Book of Law Study Group 1.2

Scion

similia said:
If so it would seem to me that the first three lines, represent those three levels from Agrippa.
(snip)hmmm I'm not sure I'm making sense... sorry :|
Perfect sense to me... :thumbsup:
Abrac said:
Crowley's old comment on AL1.2 from The Old and New Commentaries to Liber AL:
"The 'company of heaven' is Mankind, and its 'unveiling' is the assertion of the independent godhead of every man and every woman! Further, as Khabs (see verse 8) is "Star", there is a further meaning; this Book is to reveal the Secret Self of a man, i.e. to initiate him."
Abrac, you're proving my point for me with Crowley's commentary! The important part of that sentence is "reveal the Secret Self of a man" which is another way of referring to the HGA, which is an Abramelin name for a personal Daemon, which is in fact a denizen of Agrippa's celestial realm... To speak of the "godhead" in mortals is to explicitly indicate that intermediary class of spirits: Aiwass/Crowley doesn't say that we ARE gods; but that we each possess an independent godhead... which is another word for HGA or Daemon. IOf you don't believe me look at the BOL line: "the unveiling" comes first: this is what he identifies as the godhead assertion. THEN mankind is become "the company of heaven." Which means once they've established that knowledge and conversation.

So (not to mess with Always Wondering's head further, but) it's not that something else is tying up the seats in the celestial realm, but rather that when we see clearly, we are intimately bound up in the celestial, but most are ignorant of that. It's not musical chairs, more like a daemonic waltz where we are all trying to find our partners. :D ("Wake World," anyone?) "Every man and every woman is a star" is a description of a relationship between men and women and stars as much as it is descriptive of their identities as stars. My point is that "unveiling the company" is a way of metaphorically unveiling the secret shapes above and around us so that we can begin to understand how we connect to them. All magick begins with a belief in meaningful connections.

This is why the small Egyptology debate in the other thread seems so pointless. This is a description of a primary experience that cannot be communicated explicitly. Art is the only way to convey inarticulable truths. Crowley using meaty, mythological metaphors from his Cambridge days is a clever attempt to explain something he wants people to experience individually. (93/93) Crowley's beliefs have almost NOTHING to do with the little we know of their religion, so to scold him for getting it wrong is a little tangential. It's as if he were using primary numbers to describe the way Provence farmland smells in April. To argue over fractions is missing the point.

I think another important thing to remember here is that Crowley is not (like post-Jungian New Age America) psychologizing magick. And please no one cite the psych-misreading of the Goetia intro: it IS a New Agey misreading. As Liber O says, "It is immaterial whether they exist or not. By doing certain things certain results follow." Arguing over the truth or falsehood of a myth or a scientific theory is maya... noise. Gnosis is personal. We can only point in helpful directions for each other. Hence the pivotal role of Will/Love. "It is essential that he remain the master of all that he beholds, hears or conceives; otherwise he will be the slave of illusion and the prey of madness." Crowley wasn't burning down the world to ruin it, he was trying to clear the dross and light a path. A pyre and a rebirth.

similia said:
I am trying to gauge how your understanding is different to Aeon's and to my own initial thoughts. Not to choose one over the other, just trying to compare and understand them.

I don't think our understanding is different, actually. I think we're agreeing, just coming at a complex thing from several directions (like the blind men with the elephant). But actually if you string all our ideas together (on the girdle of Nuit) they connect pretty cleanly. I was more trying to express a gut sense I've developed about the pivotal role of the celestial realm in magickal work and the primal necessity of seeing with new eyes, excising our Osiric preconceptions and habits.



Scion
 

Abrac

Scion said:
This is why the small Egyptology debate in the other thread seems so pointless. This is a description of a primary experience that cannot be communicated explicitly. Art is the only way to convey inarticulable truths. Crowley using meaty, mythological metaphors from his Cambridge days is a clever attempt to explain something he wants people to experience individually. (93/93) Crowley's beliefs have almost NOTHING to do with the little we know of their religion, so to scold him for getting it wrong is a little tangential. It's as if he were using primary numbers to describe the way Provence farmland smells in April. To argue over fractions is missing the point.
As far as Egyptology goes, I believe having all the facts is always a good thing and this is no exception. I can't understand why anyone would find this objectionable. Knowledge is power. It was Crowley who made Egyptian religious symbolism part of his system in the first place. If he had not wanted it held up to scrutiny he should have stayed away from it. Some have reacted defensively to a few of my points as if I were trying to discredit the BoL or, as you say, "scold" Crowley, but that was the furthest thing from my mind. I respect Aleister Crowley for what he accomplished. I hope we can get on with the study at hand.
 

Grigori

Moderator Note

Abrac said:
I hope we can get on with the study at hand.

I'm sure everyone would like to get on with the topic at hand. So I will delete further posts that are not related to what we are studying.

This thread is about:

Aiwass said:
2. The unveiling of the company of heaven.

If anyone would like to discuss something different, please start a different thread, rather than derail this one. This is a big forum, with room for lots of threads after all :)
 

Grigori

Scion said:
THEN mankind is become "the company of heaven." Which means once they've established that knowledge and conversation.

Thanks Scion, that was very useful. I've not thought of it in that way before, having always considered the HGA something somehow internal and hidden (which allows connection with something external), rather than something external in its self, which is the first step in a connection to the wider world of other external things. Its very useful to me to think of it that way.

Scion said:
I don't think our understanding is different, actually. I think we're agreeing, just coming at a complex thing from several directions (like the blind men with the elephant)

Yes, its interesting that in the commentary Crowley also addresses each of the three possibilities of interpretation different people have proposed, and validates each one.

Scion said:
I was more trying to express a gut sense I've developed about the pivotal role of the celestial realm in magickal work and the primal necessity of seeing with new eyes, excising our Osiric preconceptions and habits.

I'm quite taken by the way you interpret this line as descriptive of the "magical environment" but at the same time as advice or a directive even on a certain course of action. It takes the entire book from being an object of curiosity to be studied, to a functional guidebook.

Yygdrasilian said:
1. Day! The child of Night.
2. Light departs and Stars come out.
3. Your lives and deaths are a microcosm of this cycle : as above, so below

I really like this too. Paraphrasing the text, using other/related words that describe the same content is really helping to cement the ideas for me. It would be interesting to read a version of the BoL, entirely transcripted into another cosmology. Perhaps even that of science or physics would be very interesting.
 

Aeon418

similia said:
having always considered the HGA something somehow internal and hidden (which allows connection with something external), rather than something external in its self, which is the first step in a connection to the wider world of other external things. Its very useful to me to think of it that way.
If you take a look at Crowley's various explanations of what the HGA is, you will find that he seems to contradict himself again and again. For example compare his very objective statements in Magick Without Tears - Chp.43, with the more subjective point of view taken in the scholion to Liber Samekh.

So what is the HGA (or that level of consciousness)? Is it subjective/internal or objective/external? The answer is....... Yes. :laugh:
The HGA will not neatly fit inside any rational framework which allows you to label it and file it away in it's own little pigeon-hole. The HGA is beyond reason. Trying to pin it down with reason is kind of like holding a jelly. The harder you try to hold it, the more it will squeeze through your fingers.
But, different conceptions of the HGA may be useful to different people in different ways at different points on their initiatory journey. A conception of the HGA that works for you may not work for someone else. But that doesn't mean that one or either party is wrong. It's a case of different tools for different jobs. And there's no guarantee that one method will work for you for the whole journey. My own understanding has swapped around numerous times.

Something you might like to try is reading Liber Legis as a direct message from your HGA. Each chapter is a revelation for you from your HGA, but each chapter is delivered from a different perspective. Nuit- the infinite without. Hadit - the infinite within. Ra Hoor Khuit - the guardian angel in a less abstract sense. A trinity in unity.

Here's a quote from a letter by Karl Germer to Jane Wolfe. The letter was about how the HGA communicates with us, and it isn't always in ways we may expect. It stopped me in my tracks and made me sit up the first time I read it.
What we have to learn and make ourselves ready for, is to hear the speech in ordinary things in our lives.
The HGA is always speaking to us. But we frequently don't know how to listen or have ideas in our minds that lead us to expect something else.
 

Aeon418

THE AUGOEIDES. *
* From a letter of Fra P.

Lytton calls him Adonai in 'Zanoni,' and I often use this name in the note-books.

Abramelin calls him Holy Guardian Angel. I adopt this:

1. Because Abramelin's system is so simple and effective.

2. Because since all theories of the universe are absurd it is better to talk in the language of one which is patently absurd, so as to mortify the metaphysical man.

3. Because a child can understand it.

Theosophists call him the Higher Self, Silent Watcher, or Great Master.

The Golden Dawn calls him the Genius.

Gnostics say the Logos.

Zoroaster talks about uniting all these symbols into the form of a Lion --- see Chaldean Oracles. *

*A similar Fire flashingly extending through the rushings of Air, or a Fire formless whence cometh the Image of a Voice, or even a flashing Light abounding, revolving, whirling forth, crying aloud. Also there is the vision of the fire-flashing Courser of Light, or also a Child, borne aloft on the shoulders of the Celestial Steed, fiery, or clothed with gold, or naked, or shooting with the bow shafts of Light, and standing on the shoulders of the horse; then if thy meditation prolongeth itself, thou shalt unite all these symbols into the Form of a Lion."

Anna Kingsford calls him Adonai (Clothed with the Sun). Buddhists call him Adi-Buddha --- (says H. P. B.)

The Bhagavad-Gita calls him Vishnu (chapter xi.).

The Yi King calls him "The Great Person."

The Qabalah calls him Jechidah. *

We also get metaphysical analysis of His nature, deeper and deeper according to the subtlety of the writer; for this vision --- it is all one same phenomenon, variously coloured by our varying Ruachs *

* Ruach: the third form, the Mind, the Reasoning Power, that which possesses the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

--- is, I believe, the first and the last of all Spiritual Experience. For though He is attributed to Malkuth, *

* Malkuth: the tenth Sephira.

and the Door of the Path of His overshadowing, He is also in Kether (Kether is in Malkuth and Malkuth in Kether --- "as above, so beneath"), and the End of the "Path of the Wise" is identity with Him.

So that while he is the Holy Guardian Angel, He is also Hua *

*The supreme and secret title of Kether.

and the Tao.*

* The great extreme of the Yi King.

For since Intra Nobis Regnum deI *

* I.N.R.I.

all things are in Ourself, and all Spiritual Experience is a more of less complete Revelation of Him.

Yet it is only in the Middle Pillar*

*Or "Mildness," the Pillar on the right being that of "Mercy," and that on the left "Justice." These refer to the Qabalistic Tree of Life.

that His manifestation is in any way perfect.

The Augoedes invocation is the whole thing. Only it is so difficult; one goes along through all the fifty gates of Binah *

* Binah: the third Sephira, the Understanding. She is the Supernal Mother, as distinguished from Malkuth, the Inferior Mother. (Nun) is attributed to the Understanding; its value is 50. Vide "The Book of Concealed Mystery," sect. 40.

at once, more or less illuminated, more or less deluded. But the First and the Last is this Augoeides Invocation.
 

cardlady22

This is probably superficial, or corny . . . but I'm playing with the scenes of "Impression" from Anne McCaffrey's Pern books. The candidates are on the Hatching Sands waiting for their dragonet to "choose" them. Or at least, that is what it appears to be from the viewpoint of the non-talented audience.

But, we are choosing each other. Choosing to go through the terrible process of bonding with a being we can never understand. What could he/it possibly gain from relationship with an insignificant creature like me?
. . . until his mind touches mine and we take that leap into the "heavens" which transforms my view of EVERYTHING on every level.
 

Grigori

cardlady22 said:
This is probably superficial, or corny . . . but I'm playing with the scenes of "Impression" from Anne McCaffrey's Pern books. The candidates are on the Hatching Sands waiting for their dragonet to "choose" them. Or at least, that is what it appears to be from the viewpoint of the non-talented audience.

I don't think its corny at all. I was also thinking of the Eragon novel, and the Golden Compass. Acutally now that I'm typing this, I'm also remembering the Dino-riders cartoon I watched when I was little, which had an interesting variation; the good-guys bonding with their dinosaur companion telepathically (by communication), the bad-guys using technology to force the dinosaurs compliance. hmmm will be thinking about that for a little while :D

Its interesting how many cultural references there are to this idea, of an intermediary creature who links with the human, and initiates a process of the human becoming something special, or a superhero. I s'pose it the same formula as a lot of religions also, who have a personable figure that is the intermediary between us and the god/s (the difference being religions may have a 1 size fits all figure, and not an individual one for each person).

So this leads to the question, what does the HGA want from us? Why would the company of heaven be interested in unveiling themsleves at all? Do they want to participate in some kind of exchange with us, or are we forcing ourselves onto them?
 

cardlady22

similia said:
So this leads to the question, what does the HGA want from us? Why would the company of heaven be interested in unveiling themsleves at all? Do they want to participate in some kind of exchange with us, or are we forcing ourselves onto them?

And this leads into the condemnation and fear component: What if THEY want to force themselves on us?

Trudi Canavan's Age of the Five trilogy has a priestess character who gains the ability to "eavesdrop" on the gods. Quite an interesting premise. And what is it about human beings that insists on fashioning the god(dess) in our own image with our own petty bickering and power-plays?

Another image is from Weis/Hickman's Sovereign Stone trilogy (Well of Darkness, pages 154,155) where the king is given a dream showing himself as an impatient child whose parents warn him, but then give him what he asks. He has to learn from and make the best use of what he has invoked.
 

Aeon418

similia said:
So this leads to the question, what does the HGA want from us? Why would the company of heaven be interested in unveiling themsleves at all? Do they want to participate in some kind of exchange with us, or are we forcing ourselves onto them?
One of the age old problems with conventional views of God is why does an all knowing, all seeing, all powerful deity bother to do anything at all? It can't learn anything because it already knows everything. There's nothing new to see because it's already seen all there is to see. And why bother doing anything with all that power when you already know what's going to happen anyway. Can you imagine anything more boring? Yet it's a problem that mainstream religion grapples with to this day. Various ingenious intellectual fudges have been set up over the centuries to get around this little problem. None of them stand up to close scrutiny.

How can the perfect Infinite explore itself and it's own nature? Experience it's own infinite possibilities? (Note the big difference between Infinite Possibilities and Actual Experience) By manifesting in finite form, thereby giving rise to a unique point of view with it's own set of finite possibilities, none of which is possible in the infinite state. For the purposes of gathering experience a tool called the Ego is used. The Ego does not realise that it is part of the infinite. It is immersed in the illusion of seperate existence. This illusion is needed to make the whole thing work. But it has one big drawback. The Ego doesn't realise it's here for a purpose (True Will). Instead it follows it's own selfish instincts, which are all based on the illusion of seperateness. Instead of following the True Will, it follows anything that preserves it's illusory sense of self.

The HGA is the intermediary between the finite ego and the infinite. Part of it's job is to guide the stupid little ego into experiencing those things that it originally incarnated to experience. But the ego is like a petulant child. Because it doesn't see the big picture it will insist on doing what it Wants (in contrast to Wills) and if it doesn't get what it wants it blames the universe for being harsh and cruel and that God doesn't listen or care, etc., etc,.

The Great Work is in surrendering to the Will of the Angel, who sees a bigger picture. Sounds easy. It ain't. The egos grip is very strong. For the majority of people that grip is only released at the point of death. The purpose of the Great Work is to, metaphorically speaking, die while still living. Get the ego to take a back seat and follow the Will of the Angel.

Thou hast no right but to do thy will. ;)