Liber XC, v. 37
Many have arisen, being foolish. They have said, 'Stoop down unto the darkly splendid world, and be wedded to that Blind Creature of the Slime.'
Like the wise, these foolish are also arisen, i.e. initiated themselves. The recommendation to "Stoop down" etc., is an inverted paraphrase from the Chaldean Oracles (145-146) --Stoop not down unto the Darkly-Splendid World; wherein continually lieth a faithless Depth, and Hades wrapped in clouds, delighting in unintelligible images, precipitous, winding, a black ever-rolling Abyss; ever espousing a Body unluminous, formless and void. Stoop not down, for a precipice lieth beneath the Earth, reached by a descending Ladder which hath Seven Steps, and therein is established the Throne of an evil and fatal force.
In the name of the foolish school, this verse counsels communion with the "evil and fatal force" which is the Dweller on the Threshold. The child of Earth is exhorted to a wedding with the kakodaimon to parallel the union with the eudaimon in the previous verse. This "False Union with the Demon himself" is also referenced in Liber Astarte, v. 29.
Crowley's most extended discussion of the doctrine of the Evil Genius can be found in his commentary on Liber LXV, IV:34-35. The actual scripture reads as follows:On the threshold stood the fulminant figure of Evil, the Horror of emptiness, with his ghastly eyes like poisonous wells. He stood, and the chamber was corrupt; the air stank. He was an old and gnarled fish more hideous than the shells of Abaddon. He enveloped me with his demon tentacles; yea, the eight fears took hold upon me.
In his commentary, Crowley very explicitly writes that this passage is a description of the Evil Genius, on the threshold within the door of pe, corresponding to the Veil of Paroketh. The Evil Genius conforms to the principle expressed by Eliphas Levi, and taken for a magical motto by William Butler Yeats: Demon est Deus inversus. The Evil Genius is the complementary entity whose maleficence balances the goodness of the Holy Guardian Angel. As Crowley notes, folkloric representations often show an angel and a devil vying for the attention of the individual, to express this idea. Another example is the opposition of Metatron and Samael in the Zelator ritual of Mathers' G.D. Order. In literature, this personal devil finds his fullest expression as the Mephistopheles of the sorceror Faust. Goethe understands the Evil Genius as a darkness contrasted with the Guardian Angel, whose light the "unluminous" Mephistopheles derides:I am but part of the part that was whole at first,
Part of the dark which bore itself the light,
That supercilious light which lately durst
Dispute her ancient rank and realm to Mother Night;
And yet to no avail, for strive as it may,
It cleaves in bondage to corporeal clay.
It streams from bodies, bodies it lends sheen,
A body can impede its thrust,
And so it should not be too long, I trust,
Before with bodies it departs the scene.
Faust, ll. 1349-1358
(Arndt translation)
Liber LXV places the Demon "On the threshold." Occultists of Crowley's generation (and their immediate predecessors) tended to reference the Evil Genius as the "Dweller on the Threshold," taking the phrase from Bulwer-Lytton's novel Zanoni. The protagonist Glyndon's first encounter with the Dweller is described on pp. 208-9:By degrees, this object shaped itself to his sight. It was as that of a human head, covered with a dark veil, through which glared with livid and demoniac fire eyes that froze the marrow of his bones. Nothing else of the face was distinguishable -- nothing but those intolerable eyes; but his terror, that even at the first seemed beyond nature to endure, was increased a thousand-fold, when, after a pause, the Phantom glided slowly into the chamber. The cloud retreated from it as it advanced; the bright lamps grew wan, and flickered restlessly as at the breath of its presence. Its form was veiled as the face, but the outline was that of a female; yet it moved not as move even the ghosts that simulate the living. It seemed rather to crawl as some vast misshapen reptile; and apusing, at length it cowered beside the table which held the mystic volume, and again fixed its eyes through the filmy veil on the rash invoker. All fancies, the most grotesque, of Monk or Painter in the early North, would have failed to give to the visage of imp or fiend that aspect of deadly malignity which spoke to the shuddering nature in those eyes alone. All else so dark -- shrouded -- veiled and larva-like. But that burning glare so intense, so livid yet so living, had it it something that was almost human, in its passion of hate and mockery; something that served to show that the shadowy Horror was not all a spirit, but partook of matter enough, at least, to make it more deadly and fearful an enemy to material forms. As, clinging with the grasp of agony to the wall, his hair erect, his eyeballs starting, he still gazed back upon that appalling gaze, the Image spoke to him -- his soul rather than his ear comprehended the words it said.
"Thou hast entered the immeasurable region. I am the Dweller of the Threshold. What wouldst thou with me? Silent? Dost thou fear me? Am I not thy beloved? Is it not for me that thou hast rendered up the delights of thy race? Woudst thou be wise? Mine is the wisdom of the countless ages. Kiss me, my mortal lover."
Both Liber LXV and Zanoni emphasize the eyes of the Dweller; ayin is literally "an eye," and Paul Foster Case, among others, has used the Devil Trump of the Tarot, attributed to ayin, as a illustration of the Evil Genius. H.P. Blavatsky correlates the "Dweller of the Threshold" (sic) of Bulwer-Lytton to "the ancient type of the Sulanuth of the Hebrews and Egyptians," for which she cites a description from the (forged 1751) Book of Jasher:"... God ordered the Sulanuth which was then in the sea, to come up and go into Egypt ... and she had long arms, ten cubits in length ... and she went upon the roofs and uncovered the rafting and cut them ... and stretched forth her arm into the house and removed the lock and the bolt and opened the houses of Egypt ... and the swarm of animals destroyed the Egyptians, and it grieved them exceedingly."
Isis Unveiled, vol. I, p. 325
(Blavatsky's ellipses)
Both Bulwer-Lytton's Dweller and Blavatsky's Sulanuth are feminine. And even the "figure of Evil" from Liber LXV is associated with the "feminine" elements of water and earth; it envelops the aspirant, as contrasted with the utterly male Guardian Angel who pierces the magician (LXV, IV:39-40). Interestingly, this polarity is reversed for the Second Critical Task: the prize of the Adventure of the Abyss is marriage to the female Babalon, while failure is personified by the masculine Choronzon. Since the task at the Veil of Paroketh is to attain transcendent individuality, the Angel penetrates to the core of the magician, but the Demon insulates him from full spiritual reality. At the Veil of the Abyss the object is to overcome divided and broken consciounsess, so the Mighty Devil encourages the adept to take in and hold back individual life, while Our Lady demands that life be bled entirely into her Cup. Crowley also contrasts failure in the Two Critical Tasks, noting that:Appalling as is such a catastrophe [i.e. accepting the Evil Persona in the stead of the Guardian Angel], it lacks the element of finality since the principles involved do not extend above Tiphareth. He has become a Black Magician no doubt, but this is far indeed from being a Black Brother. It cannot even be said that such an one thereby manifests any tendency to become a Black Brother when the time is ripe; for his union even with the personification of Evil is also an act of love under will, though that will be false and vitiated by every conceivable defect and error. His chief danger is presumably that the intensity of the suffering which results from his amartia may, as in the case of Glyndon in Zanoni, lead him to seek to escape altogether from Magick, to refrain from any act of love for fear lest he stray still farther from his true path. Let him remember the words of my brother: "If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise."
Commentaries on the Holy Books, p. 154
For a literary example of success by way of the Evil Genius, we have not only Goethe's Faust, but Crowley's Tannhaueser. In the latter, the Dweller takes the form of "The Evil and Averse Hathoor, called Venus." At the fatal end of these dramas, Faust is welcomed by Babalon under the figure of Mater Gloriosa, just as the finished Tannhaueser is visited by the true Isis.
Like the wise, these foolish are also arisen, i.e. initiated themselves. The recommendation to "Stoop down" etc., is an inverted paraphrase from the Chaldean Oracles (145-146) --Stoop not down unto the Darkly-Splendid World; wherein continually lieth a faithless Depth, and Hades wrapped in clouds, delighting in unintelligible images, precipitous, winding, a black ever-rolling Abyss; ever espousing a Body unluminous, formless and void. Stoop not down, for a precipice lieth beneath the Earth, reached by a descending Ladder which hath Seven Steps, and therein is established the Throne of an evil and fatal force.
In the name of the foolish school, this verse counsels communion with the "evil and fatal force" which is the Dweller on the Threshold. The child of Earth is exhorted to a wedding with the kakodaimon to parallel the union with the eudaimon in the previous verse. This "False Union with the Demon himself" is also referenced in Liber Astarte, v. 29.
Crowley's most extended discussion of the doctrine of the Evil Genius can be found in his commentary on Liber LXV, IV:34-35. The actual scripture reads as follows:On the threshold stood the fulminant figure of Evil, the Horror of emptiness, with his ghastly eyes like poisonous wells. He stood, and the chamber was corrupt; the air stank. He was an old and gnarled fish more hideous than the shells of Abaddon. He enveloped me with his demon tentacles; yea, the eight fears took hold upon me.
In his commentary, Crowley very explicitly writes that this passage is a description of the Evil Genius, on the threshold within the door of pe, corresponding to the Veil of Paroketh. The Evil Genius conforms to the principle expressed by Eliphas Levi, and taken for a magical motto by William Butler Yeats: Demon est Deus inversus. The Evil Genius is the complementary entity whose maleficence balances the goodness of the Holy Guardian Angel. As Crowley notes, folkloric representations often show an angel and a devil vying for the attention of the individual, to express this idea. Another example is the opposition of Metatron and Samael in the Zelator ritual of Mathers' G.D. Order. In literature, this personal devil finds his fullest expression as the Mephistopheles of the sorceror Faust. Goethe understands the Evil Genius as a darkness contrasted with the Guardian Angel, whose light the "unluminous" Mephistopheles derides:I am but part of the part that was whole at first,
Part of the dark which bore itself the light,
That supercilious light which lately durst
Dispute her ancient rank and realm to Mother Night;
And yet to no avail, for strive as it may,
It cleaves in bondage to corporeal clay.
It streams from bodies, bodies it lends sheen,
A body can impede its thrust,
And so it should not be too long, I trust,
Before with bodies it departs the scene.
Faust, ll. 1349-1358
(Arndt translation)
Liber LXV places the Demon "On the threshold." Occultists of Crowley's generation (and their immediate predecessors) tended to reference the Evil Genius as the "Dweller on the Threshold," taking the phrase from Bulwer-Lytton's novel Zanoni. The protagonist Glyndon's first encounter with the Dweller is described on pp. 208-9:By degrees, this object shaped itself to his sight. It was as that of a human head, covered with a dark veil, through which glared with livid and demoniac fire eyes that froze the marrow of his bones. Nothing else of the face was distinguishable -- nothing but those intolerable eyes; but his terror, that even at the first seemed beyond nature to endure, was increased a thousand-fold, when, after a pause, the Phantom glided slowly into the chamber. The cloud retreated from it as it advanced; the bright lamps grew wan, and flickered restlessly as at the breath of its presence. Its form was veiled as the face, but the outline was that of a female; yet it moved not as move even the ghosts that simulate the living. It seemed rather to crawl as some vast misshapen reptile; and apusing, at length it cowered beside the table which held the mystic volume, and again fixed its eyes through the filmy veil on the rash invoker. All fancies, the most grotesque, of Monk or Painter in the early North, would have failed to give to the visage of imp or fiend that aspect of deadly malignity which spoke to the shuddering nature in those eyes alone. All else so dark -- shrouded -- veiled and larva-like. But that burning glare so intense, so livid yet so living, had it it something that was almost human, in its passion of hate and mockery; something that served to show that the shadowy Horror was not all a spirit, but partook of matter enough, at least, to make it more deadly and fearful an enemy to material forms. As, clinging with the grasp of agony to the wall, his hair erect, his eyeballs starting, he still gazed back upon that appalling gaze, the Image spoke to him -- his soul rather than his ear comprehended the words it said.
"Thou hast entered the immeasurable region. I am the Dweller of the Threshold. What wouldst thou with me? Silent? Dost thou fear me? Am I not thy beloved? Is it not for me that thou hast rendered up the delights of thy race? Woudst thou be wise? Mine is the wisdom of the countless ages. Kiss me, my mortal lover."
Both Liber LXV and Zanoni emphasize the eyes of the Dweller; ayin is literally "an eye," and Paul Foster Case, among others, has used the Devil Trump of the Tarot, attributed to ayin, as a illustration of the Evil Genius. H.P. Blavatsky correlates the "Dweller of the Threshold" (sic) of Bulwer-Lytton to "the ancient type of the Sulanuth of the Hebrews and Egyptians," for which she cites a description from the (forged 1751) Book of Jasher:"... God ordered the Sulanuth which was then in the sea, to come up and go into Egypt ... and she had long arms, ten cubits in length ... and she went upon the roofs and uncovered the rafting and cut them ... and stretched forth her arm into the house and removed the lock and the bolt and opened the houses of Egypt ... and the swarm of animals destroyed the Egyptians, and it grieved them exceedingly."
Isis Unveiled, vol. I, p. 325
(Blavatsky's ellipses)
Both Bulwer-Lytton's Dweller and Blavatsky's Sulanuth are feminine. And even the "figure of Evil" from Liber LXV is associated with the "feminine" elements of water and earth; it envelops the aspirant, as contrasted with the utterly male Guardian Angel who pierces the magician (LXV, IV:39-40). Interestingly, this polarity is reversed for the Second Critical Task: the prize of the Adventure of the Abyss is marriage to the female Babalon, while failure is personified by the masculine Choronzon. Since the task at the Veil of Paroketh is to attain transcendent individuality, the Angel penetrates to the core of the magician, but the Demon insulates him from full spiritual reality. At the Veil of the Abyss the object is to overcome divided and broken consciounsess, so the Mighty Devil encourages the adept to take in and hold back individual life, while Our Lady demands that life be bled entirely into her Cup. Crowley also contrasts failure in the Two Critical Tasks, noting that:Appalling as is such a catastrophe [i.e. accepting the Evil Persona in the stead of the Guardian Angel], it lacks the element of finality since the principles involved do not extend above Tiphareth. He has become a Black Magician no doubt, but this is far indeed from being a Black Brother. It cannot even be said that such an one thereby manifests any tendency to become a Black Brother when the time is ripe; for his union even with the personification of Evil is also an act of love under will, though that will be false and vitiated by every conceivable defect and error. His chief danger is presumably that the intensity of the suffering which results from his amartia may, as in the case of Glyndon in Zanoni, lead him to seek to escape altogether from Magick, to refrain from any act of love for fear lest he stray still farther from his true path. Let him remember the words of my brother: "If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise."
Commentaries on the Holy Books, p. 154
For a literary example of success by way of the Evil Genius, we have not only Goethe's Faust, but Crowley's Tannhaueser. In the latter, the Dweller takes the form of "The Evil and Averse Hathoor, called Venus." At the fatal end of these dramas, Faust is welcomed by Babalon under the figure of Mater Gloriosa, just as the finished Tannhaueser is visited by the true Isis.