The second act of worship listed in the Hadith of Gabriel is salāt, “the prayer.” This Arabic term does not refer generically to occasional or spontaneous prayers of thanksgiving, imprecation, and so forth. Those prayers instead are designated as du’ā. Salāt is the required daily regimen of prayer at the five appointed times of early morning, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, and evening. Observing salāt requires that the adherent be ritually pure, face a particular direction (qibla), and perform a very specific sequence of invocations, with prescribed bodily postures, along with recitals from the Quran and perhaps a du’ā or two as components of the larger salāt.

Crowley’s admiration of and interest in the practice of salāt was expressed in his poem “The Five Adorations,” published under the pen-name Dost Achiha Khan ( in the Autumn 1909 Equinox ).

But it wasn’t until 1910 that Crowley publicly issued his basic ritual for a salāt sort of worship among Thelemites. This “Liber Resh vel Helios sub figura CC” is prescribed for aspirants and initiates of both A.'.A.'. and O.T.O. Later curricular summaries describe it as an “instruction for adoration of the Sun four times daily, with the object of composing the mind to meditation and of regularizing the practices,” and a “highly important magical ritual for daily use and work.” Resh (as I will call it here for short) differs from the Muslim salāt by requiring only four, rather than five, sessions of prayer each day. It is also--from the Muslim perspective--blasphemously polytheistic, even in the instruction to “assume the God-form of Whom thou adorest, as if thou didst unite with Him in adoration of That which is beyond Him.” Interestingly, however, Muslim sources affirm the continuity of the prayer-times of salāt with the custom of pre-Islamic Arabic paganism. The synchronization was intended to force on the earliest Muslims an exclusive choice between Muhammad’s din and that of his tribal forebears. Crowley's "Five Adorations" poem, no less than Resh, seems to tie salāt back to its origins in solar worship.

Like the Muslim salāt, Resh is tightly regulated in terms of speech, thought and physical gesture, and yet affords room for variations based on traditional instruction and individual choice. There are two general tasks that complete the Thelemic ritual, in the form of the “adoration” and “holy meditation.” The stanzas from the Stele of Revealing as paraphrased in chapter III of Liber Legis seem to have become the global default option for the “adoration,” which is, however, supposed to be “taught thee by thy Superior” among initiates. “Holy meditation” is left undefined, and Crowley’s remark about “regularizing the practices” suggests that it might consist of one of the yoga exercises from Liber E, Liber Ru, Liber HHH, or Liber Yod. But the precedent of salāt instead inclines towards the notion of reciting memorized passages from the Holy Books of Thelema.

Another important development away from the Islamic salāt is the qibla, or direction of prayer. In Islam there have been two points designated as the qibla for all worshippers. The original qibla was Jerusalem. Only after the emigration of the fledgling Muslim community from Mecca to Medina did Muhammad abrogate the Jerusalem qibla in favor of the Kaaba at Mecca. In Thelema, Liber Legis designates a qibla (“kiblah”) at “thy secret temple -- and that temple is already aright disposed,” (III:10) interpreted by Crowley as a reference to Boleskine House in Scotland, which he had owned at the time of the Writing of the Book. Yet Resh does not use Boleskine as its qibla. Instead, worshippers are to orient towards the actual physical location of the Sun. The same solar qibla obtains in the Mass of the Phoenix, a later (1913) ritual for daily use that could fulfill some functions of salāt.

Boleskine only comes to serve as a proper qibla in the Gnostic Mass (1918) and the Ritual of the Mark of the Beast (1921 at the earliest—possibly as late as 1928). Each of these latter two rituals has features that invite comparison to salāt. The Ritual of the Mark of the Beast (detailed in “Liber V vel Reguli”) is “for the daily use of a Magician of whatever grade,” and could at least serve as a perpetual observance “to invoke the Energies of the Aeon of Horus.” The Gnostic Mass is, of course, based more closely on Christian models. But it inclines towards the sort of communal worship which is expressed in Islam through the weekly Friday salāt. ( Read more... )

- other posts in this series
- essay by NGMG Sabazius X° on the Boleskine kiblah