ASINUS RUMINTIS

la petite mort et son superieur inconnu

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:58:03 GMT

why do "resh"?

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:04:53 GMT

Liber Resh vel Helios sub figura CCXX

666 remarked that advanced practitioners could use this ritual to draw on the spiritual power of the sun. In my experience, this ritual properly performed has the further effect of converting the power of the physical rotation of the earth--which produces the effect of the motion of the sun--into the practitioner's spiritual aspiration to (or communion with) his or her star, i.e. personal genius. It effectively induces a current through the continual observation of the circular motion of the outer world, propelling the ritualist on a linear path of interior initiation. "O my darling, I also wait for the brilliance of the hour ineffable, when the universe shall be like a girdle for the midst of the ray of our love, extending beyond the permitted end of the endless One." --Liber LXV, IV:64

The key to all this success can be found in the oft-neglected points 5 & 6 of the ritual.

The practice rests on the work of 666 in practical comparative religion, applying the most potent techniques of the religions of the Old Aeon to the Work of the New. Let us thus witness to the power of our Father the Sun openly in the marketplaces and secretly in the chambers of our houses.

BO OKs MD-RXd MJ

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:04:40 GMT

For crying out loud, what took this so long? I know a three-page federal policy directive isn't like writing a book review, but it's a simple, humane, cost-saving reform that the Obama DOJ could implement all on its own in a straightforward command hierarchy.

Well, it's some good news anyhow.

vegetation of the gnosis

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:41:14 GMT

The stages of vegetation pronounced by the Priest on the first step of the dais in the Ceremony of the Introit constitute a specific formula of magick that could be applied to nearly any human enterprise, since “Every willed act is a magical act.” But the text of Liber XV directs our attention particularly toward its use in the invocation of Love as an image of the divine. We might profitably consider what Liber Nu calls the “first practice of Intelligence”: the appreciation of the rim of the Stele of Revealing as described in the stanza of Liber Legis I:14.

Above, the gemmed azure is
The naked splendour of Nuit;
She bends in ecstasy to kiss
The secret ardours of Hadit.

The growing plant, from its hidden seed to its full fruition, desires the unattainable: union with the heavens. It expresses its nature as a centrifugal striving, outwards towards Infinite Space. And yet every growth of the plant is already in space. Nuit is “above you and in you.” (CCXX I:13) The Infinite curves itself in love around every point-of-view, and the Priest’s acknowledgement of love as the divine image, of love as the law, is an invocation that transports him to the embrace of heaven.

Happy Crowleymas

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:48:37 GMT

Not all the filth of London is thick enough to hide me from the Eye of God: & by that Ray I live.
--Aleister Crowley

There has been an update at Vigorous Food and Divine Madness, including materials from NOTOCON VII.

Special thanks to scarletstar777 and Kikhos ba-Midhbar, among other novices, whose conversations helped to prompt and inform the new Addenda to Advice for Deacons.

As a special bonus for the Lesser Feast of the Prophet, lammassu has completed the set of four Aum. Ha. Oasis Resh videos, with yours truly as imam.

Review: Occult America, by Mitch Horowitz

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 21:29:09 GMT

Occult America by Mitch Horowitz is engaging, entertaining, and educational. It is not, however--despite the assertion of its subtitle--"the secret history of how mysticism shaped our nation." For one thing, it is not a single history; it is a bricolage of tangentially-related sketches and investigations regarding a topic that Horowitz never manages to subject to any theoretical treatment, nor to encompass with a larger narrative. (An earlier attempt that did succeed in this regard is Catherine Albanese's A Republic of Mind and Spirit.) The closest he comes to answering his own initial question "What is the occult?" is to propose that it comprehends all those techniques and teachings that purport to put people in communication with an "unseen world." But surely many of the most common and non-"occult" of spiritual traditions do so as well.

Although the book starts with the 18th century and ends with the 1970s, the contents don't progress in a strictly chronological fashion. In one chapter for example, Horowitz spends the first half discussing the Theosophical Society, and then goes back to describe the advent of Spiritualism in the second half. He jumps forward from there to give the full century-plus history of the Ouija Board, before returning to the early origins of New Thought in the 1830s. This lack of organization in the book is somewhat surprising, since the author's own background is as an editor, and he is currently editor-in-chief at Penguin's Tarcher imprint for metaphysical books. He contributed to the publication of the "reader's edition" of Manly P. Hall's Secret Teachings of All Ages and the trade paper issuance of The Tarot by Paul Foster Case, and when it comes to these figures, and to other trivia of American occult bibliography, Horowitz delivers fascinating and highly credible detail I have never encountered elsewhere.

In a treatment that appears to be attempting a comprehensive sketch, however, the initiatory orders of occultism are markedly absent. Horowitz derides them as being characteristic of the European occult scene, and writes as if they have had only sporadic relevance to America. The one to which he gives the most attention is the Golden Dawn, in his account of Paul Foster Case. But an otherwise-uninformed reader of Horowitz would likely get the impression that in Case's day the US only had a few fledgling Golden Dawn (really Alpha et Omega) groups, with the bulk of the Order still in England, when in fact the American membership may well have outnumbered the British at that time, just as O.T.O. (never mentioned by Horowitz) had its most populous organizing in America then--and ever since. Even AMORC, whose mail-order initiatory arrangement demonstrates so well the themes of popularization and commodification that seem to interest Horowitz, barely rates a few glancing mentions. This is a book purportedly about the deep traditions of American occultism, in which Paschal Beverly Randolph is given only passing notice, in reference to the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor--itself only briefly mentioned as background for the astrological writer C.C. Zain.

Horowitz's disdain for initiatory orders and the objects of their secrecy puts into question his offer of a "secret" history. Still, one of the high points of the volume is the chapter on "Politics and the Occult," with sometimes surprising facts regarding the role of mystics on both the right and left in mid-20th-century US politics. Although he is willing to acknowledge the connection of the occult to political ideologies he finds distasteful, Horowitz seems to be whitewashing other key features of American occultism. He does not introduce his readers to figures like sex-guru Oom the Omnipotent or professed antichrist Jack Parsons, nor does he discuss the historical intersection of occultism and drug culture.

Horowitz concludes the book with a claim that the late 20th-century New Age synthesized the occult currents of America and successfully deposited them in mainstream religion and popular culture. The thesis that the New Age Movement was heir to occultism and esotericism has been amply demonstrated in Wouter Hanegraaff's magisterial New Age Religion and Western Culture, but Horowitz glosses over the more recent fact that the piecemeal adoption of "New Age" ideas and techniques by other groups and personalities has only helped to make superfluous an ostensible movement which was always a shaky sort of coalition.

While Occult America is clearly intended for a popular audience, I think the book's greatest value will be for those who already grasp the larger historical framework of American metaphysical religion that it doesn't really clarify. Its wealth of intriguing detail kept me thoroughly interested, and its neglect of the initiatory culture of American esotericism actually makes it a valuable complement to the reading usually undertaken by those of us who have an established interest in that field.

Review: Lucid Dreaming, by Stephen LaBerge

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 21:37:05 GMT

LaBerge's highly readable treatment of this interesting topic rightly gives it much greater significance than it is generally accorded. My 1986 mass paperback copy promises on the back cover a "systematic, step-by-step program" to cultivate lucid dreaming, but that's not a fair characterization of the contents. While LaBerge does insist that lucid dreaming is trainable, and he details a couple of the most useful procedures for that purpose, the book's scope is really much broader. The author provides a full summary of the state of research on the topic up to and including his own. At least one full chapter of the book is devoted to explanations of the function and meaning of ordinary dreams, and his conclusions on these lines are both flexible and well-reasoned. The information offered is founded in sleep lab research of the late 20th century, but the presentation draws on and discusses traditional lore such as Tibetan dream yoga and Sufi teaching stories.

I did find it surprising that a researcher addressing non-ordinary states of consciousness would take the sort of pre-Ericksonian view of "hypnotizability" that LaBerge does, when insisting that hypnosis will facilitate lucidity training for only a small minority of subjects. (172) But this quibble paled beside the quantity of good sense and healthy encouragement to be found in the volume. Another surprise was the final pages' appeal for funding and participants in LaBerge's "Lucidity Project," that gave the book a faint aftertaste of old-fashioned occultist organizing and self-promotion.

An initiated sister once remarked to me her unelaborated opinion that there was no difference between lucid dreaming and the occultist practice of exploration on the astral plane. At the time, I responded with blank disagreement, it seeming obvious to me that one should not a priori subsume one phenomenon in the other without having reasonably robust experience of both. In Lucid Dreaming, LaBerge makes a more extensive and philosophical argument for including "astral projection" as a subset of dream phenomena, but he understands the original scope of the term somewhat differently than I do. Although he is clearly acquainted with the history of occultist usage, at one point summarizing the perspective of Blavatskian Theosophy, his notion is evidently informed by the parapsychological school, with an emphasis on the OBE (Out of Body Experience) as the defining feature of the category. As a lab-trained skeptic, LaBerge rightly takes a dim view of the naive OBE theory, and consequently is able to present astral projection as a "misinterpreted lucid dream." In deflation of the OBE, he aptly points out, "it would seem reasonable to suppose that we never 'leave our bodies' because we are never in them." (244)

But LaBerge offers another distinction within his (very wide!) category of lucid dreaming, that I would use to distinguish it from the astral voyage. When discussing means of achieving the paradoxical state of lucid dreaming, he identifies two essential methods: waking while dreaming and dreaming while waking. The former method, evidently preferred by him and assumed as the standard in much of the other literature on lucid dreams, is to my mind fully deserving of the "lucid dream" label. The latter method, on the other hand, despite the similarity of its results, should be distinguished as a method, and can be conveniently tagged with such traditional language as "scrying in the spirit-vision," "astral journeying," or "clairvoyant travel." Occultists too have their own term for the lucid dream proper: the Sleep of Shi-lo-am, referenced by Randolph, Blavatsky, Crowley, and others. In fact, Crowley called that state somnus lucidus, and it would be interesting to know whether there was any influence common to or crossing between him and his contemporary Frederik van Eeden, who introduced the term "lucid dream" to psychological discourse.

In fact, the method of astral projection, or in LaBerge's parlance dreaming while waking, is of peculiar value to occultists, because it
a) facilitates programming of the visionary episode through ceremonial measures, and
b) may allow for visionary phenomena ("auras" etc.) to be superimposed on external perceptions.

Since having studied more widely (with LaBerge's book as a positive contribution), and having gained more of my own experience, I would now agree that while there is value in distinguishing the methods of astral travel and lucid dream, their highest results are likely to overlap to the point of indistinction. It is not on no account that the greatest occultist of the age, in his most recondite book of esoteric theory and technique, placed his discussion of "Astral Journeys and Visions so-called" sandwiched between multiple passages on dreams. And his verdict on them could apply equally to the lucid dream:

Whereas the Direction of such Journeys is consciously willed, and determined by Reason, and also unconsciously willed, by the True Self, since without It no Invocation were possible, we have here a Cooperation or Alliance between the Inner and the Outer Self, and thus an Accomplishment, at least partial, of the Great Work. (Liber Aleph 15, de via per empyraeum)

LaBerge observes that one of the greatest possibilities to arise through lucid dreaming is "surrendering control from you you think you are to who you truly are." (269) --And lo! thou art past though the Abyss.

Hail unto thee!

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:17:19 GMT

An ongoing project of terrestrial Thelemites: World Wide Resh, thanks to the industry of lammassu.

We've generated footage for three of our four Chicago Resh videos, and probably a good out-takes segment besides. Each time we shoot, we get curiosity from bystanders. (Or, conversely, the woman so intent on her cell phone that she has to walk through the middle of the shot, and reacts with unthinking hostility when someone tries to warn her away.)

After doing noon, we were approached by a fellow in a t-shirt that proclaimed him a devout Christian. I think he was a youth pastor or something of the sort. He asked what we were about, and I happily answered him that we were Thelemites enacting a ceremony prescribed by Aleister Crowley for daily devotion to the Sun.

"Do you think it hears you?" inquired the man.

"What? Uh, of course not!" I said. Had I been in cruel godstomping mode, I would have continued: "Oh, wait--you think Jesus hears you, right? Hahahahaha." But I was in friendly promulgating mode, so I explained to him that since we're residents of the Solar System, the Sun is He in whom we live and move and have our being. That the planets are sort of like sensory organs of a grand cosmic beast with the Sun at its heart. And that we are like the eyelashes of that god. We pause four times daily to reconnect with the solar center.

"So, you don't believe in the Bible," he ventured.

"What's not to believe in? I have a shelf of Bibles at home! I probably read the Bible a lot differently than you do, is all." I mean, whoever heard of somebody saying they "don't believe in" the Odyssey, or Blake's Jerusalem?

As he walked away, he assured us: "See, I wasn't afraid to talk to you!" That seemed rather a misconstrual of our motives.

Review: Satan Wants Me, by Robert Irwin

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 02:43:02 GMT

Irwin weaves a terrific tale of the "Summer of Love Under Will": a hippy college student in London gets into more occultism than he bargains for. The story is enchanting, revolting, hilarious, nostalgic, riveting, and pathetic by turns, and the magick, the drugs and the weird sex are all pretty credible--even as outre as they become.

The entire book is written as a diary, initially undertaken as a magical record in obedience to the "Black Book Lodge," a persistent old schism (of Irwin's invention) from Crowley's A.'.A.'. The journal format is not merely an homage to or evocation of classic horror fiction like Stoker's Dracula, it is a faithful representation of the sort of document that modern magical practice actually generates. It repeatedly inspired me with envy; would that my own diary were as witty and perceptive as that of Irwin's protagonist! In that sense, it can serve as a goad for working occultists today.

The author's 1967 photo portrait on the back inside jacket (also in the background of the paperback cover) provides further evidence for the idea--which must occur to any informed reader--that he drew significantly on personal experience in constructing this delectable yarn.

I was curious, and I found out

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:06:30 GMT

Persian language

...has no grammatical gender, not even "natural" gender,

...comprehends Farsi (Iran), Tajiki (Tajikistan), and Dari (Afghanistan) among its principal dialects,

...is an Indo-European language most often written in Arabic characters (with four bonus letters not found in Arabic),

...is written in a modified Cyrillic alphabet in Tajikistan, and

...is called Fingilish or Penglish when written in Latin characters.

The 1001 Nights was based on a prior collection in Persian, and only became "Arabian" in the 9th century e.v. (The Scheherezade frame-narrative seems to date from the 14th century.)

When medieval Persia fell under the rule of the Ummayad and Abbasid caliphates, Persian was banned in favor of Arabic, but Islam remained an elite religion of the rulers. Only after the revival of Persian language and literature in the 9th and 10th centuries e.v. ("Persianization") did Islam become a popular religion throughout the region.

Use of the unique Persian alphabet, or Old Persian cuneiform, did not survive Islamicization. Old Persian was a much more inflected language, with extensive grammatical gender and eight different cases.

Hidden Wisdom

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:32:58 GMT

Iranaeus describes Gnostic biblical interpretation as "dismembering the body of truth," implying that Scripture is like a "body" encompassing the totality of truth (soma tes aletheias). By their heretical, perverse mode of reading, the Gnostics "dismember," as it were, truth.
--Guy G. Strousma (2005),
Hidden Wisdom: Esoteric Traditions and
the Roots of Christian Mysticism, p. 115

This volume, which its author admits to lack "conclusive results," doesn't overcome its origin as a collection of disparate papers and lectures on a common theme. All of the details are interesting, and often deeply considered, but there seems to be a shortage of overarching argument. At some points the book is strangely at odds with itself, most conspicuously when declaring that the "inner logic of Christian soteriology was fundamentally anti-esoteric," (133) while adducing in chapter after chapter persuasive evidence for esoteric mechanisms and doctrines in the earliest strata of Christianity.

Strousma looks at various cultural formations of late antiquity that could have been tied to (and in any case help to illuminate) the esoteric dimensions of early Christianity. Among these are Neoplatonist hermeneutics, Gnostic mythopoesis, Manicheanism, and esoteric Judaism. Strousma is especially insistent on the last of these, perhaps in (over-?) reaction to what he views as a neglect in the secular "history of religions" discipline, where the emphasis has been on Hellenistic pagan mystery cults. When he writes, "It is hard to believe in a Valentinian influence on Jewish circles," (198) my reaction is: why? Strousma himself very correctly demonstrates that "Judaism and Christianity in the second century can be perceived as sister religions, rather than standing in a filial relationship." (89)

The final chapter, new in the 2005 edition, is on "Judeo-Christian and Gnostic 'Theologies of the Name'." It should be of special interest to both ceremonial magicians and esoteric Freemasons.

The Feast of Giacomo Casanova

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:11:05 GMT

Casanova's exploits as a Freemason, faux(?)-Rosicrucian, alchemist and magical confidence-man all rest within a larger context, where the freethinker and libertine seems to have enjoyed a genuine conviction of the reality of his personal daimonic genius. Writing of his first hardships as a prisoner, Casanova reflects, "My Genius diverted himself in this fashion in order to give me the pleasure of making comparisons." The name of this Guardian Angel was
P A R A L I S.

Casanova reflects on the Mysteries.

confirming those baptized as adults

Fri, 08 May 2009 15:39:03 GMT

(promoted from a comment made in another journal)

Once in a while, I note that some people think our ceremony of confirmation in the Gnostic Catholic Church is superfluous or oxymoronic. As best as I understand it, the argument goes that since we don't inflict involuntary infant baptism on our members, they don't need to be "confirmed." I disagree with this critique, and not only (or even mostly) because of the tradition of confirmation as a cardinal sacrament of both apostolic Christian and Neognostic churches.

In primitive Christianity, adult converts went through a ceremony that included an initial exposure to the creed (and in which they also typically received bread and salt sacramentally), to inaugurate a catechumenal period in which they would prepare for full membership through baptism.

In EGC, our "baptism" takes the place of such a catechumenal ceremony, while our "confirmation" serves the role of the antique baptism, at least with respect to communal ties and individual status. It makes sense that we who are directed to "worship...with fire and blood" should have a solar and martial confirmation ceremony as the real admission to lay membership, while the watery and lunar baptism is a preliminary. (Of course, the old Piscean agenda would place the emphasis on water.)

shall we promulgate?

Fri, 08 May 2009 01:41:34 GMT

sphinxie and I are flogging the Law and our Order on the front page of Reality Sandwich.

National Day of Prayer (invoke often)

Thu, 07 May 2009 13:08:18 GMT

GLORIA PATRI RA
The lord and giver of life
Beams forth the world's nourishment
Ever-present, ever-radiant;
It is we who travel through Amenti
At nine hundred miles per hour.

GLORIA FILIO HOOR
With blood-stained spear and brilliant crown
The Child issues the decree:
Do What Thou Wilt!
The Law of the Battle of Conquest
Is a curse to be desired.

GLORIA SPIRITUI SANCTO KHUIT
The cooing of the dove
Opens the gates of Hell:
From deep within sounds the serpent's hiss,
Summoning us to joyful worship.
Our orison: HRILIU!

AUM HA

The Feast of Saint Sir Richard Payne Knight

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:24:15 GMT

Unto him may there be granted the accomplishment of his will!

The Greeks, and all the Celtic nations, accordingly, burned the bodies of the dead, as the Gentoos do at this day; while the Egyptians, among whom fuel was extremely scarce, placed them in pyramidal monuments, which were the symbols of fire; hence come those prodigious structures which still adorn that country. The soul which was to be emancipated was the divine emanation, the vital spark of heavenly flame, the principle of reason and perception, which was personified into the familiar daemon, or genius, supposed to have the direction of each individual, and to dispose him to good or evil, wisdom or folly, and all their consequences of prosperity and adversity.
(Discourse on the Worship of Priapus, ch. XI, pp. 191-2)

wow

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 13:19:31 GMT

Wow!
Wow?
Wow.

The Feast of Saint Algernon Charles Swinburne

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:05:27 GMT

Swinburne died ninety years ago today, at the age of 72. He had nigh slain himself in the fervor of his devotion to Our Lady during his early forties, but lingered respectably upon Mispec Moor long enough to be still living when bits of Atalanta in Calydon were hijacked for the Caxton Hall Rites of Eleusis, and when 666 sainted him in the writing and earliest publication of the Gnostic Mass.

For winter's rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
(ll. 89-96)

goldbrixredux

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:50:13 GMT

Ali Sloper

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:00:03 GMT

I have a nice, large (2" or so) rose-cross pin that I wear on the lapel of my overcoat these days. For some reason, this insignia prompts strangers to blithely interrogate me about my religious status--usually while I'm preoccupied with, say, grocery shopping. Such conversations have become gradually more blunt as the exercise has been repeated, reaching a point of near-perfection on the train this afternoon.

Q. (out of the blue, without the merest hello) Are you a chaplain?

A. (flatly) No, I'm a bishop.

Q. A Lutheran bishop?

A. (with careful diction) No, a bishop of the Gnostic Catholic Church.

Q. Agnostic Catholic? That sounds like an oxymoron to me.

A. No, not Agnostic, Gnostic.

Q. Never heard of it. What's the difference?

A. (gravely) Historians typically consider Gnosticism to be the oldest and most terrible of Christian heresies.

Q. Um.

A. Good-bye! (The train has reached my stop.)

happy new year

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 03:08:31 GMT

The Feast of Saint Jacobus Burgundus Molensis the Martyr

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:22:13 GMT

O sad Fraternity, do I unfold
Your dolorous mysteries shrouded from of yore?
Nay, be assured; no secret can be told
To any who divined it not before:
None uninitiate by many a presage
Will comprehend the language of the message,
Although proclaimed aloud of evermore.

There is an update at Vigorous Food and Divine Madness, with new ritual, reading recommendations, and other goodies.

The Feast of Saint Jordanus Brunus Nolensis the Martyr

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:17:23 GMT

Today is the Feast of Giordano Bruno the Nolan, who proclaimed himself d'ogni legge nimico e d'ongi fede ["enemy to every law and every faith"]. Excommunicated by Catholics, Calvinists, and Lutherans, he was finally burned at the stake by the Roman Inquisition. Bruno was an original and profound theorist of the magical link and a surpassing mnemotechnician, who aspired to revive the solar worship of the ancients. Unto him may there be granted the accomplishment of his will, yea the accomplishment of his will.

The Islam of To Mega Therion: Fifth Pillar

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 04:48:33 GMT

To finally complete this survey of the basic disciplines of Islam as reflected in Thelemic practice requires an examination of the hajj: the pilgrimage to Mecca, performed with the customary rites at the designated season. Muhammad is reported to have said, “Except for paradise, there is no more pleasing reward than the pilgrimage!” The word hajj is usually supposed to be derived from an Arabic term meaning “to make a circle,” and the sevenfold circumambulation (tawaf) of the cubic building of the Kaaba in the hajj ceremonies persists from an age before Islam.

The pre-Muslim hajj is a phenomenon implicitly admitted in the Qu’ran and other sources. A prior custom of nude worship was abolished in the first Islamicization of the hajj rites, in favor of the simple white ihram garb now enjoined on male Muslims for the hajj. Of course, the most important change was the shift from a polytheistic idolatry to aniconic monotheism. While secular historians might see this development as an innovation for Mecca, the Qu’ran itself insists that Muhammad restored an ancient worship that had been instituted by the Biblical patriarch Abraham (Ibrahim), who constructed the Kaaba (2:125, 22:26). Tradition further alleges that the site of the Kaaba was the location where, after Adam’s expulsion from paradise, he had worshipped God by circumambulating a tent.

For all of the significance and interest of the hajj rites around the Kaaba, the climax of the pilgrimage is the wuquf at ‘Arafa about fourteen miles away: the throng of the year’s pilgrims “standing” (wuquf) before the divine presence. These few hours—largely measured by a couple of sermons (khutbas), which could not be heard by most attendees before modern amplification technologies were available—are the fulfillment of the pilgrimage and the point at which living Muslims are considered to attain greatest proximity to God. A series of rites follows the wuquf at ‘Arafa: a night without sleep at Muzdalifa en route back to Mecca, followed by a second wuquf, the stoning of a pillar in Mina, a sacrifice of livestock, a return to Mecca for a final tawaf and ceremonies of purification, and three days in Mina with further stoning of the pillars there, which are understood to represent “Devils.”

In its spatial focus on Mecca, the hajj bears a relationship to the daily salat. But it is also viewed as related—by change of temporal scale—to the annual sawm for Ramadan. Salat punctuates the day with dedication to God, sawm punctuates the year, and the hajj punctuates an entire lifetime. Although some may repeat the pilgrimage, the obligation applies only once, and the unfree and insane are exempt. Undergoing the hajj is understood to confer spiritual maturity, and while it is seldom described as such, it constitutes the most significant initiatory experience offered by Islam as a whole.

In the system of attainment that Crowley outlined for Thelemites, he pointed to one particular experience as the essential spiritual maturation. “The Holy Guardian Angel is the Unconscious Creature Self--the Spiritual Phallus. His knowledge and conversation contributes occult puberty.” (Liber Samekh II.A.5) “It should never be forgotten for a moment that the central and essential work of the Magicians is the attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.” (Magick Without Tears, p. 502) “The Supreme and Complete Ritual is therefore the Invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel; or, in the language of Mysticism, Union with God.” As the cornerstone of his system, Crowley indicated this attainment as “The Next Step, the thing which was immediately above” mankind. (Magick in Theory & Practice, pp. 11 & 20)

This is the essential work of every man; none other ranks with it either for personal progress or for power to help one's fellows. This unachieved, man is no more than the unhappiest and blindest of animals. He is conscious of his own incomprehensible calamity, and clumsily incapable of repairing it. Achieved, he is no less than the co-heir of gods, a Lord of Light. (One Star in Sight, pt. 10)

Crowley definitely described this Next Step as a universal property of humanity, in no way novel with him, nor bound to any particular tradition. While the phrase originally derives from The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-melin the Mage, Crowley identified the “Holy Guardian Angel” with the augoeides of Iamblichus, the daimon of Socrates or the Neoplatonic genius, the Logos of ancient Gnosticism, the Adi-Buddha (as understood by Blavatsky), Vishnu in the Bhagavad-Gita, and the Jechidah of Kabbalism. He also pointed to “Adon-Ai” in Bulwer-Lytton’s novel Zanoni, and the “Vision of Adonai” recorded by Anna Kingsford, as examples of the phenomenon. In his instructions to aspirants, Crowley kept to the designation “Holy Guardian Angel,” for these professed reasons:

Because Abramelin’s system is so simple and effective.
Because since all theories of the universe are absurd it is better to talk in the language of one which is patently absurd, so as to mortify the metaphysical man.
Because a child can understand it.

When Crowley himself first undertook the operation to attain Knowledge and Conversation at Boleskine House in 1900 e.v., he did so with incentive from the curriculum and obligations of the R.R. et A.C. Order within the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. In this initial attempt, he vowed himself to work “in the manner prescribed in the Book of Abra-Melin, without omitting the least imaginable thing of its contents.” (Confessions, p. 191)

There are some few points of comparison one might make between the Sacred Magic as described by “Abraham the Jew” (the actual by-line of the Abra-melin text) and the hajj. Most conspicuous is the idea of undertaking an approach to God in a condition of regulated purity. Both insist on a white garment for the final phases. The Day of Consecration in which Knowledge and Conversation is attained might be compared to the wuquf at ‘Arafa, the Convocation of the Good Spirits to the return to Mecca, and the Convocation (and subjugation) of the Evil Spirits to the final days at Mina.

The differences are, of course, manifold, but many of them were mitigated in the course of Crowley’s grappling with the operation. The hajj involves travel to a specific place--understood as a veritable axis mundi; while the work from The Sacred Magic is to be undertaken at a single location “in whatever place” (with specific reference to Exodus 20:24). The hajj takes only a single season at most, even including the times of caravan travel; but The Sacred Magic demands an entire six months, to begin at Easter. The hajj is a universal component of a religion that aggressively affirms its accessibility; but The Sacred Magic cautions its possessor against communicating its method to any who might prove unworthy. Hajj pilgrims are supposed to be adults. Abraham requires the use of a child medium for the Knowledge and Conversation; Abra-melin editor and Golden Dawn chief S.L. Mathers dismissed this requirement, and Crowley seems never to have seriously considered it.

Crowley broke off his operation of 1900 in order to attend to the political schism within the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He did not return to the aspiration until his sojourn in China of 1905. This time, he worked while traveling:

My plan was to transport the astral form of my temple at Boleskine to where I was, so as to perform the invocation in it. It was not necessary for me to stay in one place during the ceremony; I frequently carried it out while riding or walking. (Confessions, p. 518)

The invocation was the Preliminary Invocation of the Goetia (so-called), which developed gradually into the form detailed in “Liber Samekh.” This practice begun in February, ceased in July of that year, without reaching the term of six months. Crowley’s third attempt at the A.'.O.'. (i.e. “Augoeides Operation,” as it most commonly appears in his diaries) started in June 1906. In August, he composed the Invocation of the Ring (i.e. “ADONAI! Thou inmost fire...”) to serve as the crowning orison of the final weeks. And on October 9, Crowley finally achieved the attainment to which he had been aspiring for nearly seven years.

As part of Crowley’s later visionary operations in the Algerian desert in 1909, his Angel Aiwass communicated to him a reworking of the Abramelin instructions tailored to the New Aeon and Thelema. The reduced ninety-one day procedure of this “Liber VIII” actually brings the Augoeides Operation into a duration comparable to that of the hajj. In the final century of the Old Aeon, the pilgrim caravan from Cairo took about sixty days, which were then followed by the few weeks of actual hajj observances. And yet, despite the clear specifics of “Liber VIII,” Crowley wrote in “One Star in Sight”:

It is impossible to lay down precise rules by which a man may attain to the Knowledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel; for that is the particular secret of each one of us; a secret not to be told or even divined by any other, whatever his Grade. It is the Holy of Holies, whereof each man is his own High Priest, and none knoweth the Name of his brother’s God, or the Rite that invokes him. (pt. 10)

In the Sufi traditions, there is sometimes an apparent derogation of the hajj. Yunus Emre said,

When you seek God, seek Him in your heart
He is not in Jerusalem, nor in Mecca nor in the hajj.

One of the chief charges of heresy brought against the great mystical teacher Mansur al-Hallaj was that he had declared physical pilgrimage to Mecca unnecessary. Instead, since God was omnipresent and omnibenevolent, the faithful might perform modified versions of the hajj rites in their homes with the same spiritual benefit as that obtained in the Holy Places. (Hallaj protested that he had only recounted an existing tradition to be applied in cases where it was impossible for a Muslim to make the pilgrimage.) The Sufi master Ibn ‘Arabi claimed that the true Kaaba was the being of the individual Muslim.

The context in which Ibn ‘Arabi made this claim is important, in that it stands as an important pre-figuration, and even precedent, of Crowley’s Next Step as a reflection or development of the hajj in the New Aeon. In 1201 e.v., the Sufi arrived in Mecca for the first time. Not only did he engage in tawaf of the ordinary sort, but he developed a practice of visualizing the Kaaba and circling it in his "heart" (i.e. meditative imagination). In the course of this practice, the Kaaba of the heart transformed itself into a being whom Ibn ‘Arabi describes in the Futuhat (“Meccan Revelations”) as “the Evanescent Youth, the Silent Speaker, him who is neither living nor dead, the composite simple, the enveloped-enveloping.” This Mystic Youth is his eternal Companion, the Angel who has accompanied him on his peregrinations and circumambulations, and who is that Form of God “who knows and ... [is] what is known.”

For his Angel is an intelligible image of his own true Will, to do which is the whole of the law of his Being.
(“Liber Samekh,” pt. III)

(Other posts in this series...)

Don't forget the reason for the season!

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 13:43:51 GMT

It is the obliquity of the Earth's axis.

There is an update at Vigorous Food & Divine Madness, including two new rituals:

"All minds, Virginia, whether they be adults' or children's, are little."
Earth and its joys are but as shadows. There is no limit to the light.