17 Occultism
1 Thelema
1 Fiction
16 Aleister Crowley
13 Magick Without Tears
2 Liber ABA
0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The Book of Thoth (The Tarot). London, 1944.
AHA! The Eqx., I, iii.
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1.00a - Introduction, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
7. The Book of Thoth Surely all terms not in a good dictionary are explained in the text. I don't see what I can do about it, in any case; the same criticism would apply to (say) Bertr and Russell's Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, wouldn't it?
Is x an R-ancestor of y if y has every R-hereditary that x has, provided x is a term which has the relation R to something or to which something has the relation R? (Enthusiastic cries of "Yes, it is!") He says "A number is anything which has the number of some class." Feel better now?
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1.00g - Foreword, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
"Much gratified was the author of The Book of Thoth to have so many letters of appreciation, mostly from women, thanking him for not 'putting it in unintelligible language', for 'making it all so clear that even I with my limited intelligence can understand it, or think I do.'
"Nevertheless and notwithstanding! For many years the Master Therion has felt acutely the need of some groundwork-teaching suited to those who have only just begun the study of Magick and its subsidiary sciences, or are merely curious about it, or interested in it with intent to study. Always he has done his utmost to make his meaning clear to the average intelligent educated person, but even those who understand him perfectly and are most sympathetic to his work, agree that in this respect he has often failed.
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1.05 - The Universe The 0 = 2 Equation, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Yes, I admit everything! It is all my fault. Looking over my past writings, I do see that my only one-opointed attempt to set forth a sound ontology was my early fumbling letter brochure Berashith. Since then, I seem to have kept assuming that everybody knew all about it; referring to it, quoting it, but never sitting down seriously to demonstrate the thesis, or even to state it in set terms. Chapter 0 of Magick in Theory and Practice skates gently over it; the "Naples Arrangement" in The Book of Thoth dodges it with really diabolical ingenuity. I ask myself why. It is exceedingly strange, because every time I think of the Equation, I am thrilled with a keen glow of satisfaction that this sempiternal Riddle of the Sphinx should have been answered at last.
So then let me now give myself the delight, and you the comfort, of stating the problem from its beginning, and proving the soundness of the solution of showing that the contradiction of this Equation is unthinkable. Are you ready? Forward! Paddle!
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1.15 - Sex Morality, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The Magical side. Sex is, directly or indirectly, the most powerful weapon in the armoury of the Magician; and precisely because there is no moral guide, it is indescribably dangerous. I have given a great many hints, especially in Magick, and The Book of Thoth some of the cards are almost blatantly revealing; so I have been rapped rather severely over the knuckles for giving children matches for playthings. My excuse has been that they have already got the matches, that my explanations have been directed to add conscious precautions to the existing automatic safeguards.
The above remarks refer mainly to the technique of the business; and it is going a very long way to tell you that you ought to be able to work out the principles thereof from your general knowledge of Magick, but especially the Formula of Tetragrammaton, clearly stated and explained in Magick, Chap. III. Combine this with the heart of Chap. XII and you've got it!
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1.22 - How to Learn the Practice of Astrology, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
"Up guards, and at 'em!" First, you must know your correspondences by heart backwards and upside down (air connu.) They are practically all in The Book of Thoth; but "if anyone anything lacks," look for it in 777.
Then, get a book on Astrology, the older the better. Raphael's Shilling Handbook is probably enough for the present purpose. Get well into your head what the menu says about the natures of the planets, the influence of the aspects, what is meant by dignities, the scope of the houses, and so on.
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1.28 - Need to Define God, Self, etc., #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
It is just like all those symbols in The Book of Thoth; as soon as you get to the "end" of anything, you suddenly find it is the "beginning."
To formulate the idea of "self" at all, you must posit limitations; anything that is distinguishable is a mere temporary (and arbitrary) selection of the finite from the infinite; whatever you chose to think of, it changes, it grows, it disappears.
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1.34 - The Tao 1, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
This is the hardest question you have yet put to me: to explain the Tao. The only proper answer would be Silence, trusting to the slow dispersion and absorption of the disturbance created by your asking it. In that sentence there lies, really, the whole explanation; but I see well enough that it won't do for you. You are not yet old or wise enough to understand that the only way to clear muddy water is to leave it alone. Still, you doubtless expect me to tell you just how that comes to pass; I will not disappoint you. First of all, what is the Tao? No proposed equivalent in any other language comes within a billion light-years of giving even an approximation. For one thing, it is itself a paradox; for another, it has several meanings which are apparently quite distinct. For instance, one sinologist calls it "Reason"; another, "The Way"; another "Tat" or "Shiva." These are all true in one sense or another. My own "White Hope" (see The Book of Thoth) is to identify it with the Qabalistic Zero. This last attri bution is useful, as I will show presently, for hard practical reasons; it is an assumption which indicates the method of the Old Wise One who approaches the Tao.
As you know, the supreme classic of this subject, is the Tao Teh King; and I must suppose that you have read this in at least one of the several translations, else I should have to start by pushing my own version at you. (This has been ready for a quarter of a century, and I seem to be unable to get it printed!) None of these published translations, learned and admirable though they may be as such, can be of use except to familiarize you with the terminology; for not one of these scholars has the most nebulous idea of that Laotze was talking about. I can hardly hope to emphasize sternly enough how deep and wide is the "Great Gulf fixed" between the initiate and the profane, when questions of this kind are on the Magic Carpet. Suppose you were transported (on that Carpet!) to a planet where the highest means of reproduction was germination; try to make the denizens understand Catullus, Shelley, Rossetti, or Emily Bronte! It is, honestly, quite as bad as that. How can anyone grasp the idea of perfect and absolute negation being at the same time the sole motive force of all that exits?
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1.42 - This Self Introversion, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
{The following note in handwriting may be a proper element of the text. This will be cross-check from available materials:} * 0 = 2 Because 2 comes from 0 --- itself is .... --- 2 High ... issue from Kether the Crown under ..... ....... The Book of Thoth. thus Nuit ... ... Hadit --- and as you said yourself, ... she .... --- never
There may be a reference to AL II, 4 in the last few words..
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1.48 - Morals of AL - Hard to Accept, and Why nevertheless we Must Concur, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
What seems to me the most encouraging symptom of all is this: the Book itself, and the system of Magick based thereon, and the bankruptcy of all previous systems (as set forth in Eight Lectures on Yoga, Magick, The Book of Thoth, and other similar works) do furnish us all with a clear, concise practical Method (free from all contamination of the humbug of faith and superstition) whereby any one of us may attain to "the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel," and that the many other Beings of intelligence and power indefinitely more exalted than anything which we recognize as human and, let us hope, capable of bestowing upon us a modicum of Wisdom adequate to get us out of the quagmire into which the crisis has temporarily plunged us all!
Love is the law, love under will.
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1.63 - Fear, a Bad Astral Vision, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Then there is quite another kind, which is quite clearly penny-plain frustration. Something one wants to do, perhaps a trifle, and one can't. Then one looks for the obstacle, and then the enemy behind that again; maybe one gets into one of those "ladder-meditations" (as described in Liber Aleph,[121] quoted in The Book of Thoth, when discussing "The Fool" and Hashish, only the wrong way up!) which end by the conception of the Universe itself as the very climax, asymptote, quintessence of frustration the perfect symbol of all uselessness. This is, of course, the absolute contradictory of Thelema; but it is the sorites on which both Hindu and Buddhist conclusions are based.
This kind of rage is, accordingly, most noxious; it is direct attack from within upon the virgin citadel of Self. It is high treason to existence. Its results are immediately harmful; it begets depression, melancholy, despair. In fact, one does wisely to take the bear by the ring in his snout; accept his conclusions, agree that it is all abject and futile and silly and turn the hose-pipe of the Trance of Laughter on him until he dances to your pleasure.
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1.65 - Man, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Note: In the original this letter was accompanied by four Tree of Life diagrams, three of which were copies of those which appeared in The Book of Thoth. They have been redrawn and in some cases re-arranged in an attempt to make the information readable on a computer screen.
THE KEY SCALE.
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Names of Tarot Trumps, suits and court cards have been conformed to those employed in The Book of Thoth.
ATU VIII, "Adjustment," was traditionally called Justice.
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1.68 - The God-Letters, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
I am not at all sure how far it is wise to take this letter. To make it complete, we should need a Book about three times the size of The Book of Thoth, and I should want another half-century of research before I started to write it! As this seems for divers reasons a little awkward in practice, I am rather afraid that we must content ourselves with this very sketchy account: always, when one touches the subject, one "goes all woolly." One lacks not only completeness, but precision. Then there is the "over-lapping" nuisance, and the fact that the natures and the names of the Gods change slowly as time goes by. The confusion! The contradictions! I could wish to be the proverbial bargee. Oh! I could go on making excuses for another hour! I can't be helped; and I feel that I shall have rendered you quite a bit of service by calling your attention to the existence of the subject, by stimulating you to research, by suggesting certain potential lines on which to attack the same, and perhaps even by giving you a few tips which you may find useful in practical Magick.
The subject is closely bound up with Mantra-Yoga, and with Invocation. You will doubtless have noticed (for instance) that many chapters of the Q'uran have the letter L for a leit-motif. Islam attaches immense importance to this liquid L, as it appears in Allah (compare the Hebrew L-Gods, AL, Aloah, Elohim, A'alion, etc., and look up the L-idea in your Book of Thoth, and in Magick, pp. 331 sqq.[136]) and other peculiarly sacred names and words.
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1.81 - Method of Training, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
To study Magick, Book 4, Parts II, III (Magick in Theory and Practice) and IV (The Equinox of the Gods.)[160] Add The Book of Thoth and there you are:
"Being furnished with complete armour and armed, he is similar to the goddess.[161]
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1f.lovecraft - Through the Gates of the Silver Key, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
is written in The Book of Thoth how terrific is the price of a single
glimpse. Nor may those who pass ever return, for in the Vastnesses
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hints, and extracts from The Book of Thoth, might not have come from
envy and a baffled wish to do what was now about to be done. Or perhaps
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3.04 - The Formula of ALHIM, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
draft of this section was written. The reversal is fully spelt out in The Book of Thoth
and in the New Comment on the verse in question: I see no harm in revealing the
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3.18 - Of Clairvoyance and the Body of Light, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
May 14th, 1919 e.v., and in The Book of Thoth (omitting It is no objection to end);
it is sourced to a notebook or diary titled The Book of the Great Auk, otherwise
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in I (8), and The Book of Thoth which comprised III (5); for Qabalah: A Note on
Genesis (Liber 2911) in I (2), the article on the Qabalah in the Temple of Solomon
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taught in the R.R. et A.C. which appeared in Equinox I (8) and The Book of Thoth.]
2. It is easy to teach the General Principles of exegesis, and the main doctrines.
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so much, achieved so much, who dare deny that The Book of Thoth,
the quintessentialized wisdom of our ancestors whose civilizations,
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Liber, #Liber Null, #Peter J Carroll, #Occultism
Liber LXXVIII. (78) [B] - On the Tarot. ::: A description of the Cards of the Tarot The Book of Thoth - Crowley: '... with their attri butions; including a method of divination by their use.' and on TBOT, 'A complete treatise on the Tarot giving the correct designs of the cards with their attri butions and symbolic meanings on all the planes.'
Liber LXXXI. (81) [] - Moonchild. (The Butterfly Net). ::: An account of a magical operation, particularly concerning the planet Luna, written in the form of a novel. Published under the title "Moon-child" by the Mandrake Press, 41, Museum St., London, W.C.1.
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