On Discarnate Beings:
“Do what thou
wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”
DE FORMULA TOTA:
“Here then is the Schedule for all the Operations
of Magick. First, thou shalt discover thy true Will, as I have already taught
thee, and that Bud thereof which is the Purpose of this Operation.
Next, formulate this Bud-Will as a Person, seeking
or constructing it, and naming it according to thine Holy Qabalah, and its
infallible Rule of Truth. Third, purify and consecrate this Person,
concentrating upon him and against all else. This Preparation shall continue in
all thy daily Life. Mark well, make ready a new Child immediately after every
Birth. Fourth, make an especial and direct Invocation at thy Mass, before the
Introit, formulating a visible Image of this Child, and offering the Right of
Incarnation. Fifth, perform the Mass, not omitting the Epiklesis, and let there
be a Golden Wedding Ring at the Marriage of thy Lion with thine Eagle. Sixth,
at the Consumption of the Eucharist accept this Child, losing thy Consciousness
in him, until he be well assimilated with thee. Now then do this continuously,
for by Repetition cometh forth both Strength and Skill, and the Effect is
cumulative, if thou allow no Time to dissipate itself.”
Aleister Crowley: Liber ALEPH
The practice of magick and the path of initiation
is a path of becoming, which is marked by three steps or initiations in every
magickal career. The first is birth and symbolized by the Neophyte grade, the
last is called Crossing the Abyss and the grade is called the Babe of the
Abyss, that if successful the Adept attains the grade of Master of the Temple.
We know from Charles Stansfield Jones’ career that he experienced at least the
above two, but the quote is referring to Knowledge and Conversation being the
central attainment in the practice of Thelemic magick, and perhaps the most
relevant to what Thelema sets out to accomplish. From reading the vignette it
seems that Crowley is telling Achad about a method for maintaining Knowledge
and Conversation, an attainment pertaining to the A.’.A.’. that is marked by
two distinct parts of the same grade and these are the Adept Without and the
Adept Within and symbolizes the initiation of entering into the College of the
Rosy Cross. It is at the entrance of the grade called the Veil of Paroketh that
the aspirant stands as Asar-un-nefer, which means that he has completed
perfecting himself by completing the Outer Order grades and is called the
Formula of Pentagrammaton and symbolized by the Christ as indicated in the name
Yod-Heh-Shin-Vau-Heh, he is thus a perfect reflection of the Demiurge--the
God-Man and a name which qabalistically corresponds to the ineffable name,
Yod-Heh-Vau-Heh. The number of the grade is 65 and represents union between the
five and the six pointed stars, and via the Abramelin ritual the aspirant is
attempting to raise his consciousness thus piercing the Veil of Paroketh for
the union between the Microcosm and the Macrocosm to occur, which in Hindu
thought is the equivalent of Atman losing self-awareness and realizing itself
as Brahman. This exposes the nature of Being to self, or in other words, he
realizes himself as the all within the all, or plainly, he is a god.
The True Will is the awareness of a substratum of
consciousness which corresponds to the Logos in Nature and it is by harmonizing
the magician’s will, which Crowley calls the Bud-Will with the Logos that the
Great Work is accomplished. The Adeptus Without attains knowledge of his True
Will, although it is only after harmony has been attained that he becomes an
Adeptus Within, ergo the distinction is made between the two in the above
quote. The quote corresponds to maintaining Knowledge and Conversation, and not
the attainment as such, but indicates the work performed by an Adeptus Within,
as having already harmonized his ego at the centre of the Ruach and is in the
process of reflecting his Genius into the Astral Triad. In other words, the
quote is referring to maintaining balance and power in the continual
development of the will during the Adept’s becoming, signifying an evolutionary
process that is the performance of the Great Work, or injunctions given to the
Adept directly by his Angel. The injunctions are referring to the Bud-Will that
serves the Adept as guidance, and Crowley is saying that these must be
observed, presumably for the remainder of the magician’s career, that is to
say, for the rest of his life, if he is to drain every drop of his Blood into
the Cup of Babalon and attain immortality by accomplishing the Great Work. For
example; if the Adept is a sculptor who usually works in a clay medium, but one
day decides to create a sculpture using a hammer and chisel, it means that he
was guided towards this impulse by his True Will and is what is meant by his
Angel’s injunction, thus the magician’s passion changes in light of his Angel’s
influence. As people we change every day, these changes are usually so minute
that they are consciously imperceptible, but on an unconscious level the
transformation is immediate, so that the more aware one is of the nature of his
or her True Will, the more clearly these changes are perceived, and once such
an awareness is generated it becomes the responsibility of a magician to
harness and cultivate such impetus in accordance with his will and is what the
invocation is meant to accomplish.
The impulse which is symbolized in the above by
the sculptor picking up a hammer and chisel is what I will be referring to in
the following as the small will, what Crowley means by the Bud-Will as being
distinct from the big will or the True Will, the latter emphasizing the nature
of the Great Work. Crowley describes working with the small will in two
distinct ways, first he says that it must be made into a “Person” and secondly,
he describes it as a “Child” and the magician is supposed to produce a new
“Child” immediately after giving birth to the preceding one. Henceforth,
Crowley says to qabalistically formulate a word to represent the elements of a
hammer and a chisel used in the art of sculpting as pertaining to the above
example, which I assume is separate from the name of the “Person” that
accordingly may be given to the magician at the invocation ceremony by the
"Person" himself, thus the formula reflects the elements of the
aspect of art that it supposes. The image of the person I suspect, must create
itself organically as knowledge of his character increases imbuing the object
of admiration into a figure of recognizably distinguished characteristics. Of
course, since all of this is dealing with the unconscious, obtaining knowledge
of the subject will serve as a type of skrying practice enlivening the creative
faculty, and the invocation accordingly must be performed in the Body of Light,
such as the invocation of one's Holy Guardian Angel. The “Person” will serve as
the object of the magicians admiration and devotion, that to which he must
dedicate himself, thereby flooding his consciousness with the nature of his
small will, this process is not dissimilar to invoking a god and the magician
will have to by saturating his life with the elements of the small will,
harmonize with it completely, and this is what is meant by turning the
“Bud-Will” into a “Person”, who will become an ‘image of an image’ with which
the magician will unite during the course of the ritual until he has completely
assimilated all the elements thereof. It is called the small will as distinct
for the reason that it merely serves to form part as a compliment of the
Adept’s work, whether he is sculpting with clay or using a hammer and a chisel
is immaterial, as in the end, his Great Work--the Summum Bonum will be
understood as the work of a Great Sculptor, and immortalized as that which
pertained to his True Will in its entirety.
It will be seen then, that the quote is dealing
with preternatural contact and clearly distinguishes the Hero from the Daemon,
the Hero thus being the “Person” or the embodiment of the small will and the
object of invocation for the Adept Within. This preternatural being, it may be
noted, pertains to tradition in a concentrated way and is uniquely congruent
with the will of the Adept, for whom in order to become an Adept Without he had
to devote himself entirely to the corresponding tradition and as an Adept
Within he has become a proponent thereof making preternatural contact a
necessary part of the work of his grade. Hence, he is to unite through constant
observation the Lion and the White Eagle that are associated with Chokmah and
Binah and the logic behind Crowley’s use of the procreative terminology in the
above vignette, the union which is symbolically represented by the Golden
Wedding Ring at the Mass, and is the formula of “Love under Will”. The Lion
symbolizes the ‘essential masculine’ and the Will as represented by the
Logos--the Father in the sphere of Chokmah on the Tree of Life, and in the Holy
Tarot this sphere corresponds to Wands, Fire and passion, whereas the opposing
sphere is associated with the Mother, and this ‘essential feminine’ nature
indicates all the characteristics that are associated with this archetype
symbolized by Cups and Water, however in context of the quote, she is
particularly attributed to Love and devotion. These two sephiroth are united
within the path of Daleth wherein a child is conceived, the womb in this case,
is in the position of Da-ath and instead of the way we usually understand the
false sephira’s place on the Tree of Life, in this case it is congruent with
man’s fall from grace as marking the ontology of human experience, although for
the invocation the magician represents all of these elements and the “Child”
symbolizes the offspring of inspiration that results from union between the
“Person” and the magician as pertaining to the small will.
“Love is the law, love under will.”
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