Magick in Theory and Practice (Section 1)

basis of many important initiations, notably the Third degree in Masonry, and the 5®—6° ceremony of the G.D. described in Equinox I, III. A cérémonial self-initiation may be constructed with advantage on this formula. The essence of it consists in robing yourself as a king, then stripping and slaying vourself, and rising from that death to the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel \ There is an etymological identitv between Tetragrammaton and I A 09 but the m agi cal formulæ are entirely different, as the descriptions here given hâve schewn. Professor William James, in his “Varieties of Religious Expérience”, has well classified religion as the <£once~born” and the “twice-born”; but the religion now proclaimed in Liber Legis harmonizes these by transcending them. There is no attempt to get rid of death by denying it, as among the once-born; nor to accept death as the gâte of a new life, as among the twice-born. With the A.*. A.*, life and death are equally incidents in a career, very much like day and night in the history of a planet. But, to pursue the simile, we regard this planet from afar. A Brother of A.*. A.*, looks at (what another person would call) “him- self”, as one — or, rallier, sonie — among a group of phenomena. He is that “nothing” whose consciousness is in one sense the universe considered as a single phenomenon in time and space, and in another sense is the négation of that consciousness. The body and mind of the man are only important (if at ail) as the telescope of the astronomer to him. If the telescope were destroyed it would make no appréciable différence to the Universe which that telescope reveals. It will now be understood that this formula of I A O is a formula of Tiphareth. The magician who employa it is conscious of himself as a man liable to suffering, and anxious to transcend that state by becoming one with God. It will appear to him as the Suprême Ritual, as the final stepj but, as has already been I. This formula, although now superseded by that of HORUS, the Crowned and Conquering Child, remains valid for those who hâve not yet assimilated the point of view of the Law of Thelema. But see Appendix, Liber SAMEKH. Compare also “The Book of the Spirit of the Living Gods,” where there is a ritual given in extenso on slightly different lines: Equinox I, III, pages 269-272. — 30