metaphysics based upon communion with a great spirit, spirits, gods, or ancestors are generally called “religions” (from the Latin re–ligio — to reconnect), a term that has lamentably lost its meaning in this age of the “spiritual — but not religious” refrain. Truly, those who claim this are invariably speaking from their personal negative experience with the corrupted and restrictive exoteric Abrahamic religions, from which so much harm and grief has come, and that quite understandably do not serve their Spirit. Lamentably, most are too quick to throw the dishes out with the dishwater.

Undoubtedly — without religions and religious institutions, hard–won knowledge could never have been preserved and handed down. Without religion, we would have no practice of yoga or meditation, no tarot or astrology, no seven chakras, no Qabalah, no Yin and Yan, nor any of the other spiritual religious symbolism and technologies we so freely use for our benefit today in this “New Age.”. The use of fragrances, intoxicants, invocations, chants, trance, imagery, and music in ritual settings was a well–developed spiritual technology far back in the hazy past, and it behooves us to partake of that wisdom once again since we have so much of it left to us intact from several religious currents that predate Roman Christianity, and so little to choose from in the way of contemporary religions that might satisfy our spiritual appetites.

For all practical purposes, religious currents can be said to flow from four primary geographic locations, each with traditions that can be considered useful spiritual technologies for the contemporary Western psyche. I have found that simply reading some, practicing a little, and perhaps personally experiencing their various methods is usually enough for most people without necessarily joining a circle, ashram, order, or any particular “religion,” though it might be one’s Thelema to do so. After all, Thelema the Law, as “Do what thou wilt” is necessarily syncretic and more philosophical than religious anyway, and therefore open to religious pluralism or “perennialism,” which holds that all major religions share an “abstract core of truth” (to quote Castaneda). These recurring common themes illuminate universal truths — about reality, ethics, consciousness, and humanity. The Golden Rule stands out. Crowley was famous for telling Thelemites to seek the core truth in all belief systems, no matter how appealing, appalling, seemingly perfect, or flawed any ideology may appear to be, and to ignore the rest.

The Four Geographical Religious Currents:

Eastern: Vedic/Hindu polytheism*, Buddhism — India; and Taoism — Far East, Asia

Western: Egyptian/Sumerian polytheism, Hebrew Kabbalah, Christian Gnosticism, Hermeticism — Mediterranean and Near East

Northern European: Druidry and Craft Traditions, Nordic/Germanic paganism, Greek/Roman polytheism, Steppe shamanism — Northern Europe, Italy and Greece, Eurasia

The New World: Shamanism/polytheism — North America, Mesoamerica, South America,

*Note: With emphasis on Yoga. There are actually Five Yogas: 1) Gnana — study of symbolism, sacred texts, and writing; 2) Raja — contemplation, meditation, dreaming, vision quests; 3) Hatha — poses and mudras, sex, diet, bodywork, mantra and breathing; 4) Bhakti — spiritual devotion and ceremonial offerings to and invocation of god–forms, and 5) Karma — living in accordance with your true Thelema / Dharma / Ma’at.

Of these traditions, the Egyptian sacred science and magic is among the more poorly represented active religious currents today, although it is truly the fountainhead of all the Western Abrahamic religions. Hebrew Kabbalah as an oral tradition and Christian Gnosticism historically commingled with the Egyptian religion almost exclusively in Alexandria and the Nile Delta during its final days, and are the most critical to understanding many of the cryptic sayings in The Book of the Law. My work at Wandering Stars is to help spread the word about the relevance of the ancient Egyptian civilization and religion, which endured for over 3,500 years, inherited from progenitors going back thousands of years.

This isn’t to suggest that those traditions I may have left unlisted, ancient or contemporary, have no value in seeking our true Thelema. Quite to the contrary. But I cannot speak for them personally as practices. That’s somebody else’s Thelema to explore. My perspective is suggestive at best and offered with a healthy helping of subjectivity. As a prime example, while I can dig it academically, I do not emphasize Greek polytheism myself, even though Thelema is a Greek word. After all, Alexander, Egypt’s great liberator, appears to have converted emphatically to the Egyptian religion, followed by his Greek Ptolemaic successors in the last days of Egypt. I guess I can relate. There is much to say about the Hellenistic religions, however, particularly of the Eleusinian mysteries, and their powerful influence on Mediterranean coastal cultures, even upon the Jewish Theraputae, Gnostic Christians, and Islamic Sufis, esoteric light–bearers of their oppressive fundamentalist brethren. I haven’t gone beyond a shallow study of the Eleusinian tradition myself, but their use of some kind of psychoactive sacramental beverage called Kykeion in their initiation rites into the mysteries is telling, and shamanic to say the least. Their pantheon of gods and goddesses are easily correlated with the Egyptian Neteru, and likely were heavily influenced by them.

Like Buddhism, one has religious freedom in syncretic Thelema. One can be a Gnostic Christian Buddhist and Thelemite at the same time, a worthy contemplation. There is just one detail of course, a caveat if you will, and it is problematic for atheists and materialists alike: the unmistakable signature of actual, not literary, Egyptian divinities in The Book of Law. It should behoove us then to explore that rich Kemetic concordance more thoroughly, if not first and foremost.

Gnosis, the Akh, and Thelema:

Engraved over the portico of the temple of the Greek Oracle of Delphi (see Pythia) was “Gnothi Seauton” (γνῶθι σεαυτόν) “Know Thyself”. Better known from the later Gnostic Christians, the term Gnosis (γνῶσις, gnōsis), is a Greek noun meaning “to Know.” A “feminine” word used in various Hellenistic religions and philosophies, gnosis was used most notably in the Eleusinian Mysteries, signifying, according to my AI assistant: “an inner personal knowledge and insight into one’s true nature as divine, leading to the deliverance of the divine spark within from the constraints and illusions of earthly material existence.” In this way, Gnosis and Thelema are identical and mutually supportive of the Egyptian spiritual tradition of the Khabs and the Akh.

About the Akh from Wikipedia:

“The akh or ꜣḫ " (magically) effective one”, was a concept of the dead that varied over the long history of ancient Egyptian belief. Relative to the afterlife, the akh represented the deceased, who was transfigured and often identified with light.

It was associated with thought, but not as an action of the mind; rather, it was intellect as a living entity. The akh  – ꜣḫ also played a role in the afterlife. Following the death of the khat  – ẖt (physical body), the ba  – bꜣ and ka  – kꜣ were reunited to reanimate the akh ꜣḫ. The reanimation of the akh ꜣḫ was only possible if the proper funeral rites were executed and followed by constant offerings. The ritual was termed sa – akh, s – ꜣḫ "make (a dead person) into an (living) akh ꜣḫ.”

The Egyptologist Gertie Englund summarizes the Akh as:

“the effective one... a glorious and shining spirit which has risen up to the heavenly realm to enjoy the eternal life... the consciousness or immaterial part of the person after the transfiguration of the Ba.” (Gertrud Englund  – Akh  – A Religious Concept in Pharaonic Egypt 1978).

From my “The Woman with the Alabaster Box:”

“This Egyptian concept of the “Divine Union” of the Ba (soul) with the Ka (spark) to animate the Akh (effective spirit) is mirrored in the general Gnostic view of the nature of the “transfigured” or “risen Christ” as opposed to the physical resuscitation from death, and appears derivative of it. We see this especially when comparing Mary’s encounter with the transfigured Christ related in the gospels with the passages in The Gospel of Mary, a Gnostic text. It also appears that Jesus was the Gnostic shower of “the way” in this regard, his teaching, in essence, being that such transfiguration is possible for all, and not solely limited to himself.

Also, the Egyptian concept of the vital spark, the Ka, within its “house” the Khabs, is integral to the Gnostic and Kabbalistic doctrines, which tell us that we all contain a shard or spark of the divine Light of “the All”, “the Entirety”, or “Pleroma” within each of us after a sort of primordial “shattering”. These Divine Sparks are said to have “fallen” from the immaterial spiritual world, involving and manifesting the bodies of all sentient life, culminating with sapient human beings who might perceive it and perhaps reconnect with their divine source.”

Speaking of Gnosis, those unfamiliar with the early Christian Gnostics and the how and why of their gospels being labeled heretical and viciously stamped out by the Roman church after it became the official state religion, I heartily suggest “The Gnostic Gospels” by academic scholar Elaine Pagels. In it, she documents the fascinating story of the 1945 discovery of Gnostic codexes in a cave or tomb in nearby Nag Hammadi, Egypt (a short distance from sacred Abydos), and goes on to show how their content upsets the apple cart of Roman Christian dogma (see The Nag Hammadi Library). Being a Catholic herself, she sees Gnosticism as neither the end of — nor as a replacement for contemporary Christianity, but rather as an important foundation from which to forge a path forward. I couldn’t agree more.

As for “religion,” Jesus says in verse 2 of “The Gnostic Gospel of Thomas,” written circa 30 CE:

“Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled he will be astonished, and he will rule over the all.”

And so, Thelema is the birthright of every sentient being — to seek, find, and do their will. In this seeking, it is all about the journey… and Self Gnosis.

On the Contemporary Criticism of Crowley:

Now we can chew a little fat and add some grist for the mill.

Aleister Crowley is still often referred to as "the wickedest man in the world," a tabloid epithet stemming primarily from his larger–than–life personality, occult writings, and spiritual beliefs that challenged the societal norms and traditional religious values of his time. To be sure, Crowley's flamboyant and provocative lifestyle was controversial and even shocking to the gentile society in the post–Victorian era in which he lived.

Besides his occupation with the occult, he was vocally defiant against Christianity and the prevailing Victorian prudishness toward sexual subjects. He was openly promiscuous with both genders while homosexuality was still illegal in Britain, and his involvement in secret societies and sex magic, coupled with his experimentation with the novel entheogens cannabis and mescaline, all contributed to the perception of him as depraved and immoral in the eyes of his British contemporaries. As a final ignominy, he suffered from heroin and morphine addiction later in life due to chronic health problems. Despite all this, while Crowley did detest Christianity, he was an immensely religious and spiritual person, and his writings all attest to that in no small way. He was 50 years ahead of his time, and undoubtedly influenced the subsequent counterculture of the 60s.

Crowley's reputation was to a significant extent based on sensationalism and exaggeration by the tabloid press and his critics, which he often encouraged for notoriety. And while Crowley certainly courted controversy by billing himself “The Beast 666,” deliberately cultivating the dangerous image of an anti–Christian rebel and provocateur, his actual spiritual beliefs and practices were far more nuanced and complex than the caricature of evil that was often attributed to him. Nowadays, Crowley is generally recognized as a misunderstood and complex genius who made significant contributions to the occult and Western Esoteric Traditions, playing an influential role in the 60s counterculture. While his lifestyle and beliefs were certainly unconventional in his day, his writings and teachings continue to be studied and respected by many scholars and practitioners of contemporary esotericism and spirituality. It has been said: 111 HIMOG cannot be wrong!

There are, however, five main criticisms of Crowley and his work that we should address here: 1) the questioned originality of his version of Thelema, 2) his anti–Christianism, and 3) his sexual libertinism, 4) his alleged social Darwinism, and 5) his role in the dissolution of the Golden Dawn and the breaking of his oath of secrecy with them. Let's take a look, shall we?

As for his originality with the use of the word and concept of Thelema, based on his general erudition, I can’t imagine Alester Crowley hitting the library after writing “The word of the Law is θέλημα (Thelema). Who calls us Thelemites will do no wrong, if he look but close into the word.” Whether or not he knew about the following before looking closely, is hard to ascertain. His critics claim a form of philosophical plagiarism. He might have encountered these instances in his Cambridge studies beforehand, or his research afterward, but let’s face it, they’re obscure, and many latter–day Thelemites are still completely unaware of them.

First, in the mid–18th century, Sir Francis Dashwood inscribed the adage “Do what thou wilt” over the doorway of his abbey at Medmenham, where it served as the motto of the Hellfire Club.

Second, a female character named "Thelemia" appears in the “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili” by the Renaissance–era Dominican friar and author Francesco Colonna. The protagonist Poliphilo has two allegorical guides, Logistica (reason) and Thelemia (will or desire). When forced to choose, he chooses fulfillment of his sexual will over logic.

In the third instance, possibly inspired by Colonna, the ex–Franciscan friar and writer François Rabelais used Thélème (Thelema) as the name of a fictional Abbey in his 1564 comic novel, “Gargantua and Pantagruel.” This Abbey was also referred to by later authors Sir Walter Besant and James Rice, in their 1878 novel “The Monks of Thelema.” In “Gargantua and Pantagruel,” the “Abbey of Thélème” was taken over by a giant called Gargantua, who traveled over Europe ending wars and freeing prisoners. His simple rule for the Abbey was "fais ce que tu voudras," which translates to “do what thou wilt.” Enjoy, if you will, Rabelais’s description of how the “Thelemites” of the Abbey lived:

"All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their beds when they thought good; they did eat, drink, labour, sleep, when they had a mind to it and were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor to do any other thing; for so had Gargantua established it. In all their rule and strictest tie of their order there was but this one clause to be observed, 'Do What Thou Wilt'; because men that are free, well–born, well–bred*, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after things forbidden and to desire what is denied us."

*This language is often flagged as suggestive of the sort of social Darwinism that Crowley was often accused of, when all it really means is being born into a happy and financially secure home without any congenital mental defects or disease. Crowley’s talk elsewhere of “improving the race” in this regard means the human race, not its white color variants.

Did Crowley know about Rabelais’s Utopia before writing The Book of Law? Nobody knows for sure. Perhaps… I suppose it would be profound if he did. He was well–read at Cambridge. It wasn’t a critique from among his academic peers until he was well into his magickal career. The goddess Nuit sure appears to have been aware of Thelema and “Do what thou wilt,” but hey, she's a divine being! Meanwhile, we have no documentation that Crowley knew about Rabelais’ Abbey of Thélème beforehand, and while it certainly may be important, it doesn’t matter either way if Gargantua influenced his vision, or the naming of his Abbey at Cefalu, or the writing of Liber Oz, before, during, or after the writing of Liber Legis. One might wonder about the need for secret societies and initiation degrees at all after reading Rabelais’s account! Even if he was previously aware of it, the Egyptian transmission through Rose shows that the Neteru were trying to speak to him in a language he would understand and relate to; as Crowley tells us, they intimately knew his innermost thoughts. This may be an example. Does it mean Crowley made up the whole of The Book of Law? Not at all. Does it mean he was previously inspired by Rabelais? Probably. It could have already been in his subconscious, or it could have been percolating in his mind at the time. He certainly discusses it unabashedly in his writings. These are universal ideas in the ether after all, and nobody can claim ownership of them.

As for the critique of his sexual libertinism, anti–Christianism, and allegations of his social Darwinism, let's use this overview by critic Marco Pasi from “Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics” as a platform to lay out the issues.

“The first element is primarily centred around the question of sexual freedom. Crowley inveighs against the “bourgeois” (i.e. Christian) concept of sexuality, and above all against marriage. All people must be allowed to pursue their own sexuality freely, without rules imposed from the outside, exclusively on the basis of their own inclinations. In this domain, absolute and unconditional individual liberty must reign. In this regard, one can sense Nietzsche’s influence, and indeed he is expressly cited.”

I, for one, support unconditional sexual liberation in theory, as long as it’s always between fully aware and consenting adult parties, and causes no untoward physical or mental harm. And as long as it's kept private! Beyond that crosses the border of criminality. That being said, I also regard a few of Crowley’s higher–degree OTO initiation rituals to be a form of sexual totalitarianism. The Law may be for all, but these ordeals sure aren’t; in fact, they’re unnecessarily severe, subject to abuse, and even toxic as far as I’m concerned. I can understand the teachings of the Hindu Aghora, but it seems to me that Crowley’s sex magic rites are suspiciously selective for sociopathy, sadomasochism, and/or a breaking of the aspirant’s will in the higher ranks. In other words, methinks the gentlemen doth protest Christian prudery too much.

As Rabelais wrote: “Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after things forbidden and to desire what is denied us."

That’s fine for Crowley and the Marquis de Sade with their “shadow work” on their psychological complexes, and for others who might share them to that degree I suppose, but not everybody does. Therefore, it is here where he and the Order rightfully deserve criticism for keeping such rites secret until the aspirant had gone thus far in a magickal society whose “Law is for all.” Again, it’s sexual totalitarianism, pure and simple. Mysticism is about remembrance, and a return to “that noble disposition by which they formerly were inclined to virtue.” The Egyptians call it Ma’at, and that, when all is said and done, is true Thelema.

In both the mundane and spiritual guru worlds, it’s similar to the “horny celibate” in Ram Dass’s teachings, except in this case, it’s the “horny libertine.” While one tries to repress it, the other attempts to sublimate it, and yet both remain equally horny. Or like the ex–smoker who hates smokers and vice versa. And while statements like “I hate Christian prudes” by the sexually liberated secular person may, at first blush, seem as unfair as the Christian fundamentalist that slut shames them, both have their roots deep in nearly 2,000 years of institutionalized religious restriction and demonization of sex. In this case, Crowley’s lifelong rebellion against the sexually repressive Victorian Christian environment he grew up in was entirely understandable, even though it was hopelessly out of place at the time, and still is even to this day among about a third of the Western population. Thus, we have the continued criticism of Crowley’s sexual libertinism.

Only now are a majority of folks ready to objectively see how liberating the “sexual revolution” of the 60s was, as well as recognize its folly, with the upper–degree OTO initiation rituals perhaps representing the latter. Simply put, they’re as abhorrent to the spirit of Thelema as bible–thumping Christianity…  so, no thank you. These rites may be fine for someone’s personal magickal practice with other consenting adults, but to make certain forms of sexual magick a prerequisite initiation for spiritual enlightenment is distinctly cultish. The same by the way, goes for Wicca. Some love it, others not so much.

Having said all that, such practices hearken back to the creation/fertility rites performed in the ancient temples, and so a true sexual liberation must necessarily include sex as a spiritual and even religious act of communion and union, and this is what they have right. We see such practices in the early East Indian Vedanta and Hindu Shiva/Shakti traditions, the Tantric Buddhist practices, the office of “God’s wife” in the Egyptian and Sumerian temples, the Heiros Gamos or Holy Wedding in the Greek religion, and the Jewish/Gnostic Union of the Shekinah Bride with the Messiah Bridegroom. But there is no room for the goddess, priestess, or sex as a sacrament in the patriarchy, and hasn’t been for over two millennia. That will have to change.

This ties into the politically charged issue of women's rights as well. The harmful legal controls over a woman’s body, over whom one may marry or have children with, or with what gender one may identify, or how we may explore our sexuality and consciousness — draconian laws heavy–handedly enacted by the Christian theocrats, is truly beneath contempt in Thelema. Nobody is telling them what to believe, but they’re busy buying justice appointments and making laws that restrict non–believers' sovereign liberties, intentionally blurring the division of church and state. This is what the Law of Thelema addresses most directly here. Sexual repression is just the tip of the iceberg of Christian nationalist autocracy.

As to the Nietzsche sneer, Pasi is referring to the now disproven claim that he was a social Darwinist, i.e. a Nazi. Undoubtedly, Crowley was influenced by Nietzsche, and rightly so, because his advanced philosophical theories tie in so well with Thelema. From Wiki: “The Nazis attempted to incorporate Nietzsche’s concept (of the “Ubermensch” or Superman) into their (white supremacist) ideology by means of taking Nietzsche's figurative form of speech and creating a literal superiority over other ethnicities. After his death, Elisabeth Förster–Nietzsche became the curator and editor of her brother's manuscripts. She reworked Nietzsche's unpublished writings to fit her own German nationalist ideology while often contradicting or obfuscating Nietzsche's stated opinions, which were explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism. Through her published editions, Nietzsche's work became associated with fascism and Nazism; 20th–century scholars contested this interpretation of his work and corrected editions of his writings were soon made available.”

I hereby rest my case on whether or not Nietzsche, and in turn, Crowley, were social Darwinists or Nazis, but I will let Pasi continue:

“A strong component of social Darwinism is also perceptible, very probably absorbed by Crowley during his years of study at Cambridge. The various references to the “weak”, who must be exterminated by the “strong”, and toward whom no compassion must be shown, are highly significant. And among the authors Crowley refers to in his commentaries we find Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), the most influential proponent of social Darwinism in England, specifically in connection with the “unfit.” Although ideas of this kind are almost entirely restricted to Neo–Nazi movements, in those days—especially before WWI—they were fairly widespread among various groups, especially in progressive and leftist circles.”

Here we have the same old difficulty with somebody taking the words from the Book of Law out of context, as if they were ideas exclusively from Crowley’s mind, rather than a prophetic message from 26th Dynasty Egyptian god forms. Issues like this are easily dispatched with a healthy dose of Egyptology and a spiritually opened eye. There is also an understanding that the “weak” in Liber Legis are metaphors for elements of one’s own psyche that are unfit and must be purged. Much of the book tends to cross planes like this. We have already discussed such militaristic passages as Pasi notes from Liber Legis concerning the Egyptian dispensation.

This isn’t to say that Crowley didn’t take the sayings as carte–blanc for his take on social Darwinism, for good or ill. Even so, his interpretation was about spiritually evolving consciousness — not a “superior race,” but a more spiritually connected and thereby “superior human race.” Understandably, materialists and atheists have a hard time getting this. Like it or not, he and Liber Legis sought to prepare us for an eventual battle, spiritually and materially, inner and outer, against such restrictive forces as Christian nationalism, and the materialism that stupefies and binds the masses, the “slaves that serve.” Which side are you on?

It’s a conundrum Crowley often found himself in. For example, on the eve of WWII, Hitler’s interest in the occult and the possibility of harnessing magic to his cause had turned him on to Crowley’s writings, and the martial passages from Liber Legis earned Thelema a cadre of Nazi disciples in Germany. Horrified by what he saw was about to take place, Crowley broke with them utterly with a strongly worded letter suggesting that “Germans are to Jews as apes are to men,” likely referencing what he viewed as the spiritually more evolved Hebrew Kabbalah compared to the German “fatherland” paganism that spawned the fascist movement. One can only imagine the Fuhrer’s ire. After Hitler banned Liber Al vel Legis, OTO Treasurer Karl Germer was arrested by the Gestapo while visiting his homeland in Germany and spent the rest of the war in concentration camps. This is the same problem we see today with white nationalism amongst certain individuals in the ranks of the OTO chanting “Jews will not replace us!” while muttering sotto voce, “… but we sure do love their Kabbalah!”

It's true that the martial elements of the “strong stamping down the weak” can be unnerving in Liber Legis, and sound like social Darwinism — that is until it is turned back on the accuser. It must be understood that the book describes metaphorically, prophetically, and directly what we are facing today — a literal battle between the “weak” and “unfit”, i.e. the blind fascist forces of unyielding white Christian nationalism and unbridled autocratic capitalism, against the “strong,” i.e. those who support returning power to the people, democracy, and liberty above all, a conflict going back nearly two millennia. Folks will have to face it again soon enough when they discover after push comes to shove and the first shots are fired in their direction, that pacifism is pathological in the face of survival against these predators. And that makes The Book of Law prophetic, not social Darwinism, and very relevant indeed, be it manifest or metaphor. It may seem all Doom and Gloom but ‘tis better to be prepared than sorry.

Pasi goes on:

“Perfectly in line with this theory, Crowley claims that the dominance of the stronger over the weaker is not so much an ethical question as a biological one… There was a time when natural selection was able to act undisturbed, and “the race, as such, consequently improved.” But then Christianity overturned this equilibrium, and “the unfit crowded and contaminated the fit.” This has been made even worse in recent times thanks to the propagation of an image of Jesus as “the pacifist, the conscientious objector, the Tolstoyan, the passive leader,” put forward as a model for life.

For this reason the struggle against Christianity must be radical and merciless; no compromises can be made. Crowley then wonders whether it would not be better to directly exterminate the Christians, whom he calls “parasites of man”, and also the Jews, who fundamentally belong to the same religious stock… it may be hard to believe that Crowley literally meant what he was saying.”

Crowley may or may not have meant it literally, but I can’t say that I disagree with any of this, truth be told, except for the extermination part, which IS Nazi–ish if taken literally. “Enlighten” would be a better word. As for the Jews too, the fact is that Crowley was never antisemitic, and so that final assumption is completely unfounded and erroneous. But yes, Crowley did dare to stare down the 1700–year genocidal colonialist legacy of the Roman Catholic church and its spawn of Protestant, evangelical, and fundamentalist Christianity. Looking it squarely in the face he saw it for the horror it truly is — a multi–headed, authoritarian, crapulous, power–hungry medusa, intent upon the subjugation and exploitation of humanity and nature itself. He truly believed that “you are either with us or against us” in this regard, and that The Book of Law spoke directly to it… I, for one, do too.

Despite his limited knowledge about the Christian Gnostics (the Nag Hammadi codices were only discovered in 1945 a few years before his demise), his “Aeons” hypothesis shows that his acquaintance with them was not superficial. We know that he considered them a source of Rosicrucianism, which he had extensive knowledge about. Crowley knew that the Rosey Cross he put on the back of his Thoth Tarot was the Gnostic/Rosicrucian symbol of the divine Union of the Bride (Shekinah) and Bridegroom (Messiah), in the Bridal Chamber of the Heiros Gamos. He may have therefore believed, though never saying so, that Christianity could only be redeemed by returning to its Gnostic roots before Peter and Paul took it to Rome.

This was back when Christianity was still an oral tradition, back when Jesus had a human father as well as a spiritual one, was born of a woman who had sex with that human father, and who died like everyone else. Back when his followers still remembered that he was a human being, an itinerant healer, a miracle worker, and a magician (likely an Alexandria–trained Jewish Therapeut), who remembered the Jesus who upturned the tables of the money changers at the Temple and said “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Back when his adherents remembered that he was supported financially by his beloved, the anointer Mary from the Magdala temple, and how they traveled the Holy Land together, threatening the return of the divine feminine to Judaism, which had embraced monotheism and kicked their goddess out of the religion around 450 years prior. No wonder the Pharisees had him crucified and made her into a sinner and prostitute. (See my research paper “The Woman with the Alabaster Box”)

Being counter to “Love is the law,” Roman Catholicism was the anti–Christ or Demiurge in Aleister Crowley’s mind, just as it was for the Egyptian Gnostics. This is possibly why he patterned the ecclesiastical arm of the OTO as the Gnostic Catholic Church, i.e. the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica (EGC), with its Gnostic Bishops wearing the miter and bearing all the regalia. The High Ceremony of Thelema is the “Gnostic Mass,” with the Priestess, The Book of the Law, and a reproduction of The Stele of Revealing on the main Eastern altar. So, as it turns out, he wasn’t anti–Christian after all, but rather, Aleister Crowley might better be regarded as the first Gnostic Christian in Thelema!

Truthfully, there wouldn’t be a problem with Christianity at all if they weren’t so hell–bent on converting the whole wide world to their pernicious, sexually repressed patriarchy, raping the planet of her wealth, and destroying her ecosystems while they’re at it. But they were, are, and will continue to do so until they are stopped. “Live and let live” does not apply in their dogma, nor, I dare say, should it apply in our response to it when all is said and done. The Earth is Gaia, our Great Mother, and it's high time everyone started remembering this.

As Dion Fortune wrote: “Any religion without a goddess is halfway to atheism,” and in The Threefold Book of Law, the goddess comes first.

Crowley and the Golden Dawn:

Finally, concerning the criticism of Crowley for bringing about the dissolution of the Golden Dawn and breaking his oath by publishing Liber 777, I will respectfully call bullshit. The issues in the GD were primarily with ‘MacGregor’ Mathers: his alcoholism, his not showing up for knowledge lectures, and his finances. Problems in the organization began in 1895 when Mathers had a fallout with his financier, member Annie Horniman, concerning these issues, and she resigned as chief financial officer as a result. Further conflict with other Order members caused him to publish a Manifesto in 1896 demanding absolute obedience to his administration. Horniman did not comply and after refusing him funds, Mathers expelled her from the Order. Discontentment continued due to all of this, and Wescott resigned his position to Florence Farr, who by 1900 was also irreparably conflicted with Mathers, so much so that she requested that the order be dissolved. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the scandal of Mathers's revelation that Woodman had forged the “Cipher Manuscript” (the founding document of the Order) after it looked like Wescott was poised to return and take over leadership. Based upon Mathers’ erudition and a contested letter from a German RC head named Anna Sprengel, Woodman apparently concocted the document to give the group an aura of authority. Both the pretense and the loss of their connection to an authentic German Rosicrucian lineage threw the whole membership into disarray.

Add to that the deep enmity between Crowley and Yeats, exacerbated by Crowley being allowed into the Second Order and coming to Mathers’ defense financially — and the next thing you know, the Order (read: Westcott, Farr, Yeats, et al) unceremoniously expelled them both. Crowley was only guilty by close association with Mathers, along with the fact that certain gentile members didn’t like him very much in the first place. Human nature considered, we might assume that a few resented his closeness to the leader of the Order and rapid rise through the grades — if they weren’t outright jealous. Adding insult to injury, Yeats then took control of the organization, reinstating Horniman. One cannot blame Crowley for being bitter about it.

Then, in 1901 a certain Madame Horos and company deceived the Order and made off with their documents. When the authorities later charged them for an unrelated offense, they claimed to be leaders of the Golden Dawn. During the legal process, the GD was discredited in the tabloids and most of their private information was made public. This ordeal fractured the order into four smaller organizations: Mathers’ Alpha et Omega, Crowley’s A∴A∴, Waite’s Isis–Urania, and after a few false starts, a group of Yeats followers who started the Stella Matutina (Star of the Morning). All were equally valid offshoots intended to continue the Great Work of the Golden Dawn in their own way after the blowup.

Therefore Crowley, in truth, had very little at all to do with the dissolution of the Golden Dawn. In addition to being unfairly expelled, his was a solemn oath of secrecy to an Order founded upon a forgery. The young magician had already availed himself of Mathers’ revelatory publication “The Kabbalah Unveiled” a year before even joining the GD, which would have accelerated his rise through the grades without the alleged favoritism of Mathers. Additionally, Crowley was a Second Order Adeptus Minor, and a Master of England at the time of the schism.

Perhaps tellingly, besides the A∴A∴, no temples with an original Golden Dawn lineage have survived past the 1970s. Now, after all the dust has settled, we can see how Crowley had as much of a right as any of the others to use the GD system in his Order, with its “true attributions” (read: the Order initiation degrees) of the 10 Sephiroth and 22 Hebrew letters of their connective Paths of the Tree of Life, (which were, by the way, derived from the Masons and SRIA, and were the result of Mathers genius — see David Allen Hulse “The Western Mysteries”). But, according to his oath of secrecy, not so much in publishing them; though honestly, the amount he borrowed was eclipsed by his erudite additions. As to the issue of breaking his oath of secrecy with Liber 777, I’ll let Crowley himself do the talking:

“All this secrecy is very silly. An indicible (unspeakable, inexpressible) Arcanum is an arcanum that cannot be revealed. It is simply bad faith to swear a man to the most horrible penalties if he betray …, etc., and then take him mysteriously apart and confide the Hebrew Alphabet to his safekeeping. This is perhaps only ridiculous; but it is wicked imposture to pretend to have received it from Rosicrucian manuscripts which are to be found in the British Museum. To obtain money on these grounds, as has been done by certain moderns, is clear (and I trust, indictable) fraud.

The secrets of Adepts are not to be revealed to men. We only wish they were. When a man comes to me and asks for the Truth, I go away and practice teaching Differential Calculus to a Bushman; and I answer the former only when I have succeeded in the latter. But to withhold the Alphabet of Mysticism from the learner is the device of a selfish charlatan. That which can be taught shall be taught, and that which cannot be taught may at last be learnt.” ~ Preface of Liber 777

I am sure many of you are as grateful as I am for Aleister Crowley’s publishing of Liber 777. There would be no Western Esoteric Qabalah without him — and Macgregor Mathers.

As for those claiming Gnostic or Rosicrucian roots who take a dim view of Crowley and Thelema in the Western Esoteric Traditions — as I note elsewhere in my About The English Cabala — 111:

“The way I see it, Western Esoteric groups like the BOTA and the current so–called Golden Dawn groups, who ostracize and demonize Crowley and his followers while still utilizing the fruit of the great man’s work without crediting him, are simply being hypocritical and narrow–minded, if not mean–spirited, despite what they believe to be true — real or imagined. It seems they at least owe him credit for his Qabalistic erudition, from which they all have borrowed wholesale, along with the caveat of their disapproval. I judge the Tree by its Fruit. Nobody’s perfect, one might suppose.

I learned early on that Thelema was often frowned upon by other Mystery Traditions; not only because of what they think Crowley’s role was in the dissolution of the Golden Dawn and his supposed spilling the beans on much of their “secret” Qabalistic teachings in his Liber 777, but mostly due to his bad reputation, especially in the sexual realm. Some contentions are real, of course, but most are tabloid fabrications — leading to the ridiculous accusations of human sacrifice from people who don’t know his wry humor and actual Great Work.  

And so, it is all quite understandably too much for most folks to deal with, secular or religious alike, even esoteric groups like the BOTA, GD, AMORC, et al. Quite honestly, I have no problem at all with that — the man had his downsides no doubt. However, I feel that he has been overly and unfairly marginalized by their promotion of the sordid at the expense of the truth, which they all would do well to discover. My personal practice of Thelema was never really about most of Crowley’s Order rituals and initiation ordeals anyway. I never became a member. For me, it was always about the Book of Law, the words of the Egyptian Neteru, and my own Thelema, first and foremost. Everything else follows, including Crowley’s writings — both the sublime and the ridiculous. I still regard him, far more for good than for ill, as a beloved “spiritual father”.”

My objective take on Crowley, the brilliant and all–too–human man, is that he began veering off the rails not long after taking charge of the OTO in 1921. Intoxicated with his semi–Masonic authority and power, his already overbearing personality and messiah complex, coupled with increasing abuse of opioids both illicit and prescribed likely had some influence. This is when the more lurid tales started coming in. In some ways, I view it as a result of mental overload, especially when reviewing the vast library he authored. Even so, there is absolutely no denying his genius, his integral role in the reception of The Threefold Book of Law, and his indelible influence on the Western Esoteric Traditions and the so–called counter–culture to this day.

Of course, this should not suggest that I agree with him on every point. I don’t believe his experience in Cairo was the “first” with a “new order of beings” as he claims, although it surely was an important one. The ancient Egyptians called them the Neteru, and their priests understood the spiritual technology of communion, union, and transcendence through them. The Neteru want us to Remember, as many people do after visiting the temple ruins of ancient Egypt, with no need for The Threefold Book of Law. It just happened to be what drew me to Egypt in the first place…  Sekhau!

As for the objective reality of these Neteru, these words from Alan Watts in his “Becoming What You Are,” express it well:

“The ancient paths of mysticism and occultism resolved the problem of the Unconscious from the very beginning, even before it became a problem, for their first requirement was that man should know himself. Whereat he very quickly found that the huge, brute forces of Nature had their counterparts in his soul, that his being was not a simple unit but a pantheon of gods and demons. In fact, all the deities of the ancient theologies were known to the initiated as the inhabitants not of Olympus but of the human soul. They were not mere products of man's imagination any more than his heart, lungs, and stomach are products of his imagination. On the contrary, they were very real forces belonging both to Nature, the macrocosm, and man, the microcosm. Occultism was thus the art of living with one's gods and demons, and you had to know how to deal with them in yourself before you could deal with them in the universe.”

And so I will finish “About Thelema” with Crowley’s own words on what The Book of Law ultimately meant to him, with the above caveat — from the same Chapter 49 of his Confessions:

“THE CLAIM OF THE BOOK OF THE LAW IN RESPECT OF RELIGION.

The importance of religion to humanity is paramount. The reason is that all men perceive more of less the “First Noble Truth” — that everything is sorrow; and religion claims to console them by an authoritative denial of this truth or by promising compensations in other states of existence. This claim implies the possibility of knowledge derived from sources other than the unaided investigation of nature through the senses and the intellect. It postulates, therefore, the existence of one or more praeter-human intelligences, able and willing to communicate, through the medium of certain chosen men, to mankind a truth or truths which could not otherwise be known. Religion is justified in demanding faith, since the evidence of the senses and the mind cannot confirm its statements. The evidence from prophecy and miracle is valid only in so far as it goes to the credit of the man through whom the communication is made. It establishes that he is in possession of knowledge and power different, not only in degree but in kind, from those enjoyed by the rest of mankind.

The history of mankind teems with religious teachers. These may be divided into three classes.

1. Such men as Moses as Mohammed state simply that they have received a direct communication from God. They buttress their authority by diverse methods, chiefly threats and promises guaranteed by thaumaturgy; they resent the criticism of reason.

2. Such men as Blake and Boehme claimed to have entered into direct communication with discarnate intelligence which may be considered as personal, creative, omnipotent, unique, identical with themselves or otherwise. Its authority depends on “the interior certainty” of the seer.

3. Such teachers as Lao-Tzu, the Buddha and the highest Gnana-yogis announce that they have attained to superior wisdom, understanding, knowledge and power, but make no pretense of imposing their views on mankind. They remain essentially sceptics. They base their precepts on their own personal experience, saying, in effect, that they have found that the performance of certain acts and the abstention from others created conditions favourable to the attainment of the state which has emancipated them. The wiser they are, the less dogmatic. Such men indeed formulate their transcendental conception of the cosmos more or less clearly; they may explain evil as illusion, etc., but the heart of their theory is that the problem of sorrow has been wrongly stated, owing to the superficial or incomplete data presented by normal human experience through the senses, and that it is possible for men, but virtue of some special training (from Asana to Ceremonial Magick), to develop in themselves a faculty superior to reason and immune from intellectual criticism, by the exercise of which the original problem of suffering is satisfactorily solved.

The Book of the Law claims to comply with the conditions necessary to satisfy all three types of inquirer.

Firstly, it claims to be a document not only verbally, but literally inspired. “Change not as much as the style of a letter; for behold! thou, o prophet, shalt not behold all these mysteries hidden therein.” … “This book shall be translated into all tongues: but always with the original in the writing of the Beast; for in the chance shape of the letters and their position to one another: in these are mysteries that no Beast shall divine. Let him not seek to try: but one cometh after him, whence I say not, who shall discover the Key of it all.”

The author claims to be a messenger of the Lord of the Universe and therefore to speak with absolute authority.

Secondly, it claims to be the statement of transcendental truth, and to have overcome the difficulty of expressing such truth in human language by what really amounts to the invention of a new method of communicating thought, not merely a new language, but a new type of language; a literal and numerical cipher involving the Greek and Hebrew Cabbalas, the highest mathematics etc. It also claims to be the utterance of an illuminated mind co-extensive with the ultimate ideas of which the universe is composed.

Thirdly, it claims to offer a method by which men may arrive independently at the direct consciousness of the truth of the contents of the Book; enter into communication directly on their own initiative and responsibility with the type of intelligence which informs it, and solve all their personal religious problems.

Generally, The Book of the Law claims to answer all possible religious problems. One is struck by the fact that so many of them are stated and settled separately in so short a space.

To return to the general question of religion. The fundamental problem has never been explicitly stated. We know that all religions, without exception, have broken down at the first test. The claim of religion is to complete, and (incidentally) to reverse, the conclusions of reason by means of a direct communication from some intelligence superior in kind to that of any incarnate human being. I ask Mohammed, “How am I to know that the Koran is not your own compilation?”

It is impertinent to answer that the Koran is so sublime, so musical, so true, so full of prophecies which time has fulfilled and confirmed by so many miraculous events that Mohammed could not have written it himself.

The author of The Book of the Law foresaw and provided against all such difficulties by inserting in the text discoveries which I did not merely not make for years afterwards, but did not even possess the machinery for making. Some, in fact, depend upon events which I had no part in bringing about.

It may be said that nevertheless there may have been someone somewhere in the world who possessed the necessary qualities. This again is rebutted by the fact that some of the allusions are to facts known to me alone. We are forced to conclude that the author of The Book of the Law is an intelligence both alien and superior to myself, yet acquainted with my inmost secrets; and, most important point of all, that this intelligence is discarnate.

The existence of true religion presupposes that of some discarnate intelligence, whether we call him God or anything else. And this is exactly what no religion had ever proved scientifically. And this is what The Book of the Law does prove by internal evidence, altogether independent of any statement of mine. This proof is evidently the most important step in science that could possibly be made: for it opens up an entirely new avenue to knowledge. The immense superiority of this particular intelligence, AIWASS, to any other with which mankind has yet been in conscious communication is shown not merely by the character of the book itself, but by the fact of his comprehending perfectly the nature of the proof necessary to demonstrate the fact of his own existence and the conditions of that existence. And, further, having provided the proof required.

THE CLAIM OF THE BOOK OF THE LAW TO OPEN UP COMMUNICATIONS WITH DISCARNATE INTELLIGENCE.

In the above section I have shown that the failure of previous religions is due, not so much to hostile criticism, but to their positive defect. They have not made good their claim. It has been shown above that The Book of the Law does demonstrate the prime position of religion in the only possible way. The only possible argument, on the other side, is that the communication cannot have been made by a discarnate intelligence, because there are none such. That indeed constitutes the supreme importance of The Book of the Law. But there is no a priori reason for doubting the existence of such beings. We have long been acquainted with many discarnate forces. Especially in the last few years science has been chiefly occupied with the reactions, not merely of things which cannot be directly perceived by sense, but of forces which do not possess being at all in the old sense of the word.

Yet the average man of science still denies the existence of the elementals of the Rosicrucian, the angels of the Cabbalist, the Nats, Pisachas and Devas of southern Asia, and the Jinn of Islam, with the same blind misosophy as in Victorian days. It has apparently not occurred to him that his position in doubting the existence of consciousness except in connection with certain types of anatomical structure is really identical with that of the narrowest geocentric and anthropocentric Evangelicals.

Our actions may be unintelligible to plants, they might plausibly argue that we are unconscious. Our real reason for attributing consciousness to our fellow-men is that the similarity of our structure enables us to communicate by means of language, and as soon as we invent a language in which we can talk to anything soever, we begin to find evidence of consciousness.

It was therefore clear for me to come forward and assert positively that I have opened up communication with one such intelligence; or, rather, that I have been selected by him to receive the first message from a new order of beings.”

~ ~ ~

Now, I do not for a moment believe that this is the first message, nor that the order of beings is in any way “new,” except to those who have yet to connect with them. It is my own true Thelema to do what I can to properly present both Thelema and The Threefold Book of Law in a clear way that is fair to its scribe, who has suffered greatly for his often rash bravery; and faithful to the Egyptian Neteru who delivered this message to him, and to us in turn.

Most importantly, I wanted to be sure that Rose Kelly Crowley is given full credit for her altogether crucial role in the reception, so often neglected in the past. As Dion Fortune admonished “Any religion without a goddess is halfway to atheism.” And every goddess, including Nuit, needs a priestess.

“Invoke me under my stars! Love is the law, love under will.” “At all my meetings with you shall the priestess say - and her eyes shall burn with desire as she stands bare and rejoicing in my secret temple - To me! To me! calling forth the hearts of all in her love-chant.”

Sekhau!

May my Will be done.

In Ma’at,

Shane

About Thelema and the Threefold Book of Law © 2022-24 R. Shane Clayton (except where noted) - Wandering Stars Publishing

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Wandering Stars is dedicated to expounding the Sacred Science of Ancient Egypt

In memory and in honor of John Anthony West

Born July 9, 1932 - Wested February 6, 2018

AUM