The Book of The Law Study Group 3.55

[Grigori]

Originally Posted by Aiwass

55. Let Mary inviolate be torn upon wheels: for her sake let all chaste women be utterly despised among you!

http://www.sacred-texts.com/oto/index.htm
http://hermetic.com/crowley/index.html
http://lib.oto-usa.org/libri/liber0220.html

Other threads in this study group

[closrapexa]

At a (very) first glance, this would seem almost cliched. Mary being the opposite of Nuit, Nuit being the Whore, mother, etc. If anyone said that Crowley was "merely" against mainstream Christianity and sought only to provoke, this verse could be used as an example.

The mention of wheels usually makes me think of the Chariot, perhaps Mary being beneath Cancer, a form of the Mother? It almost makes sense if you equate Mary with Babalon and Nuit as... the wheels?

[Always Wondering]

Originally Posted by closrapexa

The mention of wheels usually makes me think of the Chariot, perhaps Mary being beneath Cancer, a form of the Mother? It almost makes sense if you equate Mary with Babalon and Nuit as... the wheels?

Originally Posted by New Comment

We dare not thwart Her Going, Goddess she! We arrogate no right upon Her will; we claim not to deflect Her development, to dispose of Her desires, or to determine Her destiny. She is Her own sole arbitar; we ask no more than to supply our strength to Her, whose natural weakness else were prey to the world's pressure. Nay more, it were too zealous even to guard Her in Her Going; for She were best by Her own self-reliance to win Her own way forth!

Good point closrapexa.

Though I don't don't get the Mary Mars connection.

I've read this comment many times and I like Crowley a little more every time. He provokes me more when he reflects the less inspired attitudes, about women, of his time. But in the end his conscious thoughts on women outshine many of the males from my own generation. I actually turn to this commentary for of lift, when I need one. It's so inspiring.


AW

[closrapexa]

Wow, I just realized a rather big error on my part. I automatically thought Mary was the Virgin Mary, but now it seems to make more sense if she is Mary Magdalene. For her sake, for the sake of a prostitute, despise what virginity means and is equated with. This way she can't be anyone but Babalon, and the verse becomes clearer.

[Aeon418]

Originally Posted by Liber 418. 3rd Aethyr.

Moreover, there is Mary, a blasphemy against BABALON, for she hath shut herself up*

[*footnote: She seeks to resist Change, which is Life, she refuses the Formula, "love under will."
<Yet Μαριε (Greek) = 156.>]

III x 55 = 165. QLLH, Qelalah - Curse.

Mary inviolate obviously refers to the Virgin Mary. She is a classic avatar of Binah, but with one big problem. Binah is the root sephirah of all receptive femininity, and that is exactly what Mary is not. Even after being knocked up by God almighty she still managed to keep her virginity. That's quite a feat.

While this distorted deific image of Binah served a purpose during the Aeon of Osiris, it also had some quite nasty side effects on women. Mary is closed off and anti-sexual. Setting this image up as a shinning avatar of perfect femininty cast some pretty deep shadows on real flesh and blood women. Unless they chose to be nuns and rejected their sexual nature they could never live up to the ideal. The idolization of the supposed spiritual sanctity of virginity instantly relagated any sexually active woman to a kind of lower tier status. But it is that very sex-negative aspect of Mary that must "torn upon wheels". The symbolism of wheels suggests (revolving)revolution and change to me. When the false veil is torn away the real Binah is revealed - BABALON! All that Mary was is subsumed within Babalon (Μαριε = 156 = Babalon), but the false veil of restriction is gone.
As one friend quipped to me once. "All hail the Holy MILF."

To me the part about despising chaste women seems to be tied in with the wrong headed idolization of virginity. The cultivation of sex-negative or "uptight" attitudes and ideals based on the assumption that there is some sort of spiritual virtue inherent in denying the sexual impulse is nuts in my opinion. A woman who has sex as a true expression of her Will is more "pure" than anyone pretending to be a nun. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

Obsevations on the structure of the verse.
There are 19 words in this verse. 19 is the numerical value of the Hebrew, ChVH, the biblical Eve. The legendary first woman. Also the 19th path is Teth - Atu XI Lust, which proudly displays Babalon astride the Beast.

There are 7 words before the colon and 12 after. For some strange reason my intuition keeps bugging me about this. But it's not clicking at the moment. A possible bit of feminine symolism? 7 - Netzach - Venus? 7 Planets? 12 signs of the Zodiac worn by the Empress?

This is the 55th verse of the third chapter. 55 is the mystical number of Malkuth. This may point to the reintegration of the earthy, physical aspects of the divine feminine.

This verse is also the 200th in the book as a whole. 200 is the numerical value of the letter Resh - The Sun. The glyph of the Sun is the point in the circle and is a form of the Lingam-Yoni and divine Union.

*Note: I just finished typing the last few words and immediately performed the noon adoration (Liber Resh) to the goddess Ahathor (Hathor). Right in the middle of it a phrase popped into my head. "The Woman Clothed with the Sun." (Revelation 12.)

[Always Wondering]

A thoughtful post I will be thinking on for a while.

So I hate to seem nitpicky, but I am trying to learn. It will be fun to break some rules once I learn them.

III x 55 = 165. QLLH, Qelalah - Curse.

Why did you present it both with and without the vowels?


AW

[Aeon418]

Originally Posted by Always Wondering

Why did you present it both with and without the vowels?

QLLH is the Hebrew spelling.

Qelalah is just a rough attempt at pronunciation. The frequent consonant clusters that appear in transliterated Hebrew often remind me of a remark made by Harrison Ford regarding the techno-babble in the original Star Wars script.

"You can write this stuff, but you can't say it."

I was just trying to be helpful. Sorry for the confusion.

[closrapexa]

Originally Posted by Always Wondering

A thoughtful post I will be thinking on for a while.

So I hate to seem nitpicky, but I am trying to learn. It will be fun to break some rules once I learn them.



Why did you present it both with and without the vowels?


AW

I'll quip in with this. I'm simplifying, but in Hebrew, vowels are marked by a series of dots and dashes indicating how to read the word, and also used in oration. While most Hebrew speakers can read most familiar words without them, these diacritical signs are what actually tell you how to read them, how to orate them and also to differentiate between words, as many are spelled the same but mean different things, especially in different parts of speech of the same verb.

The word Aeon used, curse, is spelled Kuf, Lamed, Lamed, Heh, as in:

קְלָלָה

There are no vowel letters after the kuf, but there is a vowel sign, hence it is pronounced as kelalAH with emphasis placed on the last syllable.

Those two dots under the kuf add a short E sound to it while both signs under the lameds add A sounds to them. They are different because of grammatical rules but sound more or less the same. There are all sorts of other rules that dictate why that vowel is after the first kuf, but that's long and involved, and I doubt anyone has the three years I studied all this in High School to listen to meץ

But, as always, Wikipedia explains it better than me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niqqud

[Aeon418]

Thanks closrapexa. I just want to mention something to avoid further confusion.

Originally Posted by closrapexa

The word Aeon used, curse, is spelled Kuf, Lamed, Lamed, Heh,

I suspect that most of the sources AW is familiar with render the letter קְ Qoph(Kuf) - Q to differentiate it from Kaph - K.

[closrapexa]

Yes that's true. Phonetics are out of my league