On first glance, the ritual looks something like a “Thelemicized” version of the Supreme (aka Greater) Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram. On deeper inspection, this ritual is an enactment of Thelemic cosmology that functions by dramatizing the LAShTAL formula. It thus expands and deepens the Supreme Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram as the Star Ruby does the LBRP.
The ritual is a symbolic means of saturating one’s consciousness in a “Thelemic” view of the world, as summarized in the word LAShTAL. It thus indeed “invoke[s] the Energies of the Aeon of Horus” in the truest sense of those words. No supernatural energies are stirred by this ritual: as in the LBRP and Star Ruby, the mechanism and effects are purely psychological. As Crowley put it in Magick in Theory and Practice, “The sincere student will discover, behind the symbolic technicalities of this book [i.e. behind the symbols of ritual magick], a practical method of making himself a Magician. The processes described will enable him to discriminate between what he actually is, and what he has fondly imagined himself to be.”
In what follows I examine the performance and function of Liber V by reading it against the essay Crowley appended to it.
You should consider reading my articles on the LBRP and the Star Ruby as preliminaries to this article.
If you intend to perform Liber V, I recommend a solid grounding in the standard pentagram rituals first and some significant experience with invoking.
Read on for more.
Invocation
Before examining Liber V in depth, we should say a few words about invocation. What does it mean to “invoke” a force? What does it mean, specifically, to invoke the “Energies of the Aeon of Horus”?
Over at the Temple of Thelema Forums, Jim Eshelman has employed a useful metaphor for invocation that I’m going to blatantly steal (and then develop). Invoking is like tuning a radio: the rituals “tune” the practitioner into certain “frequencies.” Banishing essentially “resets” the dial to zero: one begins by banishing in order to establish a neutral state of mind, and then one invokes to “tune” the mind to a particular frequency, and then one concludes the rite by banishing again so that the practitioner doesn’t go wandering around “tuned in” to those frequencies in day-to-day life.
But what exactly does that metaphor mean?
What does it mean to be “tuned in” and what are these “frequencies”? In order
to explain what invoking entails, I’m going to use a common experiences as a
concrete example.
Have you ever decided to buy a car and
then selected one you liked and started researching it? (Even if you haven’t,
you’ve probably been in a situation where you start learning a lot about a
particular new thing, so you can kind of relate to what I’m going to say here)
What tends to happen is somewhat remarkable: you start seeing that model of car
everywhere. You see it every day on
the road. You see it in every single parking lot. You see it in TV shows, you
hear about it in conversations that strangers are having in front of you when
you’re waiting on a line, you start seeing and hearing dozens of little things
indirectly related to it all over the
place. And you start to wonder what the hell is happening. Have you
summoned multiple references to this car into your life just by studying it?
The answer, of course, is no. That car has
always been common. You’re just noticing it
now, where you used to not notice it at all. The reason that you’re noticing it
now is that you’re “tuned in” to the “frequency” of that particular kind of
car. You’re viewing reality through a new lens. We might even say, in a sense –
to put it in a kind of flowery way – you’ve performed a very minor “invocation”
of this particular car.
When you “invoke” an element or a planet,
you’re doing something similar. You’re impressing on your mind the idea that
you’re going to start paying attention to things associated with the invoked
force. For example, invoking earth tends to make one more aware of the physical
world and the body. Invoking water tends to make one more aware of the
emotions, etc.
Standard magical practice is to invoke a
force associated with a goal that one has and then build up a large amount of
energy (say, by means of the middle pillar ritual). You get yourself worked up
into a state where you’re focused on the goal and in tune with the means of
achieving it, and then you use your imagination to (pretend to) “imbue” a
talisman with the “energy.” [While you’re doing it, you deliberately try to
forget that this is make believe, and you throw yourself into the performance
as much as possible, just like an actor does when on stage] Then you perform a
banishing to “detune” yourself from the forces and go back to your normal
consciousness, but you carry the talisman with you as a reminder of that state
when you were hopped up on energy and convincing yourself that you were a
powerful magician causing the result you want to come to pass.
[Please note: this process does indeed
work, but it is entirely useless without a “magical link.” Making a talisman to
get you good grades won’t work unless you study. A talisman to get a job won’t
work unless you go out and look for one, etc. And if you’re going to object
that a person might as well just look for a job without bothering with the
silly make believe rituals, then sure, I agree with you in principle. But
remember that these rituals are symbolic representations of the process of
discovering and carrying out the Will. Preparing the ritual and considering the
“force” necessary to achieve the goal might help you with planning for the
regular, mundane actions that actually will lead to the goal. Also, getting
oneself “pumped” for achieving a goal and then carrying around a reminder of
that “pumped up” state can be inspiring to a lot of people and might actually
assist them in achieving the goal by making them more confident or removing
some of their worries. But it is true that, for the most part, thinking that
ceremonies like this will literally do anything more than be a cool piece of
performance art is awfully silly. Performing these rituals is mostly just for
fun.]
The elements and the planets represent
parts of the universe and the magician’s being. Insofar as the pentagram
represents Spirit (the True Self) ruling over the “elements,” it is a potent
symbol of the Great Work. A useful way to employ the pentagram rituals is to
use them to invoke a particular element and then “work” with it (meditate on
it, study passages in the Holy Books related to it, pay attention to it during
everyday life, make talismans to focus on goals in one’s everyday life associated
with that element, etc.). It is traditional to banish after these workings or
experiments.
It might be useful to use the LBRP every
day for a period of no less than three months (and ideally at least six months)
before moving on to the LIRP (same exact ritual with the exception of employing
a generic invoking pentagram at the
quarters [start from the top and go down to the left hip]). See how the LIRP
makes you feel in contrast, and then banish to close. [Some sources recommend
invoking at the beginning of the day and banishing at the close of the day;
other sources recommend the exact opposite (banish in the morning and invoke in
the evening); still others recommend to invoke and then banish always as part
of the same ceremony. Feel free to experiment and do whatever you like]
After another few months of working these
“generic” rituals, you might move on to working with each element in turn
(earth, air, water, fire), spending several weeks or months with each.
The idea here is to get the “feeling” of
each element, to build up each in your mind and “anchor” in your mind the
pentagram ritual associated with each one. This will be important for Liber V.
After a good deal of familiarity with each
element (and it might take you a year or two to work all the way through the
elements…there’s no reason to rush this), you’ll be ready for the Supreme
Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram (sometimes called the “Greater Invoking Ritual
of the Pentagram”). This ritual works – you guessed it – exactly like all the
other pentagram rituals, except that at each quarter you draw an invoking
pentagram of spirit (active for air and fire, passive for earth and water)
before drawing the invoking pentagram of the element assigned to each quarter.
The god-names are changed around a little too, and some versions add words from
the Enochian tablets or additional signs “drawn” onto the pentagrams.
The SIRP invokes all of the elements in
balance around you so that they may be ruled by Spirit. The whole thing is a
metaphor for KCHGA, and in fact you will note that Crowley’s Liber Samekh (the
ritual he used to obtain KCHGA) is basically an elaborated version of the SIRP.
If you’ve ever seen a Wiccan circle casting, it’s a similar idea: you go to
each of the quarters and invoke each element, one at a time.
I would recommend practicing the SIRP for
some time – or at least getting the standard pentagram rituals firmly impressed
on your mind – before moving on to Reguli. The reason is that Reguli turns the
standard pentagram rituals on their head, but that won’t mean very much to you
if you’re not familiar with the standard rituals.
Ideally, one would not be practicing
Reguli until one has had a great deal of familiarity with using the standard
pentagram rituals to invoke the four elements. You’re free to just jump right
into Reguli – it’s not going to bite or anything – but you’ll get a lot more
out of it if you anchor the traditional rituals into your psyche.
The
LAShTAL Forumla
Liber V vel Reguli must be understood in
terms of the LAShTAL formula, which is handily explained in the essay that
Crowley appends to the ritual.
The ideas contained in the LAShTAL formula
are a large part of what you will be “invoking” with Reguli (over and beyond
the four elements), so it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with it.
LAShTAL is the combination of three words:
LA, ShT, and AL. Each of those words sums to 31, which makes the whole word
equal 93, which associates it with Thelema and Agape (Will and Love, the two
key words of Thelema).
LA means “Not,” and is composed of Lamed (30)
and Aleph (1). Those letters signify the motion of 2 (L = the balance of
Adjustment, attributed to Lamed) into 0 (A = the pregnant void of the Fool,
attributed to Aleph). To understand the full significance of this point, you
must study the 0=2 formula. [See here, among other places]
AL means “All” or “God,” and is composed
of the same two letters arranged the other way. Zero becomes two.
ShT differs from LA and AL in that it is
not a state: it is the movement between the two states of LA and AL. It represents
the Force and Fire of Ra Hoor Khuit, the combination of spirit (Shin, fire) and
flesh (Teth, the phallus, lust).
We might associated LA and AL with Nuit
and Hadit, respectively. And like those deities, neither LA nor AL actually
exist, per se. Nuit and Hadit are possibilities, the grounds for experience,
and LA and AL represent the poles of possibility. The universe is not, in fact,
nothingness, nor is it a static fixture of things. It exists between these
states, constantly in flux as “things” (as defined by our perceptual faculties)
come in and out of existence.
LAShTAL summarizes this process. It
symbolizes the flux of existence, the marriage of matter and motion, of spirit
and matter, of absolutely nothing and absolutely everything (to produce something).
The whole word, then, dramatizes how Not
(LA) transforms (ShT) into All (AL). As a palindrome, it also suggests the
symmetry of existence and the endless recurrence. Nothing (L) becomes something
(A) which undergoes experience (ShT) to become a new something (A) which
eventually withdraws back into nothing (L) to begin the process over. There is
no fixed stopping point.
See Crowley’s description of the “pagan”
version of the Tetragrammaton in the Book of Thoth, which describes a similar
kind of circular pattern: the Father and Mother produce a Son and Daughter. The
Son sets the Daughter on the throne of the Mother, awakening the Father to
begin the process anew. This is a metaphor for the motion of the universe, and
for the path of initiation.
We might elucidate the meaning of LAShTAL
by contrasting it with VIAOV and NOX, covered in my essay on the Star Ruby. VIAOV
is the sign of the initiated person – Pan made fully human, the individual
realizing each event as the fulfillment of the True Will: the word dramatizes
the True Self (V) clothing itself in the illusion of individuality so that it
may grow from a seed (I) to an innocent person (A) to an enlightened person (O,
the devil), comprehending the balanced elements of existence (I and O)
equilibrated by the pentagram (A, much as Tipareth balances the points of the
Qabalistic Cross). Such a person also understands that at the end of the process,
the True Self (V) remains the same, having merely gained the knowledge of
experience by undergoing the process. In this manner, the individual at
Tipareth opens himself or herself to nonexistence, the destruction of the
(false) self: I (the self) becomes O (zero) by means of realization (A or AH!).
But the O also conceals NOX, the process of the next attainment, dying (N) even
to the true self to realize a fuller zero (O) that is yet one with the flesh (X,
or the phallus). [NOX=210=2 reduced to unity and then to nothing]. LAShTAL is
the next level up, beyond VIAOV and beyond NOX: we might say that LAShTAL
dramatizes ideas that are similar to those depicted in the VIAOV formula, but
seen through a more impersonal lens. We begin not with something that the
individual (mis)takes for the True Self (V) but with complete Nothingness (L or
LA), we move into experience – not just the individual’s experience, but all
experience and flux, as Nothingness moves toward but never reaches a state of
static equilibrium, AL. The individual is but a tiny part of this entire
process.
In other words, VIAOV dramatizes the
individual realizing himself as a part of the cosmos. NOX symbolizes the
individual dissolving back into the cosmos. LAShTAL symbolizes the very cosmos
itself, the flux of existence of which the individual is part.
It is worth considering that 777 places
IAO at Tipareth and LAShTAL in the negative veils of the Tree of Life. We might
additionally attribute NOX to the sephiroth between Tipareth and Binah, in
accordance with the NOX signs. These formulae are thus all attributed to the
middle pillar, which – as I discussed in this essay can be seen as representing different perspectives on
the universe. If these formulae seem to share many similarities, it may be
because they are dramatizing the same thing as seen through different lenses.
[Note: 777 attributes IAO to Tipareth but
VIAOV to Chokmah. There is a topic here for readers to meditate on]
According to a post by Bill Heidrick
reproduced on Lashtal.com,
Lashtal is a “spelling variation on a term from regular Jewish religious
practice, not even limited to Kabbalah.”
Heidrick goes on to explain,
La-stal is a qualifier for an action that is considered holy in itself, not done for merit or ulterior purpose. In other words: "For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect." -- AL I,44.
I don't know why Crowley used this particular spelling, but I conjecture that he either tried to reproduce the word phonetically or wanted to design a variant with letters arranged in a symbolic pattern. Although the spelling is decidedly different from Jewish usage, the sound is close enough and the meaning is obviously the same. Crowley attributes LASTAL to zero on the Key Scale of Liber 777 Revised. It is also characterized as the formula of the Abyss, as indeed it is -- to pass the Abyss, one must be as a babe, without attachment, taking every impression as a direct communication of the divine with the soul. Choronzon is the opposite in Crowley's usage, the tendency to attach mundane or personal meaning to such impressions.
As Heidrick puts it here, LAShTAL is the
formula of the method of crossing the abyss by refusing to discriminate between
any things – that is, refusing to see one thing as “better” than another – by
refusing to impose any higher meaning onto any impression.
This idea resonates with Crowley’s
statement of the function of the LAShTAL formula in his essay in Liber Reguli:
the word “declares that all somethings are equally shadows of Nothing, and
justifies Nothing in its futile folly of pretending that something is stable,
by making us aware of a method of Magick through the practice of which we may
partake in the pleasure of the process.”
After all, “all acts must be equal…existence
asserts the right to exist…the orgies of Bacchus and Pan are no less
sacramental than the Masses of Jesus…the scars of syphilis are sacred and
worthy of honour as much as the wounds of the martyrs of Mary.”
Given these facts, “evil” is not an actual
thing that “exists.” No thing is in itself “evil,” but it is only perceived
this way by a defect in our perception: “ the existence of "Evil" is
fatal to philosophy so long as it is supposed to be independent of conditions;
and to accustom the mind to "make no difference" between any two
ideas as such is to emancipate it from the thralldom of terror.”
Indeed, Crowley tells us that “evil” is in
fact “a mere term expressing some relation of haphazard hostility between
forces equally self-justified.” In other word, everything that is must be and
is justified in being what it is. We call things “evil” only to express hostility
between two of these equally self-justified things.
Crowley’s essay establishes LAShTAL as the
word that makes us “aware of a method of Magick” through which “we may partake
in the pleasure of the process” of the flux of existence (Nothing becoming
Something). This method is detailed in AL I:22: “Let there be no difference
made among you between any one thing & any other thing”
We might sum up the above discussion by
saying that while VIAOV symbolizes discovering the True Will, NOX symbolizes
the dissolving of the True Self through working that Will, and LAShTAL
symbolizes the realization of the flux of existence, permitting one to enjoy
the participation of the illusion of “self” in the illusion of “things,”
“taking my pleasure on earth among the living” without artificial prejudice.
The
Ritual Structure
The structure of Liber V follows that of
the standard pentagram rituals: drawing a cross, drawing and charging the
pentagrams, calling the guardians, and repeating the cross.
The ritual instructs the magician to take
the direction of Boleskine – Crowley’s house in Scotland – as “East” for the
ritual. The idea of “facing Boleskine” when doing this ritual is reminiscent of
the idea that Muslims face Mecca when reading their prayers, and it is based
around the (rather stupid) idea that there is some “magical current” that
emanates from Crowley’s house.
Personally, I’ve always found the idea of
facing Boleskine to be pretty silly. I just use the regular ol’ East. At times,
I have practiced this ritual by using the current location of the sun as “East”
(the idea being that the sun is the “true Boleskine,” the true (symbolic)
source of the Thelemic “current,” as much as I find the term “current” to be
ridiculous in this context).
The bottom line: face whichever direction
you like.
The
Hierophantic Cross
The ritual opens with the magician drawing
the hierophantic cross over his or her body. This cross includes not just the
middle pillar and path 19, but also paths 14 and 27.
Begin by knocking (or, alternatively,
ringing the bell) eleven times (in a set of 1-3-3-3-1). If you have a physical
altar, you can wrap your knuckles against it. If not, wrap them against your
thigh.
This series of knocks adds up to eleven,
the number of magick (and the Lust tarot card). By flanking the set with two
ones, the magician affirms that eleven is the scope of the ritual, and within
magick itself exists the three (the triads of the Tree of Life).
Then place your thumb between your index
and third fingers. The thumb is the finger attributed to the element of Spirit
and is associated with magical powers (there was once a rule in the Roman
Catholic Church that a man without a thumb could not be ordained priest…I guess
lacking a thumb interferes with the hocus pocus, eh?).
With your thumb between your index and
third fingers, draw a circle around your head and vibrate “Nuit.” This is the
negative veils on the Tree of Life (LA), also associated with the Sahashara
Chakra on the body. Draw a line down to your Muladhara Chakra and vibrate
“Hadit” (AL). Retrace the line to your chest (Anahata) and vibrate “Ra Hoor
Khuit” (ShT).
Then trace the paths:
Touch the forehead, mouth, and larynx.
Vibrate “Aiwass.” Then draw a line corresponding to the line from Sephirah 3
to 2 (path of the Empress). You associate this path with the Ajna and Vishuddha
Chakras (Forehead and throat) and with the mouth, since Aiwass is the messenger
of the New Aeon). On the Tree of Life, this would correspond with the Supernal
Triad.
Touch the center of the breast and the
solar plexus (Anahata and Manipura) and vibrate “Therion.” Then draw across the
breast a line from Sephirah 4 to 5 (path of Lust). On the Tree of Life, this
is the Actual Triad.
Touch the genitals and the perenium
(Svadistthana and Muladhara) and vibrate “Babalon.” Draw the line from 8 to 7 (path of the Tower).
On the Tree of Life, this is the Individual Triad.
Notice that you draw the paths from the
form sephirah to the motion sephirah of each triad on the Tree of Life. You’re
not just drawing the Tree of Life in your aura: you’re pushing the energy in
the direction of manifestation.
Notice also that the paths you trace are
attributed to Empress + Lust + Tower = Daleth + Teth + Peh = 4 + 9 + 80 = 93.
Between the poles of LAShTAL (the vertical
component) are the energies of the paths of the Tree of Life (the horizontal
component) that give rise to experience.
You then clasp your hands and vibrate the
following: LAShTAL! THELEMA! FIAOF! AGAPE! AUMGN!
Each of these words sums to 93. Each of
them is complicated enough to deserve its own essay. Their order suggests a
progression down the Tree of Life: LAShTAL declares the flux of the cosmos,
THELEMA is the appearance of the cosmic Will (at Chokmah), FIAOF declares the
individual’s True Self as a part of the cosmos and an echo of the cosmic Will
(at Tipareth), AGAPE is the mode by which the Self fulfills the Will
(destroying the illusion of separateness) (the directing of Will towards it goal
by means of the lower Sephiroth), and AUMGN seals the entire process with a
variant of “Amen” that affirms the four elements in harmony (A, birth
symbolized by the opening of the mouth; U, the joy of experience, oooooh; M,
the silence of death and returning to the tomb/womb; GN, the silent gnosis
underlying the entire process. The letters depict the progression of the sun
from dawn to noon to sunset to midnight, affirming that the sun is always
shining – an eternal Amen, an eternal Yes – beneath this apparent process).
These words together sum to 465: Knowledge
and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel (65) expressed through the 4
(elements, worlds). We might say that this is the AUMGN process expressed
through the four words that precede it.
The magician then strikes the battery
again, this time in a set of 3-5-3. The pentagram (5) is contained in 33, the
number of Baphomet (a symbol of the union of opposites). We might also say that
the True Self buried beneath the elements in Tipareth is suspended between two
symmetrical triads on the Tree of Life (the Supernal and Individual triads).
The
Pentagrams
Probably the most well-known feature of
this ritual is the fact that the pentagrams are drawn inverted (“averse”).
There are at least three reasons that have
been proposed for this feature:
One of the most common suggestions,
popularized by Lon Duquette in his book The
Magick of Thelema, is that Crowley intends the magician to be symbolically
standing upside down at the location
of the sun (with Aquarius in the North and Taurus in the East).
Another possibility is that the ritual
exists to break all the rules of the
Old Aeon. And since Old Aeon Orders were apprehensive about the averse
pentagram (and widdershins motion), Crowley built the whole ritual around the
actions that they were taught *not* to do in rituals. This idea is an extension
of the first: in the New Aeon, everything is turned on its head, and the old
rules no longer apply. The magician is not a terrestrial being, bound by the
old “rules” of working, but is a “star in space.” Up and Down are matters of
convenience, not absolute standards (just as the New Aeon has overturned ideas
of absolute values).
A third possibility is that the averse
pentagram is intended to valorize physical reality. The upright pentagram
traditionally symbolizes the control of Spirit over the physical world. The
averse pentagram is sometimes considered “evil” because it symbolically exalts
the physical world over the spiritual. In Thelemic terms, of course, there is
no “evil”: the upright pentagram represents the True Self in control over the
elements, and the averse pentagram emphasizes that the elements spring from
Spirit, that the True Self underlies the
elements. The upright and averse pentagram are, to a Thelemite, merely
different ways of conceptualizing the relationship between Spirit and the four
elements. And since this ritual invokes all of the elements in the process of
affirming a formula of "partake[ing] in the pleasure of the process" of manifestation, it seems
fitting to use the form of the pentagram that affirms physicality, confirming
that the physical world is not sundered from the spirit but that acts in the
physical world are spiritual acts.
This
is an important lesson: There is no spiritual act aside from physical acts.
The enjoyment of physical reality is the ultimate
spiritual sacrament. In fact, there are
no other spiritual sacraments. The word “spiritual,” in any other context,
is absolute bullshit.
Even the most high flung “spiritual”
trances are generated by your physical brain, and there is no trance that is
any more “spiritual” than a night of hanging out with your friends, an
afternoon of watching videos on YouTube,
or an evening of passionate lovemaking.
This idea really does turn the Old Aeon on
its head. The old way of conceiving of religion and spirituality was that it
was sundered from your everyday existence. That’s why religions have sacred
spaces and sacraments (sacra-ment, to make sacred): to demarcate their spaces
and practices from the secular world, to draw a line and say, “In here is where
the spiritual stuff happens.”
The New Aeon sweeps all of this aside. The
“circle” that you draw in this ritual is the
very bounds of the universe itself.
The pentagrams you draw affirm that Spirit underlies all of physical reality. The “powers” you invoke to guard the
circle are the fundamental forces of reality, the potential (LA, AL) and the
actual (ShT) that comprise the flux of Becoming.
This ritual seeks to make you aware of
this process and to help you enjoy it,
to “take [your] pleasure on the earth among the legions of the living.”
Proceed widdershins to the North, where
you draw an averse invoking pentagram of Air, point to the center, and vibrate “Nuit.” Visualize the
Star tarot card. Feel the rushing air around you, the rapid yet clear motion of
thoughts.
[Note: I prefer red pentagrams on a blue
background, much as in the Star Ruby. Experiment and see what colors you like]
“I am Omniscient, for naught exists for me
unless I know it.”
You are invoking the power of the mind,
the clear knowledge of the universe. You might hear the slow, clear sweeping motion
of air, and you might imagine that you have brought into the circle a new
energy that feels clear and crisp.
Notice that the widdershins motion means
that you are moving “with the sun” (the direction that the sun *actually* moves
in from the perspective of the earth).
Give the sign of Puella. The virgin eager
for contact with man. A pure mind ripe to know experience.
Proceed widdershins to the South, where
you draw an averse invoking pentagram of Fire and vibrate “Hadit.” Visualize
the winged disk from The Aeon tarot card. Feel the roaring flames around you,
the power of your True Will, which flashes like a flaming sword in your hand.
“I am Omnipotent, for naught occurs save
by Necessity, my soul's expression through my Will to be, to do, to suffer the
symbols of itself.”
You are invoking the power of your Will,
the motion of your star through the universe that you are learning to see with
increasing clarity.
Give the sign of Puer. The boy preparing
to ravish the girl, to create experience through his Will and thus impregnate
her.
Proceed widdershins to the East, where you
draw an averse invoking pentagram of Earth and vibrate “Therion.” Visualize the
Beast from the Lust tarot card. Feel the solid ground beneath your feet, the
bountiful earth yielding a harvest that stretches so far your imaginative
vision cannot take it all in.
This is the bounty of the physical world.
“I am Omnipresent, for naught exists where
I am not, who fashioned Space as a condition of my consciousness of myself, who
am the centre of all, and my circumference the frame of mine own fancy.”
You are invoking the path that the motion
of your Will produces, the direction that your star takes through the material
universe, enjoying its fruits. You might get a delicious taste in your mouth as
you perform this invocation.
Give the sign of Vir. The boy has
transformed into a Man, whose passionate union with the girl – and with reality
itself – makes her into a woman.
Proceed widdershins to the West, where you
draw an averse invoking pentagram of Water and vibrate “Babalon.” Visualize
Babalon from the Lust tarot card. Feel the waves breaking around you, spraying
you with mist. The ocean is so vast and so deep that you are a speck, a drop, a
single pearl.
You are invoking the objects (within that
material universe that you just affirmed) toward which your Will impels you.
The universe is thus complete.
“I am the All, for all that exists for me
is a necessary expression in thought of some tendency of my nature, and all my
thoughts are only the letters of my Name.
“I am the One, for all that I am is not
the absolute All, and all my all is mine and not another's; mine, who conceive
of others like myself in essence and truth, yet unlike in expression and
illusion.
“I am the None, for all that I am is the
imperfect image of the perfect; each partial phantom must perish in the clasp
of its counterpart, each form fulfil itself by finding its equated opposite,
and satisfying its need to be the Absolute by the attainment of annihilation.”
Give the sign of Mulier. The woman
rejoicing in the fullness of satisfaction. The universe is a symphony of
pleasure. All experience is a sacrament, a manifestation of Nothingness in
flux.
The instructions at this point tell the
magician to “break into the dance,” spiraling widdershins and spinning at each
quarter until you arrive at the center of the circle. You could omit this part
if you want and just circumambulate, especially if you don’t have the space for
a full spiral dance, but this is a fascinating addition to a pentagram ritual:
the magician dances through the
elements invoked, affirming a joy and beauty to the enjoyment of them.
It’s important to stress that this ritual
is as much about the body as it is about the mind or the “spirit.” The
invocations of the elements are grounded in the body with the NOX signs.
They’re affirmed with a spiraling dance. You should lose yourself in a spirit
of wild abandon as you twirl through the elements of existence. Strive to feel the force in each quarter, and feel
it intensify as you spin.
Return to the center and face East. Trace
the Mark of the Beast in the air before you and vibrate “Aiwass."
Draw the Invoking Hexagram of the Beast
(the unicursal hexagram starting from the top and moving down to the right for
the first move). This invokes the Sun (True Self, HGA).
Lower your hand and strike the earth (you
are bringing the energies “down” into practical manifestation)
Give the sign of Mater Triumphans (as if
nursing a child). Vibrate “Thelema.” The lovemaking of Nuit and Hadit,
expressed through the elements and their avatars Therion and Babalon, have
issued forth into you. The “child” you hold is the thing you call your Self,
and its dynamic aspect is Thelema.
Begin the spiral dance again, this time
moving deosil and spinning widdershins. Every time you pass the West, you bow,
point in the appropriate direction and invoke the guardians.
Calling
the Guardians
The “guardians” in this ritual are not
angelic beings but the constitutive forces of reality itself: LA, ShT, and AL.
During the spiral dance, the magician
invokes the powers of LA in the North and West (the traditional “feminine”
quarters) and invokes the powers of AL in the East and South (the traditional
“masculine” quarters).
Departing from standard pentagram rituals,
the areas above and below the magician (within the “bubble” of imaginary light
created by the ritual) are attributed to ShT.
In my experience, these “guardians” do not
take specific shape or form. They are “felt” as abstractions more than they are
“seen.” If you’d like, you might visualize the Hebrew letters (or use the
technique of building angelic shapes out of the letters in your imagination).
It’s less important what you visualize than what you feel.
The magician declares “Within me the
powers!” affirming that all of these forces are within the self. Remember that
the circle is the “aura” of the magician, the universe itself as it appears to
the magician’s subjective impressions. The magician is standing at the center
of the cosmos, in the middle of the LAShTAL formula. The individual emerges out
of this formula, and indeed there is no individual: there is only the formula.
“For about me flames my father’s face, the
star of force and fire!”
Aside from being a very nice-sounding line
(try speaking it aloud), these words affirm that the pentagrams are emblems of
“force and fire” (RHK) and are images of “my father’s face” (The Devil, Ayin, O
– see the discussion of VIAOV above). It is worth reading up on Baphomet, and
comprehending how this symbol sums up the balancing of opposites.
To the extent that the Devil is the O of
VIAOV, concluding the ritual with this statement re-orients the individual in
the formula of personal attainment, from which he or she may go forth to work
the True Will.
It’s been suggested that the F’s in the
sentence are really vav’s, which equal 6 in Hebrew. So “flames my father’s
face” would be 666. And the whole sentence, with 6 F’s would be 6x6=36.
The
Hierophantic Cross
Repeat the Hierophantic Cross to close the
ritual. Note that you will have to knock eleven times twice again, bringing the
total number of knocks in this ritual to 44, a number of magical power (11)
expressed through the 4 elements, a number of Ra-Hoor-Khuit, and the number of
the Mass of the Phoenix (a ritual of communion, wherein the magician affirms to
“take [his or her] pleasure on the earth among the legions of the living”)
Strange
Fears
Many years ago, Liber V vel Reguli was
part of my daily practice. I usually employed it as a daily invocation, sometimes
using it as a prelude to Samekh.
The ritual never gave me any problems. It
was, for all intents and purposes, a more potent and “Thelemicized” Supreme
Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram. Like its brother from another order, Liber
Reguli is useful for daily consecration of the self, as part of the process of
purifying the individual and awaiting the “indwelling of the Spirit” (see Erwin Hessle's Fundamentals of Thelemic Practice on the final, passive stage of Thelemic practice). Banishings
and consecrations symbolize the preparation of the individual, and the mental
states that they induce can be useful for carrying out the practices that they
represent: becoming aware of the thoughts and mental overlays upon reality,
perceiving reality more clearly, becoming more aware of the world outside of
one’s head (the world of the four elements and the constituent forces of
existence), and conceptualizing the world in broader ways (seeing from the
perspective of the cosmos, from the perspective of a “New Aeon” in which the
individual participates simultaneously in the All, None, One, and Two.
It was only after I had outgrown the
practice of these rituals that I came across the odd opinion that Reguli is
“dangerous” in some unspecified way.
A similar experience is reported by
“Xnoubis,” the operator of the old Thelemic discussion board BeastBay. He
describes how he too performed the ritual daily with no problem, but
many Thelemites have come to the opinion that performing Reguli every day is not a good idea.
[…]
The more I practiced Reguli, the more integrated I felt with parts of myself that had previously gone unnoticed. Overall, I found the experience to be settling and calming.
It wasn't until I moved to California that I heard the accepted wisdom: "What a work of mischief, to get Second Degrees performing Reguli every day!" In my adopted homeland, it seemed that most magicians who worked with Reguli, er, regularly, found it to be rapidly and profoundly disruptive.
These widespread fears of the ritual are
echoed by Jim Eshelman, who has demonstrated an almost pathological aversion to
discussing the ritual on his forums, and who claims that he suspects Reguli is
a “trap” of sorts that Crowley created: “I mostly think this was the ritual he
meant when he said he had planted in his writings a trap for the unwary to weed
out the foolish”
Other discussions online includes a post
by Michael Staley, who implies that performing Reguli caused a car to explode
nearby him:
During the last few weeks of practise, I found that violence was following me around, manifesting in people around me though never touching me personally. Towards the end of this period, one evening I was walking across the road, and heard a muffled explosion. I remember thinking at the time "Ah, the IRA bombing campaign has started early this year", then saw that a car in front of me had burst into flames from under its engine bonnet. At the same time, there was a sudden and strong sensation in my solar plexus, and I knew with absolute certainty that this event was connected with my daily working.
In reading these accounts – and the idea
that a ritual could “cause” something bad to occur – I’m reminded of the sort
of faulty thinking about causality suggested in the writings of other occultists. One such
comment that sticks out in my memory was made by Wiccan priestess Starhawk in
her seminal text The Spiral Dance.
She recounts that when she began to practice magick, her life started to fall
apart and she ended up packing up and moving. The way she presents this makes it
sound not only as if magick caused her
life to fall apart but as if magick normally
does this: “the ritual began a process of change and transformation,
working in the way magic often does: by making everything fall apart.”
Even at the time I first read this – which
was easily fifteen or sixteen years ago now – I could spot the fallacy: she was
assuming that the causality went in one direction, when it could equally be in
the other direction: perhaps starting to practice magick doesn’t cause a person’s life to fall apart;
perhaps a person wants to start to
practice magick because there are problems in his or her life, the sorts of
problems that might cause things to fall apart at any time.
It could, of course, also be a simple
coincidence.
Staley’s mistake seems to be of the same
kind. Violence is a part of the world, and there’s no reason to think that
practicing a ritual will make the world more
violent. But there’s every reason to think that practicing a ritual might
make one start to take greater notice of
violence and conflict, especially if one is *expecting* it to.
For what it’s worth, I’ve never had the
ritual make me more aware of violence and conflict: instead, my experience is
similar to Xnoubis’: I’ve found it to be powerful, moving, profound, and
peaceful in a passionate way. It awakens the appetites and makes one hungry for
experience, for the thrill of living.
I would encourage students not to be
afraid of performing this ritual. You can rest assured that waving your hands
around, chanting a bunch of funny words, and doing a dance in the privacy of
your attic will not cause anything
bad to happen to you. The worst that will happen is that you might feel kind of
silly if anyone ever sees you do it.
No comments:
Post a Comment