The Magick of Aleister Crowley: A Handbook of the Rituals of Thelema - Softcover

DuQuette, Lon Milo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1578632994 ISBN 13: 9781578632992

Publisher: Weiser Books, 2003

Synopsis

Aleister Crowley's ascension into the pantheon of alternative gurus was cemented by his appearance on The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover. Unfortunately, he was known more for his reputation as "The Beast 666" and "The Wickedest Man in the World." All well and good for publicity, but this infamy eclipsed his teachings, as did his technical and opaque writing style, meant more for adepts contemporary to him than the average modern reader. Enter Lon Milo DuQuette to decipher and explain Crowley's texts and more important rituals. Formerly titled The Magick of Thelema, this revised edition features extensive corrections, a new introduction, and a new ritual, "The Rites of Eleusis." This is the perfect introductory text for readers who wonder what the works--rather than the myth--of Aleister Crowley are all about. DuQuette takes the mystery out of both the rituals themselves and Crowley's writing in this modern grimoire. Step by step, he presents a course of study in plain English, with examples of rituals and explanations of their significance. DuQuette also includes a course of study for Crowley's original works with an extensive bibliography and fastidious footnotes.

About this title

About the Author

Lon Milo DuQuette has been involved with occult studies since the late 60s, and has become an acknowledged and widely recognized authority within the world of modern occultism. His previous publications include Magick of Thelema, The Tarot of Ceremonial Magick, Angels, Demons & Gods of the New Millennium, and the humorous, biographical My Life with the Spirits.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Magick of Aleister Crowley

A Handbook of the Rituals of Thelema

By Lon Milo DuQuette

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

Copyright © 2003 Lon Milo DuQuette
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-57863-299-2

Contents

Foreword by Hymenaeus Beta
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter Zero: Frequently Asked Questions about Aleister Crowley
Chapter One: The Magick of Will
Chapter Two: The Evolution of Magical Formulae
Chapter Three: The Book of the Law
Chapter Four: The Pentagram Rituals
Chapter Five: The Thelemic Rituals of the Pentagram
Chapter Six: The Hexagram Rituals
Chapter Seven: The Thelemic Ritual of the Hexagram
Chapter Eight: Knowledge and Conversation
Chapter Nine: The Solar Rites
Chapter Ten: Thelemic Mysticism
Chapter Eleven: The Rites of Eleusis
Chapter Twelve: Thelemic Orders
Chapter Thirteen: The Religion of Thelema
The Mass of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica
Notes
Bibliography

CHAPTER 1

The Magick of Will

Magick is the Science and Art of causing change tooccur in conformity with Will.

—Magick in Theory and Practice

The above definition of Magick can be as misleading in its simplicity as it isin its complexity. The key word is of course Will, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] in Greek, and according tothis definition, any willed action is an act of Magick: brushing your teeth,walking the dog, or even paying your taxes.

Conversely any unwilled action is an unmagical act: reaching for a cigarette;ordering that fourth Martini; or any habitual or reactive behavior thatoverrides the momentum of one's life focus could fall into the category of anunmagical act.

Try as we might there is no escaping this simple fact: We are all Magicians andwe are either competent or incompetent practitioners of our craft.

The great majority of successful Magicians do not even realize (nor should theycare) that they are Magicians, or that there is a name for what they do so well.They just go through life striving to cause change to occur in conformity withtheir Wills and that's that. They have made a science out of their lifestyle andthey execute it with great art. They work hard, but for them the work is not aburden it is a labor of love and a continuing expression of the purpose of theirexistence.

Obviously most of us do not, without great effort, fall into this fortunatecategory of human being. Our Magick falls somewhere between competence andincompetence. Occasionally we become aware of what our Will is (or might be) andtry to work the Magick. But more often than not, we find ourselves simplyresponding to an endless chain reaction of external events and circumstancesover which we have little or no control.

Out of fear, frustration, or what might be called spiritual fatigue, many of usturn to religions whose champions are more than happy to tell us, in nouncertain terms, exactly where our place in the universe is.

The religions that Westerners most frequently are attracted to (Christianity,with its many sects, Judaism, and Islam) postulate a Supreme Being whopersonifies and manifests the order of the universe. The mechanism of this orderis often termed the "Will of God." By surrendering the individual will to Willof God, the religious devotee can theoretically harmonize his or her life withthat of the Deity's. Not my will, but Thine be done.

In order for us to know God's Will, these religions offer, for our great comfort(and often from ancient and "infallible" sources), rules, commandments, andassorted scriptural injunctions to guide the thoughts and behavior of thefaithful. As an added safeguard that these scriptures be "correctly"interpreted, a priestcraft of some form or another invariably evolves andassumes the role of a visible mediator between the worshiper and the Deity. Forthose who dutifully comply with the dictated formulae and surrender their willsto the prescribed Will of God, a great burden is lifted from their shoulders.They no longer feel the need for direct spiritual experience, and faith in theinfallibility of the dogmatists makes even intellectual investigationunnecessary. The reward for such spiritual collaborators is the smug comfort ofknowing that those who haven't submitted to the formula will suffer after death,and that they who have, will not.

Magick also postulates a universal order—call it God, Nature, the Supreme Being,the Grand Architect of the Universe, the Tao, or just the-way-things-are. Butthe Magician knows that the pure Will of every man and every woman is already inperfect harmony with the divine Will; in fact they are one and the same. It isthe Magician's Great Work to endeavor to remove the obstacles that hinder his orher perfect realization of that Will and then proceed to execute it.

We perceive in the world around us a vast cosmic orderliness (or at least aglorious systematized chaos). Galaxies, stars, planets, atoms, electrons, andother sub-atomic particles all seem to have found their niche in the grandscheme of things and behave themselves accordingly. By realizing our True Willswe find our place ... our orbit. By doing our True Will, we have the inertia of theentire universe to assist us.

The Magician does not necessarily want the burden of existence lifted from hisshoulders; he wants to understand why he is carrying it and where.

CHAPTER 2

The Evolution of Magical Formulae

In the Years of the Primal Course, in the dawn of terrestrial birth,Man mastered the mammoth and horse; and Man was the Lord of the Earth.He made him an hollow skin from the heart of an holy tree;He compassed the earth therein, and Man was the Lord of the Sea.He controlled the vigour of steam, he harnessed the lightning for hire;He drove the celestial team; and Man was the Lord of the Fire.Deep-mouthed from their thrones deep-seated, the choirs of the aeons declareThe last of the demons defeated, for Man is the Lord of the Air.Arise, 0 man, in thy strength! the kingdom is thine to inherit,Till the high gods witness at length that Man is the Lord of his spirit.

—The Pentagram

A magical formula is a statement of perceived cosmological fact or theory It canbe as simple as an axiom:

Love thy neighbor as thyself. An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

It can be a statement or a set of symbols revealing the mechanism of a naturallaw:

As above, so below. All is sorrow. Love is the law, love under will.

E = MC². YHVH. INRI. AUM.

It can even be a single word that initiates an entire age:

TAO; ANATTA; [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]

Magical formulae evolve from older magical formulae as humanity's ability toperceive itself and the universe increases. A change in the consciousness of therace necessitates a change in magical formula. It's not that the old formuladoesn't work anymore, it's just that the new one works so much better. Obsoleteformulae of the past aren't necessarily discarded completely but are oftenamended or fine-tuned to better harmonize with a new, expanded understanding ofnatural or spiritual law.

To use an apparently unmagical example, an ancient carpenter or craftsmanseeking to determine the area of a small circle might venerate the greatMagician who revealed to him that the area could be determined by measuring theradius of the circle, then multiplying that figure by itself, then multiplyingthat figure by the sacred number 3. For the rough calculations required by ourprimitive ancestors, this crude formula served quite adequately. But for larger,more complex projects (such as temples, pyramids, etc.) requiring precisecomputations, the world had to wait for the "Magick" of π. Once this new bit ofinformation became general knowledge the world was never the same.

While this is a very crude analogy, I am confident that the reader can see howit applies to our ever evolving perception of ourselves and our place in theuniverse.

The Formula of the New Age

Great spiritual periods (ages or aeons) are characterized by their magicalformula. This is very important and fundamental to the understanding of Magickin general and Thelemic Magick in particular, for the planet has just recently(relatively speaking) entered a new period; a new age; a new aeon.

Yes, this is coincidental to what astrologers and songwriters call the Age ofAquarius and what millions of others refer to simply as the New Age. But itwould be a mistake to view this new aeon as simply another tick on a greatcosmic clock. The Age of Aquarius, profoundly significant as it is, is only oneaspect of a far greater new spiritual age. (Such magical aeons do notnecessarily coincide with the astrological periods and, according to Crowley,may be of any length.) A more intimate, more magical perspective may be had if,rather than considering the ages as merely astrological epochs, we instead viewthem as gods.

Crowley recognized in the three principal gods of Egypt Isis, Osiris, and Horusthe characteristic formulae of the last three magical aeons.

The present aeon is that of Horus, which has followed the Aeon of Osiris, whichfollowed the Aeon of Isis. Each aeon is characterized by the level ofunderstanding of nature and of self contemporarily prevalent, and dictates thevariety of magical and religious expression that dominate these periods.

Here it will be necessary to take a moment to review the myth of Isis, Osiris,and Horus, for it is vitally important to the understanding of the evolution ofmagical formulae and the Magick of Thelema. Please keep in mind that this isonly the briefest sketch of a story that has undergone over four thousand yearsof revision.

THE MYTH OF OSIRIS

The Creator, Temu, first appeared (from out of a watery chaos) on a sacredmound. Upon this solid foundation of matter he masturbated, creating twochildren, brother and sister, Shu and Tefnet. These two in turn created Geb (theEarth-god) and Nut (the Sky-goddess) who united to give birth to Osiris, Isis,Seth, and Nephthys. These nine deities make up the ennead of Heliopolis, whichappear continually throughout the sacred texts.

Osiris became king of Egypt, supported by his sister-wife Isis. Theirs was agolden reign that raised the Egyptian people from the sub-human depths ofanarchy and cannibalism. They initiated the systematic cultivation of the landin harmony with the flooding cycle of the river Nile, and their administrationbrought prosperity and happiness.

Seth, the brother of Osiris, became increasingly envious of the success of hissibling, and conspired to have him assassinated. Secretly he had an ornate boxconstructed to the exact measurements of the body of Osiris. He then hosted alavish party for his brother and announced that he would award the box to anyonewho could fit perfectly inside. In what can only be described as an act ofdivine folly, Osiris volunteered to give it a try. As soon as he was comfortablysnuggled inside the perfectly fitting box, the lid was immediately nailed shutby seventy-two of Seth's coconspirators and the coffin set adrift on the Nile.

Isis, hearing of the murder, immediately set out to find the body. Shediscovered it at Byblos where it had become imbedded in a tree which had beencut down and used, because of its wondrous aroma, as a column in the palace ofthe king. She pleaded with the local king for the return of her husband's bodyand was allowed to take it.

As she was returning with it by boat, she laid down upon the body and kissed ituntil its phallus became miraculously erect. She mounted her dead husband andconceived the child Horus. (Horus or Hoor also has a brother, Hoor-Paar-Kraat,whom the Greeks called Harpocrates. More on this later.)

Seth, discovering where Isis had hidden the body, stole it, dismembered it, andscattered the fourteen pieces throughout the entire country.

Isis set out again and successfully recovered all the pieces of Osiris, saveone, and magically reassembled them, thereby bestowing upon Osiris immortalityand rulership of the afterlife. Henceforth pious individuals who faithfullyadhered to the complex magical formulae of the cult of Osiris, as outlined inThe Book of the Dead, would be assured of the same continuity of existence afterdeath.

Their son Horus, to avenge the murder of his father, initiated a mighty struggleagainst Seth, which according to some stories was successful after three daysand according to others is perpetuated to this day.

* * *

The images of this simple passion play are imbedded deeply in the collectiveconsciousness of the human race. We see it retold almost verbatim by the Greeksas the story of Demeter and Persephone, and Orpheus and Eurydice. IAO, the greatGod of the Gnostics, even announces the magical formula of life, death, andresurrection in the letters of its name: Isis (Nature) is ruined by Apophis (theforces of destruction and decay), but is cyclically resurrected in Osiris.

Most striking to the Western mind are the similarities between the story ofOsiris and the central myth of Christianity: Through treachery a wise youngsavior is murdered ... nailed to His death; the tree whereon the body is affixed;the mourning devotee who begs the return of His body in order to give it properburial; the resurrection of the God which also provides the formula for theeternal salvation of the world, etc. All very Osirian.

But I am getting ahead of myself. To understand where we are, we must firstunderstand where we have been, so let us first examine the conditions thatcharacterized the last two aeons.

The Aeon of Isis

The Formula of the Great Goddess: It is difficult to speculate precisely whenthe aeon of the formula of Isis began for its foundations were laid in thenebulousness of prehistory. However, we can with relative confidence venture topinpoint its zenith as being approximately 2400 B.C.

This was the Age of the Great Goddess, and nowhere at this time was Her worshipmore conspicuous than in the Sumerian city of Uruk where the magnificent templeof Innana (Ishtar) dominated civilization's first great city. For us to focusexclusively upon Sumeria, however, would be a grave error for, indeed, the cultof the Great Goddess was truly universal. She was worshiped by countlesscultures under myriad names and forms. It would also be a mistake for us toconclude that the magical formula of this period manifested exclusively throughthe worship of any particular anthropomorphic female deity. For, like everyaeon, the magical formula of the Aeon of Isis was founded upon mankind'sinterpretation of the "perceived facts" of nature, and our Isian-age progenitorsperceived nature as a continuous process of spontaneous growth.

In the dim beginnings of the aeon, humans were ignorant of the cause and effectmysteries of sex and birth. Life appeared to come from woman alone. Blood flowedinexplicably from her body with the same cycle as that of the moon. And when thecycle of bleeding was interrupted, her belly swelled for nine moons until sheburst with new life. She then continued to nourish this life with her milk, thewhite blood of her breasts, and without this nourishment, drawn directly fromher body, the new life would die.

Nothing could match the power of woman. From her all life proceeded and withouther nourishment no life could survive. Like the moon itself, she lived a threefoldlife cycle of maid, mother, and crone; fertility, sustenance, and wisdom.

Once the child was weaned, the Earth itself became surrogate mother, directlyproviding the flesh and blood of animals and plants for sustenance. Mother waslife. Earth was Mother. God was Woman. Death was a mystery that could not besolved nor overcome.

This fundamental perception of nature persisted long after the mystery of wherebabies came from had been solved. Matriarchies and cannibalism dominated much ofthis period, but even after the ascent of the male warrior gods, the essentialformula of the Goddess lived on.

There exist to this day tribes of hunter-gatherers whose social and religiouslives exemplify the formula of Isis, but the Aeon of Isis survived only as longas the spirit of humanity was dominated by the perception that life and itsrequisite nourishment came directly from the Earth and from the woman.

A clearer perception of the universe would evolve that would usurp the formulaof Isis and initiate a new cultural and religious age. We are painfully familiarwith this period for it lasted until the turn of the twentieth century. Itsformula is still the consensus of the so-called "Great Religions" and continuesto dominate the spiritual lives of the majority of the inhabitants of ourplanet.

In this age the focus was shifted from the Earth to the Sun as the source of alllife, and from the mysteries of birth to the mysteries of death. We figured outwhere babies came from; now we were to ponder where we go when we die.

The Aeon of Osiris

The Formula of the Dying God: It could be said that the Aeon of Osiris beganwhen men and women first became cognizant of the Sun, and recognized that thefertility of the Earth (and consequently their lives) depended directly upon thevitalizing power of sunlight. The secret of life was now perceived as apartnership of Sun and Earth, and our ancestors saw this partnership reflectedin themselves: man and woman, phallus and kteis, father and mother.

When it became universally acknowledged that without the Sun, the Earth wouldperish, and without the semen of man, woman would remain barren, the greatpendulum of racial consciousness and attitude took a radical swing. The formulaof Isis was altered: woman brings forth life, but life comes from the Sun. Godwas now Father.

This new "illumination" resulted in unprecedented advances in civilization.Armed with the solar knowledge of the cycles of seasons, Osirian-age farmersbegan the organized cultivation of crops. Cities arose, and with them theeconomies and armies of great nation-states. Patriarchies supplantedmatriarchies as the goddesses of countless cultures became "wives" to the newmale deities.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Magick of Aleister Crowley by Lon Milo DuQuette. Copyright © 2003 Lon Milo DuQuette. Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Weiser Books
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1578632994
• ISBN 13: 9781578632992
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304