THE ARCANE ARCHIVE
	a cache of usenet and other text files pertaining to occult, mystical, and spiritual subjects.

To: alt.magick,alt.magick.tyagi
From: "James A. Eshelman" 
Subject: Re: VHMaroney: Who Was Aiwass?
Date: Sat, 27 Mar 1999 09:13:51 -0800

> [from thelema93-l@hollyfeld.org: VH Maroney ]
> >As Crowley once is said to have answered when asked who was really the
> >author of the Book of the Law?  "Why of course I WAS."
>
> Could I please have a reference for this? I'd like to see the context.

Agreed. Additionally,
(a) the homonym made for easy misunderstanding by the listener, and
(b) anyone suggesting Crowley didn't exercise a sense of humor is either
grossly underinformed, or an idiot

> It is possible Crowley consciously wrote the book himself. In an
> unpublished draft of the Collected Works referenced by HB in "Magick" (p.
> xliv) Crowley writes that he came into possession of the manuscript in
> 1906, a significant dating anomaly that throws the Cairo account into
> question. This date also appears on the title page of the manuscript
> itself, the original handwritten version of the note for the Collected
> Works.

This is correct, but misleading I think. For clarification: This date
appeaers on the title page of the Liber L. manuscript itself, as part of a
note Crowley wrote thereon, *seemingly* at a later date. (The note is the
one you are citing.) The title page also explicitly says that the book was
"given from the mouth of Aiwass to the ear of The Beast on April 8, 9, & 10,
1904." (1904 is followed by what appears to be "O.S.," which is then crossed
out.) There is also a further annotation adjacent to this noted, dated in
A.C.'s hand as October, 1909, which could not have been precedent to the
Collected Works, since the C.W. had long been published by then. Crowley
also scrawled other notes on the front of this -- really doodled it up! -
including a development of some of the N.O.X. signs, which originate about
1909, not 1904. In the upper lefthand corner, upside down (the page having
been turned around for scratch paper it seems), he adds numbers that are
either the the values of the Hebrew MThISPThGTDK, or the Greek MYIXPYGThDK.

Besides, in December, 1904 A.C. had a few typescripts (was it 11? it's been
too long since I saw the account) of Liber L. prepared and sent them out as
"Christmas cards." One went to MacGregor Mathers with a nice note saying, in
effect (I paraphrase grossly, and from distant memory), "Oh, I almost forgot
to mention, something interesting happened in April and the Secret Chiefs
appointed me head of the Order. Thought you'd like to know. Merry
Christmas." (As I said, I paraphrase *grossly,* but in the spirit of the
original.)

>Apparently the 1904 date does not appear in the Collected Works
> typescript -- perhaps one of our Austin residents could check on this at
> Ransom? -- so it seems reasonable to assume that the date of "April 8, 9,
> 10, 1904" that also appears on the title page was added later than the
> note on the 1906 date.

Why is this reasonable? Examining the title page shows it in a consistent
pen and placement. The note referencing 1906 is crawled in what at least
appears to be a different pen, compressed and hasty, underneath it, squeezed
into the remaining space. Now, I'm not saying it *couldn't* have been done
as you suggest -- any kind of forgery is possible, I guess -- I'm only
saying that an examination of the page suggests the simplest and most
reasonable assumption is that the 1904 passage I quoted above is part of the
original writing o the page.

>In 1909 Crowley (rather unconvincingly) added a
> note to the title page that his coming into possession of the ms. in 1906
> only meant he had not yet become its master. If so, he was willing to
> give a very misleading account when he wrote this on the title page and
> considered putting it into his Collected Works: "This MS (which came into
> my posession in July 1906) is a highly interesting example of genuine
> automatic writing." He would later say that it was not automatic writing
> and that it came into his possession in 1904.

Agreed that he was willing to give a misleading account. He was also very
conflicted about his relationship to L. until at least mid-1909, and
certainly had no clear idea what to do about it or with it.

> To make any sense of this account, we have to grant that he was willing
> to mislead the reader as to the origins of the book at least once.

Yes.

>Given
> that, we might wonder why we should prefer the later "Cairo revelation in
> 1904" account to the earlier "automatic writing in 1906" account.

The 1904 Christmas mailings prefer it. It was in other people's hands by the
end of 1904 (with several typed errors, of course.)

I have another reason (besides pure personal relationship to the Work) for
accepting the 1904 date: From an astrological point of view, the moment of
the (alleged) completion of the dictation of Liber Legis on April 10, 1904,
1:00 PM in Cairo was the most astrologically critical hour of Aleister
Crowley's life. Any astrologer looking simply at straightforward transits
couldn't miss it! I over 30 years of intensive study and practice of
astrology, I have never seen one other event in one other horoscope that
brought such a precise convergence of factors into concentrated play on one
individual (though for this last sentence to be true, more than transits
have to be considered). Had I been given this horoscope and event chart
blind (i.e., without knowing who or what they were for), I likely would have
said, on examining them, "I don't know what happened, exactly, but this was
probably the defining point for the remainder of his life. Something had
been building that came to a head, that required him (at no small amount of
discomfort, I imagine) to have to confront who he is and what his life was
all about. It *all* came to a peak, and probably took him years to sort it
out."

> Do we have evidence that the book existed before 1906?

As mentioned above.

But like you, I find this kind of discussion refreshing. What interests me
even more is the consideration of how much of it was more or less
"pre-written." The names didn't just drop out of the blue in April, 1904. He
had used the atypical "Nuit" since at least 1899. He had the translation of
the Stele and his poetic paraphrase of its text in the weeks preceding the
dictation (hence "Hadit"). He had worked out 418 circa 1901 (but the Book
refers to this being already known). There's no question it came through the
vehicle Aleister Crowley and his mind, personality, etc. -- which can be
used either as an argument for his conscious creation of all or part of it,
or as an argument for why he was the perfect vehicle for its delivery.

But I just don't think he could have drawn the slash in Chapter 3
convincingly except be a single quick stroke, and it *does* pass through
letters totaling to 418, the strongest key to the whole book that is also
explicitly stated in the Book. (Try to do it manually, with the same kind of
paper and pen -- it's a bitch!)


--
93 93/93,

In L.V.X.,

JAE
See: http://www.thelema.org
-------------------------------------
"All you have to do is to be yourself, to do your will, and to rejoice." --
L.837