Central to Crowley's system is a curious and enigmatic book known as the Book of the Law, also called Liber AL, Liber Legis, Liber L, or CCXX (220). It is fairly short and has often been issued in pamphlet form. Crowley said it was revealed to him during his 1904 vacation with his wife Rose in the Boulaq neighborhood of Cairo, Egypt, by the audible dictation of a spiritual being called Aiwass, who was both the messenger of the new deities set over this æon and Crowley's own Holy Guardian Angel. In a series of trance visions, Rose indicated a number of symbols related to the Egyptian god Horus, according to the system Crowley had gotten and augmented from the Golden Dawn. She pointed out Stele 666 in the Boulaq Museum, which has since come to have a meaning in Thelemic mythology as an alternate form of the Book of the Law. Following Rose's instructions, he went to one of their rented rooms at an arranged time and took an hour of dictation from an unseen voice on each of three successive days.
The phrase "Book of the Law" comes from Freemasonry, as an alternative form of "Volume of the Sacred Law" (VSL). In a Christian Lodge this would be the Bible open on the altar; in a Jewish Lodge it would be the Torah, which means the scroll of the Law; and in a religiously mixed Lodge there might be more than one open sacred book on the altar. In Lodges, Temples, and other ritual bodies in Thelema, Crowley's Book of the Law is used for swearing initiatory oaths and for ritual connection to tradition, like the VSL in Freemasonry or the Book of Shadows in Witchcraft. Of course many religions have a central scripture and in Thelema the role is filled by the Book of the Law.
The book has three chapters, one chapter for each member of a trinity of ruling deities. Its phrasing is often ambiguous and it employs an odd, unearthly prose-poetic style which many people find beautiful. Various interpretations of its meaning are possible and Crowley wrote several commentaries during his life, some of them interpreting its verses in very different ways from his other commentaries or in ways at odds with the surface meaning.
The trinity of the Book of the Law or Liber AL is composed of three reinterpreted Egyptian deities. First is Nuit (Nut), the goddess of the night sky, closely linked in Egyptian religion with Hathor, also known as the Egyptian Venus. Her message is of freedom, love and the mystical bliss of union, as expressed in the curious equation 0=2. Nuit reveals the Law of Thelema and declares that the æons have turned in the Equinox of the Gods. She is represented imagistically as space and the stars of space. Nuit has been interpreted as the space-time continuum, or as the infinite potential containing all things real and unreal.
Second is Hadit (Heru-Behdeti or Horus of Edfu), the winged solar globe, symbol of divine authority. This form of the Egyptian god Horus, originally local to Bedheti, had influence throughout ancient Egypt. Hadit symbolizes the secret individuality within each of us, the star that each person is, the invisible, ineffable and unmanifest divine spark which moves each of us on our self-appointed path of will. As such Hadit also represents the underworld, the infinitely small point, the capacity for knowledge, the partner of Nuit, and the fiery nature of underworld deities such as Blake's Los, the Greek Hekate and Hades, and the Christian Lucifer. Their aspect of wrathfulness is often interpreted as a form of great energy usable for many purposes. Themes of kingship are central to the message of Hadit.
Third in the trinity is the child produced by the union of Nuit and Hadit, the lord of the new æon, alternately expressed by two different forms of Horus. One form is Ra-Hoor-Khuit (Ra-Horakhty), a military aspect of Horus as conqueror and warrior. Ra-Hoor-Khuit extends the inwardly-turned energy of Hadit outwards into the world. Whether the urgings to war and violence found in the third chapter of the Book of the Law, and to a lesser extent in the second chapter, are meant as metaphorical magical formulae of fiery energy, or are actual exhortations to conquer on the plane of political and temporal power, or both, is a controversial issue. Many Thelemites find any literal interpretation of the warlike material repugnant, while others embrace it as a necessary part of the world's transition to the new æon...READ MORE ...
