;header This is File 220a3-1.r1 1. Observe firstly the word ``reward'', which is to be compared with the words ``hiding'' and ``manifestation'' in the former chapters. To `re-ward' is to `guard again'; this word Abrahadabra then is also to be considered as a Sentinel before the Fortress of the God. Why is the name of Him spelt Khut? We have seen that ST is the regular honorific ~terminitation for a God. Ra is, as shown in the Old Comment, the Sun, Hoor the Warrior Mars; who is Khu? He is the Magical Ego of a Star. Without the Yod or Iota, Khu-t, we get a human conception; the insertion of that letter makes the transmutation to Godhead. When therefore Ra Hoor Khut is rewarded or Re-guarded with the Magick Word of the Aeon, he becomes God. Thus in the next verse. I `raise the spell of Ra Hoor Khuit'. The text may also be read as follows. Abrahadabra is the formula of the Aeon, by which man may accomplish the Great Work. This Formula is then the `reward' given by the God, the largesse granted by Him on His accession to the Lordship of the Aeon, just as the INRI-IAO-LVX formula of attainment by way of Crucifixion was given by Osiris when he came to power in the last Aeon. (See Book 4 Part III, and Equinnox I, III, pp. 208-233). I must here say that I find myself in the greatest difficulty, again and again, in the comprehension of this chapter. It might be said roughly that at the end of the first five years of Silence (An 0-IV) I understood Chapter I; at the end of the second five years (an X-XIV) I understood Chapter II, -- - 2. `Division hither homeward'; a most dour phrase to interpret! Such curious concatenation is sure to imply profound meaning. Homeward must mean `toward the House of the Speaker. He says, then, that there is `division', which (as I take it) prevents man from being God. THis is a natural and orthodox meaning, and it goes well with `there' (I.E. in verse 1) `is a word not known'. That Word is Abrahadabra, which was not known, it having been concealed by the corrupt spelling ``abracadabra'. `Spelling is defunct'; this seems to be an echo of the statement in Cap. II, v:5 ``The rituals of the old time are black''. (The word `defunct' is decidedly curious; the implication is `no longer able to fulfil its function'.) `Spelling' then means `making spells'. And this is characteristic of Ra-Hoor-Khuit, that He demands not words, but acts. (Compare `The Paris Working'). So then we pass naturally to verse 3. `All is not aught' is an abrogation of all previous law, on the accession of a Monarch. He wipes out the past as with a sponge. This phrase is also an excessively neat cipher or hieroglyph of the great Key to this Book. All (AL) is not aught (LA). AL is LA: that is to say, the phases of the Universe X and 0 are identical. ``Beware!'' as if it were said to a soldier, ``Attention!'' ``Hold!'', that is, ``Steady! LIsten to the Proclamation!'' ``Raise the spell of Ra-Hoor Khuit!'' That is ``Here, I, the New God, utter my Word''. 3. Comment seems hardly necessary. The Great War is a mere illustration of this text. The only nations which have suffered are those whose religion was Osirian, or, as they called it, Christian. The exception is Turkey, which foolishly abandoned the principles of Islam to form an unholy alliance with the Giaour. Abdul Hamid would never have made such an ass of himself as the degenerate gang of ``Liberty and Progress''; may jakals defile the pyres of their dog fathers! (The God of Vengeance is in Greek Aleister. For some reason which I have not been able to trace, this God became ALASTOR, the Desert Daemon of the Rabbins, the later the ``Spirit of Solitude'' of Shelly. The attribution is appropriate enough, the root being apparently A AOMAI, I wander. The idea of ``Going'' is dreadful to the bourgeois, so that a wanderer is ``accursed'. But, me judice, to settle down in life is to abandon the heroic attitude; it is to acquiesce in the stagnation of the brain. I do not want to be comfortable, or even to prolong life; I prefer to move constantly from galaxy to galaxy, from one incarnation to another. Such is my intimate individual Will. It seems as thou this ``god of War and of Vengeance'' is then merely one who shall cause men to do their won Wills by Going as Gods do, instead of trying to check the irresistible course of Nature.) P. S. El OUid Algeria An XX in The terror of Syria in the reign of Oman was the great soldier and administrator Melekh-Al-AStar. Possibly Jewish mothers used to scare their crying babies by threatening them with this ``demon of the desert'' and the Rabbins incorporated the ``bogey man'' in their averse hierarchy. 4. 4-9. This is a practical instruction; and, as a `military secret', is not in any way soever to be disclosed. I say only that the plans are complete, and that the first nation to accept the Law of Thelema Shall, by My counsel, become sole Mistress of the World. 6. This phrase is curiously suggestive of the `mine-layer' to those who have seen one in action. 7. This suggests the Tank, the Island chosen being England. But this is probably a forthshadowing of the real Great War, wherein Horus shall triumph utterly. 9. ``Lurk! Withdraw! Upon them!'' describes the three parts of a certain magical gesture indicative of a formula which has proven very powerful in practical work. (The events beginning in An XVII Sol in Libra, know when wil form a luminous comment on the passage. There is an alternative, taking the beginning as An X sol in Libra, and implying larger periods). 10. The language is hereso obvious and so inane that one is bound to suspect a deeper sense. It sounds as bad as ``the last winking Virgin'' or St. Januarius. 11. The Victorious City is of course Cairo (Al-Kahira, the victorious), and the ill-ordered house is the Museum at Bulak. Ra-Hoor-Khu; why is the name without its termination? Perhaps to indicate the essence of the force. The Ritual of the Adoration of Ra-Hoor-Khuit is, as one might expect, illustrative of His nature. It seems doubtful whether this Ritual can ever abe of the type of symbolic celebration; it appears rather as if expeditions against the Heather: i.e. Christians and other troglodytes -- but most especially the parasites of man, the Jews -- were to be His rite. And it is to be taken that `the woman' is to take arms in His honour. This woman might be The Scarlet Woman, or perhaps Woman generally. Remember that in the Scarlet Woman `is all power given'; and I expect a new Semiramis. 12. 12-15. This, read in connexion with verse 43, was then fulfilled May 1, 1906, o.s. The tragedy was also part of mine initiation, as described in The Temple of solomon the King. It is yet so bitter that I care not to write of it. 16. The God wisely refrains from clear expression, so that the event, as it occurs, may justify His word. This progressive illumination of that word has served to keep it alive as no single revelation could have done. Every time that I have dulled to Liber Legis something has happened to rekindle it in my heart. ``Know not this meaning all''; another cipher for LA = AL. 17. The last paragraph is a singular confirmation of the view which I have taken of Our Hierarchy: compare what has been said on the subject in previous chapters. 18. What has been the net result of our fine `Christian' phrases? In the good old days there was some sort of natural selection; brains and stamina were necessary to survival. The race, as such consequently improved. But we thought we knew oh! so much better, and we had ``Christ's law'' and other slush. So the unfit crowded and contaminated the fit, until Earth herself grew nauseated with the mess. We had not only a war which killed some eight million men, in the flower of their age, picked men at that, in four years, but a pestilence which killed six million in six months. Are we going to repeat the insanity? Should we not rather breed humanity for quality by killing off any tainted stock, as we do with other cattle? And exterminating the vermin which infect it, especially Jews and Protestant Christians? Catholic Christians are really Pagans at heart; there is usually good stuff in them, particularly in Latin countries. They only need to be instructed in the true meaning of their faith to reflect the false veils. An XXI in After some years spent in Catholic countries, I wish to modify the above. Catholics are dead alike to Spirituality and to Reason, as bad as Protestants. And the Jew is far from hopeless outside America, where the previous paragraph was written. 19. The reference appears to be to the old prophecies of `Daniel' and `John'. The first Qabalistic allusion is yet (An XIV in ) undiscovered. An XVII in . 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 in , in , 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 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, in , in ) 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 bo 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 solution, 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 which conceal Secret Matters were already at that time possessed of a certain significance for me. Some unconscious co-operation of my mind might be alleged as the determinant factor in the choice of those numbers, their subsequent interconnexions, and so on explained by the commentators' ingenuity, and the confirmation of independent facts by coincidence. Similarly, the hidden numbers such as 3,141593, 395, 31, 93, may be ascribed to the commentators, and denied to the intention of the text; at least, by that class of Pharisee which strains at the Butterfly of the Soul, preferring to swallow any hippopotamus if it be slimed thickly enough with the miasmal swamp-mire of materialism. But 718 is expressed openly; its nature is described sufficiently and unambiguously; and it meant nothing to anybody in the world, either then or for seventeen years after. And now the meaning falls so pat, so natural, so self-justified, so evidently the unique value of the `x' of the equation, that it is impossible to quibble. The law of probablities excludes all theories but one. The simple Truth is what I have always asserted. There is a Being called Aiwaz, an intelligence discarnate, who wrote this Book of the Law, using my ears and hand. His mind is certainly superior to my own in knowledge and in power, for He has dominated me and taught me ever since. But that apart, the proof of any discarnate intelligence, even of the lowest order, has never before been established. And lack of that proof is the flaw in all the religions of the past; man could not be certain of the existence of ``God'', because though he knew many powers independent of muscle, he knew of no consciousness independent of nerve. EOF