The Strange Egyptomaniacal Origin of Hadit

The Stele of Revealing showing Nuit, Horus (Winged Disk)
and "Hadit" hieroglyphs

Earlier this month Thelemites celebrated the birthday of Hadit, which is kind of weird if you think about it because Hadit is supposed to be an Egyptian god, a version of Horus, whose birthday isn't really known. Of course, what Thelemites mean by celebrating Hadit's birthday on a particular day, April 9, is that on this day in 1904 Aleister Crowley wrote the "Hadit" chapter of Liber AL. This is the day, in other words, when one of the Thelemic "trinity" was given his life (or was recognized) in the current of the New Aeon.

Now, where does this name "Hadit" come from? Well, allegedly from the artifact called by Crowley The Stele of Revealing. It was an old funerary monument, a double-sided piece of painted wood with a bunch of Egyptian hieroglyphics, that Crowley and his wife Rose found on their honeymoon to Cairo in 1904. Crowley, after being much impressed that the Stele had some personal connection to him* had it translated by the Cairo Museum staff.
*—The stele was #666 in the Cairo Museum Catalog (actually one of two items so numbered), and was Crowley's number, that of the Apocalyptic "Beast".

After having the Stele translated (originally into French), Crowley and Rose began preparations for a ritual that would finally result in the writing over three days on April 8-10, 1904, of the Thelemic holy book, Liber AL, or The Book of the Law. As noted, on each day, Crowley channeled, allegedly via a spirit called Aiwass (the "Messenger" or "Angel"), one of three chapters, each focusing on one of the three main Thelemic deities:

April 8—Nuit (or Nut, the Starry Heaven, "space")
April 9—Hadit (or Horus, the Winged Disk of the Sun, "any point of view")
April 10—Ra-Hoor-Khuit (Ra-Harakhti, the Conquering Child Horus, Lord of The Aeon Of Horus)

While Crowley superficially based the narrative of these chapters on elements of the Stele of Revealing, his main inspiration was clearly Qabalah and the Western occultism he had learned in the Golden Dawn. Nevertheless, most people have accepted the notion that the names of the Thelemic god-forms were actually Ancient Egyptian and were on the Stele.

For example, Lon Milo DuQuette, writing in Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot says: "The three "deities" of The Book of the Law are the main figures that appear on the Stéle of Revealing".

And Thelemapedia's article on "Hadit" says: "Hadit, "the great god, the lord of the sky," is depicted on the Stele of Revealing in the form of the winged disk of the Sun."

You will find that same line included in the Wikipedia article for "Hadit" as well.

The implicit idea is that Thelema is in some respects a resurrection and an updating of the ancient, presumably truer, Egyptian religion.

For example, the OTO US Grand Lodge website says: "In the Book of the Law, the divine Principles are personified by a trinity of ancient Egyptian Divinities: Nuit, the Goddess of Infinite Space; Hadit, the Winged Serpent of Light; and Ra-Hoor-Khuit (Horus), the Solar, Hawk-Headed Lord of the Cosmos."

I have seen some Thelemites today even advocate adopting what they allege is a more scientific approach to interpreting Thelema, attempting to enlist Egyptological analysis to support their religious faith.

My 1995 Hadit Revelation

My own interest in the true origin of Hadit came in the Fall of 1995, when I acquired a used copy of the 1970s reprint of The Equinox of the Gods, the account by Crowley of the 1904 Cairo Working. In the back of this book, a previous owner had written some notes concerning the translation of the god-names from the Stele of Revealing. This reader seemed to have at least some basic knowledge of hieroglyphics:

"It is to be noted...that the stele makes no mention whatever of Hadit. "Behdet"="Behutet", an epithet of Horus".

AND

"The name Hadit would appear to be based on a mistranslation made by a flunky at the museum. It occurs nowhere in Egyptian mythology."

Since at that point I had no knowledge whatsoever of Egyptian hieroglyphics and certainly could not dispute these allegations, I thought I would go to someone who should know about Hadit, Bill Heidrick, at that time the Grand Treasurer General of the Caliphate OTO.

Heidrick examined the notes and wrote to me on December 30, 1995:

"Interesting notes, in that they show somebody tried pretty seriously to study. The error in the notes is in not realizing that the stele does have "Hadit" as a hieroglyplic spelling of "Bahudit", omitting the "Ba"=into in Crowley's early translation. The full name of Ra Hoor Khuit, according to Budge, is Ra Heru Khuti BaHadit, more or less, Ra who as Horus flies into the disk of the sun. The Bahedit (various English spellings) is simply the winged sun disk. This term appears in the upper part of the vignette of the stele, just under the right wing, from the viewer's position."

Again, not having the expertise to dispute or confirm Heidrick, I let the matter drop at this point, but since there was a clear contradiction between the two opinions, I decided to come back to the question later on, after I had learned some more, especially some Egyptian hieroglyphics.

After a while, I had obtained enough information to knowledgeably question Heidrick the next time the matter came up.

1998 And the Infamous Devil Thread

One of the more infamous, and interesting, threads that ever occurred on the old Usenet group, alt.tarot, was an argument between myself and Bill Heidrick over questions of Tarot, Thelemic belief, and the OTO. I had by the time of this debate learned a great deal more about the various topics of discussion, especially about "Hadit". Given that Hadit is specifically referred to the Devil by Crowley, it is interesting this question was first publicly raised in a thread entitled "Thoth's Devil & Sex".

The thread had started innocently enough, for a discussion of Crowley's Thoth Tarot card "Devil". It was during Heidrick's explanation of this card's symbolism, particularly the Hierophant wand, that he made a suggestion that started all the trouble—"Top Bahadi of that wand indicating Hadit."

Now, by "Bahadi" it seems Heidrick must have meant "Bahadit", echoing his theory quoted above, and so he was saying that this symbolic element of the wand:

Heidrick's "Bahadi" on Thoth Devil Atu

—went by the same alleged name as the winged disk on the Stele of Revealing, and that it indicated "Hadit".

As it turns out, Heidrick had publicly articulated his Hadit theory in his notes to The Old and New Commentaries to Liber AL, at Chapter II, verse 1:

"'Hadit' is the spelling of 'Bahadit' found on the Stele. This is unusual in that most Egyptian spelling of the period maintained the "Ba" prefix. Crowley adopted the spelling from the Stele, and it is common as well in Liber AL."

Heidrick credited this theory as being "researched by Fr[ater] Ebony", i.e. Charles Lee Reese, whose memorial website includes a eulogy to Reese by Heidrick wherein he claims Frater Ebony was "[s]teeped in the language of Egypt".

At one point in the 1998 discussion, Heidrick was quite explicit in his opinion: "The misspelling is on the Stele itself."

What we see is that esteemed and high-ranking members of OTO were publicly declaring that "Hadit" was "on the Stele", and if there was anything unusual about it, this was allegedly due to a peculiarity in spelling introduced by the artist who created the Stele, 27 centuries ago. In other words, if "Hadit" didn't quite sound like "Bahadit", it is simply because the artist had left off "the 'Ba' prefix".

However, during the 1998 discussion, OTO began to be aware that these explanations were no longer going to suffice, as I began a critique of Heidrick's explanations in the Devil thread that involved a hieroglyphic analysis. Note that I certainly did not claim back then, nor do I now claim, to be "steeped in the language of Egypt", as I had only a beginner's understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphics; but that is just the point—a basic understanding was all that was required to see that the note-maker in my copy of EOTG had been quite correct—"the stele makes no mention whatever of Hadit".

---

My 1998 analysis follows (note that at this time I had not seen the French translation and so did not know whether it used the word "Hadit" or some other spelling. As I will explain below, the French translation actually used the word "Houdit", which in fact was a common, but erroneous, spelling of the hieroglyphs):

Let's examine Bill's myth, point by point—

1. Bill states "Hadit" is the spelling of "Bahadit" found on the Stele."

First off, it's helpful to know that in hieroglyphic transliteration one generally does NOT know the sound of vowels (Egyptian hieroglyphs are consonants, the readers of the language were expected to fill in the vowels). So, a convention developed amongst translators whereby the vowel 'e' was substituted for all vowels (exceptions being made for when the correct vowel sound might be guessed from other sources or to simply add some variation to a word).

Thus, what Bill writes as 'Bahadit', or 'Ba-Hadit', is generally written 'Behdet' or (as in Budge) 'Behutet'.

Indeed, as pointed out before, in later editions of 'Equinox of the Gods' the word is, in fact, given as 'Behdet', the correct translation. Now, the way in which we get this word is by the combination of certain hieroglyphs, in this case they are:

a. 'tusk'='b' or 'b(e)h'
b. 'hand'='d'
c. 'cake'='t'

In addition, as I pointed out earlier, this word possesses a special glyph (the circle with cross), known as a 'determinative', which expresses a particular characteristic of the word, in this case, that 'Behdet' is the name of a town (modern 'Edfu').

My analysis of the pertinent hieroglyphs.

If what Bill claims is true, and the 'b' (or, as he says, 'ba') sound is absent on the 'Stele of Revealing', we should not expect to find the 'tusk' hieroglyph.

But in fact we DO find it.

Indeed, the word 'Behdet' appears on MANY such votive stelae of the Saite and Late Periods. There is the stele of Wedjarenes, for example, which depicts a scene similar to that found on the 'Stele of Revealing', and which is inscribed almost identically---'the great god, lord of heaven, he of variegated plumage---Behdet'.

The hieroglyphs for the word, 'Behdet', are exactly the same here as for that found on the 'Stele of Revealing'. There is NO misspelling of the word on the 'Stele of Revealing'. The word was mistranslated and Crowley simply accepted the error as the great Thelemic deity, 'Hadit'.

2. While Bill allows that 'This "Hadit" or "Bahadit" is the winged sun disk, used over the entrances of temple doorways, at the tops of steles and elsewhere in Egyptian art and architecture", he fails to understand that 'Behdet' is a very particular expression of this winged disk (as Horus), which identifies him with the town of Edfu (a center of his myth and worship). Indeed, because Bill wishes the word to actually be TWO words, meaning, according to him, 'into the disk of the sun', he claims that it is 'hadit' which means 'disk of the sun'. As I pointed out before, it is possible that such a name (Hadit) was used as shorthand by the translator---but THAT word is NOT present in the name of Horus given at the top of the 'Stele of Revealing'---it is instead 'BHDT'---'Behdet', correctly spelled, incorrectly translated and incorrectly understood and used by Crowley.

---

Heidrick's response to this critique? He refused to reply to it:

"I'm skipping this part. Make as little or as much of that as you will. I've said my piece on it."

I will simply note that it was not Heidrick's habit to back away from direct challenges to Thelemic and OTO credibility. Recall that I was directly calling into question both his knowledge and that of Frater Ebony on a key point of dogma and lore. I have wondered if his refusal to reply to my analysis was because he had been ordered to silence by his superiors in OTO.

So far as I know, Heidrick has never again offered another public opinion about the Hadit question in these ten years.

One viewer of this exchange noted: "Bill and the OTO come off as such eunuchs. No sense of creative energy—just
attenuated protectors of a legacy they're too timid to confront openly. Why do I get the feeling old Beastie Boy would have made mincemeat of his followers?"

Of course, Crowley did that regularly to his followers.

A Professional Opinion

During the 1998 discussion, it occurred to me that the most authoritative opinion that I had obtained so far on the matter was my own and some anonymous analysis in the back of my copy of "EOTG". I was confident I was correct in the main of what I was saying, but I thought it might be prudent to obtain a professional confirmation. So, I began sending out requests for information about the hieroglyphs to a number of Egyptologists. One of the responses I received, four days after my analysis was posted to alt.tarot, came from Dr. James P. Allen, who at that time was curator of the Department of Egyptian Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Dr. Allen wrote to me:

"The misreading 'Hadit' for 'Behdet' arises from the first sign, the flat one with an upturned end. [i.e., 'tusk'] This has the value *Hw* (H = "dotted h") in most uses: hence, the translator read *Hwdt* = 'Hadit.' But the same sign is also used with the value *bH*, and fuller spellings of this word show it is *bHdt* = 'Behdet'."

The next day Dr. Allen repeated his confirmation in blunt terms:

"'*Hwdt* Hadit' doesn't mean anything in Egyptian. It's simply a misreading of *bHdt* 'Behdet'. Such misreadings were common in the early years of Egyptology."

This was of course precisely the determination that the note-maker in my copy of "EOTG" had come to, and that I myself had figured out as well. It did not in other words require Dr. Allen's level of expertise to establish the correct translation of the relevant hieroglyphs on the Stele, but his confirmation was conclusive that "Hadit" was not on the Stele of Revealing.

Recent Hadit Findings

From time to time I have revisited these questions; each time I have an opportunity to learn more, and to better understand exactly how it is "Hadit" came to be. As a consequence of one discussion, I was encouraged to examine the French translation to see what if anything it might offer. Of course, as one might expect, it offered a great deal, for example the insights that the original translation of the hieroglyphs for "Behdet" had been "Houdit", anglicized "Hudit". The "Houdit" form had been standard for translating the "Behdet" hieroglyphs for much of the 19th century, but by 1904 had been replaced by most Egyptologists with the form "Behdet". The French translator was still using the older, obsolete, form. This is what Dr. Allen meant by pointing out "[s]uch misreadings were common in the early years of Egyptology".

However the most interesting thing about my examination of the French translation was the clear evidence it provided for how "Houdit" became "Hadit".

---

This is from my notes taken during my examination of the original French translation:

"On the back of the pages of the translation are numerous notes made by Crowley, trying to force the various Egyptian names he was now introduced to into Hebrew transliterations and gematrias.

For example:

For Houdit/Hudit:

ChDiT
Cheth-Dalet-Yod-Tau

&

HADIT
Heh-Alef-Dalet-Yod-Tau

Then Crowley wrote the following:

ChADIT=441

—and he scribbled numerous combinations trying to make it work—adding, dividing—trying to get "the father of truth" (AMT=441, "truth"), desperate to get 666."

---

What this means is that the word "Hadit" was a Qabalistic expression by Crowley of the word "Hudit" (itself a mistranslation of "Behdet"). This modification occurred prior to the Aiwass sessions of April 8-10, 1904, and this means, unlike what some have argued, "Hadit" was not a product of Crowley misunderstanding the spoken word "Behdet" from Aiwass; nor was it as Heidrick and others have alleged a misspelling that occurs on the stele itself.

"Hadit" is a modern word originated by Aleister Crowley for the religion of Thelema. It is in no way ancient Egyptian, although it is based in a misunderstanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Finally, it may be worth noting that Crowley says in the Second Aethyr: "Hadit is a mathematical expression rather than a God."

That in fact seems to be precisely the case; "Hadit" is a Qabalistic expression.

Why Does This Matter?

A number of people have understandably asked why such a seemingly small point should make any difference to anyone, and especially to people who accept the Thelemic creation myth, and Liber AL.

My answer would be that this is not a question concerning a "small point", but rather a couple of fundamental ones

1. It suggests that Liber AL was the product of a calculated effort on Crowley's part to produce a Qabalistic document. It undercuts the notion that a praeternatural entity authored the text via an aural transmission, because certainly Aiwass, who was alleged to be the minister of the Egyptian god Hoor-paar-kraat, would have known and spoken the correct name for Horus, i.e., the epithet "Behdet". Obviously Crowley, who we see had intentionally changed the epithet to "Hadit", didn't care what Aiwass might have said about this, since he was aiming for a Qabalistic validation of a personal belief system. If all Aiwass intended to do was to echo Crowley's misunderstandings and personal designs, then what indeed is really the difference between Aiwass and Crowley? Crowley himself at certain points of clarity or honesty, acknowledged this. We should expect more from a truly impersonal revelation concerning the nature of the order of the cosmos for the next 2000 years. We should at least expect, for example, the Secret Chiefs would get the names of the principal players right.

2. Given that Crowley became aware of the "Hadit" error a few years after he had enshrined it, why would the OTO persist, even to this day, in representing "Hadit" as an Egyptian god, instead of a purely Thelemic one? And why have they concocted such a demonstrably erroneous story to explain away questions regarding the error? Why do they attempt to make it seem that no mistake had been made on Crowley's part, that he was innocently copying an error that was already on the stele, and so presumably validated in some way by its antiquity? Obviously, for whatever reason, OTO has considered this much more than a small point. Given that OTO claims to have employed professional Egyptologists over the years to aid in the translation and understanding of the stele, it is difficult to see how OTO could reasonably contend they have remained ignorant not merely of the facts (which again they had at hand for a long time), but also their implications.

3. Finally, apart from big-picture considerations (of small points) or any sort of controversy (I think), it should be important to anyone interested in Crowley and his ideas to finally understand the origin of "Hadit".

(jk)

Crowley's Holy Qabalah, part I

Without Form and Void

And the Earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Powers of Nature said: ‘Let there be light! and there was light.—1st Degree Initiation, Ordo Templi Orientis (The quoted text was largely cribbed by AC from the KJV Bible of course)

There is no-one who thinks in the lucid way you do, my little paltry cards are lost unless you illumine them by your Art.—Frieda Harris, begging Aleister Crowley to write BOT.

THE NEXT issue is the Holy Qabalah. This is a very simple subject.—Aleister Crowley, affirming the light by making light of it in BOT.

If Qabalah were a very simple subject, Crowley would not have needed to spend a good portion of his lifetime, and BOT, trying to explain it, to elucidate it—even to himself. And yet, he is quite correct too, for the basics of Qabalah do seem pretty simple to the oxymoronic audience he is talking about, people possessed of an “ordinary intelligent mind”.

What exactly is an ordinary intelligent mind? It seems to be a phrase denoting someone who lacks the knowledge to be classified as an expert in a subject, and who lacks the intelligence to do much with that knowledge even if he possessed it, but who nevertheless possesses a passable level of intelligence required to understand some basic ideas.

For example, most people can understand a basic mathematical statement:
2+2=4

But not so many, indeed few people can really understand an apparently equally simple statement:
E=mc²

Both are math equations. Both have five seemingly simple symbols. But there’s a difference in complexity between comprehending the one and the other, and not just the fact that the latter depends upon multiplication of variables and a constant, instead of addition of integers.

One reason for the difference is that the former, ordinary intelligent, equation is not burdened by being referential or correspondent. In other words, it exists purely mathematically (thus dangerously abstract) and is not intended to enlighten us about the fundamental conditions and workings of cosmic reality. Of course, one must qualify that statement, pointing out that 2+2=4 certainly is capable of providing useful insights about cosmic reality to occultists; but their realities, while often cosmic, are seldom scientific.

On the other hand, E=mc², divorced from what it is alleged to signify, is just another, purely abstract, mathematical expression. It could, like 2+2=4 stand for all kinds of things. However, hitched to its traditional signified, E=mc² is iconically fundamental, something like a mix of savior and sword of Damocles.

Crowley, by blithely dismissing complexity as any obstacle to Qabalah, is trying to tug the understandably reluctant ordinary intelligent reader into contemplation of what Crowley knows is a subject so vigorously abstruse that he himself was forced to admit his own shortcomings in understanding it. Indeed, he often employed extraordinary praeternatural intelligence, or so he claimed, in helping him to understand the complexities and ambiguities of Qabalah.

Back in Crowley’s day, there was a debate in intellectual circles about what kinds of understanding could be achieved by the ordinary intelligent mind. Certainly, that mind could only claw at the profound complexities of modern physical science. And with respect to art, it could pronounce its pleasures (it knew what it liked), which were appropriately banal and pedestrian, but it could not be expected to understand the differences between these dumb amusements and whatever world a Picasso inhabited and illustrated. And philosophy? Well, that had never been intended for ordinary minds, not even ordinary intelligent ones, had it?

Yet, here was Crowley telling his readers, most of whom were at best ordinary intelligent—his Tarot artist Frieda Harris joked she was sub-normally intelligent—that Holy Qabalah was a very simple subject. Was he joking? Was he veiling (or merely lying)? Or was he veiling by telling a truth too plainly?

The first, simple, thing Crowley tells his ordinary intelligent audience is that there are ten numbers in the decimal system. And then to back up that tautological insight, he says the reason for this is not merely mathematical, because Qabalah is not just a system of mathematics, but that it is—uh-oh—philosophical.

Wait a second. Didn’t we just get through saying philosophy was never intended for ordinary minds? Yeah, I said that, didn’t I? But you probably think there is some difference between my saying it, and Crowley saying it.

OK. Check this out:

“[Ten of Swords-RUIN] shows reason run mad, ramshackle riot of soulless mechanism; it represents the logic of lunatics and (for the most part) of philosophers.”

And note that it is in this lunatic essay on the Ten of Swords that Crowley includes an important reminder: “10 is the key of the Naples Arrangement”.

OK, so maybe he is counting himself as one of those least-part sane philosophers, the kind that will endeavor to set ordinary intelligent minds straight about the amazing entanglements of Qabalistic philosophy. Sure, thats the ticket. And we even know where that ticket is taking us. Crowley just told us, didn’t he?

A place called Naples.

Next: The Naples Arrangement

(jk)

Update to a Postmodern Thoth Narrative

Mary Greer Admits To Arrien "Nonsense"

(jk)

Back to the Book

When I began this project, a little over a year ago, I had in mind to finish it by a certain deadline, the 60th anniversary of the death of Aleister Crowley. That seemed rather celebratory, and also it focused the work. On the other hand, when this deadline was established, I had done no research into the book, by which I mean the deeper research necessary to truly delve into the mysteries of Thoth Tarot and clear up some things for myself and for others that had never before been made clear.

As that process of research progressed, I was struck by how much really wasn't known, but should have been, and how much material there really was to explore to fairly and truly clarify Thoth, if not once and for all, at least for the first time.

On the bad news side of things, I missed the deadline. 

On the good news side, I've succeeded in solving some of the mysteries. I will be reporting on one of those, which is really related to a more general mystery or question, in a few weeks time. It will not be part of the Thoth book, because its topic is in fact more general than would warrant its inclusion in that book.

And, I will once again be updating this blog.

I hope to complete the Thoth book this year sometime, but I'll refrain at this point from suggesting a date. When I get closer, I'll let you know.

(jk)

“SUMMARY OF THE QUESTIONS HITHERTO DISCUSSED” [AND BEGGED]

On page ten of BOT, Crowley sums up the points he alleges to have made so far in the book. It is not quite a masterpiece, but it is certainly an exercise in begging the question(s):

1. The origin of the Tarot is quite irrelevant, even if it were certain, It must stand or fall as a system on its own merits.

Repeatedly, Crowley begs the question of Tarot’s origin (and more particularly the relevance of Tarot history to his theory), saying it is obscure: “The origin of this pack of cards is very obscure”—and disputed: “There is here no need to enter into any discussion of these disputed points”. Common minds often fall for the trick Crowley employs here, of suggesting disputed points (especially about obscure matters) are battlefields of equally valid opinion, and so of dubious value in establishing something relevant and true. This perception is even more popularly held in our time, when “debate” is understood to be a contest to see who can scream his point the loudest and most abusively. Yet, the question of what Tarot was, what it was originally designed to be, and how it came to be what it did by the 1940s, hovers over Crowley’s entire argument and “theory” of Tarot.

This is amply demonstrated by his next assertion:

2. [Tarot] is beyond doubt a deliberate attempt to represent, in pictorial form, the doctrines of the Qabalah.

Perhaps so. But the question Crowley begs is when exactly did this deliberate attempt begin? He implies the structure and the symbolism of Tarot have been Qabalistic since the beginning of their recorded existence. For example: “But the Tarot certainly existed, in what may be called the classical form, as early as the fourteenth century”. This classical form was allegedly recognizable as Qabalistic right from that time, needing only an initiated viewer to see it that way. Crowley says that came in the person of Eliphas Lévi who “seems to have understood that the Tarot was actually a pictorial form of the Qabalistic Tree of Life, which is the basis of the whole Qabalah”.

Crowley of course fails to mention to us, having dismissed the value of studying Tarot history, that Lévi was mainly initiated into an extant literary tradition which asserted the Qabalistic nature of Tarot, a tradition that was established in 1781, by two French Freemasons. Their essays introduced the ideas that Lévi and Crowley, and other occultists, have since developed about Tarot and its supposedly deep but obscure Qabalistic heritage.

Crowley, hoping to get the reader very much invested in a questionable tree so as to avoid consideration and discussion of the question-begging forest, now tries the “Wheel of Fortune” argument:

3. The evidence for this is very much like the evidence brought forward by a person doing a crossword puzzle. He knows from the "Across" clues that his word is "SCRUN blank H"; so it is certain, beyond error, that the blank must be a "C".

Here Crowley’s error (and attempted trick) in argument is to beg an erroneous analogy between the evidence offered and the answer it implies in his word puzzle, and that offered and implied by Tarot’s Qabalistic evidence.

In fact, it is quite reasonable to say that there is no puzzle at all regarding the origin of Tarot’s Qabalistic nature, which means the correct analogy would be to say the word should be spelled out in full—SCRUNCH—which is precisely what Crowley is doing with a lot of the relevant evidence. This is an important point—Crowley himself is making, and is in need of, the “C” to go missing. He needs there to be both mystery to attract us, which would not be as likely if the mundane facts were considered, and some kind of blank to be miraculously filled in, by Aiwass of course.

4. These attributions are in one sense a conventional, symbolic map; such could be invented by some person or persons of great artistic imagination and ingenuity combined with almost unthinkably great scholarship and philosophical clarity.

Now, here Crowley prepares a kind of argument much loved by people such as Erich von Däniken, where a great achievement or artifact is claimed to be so stupendous that it is beyond the ability and intelligence of even the most gifted human beings to have created. This idea has been repeatedly tested; for example respecting von Däniken’s claim that ancient astronauts must have built the Egyptian pyramids because it was too daunting a task for primitive humans to accomplish on their own; and found to be nonsense, or worse racist nonsense.

Of course, Crowley is here talking specifically about the correspondences of the Qabalistic Tarot Key, and he admits that, up to a point, a human genius could have accomplished a certain level of it. But, it is important to Crowley's purpose, proving his link to the Secret Chiefs, that he dismiss once and for all the idea that mere humans could have made this most brilliant Qabalistic instrument, the Tarot. Therefore, the Jews have got to go. Qabalah, after all, and Tarot's illumination of it, must be preserved as a great Mystery.

Therefore, in BOT, Crowley dismisses the idea that Jews could have invented or originated Kabbalah. As he says: “To explain [Kabbalah] at all, one has to postulate in the obscure past a fantastic assembly of learned rabbins, who solemnly calculated all sorts of combinations of letters and numbers, and created the Hebrew language on this series of manipulations.” Crowley of course rejects his own strawman at that point, telling us the “facts of history”, which have suddenly become relevant to him, could never support it. But from this he concludes the Jews could not therefore have invented Kabbalah.

Many Christian occultists, and Crowley here was certainly writing from a Christian-occult literary tradition, rejected the notion that Jews had invented Kabbalah; because the system seemed too perfect, too linked to some obscure ancient wisdom, for the “Christ-killing” race to have figured it out. Instead, Western occultism adopted the idea that Jews borrowed or stole Kabbalah from an even more ancient people, the Egyptians. This is precisely the Tarot dogma established in the essays of Court de Gébelin and the Comte de Mellet in 1781. And Crowley is following in that Egyptomaniacal tradition.

Having rejected, or begged off, the scholarship and philosophical clarity of the Jews, Crowley moves in for the spiritual kill:

5. Such persons, however eminent we may suppose them to have been, are not quite capable of making a system so abstruse [i.e., obscure, once again] in its entirety without the assistance of superiors whose mental processes were, or are, pertaining to a higher Dimension.

So, let us be clear here. Crowley, by adding that little “or are” bit, is clearly saying that Aiwass is of the very same class of spiritual superiors responsible for creating Kabbalah/Qabalah in the first place. In order to make this seem like something more than the preposterous claims of a con artist, or the ravings of a lunatic, Crowley has first to beg the question of the impossibly abstruse nature of Qabalah, so impossible that no humans, and certainly no Jews, could have invented it. Only creatures of “a higher Dimension” could have intervened to assist in the making of such a divinely-inspired artifact.

And isn’t it fortunate he just happened to choose Aleister Crowley to converse with?

But, as we have seen, there may have been other, more mundane, more traditionally occult, explanations. Certainly the latter do not require quite so much beggary, or bigotry.

Now, at this point in the proceedings, any educated reader of BOT could not be blamed for tossing the work into the fire, as it seems to be merely an euchering mockery of scholarship and (un)common sense. But, as in so much occultist writing, that is the traditional point of departure, one certainly well understood by Crowley, for finally writing something useful and interesting. In other words, the veils of cautionary tales, of reason, and certainly of certainty, are intended to stop most readers from going on.

And it is precisely at this point, having made an excellent case for thinking occult Tarot, and especially Crowley’s version of it, to be utterly valueless, that AC finally offers a credible and interesting justification for what he and other occultists have done to the game of Tarot. It comes at the end of the summary, indeed backs the intervening page of occult symbols (page 11), on page 12 (“He departed, went forth”).

One might take, by way of an analogy, the game of chess. Chess has developed from very simple beginnings. It was a mimic battle for tired warriors; but the subtleties of the modern game—which have now, thanks to Richard Reti, gone quite beyond calculation into the world of aesthetic creation—were latent in the original design.

Isn’t that all Crowley needed to say to the skeptics? The “subtleties...were latent in the original design.” Of course the skeptics would reply: But the subtleties of chess, however latent, are still used for playing a game, not demonstrating higher Dimensions or Intelligences.

But Crowley is prepared to deal with the random, evolutionary, heretics:

It is of course possible to argue that these subtleties have arisen in the course of the development of the game...One can argue that it is merely by chance that modern chess was latent in the original game.

Yes, one could argue that if, unlike parsimonious Aleister, the foolish controversialist wanted to make the most absurdly wild conjecture based on boring old likelihood, and in all ignorance of things like—uhm—oh, the theory of inspiration:

The theory of inspiration is really very much simpler, and it accounts for the facts without violation of the law of parsimony.

Of course it is one thing to argue that chess’s subtleties were latently laid by game designers unconsciously linked into the great cosmic chess archetype, which is questionable enough; and quite another to argue that the Secret Chiefs inspired the creators of Tarot, which is what Crowley is arguing, and what he wishes us to think is still happening with his Tzaddi-Heh switch.

Nevertheless, in spite of this, as so many commentators about Tarot have seen and discussed for over two centuries, it is interesting to see how easily the old gaming deck can be Qabalistically tricked out. There does seem to be a latent Qabalism in Tarot. Whether that latency is a product of archetypal or spiritual inspiration, or is just an interesting and inspirational coincidence is a question that will not be definitively settled simply because no matter what Tarot may have once been or once was intended to be, it is certainly a book of Qabalistic symbolism today.

And, despite what certain, dreary, cardgame historians have to say, Tarot has benefitted greatly from its Qabalistic development, becoming a fruitful aesthetic medium for many kinds of artists as a consequence. If Aleister Crowley had only exploited this quality of Tarot’s Qabalism, he might still have created an interesting Tarot deck. But because he required Tarot to do service in his Great Work of Thelema, he transformed it from a gaming deck, and from a quaint occult pastiche, into a true work of Art.

On that point, I will somewhat gratefully dispense with (some of) the mean-spirited skepticism I have so far employed in this examination, and prepare myself and you, reckless readers, for our trip in the next entry down the rabbit hole of Crowley's "Holy Qabalah".

(jk)

"The Most Convincing Evidence Possible"

I will preface this entry with a question about the value of truth.

If you can save 1000 lives by lying, is a greater truth served than if you tell the truth and those 1000 lives are lost? And if by lying, you save these 1000 lives, but 10,000 more are made by this to think lying is always a life-saving virtue, and this results in the deaths of many thousands more eventually, have you done the right thing by saving life now, only to see the ripples of deadly consequences stain your good, dishonest intentions?

Of course you may wish to muddle more the simple consideration by asking me whether those 1000 lives were worth saving in the first place. Were they "good people"? And how can you truly know such a thing about all of them? And from that point we sink down into the abyss of real-life calculations, where truth that is rightly claimed to be something more than personal bias struggles to be seen or known or thought any more extant than the dodo.

I invite you to consider these questions as we engage tonight's discussion, which may upset some people, especially Thelemites.

EVIDENCE and MYTH

In the first ten pages of BOT, Aleister Crowley argues in favor of what he calls "The Theory of Tarot". While this theory is firmly planted in traditional occultism, especially Qabalism, Crowley wishes us to accept the idea that this is an organic planting, nothing manmade or arbitrary, and certainly nothing he himself invented. While he might be adjusting Tarot for the New Aeon, he claims to be making these adjustments according to the directions of Secret Chiefs who have long been the true authors of occult ideas and the true designers of the illustrations of these contained in occult Tarot.

While Crowley is not much interested in telling us about the long history of Tarot, he is all for telling us a certain version of its short side, as noted in the previous posting especially that side with which he has personal knowledge and in which he has a personal investment. Of course, just because he has these personal interests doesn't automatically mean everything he is going to tell us is wrong. But it does mean that as we encounter his claims, we should recall that he frequently begs questions any skeptical reader ought to have.

For example, on page eight, Crowley hones his history lesson about the antics of the Golden Dawn down to a personally useful point: "The point of these data is simply to show that, at that time the main preoccupation of all the serious members of the Order was to get in touch with the Secret Chiefs themselves." And to make the further point that "of all the serious members" he himself was the most serious and most worthy, Crowley modestly claims: "In 1904 success was attained by one of the youngest members, Frater Perdurabo." Of course Frater P. was our own AC.

One thing to recall, by the time of this alleged success, Frater P. was no longer a member of Golden Dawn, having been chucked out after an embarrassing tug-of-wills with a group of Order rebels led by W. B. Yeats and others. In fact, in 1904 Crowley was not making any conscious effort to get in touch with Secret Chiefs, of the Golden Dawn or anyplace else. He was on an extended honeymoon, and in the midst of a long, rather hysterical melodrama crafted by his wife Rose in Cairo, Egypt. At the culmination of their chimerical foreplay, Crowley allegedly acted as secretary to a Secret Chief named Aiwass, who he later admitted just might have been himself, and who told Crowley the rules for the New Aeon of Horus, which rulebook became the Book of the Law, the chief religious text of Thelema.

Now, putting aside the credibility of Crowley's account of the Cairo episode, which is another story, what does it have to do with Tarot, or any relevant evidence regarding its "theory"?

Simply this, Crowley tells us in the next page and a half, under "The Nature of the Evidence", that "the most convincing evidence possible that the Book of the Law is a genuine message from the Secret Chiefs" is contained in the most important and perplexing adjustment Crowley makes in his New-Aeonic Tarot, the switch of Hebrew letter correspondences between the Tarot trumps IV-Emperor, and XVII-Star. The switch, from the Golden Dawn key, corresponds the Hebrew letter Tzaddi to IV-Emperor, and the Hebrew letter Heh to XVII-Star. Many complications and furrowed Thelemic brows (including supposedly Crowley's own) have followed in the wake of this alleged revelation.

Now, it is easy to get bogged down with discussions of these correspondences, but the question here is a simple one. Did a Secret Chief supply Aleister Crowley with this allegedly new, "most convincing", information? Or was there perhaps another, more mundane, source for it available to him?

Unfortunately for Crowley's lack of interest in the long history of Tarot, we will have to go back in time to the beginning of public speculation about occult Tarot to get the answer to that question.

THE 1781 KEY

Before we start that investigation, it would be good to point out (to novices especially) a surprising aspect of the structure of Tarot decks, even the really old and mundane ones—there are twenty-two trumps (actually twenty-one trumps and a Fool) in addition to the four regular suits (Wands, Cups, Swords, Disks) in a Tarot deck. When public speculation about the occult nature of Tarot cards began in 1781, it was noted by the French authors—Antoine Court de Gébelin and Louis-Raphaël-Lucrèce [Comte] de Mellet—of these first essays that twenty-two just happened to also be the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. And since one could easily make superficial links between the cards and the Qabalistic meanings of the letters, these French Freemasons believed this indicated Tarot must have been created to illustrate Qabalistic ideas. Of course, as you might surmise even knowing just these basic facts, getting the order of the correspondence between the trumps and letters correct was key to understanding the true meaning of the original Tarot symbolism, or so it was alleged.

And, regardless of what you may think about the credibility of those conjectures, they have been critically influential. The question of the correct letter-trump correspondences, known as the Tarot "keys", dominated much of the work of Western occultists since 1781, as Tarot became the centerpiece artifact of their speculations and their aspirations. That is why the "serious members" of the Golden Dawn were battling over who had the right number for the Secret Chiefs, who among other things could validate or correct one's Tarot keys to make sure they were "aright", as Crowley claimed Aiwass had done for him in the Book of the Law.

But, just one thing. Hadn't the keys been published back in 1781, back when the original authors of the original occult Tarot theory offered it up for public consumption?

Answer—yes. And, unlike their successors, those first occult authors, behaving most un-occcultly, were more concerned to report what they considered an important archaeological discovery, that Tarot was the lost Book of Thoth, than they were to conceal true Tarot keys. No, they revealed it all, noting specific trump-letter correspondences in the second essay, written by the Comte de Mellet. And it is this Hebrew-letter correspondence key for the Tarot trumps, again the first ever established for Tarot, that interests us here. For in that key, one claimed by Mellet to be the original ancient Egyptian key, the trumps were reversed from what they eventually were in the Golden Dawn key, with the first Hebrew letter, Aleph, corresponding to the last trump, XXI-World, and counting up (or down) to the final letter, Tau, corresponding to the Fool card.

A very interesting consequence of this key is the following set of correspondences: XVII-Star corresponds to the Hebrew letter Heh, and IV-Emperor corresponds to the Hebrew letter, Tzaddi.

Sound familiar?

Again, that key was published for all the world to see back in 1781. It was not something hidden away, or unknown, as Eliphas Lévi had read the essays and makes mention of Court de Gébelin as an "erudite" commentator on Tarot. In other words, Aleister's alleged previous incarnation had certainly read the 1781 essays. Indeed, they were considered fundamental Tarot texts back in the 19th century. So important were these essays, that A. E. Waite, in his "Pictorial Key to the Tarot", spends many pages discussing Court de Gébelin's ideas and influences, and provides bibliographical information about the essays at the back of his book.

If Crowley was not aware of the essays and of the original Tarot key in 1904, it seems a little odd that Aiwass would not have told him to check at the British Museum.

On that point, Crowley once wrote:

It is simply bad faith to swear a man to the most horrible penalties if he betray…, etc., and then take him mysteriously apart and confide the Hebrew Alphabet to his safe keeping. This is perhaps only ridiculous; but it is a wicked imposture to pretend to have received it from Rosicrucian manuscripts which are to be found in the British Museum. To obtain money on these grounds, as has been done by certain moderns, is clear (and I trust, indictable) fraud.

I suppose then pretending to have gotten it from a Secret Chief named Aiwass must be pretty bad too.

And if he wasn't pretending in 1904, and for some years afterward while he claimed to be struggling to make sense of Aiwass's instruction, Crowley seems to have been actively ignoring the truth, in 1944, when he wrote BOT, and was so intent on dismissing the importance of the part of Tarot history that would have challenged his most basic beliefs (or claims).

Of course, by that time, at the end of his life, Crowley had a magickal legacy to protect, a reputation that, if not exactly seemly or popular, did give him some credibility in the occult world, and some means to access financial support from always ready followers. Would those followers have been as enthusiastic and as faithful if they had known, for a fact, that Crowley had been lying to them? Or that, at the least, his alleged spiritual connection wasn't capable of providing any better evidence for its praeternatural knowledge than one could get at a good library?

Now, maybe this revelation about a revelation is just a curious footnote on Crowley's magickal enterprise. Certainly, it is something religiously avoided by the industrial purveyors of Crowley's legacy. But, in 1944 at least, when he published what many people consider one of his masterpieces, Crowley claimed Aiwass's Tarot tip was "the most convincing evidence possible."

I will close tonight with a quotation from one of Crowley's most important teachers, A. E. Waite:

I know that for the high art of ribaldry there are few things more dull than the criticism which maintains that a thesis is untrue, and cannot understand that it is decorative. I know also that after long dealing with doubtful doctrine or with difficult research it is always refreshing, in the domain of this art, to meet with what is obviously of fraud or at least of complete unreason. But the aspects of history, as seen through the lens of occultism, are not as a rule decorative, and have few gifts of refreshment to heal the lacerations which they inflict on the logical understanding.

(jk)

Origin and Evidence, Part II

In the last post, I talked a lot about how Crowley was carefully crafting a certain kind of argument in the early pages of BOT, with a certain kind of occult aim. I said that when he employs mentions of science, he is certainly not doing so to demonstrate any legitimate interest in science or its methods, but he is using a popular understanding of science as a kind of meme to communicate what he sees as a higher, spiritual, idea.

And I concluded the last post pointing out that Crowley, contradicting his claim of being unconcerned about authority and tradition, was certainly employing these things to make a very personal and extraordinary claim about the Tarot's central place in his own occult experience.

Crowley is well known for being, or seeming, contradictory. One example of this is how, after telling us that the history of Tarot is not really relevant to what he is attempting to argue about the "theory" of Tarot, he changes his mind when it comes to considering the evidence of its "quite modern history", that is the portion of Tarot's history that directly concerns Crowley's interests and claims. As we shall see, the problem for Crowley and his claims is that he arbitrarily decides when the "quite modern" or quite relevant portion of his report of the "evidence" begins, and by doing this he is intentionally distorting the truth.

What Crowley calls "the initiated tradition of Tarot" he alleges begins, or at least comes into relevant consideration, with Eliphas Lévi in the middle of the 19th century, but the truth is that Eliphas Lévi would never have written a thing about Tarot if he had not inherited a literary tradition that claimed Tarot was a centrally important artifact in Western occultism. Why does Crowley imply otherwise, saying for example that Lévi "seems to have understood that the Tarot was actually a pictorial form of the Qabalistic Tree of Life", as if that understanding were the product of Lévi's initiated insight, instead of his having read this claim in a book?

The main reason Crowley starts with Lévi is of course that AC so strongly identified with him he counted Lévi as one of his personal avatars, that is an earlier incarnation of Crowley's spirit. Crowley is then talking mainly about himself and his personal "initiated tradition of Tarot". We shall see however that his failure to look deeper into the past regarding this tradition is a calculation of his, intended to protect the spiritual authority of his entire belief system of Thelema. And that is because Lévi's predecessors, the people who inspired his own interest in Tarot, had done something terrible to the "initiated tradition"—they had revealed its true keys to everybody, right at the start of the occult version of the game!

The Veil-less Tradition

Have you ever wondered how Tarot came to be associated with Qabalah? Or how it acquired Qabalistic keys or correspondences? It was not, as Crowley suggests, a natural condition of its original symbolism. In other words, Tarot was not originally made to be Qabalistic. Rather, its structure and its symbolism fitted nicely into a Qabalistic scheme of interpretation, so long as one did not push that interpretation too far along. For if one did that, he would naturally bump up against the symbolic poverty of the older Tarot decks, whose symbols were clearly intended mainly to function as gaming mnemonics, and not as the Book of Thoth. That is why so many occultists complained of a corrupted Tarot, and of the need to "rectify" it. The notion that somehow that true Qabalistic symbolism of Tarot had gotten changed or was intentionally veiled, is a key part of the occult Tarot mythos.

And when and where did that mythos begin? Recall, Crowley doesn't want to discuss that, does he? In fact, he leaves any origin for that mythos veiled in what he calls the obscure mists of time.

Unfortunately, for true (Qabalistic) believers of many stripes, including Thelemic ones, we actually know the answer to this question. Occult Tarot began in 1781 in France, with the publication of two essays written by French Freemasons, and these essays conjectured for the first time publicly that Tarot was in fact the long lost Book of Thoth.

Tomorrow, I will discuss how those essays provided all the basic working parts of the "initiated tradition", and how they also provided a particular part of the Thelemic tradition that Crowley would later allege was given exclusively to him by the spiritual entity, Aiwass.

(jk)