ALEISTER CROWLEY & LIBER AL - THE BOOK OF THE LAW

Liber AL vel legis Sub Figura CCXX is the most important Holy Book and founding document of Thelema, originally titled Liber L, or Liber Legis, - The Book of the Law.

Liber AL's three chapters were dictated to Aleister Crowley during three sessions, approximately one hour each, over three days, April 8th, 9th, and 10th, 1904. The entity giving dictation was a "praeter-human intelligence", - "Aiwass", - "the minister of Hoor-paar-kraat".

Crowley describes the messenger, and the circumstances surrounding the dictation of the book in the following quotes:

"The Voice of Aiwass came apparently from over my left shoulder, from the furthest corner of the room. The voice was passionately poured, as if Aiwass were alert about the time limit. I had a strong impression that the speaker was actually in the corner where he seemed to be, in a body of 'fine matter', transparent as a veil of gauze, or a cloud of incense smoke. He seemed to be a tall, dark man in his thirties, well-knit, active and strong, with the face of a savage king, and eyes veiled lest their gaze should destroy what they saw. The dress was not Arab; it suggested Assyria or Persia, but very vaguely. I took note of it, for to me at the time Aiwass was an 'angel' such as I had often seen in visions, a being purely astral". - Aleister Crowley, The Equinox of the Gods (London: O.T.O., 1936), pp. 117-18.

"On page 19, I failed to hear a sentence, and (later on) the Scarlet Woman, invoking Aiwass, wrote in the missing words. (How? She was not in the room at the time, and heard nothing)." Crowley was referring to his wife Rose. It was her discovery of the Stele of Revealing in Cairo that Crowley claimed led to "the creation of the ritual which invoked Aiwass". According to Crowley there was a certain continuity or identity with himself and the "self-slain Ankh-af-na-khonsu"

"My observation of the Universe convinces me that there are beings of intelligence and power of a far higher quality than anything we can conceive of as human; that they are not necessarily based on the cerebral and nervous structures that we know, and that the one and only chance for mankind to advance as a whole is for individuals to make contact with such Beings". - Aleister Crowley.

 

 

"We always think that the UFOs are projections of ours. Now it turns out that we are their projections". - Carl Jung.