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In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. |
* * * * * * * * * * * *The Most Important Book ever published on Occult Tarot * * * * * * |
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God existed before the beginning, before the heaven and the earth, and before the creative light of the Triple Veils had penetrated the darkness and begun the process of illumination and division. In researching the concept of the Triple Veils of the Negative, and Crowley's adaptation of this dogma to his own system, I realized that there was simply more to it than could reasonably fit into the profile I am offering in the main Naples Arrangement page. So I am providing this supplement to give more details, and in the process to also discuss how even this absurdly esoteric subject has very real political implications for some occult retail managers. Back in 1994 there was a brief discussion about the Triple Veils on alt.magick. In reply to Bill Heidrick's (C)OTO policy statement that "...just about everything Mathers wrote was massive plagiarism", other posters raised the possibility that Mathers had instead invented the Triple Veils doctrine. Colin Low stated "I haven't found anything which corresponds to the three veils in any traditional Jewish material in translation." Unfortunately, that view tended in another poster's mind to indict Mathers not on the grounds of being a plagiarist but instead a liar or an inept researcher: "If Mathers was the originator of the 'Veil of Negativity' model, it would mean one of two things. Either he lied when he told the other G[olden] D[awn] members that it was from 'the writings of the Jews;, or he honestly believed it was traditional Qabalah, and was just a result of mistranslation on his part.."
Mathers in fact makes the discussion of the Negative, both triple and otherwise, a major part of his Introduction. He understands that the idea is a difficult one, especially when it is multiplied by three vaguely simple terms: AYN, AYN SVP, & AYN SVP AVR (or Nothing, the Limitless, and the Limitless Light). All these terms describe some impression or Creative impulse of God, and so as Mathers readily admits—"...for a subject to be capable of definition it is requisite that certain limits should be assignable to it." But this subject is God, and Mathers rightly asks "How then can we limit the Illimitable?" Mathers' answer is that we cannot do so, nor do we need to do so to retain rational sense to our attempt to talk about the Absolute in Negative terms. At this point, on page 17, he makes an appeal to the writings of Eliphas Lévi, whose comments about triads and trinities, for example in "Transcendental Magic" (Dogma et Rituel de la Haute Magie), are worth reading for the obvious influence they have had on Mathers' interpretations of Qabalistic dogma: Unity must multiply itself in order to become active. An indivisible, motionless and sterile principle would be unity dead and incomprehensible. Were God only one He would never be Creator or Father. Were He two there would be antagonism or division in the infinite, which would mean the division also or death of all possible things. He is therefore three for the creation by Himself and in His image of the infinite multitude of beings and numbers. So is He truly one in Himself and triple in our conception, which also leads us to behold Him as triple in Himself and one in our intelligence and our love. This is a mystery for the faithful and a logical necessity for the initiate into absolute and real sciences. Later Lévi explains: In his hymn to the royal Sun, the Emperor Julian gives a theory of the triad which is almost identical with that of the illuminated Swedenborg. The sun of the divine world is the infinite, spiritual and uncreated light [i.e., AIN SVP AVR], which is verbalized, so to speak, in the philosophical world, and becomes the fountain of souls and of truth; then it incorporates and becomes visible light in the sun of the third world, the central sun of our suns, of which the fixed stars are the ever-living sparks. The Kabalists compare the spirit to a substance which remains fluid in the divine medium and under the influence of the essential light, its exterior, however, becoming solidified, like wax when exposed to air, in the colder realms of reasoning or of visible forms.
Mathers concludes that the IDEA of negative existence can certainly exist—as Lévi says "triple in our conception"—but that it cannot be defined but only hinted at through metaphor. Mathers further explained there had to be, between negative and positive existence, "a certain nexus", a link to allow these ideas to be communicated from one to the other. This link he called "potential existence" or "existence in its possible form". And here Mathers gave an explicit and influential metaphor to explain the whole system of existence he was postulating: For example, in a seed, the tree which may spring from it is hidden; it is in a condition of potential existence; is there; but it will not admit of definition. How much less, then, will those seeds which that tree in its turn may yield. But these latter are in a condition which, while it is somewhat analogous to potential existence, is in hardly so advanced a stage; that is, they are negatively existent. In other words:
At first this example, using positive metaphors of known existent things, seeds and trees, may seem confusing. It is after all equating future possible (though, Mathers affirms, not exactly potential) existence with negative existence. Does this give us a hint about the nature of the indicible and indefinable quality of the Negative? It cannot be fixed. It cannot even be reasonably predicted—as one might do when known factors are in play. One may look at a seed, and, judging from its quality and the conditions of agriculture he is employing, he can make some reasonable prediction about the potential of this seed to produce a certain kind and quality of tree. But when he asks about the nature, or the "definition", of the seed that as yet undeveloped tree will generate, he goes deeper into the realm of baseless conjecture. Too many variables begin masking his vision into the nature of this negatively-existing idea. This is a little like attempting to view the Absolute through the many veils of positive existence.
After discussing at some length the notion of negative existence, in paragraph 38 of the Introduction to Kabbalah Unveiled Mathers explains, in his view, the dogma of the Triple Veils of the Negative. I will quote him here in full: There are three qabalistical veils of the negative existence, and in themselves they formulate the hidden ideas of the Sephiroth not yet called into being, and they are concentrated in Kether, which in this sense is the Malkuth of the hidden ideas of the Sephiroth. I will explain this. The first veil of the negative existence is the AIN, Ain=Negativity. This word consists of three letters, which thus shadow forth the first three Sephiroth or numbers. The second veil is the AIN SVP, Ain Soph = the Limitless, This title consists of six letters, and shadows forth the idea of the first six Sephiroth or numbers. The third veil is the AIN SVP AVR, Ain Soph Aur = the Limitless Light. This again consists of nine letters, and symbolizes the first nine Sephiroth, but of course in their hidden idea only. But when we reach the number nine we cannot progress farther without returning to the unity, or the number one, fur the number ten is but a repetition of unity freshly derived from the negative, as is evident from a glance at its ordinary representation in Arabic numerals, where the circle 0 represents the Negative, and the 1 the Unity. Thus, then, the limitless ocean of negative light does not proceed from a centre, for it is centreless, but it concentrates a centre, which is the number one of the manifested Sephiroth, Kether, the Crown, the First Sephira; which therefore may be said to be the Malkuth or number ten of the hidden Sephiroth. (See Plate II.).
Thus, 'Kether is in Malkuth, and Malkuth is in Kether.' Or, as an alchemical author of great repute (Thomas Vaughan, better known as Eugenius Philalethes) says [in 'Euphrates', or 'The Waters of the East'], apparently quoting from Proclus: 'That the heaven is in the earth, but after an earthly manner; and that the earth is in the heaven, but after a heavenly manner.' But inasmuch as negative existence is a subject incapable of definition, as I have before shown, it is rather considered by the Qabalists as depending back from the number of unity than as a separate consideration therefrom; wherefore they frequently apply the same terms and epithets indiscriminately to either. Such epithets are 'The Concealed of the Concealed,' 'The Ancient of the Ancient Ones,' the 'Most Holy Ancient One,' &c. This text, along with more than eleven pages from Mathers' Introduction, was copied verbatim by Aleister Crowley to include in The Temple of Solomon the King, part V. Crowley viewed this excerpt of Mathers's work as necessary reading for fully understanding the Key Scale, and while Crowley attributed the text to Mathers, this lengthy "borrowing" by Crowley shows the degree of dependence upon Mathers' ideas Crowley still had when this article appeared in Equinox I, 5. (in 1911). Yet, fully aware that he was so dependent, even though one would have thought Aiwass would have helped Crowley create his own superior introduction to Qabalistic ideas, Aleister understood he needed to distance himself from Mathers' authority, especially since Crowley was stealing the man's work left and right. Only the year before, in 1910, Crowley had been sued by Mathers for copyright infringement, to prevent the further publication by Crowley of the secret papers of the Golden Dawn. As Crowley later noted in his "Confessions": "In 1910 Aleister Crowley was a sheep not having a shepherd; the motives and controlling element had been removed and he was more or less cut off from the past. One thing seemed as good as another. He acted irresponsibly." While Crowley here blames his confusion and puerile behavior on his having allegedly crossed the Abyss, his earthly remains behaved pretty much the same as always. While Crowley eventually won the lawsuit, on appeal, he was clearly stung, both by the fact somebody tried to tell him NOT to do what he wanted (with other people's property), but also because Mathers was still so dominant a figure in the molding of Crowley's ideas. He now began (or rather stepped up) a campaign to disparage his former master, even while he continued to loot Mathers' work.
Regardless of what Crowley truly believed about the worth of Mathers' Qabalistic words and ideas, he certainly based a good bit of his life's work on at least the superficial structures of Mathers' appropriated writings. The Naples Arrangement incorporates the Triple Veils, as described by Samuel L. Mathers, and despite Crowley's claim that AYN meant plainly an "Absence of Things", he later wrote (in The Book of Thoth): "One must begin, as a mathematician would, with the idea of Zero, Absolute Zero, which turns out on examination to mean any quantity that one may choose, but not, as the layman may at first suppose, Nothing, in the "absence-of-anything" vulgar sense of the word." Perhaps Crowley was simply being post-Abysmally vulgar and irresponsible when he wrote otherwise. Of course what good is consistency when one is supposedly doing the work of the Secret Chiefs, which neatly dovetailed with Crowley's need to steal Mathers' work, as Aleister confessed: "We were carrying out the orders of the Secret Chiefs by exposing the G[olden] D[awn] and publishing its Ritual...". Conjugal Cones Another approach Aleister Crowley used to view the relationship between the negatively-existent or pre-positive trinity and the resultant Tree (and especially the Supernal Triad) was by means of geometry. This explanation, and its illustration, cannot of course merely concern mundane mathematical formulations but instead use some geometrical ideas to create another layer of metaphor about that unknowable process we wish to indirectly know. The particular branch of geometry to which we shall refer is the study of conic sections. This study can be quite complex, involving all kinds of esoteric formulae and codes which to the un- or anti-mathematical mind are hopelessly obscurant veiling. On the other hand, the basic ideas which attend to our concerns are not particularly difficult to grasp, nor need they be formal in their presentation. Simply, conic sections are slices made through a cone. The conic idea (and shape) is one which, if you have had even an elementary experience of ice cream, you ought to have seen—and even devoured. The Qabalistic cone is of course theoretical and not edible in any real sense, but it does not hurt to keep thinking of that very real pile of frozen joy in a cone while we go through this. In fact maybe you should go get an ice cream cone before reading this. And a brief disclaimer before we go on: What follows is necessarily mathematical in some jargon and theory, but is certainly not intended to be formally and comprehensively pregnant (as A. E. Waite might put it). There are usually exceptions to general rules, or better, more mathematical, ways of putting things, but remember that we are approaching this from an occult viewpoint, and are more interested in the general perception of these ideas by occultists such as Crowley rather than the exhaustive understanding an honest-to-pi mathematician would prefer. First, some history. A long time ago, in ancient Greece, people, who were not slaves, had a lot of time on their hands. One of the things they did to take up this time was to ponder the mysteries of nature, and how mathematics, and particularly geometry, seemed to accurately describe it. At some point they became interested in the shape of the cone and how it could be sliced up to render mathematically interesting shapes. Ever since, the conic sections (cone slices) have been studied partly because of their theoretical characteristics and mainly because they have so many applications to the real world. For example, conic sections describe the orbits of planets and other bodies around the Sun. They also can be used to design antennae and to make maps. Another, not so practical, application for conic sections is in occultism. What is a conic section? First, imagine a triangle. If you rotate the triangle on an axis formed by a line dropped from the apex perpendicular to the base, you will form an infinite series of identical triangles described on different planes, which seen together form a circular pyramid, or a cone.
To achieve this effect without getting too oblique (and you do not need to do this to get the occult idea), you will want to use either an isosceles triangle (with the base being the line connecting the two equal angles), or a right triangle using one of the sides of the right (90°) angle as the axis of rotation (in this case you are just reflecting or doubling your original triangle). If this is beginning to sound too technical, do not worry, all you need to recall is that triangles "give rise to" cones. Now that we have a cone, we get to start slicing. How do you slice a cone? Very carefully, or very technically—uh-oh. But again, it is really not that hard. Our cone is after all existing in three dimensions (in our minds) but drawn in two dimensions on the screen or on paper. The slicing is not done with a knife, though you could use one to slice up a real world cone. But the geometrical cones are cut using planes. What is a plane? Simply any flat surface described by three non-collinear points (i.e., not all in one straight line). Of course that shape is a triangle, but the surface they occupy can be thought of as limitless in extension. If the plane we have constructed, which we will call the slicing plane, should intersect an object, such as our cone—meaning if the slicing plane should intersect the planes of the object (recall our cone is constructed on many planes)—then if we think of the now divided portions of our cone as literally cut into, it has been sliced. The different shapes of the slicings on the cone are called conic sections. In the picture above showing the cone you can see one kind of slice, the circle which forms the base, although because of the simulated angle of view, you see it as another kind of slice, the ellipse. It is important to realize that the cone's base is arbitrary; in other words, the cone does not really have a base but rather the sides continue to infinity. Also, the cone is hollow. Since it is easier to work with, and conceptualize, a finite object, we can depict it with a nice circular base. There are four shapes one can make by slicing a cone, although one of them actually requires two cones, configured, as we shall see, in a most telling occult fashion:
As you can see, one way of thinking about what we are doing is rotating the slicing plane from perpendicular to the axis of the cone (in the circle) to parallel to it (in the hyperbola). The double-cone required to show the hyperbola is generally used for all conic section work, and is what we might call a mathematical cone since this shape is usually what mathematicians mean when they talk about a cone. Something else you should note is that the circle and the ellipse are finite shapes, whereas the parabola and hyperbola extend to infinity on their open ends (that is the ends which continue outside the visible cone). As noted before, the cone itself is also in fact infinitely extended, but drawn as if it is not to make it easier to work with. Also, depending on the real-world application, the cone may have a definite limit at its base. So, the more concrete our ideas become the more limits we apply to their otherwise unconstrained abstractions. Looking once more at the hyperbola we can see why this relationship between the planes can be viewed as conjugal, especially in an occult way, because, if we understand the upper cone to be representative of the Negative condensing to 1-Kether (or actually to zero as we would understand it), and the lower cone as being the Positive expanding from 1-Kether, the hyperbola becomes a symbol of the magickal dynamic, which corresponds to a conjugal dynamic, of the intercourse between the cones. The upper cone is the penis squeezing out its infinitely tiny drop of Limitless Light, while the lower cone is the womb which infinitely expands to nurture the flourishing and differentiating of this Light. The special nature of the hyperbola, its ability to transmit information via mirroring from one cone to the other geometrically describes the process of Creation. Why all this somewhat arcane geometry interests us with respect to the Triple Veils is because, when Aleister Crowley published The Book of Thoth, he applied the ideas of conic sections to his illustration of the Triple Veils of the Negative (illustration labeled the "Key Scale" on page 266). In Crowley's construction, the ellipse, parabola and hyperbola correspond to the Triple Veils in the following manner: Hyperbola—AYN SVP AVR (000)* *[NOTE—the 0's indicating the Veils are never properly explained by Crowley. In a note to the Key Scale in 777 he does state that the numbering of the Scale should start with '000', and since AYN is the first Veil listed it would seem to naturally be attributed to 000. However, the numbers actually printed on the Key Scale do not show this, and instead merely include a single 0 to apply to all three Veils. It seems that when it came time to commit himself and the Scale to specific correspondences on this point he backed away from the challenge. In the illustration for The Book of Thoth, AYN SVP AVR is the third Veil and is corresponded to the three 0's, while AYN SVP receives two 0's as the second Veil and AYN one 0 as the first Veil. Crowley in several Libers used the Veils, or rather the 0's, as paragraph heads, and in some of these indicated 000 as being the first Veil and so apparently AYN. In The Treasure-House of Images (published in Equinox I-3), this method makes explicit the correspondence of 000 to AYN and 0 to AYN SVP AVR. However, this was not written by Crowley, but instead by J. F. C. Fuller. Note the discussion below about whether Crowley would have been likely to have committed such a glaring and basic error as illustrating the Veils in reverse order in The Book of Thoth.] In The Book of Thoth illustration the ellipse (AYN) is shown encompassing, and one might say including, the Qabalistic Tree of Life, as if the Tree was growing inside the zero-shaped ellipse of AYN. Outside of, which is to say above, the ellipse we see the parabola of AYN SVP, and outside of that the hyperbola of AYN SVP AVR; the latter two are seen only with the topmost of their arcs visible as they extend into infinity. This drawing has confused quite a few people, and not simply because these matters are readily confusing, but also because there has been a suspicion that Crowley, in this illustration, somehow got it wrong. Why? Simply, the argument has been, how can AYN, the Absolute Negative, be represented by a finite figure such as the ellipse? And shouldn't it be represented as the most distant idea from 1-Kether and the rest of the Tree, instead of being (seemingly) the nearest? One website, authored by a "priest" of (C)OTO, Matt Rogers (AKA Dionysos Thriambos), puts it this way: "The conic sections of ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola were first related to the Tree of Life in Appendix B of Crowley's The Book of Thoth. He attributes them to the "three Veils of the Negative," but the Diagram I which purports to give the specifics appears to be incorrect. In light of the explanation of the Naples Arrangement given on page 32 of the same text, the ellipse should be Ain Sof Aur—as the Veil most proximate to Kether. Thus Ain Sof is still represented as the parabola; and the hyperbola becomes the symbol of Ain, the absolute qabalistic zero."* *NOTE: When jktarot.com contacted Rogers to ask him about his statement, he was initially open to answering questions, but as soon as he read something indicible, he became cultish, claiming: "I have no reason to view you as a peer or collaborator, particularly in light of your public derision for the Order in which I am very active. (http://jktarot.com/editor4.html)" and concluded our exchange: "It is amply evident to me that your primary goal in approaching me at all has been harrassment. I am terminating this dialogue with prejudice, and you may be assured that I will delete further mails from you unread." In spite of this Rogers found the "harassment" sufficiently inspirational to include in his blog comments: http://www.livejournal.com/users/paradoxosalpha/50049.html As you will see, in this Rogers explicitly makes reference to a "correspondent", not harassment. And, when William Breeze (Hymenaeus Beta), Outer Head of the Caliphate OTO (or (C)OTO), included a version of the original "Key Scale" illustration (on page 532) in his first revised edition of Crowley's Magick (1994), Breeze exchanged the order and conic attributions of AYN and AYN SVP AVR without any explanation other than to note that his illustration was "based on" Crowley's. However, to make such a fundamental change in the representation of Crowley's system certainly raises a question of why this was done. Breeze appears to agree with the sentiments, voiced in the above quotation by one of his fraters, that Crowley made an error. In Breeze's second revision of Magick, published in 1998, he offered an explanation for his change. I have dealt with this note in more detail in this commentary. However, the main point is that Breeze does in fact write that the 1944 The Book of Thoth illustration contradicts Crowley's words, and that. according to Breeze, the culprit is the always blameable Mathers, who Breeze suggests may have confused the artist of the The Book of Thoth diagram with Mathers' own 1887 illustration of the Triple Veils [i.e., Plate II, vide supra]. Breeze goes further, saying that Mathers is himself vague about how the veils correspond or are sequenced, and the suggestion is that Mathers once again, and unlike Crowley, must have been confused about the finer points of abstruse occult dogma. Breeze concludes by declaring that the error has been corrected and the proper Veil sequence and conic attribution will NOW be: Hyperbola—AYN (000) However, is this change really what Breeze claims—a change BACK to what Crowley intended? For if it is, this raises some serious questions about Crowley's motives or mental focus in publishing what Breeze claims was an obviously flawed illustration of Crowley's most fundamental "Key" ideas. Was Crowley simply distracted, or old and strung out on heroin, or the lack of it, or is this an intentional blind (of the rather hamfisted Waitean sort), OR is it possible Breeze is wrong and Crowley was correct in his choice of illustrations? We should note that if this is such an obvious mistake, it is one that Crowley's editors, including people who should have known better than to allow it to go uncorrected, have consistently followed. For example, when Karl Germer published "Magick Without Tears" in 1954, he included the very same Key Scale illustration from the 1944 The Book of Thoth. In other words, ten years had gone by and nobody, apparently including Aleister Crowley (who died in 1947), had noticed the supposed mistake and suggested a correction. In the Symonds-Grant edition of Magick (1973), the editors included an illustration facing the title page of the Tree of Life, including the Veils ordered according to the 1944 illustration, with AYN (or AIN) closest to Kether and AYN SVP AVR (AIN SOPH AUR) as the outer (hyperbolic) Veil. The editors say that this illustration is "in accordance with Crowley's system." Also, in notes to Appendix VII (Liber Thisharb), the editors clearly state that AYN (AIN) is corresponded to 0 and is the inner veil, while AYN SVP AVR (AIN SOPH AUR) is corresponded to 000 and is the outer veil. They further specify in a note to Liber V vel Reguli: "In the Thelemic Cabbala...LA (NOT) [is the] concentration of the Void (Ain)...attributed to Kether." That view is of course consistent with the Mathers diagram, showing Kether concentrating at the center or the void of AYN. But if that is true, is that description of the process consistent with what Mathers explains about it? Recall Mathers tells us: "...the limitless ocean of negative light...concentrates a centre, which is the number one of the manifested Sephiroth, Kether, the Crown." But in Plate II Mathers shows the concentration occurring seemingly within AYN, the Negative Existence, with AYN SVP AVR as some sort of external shell of the process. If we think about the metaphor Mathers uses to describe the Veils, this apparent problem may be dissolved. He writes of the Veils as "cloud-veils of the AIN" (in the caption to Plate II). We should recall how in the Bible God is frequently described as being veiled by a cloud or being in a cloud—e.g.,"I come unto thee in a thick cloud" (Exodus 19:9). So, if the metaphor of a cloud has any coherent application to these ideas of Veils, then think for a moment about the nature of a cloud, especially a thick one. What one sees of it is the exterior. The interior is of course veiled to us, just as the interiors of the gas giant planets, such as Jupiter and Saturn, are veiled to us. We describe features of Jupiter and Saturn then based upon literally nebulous surfaces, and not what lies beneath the veils. Now, in the realm of the Negative, there are no such limits as interior or exterior, but from the realm of our perception, and in using metaphors to represent what we think we see or understand of the Negative, AYN is veiled by the "cloud" layers of AYN SVP and AYN SVP AVR, and so it lies beneath these, at the interior. And where AYN SVP AVR concentrates a center is precisely in the deepest void of AYN, just as Mathers indicates in his illustration. However, what we see of this process, or understand of it from our perspective, is the emersion of 1-Kether from the exterior Veil, AYN SVP AVR, the "limitless ocean of negative light". That Aleister Crowley unquestionably was following Mathers' lead, and the metaphors indicated in Mathers' Plate II illustration of the Veils, can be demonstrated by this Crowley explanation from The Book of Thoth: "If there is anything except Nothing, it must exist within this Boundless Light [AYN SVP AVR]; within this Space [AYN SVP]; within this inconceivable Nothingness [AYN]." That comment by Crowley could in fact serve as a caption for Mathers' Veil-clouds of AYN graphic. Further, if the argument is that the ellipse should not be able to represent any infinite or absolute quality, how can it then be said to properly represent a "limitless" light? Also, as the double mathematical cone demonstrates, the hyperbola is the one conic section that spans, or serves to communicate (conjugally) between, the cones—or in occult terms between the positive and negative realms of existence. AYN SVP AVR is then, somewhat paradoxically, the furthest Veil from 1-Kether in conceptual terms, but the closest and most brilliant Veil in perceptual terms. In other words, AYN SVP AVR is not subject to the clear-cut categorizing tendencies of sub-Abysmal human conjectures, but can serve a seemingly paradoxical double (or multiple) function—depending on how one looks at. And that relativistic attitude is precisely the one Crowley generally favored and that Mathers noted as being a characteristic of Zoharic commentary about the Triple Veils. As Mathers says, "But inasmuch as negative existence is a subject incapable of definition...it is rather considered by the Qabalists as depending back from the number of unity than as a separate consideration therefrom; wherefore they frequently apply the same terms and epithets indiscriminately to either." Now, this serves to explain why AYN SVP AVR may be seen as the medium uniting the conjugal cones, and why it should be represented by the hyperbola, but what about AYN and any correspondence one might claim for it to the ellipse? How can the Absolute be correctly corresponded to a finite figure? Or why, in the model presented by Crowley in The Book of Thoth illustration, would it be the correct correspondence? First, let us examine some of the comments Crowley makes about the ellipse, the parabola and hyperbola, in his writings. Much of what Crowley had to say about conic sections and their occult relevance occurred in two of his works—Liber V vel Reguli, and The Book of Thoth. The former is a Class D A\A\ treatise giving a basic ritual for "invoking the Energies of the Aeon of Horus", i.e., Satan. "Reguli" means "of the prince", as in the Prince of this world, or Satan, so the work is subtitled "The Book of Satan". In the commentary to this Satanic ritual, Crowley explains how the parabola is a metaphor for any human life, but particularly for the life of the Magus (an idea supported by the attribution of the 00 or second Veil to the Magus in Liber B vel Magi): "The Magician must be wary in his use of his powers; he must make every act not only accord with his Will, but with the proprieties of his position at the time...Similarly a parabola is bound by one law which fixes its relations with two straight lines at every point; yet it has no end short of infinity, and it continually changes its direction. The initiate who is aware Who he is can always check his conduct by reference to the determinants of his curve, and calculate his past, his future, his bearings and his proper course at any assigned moment; he can even comprehend himself as a simple [or single] idea. He may attain to measure fellow-parabolas, ellipses that cross his path, hyperbolas that span all space with their twin wings. Perhaps he may come at long last, leaping beyond the limits of his own law, to conceive that sublimely stupendous outrage to Reason, the Cone!...His own infinity becomes zero in relation to that of the least fragment of the solid [i.e., of the cone]. He hardly exists at all." Crowley goes on to remark about how the True Will is itself "determined by its equations" and thus it is necessary for one who would know this to become what Crowley calls a "parabola-philosopher", one who knows and codifies his own law, according to his parabolic destiny and his True Will. Further, true transcendence even requires the rejection of this law of self as anything other than a temporary set of numbers and relationships applicable to a nearly non-existent abstraction of the whole or the ALL—in other words applicable to one's conic-sectioned life of the parabola. Crowley is here in a sense personalizing or microcosming the Veils, anointing the Thelemic initiate as the divine agent of AYN SVP and a container and dispenser of AYN SVP's hyperbolic limitless light. In The Book of Thoth Crowley further discusses the symbolism of the conic sections and of the cone itself. In his essay on the Fool, for example, he calls the card a glyph of "the creative light", in other words AYN SVP AVR. This light is symbolized in numerous ways on the card, including the "phallic cone of white light" which shows light descending from Kether upon the head of the Fool, and indeed if you look at the whole card, the Fool's body is shaped like a great cone, indicating the lower, positive cone, which starts at a single point in 1-Kether and expands outward as it progresses down the Tree of Life. While the card is supposed to be about the "Negative above the Tree of Life", its position as a Key is of course a path ON the Qabalistic Tree of Life and so these Negative energies or Veils are shown manifesting, in positive forms. The Veils themselves are manifested as the Dionysian Holy Vine, the grapes of which make the ecstatic liquor which both describes the divine creative impulse (i.e., a divinely drunken outburst), as well as the means for apprehending that impulse and bringing a bit of that spark down in a magickal or spiritual way. Completing the Fool, and in a sense the conjugal cone it establishes, is the Universe, whose function is to provide "Nothing in its complete expansion", i.e., a kind of base to the limitless, baseless cone of the Fool's expansion. It is seemingly a paradox that this expansion can be and will be contained at all, but, as Crowley notes, to allow a "universe of discourse" to exist at all, implies and demands "the idea of limitation". At the end of things, at the limit of the expanse of the mirror which is limitless, everything implied in the Negative Nothing is made manifest in the Positive Nothing (or the great clutter of Something(s)). And these cards—Fool and Universe—spell ATh—"essence", or "existence", or a "ploughshare", that is the tool (like a cone) driven by the Fool who breaks the ground of light to make of it the myriad agricultures of the Universe.
It is worth nothing that while Crowley's comments about the Fool certainly indicate that the ellipse of zero (that is the Arabic symbol—0) corresponds to AYN—the Qabalistic Zero is in fact that very concept—that he does so raises as many questions as it may answer. For while he seems to be openly saying that 0 is AYN and thus explaining how it may be that the ellipse correctly corresponds to AYN (after all, AYN is unextended anyway, and so could not really be correctly corresponded to any conic section), his comments about zero as being the balancer raise questions about the meaning of what is actually being balanced. For zero (0) is not NEGATIVE in this sense, but neither negative or positive, and serves then to balance, or to annihilate both negative and positive expression. It expresses absolutely NOTHING while gobbling up literally everything like a black (w)hole. Perhaps this is simply another problem of attempting to use mathematics too rigorously in the occult. Crowley tended to explain away any apparent contradiction of this sort by saying if one was blocked by the specifics he was too dull to get the higher implications anyway. However, there is an interesting consideration here, which is that AYN, if truly NOTHING, is neither Negative nor Positive, and so AYN SVP and AYN SVP AVR, being just sufficiently differentiated to stand back—Negatively—from AYN and in the case of AYN SVP AVR to also provide the spark for a Positive expression, are also annihilated when the two cones collapse to zero (0). It is worth noting that Allan Bennett, whose ideas about Qabalah were respected by Crowley and influenced his thinking about the subject, had this to say in an article (A Note on Genesis, published in Equinox I, 2) much praised by Crowley: "That which is behind and beyond all Number and all thought (even as the Ain Soph with its Mighty Veils depending back from Kether is behind and beyond all Manifestation) is the number 0. Its symbol is the very Emblem of Infinite Space and Infinite Time." Finally, in looking at Crowley's comments in The Book of Thoth about the Veils and their correspondences as they relate to any ordering before the Tree of Life, we should note he says on page 267: "The ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola, show the three Veils of the Negative." Since Crowley habitually listed AYN (Nothing) as the first of the Veils, just as Mathers had indicated: "The first veil of the negative existence is the AIN.", and since Crowley lists here the ellipse as the first conic section, it makes sense that he means the ellipse is to be associated with the first Veil AYN. This is in fact what the illustration on page 266 shows, that AYN corresponds to the ellipse, while AYN SVP AVR corresponds to the hyperbola. We should note as well Crowley's instructions regarding the page 266 diagram: "This diagram should be studied so deeply and so constantly that it becomes automatic for the mind to accept it as the BASIS OF ALL THINKING ON THE SUBJECT OF TAROT...". Yet recall that William Breeze has said Crowley must be wrong on this point, that he must have been confused, that a Mathers-muddled artist is to blame, or Mathers himself. However, if Crowley cannot be trusted to get right "the basis of all thinking" on a subject such as Tarot, how and why should he be trusted to get anything right at all? And if we cannot trust an authority (at least on the subject of what HE thinks about something) to accurately report the basis of his ideas, why should we bother reading him at all? This dispute, and claim by Breeze, goes right to the heart of whether someone like Crowley understands the basis and the basics of what he is talking about, and moreover it goes right to the heart of whether someone such as William Breeze understands these things either. |
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© 2004 by J. Karlin, all rights reserved |
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