An XVII Sol in Libra.  I think it proper to insert here the account
 of the true meaning of this verse, though it more properly belongs to
 the Appendix.  But the circumstances are so striking that it is well
 worth the while of the lay reader to become acquainted with the nature
 of the reasoning which attests the praeterhuman character of the Author
 of this Book.
    It follows, in the words in which it was originally written, An XVII
 Sol in Gemini, Moon in Cancer, June 8, 1921 e.v., with no
 preliminaries, in my Magical Diary, at the Abbey of Thelema in
 Cephaloedium of Trinacria.
    These verses are very subtly worded.  How should I understand this
 allusion to the stele; how "count well its name" without knowing it?
    I tried to count "Abomination of Desolation", but that is what "they
 shall call" it, not its proper name.
    It seemed that this name, when found, ought to add to 718, or to be
 identical with some other word or phrase that did so.  More, this name
 when found must some how express "the fall of Because".
    For many years these two verses, despite elaborate research, yielded
 no meaning soever.  At last I chanced on Upsilon-pi-omicron-mu-omicron-
 nu-eta as 718; it means "persistence", the Greek noun corresponding to
 "Perdurabo", my first magical Motto.  Of course the Stele had persisted
 since the 26th Dynasty, but that scarecely justified naming it
 "Persistence"; also, there was nothing about "the fall of Because".
    Now (An XVII, Sol in Gemini, Moon in Cancer) I was going through the
 Law in order to repair any details of omission in the rituals ordained,
 and found these verses introduced among the instructions.  They
 fascinated me; when I had finished the work in hand, I returned to them
 and worked for some hours with a Lexicon, starting from the word APXH,
 Cause, 709, to find some phrase equal to 718 which would deny Cause.  I
 found AZA, 9, a word meaning "dryness", but most especially the dirt or
 mould upon a disused object.  APXH AZA is, therefore, a precise
 expression of the doctrine expounded in our Law about "Because".
    So far, so good; but this is no sense the name of the Stele.
    I worked on, and found XOIZA, 718, "Yesterday" which might be
 grasped as a straw if I sank the third time; but I was swimming
 strongly enough.
    I found XAIPE A.'.A.'. 718, "Hail to the A.'.A.'.".  I gracefully
 acknowledged the greeting to Our Holy Order, but went on with my
 search.
    There is no such word as AXPICTA, "unchristlike things"; only blind
 bigotry could be satisfied with so crude an invention.
    Then came XAPA H, 713, an engraved character.  That was a true name
 for the Stele; if I suffixed AD, 5, it might read "The Mark of Hadit".
 But I did not feel inwardly that thrill of ecstacy that springs in the
 heart or that dawn of amazement that kindles the mind, when Truth's
 sheer simplicity takes form.  There is a definite psychological
 phenomenon which accompanies and important discovery.  It is like First
 Love, at First Sight, to the one; like the recognition of a Law of
 Nature, to the other.  It inflames one with Love for the Universe, and
 it explains all its puzzles, in a flash; and it gives an interior
 conviction which nothing can shake, a living certainty quite beyond
 one's argued acquiescence in any newly acquired facts.
    I lacked this; I knew that I had to seek further.  The Truth uttered
 by Aiwaz is hidden with such exquisite art that it is always easy to
 wring out a more or less plausible meaning by torture.  Yet all such
 learned and ingenious fumblings reveal their own impotence; the Right
 Key opens the safe in a second, so simply and smoothly as to make it
 ridiculous to doubt that the lock was made by a master smith to respond
 to that key and no other.
    The reader will have noticed that all the really important
 correspondences in this Book are so simple that a child might
 understand them.  There are also my own creaking and lumbering scholar-
 dredgers, not one of which is truly illuminating or even convincing.
 The real solutions, moreover, are almost always confirmed by other
 parts of the text, or by event subsequent to the Writing of the Book.
    I worked on: I asked myself for the thousandth time what the Stele
 could claim with literal strictness as "its name".  I scribbled the
 word CTHAH and added it up.  the result is 546, when CT counts as 500,
 or 52, when CT is 6, a frequent usage, as in CTAYPOS, whose number is
 thus 777.
    Idly enough, my tired pen subtracted 52 from 718.  I started up like
 a Magician who, conjuring Satan in vain till Faith's lamp sputters, and
 Hope's cloak is threadbare, gropes, heavily leaning on the staff of
 Love, blinking and droning along -- and suddenly sees HIm!
    I did the sum over, this time with my pen like a panther.  Too good
 to be true!  I added my figures; yes, 718 past denial.  I checked my
 value of Stele; 52, and no error.  Then only I let myself yield to the
 storm of delight and wonder that rushed up from the Hand of Him that is
 throned in the Abyss of my Being; and I wrote in my Magical Record the
 Triumph for which I have warred for over seventeen years

                             718
                         CYHAH 6 6 6
 No fitter name could be found, that was sure ... ---
    And then came a flash to confirm me, to chase the last cloud of
 criticism;  the actual name of the Stele, its ordinary name, the only
 name it ever had until it was called the "Stele of Revealing", in the
 Book of the Law, itself, "its name" in the catalogue of the Museum at
 Boulak, was just this: "Stele 666".