LITTLE LECTURES ON MAGICK: NUMBER SYMBOLISM

The Apologia for this System is that our purest conceptions are symbolized in Mathematics. "God is the Great Arithmetician." "God is the Grand Geometer." It is best therefore to prepare to apprehend Him by formulating our minds according to these measures.

By "God" I here mean the Ideal Identity of a man's inmost nature...

Crowley; Magick: In Theory and Practice

At the root of the Western Esoteric Tradition which informs not only Enochian, but the Tarot and the Qabalah as well, lies a set of symbolic numbers. These originate mainly with Pythagoras (circa 570-495 BCE). "The numerals of Pythagoras," wrote Porphyry in the 4th century CE, "were hieroglyphic symbols, by means whereof he explained all ideas concerning the nature of things." This is exactly how they are understood in Magick today. Crowley adds to this;

Let us say, once again, that the magical language is nothing but a convenient system of classification to enable the magician to docket his experiences as he obtains them. Yet this is true also, that, once the language is mastered, one can divine the unknown by study of the known, just as one's knowledge of Latin and Greek enables one to understand some unfamiliar English word derived from those sources...

Numbers, because of their universality, are generally understood to be the best tools for classification at the Magician's disposal. They are a shorthand for very complex ideas, and because Magick often deals with highly subjective concepts, a way to ensure as much clarity as possible in communicating such things. Thus, without further ado, let us look at the numbers essential to Tarot, Qabalah, and Enochian Magic.

Zero

Zero, also known as Silence, Nothing, or the Void, is the Infinite. It contains and is the sum of all opposites within it (0 = n + -n). Creation ex nihilo is simply zero dividing back into paired opposites (see Genesis 1). One useful way to think of zero is infinite potential; a blank sheet of paper has the potential to become anything...a love letter, a laundry list, a recipe, an origami crane. It is empty, but by virtue of this has infinite potential.

Zero exists beyond time, beyond definition, and beyond thinking. It is the highest level of reality in multiple traditions, from the Hebrew Ain Soph which exists above the Tree of Life to the Buddhist nirvana.

One to Three; the Heavens

Ancient Near Eastern, Classical, and Indian traditions divide the universe into two; the Heavens and the Earth (though some traditions include a third realm, the underworld, it is generally considered to exist within or under the Earth). The Heavens are the Ideal Plane, existing beyond time or matter, and they are usually symbolized by the Circle or Sphere. The Earth is the material world, symbolized by the Square or Cube.

One: the Point is very nearly Nothing. It has no length, no breadth, no depth. It has no mass. It only has position. Yet, like the Nothing it emerges from, it contains all the other numbers inside it. Every other number is made of it. This is the fertilized egg before it begins to divide. This is the breath you draw before uttering a word. This is the nucleus of the Big Bang.

Two: the Opposite, the Other, the Double (Devil). The moment One emerged from anything, Two was born, because "this" implies "not that." One is Unity; Two is Division, Opposition, and Expansion. Two points make a line, a direction.

Three: She is the Queen of Heaven. The moment Separation occurs at Two, a Third element is created...Space. This third point defines and measures the first two, establishing limit. Three is Geometry; she is the Circle (Centre, Radius, Circumference), the Triangle, and the Creatrix of Three Dimensional Space (Up/down, Left/Right, Front/back). Finally, she is the Gate between Heavens and Earth.

Four to Ten; the Earth

Four: After Space is created, a fourth point allows the creation of the Tetrahedron, the first Pythagorean solid. Four is Matter, the Four Elements of Creation. It is the Tetragrammaton, YHVH, the Demiurge who mistakenly believes he is the highest god because he cannot see beyond the Abyss yawning between the Heavens and Earth.

Five: This is Matter in Motion, and therefore Time. It is the Tesseract and the Pentagram, which creates stability through motion.

Six: Now that Matter has a past and a future, it is capable of Individuality and Consciousness. It can say "I was that, I am this, I will be that." It can grow and change. Six is also the Emissary of the Heavens, the Word Made Flesh. 1 + 2 + 3 is 6, the Three Supernal numbers incarnating as the six faces of the Cube.

Seven: Six, given Individuality, now interacts with the other individuals around it. Seven is Sensation, the Self reaching out to Experience the World (the center of the Cube reaching out to the six faces). Further, just as the triangular prism breaks white light into seven colors, there is a special relationship between 3 and 7 (seven being a direct extension of the three vectors--up, down, left, right, front, back, and now a center). 3 is Heaven, 7 is Earth and together they are One and Zero (10).

Eight: the Individual experiences Sensation, and moving through Time, Learns from its experiences. Eight is Learning, and the means the means to record Learning...Language and Communication.

Nine: the Individual experiences Sensation, Learns, and cireates a sense of Self from its unique adventures, an Ego. But this is the Created Self, the Lesser Self. It is a reflection of the True Self at Six. Nine is the Number that Always Returns to Itself. It is the Waking Self of daily life, not in control but responsive and prone to illusions. But it is also desire, and the desire to create. It is the Self that most people identify with.

Ten: Here the cycle is complete. The Point has expanded, incarnated, and created a Universe to experience and better know itself. It has formed a world for itself, and now yearns to Return.

The Planets; The Path of Return

If One through Ten marks the path of descent and manifestation, the planets associated with these Numbers show the reverse path, Ascension, return to the infinite.

Ten is Earth, the Material World. It is the Mother who gives birth to us. Nine is Luna, the Moon. This is the Virgin, the Child that believes itself to be the center of existence, lost in illusions and dreams.

Eight is Mercury, the Student. It is the mischievous child between infancy and adolescence, clever and capricious. Seven is Venus, the Adolescent who begins to yearn for the other. Six is Sol, the Golden Youth in the prime of life. Five is Mars, the Adult, fighting to make a mark on the world. Four is Jupiter, the Father, who now has a family and children. He has conquered the world and is passing it on.

Three is Saturn, Old Age, the Wizard and the Crone. It sits on the edge of the Abyss. Saturn is also Death, the portal back to the Infinite. Two is the Zodiac, expanded space. One is the Sphere of Fixed Stars.

The Numbers of the Cube

There are a few more significant Numbers, and they all relate to the Cube, the symbol of Material Space.

We have discussed how 3 and 7 relate to the Cube. 8 is also related, as it constitutes the number of points or corners. The next Number is 12, the number of edges. It is associated with the signs of the Zodiac, which guard the borders of the cosmos. 13 is the 12 edges plus the center. It is the Sun moving through the belt of the Zodiac.

After 12 and 13, two more numbers merit discussion. The first is 22, or 3 + 7 + 12. 22 is the whole of Creation, the Heavens and the Cube. We will be discussing it in more detail when we get into the Qabalah and Tarot.

26 is similar to 22; it is the 8 corners of the Cube added to the 6 faces and 12 edges. Again, this number will become critical when we discuss Qabalah.

Finally, we must discuss 37. This is again a manifestation of the relationship between 3 and 7, Earth and Heaven. But it is also the "seed number" of the Triples, all of which have great significance. 37 x 3 is 111, 37 x 6 is 222, 37 x 9 is 333, 37 x 12 is 444, 37 x 15 is 555, 37 x 18 (6 + 6 + 6) is 666, and so on.

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THE SIMON NECRONOMICON PART 2: THE COSMOLOGIES OF DERLETH AND THE ARAB

The Simon Necronomicon (Schlangekraft, 1977) purports to be the survival of an ancient Mesopotamian magical tradition that subsequently influenced both the weird fiction of H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) and the occult teachings of Aleister Crowley (1875-1947).  None of this is exactly true.  This  Necronomicon is not exactly Lovecraftian, it's not exactly Sumerian, and it's not exactly Crowley...rather it combines the ideas and writings of Lovecraft's and Crowley's proteges, August Derleth and Kenneth Grant respectively, in an attempt to materialise the "astral Necronomicon" Grant so often wrote about.  The result is an intriguing, workable grimoire that puts many of Grant's theories into practice.

in keeping Lovecraft's work alive, Derleth--a devout Catholic--also added to and tinkered with the mythos, turning it into a radically different vision than that of Lovecraft.

The Mad Arab and August Derleth   

In his Introduction, editor Simon makes some comments about Lovecraft;

Lovecraft depicted a kind of Christian Myth of the struggle between opposing forces of Light and Darkness, between God and Satan, in the Cthulhu Mythos...(b)asically, there are two "sets" of gods in the mythos : the Elder Gods, about whom not much is revealed, save that they are a stellar Race that occasionally comes to the rescue of man, and which corresponds to the Christian "Light"; and the Ancient Ones, about which much is told, sometimes in great detail, who correspond to "Darkness".

This is, of course, absolutely not the case.  What Simon is describing is the work of August Derleth (1909-1971), a Lovecraft fan and imitator who played a vital role in keeping Lovecraft's tales and letters in print.  But in keeping Lovecraft's work alive, Derleth--a devout Catholic--also added to and tinkered with the mythos, turning it into a radically different vision than that of Lovecraft.  Pre-eminent Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi states the case nicely, and I will quote him at length;

The essence of the Derleth Mythos is as follows:

- There is a moral conflict between the Elder Gods (benevolent cosmic deities who battle on behalf of the human race) against the “evil” Old Ones (Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, etc.), who are intent on subjugating the human race. [In Lovecraft’s stories, there are no benign deities, and the Old Ones are for the most part not gods at all but morally neutral space aliens who have come to earth and encountered human beings and other earthly entities at random points in history.]

- As a result of this cosmic struggle, the Elder Gods have “imprisoned” the Old Ones in various obscure corners of the world or the universe. [In Lovecraft’s stories, none of the “gods” or space aliens are imprisoned with the exception of Cthulhu, and there is no evidence that his imprisoning was at the hands of any benevolent deity.]

- Accordingly, the Cthulhu Mythos is analogous to the Christian mythos, especially in regard to the expulsion of Satan and his minions from heaven. [Lovecraft, an avowed atheist, portrayed a bleakly amoral and atheistic vision of an insignificant humanity lost in the temporal and spatial depths of the cosmos.]

- The Old Ones are “elementals”—that is, they represent the four “elements” (earth, air, fire, and water) of ancient and mediaeval philosophy. [Lovecraft’s “gods” do not bear the slightest resemblance to elementals, especially as they have come from the depths of space where earthly elements may not exist.]

If you were a reader discovering Lovecraft in the 50s, 60s, or 70s, it is likely you did so via Arkham House, the publishing company created by Derleth in 1939 to keep Lovecraft's writings and letters in print.  This would have meant, however, that you were being exposed to Lovecraft's Mythos through a "Derlethian" lens.  It wasn't really until the 1980s that scholars and critics (in America...Lovecraft had been the subject of serious study in European scholarship for decades) took Lovecraft seriously enough to begin to distinguish his vision from his protégé's.  S.T. Joshi, quoted above, was one of those scholars critical to this process.  Simon, writing his Introduction in the mid-Seventies, was simply repeating what was thought about Lovecraft at the time.  Indeed, by his own admission in the book Dead Names: The Dark History of the Necronomicon, when he discovered the Necronomicon manuscript Simon claims he knew nothing about Lovecraft. Whether you believe that Simon edited the Necronomicon or authored it, it's easy to understand how someone writing about the Cthulhu Mythos in the 70s would mistake  Derleth's version for than Lovecraft's.  

The better question then, is why "the Mad Arab" makes the same mistake.

Describing a cosmology that marries Derleth to the Enuma Elish, the author of this Necronomicon writes of two warring pantheons of deities, the primordial Ancient Ones and the younger Elder Gods who defeated and imprisoned them.  The Ancient Ones are led by Tiamat, the ancient Sumerian goddess of chaos and the seas, and her mate Absu (lord of subterranean waters).  These are, of course, authentic Mesopotamian deities, but to their number the text adds a host of clearly Lovecraft-inspired horrors; Iak Sakkak (Yog Sothoth), Azag-Thoth (Azathoth), Ishniggarab (Shub Niggurath), and of course Kutulu (Cthulhu).  These ancient beings are convincingly Lovecraftian.  They are alien, inhuman, immense, and possessing monstrous power.  But against them are the Elder Gods, led by the Babylonian god Marduk.  He and his fellow "Zonei" are each associated with one of the Hermetic planets (Nanna with the Moon, Nebo with Mercury, Inanna with Venus, Shammash with the Sun, Nergal with Mars, Marduk with Jupiter, and Ninib with Saturn).  They defeat the Ancient Ones, steal their power, and imprison them.  Then their father Enki fashions Man (a point we will get to shortly).  

Now, these Elder Gods have very human attributes and concerns.  Nebo is patron of the sciences, for example, while Inanna oversees love and war.  All of this completely flies in the face of Lovecraft's mythology, where the "gods" are utterly alien and man is entirely insignificant to them.  This is the whole point of Lovecraft's horror; it rejects the traditional notion of cosmic powers at war over Man's soul.  For Lovecraft, the universe neither notices us nor cares.  Humanity simple doesn't matter.  And this, more than anything, is where the Necronomicon betrays itself as "Derlethian" rather than "Lovecraftian," because in its pages Man is a the very centre of the cosmic struggle;

And was not Man created from the blood of KINGU
Commander of the hordes of the Ancient Ones?
Does not man possess in his spirit
The seed of rebellion against the Elder Gods?

...Created by the Elder Gods
From the Blood of the Ancient Ones
Man is the Key by which
The Gate of IAK SAKKAK may be flung wide  

Far from being insignificant, Man is the centrepiece of the entire system, born of the Ancient One's blood and the breath of the Elder Gods he is the key that can release the Ancient Ones from their prison.  While Lovecraft struggled to create a mythology completely divorced from humanity, this Necronomicon returns to the very path he was departing from.  If we are to believe this is the "real" Necronomicon, the one that inspired Lovecraft's work, it is very difficult to explain why it more closely resembles the bastardised version created by August Derleth.

Simon Dissents

As we touched on briefly in Part One, one of the interesting features of the Necronomicon is that it speaks with two contrasting voices.  One the one hand we have it's author, the Mad Arab, who represents a very traditional viewpoint (from the Western esoteric viewpoint, that is).  For the Mad Arab there is a human race created by the gods and playing a central role in the cosmos, seven hermetic planets associated with fairly traditional correspondences that enclose and protect the world, and forces of Light and Darkness at war with one another.  Humanity is, naturally, urged to side with the Light in this struggle.  These are the same sorts of things we might find in Agrippa, Levi, or any of the medieval grimoires.

The Ancient Ones are not unspeakable horrors that must be kept imprisoned, but a Power, a force venerated in the East but demonised in the West.

Against this we have the voice of the editor, Simon, who speaks from a very nontraditional viewpoint.  He espouses views that started with Aleister Crowley and flowered through modern occultists like Austin Spare, Anton LaVey, Peter Carroll, and (most specifically) Kenneth Grant.  This is a view that transcends notions of Light and Dark and Good and Evil.  Where the Mad Arab has a very dualistic 'us against them' mentality (the 'Christian Myth' Simon mistakenly ascribes to Lovecraft), Simon seems to see the Elder Gods and Ancient Ones as part of a single continuum. When discussing the traditional viewpoint of the Mad Arab, for example, Simon calls everything into question.  Note the use of quotation marks and the statements made in the follow section;

There was a battle between the forces of "light" and "darkness" (so-called) that took place long before man was created, before even the cosmos as we know it existed.  It is described fully in the Enuma Elish and in the bastardised version found in the NECRONOMICON, and involved the Ancient Ones, led by the Serpent MUMMU-TIAMAT and her male counterpart ABSU, against the ELDER GODS (called such in the N.) led by the warrior MARDUK, son of the Sea God ENKI, Lord of the Magicians of this side, or what would be called "White Magicians"--although close examination of the myths of ancient times makes one pause before attempting to judge which of the two warring factions was "good" or "evil"...

"Light," "Darkness," "so-called," "White Magicians," "good," "evil..." Simon is clearly skeptical of the Mad Arab's traditional assumptions.  He is consistent in this.  When writing of Enki's opposite, the Ancient One AZAGTHOTH, he calls him the Lord of Magicians, but of the "Black" magicians, or the sorcerers of the "Other Side."  Again, "Black" and "Other Side" are enclosed in quotation marks.  And shortly after these comments, Simon sets aside a chapter of his Introduction to discuss the worship of the Ancient Ones in which it sounds suspiciously like he is defending the idea;

S.H. Hooke, in his excellent Middle Eastern Mythology, tells us that the Leviathan mentioned in JOB, and elsewhere in the Old Testament, is the Hebrew name given to the Serpent TIAMAT, and reveals that there was in existence either a cult, or scattered individuals, who worshipped or called up the Serpent of the Sea, or Abyss.

Bear in mind Simon's counterpart, the Mad Arab, speaks of these worshippers too, but always with absolute horror.  They are the "wreakers of havoc," "the ensnarers, the piers-in-wait, the blind fiends of Chaos," "secret priests initiated into the Black Rites, whose names are writ forever in the Book of Chaos."  Simon begs to differ;

It is this TIAMAT or Leviathan that is identified closely with KUTULU or Cthulhu in the pages of the NECRONOMICON...(t)his monster is well know to cult worship all over the world...the Dragon or Serpent is said to reside somewhere "below the earth;" it is a powerful force, a magickal force, which is identified with mastery over the created world; it is also a power that can be summoned by the few and not the many. However, in China, there did not seem to be a backlash of fear or resentment against this force as was known in Europe and Palestine...In the West, the conjuration, cultivation, or worship of this Power was strenuously opposed with the advent of Solar, Monotheistic religions...

These "Solar, Monotheistic religions" are what Simon meant with the phrase a "Christian Myth of the struggle between opposing forces of Light and Darkness."  It is a dualistic struggle Crowley would have called Osirian and which Simon enthusiastically dismisses;

The wholesale slaughter of those called "Witches" during the Inquisition is an example of this, as well as the solemn and twisted--that is to say purposeless and unenlightened--celibacy the Church espoused.  For the orgone of Wilhelm Reich is just as much Leviathan as the Kundalini of the Tantrick adepts, and the Power raised by Witches.  It has always, at least in the past two thousand years, been associated with occultism and essentially with Rites of Evil Magick, or the Forbidden Magick, of the Enemy, and of Satan...

Instead of a cosmic struggle between the forces of Good and Evil, Simon sees in the Necronomicon something completely different.  The Ancient Ones are not unspeakable horrors that must be kept imprisoned, but a Power, a force venerated in the East but demonised in the West.   The perception of them as Evil is one fostered by two thousand years of priestly propaganda.  

In Part Three, we will be taking a closer look at this idea, tracing it through Crowley, Spare, and Grant.

      

 

  

  

THE SIMON NECRONOMICON PART 1: THE IMAGINARY GRIMOIRE

By the way—there is no “Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred.” That hellish & forbidden volume is an imaginative conception of mine, which others of the W.T. group have also used as a background of allusion.

Lovecraft, Letter to Robert Bloch, May 9, 1933

A Book That Never Was

The Necronomicon is one of those literary inventions--like Atlantis or Noah's Ark--that certain circles of people desperately want to believe really existed.  The invention of American master of weird fiction Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937), the Necronomicon makes it's first appearance in the short story "The Hound" (1922), but is probably best remembered from "The Dunwich Horror" (1929), where it is a vital part of the plot and quoted extensively.  Composed around 700 AD by the "half-crazed" Yemeni Abdul Alhazred, the sprawling 800+ page volume describes the cosmic deities, alien races, and occult forces of the "Cthulhu Mythos," a term coined by Lovecraft protege August Dereleth.  The Necronomicon is just one of many fictional tomes invented by Lovecraft, and because it--like all elements of the Cthulhu Mythos--was something he freely shared with his literary circle and allowed other authors to borrow for their own tales, the Necronomicon began to enjoy an existence independent of its creator.  As more authors started writing about the Necronomicon, more readers started assuming it actually existed, forcing Lovecraft to set the record straight on several occasions;

Regarding the Necronomicon—I must confess that this monstrous & abhorred volume is merely a figment of my own imagination!

Letter to Margaret Sylvester, 1933

Regarding the dreaded Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred—I must confess that both the evil volume & the accursed author are fictitious creatures of my own—as are the malign entities of Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep, Shub-Niggurath, &c.

Letter to William Anger, 1934

Now about the “terrible and forbidden books”—I am forced to say that most of them are purely imaginary. There never was any Abdul Alhazred or Necronomicon, for I invented these names myself.

Letter to Willis Conover, 1936

Upon learning the Black Book never existed, some urged Lovecraft to attempt writing it.  To "Conan" creator Robert E. Howard he wrote in 1932;

As for writing the Necronomicon—I wish I had the energy and ingenuity to do it! I fear it would be quite a job in view of the very diverse passages and intimations which I have in the course of time attributed to it! I might, though, issue an abridged Necronomicon—containing such parts as are considered at least reasonably safe for the perusal of mankind! When von Juntz’s Black Book and the poems of Justin Geoffrey are on the market, I shall certainly have to think about the immortalisation of old Abdul!

Lovecraft never did get around to his abridged version of the sprawling volume, but by the 1970s, several others decided to try.  The climate, after all, was right for a Necronomicon.  The 50s and 60s had seen an occult revival, which by the 70s was drifting from Age of Aquarius white Magic towards something darker.  The Church of Satan was grabbing headlines and spawning imitators, Kenneth Grant was exploring the nightside of Eden, and Chaos Magic was coalescing.  And Lovecraft, who for decades had been banished to quiet semi-obscurity, was making a comeback. H.R. Giger published a collection of horrific art in 1977 under the title Necronomicon, and it helped land him the job of creating the terrifying xenomorph in Alien.  A bit earlier, von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods reawakened Lovecraft's themes of ultrarerrestrial deities and unearthly visitations.  Rod Serling's Night Gallery brought a few of Lovecraft's stories to the small screen, and the decade had kicked off with a film version of The Dunwich Horror. In short, there was a new interest in the Cthulhu Mythos, and coupled with the shadowy direction the occult scene had taken a Necronomicon was nearly inevitable.

Of the three major attempts the Seventies made at manifesting a Necronomicon, only one was viable.  1973 saw Owlswick Press publish a Necronomicon in the fictional, indecipherable language of "Duriac."  It consisted of about twenty pages repeated over and over again to make it look like a real book, and had little value as anything but a prop.  In 1978, the Hay Necronomicon appeared, "prepared from" encoded sections of John Dee's Liber Logaeth.   It's claim to fame was a long-winded ramble by Colin Wilson that the Necronomicon "had to be real" because Lovecraft was too much of a hack to have ever made it up, and went to great pains to show how this weird fiction writer would have come across it.  Vastly superior to the Owlswick attempt, it nevertheless rapidly faded back into obscurity.  But in 1977, a Necronomicon rose from the vortex of New York's occult scene that thirty-seven years and four editions later would still be in print, a little black book that televangelists would wave around alongside The Satanic Bible throughout the Eighties to scare the rubes.  Bearing very little in common with Lovecraft's accursed book, this Necronomicon nevertheless seized the title and made it its own.

It would come to be known as the Simon Necronomicon.

The Simon Necronomicon succeeded for several reasons.  For starters, it tapped perfectly into the zeitgeist of the 1970s. In addition to the trends of darker magic and H.P. Lovecraft mentioned above, the Simon Necronomicon added two other key elements.  The first was Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), who in the Seventies was making a comeback much as Lovecraft was.  The second was Sumer, which thanks to Zacariah Sitchin had replaced Egypt as the new epicenter of the "ancient astronauts" craze.  As we shall see, Sumer, Crowley, and Lovecraft are the three corners the Simon Necronomicon is written around, and all three were hot topics in the Seventies underground.  Bringing the Annunaki, the Cthulhu Mythos, and Crowley's Magick together was a stroke of genius.

A second factor had to be the book's graphic design.  The distinctive Gates and Seals throughout the Simon Necronomicon are nothing short of striking. Indeed, the "Arra-Agga-Bandar" Sigil adorning the front cover on the book rapidly became--alongside the Church of Satan's Baphomet--a universal logo of dark magic, recognizable on heavy metal album covers and back alley walls throughout the Eighties.  This is a real testament to the book's ability to grab the eye.  Being as much about aesthetics as anything else, the look of a magic system's occult mandalas is crucial to a grimoire's success.  The Necronomicon's sigils are far more convincing than any of the text itself.

...there is hardly a grimoire out there (or holy text for that matter) that doesn't make absurd claims about its origin.  The Key of Solomon was not written by Solomon.  The Corpus Hermeticum was not composed by Thrice Great Hermes.  The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses weren't written by Moses, and the five books of the Pentateuch weren't either.  So the point is never what the text claims about its origination, but the fruit it bears...

The key element in the book's success, however, is that it is an actual grimoire.  It is a "fake" Necronomicon but a "real" book of magic.  There is a complete system of magic in the Necronomicon's pages, as unique and self contained as, say, the Enochian system.  Whether the claims it makes about this system are true or not (that it predates all modern magic systems and is an ancient tradition) doesn't change the fact you can pick up the book and work with it.  This, of course, is the only criteria that really matters with a grimoire; does it work.  Because there is hardly a grimoire out there (or holy text for that matter) that doesn't make absurd claims about its origin.  The Key of Solomon was not written by Solomon.  The Corpus Hermeticum was not composed by Thrice Great Hermes.  The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses weren't written by Moses, and the five books of the Pentateuch weren't either.  So the point is never what the text claims about its origination, but the fruit it bears.

With this in mind, for the rest of our discussion we are going to lay aside questions of the book's authenticity and concentrate on it as a piece of occult technology.  To do this, we need to look at the volume's two parts; the text proper, and Simon's long Introductions and explanatory front matter.

Simon Says

"Simon" is both the man of mystery who brought this Necronomicon to press, and the Editor whose voice provides a modern counterpoint to the "Mad Arab" who is said to have written the text.  His Introductions (as of the 2008 edition there are four) and commentary take up nearly a quarter of the book.

Simon's presence in the Necronomicon is interesting, because the ideas he expresses so often run completely counter to what the Mad Arab is telling us.  For example, the Mad Arab's motivation in writing the book is to protect us from the very dark powers the Necronomicon discusses; "Seek ever to keep the Outside Gate closed and sealed, by the instructions I have given thee, by the Seals and the Names herein."  Simon, however, blithely dismisses these warnings;

After the long and poetic MAGAN text, comes the URILLIA text which might be Lovecraft's R'lyeh Text, and is subtitled "Abominations". It has more specifically to do with the worship of the Serpent, and the nature of the cults that participate in the Concelebration of Sin. Again, more conjurations and seals are given, even though the reader is charged not to use them; an inconsistency that is to be found in many grimoires of any period and perhaps reveals a little of the magicians's mentality; for there is very little that is evil to the advanced magus, who cares not if he deals with angelic or demonic forces, save that he gets the job done!

This seems to be the first of the roles Simon plays in the book...to urge us to look past the lurid horrors and dire warnings of the Mad Arab towards a deeper meaning in the text.  The Mad Arab reads like A. E. Waite, while Simon sounds like Aleister Crowley ("Ah! Mr. Waite, the world of Magic is a mirror, wherein who sees muck is muck..." Crowley famously wrote, chiding Waite for his pious fear of Goetia).  More to the point, given the nature of this Necronomicon, the Mad Arab reads like August Derleth and Simon like Kenneth Grant.

I mention these names because Simon's second role seems to be connecting the dots for us, bringing together Lovecraft, Crowley, and ancient Mesopotamia for us in the pages of the book;

That a reclusive author of short stories who lived in a quiet neighbourhood in New England, and the manic, infamous Master Magician who called the world his home, should have somehow met in the sandy wastes of some forgotten civilisation seems incredible. That they should both have become Prophets and Forerunners of a New Aeon of Man's history is equally, if not more, unbelievable. Yet, with H.P. Lovecraft and Aleister Crowley, the unbelievable was a commonplace of life. These two men, both acclaimed as geniuses by their followers and admirers, and who never actually met, stretched their legs across the world, and in the Seven League Boots of the mind they did meet, and on common soil . . . . Sumeria.

The gist of the initial 1975 Introduction is that the Necronomicon, as an ancient magical tradition, is the common source of both Crowley's Magick and Lovecraft's fiction (as well as the cult of Wicca and much of modern Satanism).  The problem with this is that both Simon's Introduction and the text itself are clearly derivative not of Lovecraft and Crowley, but their proteges...August Derleth and Kenneth Grant.  This is a matter we will be exploring in Part Two.   

THE WHOLE OF THE LAW, Some Observations on Thelema

Here is the official story.  Do what you will with it.

While on honeymoon in Cairo, the young bride of one Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) fell into a sort of trance, and started telling her husband that the god Horus was trying to get in touch with him.  Crowley had been, prior to all of this, l'enfant terrible of a magical order known as the Golden Dawn, but he had retired from the magical arts and was at the time a practicing Buddhist.  His wife, by contrast, had no esoteric background or knowledge, and he was understandably irritated by her ramblings.  He took her to a museum and challenged her to point out who was trying to reach him, sneering to himself as she blindly walked right past all the well known images of Horus.  But straight she went to a small, painted funeral stele, and pointed excitedly.  Sure enough, it displayed Horus (Ra Hoor Khuit), as well as two other deities, the Egyptian star goddess Nut (Nuit) and Behdet (Hadit) the winged solar disc.  She insisted this was the source of the voices calling to her, and Crowley, who had been raised in a strict Christian sect and had been called by his mother "the Beast" and "Antichrist" for his rebelliousness and rejection of her faith, couldn't help but notice that the museum exhibit number of this little wooden item was number 666.  It was enough to convince him to listen to her.

Following her instructions, Crowley locked himself in his bedroom between the hours of noon and one o'clock on three successive afternoons, April 8th, 9th, and 10th.  There he sat down at his desk, pen and paper ready.  And there, the story goes, a voice dictated to him Liber AL vel Legis, also known as The Book of the Law.  He always insisted it wasn't in his head.  He heard it from over his left shoulder, from the corner of the room.

This book, and the message it contains, is absolutely central to my world view.  Though I dislike the word "religion," and agree with Crowley that it has no place in discussions of Thelema (the philosophy arising from The Book of the Law), if I had a religion this would be it.  But part of the reason I call myself a Thelemite is because it asks me to believe nothing, including the origin story I just shared with you.  Did the gods reach out and dictate this book to Crowley?  I don't know.  I do know, however, that he himself was convinced of this.  Crowley was a skeptical polymath, relentlessly self-critical, and kept meticulous diaries.  It is clear from them that he rejected The Book of the Law, and was initially dismissive of its claims.  He refused the role it assigned to him for years.  But the more he studied the book, the harder he tried to reduce it, the more convinced of its authenticity he became.  It became crystal clear in his mind that The Book of the Law had been dictated to him by an intelligence greater than himself, and it was his firm conviction that his life mission was to bring the new law to all.  I for one and glad he did.

So what exactly is in this book?  For starters it is divided into three short chapters, each dictated over the space of one hour as Crowley furiously scribbled them out.  We know this because those pages are preserved, and photos of each one are included in every copy of The Book of the Law for all to examine.  These are not the golden tablets of Joseph Smith, conveniently whisked away by angels after he translated The Book of Mormon from them.  Each chapter was dictated, through a messenger named Aiwass, by a different deity.  Like the Christian Trinity, however, these three gods are part of a whole.  The first is Nuit, the goddess of infinite space.  The second is her counterpart Hadit, the tiny spark of the infinite within each of us.  The third is Ra-Hoor-Khuit, the Crowned and Conquering Child of theirs who governs the space between them.  Think of Nuit as the circumference of a circle, Hadit as the center, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit as the radius and the area (everything in The Book of the Law is intensely mathematical, and it is riddled not only with mathematical conceptions but hidden codes and encryptions).  Another way to regard them is with Nuit as the Universe, Hadit as our own individuality and consciousness, and Ra-Hoor as how we interact with the world around us.

Aside from this cosmology, which is in itself actually key to the rest of the message, The Book of the Law is declaring a New Aeon and a new Magickal Formula for humanity to live by.  That takes some explaining.  For starters a "Magickal Formula" is simply an observation of reality and a prescription of how to interact with it.  "The early bird gets the worm," "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," "E=MC2," and "pi" are all examples.  They reflect our understanding of how things work, or how they should work.  Thelema postulates beyond this that there are bigger, all-encompassing Magickal Formulae that govern entire stages of human development, also known as "Aeons."  Crowley discusses three of these, and given the Egyptian origins of Thelema, he uses Nile gods to label them.

The Aeon of Isis governed human prehistory.  It was the time of our hunter-gathering ancestors, and its chief Magickal Formula was the Great Mother.  Chiefly concerned with "where does life come from," the answer seemed to be from women, and the earth.  Women appeared to spontaneously bring forth life, as did the land itself, and both produced food from their bodies.  Archaeological evidence abounds demonstrating this ancient cult of the mother, from massive breasted fertility figurines to skeletons buried in the fetal position as if returning to the Great Mother's womb.  

With agriculture came a new formula, and a new Aeon.  Crops were produced by the seed, incubated in the soil.  This led to the conclusion that the male seed, semen, was the source of human life as well, with women merely as the incubator.  This was an idea that lasted well into Roman and medieval times.  Further, the importance of the sun in the cycles of nature and the growing season moved the focus from Terra to Sol.  The new formula was God the Father, Lord of Light and Life.  Believing to have the mystery of where life came from solved, attention turned sharply to "what happens after death."  The answer came from the Solar Father; the sun dies each night and rises reborn.  This became the formula of the Father God cult.  By obedience and worship to God the Father, like him we will rise from the dead.  This was the central teaching of scores of antique mystery religions, from Osiris to Christ.  Crowley chose to name this Aeon after the former.  With this Aeon of Osiris authority moved from matriarchal families and tribes to patriarchal states.  It lasted until the dawn of the 20th century.

The Book of the Law initiates the Aeon of Horus.  For the egyptology-impaired, Horus was the son of Isis and Osiris, and just as the first Aeon was the Mother's, and the second the Father's, the New Aeon is that of the Child.  Humanity is no longer ignorant of the facts of life; we understand conception requires both egg and sperm equally.  The union of opposites becomes  an essential Magickal Formula of the Age.  We no longer believe the sun dies and is resurrected; we know it is always there, and that the rotation of the planet creates the illusion of solar death.  Thus we can discard all this resurrection nonsense; even "death" can be dismissed.  Nothing "dies," and the molecules of our bodies--forged in the hearts of stars countless millennia ago--are simply translated into something else.  Death comes from the erroneous conclusion that we are separate from the Universe.  The end of bodily life does not erase suddenly the role we played.  The effect we had upon the world endures forever.  We are part of the fabric of being and this never ends.

Dispensing with the question of birth and the fear of death, Thelema asks us to focus on the most important spiritual question; "how should we live?"  It provides us with an answer, the new Magickal Formula of the Aeon of Horus.  "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."

Perhaps nothing else in Thelema is as poorly understood, or as central, as "do what thou wilt."  Thelema is the Greek word for "will," and the very definition of a Thelemite is one who seeks to discover and do his or her will.  By "will" we mean True Will, and it is nothing less than what you are meant to do with your existence.  Will is not assigned to us by an external God; we are not to do God's will but our own.  The time of the Father, like the Mother, has passed.  We are to take responsibility for ourselves now and move out on our own.

For the Thelemite, "every man and every woman is a star."  We are each the center of our own solar system, the source of our own light, the sole sovereign of our own existence.  But at the same time we are clustered into galaxies, and each of us has a trajectory we are moving on through space.  Your Will is that trajectory, determined by your position, composition, and disposition.  It is always natural to you.  You are drawn to it, you are good at it, it comes naturally and feels right.  It is not a chore, though it may not be easy.  The Thelemite works to find his or her Will and then do it as best as they can.

But there is a corollary to this Law of perfect freedom; "...thou hast no right but to do thy will. Do that, and no other shall say nay."  The Law does not say "do whatever you please." You are required to do your Will; if you are gay it is wrong to try and force yourself to be straight.  If you are a gifted painter it is wrong to force yourself into accounting or medicine to please your parents.  Trying to make your life easier by not doing your Will violates the Law.  Further, no other may say "nay."  The only sin, The Book of the Law tells us, is restriction.  Any action that restricts another person from doing his or her own Will is "evil."  Rape, as a violation of another's sexual Will, is evil.  Theft, as a violation of a person's livelihood and therefore ability to do their Will, is evil.  Murder, the greatest violation of Will imaginable, is evil.  It may be that on some occasions, stars collide when following the course of their Wills, but in general the evils of the world arise from people not doing their Will.  It is no one's Will to walk into a classroom and murder innocent children.  It is no one's Will to force themselves on someone.  We must do our Wills and leave others to do theirs.

Connected to this concept of individual sovereignty and individual Will is that of individual deity.  This brings up the debate whether or not Thelema can be called a "religion."

The three chief divinities of The Book of the Law are not properly objects of worship in the way that Yahweh or Allah or Vishnu are understood to be.  Nor do they answer prayer.  Indeed they are not even objective entities so much as personifications of concepts.  Hadit is the spark of consciousness and individuality within us, and Nuit is the manifest universe around us.  They are "divided for love's sake," for the joy of reunion.  We are meant to intact with each other and the world as we might with a lover.  The "worship" of Nuit then, is to live joyously, and Hadit is in reality the "worshiper."  Ra-Hoor-Khuit, the product of the interaction between the self and the world, is the embodiment of Thelema.  He embodies how we are to live, and is not to be worshipped, just followed.  

But the notion of a personal god is not entirely absent from Thelema.  In fact, Thelema takes the word "personal" quite literally.  Rather than the individual forming a "personal relationship" with a single divine being, as worshipers do with Christ or Krishna, the Thelemite has his very own "personal god," a link between the self and the ultimate level of reality.  This is not unique to Thelema; it is an extremely ancient and widespread concept.  The Greeks believed everyone had their own god, or daemon.  The Romans called it the genius.  Thelema includes this type of being in its cosmology as well, calling it the "Holy Guardian Angel." There is no clear consensus on what exactly its nature is, however, and even Crowley went back and forth when trying to pin it down.  He would at one time call it the "Higher Self," only later to insist that it was not that, but a being in its own right.  For example, he came to think that Aiwass, the intelligence that dictated The Book of the Law to him, was his own Angel, and possessed intellect and awareness far beyond his own capacities.  Fortunately, the Thelemite is not required to have any preconceptions concerning the nature of this being, he or she is only required to seek it out and form a union with it.  This is perhaps the closest Thelema drifts towards religion in the conventional sense, but there are so many other facets of the system at odds with religious conventions it is hard to feel comfortable using that word.

Aside from the absence of communal prayer or a shared deity, it is forbidden for any Thelemite to attempt to interpret The Book of the Law for anyone else.  One must read the book and interpret it for oneself, period. This makes any sort of church or congregation, wherein uniformity is encouraged, problematic.  Further, nothing is to be taken on "faith;" Thelema insists on a policy of scientific illuminism wherein the "method of science" is put towards "the aim of religion."  If there is any truth to mystical experience, it is argued, then it must respond to the application of the scientific method.  Mystical states must be reproducible by anyone using the correct formulae, regardless of ideology or "belief."  Crowley wrote in his kind to students, Liber O;

"In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them."

This system of scientific illuminism, which Crowley termed "Magick," is closely intertwined with the philosophy of Thelema in a way religion is not.  The Book of the Law refers to magical rites, but refrains from using the word "religion" at all.  So while Thelema does indeed occupy the psychology space in my being that religion might occupy for others, I am more comfortable referring to it as a "path" or "system" than a religion. "...our system is a religion," wrote Crowley;

"...just so far as religion means an enthusiastic putting together of doctrines, no one of which must in any way clash with Science or Magick...call it a new religion, then, if it so please your Gracious Majesty, but I confess I fail to see what you will have gained in so doing, and I feel bound to add that you might easily cause a great deal of misunderstanding, and work a rather stupid kind of mischief."    

The question, ultimately, resides with the story back in Cairo.  If you think Aiwass was an objective being, if you think Ra Hoor Khuit really has taken his seat on the throne of the gods, if you think Crowley really was chosen to deliver a divine mandate to mankind, you are very likely to look at Thelema as a religion.  Indeed, I have known many Thelemites who do.  If you tend to think as I do, that the elementals, gods, demons, and angels conjured by Magick all dwell as disparate facets of our own psyches, one is less inclined to regard it as religion and more as a system for psychological development and a guide for living.  In a way it all depends on the question of Aiwass.  As psychologist, occultist, and former secretary to Crowley Israel Regardie wrote in The Eye in the Triangle;

“If Aiwass was his own Higher Self, then the inference is none other than that Aleister Crowley was the author of the Book, and that he was the external mask for a variety of different hierarchical personalities… The man Crowley was the lowest rung of the hierarchical ladder, the outer shell of a God, even as we all are, the persona of a Star… He is the author of The Book of the Law even as he is the author of The Book of the Heart Girt with a Serpent and Liber Lapidis Lazuli, and so forth. …these latter books reveal a dialogue between the component parts of Crowley. It seems to me that basically this Liber Legis is no different.”

I am inclined to side with Regardie for several reasons.  The first and chiefest is my own thirty years of dealings with Magick and twenty with The Book of the Law.  I know full well how real these entities all can be, and frequently they do demonstrate knowledge and power that I would consider beyond my own capacity.  Indeed, the summer I retired from the world to perform the Abramelin Ritual (the operation to achieve the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel) very nearly tipped me the other way into believing full on that I was dealing with discarnate entities independent of my own mental processes.  This experience was intimately connected with The Book of the Law, and like Crowley I teetered on that line between skepticism and belief.  I have been struggling the subsequent eight years to put that summer into words, but suffice to say it was Crowley--and Liber AL vel Legis--that talked me off the ledge.  The first was the quote from Liber O I mentioned above, the second was Crowley's commentary on one of The Book of the Law's most inspiring verses; "Every man and every woman is a star.  Every number is infinite; there is no difference."  Crowley wrote of this in The Law is for All;

"This is a great and holy mystery.  Although each star has its own number, each number is equal and supreme.  Every man and every woman is not only a part of God, but the Ultimate God.  'The Centre is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.'  The old definition of God takes new meaning for us.  Each one of us is the One God."

If we are stars, then, all the spirits would seem to be the planets and moons and comets that compose our systems.  They are independent to a degree, but dependent on our gravitation and light.  This is not to say that our common, daily consciousness is the "star" either.  In fact I think it is probably our Higher Self that is the true center, and that the idea of ourself we have constructed from experience and cultural inheritance is just more debris in orbit around that center.  Magick, and Thelema, is about shifting the seat of your consciousness from those moons to the actually sun.

For this reason, I hold the view that in that Cairo hotel suite Crowley did indeed experience a revelation from the deepest center of himself, not a religion, but a liberation from religion.  "It is our Work to overthrow the slave-gods," as Crowley wrote.  

But does this make Liber AL vel Legis more or less remarkable?  Obviously I side with "more."  If Crowley's New Aeon was not, in fact, yet another dictate from yet another god, it was something all the more amazing: the deepest parts of a young man in 1904 who somehow saw the entire 2oth century spread before him.  For the Book accurately predicts wars on a scale never seen before as the old ways of kings and gods and faiths clash with the new way of freedom, personal responsibility, and independence.  It predicts the rising equality of the sexes and the acceptance of personal sexual preferences.  It sees a massive redefining of what religion means.  And it calls for a spirituality that in no way clashes with reason or science.  If Crowley was not the message bearer for yet another god, he was a visionary.  And in that there is the promise that we can be too.  So I close with a quote from his Confessions;

"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."

THE ANGEL MOST HIGH, PART 3, The Fifth Article on the work of Andrew Chumbley

...again we come face to face with the magical theme of the mask and the mirror; if you look into the face of the Devil and see only wickedness and sin, that is because you are seeing your own wickedness and sin reflected...

The Yezidi people of Iraq's Nineveh province have long been accused of being "Devil worshipers."  In a sense they are.  The Yezidi religion, which is neither an off-shoot of Christianity nor of Islam but a parallel tradition in its own right, teaches that God left the task of creation--and governing the universe--to seven angels, emanations of Himself (a very Qabalistic concept).  The leader of these angels, the Angel Most High, is Tawuse Melek, the "Peacock Angel."  He rules creation on God's behalf.  What gets the Yezidi into trouble with their Muslim neighbors are the parallels between Tawuse Melek and the Islamic Shaytan (aka Iblis).  Both are the highest of God's angels, and both--in nearly identical stories--are brought before Adam after his creation and told to bow before him by God.  In the version told in the Quran, Shaytan refuses to kneel and asks why a creature of air and fire should bow before one formed of water and clay.  For that, he is condemned by Allah, and falls.  But in the Yezidi telling, Tawuse Melek refuses because it is lawful to bow before only one being; God himself, and for this he is praised rather than condemned.  The Yezidi acknowledge that Iblis and Tawuse Melek are one in the same, but they no not call him "Shaytan" and deny that he is evil.  He is Lucifer Unfallen.  And here again we come face to face with the magical theme of the mask and the mirror; if you look into the face of the Devil and see only wickedness and sin, that is because you are seeing your own wickedness and sin reflected.  As the Buddhists point out, one who is enlightened can find the Buddha nature in anything.  The Yezidi understanding of the Angel Most High embraces this.  And so, apparently, does the work of Andrew Chumbley, who refers to the Peacock Angel throughout Qutub, and for whom the Angel Most High represents something other than temptation.

We have spent nearly three essays now on Chumbley's own version of why the Angel Most High refused to bow, and it should be clear that his Crooked Path is taking us in a direction different from either the Islamic or Yezidi stories. In all three versions, God orders the Highest Angel to bow before Adam, signifying of course that mankind is his second-in-command, the divine vice-regent of God.  The Muslim Angel refuses out of wounded pride, the Yezidi Angel refuses out of love for God. Chumbley's Angel refuses because he knows a secret even the One God doesn't; Man has the capacity to rise higher than the One himself.  He is not God's subordinate...God is man's subordinate.

And now the final veil is lifted from this fable, and reveals the deepest truth of all.

...from the Adept's point of view, these believers have counted down to "One" and forgotten to go all the way to "Zero."  They have forgotten the Buddhist exhortation "if on the road to Enlightenment you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha."  This applies to Allah and Yahweh too...

Nearly all men--one could comfortably say 99%--are mainly atheists.  Even the most pious Christian, Muslim, or Jew disbelieves in far more gods that he believes in.  The Muslim or Christian denies a million gods; the 'total' atheist denies just one more god than them.  But all will agree that mankind has invented countless deities throughout history to satisfy his needs.    The only difference between the believer and the atheist is that the former have convinced themselves that of countless false gods, only the one they believe in is true.  The believer is an atheist 99 times out of a hundred.  From Chumbley's point of view, indeed from the Adept's point of view, these believers have counted down to "One" and forgotten to go all the way to "Zero."  They have forgotten the Buddhist exhortation "if on the road to Enlightenment you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha."  This applies to Allah and Yahweh too.

Now, this is not to say that there isn't a "God," an ultimate reality, out there, but in the words of the Egyptian Sufi saint Dhu'l Nun, "God is the Opposite of anything you can imagine."  The parade of gods marched out by organized religions are all of human manufacture, and any God the priests, imams, or rabbis can tell you about is not really God at all; because the divine is ineffable.  God cannot be communicated by others.  God can only be experienced directly.  And by "God" we don't mean his false anthropomorphic face, "the One that men have named falsely," but the Qabalitsic Zero.

Magical power radiates from the center, and to find it, the Adept must seek the center first. 

Aleister Crowley, in his Eight Lectures on Yoga, asks us to consider what the Buddha, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad all had in common.  The answer is surprisingly simple.  All of them went alone into the wilderness for a period of isolation, mediation, fasting, and concentration.  All of them rid themselves of distractions.  All of them became emptied.  All of them reached "Zero."  After their withdrawal from the world they return to it different, changed by their contact with the highest levels of reality.  Because for knowledge to flow in, an empty space must first be made.  Magical power radiates from the center, and to find it, the Adept must seek the center first.  He 'concentrates.'  He reaches the point or Qutub that exists yet has no dimension or form.  The point that is "without form and void."

Which brings us at last to our final destination: Genesis 1:1-2, with a brief detour first through Job.

In the Book of Job, Yahweh unashamedly launches into an extended rant about just how wonderful he is, and produces Leviathan as "Exhibit A" of his ultimate badassness...

Many of the myths in the Old Testament echo even earlier stories from Mesopotamia. The story of the ark and the flood, for example, was well known in Mesopotamia and India before Noah took it over; it is even mentioned in Gilgamesh, which precedes Genesis by many centuries.  Gilgamesh also contains an earlier version of the Garden of Eden, with a man created from the dust and a woman who tempts him.  Once again he accepts food from her, covers up his nakedness, and is exiled.  Gilgamesh even has a snake that cheats mankind of immortality.  But one of the most interesting echoes of older mythology is found in Job, and involves another serpent.  And for this tale, "we are going to need a bigger boat."

We are talking about the titanic sea serpent Leviathan.  In the Book of Job, Yahweh unashamedly launches into an extended rant about just how wonderful he is, and produces Leviathan as "Exhibit A" of his ultimate badassness;

"Can you pull in the Leviathan with a fishhook or tie down his tongue with a rope?  Can you put a cord through his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook?  Will he keep begging you for mercy?  Will he speak to you with gentle words?  Will he make an agreement with you for you to take him as your slave for life?  Can you make a pet of him like a bird or put him on a leash for your girls?"  (Job 41)

...aside from the comical imagery of God leading his pet dragon around on a leash to impress girls, we might well be asking ourselves why exactly we are expected to be impressed with this feat...

Basically, the Lord God is pleased with himself for having made Leviathan his bitch.  Now aside from the comical imagery of God leading his pet dragon around on a leash to impress girls, we might well be asking ourselves why exactly we are expected to be impressed with this feat.  After all, in Psalm 104 we are told God made all things, including Leviathan.  Are we really supposed to praise God for beating up on something he himself created?  It's a bit like a father swaggering around patting himself on the back for smacking down his five-year-old.  The whole episode is absurd.

Unless you look at it in the light of earlier versions.

In the Babylonian creation epic, for example, the titanic sea serpent is the cosmic dragon goddess Tiamat, the embodiment of the Primordial Chaos that exists before Creation.  Tiamat is before all things, the oldest of all that exists, and gives birth to the other gods.  Another of her forms is the ocean, the ultimate symbol in ancient times for the "negative existence" the universe arose from.  One of Tiamat's children is the warrior chief Marduk, who rises up and defeats her, and from her immense body fashions the universe.  He splits her corpse into two halves to fashion heaven and earth.  Marduk becomes the creator of the universe by defeating his dragon and shaping her Primal Chaos.

Before receiving the ultimate promotion Yahweh was neither the only god nor the first.  It took the Babylonian Captivity, and prolonged exposure to Zoroastrianism, to put that idea into Hebrew-speaking heads.

Yahweh's boast makes a lot more sense if we step back and remind ourselves that monotheism is a late comer to his party.  He wasn't always the One God; he started out as just one god.  He was a very typical Near Eastern "divine warrior chief," like Marduk, Ninurta, or Indra, all of whom conquer dragons to prove their might.  In the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah, Yahweh was the patron of the royal court and the leader of a pantheon that included El, Baal, and his consort Asherah.  Over time (from about the tenth century BC forward) his cult became increasingly intolerant of rivals, until finally in the sixth century BC the authors of Isaiah proclaimed Yahweh as the sole deity and creator of the universe.  Before receiving the ultimate promotion Yahweh was neither the only god nor the first.  It took the Babylonian Captivity, and prolonged exposure to Zoroastrianism, to put that idea into Hebrew-speaking heads.

If Yahweh did not create Leviathan, if the dragon was there before him like Tiamat and Marduk, his boast suddenly starts to make sense.  Indeed, there is some indication of this right there in the very beginning of Genesis;  "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.  And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep."  The Hebrew word for "the deep" in that sentence was tehom, derived from the same source as "Tiamat."  Read with this in mind, Yahweh, like Marduk, becomes the creator when he fashions heaven and earth from her body.  He becomes the Creator by shaping the Primordial Chaos that comes before him.

...in order to do this he needs to ignore the One and go on to Zero; he cannot stop and worship any god invented by man, but push forward into that ineffable silence which exists before all things.  

And if Yahweh can become God by shaping Primal Chaos, surely the being that invented him is capable of the same.

Chumbley very explicitly tells us all this.  "... in the Fullness of Time Man would claim for Himself the substance of his own Creation and Know Himself as the One True-born of the Elder Gods."  But in order to do this he needs to ignore the One and go on to Zero; he cannot stop and worship any god invented by man, but push forward into that ineffable silence which exists before all things.  This is what the Indians called samadhi, and what Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, Mohammad, and others seem to have achieved by becoming empty in the wilderness.  It is what transforms the substance of a man into an Adept.  It is what modern Chaos Magicians refer to as "Gnosis."  Chumbley's Angel Most High is telling us not to make idols and of those who achieve this state, but rather to seek it ourselves.

In this he echoes Aleister Crowley again. In his Confessions he writes;

"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."

Crowley was adamant about this.  His Book of the Law, which he conspired a piece of "divinely inspired writing," came with the warning that every reader had to interpret it for themselves.  It was forbidden for anyone to preach about its meaning.  This is because the Adept knows that truth must be won, it can not be echoed and passed down.  Again it is a core way that Magick differs from religion, which claims not only to be able to interpret scriptures for you, but to have the accurate interpretation of their meaning.

Chumbley's Angel Most High is thus a Shadow, a dark reflection that is, in fact, Nothing.  It is the emissary of emptiness.  But it leads us towards emptiness--samadhi--Gnosis with a very specific purpose.  Again, from Chumbley's Commentary on the Qutub;

The aim of the Adept is union with the Absolute; this is the summit of True Mysticism, and yet, for the Adept, this height of attainment has a distinct interpretation. Rather than his own identity dissolving within the Absolute State of Being, merging and unifying like the droplet within the ocean, the Adept realises himself as Absolute: a Perfected Unique Being, and thus as an Active Principle of New Creation. Taking Himself to be the Hand of Fate, the struggle of the Adept is that of Lucifer: a War against That which resists or denies his Will to become the Sole and Unique One, a Singularity of Unique Power, the Polestar of his own Universe: QUTUB.

Or in the words of famed artists and magician Austin Spare; "Demand equality of God--usurp!"