The Mystic Interpretation of Liber AL vel Legis

Note: The Mystic Interpretation is always "All is One." It may be conceived in many forms - "Naught-One-Many-All" - but it always refers to the un-differentiated, non-dual substance that underlies and binds together all phenomena unto a Unity. As it is said in Liber Causae, "Now the Great Work is one, and the Initiation is one, and the Reward is one, however diverse are the symbols wherein the Unutterable is clothed." Also, it is said in Liber Ararita, "O my God! One is Thy Beginning! One is Thy Spirit, and Thy Permutation One!"

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AL I:1 -  Had! The manifestation of Nuit.

Had! is the first breath. H the beginning, A the breath (Air), and D is creation & love (Venus). By this breath, as the Taoist 'Tao' and the Hindu Purusha and Norse Ymir divided themselves up/were sacrificed, the 'world' is created by the unity being divided into duality. Nuit may only be known through her manifestations.

AL I:2 - The unveiling of the company of heaven.

This unveiling is the 'apocalypse,' the perception of Unity where all beings are seen to be 'the company of heaven.' This pronouncement underlies the message of the Book that will follow.

AL I:3 - Every man and every woman is a star.

In antiquity, heaven was understood to be the skies with the motions of the celestial bodies being perfect. We now know that Earth is in Heaven, and Heaven is understood by the manifestations of Earth. Just as the company of the ancient heaven were the stars, we have unveiled before us this new symbolic perspective: every man and every woman is a star and is therefore part of this company of heaven. This means also, every man and every woman has the potential for attaining to this consciousness of being a star - that is understanding the Self as the Monad... and it is an affirmation that every man and every woman is a manifestation of this Monad, created to know & love & enjoy Itself. (Transitive verbs are misleading; all things are the various modifications of a unified Subject in itself, and therefore as a whole it is never modified. Only when this unified Subject is divided, when 'things' and 'categories' arise and their bounds are felt as reality, do 'modifications' and 'change' seem to be apparent. All 'objects' are part of the unified Subject; the deed, the doer of the deed, and the situation which makes the deed possible are all parts of the unified Subject. The many change and pass, the One remains.)

After contemplating, I add this conception - Every man and every woman is a star, an aggregate or ganglion of force, and are naturally parts, the company, of the Whole of heaven. Again, it may also refer to the part's potential for abolishing its false selfhood in its immersion in the unified Subject.

AL I:4 - Every number is infinite; there is no difference.

Every number is some construing of the infinite. 2 is the number of the 1 expressed as 2, divided into yin & yang, up & down. 3 is the number of the 1 expressed as 3. 4 is 1 expressed in a four-fold manner, etc. etc. "Differences" are contrivances, and the apparent separation between "things" they point out is a fiction (but untruth doesn't rule out utility). Even the number '1' is a silly contrivance which means to our thinking a Unity, but One has the opposing idea of 'Many' and/or 'not-One' therefore some people take solace in 'Naught'/0. All of these are masks of the infinite. 

AL I:5 - Help me, o warrior lord of Thebes, in my unveiling before the Children of men!

The asking of help is really a command to rise up and awaken to the truth of Unity, to assume an active role in the process. Further, an intermediary is necessary for the expression of Unity to the many; that is, a body which has the means of materially communicating the dialectics of thought through language.

AL I:6 - Be thou Hadit, my secret centre, my heart & my tongue!

We are to assume the role of Hadit, the secret center of the Infinite, and a mode of its expression ('my tongue'). 

AL I:7 - Behold! it is revealed by Aiwass the minister of Hoor-paar-kraat.

We are made to expect a doctrine. Aiwass:Hoor-paar-kraat :: Mercury:Sun :: Tahuti:Ra-hoor. That is, Aiwass is the communicatory, active medium for the propagation of the Message of Hoor, the Silent Self, the Crowned & Conquering Child of Horus, the powerful Unity.

AL I:8 - The Khabs is in the Khu, not the Khu in the Khabs.

This verse depends on an interpretation of 'is in.' I take the meaning to be 'is inside,' 'is concealed within/beyond,' 'is that which transcends.' This is the common spatial metaphor of the outside as exoteric & false as a sort of crust or mask, and the inside as the esoteric & true essence. 

The Khabs is the Starry Nature concealed within Man - that is, his knowledge of himself as truly the Silent Self, the unified Subject. The Khu is the entire cosmos as it is 'known' to man, i.e. through the representations of his nervous system. This includes all interior (emotions, thoughts, imagination, memory) and exterior (surroundings, the world, the universe) things. This is essentially the Jnana Yoga doctrine of the unreality of impermanent, constituent things - also the Buddhist teaching of anicca and anatta which are intrinsically bound up in one another. The only 'real' thing, is the Unity which is beyond change because it contains all change in Itself.

AL I:9 - Worship then the Khabs, and behold my light shed over you!

We are then to penetrate beyond the veils of duality and worship (identify with) the Khabs... the inner 'light' of unity. "Light" is a common metaphor that can most likely be found in any religious text, especially when describing an encounter with god or some religious experience. This is the light that is beyond our notions of light & dark, but we ascribe the name light to it for various reasons (e.g. it disperses the darkness of ignorance, it has energy like the heat of light, etc.) It is by the worship of this 'inmost essence,' the 'quintessence' of the four elements, the Unity that transcends the impermanent constituents, that we come to know ourselves as Ourself.

AL I:10 - Let my servants be few & secret: they shall rule the many & the known.

A law of nature as well as a command to the ordering of society & the psyche. We are to order our psyche & society according to a few dominant principles, which will influence and guide the many. The psyche is still 'servant' to the Self. 

Where can Thelema spread?

Thelema is taken up mostly by middle-class, well-educated caucasians. 

There are large amounts of the population that may benefit from the Law of Thelema (for "the Law is for all"), including:

• Asians
• Hispanics
• African-americans

Seeing as how a large majority of those adhering to Thelema were formerly Catholic or Protestant, and knowing the large amount of the above-listed categories are also mostly Catholic or Protestant... it seems feasible that Thelema could just as easily spread to these people. The middle-class, well-educated slice of the demographic would be the most efficient for targeting.

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...But the middle-class is a small slice of the entire demographic of humanity. 

What does Thelema have to offer the poor?

• philosophy of self-importance
• philosophy of affirmation & persistence in the face of conflict & obstacles

What does Thelema have to offer the rich?

• philosophy that accepts materiality - gold, jewels, clothing, drugs, etc. - if done in the proper attitude
• philosophy that affirms & exalts the strong - in this case, the financially/economically strong, the few (aristocrats) against the many (democrats)
• philosophy of non-attachment which is necessary in proportion to the amount of 'possesions' one maintains

It has the Way of Attainment to offer to all.

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Further, Thelema's adherence is concentrated in the 20-40 year age group. Thelema is especially applicable to the young who are naturally full of force, fire, strength, beauty, joy, and laughter. Thelema is also applicable to the old, for it brings a view of death as fulfillment & ecstasy instead of an idea riddled with fear, punishment, uncertainties about 'heavens' and 'hells,' etc.

The young may take Thelema for its

• justification of their natural tendency toward growth, strength, danger, power, etc.
• symbolism for the unconscious to work with (stars, night sky, Nuit, Hadit, Horus, etc.)
• inherent individualism
• justification of all forms of sex & drug use if in accordance with Will
• lessons on reason (as minister, not king) and purpose (a useful limit which must always be uprooted for it is ultimately a contrivance)

The old may take Thelema for its

• promise of peace & ecstasy in death (I give unimaginable joys on earth... upon death; peace unutterable, rest, ecstasy)
• practical outlook on ordering values & morality (There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt)
• practical outlook on ordering one's life (Thou hast no right but to do thy will; All must be done well and with business way)
• destruction of the repressions of sex morality

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Further, Thelema is overwhelmingly characterized by well-educated adherents, i.e. a college degree of some sort. Yet Thelema is for all, even as Magick is for all, and so the exoteric and pragmatic aspects must be rooted out, understood, and employed for those who have neither the wits nor the time to understand more subtle mysteries. But also these are saved from slippery slopes of sophistry.

The O.T.O. fulfills this role nicely with a version of the Catholic mass, the Gnostic mass. This form of public gathering for a public ritual with public communion is a familiar form to most people and therefore useful... but the Gnostic Mass is riddled with absurdities, the foremost in my mind being the Creed of the Mass... as if "belief" was necessary for anything, let alone these absurd constructs of images & symbols... Chaos, Babalon, etc. Belief is not necessary; feeling and becoming the energy which underlies these arbitrary forms is what is needed to become 'religious.' The form is excessively Qabalistic in my mind, to the point of destroying naturalness at the desire for having aesthetically pleasing 4-fold, 8-fold, 11-fold, etc. schemes.

On the other hand, a degree of irrationality or suprarationality must be maintained (and is inherently so by the employment of symbols). A ritual must be practically/pragmatically effective in instilling a certain praxis to the individual, but it must also convey a sense of (a) power and (b) mystery (which are inherently two sides of the same coin). There must also be room for movement, i.e. room for individual interpretation & integration of the lessons & symbols of the ritual. 

The Gnostic Mass holds weight in another sense because it is a centralized ritual that many people of diverse locations share... all Catholics share the mass, and all OTO members share the Gnostic Mass (and initiations). They have shared ordeals and can sympathize with similar forms of worship. And this is what is necessary to for any kind of exoteric Thelema to take hold, for the exoteric want security & comfort, i.e. a ritual that is founded in many years of practice... they do not want the terrible responsibility of creating forms for themselves. Yet this itself is implicit in the philosophy of Thelema - perhaps the seed of dissension should be placed in the exoteric, more static forms... ready to blossom if it touches the right nourishment.

This leads to the question: is a sort of common-place, exoteric form of Thelema possible if individualism is inherent in Thelema? The OTO represents the most concentrating group of self-proclaimed Thelemites and has a central ritual to bind them together... but by their fruits ye shall know them, and the fruits of the OTO have been inordinately sparse. 

In the end it seems antithetical to set up any centralized organization, let alone a centralized ritual, to delineate what Thelema is... These may arise naturally, and success will be their proof. Stars of great mass (great potency & energy) tend to attract other stars so clusters of stars - galaxies - may arise... But diversity & variety is the key to strength & growth. The setting up of exoteric forms will destroy the individualist, dynamic current that underlies the philosophy of Thelema.

What pragmatic tools does Thelema offer?

What tools does Thelema offer, like Buddhism offers the practice of 'mindfulness...'

• Attitude of non-attachment to results/fruits of labor (Liber AL I:44)
• Attitude of affirmation, strength, beauty, force, etc. (Liber AL II)
• Attitude of no guilt from lust, "sinful" things, materiality, etc.

But all these things are subtle, somewhat passive in that they are 'attitudes' and not pragmatic tools like mindfulness. 

Is Thelema merely a paradigm which does not necessarily come with any specific tools?

The traditional response is (a) Yoga and (b) Magick, but are these founded in Thelemic literature or Crowley's literature on... yoga & magick?

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• The use of 'strange drugs' (entheogens) is explicitly endorsed by Hadit:
• "I am the Snake that giveth Knowledge & Delight and bright glory, and stir the hearts of men with drunkenness. To worship me take wine and strange drugs whereof I will tell my prophet, & be drunk thereof! They shall not harm ye at all. It is a lie, this folly against self. The exposure of innocence is a lie. Be strong, o man! lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture: fear not that any God shall deny thee for this." (Liber AL II:22)
• The use of wines and alcohol is explicitly endorsed by Nuit: 
• "Be goodly therefore: dress ye all in fine apparel; eat rich foods and drink sweet wines and wines that foam! Also, take your fill and will of love as ye will, when, where and with whom ye will! But always unto me." (Liber AL I:51) 
• ...by Hadit: "I am the Snake that giveth Knowledge & Delight and bright glory, and stir the hearts of men with drunkenness. To worship me take wine and strange drugs whereof I will tell my prophet, & be drunk thereof!" (Liber AL II:22) 
• ...by Ra-Hoor-Khuit: "For perfume mix meal & honey & thick leavings of red wine: then oil of Abramelin and olive oil, and afterward soften & smooth down with rich fresh blood." (Liber AL III:23)

Perhaps that to which is alluded to often.... "the first task of the Aspirant is to disarm all his thoughts, to make himself impregnably above the influence of any one of them; this he may accomplish by the methods given in Liber Aleph, Liber Jugorum, Thien Tao, and elsewhere." (AL II:25 comment)...