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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is this BAG, the 28th Aethyr?

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

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

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

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

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

Greetings SOMUE.  I am DIAFNE.

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

Nothing, she replied.

Nothing?

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

I thought about this.  How?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Physical death, the end of life…is Love?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then I sensed movement behind me.

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

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

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

Is this RII, the 29th Aethyr?

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

May I ask your name?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RII is the foundation of thought?  Is that correct?

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

How can I better understand this?  I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then, I blacked out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here ends the Vision of RII.

ENOCHIAN MAGIC: THE CRY OF TEX, THE 30TH AETHYR

NOTE: This is the first in a series of Enochian inspired visions.  Please read this Introduction before proceeding.

I FELL, upwards from the face of the world.  Up, up, up amongst the wheeling stars I plummeted into the night sky.  I saw the constellations moving around me like living beings of pale, blue-white fire.  Pegasus, Draco, and Scorpio moved by me.  Then I saw great wheels all around, tracing out the courses of the stars and planets.  It was as if I found myself in some great astrolabe of crystal.  Earth was at the center, around which all the heavens turned.

Then it seemed to me my eyes adapted to the dimness, for everywhere about me I could now see turning gears of transparent glass.  They were impossibly ornate, like the rose windows of a cathedral, or snowflakes.  They all moved in harmony with each other, the motion of one affecting the next, and thus maintaining the motions of the Sun, Moon, and Stars, as well as the turning of the Earth.  

Suddenly I saw the Angels all about me, everywhere.  Like ants they swarmed.  I perceived they were the engineers, maintaining the system of crystalline gears ceaselessly, diligently.  Everywhere they flew.  One of their countless number passed near me and I hailed him to stop.

He was fashioned of the same pale blue fire as the gears, but liquid and less dense.  He flamed and flickered like the blue of a gas flame.  Winged and robed, he bore no halo.  He was immaterial and ghostly.  Turning towards me he demanded my name.

SOMUE, I told him.  Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Ah, said he, a Thelemite.  Then I say unto thee ‘Love is the Law, Love under Will.’

Cautious I gave the LVX signs to see if he was a hostile spirit, but he returned them with ease.  I asked him his name.

I am ZAAMPE, he replied.  I asked him to spell this for me and he did.  Then to me he asked, Why come you to this place?

I wish to walk all the Aethyrs, seeking the First.  What can you tell me of this Aethyr?

This is TEX, the Machinery of the Universe.  This is the densest of the Aethyrs, and most like unto the material world.

I recognized the phrasing.  Machinery of the Universe?  Is its character like Yesod, then?

Only distantly, he answered.  Man makes machinery of the world…machines of the animals, of the soil, of nature itself.  It is a defect in perception, seeing only half of what is.  TEX is the understanding of the Universe possessed by Man.

I considered this.  It is then only Man’s perception of the Universe, not its true character?

This Aethyr is shaped by the perceptions of those billions down below, he replied, gesturing towards the blue-green globe of the Earth hanging in the center of the void around us.  This is the machine of their making, as indeed they make we who work upon it.

What is the true nature of TEX, then?  I asked.  Can you reveal it to me?

At this, the Angel took up a great hammer.  His face suddenly bunched up in fury he swung the weapon in a great arc, shattering the closest gear.  A chain reaction spread through all the heavens.  The countless wheels screamed and shattered in a rain of jagged glass.  One by one the stars burst and faded to blackness.  The planets crumbled.  The Earth went dark.  All that was left was a desolate darkness, through which a wind howled and moaned.  

This is the true nature of things, from whence they come and to which they return.  The Void, the Angel told me.

I shivered in the darkness.  Are we to fear this?

You are to Understand and Embrace it, said the Angel.  Only this way can you cross the Abyss when that time comes to you.  The Machinery of the Universe, made by Man, with its calendars and clocks and laws is Illusion.

Suddenly, the darkness was lifted, and I beheld the stars and planets again.  The gears were back in place, restored by the angels.  They had dutifully repaired the machine.

Can you tell me any more of the nature of TEX?  I asked him.

I can only show you, he replied.  He took me by the hand and we fell downwards into the world, falling through the atmosphere and clouds, until I saw racing beneath us snow-capped mountain peaks.  So high were these jagged mountains that they seemed to touch the very sky. 

Then, on the highest of the high peaks, I beheld a terrifying figure in silhouette.  He was impossibly tall, looking like one of those towering mecha from Japanese animation, with massive, outstretched wings like an eagle and great horns upon his head.  He stood motionless on the mountain, arms reaching up like Atlas to support the sky.  We landed at his feet, tiny, like ants.

This is the essence of the Plane, the soul of TEX, my Guide informed me.

Then a great voice, like thunder or the roar of a titanic engine, boomed out.  MORTAL THING.  INSIGNIFICANCE.  COME FORWARD AND KNOW ME.  LAY YOUR PUNY HAND UPON MY FOOT IN OBEISANCE.

I did as he bade me, stepping forward through the deep drifts of snow.  I felt ridiculously small as I approached his massive right foot.  I saw now that his body was made of rusting iron plates, all haphazardly riveted together, piece by piece.  As I reached out to touch this Machine God, the rusted iron crumbled beneath my fingers.  The crumbling spread, and soon the entire statue was raining down upon me in jagged pieces and iron dust.  I caught one fragment in my hand.  The Eye of Horus was etched into the metal, inside a Triangle.  

That which ceases to move becomes stagnant, my Guide whispered in my ear.  Subject to entropy and decay.

As the great juggernaut disintegrated, the sky came crashing down with it.

September 30th, 2004     

ENOCHIAN MAGIC: SCRYING THE AETHYRS

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

Aleister Crowley

Visions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE GREAT BEAST: ENOCHIAN AND THELEMA

Note: The following assumes, gentle reader, that you have read the four prior "Little Lectures on Magick" series here on the blog.

So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.

— Revelations 17:3-6

The Coming of the Beast

FOLLOWING DEE AND KELLEY the Enochian materials lay quietly, largely forgotten.  And yet everything Dee had wanted, he got.  Britain not only survived, she thrived.  The Spanish Armada was decimated by what could only be termed an "act of God," clearing the way for England to become an imperial power.  By the end of the 19th century, the tiny island kingdom with its rebel queen was the greatest empire the world had ever seen, under a new queen whose very name summed it all up nicely; "Victoria."  It might have seemed to Dee, had he been resurrected to see it, that God and his Angels had delivered.  Still, the Apocalypse they warned off, the Apocalypse he had been given the Keys to unlock, was nowhere to be seen.

In 1886, a group of Masons with occult leanings came into possession of some improbable cipher manuscripts.  The provenance of these documents is not terribly relevant to our discussion; suffice it to say the papers granted these men to launch an English branch of a Continental secret society.  It came to be called the Ordo Hermeticus Aurorae Aureae, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

The Golden Dawn was a Rosicrucian society, a curious cocktail of Christian Mysticism, Freemasonry, and Egyptology.  Its founders, William Robert Woodman, William Wynn Westcott, and Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, did an extraordinary job of combining Kabbalah, Tarot, Alchemy, and the obscure Enochian system, into a new and cohesive whole.  The Enochian element was largely to work of Mathers, who combed over Dee's journals (then property of the British Museum).  To be certain, he took liberties, inventing something called Enochian Chess and turning the Great Table into a bizarre collection of truncated pyramids, but all the same he liberated the Enochian Keys from their dusty vaults and passed them down into the hands of someone who would finally use them for their intended purpose.

We are speaking, of course, of Aleister Crowley (1875-1947).  Crowley joined the Golden Dawn in 1898, shot up at ridiculous speed through its ranks, and within two years (according to some accounts) had destroyed it.  This was a pattern with Crowley.  Chaos came in his wake.

In his time with the Order, Crowley had become Mather's protege, and like his mentor took a keen interest in the Enochian Keys.  Perhaps the Apocalyptic imagery spoke to him; Crowley had been raised in the Plymouth Brethren, a severe sola scriptura Evangelical sect hot for the End of Days.  A rebellious polymath, Crowley put as much distance between him and his upbringing as possible, but he could still quote the King James Bible chapter and verse until the end of his life, and internalized the name his mother used to taunt him with...the Beast.

In 1900, Crowley took the Keys with him to Mexico, where he decided to use them to explore the 30 Aethyrs, the "heavens" that surround the material world (analogous to the Gnostic Aeons).  He was only able to unlock two, and would return finish the remaining 28 nine years later.  Crowley record of these visionary experiences, Liber 418: The Vision and the Voice, is (next to Dee's own diaries) the single most important document in the whole Enochian canon.  It has been compared, favorably, to Blake.  Crowley himself considered it his second greatest work.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

In 1900, scrying the first Aethyr, the young Crowley recorded;

I AM in a vast crystal cube in the form of the Great God Harpocrates. This cube is surrounded by a sphere. About me are four archangels in black robes, their wings and armour lined out in white.

In the North is a book on whose back and front are A.M.B.Z. in Enochian characters.

Within it is written:

...Lift up your heads, O Houses of Eternity: for my Father goeth forth to judge the World. One Light, let it become a thousand, and one sword ten thousand, that no man hide him from my Father's eye in the Day of Judgment of my God. Let the Gods hide themselves: let the Angels be troubled and flee away: for the Eye of My Father is open, and the Book of the Aeons is fallen...

...Tremble ye, O Pillars of the Universe, for Eternity is in travail of a Terrible Child; she shall bring forth an universe of Darkness, whence shall leap forth a spark that shall put his father to flight...

This is 1900, four years before the event Crowley is best known for, but there are clear hints of what-was-to-come right there in the first Enochian vision...Harpocrates, a Book proclaiming an Apocalypse, a "Terrible Child" about to be born and replace his father.  Four years before Thelema officially "went public," the Enochain angels seemed to be leaking the story.

Crowley made it only so far as the 29th Aethyr (having scried the 30th Aeythr, the one closest to Earth, first).  He would later claim he lacked sufficient initiation to go further.  But the two visions are Apocalyptic, referring both to a coming Book and a Child.  In the wake of these visions, for various reasons, Crowley abruptly abandoned magic and mysticism and converted to Buddhism.  He married, and took his bride, Rose, on a globe trotting honeymoon.  Perhaps he thought he was done with the Angels.  The Angels, however, were not done with him.

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

The Book of the Law

While on honeymoon in Cairo, Crowley decided to entertain Rose with some of his old, rejected magic.  He figured conjuring the sylphs would be harmless enough.  But Rose fell into a sort of trance, and started telling her husband that the god Horus was trying to get in touch with him.  As Rose had no knowledge or interest in things esoteric, Crowley 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 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.

So what exactly is in this book?  It's a tricky business, really, to talk about it.  Preaching a doctrine of extreme individualism, it is forbidden to interpret Liber AL bel Legis for anyone else.  Everyone must read and decipher it through the lens of their own experience.  So I tread lightly here.

For starters it is divided into three short chapters, each dictated over the space of one hour as Crowley furiously scribbled them out. Each chapter was dictated, through a messenger named "Aiwass," the "minister of Hoor-paar-kraat" (the god Hapocrates, mentioned above in Crowley's scrying of the 30th Aethyr).  The chapters, however, are messages from three different deities.  The first is Nuit, the Divine Feminine and goddess of infinite Space. The second is her counterpart Hadit, the Divine Masculine.  He is said to exist at the center of every individual. The third is Ra-Hoor-Khuit, the Crowned and Conquering Child.  This is the "Terrible Child" the Enochian Angels told Crowley would be born.  Ra Hoor is the fiery, active form of Horus (Hoor-paar-kraat or Harpocrates, is his hidden, passive form...more on this later).  Horus is also, it seems, the Lord of the New Aeon.

What is this New Aeon?  Simply put, The Book of the Law is announcing the Apocalypse. 

The book puts forward a theory of Aeons, ages of time not unlike the Ages of Man discussed by Hesiod and Ovid or the "Yugas" of India.  Each Aeon represents a stage of human development.  Human prehistory is largely dominated by the Aeon of Isis, the Mother.  Societies tended to be matrilineal hunter gatherers, and were dominated by the family or clan. The great mystery was Birth; "where does life come from?"  Women, it seemed, periodically brought life forth from their bodies, as did the Earth.  Reproduction was not clearly understood.  

With agriculture, the Aeon of Isis was replaced by that of Osiris, the Father.  It was very clear to the Osirians where life came from...the Seed.  Women, like the soil, were merely incubators.  Patriarchy took over, and worship moved from the Earth to the life-giving Sky Father, the Sun.  The notion of sacrifice became central, as crops and livestock died so that mankind could live.  And with the new focus on growing seasons, the formula of "death and resurrection" took hold.  The Sun, it seemed, was reborn ever day.  The patriarchal, hierarchal, and sacrificial were the dominant themes of this Aeon, and the central forces of society were the church and the state.

The Book of the Law is the trumpet blast heralding the death of the Osirian Age.  Horus, the son of both Isis and Osiris, is taking his place on the throne of his father.  This is the Age of the Child, in which we understand now that both men and women play roles in reproduction, so there shall be equality of the sexes. Indeed, the authority of the Mother (Family) and the Father (Church/State) are overturned; the seat of society is now the Individual.  The only law is do what thou wilt, discover your true nature and act in accordance with it (allowing others to do the same).  All the old formulae of self-sacrifice, abstinence, and restriction are swept aside.  Notions of birth and death are defunct--the molecules in our bodies were forged in stars and will endure until the end of time.  The Sun doesn't die and get reborn, we simply turn away from it awhile, but it is always there, affecting the world.  Likewise the existences we lead endure forever in the marks our actions made upon the world.  Our error is in seeing ourselves as isolated, rather than as part of the continuity of existence. We are each of us the Universe experiencing itself. 

But it is not all good news.  The transformation of one Age to the next is a bloody, chaotic, tumultuous affair.  The Dawn of the New Aeon will see Horus in his most bloodthirsty, martial aspect; he will stamp down the wretched and the weak.  The third chapter of The Book of the Law, his chapter, is the most difficult to read, filled with violent imagery;

...Thou shalt have danger & trouble. Ra-Hoor-Khu is with thee. Worship me with fire & blood; worship me with swords & with spears. Let the woman be girt with a sword before me: let blood flow to my name. Trample down the Heathen; be upon them, o warrior, I will give you of their flesh to eat!

Crowley, it seemed, was to be the Prophet of this New Aeon.  He and his wife Rose were meant to fill the offices of the Beast and Scarlet Woman of Revelations, dedicating their lives to spreading word of the new law.

Crowley, however, was having none of it.  There was a great deal in the book he didn't understand, large sections he considered gibberish, and much of what he did understand disturbed him.  So, despite warnings of dire consequences should he reject his role, Crowley did exactly that.  Tucking The Book of the Law away, he promptly spent the next five years forgetting about it.  

43. Let the Scarlet Woman beware! If pity and compassion and tenderness visit her heart; if she leave my work to toy with old sweetnesses; then shall my vengeance be known. I will slay me her child: I will alienate her heart: I will cast her out from men: as a shrinking and despised harlot shall she crawl through dusk wet streets, and die cold and an-hungered...

Rose and Crowley went about their way, and one by one the warnings of the book came true.  In 1906 the couple lost their daughter (born the year The Book of the Law was received).  Several years later Rose had to be put away in an institution for alcoholic dementia.  Crowley, meanwhile, suffered a string of failures and misfortunes.  In the end it was enough to convince him to give The Book of the Law another look.  

What is crucial, however, is that when he needed aid in deciphering this text, he went back to the Enochian Aethyrs.

The Vision and the Voice

The genuineness of these Keys, altogether apart from any critical observation, is guaranteed by the fact that anyone with the smallest capacity for Magick finds that they work...

The intelligent reader is faced with two possibilities here.  One, The Book of the Law is indeed a declaration from "on high."  The Angels who spoke to Dee in the 1580s handed him the Keys to the Apocalypse, but not for his use...for Crowley's, three centuries later.  When Crowley scried the first two Aethyrs in 1900, with their visions of a Terrible Child and a Book, he was doing what the Angels has always planned...unlocking that Apocalypse, the New Aeon of Horus.  Crowley was, as he later came to believe, the Beast spoken of in Revelations.

Or...

Aleister Crowley, fascinated by Revelations and the Beast, read the Enochian materials and internalized them.  Just as Dee was trying to create a new English religion, so too was Crowley.  Consciously or subconsciously Dee's spiritual revolution inspired Crowley to pen The Book of the Law.

Either way it is clear that Enochian and Thelema are connected, either by angelic or human intent.  They are the same spiritual revolution in two phases, separated by three centuries but bound by a common language and culture.  Born at the dawn of the British Era, Enochian was an English attempt to overthrow an older era.  Thelema, born at Britain's climax, was exactly the same.  In Crowley's mind, at least, he was finally bringing the revolution Dee started to the world.

In 1909, in the deserts of North Africa, Crowley returned to Dee's Angels and the Aethyrs.  Working with an assistant named Victor Neuburg, Crowley successfully scried the remaining 28.  

Now, while The Book of the Law is without question the foundational text of the New Aeon, it is actually from the Aethyric visions that Crowley received much of what we consider the core doctrines of Thelema.  The concept of the Holy Guardian Angel, of Crossing the Abyss, the Thelemic deities BABALON and CHAOS, all of these come from his communications with the Enochian Angels.  A review of his titles for the scrying of the Aethyrs illustrates this (see the image below).

Perhaps it is simplest to say that while The Book of the Law lays out the "what," the visions Crowley beheld in the Aethyrs detail the "how" of Thelema, as well as introducing three new key figures to Thelemic cosmology.

Let us examine briefly some of the major teachings Crowley obtained from these visions.

THE HOLY GUARDIAN ANGEL

And because I am with thee, and in thee, and of thee, thou shalt lack nothing. But who lack me, lack all. And I swear unto thee by Him that sitteth upon the Holy Throne, and liveth and reigneth for ever and ever, that I will be faithful unto this my promise, as thou art faithful unto this thine obligation...

The Holy Guardian Angel is representative of one’s truest divine nature. The term is equivalent with the Genius of the Golden Dawn, the Augoeides of Iamblichus, the Atman of Hinduism, and the Daemon of the gnostics.  It was in the 8th Aethyr that Crowley was taught the nature of this being, and his was identified as Aiwass, the entity who dictated Liber AL to him.  

The Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel is the first thing all new Thelemites must aspire to, for it is the revelation of the True Will.  Without this attainment, the aspirant acts blindly, in ignorance of his deepest nature.

BABALON

Though her name is an Enochian word derived from Dee and Kelley's sessions, BABALON only reveals herself as a Thelemic divinity while Crowley was scrying the Aethyrs (particularly the 12th);

This is the Mystery of Babylon, the Mother of Abominations, and this is the mystery of her adulteries, for she hath yielded up herself to everything that liveth, and hath become a partaker in its mystery. And because she hath made her self the servant of each, therefore is she become the mistress of all. Not as yet canst thou comprehend her glory.

Beautiful art thou, O Babylon, and desirable, for thou hast given thyself to everything that liveth, and thy weakness hath subdued their strength. For in that union thou didst understand. Therefore art thou called Understanding, O Babylon, Lady of the Night!

BABALON is a manifestation of Nuit, and more prefectly, of Binah (the Third Sephiroth that births the universe).  She is the Divine Feminine.  The Scarlet Woman spoken of in The Book of the Law is merely an office, a representative of BABALON on Earth.  

It is worth mentioning that BABALON is referenced in the workings of Dee and Kelley themselves;

"...I am the daughter of Fortitude, and ravished every hour from my youth. For behold I am Understanding and science dwelleth in me; and the heavens oppress me. They cover and desire me with infinite appetite; for none that are earthly have embraced me, for I am shadowed with the Circle of the Stars and covered with the morning clouds. My feet are swifter than the winds, and my hands are sweeter than the morning dew. My garments are from the beginning, and my dwelling place is in myself. The Lion knoweth not where I walk, neither do the beast of the fields understand me. I am deflowered, yet a virgin; I sanctify and am not sanctified. Happy is he that embraceth me: for in the night season I am sweet, and in the day full of pleasure. My company is a harmony of many symbols and my lips sweeter than health itself. I am a harlot for such as ravish me, and a virgin with such as know me not. For lo, I am loved of many, and I am a lover to many; and as many as come unto me as they should do, have entertainment.

Purge your streets, O ye sons of men, and wash your houses clean; make yourselves holy, and put on righteousness. Cast out your old strumpets, and burn their clothes; abstain from the company of other women that are defiled, that are sluttish, and not so handsome and beautiful as I, and then will I come and dwell amongst you: and behold, I will bring forth children unto you, and they shall be the Sons of Comfort. I will open my garments, and stand naked before you, that your love may be more enflamed toward me."

In the language of the Angels, babalon means "wicked" and babalond is "harlot."  Thus not only does this passage from Dee's journals sum up the Thelemic understanding of BABALON nicely, it also references her ("harlot," in bold above).

CHAOS

The male counterpart to BABALON, Chaos is the "Unnamed God" that inhabits Chokmah, the Dyad (the number two).  Together BABALON and CHAOS are the Female and Male principles of existence, and forms of both Nuit and Had.  The Beast is his earthly representative.

And thou shalt give the sign of the Mother, for BABALON is thy fortress against the iniquity of the Abyss, of the iniquity of that which bindeth her unto the Crown, and barreth her from the Crown; for not until thou art made one with CHAOS canst thou begin that last, that most terrible projection, the three-fold Regimen which alone constitutes the Great Work.

Associated with the Dyad, two, CHAOS is inherently also associated with that perfect, Qabalistic zero or "nothingness" as well (2=0, or +n + -n = 0).  From Crowley's comments on the 4th Aethyr;

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

There is some suggestion here that the Devil (Dual, Dyad, Double) is Pan, the "All," with the "Night of Pan" being the state of transcendent Nothingness of Void.  This is an interesting spin on the title "the Prince of Darkness."

CHORONZON AND THE ABYSS

In the writings of John Dee, "Choronzon" was the angelic word for Satan, the Serpent in the Tree of Knowledge.  Crowley's Enochian visions link him with the Abyss.

Though the Abyss exists also in Qabalah, as the gulf between the 3rd and 4th Sephiroth (between the Heavens and the Earth), it exists also among the Aethyrs (the 10th).  Here it is the lair of Choronzon, synonymous in Dee's journals with Satan.  Crowley says of him;

The name of the Dweller in the Abyss is Choronzon, but he is not really an individual. The Abyss is empty of being; it is filled with all possible forms, each equally inane, each therefore evil in the only true sense of the word—that is, meaningless but malignant, in so far as it craves to become real. These forms swirl senselessly into haphazard heaps like dust devils, and each such chance aggregation asserts itself to be an individual and shrieks, "I am I!" though aware all the time that its elements have no true bond; so that the slightest disturbance dissipates the delusion just as a horseman, meeting a dust devil, brings it in showers of sand to the earth...

It is scrying the Aethyrs that Crowley crosses the Abyss, one of the major landmarks in Thelemic mysticism.  If the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel is the discovery of the True Self, crossing the Abyss is the identification of the Self with the Absolute.  It is one of the highest attainments a Thelemite may reach.

THE CROWNED AND CONQUERING CHILD

In the 1st and final Aethyr, LIL, Crowley comes face to face with Horus himself, the Lord of the Aeon;

I am light, and I am night, and I am that which is beyond them. I am speech, and I am silence, and I am that which is beyond them. I am life, and I am death, and I am that which is beyond them. I am war, and I am peace, and I am that which is beyond them. I am weakness, and I am strength, and I am that which is beyond them. Yet by none of these can man reach up to me. Yet by each of them must man reach up to me...

This is an elaboration and confirmation of truths revealed in The Book of the Law, the general formula of the Aeon which is 2 = 0; the Great Work consists of uniting all things with their opposites to transcend them:

27.  ...O Nuit, continuous one of Heaven, let it be ever thus; that men speak not of Thee as One but as None; and let them speak not of thee at all, since thou art continuous!

28. None, breathed the light, faint & faery, of the stars, and two.

29. For I am divided for love's sake, for the chance of union.

This idea is encountered over and over again; n + -n = 0.  Nuit and Hadit, Ra Hoor Khuit (the outer Horus) and Hoor-paar-kraat (the hidden Horus), CHAOS and BABALON, Heaven and Earth.  In the New Aeon, "God," and by this we mean "highest reality," cannot be understood as One, but as Two that merge to become Zero.  It is implicit even in the notion of this as the Aeon of the Child, the product of the Union of Isis and Osiris that overthrows them both.

All in all, the visions Crowley received scrying the Aethyrs are inextricably linked with Thelema.  They elaborate and expand on The Book of the Law.  From a Thelemic perspective, the Enochian system given to John Dee is the Magick of the New Aeon; and this is why Dee was never given permission to practice it.  

It wasn't meant for him.  It was meant for us.

Appendix: A COMMENT UPON THE NATURES OF THE ÆTHYRS 

Aleister Crowley

30. Without the cube—the material world—is the sphere- system of the spiritual world enfolding it. the Cry seems to be a sort of Exordium, and external showing forth of the coming of the new Æon, the Æon of Horus the crowned child.

29. The disturbance of Equilibrium caused by the Coming of the Æon.

28. Now is a further and clearer shadowing-forth of the Great Mystery of the Æon whichis to be led up to by the Æthyrs. Note however that the King of the New Æon never appears until the very first Æthyr.

27. Hecate appears—her son, the son of a Virgin, a magus, is to bring the Æon to pass. And she, the herald, her function fulfilled, withdraws within her mystic veil.

26. The death of the past Æon, that of Jehovah and Jesus; ends with adumbration of the new, the vision of the Stele of Ankh-f-n-khonsu, whose discovery brought about in a human consciousness the knowledge of the Equinox of the Gods, 21. 3. 04.

25. Appearance of the Lion God of Horus, the child of Leo that incarnates him. The first Angel is Isis its mother.

24. Now appears his mate, the heavenly Venus, the Scarlet Woman, who by men is thought of as Babalon as he is thought of as Chaos.

23. Here appear the Cherubim, the other officers of the new Temple, the earth and water assistants of the fire and air Beast and Scarlet Woman.

22. Here is the First Key to the formula of Horus, a sevenfold arrangement. A shadow of Horus declares his nature.

21. This seems to be the Vision of God face to face that is the necessary ordeal for him who would pass the Abyss, as it were. A commission to be the prophet of the Æon arising is given to the Seer. The God is the Hierophant in the Ceremony of Magister Templi.

20. A guide is given to the Seer, his Holy Guardian Angel. And this is attained by a mastery of the Universe conceived as a wheel The Hiereus in the Ceremony of Magister Templi.

19. Now cometh forth the Angel who giveth instruction, in the lowest form. The Hegemone in the Ceremony of Magister Templi which the Seer is about to undergo.

18. The Vault of preparation for the Ceremony of M.T.

The Veil is the Crucifixion, symbol of the dead Æon. The first ordeal is undergone.

17. The symbol of the Balance is now given unto the Aspirant.

16. The sacrifice is made. The High Priestess (image of Babalon) cometh forth upon her Beast and maketh this.

15. The mystic dance by Salome. The new Temple, the signs of the grades are received and the A.E. rejected.

14. The Shrine of Darkness. Final initiation into grade of M. T.

13. The emergence of Nemo into the world; his work therein. This is the first mystery revealed to a M.T.

12. The Second Mystery: the cup-bearer of Babalon the beautiful. The Holy Grail manifested to the M.T., with the first knowledge of the Black Brothers.

11. Now cometh the Frontier of the Holy City; the M.T. is taken into the Abyss.

10. The Abyss.

9. The M.T. hath passed the Abyss, and is let to the Palace of the Virgin redeemed from Malkuth unto Binah.

8. The fuller manifestation of the Holy Guardian Angel.

7. The Virgin become the Bride, the great Reward of the Ceremony. also an adumbration of the Further Progress.

6. A shadowing-forth of the grade of Magus.

5. The reception of the M.T. among the Brethren of the A∴ A∴; the manifestation of the Arrow.

4. Further concerning the Magus. The marriage of Chaos with the purified Virgin.

3. The Magician. Exhibition of the Guards to the Higher Knowledge.

2. The understanding of the Curse, that is become a Blessing. The final reward of the M.T., his marriage even with Babalon Herself. The paean thereof.

1. The final manifestation. All leads up to the Crowned Child, Horus, the Lord of the New Æon.