Correction?
Bill goes into some detail regarding an apparent disagreement between Crowley’s poetic paraphrase of a French translation of the Stélé of Revealing and his note regarding which to insert in 220,3:37. The standing paraphrase reads, in part,
Appear on the throne of Ra!
Open the ways of the Khu!
Lighten the ways of the Ka!
The ways of the Khabs run through
To stir me or still me!
Aum! let it kill me!
The manuscript of chapter 3, page 10, on which verse 37 appears is reproduced below.
The manuscript says, for verse 37,
I adore thee in song
“I am the Lord of Thebes” +c from vellum book
Unity +c
———“fill me”
Apparently, the note to insert from “I am the Lord of Thebes” etcetera from vellum book to “fill me” was pencilled in by Crowley after the dictation. Bill makes the point six times that the note to insert is in pencil, as opposed to the ink of the dictation. Perhaps the inference is that Crowley’s handwriting in pencil carries less weight than the same in pen and ink.
Bill goes on at some length about Crowley’s distaste for proof reading, and speculates as to how the supposed error was reproduced in every version of the Book of the Law printed in Crowley’s lifetime. The only place in which it was “corrected” was in a margin note in one copy, which he subsequently gave away. Though the paraphrase of the vellum book reads “Aum! Let it kill me” and the manuscript says, ——“fill me,” would it not make sense that Crowley settled on the “fill me” version because it worked better in context?
Bill was very careful not to mention the subsequent sentence, which reads,
So that thy light is in me; & its red flame
is as a sword in my hand to push thy
order.
Would it not make more sense that the ways of the Khabs (star) filled me so that thy light is in me, rather than that the ways of the Khabs killed me so that thy light is in me? Does it mean that I’m actually dead or just mortified? If the former, I don’t have a hand any more to push anything, let alone thy order. If the latter, perhaps I should put my hand down and go stand in the corner.
If Crowley remembered the paraphrase, incorrectly, as “fill me,” wouldn’t that then be the correct version at the time of the writing of the Book of the Law? Isn’t what was in Crowley’s mind in the moment more important than what some literal-minded fussbudget a hundred odd years later gets up to in taking it out of context?
“That Crowley gave away the one copy in which he had made the correction, and failed to make the change in any of the subsequent editions in his lifetime, should not surprise us.” writes Bill. It doesn’t. Crowley was a human being: changeable. Perhaps he thought fill was a better fit than kill, and simply failed to make a big fuss about it.
For every level of initiation I have reached, and there have been a few, Crowley got there first. What a relief to realise I’m not alone, I’m not crazy. The path of initiation is lonely and self-doubt a constant companion. You can’t imagine how grateful I am that Crowley left bread crumbs along the way. If you have not trod that path, you have no idea of how truly great the Great Beast was. That the picayune details of proof reading were not his strong suit is hardly a fault. He got the big stuff more right than you can possibly imagine. Do the work; shift your consciousness; then tell me I’m wrong.
Nor should it surprise us that Bill Breeze would arrogate the authority to do what the prophet of the aeon and amanuensis of the Book of the Law did not do: change as much as the style of a letter.
Harvard was founded by Puritans. Congregationalist ratiocination is shot through Bill’s entire argument. Decide what you want, show how what you want is really what God wants (shirk responsibility), indicate you are merely following God’s will in the matter (claim divine authority), conclude by condemning any opposition as heretical. If you are concerned that someone may call you on your logic, make it as convoluted as possible and trust they will eventually give up.
In this case, I doubt very much that Bill actually cares about the change itself. I think he is seeking relevance by asserting authority. He has to justify his stipend and it’s easier to stir up controversy over some trivial matter than to do real work, like fixing errors in The Book of Thoth or The Book of Wisdom or Folly which confuse students with mangled qabalah.
Bill “feels obligated” to make the supposed correction. “I really do not see that I have any choice in the matter, and what I might personally think (which might surprise some of you) is irrelevant,” he writes. What Bill personally thinks is the only thing relevant to his argument. “The implementation of Crowley’s correction rests on Crowley’s authority as prophet. It does not rest on my authority as an officer of any order, or my supposed (by some!) expertise as a Crowley editor,” writes Bill. Not my will, O Lord, but thine. This is on page 6 of the PDF, by the way. Folks who are not used to text editing might find the previous five pages baffling with tedious details. It’s a walk in the park for me. But page 6 is where Bill finally gets down to business.
“I have to assume that he [Crowley] was doing his best to honor the ‘order’ to ‘quote’ his Paraphrase that he had received…” writes Bill. So Aiwass ‘ordered’ Crowley to ‘quote’ the ‘Paraphrase’, eh? (Full disclosure: I’m a Canadian, eh?) I refer the reader to the manuscript of Liber Al chapter 3, page 16, below.
This book shall be translated into all
tongues: but always with the original in
the writing of the Beast; for in the
chance shape of the letters and their
position to one another: in these are mysteries
that no Beast shall divine. Let him
not seek to try: but one cometh after
him, whence I say not, who shall
discover the Key of it all. Then
this line drawn is a key: then this
circle squared in its failure is a
key also. And Abrahadabra. It shall
be his child & that strangely. Let him not
seek after this; for thereby alone can he
fall from it.
– 220,3:47
I quote the entire verse for the sake of continuity, though only the latter part appears on the image of page 16, above. Don’t do it, Alex. Just say “No!” Aw, you went and drew a grid right on the manuscript page itself! Even though you were told multiple times not to mess with it. So much for Aleister Crowley’s willingness to follow orders. But not to worry. Bill will follow the ‘order’ of ‘Aiwaz’ for him to rigidly quote a piece of creative writing differently from the way that scamp, the Beast, did himself. One hundred and nine years after the fact. Because Bill has no choice. There is more than a whiff of sulfur about Bill’s argument.
If my ego got that out of hand, my Angel would slap me down so hard I’d never get up again in this life. But Bill has no Angel to guide him, so he has no problem insisting on an unwise and unnecessary change to a text that is sacred to those who are the earthy vehicles of Holy Guardian Angels. His circular reasoning leaves him no choice. Actually, his inability to silence his internal dialogue leaves him no choice. If the dust devil falls apart, there is nothing left. Death of the ego, for Bill, is a chasm of darkness that spells terminus. Death of the ego, for me, is a doorway to share consciousness with my Eternal Self.
