ENOCHIAN MAGIC: THE CRY OF BAG, THE 28TH AETHYR

AS BEFORE I fell upwards through space, stars and worlds shooting past me.  Above me I saw a great orb of rose pink, surrounded by a burning corona of pale green fire.  I was pulled into this sphere, descending into delicate clouds of dawn pink.  

As the clouds parted I landed gently at the shore of a small, still pond, in the middle of a green wood.  Lily pads and pink lotus blossoms floated on the waters.  Crickets chirped, and dragonflies Flitted about.  It was twilight; in the west, through the trees, the sky was brilliant gold; overhead, rose pink clouds drifted.  Behind them I caught glimpses of the green fire, like the northern lights.  The air was still and heavy, humid, ripe with the scent of a thousand flowers.  Everywhere I heard the buzzing of insects.

Then I noticed the statue.  It stood in the center of this pond, an Isis figure of rose-colored marble, cradling the infant Horus in her lap.  

I waited a few moments at the edge of this pond, realizing the sun’s position had not changed.  This world seemed locked in eternal sunset.  I turned slowly around, looking at the shadowy silhouettes of the tree line and the velvet blue haze of the woods behind.  I saw that the pond was at the bottom of a great, bowl shaped depression, like an ancient crater.  I decided to see what was up along the rim.

I fought my way through the thick reeds and pussy willows that grew along the pond, and then ducked my head under the branches as I entered the trees.  Here I scrabbled up a slope covered in old pine needles.  Eventually I reached the edge of the rim, and my breath caught at the sight of a magnificent view.

The bowl shaped depression, it turned out, was the cauldron of a long extinct volcano.  I was standing then atop this high peak.  Under the bluish dark of twilight, I beheld beautiful mountain valleys, green with rich farmland and vineyards.  These shone green and gold in the fading light.  Jagged mountain peaks concealed the horizon, capped with snow.  Everything was verdant and lush.  It seemed to me it must be late summer, just before harvest time.

Suddenly, to my right, I heard a stealthy sound.  Peering through the trees I spotted a fawn with a pale brown coat dappled with white spots.  It emerged from the trees and paused at the head of a thin deer path, watching for me.  I understood it wished me to follow.

As I approached it started down the deer path into the valley below.  I followed it.  The course zig-zagged down the mountainside through the twilight forest, the tall trees looking to me like cedar.  Now and again the fawn would stop and look over its shoulder at me, to make sure I was keeping up.  Beneath the trees there was a thick carpet of ferns, tall enough that if I stepped off the deer path I might disappear into them.  So I stuck to the path and followed my guide.

We emerged at the bottom of the valley, at the edge of one of the fields.  To my right was a farmstead, a collection of single-story stone buildings with thatched roofs, surrounded by a low stone wall.  The fawn walked along the edge of this wall to a square gateway, two straight pillars with a lintel laying across them.  The lintel was inscribed with what looked to be Norse or Germanic runes.

The fawn turned to pass through this gate.  As she did, she underwent a startled transformation.  A little girl merged from under a fawnskin cloak, which she neatly folded and tucked under her arm.  She was eight or nine years old, with pale blonde hair in a long single braid.  Her skin was pale, eyes green, and she wore a simple dress of spotless white.  A crown of pink flowers encircled her head.  She gestured for me to follow, and passing under the arch I entered a paved courtyard.  The cobblestones were wet; I had the impression they had just been washed.  In the center of this courtyard was a well, and to my right was a stone and thatched cottage.  To my left was a barn.  At the opposite side was a small yard.

My name is SOMUE, I told her.  Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Love is the law, love under will, she replied.  My name is MIALO. (in Enochian 194, = to PARADIZ “young girl, virgin”)

Is this BAG, the 28th Aethyr?

It is.  She gestured across the courtyard and over to the yard.  Please follow me.  I will take you to Mother.

I nodded, following her into the yard.  To the left of the were stables, and I could see the heads of beautiful white horses with golden manes.  As we approached the yard I saw a small pond with white swans sailing on its surface.  Overhead, geese flew in a V formation.  There were apple trees, and at the far edge of the yard another low stone wall with the vineyards stretching out behind it.  

The most striking thing in this yard, however, was a white marble fountain.  A young satyr (faun) was pouring wine from an urn into the pool.  The fountain was carved with a motif of grapes and vines.

Behind the fountain, with her back to me, was a woman.  Like the girl she had white blonde hair in a long braid down her back.  On her head was a circlet of gold.  She wore a gauzy, pale green cloak over a long dress of rose pink.  When she turned towards me, i was startled.  She didn’t have a face.

This is Mother, the little girl told me.  I greeted the woman, but she did not—could not—answer.  Then the little girl dropped her fawn cloak on the grass and stepped forward to embrace the Mother.  The moment they touch the girl disappeared into the woman as if absorbed.  Now, the woman looked at me with a new face…Mialo’s, but older.  

Greetings SOMUE.  I am DIAFNE.

It seemed perfectly normal to her that she had just consumed her child in this way, so I nodded my head and collected my thoughts.  I have come to learn the nature of this Aethyr.  What can you teach me of it?

Nothing, she replied.

Nothing?

What I know cannot be communicated, only experienced.  She explained.  

I thought about this.  How?

She gestured for me to sit beside her on the edge of the fountain.  Taking up a heavy golden cup engraved with sporting fauns, dryads, and grapes, she dipped it into the pool of wine.  First drink this.

I took the cup.  The wine was deepest violet, spelling of fragrant spices.  A warning touched my heart.  How do I know I can trust you?

She stood and showed me the LVX signs.  At their conclusion, the clouds seemed to part on the horizon and shafts of golden light fell upon her.  I saw her gown was translucent, and beneath could make out her breasts and the curves of her body.  Suddenly, as I watched, she transformed.  Her garments faded and became pale white chased with golden threads.  Her skin became white marble.  Her eyes looked like amber stones, and her hair and eyelashes were golden threads.  She seemed to absorb the sunlight as she had the child, transforming into this goddess, a living statue of terrible beauty.

I drank the wine, feeling its warmth spread through me.  It seemed to concentrate especially between my thighs, and I felt a sudden intense arousal.

Knowledge of BAG can only be obtained by experience and union.  The formula is love.  Will you enter into me, Thelemite? 

To my great surprise, I felt a powerful desire to do this, a hot, all-consuming lust.  She undressed, letting her gown fall to the grass and then lay down across it, spreading her arms for me.  I immediately undressed as well, my eyes roaming her body.  It was perfectly smooth and white, gleaming faintly.  I lay atop her, eye to eye, and entered into her with a feeling of intense pleasure.

As we made love a curious thing started happening.  I felt her beneath me, felt myself inside her…but at the same time I felt from her point of view.  I felt my body lying on top of me, felt the pressure of me moving inside my body.  The shifting continued until I was her, and could no longer feel myself.  I was the woman making love to a stranger who looked like me.  

Orgasm approached,  and now my consciousness seemed evenly divided between two bodies.  I felt the build up to orgasm inside my body, and felt the energy mirrored in hers.  I felt myself giving and receiving pleasure.  In fact, I could no longer tell who I was any longer.  Sexual intercourse was happening but subject and object were blurred.  We were pure action and reaction, identity was gone.

Then there was a blinding white light, a sensation of warmth.  I seemed to be floating in a milky white light, warm, rainbow hued like pearl.  I had no idea who i was, what I was, where i was.  There was only Being.

Gradually, I seemed to condense, to become more and more “myself.”  It seemed I had a body again, an identity, an individuality.  I was floating naked in a pool of white, silky fluid, inside an amber colored vessel, egg-shaped.  I immediately understood I was in a womb of some sort.  Her womb.

Once I understood this, we became separate again.  She was standing fully clothed again before me, beside the fountain.  i was dressed as well, and dazed.

The formula of Love is the dissolution of the Ego, she said.  Love is Death, and simultaneous Birth.  The sperm and the egg die to become something new.  Salt dissolves into water, changing both.  Identities become lost to create something new.  You cannot truly love and remain the same person you were before.

All of this…is Venusian?  It was a feeble question and I was ashamed afterwards of asking it.  So far i was still struggling to understand a pattern to the Aethyrs, and it seemed to me TEX had been like Yesod, RII like Hod, and now BAG like Netzach.  

Here is the secret of Love and Death.  Of the Desire to Die.  The Pain of Pleasure.  If you see this as Venusian, so be it.  The Mystery to be learned is that Love and Death are the same.

Physical death, the end of life…is Love?

She nodded.  Like the sperm merging with the egg what you are is changed, not lost.  What you did, how you acted, the information of your existence remains embedded in the Universe, which was changed by your presence in it.  There can be no death for those who truly live.

 I considered what she was saying.  This is beyond communication?

Communication requires division, separation.  Union erases these.  Love is that Union.  You are required to know this, ‘Secretum Operis Magni Unitas Est.’

She turned her gaze and gestured back towards the courtyard and the gate.  It is time for you to leave.  You know what you need for the road ahead of you.  She handed me a pink lotus blossom.  Take this as a reminder.

I accepted the gift and made my goodbyes.  From the woman, MIALO emerged again, as a fawn once more.  She led me out of the gate and back up the deer path.  As we ascended, and finally reached the rim, I realized it was no longer sunset but dawn.  The sun was on the eastern horizon, in the same twilight.  

I left the fawn and descended back into the bowl-like depression.  As I entered the reeds around the pond, the vision ended.

ENOCHIAN MAGIC: THE CRY OF RII, THE 29TH AETHYR

FIRST THERE WAS a yawning void, and I was falling upwards into it.  I seemed to fall forever.  Then there was light in the darkness, a growing brightness.  Stars, planets, galaxies rushed past me.  Was I falling, or were they?  Upwards, faster and faster, I sped.  Then, above me, I beheld an immense black orb, burning in an aura of orange light not unlike the corona of the sun.  I was racing towards this, passing unburnt through the orange flames and swallowed whole in the darkness of the sphere.

My feet touched ground.  Slowly, as if lights were being raised in a darkened theater, a world around me emerged.  The brightness grew intense, like noonday.  Before me towered a giant Caduceus, forged of brass.  It seemed to me more Egyptian than Greek.  It was embedded like a flagpole in the ground, in the very center of a circular plaza orf brilliant white stone.  From the base of this Caduceus, that same orange light, like fire, rose and swirled upwards around the shaft.  It did not burn the metal, but caused the pole to hum and vibrate, wobbling rhythmically. 

I looked around me.  Around the edge of the plaza were greco-roman columns, of the same white stone.  Above was a clear blue sky, dazzling.  A few puffy white clouds hung in the air.  The entire plaza was open and airy, a soft breezing blowing through.

I strolled towards the edge of the plaza.  From there, I saw I was atop a high, grassy hill, green lawn stretching down a great distance around me.  All around were green, rolling hills, treeless, but each carved with chalk figures dug into the turf, reminding me of figures like the Uffington White Horse in England.  But these were not animals, or giants.  Each hill bore a variety of symbols, sometimes geometric figures, sometimes the runes or letters of dozens of different alphabets.  I marveled at this, walking around the circumference of the plaza looking out at the endless sea of strange, carven hills. 

Then I sensed movement behind me.

I turned to behold a Sphinx.  It was strolling away from me, towards the opposite side of the plaza.  It had the immense, tawny body of a lion, and great wings feathered white and brown like a hawk.  Its tail, however, a living Caduceus…a lion’s tail ending in a smaller pair of wings and around which two serpents, red and green, coiled.  Cautiously, I approached it.

Excuse me, I am SOMUE.  Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

It turned slowly to face me.  It had a man’s face, with kohl around the eyes, and a pharaonic beard and head dress.  Under this, however, hung the pale, naked breasts of a woman from its chest.  It stared impassively at me.

Is this RII, the 29th Aethyr?

The creature face a nod.  That it is, Thelemite.  The sphinx spoke with the high, sweet voice of a little girl.

May I ask your name?

I am XILOPE, it answered.  I simultaneously heard and saw it.  You have questions, Thelemite.

I hesitated a moment, considering where to start.  What is the nature of this place?

It is the beginning of Bindings, of Yogas, of Religions.  The Sphinx replied.  This is where the Higher Planes are linked to your world.

It’s nature is communicative?  I saw the symbols in the hills.

The creature licked its front paw and nodded.  All words and symbols have their origins here.  This is where the Logos is made Flesh.  From these raw materials are hammered the realms of TEX and the Watchtowers.  But symbols are not the same as truths.  They suggest the truth, but cannot claim it.  To know the Real you must transcend the symbols, and cross the lightless dark of the Abyss.

I shuddered at this, and nodded, looking out at the horizon.  Somewhere out there lay the Abyss.  Is RII Mercurial then?

The creature flicked its tail.  In the sense that it connects the worlds of Gods to Men, yes.

RII is the foundation of thought?  Is that correct?

The Sphinx yawned and nodded again.  Obviously.  But not the foundation of experience.

How can I better understand this?  I asked.

The Sphinx indicated that I should follow, and so I did.  We left the plaza together and strolled down the grassy hillside.  At the bottom of the hill flowed a crystal clear stream.  As I looked more closely I saw it was not exactly water, but a sort of silvery, flowing light.  Around the stream grew tiny flowers of scarlet and yellow. 

There, Thelemite.  The cup.  The Sphinx pointed with its nose.

Beside the stream, on a small rocky ledge, was a silver chalice.  It was engraved with alchemical symbols, and had two handles, like wings, in the shape of laurel leaves.  You must drink, the Sphinx informed me.

Strangely, this made me nervous.  For a moment, I looked at the stream and it now seemed mercury, which I knew was highly toxic.  So I asked the Sphinx to give me a sign that it was a friend and not a foe.  

Clearly bored, it reared up on its hind legs to give the LVX signs.  When it fell back to all fours it watched me through lidded eyes.  Satisfied?

I nodded, and lifting the heavy cup dipped it into the stream.  Raising it to my lips, I drank.

As soon as I drank, a thousand million characters exploded in my mind.  Every letter of every alphabet, every glyph, every number, every possible symbol lost or yet to be discovered flashed through my brain.  It was overwhelming.  Endless streams of silvery data poured through my consciousness, and I understood wholly and completely that all manifest things are formed from pure information.  Anything that existed was a string of code.

Then, I blacked out.

I cannot say how long I was unconscious, but I opened my eyes in a bed of red velvet, the cushions trimmed with gold tassels.  There was a low table beside me, bearing a bowl of fruit.  An ornate Persian carpet, also crimson and gold, covered the floor.  Incense was burning.  All around the bed were scattered books and scrolls.  I looked around and realized I was in a great orange tent, like that of some bedouin king.

The Sphinx lay at the foot of the bed.  It raised its head when it saw me awake.  When you feel strong enough, you should perhaps return to your realm.

I sat up in bed.  That drink?  Was that the nature of Mercury I took into me?

You must gather what you will need for your journey.  What is now in you was in you before, but a seed has begun to grow.  You will now develop your mercurial powers.

I placed my feet on the floor as the Sphinx sauntered over and opened the tent flaps.  Sunlight streamed in.

I stood, and followed the creature out.  We were encamped by the side of the stream, at the base of the hill where the plaza stood.  

You may return any time that you wish, the Sphinx told me, but I can instruct you further only as your initiation deepens.

Thank you, I replied, and started back up the hill.  Now I walked a white stone path, and each stone bore a distinct character.  Then I realized that each of the red and yellow flowers growing on the hillside also bore a character, as did each and every blade of green grass.  Even the motes of pollen drifting through the air had their own unique markings.  Everything around me bore information for those who could read it.  The world was a book, waiting to be interpreted.

I re-entered the plaza, and immediately began falling upwards, back to the Earth.

Here ends the Vision of RII.

ENOCHIAN MAGIC: SCRYING THE AETHYRS

I admit that my visions can never mean to other men as much as they do to me. I do not regret this. All I ask is that my results should convince seekers after truth that there is beyond doubt something worth while seeking, attainable by methods more or less like mine. I do not want to father a flock, to be the fetish of fools and fanatics, or the founder of a faith whose followers are content to echo my opinions. I want each man to cut his own way through the jungle.

Aleister Crowley

Visions.

Whether you view them as psychic explorations of higher planes or something more akin to Jungian active imagining, visions are an essential part of any magician's career.  It's the oldest magic, really, with roots deep in the shamanic experience.  To cross over into the Otherworld (however you wish to define it) and bring back treasures is the core of the magic experience.  It is what makes a magician a magician.

It's also a nearly universal motif, a classic feature of what Eliade, Campbell, Leeming, and Vogler understood as the Monomyth, or Hero's Journey.  The Hero sets out of his quest, and at some crucial point crosses over into the Unknown, which can be represented as an Underworld, an Otherworld, or an Inner or Outer world.  There he faces challenges and trials, gains wisdom and strength, at at some crucial point crosses an Abyss that leaves him irrevocably transformed.

Magic is interacting with Myth as much as anything else.  The magician deals habitually with gods, demons, and spirits liberated from story and fable.  For those seeking such visionary experiences, there are scores of systems available to the modern practitioner.  For my part, I have always had extraordinary success with the "Enochian" magic of John Dee.  I have operated other methodologies with varying degrees of success, but invariably and without fail, the process of chanting an Enochian Key or Call lights up my brain.  By the end I am flying.  The visions are the most coherent, the most vivid, the most intense.  And they have also had the most profound effect upon me.  Naturally I do not expect this to be true for everyone, and magicians all need to experiment to find which techniques best trigger visions for them.  I am hardly alone, however, in attesting the efficacy of the Enochian Calls.

I have been scrying the 30 Enochian Aethyrs or Aires for thirteen years now, keeping careful records of these sessions, as well as work with the spirits or "angels" of the Watchtowers, in notebooks set aside purely for Enochian work.  Recently, I crossed the 10th Aethyr, which in the Enochian cosmology is the Abyss, the gulf or chasm separating the phenomenal universe from the noumenal one. This was a transformational experience, reordering my priorities and changing the way I view things.  One side effect of the experience is the decision to share my experiences of scrying the Aethyrs, not with dogmatic intent but to--as Crowley states above--"convince seekers after truth that there is beyond doubt something worth while seeking, attainable by methods more or less like mine."  By making these records public, I hope to show others the type of experience that is possible, fully aware that these experiences are mine and naturally cannot mean to others what they mean to me.

I invite the reader to check out the links above first, to familiarize himself or herself with the Enochian system and cosmos.  The short version, however, is a gnostic cosmology in which the physical world is surrounded by 30 concentric "Aires" or "Aethyrs," the 30th being the innermost and closest to physical reality, the 1st bordering on the Divine, or "Ultimate Reality."  The Enochian magician experiences each in a series of visions, moving ever outwards.  The best example of this is probably Aleister Crowley's The Vision and the Voice, which provided many crucial elements of his system of Thelema.

In subsequent posts, I will be sharing abridged journal entries of my own journey across the Aethyrs, starting with the 30th Aethyr of TEX back in 2004 and moving forward.  My methodology has been more or less consistent.  I perform a banishing/purification followed by an invocation.  In my case, these are specifically The Star Ruby and The Star Sapphire, but again any equivalent rituals will do.  I then recite the 19th Enochian Call or Key, inserting the name of the Aethyr I intend to visit.  This is followed by intoning the names of the Governors associated with that Aethyr with my eyes closed.  The vision usually comes on fairly quickly.

I tend to narrate what I see and hear aloud, either recording myself or working with a partner who keeps a record.  

In the next post, we will start out journey with TEX.  

LILITH: THE SYMBOLS OF TRADITIONAL WITCHCRAFT, PART FOUR

PART FOUR: THE WITCH AND THE SERPENT

I'm the obeah woman

from beneath the sea

to get to Satan

you gotta pass through me...

Nina Simone, "Obeah Woman"

We have already discussed the myth of Eden in comparison with other tales of the Serpent, the Woman, and the Tree, already seen how the male protagonist's role is altered from a freeman who comes to test his mettle against the Dragon to that of a chattel punished for trying to rise above his appointed station.  We talked of how Odin, Heracles, and Jason willfully face the Tree and are elevated; Adam unwillingly is tested and is cast down.  Yet there is another difference in the Eden story from all the others, a critical one.

In Odin's tale, the Woman is represented by the Norns, powerful and shadowy beings that control the fates of all living beings.  In the story of Heracles, the Woman appears as the three Hesperides, the daughters of Night (Nyx) and Darkness (Erebus).  These "Nymphs of the West" own the Tree of Immortality and the Dragon that guards it.  In Jason's quest, the Woman is Medea, the granddaughter of the Sun, a princess and powerful sorceress.  In the "Churning of the Ocean," the Woman is the goddess Sri, the embodiment of fortune, blessing, and kingship, connected to the cosmic center and the elixir of divinity.  

In Eden, however, the Woman is Eve.  

We can debate the original role of Eve in these scriptures; many scholars have.  The majority opinion down through history has been that she was created as Adam's "helper," from one of his ribs;

18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

23 The man said,

“This is now bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called ‘woman,’

for she was taken out of man.”

The traditional conclusion drawn from this is that women, like Eve, and subservient to men.  The second century rabbi, Joshua ben Hananiah, puts the matter succinctly;

"God deliberated from what member He would create woman, and He reasoned with Himself thus: I must not create her from Adam's head, for she would be a proud person, and hold her head high. If I create her from the eye, then she will wish to pry into all things; if from the ear, she will wish to hear all things; if from the mouth, she will talk much; if from the heart, she will envy people; if from the hand, she will desire to take all things; if from the feet, she will be a gadabout. Therefore I will create her from the member which is hid, that is the rib, which is not even seen when man is naked."

Modern scholarship questions just how subservient Eve was meant to be; the original Hebrew designation for "helper," for example, is ezer kenegdo, can also mean "opposite" and "counterpart," translations with a markedly different connotation than "helper."  Likewise, the name Eve is derived from hawwah, which means "living" or "source of life" (importantly, it can also be translated as snake).  This implies a more noble view of Eve as well.  Regardless, the fact remains that historically Eve was made to serve man, just as man was made to serve God.  She is the servant of a servant.  A subordinate.  Furthest removed from God, she is the first to surrender to the temptations of the Serpent.

This is clearly a very different role than that played by the Norns, the Hesperides, or Medea.  They are all powerful, otherworldly beings connected to the Dragon and the Tree.  We might even call them witches, if by this we mean a figure that appears human but is possessed of occult powers and properties.  This cannot be said of Eve.  Of course, there was a witch in the Garden, a being of secret knowledge and immense power...but by the time the temptation occurs she has already packed up and gone.  In fact, she might even be the Serpent.

We are speaking of Lilith.

Fittingly, Lilith is a subject of great controversy.  She appears explicitly only once in the scriptures.  In Isaiah, the Lord will lay waste to the kingdom of Edom, turning its rivers to pitch, drenching the land in blood, and making it the habitation for all sorts of Hebrew demons and monsters.  The name Lilith appears in Isaiah 34:14, where it is sometimes mistranslated as screech owl.  This is, to put it bluntly, incorrect.  Theologian Charles Ellicott wrote;

the “screech-owl” is the Lilith, the she-vampire, who appears in the legends of the Talmud as having been Adam’s first wife, who left him and was turned into a demon. With the later Jews, Lilith, as sucking the blood of children, was the bugbear of the nursery. Night-vampire would, perhaps, be the best rendering.

Albert Barnes agreed; 

The screech-owl - Margin, 'Night-monster.' The word לילית lı̂ylı̂yt (from ליל layil, night) properly denotes a night-spectre - a creature of Jewish superstition. The rabbis describe it in the form of a female elegantly dressed that lay in wait for children at night - either to carry them off, or to murder them. The Greeks had a similar idea respecting the female ἔμπουτα empouta, and this idea corresponds to the Roman fables respecting the Lamice, and Striges, and to the Arabic notions of the Ghules, whom they described as female monsters that dwell in deserts, and tear men to pieces (see Gesenius, Com. in loc; and Bochart, Hieroz. ii. 831). The margin in our version expresses the correct idea. All this is descriptive of utter and perpetual desolation - of a land that should be full of old ruins, and inhabited by the animals that usually make such ruins their abode.

Most other scholars concur.  The "Lilith" that finds her rest in the damned and ruined kingdom of Edom is a mythological being, a figure of terror, that may or may not have her origin in far more ancient stories from Sumer, Akkad, and Babylonia. And while Isaiah is her only explicit appearance, she is implicitly present in the very first chapter of Genesis...at least in the traditions of late Judaism.

The problem, of course, is what to do with the glaring inconsistency of Genesis.  Genesis 1:27 states clearly that Man and Woman are created at the same time, from the same material, and both in the image of God.  In the next chapter, as we have seen, the Woman is gone and Adam is alone.  Eve is created from his rib.  To reconcile this, a tradition emerges as early as the 3rd to 5th centuries of the Common Era, coming to fullness a few centuries later (circa 700-1000), that the scriptures are talking about two different women.  The original woman, created co-equal with Adam, was Lilith.  The second, made subservient, was Eve.

Lilith's tale is a striking one, and deserves to be quoted directly from The Alphabet of ben Sirach (Alphabetum Siracidis, Othijoth ben Sira);

While God created Adam, who was alone, He said, 'It is not good for man to be alone.' He also created a woman, from the earth, as He had created Adam himself, and called her Lilith. Adam and Lilith immediately began to fight. She said, 'I will not lie below,' and he said, 'I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the superior one.' Lilith responded, 'We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth.' But they would not listen to one another. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name and flew away into the air.

Lilith flees the Garden for the Red Sea, where legends have her immediately begin mating with devils and demons and spawning a monstrous brood.  God sends three angels to bring her back and she rebuffs them.  When she is punished by having a hundred of her children killed every day, she vows to make herself a terror to the children of Adam.  She becomes a sort of boogeyman, a night flying vampire that causes unmarried young men to have nocturnal emissions and kills infants in their sleep.

How far back exactly her story really goes is difficult to say.  As we have noted, written sources carry her name as far back as the third century of the Common Era, but the Book of Isaiah dates back to at least the Babylonian Captivity, roughly 597 to 539 B.C.E.  And if the Jewish Lilith is indeed a "borrowing" from earlier Mesopotamian stories, adopted during the Captivity, the essence of her story reaches back thousands of years before even this.  Some have even argued she makes an appearance in the Gilgamesh cycle, in a way that it relevant to our study.

In this story, “after heaven and earth had separated and man had been created,” the goddess Inanna plants and lovingly tends a willow tree. Her plan is to build a throne for herself from its wood. But the Tree becomes possessed by three sinister forces, a zu bird, a Serpent, and "in its midst the demoness Lilith had built her house.”  Gilgamesh slays the Serpent, frightens the bird off, and banishes Lilith to the wastes.  The echoes here--the Woman, the Tree, the Serpent--are unmistakeable.  

Regardless of her antiquity, it is in the early Middle Ages that Lilith takes on her present form, and it was in medieval Judaism that she became the very archetype of the Witch. Indeed, as the Middle Ages moved into the Renaissance, her tale only grew.  In this period we find a Lilith who not only mates with demons but is the bride of Samael or Samyaza, chief of the Fallen Angels (the Christian Satan).  Indeed, to some--such as Moses ben Solomon of Burgos, Samael and Lilith are a united pair, an androgyne;

Both Samael, king of the demons, and Lilith were born in a spiritual birth androgynously. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is an epithet for both Samael and Grandmother Lilith (e.g. the Northerner). As a result of Adam's sin, both of them came and confused the whole world, both the Upper one and the Nether one.

Given the association of the Serpent and the Tree with the constellation Draco and the Pole Star, it is significant here that Lilith is identified with the North as well.  Also significant is that late Medieval tradition identifies Lilith with the Serpent of Eden itself.  The Zohar tells us;

The secret of secrets:
Out of the scorching noon of Isaac,
out of the dregs of wine,
a fungus emerged, a cluster,
male and female together,
red as a rose,
expanding in many directions and paths.
The male is called Sama'el,
his female is always included within him.
Just as it is on the side of holiness,
so it is on the other side:
male and female embracing one another.
The female of Sama'el is called Serpent,
Woman of Whoredom,
End of All Flesh, End of Days.
Two evil spirits joined together:
the spirit of the male is subtle;
the spirit of the female is diffused in many ways and paths
but joined to the spirit of the male.

It is as the Serpent that Lilith appears on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel itself, painted by none other than Michelangelo, for by the Renaissance, Lilith now returns to the Garden to seduce both Adam and Eve;

And the Serpent, the Woman of Harlotry, incited and seduced Eve through the husks of Light which in itself is holiness. And the Serpent seduced Holy Eve, and enough said for him who understands. An all this ruination came about because Adam the first man coupled with Eve while she was in her menstrual impurity -- this is the filth and the impure seed of the Serpent who mounted Eve before Adam mounted her. Behold, here it is before you: because of the sins of Adam the first man all the things mentioned came into being. For Evil Lilith, when she saw the greatness of his corruption, became strong in her husks, and came to Adam against his will, and became hot from him and bore him many demons and spirits and Lilin.

She is then, here, both succubus and incubus, the Serpent, one and the same with Satan himself.  Thus in the Jewish tradition, Lilith is--like the Norns or the Hesperides--bound to the Tree and the Serpent as one.

What are we to make of her, then...the Woman tied to Tree and Serpent?  

If we recall our discussions of number symbolism and Qabalah, we are reminded that of the Decad the first three numbers describe Heaven, and the subsequent seven represent Earth.  One is Unity, the Point.  Two is Division and Opposition.  In the northern hemisphere this is symbolized by the Pole Star and Draco, the axis mundi and the Dragon.  On the Tree of Life, these would be Kether and Chokmah.  Chokmah, as the Prime Masculine quality, has as his counterpart the sephira Binah, the Prime Feminine.  These three are collectively known as the Supernal Triad, the three numbers that exist above the Abyss and define Heaven.

Binah, the Divine Feminine, is the Gateway to and from Heaven.  Climbing the Tree of Life, you must first pass through Binah to reach Chokmah and Kether, the Dragon and the Tree.  Aleister Crowley associated Binah with Babalon, whose "Whoredom" is in fact that she will receive anyone who comes to pass through her Gate.  If the Circle is seen as the symbol of Heaven, then Binah is its circumference, with Chokmah as the radius--the Path leading from the threshold to the Center--and Kether being that Center, the Crossroads, the axis mundi itself.  If we think of the Pole Star and Draco, Binah might be seen as Draco's orbit, or even the night sky itself.

It is the latter association that is most compelling.  In Thelema, the Divine Feminine is embodied as Nuit, the starry night sky.  The Hesperides, as we have said, were the daughters of Nyx and Erebus, night and darkness.  And Lilith, who is called the Night Demon, derives her own name from a root cognate with the Hebrew layil and the Arabic layl, both meaning "night."  Night--Lilith--is the Circle, and she must be penetrated to reach the Serpent at the Crossroads.  As the song goes; "I'm the obeah woman from beneath the sea, to get to Satan, you gotta pass through me."

It is worth noting here the symbolism of Stanislas de Guaita's famous "sigil of Baphomet," later adopted by Anton LaVey as the official logo of the Church of Satan.  Here, the names Samael and Lilith are surrounded by the Hebrew word Leviathan.  Leviathan--related etymologically to Ladon, the Dragon guarded the Apples of Immortality--is the great cosmic Serpent, Draco, that the Hebrew god boasts of taming.  Guaita's image references the Hebrew tradition that Samael and Lilith, as Serpents, are both manifestations of Leviathan.  Moses Cordervo wrote;

And about this mystery it is written, And on that day the Lord with His sore and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the Slant Serpent, and Leviathan the Tortuous Serpent, and He will slay the Dragon that is in the sea (Isa. 27:1). Leviathan is the connection and the coupling between the two who have the likeness of serpents. Therefore it is doubled: the Slant Serpent corresponding to Samael, and the Tortuous Serpent corresponding to Lilith....

The symbolism in Guaita's image is unmistakable; a Dragon coiled around a Star and forming a Circle, the twin Serpent energies of Lilith and Samael present within.  Even the pentagram itself suggests a sort of Crossroads.

We might regard then, Lilith and Samael, the Woman and the Serpent at the Crossroads, as the Gate and the Key respectively (with awareness of the sexual symbolism implied). Together they unlock the power of the Tree. We see here again Crowley's formula of 2 = 0, that the union of opposites results in the transcendent "nothingness" that is the source of all power and creation.

This is something we will examine more deeply later.    

   

    

THE SERPENT AT THE CROSSROADS; THE SYMBOLS OF TRADITIONAL WITCHCRAFT, PART THREE

PART THREE: THE SERPENT AND THE STAR 

The Dragon guarding the Golden Apples of the Hesperides. The Wyrm guarding the Golden Fleece. Vasuki coiled around Mount Mandara churning the sea. Níðhöggr gnawing at the roots of Yggdrasil. The Serpent in the Tree of Knowledge. To these stories we might add the Taoist legend of a Dragon guarding a Tree bearing immortality-granting peaches. We could look towards Mesoamerica, halfway across the world, where the Mayans spoke of a Tree that united Heaven and Earth, the "Vision Serpent" lurking in its highest branches. Or we could look to ancient Sumer, where the goddess Inanna planted a Huluppu Tree and set a Serpent to guard it. The Serpent, the Dragon, coiled around a cosmic center is spoken of around the globe. 

But of course, this is a story written in the stars.

Ancient peoples depended on the night sky. The heavens served as their calendar, telling them went to plant and harvest, when to hunt, when to migrate. The stars were their compass and their map. The night was a repository for the legends and fables of the people, with tales of gods and heroes recorded in the planets and constellations. Most significantly for our purposes here, the heavens were also the gateway to the Underworld, the hidden realm of the spirit. The power of life and death was hidden there.

It might seem counterintuitive to associate the heavens with the Underworld, the Land of the Dead, but consider: all the stars and constellations, the planets, the Moon and the Sun, rise in the East and set in the West. For the ancients, this setting was a descent into the Underworld. All the occupants of the heavens, when not traveling across the sky, were understood to spend an equal amount of time traveling across the Underworld. In an endless cycle, the stars and planets were born, lived, died, and then were reborn after a sojourn in the realm of the Dead.

And the Serpent--who shed his old skin and renewed himself--was the Lord of the Underworld.

Because, really, not all the stars rise and fall. In the Northern Hemisphere, the entire dome of Heaven seems to revolve around a single center, the Pole Star. The Cosmic Tree, or Mountain, is nothing less than this, the axis mundi, the hub around which all of creation turns. In physical terms, we are talking the celestial or geographic pole, but for ancient peoples it was much more than this. The axis mundi was the center of the world, a magical place at the crossroads of North, South, East, and West. Like the trunk of a Tree, all of creation was understood to grow from this mystic center. It was the heart and origin of the universe. Of it, the great scholar of comparative religions, Mircea Eliade, wrote;

We have a sequence of religious conceptions and cosmological images that are inseparably connected and form a system that may be called the "system of the world" prevalent in traditional societies: (a) a sacred place constitutes a break in the homogeneity of space; (b) this break is symbolized by an opening by which passage from one cosmic region to another is made possible (from heaven to earth and vice versa; from earth to the underworld); (c) communication with heaven is expressed by one or another of certain images, all of which refer to the axis mundi: pillar (cf. the universalis columna), ladder (cf. Jacob's ladder), mountain [Meru in India, Haraberazaiti in Iran, Gerizim in Palestine], tree, vine, etc.; (d) around this cosmic axis lies the world (= our world), hence the axis is located "in the middle," at the "navel of the earth"; it is the Center of the World...

The Tree, the Mountain, the Crossroads, are all cognate symbols of the axis mundi, the Hub of the Cosmos. Seen from above, the picture is clear. The Pyramid (a symbol of the cosmic Mountain) and the Tree both become Crossroads. These then are really a Wheel, the Dome of Heaven turning around a center. 

This is why the axis mundi is understood to be the "crossroads" of the universe, where the realms of flesh and spirit, the living and the dead, come together. It is the axel that turns the Wheel of Time, the cycle of the seasons, of Death and Rebirth. While other stars rise and fall, the Pole Star sits eternal at the center, reigning over them all. This is why the Tree is associated with sovereignty, with life and death, with power.

Andrew Chumbley, author of such texts as the Azoetia and the Dragon Book of Essex, writes on the subject;

the word 'Qutub' (rendered as the tri-literal root QTB) is interpreted as meaning 'The Great Magnetic Centre', or 'The Axis' - the Point of Universal Centrality. This focus of existence is identified with the concept of the Logos and with the Soul of the Perfected Human Being (Insani Kamil). It is also cognate, in sidereal terms, with the Pole-star of the Age and thus with the Hub of the Universe. We may therefore consider 'Qutub' to be a term equivalent with the Mystical Absolute of Being: I.

Andrew Chumbley, "Qutub"

and also;

By going forth through the Gateway of the Cross'd-Roads the aspirant meets face-to-face the Catena of the Mighty Dead, not only those of his own metempsychotic lineage, but all Kindred of Our Arte to which he is bound by the Covenant of descent from the First Initiate. He enters the Circle of the Living and the Dead to dance in co-eval rings of moments, days and epochs, hand-in-hand with Gods, Beasts, Men and things of Spirit and Flesh as yet unnamed. This Vision is that of the Great Sabbat — the Prototype or 'Form' of Magical Quintessence from which all magical rites and practices take their pattern...

Andrew Chumbley, "Gnosis for the Flesh Eternal"

At the Crossroads--the Tree--the Heart of the Universe is reached. Here the realms collide, men can become kings, and kings can become gods. And the Guardian of this terrible power is the Serpent...because coiled around the Pole Star, the axis mundi, there for all to see, is the constellation Draco.

While other constellations can be seen only at certain times of the year, the Dragon is always visible, there in the northern night skies. He turns nightly around the cosmic center, circling it, the Watcher and Lord of the Crossroads. This makes the Dragon the embodiment of its powers.

Of course, Draco is not the only circumpolar constellation. Why don't the legends talk about Ursa Major and Minor, Camelopardalis, or Lynx? The answer is simple; the star Thuban (Arabic for "snake"), also known as Alpha Draconis, was the Pole Star from 3942 BC to 1793 BC. This is the period when the Great Pyramid of Giza--itself a model of the "cosmic mountain"--was built. It may be that the "air shaft" in this pyramid, leading to the King's Chamber, was intentionally aligned so that Thuban's light shone down it, playing a role in the immortality of the Pharaoh. Due to the precession of the Earth's rotational axis, the Pole Star moved from Thuban to Kappa Draconis around 1793 BC, yet another star in Draco. This means that from 3942 BC to about 1000 BC, the Pole Star was in Draco. The Dragon was the center of the cosmos, the bridge between worlds.

But what of his sinister aspect? The Serpent's associations with the Underworld, with immortality and secret wisdom are clear, but what is it that fills the profane with dread?

The North is the one place the Sun never enters, at least not in the Northern Hemisphere. It rises in the East, journeys on an arc through the South, and sets in the West. The North remains untouched by it, a place of darkness. In addition, if you face the rising Sun, the North falls at your Left Hand, with all the "sinister" associations that come with it. The Old English norð come from the Proto-Germanic *nurtha- and earlier from the Indo-European *ner-, a term that means "left," as well as "below" (think of nether and north). It is related to the Sanskrit narakah ("hell") and the Greek enerthen "from beneath." The same pattern of associating the North with the Left Hand and the Underworld underlies the Old Irish tuath "left; northern" and Arabic shamal "left hand; north." Language itself associates the North with darkness, with the Left Hand, with the Underworld. The Dragon, as Lord of the North Star, picks up these associations as well.

The result is a fearsome guardian, a psychopomp of shadowy aspect and terrible power.

In terms of numerical symbolism and the Kabbalah, the Pole Star naturally assumes the role and properties of One, or Kether. It is Unity, the underlying foundation and structure of existence. The Center of All. It is the exact point in the Crossroads where the paths cross and become One. 

As the Guardian of the Crossroads, the Dragon is associated with Two, the Dyad, and the sephiroth Chokmah. This gives us important insight into its nature. If One is Unity, then Two is Opposition. It is Polarity and Division. Divide. Dual. Devil. It is the Shadow to the Light. The Night to the Day. Aleister Crowley associated it with Chaos is his theogony, which is to say the Great Beast that consorts with Babalon, a relationship Crowley symbolized by the Lion Serpent, Teth. 

This is another draconic image, which immediately recalls the shape of Draco itself. For Crowley, this Dragon is actually "higher" than the One. We must recall the formula essential to his Thelema, 2 = 0. The Dyad, the Opposite, is the key to attainting the very highest. He describes our Dragon as;

This is the meaning of that passage; they are attempts to interpret Chaos, but Chaos is Peace... Blackness, blackness intolerable, before the beginning of the light. This is the first verse of Genesis. Holy art thou, Chaos, Chaos, Eternity, all contradictions in terms!... But when the balances are equal, scale matched with scale, then will Chaos return...

For Crowley, Unity is unchanging and static. You cannot transcend it because it cannot transcend itself. Zero, nirvana, the Ain, is the transcendent reality and it can only be attained by Opposition (-n + n = 0). In short, to attain a transcendent state, one must confront the Opposer, the Dragon. This is how Marduk made himself ruler of the gods; he fought Tiamat. It is how the Hebrew god Yahweh did as well, as he boasts in Job 41. 

Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook

or tie down its tongue with a rope?

Can you put a cord through its nose

or pierce its jaw with a hook?

Will it keep begging you for mercy?

Will it speak to you with gentle words?

Will it make an agreement with you

for you to take it as your slave for life?

...Who dares open the doors of its mouth,

ringed about with fearsome teeth?

Its back has rows of shields

tightly sealed together;

each is so close to the next

that no air can pass between.

They are joined fast to one another;

they cling together and cannot be parted.

Its snorting throws out flashes of light;

its eyes are like the rays of dawn.

Flames stream from its mouth;

sparks of fire shoot out.

Smoke pours from its nostrils

as from a boiling pot over burning reeds.

Its breath sets coals ablaze,

and flames dart from its mouth....

Nothing on earth is its equal—

a creature without fear.

These boasts do not make sense for the Almighty Creator of the Universe to be making. If this were the case, Yahweh would simply be beating up on a creature He Himself created. But they do make sense in the context of facing the Dragon to reach a transcendent state. In this, the Hebrew god was no different from Jason or Heracles.

Unity and Division, One and Two, are two-thirds of the Trinity that defines the Circle of Heaven (the Point, the Radius, and the Circumference). In out next installment, we will be looking at the third defining member of the formula, the Woman who manifests in these tales as the Norns, the Nymphs, the Sorceress.