Liber Forty

 “I was turning 40 and thinking, Oh dear, I’m probably going to have one of those midlife crisis things which always just bore the hell out of everybody. So it would probably be better if, rather than just having a midlife crisis, I just went completely screaming mad and declared myself to be a magician.”[1]

–Alan Moore

“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”^[2]

The prophet Aleister Crowley once claimed to begin all his writing, even letters to his butcher,^[3] with this mantra. It is, in eleven words, the heart of Thelema. This affectation, of course, took, and so it’s also the first eleven words of anything written on the topic by a Thelemite. So it’s really the only place I can begin.

Since it’s a religion of wizards; there’s a lot of writing about Thelema, much of which will begin by telling you that this core tenet of Thelema is widely misunderstood to be a call for endless self-indulgence. It is an understandable anxiety, what with their prophet being perhaps best known for being an Old Guarde Edgelord. That said, I have yet to meet anyone with this misapprehension. I have, however, met a lot of people who don’t know what Thelema is in the first place. I’m not sure how much of an audience there is to be misunderstanding this vaguely obscure occult religion. But that’s fine; having one foot in the shadows is a necessary and important part of occult societies. Thelema, as a matter of principle, doesn’t evangelize, or reach out to new prospective members.

That’s not to say that the practice of regularly disavowing this “common misunderstanding” is meaningless, or an act that exclusively belies a community that is unaware of its obscurity. No, the phenomenon is perhaps best thought of as a cumulative banishing ritual—by the time you’re deep enough in esoteric nonsense to be reading the Law, you’ve already been told what it’s not.

So sure, I’ll do my part: Obviously, “do what thou wilt” doesn’t mean “yolo.” Wilt is the key here. The word “Thelema” itself is derived from the Classical Greek for “divine will,” and the work of the Thelemite is all about discovering and following one’s True Will—capital T capital W—the thing you are meant to be doing at a celestial level. Find your true spiritual calling and do whatever it takes to achieve it. There exists no moral or legal code that supersedes this mandate.

Given this, one must assume that Aleister Crowley’s True Will was to be a giant asshole.

No, really; stories to this effect abound. My favorite is how, in addition to being an occultist and poet, Crowley was an accomplished mountaineer, and in 1905 he and a small team made an attempt to summit Kangchenjunga^[4]—a feat that would not be achieved for another fifty years. The group had a spat over leadership and several of the climbers attempted a retreat. There was an accident, and Crowley, alone, stayed in his tent when their cries reached the camp. All four of his previous companions died. When writing to the newspaper the next morning, Crowley proclaimed that “a mountain ‘accident’ of this sort is one of the things for which I have no sympathy whatever.”

Our story starts a couple years before that, though; In 1903 the Great Beast^[5] would marry his friend’s sister, Rose Edith Kelly, to get her out of an arranged marriage.[6] During their honeymoon in Egypt Crowley decided that, no, actually he did want his lady’s affections. His plan to impress her was, of course, to invoke the Bornless One[7] in order to reveal the sylphs of the Great Pyramid. No sylphs made themselves known at that time, (or as Crowley put it in his notes,^[8] she was “unable or refused” to see them) but it’s a good bet that Kelly was impressed anyway; the invocation dropped her into a dreamlike trance from which she began to repeatedly mutter “They’re waiting for you.” This was Kelly’s first spark of clairvoyance, and the couple would spend the next weeks testing it.

She would pass these tests in ways that amazed and almost certainly annoyed Crowley who, speaking of himself in the third person, once wrote that he had “great experience with clairvoyants” and that he had made it a point of honor to dismiss those claiming to have the gift. “And here was a novice,” he fretted, “a woman who should never have been allowed outside a ballroom, speaking with the authority of God, and proving it by unhesitating correctness.” One slip, he said, and he’d have sent her right to hell.

But she did not slip and, despite having no prior knowledge of Egyptology, was able to give him detailed information about the god she would identify at the time as Horus, whom she was told Crowley had somehow offended, and ought to invoke.^[9] To be clear, Crowley was not exclusively testing her on things one might find on Horus’ Grindr bio. Much of the information she was giving him were his own, as yet untranscribed correlations. Nor was it, as Crowley felt the need to point out,^[10] that she simply had as subtle an understanding of magical forces as himself, as in one case she even succeeded at telling Crowley about his own prior interactions with the deity.

The bit that really blew him away was a trip to a museum in Cairo. He had taken her there and tasked her with finding an image of the god. He sneered, with “silent glee” as he notes in his journal, as she passed by several images of Horus, leading him upstairs. She pointed to a glass case in the distance, too far away to make out. “There,” she cried, “There he is!” directing him to a 26^th dynasty stèle with an image of Horus, the “the Stèle of Revealing,” bearing the exhibit number 666, which Crowley had long since taken for himself. This he took as a sign of great importance, and the Stèle of Revealing appears, in reproduction, on many modern Thelemic altars.

This whole story makes, to my mind, a much better case that Kelly was reading Crowley than Horus. As does the fact that it was Kelly who first communicated with the entity who would later dictate the sacred text of Thelema, Crowley’s personal Holy Guardian Angel, Aiwass. Which raises the obvious question, “his what now?”

The Holy Guardian Angel is a concept that predates Thelema, but is, in its current form, a critical one for the faith. As with much Western occult practice it’s a bit of Greek and Egyptian mysticism that took a joyride through Christian Gnosticism before finding its first solid footing in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn,[11] specifically the work of one of its founders, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, who was first a close friend then a mortal enemy of Crowley—a pattern one sees often reading about wizards, and even more often reading about Crowley.[12] Mathers translated The Book of Abramelin, an autobiography in letters purportedly from Abraham of Worms, a Jewish man who travels from Germany to Egypt and learns the magic of the Kabbalah. This is of obvious significance to the Golden Dawn, as Kabbalah^[13], conceptualized best as a map of consciousness, is foundational to ceremonial magic.

Mathers would later write a magical commentary on Abramelin, not at all confusingly titled The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. In it he describes the Holy Guardian Angel of Abramelin in the form closest to the one that will be adopted by Thelema; listen to your Holy Guardian Angel, follow his guidance, and he will direct your life toward serving God, your community, and your own spiritual needs, calling his guidance “Divine Wisdom and Sacred Magic.”^[14] In Thelema the concept shifts a little, and in doing so gains greater significance. You see, each of us has a personal Holy Guardian Angel^[15]—the divine part of ourselves that we leave behind when we manifest on earth. It is, in effect, the god-part of our soul.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s pick back up in 1904 with Crowley and Kelly only a few months after their clairvoyant honeymoon. On April 7, she tasked him with setting up their living room as a temple and gave him instructions for a ritual to perform. Over the next three days, he was to go in to the temple at noon and, for exactly one hour, write what he hears. He was smugly certain^[16] that his wife’s ritual broke too many of the established rules of magick,[17] but faithfully did as she instructed.

It worked, of course. It is literal voice he hears in his telling: a rich baritone that echoed in his heart as in much the same way as dread. The angel Aiwass spoke with an urgency, as if all too aware of the time limit, but still his voice was musical and expressive. Though several figures will, throughout the Book, take the first person, it is all heard from that same voice. Even Crowley’s own questions were asked silently, and narrated by Aiwass.^[18] Which is some impressively deep dissociation.^[19]

By 1:00pm on April 10^th Crowley had written down The Book of the Law; This would be the founding of Thelema.

The Book is set in three chapters, each nominally from the perspective of one of the religion’s three gods and exploring their mysteries, though as I mentioned, all were dictated by Aiwass as fast as Crowley could write the words down.[20] As a received, and largely unedited work,^[21] it meanders a bit.  Crowley was given strict instructions to change not so much as the style of the letters,^[22] and this kept him from “Crowley-fying the [whole] Book, and spoiling everything,”^[23] but it also meant that a stray thought or question might derail the conversation at any time, as did his several episodes of near sexual religious fervour.

On top of this, it’s just a very dense work. Aiwass spoke to Crowley in language steeped in the Occult, Egyptology, gematria, and Kabbalah. And we can’t forget the lettering games. For instance, the book opens on the goddess Nuit, who will periodically be referred to as Nu, and Nuith. I am told that these spelling differences are of great importance, a claim I am inclined to believe given Crowley’s penchant for such nonsense, but lucky for you it’s a subtle distinction well past the level of this study.^[24] Just know that the devoted find puns, riddles, and hidden symbolism on every page of that book, many of which are even plausible. Similar games are played with the other figures discussed—Hadit is, for instance, referred to as “Had!” in verse one, while Crowley himself is delightfully referred to in various ways throughout the text, causing much discussion about who, precisely, is being spoken to at any point: the prophet (whether as the Great Beast or just the man), the reader (be they mystic or Thelemite), or the general public, all of whom have Aiwass’ attention in turns.

The words and lettering games were all from the angel—the stops, however? Those he could do with as he pleased,^[25] meaning a very excitable version of the Book of the Law where every sentence ends with an exclamation point is, in fact, a legitimate version! My copy, however, is not a real Book of the Law, as it doesn’t include the handwritten text; He was instructed that the Book should always be printed with a facsimile of the original appended, so that we may each discover its hidden meanings. This is important, as Crowley is explicitly told not to worry his pretty little head about certain mysteries which were not simply his to solve. As if taunting him with this, the angel had Crowley draw a line across one page, saying it would be the key to some future wizard’s discovery.^[26]

Though the specific words used are important, he is also instructed that the book “shall be translated into all tongues.” ^[27] James Eshelman, who is both the current chancellor of the College of Thelema^[28]  and Prolocuter-general of the Temple of Thelema, wrote a verse-by-verse commentary on the Book^[29] in 1995. While he thinks its literal meaning is valid, he also takes a secondary meaning of the phrase “into all tongues,” saying that “each person must understand this Book in his or her own words, not those of another; but the original, regardless, is to be preserved undistorted,” ending, dramatically, with the declaration that “it is the catalyst that will ignite each person’s own Truth.”^[30] (I kinda love this guy, by the way. He’ll come back up, don’t worry.)

As for the mystery of the random line? If there actually is an intended solution, and it’s not just Aiwass fucking with generations of wizards from Crowley on down (I would not be the first to come to that conclusion), then it’s not known. Or rather, there as many answers as you’d like. “93”^[31] perhaps, or some other near memetic value. But let’s leave the wizard math^[32] alone for now and look into the text of the Book of the Law, or as it is more properly titled, Liber Legis.

The book itself, and chapter one in particular, is an initiation of sorts for the Thelemite. “The unveiling of the company of heaven,”^[33] as it were, this being both the gods as they make themselves known in this text, and humanity itself as the next verses explain. “Every man and every  woman is a star,” it tells us, and every number (or star in this context) is infinite and the same. Eshelman makes the claim that this is the first overt teaching of the Book, calling it the essence of Thelema.^[34] It is, of course, to be taken literally. Nuit, as the book will later reveal, can be understood as the infinite night sky, or as matter and space-time itself that can only be known by existing within it. Hadit, likewise, is “the manifestation of Nuit”—the motion and action through which we may experience her. So, every man and woman is a star, infinite, complete, and immeasurable; within each of us is the sublime. We come from within the goddess Nuit, as we later learn we will return to her in ecstasy when we die.^[35]

But the sun does not change the night sky—it only reveals—and we, too, are told to be Hadit—to be the motion and change that the gods cannot be for themselves. “The Khabs is in the Khu, not the Khu in the Khabs,”^[36] it goes on to say. This is the last verse on the first page of my printing of the Book of the Law, and there was certainly an “oh, fuck this” moment when I reached it—and I’m decidedly fond of wizard nonsense. But look; the gods speak to us all in the language we’ll understand, and this message was being given to a madman who was obsessed with ancient Egypt.

The line is, unfortunately, actually important so I’m going to break it down. Khabs translates to star, and is the star of the self, or one’s essential identity; khu, meanwhile, is the life force or soul—the part of you that creates your body and experiences. So what Aiwass is saying is that your true self is found within your manifestation, and not the other way around.  Where some faith paths ask the practitioner to look outward and seek a new state of being—Crowley, notably, was a Buddhist at the time of writing the Book—Thelema looks within.  Nuit instructs the reader to worship the Khabs, to really know yourself, and thus receive her light and her love.[37]

How will you know that you’ve found your true self, then? Crowley asks that very question: “Who am I, and what shall be the sign?”^[38] She replies that he knows who he is, in words he will later interpret as a riddle with the answer “666: The Great Beast”^[39] and that the sign shall be her ecstasy.

This ecstasy is also important. Nuit is essentially a goddess of the pleasures of existence, and as with the other two gods in the pantheon, is described alternately as an external force and an internal one. “I am above you and in you,” she tells us, and “my ecstasy is in yours. My joy is to see your joy.”^[40] Because of course it is—to be separated from the universe and unaware of your true self is unbearably lonely. Here we have the ultimate divine feminine, both lover and mother. She defines herself as “Heaven,” saying, “there is no other God than me, and my lord Hadit.”^[41] This shouldn’t be taken as a proscription against worshipping other gods, as eclectic polytheism is a norm amongst practitioners of Thelema, but rather as a statement of universalism. After all, what can exist outside of matter and motion?

She spends the rest of her hour with her prophet laying down the foundations of the faith, beginning with the creation myth of Thelema.^[42] As is often the case with creation myths, you can easily read it as the big bang: stars, fire, and the division of atoms. I suppose that is as valid as a more poetic rendering—after all, one of the structural values of Thelema is that each person should read and interpret the text on their own.[43] But it’s a pretty simple myth, only three poetic verses, and its shape is roughly alluded to by the existence of the Infinite Mother Sky herself. There is nothing and then it breathes. Zero is two; the motion itself is her beloved Hadit, the change through which reality can manifest.

Nuit divides herself into everything so that she may love and be loved. That is her True Will, if she can be said to have one. After “Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” the most quoted^[44] bit of scripture, is “love is the law, love under will.”^[45] This makes sense, as another way to think of will is as desire, and what is true desire if not love. So, love—true love—is the law, as long as it is love that is in pursuit of your True Will. As Eshelman says in his commentary on that verse, “There must be genuine and deep desire in order to complete this alchemy.”

These things really do comprise the bulk of the faith: grand love, and true will to guide you to it. She offers them to us as evidence of her, and swears on her own body^[46] that those who seek her mysteries^[47] through “the ordeals of her knowledge” will know the joy of her love to redeem them from pain.

If you’re wondering what these ‘ordeals’ are that she’s just mentioned out of nowhere, then rest assured so was Crowley. Indeed, Aiwass narrates him swooning^[48] as he asks, and Crowley, not one to disobey his own formalist conceits, writes that down too. She replies that she will not write the ordeals, the rituals will  only half be known, but names the book he was writing the Law, and says that Law shall be for all. Crowley, among his commentaries on the text, explained them like this: the ordeals she will not write, because the initiatory process of any individual aspirant is going to be a trial of the self,^[49] saying that “each man must go through a furnace of his own kindling.”^[50] The rituals have much the same tone—Crowley will publish the “Magical Formulae”^[51] of some in future publications, but many cannot be written in whole, as again, they will need to be discovered by the participant.

Those concerns she all but dismisses.^[52] To Nuit, the important part is the last one. It gets its own verse, after all. “This that thou writes is the threefold book of the Law.” We’re done playing, then; it’s time for proclamations and prophecy. Nuit sets Crowley the task of becoming her priest, telling him to learn and teach a new kind of magic built on eclectic study,^[53] and gives him instructions on the aesthetic concerns of her worship:^[54] wood resin perfumes, blue and gold, lush jewels, sex, love-songs, splendor, and drink. Do this all for her, she cries, for she loves you. She promises to “give unimaginable joys on earth: certainty, not faith, while in life, upon death; peace unutterable, rest, ecstasy; nor do I demand aught in sacrifice.”^[55] It is simply our joy she desires. There is but one sin in Thelema, and that is Restriction. Any action which impedes someone from achieving their True Will is forbidden. Likewise, the Thelemite has no right but to follow their will.^[56] “Do that,” she says, “and no other shall say nay. For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.^[57]

Thus ended the manifestation of Nuit, and the next afternoon, it was time for Aiwass to speak for Hadit. I described him before as motion, and he uses the word “life” for himself—he is both life and life-giving, and thus to know him is to know death. He is “the flame that burns in every heart of man, and in the core of every star,”^[58] Which, you have to remember that ‘star’ is an important word; Khabs, the essential self, is his home.^[59] Hadit is, in essence, the magic that animates us—the ego. Or, if you prefer, he is Original Sin—the knowledge that rips you away from the bliss of unity with God, so that you may know Her. “I am the Magician and the Exorcist,”^[60] he says, at the center of all, both creating and tearing down.  Where Nuit tells us to come unto her, with Hadit, that is a fool’s errand; he, by his nature, goes.

While Aiwass would lay out instructions for specific cult worship of both of the other gods in this pantheon, we are warned against worshiping Hadit himself. Whenever the topic comes up in this chapter, he describes worshiping Nuit instead, mirroring her early command to be Hadit.^[61] Crowley, in his commentaries, goes pretty hard on this point, saying “it is bad Magick to admit that one is other than One’s inmost self,”^[62] instead suggesting we experience life passionately and completely so as to know ourselves as distinct from our previous notions of such. This fits quite tidily with the Book’s notion of Will and Nuit’s focus on the pleasure of life. “Remember all ye that existence is pure joy; that all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass & are done; but there is that which remains,”^[63] he dictates.

He returns to this theme throughout the chapter, and it’s a point that’s clearly worth repeating. Eshelman calls it a “fundamental doctrine” of Thelema, writing that “here the God…who is Existence itself in any way we may conceive of such…tells us that Existence is pure joy. The rest is…the shadow play inevitably cast by so great a light.” ^[64] But it royally pissed off Crowley, who in 1904 was still a rationalist Buddhist who was “very convinced of the First Noble Truth: ‘Everything is Sorrow’”^[65]—so much so that Aiwass dedicates the next three verses to chastising him for pouting.^[66]

In spite of this, it took Crowley several years to fully accept the teachings in his own received work. Writing of himself in the third person in Equinox of the Gods he describes struggling against it, and turning away from it, even attempting to “destroy its value, to nullify the result,” a turn of phrase that is as fascinating as it is unexplained. But there was still much work to do that afternoon, and Aiwass was stronger^[67] than Crowley’s “fierce resentment”^[68] at being made to recant his beliefs; Hadit has little time for sorrow, or doubt.

In fact, he has a whole mini rant about the concept of “Because.” The Thelemite must know Hadit within themselves to gain his perfection,^[69] or, as Crowley puts it in his commentaries, “Beauty and strength come from doing one’s Will; you have only to look at any one who is doing it to recognize the glory of it.”^[70] But as Hadit explains, there’s risk to this for those who don’t understand the Law.^[71] “Do as thou wilt,” is universally a very broad moral mandate, but an individually precise one. When there are no laws beyond one’s Will, there are near infinite ways to fuck up. Overthinking and getting in your own way is an obvious one. James Eshelman words this beautifully, saying “If you cannot get past the limits of reason, and into actual spiritual perception, then you are stuck where you are.^[72] And so Hadit curses Because. “If Will stops and cries Why, invoking Because, then Will stops and does nought. If Power asks why, then is Power weakness.”^[73] Reason, too, is a lie; the rational is simply incompatible with pure Power and Will, and this is a religion of wizards.

So what do wizards need? Magic and rituals, obviously, which is where Hadit goes next, telling his people to rise up^[74] out of the Abyss[75] of doubt and awaken; there’s joy to be had. He instructs those who answer his call to perform rituals “rightly” and “with joy and beauty,” calling for “a feast every day in your hearts in the joy of [his] rapture” and every night “unto Nu, and the pleasure of uttermost delight.”^[76] As a basic standard for daily worship goes, you could do worse.

Of course, there are specific holidays laid out^[77] as well. “Rituals of the elements and feasts of the times,” feasts for the writing of the Book of the Law and other days of importance. There is a feast for birth, and a greater feast for death—which, remember, is to be celebrated. “There is no dread heareafter,” Hadit reminds us; there is only the “eternal ecstasy in the kisses of Nu.” Dread, sorrow, and fear only serve to pull the Thelemite further from him and into the black veil of illusion^[78] cast over the world. Hadit tells us not to pity the ‘fallen’^[79] who do not know themselves; if we are, as Nuit proposes, of the stars, and return to them, then there is no real possible failure—the star within is immortal and remains.

Once again, it all comes down to “Do what thou wilt,” and “Love under Will,” because the other obvious way to fuck those commands up is to be stuck in that illusion; the Thelemite is told to tear the veil down.[80] This veil can be read as the rules of morality that surround us; the things we call vices may well be in service to our Will. “The word of Sin is Restriction,”^[81] after all, and what does propriety serve if it does not serve you? Perhaps it is simply the veil cast over our own eyes that we must tear down in order to truly see our Will, and thus to know Hadit. The truth of one’s self, and the willingness to look at that Truth, is core to Thelema. Nothing can change one’s fundamental Nature, nor will good actions in this life offer a Star reincarnation into something greater. “He that is righteous shall be righteous still; he that is filthy shall be filthy still.”^[82] The specific language here rejects a caste system, but the core concept is still that every star is but what it is.

This is not to say that Thelema is a faith of rigid predeterminism, as we each may manifest our Will to a greater or lesser extent; it’s just that this is largely a concern for every individual alone. There are no Thelemic missionaries to show an aspirant their path, nor are there proscribed standards to uphold. “We are to do what we will, and leave others to do what they will. We are infinitely tolerant, save of intolerance,”^[83] as Crowley puts it in his commentaries. Hadit tells us that this work of self-discovery and improvement is never completed; good enough is never good enough, and the Thelemite should strive not to succeed but to exceed in the joy and rapture by which they shall know the Hidden One, Hadit.

Which, if you think about it, is an awful lot to get hit with before lunch. I can’t help but imagine Crowley standing in his apartment temple on that third afternoon with some trepidation. Remember, all this began with talk of Horus, whom he’d recently learned was ticked off with him, and while Hadit and Nuit are thick in each other’s stories, nothing Horus-shaped had yet appeared. Crowley’s emotional state has had a noticeable effect on the tone of the writing, as he points out in his own notes,^[84] and in that light, chapter three speaks to a fair amount of that supposed trepidation.

But before we meet that secret third thing, we need to talk about Aeons. There is a linear progression between these figures that I’ve not discussed so far. Largely it is a concept that comes up more deeply in study of Crowley’s later work, and does not appear as such in the text of Liber Legis. However, it is also important to understanding exactly what’s happening with Chapter three.

The Aeons are defined eras of human spiritual history. First is the Aeon of Isis,[85] representing Nuit: an idyllic cultural matriarchy characterized by a lunar mother goddess from whom all else is created. History turns, and the moon sets on the Aeon of Isis, to be replaced by the solar Aeon of Osiris—this one, predictably, representing Hadit, and marking a shift from nature worship to that of a patriarchal moral dualism. Crowley associates it with the resurrecting father god archetype found in figures like Jesus and Odin. This was an era of redemption through sacrifice, and the codification of esoteric knowledge. Finally, at least as of 1904,[86] comes the Aeon of Horus, heralded by the completion of the Book of the Law. Where Osiris was the sun—an explosive catalyst—Horus is the Light itself. This is an Aeon that called for transformation and individualism; “every man and every woman is a star,”^[87] and at the center of every star is god. Move beyond your constraints! Embody your True Will!

Another way to look at this is that chapter three of the Book of the Law is the birth of Horus himself,^[88] following the coupling of his parents in manic verse over the two afternoons prior. Of course, as with Isis and Osiris, who become the Thelemic figures Nuit and Hadit respectively, Horus goes by the name Ra-Hoor-Khuit.  The chapter marks a jarring change of tone into something much bloodier and aggressive than the two who came before. He introduces himself out of the gate as War and Vengence, a proclamation that Crowley mostly took literally,^[89] a prophecy of Great War to come.^[90]

This makes enough sense if you consider the original shape of Horus, where he is regularly in battle with Set to wrest control of Egypt from him and avenge his father, Osiris,^[91] but it’s hardly his only role, nor his primary one. Mostly he’s a protective god, as sky gods often are, known for light and healing. The Greeks associate him with Apollo, which is interesting, as it adds the implication of magic and prophecy to the mix, which are clearly also present in the Thelemic version of the figure. Even as Crowley delights in finding and manifesting confirmations of a strictly prophetic reading of chapter three, he ends his first commentary on the verses introducing Ra-Hoor-Khuit with, “Yet a mystical meaning is easy to find.”^[92] Because of course nothing in this book had a chance of being that straightforward.

Anyway, any attempt at an exclusively literalist reading of the chapter dies on the first word. All three chapters open with a verse in the same structure, introducing their main figure. Nuit and Hadit each call for the other like lovers with their first breath, each defining themself in terms of the other.^[93] But their son^[94] has no double, and opens instead with the magic word “Abrahadabra.”^[95] It is this reward^[96] he offers.

Crowley defines Abrahadabra with uncharacteristic concision^[97] as “the formula of the Aeon [of Horus], by which man may accomplish the Great Work” of achieving one’s True Will. Which is a bit circular, but I’ll give it to him. Other analyses of the word and its use as a key to secret magical mysteries exist, but usually they boil down to things like calculating it out to 418, the same number as Aiwass the Holy Guardian Angel,^[98] which to be fair is a reasonable key to Thelemic mysteries. It certainly solidifies the reading of Ra-Hoor-Khuit as a god of magic, and by extension, action.

So who is this protective magical god of Vengeance that ushered in the 20^th century, and what is his War if not just a mirror held to the years ahead? Eshelman, who finds the literalist/prophetic reading of the text as trite as I do boring, writes that “the social and spiritual impetus which is Horus demands real change and real transformation,”^[99] arguing that when we ignore or deny “powerful inner forces” they are certain to be externalized in destructive ways. It is our failure to know these forces and resistance to change that cause so much pain. Of course we see the negative ‘prophecies’ from the work cast onto our world, but they can also be seen simply as humanity’s inner needs being ignored and destructively externalized.

Eshelman supposes that “the true warrior spirit blended with a redemptive or healing god must require that the battlefield is within ourselves, and that there is no opponent save ourselves,” later making the point that this war is, in effect, the essence of the Great Work. Of course, he also frets that he’s simply rejecting this image of Horus out of a personal aesthetic distaste for cruelty and violence—a fair concern, and certainly one worth entertaining, although as his arguments are both solid from a Kabbalist perspective^[100] and lead to a more nuanced view of the figure, so I’m once again inclined to let him cook.

Also, I don’t think we can understate the degree to which Aleister Crowley the man, on day three of the single biggest magical experience of his pointedly magical life, was having an effect on the tone of this work. Even if you take the entirely credulous reading of the Book of the Law as actual prophecy—which is not remotely a necessary stance for even the most ardent Thelemite to take^[101]—the relationship between these gods and their chosen is a deeply intimate one. While I think the simplest analysis of Nuit is as a single goddess, Hadit, as we’ve discussed, lives within every star. Why would the light from your star be the same as the light from mine? Why would the God who defined the Aeon of individualism be the same God to all who would speak to him?

Ra-Hoor-Khuit goes on to either give bland and certainly useless martial advice[102] or a meditation on fortifying the ego against the war of attrition that is this life so that one may manifest their True Will.^[103] Like… I don’t know about you, but I know which book I think is more interesting. In any case, after busting in like a feral Kool-Aid man[104] it was time for Horus to lay out the shape of Thelemic worship, this being entirely a concern for and of Ra-Hoor-Khuit. Neither Hadit nor Nuit are to be worshipped as such; Hadit rejects the concept outright, and although one may see reflections of Nuit in any number of mother goddesses, she and Hadit are, as Crowley words it, “incommensurables and absolutes.”^[105] As far as the public is concerned Thelema should be considered a “Cult of the Sun,” with all the phallic energy one expects^[106] from such a thing.

The key phrase about that in the Book of the Law is that Ra-Hoor-Khuit should be the “visible object of worship,”^[107] which, like everything else in this faith, is deliciously loaded. On a surface level, of course he is; you don’t actually get more visible than the Sun. And while the depth of the matter is more nuanced, this certainly communicates something close enough to true for the general public. Thus, the party line, as it were, is that Thelema is “to be consistently declared and enacted as a solar religion.”^[108] But go a level deeper into the mysteries of Thelema^[109] and you begin to see Ra-Hoor-Khuit as a stand-in while the novice Thelemite works toward attaining “Knowledge and Conversation”[110] with their personal Holy Guardian Angel.

Regardless, he instructs that his image is to be set up in the East as the rising sun^[111]—the Golden Dawn. His idol, he says, in a verse^[112] I suspect to be directed at the reader rather than Crowley, is to be a specific one, procured specifically for this purpose—he gives a “you’ll know it when you see it” rather than a description. I believe Crowley was directed toward was a golden hawk statue,^[113] but the strong implication here is that it will be unique for each individual.

All other images of gods are to cluster around “to support Ra-Hoor-Khuit,” which I suppose you could take as direct instructions on the decoration of your altar.  We certainly do get some very specific instructions on that front, including Ra-Hoor-Khuit’s preferences in fragrance and a ranking of different kinds of blood (menstrual is best, obviously,[114] but in a pinch any blood, or even semen[115] will, apparently, do). He also provides the formula for magic blood cakes to be burnt on his open brass altar with silver or gold, or maybe eaten[116]. Also, there are cockroaches?^[117] Look, chapter three is wild. For my part, I prefer the reading that, freed of the cycle of resurrection and sacrifice characteristic of the Aeon of Osiris,^[118] the worship of any god is in service to the same source of divinity and thus exalts Ra-Hoor-Khuit.

But honestly, the specifics here don’t matter—Know thyself: it’s the sincere worship itself that is the pathway to a relationship with one’s Holy Guardian Angel. Each person’s Will is unique to them, and so too are their magics, rituals, and ordeals.^[119]  In which case, let’s just leave the convoluted prophecy and oddly bloody restatement of themes that constitutes the back half of chapter three and get into the weird-ass religion that sprung out of this weird-ass book.

All the canonical scripture of Thelema is written by or through Crowley,^[120] but it is not the man Crowley or his specific interpretations that are the important part. His commentaries and other works, while wildly interesting and useful in untangling the text of the Book of the Law, are not, in and of themselves, sacred. It is perfectly normalized within Thelema to disagree with Crowley’s, or anyone’s, interpretations of the work,^[121] and he was far from the last wizard to shape the faith as it is practiced today.

Take Jack Parsons; possible spy, and literal rocket scientist of some importance, who, in addition to his contributions to Thelema, was lightly cuckolded^[122] by his dear friend and magical partner, L. Ron. Hubbard.[123] Ever a bro, however, Hubbard assisted him on a set of rituals to conjure a new lover, into whom he would manifest the goddess Babalon,^[124] and take from her new prophecy.

This actually makes sense. It is perfectly reasonable to understand the gods of Thelema as power in the form of archetypes within which all other, more specific gods thrive. Horus is the god of the Aeon itself, not of a Thelemic utopia. His influence would, by its very form, be too broad for much else. A god of an Aeon is merely what powers the story of that Aeon; Parsons saw him as a “force [which] relates to fire, Mars, and the sun,” which is to say “to power, violence, and energy.” He goes on to say he has the undifferentiated judgement of a child, dependent on the guidance of those who invoke his power.

Make no mistake, this book is a manifesto. “Obviously,” he says, “[Horus’s] guidance now tends towards catastrophy.” And he’s not exactly wrong; this is 1946, and we’ve just gotten out of one war and are barrelling toward another, albeit a colder one.^[125] Of course he wanted to stare Crowley’s Aeon down and ask why it wasn’t good enough. His conclusion is that it comes down to shame and fear—our lack of understanding of our own natures, basically. So Babalon was going to break the impasse: a force of love, debauchery, and passion strong enough to balance Horus’s fiery will, and to burn out the last vestiges of Osirian morality.

Shockingly, their rituals seem to have worked, or at least Parsons “found a young woman answering the requirements” of his magic waiting for him at the appointed time. This was another occultist named Marjorie Cameron,^[126] and he would spend the next weeks with her doing elaborate sex magick rituals to bring about his goddess in the home he shared with his wife, Hubbard, and at least one other lodger. To be clear, Cameron was the only involved party not to know the purpose or scope of these rituals. Babalon was, however, summoned, and Cameron would continue to feel a connection to Babalon for the rest of her life. Literally every word of this is horror.

While he was doing all of that bullshit, Parsons wrote The Book of Babalon,^[127] or Liber 49,[128] which he styled as the fourth chapter of The Book of the Law, conjuring who else but Babalon^[129] to speak.

Whether or not his “fourth chapter” is a valid piece of prophecy,[130] or whether it being so makes it hold any weight in a Thelemic context is debated, although Crowley, who by 1946 already knew Hubbard to be a Con Man,^[131] was not impressed. “I get fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these goats” he once wrote,^[132] appending an apology to goats for the comparison. Eventually Hubbard, who was just extraordinarily bad at being a friend, betrayed Parsons to the tune of $50,000, his home, and his reputation. Parsons left their shared magical order in mild disgrace, calling it autocratic and describing it as “an excellent training school for adepts, but hardly an appropriate Order for the manifestation of Thelema.”^[133]

Which is very funny, to be clear.[134]  He was referring to the Ordo Templi Orientis (more commonly referred to as the O.T.O., as Ordo Templi Orientis is obnoxious to say).[135] It’s the hermetic order of which Crowley was already a member when he wrote the sacred text of Thelema. Now, I’m perfectly willing to kill a man on the hill that the O.T.O. is not, itself, the religion, but it has undeniably been subsumed by the faith.

It gets its start in 1895, with chemist and Freemason Carl Kellner,^[136] who, on a spiritual journey through Europe, had a revelation: a “key” to the complex symbolism used in Masonry that would open the mysteries of Nature and allow Freemasons of all degrees to better learn their craft. He and Theodor Reuss^[137] decide to found the Ordo Templi Orientis^[138] to teach this key, as well as various other occult practices.

Women were not technically barred from entry into the O.T.O., but as it was only open to Freemasons at its conception, this was a bit moot. They eventually go on to fix this oversight^[139] by literally buying the right to use some Masonic rites, and by 1903 they were an independent order. They describe themselves as drawing from several different schools of magic, and seek the unification of these teachings.

The copy of the Book of the Law on the O.T.O. website has a short introduction explaining that Nuit is the “total of possibilities of every kind,” and therefore Hadit is that which can experience those possibilities. Forget “every man and every woman is a star”; we’re the whole universe. It doesn’t get more unified than that, and so the O.T.O. was here for the Book of the Law^[140]—so much so that also they set up the Gnostic Catholic Church, or E.G.C.,^[141] which was founded in 1907 by a couple of bishops from a different Christian Gnostic church. The next year Reuss, using his rights to use Masonic rites along with what frankly reads like a series of bribes, ended up sole authority and glued it to the O.T.O. as was his wont.

In 1913, Crowley would use the name of the E.G.C. in The Gnostic Mass,^[142] a work containing a set of rituals, including the titular Gnostic Mass, describing what he called “the original and true pre-Christian Christianity.” It was, of course, Thelemic; all of Crowley’s work after writing the Book of the Law was.  In his autobiography^[143] he discusses the human need for ritual and the sublime, describing the Gnostic Mass as an attempt to “construct a ritual through which people might enter into ecstasy.”^[144]

It’s certainly flashy; 22 candles, a set of precisely placed magical tools, and the Book of the Law rest upon a veiled, crimson draped high altar in the east. There’s a fountain of water, and an upright tomb. The congregation files in, incense is lit, and the Creed of the Thelemic Gnostic Church[145]  is recited in unison. There’s music, children bearing yet more magical tools, and a Priestess with a sword tearing the veil off of the tomb to raise the Priest to life; he issues from within with a damn lance. He is consecrated, robed and crowned, while she is sat, naked, upon the High Altar—the “summit of the Earth.” She too is consecrated, and then veiled. It continues from there, with invocations of the gods, blessings of the elements, and a declaration of the Law. Finally, the Priest, then the People will take Communion, proclaiming that “there is no part of me that is not of the Gods,” and the final benediction is delivered before the Priest, Deacon, and children return to the tomb. It’s wall to wall bombast.

Of course, a few years later Reuss would cannibalize that, too, declaring his E.G.C.’s independence from the original, with himself in charge of it, while the O.T.O. officially became the eclectic Thelemic institution it is today. To be clear, even though this is all secret occult societies, and word games, this is a perfectly standard pagan church, if a high ceremony one, with the kind of structured membership you would expect given its origins. A lay member will need first to be Baptized with consecrated water and wine, accompanied either by their parents and godparents for a child, or by two confirmed member sponsors for an adult, wherein they will receive their Baptismal name. This is not symbolic of a washing away of sin, as Thelema rejects Original Sin, but simply a ritual to welcome the candidate into the community—a symbolic second birth “into the knowledge, fellowship and sanctuary” of the congregation “as a member of the Body of Nuit.”^[146]  It is a promise from the Church to protect their new probationary member and lead them toward their Will as they work toward Confirmation,^[147] which represents the first conscious manifestation of their True Will, wherein the candidate[148] will need to recite the Creed from memory.

While there are no such requirements for the congregation, all clergy roles require a minimum rank within the O.T.O., as the spiritual leaders of Thelema are responsible for a great deal of ritual work. At the very top of the structure is the Sovereign Patriarch or Matriarch—the Father or Mother of the Church.^[149] Everything the Church does—approval of rites and ceremonies, suspension of clerical status, and general guidelines—is run through them. The current Patriarch is 70-year-old writer and industrial musician^[150] William Breeze, Frater Superior Hymenaeus Beta.[151] He’s only the second person to take this role,^[152] having assumed it after Grady McMurtry^[153]—who had been appointed by Crowley himself^[154]—passed away in 1985. Under Breeze the O.T.O. grew in membership, opening new lodges in the US, Britain, and Australia, and he was able to conserve and legally protect significant Thelemic works, including a restoration of the original art from Crowley and Lady Frida Harris’s Thoth Tarot.[155]

Under the Patriarch is the Primarch, or the Presiding Bishop, responsible for national level O.T.O operations. The current Primate of the US is Sabazius X°,[156] whose significant accomplishments during his reign have mostly been important sounding management tasks: implementation of procedures, and business practices, improvement of training, hosting national conferences. That kind of thing.

Zoom in to individual churches and you get Bishops,^[157] with the authority to perform important rituals and represent the church within the context of O.T.O. events. A Bishop may further ordain and delegate authority to Priests, Priestesses, and Deacons, all of whom must attain certain levels within the O.T.O. Unofficially, the church also has Novitiates who are under their Bishop’s supervision in an apprenticeship of sorts for those who are preparing for ordination.

All that said, there are only four proper temples on this continent: two in California, one in New York City, and one up in Toronto. Beyond those, there are a few more O.T.O. lodges[158] that also perform the Gnostic Mass,[159] which will usually be open to the public at large.[160]

Literally every part of this faith is seemingly designed to make sure the only people who get involved really, and I mean really, want to be there. But it’s trivial to see the appeal. The ethos of individualism translates to one of radical acceptance, permitting all things that do not infringe on the rights of another to seek their True Will and move through the world unrestricted.  Which is, at the end of the day, a pretty solid ethical system. Crowley posited^[161] that if we removed all ‘false crime’ from the books and just let people live and thrive unrestricted according to their own Will, that ‘real crime’ would diminish. Which, idealistic as it may be, I’m not sure I can fault given that so much crime comes from a starting place of need.

Ultimately, for all its obscurity—indeed, because of its obscurity—Thelema a faith best summed up by the idea of deliberateness; perhaps even obsessive deliberateness. Figure out what your soul needs to do and go do it. That’s it. Literally. Do nothing that does not serve that need. But it’s your True Will, after all; why would you do anything else?^[162]

After all,

Love is the law, Love under Will.[163]

Footnotes

[1] Alan Moore, interview by Nisha Goplan for Entertainment Weekly, 2008

“Are you still practicing magic,” Goplan asks. “Well, yes,” Moore replies, “practice makes perfect.” He goes on to tell the story of announcing himself as a magician after, perhaps, too many beers on the night of his fortieth birthday party. Always one to stick to a whim (respect), he woke up the next morning and went about figuring out what a magician did.

“What does a magician do” is never a question I’ve felt the need to ask, but still I’d be hard pressed to try to deny the influence Moore has had on my present experience of the magical world. His uniquely magical work Unearthing is my favorite Moore, after all, and it was Moore’s obsession with Kabballah that first got me to sigh, roll up my sleeves, and get to work learning it—a decision that snowballed out until I was doing things like annotating my copy of The Book of Thoth, and making a ‘wand’ for the first time in my life (which never stops feeling absurd, even as I cannot argue with the result.)

At some point, my jokingly calling myself a wizard became a Truth. Moore conflates magic and art, saying that “the ultimate act of magic is to create something from nothing.” I think he’s dead wrong. Art doesn’t come from Magic—Magic comes from Art. These very words are my Will on the page, and they materially change the world as Concepts from beyond time and space manifest in black and white (or, well, black and peach).

The day I publish this essay is my fortieth birthday. It really just lined up that way. “Happy birthday, Self,” I said, “please enjoy this sudden deadline! It’s got mad poetry!” (I really can’t resist mad poetry.) though I’d been obsessive about the research once I realized what shape this essay had decided to take. Sometimes art pushes you to make it—that’s magic, too. I don’t need to declare my intention to become a magician; I’ve always been one. But the work involved in writing this essay materially changed what that means.

Welcome to my fortieth birthday party.

^[2] Aleister Crowley, Liber AL vel Legis I:40, 1904
Most of the quotations in this essay will be from Liber AL vel Legis, also called The Book of the Law, or basically any combination of Liber, Legis, and AL. Quotes will be noted as AL chapter:verse

^[3] Aleister Crowley, The Equinox, volume III, 1919
“I AM OFTEN ASKED why I begin my letters in this way. No matter whether I am writing to my lady or to my butcher, always I begin with these eleven words. Why, how else should I begin? What other greeting could be so glad? Look, brother, we are free! Rejoice with me, sister, there is no law beyond Do what thou wilt!”

^[4] No, really, it’s a wild story. You can read about it in detail in Fallen Giants, by Maurice Isserman and Stewart Angas Weaver.

^[5] Yes, he really went by this. Apparently, his mother used to call him “the Beast,” and he went with it. Honestly, I don’t know what she expected.

[6] The friend was not impressed with this move.

[7] This ritual is also called the Preliminary Invocation of the Geotia, and is an ancient Graeco-Egyptian spell intended to conjure the endless divine, but “Bornless One” sounds much more ridiculous. The ritual would eventually be adapted by Crowley and the Golden Dawn to serve Thelemic purposes, and remains a foundational script in Western Occult practices.

^[8] Extensive, poorly indexed notes and commentary on the events that led to his receiving AL can be found in The Equinox of the Gods which Crowley published in 1936.

^[9] From Equinox of the Gods

^[10] He’s just like this. All the time.

[11] If you’re not familiar with the Golden Dawn, due to being a sane and well-adjusted person or something, it was a British magical order founded by some freemasons in 1887, and dissolving in the early 1900s. Crowley was a member, and yes, of course he had a finger in its downfall.

[12] Being a Giant Asshole was his True Will, after all.

^[13] Kabbalah gets its origins in Jewish mysticism, as a way to contextualize the mysteries of their sacred texts. It has changed and shifted enough (including changing the standard spelling from Qabbalah) that Hermetic Kabbalah is its own category of study, and unavoidable if you want to understand literally anything a wizard has written.

^[14] [The Book Of The Sacred Magic Of Abramelin The Mage, Mathers, 1900]

“If thou shalt perfectly observe these rules, all the following Symbols and an infinitude of others will be granted unto thee by thy Holy Guardian Angel; thou thus living for the Honour and Glory of the True and only God, for thine own good, and that of thy neighbour. Let the Fear of God be ever before the eyes and the heart of him who shall possess this Divine Wisdom and Sacred Magic.”

^[15] or an HGA, because wizards love TLAs (three letter acronyms).

^[16] [Aleister Crowley, New Commentary, 1921, AL II:12]

“It is to be remembered that The Beast has agreed to follow the instructions communicated to Him only in order to show that ‘nothing would happen if you broke all the rules.’ Poor fool! The Way of Mastery is to break all the rules — but you have to know them perfectly before you can do this; otherwise you are not in a position to transcend them.”

[17] Magick with a k is the spelling preferred by many wizards, Crowley included, to distinguish “real magick” from parlor tricks.

^[18] [From Equinox of the Gods]

“The problem of the literary form of this Book is astonishingly complex; but the internal evidence of the sense is usually sufficient of make it clear, on inspection, as to who is speaking and who is being addressed.

There was, however, no actual voice audible save that of Aiwaz. Even my own remarks made silently were incorporated by him audibly, wherever such occur.”

^[19] I guess so much for showing Rose how she couldn’t go breaking all the established rules of magick.

[20] One guy calculated out the talking speed necessary to dictate each chapter of the book in an hour, and found that, despite Crowley’s descriptions of the voice’s urgency, he was actually speaking at a decidedly languid pace. On reflection, that’s obvious: Speaking is fast compared to a person’s average long-hand writing speed. This changes nothing, of course, as trance-time and clock-time are only passing aquaintances.

^[21] In truth a handful of things were changed from the original manuscript to the version that you can easily hold in your hands. One time, Aiwass uses a turn of phrase that Crowley thinks too obscure, and is given permission to translate it later. Another is a sentence simply added by one of his future Scarlet Women. A bit of shorthand allowed yet elsewhere. These changes are all dutifully logged in Equinox of the Gods.

^[22] [AL I:54] “Change not as much as the style of a letter; for behold! thou, o prophet, shalt not behold all these mysteries hidden therein.”

^[23] [From Equinox of the Gods]

^[24] Likewise, I won’t be nerding out at you about my favorite wizard’s theory about how the verses embody a repeating cycle of the Tree of Life. I promise it’s really cool, though.

^[25] [AL II:54] “Nor shall they who cry aloud their folly that thou meanest nought avail; thou shall reveal it: thou availest: they are the slaves of because: They are not of me. The stops as thou wilt; the letters? change them not in style or value!”

[26] Not mine, alas

^[27] [AL III:47] “This book shall be translated into all tongues: but always with the original in the writing of the Beast; for in the chance shape of the letters and their position to one another: in these are mysteries that no Beast shall divine. Let him not seek to try: but one cometh after him, whence I say not, who shall discover the Key of it all. Then this line drawn is a key: then this circle squared in its failure is a key also. And Abrahadabra. It shall be his child & that strangely. Let him not seek after this; for thereby alone can he fall from it.”

^[28] https://thelema.org/ “a modern mystery school,” to steal their tagline

^[29] You can find Eshelman’s commentary (and those of Crowley himself, Marcelo Motta, and the delightfully perplexing rewrite by The Scarlet Sisterhood) at www.thelemistas.org
I wish I could give you a better reference for these, but wizards, man… what are you gonna do?

^[30] [Eshelman, AL III:47]

^[31] You see, 93 means Will, so it is common in online Thelemic spaces to open with “93” as shorthand for the Law, rather than typing the whole thing out for, like, a reddit post.

^[32] “Wizard Math” is better known as gematria, and was a special interest of sorts for Crowley; all of his work is dripping with it. It is the practice of assigning numbers to the letters of a text or to a cipher of it and wiggling the arithmetic around to find hidden magical meanings based on other words you’ve assigned numbers to.
Yeah, I don’t know. Wizards, man.

^[33] [AL I:1-4]

“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.”

^[34] [James Eshelman on AL I:3] “This sentence is the real essence of Thelema. This is the fundamental teaching of The Book of the Law. Eight words; 28 letters. Every 93-key of our doctrine exists as a corollary of this, the first overt teaching of Liber Legis.”

^[35] [AL II:44] “Aye! feast! rejoice! there is no dread hereafter. There is the dissolution, and eternal ecstasy in the kisses of Nu.”

^[36] [AL I:8]

[37] She’ll love you either way, of course; the Universe asks for nothing in return for being.

^[38] [AL I:26] “Then saith the prophet and slave of the beauteous one: Who am I, and what shall be the sign? So she answered him, bending down, a lambent flame of blue, all-touching, all penetrant, her lovely hands upon the black earth, & her lithe body arched for love, and her soft feet not hurting the little flowers: Thou knowest! And the sign shall be my ecstasy, the consciousness of the continuity of existence, the omnipresence of my body.”

^[39] [From New Comment, AL I:26] “It is curious to note that ‘Thou knowest’ in Greek begins συγιγν — 666. The first six letters! The answer was thus given secretly, as a riddle, a far more convincing proof of Her knowledge than if a straightforward answer, ‘The Beast 666’ had been given, for this name or number could have been in the mind of the hearer.”

^[40] [AL I:13]

^[41] [AL I: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.”

^[42] [AL I:28-30]

“28.None, breathed the light, faint & faery, of the stars, and two.

29.For I am divided for love’s sake, for the chance of union.

30.This is the creation of the world, that the pain of division is as nothing, and the joy of dissolution all.”

[43] You wanna make a guess at how often that fact is the first answer to any question about the text?

^[44] Ok, so remember the footnote earlier about 93 meaning Will and thus the whole of the Law for like, greetings? Well, it also means love, so in truth, the standard writing set turns out to be a 93 to open and 93, 93/93 to close. The second set translating to “LOVE is the law, LOVE under Will.”

^[45] [AL I:57] “Invoke me under my stars! Love is the law, love under will. Nor let the fools mistake love; for there are love and love. There is the dove, and there is the serpent. Choose ye well! He, my prophet, hath chosen, knowing the law of the fortress, and the great mystery of the House of God.”

^[46] [AL I:31-32]

“31. For these fools of men and their woes care not thou at all! They feel little; what is, is balanced by weak joys; but ye are my chosen ones.

32. Obey my prophet! follow out the ordeals of my knowledge! seek me only! Then the joys of my love will redeem ye from all pain. This is so: I swear it by the vault of my body; by my sacred heart and tongue; by all I can give, by all I desire of ye all.”

^[47] Since you’re apparently committed enough to still be reading the footnotes, I guess that means you probably noticed that I left a pretty big decree out of that last one. Yes, she says to seek her mysteries, but only does so after telling the reader to obey her prophet. The obvious reading of this is Crowley, who has been at previous points of the book called her prophet, and he will be called this again, but its use is a bit more nuanced that that in this critical verse.

Crowley, in his “New Commentary,” from 1921, explains the line with “it is proper to obey The Beast, because His Law is pure Freedom, and He will give no command which is other than a Right Interpretation of this Freedom.” Sure, and again, the obvious read there is that Crowley, The Great Beast, wants you to obey him. This is undoubtedly true on a personal level, but back in verse 15 Nuit defines the “prince-priest the Beast” and his Scarlet Woman to whom power is given to bring the faith together. They are best understood as archetypes, or “titles of office,” as Crowley once worded it. Although I do not think any future person has taken the title, the word choice, and capitalization here was deliberate. Eshelman goes on to suggest that the prophet of Nu being referred to here is to each of us our own Holy Guardian Angel. “I am above you and in you” she tells us.

^[48] [AL I:33-35]

33. Then the priest fell into a deep trance or swoon, & said unto the Queen of Heaven; Write unto us the ordeals; write unto us the rituals; write unto us the law.
34. But she said: the ordeals I write not: the rituals shall be half known and half concealed: the Law is for all.
35. This that thou writest is the threefold book of Law.

^[49] [From New Commentary, AL I:34] “They are not, like the traditional ordeals, formal, or identical for all; the Candidate finds himself in circumstances which afford a real test of conduct, and compel him to discover his own nature, to become aware of himself by bringing his secret motives to the surface.”

^[50] So true, bestie.

^[51] [From New Commentary, AL I:34] “Some of the Rituals have been made accessible, that is, the Magical Formulae have been published. See “The Rites of Eleusis”, Energized Enthusiasm, Book 4, Part III, etc.”

^[52] Oh, you wanna know what fancy pants wizard James Eshelman has to say on this fascinating verse? “NOTES TO MYSELF: Does the original punctuation change the meaning?”

Thanks, bro.

^[53] [AL I:37-38]

“37. Also the mantras and spells; the obeah and the wanga; the work of the wand and the work of the sword; these he shall learn and teach.

38. He must teach; but he may make severe the ordeals.”

^[54] [AL I:59-61]

“59. My incense is of resinous woods & gums; and there is no blood therein: because of my hair the trees of Eternity.

60. My number is 11, as all their numbers who are of us. The Five Pointed Star, with a Circle in the Middle, & the circle is Red. My colour is black to the blind, but the blue & gold are seen of the seeing. Also I have asecret glory for them that love me.
61. But to love me is better than all things: if under the night stars in the desert thou presently burnest mine incense before me, invoking me with a pure heart, and the Serpent flame therein, thou shalt come a little to lie in my bosom. For one kiss wilt thou then be willing to give all; but whoso gives one particle of dust shall lose all in that hour. Ye shall gather goods and store of women and spices; ye shall wear rich jewels; ye shall exceed the nations of the earth in spendour & pride; but always in the love of me, and so shall ye come to my joy. I charge you earnestly to come before me in a single robe, and covered with a rich headdress. I love you! I yearn to you! Pale or purple, veiled or voluptuous, I who am all pleasure and purple, and drunkenness of the innermost sense, desire you. Put on the wings, and arouse the coiled splendour within you: come unto me!”

^[55] [AL I:58]

^[56] [AL I:42] “Let it be that state of manyhood bound and loathing. So with thy all; thou hast no right but to do thy will.”

^[57] [AL I:43-44]

^[58] [AL II:6]

^[59] [AL II:2] “Come! all ye, and learn the secret that hath not yet been revealed. I, Hadit, am the complement of Nu, my bride. I am not extended, and Khabs is the name of my House.”

^[60] [AL II:7] “I am the Magician and the Exorcist. I am the axle of the wheel, and the cube in the circle. “Come unto me” is a foolish word: for it is I that go.”

^[61] [AL I:6] “Be thou Hadit, my secret centre, my heart & my tongue!”

^[62] [From New Commentary, AL II:8] “It is therefore wrong to worship Hadit; one is to be Hadit, and worship Her. This is clear even from His instruction “To worship me” in verse 22 of this chapter. Confer, Cap.I, v.9. We are exhorted to offer ourselves unto Nuit, pilgrims to all her temples. It is bad Magick to admit that one is other than One’s inmost self. One should plunge passionately into every possible experience; by doing so one is purged of those personal prejudices which we took so stupidly for ourselves, though they prevented us from realizing our true Wills and from knowing our Names and Natures.”

^[63] [AL II:9]

^[64] [From Eshelman, AL II:9]

^[65] [From New Commentary, AL II:10]

^[66] But I mean, to be fair, whomst among us hasn’t been sassed by our personal guiding spirit?

^[67] [AL II:11] “I see thee hate the hand & the pen; but I am stronger.”

^[68] [From New Commentary, AL II:11] “I remember clearly enough the impulse to refuse to go on, and the fierce resentment at the refusal of my muscles to obey me. Reflect that I was being compelled to make an abject recantation of practically every article of my creed, and I had not even Cranmer’s excuse. I was proud of my personal prowess as a poet, hunter, and mountaineer of admittedly dauntless virility; yet I was being treated like a hypnotized imbecile, only worse, for I was perfectly aware of what I was doing.”

^[69] [AL II:20] “Beauty and strength, leaping laughter and delicious languor, force and fire, are of us.”

^[70] Ok, but the whole quote goes hard.

[New Commentary, AL II:20] “As soon as one realizes one’s self as Hadit, one obtains all His qualities. It is all a question of doing one’s Will. A flaming harlot, with red cap and sparkling eyes, her foot on the neck of a dead king, is just as much a star as her predecessor, simpering in his arms. But one must be a flaming harlot — one must let oneself go, whether one’s star be twin with that of Shelly, or of Blake, or of Titian, or of Beethoven. Beauty and strength come from doing one’s Will; you have only to look at any one who is doing it to recognize the glory of it.”

^[71] [AL II:27] “There is great danger in me; for who doth not understand these runes shall make a great miss. He shall fall down into the pit called Because, and there he shall perish with the dogs of Reason.”

^[72] [From Eshelman, AL II:27]

^[73] [AL II:30-31]

^[74] [AL II:34-35]

“34. But ye, o my people, rise up & awake!

35. Let the rituals be rightly performed with joy & beauty!”

[75] Oooh, that capital A. Is this a Kabballah thing? Oh, you bet.

^[76] [AL II:42-43]

^[77] see AL II:35-44 for these

^[78] [AL II:52] “There is a veil: that veil is black. It is the veil of the modest woman; it is the veil of sorrow, & the pall of death: this is none of me. Tear down that lying spectre of the centuries: veil not your vices in virtuous words: these vices are my service; ye do well, & I will reward you here and hereafter.”

^[79] [AL II:46-48]

“46. Dost thou fail? Art thou sorry? Is fear in thine heart?

47.Where I am these are not.

48.Pity not the fallen! I never knew them. I am not for them. I console not: I hate the consoled & the consoler.”

[80] An instruction taken literally in many Thelemic rites

^[81] [AL I:41] “The word of Sin is Restriction. O man! refuse not thy wife, if she will! O lover, if thou wilt, depart! There is no bond that can unite the divided but love: all else is a curse. Accursed! Accursed be it to the aeons! Hell.”

^[82] [AL II:57]

^[83] [From New Commentary, AL II:57] “Every Star has its own Nature, which is ‘Right’ for it. We are not to be missionaries, with ideal standards of dress and morals, and such hard-ideas. We are to do what we will, and leave others to do what they will. We are infinitely tolerant, save of intolerance.”

^[84] [From Equinox of the Gods on AL II:13] “The interruption seems to have added excitement to the discousre, for verse I4 is violent.”

[85] In the Book of Thoth, Crowley explains how the Aeon of Isis is connected to an Mediaeval “parthenogenetic system of explaining and ruling Nature,” wherein “all birth was considered an emanation, without male intervention, of the Mother- or Star-Goddess, Nuit.” Fortunately for men, everywhere, mystics invent semen around the same time as the advent of agriculture, and it’s all been downhill from there.

[86] The Aeon to follow Horus is that of Ma’at. Whether we are already in it, or if it looms ahead is a matter of debate.

^[87] [AL I:3]

^[88] Let me be real with you—this is me on my bullshit, and not some other wizard on theirs. Take that for what you will.

^[89] [Aleister Crowley, Old Commentary, 1912, AL III:1] “This whole books seems intended to be interpreted literally. It was so taken by the scribe at the time.

Yet a mystical meaning is easy to find. Exempli gratia; vv. 4-9.”

^[90] [New Commentary, AL III:3, in which Aleister Crowley goes off the rails.] “Comment seems hardly necessary. The Great War is a mere illustration of this text. The only nations which have suffered are those whose religion was Osirian, or, as they called it, Christian. The exception is Turkey, which foolishly abandoned the principles of Islam to form an unholy alliance with the Giaour. Abdul Hamid would never have made such an ass of himself as the degenerate gang of “Liberty and Progress”; may jakals defile the pyres of their dog fathers!”

^[91] Osiris gets better, but his penis was eaten by a fish, (or maybe a crab?) which I can’t imagine was his favorite thing to learn upon resurrection. Don’t worry, though, Isis makes him a new one.

^[92] [From Old Commentary, AL III:3]

^[93] [AL I:1] “Had! The Manifestation of Nuit.”

[AL II:1] “Nu! the hiding of Hadit.”

^[94] or “sun” followed by double wizard finger guns. No, really, it’s some Hermetic Kaballah bullshit. Tiphereth, the sphere of the Tree of Life where you’d find the divine archetype of “the son” hanging around is associated with the sun, and a revealing divine light.

^[95] [AL III:1] “Abrahadabra; the reward of Ra Hoor Khut.”

^[96] or re-ward followed by more wizard finger guns.

[From New Comment, AL III:1] “Observe firstly the word “reward”, which is to be compared with the words “hiding” and “manifestation” in the former chapters. To ‘re-ward’ is to ‘guard again’; this word Abrahadabra then is also to be considered as a Sentinel before the Fortress of the God.”

^[97] [From New Commentary, AL III:1] “The text may also be read as follows. Abrahadabra is the formula of the Aeon, by which man may accomplish the Great Work. This Formula is then the ‘reward’ given by the God, the largesse granted by Him on His accession to the Lordship of the Aeon, just as the INRI-IAO-LVX formula of attainment by way of Crucifixion was given by Osiris when he came to power in the last Aeon.”

^[98] That sure implies the magic that is Ra-Hoor-Khuit’s gift is connection with the HGA in the first place. Ugh, that’s so poetic it gives me cute aggression.

^[99] [From Eshelman, AL III:3] “However, I think it a serious blunder to presume war as a necessary consequence of the energies of Horus. These wars are a result of the failure and weakness of humanity in the birthing of this new Aeon. Perhaps “labor pains” were inevitable, and the tantrums of an unruly child to be expected. Yet infants are usually only unruly in this way if given painful provocation.

“The social and spiritual impetus which is Horus demands real change and real transformation. It is a certainty of the human constitution that if powerful inner forces are ignored or denied, these forces will exteriorize; and, not being consciously nurtured and directed, they will exteriorize in an immature and generally destructive fashion. It is only the ignorance of humanity, its failure to recognize these inner needs and forces, its stubborn and inertial resistance to real change, which has necessitated the pattern we have witnessed thus far — at least until about 1989 e.v.”

^[100] Alright, so… given that the words War and Vengence are capitalized, and the ‘style’ of the letters is noted as important, we can assume the words hold more than their surface meanings. You remember Tiphereth, the sphere of the Son archetype that emanates the light of the sun? With some Hebrew substitutions, and wizard math, you can equate War to that Light, with a “go big or go home” connotation.  Vengence, meanwhile, speaks the language of the sphere Geburah, which translates to “Severtity,” but in practice is more Strength, or stern, considered judgment. It’s definitely still a martial sphere, all Mars and fire, and one that suits Vengence as an active response.  So, think “War and Vengence” as Tiphereth and Geburah: “Light and Justice” but with “and I’ll fuck you up” amended.

^[101] Though I’ll admit being a little puzzled by the Thelemite who does not.

[102] Gods of war love to give useless advice. See the Hávámal for Odin’s instructions on houseguests and getting laid.

^[103] And man, if you like these footnotes, check out Eshelman’s commentary for AL III:4-9 for things like the precise dictionary definition of ‘dung’ and ‘island.’

[104] Which, I suppose, befits a god of stern action.

^[105] [From New Commentary, AL III:22] “There are to be no regular temples of Nuit and Hadit, for they are incommensurables and absolutes. Our religion therefore, for the People, is the Cult of the Sun, who is our particular star of the Body of Nuit, from whom, in the strictest scientific sense, come this earth, a chilled spark of Him, and all our Light and Life.”

^[106] For a good time* check out Alan Moore’s comic From Hell. There’s a scene in chapter four that talks about this exact phenomenon with breathtaking ease. Seriously, one of my favorite bits of comic writing.
*FSVO “good time”

^[107] [AL III:22] “The other images group around me to support me: let all be worshipped, for they shall cluster to exalt me. I am the visible object of worship; the others are secret; for the Beast & his Bride are they: and for the winners of the Ordeal x. What is this? Thou shalt know.”

^[108] [From Eshleman, AL III:22] “For the general populace — the public — our religion is to be consistently declared and enacted as a solar religion. This is the best and most suitable of blinds, for it is one that really communicates useful truth, summarizing the essential truthful doctrines of all faiths. But this is no longer a “rising and setting Sun” cult, but one centered upon the eternity of the Invisible Sun, the bright and beautiful Child of the Supernal Parents. The fact that there is a deeper mystery behind this — for example, that the Sun is but one example of a Star — may of course be apparent for those who know how to look. However, for the public, the Sun communicates the ideas much better.”

^[109] Or the mysteries of the Kabbalah, wherein Tiphereth, that sun sphere I keep bringing up, is the highest level of consciousness even most initiates are likely to be able to reach for guidance.

[110] Remember that Bornless One ritual from earlier? It’s most significant use in a modern Thelemic context is to achieve “Knowledge and Conversation” with the HGA. To see a script of this ritual geared to that purpose, see Crowley’s Liber Samekh, where he explains “the true aim of the Adept in this whole operation [is] to assimilate himself to his Angel by continual conscious communion. For his Angel is an intelligible image of his own true Will, to do which is the whole of the law of his Being.” It is the life’s work of a Thelemite.

^[111] Note the capital E on East here is how the word appears in the Book. Capital letters on random words is generally significant. In this case, it’s basically just “Such Tiphereth. Very Magic. Wow.”

^[112] [AL III:21] “Set up my image in the East: thou shalt buy thee an image which I will show thee, especial, not unlike the one thou knowest. And it shall be suddenly easy for thee to do this.”

^[113] The full text of Crowley’s Old Comment on this is simply “This was remarkably fulfilled,” only to have a proper existential crisis about the word “easy” in his New Comment, which is about the most relatable thing Aleister Crowley will ever do.

[114] “obviously”

[115] In his commentary on AL III:24, where the blood preferences are listed, one is “the fresh blood of a child,” which he emphatically clarifies is not baby’s blood, saying only “Given obligations I have taken, I can do nothing more (since others will read this) than say that it takes two to make a child.”

[116] [From Eshelman, AL III:25] “From experience I can say that, while [these Cakes of Light] smell bad in burning, they taste far better.”

^[117] Yeah, Idk. Wizards, man. See AL III:23-30

^[118] Oh man, if you want a massive Crowley rant about this, look at the essay for The Hanged Man in The Book of Thoth. Motherfucker completely rejects the premise of the card, and just goes off on the concept.

^[119] Crowley himself even ends the book with a personal suggestion against studying it too hard, presumably lest you get too enamored of rigid thinking. It is a patently ridiculous note that he and every other person who has decided to take Thelema seriously has disregarded in its entirety. Perhaps he just wanted to give the wizards to follow the opportunity for little a rebellion as a treat.

^[120] The Holy Books of Thelema are Crowley’s “class A” works, indicating that nothing, down to the letter, should be changed about them.  He did not consider himself to be the author of these works.

^[121] Explicitly encouraged, even.

^[122] Ok, so technically it was an open relationship, but the circumstances read more than a little coercive, so I stand by it.

[123] Yep, that Hubbard. This was before he founded Scientology.

^[124] Babalon (note the ‘a’ where you expect a ‘y’) is the ultimate Scarlet Woman, the goddess that is mirrored within the woman who holds the “office” on earth. Though she’s a relatively minor figure in Thelema, Crowley writes about her in The Vision and the Voice, published in the first volume of The Equinox in 1911.

^[125] And, you know, it’s not like current events are really disproving his theory.

^[126] This woman is fascinating in literally every story about her.

^[127] [Jack Parsons, The Book of Babalon, 1946. verse 60] “It is I, BABALON, ye fools, MY TIME is come, and this my book that my adept prepares is the book of BABALON.”

[128] Literally nothing has only one name.

^[129] In subsequent communications with the goddess she promises that she will absorb him into a living flame. True to her word, in 1952, Parsons would die in an explosion at his home laboratory.

[130] It’s not.

^[131] Capitalization Crowley’s. I decided not to change the style of the letter, as it were.

^[132] In a 6/14/1946 letter to future Head of the O.T.O. Grady McMurtry. And yes, he opened and closed the letter with the Law. He signed it in black ink: 666

^[133] I imagine he did a little mic drop when he wrote that.

[134] No one beefs like wizards, you know?

[135] and wizards do just love acronyms

^[136] The O.T.O. calls Kellner their “Spiritual Father” which, not gonna lie, is hilarious.

^[137] His wizard name was Frater Merlin. You really can’t beat that.

^[138] Its name was going to be Academia Masonica, which I think is a lot clearer as to the stated goals. Perhaps that’s why he changed it.

^[139] The Masons, however, are still a boy’s club. I was curious, so I did a little digging, and whether or not trans men are allowed to be Masons depends by location. Some say yes, but possibly only trans men who’ve had genital reconstruction surgery, however. The over whelming vibe was “oh, hell no.”

^[140] I imagine the fact that Crowley was clearly extremely charismatic helped, too. Man had unexplainable mojo.

^[141] The only thing wizards love more than acronyms is Latin. It stands for Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica.

^[142] Almost all of Crowley’s magical writing was titled “Liber” followed by a number. This work was actually titled Liber XV.

^[143] Aleister Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, 1969.

^[144] This checks out.

[145] [Aleister Crowley, Liber XV, 1918] “I believe in one secret and ineffable LORD; and in one Star in the company of Stars of whose fire we are created, and to which we shall return; and in one Father of Life, Mystery of Mystery, in His name CHAOS, the sole viceregent of the Sun upon Earth; and in one Air the nourisher of all that breaths.

And I believe in one Earth, the Mother of us all, and in one Womb wherein all men are begotten, and wherein they shall rest, Mystery of Mystery, in Her name BABALON.

And I believe in the Serpent and the Lion, Mystery of Mystery, in His name BAPHOMET.

And I believe in one Gnostic and Catholic Church of Light, Life, Love and Liberty, the Word of whose Law is THELEMA.

And I believe in the communion of Saints.

And, forasmuch as meat and drink are transmuted in us daily into spiritual substance, I believe in the Miracle of the Mass.

And I confess one Baptism of Wisdom whereby we accomplish the Miracle of Incarnation.

And I confess my life one, individual, and eternal that was, and is, and is to come.

AUMGN, AUMGN, AUMGN.”

^[146] From the suggested text of the Baptism ceremony.

^[147] The suggested script for these rituals can be found in the online archives of the Hermetic Library. They are stunning.

[148] While baptism can happen at eleven years, confirmation requires the candidate to have reached the age of puberty.

^[149] They will also be the Outer Head of the Order (O.H.O of O.T.O.)

^[150] No, really. Among other things, he was a member of Coil from 1997 to 2000.

[151] As a bishop, his title is Tau Silenus

^[152] Although he is the third Outer Head of the Church. Karl Germer, who spent some time in one of Hitler’s concentration camps for being a notable Thelemite, was Crowley’s immediate successor, but the role of Caliph had not yet been formed.

^[153] Who was Frater Superior Hymenaeus Alpha, obviously.  You gotta have a pope name, that’s just how this works.

^[154] Which, man that sure hits home how recent this whole thing is.

[155] Lady Frida Harris, like every other woman in these stories, is a complete badass.

[156] His rank in the O.T.O. is Rex Summus Santissimus, or Supreme and Holy King.

^[157] Bishops all take a Bishop name that starts with Tau

[158] Though, when I say more, I mean like… seven, and I’d still have to drive up into the City to get to one.

[159] Like, you can absolutely see how the E.G.C. and O.T.O. get conflated, but don’t try me on my hill.

[160] There’s a thriving Reddit community, though!

^[161] For more on this, check out Crowley’s essay “Duty,” published in a collection of essays titled The Ethics of Thelema in 2011.

^[162] Of course, I would feel that way. My Lady Sága is a goddess to whom such obsessive deliberate action is sacred. Her gifts of language, magic and narrative all lose their power if you strip them of structure and intention. They become lifeless: an arrangement of nonsense which can move nothing.

[163] I had my first existential crisis the day I turned seven (so, 33 years ago), when a boy told me that there was no such thing as a birthday wish. Well, he was an older boy–worldly… like… nine or something–so obviously he would know, or at the very least, his thesis was worth consideration. But, it shook me; I had never considered that a kind of magic might not be real before. I was the child dreaming up arboreal libraries, trading stories with fairies, and learning dirty words from crows in the woods. My world was made of Magic. It was, in key ways, the most real part of my childhood. Certainly, I remember my fairies better than I do that little boy. But he’d said something important, and I knew it. Even if he was dead wrong, and I was sure he was dead wrong, I mean… they were birthday wishes? Why would my own birthday refuse to grant me a wish? But even if he was dead wrong, it set me to thinking about the problem.

Ok, so, if wishes weren’t all real, they obviously weren’t all lies either. There was literally no world in which the whole concept of wishes was just… false. That makes no sense, and was rejected immediately, but it led to a new question: which wishes were the real ones? I determined that I couldn’t know for sure, and that, in that case, I couldn’t waste a bad wish on a real wishing opportunity—Magic is too interesting to waste. I needed to pick one wish to make every time, so that just mathematically speaking, the wish would have to work. I didn’t have to concern myself with which ones were real if I just assumed they all were.  (It might be clarifying at this point in the story, to bring up the fact that I have so much OCD, and that it was not remotely diagnosed until my late twenties, but anyway…)

I spent my birthday party alone, watching the other kids play, and thinking about the nature of magic (you know… as one does). It was apparent to me things like birthday cakes and shooting stars were almost certainly capable of magic. (I mean, what does that kid know, anyway, he’s a jerk and he smells like cheese.) But if it was real magic, it was probably going to have rules; Yeah, I wanted a pair of roller skates, but roller skates are bought with money. The money may well be magic, I didn’t properly understand that just yet, (still don’t, really) but it’s not like my birthday candle was going to whisper my wish into my mother’s ear while she was wandering the aisles at Wal*Mart. That’s ridiculous. And even if it worked, all I’d have is some skates. I could do better than that.

Magic, I insisted, simply must have structure, or poetry, as I would later come to think of it. And what I wanted, more than anything else, was to know that when I grew up, I’d leave this cursed town that had neither kindness nor care for something shaped like me. I wanted ‘home.’ I wanted to grow old with a family that loved me; I wanted joy and magic, and art. I was in bed that night, listening to crickets, and staring up at the angry man watching me from the designs carved into my ceiling fan, when I realized that was my Wish.

It was the perfect wish; it had room to grow and change with me in subtle ways that never need contradict its past incarnations. It felt like a big wish, though, and the only way it had a chance of working was if there were Rules. So, every single wish I would make from that sleepless night on would be my Wish. And I have, for 33 years, at every opportunity, made my Wish again. I don’t expect I’ll ever stop wishing for it, even as I find myself as an adult in a home with more joy, magic, art, and love than I ever imagined.

Nothing will ever convince me that I didn’t manifest this life through Wish magic. I’ll even concede that little shit might have had a point about birthday wishes. It’s not the candle makes the magic, it’s intention, dedication, and ritual. Looking at it as an adult who’s read a lot of magic theory and wizard nonsense, it’s just the fundamentals of Chaos magic stripped down to something a seven-year-old could create from sincere faith, first principles, and undiagnosed OCD. It’s why I don’t rate the specifics of wizardry—a clear quartz on the full moon is only powerful if those things speak powerfully to the magician.

Earlier I made the claim that Magic comes from Art. I’ll go one step further, and make it the claim that Art is necessary for Magic, and this is what I mean by that—not art as in Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”, the song “Go Small,” by Seeming, or a 15,000-word essay about Thelema, even if all of those can be Magic—but Art as in the human capacity–the human need–for obsessive directed intention.

It’s why so many wizards gravitate to verbosity; language is a shortcut to directed intention, and takes well to both obsession and refinement.

You see, I’m turning forty into a world dead set on burning itself to ash around me. The allostatic load of being a fucking person right now is unreasonable. I both happier and angrier than I’ve ever been in my life, and what can I fucking do? I can write little essays about the god damned nature of magic. I can experience joy, art, and fucking wonder in the name of my Goddess, and I’ll probably write about that, too. I can talk to the shadows in the woods like an old friend, and wish on every damn star in the sky, and there it is again: Love; Love under Will; the Art that needs to be made. Magic is nothing but the poetry that boils in your pen until you’ve written it onto the world, and my forties will be fucking magical.