The Book of the Law

Cover of The Book of the Law by Aleister Crowley (Weiser 2004 Centennial Edition)

The Book of the Law is the central sacred text of Thelema, written (or received) by Aleister Crowley in Cairo, Egypt in the year 1904. It contains three chapters, each of which was written down in one hour, beginning at noon, on April 8th, 9th, and 10th. Crowley claims that the author was an entity named Aiwass, whom he later referred to as his personal Holy Guardian Angel (or "Secret Self"). Biographer Lawrence Sutin quotes private diaries that fit this story, and writes that "if ever Crowley uttered the truth of his relation to the Book," his public account accurately describes what he remembered on this point.Sutin, Lawrence. Do What Thou Wilt 2000. p. 122-140, 312 The teachings within this small book are expressed as the Law of Thelema, usually encapsulated by these two phrases:
*"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" (AL I:40) and
*"Love is the law, love under will" (AL I:57)

Its full title is Liber AL vel Legis, sub figura CCXX, The Book of the Law, as delivered by XCIII=418 to DCLXVI. CCXX is 220, XCIII is 93, and DCLXVI is 666. This is a way of saying that the book was delivered by Aiwass (whose number is both 93 and 418) to Crowley, who identified with The Beast 666. It is often abbreviated as Liber Legis, Liber AL, or even just AL.

The Writing of Liber Legis

The Summons

According to Crowley, the story begins on March 16, 1904, when he tries to "shew the Sylphs" by means of a ritual to his wife, Rose. Although she could see nothing, she did seem to enter into a light trance and repeatedly said, "They're waiting for you!" Since Rose had no interest in magick or mysticism, he took little interest. However, on the 18th, after invoking Thoth (the god of knowledge), she mentions Horus by name as the one waiting for him. Crowley, still skeptical, asks her numerous questions about Horus, which she answers accuratelyâ€"without having any prior study of the subject. Crowley also gives a different chronology, in which an invocation of Horus precedes the questioning. Lawrence Sutin says this ritual described Horus in detail, and could have given Rose the answers to her husband's questions.Sutin, Lawrence. Do What Thou Wilt 2000. p. 120 The final proof was Rose's identification of Horus in the Stele of Revealing, then housed in the Boulak museum, with the exhibit number 666.

On March 20, Crowley invokes Horus, "with great success." Between March 23 and April 8, Crowley has the hieroglyphs on the Stele translated. Also, Rose reveals that her "informant" was not Horus himself, but his messenger, Aiwass. Finally, on April 7, Rose gives Crowley his instructionsâ€"for three days he is to enter the "temple" and write down what he heard between noon and 1:00pm.

The Writing

Crowley wrote The Book of the Law on April 8, 9, and 10, between the hours of noon and 1:00 pm. The place was the flat where they were staying for their honeymoon, which he descibed as being near the Boulak Museum in a fashionable European quarter of the city, let by the firm Congdon & Co. The apartment was on the ground floor, and the "temple" was the drawing room.

Crowley described the encounter in detail in The Equinox of the Gods, saying that as he sat at his desk in Cairo, the voice of Aiwass came from over his left shoulder in the furthest corner of the room. This voice is described as passionate and hurried, and was "of deep timbre, musical and expressive, its tones solemn, voluptuous, tender, fierce or aught else as suited the moods of the message. Not bassâ€"perhaps a rich tenor or baritone." Further, the voice was devoid of "native or foreign accent," perhaps meaning that it was similar to his own (i.e. British).

Crowley also was able to describe his general appearance, which he got from a "strong impression." Aiwass had a body composed of "fine matter," which had a gauze-like transparency. Further, 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."

Crowley also makes it very clear that it was not "automatic writing," but that the experience was exactly like an actual voice speaking to him. This is evidenced by several errors that the scribe actually had to inquire about. He does admit to the possibility that Aiwass was a manifestation of his own subconscious, although he thought this was unlikely:

"Of course I wrote them, ink on paper, in the material sense; but they are not My words, unless Aiwaz be taken to be no more than my subconscious self, or some part of it: in that case, my conscious self being ignorant of the Truth in the Book and hostile to most of the ethics and philosophy of the Book, Aiwaz is a severely suppressed part of me. Such a theory would further imply that I am, unknown to myself, possessed of all sorts of praeternatural knowledge and power."

Changes to the manuscript

The final version of Liber Legis includes text that did not appear in the original writing, including many small changes to spelling. In several cases, stanzas from the Stele of Revealing were inserted within the text. For example, chapter 1, page 2, line 9 was written as "V.1. of Spell called the Joy" and was replaced with:

Above, the gemmed azure is::The naked splendour of Nuit;:She bends in ecstasy to kiss::The secret ardours of Hadit.:The winged globe,the starry blue,::Are mine, O Ankh-af-na-khonsu!

On page 6 of chapter 1, the following is in the original manuscript:

And the sign shall be my ecstasy, the consciousness of the continuity of existence, the unfragmentary non-atomic fact of my universality. along with a note: Write this in whiter words But go forth on.

This was later changed to:

...And the sign shall be my ecstasy, the consciousness of the continuity of existence, the omnipresence of my body. (AL I:26) In his Commentaries, Crowley writes: "This phrase was totally beyond the comprehension of the scribe, and he said mentallyâ€"with characteristic self-conceitâ€""People will never be able to understand this." Aiwass then replied, "Write this in whiter words. But go forth on." He was willing that the phrase should be replaced by an equivalent, but did not wish the dictation to be interrupted by a discussion at the moment. It was therefore altered (a little later) to "the omnipresence of my body." It is extremely interesting to note that in the light of the cosmic theory explained in the notes to verse 3 and 4, the original phrase of Aiwass was exquisitely and exactly appropriate to his meaning.

Again in chapter 1, on page 19, Crowley writes, (Lost 1 phrase) The shape of my star isâ€". Later, it was Rose who filled in the lost phrase:

The Five Pointed Star, with a Circle in the Middle, & the circle is Red. (AL I:60)

Chapter 2 has very few changes or corrections. Chapter 3 has a few spelling changes, and includes large chunks inserted from Crowley's paraphrase of The Stele of Revealing.

Interpretation of Liber Legis

Thanks in large part to The Comment, interpretation of the often cryptic text is generally considered a matter for the individual reader. However, Crowley wrote about AL in great detail throughout the remainder of his life, attempting to decypher its mysteries. He became convinced that Liber Legis introduced a spiritual Law comparible with those spoken by Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed, and that the Book was itself to be the basis of all modern religion: "This Book is the foundation of the New Aeon, and thus of the whole Work."

The general method that Crowley used to interpret AL was the Qabalah, especially its numerological method of gematria. He writes, "Many such cases of double entendre, paranomasia in one language or another, sometimes two at once, numerical-literal puzzles, and even (on one occasion) an illuminating connexion of letters in various lines by a slashing scratch, will be found in the Qabalistic section of the Commentary." From Magick Without Tears, he writes:

"Now there was enough comprehensible at the time to assure me that the Author of the Book knew at least as much Qabalah as I did: I discovered subsequently more than enough to make it certain without error that he knew a very great deal more, and that of an altogether higher order, than I knew; finally, such glimmerings of light as time and desperate study have thrown on many other obscure passages, to leave no doubt whatever in my mind that he is indeed the supreme Qabalist of all time."

It is important that Aleister Crowley noted, not without surprise, that Liber Legis was somewhat similiar to the alleged Necronomicon, which he said to have read a few years later. This lead to the belief among his followers that the entity that appeared to him was the spirit of The Old Ones.

The Speakers

Although the "messenger" of AL was Aiwass, the Book presents several personalities that are the primary speakers. The key three are the central godforms of the three chapters, Nuit, Hadit, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit. The first chapter is spoken by Nuit, the Egyptian goddess of the night sky, called the Queen of Space. Crowley names her the "Lady of the Starry Heaven, who is also Matter in its deepest metaphysical sense, who is the infinite in whom all we live and move and have our being." (Crowley, The Law of Liberty)

This chapter also introduces:
* Ankh-af-na-khonsu (the historical priest that created the Stele of Revealing)
* The Beast (i.e. Aleister Crowley)
* The Scarlet Woman, also known as Babalon, the Mother of Abominations

The second chapter is spoken by Hadit, who refers to himself as the "complement of Nu," his bride. As such, he is the infinitely condensed point, the center of her infinite circumference. Crowley says of him, "He is eternal energy, the Infinite Motion of Things, the central core of all being. The manifested Universe comes from the marriage of Nuit and Hadit; without this could no thing be. This eternal, this perpetual marriage-feast is then the nature of things themselves; and therefore everything that is, is a crystallization of divine ecstasy" and "He sees the expansion and the development of the soul through joy." (Crowley, The Law of Liberty)

Ra-Hoor-Khuit is the third speaker, identified as the Crowned and Conquering Child, and the god of War and of Vengeance. Crowley sums up the speakers of the three chapters thus, "we have Nuit, Space, Hadit, the point of view; these experience congress, and so produce Heru-Ra-Ha, who combines the ideas of Ra-Hoor-Khuit and Hoor-paar-Kraat."

The Comment

Based on several passages, including: "My scribe Ankh-af-na-khonsu, the priest of the princes, shall not in one letter change this book; but lest there be folly, he shall comment thereupon by the wisdom of Ra-Hoor-Khuit" (AL I:36), Crowley felt compelled to interpret AL in writing. He wrote two large sets of commentary, where he attempted to decypher each line, usually according to his own understanding of the Qabalah. One of these, "The Law Is For All" is in print and published by New Falcon Press, ISBIN:1561840904.However, he was not satisfied with these attempts. In 1912, he prepared AL and his current comments on it for publication in The Equinox, I(7). He recalls in his Confessions (p. 674) that he thought the existing commentary was "shamefully meagre and incomplete." He later explains, "I had stupidly supposed this Comment to be a scholarly exposition of the Book, an elucidation of its obscurities and a demonstration of its praeterhuman origin. I understand at last that this idea is nonsense. The Comment must be an interpretation of the Book intelligible to the simplest minds, and as practical as the Ten Commandments." Confessions, p. 849 Moreover, this Comment should be arrived at "inspirationally", as the Book itself had been. Confessions, p. 840

Years later in 1925 while in Tunis, Crowley received his inspiration. He published in the Tunis edition of AL, of which only 11 copies were printed what was to become called simply The Comment (which is also called the Short Comment or Tunis Comment), and signed it as Ankh F N Khonsu (lit. "He Lives in Khonsu"â€"an historical priest who lived in Thebes in the 26th dynasty, the creator of the Stele of Revealing). It advises the reader against the "study" of the Book and states that those who "discuss the contents" should be shunned. The result is the common idea that interpretation of this often cryptic book is a responsibility for the reader alone.

The text

:Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.:The study of this Book is forbidden. It is wise to destroy this copy after the first reading.:Whosever disregards this does so at his own risk and peril. These are most dire.:Those who discuss the contents of this Book are to be shunned by all, as centres of pestilence.:All questions of the Law are to be decided only by appeal to my writings, each for himself.:There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.:Love is the law, love under will.::The priest of the princes,::: Ankh-F-N-Khonsu

Editions

* Weiser Books (Reissue edition; May 1987; ISBN 0877283346)
* Weiser Books (100th Anniversary edition; March 2004; ISBN 1578633087)
* Mandrake of Oxford (April 1992; paperback; ISBN 1869928938)

Liber AL is also published in many books, including:
The Equinox (III:10). (2001). York Beach, ME : S. Weiser. ISBN 0877287198
The Holy Books of Thelema (Equinox III:9). (1983). York Beach, ME : S. Weiser. ISBN 0877285799
Magick : Liber ABA, Book Four, Parts I-IV. (1997). York Beach, ME : S. Weiser. ISBN 0877289190

And at least one out-of-print audio version common on eBay:
The Book of the Law Vondel Park Audio Book 2003

*Text of The Book of the Law
*OTO-USA scans of the Manuscript version of The Book of the Law (more detailed)
*Ecclesia Gnostica Universalis presentation of the Manuscript version of The Book of the Law (more readable)
*The Old and New Commentaries to Liber AL by Aleister Crowley
*Thelemapedia, the Encyclopedia of Thelema & Magick
*Free Encyclopedia of Thelema
*A Transcription of Liber L vel Legis, showing in detail all the various differences between the original manuscript and the final form of the text.
*Essays on the Tunis Comment
*Text of ''The Book of the Law' in Persian'

The Book of the Law: Encyclopedia BETA

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