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    The Book of Lies
    The Book of Lies
    The Book of Lies
    Ebook116 pages1 hour

    The Book of Lies

    By Aleister Crowley

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    About this ebook

    The Book of Lies is a complex work of occultism. Deciphering its many layers of hidden meaning requires a little patience and more than a beginner's knowledge of Thelema. For those interested in passing beyond the initiate stage, the reward offered by a deeper understanding of this challenging text is well worth the effort.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAiwass Books
    Release dateSep 14, 2018
    ISBN9781387991808
    Author

    Aleister Crowley

    Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) was an English poet, painter, occultist, magician, and mountaineer. Born into wealth, he rejected his family’s Christian beliefs and developed a passion for Western esotericism. At Trinity College, Cambridge, Crowley gained a reputation as a poet whose work appeared in such publications as The Granta and Cambridge Magazine. An avid mountaineer, he made the first unguided ascent of the Mönch in the Swiss Alps. Around this time, he first began identifying as bisexual and carried on relationships with prostitutes, which led to his contracting syphilis. In 1897, he briefly dated fellow student Herbert Charles Pollitt, whose unease with Crowley’s esotericism would lead to their breakup. The following year, Crowley joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret occult society to which many of the era’s leading artists belonged, including Bram Stoker, W. B. Yeats, Arthur Machen, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Between 1900 and 1903, he traveled to Mexico, India, Japan, and Paris. In these formative years, Crowley studied Hinduism, wrote the poems that would form The Sword of Song (1904), attempted to climb K2, and became acquainted with such artists as Auguste Rodin and W. Somerset Maugham. A 1904 trip to Egypt inspired him to develop Thelema, a philosophical and religious group he would lead for the remainder of his life. He would claim that The Book of the Law (1909), his most important literary work and the central sacred text of Thelema, was delivered to him personally in Cairo by the entity Aiwass. During the First World War, Crowley allegedly worked as a double agent for the British intelligence services while pretending to support the pro-German movement in the United States. The last decades of his life were spent largely in exile due to persecution in the press and by the states of Britain and Italy for his bohemian lifestyle and open bisexuality.

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    • 4/5
      This Qabalistic book has been described as a "little master work", and in occult literature, I would say that is accurate. The title, "Book of Lies", refers to the idea that nothing True can be spoken or written, but only experienced. Nevertheless, human communication, vital to aiding our Understanding, must be used to give a hint or suggestion of Truth. And so Crowley writes 91 brief chapters of what he calls "relatively true" falsifications; in other words, Universally Untrue things that nevertheless have truth for humans in their microcosmic lives.Sometimes amusing, sometimes disturbing, sometimes cryptic (even to Crowley who notes "the final Mystery is always insoluble"), the verses are accompanied by Crowley's commentaries, providing a concise and artful introduction to and clarification of his views on life and Qabalah.
    • 4/5
      Probably the most approachable of Crowley's magickal writings. Much less intimidating then Liber AL and other highly technical works by Crowley. An amusing tome of Qabalistic 'verse' (in the loosest sense, as a chapter can be a single word or punctuation), that can't help but to remind one of the Tao Te Ching. However, Lao Tzu was never this funny or cryptic. An enjoyable work for the layman as well as the student, and I err more towards the former.
    • 5/5
      I love this book. Meant to be taken in small doses, it's the best and worst of Uncle Al, with jokes, puns and outright snarkiness on so many levels. Many of it is inside jokes, so if you don't have a background in Western Hermetic Qabalah and/or general Crowley, it wont be as much fun. I'd always recommend his Autohagiography first

    Book preview

    The Book of Lies - Aleister Crowley

    Crowley

    The Book of Lies

    By Aleister Crowley

    which is also falsely called

    ––––––––

    Breaks

    ––––––––

    The Wanderings or Falsifications of the One Thought of Frater Perdurabo* which Thought is Itself Untrue

    Liber CCCXXXIII

    *Frater Perdurabo, (literally, ‘Brother Who Endures,’ was the name taken by Crowley during a Golden Dawn ceremony in 1898. (See image following page). The Golden Dawn of Crowley’s era counted many luminaries amongst its occultist members, including literary figures like Algernon Blackwood (1869–1951), Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) and W. B. Yeats (1865–1939).

    **The Book of Lies was first published by Weiland and Company, London, 1913.

    Image following page: Aleister Crowley during his Golden Dawn Era, 1898-99.

    "Break, break, break

    At the foot of thy stones, O Sea!

    And I would that I could utter

    The thoughts that arise in me!"

    ?

    !

    KEΦAΛH H OYK EΣTI KEΦAΛH

    O!

    THE ANTE PRIMAL TRIAD WHICH IS NOT-GOD.

    ––––––––

    Nothing is.

    Nothing Becomes.

    Nothing is not.

    ––––––––

    THE FIRST TRIAD WHICH IS GOD I AM.

    ––––––––

    I utter The Word.

    I hear The Word.

    ––––––––

    THE ABYSS

    ––––––––

    The Word is broken up.

    There is Knowledge.

    Knowledge is Relation.

    These fragments are Creation.

    The broken manifests Light.

    ––––––––

    THE SECOND TRIAD WHICH IS GOD

    ––––––––

    GOD the Father and Mother is concealed in Generation.

    GOD is concealed in the whirling energy of Nature.

    GOD is manifest in gathering: harmony: consideration:

    the Mirror of the Sun and of the Heart.

    ––––––––

    THE THIRD TRIAD

    ––––––––

    Bearing: preparing.

    Wavering: flowing: flashing.

    Stability: begetting.

    ––––––––

    THE TENTH EMANATION

    ––––––––

    The world.

    ––––––––

    KEΦAΛH A

    The Sabbath of the Goat

    ––––––––

    O! the heart of N.O.X. the Night of Pan.

    ΠAN: Duality: Energy: Death.

    Death: Begetting: the supporters of O!

    To beget is to die; to die is to beget.

    Cast the Seed into the Field of Night.

    Life and Death are two names of A.

    Kill thyself.

    Neither of these alone is enough.

    KEΦAΛH B

    The Cry of the Hawk

    ––––––––

    Hoor* hath a secret fourfold name: it is Do What Thou Wilt.

    Four Words: Naught-One-Many-All.

    Thou-Child!

    Thy Name is holy.

    Thy Kingdom is come.

    Thy Will is done.

    Here is the Bread.

    Here is the Blood.

    Bring us through Temptation!

    Deliver us from Good and Evil!

    That Mine as Thine be the Crown of the Kingdom, even now.

    ABRAHADABRA.**

    These ten words are four, the Name of the One.

    *Aiwass claimed to be a messenger of the falcon-headed Egyptian god Hoor or Horus (also, Heru-ra-ha and Hoor-Paar-Kraat).

    **Crowley’s variation on abracadabra takes his ‘magick’ away from the more prosaic magic, with all its connotations of trickery and illusion. The ‘H’ in place of the ‘C’ signifies birth and life. Crowley coined the neologism over a decade earlier, in 1901, using kabbala methods.

    Following image: Sun god Horus on papyrus scroll.

    KEΦAΛH Γ

    The Oyster

    ––––––––

    The Brothers of A.’.A.’. are one with the Mother of the Child.

    The Many is as adorable to the One as the One is to the Many. This is the Love of These; creation-parturition is the Bliss of the One; coition-dissolution is the Bliss of the Many.

    The All, thus interwoven of These,

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