Liber AL
vel
Legis
sub figurâ CCXX
as delivered by
XCIII = 418
to
DCLXVI
A∴A∴ Publication in Class A
Introduction
I
THE BOOK
1. This book was dictated in Cairo between noon and 1 p.m. on
three successive days, April 8th, 9th and 10th in the year 1904.
The Author called himself Aiwass, and claimed to be “the
minister of Hoor-Paar-Kraat”; that is, a messenger from the forces ruling
this earth at present, as will be explained later on.
How could he prove that he was in fact a being of a kind superior
to any of the human race, and so entitled to speak with authority? Evidently he
must show KNOWLEDGE and POWER such as no man has ever been known to
possess.
2. He showed his KNOWLEDGE chiefly by the use of cipher or
cryptogram in certain passages to set forth recondite facts, including some
events which had yet to take place, such that no human being could possibly be
aware of them; thus, the proof of his claim exists in the manuscript itself. It
is independent of any human witness.
The study of these passages necessarily demands supreme human
scholarship to interpret— it needs years of intense application. A great deal
has still to be worked out. But enough has been discovered to justify his
claim; the most skeptical intelligence is compelled to admit its truth.
This matter is best studied under the Master Therion, whose years
of arduous research have led him to enlightenment.
On the other hand, the language of most of the Book is admirably
simple, clear and vigorous. No one can read it without being stricken in the
very core of his being.
3. The more than human POWER of Aiwass is shewn by the influence
of his Master, and of the Book, upon actual events: and history fully supports
the claim made by him. These facts are appreciable by everyone; but are better
understood with the help of the Master Therion.
4. The full detailed account of the events leading up to the
dictation of this Book, with facsimile reproduction of the Manuscript and an
essay by the Master Therion, is published in The Equinox of the
Gods.
II
THE UNIVERSE
This Book explains the Universe.
The elements are Nuit— Space— that is, the total of
possibilities of every kind— and Hadit, any point which has experience of
these possibilities. (This idea is for literary convenience symbolized by the
Egyptian Goddess Nuit, a woman bending over like the Arch of the Night Sky.
Hadit is symbolized as a Winged Globe at the heart of Nuit.)
Every event is a uniting of some one monad with one of the
experiences possible to it.
“Every man and every woman is a star,” that is, an
aggregate of such experiences, constantly changing with each fresh event, which
affects him or her either consciously or subconsciously.
Each one of us has thus an universe of his own, but it is the
same universe for each one as soon as it includes all possible experience. This
implies the extension of consciousness to include all other consciousness.
In our present stage, the object that you see is never the same
as the one that I see; we infer that it is the same because your experience
tallies with mine on so many points that the actual differences of our
observation are negligible. For instance, if a friend is walking between us,
you see only his left side, I his right; but we agree that it is the same man,
although we may differ not only as to what we may see of his body but as to
what we know of his qualities. This conviction of identity grows stronger as we
see him more often and get to know him better. Yet all the time neither of us
can know anything of him at all beyond the total impression made on our
respective minds.
The above is an extremely crude attempt to explain a system which
reconciles all existing schools of philosophy.
III
THE LAW OF THELEMA*
This Book lays down a simple Code of Conduct.
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”
“Love is the law, love under will.”
“There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.”
This means that each of us stars is to move on our true orbit, as
marked out by the nature of our position, the law of our growth, the impulse of
our past experiences. All events are equally lawful— and every one
necessary, in the long run— for all of us, in theory; but in practice,
only one act is lawful for each one of us at any given moment. Therefore Duty
consists in determining to experience the right event from one moment of
consciousness to another.
Each action or motion is an act of love, the uniting with one or
another part of “Nuit”; each such act must be “under
will,” chosen so as to fulfill and not to thwart the true nature of the
being concerned.
The technical methods of achieving this are to be studied in
Magick, or acquired by personal instruction from the Master Therion and
his appointed assistants.
* Thelema is the Greek for Will, and has the same numerical value as Agape,
the Greek for Love.
IV
THE NEW AEON
The third chapter of the Book is difficult to understand, and
may be very repugnant to many people born before the date of the book (April,
1904).
It tells us the characteristics of the Period on which we are now
entered. Superficially, they appear appalling. We see some of them already with
terrifying clarity. But fear not!
It explains that certain vast “stars” (or aggregates
of experience) may be described as Gods. One of these is in charge of the
destinies of this planet for periods of 2,000 years.* In the history of the
world, as far as we know accurately, are three such Gods: Isis, the mother,
when the Universe was conceived as simple nourishment drawn directly from her;
this period is marked by matriarchal government.
Next, beginning 500 B.C., Osiris, the father, when the Universe
was imagined as catastrophic, love, death, resurrection, as the method by which
experience was built up; this corresponds to patriarchal systems.
Now, Horus, the child, in which we come to perceive events as a
continual growth partaking in its elements of both these methods, and not to be
overcome by circumstance. This present period involves the recognition of the
individual as the unit of society.
We realize ourselves as explained in the first paragraphs of this
essay. Every event, including death, is only one more accretion to our
experience, freely willed by ourselves from the beginning and therefore also
predestined.
This “God,” Horus, has a technical title: Heru-Ra-Ha,
a combination of twin gods, Ra-Hoor-Khuit and Hoor-Paar-Kraat. The meaning of
this doctrine must be studied in Magick. (He is symbolized as a
Hawk-Headed God enthroned.)
He rules the present period of 2,000 years, beginning in 1904.
Everywhere his government is taking root. Observe for yourselves the decay of
the sense of sin, the growth of innocence and irresponsibility, the strange
modifications of the reproductive instinct with a tendency to become bisexual
or epicene, the childlike confidence in progress combined with nightmare fear
of catastrophe, against which we are yet half unwilling to take
precautions.
Consider the outcrop of dictatorships, only possible when moral
growth is in its earliest stages, and the prevalence of infantile cults like
Communism, Fascism, Pacifism, Health Crazes, Occultism in nearly all its forms,
religions sentementalised to the point of practical extinction.
Consider the popularity of the cinema, the wireless, the football
pools and guessing competitions, all devices for soothing fractious infants, no
seed of purpose in them.
Consider sport, the babyish enthusiasms and rages which it
excites, whole nations disturbed by disputes between boys.
Consider war, the atrocities which occur daily and leave us
unmoved and hardly worried.
We are children.
How this new Aeon of Horus will develop, how the Child will grow
up, these are for us to determine, growing up ourselves in the way of the Law
of Thelema under the enlightened guidance of the Master Therion.
* The moment of change from one period to another is technically called The
Equinox of the Gods.
V
THE NEXT STEP
Democracy dodders.
Ferocious Fascism, cackling Communism, equally frauds, cavort
crazily all over the globe.
The are hemming us in.
They are abortive births of the Child, the New Aeon of Horus.
Liberty stirs once more in the womb of Time.
Evolution makes its changes by anti-Socialistic ways. The
“abnormal” man who foresees the trend of the times and adapts
circumstance intelligently, is laughed at, persecuted, often destroyed by the
herd; but he and his heirs, when the crisis comes, are survivors.
Above us today hangs a danger never yet paralleled in history. We
suppress the individual in more and more ways. We think in terms of the herd.
War no longer kills soldiers; it kills all indiscriminately. Every new measure
of the most democratic and autocratic governments is Communistic in essence. It
is always restriction. We are all treated as imbecile children. Dora, the Shops
Act, the Motoring Laws, Sunday suffocation, the Censorship— they
won’t trust us to cross the roads at will.
Fascism is like Communism, and dishonest into the bargain. The
dictators suppress all art, literature, theatre, music, news, that does not
meet their requirements; yet the world only moves by the light of genius. The
herd will be destroyed in mass.
The establishment of the Law of Thelema is the only way to
preserve individual liberty and to assure the future of the race.
In the words of the famous paradox of the Comte de
Fénix— The absolute rule of the state shall be a function of the
absolute liberty of each individual will.
All men and women are invited to cooperate with the Master
Therion in this, the Great Work.
O. M.
The Holograph Manuscript of Liber AL vel Legis
reprinted, Samuel Weiser, Inc, York Beach, Maine, 1976