The Ending of the Words - Magical Philosophy of Aleister Crowley

152 Pages·2007·16.58 MB·English

by  Oliver St. John

THE ENDING

OF THE

WORDS

MAGICAL PHILOSOPHY OF

ALEISTER CROWLEY

BY

OLIVER ST. JOHN & SOPHIE DI JORIO

ORDO ASTRI Anno IV-xv

Ordo Astri
PO Box 3609
BA1 2ZN
England, UK
The Ending of the Words ~ Magical Philosophy of Aleister Crowley
© Oliver St. John & Sophie di Jorio 2007
All Rights Reserved
First Published 2007
Ordo Astri
Special Edition

Ordo Astri (http://www.ordoastri.org) is a Thelemic Order with an operational
collegium based on the traditional grade system of Aleister Crowley.
Preface

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

Hermetic wisdom is not obtained by intellectual effort alone, since
mystical symbolism alludes to that which is outside of time and space
and therefore beyond the limits of the human reason.1 To prepare for
the gnosis that may come through work and discipline it is necessary
to organise and to inform the mind. Unless this is accomplished the
person shall be ill fit to approach the source of all power and
knowledge.
Liber AL vel Legis, the Book of the Law which proclaimed the advent
of the Aeon of Horus, was communicated to Aleister Crowley (1875–
1947) via the mediumship of his wife, Rose. It was dictated in 1904 by
a praeterhuman intelligence called Aiwaz. Named as the “minister of
Hoor-paar-kraat” in the book, the work of Aiwaz was to reveal the law
governing a new phase of human spiritual evolution, the Law of
Thelema. As minister of the God of Silence who presides over the
eternal aeon outside of time, it was not the function of Aiwaz to
manifest or to incarnate the New Aeon. A chaotic period in history of
unprecedented proportions thus followed the transmission of the book.
Before a magical aeon can be incarnated or fixed in time, the word
or truth of the previous aeon must be broken down and assimilated.
Only then may Horus achieve Maat – his full expression. The operation
is directed by Ra Hoor Khuit, that is the active counterpart and twin of
Hoor-paar-kraat. Ra Hoor Khuit is a martial god of “Force and Fire”
that embodies and manifests the power of Set or Saturn, the Lord of
Time.
Through the ages, spiritual events are rooted in time. The evolution
of man’s deeper understanding of himself and the cosmos is anchored
by historical events – whether these are understood as being “real” or
“imagined”. The twelve equal divisions of the Great Year of the
precession of the equinoxes may represent an historical age, for
example. These are a little over 2000 years each. The Age of Aquarius,
for example, is descriptive of the present time where the sunrise at the

1 Aleister Crowley, numbered the manuscript “Liber XXX”; this is a reference to the
qabalistic value of the letter “L”, that was the original title of the book (Liber L vel
Legis). It is also known as Liber CCXX (since the book has 220 verses in total) as well as
the “corrected” number, XXXI, when Crowley decided to add an aleph (A = 1) to the
lamed (L = 30). This was done against the advice given in the Book of the Law, that the
author of the book (Ankh-af-na-khonsu) would not in one letter change the book.
spring equinox now aligns with the constellation associated with
Aquarius, the Waters of Space.2 Magical aeons may take place in a
thousand years or they may pass in a second – in the twinkling of an
eye. They may also run concurrently with historical ages.
Aleister Crowley suggested there are three historical aeons: Isis,
Osiris and Horus. The Aeon of Isis represents a prehistoric time of
matriarchy, where hunting and gathering predominated. Following
this, after some considerable time, came the patriarchal Aeon of Osiris.
This was a time in which agriculture and civilisation flourished. The
Aeon of Horus is then to be understood as the child of these parents,
indicating a stage where individuals must take responsibility for their
own actions.
The subject of magical timing could warrant a whole book all to
itself. According to some occultists, the magical Aeon of Horus as
declared by Crowley was abortive and ended in 1948 – a mere 44 years
after the reception of Liber AL vel Legis. An Aeon of Maat then
superseded the Aeon of Horus.3 The notion here is that the Egyptian
goddess Maat represents the perfection or completion of the Great
Work or Hermetic Arcanum on earth. No aeon in time can truly be
called “perfect” since all manifestation requires the continuous
adjustment or balancing of karma or “actions in time”. As Horus enters
his Maatian phase – called Hrumachis in the book – the first result is
necessarily polarisation and separation:

There is division hither homeward; there is a word not known.
Spelling is defunct...

Liber AL vel Legis, III: 2

The spiritual power that initiated the Aeon of Hrumachis (or Horus-
Maat) is a Mercurial, Setian intelligence or “star”. The keys of the
knowledge of heaven and hell, of life and death, have been passed on in
the silence of a New Aeon that is as yet little understood. The Law of
Thelema is “written and concealed”, as stated in Liber AL vel Legis, III:
75. Man has failed to understand the runes that forecast his own
doom.

2 In Liber AL vel Legis the Age of Aquarius is referred to as the Aeon of Hrumachis.
3 A student and disciple of Crowley, Frater Achad (Stansfeld Jones) put forward the
year 1948 as the beginning of the Aeon of Maat; Crowley died in 1947, having expelled
Achad from his magical Order. Achad, who claimed to have “crossed the Abyss”,
subsequently became insane.
The Master Therion (Aleister Crowley, the Beast 666)

From the oil painting by Leon Kennedy – with the kind permission of Tony Naylor, of Mandrake
Press Ltd.
The aim of this Magical Philosophy is to assist in establishing the
enigmatic Law of Thelema in the context of the ages old Hermetic
tradition from whence it emerged. The reception of the book by Aleister
Crowley in 1904 was not the first occasion in which the Word
addressed a prophet; much of the language and symbolism of the book
has its origin in the Egyptian and Judaeo Christian tradition. The
language used in Liber AL vel Legis indicates that the book may best be
understood as being rooted in a vastly ancient tradition of divine
revelation.
For example, the symbols of the “Beast” and the “Scarlet Woman”
are taken directly from the Apocalypse of St. John, the last book of the
Christian New Testament. The symbol of the “Abomination of
Desolation” (the special title of the Stélé given in Liber AL vel Legis)
appears in both the New Testament and the book of Daniel in the Old
Testament. St. John the Divine and the prophet Daniel are merely two
better known cases of those who received direct revelation and
transmitted this through their writings and work.
The Khabs, the Khu and the Ka are ancient Egyptian pictographic
symbols, and the many gods mentioned in Liber AL vel Legis are
specific to the transformative roles played by deity at cult centres of
Egypt such as Thebes and Heliopolis.
The doctrine typified in the Christian tradition by the assumption of
the Virgin Mary predates the Christian era and is portrayed in the
Thelemic tradition as the mystical saga of the Scarlet Woman or Soul.
The legend of the Hero, Christ or Saviour who passes through trial and
ordeal to be born in spirit reached its apotheosis at the Egyptian cult
centre Aunnu, known by the Greeks as Heliopolis and called On in the
biblical Old Testament. Here was celebrated the birth, death and
resurrection of the hawk-headed star-god Horus. In Liber AL vel Legis
this god takes various forms. Among these are the Sphinx, the Dwarf
Soul, and the Angel of Judgement.4
The magical principle of soul and body is referred to throughout this
present volume as feminine (“she”; “her”) while the principle of spirit
and mind is treated as though masculine (“he”; “his”). This is a literary
and poetic convention in the language of more than one mystic
tradition.
Liber AL vel Legis is scattered through with riddles requiring the use
of the system known as the Qabalah to unravel. We have anticipated

4 It is unfortunate that Christ is so often confused with Osiris. Whereas Osiris remained
in the underworld as Lord of the Dead, Christ and Horus both ascended to heaven.
“Heaven” and “paradise” (or Amentet) are actually two quite different worlds.
some familiarity with the law of magical correspondences as well as the
branch of Qabalah called gematria. The general reader, though, should
have little difficulty in following the lines of thought since the
rudiments of gematria are very simple. In Greek and Hebrew, letters are
numbers and numbers are letters. Words can therefore be added up to
produce a number that represents the fundamental value of that word.
Meaning may then be obtained from the relationship of words having
the same numerical value. For instance the word “Thelema” (“Will”)
adds to 93 by Greek Qabalah as does “Agape” (“Love”). The “will” and
“love” indicated by these words can be said to have identical (or related)
meaning. The name of Aiwaz, the intelligence that transmitted the
Book of the Law, is also qabalistically equal to the number 93.
There is included here a full glossary of technical terms used in
Liber AL vel Legis and elsewhere, plus some key historical references –
for in magick, timing is of the essence.

Love is the law, love under will.
The Stélé of Revealing 666

This hand-painted copy of the Stélé 666 is used by a modern Thelemic cult. Special thanks are
due to the artists Andy and Becky Morris, of AKAMORA-IAO.