Gems from the Forums: Nuit and Hadit

Today’s “Gems” entry comes from a thread in which the original poster was confused about the symbol called “Hadit” in Thelema.

The poster’s question revolves around the fact that Hadit is in some senses “unmoved” and in other senses ever “going.” As the poster puts it: “Hadit is the ‘secret center’, the Hidden One, the distinctive ‘point of view.’ In buddhist and yogic practice, this is often referred to as ‘the witness,’ which is unbounded and unmodified by what it witnesses, and absolutely unmoved. Yet in Thelemic discussions, Hadit goes.”

In response to this interesting question, the poster got mostly unhelpful replies, including the ludicrous suggestion that Hadit is an “idea that transcends 4D space-time” and that we cannot “address Hadit adequately with such a logic that “relies on those finite definitions” of space and time.

Read on for my thoughts on this subject and my description of Nuit and Hadit.

George Carlin once commented that religion was the easiest class in school. “All you had to do,” he pointed out, “was suspend the logic and reasoning that all the other classes were trying to teach you.”

Of course, that’s a very accurate summary of one of the primary problems and dangers of the religious mindset in general – and occultism is only one manifestation of the religious mindset. This problem is also one of the reasons that arguing with the religious is often so frustrating and usually a waste of time. There’s no point in seriously engaging in conversation with people who just get to make shit up and to declare arbitrarily that logic doesn't apply to their pet beliefs.

It’s important to keep in mind that Nuit and Hadit are symbols. They’re not actual, honest-to-goodness entities, they’re not “intelligences,” and they’re most certainly not literal “gods.” They’re symbols. They mean, embody, and represent ideas.

So what ideas do they represent? Well, there’s not necessarily a “right” way to attribute ideas to these symbols. The best you can do is to be consistent in the attributions. Seriously arguing about it or trying to figure out the “right” attributions or trying to resolve perceived incongruities from being able to attribute apparently contradictory things to the same symbol is, at the end of the day, about as productive as seriously arguing how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.

With that in mind, I’ll give you a quick crash course on one way I like to use these symbols. Nuit and Hadit are unmanifest, being potentials, not actuals. Nuit is a symbol for all possibilities, and Hadit is any and every potential point of view capable of experiencing some of those possibilities. [We might attribute Nuit to Qabalistic zero (the negative veils on the Tree of Life), where she signifies the flux of existence in which there are no thing (No-Thing) and in which there is endless potential for manifestation. Hadit would correspond to Kether in this particular scheme of attributions] The interaction of Nuit and Hadit – yeah, sure, their lovemaking, dancing, whatever – is what gives rise to phenomenal experience. Hadit doesn’t say that he’s the core of every star: he says that he’s in the core of every star (read II:6 carefully). He’s the blueprint on which each “True Self” (Ra-Hoor-Khuit or “Holy Guardian Angel,” if you will) is built, the ubiquitous kernel at the center of each person’s Self. He’s the basis for the individuality that gets “clothed” with self-consciousness in order to have experience.

Hadit is motion – in that he inspires the Self, inside which he resides, to constant experience/change – but he is also perfect stillness in the sense of being apart from that experience and, in a very real way, “untouchable” by that experience he inspires. Hence, “she shall be known & I never.”

“I am alone: there is no God where I am.”

“Even as the diamond shall glow red for the rose, and green for the rose-leaf; so shalt thou abide apart from the Impressions.”

Etc., etc.

For further insights, it’s worth studying the Book of Lies 17 (“The Swan”: “In all the Universe this Swan alone is motionless; it seems to move, as the Sun seems to move; such is the weakness of our sight”), the 0=2 formula, the notion of change and stability being identical (see the Tree of Life diagram for an image of the way that the balance of – and ultimate identity of – change and stability “produce” manifest experience in Malkuth), and the concept of opposites containing themselves above the Abyss.

Altogether, this topic is not some insoluble “Mystery” for which some higher type of logic is required. There is no higher type of logic. These are symbols, and – as Carlin joked another time – “I leave symbols to the symbol-minded."