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!"

THE ANGEL MOST HIGH, PART 2; The fourth article on the work of Andrew Chumbley

As I mentioned before, the word "occult" simply means "hidden," and the word "esoteric" means "inner" (its opposite is "exoteric," the outer appearance of things).  These definitions must always be kept in mind by those approaching literature of this kind.  The really great occultists, and I think Chumbley belongs in this category, write passages like Russian matryoshka dolls.  If you look at the surface of what is written, you are missing what is hidden inside.  You need to dig, dig again, and then dig some more.  The reasoning behind this sort of thing is not merely to encode it--something that was desperately necessary in the centuries when the Church had the power to execute those who questioned its doctrines--nor to keep it from the eyes of the 'profane.'  The fact is occultists are often trying to communicate something incommunicable, or more to the point, something that the reader must seek for himself.  Once more, the world of magic is a mirror, and in digging through a layers of a passage like this, the reader is looking deeper and deeper into himself.  You cannot simply be "told" any meaningful secret...it has to be discovered and earned.  My purpose is unpacking this 300-word passage of Chumbley's is not only to illuminate his philosophy, but to demonstrate to the reader the intricacy of this kind of work.

You cannot simply be "told" any meaningful secret...it has to be discovered and earned. 

And so Chumbley has given us a recycled version of the myth of Lucifer, simultaneously drawing us deeper and earlier to the Hebrew "fallen angel" myth that precedes the Christian retelling.  In doing so, he has tipped his Gnostic hand.  There are at least two deeper levels ahead, but we need to stop a minute and consider the meaning of what we have already discovered.  We need to dwell on "Gnostic" for a bit.

"Gnosticism" is an umbrella term for hundreds of sects, but what they all share is an approach to truth if not the same conclusions on what the "truth" is.  The Indian subcontinent, which gave rise to some of the richest philosophical and religious traditions in the world, often employs the word yoga when discussing spiritual practices.  This is not merely stretching and breathing exercises; in India it is synonymous with "religion."  In fact, the word yoga is connected to the English "yoke," both Sanskrit and English being descendants of a common Indo-European tongue.  They both mean the same thing; something that "joins" two things together.  This is exactly the meaning of "religion," from the Latin re ligio (to bind two things together; "ligature" comes from the same source).  

India recognizes many types of yoga, or religious approaches, three of the most common being bhakti yoga (joining yourself to the divine through love and faith), karma yoga (joining yourself to the divine through good works and proper conduct), and jnaya yoga (joining yourself to the divine through knowledge and direct experience).  Historically, the Christian Church in the west decided early on that bhakti was the official method of coming to God, with karma running second.  But Christianity has always been uncomfortable with "knowledge," a word again linguistically related to both the Sanskrit jnaya and the Greek gnosis through those same Indo-European roots.  It is a matter of historical record that the Church tried relentlessly to eradicate any knowledge that contradicted its teachings--the Renaissance only could occur after prolonged contact with Islamic civilization, which had preserved classical writings instead of destroying them.  The church discouraged seeking direct knowledge of the divine in favor of serving as the sanctioned intermediary between man and God.  The Gnostics, as their name implies, rebelled against this.  What joins all the various Gnostic sects is the doctrine of initiation, of discovery, of knowledge and personal experience as the road to truth.

Who the heck are these "Elder Gods" Chumbley is talking about?

We cannot blame the Church entirely for its discomfort with knowledge...it inherited this from the Hebrew priesthood it is modeled upon.  In retrospect it was probably Islam's lack of an institutionalized religious authority that left it more open to knowledge; there was no Islamic church or temple that needed a monopoly on knowledge to justify is existence.  Twice in the Hebrew myths connected to this passage we have seen God frown upon "leaks" in heaven's knowledge monopoly.  First in the passage's reference to Eden and the serpent (the fall of Man caused by eating the fruit of knowledge) and second in its reference to the fall of the Watchers in 1 Enoch (damned for teaching the arts and sciences to men).  Ironically, the Church seems to have inherited its "we have all the answers" mentality from the very priesthood that Christ accused of not having all the answers.  But the Gnostics were having none of it, and Chumbley is throwing his lot in with theirs.

Which brings us to the part where we must lift the next veil.

Who the heck are these "Elder Gods" Chumbley is talking about?

While many readers are familiar with the story of Lucifer and the that of the serpent in Eden, and careful readers of the Bible are aware of the Watchers and their dalliance with the daughters of men, this notion of gods existing before (G)od probably comes out of nowhere to them.  Well buckle those seat-belts gentle reader, this is where the real fun begins.  

Let's start with the most obvious.  I cannot say with absolute certainty, but I would be more than willing to wager, that Chumbley is sneaking in a reference to H.P. Lovecraft's fictional brood here.  Lovecraft--who was himself a materialist and atheist--wrote weird fiction and horror tales that often included the "Old Ones" or "Elder Gods."  These were vast and incomprehensible alien beings who reigned over the cosmos long before man evolved, and fell into decline before the first human civilizations appeared.  Now they are somehow locked "outside" of our universe, and much of his fiction deals with them trying to get back in.  These Elder Gods were purely fictitious, but--as we shall see--reflective of genuine mythological beings.  More importantly, they found their way into occultism around the mid-20th century.  Anton LaVey--who like modern Chaos Magicians viewed belief as a tool and all gods as symbols--published two rituals dedicated to these Elder Gods.  Several other occultists, most notably the anonymous "Simon" and more recently Donald Tyson, have published their own versions of the Necronomicon, a book Lovecraft invented detailing these Old Ones.  But the reason I am quite comfortable in linking Chumbley with them is that Chumbley was a member of Kenneth Grant's British offshoot of Aleister Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis from 1993-1999.  While Grant is a fascinating figure in his own right, what matters here is that he wrote extensively about Lovecraft's prehistoric gods and included them in his magical teachings.  I have no doubt this is how Chumbley comes to incorporate them.

We need to remember the mask and the mirror, the lies that point to truth.  

Am I telling you that Chumbley is now talking about fictional entities in his occult teachings?  Yes, and no.  We need to remember the mask and the mirror, the lies that point to truth.  I spoke at length in my article on Qutub on the Qabalistic concept of zero, of nothingness, and the true nature of God (ultimate reality).  Basically, the "real" God is by definition ineffable and incomprehensible.  Anything less and it could not be God.  Yahweh, like all gods, is a human invention, an attempt for the sake of convenience to put a face and a name to that which is nameless and faceless.  Yahweh is thus no more real than Lovecraft's gods; but God being omniversal, these gods can tell us something true about God's nature just as surely as Yawheh can.  In fact, from the Gnostic point of view, the Elder Gods are closer to an accurate conception of God than Yawheh is because Lovecraft's deities are themselves incomprehensible.  By being outside our ability to understand, the Elder Gods are more reflective of real ultimate reality.  Further, the Gnostics believed that the "true" God existed outside of the universe, something we touched on in talking about the Azoetia.  For them, the universe was far too imperfect to be the handiwork of a perfect being, and thus ascribed Creation to the "Demiurge," a manifestation of the true God with delusions of grandeur.  In their conception, this tyrannical God manufactures the universe and traps humanity within it.  Having fashioned the cosmos and shut himself away from the True God, the Demiurge becomes the "jealous" god of the Old Testament, convincing himself he is the one and only god and setting himself up as a despot.  The Gnostic path was to escape our prison and return to the True God outside of it.  Chumbley is clearly merging Lovecraft's extra-dimensional deities with the Gnostic one.

Again, he has a sound reason for doing this, but before we get there a moment must be taken to scratch our heads over his cryptic "Those who are without number and yet are numbered as Eight."   The first half should be easy to understand by now; without number is 0, the Qabalistic conception of nothingness.  The Eight is a bit more problematic.  I will submit three points for your consideration.

It is possible that Chumbley is taking a page from Crowley's play book, and that this "Eight" is a sly reference to the "infinity" symbol (an 8 on its side).  Those who are without number and yet are infinite.

It is possible that Chumbley is nodding his head towards Chaos Magicians, another group he had close contact with (having written for the journal Chaos International).  Without getting distracted now--I plan on talking about Chaos Magic in a future entry--it is enough to say now that this school uses Chaos as a way to describe the same idea as the Qabalistic Zero, and that the unofficial but widely used Chaos symbol is an eight-pointed star.  We will come back to Chaos at the close of this entry, so keep it in mind.

Or it could be that he means the Qabalistic "Eight."  Qabalah is another topic that demands an essay (or a hundred essays) unto itself, but to summarize here Qabalah ascribes symbolic meaning to numbers, especially the first ten, which form spheres of experience on a diagram called The Tree of Life.  We have already discussed the meaning of zero, but to fully grasp what Chumbley is telling us we need to breeze through the next ten.  I will use a model created by Aleister Crowley, the elegant and succinct "Naples Arrangement," to summarize for you. 

After the infinite, indescribable perfection of Qabalistic nothingness, we arrive at One.  This is the mathematical point, or Qutub, again.  It is the "I" and the "eye," a mystery we will save for later.  The point is the first manifestation of nothingness, positive yet undefinable.  It has position but nothing else.  It is the number of the Demiurge, the god who thinks it is the first to exist and the source for the rest of the universe (ie numbers).  "With the conception of the Universe was the Beginning and the Fall of the One, the One that men have named falsely," Chumbley tells us.  One thinks it is the first, but Nothing was before it.

In short, if all the pairs of opposites in the cosmos are viewed from a distance, everything vanishes into zero.  Observer and observed, hot and cold, light and dark...all of the positive "n" plus the negative "n" balance out to 0

"At the side of the One there was the Secret One, the Angel Most High, Emissary of the Elder Gods."  Here is the number Two, who Chumbley identifies with the Elder Gods (Zero).  Why?  The answer again is Crowley, who attempted to reconcile the old mystical question of whether the universe was dualistic, monistic, or nihilistic with an elegant equation.  The "dualistic" universe is that wherein God creates the universe but stands outside of it.  The monistic universe, most famously seen in the Indian Advaita Vedanta school, postulates that "all is One" and separateness is illusion.  The nihilistic school is typified by early Buddhism, and says the nature of the universe is nothingness.  This is also the Qablastic position.  Crowley stood forward and said "2=o," that the universe appears dualistic and is simultaneously nihilistic.  In short, if all the pairs of opposites in the cosmos are viewed from a distance, everything vanishes into zero.  Observer and observed, hot and cold, light and dark...all of the positive "n" plus the negative "n" balance out to 0 (n + -n = 0).  It was a cornerstone of his system of Thelema.  "One" is leap-frogged over because it is not as perfect as Zero and cannot be defined without Two; "...position does not mean anything at all unless there is something else, some other position with which it can be compared.  One has to describe it.  The only way to do this is to have another Point, and that means one must invent the number Two..."  Here then is Chumbley's Angel Most High, the number Two that is secretly the true manifestation of Zero and the "Secret One" that the One needs to even exist.

Then comes Three, a number that is necessary for the universe to begin.  Two points makes a line, but we cannot even say how long that line is without a third coordinate to measure it.  Three gives us the first geometric shape, the Triangle (the circle belongs to Zero), it gives us the synthesis that reconciles thesis and antithesis.  It is the child of the Mother and Father.  

Four is the manifestation of Matter, a point defined by three coordinates, the birth of the Third Dimension.  The first Pythagorean solid, the three sided pyramid, now is possible.  Five introduces Motion, and therefore "time."  Six is said to be where the Point becomes conscious, able to define itself by position, direction, and form.  Now the next three are forms of experience drawn from Indian philosophy, Ananda, Chit, and Sat.  These are the things the conscious and manifested point experiences on its journey.  Ananda is "bliss" or "sensation," and is associated with Seven.  Sat is "being," the awareness of existence.  That is number 9.  But the number 8, which I skipped over briefly, is "Knowledge."  And this brings us back to Chumbley's "Those who are without number and yet are numbered as Eight" and the third possibility.  

Knowledge is the union of two points.  One point-event experiences another when they collide.  If it helps, think of "knowledge" in the Biblical sense.  But this is 2=o again.  In knowing each other, two points become one and difference is erased.  The third possibility is a very Gnostic one, and ties up our entire discussion neatly.  The Eight could be Chaos, it could be Infinity or it could be Knowledge, all of which are expressions of the Qabalistic Zero or how to attain the ultimate reality of the Qabalistic Zero.  My suspicion is that it is simultaneously all three.

Next, in the third and final essay on this simple three-hundred word passage, we will tie up the lose ends and pull back the final veil on this deceptively simple myth.

THE ANGEL MOST HIGH; Part 3 of an Exploration of Andrew Chumbley's Work

This is the third in an ongoing study of Andrew Chumbley’s (1967-2004) work.  Readers are gently encouraged to read and digest both my essay on Qutub and the first article on the Azoetia before returning here.  - ALM

There is a myth known to Few, a myth silent dreaming within all Creation, a myth of which I will but whisper:- 

"Before the Manifest came to exist there was a Place of Darkness - the Negative Existence. Naught may truthfully be said of this Place, for it is Otherness Entire. Within this Domain are Those-who-exist~not, call'd by their descendants "The Elder Gods" - They who are without number and yet are numbered as Eight. With the conception of the Universe was the Beginning and the Fall of the One, the One that men have named falsely. At the side of the One there was the Secret One, the Angel Most High, Emissary of the Elder Gods. Yet the One knew naught of this, the Veil having fallen upon the Mystery of Otherness. In Time, the One didst create the World and sought to make one like unto Itself. Therefore was the Angel sent unto the Earth, for it alone had power to take seven handfuls of clay from the World's Heart,- this being the Substance for the Creation of the First Man. Then was Man fashioned in the likeness of the One, yet being born solely of the clay; and the One didst marvel at this and commanded the Angel to bow down before Man. Then, being wise and subtle, didst the Angel leave the side of the One, knowing that it had commanded falsehood. The Angel Most High went forth upon the Earth in the form of the Serpent to transmit unto Man the Fire of the Elder Gods, knowing that 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."

Andrew Chumbley, Qutub, “Commentary,” p. 59

It is the literary version of Austin Spare’s sigilization technique, folding in upon themselves symbols and meanings from a dozen different traditions into what almost appears to be nothing at all. 

The myth above is a perfect illustration of Chumbley’s work, and what both the Azoetia and Qutub set out to do.  Once again, Chumbley compresses a vast amount of arcana into a brief passage--in this case less than three hundred words.  It is the occult equivalent of a ZIP file.  This is a gift the author has; Crowley had it as well.  It is the literary version of Austin Spare’s sigilization technique, folding in upon themselves symbols and meanings from a dozen different traditions into what almost appears to be nothing at all.   For the unitiated it is unintelligible; for the occultist it requires careful unpacking to fully appreciate.

At first it looks like a retelling of a Biblical story familiar to most of us.  This is the first veil.  The fact is that nowhere does the Bible tell us about the “fall of Lucifer.”  The story that we all think we know is a mangled translation of Isaiah 14:12-15.  "On the day the Lord gives you relief from your suffering and turmoil and from the harsh labour forced on you, you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon: How the oppressor has come to an end! How his fury has ended!"  So begins the passage, describing the death of the King of Babylon and the release of the Israel people from bondage.  It goes on to say;

"How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said in your heart, 'I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.' But you are brought down to the realm of the dead, to the depths of the pit. Those who see you stare at you, they ponder your fate: 'Is this the man who shook the earth and made kingdoms tremble, the man who made the world a wilderness, who overthrew its cities and would not let his captives go home?’”

In the centuries old game of ‘Telephone” that is Biblical translation, the Hebrew name of the planet Venus, הילל בן שחר (hêlêl ben šāḥar) was first passed into Greek as “phosphorous” (the Light-Bearer) and then into Latin as “Lucifer.”  The Church incorporated this into their manufacture of “Satan,” a figure which does not exist in the Hebrew scriptures but is the invention of Christian theologians Biblical scholar Elaine Pagels, in her excellent "The Origin of Satan," writes;

In biblical sources the Hebrew term the satan describes an adversarial role. It is not the name of a particular character. Although Hebrew storytellers as early as the sixth century B.C.E. occasionally introduced a supernatural character whom they called the satan, what they meant was any one of the angels sent by God for the specific purpose of blocking or obstructing human activity.

Thus John Calvin was correct when he wrote of Isaiah 14, “The exposition of this passage, which some have given, as if it referred to Satan, has arisen from ignorance: for the context plainly shows these statements must be understood in reference to the king of the Babylonians.”  But by the time he wrote this it was far too late.  The King of Babylon had become the Devil, and the story of Lucifer’s fall was used as a boogeyman to warn children what happens if you dare to challenge God.

The serpent in Eden is a serpent, a Trickster figure like Coyote or Raven in Native American traditions.  The fact that it “speaks” is unremarkable; Balaam’s donkey speaks too and no Christians are screaming that this constitutes evidence for its infernal nature...

Chumbley seems to have swallowed the entire “Lucifer, Son of Morning” lie hook line and sinker.  He also seems to have swallowed the similar error that the serpent in Eden was the Devil.  Once again, there is no “Devil” in the Hebrew scriptures, and the “ancient serpent” of the Christian Gospels is a later addition to the mythos.  The serpent in Eden is a serpent, a Trickster figure like Coyote or Raven in Native American traditions.  The fact that it “speaks” is unremarkable; Balaam’s donkey speaks too and no Christians are screaming that this constitutes evidence for its infernal nature (see Numbers 22:30)!  Like all ancient Trickster figures, the serpent is an agent of change, and what he brings is double edged.  Adam and Eve get wisdom, but they lose their divine Sugar Daddy in the process.  

But as we peel back this veil, it slowly becomes clear that the magician is using lies to tell a truth.  It is the old question in magic again; what is the mask and what is the mirror?  Chumbley tells us that the serpent is passing on  the “Fire of the Elder Gods,” which recalls both Prometheus and the genuine fallen angels of Hebrew scripture, the ones we first get wind of in Genesis 6:1-4;  

Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. Then the LORD said, "My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years." The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.   

Late Hebrew tradition and scriptures would flesh out the tale of these “sons of God” in full, and it was probably from these later stories of fallen angels that the early Christians began to draw Satan from.  The story appears in the apocryphal “Book of Enoch,” and was widely known by the time of Christ (indeed, Jude 1:14-15 quotes from the much earlier 1 Enoch) .  Essentially, the “sons of God” are called the ‘Watchers,’ angels charged with keeping an eye on man.  They begin to lust after the daughters of men and take them as wives.  In exchange they teach humankind the arts and sciences, including such things as metallurgy, astrology, medicine, and magic;

This is the original “fallen angel” story; it has nothing to do with pride or Lucifer placing himself above God.  Instead, it directly parallels the tale of Prometheus, chained to a rock and faced with eternal punishment for stealing fire for man.  

And Azâzêl taught men to make swords, and knives, and shields, and breastplates, and made known to them the metals of the earth and the art of working them, and bracelets, and ornaments, and the use of antimony, and the beautifying of the eyelids, and all kinds of costly stones, and all colouring tinctures. And there arose much godlessness, and they committed fornication, and they were led astray, and became corrupt in all their ways. Semjâzâ taught enchantments, and root-cuttings, Armârôs the resolving of enchantments, Barâqîjâl, taught astrology, Kôkabêl the constellations, Ezêqêêl the knowledge of the clouds, Araqiêl the signs of the earth, Shamsiêl the signs of the sun, and Sariêl the course of the moon...  

God is infuriated by this, and inflicts a punishment that the reader will instantly recognize as the inspiration for Lucifer’s later banishment to Hell;

...the Lord said to Raphael: 'Bind Azâzêl hand and foot, and cast him into the darkness: and make an opening in the desert, which is in Dûdâêl (God's Kettle/Crucible/Cauldron), and cast him therein. And place upon him rough and jagged rocks, and cover him with darkness, and let him abide there for ever, and cover his face that he may not see light. And on the day of the great judgement he shall be cast into the fire. And heal the earth which the angels have corrupted, and proclaim the healing of the earth, that they may heal the plague, and that all the children of men may not perish through all the secret things that the Watchers have disclosed and have taught their sons. And the whole earth has been corrupted through the works that were taught by Azâzêl: to him ascribe all sin."   

This is the original “fallen angel” story; it has nothing to do with pride or Lucifer placing himself above God.  Instead, it directly parallels the tale of Prometheus, chained to a rock and faced with eternal punishment for stealing fire for man.  The Watchers‘ crime is to pass immortal spirit into mortal flesh, and to teach the knowledge of Heaven to human creatures.  Like the Serpent, they brought knowledge. It shouldn’t surprise us then that the Gnostics might look upon the serpent and these angels in a more favorable light.  And Chumbley, both in his reference to the ‘Devil’ as “the Secret One, the Angel Most High, Emissary of the Elder Gods,” and in in the line “The Angel Most High went forth upon the Earth in the form of the Serpent to transmit unto Man the Fire of the Elder Gods” is showing his Gnostic inclinations.  He understands full well that the tale of Lucifer, the fallen Angel Most High, is nonsense, and that the serpent had nothing to do with the Devil.  But he is using this myth to tell us about the myth behind it, and, as we will see in Part 2, uses the myth behind it to suggest an even deeper secret.  

THE AZOETIA, PART 1; Thoughts on the Grimoire

The Modern Necronomicon

If you are a serious occultist, you’ve probably heard of the Azoetia already. For the more casual reader, let me give you some background. In May, 1992, British “cunning man” Andrew Chumbley self-published a new occult work in limited edition. By 2002, Azoetia: A Grimoire of the Sabbatic Craft, was ready for re-release in another, slightly more deluxe edition (the Sethos edition, named for the book’s “guardian daemon”). It was already by that time a sensation. In today’s esoteric market, everyone seems to want to imitate the late Anton LaVey, whose 1969 Satanic Bible was a mass market grimoire written for the Everyman.  Aleister Crowley had attempted such a thing decades earlier, but his work proved too dense for the non-specialist. The Satanic Bible, by contrast, was a little paperback anyone could purchase, read, and then completely apprehend all the “secrets” of magic with. When LaVey published this book, it was a landmark. Since then, however, everyone under the sun has tried to do the same thing, flooding the world with mass market self-help mumbo jumbo. Most of these modern New Age books are to the medieval grimoires, or Crowley’s Equinox, what the Big Mac is to filet mignon; cheap, filling, but utterly lacking in substance.

Most of these modern New Age books are to the medieval grimoires, or Crowley’s Equinox, what the Big Mac is to filet mignon; cheap, filling, but utterly lacking in substance.

Chumbley decided to go against the current.  It is the oldest magical formula in the book: do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. Thus, the Azoetia was neither mass market nor for the Everyman. Chumbley’s esoteric group, the Cultus Sabbati, released the volume in a very limited number through a publisher (“Xoanon,” from a Greek word meaning a wooden fetish or icon) specifically created for the purpose. The book was exceedingly rare, and possession of it suddenly put you in an elite club.

By 2004, it seemed as if everyone in the occult community had heard of the book, but few had every actually seen it. Like Lovecraft’s Necronomicon, it seemed quasi-legendary, an urban legend for modern Magicians. And then, the unthinkable happened. On his 37th birthday, Andrew Chumbley died of a sudden, severe asthma attack.

Another thing Magicians share in common with Artists is that death makes their work even more valuable. In Chumbley’s case, this was triply so. Not only had he died young, suddenly, and unexpectedly, the very date of his death had eerie occult significance. There is something weird—in the classic sense of the word—about dying on your birthday, particularly given Chumbley’s profession. Add to this the fact that the number 37 has tremendous qabbalistic significance; 37 is the number of the “Perfected Man,” the three divine Sephiroth of the Tree of Life balanced above the 7 manifest Sephiroth below the Abyss. In addition, 37 is the seed of all triple numbers. 37 x 3 = 111, 37 x 6 = 222, 37 x 9 = 333, and 37 x 18 = 666. These coincidences all coalesced, turning tragedy into a kind of frenzy. On the internet, people started to compare Chumbley to Lovecraft’s Abdul Alhazred, who penned the infamous Necronomicon before himself dying a mysterious death. The Azoetia was lifted from legend to myth. The result was a kind or viral marketing campaign. Copies of the Azoetia couldn’t be obtained for love or money.

Well…not exactly. People were willing to part with their precious Azoetias for absurd amounts of money…usually in the range of $1500 to $2500 US. Worse still, one was expected to shell out the cash sight unseen. If you went on Amazon to read “reviews” of the book, for example, no one seemed willing to talk about what it actually said. All you got was a bunch of scary hoodoo about the book being a “True Grimoire,” “not for the weak-hearted,” “a text only for the most serious student,” etc, etc. As I started to research the book, it became clear to me that most owners weren’t willing to divulge its contents mainly because it’s very mystery ensured its value.  I began to wonder if anyone actually used it.

More fuel was added to the fire by the Cultus Sabbati themselves. In an age where every “secret,” “occult” order has a website and runs around constantly blabbing about it’s teachings and trying to recruit new members, the Cultus was truly closed. Few knew what they stood for, what they did, or how to get in. Possession of the Azoetia seemed to be the only glimpse inside a secret order that really was secret.

I had gotten my hands on Qutub, Chumbley's second work, some time before and found it astounding.  This made me only more determined to read the Azoetia.  Reasoning there is no point calling yourself a magician if you can't even conjure up a book, I sent out a sigil for it, Austin Spare style, and went about my business.  About three months later a friend put me in touch with a young woman who had found religion and wanted to get rid of her "devil books" as quickly as possible.  It turned out she had an Azoetia, and I picked it up for little over it's original price.  That was back in 2007.  I have had to re-read and digest this extraordinary book for five years before feeling like I could start to discuss it.

But not all in one post.  So here is the first of an eventual series of essays on the work.   

A Book By Its Cover

The Sethos edition is indeed a handsome book. Hardbound with the very highest quality binding, the spine is stamped with the title, the publisher’s imprint, and a sigil that resembled the god Set crossed with a Spare-type sigil. This would be the mark of Sethos, no doubt. The cover bears a mandala-like magic circle, an eight-spoked wheel bearing 22 mystical letters, around the circumference of which are words of power in the same characters.

The title Azoetia is suggestive of both the original essence of creation and the calling up of spirits. One might wish to translate it as “the calling of daemons from primal quintessence,” which given the contents of the book is not so radical an interpretation.

The title is itself provocative. “Azoth” was the Universal Solvent or Medicine of alchemy, the “quintessence” from which everything else was made. Lovecraft might have been inspired by this term when he created “Azathoth,” the mindless, nuclear chaos from which the universe emerged. In any case, Azoth plays a key role in the book, as we shall later see. “Goetia” (perhaps the source of the second half of the title) is the fabled medieval Lesser Key of Solomon, the grimoire of grimoires concerned with the evocation of fallen angels. The title Azoetia is suggestive of both the original essence of creation and the calling up of spirits. One might wish to translate it as “the calling of daemons from primal quintessence,” which given the contents of the book is not so radical an interpretation.

Tradition

The first thing readers will wish to know is to what tradition does the Azoetia belong. Is it Wiccan? Satanic? Hermetic? Thelemic? Voodoo? Sufi? Chaotic? The answer, it seems, is “all of the above.”

For Chumbley, the dogmatic differences of occult traditions are veils, masks concealing a single, hidden source. The Azoetia is an attempt to tap directly into that source.

“…it has been my endeavor,” the author writes in his introduction to the first edition, “to define those Principles underlying the many different paths of Magick and to unify them within the single body of a working grimoire…” It would seem, therefore, that the author is working from a Perennialist viewpoint, the assumption that there exists a universal truth or set of truths in all schools of magic and philosophy. He confirms this a few paragraphs later; “…all currents of Magick flow from a single fountain, and I, in drawing this Grimoire from my dreams, have hopefully filled a cup from a pure source…” For Chumbley, the dogmatic differences of occult traditions are veils, masks concealing a single, hidden source. The Azoetia is an attempt to tap directly into that source.

The skeptic might say that Chumbley is not so much as tapping into the primordial source of occult traditions as synthesizing a new one from diverse schools of thought. Either viewpoint is valid with regards to this text. The final point is that virtually any Magician, working from any tradition, could find in the pages of Azoetia some portion of teachings or practices mirroring his own.

For example, despite consciously distancing himself from the modern schools of Wicca, Chumbley’s “Sabbatic Craft” shares a great deal in common with them (at least on the surface). This text is very much concerned with a God and a Goddess (the former embodying Death and the latter coming in triple forms). The working tools mirror those of Gardenarian or Alexandrian Wicca; the wand, a black handled Arthame (Athame), a white handled working knife, a Pentacle, a Cup, a Cord, a Circle, an Altar, etc. The opening ritual closely resembles Wiccan Circle Casting, and there is even a wheel of the year. However, elements from other traditions are clearly woven in here. A magical quill is included, which recalls the Peacock Angel Melek Taus (a key figure in Qutub). The altar is a double cube (more Hermetic than Wiccan). The temple includes a central pole, or “fetish-tree” which is nearly identical in function to those in voodoo honfours.

Chumbley earnestly wants us to understand that the grimoire, and all the tools, are physical representations of something else, something without form. For him, Magick is tool of working backwards from the trappings towards that inner source. 

But all of this, the author asserts, is just set dressing, with little bearing on the truth of the text. A constant theme throughout the Azoetia is the reminder that all the tools, rituals, incantations, and even the text itself are just outward expressions of inner truths. Without getting too far ahead of myself, the last page of the Azoetia reads; HERE ENDETH THE GRIMOIRE AZOETIA…MISTAKE NOT THIS BOOK FOR THE WORDS ON ITS PAGES. Chumbley earnestly wants us to understand that the grimoire, and all the tools, are physical representations of something else, something without form. For him, Magick is tool of working backwards from the trappings towards that inner source. Again, back to the introduction; “…the Quintessence of Magick is not to be found by the combination of externals, but solely by the direct realisation of innate source. It is not to be discovered by system with system, belief with belief, or practice with practice; it is not found by uniting the “elements” in their temporally manifest forms. For beyond the Outer, beyond the dualistic and substantive manifestations of element with element, the Quintessence is already attained…when this Mystery is understood, the secret of the Azoth is revealed in truth…”

Like the Chaos Magicians, or to an extent Anton LaVey, Chumbley is telling us that the dogmatic elements of Magick are all mechanisms to tap into its noumenal source. Writing from this standpoint allows Chumbley to imbue his grimoire with a quality which transcends divisions of tradition. A Hermetic is going to read the Azoetia and say “Chumbley was really one of us.” But the Wiccan, the Satanist, and the Thelemite might all come to the same conclusion. Whether you feel that this is evidence of Chumbley’s “Quintessence,” or just a skilled job at integrating diverse forms and practices, is up to you.

Sethos

The second edition of the Azoetia bears the name of the entity watching over it, and opens with a dedication to him. Chumbley explains “Sethos” as… “the Daimon of the Grimoire Azoetia; a noetic emanation of the Magical Quintessence; a mediator between Abel, Cain, and Seth, that is, between the Sacrificed Man of Clay (the Uninitiate Self), the Transformative Man of Fire (the Initiating and Becoming Self), and the Self-Transformed Man of Light (the Initiatic Self-existent One)…” p. 361

Chumbley is drawing on a bit of Gnosticism here. For the Gnostics, ideological rivals of the early Christian Church, the Hebrew God described in the Old Testament wasn’t the Good Guy at all, but rather the Villain. He and his angels were merely lesser emanations of the True Deity. The Gnostics called the false god Ialdabaoth, and explained that he had fashioned the world of matter as a prison to hold captive human souls (which were, in fact, tiny sparks of the True God). Ineffable, invisible, and intangible, the True Deity was far removed from the material world. He did not act directly, but only sent forth emanations. For some Gnostics, Jesus was just such an emanation, sent by the True God to liberate people from the captivity of false one.

If you reread the Bible with Gnosticism in mind, several things change. For example, in Eden, Ialbadaoth and his angelic cronies suddenly appear to be keeping Adam and Eve naked and stupid, like apes. Then along comes the serpent, who actually helps the couple by persuading them to rebel. He talks them into eating the fruit of knowledge and becoming self-aware. They stop being animals and start being human. 

While this may seem odd to the modern reader, it does explain a great deal of the Bible’s inconsistencies. Any objective reading of the text leads the reader to wonder how the jealous, vindictive, and murderous God of the Old Testament could possibly be the beneficent and compassionate one spoken of by Jesus. In addition, it explains the problem of suffering and evil a lot more efficiently than the more standard “blame-it-on-Lucifer” line. Regardless, this is what various Gnostic groups believed and taught down through the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd centuries, until the Christian Church got organized and started putting them out of business.

Now, if you reread the Bible with Gnosticism in mind, several things change. For example, in Eden, Ialbadaoth and his angelic cronies suddenly appear to be keeping Adam and Eve naked and stupid, like apes. Then along comes the serpent, who actually helps the couple by persuading them to rebel. He talks them into eating the fruit of knowledge and becoming self-aware. They stop being animals and start being human. For this reason, there was an entire Gnostic sect known as the Ophites (snake-worshippers).

But there was another Gnostic sect known as the Cainites.  To understand why, we must consider the next biblical drama; Cain and Abel. Cain, the eldest son of Adam and Eve, is the first farmer and blacksmith. Abel is a herdsman. God (ie Ialbadoath) commands the two to make a sacrifice to Him. Cain sacrifices the finest fruits of the harvest. Abel slaughters an animal. As a result, God favors Abel’s sacrifice and scorns Cain’s. Message? This God wants blood. As a result, Cain murders his brother and as a result undergoes a mysterious transformation.  Though sent into exile, he is somehow “marked” with a sign of God’s protection.  If anyone tries to punish or murder Cain for his crime, they themselves will be punished by God.  This is completely bizarre, given Yahweh’s “eye for an eye” mentality.  Even more odd, in the wake of losing two sons, Eve conceives a new son, Seth.

For Gnostics, Seth’s incarnation was made possible by Cain’s sacrifice.  Abel was the first human being to die, and by killing him Cain had opened a path into the otherworld, a path along which the True God could send part of Itself into Ialbadaoth’s creation. 

Seth is a very curious figure in both Gnosticism and mystical Judaism. Many sects regarded Seth as an emanation of the True God.  The line of Seth was called the “sons of God,” and believed to be holy.  Adam is said to have given them the secrets of the Kabbalah, and many Gnostics belived that Seth—not Jesus—was the savior who would return at the end of time.  

For Gnostics, Seth’s incarnation was made possible by Cain’s sacrifice.  Abel was the first human being to die, and by killing him Cain had opened a path into the otherworld, a path along which the True God could send part of Itself into Ialbadaoth’s creation. Perhaps Yahweh couldn’t punish Cain because he somehow enjoyed the protection of the higher, true God.  

With all this in mind, we are ready to tackle the dedication opening the Sethos edition of the Azoetia;

O Sethos! Rise up and remember!

Recall the Promise once stain’d in red upon the primal dust of the earth!

By baying dog and moon-beam, by lantern, stave, and upright stone,

Come fathom the starlit heights of Heaven in the Old Dew-pool of Cain.

Come ring the blood round with the Serpent, Come turn the skin of time,

Come pace about the corpse of Abel, here break the Fate of Mortal Man!

Here cast forth the Visions from Yesterday, from Tomorrow, unto Today.

Here open the way for the Crooked Path, for the Pathway forever to be!

O Sethos! Rise up and remember,

‘Til thy Namesake, the Man of Light, is born!

The Crooked Path is the one opened by the sacrifice of Abel, and it leads directly to the Azoth. And Cain—the first Magician—is held as the psychopomp, the opener of the way.

Now on one level, Abel is the Uninitiated Self, the normal, everyday mortal held captive by the system, subject to all the laws of nature and time. Cain is the Initiate who rebels against this, sacrificing his old life up in an effort to tear free from the bounds of time and space. And Seth is the Divine Self, the perfected being born from Cain’s sacrifice, the magician who completes his quest. We are seeing the old alchemical formula, solve et coagula, again.

In purely psychological terms, this myth reflects the fact that our lives and identities are hollow constructs, forced upon us by heredity, society, and experience. It urges us to murder these identities and to replace them with entirely self-created ones, to transform ourselves into who we want to be rather than who we’ve been told to be.

But on another level, Abel represents what Chumbley calls Zoa—the life force present in all human beings, analogous to the alchemical mercury. Cain is his darker twin, Azoa, the force of death equally present within us, analogous to salt. And Seth/os would be Azothos, the magical force that unites and transcends both, the divine fire analogous to sulfur. The work of the magician is to liberate himself from both the forces of life (with its pains, cravings, and instability) and death (with its limitation and finality). He must murder Abel and exile Cain, so that Seth (transcendence) might be born.

Aleister Crowley touched on all of this in his Book of Thoth, particularly with regards to the Trumps “Lovers” and “Art.” Another excellent source for further reading would be the writings of Julius Evola (the best being The Hermetic Tradtion).