Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law – Non-Fiction

Writer: Notes from the Editor of Magick (Book Four – Liber Aba) by Aleister Crowley

Subject: Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law

Link: Tumblr / 18.02.2023

Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law

This edition brings all four parts of Book 4 into one volume, as Aleister Crowley intended the work to be read as a whole. Each part complements the others in important ways. As might be expected of Crowley’s major life work, Book 4 is sweeping in scope and complex in parts; it exceeds the entire first volume of The Equinox in the sheer amount of information presented. The 1994 E.V. first one-volume edition was flawed by readability problems resulting from an attempt to fit the book to a physical format that was too small for its requirements. Crowley loved long discursive foot notes; a few are the length of short essays. These dictated certain typographic parameters that proved impractical in the smaller page size of the 1994 E.v. edition; the present edition has a larger page format to aid readability. The earlier edition was also marred by numerous typographical errors, although few passages had errors that affected comprehension. As against these problems, it restored dozens of lines of text inadvertently dropped in Crowley’s first editions.

Besides preserving and in some instances restoring the integrity of the text, the principal concern with this edition has been to provide a reliable, readable edition, with an editorial apparatus that simplifies the use of such a large and complex work.

This new edition differs from the 1994 E.V. edition in more than size and accuracy. The O.T.O. was able to purchase (at what is probably a record price for a Crowley manuscript) Crowley’s hand-corrected and an notated typescript for Part  Ill,  Magick in Theory and Practice (cited as TS2).  We have also been able to use Crowley’s corrected and annotated typescript for Part IV for the first time. These sources have yielded still more material inadvertently dropped from Crowley’s first editions; these latest additions are corrected silently in the text as cited in unnumbered endnotes.

The previous edition was prepared using an early original manuscript and two uncorrected typescripts for Part III, but only published editions and scanty marginalia for Parts I, II and IV, little of which was handled by Crowley. Such secondary source material suggested a cautious editorial approach. The 1994 E.v. edition is therefore a transitional text between Crowley’s first editions and the present edition. Variant readings and restored lacunre from manuscript and typescript were indicated in the previous edition by a system of sigla, ortextual markers. This system of markers has generally been dropped in this new edition, and readings confirmed in Crowley’s type scripts have been incorporated silently, including details not noted in the previous edition. Punctuation and capitalization have been greatly improved, and to some ex­ tent standardized, throughout the four parts. Important variant readings are noted in the end notes in unnumbered notes keyed to the page number to which they refer.  ~ [Editor] Hymenaeus Beta.

So why are unpublished notes and materials from Crowley for Magick Book IV so interesting

Crowley unequivocally identifies his Holy Guardian Angel with Sothis (Sirius), or Set­ Isis:

“Aiwaz is not a mere formula, like many Angelic names, but it is the true, most ancient name of the God of the Yezidi, and thus returns to the highest antiquity.  Our work is therefore historically authentic; the rediscovery of the Sumerian tradition. I have italicized the last dozen words because they form the crux of Crowley’s system, without which it is both incomprehensible and unfathomable; incomprehensible in its magical significance for the present magical revival, and unfathomable without the key supplied by the Sumerian tradition which involved the worship of Shaitan, the astronomical vehicle of which was Sirius.”

Crowley, speaking for The Beast 666, declares that:

“Aiwaz solar-phallic -hermetic Lucifer – is His (i.e. the Beast’s) own Holy Guardian Angel, and The Devil, Satan, or Hadit, of our particular unit of the Starry Universe. This serpent, Satan, is not the enemy of Man, but He who made Gods of our race, knowing Good and Evil; He bade Know Thyself and taught Initiation. He is The Devil of the Book of Thoth, and his emblem is Baphomet, the Androgyne who is the hieroglyph of arcane perfection. The number of his Atu (Key) is XV, which is Yod He,3 the Monogram of the Eten1al, the Father one which the Mother, the Virgin Seed one with all-containing Space. He is therefore Life, and Love. But moreover his letter is Ayin, the Eye; he is Light, and his Zodiacal image is Capricornus, that leaping goat whose attribute is Liberty.” ~ 1972 in Kenneth Grant’s Magical Revival.

When we [Harms & Gonce] asked Peter Levenda, who edited the Simon Necronomicon, where the quote came from, he said it was taken from one of Kenneth Grant’s early books. Perhaps there is no greater Living scholar on the subject of Aleister Crowley than Kenneth Grant, who once served as Crowley’s secretary, and, thanks to his working relationship with Crowley literary executor, John Symond, has access to all of Crowley’s written works, both published and unpublished. If the “Sumerian Tradition” quote came from Grant, it could easily be from one of Crowley’s unpublished letters or magickal diaries, which only further underscores its insignificance.

Presumably, we are to believe that the Simon Necronomicon represents the ultimate grail of Crowley’s alleged quest, the supposed rediscovery of the Sumerian Tradition.

The introduction itself continuously attempts to link Lovecraft to Crowley on the “common soil” of Sumeria, even though ancient Sumer was a time and place.

Crowley is alluding to  the transition from the Æon of Isis, or  paganism, to the Æon of Osiris.  But did the Æon of Horus call for a restoration of the original tradition, or a new formula?  At Cefalu he identified Saturn with Set, Shaitan, or Satan, as epitomized in Atu XV of the Tarot, the trump entitled “The Devil”:

This “Devil” is called Satan or Shaitan, and regarded with horror by people who are ignorantof his formula, and, imagining themselvesto be evil, accuse Nature herself of their own phantasmal crime. Satan is Saturn, Set, Abrasax, Adad, Ado­nis, Artis, Adam, Adonai, etc. The most serious charge against him is only that he isthe Sun in theSouth.

Later in Part III he stresses that “the Devil does not exist,” terming it “a false name invented by the Black Brothers to imply a Unity in their ignorant muddle of dispersions.” But when discussing Saturn years later in The Book of Thoth, Crowley again refers to a lost tradition, and again distinguishes Set from Saturn:

It was only the corruption of the Tradition, the confusion with Set, and the Cult of the Dying God, misunderstood, deformed and distorted by the Black Lodge, that turned him into a senile and fiendish symbol

But later inthe same work, in his discussion of Atu XV, he states that:

Saturn, the ruler of the sign Capricornus, is Set the ass-headed god of the Egyptian deserts; he is the god of the south.The name refers co all gods containing these consonants, such as Shaitan, or Satan:·

He thus kept the resolve expressed in Book 4 to “let names stand as they are”:

“We have therefore no scruple in restoring the “ devil-worship” of such ideas as those which the laws of sound, andthe phenomena of speech and hearing, compel us to connect with the group of “Gods”whose names are based uponShT,or D, vocalized by the free breath A. For these Names imply the qualities of courage, frankness, energy, pride, power and triumph;they  are the  words which express the creative and paternal will.”

The basis for Crowley’s identification of Aiwass with Sumer is not apparent from the text of Book4, but is discussed elsewhere:

LXXVlil. The number of Aiwass, the Intelligence who communicated this Book. Having only hearing to guide me, I spelt it ON1’ N, LXXVill, refe rring it to Mezla, the Influence from Kether, which adds to the same number. But in An. XIV [1918] there came unto me mysteriously a Brother, ignorant of all this Work, who gave me the spelling which is XCIII, 93, the number of Thelema and Agape, which concentrates the Book itself in a symbol. Thus the Author secretly identified him­ self with his message.

Aiwaz is not (as I had supposed ) a mere formula, like many angelic names, but is the true most ancient name of the God of the Yezidis, and thus returns to the highest Antiquity.  Our work is therefore historically authentic, the rediscovery of the Sumerian Tradition. (Sumer is in Lower Mesopotamia, the earliest home of our race.)

Another Brother informs me that Aiwaz means “servitor” or “messenger,”espe­cially a “cup-bearer”; and this is in strict accordance with His function of logos:

Typhon is “The feminine aspect of Set; sometimes typified as the Mother of Set in her role of Goddess of the Seven Stars, of which Set is the Eighth.” ~ Kenneth Grant

“Typhon was the god in Greek mythology who when appearing before the other gods was so ugly he changed into a fire-eating monster; he waged a terrible war and was eventually killed by one of Zeus’ thunderbolts. Thus, Typhonian is synonymous with fire and force, also means the Opposer. Typhon’s Egyptian counterpart is Set or Seth.”

Welch: “We continued a tour of the low-ceilinged rooms with sloping floors and muddied piles of valuable paintings, records, model trains, and books.  Copies of Man, Myth, and Magic [Note; Kenneth Grant was a contributing editor] lay around and a huge volume of the works of mystic Aleister Crowley.  In one room was a Mutoscope, a hand-cranked seaside peepshow featuring “a gentleman’s downfall”, involving a lissome lass wearing not unsexy 1926 underwear and a healthy smile. Parts of the house were freezing cold where central heating had not yet been deployed to combat the creeping river air.  But all held the warmth of personality – and a welcome return to traditional English eccentricity.“ 1970 February, 14 Melody Maker [Chris Welch]  “Jimmy Page: Paganini of the Seventies,” (February 14, 21, 28, 1970), pp. 17–18; 12; 10.

Does the solace you’ve achieved in any way spring from your reading Aleister Crowley? I read Crowley’s technical works. I read those a number of years back and still refer to them from time to time just because of his system. I read Magic In Theory And Practicewhen I was about 11 but it wasn’t for some years till I understood what it was about. Most of his stuff was unobtainable and by the time I was able to get hold of it I was able to understand more. The more I was able to obtain of his own, as opposed to what other people wrote about him, I realized he had a lot to say.

1976, October 12th – Zeus Of Zeppelin: An Interview with Jimmy Page Mick Houghton Circus Magazine