of the rest of the universe, despite his now desperate efforts to insulate and protect himself, and to
aggrandize himself by predatory practices. He may indeed prosper for awhile, but in the end he must perish,
especially when with a new æon a new Word is proclaimed which he cannot and will not hear, so that he is
handicapped by trying to use an obsolete method of Magick, like a man with a boomerang in a battle where
everyone else has a rifle.” - Magick in Theory and Practice
21. We have nothing with the outcast and the unfit: let them die in their misery. For they feel
not. Compassion is the vice of kings: stamp down the wretched & the weak: this is the law of
the strong: this is our law and the joy of the world. Think not, o king, upon that lie: That
Thou Must Die; verily thou shalt not die, but live. Now let it be understood: If the body of the
king dissolve, he shall remain in pure ecstasy for ever. Nuit! Hadit! Ra-Hoor- Khuit! The
Sun, Strength & Sight, Light: these are for the servants of the Star & the Snake.
The “law of the jungle”, raised to its most complex expression in the writings of Nietzsche. One of the
prerogatives of an independent intellect, however, is that of defying the law of the jungle - to enable the weak
or injured to survive in order that they may prove their worth under other circumstances. Excessive devotion
to one extreme means cruelty. Excessive devotion to the other results in weakening the self through the
hosting of parasites. An Aristotelian “Golden Mean” must be sought.
In Egyptian philosophy the pharaoh was not a king in the European sense. Rather he was an embodied
manifestation of the neteru. Human shells for him to inhabit might be required, but the “actual” pharaoh was
immortal.
The Star is the Silver Star (A.'.A.'.) of Babalon, and the Snake is subsequently (#II-22) identified as
HarWer.
22. I am the Snake that giveth Knowledge & Delight and bright glory, and stir the hearts of
men with drunkenness. To worship me take wine and strange drugs whereof I will tell my
prophet, & be drunk thereof! They shall not harm ye at all. It is a lie, this folly against self.
The exposure of innocence is a lie. Be strong, o man! lust, enjoy all things of sense and
rapture: fear not that any God shall deny thee for this.
Here the random volatility of the HarWer- neter is shown at its most extreme. It may well be one of the
greater tragedies of the Æon of Horus that Crowley did not recognize the fourth sentence of this verse as
being an abrupt rejection of the disordered thoughts of the first three. This rejection is emphasized by the
fifth and sixth sentences, which encourage him to strengthen, not impair his sensory powers.
23. I am alone: there is no God where I am.
The conceptual separation of HarWer from Nuit is absolute; the two neteru are mutually exclusive.
24. Behold! these be grave mysteries; for there are also of my friends who be hermits. Now think
not to find them in the forest or on the mountain; but in beds of purple, caressed by
magnificent beasts of women with large limbs, and fire and light in their eyes, and masses
of flaming hair about them: there shall ye find them. Ye shall see them at rule, at
victorious armies, at all the joy; and there shall be in them a joy a million times greater than
this. Beware lest any force another, King against King! Love one another with burning
hearts; on the low men trample in the fierce lust of your pride, in the day of your wrath.
- 85 -
Strengthening of self-awareness is not to be achieved through isolation and meditation, as in the Hindu
and Buddhist systems, but through exposure and expression of the self. Those with the most highly-
developed sense of self-awareness are also those who are seen to attain success in their endeavors; it is a sign
that they have correctly identified and actualized their true will. Such a person will continue to achieve
success, unless he should clash with another whose true will is equally well-developed - or more so.
25. Ye are against the people, O my chosen!
A reaffirmation of #II-18/19.
26. I am the Secret Serpent coiled about to spring: in my coiling there is joy. If I lift up my
head, I and my Nuit are one. If I droop down my head, and shoot forth venom, then is rapture
of the earth, and I and the earth are one.
A learned discourse on the pleasures of sex.
27. There is a 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.
28. Now a curse upon Because and his kin!
29. May Because be accursed forever!
30. If Will stops and cries Why, invoking Because, then Will stops & does naught.
31. If Power asks why, then is Power weakness.
32. Also reason is a lie; for there is a factor infinite & unknown; & all their words are skew-
wise.
33. Enough of Because! Be he damned for a dog!
Neither the Book of the Law nor other texts dealing with metaphysics can be comprehended through
purely-logical analysis. This is the ultimate message of the Platonic Dialogues, which collectively
demonstrate the futility of a logical approach to the Forms/ neteru. After all rational and scientific
procedures have been exhausted, an intuitive (nœtic) apprehension of each Form is required.
A reading of the Book of the Law with an inaccurate or insufficient appreciation of the neteru manifest
within it can lead to disaster. [Consider Crowley’s own misreading of #II- 22.]
34. But ye, o my people, rise up & awake!
35. Let the rituals be rightly performed with joy & beauty.
36. There are rituals of the elements and feasts of the times.
37. A feast for the first night of the Prophet and his Bride.
August 12, the day in 1903 when Crowley married his first wife, Rose Edith Kelly. In his Comment he
observed that this event ultimately made possible the Cairo Working [yielding the Book of the Law].
38. A feast for the three days of the writing of the Book of the Law.
April 8, 9, and 10 beginning at noon.
39. A feast for Tahuti and the child of the Prophet - secret, O Prophet!
40. A feast for the Supreme Ritual, and a feast for the Equinox of the Gods.
Crowley identified the “Supreme Ritual” as the March 20 invocation to Horus which resulted in the
subsequent success of the Cairo Working. See “The Temple of Solomon the King” in Equinox #I-7.
41. A feast for fire and a feast for water; a feast for life and a greater feast for death!
- 86 -
42. A feast every day in your hearts in the joy of my rapture!
43. A feast every night unto Nu, and the pleasure of uttermost delight!
44. Aye! feast! rejoice! there is no dread hereafter. There is the dissolution, and eternal ecstasy
in the kisses of Nu.
A reaffirmation of the true nature of Nuit. Concerning the “dissolution” see the comments to #I-32 and
#II-21.
45. There is death for the dogs.
Those who reject such dissolution and absorption, and who are not initiates capable of sustaining the
existence of the ba and ka after the transfer of the khu, will in fact die.
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.
49. I am unique and conqueror. I am not of the slaves that perish. Be they damned & dead!
Amen. [This is of the 4; there is a fifth who is invisible, & therein am I as a babe in an egg.]
A restatement of the themes in #II-18/21. Amon is the “conqueror” - the warrior lord of Thebes [see
#I-5]. He was the patron of Uast, the IV (4th) Nome of Upper Egypt. Patron of the V (5th) Nome was
Amsu, portrayed as one of the children of Horus the Younger [hence “babe in an egg”].
50. Blue am I and gold in the light of my bride: but the red gleam is in my eyes; & my spangles
are purple & green.
See #I-60. Yet there is also an aspect of HarWer that is closer to Set [whose color is red] than to Nuit
[whose colors are blue & gold]. Purple is the color of a Magus, and green the blending of the colors of Nuit.
51. Purple beyond purple: it is the light higher than eyesight.
The “vision” of a Magus extends beyond the scope of the normal range of eyesight, just as ultraviolet is
beyond violet in the visible spectrum.
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.
The “lying spectre of the centuries” is Osiris, the death- god of the æon preceding that of Horus. The
“vices” of emotional excess are characteristic of emotional use of the intellect - an attribute of HarWer’s
distinction from the dispassionate OU.
53. Fear not, o prophet, when these words are said, thou shalt not be sorry. Thou art
emphatically my chosen; and blessed are the eyes that thou shalt look upon with gladness.
But I will hide thee in a mask of sorrow: they that see thee shall fear thou art fallen: but I lift
thee up.
A restatement of Crowley’s role as set forth in #I-15. The Curse of a Magus is that, because he Utters a
new Word amidst the values and norms of the expiring æon, or as an unfamiliar complement to the
present æon, few if any will initially understand or endorse that new Word. Hence he can expect to be
greeted with disinterest or even contempt. Truth, however, is not determined by vote. HarWer suggests
that Crowley’s reception will be so antipathetic that even his disciples may lose confidence in him. This,
however, will not affect the essential truth of his Word.
- 87 -
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!
The Word and philosophy of Aleister Crowley cannot be understood as a mere product or synthesis
of existing philosophy. A Word [as the Utterance of a Magus] introduces a new philosophical principle
altogether. While it may contain elements of preexisting wisdom, its essence and emphasis will be unique and
accessible only via nœtic intuition.
Crowley is permitted to punctuate the Book of the Law as he thinks appropriate, but he is not to tamper
with the words, letters, or numbers of the text.
55. Thou shalt obtain the order & value of the English alphabet; thou shalt find new symbols to
attribute them unto.
A straightforward instruction for Crowley to discard the number & letter values of the Hebrew Cabala. He
ignored #II- 55, due no doubt to the years he had already invested in Cabalism, and put forward Liber
Trigrammaton as a gesture of compliance. He admitted his dissatisfaction with this in his 1920 Comment,
theorizing further research into Sanskrit or Enochian.
The actual solution was deceptively simple: a direct, numerical equivalence to the order of the English
alphabet and the construction of a new symbol for each letter/number. #II- 55 was later to prove crucial to
the revealing of #II-76 in the Book of Coming Forth by Night.
56. Begone! ye mockers; even though ye laugh in my honour ye shall laugh not long: then when
ye are sad know that I have forsaken you.
Those who ridicule the Book of the Law, feeling secure in the conventions and norms of the expiring Æon
of Osiris, will find that this conservatism works against them when the inertia of Nuit gradually aligns itself to
the emerging values of the Æon of Horus.
Crowley himself was of the opinion [in the 1920 Comment] that this verse also had a special
meaning with regard to impostors and false cults abusing the license of the Æon of Horus: that ultimately
they would merely make themselves look foolish. There is a lesson here for any individual or group
attempting to “go through the motions” of ritual magic, Thelemic or otherwise, without actually
understanding the principles or desiring the results the ceremonies in question were originally conceived to
activate. Ritual without such understanding and purpose becomes merely a rote exercise, hence an excuse to
not think!
True to the OU-unifying principle of Nuit, Crowley went on to propose intellectual separateness [from Nuit
… ironically the central feature of HarWer, whose æon he was inaugurating] as the ultimate “evil”. In Liber
Aleph he observed:
Division … know this concerning the Black Brothers that cry: I am I. This is Falsity and Delusion, for the
Law endureth not Exception. So then these Brethren are not Apart, as they Think; but are peculiar
Combinations of Nature in Her Variety.”
Alas for those who think that mere insistence upon a law can make its violation impossible! Quite the
contrary: Were it not conceivable or possible to do so, no law would be necessary in the first place. Nor is
it sufficient to say that “[objective] universal law is a fact, not a convention, hence cannot be violated”.
Until man understands and correlates all of what he so boldly calls “natural law”, how can he be certain that no
exception exists to the tiny province he has thus far mapped?
Why should Crowley so dislike the “Black Brethren”, then? Is it just because they are explorers bolder
than he, or is it rather because the endless evolution, change, and variety they cherish is antithetical to the goal of
a monolithic, homogenous OU - that siren’s song of Nuit which so enraptured the “Buddhist” Magus of the
Æon of Horus?
Unfortunately - or fortunately, depending upon your æonic point of view - the Beast 666 had a bit of Black
Brotherhood in his modus operandi as well. He may have advocated the theoretical ideal of universal
harmony, but he nonetheless devoted considerable time and effort to exercising and maximizing his own
individuality. [I am certain HarWer approved.]
57. He that is righteous shall be righteous still; he that is filthy shall be filthy still.
In the 1920 Comment Crowley viewed this as a corollary to
#II-56, suggesting that it is actually impossible for an object to undergo change, because it cannot be
altered in its basic chemical constitution. If an apparent change occurs due to the addition, subtraction, or
rearrangement of elements of this constitution, then the object has lost its original identity and assumed a
new one.
- 88 -
&nbs
p; This argument does not provide, however, for unrealized potential, which may not be apparent in the
original assessment of an object although it is in fact there. A caterpillar does not lose its identity because it
evolves into a butterfly, any more than a man loses his identity because he grows a beard. For Crowley’s
argument to hold true, identity would have to be defined in a strictly limited sense, and at a fixed point in
time. Either one of these assignments would be arbitrary, hence artificial - a stepsister’s foot being
jammed into Cinderella’s glass slipper.
58. Yea! deem not of change: ye shall be as ye are, & not other. Therefore the kings of the
earth shall be Kings forever: the slaves shall serve. There is none that shall be cast down or
lifted up: all is ever as it was. Yet there are masked ones my servants: it may be that yonder
beggar is a King. A King may choose his garment as he will: there is no certain test: but a
beggar cannot hide his poverty.
The Æon of Horus [and the Æon of Set, for that matter] will not enable silk purses to be made from
sows’ ears. Yet superficial appearances may be quite deceptive, and an Adept seen through the eyes of a non-
Adept may seem to be behaving erratically or irrationally. It is true that a beggar might not be able to hide his
poverty, but a king in a good disguise would seem every bit as impoverished. In judging another, one must
first determine one’s actual ability to render such a judgment, then the judgment criteria.
59. Beware therefore! Love all, lest perchance is a King concealed! Say you so? Fool! If he be a
King, thou canst not hurt him.
See the discussion of “love” in the comment to #I-57. In his 1920 Comment with reference to #II-59,
Crowley further characterized it as a “right relationship” between two components of the Nuit-totality -
not a blind attraction for superficial motives which, upon closer examination, might not prove to be mutually
beneficial.
60. Therefore strike hard & low, and to hell with them, master!
Crowley is to be aggressive, uncompromising, and remorseless in his proclamation, definition, and
application of the Word of the Æon. [He was.]
61. There is a light before thine eyes, o prophet, a light undesired, most desirable.
62. I am uplifted in thine heart; and the kisses of the stars rain hard upon thy body.