This post is the second (alongside Hermekate and Setamorphosis) of the two posts that I first teased in Chapter 27 of Inner Tarot Revolution. This one will deal with the matter I first mentioned in that post of how the vision of a Magus is so deeply colored by their Word that it is difficult for them to see past it. It will also pertain to one of the core purposes of my Word of Hermekate, which is to link the Aeons of Set and of Ma’at by setting a new precedent that paves the way for a steadily-growing number of Magi to Come Into Being. This exploration will lead naturally into the focus of my next post outside of the Inner Tarot Revolution series, which will be to discuss this particular change to the current magic(k)al landscape and some of its possible ramifications. I’m not sure when that post will be forthcoming because I still have some research to complete before I’ll be ready to write it, but I do have a general idea of what I plan to cover in it: While this post will examine the established tradition and resulting “culture of Magi” in recent times, the next one in the Word of Hermekate series will instead focus on the future and how I expect the Word of Hermekate to influence said “culture.” This sort of thing is an essential part of a Word above and beyond the mere philosophy connected with it: A genuine Magus Word should also make some predictions, for a few reasons:
A genuine Magus Word is more than a mere idea or philosophy, but as I’ve written recently after similar suggestions by Michael Aquino, is also a “Ding an sich,” an extant “thing in itself” that exerts an actual magic(k)al force, causing a change in the Objective Universe.
Because this is such a defining feature of a genuine Word, it thus follows that a genuine Magus should be able to reasonably speculate on the eventual manifestations or changes their Word is likely to cause—the Magus will never be able to predict everything and may get some things wrong, but generally should be able to carry this step of prognostication out with some degree of accuracy.
As such, this process of predicted results in the newly-balanced Aeon(s) becomes an important test of the legitimacy of one’s Word, which in turn serves as a bulwark against charlatanry. If a Word is genuine, then the manifestation of its effects becomes a “proof” of its validity. This is part of the “science” aspect of magic(k) as defined by Aleister Crowley.
Before I begin this post’s explorations in earnest, a bit of housekeeping is in order.
I need to clear something up, and this is owing to how seriously I take this work because it is not my intention to mislead or deceive—thus, when I catch a mistake in my work, it’s important for me to admit it. This is especially true given the relative isolation in which I am working, which means I will bear a “burden of proof” quite different from other Magi from Crowley forward.
I recently watched a very interesting discussion on YouTube that first went up about 5 days ago: A long conversation between well-known magicians Damien Echols and Jason Louv. Jason Louv in particular has been a strong influence on my work. The VSigil Working I performed in 2012 probably would not have happened without his anthology, Ultraculture Journal: Essays on Magick, Tantra and the Deconditioning of Consciousness, which I remember reading for the first time as I traveled to Norway from the United States in 2010. His essay entitled "Magic: A Grammary” remains one of the single most influential pieces of writing in terms of its impact on my magic(k)al career, and I think every magician should read it. I remember it hitting me right upside the head on my layover in Frankfurt, Germany. I’ve written elsewhere about my habit of boldly emailing various magicians with annoying questions about phurbas, including Lon Milo Duquette, Jason Miller, Carroll Poke Runyon and Don Webb…and Jason Louv was in fact the very first (so all the rest of them can blame him for encouraging me, because he actually wrote me back. It’s all his fault!).
A note: The link above says the book was first published in May of 2014, but that must be a newer edition of the book. Just to prove that I’m not lying, here’s the title page of my copy, which shows it was published in 2007. The front cover found its way into a homemade birthday card collage that I gave to a “tantric massage therapist,” which also included my personal, hand-painted B.O.T.A. copy of Major Arcana Key VIII - Strength (she’s a Leo)—yet another detail that inspired not only this pen name, but also that of Gogo Bordello (wink wink). She ended up gifting me my first Thoth Tarot deck, so it was a pretty fair exchange, I’d say. Anyway. Ahem. There I go oversharing again…
Anyway, I appreciated this discussion, which first made me feel somewhat vindicated and then, in almost the same breath, made me super self-conscious, and here’s why: Damien Echols is pretty well-respected, but he confessed that he never got too deep into studying Crowley and said it was mainly because of the amount of stuff a person has to decipher if they want to understand his ideas—which essentially matches with my own experience, though that is now proving to be an “Achilles’ heel” in the Utterance of my Word, since Crowley was the first Magus of the modern occult revival. This is evidenced by what Echols said next: That the one part of Crowley’s work he did find helpful was the writing Crowley did about the basic system of grades that comprised the A.:.A.:., because he described Initiatory experiences that a person has for each of them. Then Echols went directly into the specific example of how, for instance, in the grade connected to Chokmah (that would me the grade of Magus), a person is supposed to receive “a Word or whatever” and as soon as I heard that, my face went red.
Why?
Because I spent several lines in recent writings describing how the first time I ever came across the concept of a “Word” in the context of the grade of Magus was in Don Webb’s book Mysteries of the Temple of Set (Inner Teachings of the Left Hand Path)—importantly, after I had already “heard” my Word of Hermekate. Once he said that, I suddenly realized that couldn’t be entirely true, because I have definitely read the same stuff about the grades of A.:.A.:.that Echols did—more than once—and it mentions this:
There are many magical teachers but in recorded history we have scarcely had a dozen Magi in the technical sense of the word. They may be recognized by the fact that their message may be formulated as a single word, which word must be such that it overturns all existing beliefs and codes. We may take as instances the Word of Buddha—Anatta (absence of an atman or soul) [...] Mohammed, again, with the single word Allah [...] Similarly, Aiwass, uttering the word Thelema (with all its implications), destroys completely the formula of the Dying God.
From The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, Chapter 49
Cited from the Wikipedia page about A.:.A.:..
This is an important detail because I had leaned fairly heavily on this misremembered account of things to support the case that my Word is genuine, so now I must retract that statement and offer a qualifying statement: I had read the above passage about Words and Magi, but it also didn’t make a very strong impression on me, and I took the idea at face value as an incidental detail, and then forgot all about it (at least as far as my conscious memory is concerned). I also did not draw the same deeper understanding of the Word of a Magus from the above passage that I later gained from reading the book by Webb. That book was the first time I encountered the term “Word” with a capital W or learned about its more explicitly magic(k)al nature. This is one of the things Damien Echols was referring to: The fact that you can read about these descriptions regarding the grades one day and take them as flowery, poetic language, and then later on when you actually experience the grade, you then realize just how literal the statements were. That is what happened for me, and I spoke to something very similar with regard to Don Webb’s chapter on the grade of Magus in the post Fifth Grade Book Report. Nonetheless, this does not change the fact that at the time I first heard my Word in 2016, I did not make this connection consciously—I promise. The above detail was sufficiently “forgotten” that I still felt quite a “jolt” when I read about Words in Webb’s book. As such, even though I had encountered the concept before, I didn’t understand it for what it was and thus I was not “trying” to be a Magus when I heard my Word. The experience was still spontaneous and genuine when it occurred.
That’s all I needed to clear up.
Feel free to watch the discussion—Echols and Louv talked about some good stuff:
And now back to your regularly-scheduled programming.
Sympathy For The Devil
A few weeks ago, Veronica and I were sitting down for dinner at Red Lobster when she asked me a question:
”Do you know why the hell those Temple of Set people pay attention to Aleister Crowley?"
Like most women familiar with who Aleister Crowley was, Veronica is…not exactly a fan of his. More to the point, she really can’t stand him. And honestly, I can’t blame her.
The answer to that question can get a bit complicated, and I didn’t keep it as simple as I probably should have, and by the end of the discussion, we were both pretty upset because no matter how I came at answering the question, V was like, “So? So what? Fuck that guy!” I for one felt a bit hurt because I am pretty frank with V about all this Magus stuff I’ve got goin’ on and she knows what it all means to me, but she was upset because she felt like I was mansplaining to her (she isn’t a practicing occultist), not to mention making unjustifiable excuses for Crowley. I came at it from the angle of magic(k) (and particularly Initiation) being both an art and a science, making the analogy that, for example, if Einstein had been “problematic” as a person like Crowley was, we couldn’t just ignore his Theory of Relativity because it gets at something so fundamental about physics, and likewise, some of Crowley’s contributions to our understanding of Initiation were similar in their impact on popular occultism. V turned it around and said, “So? Hitler had all kinds of ideas about politics and society, but we don’t dignify any of it,” and I replied “Well, none of Hitler’s ideas were particularly unique or groundbreaking, and as long as there’s someone else they could be attributed to, it’s still pretty safe to ignore him. And also, comparing Crowley to Hitler is…going a bit far.” We kept talking over one another and ultimately….”agreed to disagree” (i.e. walked out of the restaurant not speaking to one another).
I had tried conceding this much: Despite Crowley’s influence, no, it’s not really necessary for most occultists these days to pay attention to him, and a great many people don’t. As far as large swathes of the occult community are concerned, he’s effectively “canceled.” Even though most of us wouldn’t even know about occultism if it weren’t for him and any popular author we might name can trace a historic line back to him somehow, it’s more than do-able nowadays to learn magic(k) and become quite proficient without reading a single sentence that he himself wrote.
Of course, even that stance is nuanced because there’s something somewhat “morally questionable,” in the eyes of “polite society,” that is an inherent part of the image of the magician. More than this, while society in its current wave of political correctness is out to cancel and censor all sorts of people these days, it’s more common in magic(k) circles for people to take a more nuanced approach that involves scavenging whatever is useful from any given person’s ideas, and happily leaving the rest. This is because, above all, practical magic(k) is about pragmatism, about getting results, and about doing whatever works. To a magician, there’s no reason not to use the magic(k) of a shady figure, whether they were a misogynist or a racist, if that magic(k) works. We understand that the realm of magic(k) exists in its own sort of liminal space that operates by completely different rules from society or day-to-day life, even outside of the accepted laws of nature; by this token, a person’s racist or classist or sexist attitudes aren’t necessarily reflected in their raw technique or magic(k)al philosophy at all—or, if they are, we can adjust for that and only apply the parts in our own practice that are relevant to us. Besides, by the time a person is seriously standing in the middle of a magic(k) circle conjuring infernal powers or contracting even with angelic spirits, they are violating so many social norms that heeding the more useful ideas of people found to be repugnant by society isn’t really much worse.
Well…much of the time. These days, even occultism is being subjected to the standards of political fashion, and there are plenty of magicians who do still feel strongly about canceling every past occultist who held questionable views (which is most of the classical ones because frankly, times were different not that long ago).
However, to bring back the above analogy to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity: Crowley’s definition of magic(k)—that it is “the art and science of causing change to occur in conformity with Will”—is as well-known to occultists as the formula E=Mc2 is to physicists…and it has absolutely no inherent connection to anything else Crowley ever said or did. As such, most magicians innately understand that pinching esoteric ideas here and there from a person’s body of work is generally not making a clear endorsement of everything that person said, did, or lived for.
That being said, even if this weren’t the case, the picture is less clear for someone on the path of Initiation, to which Crowley made contributions so significant that one would be hard pressed to get anywhere at all without relying on significant chunks of his thinking…and if you’re a Magus? In that case, it’s going to be extremely difficult to make headway if you can’t deal with Crowley at all…not without entirely reinventing the wheel, which in this line of work, would likely take a lifetime (as, indeed, Crowley himself dedicated his entire life to his magic(k)al work). Lastly, for a Magus, this goes far beyond mere theoretical concepts, foundational or otherwise.
In the context of the Western esoteric tradition, the archetype of the Magus is inherently Mercurial, attributed the qualities of the god Hermes, who is fleet of foot and Messenger of the gods, but who also rules over thieves; the work of the Magus is, in many ways, to steal from the gods. The impulse of the Magus is Promethean, and Prometheus stole fire from Zeus to give to mankind; for his transgressions, he was punished severely, being chained to a rock so that Zeus’ eagle could feast upon his liver every morning for eternity.
The Magus finds themselves in a similar position. As Don Webb commented in Overthrowing the Old Gods: Aleister Crowley and the Book of the Law, “Everyone reading this book will have experienced these things, but if you will allow me a geeky metaphor, you have experienced gravity while walking on the moon, but the Magus is experiencing it while walking on the surface of Jupiter” (p. 142).
As a mediator between the realm of the gods and the realm of humanity, the Magus is the fulcrum between vast opposing forces, and this puts a unique level of strain upon them that no one else but another Magus can fully sympathize with.
One afternoon last year, quite curiously, I was scrolling my Facebook feed and noticed that someone had left an interesting comment under one of Don Webb’s posts; it stood out awkwardly because given the content of the message, it looked like a private bit of correspondence that should probably have been an email instead of a comment. It wasn’t even related by subject to the post under which it appeared. It began with “Dear Don Webb,” and was an apparent message from a student of his, reporting on his progress. It specifically said something along the lines of, “I have read up to page 351 in The Temple of Set Volume II” and went on to thank Don Webb for teaching him. Given the book in question—which, as I have written recently, I’ve been holding onto for years knowing that I needed to study it, but not being in a good mental place to do so—I followed this apparent lead to find that the page number given was the beginning of precisely the chapter I needed to read at that moment, so consumed as I was by doubt and discouragement regarding my magic(k)al task. The timing was so striking and the numbering of the page so exact to meet my need in that moment that I honestly believed that the comment had been intentionally left there just for me.
It’s a chapter entitled “Xem and Per-t: From Magic to Mysticism.” The context is heavy, as it regards two Words Uttered within Temple of Set that were surrounded with scandal and controversy; however, there are some very intriguing and “meaty” comments about the nature of the grade of Magus written by Michael Aquino in a letter to Lynn Norton, a would-be Magus V° of the (alleged) Word of Per-t in July of 1981. It’s very unfortunate that I was also very drunk that first night I read it, because it would have been very helpful to actually remember what I read there, but another reason it didn’t quite sink in at the time was that I didn’t have enough context to attach its statements to. However, I read it again this morning and I now offer a selection of statements from the letter that will help to illustrate the point I am working toward here:
As was also the case at the time of my own and Anubis’ V° initiations, I do not think that congratulations would be magically appropriate. While the path from I° to IV° is one of increasing exaltation and satisfaction, the V° is, like Satan’s fabled fall from Heaven, a plunge into an entirely new environment. The Magister Templi can be an explorer, a teacher, a philosopher. All these pleasant pursuits are shattered for the Magus, as he must be a creator. That is his Task, and therein also lies his Curse:
And this is the horror that was shown by the lake that was nigh unto the City of the Seven Hills, and this is the Mystery of the great prophets that have come unto mankind, Moses, and Buddha, and Lao Tan, and Krishna, and Jesus, and Osiris, and Mohammed; for all these attained unto the grade of Magus, and therefore were they bound with the curse of Thoth. But, being guardians of the truth, they have taught nothing but falsehood, except unto such as understood; for the truth may not pass the Gate of the Abyss. - 666, 6th Æthyr, The Vision and The Voice
—
At this moment, if you are in truth a Magus, no one understands you but you. That is why a Magus is understood as Uttering a “falsehood”, and that is why the Curse: He encounters skepticism and then disbelief, and then even annoyance and rejection as he insists upon proclaiming the Word. Yet if he is a Magus, then he cannot help himself; he must continue to proclaim the Word, and that is the Task of the Magus.
Remember that it took our Initiates a long, slow, and often difficult process to make the magical switch from Indulgence to Xeper. Some fell by the wayside. Then it took a similar process to make the switch from Xeper to Xem. The word of Nuit - “inertia” - works for the Magister Templi (who streamlines and fulfills the existing magical universe) and against the Magus (who expands it and thus alters all preexisting formulæ concerning it).
It is most important that you are aware of this inertia distinction. Otherwise you might tend to interpret resistance and ignorance concerning your statements as petty, interpersonal antagonism.
—
If on the other hand you know that you are not a Magus that the phenomena of Set-III and thereafter are IV° and not V°, then I warn you most emphatically not to accept the purple medallion, for to do so would destroy you.
The Temple of Set Vol. II
pp. 352-353
Aside from his misogyny and even his antisemitism, one reason many occultists can’t stand Aleister Crowley is because of what appears to be his sheer egotism (and he was, indeed, quite narcissistic). However, the above statements illustrate an important array of qualifying factors: To many occultists, the entire “Magus” schtik was nothing but self-important, grandiose nonsense, completely made up, and I’ll let you in on a secret: Until I began to Cross the Abyss and then experience the phenomena of this grade, I tended to agree with them. The whole thing seems so improbable to someone who has not experienced it that people either think it’s complete bullshit, or they go in the opposite direction as “true believers” and wind up in a position of practically worshiping the man (for, as we see in the above statements, to attain the grade of Magus theoretically puts one in a class alongside such figures as Moses, Mohammed, and the Buddha, all of whom are and were worshiped worldwide).
The reality is that while this grade is very real, neither of the two responses is actually appropriate.
The grade of Magus is a real spiritual experience and the Word of the Magus has real, direct, magic(k)al and metaphysical consequences. The Magus is literally leveraging the power of their Will and their Word against the “inertia of Nuit,” and as such, is basically a person at war with the Universe itself, in a sense. As such, the Magus has a special place in the hearts of other Magi who have persevered through the same struggle, enduring the Curse of the Magus to proclaim their Word, because only other Magi can possibly know what it’s like. Thus, even never having met them, one Magus holds an inner sympathy for and bond with other Magi that is something like the special bond among soldiers who have endured the horrors of war together.
They have “an understanding,” and this makes it much easier for a Magus to overlook the human shortcomings of other Magi; put simply, the stresses of essentially being the rope in a tug-of-war between opposing universal forces are something that inevitably leads a person to do any manner of things most people wouldn’t conceive of. A Magus must basically do whatever they’ve got to do in order to get their Word out…and lastly, a Magus knows, far better than anyone else, that the world at large will inevitably misunderstand much of what other Magi have said and done. The context in which a Magus exists is very specific and the rules are different in that context. The very laws of polarity break down for us, such that very little of what a Magus says can ever be taken solely at face value.
Dwelling beyond the realm of duality in a sense, the Magus is beyond good and evil, but of course, that impulse must inevitably be translated and anchored to the world of duality, where moral good and moral evil do exist, and thus the Magus is a very “checkered” figure who is very likely to err severely in their judgement, especially without help from others who stand a chance of understanding them.
The Magus endures tremendous vacillation between two opposite states until such time that they make sufficient headway in their Task that they can maintain something of a stable equilibrium between the two. When the Will of the Magus is waxing and tipping the scales, the Magus experiences great good fortune, positive synchronicity, and wonderful serendipity that gives them tremendous encouragement; everything seems to go their way and it essentially feels as though the universe is completely on their side. At other times, the Curse of the Magus tips the scales the other way, and the Magus experiences tremendous resistance in everything they try to accomplish, including the above-mentioned rejection of them and their ideas.
This latter portion, and the stark warnings from the quotes above taken from Aquino’s letter to Lynn Norton, go a great length toward explaining the obstacles, the constant self-doubt, and the loneliness I have described in recent posts. I particularly need to remind myself of the line, “It is most important that you are aware of this inertia distinction. Otherwise you might tend to interpret resistance and ignorance concerning your statements as petty, interpersonal antagonism.”
The Magus is a force to be reckoned with, standing at a causal nexus that makes tremendous waves and distorts their sense of themselves. For this reason, the two modern Magi who draw by far the most ire from the public at large to this day are the two who operated in a world so unaccustomed to the presence of Magi that there was essentially no one around who could effectively check their excesses:
Aleister Crowley and Anton Szandor LaVey.
A living Magus mentally cuts them both a great deal of slack because we understand what they were up against.
People glorify these grades, and some are so antsy for a taste of their glory that they fake reaching the grade. The reality is that no real Magus would wish their fate on anyone else.
Michael Aquino was not kidding when he advised Lynn Norton that falsely taking up the “purple medallion” would result in their destruction.
This is not a game one plays for sport. It’s for keeps.
Seeing From Word to Word
It is fortunate that the Magi of the recent past have left behind such impressive (even if controversial) legacies and copious amounts of their writing, because the moral support that comes with reading the words of a past Magus is absolutely critical for the current Magus. It is as vital and essential as the very blood that flows through our veins. This is not only because of the morale boost that comes with remembering that someone else has lived who understood the struggle, but because in order to understand our own Word, we must understand past Words to the best of our ability. Once more, this is because we are dealing not only with philosophies (because they are that, too), but also real forces at work in the universe. If my Word comes to bring a change to the present universe, I can’t bring it through into manifestation in this world without understanding how the landscape it is entering has been influenced and altered by other Words—especially the more recent ones, whose reverberations are still fresh and whose activity is still very much in the process of playing itself out. Aleister Crowley said that, “Every man and every woman is a star,” and if this is true, it means that every Magus and their Word is a veritable red giant; the magic(k)al landscape of today is like a vast stretch of space with several such stars whizzing about, orbiting one another and warping the very fabric of space and time around them. There is a dynamic interplay among them, and it is into this intricate dance that a living Magus must introduce their Word—as gracefully as possible.
Words and Magi Come Into Being in an ordered rhythm that unfolds throughout time, meaning there is a meaningful progressive unfolding that flows from one Word to another. As such, it is of vital importance that a Magus study previous Magi and their Words to get a sense of the greater synergy that abides between them.
The interaction between any one Word and another tends to be dialectical in nature: Later Magi often seem hostile toward previous Magi, but this is only one aspect of their connection stemming from the fact that the Word of a Magus is the primary filter through which they experience absolutely everything once the grade takes full hold. At the same time, there is also an indescribable reverence for and fascination with other Magi and their Work. Even when we are saying completely contradictory things, we are nonetheless speaking the same language. Thus, even where we might clash intensely, Magi nonetheless honor one another on some level as brothers and sisters…again, even if we have never met. Where we are in accord, such harmony is felt deep in our very bones as our respective Words resonate; where we disagree, there is absolutely visceral discord and perhaps even spiteful disdain; after all, if our Words were all in complete agreement with one another, there would not be a need for more than one of us. Not all Magi Come Into Being to express the same things.
I will now walk through some recent Words in order to illustrate how this works (and also to come to a better understanding of it myself, because putting it all into words such as in this essay is also how I work this all out for myself).
Thelema and the Aeon of Horus
Aleister Crowley’s Word was Thelema, which loosely translates to “Will.” According to his teaching, two “Aeons,” or “world ages,” had previously ruled: The first was the Aeon of Isis, centering around the principle of the Mother. This was the age of classical Paganism, or nature-based polytheistic systems with a relatively flat and “horizontal” social structure emphasizing equality. This was later overtaken by the Aeon of Osiris, the Father, an age of patriarchy and monotheism characterized by more “vertically-oriented” systems of hierarchical, top-down rulership and control. The Aeon of Osiris stands on a foundation of agriculture and city life.
According to Crowley, in 1904, his Word of Thelema instituted the Aeon of Horus, or the age of the principle of the Child; neither matriarchal and Pagan nor patriarchal and Christian, the Aeon of Horus defies both horizontal and vertical social systems in favor of a world order centered upon the individual. Instead of taking guidance from one’s peers (as in the Aeon of Isis) or one’s social superiors (as in the Aeon of Osiris), one is to take their guidance from their “True Will,” which is an inner, spiritual guiding principle unique to each person. In this Aeon, the way to success and prosperity is to strive to understand one’s True Will and carry it out; this was not merely a recommendation but was, in fact, a strict admonition: As was written in The Book of the Law: “Thou hast no right but to do thy will... For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.” Any person sufficiently in touch with their True Will would be aided in every way by the very universe itself, and with the incoming of the Aeon of Horus, this interplay of all people in the pursuit of fulfilling their True Will would shape the very unfolding of history.
Although certain, more overt forms of the patriarchy were overthrown by the proclamation of Thelema, one of Crowley’s human shortcomings was his own misogyny, such that even his efforts to make men and women more equal were what many would call “tone deaf” at the very least. One way of understanding this is that although the Aeon of Horus is the age of the child, that child is nonetheless male; this was addressed to some degree in the Aeon of Ma’at by Soror Nema who saw the Aeon of Ma’at as the age of the Daughter, but we’ll get to that. According to Crowley, each Aeon lasts for about two thousand years as the dominant historical “overlay.” He predicted that the next Aeon to arise would be that of Ma’at and predicted that it would arrive in the distant future. In practice, it came much sooner.
One of the “blinders” of Crowley’s Word was his intense focus and reliance upon the Qabalah and its interrelated systems; the Qabalistic Tree of Life is the very backbone of Thelema, which is intricately interwoven with the tarot, and Crowley made various changes and “adjustments” to these traditional attributions in Liber 777 and The Book of Thoth, including changing correspondences on the Tree of Life and the order and names of some of the Major Arcana Trumps. The resulting system of correspondences is incredibly complex and well-thought out, with Crowley absolutely insisting that aspirants learn all of its ins and outs. Because Crowley was indeed extremely intelligent and these systems are so complicated, most students of Thelema take these aspects of his magic(k)al system as absolutes. The grade system of the A.:.A.:., Crowley’s magic(k)al order, is also rooted in all of these same attributions. In the eyes of devoted Thelemites, these details are of tremendous importance and working within this framework is not negotiable. Dedicated Thelemites live and die by these structures, sometimes to the point that they will not recognize the Initiatory legitimacy of anyone who operates outside of them.
I have largely resisted Aleister Crowley’s work, preferring secondary sources to his own writings, mainly for reasons similar to Damien Echols: It all looks needlessly complicated to me, especially as a child of chaos magic(k). In addition, I can seriously pick up on the “cult of personality” vibes that surround his more dedicated followers and I’ve personally seen more than enough of that in my life. I find it “sus.” However, since Crowley himself was such a tremendous influence on the Initiatory systems upon which my own Work ultimately rests, I recognize that I am going to have to “bite the bullet” and dig in deeper. I have always known the day would come eventually.
Ma-Ion, IPSOS, and the Aeon of Ma’at
Although Aleister Crowley originally predicted that the Aeon of Ma’at would supersede the Aeon of Horus far in the future (potentially thousands of years from now for all he knew), it was instead proclaimed by Crowley’s own student and “Magical Son,” Charles Stansfeld Jones, or Frater Achad. Frater Achad Uttered the Word of Ma-Ion on April 2nd, 1948 and declared the Aeon of Ma’at to be an age of truth, justice, and order. I still have a great deal of study to do in order to better appreciate Frater Achad and his work, but the salient point is that he was the one to announce that the Aeon of Ma’at had manifested directly alongside that of Horus, as its “twin current.”
In 1974, Soror Nema and others wrote Liber Pennae Praenumbra, an inspired text that plays the same role within the Aeon of Ma’at that The Book of the Law plays for the Aeon of Horus. Nema is Magus of the Word of IPSOS, which is held by the magic(k)al Lodge she co-founded, Horus-Maat Lodge, to be the chief Word of the Aeon of Ma’at. Kenneth Grant serves as a magical link between Frater Achad and Soror Nema in that Grant drew from Achad’s correspondence regarding the Ma-Ion in writing The Typhonian Trilogies, and was later acquainted with Soror Nema and her work. As such, in order to better understand how the Aeon of Ma’at fits into the magic(k)al landscape, I will need to study the work of Frater Achad, Kenneth Grant, and Soror Nema alike. This is especially so in consideration of the fact that the Word of Hermekate is connected with the Aeon of Ma’at. I don’t want to write much more about this portion of the Aeonic landscape until I’ve done more research.
However, it is safe to say that this corner of the Aeonic landscape shares in some of the Qabalistic “blinders” of Crowley and the Aeon of Horus; Liber Pennae Praenumbra is framed upon the Tree of Life and much of Soror Nema’s teaching is colored by the foundational aspect of Thelema in her earlier magic(k)al work. The sense I get is that while the Aeon of Ma’at may depart from the Aeon of Horus in spirit, it does not considerably do so in substance and basically upholds the idea that we very much live under the influence of the Aeon of Horus. However, since Crowley’s work resulted in the founding of his own Initiatory school and both Frater Achad and Soror Nema Came Into Being as Magi within the resulting Initiatory context, it’s arguable that the structure they were supported and constrained by was among the factors that prevented them both from suffering from the same degree of ego inflation that was exhibited by Crowley.
Indulgence and the Age of Satan
Next in line came Anton Szandor LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan and Magus of the Word of Indulgence. Church of Satan was originally founded in 1966. Perhaps in large part because the Word of Hermekate partakes of both the Aeon of Ma’at and that of Set, it differs greatly in tone and essence from LaVey, his Word, and his Work, and this forms one of my own “blind spots” as a Magus: I really don’t admire LaVey as a human being and I resist his teachings to a great extent. I have actually come to terms recently with just how much I am missing out on for intentionally overlooking his work. I recognize very strongly how many of his ideas and perspectives are so diametrically opposed to my own that I have quite a lot to learn from them as a result. Put simply, some of his opinions that I dislike the most are also the ones I need the most in order to develop along more balanced lines.
In many ways, although LaVey did study his work and ultimately “reverse-engineered” the grade system for his Church of Satan from that of Crowley’s A.:.A.:., LaVey was sort of “the anti-Crowley.”
LaVey’s metaphysical outlook is a point of intense controversy among some. I know that when I tried reading The Satanic Bible in high school, its apparent atheistic outlook in combination with the fact that LaVey nonetheless powerfully asserted the validity of magic(k)al practice was a combination that really turned me off, and I know of staunch Satanists who insist he was an atheist through and through. Others, such as early members of the Temple of Set who converted from the Church of Satan, insist that in more private quarters and particularly in his earlier years, LaVey did believe in the spiritual existence of the Prince of Darkness. I hear this from people I generally trust to be accurate on such matters, but I can’t claim to know much about this from firsthand studies of any primary sources.
Regardless, that is the general reputation of his system and his Work, and at any rate, he was highly critical of any form of organized spirituality (even as he founded a church of his own, yes). This anti-spiritual sentiment extended to Crowley and his Word of Thelema, which drew criticism from LaVey, who strongly disliked so-called “occultniks” who put too much stock in overly metaphysical notions and the vague, inchoate beliefs that do so often rest beneath them. His thinking was much more practical and down-to-earth and he focused his magic(k)al efforts more on finding their expression in real-life, everyday pursuits such as photography and sexology. His Word of Indulgence was eminently visceral and carnal, rooted in the flesh. He was a man of action who prioritized worldly power and concrete steps taken in the real world. As such, he completely rejected the Qabalistic tendencies of Thelema, absolutely purging the same from his Church of Satan.
In terms of the Aeonic landscape, this highly material emphasis was important in grounding many aspects of Crowley’s Word of Thelema, essentially taking them and rendering them far more immediate by following through with rigorously applying a skeptical, rational frame of reference to them. LaVey’s declaration of the Age of Satan was kind of a “fuck you” to Crowley’s Aeon of Horus. This would end up serving very valuable purposes and yielding impressive results in ways he would not have expected, when his student Michael Aquino would break away from the Church of Satan to found Temple of Set. One of these consequences was that through LaVey’s work, the process of Initiation that runs through Crowley’s Thelemic system was in many ways validated while simultaneously being freed from many of its artificial constraints.
Xeper and the Aeon of Set
In 1975, in response to Anton LaVey basically turning the Church of Satan into a personal moneymaking machine (something that, I gotta be real, does very well reflect his Word), Michael Aquino led a schism that resulted in the foundation of the Temple of Set. He did this through the Utterance of the Word of Xeper and the writing of The Book of Coming Forth By Night on the North Solstice of 1975.
In many ways, as a Magus, Michael Aquino’s Word and the philosophy associated with Xeper was a synthesis of Crowley’s Thelema and LaVey’s Indulgence; Aquino retained many of the more rational and materially-oriented perspectives inculcated in him by his teacher LaVey, but also brought things back in the direction of Thelema in affirming the reality of the being LaVey called The Prince of Darkness, whom Aquino called by the name of the Egyptian neter Set. According to Aquino and The Book of Coming Forth By Night, the entity responsible for The Aeon of Horus was Set’s “opposite self,” a “strange and fitful presence” named HarWer, whose chaotic and unstable influence upon the Aeon of Horus was considered to be ultimately unrefined and detrimental. From Aquino’s perspective, the Aeon of Horus should rightfully have been developed fully into something more closely resembling the Aeon of Set, but Crowley simply wasn’t capable of that level of discipline and sophistication.
The Aeon of Set holds much similarity to that of Horus with its emphasis on the individual, but it strips away many of the spiritual notions that come attached to the Aeon of Horus; in other words, while Crowley did advocate for people to do their True Will, he also pushed for them to do so within the context of the narrative and general world order upheld by his Aeon, including his emphasis on the Qabalah, and with the intense focus of the Aeon of Set on a purer and more precise notion of Selfhood, all of that was completely optional “claptrap” that was little more than an amusing mythic overlay. He did away with all of that as “baggage” every bit as readily as LaVey had with Indulgence, all while upholding the spiritual reality of Set. The Word of Xeper was about the act of creating oneself in an intentional, self-willed way that does not necessarily bow to such arbitrary external frameworks as those upheld by Crowley.
To my way of thinking and through the lens of the Word of Hermekate, my opinion as a Magus of Aquino’s own blind spots is this: His intention was to re-create or Remanifest the ancient Temple of Set that once existed in the Old Kingdom period of Ancient Egypt, and he regards this intention as having succeeded; unfortunately, this seems to me to have led to something of a “category error” in which the notion seems to be upheld that this connection with Set is so direct and literal as to be essentially exclusive; from what I can make of the writings covering the Temple’s early years, those of the Temple of Set see themselves as having been specially chosen and honored by Set and their notion of “The Elect” seems to be firmly tied to the Temple itself, such that it does not seem to occur to many members that people outside the Temple proper might also be among Set’s Elect. At least, it seems to me that there is a strong pattern of intense cliquishness in which anyone outside the Temple is regarded very differently from those within it. Even outside the Temple, there seems to be a perception that the Temple of Set and the Aeon of Set are one and the same thing.
To the extent that this is actually true and not just my own biased perception, one concept linked with the Word of Hermekate is to firmly establish that this is not the case and that the Temple is too fixated on that idea in ways that keep it rigidly constricted; it will soon prove to be too brittle in the Aeonic landscape as it will be changed by my Word. As Magi begin to Come Into Being outside the Temple, its narrow view of the Aeon of Set will prove to be a limiting perspective. The irony is that we were only able to reach this point mainly through the concentration of attention and effort that results from that same narrow perspective.
Another similar and related blind spot surrounds The Book of Coming Forth By Night: Michael Aquino wrote a commentary of Crowley’s Book of the Law in which he took what strike me as rather audacious liberties of interpretation in which he basically went so far as to make assertions about what he figured Crowley really meant when he wrote it, alleging that even Crowley himself was somewhat confused as to the meanings of his own inspired text. In this, he seems to clearly recognize that the very nature of the composition of the book is bound to be “tainted” somewhat by being filtered through Crowley’s personal perspective; after all, even if it was inspired spiritually, the man himself was the one to physically write the book, so all of this had to come through his own nervous system. As such, Aquino made interpretations and adjustments to fit the text better into his own conception of the Aeons, based on the idea that perhaps Crowley’s “signal reception” may not have been all that clear.
These are valid points…
…however, from what I have seen, Aquino did not seem to recognize similar possibilities with regard to his own text. It appears to me that, at least in the early writings found within Temple of Set Vol. II, both he and the other early members were quick to quote that book chapter and verse and to take all of its words very seriously as having been faithfully dictated without error and without any “contamination” from Aquino’s own subjectivity.
From my perspective, if this is the case, it seems to me as a Magus that Aquino and his early followers were overly confident.
As well-deserved as the Temple’s reputation is and as fine and admirable as their work is…
….I smell hubris.
But, then again, all of this does very much vibe with the Word of Xeper.
You see?
There will be more to come. As I said many times above, I have plenty of study to do in order to better understand the historical and philosophical underpinnings of the present condition of the Aeonic landscape, and gaining a better understanding will not only help me to better grasp how the Word of Hermekate alters that landscape, but it will help me to better understand the Word itself.
This study cannot be rushed, but I will add posts here as my understanding develops. This will include separate posts examining the direct one-to-one relationship between the Word of Hermekate and other Words, including the various supporting Words Uttered within Temple of Set that fall under the Aeon of Set.
So far, it appears that some of the strongest connections are to the Word of Xem…which ties in rather neatly with the previous post, in which the symbolism of that Word was very evident in the turning up of Atu XVIII: The Moon.
I have long suspected this relationship between the two words, from snippets I have picked up here and there about Xem…however, it has remained another one of those matters, similar to that of Setamorphosis, that I have been reluctant to study because I definitely needed to be in the right frame of mind to properly assimilate information related to Xem.
I could almost feel the depth of the connections between Xem and Hermekate in the inner reaches of my heart.