Alrah
The Book of the Law... really.
Reposted from Paganspace.
Richard T. Cole is soon to release a new book 'Liber Al vel Bogus', that claims he can prove the so called 'Holy Book of Thelema' is a fraud, and that Crowley invented the story of the reception of the Book by a praeterhuman entity called Aiwass.
http://www.quicksilver.uk.com/RTC/bogus.htm
There is a lot of speculation as to how Cole is going to do this, but in the meantime I'd like to present my own theories on how and why Crowley invented the story of the books reception, and give readers here the opportunity to express their opinion. While there are always going to be people who are invested in holding a 'believer script', (just like there are fundamentalist Christians who will claim that the Earth was created in 7 days because the bible says so) - I think for most rational people the evidence will speak for itself.
-----------------------------------
Aleister Crowley was born in 12/10/1875 to parents of a conservative faction of the Plymouth Brethren. In his early childhood the only reading book he was allowed was the Bible. As a young man he rebelled and nurtured a deep resentment of religion while at the same time he identified with the Beast spoken of in the Book of Revelations. If you remember your bible then the Beast of that Book lies and deceives the multitude, leading them away from 'God'.
Aleister Crowley joined a branch of irregular Freemasons and in 1900's Mexico he passed the 32 degree. It was shortly after this anti-climax for him that he claimed to have discovered the 'Lost Word' of the Master Mason, which is synonymous with discovering the Temple of Solomon.
This 'Lost Word' was cleverly hidden within a Book of Jewish Mysticism called 'The Zohar' aka 'The Book of Splendour', which had been translated by the head of the Golden Dawn 'Mathers' in 1887.
The Book presents the familiar 'Tree of Life' which occultists have been using for more than a century... without realising that the Tree was never intended to have been used in such a fashion. Indeed - the Tree of Life was intended to be starting point for Jewish Kabbalist students who wanted to know what the idealised plan was of Gods 'sacred space' - the Temple of Solomon. To avoid Christian persecution such things as cryptography to hide sensitive content was necessary in those days. To give you a flavour of the ways the book indicates to the reader that the Tree should be changed I'll quote a couple of verses here:
11. But what is to be understood by that passage— “And they that despise Me shall be lightly esteemed?” Such an one is that man who can neither institute the union of the Holy Name, nor bind together the links of truth {the paths}, nor derive the supernals {plural} into the position {singular} required, nor honour the Name of his Lord. Better were it for that man had he never been created, and much more for that man who doth not attentively meditate when he saith Amen!
and
3. When he is concealed, he is hidden by the letters which are not disposed according (to the proper order) of the letters, or (according to another reading of this passage) in their proper place; because also in him their superiors and inferiors {paths} are not rightly disposed (because of the disturbed transpositions).
The topic of how the Kabbalist derives the Temple of Solomon from the Tree of Life is a complex one and beyond the scope of this presentation, but readers may email me for more information.
In any case, Aleister Crowley managed to crack the Zohar like an egg and produce the Word and Temple in 1900, and he thought he was the bee's knee's for it. He went up and down America and across Europe visiting Masonic Lodges by the dozen, but found to his great frustration that and disgust that nobody actually wanted to know the Lost Word! They gave him a score of honorary degree's to shut him up, but basically - they felt that the entire point of the Lost Word was that it was something that people should continue to strive for. And so in 1904, still burning white hot with a resentment against religious people and nursing a new resentment against Freemasonry he conceived his raison de etre: he was the Beast, and he was going to Lie and mislead the unthinking religious bigoted fools like his mother. That was magick... and by Satan - when he'd finished, that would teach them!
There's one thing to mention here - every time he lies in one place or one document, he makes up for it and tells the truth elsewhere.
So naturally, if you've fell for his Liber Al fraud, it's your own look out. I'll demonstrate. In Appendix iii of Magick in Theory and Practise' he tells you that Aiwaz has put cryptography in the Book of the Law that Aiwass has concealed "in the letters and words a complex cipher involving the knowledge of facts never till than existing in any human mind" and that "In a word, the Book of the Law proves the prime postulate of Religion." The content of the cryptography is the Lost Word and the Temple of Solomon from his 1900 research... but Crowley? Proving the prime postulate of Religion? And the new messenger of the White school sent by the Great White Brotherhood? Come on! In Magick wthout Tears he is honest about his agenda. Spot the obvious paradox:
"It is particularly to be noted that Magick, so often mixed up in the popular idea of a religion, has nothing to do with it. It is, in fact, the exact opposite of religion; it is, even more than Physical Science, its irreconcilable enemy".
Now Crowley expected that his work might bear fruit and grow into a thriving new religion. But he also left enough dirt around to catch him red handed. The O.T.O. and a great many researchers have had access to his private notes over the years, and it's difficult to believe that they didn't notice the obvious con he was pulling off. Crowley wanted to be caught out. He went out of his way to ensure that he would be, eventually. He didn't want 'this' to go on for perpetuity. He was the Beast - teaching a magical lesson to the religious minded Fools that were his irreconcilable enemies.
The Convert - by Aleister Crowley.
(A Hundred Years Hence)
There met one eve in a sylvan glade
A horrible Man and a beautiful maid.
“Where are you going, so meek and holy?”
“I’m going to temple to worship Crowley.”
“Crowley is God, then? How did you know?”
“Why, it’s Captain Fuller that told us so.”
“And how do you know that Fuller was right?”
“I’m afraid you’re a wicked man; Good-night.”
While this sort of thing is styled success
I shall not count failure bitterness
He's left notes that have his prepared Gematria for the Book of the Law or his "Great Thesis". He went out of his way to say the Lost Word was encrypted in Liber Al, and in Confessions he tell's us that he found it in 1900. We know that he 'restored' Abrahadabra in 1900 (because it has all the letters of the Lost Word, but isn't). And we know that he prepared the poetry and translations of the Stele before he wrote the book. If you're still a believer by now, then please observe.... he didn't leave much for Aiwaz to write about, did he?
And let's look at "Aiwass the Minister"... It's an Anagram! Turn it around and you get "I Sin, I was the Master" and there's some business about the Arabic being the name of a waiter. As in the 'check please!' sort. But his confessions don't stop there. Seriously folks, this man goes on and on confessing his Sins while joking his head off...
Why does he say he received the Book of the Law over 3 days? Why is the Law of Thelema in 3 parts? Why are there three grades or degree's?
We have to go back to the Zohar again, (talking about the biblical Book of the Law) to explain these aspects of the hoax:
427. “Also it is written, Isa. vi. 4: 'And they called one unto another and said: Holy, holy, holy!' Behold these three unto which the Book of the Law correspondeth, for its covering is holy, and the Temple is holy, and the book itself is holy.
428. “And thus the law hath been constructed in triple holiness, in three degrees, in three days. {sound familiar } The Schechinah in the three which are the Table, the Ark, and the Temple; and in the same manner it dependeth from the Book of the Law, and that dependeth from the Influx.
But if we were not completely convinced by this obvious little tell then he goes all out to confess in chapter 56 of his Book of Lies:
Holy, holy, holy, unto Five Hundred and Fifty Five
times holy be OUR LADY of the STARS!
Holy, holy, holy, unto One Hundred and Fifty Six
times holy be OUR LADY that rideth upon THE
BEAST!
Holy, holy, holy, unto the Number of Times
Necessary and Appropriate be OUR LADY
Isis in Her Millions-of-Names, All-Mother,
Genetrix-Meretrix!
Yet holier than all These to me is LAYLAH, night
and death; for Her do I blaspheme alike the finite
and the The Infinite.
So wrote not FRATER PERDURABO, but the
Imp Crowley in his Name.
For forgery let him suffer Penal Servitude for Seven
Years; or at least let him do Pranayama all the
way home-home? nay! but to the house of the
harlot whom he loveth not. For it is LAYLAH that
he loveth...................................
And yet who knoweth which is Crowley, and which is
FRATER PERDURABO?
You see, Crowley knew believers inside and out. He knew that every religion must have a proper supernatural event to spark it off, so that extroverts can warm themselves over the fire of a believer script. i.e. "I belieeeeeeve in Aiwaz and the New Aeon! I belieeeeeeeve that Crowley was dictated to by a praeterhuman entity, an HGA, and (possibly) space alien at the same time!" It's not that different from saying "God bless America!" and waving some sparkly pom pom's about, God bless them.
From the Book of Thoth Crowley gives us this insight on making a Religion:
A saviour is needed. What is the one thing certain about his qualifications? That he should not be an ordinary man. (In the Gospels people cavilled about the claim that Jesus was the Messiah because he came from Nazareth, a perfectly well-known town, because they knew his mother and his family; in brief, they argued that he did not qualify as a candidate for Saviour.) The saviour must be a peculiarly sacred person; that he should be a human being at all is hardly credible. At the very least, his mother must be a virgin; and, to match this wonder, his father cannot be an ordinary man; therefore, his father must be a god. But as a god is a gaseous vertebrate, he must be some materialisation of a god. Very good! Let him be the god Mars under the form of a wolf, or Jupiter as a bull, or a shower of gold, or a swan; or Jehovah in the form of a dove; or some other creature of phantasy, preferably disguised in some animal form. There are innumerable forms of this tradition, but they all agree on one point: the saviour can only appear as the result of some extra ordinary accident, quite contrary to whatevey is normal. The slightest suggestion of anything reasonable in this matter would destroy the whole argument.
For the rest of us that have lost a religion in the last few months - here's a little bit of R.E.M. that seems particularly appropriate today as we pick up the pieces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if-UzXIQ5vw
And here's what's left: Not Liber Al, but a body of writing that he left for the real Magicians and true Mystics amongst us. He left us his legacy of the Lost Word and the Temple of Solomon. He left us his humour and his insight. And although te entire occult community is using the Tree of Life instead of the Temple and getting lost on the path, he wrote a lot more on the Temple of Solomon that can help us understand it. See: http://www.paganspace.net/profiles/blogs/ararita-and-the-temple-of-solomon...
Is it enough? Well... I note here that although at one point in early Buddhist history that the father of Gautama Buddha was said to be an elephant with six tusks, appearing to his mother in a dream - as a whole Buddhism has managed to avoid much of the founding supernatural hooha that attracts people with a believer script. Perhaps Thelema will also learn to get along without the story of a supernatural event attached to it's origins.
Reposted from Paganspace.
Richard T. Cole is soon to release a new book 'Liber Al vel Bogus', that claims he can prove the so called 'Holy Book of Thelema' is a fraud, and that Crowley invented the story of the reception of the Book by a praeterhuman entity called Aiwass.
http://www.quicksilver.uk.com/RTC/bogus.htm
There is a lot of speculation as to how Cole is going to do this, but in the meantime I'd like to present my own theories on how and why Crowley invented the story of the books reception, and give readers here the opportunity to express their opinion. While there are always going to be people who are invested in holding a 'believer script', (just like there are fundamentalist Christians who will claim that the Earth was created in 7 days because the bible says so) - I think for most rational people the evidence will speak for itself.
-----------------------------------
Aleister Crowley was born in 12/10/1875 to parents of a conservative faction of the Plymouth Brethren. In his early childhood the only reading book he was allowed was the Bible. As a young man he rebelled and nurtured a deep resentment of religion while at the same time he identified with the Beast spoken of in the Book of Revelations. If you remember your bible then the Beast of that Book lies and deceives the multitude, leading them away from 'God'.
Aleister Crowley joined a branch of irregular Freemasons and in 1900's Mexico he passed the 32 degree. It was shortly after this anti-climax for him that he claimed to have discovered the 'Lost Word' of the Master Mason, which is synonymous with discovering the Temple of Solomon.
This 'Lost Word' was cleverly hidden within a Book of Jewish Mysticism called 'The Zohar' aka 'The Book of Splendour', which had been translated by the head of the Golden Dawn 'Mathers' in 1887.
The Book presents the familiar 'Tree of Life' which occultists have been using for more than a century... without realising that the Tree was never intended to have been used in such a fashion. Indeed - the Tree of Life was intended to be starting point for Jewish Kabbalist students who wanted to know what the idealised plan was of Gods 'sacred space' - the Temple of Solomon. To avoid Christian persecution such things as cryptography to hide sensitive content was necessary in those days. To give you a flavour of the ways the book indicates to the reader that the Tree should be changed I'll quote a couple of verses here:
11. But what is to be understood by that passage— “And they that despise Me shall be lightly esteemed?” Such an one is that man who can neither institute the union of the Holy Name, nor bind together the links of truth {the paths}, nor derive the supernals {plural} into the position {singular} required, nor honour the Name of his Lord. Better were it for that man had he never been created, and much more for that man who doth not attentively meditate when he saith Amen!
and
3. When he is concealed, he is hidden by the letters which are not disposed according (to the proper order) of the letters, or (according to another reading of this passage) in their proper place; because also in him their superiors and inferiors {paths} are not rightly disposed (because of the disturbed transpositions).
The topic of how the Kabbalist derives the Temple of Solomon from the Tree of Life is a complex one and beyond the scope of this presentation, but readers may email me for more information.
In any case, Aleister Crowley managed to crack the Zohar like an egg and produce the Word and Temple in 1900, and he thought he was the bee's knee's for it. He went up and down America and across Europe visiting Masonic Lodges by the dozen, but found to his great frustration that and disgust that nobody actually wanted to know the Lost Word! They gave him a score of honorary degree's to shut him up, but basically - they felt that the entire point of the Lost Word was that it was something that people should continue to strive for. And so in 1904, still burning white hot with a resentment against religious people and nursing a new resentment against Freemasonry he conceived his raison de etre: he was the Beast, and he was going to Lie and mislead the unthinking religious bigoted fools like his mother. That was magick... and by Satan - when he'd finished, that would teach them!
There's one thing to mention here - every time he lies in one place or one document, he makes up for it and tells the truth elsewhere.
So naturally, if you've fell for his Liber Al fraud, it's your own look out. I'll demonstrate. In Appendix iii of Magick in Theory and Practise' he tells you that Aiwaz has put cryptography in the Book of the Law that Aiwass has concealed "in the letters and words a complex cipher involving the knowledge of facts never till than existing in any human mind" and that "In a word, the Book of the Law proves the prime postulate of Religion." The content of the cryptography is the Lost Word and the Temple of Solomon from his 1900 research... but Crowley? Proving the prime postulate of Religion? And the new messenger of the White school sent by the Great White Brotherhood? Come on! In Magick wthout Tears he is honest about his agenda. Spot the obvious paradox:"It is particularly to be noted that Magick, so often mixed up in the popular idea of a religion, has nothing to do with it. It is, in fact, the exact opposite of religion; it is, even more than Physical Science, its irreconcilable enemy".
Now Crowley expected that his work might bear fruit and grow into a thriving new religion. But he also left enough dirt around to catch him red handed. The O.T.O. and a great many researchers have had access to his private notes over the years, and it's difficult to believe that they didn't notice the obvious con he was pulling off. Crowley wanted to be caught out. He went out of his way to ensure that he would be, eventually. He didn't want 'this' to go on for perpetuity. He was the Beast - teaching a magical lesson to the religious minded Fools that were his irreconcilable enemies.
The Convert - by Aleister Crowley.
(A Hundred Years Hence)
There met one eve in a sylvan glade
A horrible Man and a beautiful maid.
“Where are you going, so meek and holy?”
“I’m going to temple to worship Crowley.”
“Crowley is God, then? How did you know?”
“Why, it’s Captain Fuller that told us so.”
“And how do you know that Fuller was right?”
“I’m afraid you’re a wicked man; Good-night.”
While this sort of thing is styled success
I shall not count failure bitterness
He's left notes that have his prepared Gematria for the Book of the Law or his "Great Thesis". He went out of his way to say the Lost Word was encrypted in Liber Al, and in Confessions he tell's us that he found it in 1900. We know that he 'restored' Abrahadabra in 1900 (because it has all the letters of the Lost Word, but isn't). And we know that he prepared the poetry and translations of the Stele before he wrote the book. If you're still a believer by now, then please observe.... he didn't leave much for Aiwaz to write about, did he?
And let's look at "Aiwass the Minister"... It's an Anagram! Turn it around and you get "I Sin, I was the Master" and there's some business about the Arabic being the name of a waiter. As in the 'check please!' sort. But his confessions don't stop there. Seriously folks, this man goes on and on confessing his Sins while joking his head off...
Why does he say he received the Book of the Law over 3 days? Why is the Law of Thelema in 3 parts? Why are there three grades or degree's?
We have to go back to the Zohar again, (talking about the biblical Book of the Law) to explain these aspects of the hoax:
427. “Also it is written, Isa. vi. 4: 'And they called one unto another and said: Holy, holy, holy!' Behold these three unto which the Book of the Law correspondeth, for its covering is holy, and the Temple is holy, and the book itself is holy.
428. “And thus the law hath been constructed in triple holiness, in three degrees, in three days. {sound familiar } The Schechinah in the three which are the Table, the Ark, and the Temple; and in the same manner it dependeth from the Book of the Law, and that dependeth from the Influx.
But if we were not completely convinced by this obvious little tell then he goes all out to confess in chapter 56 of his Book of Lies:
Holy, holy, holy, unto Five Hundred and Fifty Five
times holy be OUR LADY of the STARS!
Holy, holy, holy, unto One Hundred and Fifty Six
times holy be OUR LADY that rideth upon THE
BEAST!
Holy, holy, holy, unto the Number of Times
Necessary and Appropriate be OUR LADY
Isis in Her Millions-of-Names, All-Mother,
Genetrix-Meretrix!
Yet holier than all These to me is LAYLAH, night
and death; for Her do I blaspheme alike the finite
and the The Infinite.
So wrote not FRATER PERDURABO, but the
Imp Crowley in his Name.
For forgery let him suffer Penal Servitude for Seven
Years; or at least let him do Pranayama all the
way home-home? nay! but to the house of the
harlot whom he loveth not. For it is LAYLAH that
he loveth...................................
And yet who knoweth which is Crowley, and which is
FRATER PERDURABO?
You see, Crowley knew believers inside and out. He knew that every religion must have a proper supernatural event to spark it off, so that extroverts can warm themselves over the fire of a believer script. i.e. "I belieeeeeeve in Aiwaz and the New Aeon! I belieeeeeeeve that Crowley was dictated to by a praeterhuman entity, an HGA, and (possibly) space alien at the same time!" It's not that different from saying "God bless America!" and waving some sparkly pom pom's about, God bless them.
From the Book of Thoth Crowley gives us this insight on making a Religion:
A saviour is needed. What is the one thing certain about his qualifications? That he should not be an ordinary man. (In the Gospels people cavilled about the claim that Jesus was the Messiah because he came from Nazareth, a perfectly well-known town, because they knew his mother and his family; in brief, they argued that he did not qualify as a candidate for Saviour.) The saviour must be a peculiarly sacred person; that he should be a human being at all is hardly credible. At the very least, his mother must be a virgin; and, to match this wonder, his father cannot be an ordinary man; therefore, his father must be a god. But as a god is a gaseous vertebrate, he must be some materialisation of a god. Very good! Let him be the god Mars under the form of a wolf, or Jupiter as a bull, or a shower of gold, or a swan; or Jehovah in the form of a dove; or some other creature of phantasy, preferably disguised in some animal form. There are innumerable forms of this tradition, but they all agree on one point: the saviour can only appear as the result of some extra ordinary accident, quite contrary to whatevey is normal. The slightest suggestion of anything reasonable in this matter would destroy the whole argument.
For the rest of us that have lost a religion in the last few months - here's a little bit of R.E.M. that seems particularly appropriate today as we pick up the pieces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if-UzXIQ5vw
And here's what's left: Not Liber Al, but a body of writing that he left for the real Magicians and true Mystics amongst us. He left us his legacy of the Lost Word and the Temple of Solomon. He left us his humour and his insight. And although te entire occult community is using the Tree of Life instead of the Temple and getting lost on the path, he wrote a lot more on the Temple of Solomon that can help us understand it. See: http://www.paganspace.net/profiles/blogs/ararita-and-the-temple-of-solomon...
Is it enough? Well... I note here that although at one point in early Buddhist history that the father of Gautama Buddha was said to be an elephant with six tusks, appearing to his mother in a dream - as a whole Buddhism has managed to avoid much of the founding supernatural hooha that attracts people with a believer script. Perhaps Thelema will also learn to get along without the story of a supernatural event attached to it's origins.
