Scion
Perfect sense to me...similia said:If so it would seem to me that the first three lines, represent those three levels from Agrippa.
(snip)hmmm I'm not sure I'm making sense... sorry
Abrac, you're proving my point for me with Crowley's commentary! The important part of that sentence is "reveal the Secret Self of a man" which is another way of referring to the HGA, which is an Abramelin name for a personal Daemon, which is in fact a denizen of Agrippa's celestial realm... To speak of the "godhead" in mortals is to explicitly indicate that intermediary class of spirits: Aiwass/Crowley doesn't say that we ARE gods; but that we each possess an independent godhead... which is another word for HGA or Daemon. IOf you don't believe me look at the BOL line: "the unveiling" comes first: this is what he identifies as the godhead assertion. THEN mankind is become "the company of heaven." Which means once they've established that knowledge and conversation.Abrac said:Crowley's old comment on AL1.2 from The Old and New Commentaries to Liber AL:
"The 'company of heaven' is Mankind, and its 'unveiling' is the assertion of the independent godhead of every man and every woman! Further, as Khabs (see verse 8) is "Star", there is a further meaning; this Book is to reveal the Secret Self of a man, i.e. to initiate him."
So (not to mess with Always Wondering's head further, but) it's not that something else is tying up the seats in the celestial realm, but rather that when we see clearly, we are intimately bound up in the celestial, but most are ignorant of that. It's not musical chairs, more like a daemonic waltz where we are all trying to find our partners. ("Wake World," anyone?) "Every man and every woman is a star" is a description of a relationship between men and women and stars as much as it is descriptive of their identities as stars. My point is that "unveiling the company" is a way of metaphorically unveiling the secret shapes above and around us so that we can begin to understand how we connect to them. All magick begins with a belief in meaningful connections.
This is why the small Egyptology debate in the other thread seems so pointless. This is a description of a primary experience that cannot be communicated explicitly. Art is the only way to convey inarticulable truths. Crowley using meaty, mythological metaphors from his Cambridge days is a clever attempt to explain something he wants people to experience individually. (93/93) Crowley's beliefs have almost NOTHING to do with the little we know of their religion, so to scold him for getting it wrong is a little tangential. It's as if he were using primary numbers to describe the way Provence farmland smells in April. To argue over fractions is missing the point.
I think another important thing to remember here is that Crowley is not (like post-Jungian New Age America) psychologizing magick. And please no one cite the psych-misreading of the Goetia intro: it IS a New Agey misreading. As Liber O says, "It is immaterial whether they exist or not. By doing certain things certain results follow." Arguing over the truth or falsehood of a myth or a scientific theory is maya... noise. Gnosis is personal. We can only point in helpful directions for each other. Hence the pivotal role of Will/Love. "It is essential that he remain the master of all that he beholds, hears or conceives; otherwise he will be the slave of illusion and the prey of madness." Crowley wasn't burning down the world to ruin it, he was trying to clear the dross and light a path. A pyre and a rebirth.
similia said:I am trying to gauge how your understanding is different to Aeon's and to my own initial thoughts. Not to choose one over the other, just trying to compare and understand them.
I don't think our understanding is different, actually. I think we're agreeing, just coming at a complex thing from several directions (like the blind men with the elephant). But actually if you string all our ideas together (on the girdle of Nuit) they connect pretty cleanly. I was more trying to express a gut sense I've developed about the pivotal role of the celestial realm in magickal work and the primal necessity of seeing with new eyes, excising our Osiric preconceptions and habits.
Scion