No God but Man- evil lurks in the hearts of men
"Aiwaz is not (as I had supposed) a mere formula, like many angelic names, but is the true most ancient name of the God of the Yezdis, and this returns to the highest Antiguity. Our work is therefore historically authentic, the rediscovery of the Sumerian Tradition. (Sumer is in Lower Mesopotamia, the earliest home of our race.)"
-Aleister Crowley, introduction to Liber CCXX
Is it coincidental that the war of the Christian Plutocracy on the Third World has made this spot, home of the ancient traditions of the God of War and vengence, rediscovered when Aiwass revealed liber AL, a site of absolute chaos and destruction? Is it significant that the soldiers of the Old Aeon have destroyed the historical records, artifacts, and treasures of that ophidian tradition when Iraq was bombed and looted? Call me crazy, but I think that it is.
One other thing that's significant is the fact that Crowley mentions the Yezidi in connection with Aiwass...
When I was doing my religious studies degree, most of my instruction came from a Muslim woman who specialized in the study of the religious significance of food (which, obviously, was of some influence on me) and the Yezidi were one of her pet causes. Partly because it made good press to say that there was a bunch of Kurdish devil worshipers in the desert there, and partially because of her experience with a Sunni Muslim community with a lot of hostility to this particular group, the subject of the Yezidi came up a lot in her classes. I took the Satanic Bible very seriously at the time (although I didn't literally believe LeVay's story about the "mystic waters of zamzam" I appreciated the necessity of a founding mythos) and so I had a great interest in this group as well. As my professor frequently emphasized, the Yezidi did not posit an EXTERNAL source of evil, and so there was no "devil" in their system to worship. Evil, according to the Yezidi tradition, was something proceeded from human beings. Melek Ta’us, who Crowley identifies with Aiwass, is a personification of the divine light itself. A being, in other words, of pure revelation.
This is particularly significant in light of yesterday's post. It was the evil in Cain which allowed him to break the curse of Adam. It is this unique power of human beings, revealed as a result of the magnetic energies of the serpent, which creates the conditions for initiation among the children of Eve. Interestingly, this discludes the Yezidi, as Crowley surely was aware. In Yezidi tradition, the father of their own race is born of Adam alone. Adam and Eve have a kind of competition to see who would bear the creative principle by each sealing their seed in a jar. When Adam's was opened, a beautiful male child was inside, who impregnated a houri (basically, a sexually active angel) and began the race of the Yezidi. In Eve's jar, as we know if we read Magick in Theory and Practice, there were only insects and worms. Eve required the serpent to spawn her own race, which was to become the line of Cain. Initiates, according to this tradition, were the children of Eve and not Adam. Those who rejected the essential evil of humanity were the children of Adam, but not Eve.
There is a clear division between the Wanderer and Worker of the earth. The latter is not free to wander, and hates the idea. The wanderer can end up working the earth, but gains no real sustenence from it. Here we see clearly the division between King and Slave, between the descendants of Eve and the descendents of Adam, that is revealed by Aiwass in Liber AL. Serpent-crowned, the Eve that appears with Lilith behind Cain in the card described by the call call of the second aethyr is a complete being in a way that Adam was not, as we see in his rejection of Lilith. The serpent represents the inner point to which the empty expanse of her soul can concentrate itself, thus undoing the essential privation of her female constitution. Adam, by refusing to expand himself into woman qua woman and insisting instead on her obedience and "purity," crippled his own soul, and as such, the souls of his descendants. Of course, when we refer to the "line" of Adam and Eve, we do not mean geneological lineage, but rather a spiritual lineage that, while instrinsically connected to geneology, is not germane to it. What does this lineage imply?
"The Astral Light is the universal seducer, typified by the serpent of Genisis. This subtle agent, ever active, ever vigorous, ever fruitful in alluring dreams and sensuous images; this force, which is of itself blind and subordinated to every will, whether for good or evil; this ever renewing circulous of unbridled life, which produces vertigo in the imprudent; this corporeal spirit, this firey body; this impalatable omnipresent ether; this monstorous seduction of nature - how shall we define it comprehensively? How shall we characterize its action? To some extent indifferent in itself, it lends itself to good and evil, it transmits light and propagates darkness; it may be called equally Lucifer and Lucifuge; it is a serpent, but also an aureole; it is a fire, but it may lend itself to the torments of infernus and the sacrifice of insence offered up to heaven."
-Eliphas Levi, Transcendental Magic, cap. VI
Good and Evil without morality. Not amoral in the sense of neutrality or of some implicit Confuscianism, but good and evil. The line of Adam may have KNOWLEDGE of good and evil, but they do not have the CAPACITY for either. Any act of such positive commitment would require a wholeness that has been denied them by the failure of Adam. To remove oneself from this curse requires the fratricide of Cain, but even that is useless unless the lust of Lilith has been stirred as well.
-Aleister Crowley, introduction to Liber CCXX
Is it coincidental that the war of the Christian Plutocracy on the Third World has made this spot, home of the ancient traditions of the God of War and vengence, rediscovered when Aiwass revealed liber AL, a site of absolute chaos and destruction? Is it significant that the soldiers of the Old Aeon have destroyed the historical records, artifacts, and treasures of that ophidian tradition when Iraq was bombed and looted? Call me crazy, but I think that it is.
One other thing that's significant is the fact that Crowley mentions the Yezidi in connection with Aiwass...
When I was doing my religious studies degree, most of my instruction came from a Muslim woman who specialized in the study of the religious significance of food (which, obviously, was of some influence on me) and the Yezidi were one of her pet causes. Partly because it made good press to say that there was a bunch of Kurdish devil worshipers in the desert there, and partially because of her experience with a Sunni Muslim community with a lot of hostility to this particular group, the subject of the Yezidi came up a lot in her classes. I took the Satanic Bible very seriously at the time (although I didn't literally believe LeVay's story about the "mystic waters of zamzam" I appreciated the necessity of a founding mythos) and so I had a great interest in this group as well. As my professor frequently emphasized, the Yezidi did not posit an EXTERNAL source of evil, and so there was no "devil" in their system to worship. Evil, according to the Yezidi tradition, was something proceeded from human beings. Melek Ta’us, who Crowley identifies with Aiwass, is a personification of the divine light itself. A being, in other words, of pure revelation.
This is particularly significant in light of yesterday's post. It was the evil in Cain which allowed him to break the curse of Adam. It is this unique power of human beings, revealed as a result of the magnetic energies of the serpent, which creates the conditions for initiation among the children of Eve. Interestingly, this discludes the Yezidi, as Crowley surely was aware. In Yezidi tradition, the father of their own race is born of Adam alone. Adam and Eve have a kind of competition to see who would bear the creative principle by each sealing their seed in a jar. When Adam's was opened, a beautiful male child was inside, who impregnated a houri (basically, a sexually active angel) and began the race of the Yezidi. In Eve's jar, as we know if we read Magick in Theory and Practice, there were only insects and worms. Eve required the serpent to spawn her own race, which was to become the line of Cain. Initiates, according to this tradition, were the children of Eve and not Adam. Those who rejected the essential evil of humanity were the children of Adam, but not Eve.
There is a clear division between the Wanderer and Worker of the earth. The latter is not free to wander, and hates the idea. The wanderer can end up working the earth, but gains no real sustenence from it. Here we see clearly the division between King and Slave, between the descendants of Eve and the descendents of Adam, that is revealed by Aiwass in Liber AL. Serpent-crowned, the Eve that appears with Lilith behind Cain in the card described by the call call of the second aethyr is a complete being in a way that Adam was not, as we see in his rejection of Lilith. The serpent represents the inner point to which the empty expanse of her soul can concentrate itself, thus undoing the essential privation of her female constitution. Adam, by refusing to expand himself into woman qua woman and insisting instead on her obedience and "purity," crippled his own soul, and as such, the souls of his descendants. Of course, when we refer to the "line" of Adam and Eve, we do not mean geneological lineage, but rather a spiritual lineage that, while instrinsically connected to geneology, is not germane to it. What does this lineage imply?
"The Astral Light is the universal seducer, typified by the serpent of Genisis. This subtle agent, ever active, ever vigorous, ever fruitful in alluring dreams and sensuous images; this force, which is of itself blind and subordinated to every will, whether for good or evil; this ever renewing circulous of unbridled life, which produces vertigo in the imprudent; this corporeal spirit, this firey body; this impalatable omnipresent ether; this monstorous seduction of nature - how shall we define it comprehensively? How shall we characterize its action? To some extent indifferent in itself, it lends itself to good and evil, it transmits light and propagates darkness; it may be called equally Lucifer and Lucifuge; it is a serpent, but also an aureole; it is a fire, but it may lend itself to the torments of infernus and the sacrifice of insence offered up to heaven."
-Eliphas Levi, Transcendental Magic, cap. VI
Good and Evil without morality. Not amoral in the sense of neutrality or of some implicit Confuscianism, but good and evil. The line of Adam may have KNOWLEDGE of good and evil, but they do not have the CAPACITY for either. Any act of such positive commitment would require a wholeness that has been denied them by the failure of Adam. To remove oneself from this curse requires the fratricide of Cain, but even that is useless unless the lust of Lilith has been stirred as well.