Confessions of Aleister Crowley

237 Firstly, it claims to be a document not only verbally, but literally inspired. Change not as much as the style of a letter; for behold! thou, o prophet, shalt not behold all these mysteries hidden therein. ... This book shall be translated into all tongues: but always with the original in the writing of the Beast; for in the chance shape of the letters and their position to one another: in these are mysteries that no Beast shall divine. Let him not seek to try: but one cometh after him, whence I say not, who shall discover the Key of it all. The author claims to be a messenger of the Lord of the Universe and therefore to speak with absolute authority. Secondly, it claims to be the statement of transcendental truth, and to have overcome the difficulty of expressing such truth in human language by what really amounts to the invention of a new method of communicating thought, not merely a new language, but a new type of language; a literal and numerical cipher involving the Greek and Hebrew Cabbalas, the highest mathematics etc. It also claims to be the utterance of an illuminated mind co-extensive with the ultimate ideas of which the universe is composed. Thirdly, it claims to offer a method by which men may arrive independently at the direct consciousness of the truth of the contents of the Book; enter into communication directly on their own initiative and responsibility with the type of intelligence which informs it, and solve all their personal religious problems. Generally, The Book of the Law claims to answer all possible religious problems. One is struck by the fat that so many of them are stated and settled separately in so short a space. Top return the the general question of religion. The fundamental problem has never been explicitly stated. We know that all religions, without exception, have broken down at the first test. The claim of religion is to complete, {396} and (incidentally) to reverse, the conclusions of reason by means of a direct communication from some intelligence superior in kind to that o any incarnate human being. I ask Mohammed, "How am I to know that the Koran is not your own compilation?" It is impertinent to answer that the Koran is so sublime, so musical, so true, so full of prophecies which time has fulfilled and confirmed by so many miraculous events that Mohammed could not have written it himself. The author of The Book of the Law foresaw and provided against all such difficulties by inserting in the text discoveries which I did not merely not make for years afterwards, but did not even possess the machinery for making. Some, in fact, depend upon events which I had no part in bringing about. It may be said that nevertheless there may have been someone somewhere in the world who possessed the necessary qualities. This again is rebutted by the fact that some of the allusions are to facts known to me alone. We are forced to conclude that the author of The Book of the Law is an intelligence both alien and superior to myself, yet acquainted with my inmost secrets; and, most important point of all, that this intelligence is discarnate. The existence of true religion presupposes that of some discarnate intelligence, whether we call him God or anything else. And this is exactly what no religion had ever proved scientifically. And this is what The Book of the Law does prove by internal evidence, altogether independent of any statement of mine. This proof is evidently the most important step in science that could possibly be made: for it opens up an entirely new avenue to knowledge. The immense superiority of this particular intelligence, AIWASS, to any other with which mankind has yet been in conscious communication is shown not merely by the character of the book itself, but by the fact of his comprehending perfectly the nature of the proof necessary to demonstrate the fact of his own existence and the conditions of that existence. And, further, having provided the proof required.