Crowley & Grant.

[Vadge Moore]

It seems reasonable to assume that Crowley would not approve of Grant's work; I think Old Crow's ego would have gotten in the way, as it did with Achad. However, Grant's elaboration on Liber 231 seems to stack up perfectly. It seems like a natural evolution of Crowley's work...and explains a lot.

I don't know if I believe that the Aeon of Maat is in actual, physical manifestation...as the Aeon of Horus is. I believe the Aeon of Maat resides in the consciousness, the psyche of some adepts. The paradox would be, I guess, that if the Aeon of Maat resides in our psyche than it would naturally manifest in the physical universe. Thoughts?

[Marc]

Interesting you bring this up, Vadge, because as I was reading The Dark Lord I was also simultaneously reading Jim Elvidge's book "The Universe Soved!" which describes our reality as a program..a simulation. I started reconsidering what I understood Aeons to actually be. I jotted a bunch of notes down as I was reading both works and then referencing everything I could from Grant's Trilogies and Crowley's work. What I started considering is that the Aeon of Maat may be a sub-set of the Aeon of Horus. I also started considering that since there is much evidence of our reality being a simulation ...that Aeons may be programs all running..possibly simultaneously. This would mean that they may not be astrologically dependent or chronological at all (or they may be..). As in Levenda's quoting of Grant: "The mere fact that we imagine an Aeon's existence is sufficient to claim its existence". This tells me we may be able to access Aeons by vehicle of imagination alone.

I'm just throwing a bunch of ideas out here but in light of discussion...it's great to explore the nature of things like this..what do you think?

[Vadge Moore]

Marc- I think you are correct. Makes perfect sense.

[Marc]

Although it's hard to imagine how Crowley would have reacted. I guess we have to keep in mind that Crowley embraced the modern science of his time and with all of the developments we have had in sub-atomic particle physics and explorations into consciousness...he would have most likely adapted those developments as well into his system. I think the beautiful thing about Grant is that his works are parallel to all of our modern discoveries into the hidden nature of the reality construct. I'm quite sure eventually occultism and theoretical/fringe science will reach almost a point of singularity...

[Vadge Moore]

Crowley also did not take Jung very seriously, because Jung had not published his main books on alchemy during Crow's lifetime. Clearly Jung's Shadow is akin the backside of the Tree.

[Marc]

I love Jung. His works on Alchemy and on the Tarot are amazing.

[Vadge Moore]

Indeed.

[Nalyd Khezr Bey]

Crowley probably would not have approved, nor fully understood, not only Grant (didn't Crowley reprimand Grant on occasion for his "terrible defect in your outlook on life"? - Remembering Aleister Crowley) but all that has resulted from his works since his death. But I do think he was aware of the implications. As forward looking as Crowley may have been he was still a product of Old Aeon thinking and he himself seemed to have been well aware of it. Here is a brief excerpt from a quote of a letter sent by Crowley to W. B. Crow on 3 July, 1944 that appears in Richard C. Stein's excellent The Mystery of the Letters:

...what we need is a genius to work out the dynamics of the formula of Horus. Of this I am, for all practical purposes, totally ignorant. The Book of the Law gives manifold instructions, mostly difficult, some seemingly impossible, but that is only in the eyes of one born and bred in the Old Aeon.

As for the present aeon and the so-called incoming Aeon of Maat. In linear time they don't seem compatible. However, I am of the opinion and experience that an aeon is a current that is not bound by time within other levels of consciousness. All of these currents (old and new) can be accessed "outside the circles of time" to put it in Grantian terms. According to the Theosophical glossary aeons are not just periods of time but "emanations proceeding from the divine essence, and celestial beings; genii and angels with the Gnostics", i.e. they are currents and it is in that sense and of "genii and angels" that I think they may be better understood within the context that Grant seems to have understood them. I also find this "genii" reference interesting in light of Crowley's comment about needing "a genius to work out the dynamics of the formula of Horus". The quote in Stein's book actually ends with Crowley saying "but we must wait for that genius".

I don't feel that the Aeon of Ma'at is a sub-set of Horus. I feel our present time period is indeed the Aeon of Horus but I feel that Ma'at is an incoming current for those who have the ability to tune into it and channel it. For those of us engaged in these trans-Aeonic operations there is no problem with utilizing any stream. The one's closest to us in time (Osiris, Horus and Ma'at) tend to be the easiest to access for perhaps obvious reasons.

Now this may be a little beyond what was being asked here but this is probably as good a place as any to mention it. What I find most interesting in our present time, and is something Crowley seemed totally unaware of, is that the old axiom of "Kether is in Malkuth, and Malkuth is in Kether, but after another manner" is obsolete. It speaks nothing of what we are currently experiencing as occultists and magicians. I have seen no indication in his works that Grant was overtly aware of this either, outside of his intuitive feel for it, but the four worlds of the trees move. They spent many aeons moving away from each other. "Kether is in Malkuth" was the first step in their move back into full alignment. Currently it should read "Da'ath is in Malkuth and Malkuth is in Da'ath, but after another manner" or maybe "Kether is in Yesod and Yesod is in Kether, but after another manner" (depending on what one finds more relevant, personally I think both are) or at least we are approaching being able to read it that way. We have been approaching this new alignment for some time now. I think it can shed a lot of light (or darkness) on why magick in the 20th century became more preoccupied with the "Mauve Zone" in various ways that may not always be apparent to every practitioner. It may even shed a lot of light on a lot of preoccupations with "anomalous experiences" in general in the last couple hundred years. The "outer gateways" are now more accessible.

[Vadge Moore]

Nalyd- I feel that each Thelemite, at times, is only supposed to see certain things so that they may serve a specific purpose. Crowley may have been blind to what Grant later expanded upon because Crow needed to do his specific kind of work, free of distraction.

I completely agree that the Aeon of Ma'at is more an aspect of each aspirants level of initiation...what your psyche most resonates to. As for Daath is in Malkuth etc..and Kether is in Yesod...this is something that I have personally experienced. Mostly Daath is in Malkuth. However, as Grant says, Yesod is the other doorway to Universe B...and I have felt that very strongly.

[Vadge Moore]

And yes...the outer gateways are definitely more accessible...at times frighteningly so. I love this and am quite happy that my mundane self is living in such an interesting time.

[Nalyd Khezr Bey]

Oct 17, 2013 19:33:37 GMT Vadge Moore said:

I completely agree that the Aeon of Ma'at is more an aspect of each aspirants level of initiation...what your psyche most resonates to. As for Daath is in Malkuth etc..and Kether is in Yesod...this is something that I have personally experienced. Mostly Daath is in Malkuth. However, as Grant says, Yesod is the other doorway to Universe B...and I have felt that very strongly.

It's good to find others that are aware of this experientially. I've not found anyone else mention this shift anywhere. I've found vague hints of it but always in the sense that I mentioned Grant understanding it intuitively without ever making the more obvious adjustment to the actual model a lot of us utilize to understand magical experience. It may be a relevant topic on its own sometime in the near future. I'm running out of time in the moment to expand it into a separate thread.

[Vadge Moore]

Nalyd- We'll make a point of doing this in the future, when we both have more time for elaboration. Yes, it is good to find others that resonate on the same frequency.

In chapter 22 of The Nightside of Eden Grant writes of the 32nd tunnel of Thantifaxath. This tunnel on the dayside connects to Malkuth. This tunnel is extremely chthonic because it is the reflex of the Malkuthian realm, of the earth, or under the earth. The path on our side of the Tree corresponds to Earth and to Saturn. Saturn? That is Set! Set is located where? Daath! so...you are correct: Daath is in Malkuth as Malkuth is in Daath.

[Michael Staley]

Apart from the "old Comment" to AL.III.34, in which the Aeon to follow that of Horus is foreshadowed, Crowley seems to have been wedded to the idea that the Aeons were demarcated by the Precession of the Equinoxes, and thus endured for approximately 2,000 years. Grant remarks somewhere that when he attempted to discuss the Aeon of Maat with Crowley at 'Netherwood', Crowley said merely that Maat could wait. As far as Crowley was concerned, we were at the outset of the Aeon of Horus, and that of Maat was so far away that we should not distract ourselves from establishing the Aeon of Horus.

Achad threw himself into pondering many aspects of Liber AL, and foreshadowed the forthcoming Aeon - which he referred to as the Aeon of Truth and Justice - in an appendix to his book QBL or the Bride's Reception, which he published in the early 1920s. Crowley came to dislike the book enormously, and told Achad so. It was one more element in the seething miasma of distrust between the two men, which climaxed in 1925 and brought about a legal seperation between them in 1926.

In 1936, Crowley re-opened their correspondence, since he was preparing The Equinox of the Gods. In the course of this correspondence of several months - which grew increasingly fractious, dredged up the past, and resulted in Achad's expulsion from the O.T.O. - Achad referred to his work in connection with the Aeon of Truth and Justice, and Crowley conceded that he indeed appeared to have such a role.Still, at this time, I think that Achad anticipated the new aeon as being distant.

In April 1948, a few months after Crowley's death, Achad detected the incoming of the Ma-Ion, his designation for the Aeon of Truth and Justice. In the course of a voluminous and fascinating correspondence with Gerald Yorke, Achad debated with Yorke the ramifications of the new aeon. Yorke expressed incredulity that the Aeon of Horus had been superceded after a mere 44 years when Crowley had expected it to endure for 2,000 years or so. Achad's response was that Aeon of Horus was still there; the two aeons were running concurrently; the Force and Fire of Horus was now tempered by the Truth and Justice of the Aeon of Ma (Achad never liked the term "Aeon of Maat" for some reason).

Interestingly, Parson too spoke of the need for what he termed a "feminine force" to arise and ameliorate the Force and Fire of Horus. He however never saw it as an Aeon, but as a force which he called Babalon, a human avatar of which he expected in his lifetime.

Grant was familiar with Yorke's correspondence with Achad, making a typed copy of most of the correspondence, and it is this that he refers to in Outside the Circles of Time as "The Official and Unofficial Correspondence Concerning the Incoming of the Aeon of Maat". Although Grant took a great deal of interest in Achad's work, he remained sceptical about the claim that the Aeon of Truth and Justice had arrived, and this sceptical attitude can be seen in the chapter on Achad in Cults of the Shadow. There was a marked change of tone in Grant's subsequent book, Nightside of Eden, because by then he had been contacted by Margaret Ingalls with a copy of Liber Pennae Praenumbra and an account of its reception, which made hin reassess Achad's work. This reassessment flowered in Outside the Circles of Time.

Rather than a succession of aeons over a period of time, we can deduce that the aeons are simultaneous, just as atavisms are accessible now. Moreover, the Crowleyan aeonology is but one amongst many, several of which David Hall summarises in the chapter on 'Time and the World' in his comparative study of Crowley and Gurdjieff, Beelzebub and the Beast.

A succession of aeons is only one way of qualifying consciousness. Personally I see Maat as signifying an unbroken, advaitic awareness perhaps glyphed by Atu 0, The Fool.

It's getting late; I'll continue this post subsequently.

[Vadge Moore]

I'll quickly add, Michael, that I see Maat as signifying an awareness of the Ain, non-duality. Just as Ra-Hoor-Khuit represents manifestation and Hoor-Paar-Kraat represents deep inner subjectivity, the Aeon of Horus is the manifest universe and Maat would be an initiates awareness and experience of non-being. In this way Horus and Maat do run concurrently.

[Gregory Peters]

Oct 17, 2013 23:24:37 GMT Michael Staley said:

Rather than a succession of aeons over a period of time, we can deduce that the aeons are simultaneous, just as atavisms are accessible now.

I think this is very accurate. From my experience, the Aeonic currents are somewhat like flowing rivers of awareness that may be tapped into by those that have the sensitivity and ability to connect to the different streams. Although March 1904 saw the advent of the Aeon of Horus, the bulk of humanity continues to this day to operate in Osirian consciousness. Initiates however open their awareness to the consciousness of the Aeon of Horus and step into it. It is Frater Achad again that expresses similar ideas regarding how a conscious effort is required to push into the level of a dawning Aeon in his article Stepping Out of the Old Aeon and Into the New: hermetic.com/achad/misc/stepping-out-of-the-old-aeon.htm


Given this,  parallel or a multitude of aeonic currents flowing simultaneously, outside the boundaries of time, are available to the practitioner that can aspire to these different evolutionary flows.

A succession of aeons is only one way of qualifying consciousness. Personally I see Maat as signifying an unbroken, advaitic awareness perhaps glyphed by Atu 0, The Fool.

Yes I think the 22 Trumps of the Tarot in fact represent distinct aeonic flows of consciousness, each available for working with.

[Gregory Peters]

Also, just came across this in OTCOT:

"The old maxim 'when the chela is ready, the guru appears' may be adapted with equal truth to the notion that when the individual is ready (i.e. awakened) the Aeon appears, and he hears the Word of the Aeon, not in sequential time but altogether outside the circles of Time. For that ultimate Aeon is not a period, a pause, a division of time (a kala), but a supreme Akala and a continual flowing, as Nuit is the 'continuous one of Heaven' or of the Sekhet-Aarru, "the consciousness of the continuity of existence', unbounded, unconfined to any particular aeon, any specific kala." - pg.204

[Vadge Moore]

Does anybody possess the version of Magick edited by Grant and Symonds? In Hecate's Fountain Grant mentions that there was a revised version of the Star Ruby ritual using an AVERSE pentagram. Grant cites page 206 as containing this revised ritual. Is this simply visualizing a averse pentagram in the forehead before throwing it to the four directions, or is there more to it?

[Gregory Peters]

Vadge I just checked my edition of the Symonds & Grant Magick, but I do not see any reference. I wonder if he was referring to Reguli? But even so the only discussion on p206 is concluding remarks on Secrecy & Silence.

[Vadge Moore]

Grant says it's the Routeledge, London, 1973 edition. Perhaps he did mean to say Reguli.

[Fddsfdx]

Oct 17, 2013 19:33:37 GMT Vadge Moore said:

Nalyd- I feel that each Thelemite, at times, is only supposed to see certain things so that they may serve a specific purpose. Crowley may have been blind to what Grant later expanded upon because Crow needed to do his specific kind of work, free of distraction.

I completely agree that the Aeon of Ma'at is more an aspect of each aspirants level of initiation...what your psyche most resonates to. As for Daath is in Malkuth etc..and Kether is in Yesod...this is something that I have personally experienced. Mostly Daath is in Malkuth. However, as Grant says, Yesod is the other doorway to Universe B...and I have felt that very strongly.

[parzival81]

I have always thought of the concepts of Aeons along the lines of the Gnostic schools of Late Antiquity. There were about seven Aeons which corresponded with the Archon's and the Demiurge who corresponded with the Hidden God. The Aeons were emanations of the "reality" of the Hidden God, just like the Archon's were emanations of the Demiurge. So, in the Liber Al, Horus is referred to as the "lord initiating". Here I would say that the Aeon is both a personage and a length of time. The an Aeon/Horus who succeeded the Aeon/Osirus, at the Equinox of the God's, now there is the Aeon/Ma'at who in the LPP comes with a very different message warning the " children of Heru" to look to IPSOS and to use the key of Cthonos and Ychronos, not to take on the role of the Aeonic Lord Initiating, but setting up the seeds for the magickal fruitions when she becomes the lord initiation. I could see N'Aton as an example of the magickal fruit that Ma'at preshadows in the LPP. Isn't there a G.'.D.'. Ritual that has to do with one heirophant hand over initiating power to a new heirophant?

[Vadge Moore]

I've recently discovered, in Crowley's 777, a passage that seems to reveal the backside of the Tree:

"...the limitless ocean of negative light does not proceed from a centere, for it is centereless, but it concentrates a centere, which is the number one of the Sephiroth Kether, the Crown, the First Sephira; which therefore may be said to be the Malkuth or the number ten of the hidden Sephiroth." (777, page 6)

The "hidden Sephirah" would than be the back of the Tree.

Also, in Crowley's The Vision and the Voice, The Cry of the 14th Aethyr, is written:

"Behold, the Great One of the Night of Time stirreth, and with his tail he churneth up the slime, and of the foam thereof shall he make stars. And in the battle of the Python and the Sphinx shall the glory be to the Sphinx, but the victory to the Python."

Here I would think that the Sphinx may represent the front of the Tree and the Python (Typhon) the backside. If the backside was the precursor to the front than this Meonic slime is that which "produced" the front.

[johns]

Oct 17, 2013 14:47:13 GMT Vadge Moore said:

It seems reasonable to assume that Crowley would not approve of Grant's work; I think Old Crow's ego would have gotten in the way, as it did with Achad. However, Grant's elaboration on Liber 231 seems to stack up perfectly. It seems like a natural evolution of Crowley's work...and explains a lot.

I don't know if I believe that the Aeon of Maat is in actual, physical manifestation...as the Aeon of Horus is. I believe the Aeon of Maat resides in the consciousness, the psyche of some adepts. The paradox would be, I guess, that if the Aeon of Maat resides in our psyche than it would naturally manifest in the physical universe. Thoughts?

    Well, let's see what Fra. Achad has to say, when the book is available. Yes it seems to be a paradox, a duality - Aeon of Horus and     Maat -  simultaneous. Can't figure it. As for 231, perfect as it might be, it's a place where Angels fear to tread.

[Vadge Moore]

Ha! Very true John. But I do love Liber 231 and have worked quite a bit with those energies. They are great for inspiring rather perverse art.

As to the Aeons of Maat and Horus, Levenda, in his book The Dark Lord actually explains the precedent in other systems for Aeons and Ages to run concurrently. Previous examples are in Gnostic systems.

[Michael Staley]

Nov 1, 2015 2:46:44 GMT Vadge Moore said:

Ha! Very true John. But I do love Liber 231 and have worked quite a bit with those energies. They are great for inspiring rather perverse art.

As to the Aeons of Maat and Horus, Levenda, in his book The Dark Lord actually explains the precedent in other systems for Aeons and Ages to run concurrently. Previous examples are in Gnostic systems.

I thought that aspect the strongest part of Levenda's book actually; consideration of other systems of aeonology is a useful context for viewing the Isis / Osiris / Horus / Maat pattern.

I also got a lot of useful information in this area from a discussion of aeonology in David Hall's comparative study of Crowley and Gurdjieff, Beelzebub and the Beast.