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    The Book of the Law
    The Book of the Law
    The Book of the Law
    Ebook49 pages50 minutes

    The Book of the Law

    By Aleister Crowley

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    The Book of the Law, the holy text that forms the basis of Thelema, was transmitted to Crowley by the entity known as Aiwass in Cairo, on three successive days during April 1904. Acting as a medium, Crowley recorded the communications on hotel notepads and later organized his automatic writing into a short, coherent document. Aiwass/Crowley presents The Book of the Law as an expression of three god-forms in three chapters: Nuit, Hadit, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit.

    Also included is Crowley’s essay ‘Cocaine’ from the October 1917 issue of The International. His examination of cocaine and its role in society is an important document in any serious discussion of the history of recreational drugs and was considered by him to be one of his best efforts.

    *Page notes.
    *Illustrations.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAnubis Books
    Release dateJul 31, 2018
    ISBN9781387989560
    Author

    Aleister Crowley

    Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) was an English poet, painter, occultist, magician, and mountaineer. Born into wealth, he rejected his family’s Christian beliefs and developed a passion for Western esotericism. At Trinity College, Cambridge, Crowley gained a reputation as a poet whose work appeared in such publications as The Granta and Cambridge Magazine. An avid mountaineer, he made the first unguided ascent of the Mönch in the Swiss Alps. Around this time, he first began identifying as bisexual and carried on relationships with prostitutes, which led to his contracting syphilis. In 1897, he briefly dated fellow student Herbert Charles Pollitt, whose unease with Crowley’s esotericism would lead to their breakup. The following year, Crowley joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret occult society to which many of the era’s leading artists belonged, including Bram Stoker, W. B. Yeats, Arthur Machen, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Between 1900 and 1903, he traveled to Mexico, India, Japan, and Paris. In these formative years, Crowley studied Hinduism, wrote the poems that would form The Sword of Song (1904), attempted to climb K2, and became acquainted with such artists as Auguste Rodin and W. Somerset Maugham. A 1904 trip to Egypt inspired him to develop Thelema, a philosophical and religious group he would lead for the remainder of his life. He would claim that The Book of the Law (1909), his most important literary work and the central sacred text of Thelema, was delivered to him personally in Cairo by the entity Aiwass. During the First World War, Crowley allegedly worked as a double agent for the British intelligence services while pretending to support the pro-German movement in the United States. The last decades of his life were spent largely in exile due to persecution in the press and by the states of Britain and Italy for his bohemian lifestyle and open bisexuality.

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      Book preview

      The Book of the Law - Aleister Crowley

      Crowley

      *The book’s full title is Liber AL vel Legis, sub figura CCXX, as delivered by XCIII=418 to DCLXVI.

      Chapter I*

      *Aleister Crowley claims that he was more of a medium than an author when he wrote the words which would eventually become known as ‘The Book of the Law.’ The holy text that forms the basis of Thelema was transmitted to Crowley by the entity known as Aiwass. Crowley was with his wife Rose in Cairo when the ‘transcription’ occurred, between noon and 1:00p.m. on three successive days during April 1904. With Rose’s help, Crowley recorded the communications on hotel stationery. Aiwass presents the Book as an expression of three god-forms of the three chapters, Nuit, Hadit, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit.

      1. Had! The manifestation of Nuit.

      2. The unveiling of the company of heaven.

      3. Every man and every woman is a star.

      4. Every number is infinite; there is no difference.

      5. Help me, o warrior lord of Thebes, in my unveiling before the Children of men!

      6. Be thou Hadit, my secret centre, my heart & my tongue!

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

      8. The Khabs is in the Khu, not the Khu in the Khabs.

      9. Worship then the Khabs, and behold my light shed over you!

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

      11. These are fools that men adore; both their Gods & their men are fools.

      12. Come forth, o children, under the stars, & take your fill of love!

      13. I am above you and in you. My ecstasy is in yours. My joy is to see your joy.

      14. Above, the gemmed azure is The naked splendour of Nuit; She bends in ecstasy to kiss

      The secret ardours of Hadit. The winged globe, the starry blue, Are mine, O Ankh-af-na-khonsu!

      15. Now ye shall know that the chosen priest & apostle of infinite space is the prince-priest the Beast; and in his woman called the Scarlet Woman is all power given. They shall gather my children into their fold: they shall bring the glory of the stars into the hearts of men.

      16. For he is ever a sun, and she a moon. But to him is the winged secret flame, and to her the stooping starlight.

      17. But ye are not so chosen.

      18. Burn upon their brows, o splendrous serpent!

      19. O azure-lidded woman, bend upon them!

      20. The key of the rituals is in the secret word which I have given unto him.

      21. With the God & the Adorer I am nothing: they do not see me. They are as upon the earth; I am Heaven, and there is no other God than me, and my lord Hadit.

      22. Now, therefore, I am known to ye by my name Nuit, and to him by a secret name which I will give him when at last he knoweth me. Since I am Infinite Space, and the Infinite Stars thereof, do ye also thus. Bind nothing! Let there be no difference made among you between any one thing & any other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt.

      23. But whoso availeth in this, let him be the chief of all!

      24. I am

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