V'la, p'tite chatte; c'est fini, le travail. Foutons le camp!2
Notes:
1. The Legend of Absinthe
Apollo, who weeps for Hyacinth's demise,
Had not the will to yield this victory to Death.
It must be that the soul, adept in flight,
Has found for beauty the most holy alchemy.
Then with her starry hand exhausted, has used up
The most subtle gifts of the goddess Flora.
Their bodies struggle through the golden gloom
From which we carefully let drip -- Absinthe!
From lowly hovels and from sparkling courts,
Alone, in pairs, come drink of this magnetic fluid!
Because it is a charm -- as one might say --
The pale opal wine which interrupts all misery,
Manufactured within the secret sanctuary of beauty
-- Bewitch my heart, and captivate my soul!
[trans. ED., with thanks to Frater Valentinus, Soror Anna Perenna, and Frater
Majnun, for contributing to our understanding of this poem. We have not
succeeded in identifying its authorship, with the obvious suspicion being that
the pen was Crowley's own. It does not appear to be the work of any of the
major French poets of the nineteenth century, although resemblances to
Henedia, Chenier, and Gautier have been suggested. Any critical attention to
this poem, and to our efforts at translation, would be very much appreciated.]
2. "There, little kitty, the journey's done; we'll camp here!" -- trans. ED.
Previous Crowley Classics Next Crowley Classics
from the Grady Project:
The Unicorn
| I saw the god Harpocrates |
| Stride forth into the glow |
| Of cloud bank suns, whole galaxies |
| Their stars like drifting snow |
| I saw the wide eternities |
| Of dust stars sift and flow.
|
| O Lady Ishtar lift the bowl |
| And drain the Life that is our Blood |
| O Wine, Illusion of the Soul, |
| Be Nectar of the living flood!
|
| O hollow god Harpocrates |
| Writ large upon the rift |
| Of space-time continuities |
| Thy bloodless Saints adrift |
| Between the walled realities |
| Have felt the space tide's lift!
|
| O Lady Ishtar lift the bowl |
| And drain the Life that is our Blood |
| O Wine, Illusion of the Soul, |
| Be Nectar of the living flood! |
| -- Grady L. McMurtry |
| 5/18/61 & 6/11/61 |
Originally published in O.T.O. Newsletter 1:4 (March 1978), then in Ecclesia Gnostica 1:4 (1985). Grady attributed this poem to the Lust Trump in the
Thoth deck.
Previous Grady Project Next Grady Project
Book Review
The Egyptian Book of the Dead: "The Book of Going Forth by Day" translated by
R. O. Faulkner, introduced with commentary by Dr. Ogden Goelet of New York
University, prefaced by Carol Andrews, and with a foreword by Jim Wasserman.
San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1994, 175 pp.
I was quite impressed with this book in many ways. I think it must have
been a monumental task to arrange for all the permissions to bring this to
market. It's quite beautiful.
The artwork is one of its strengths. Using Photoshop they restored this
work; a much better presentation than I have ever seen before. The plates are
wonderfully presented. Larger scenes are not broken up for the convenience of
the bookmaker, but the book is made to conform with the intent of the scene,
even where fold-out pages are needed. Color is restored from the E. A. W.
Budge reproductions of the Papyrus of Ani, and damage repaired, to complete
and restore images.
The translator is R. O. Faulkner. Faulkner wrote the book on translating
material such as this -- literally, his Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian
is the standard reference. As is his translation of the Coffin Texts, and
also the Book of the Dead. I have found him to be an excellent translator,
but I enjoy the freedom to be able to refer to the scroll itself on some of
the references. Great combo, that artwork and this translation!
I also particularly liked the commentary in the back of the book by Dr.
Goelet. His history of this class of literature places the papyrus of Ani in
context; we get a good idea of its evolution. For those of us who practice
magick his section on the vocabulary of Magic will be of especial interest:
"The number of words in the Egyptian language which could be translated as
'magic' is an indication of the complexity of their thoughts concerning magic.
The most common and important of these words is heka, whose Coptic equivalent
was later used to render the Greek word magia in the Coptic New Testament. In
Egyptian texts the word was virtually interchangeable with Heka, the deity
personifying magic."
"In the realm of Egyptian magic, actions did not necessarily speak louder
than words -- they were often one and the same thing. Thought, deed, image,
and power are theoretically united in the concept heka."
At a list price of only $25 or so I would recommend this book to anyone
within reach of this review. After all, the deities might have chosen
Egyptian images for our Holy Book on purpose! And if that is the case it
would behoove us to become familiar with this work. After all, the Stele of
Revealing quotes from it, and there are more than a few of the rituals of the
Argentum Astrum that use it. So run right out and get a copy! Thanx, Jim;
intense concept, well done! Thank everyone involved.
An Introduction to Qabalah
Part XIII -Spirits and Family in the Four Worlds..Derived from a lecture series in 1977 e.v. by Bill Heidrick
Copyright © Bill Heidrick
"Pantheons" of spirits are assigned to the Tree of Life by hierarchy.
Atzilut is the realm of the deities, the highest spirits which ultimately are
One Spirit. These may have different names as understood below, but up above
they are all one. Briah is said to be the realm of the Archangels. The
angels are assigned to Yetzirah. Down in Assiah are the spirits that confuse, the nervous-breakdown angels and archangels that are considered demons and
arch-devils. This is how the hierarchies go in the four worlds. The
elemental attributions are: Atziluth-fire, Briah-water, Yetzirah-air, and
Assiah-earth -- by correspondence to the letters in the Hebrew name 
. To
Yod, the first letter of Jehovah, is fire; to Heh, the second letter, is
water; in their mingling we naturally get steam, Vau and air, the third
letter; and finally Heh, the last letter, corresponding to earth. We will
return to this spiritual ordering in later installments, but it is necessary
to look at something else first.
Here is one of the things that is difficult to understand in Qabalistic
works. Such writings speak of Macroprosophus, or the Great Face, the Vast
Countenance; Abba, the Father; Aima the mother; Microprosophus, the Lesser
Countenance; and the Bride of this Lesser Countenance, Malkah. This is an
attempt to explain things in a nice simple family relationship on the Tree of
Life according to the way Jewish families lived perhaps a thousand years ago.
There was a grandfather, the Vast Countenance with a white beard. There was a
father and mother. The eldest son had to find himself a bride. That's seeing
the Tree as a family allegory, but what else is it? The idea of many, a
multiplication of essential unity, is symbolized by the firstborn son. The
first born of an old style family is the number one hope for the future. Even
grandpa, although vastly respected, is not given as much attention as that
first born son. The family will try to analyze every fragment of his beliefs
-- everything he says and does is subject to close scrutiny. If you live in
such a family or know such a family well, you don't have to think about the
pattern; but you will understand what all of this upon the Tree of Life is
about. If you do not understand the pattern of such a traditional family, you
will need some help. To do that, we must descend to the third level on the
Qabalistic system, to the level of symbols instead of the world of Briah (the
world corresponding to allegory).
The symbol of the Great Face, the Macroprosopus, Keter up on the Tree is
the archetype of the whole universe. That's why it's called the Great Face.
It is the whole show as a single symbol, the perfect being. We can explain
this with an allegory of Briah: Grandfather is the one that made it. If there
hadn't been a successful grandfather there wouldn't be a mother and a father
and a child. Everybody looks back to what Grandfather did. He's the one who
earned the wealth and provided the home. His son, the Father of the next
generation, had to work for a living, but the Son in the third generation can
be given an education and other advantages. The beginner, the mystery beyond
all things, is Keter. Grandpa may even be dead by now, out of touch, or just
hard to talk to; but everybody knows that if it wasn't for Grandpa, if it
wasn't for Keter, there wouldn't be a family at all. The Father (Chokmah) and
the Mother (Binah) have an understandable role. If there wasn't a Father and
a Mother there wouldn't be a Son. Father and Mother probably would have had a
rougher time of it if it hadn't been for Grandpa's money. Who is the Son or
the Daughter? -- remember that sexual symbolism to the Tree is often more a
matter of tradition than essential to the ideas.
The middle six Sephirot on the Tree are You, your awareness, all of the
states of consciousness a person may reasonably expect in mundane Life. There
is an essence beyond those Sephirot that is like a mother in a family. There
is some aspect behind "her" that is like a father, and there's a vast essence
behind that like grandpa and grandmas' days. The main thing is the set of six
Sephirot inside you. Yesod is your awareness of fantasy. Hod is your
reasoning ability in practical terms, Netzach is your emotional pattern and
Tipheret is the sense of who you are and the answer to the question: "What do
you do?" Geburah is the higher reason, the sense of what should be. This is
the moral sense, but not a memorized set of do's and don't's. Chesed is the
sense of expansion, of religion, of mystic enlightenment and of ecstasy. All
those are the proper constituents of a normal human being. If that person or
Microprosophus has a good relationship with the environment, there is a
marriage to the earth. That bride or bridegroom is Malkut. In this, Adam Kadmon is a celestial model of a human being; the senses and faculties unite
with a mind reaching back to the founding generations, like a grown child with
the spirits of the ancestors carried upon his or her shoulders. The Egyptians
represented this as the young Horus, carrying the dwarf god Bez.
Previous Introduction to Qabalah, Part XII Next: The four worlds, the elements and imagery elabotated
Primary Sources
Achad after Crowley:
Here's an example from a series of lessons prepared by Fr. Achad for his group, possibly after some decline in his relations with Crowley. The approach at first seems completely apart from Thelema and Magick, but careful reading will turn up traces of those matters.
XXXII
First Binobligate Tablet
---
On the Necessity of Action
-----
Labor of any kind, especially when rightly performed, or directed towards a
proper end, results in the creation of values. There is no real value of any
kind which has not some reference to labour. The nugget picked up by chance
near a mine has value only because it shortens the term of labour of the
possessor and thereby brings him nearer to that which he desires and labours
for. Even the universal benefits which come to every man, like sunshine and
fresh air, result from the Giant Labors of the Macrocosm, beside which the
total labours of all men from the beginning of the human race are negligible.
Value creates esteem, esteem begets desire, and desire evokes effort. Thus
whatever is esteemed as valuable is thereby considered to be worth working
for, and the effort and labour to obtain it will be a measure of the value
attaching to it.
Conversely, that for which no effort is made must be considered as not
desirable or of no value, to him at least who refuses the effort.
Thus it is seen that the value of anything is extrinsic rather than
intrinsic. A laurel wreath in ancient times could evoke the greatest physical
efforts of men and induce them to submit to a long course of self-denial and
preparation.
Thus too it is seen that a Great Cycle is in motion; for the necessity of action, of which the issue is work, is itself the offspring of value, which is
created through labour.
-- --
Action deliberately performed is Work.
The popular fallacy of distinguishing as work only those actions which are
reluctantly or of necessity performed is due in part to an imperfect
apprehension of man's ultimate ends, from which results an imperfect co-
ordination of subordinate aims and an absence of pleasure in the performance
of work. To the wise man all right work is pleasurable. There are three kinds of Work: the Work of Thought, the Work of
Transmission and the Work of Production. Although distinct in kind, these are
not necessarily dissociated in any particular branch or sphere of labour.
Included in the Work of Thought is nearly all that work commonly classed as
mental, and in particular the Work of Contemplation of any kind, such as that
of a Christian monk, a Sufi or a Aannyasi, or that of a philosopher or
scientist, whether or not such work is popularly considered of any value, and
the work of enlisting the services of others more powerful than oneself, such
as prayer or canvassing, irrespective of whether such work is successful or
not. The Work of Thought also includes the Work of Direction of every kind,
such a kingship, presidency, generalship, managership, inspection,
development, etc.
Included in the Work of Transmission are all the labours by which knowledge
and traditions are transferred from place to place, from age to age, and from
generation to generation, and especially the Work of Pedagogy or Education.
Included in the Work of Production is all the work connected with the
manufacture, distribution and exchange of material goods, all forms of manual
labour, and in particular the Work of Husbandry, which is the production of
wealth from the fertility of Nature, and the Work of Defense of the social
organism from its enemies.
The Work of Thought is more honourable than and hierarchically superior to
the other Works, and those whose lives are devoted to such work usually have
the direction of those engaged in the lesser tasks.
The Work of Transmission is more honourable than and hierarchically
superior to the Work of Production, and normally carries with it a
corresponding authority.
But even the humblest form of the Work of Production, when honestly,
cheerfully and efficiently performed, is more honourable than the most exalted
Work of Thought if this be done badly, grudgingly or carelessly. And since
all three labours are necessary, he whose work is in a lower grade must, as
far as possible, be preserved and assisted in that work, as certainly as must
he whose work is in a higher grade.
The dignity of any work depends also upon the dignity and personal merit of
the worker; and on the motive which actuates the worker or the end for which
the work is done.
-- --
Whoever does no work is socially inefficient.
The same is true of every man whose work during his years of activity does
not restore to the community not only what it costs the community to keep him
during those active years, but also what has been expended on him during his
years of growth and training and what will be expended on him during his
retirement. It is not necessary that his own work should be directly
productive of these values; it suffices if by any means he enables others so
to increase the value of their labours that the results may be attributable,
in part at least, to him. He is then socially efficient.
Whoever makes it his aim to do as little work as possible, or, having the
use of faculties fails to employ them to their proper extent, or greedily
seeks only to gain from the community as much as possible, is as a
contemptible slave to the Commonwealth of the Race wherein he might be an
honoured co-operator, and is deserving of economic ostracism under the law
that "he who works not, shall not eat". This is as true of the wealthiest and
most powerful of "renters" as of the meanest tramp, if either of these
performs no service to the community.
There is a vast amount of work for every man of independent means to do if
he is willing, without thereby lessening, but on the contrary largely
increasing, the chances of employment for others. In like manner there is a
great deal of work to be done which is quite within the range of, and even
especially suited to, the capacities of even the most nomadically inclined of men. Much of this work in our present-day social organism is necessarily
unremunerative, and for that reason should be more readily undertaken by those
to whom an immediate remuneration is not an urgent factor in their toil, or to
whom some accident of birth or circumstances has brought the means which makes
them independent of such toil.
No man has ever deserved, or could deserve, all the benefits which accrue
to him from his birth in a human society already well developed. Even if he
were to produce values all his life from birth to death he would not repay his
debt. Whoever says, "I am in no man's debt; I pay in full for everything I
receive", knows neither what he has received nor what he is paying and
deceives himself or his neighbours or both. The same is true of any one who
claims to be a "self-made" man. Such vain talkers show themselves to have no
real idea of what the world and society into which they are born has done for
them, and so feeling their general indebtedness less than other men they are
more prone than others to sink below the level of social efficiency and to
become a burden instead of an asset, to the community in which they live.
-- --
There is no contradiction between the statements that man can never repay
the community for what he receives , and that the socially efficient man must
pay the community for all that it expends upon him, for by far the greater
part of the benefits received by the individual are not thereby "expended" by
the community, since they are not in the nature of "consumables" and are
therefore incapable of being expended by communication. Many, indeed, such as
for example the affection bestowed by parents upon a child are even nourished
and increased by communication, rather than expended.
-- --
There are some who imagine that this universe is ruled by fate, and that
consequently "what will be, will be" independently of whatever effort they may
make. Such a belief reduces all action and inaction to absurdity, for no
deliberate action or deliberate refraining from action can be rational if no
result is thereby produced or avoided. The extreme fatalist who, curbing his
natural appetite for activity and speculation, sits on a river-bank waiting
for what the fates may bring, whether it be a kingdom or a crocodile, is
taking a course which by his own philosophy is no more to be recommended than
any other, and which is certainly much less pleasurable and much more
inconvenient than many another. Thus those who vehemently defend the doctrine
of fatalism do but thereby show their own inherent disbelief in it, for if
blind fate ruled all, there would be no sense in defending any doctrine.
There are others who imagine that because the Divine Providence rules all
things it is unnecessary for them to do anything. But a belief which does not
issue in action of some sort is not a real belief at all, but only a mere
notion tentatively held, and such people, refusing by inaction to become
willing co-operators in the Divine Work, flout the Divine Providence as
impudently as he who openly and deliberately sets out to oppose it.
Again there are others who say to themselves, "I am only one amongst so
many, so nothing that I can do matters". Such people are generally in a
certain sense right, for no man can do as a rule what he believes himself to
be incapable of doing. But it is only their own pusillanimity and sloth that
makes them right, and whatever rightness there may be in their views is of no
credit to them, but on the contrary is very much to their disgrace.
Those who openly and consciously hold such extreme doctrine may be few in
number, but there are very many who allow such ideas to influence their
actions, thus diminishing their efficiency and destroying their hope of
success in life.
-- --
That is most worth working for which has the largest and highest aims. In
the case of an organization of which the aims are universal, which moreover
imparts the Integral Truth and produces an Integral Beauty and Integral
Goodness, the man of real intelligence and goodwill perceives that he has
found that which is more worth working for than anything else in the world.
When he has fulfilled his primary social duties, he is eager to lend his aid
in every way possible, and to be an effective collaborator in the Great Work
in whatever way is permitted to him.
And even though knowing that he can never work so hard as to actually repay
human society, the Macrocosm and its Source for what has been given him, and
that no amount of work he ever does can be considered as a full and complete
compensation for what he receives, he should realize that the spirit in which
it is done and the nature of the aims he cherishes have their due effect upon
the value of what is accomplished. Therefore, whether he can give much
assistance or little, he will give it with joy and delight and with the
satisfaction of knowing that its value to the world is multiplied many times
by reason of the exalted nature of the aims towards which it is efficiently
directed.
------
scripsit
complevit
imprim.
revidit
Previous Primary Sources Next Primary Sources
From the Outbasket
From time to time new revelations are announced or otherwise proposed. Recently, on one of the online services, a discussion folder was opened about a new book, arguing for a new revelation. This is a pretty common occurrence, and the proponents for this particular book have indicated that they don't want exposure in the TLC. Still, an issue of the testing of revelation came up, and I thought our readers would like to ponder the question. Here is a substantially edited cut from my discussions over there (wherever "there" may be!).
One of the proponents took exception to my observation: "all revelation
depends on ideas and vocabulary already present in the receiving mind."
He described how he had a vision involving a mystical passage and meeting
with an individual claiming to have been E____. There was a promise that he
would remember what he needed as he came to need it.
I responded that his experience was not incompatible with my observation.
The matter of remembering is particularly important, since it is not possible
to remember without either complete images or tags to existing memories. He
had described an experience of death, rock, passage, meeting the equivalent of
people and similar things that can be associated with daily life.
The gentleman further remarked that he was told about various things,
giving some familiar mystical terms to characterize the experience.
I replied that all those things are common elements in the present culture,
including the 19th century and earlier. Some of those terms were either
coined or very popular from 75 to 150 years ago. In a completely non-mystical
venue, as a child, I began talking about an animal called a "platypus". My parents denied that such an animal existed. A year later, there was an
article about that Australian monotreme in the local newspaper -- the first
instance of my consciously knowing from external sources that such a creature
existed. There are many unprovable theories about transmission of terminology
and ideas intangibly in society. There are also theories about accidental
observation and unconscious imprint from sight of books, sound of conversation
and similar things -- usually raised in efforts to de-bunk claims of
reincarnation with memory of events and languages from previous lives.
In my studies, all revelation takes a cultural or countercultural form.
One uses ideas and context from life either directly contemporary or from
modern ideas about the past. New ideas can be formed by seeing connections
between apparently disconnected contemporary ideas or by making moral or other
decisions about various things. The future is sometimes prophesied. Random
elements of image and name can come in, but rarely with more than a labeling
or summarizing quality. Examples would include the entire Bible and, more
recently, Crowley's Liber AL -- in the latter, various ideas and entire phrases
about Thelema and Egyptian deities can be traced to printed books from
contemporary authors back to about the year 1500. New ideas do come in, but
always from the garden of the modern day. Revelation can provide entirely
alien or novel concepts, but to write them down and communicate them requires
contemporary language and ideas.
A test frequently imposed is to the predictive, innovative and "living"
nature of the revealed texts. By this standard, the text must pass three
tests to be considered revelation.
1. It must predict events which have not yet come to pass, do actually
later come to pass and cannot be imagined based on present knowledge and
ideas.
2. It must disclose knowledge not only absent at the time from the person
receiving the revelation, but utterly impossible to come from the environment
of that person in any fashion.
3. It must be impossible of narrow interpretation to exclusion of other
interpretation -- having the quality of talking to each earnest reader uniquely
and leading to further revelation.
Unfortunately, #1 is always challengeable by some argument in every
instance and #2 is always a matter of proving a negative. Application of
these two standards is to an extent subjective. In practice, #3 is usually
the deciding factor.
-- TSG (Bill Heidrick)
Previous From the Outbasket Next From the Outbasket
Events Calendar for March 1996 e.v.
| 3/3/96 | | Gnostic Mass 8:00PM Horus Temple | | Thelema Ldg. |
| 3/4/96 | Thelema Lodge Library night 8PM
(call to attend) | Thelema Ldg. |
| 3/10/96 | Thelema Lodge Luncheon meeting 12:30 | Thelema Ldg. |
| 3/10/96 | Gnostic Mass 8:00PM Horus Temple | Thelema Ldg. |
| 3/11/96 | John Dee reading group 8PM w/Clay | Thelema Ldg. |
| 3/17/96 | Gnostic Mass 8:00PM Horus Temple | Thelema Ldg. |
| 3/18/96 | Section 2 reading group w/Catlin
Geo. Meredith's The shaving of
Shagpat 8PM at Oz house | Thelema Ldg. |
| 3/20/95 | Vernal Equinox ritual 7PM | Thelema Ldg. |
| 3/23/96 | Enochian Liturgy Group Workshop
on Scrying at 2PM | Thelema Ldg. |
| 3/24/96 | Gnostic Mass 8:00PM Horus Temple | Thelema Ldg. |
| 3/25/96 | Sirius Oasis meeting 8:PM Berkeley | Sirius Oasis |
| 3/27/96 | Thelema Lodge Library night 8PM
(call to attend) | Thelema Ldg. |
| 3/29/96 | Astrological Cycles workship 7PM
with Grace in Berkeley | Thelema Ldg. |
| 3/31/96 | Gnostic Mass 8:00PM Horus Temple | Thelema Ldg. |
The viewpoints and opinions expressed herein are the responsibility of the
contributing authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of OTO or its
officers.
Thelema Lodge
Ordo Templi Orientis
P.O. Box 2303
Berkeley, CA 94702 USA
Phone: (510) 652-3171 (for events info and contact to Lodge)
Production and Circulation:
OTO-TLC
P.O.Box 430
Fairfax, CA 94978 USA
Internet: heidrick@well.com (Submissions and circulation only)
M