31 (el)d2(el)u2(el)nSYN-3(el)u80.5icL(el)u2IBER CCXX Liber AL Vel Legis Sub Figura(ss)e CCXX as delivered by LXXVIII unto DCLXVI This book is the foundation of the new on, and thus of the whole of our Work.21[QX] In this revelation is the basis of the future on. Within the memory of man we have had the Pagan period, the worship of Nature, of Isis, of the Mother, of the Past; the Christian period, the worship of Man, of Osiris, of the Present. The first period is simple, quiet, easy, and pleasant; the material ignores the spiritual; the second is of suffering and death: the spiritual strives to ignore the material. Christianity and all cognate religions worship death, glorify suffering, deify corpses. The new on is the worship of the spiritual made one with the material, of Horus, of the Child, of the Future.[QX] Isis was Liberty; Osiris, bondage; but the new Liberty is that of Horus. Osiris conquered her because she did not understand him. Horus avenges both his Father and his Mother. This child Horus is a twin, two in one. Horus and Harpocrates are one, and they are also one with Set or Apophis, the destroyer of Osiris. It is by the destruction of the principle of death that they are born. The establishment of this new on, this new fundamental principle, is the great work now to be accomplished in the world.27[QX] To recapitulate the historical basis of The Book of the Law, let me say that evolution (within human memory) shows three great steps:[QX](el)ica1i1li1r1. (el)itlthe worship of the Mother, when the universe was conceived as simple nourishment drawn directly from her;[QX](el)ica1i1li1r2. (el)itlthe worship of the Father, when the universe was imagined as catastrophic;[QX](el)ica1i1li1r3. (el)itlthe worship of the Child, in which we come to perceive events as a continual growth partaking in its elements of both these methods.28[QX](el)ica3 Generally, (el)f37The Book of the Law claims to answer all possible religious problems. One is struck by the fact that so many of them are stated and settled separately in so short a space.29[QX] It reconciles cosmological conceptions which transcend time and space with a conventional, historical point of view. In the first place it announces unconditional truth, but in the second is careful to state that the Magical Formula (or system of principles) on which the practical part of the book is based is not an absolute truth but one relative to the terrestrial time of the revelation. (It is a strong point in favour of the Book that it makes no pretence to settle the practical problems of humanity once and for all. It contents itself with indicating a stage in evolution.)2120[QX] The full knowledge of the interpretation of this book is concealed from all.[QX] The Zelator must nevertheless acquire a copy, thoroughly acquaint himself with the contents, and commit them to memory.25[QX] CCXX (el)itlf36The number of the Verses in the three chapters of the Book. It has, however, an enormous amount of symbolism; in particular it combines the 10 Sephiroths and 22 Paths; 78 is . For 666 vide Sepher Sephiroth.3[QX](el)ic[QX]LIBER XXI[QX] AL (Liber Legis), The Book of the Law Sub Figura(ss)e XXXI as delivered by 932Aiwass418 to Ankh-f-n-khonsu, The Priest of the Princes Who is 6662121[QX] I, a master of English, was made to take down in three hours, from dictation, sixty-five 804110 pages of words not only strange, but often displeasing to me in themselves; concealing in cipher propositions unknown to me, majestic and profound; foretelling events public and private beyond my control, or that of any man.[QX] This Book proves: there is a Person thinking and acting in a praeterhuman manner, either without a body of flesh, or with the power of communicating telepathically with men and inscrutably directing their actions.2122[QX](el)i