Book of Thoth Study Group: Part 1 - Section 2

Ok then, onto section 2. (Pages 12 - 25)

If you have any questions or comments about the material in this section, lets hear 'em.

He talks about the three veils of nothingness, is that Ain, Ain Soph, and Ain Soph Aur?
Assuming thats right, did those three veils of nothingness combine to form Kether(which is the point right?)?

On pg 13 he says:
"If there is anything except Nothing, it must exist within this Boundless Light; within this Space; within this inconceivable Nothingness, which cannot exist as Nothingness, but has to be conceived of as a Nothingness composed of the annihilation of two imaginary opposites."

can that be roughly translated to "If there is anything except Nothing, it must exist within Ain Soph Aur, within Ain Soph, within Ain." and is the "nothingness composed of the annihilation of two imaginary opposites" basically re-stating -1 + +1 = 0?

I haven't read the Equinox, but both Lon and A.C. refer to the Aeon in 1904 when the world was destroyed by fire. I have this vision of Crowley's hotel room catching on fire and him standing there going "OMG THIS IS THE GOD'S WAY OF TELLING ME THAT THE NEW AEON HAS BEGUN!!" Can someone explain it to without it taking a novel, or do I need to go read Equinox and figure it out? Thanx

Ven

My take on the Equinox of the Gods and the current era destroyed by fire is simply that Heru Ra Ha (Ra-Hoor-Khuit, Hoor-pa-kraat), being a fire deity, takes the reigns from his watery dad, ie, Osiris.
I'm sure there's a lot more too it than that, but that what i get from it.

Ventrue said:

He talks about the three veils of nothingness

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When you say "veils of nothingness" are you referring to the "Veils of the Negative" he mentions in the section titled The Tarot and the Tree of Life in Section lll? I couldn't find where he mentions veils of nothingness; however, he seems to use the two words interchangeably.

I believe you are correct in assuming the veils are Ain, Ain Soph, and Ain Soph Aur and that Kether arises from them. Crowley associates them with Zero, or the Negative. They are purely potential. They contain everything, yet nothing, because you can't have something until you have One. Crowley's explains his concept of Nothing: "One must begin, as a mathematician would, with the idea of Zero, Absolute Zero, which turns out on examination to mean any quantity that one may choose, but not, as the layman may at first suppose, Nothing, in the 'absence-of-anything' vulgar sense of the word." If Zero is "any quanity that one may choose," it stands to reason it contains everything. He associates 1-10 with the Positive, "It will be seen from the above that by means of these ten positive numbers, but not by any lesser number, one can arrive at a positive description of any given object or idea."

Crowley gives us his ideas of what the Veils actually are are (Section lll):

Zero, Zero as Undefined Space, and Zero as basis of Possible Vibration.

"61=0.
61 +146=0 as Undefined (Space).
61 +146+207=0 as basis of Possible Vibration."

In Section ll he postulates there may be a connection between Nothing and Space/Time as pure potential:

"The Qabalists expanded this idea of Nothing, and got a second kind of Nothing which they called "Ain Soph"-"Without Limit". (This idea seems not unlike that of Space.) They then decided that in order to interpret this mere absence of any means of definition, it was necessary to postulate the Ain Soph Aur-"Limitless Light". By this they seem to have meant very much what the late Victorian men of science meant, or thought that they meant, by the Luminiferous Ether. (The Space-Time Continuum?)"

This is totally an aside, but I've always been fascinated by how the Hermit's hourglass (symbol of time) from the early Tarots was replaced with a light, also a symbol of time. But did they realize it, or was it merely "coincidence???"

-fof

Edit To Add: Luminferous Ether = Astral Plane?

Ventrue said:

He talks about the three veils of nothingness, is that Ain, Ain Soph, and Ain Soph Aur?
Assuming thats right, did those three veils of nothingness combine to form Kether(which is the point right?)?

Click to expand...

It might be more correct to say that Kether emerged from the Tree veils of Negative Existence, and that's about all you can say. It's totally beyond the realm of the human mind.That's one reason why the word-symbols used to describe the "Nothing" send your mind into a spin when you start to think about them.

Ain - Nothing - Negative. If you can think about it and give it form it's not Ain. Anything that you can think of is not Ain. Even the idea of No-thing is not Ain because No-thing implies some-thing.

Ain Soph - Limitless Nothing. How can Nothing be Limitless? It's certainly not space, because that implies something. But infinite space is probably the best conception that our limited minds can comprehend.

Ain Soph Aur - Limitless Light. Now this Limitless Nothing is Light. But not any light that we can think of because it's of the nature of Nothing. Try to think of "Negative Light" or "Negative Existence".

When you spin these ideas around in your head and meditate on the hebrew words they suggest certain things to you. But you can never, ever pin them down. It always seems to result in an inutuitive understanding that can never be conceptualised in a concrete way. Have fun.

Ventrue said:

I haven't read the Equinox, but both Lon and A.C. refer to the Aeon in 1904 when the world was destroyed by fire. I have this vision of Crowley's hotel room catching on fire and him standing there going "OMG THIS IS THE GOD'S WAY OF TELLING ME THAT THE NEW AEON HAS BEGUN!!" Can someone explain it to without it taking a novel, or do I need to go read Equinox and figure it out? Thanx

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Crowley is talking about a spiritual event on a world wide scale. Namely the end of the Aeon of Osiris and it's replacement by the the Aeon of Horus, the god of Force and Fire. Of course I'm not suggesting that Egyptian gods rule the world or anything like that. Rather the characteristics of the time in which we live corresponds to the nature of the gods. This can be interpreted on many different levels, both internally/spiritually and externally.

Think about this. The world back in 1904 was very stable and safe. The notion that two horrific world wars were on the way would have been laughable. Not only that, think of the way that those two episodes of "Force and Fire" radically changed the worlds view of religion. Nothing was the same after the wars. The prison of dogmatic religion was broken open and people began to search for new spiritual meaning. (Unfortunately, humanity being the lazy, comfort seeking creature that it is, we've ended up with the wishy-washy New Age movement. Which is little more than Christianity in disguise. )

But, and this is not a comforting thought, the process of cleansing by fire has probably not ended yet. Think about the current world scene, the potential dangers of Global Warming and the looming energy crisis.

I understand what you are saying about new aeons, but SOMETHING had to have happened for him to say it began on March 21, 1904. It cant be arbitrary, I guess it could have been a vision he recieved on that particular day. I was just looking for some physical event to have manifested on that day to rectify him giving that particular date.

Ven

p.s. yes i was referring to the Three Veils of the Negative, my mind got twisted around my ear and my thoughts got bottlenecked I suppose.

I was particularly struck by the idea that we are really in our own "reality" as shown in the section about two people looking at the moon are not looking at the same moon. They can agree that they are looking at "the" moon, but in reality are looking at slightly different moons. We are responsible for our own reality and knowing how our reality relates to others' realities.

I have heard of something like this before...in physics class!

In the end, I felt apprehensive, in that illustrated people misunderstanding each other but understanding it. There was no agreement that they were looking at their versions of the moon, they assumed they were each seeing the moon the same way.

Does that makes sense or am I way off base?

valeria

March 21 = Spring Equinox.

Why 1904? I have no idea. It may have had some occult significance for Crowley, or it may have suited him simply because it was convenient.

-fof

Ventrue said:

I understand what you are saying about new aeons, but SOMETHING had to have happened for him to say it began on March 21, 1904. It cant be arbitrary, I guess it could have been a vision he recieved on that particular day. I was just looking for some physical event to have manifested on that day to rectify him giving that particular date.

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According to Crowley that date marks the Equinox of the Gods. The transition between the Aeon of Osiris and the Aeon of Horus. Crowley's wife, Rose, instructed him in invoke Horus on that day with a ritual that broke all the rules of ceremonial magic that he had learnt in the Golden Dawn.