and significant as to evoke change to its very core. In traditional magical terminology the Magus
“Utters a Word” to set this dynamic in motion; although the full factor requires often quite
detailed explanation and elaboration, it can be encapsulated, symbolized by a single term - such
as Agape, Anatta, Agathon, Thelema (of the Æon of Horus), Indulgence (of the Age of Satan),
and Xeper, Xem, Runa, Remanifest, and Arkte (of the Æon of Set to date).
85 Crowley is referring to his 1921 diary, The Magical Record of the Beast 666, wherein he wrote of taking the Oath
of Ipsissmus on May 23.
86 Anatta is one of the more elusive and controversial concepts in Buddhism. Generally-accepted definitions of it
tend to leave the reader even more confused! I would summarize it as the proposition that there is no isolate,
unique, and immortal psyche such as the Egyptians, Plato, and the Temple of Set postulate. Rather, so the Buddha
said, what people think of as their “soul” is an ever-changing “rain” of impressions upon their bodily senses from
within and without the physical body, creating the illusion of a self. Thus there is no conscious immortality,
although there is natural, all-inclusive perpetuity.
- 198 -
So intensely and obsessively does the Magus identify with the Uttered Word that it in effect
becomes a personal universe, outside of which reality is unintelligible and inadequate. To others
a Magus driven by this vision may seem inexplicable, irrational, even insane. This phenomenon
is “the Curse of the Magus” - that is not to be Understood even by nearby Initiates of
Understanding!
It is into this conflict that the initiation of Ipsissimus/Ipsissima becomes not only necessary
but, in Thomson’s phrase, supremely so. It is the function of an Ipsissimus to comprehend the
greater synthesis of an Uttered Word with the collective æonic totality preceding it, and to
delicately encourage and enhance that synthesis. Characteristically this is undertaken with such
subtlety that the will and action of the Ipsissimus pass completely unnoticed, and this is as it
should be if the harmonizing is to be perfectly fulfilled.
Beyond this the Ipsissimus also confronts the still-intersecting “ripples” of many æons
activated at various points in history, and performs workings to enable them to complement and
improve, not clash with and destroy one another.
As the Priesthood constitutes a merging of the individual soul with that of Set, so the
Magistry constitutes an expansion of that merger to a full apprehension of the Æon of Set. The
Master knows not only the consciousness of Set, but the reach of that consciousness and the
resultant view of creation and existence it embraces. All particular phenomena are evaluated,
placed, and balanced within the continuum of the Æon by the Master, and such adjustments in
events as the Master makes are for Æonic purposes - some of which may be obscure or even
imperceptible to those below this degree.
Setians interacting with Masters of the Temple are tempted to assess them merely as
“senior Priests or Priestesses”, and indeed every Master is first and foremost an Initiate of the
Priesthood, invariably with a long and distinguished III° record. But the IV° is neither just an
administrative promotion nor a reward for distinguished service; it is an initiatory state of being
in itself. Onlookers - and Masters themselves - lose sight of this at their peril.
Aleister Crowley, who felt that the grade of Magister Templi (8)=[3] was indeed attainable
by incarnated humans, suggested that such attainment - the successful “crossing of the Abyss” -
necessitated the annihilation of the personality and one’s absorption in the universal
consciousness. The fallacy of this, of course, is that an (8)=[3] continued both a particular
existence and a particular perspective. The initiate might insist that he possessed no further
separateness from the cosmos, but the very act of insistence necessitates the sensation of such a
distinction. A discussion of what this implies for holders of the (8)=[3] A.'.A.'. is beyond the
scope of this writing.
The degree of Magus - V° Temple of Set/Church of Satan, (9)=[2] A.'.A.'./ G.'.D.'. -
identifies a Master who has “stepped outside” the totality of the existing Æonic formula to alter it
in an evolutionary way. Such alteration may result in the inauguration of a new Æon, or it may
massive or subtle; but it will invariably be alien to preexisting values and will thus tend to be
viewed skeptically or suspiciously. Implementation of the change is spoken of as the Task of a
Magus, and undertaking of such a Task amidst the resistant inertia of preexistence is called the
Curse of a Magus.
The degree of Ipsissimus - VI° Temple of Set, (10)=[1] A.'.A.'./G.'.D.'. - was treated evasively
by Aleister Crowley, most probably because his claim to the lower grade of Magus had already
caused him such difficulty. [Initiates of higher degrees soon learn to their annoyance that a
proportionate percentage of their time is devoted to defending their suitability for such exalted
titles. The temptation is to refuse to admit to them altogether, so that one may get on with one’s
work unpestered.] In any case, an Ipsissimus is essentially a “successful Magus”: one whose Task
is complete.
- 199 -
Inherent in such completion is a unique perception of the new æonic inertia which has
resulted, placing the Ipsissimus at once within and without the æon itself. To function as an
Ipsissimus, he must work to perfect and harmonize not only the created or modified æon, but
also its entire relationship with preexisting and potential æons. Thus he enhances the Work of
the Magi; thus he ensures that the Understanding of the Masters of the Temple is not futile
because of factors beyond the æon in which they tend their gardens.
It is the Curse of a Magus not to be Understood, in that he has set out to define and
promulgate something alien to the existing inertia of magical philosophy. It is the doom of an
Ipsissimus to Understand a great many æons simultaneously: to see how they may be exclusive
yet complementary, independent yet interrelated, sequential yet coincidental.
The Initiate of any degree of the Priesthood (III°-VI°) may function in a lower degree than
the highest one attained, and in fact usually does. About 90% of all Priesthood functions take
place at the III° level, with most of the remaining Work characteristic of the IV°. V° Work is
sharp and “surgical” in nature, and that of the VI° is usually - but not always - too subtle to be
noticed.
Of all the difficulties encountered by the Temple of Set - and its predecessors - since its
inception, none has caused greater damage to both the institution and the individuals involved
than abuses of the degree system: generally the result of rash, egotistical lunges towards what
the ambitious person perceives simply in terms of increased social status. As I would hope this
essay points out, such efforts by the unqualified merely result in a handful of air insofar as the
individual is concerned - but accompanied by the very real hazards of trying to function in a
hyperdemanding capacity without the necessary skills to do so if on
e somehow succeeds in pro
forma Recognition.
It is the sacred purpose of the Temple to Recognize each of its Initiates carefully,
responsibly, and appropriately - and to encourage each and every Initiate to attain to his or her
greatest potential. Let us remember too that there is intentional symbolism in the fact that all
medallions - from I° to VI° - are identical save in background color. No Setian is “better” than
any other Setian by virtue of holding a particular degree - only more well-traveled along certain
kinds of paths. The more we perceive one another as fellow-travelers with meaningful
experiences to communicate, the more we can maximize the very real benefits of the degree
system as it was conceived to function.
G. Æons
As far as most occultists are aware, references to æons began with Aleister Crowley’s much-
advertised Æon of Horus, which he proclaimed to have followed first the Æon of Isis (roughly
pre-Christian paganism) and then that of Osiris (roughly 2,000 years of Christianity). Since
Crowley’s understanding of Egyptian mythology was essentially that of the Osiris/Isis/Horus
trinity, this tied Western civilization up into a nice, neat package.
Not only was Crowley responsible for bringing about the Æon of Horus, we are told, but
that of Osiris as well - in a previous incarnation as the High Priest of Osiris [and Priestess of Isis]
Ankh-f-na-khonsu. The story of this is told in his memoir of that incarnation, “Across the Gulf”,
in Equinox #I-7:
But Thoth the mighty god, the wise one, with his ibis-head and his nemyss of indigo, with
his Ateph crown and his phœnix wand and with his ankh of emerald, with his magic apron in
the three colors; yea, Thoth, the god of wisdom, whose skin is of tawny orange as though it
burned in a furnace, appeared visibly to all of us. And the old Magus of the Well, whom no
man had seen outside his well for night threescore years, was found in the midst; and he cried
with a loud voice, saying, “The Equinox of the Gods!”
- 200 -
And he went about to explain how it was that Nature should no longer be the center of
man’s worship, but man himself, man in his suffering and death, man in his purification and
perfection. And he recited the Formula of the Osiris as follows, even as it hath been
transmitted unto us by the Brethren of the Cross and Rose unto this day ...
In his own writings Crowley does not indicate where he came by this concept of “æons” or
exactly what is meant by it. A little detective work, however, takes us back to the days of the
Golden Dawn and the writing of a book entitled Egyptian Magic (#10I) by Florence Farr, Scribe
of the G.'.D.'., in 1896. This book, part of a 10-volume series Collectanea Hermetica edited by
W.W. Westcott, contained a very interesting chapter called “The Gnostic Magic of Egypt”, from
which the following quote:
Let us first consider the essential principles of Gnosticism, which are briefly as follows:
First - A denial of the dogma of a personal supreme God, and the assertion of a supreme
divine essence consisting of the purest light and pervading that boundless space of perfected
matter which the Greeks called the Pleroma. This light called into existence the great father
and the great mother whose children were the æons or god-spirits. That is to say from the
supreme issues the nous or divine mind and thence successive emanations, each less sublime
than the preceding. The divine life in each becoming less intense until the boundary of the
Pleroma, or the fullness of God, is reached. From thence there comes into being a taint of
imperfection, an abortive and defective evolution, the source of materiality and the origin of a
created universe, illuminated by the divine but far removed from its infinitude and perfection.
Now the Gnostics considered that the actual ruler and fashioner of this created universe
and its beings good and evil was the Demiurgos, a power issuant from sophia or wisdom. By
some it was said that the desire of souls for progression caused the origin of a universe in
which they might evolve and rise to the divine.
The Gnostics definitely believed in the theory of cycles of ascent and return to the
evolutionary progress of worlds, ages, and man; the ascents & descents of the soul; the
preexistence of all human souls now in worldly life; and the surety that all souls that desire the
highest must descend to matter and be born of it. They were the philosophical Christians.
The rule of the Christian church, however, fell into the hands of those who encouraged an
emotional religion, destitute of philosophy, whose members should be bound together by
personal ties of human sympathy with an exalted sufferer and preacher rather than by an
intellectual acceptance of high truth.
The Gnostics dissented from the creed then being taught, on the ground of the inferiority
of the hero-worship of Christ to the spiritual knowledge of the supernal mind, which they
considered he taught.
The Gnostics were almost universally deeply imbued with the doctrines of Socrates and
Plato; and a religion of emotion and reverence, combined with moral platitudes, did not seem
to them of a sublimity sufficiently intense to be worthy to replace the religious mysteries of
Egypt, India, and Persia, the theocracy of the Jews, or the sublime truths hidden in the myths
of Greece.
In Religion in Ancient History S.G.F. Brandon comments:
In his “First Epistle to the Corinthians” Paul had occasion to contrast his teaching with
that of other systems known to his readers. In so doing he was led to give this significant
account of his own: “Howbeit we speak wisdom among the perfect: yet a wisdom not of this
world, nor of the rulers of this world, which are coming to naught: but we speak God’s wisdom
in a mystery, even the wisdom that hath been hidden, which God foreordained before the
worlds unto our glory: which none of the rulers of this world knoweth: for had they known it,
they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (ii. 6-8).
- 201 -
In our official English translations the proper meaning of this passage is obscured at two
crucial points. The Greek word translated as “world” here, severally in its singular or plural
forms, is aion, which does not mean this physical world or Earth, but “time” or “age”.]
Paul’s use of aion here accordingly shows that he was thinking in terms of an esoteric
system of “world-ages” that probably derived ultimately from Iranian and Babylonian sources,
and that in various forms was much in vogue in current Græco-Roman thought. Next the
words translated as “rulers of this world” ( archontes tou aionos toutou) do not refer, as is
popularly supposed, to the Roman and Jewish authorities who were responsible for
condemning Jesus to death. They denote dæmonic beings who were associated with the
planets and believed to govern the lives of men on Earth.
As Farr and Brandon both go on to observe, Gnostic Christianity was regarded as a very
serious threat to the Christian church and was intensely persecuted. Had it become prevalent,
the 2,000 years might have evolved very differently in Western civilization - with a very
intellectual, philosophical, and initiatory religious climate instead of the intolerant, ferocious,
and ignorant horror of dogmatic Christianity.
Now we are beginning to see this term æon in a new light, if I may be excused the
expression. The Æon of Horus is not just a period of time when ideas symbolized by Horus are
dominant. Rather it is a Ding an sich, a noumenon: something of purely rational apprehension,
not perception by the senses.
Thus in what one might term the LBM sense, an æon is simply an attitude which one
chooses or is conditioned to adopt. This is what is meant by saying that different people
“exist in different æons”: that a Jew, Christian or Moslem exists in the Æon of Osiris, a Wiccan in
that of Isis, and a Thelemite in that of Horus.
Accordingly, while æons are “pyramidal” in sophistication, after the fashion of Plato’s
“pyramid of thought”, there is no reason to consider them time-sequential, with each new one
superseding and obliterating the one before it.
In an LBM sense, therefore, the population of the world continues overwhelmingly in the
grip of the Æon of Osiris, the best intentions of Aiwass notwithstanding. The Æon of Isis is the
next influential, followed by that of Horus. The Æon of Set, highest on the pyramid and most
difficult to comprehend and indwell, is the “smallest” and most exclusive of all.
As with the degree system, it would be very difficult if not impossible to spend all of one’s
time in a “higher æon”. When we go about our affairs in the profane world, we are usually
Osirians, peering with curiosity and vague alarm at ecological activists (Isis) or avant-garde
artists (Horus). Yet we experience periods of Isis and Horus too - and, when we wish to, that very
rarefied Æon of Set.
Crowley, who suggested that æons were periods of time in “catastrophic succession” - I
presume in order to more forcefully advance the cause of the Æon of Horus - predicted in the
Equinox #I-10 that following the ÆH “will arise the Equinox of Ma, the goddess of justice. It
may be a hundred or ten thousand years from now (1913), for the computation of time is not
here as there.” In 1921, in his “new comment” to Liber Legis, Crowley speculated that the next
æon would be that of Thmaist, third officer in the G.'.D.'. Neophyte ritual. On the other hand, he