The 91 parts of the Earth

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The 91 Parts of the Earth By Benjamin Rowe

The 91 Parts of the Earth Benjamin Rowe

Introduction The price of initiation is to be ceaselessly surprised; to live in a world where the only certainty is that what you believe to be Truth, believe to be real, even what you believe to be yourself will be changed in ways that you cannot anticipate. No matter how great our knowledge and experience, it is always surrounded by the infinite darkness of the unknown; and out of that darkness things can come at any moment to transform our world. One must advance towards the darkness without fear. Not because there is nothing to fear; rather because fear forces the unknown into its own ugly shape, a shape that we all know too well. Nothing truly new can come into our consciousness while fear dominates. Deny fear its power, deny it any right to control you, and the magickal universe becomes a place of endlessly unfolding wonders. Embrace the unknown and it will reward you by opening up its unspeakable, astonishing variety. More than most people, I hunger after that variety; hunger for it as intensely as an adolescent boy hungers for sex. That which is routine, that which is known, that which is familiar hold no attraction for me; I find them oppressive. The settled territories of the magickal world, I leave to others; only in pushing into the unknown am I fulfilled. The Enochian magick provides a perfect tool for one such as I. Its depth appears to be infinite; understand one level of its reality, and a new one with different properties opens immediately. A lifetime of work cannot exhaust its potential. But penetrating its depths can be difficult, for an unusual reason. That is that the Enochian entities are too cooperative. They strive always to conform their actions to the will of the magician. This means that if the magician enters into their realm with specific expectations, they will seek to fulfill those expectations, even if it means overlaying a true picture of the realm with a false one. Aleister Crowley's visions of the Thirty Aethyrs provide a case in point. Before he ever invoked one, he had decided that the Aethyrs represented a particular structure, with each triad of Aethyrs being associated with one of the Sephiroth in sequence. Further, at the time he did the visions, he added an additional expectation by interpreting the letters of the Aethyr's name according to the Golden Dawn's attributes. The results he obtained in these visions precisely reflected the forms and levels that he expected to see.

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Ten years ago I discovered the magnitude of this problem by accident. On a whim, I decided to do visions of the "Kerubic" angels of the Earth Tablet. I had no particular goal in mind, so I told the angels that they had complete freedom in their presentations; they could show me whatever they wanted to of their nature and that of their realms. Up to that time, I had been using the standard Golden Dawn attributes for the Tablets; the results I now obtained were entirely at odds with everything I had gotten before. This so intrigued me that I decided to continue the practice with other parts of the Enochian hierarchy, taking particular care to avoid placing any limits on the actions of the angels, being completely open to whatever they wanted to say. The results were nothing less than astounding; I received more new and useful information in the next six months than I had in the previous seven years of work. These visions of the 91 "Parts of the Earth" were begun in a similar spirit. I started them on a whim; traffic was slow in the NuitNet "Enochian" echo, and I wanted something to post to show people it was still an active echo. I had no particular expectations with respect to the results; simply that they be something that might interest others. As I write this (with 29 of the 91 Parts explored) I have no idea where the series will end. Every time I start to suspect some logic behind it, it veers off in an unexpected direction. I am deliberately refusing to look for any overall pattern until after the series is completed in a few years. The "Parts of the Earth" derive from John Dee's Liber Scientiae. The book is a tabulation of these Parts, along with their groupings under the Aethyrs and certain other information. The purpose of the books, as told to Dee, was to provide him with a means of magickally influencing the governments of various countries. (This stated purpose may have been a consequence of Dee's own expectations; he was greatly intent on having such a tool.) Each Part is a region of the Earth as defined by God; each corresponds to a particular geographic/political locale in the world as it was known in 16th-Century England. (As the reader will see, in these visions some of the Parts are attributed to regions then unknown.) Additionally, the Parts have a "vertical" or hierarchic component to their natures, because they are connected in groups of three with the Aethyrs, which are said to surround the Earth in onion-like layers. It should be emphasized that these Parts are not "governors of the Aethyrs", as has been mistakenly said by some writers. The name of the Part does not invoke a specific being, but only a certain locale of the Enochian universe, with its particular qualities. Nor does the Part in any way "rule" the Aethyr of which it is a portion. One might view the relationship between Parts and Aethyrs as being similar to the relationship between the decanates of the zodiac and the signs of which they are a section. The Voice of the Part is not the Part itself, but one of the unnamed ministers who dwells therein.

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Every part is governed by one of twelve "Zodiacal Kings", who is associated with one of the Tribes of Israel. The angels did not give Dee an explicit listing of their zodiacal attributes; he was told to derive it from the related tribe. Apparently he never did so. In these visions, the following system of attributes was used, which differs from both Agrippa system with which Dee was familiar, and the G.D. system. Zodiac sign

Zodiacal King

Tribe of Israel

Aries

Alpudus

Isacarah

Taurus

Hononol

Iehudah

Gemini

Zarzilg

Nephthalim

Cancer

Gebabal

Asseir

Leo

Olpaged

Dan

Virgo

Cadaamp

Benjamin

Libra

Zarnaah

Manasse

Scorpio

Arfaolg

Ephraim

Sagittarius

Lavavot

Gad

Capricorn

Zurchol

Simeon

Aquarius

Ziracah

Ruben

Pisces

Zinggen

Zabulon

The logic of this system is based on the disposition of the Tribes depicted in Numbers 2, combined with Dee's diagram of that disposition. There are several possible systems that could be derived from these sources; the one actually used was chosen by divination after the major possibilities were assessed. In any case, it is apparent from the visions obtained so far that the angels feel free to ignore these attributes whenever necessary. Some of the visions are consistent with their attribute; others show it only as a minor factor, and others yet are entirely at odds with it. The method of invocation was changed during the course of the visions. In the early Parts, I deliberately kept things as simple as possible. I would vibrate the Call of the Aethyr two or three times, then vibrate the name of the Zodiacal King, the Part, and the Aethyr while drawing the Part's sigil in the air before me. I would then enter the astral world and see whatever there was to see. Later I decided that it would be better to have a definite "anchor" for the vision on the astral plane, in order to focus the energies. For each vision I prepared a magickal circle on the astral, in a form resembling a talisman for the Part. In the border of the circle, on the south side, the name of the Zodiacal King was written. On the north side, the name of the

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Aethyr. In the middle, the name of the Part, its sigil, and the number of its resident ministers was written. All these were oriented so that they would be upright to a person facing south. I would vibrate the Call of the Aethyr, then go into the astral circle to vibrate the various names. Typically, the response to the invocation would begin with the center of the circle becoming transparent, to reveal an aerial view of some region of the Earth. Following my usual practice, the visions were recorded while they were occurring. The blank slate-blue wall behind my computer monitor served as my "scrying crystal"; I would watch events unfold in the astral space until they stopped changing for a moment, then write down what I saw. Where the Voice of the Part was speaking, I simply typed as it spoke. The record that follows is exactly what was recorded at the time; it has not been edited or changed in any way, except to correct minor typing errors. The "seer's comments" that follow every record were written immediately after the end of the vision. Readers will note that the visions consistently use a non-standard version of the Tree of Life, the "restored" Tree devised by Frater Achad. This Tree is used simply because it is the one on which I founded my cabalistic work; its placement of the paths makes more sense to my astrologically-oriented mind than does the more generally-accepted version. It should not be construed as evidence that Achad's is the "true" Tree, or that the standard version is false. Any magician exploring these Parts will no doubt find the presentations made in terms of his own symbol-system; it is one aspect of the angels' cooperative nature.

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The First Part for the 91 Parts of the Earth

Occodon, Part 1 of 91, 1st of LIL. Zodiacal king: Zarzilg Mundane association: Egypt. I recited the Call of the Aethyrs for LIL, and invoked the part named OCCODON, and its 7209 resident ministers, by the power of the zodiacal king Zarzilg. At first the response was very faint, barely perceptible. I repeated the invocation of the various names, and it increased slightly but still did not seem inclined to generate any sort of image. Thinking of images that might ground and manifest this power, a picture of the pyramids of Giza suddenly came into my vision with power and certainty. It was a view from the west, with Cairo hidden in the valley behind them, and the sphinx invisible somewhere beyond the left edge of the view. The green of the Nile cannot be seen; there is nothing but sand. A voice spoke: "In ancient times it was said that the world began out of the division of the Waters; and so it was. The primal waters divided out of themselves a portion of themselves, a reflection; these became the 'waters below' as the primal waters, taking on a role in relation to them, became the 'waters above'. "Thus was born the essential division of finite existence; and within that first division did divisions multiply. Each 'above' had its 'below'; each 'left' had its 'right'; each 'behind' had its 'before'. And each division generated more divisions, until the world was shattered into a myriad of parts, each unique, each without comparison to the others, yet meaningless except when in relation to them. "Thus also, these parts of the Earth which you explore begin not with unity, but with division; there is nothing but division within them, division and perpetual change. For that which is below and that which is above are confounded in the curse of god; intermixed, intertwined until none can know which is the greater and which the true lesser." A flashing image here of the universe as a multitude of independent particles, with energies flashing between them. Some of these "particles" appeared as great as planets or

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stars, others more minute than the smallest quark, and with every range in between. The energies moved in every direction, from small to large, large to small, and back and forth among the middle sizes. It seemed that a tiny particle was just as capable of influencing one of the "greater" particles as those larger were of influencing it; there was no clear hierarchy among them. Now the pyramid image returns, and my viewpoint moves back away from it. A single pyramid remains visible, and it becomes apparent that the landscape in which it sits is a small chunk out of the Earth's surface, floating free in space. Magritte could have easily painted this scene. Above the chunk of Earth a starry night-sky is visible, color-tinged white pinpoints on a deep blue background. But below the Earth there is nothing but a blackness, entirely without perceptible features. A blackness which is utterly negative, which does not absorb the finite into itself (as does the great sea of the Supernals, and the greater sea of which it is the reflection) but which cancels it, makes it not to be by saying "no" to all its characteristics. For a moment a tremendous stress builds between the sky and the lower blackness. An electric current builds between them, and suddenly becomes visible as twin lightning bolts vibrating in place between the sky and the darkness. After a moment the chunk of Earth vanishes from the middle of the scene, and for a moment the planes of sky and darkness and the twin bolts become the glyph of Gemini. Then the glyph transforms itself into a view of Egypt seen from orbit. The top bar of the glyph becomes the shore of Lake Victoria; the lower bar becomes the shore of the Mediterranean Sea; and the twin pillars or bolts become the sandy wastes that border the Nile Valley on either side. "Thus is the world the center of division; finite life and existence can have their day only within the bounds of these great divisions of power, in the central area where all the opposites mix in varied proportions. Move too far towards the upper waters, and one returns to them, sacrificing finite existence for the greater; move too far towards the lower waters and one dissolves in their negation, becomes not. Move too far towards any horizontal extreme between them and one perishes in the dry death of false singularity. "And thus also is this division reflected in the Call of the Aethyrs, which has been called the Curse of God; for there is no center within the world, no point where one may become balanced and still without end. No point can remain balanced, for the balance is ever changing, ever moving; and the various parts pass in turn over the hypothetical point of balance, seeming for a moment to be the center but then passing out again into an unbalanced state.

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"So as well is the mind of Man. The 'self', the seeming 'I' that inhabits the being is truly not the center. For the mind of Man is a thing of many parts, interacting, fighting and cooperating by turn in various combinations. It never rests from change. The 'I' has no constant nature, but only the nature it takes on from those parts of the being that are dominant at a given moment. For all practical purposes, it is those parts and their interaction, and nothing more. The seeming continuity of its existence comes not from itself, but from the River of Memory, carrying the sensations of past moments in itself, taking them downwards in the being to be deposited like silt in the delta at the edge of the Dark Sea. "Now 'I' [said humorously] could continue this metaphor into many other areas. But needs not; we have seen sufficient of it for the moment. But consider, as a final example of the metaphor, the political customs of ancient Egypt. Therein the seeming balance and centrality of the Pharaohs (representatives of the Sun of "Self") was never more than a superficial image hiding the perpetual infighting of the priests of different cities and gods. Each constantly striving to make themselves dominant, each taking in turn the central position and losing it again. And consider that the Sun-self of Egypt itself shattered eventually into a myriad of divisions, and died, and was carried by the Nile to vanish in the Dark Sea. I asked the unseen speaker whether he might show something of the ministers of this part of the Earth, and of its nature in other aspects of being. It said "Not at this time." I asked if there was anything else to be seen at the moment, and receive only silence as an answer. So I spoke my thanks and departed the vision. --------------------Seer's comments: The content of this vision is fairly clear, and doesn't need a great deal of comment. Since we are working here with a "downward" current, it begins with a fall from unity into disunity, chaos, and discord. Appropriately, Occodon is ruled by the zodiacal king of Gemini, the most dualistic of the signs. The characteristics presented are typical of Gemini, but raised to an archetypal level. Egypt, the mundane region governed by Occodon, is used as a metaphor for the Earth, the human being, and human society, as they are affected by the power in the Call of the Aethyrs. The four-sided pyramids might represent the seemingly-ordered worlds of human experience, resting on a foundation of chaos -- the ever-shifting particles of the desert sands.

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Pascomb, Part 2 of 91, 2nd of LIL. Zodiacal King: Zinggen. Ministers: 2360. Mundane association: Syria 7/15/1994 2:40 p.m. I invoked PASCOMB by the power of Zinggen and the Aethyr LIL, calling upon the 2360 ministers who dwell there to come and present its nature. At first there was only a sense of a very strange energy. A sort of quintessence of sundering, without any object. As if an act of ripping something apart had been separated from the things being ripped and made into a spiritual ideal. A voice said: "A mighty tearing suffuses the universe, rending each thing from its opposite. That which is above and that which is below are sundered from one another; that which is to the right is sundered from that which is to the left; that which is before is sundered from that which is behind. "And all things are brought to one level; each thing above is brought down, each thing below is raised up; that which is before and behind, to the left and to the right, are brought to the center and inextricably mixed. "And out of that mixture are new dualities formed. None higher or lower than the others; there is no ranking here. Observe:" There came before me the image of the sign of Gemini seen in the last vision, with its straight side pillars and the curved top and bottom bars. It underwent a transformation: the portions of the bars between the two pillars broke away from the parts outside; those outer parts blended into the pillars. Gradually the two center parts of the bars moved towards the center of the figure; as they did so, the parts of the pillars they passed ceased to be straight and became smoothly curved towards the outside. The bars met and merged together into one longer bar, and the sign of Gemini was transformed into the sign of Pisces.

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"Thus it is with these parts of the Aethyrs, which God has made into parts of the Earth. For she is not a place of hierarchies, but a [spherical] surface; and upon that surface are the powers arrayed in their might. That which is shown as various spheres in Dee's diagram is not truly so. The parts are dispersed about her surface like the colors about the surface of a soap bubble; and like those colors, they are constantly shifting, changing their places. At one moment one might cover a great territory, only to be practically overthrown in the next by its neighbors." (As the above was said, it was impressed on me in an instant that all the variations of the Earth's surface were minute and indistinguishable with respect to the world's size. The highest mountains and deepest ocean trenches vary less than one part in sixteen hundred of the world's diameter. In relation to its size, the variations in the Earth's surface are no more significant than the variations in thickness that cause the color shifts of the soap bubble. Why this should be emphasized, I don't know; perhaps I missed something.) Now I saw an image of the world with the Aethyrs arrayed about it in concentric spheres. Again there came the sundering force that opened the vision, and all these spheres were broken into pieces. The pieces tumbled down towards the Earth, and as they hit the surface they slid over and around each other until none of them was above any other. Gradually they expanded and shifted until they covered the entire surface. Each of these pieces seemed to be both a sort of energy and a living liquid at the same time. I could distinguish them by their differing shades and hues, each unique. Now they seemed to be at war with each other; the effect was of a bunch of brightly colored slime molds fighting for territory. Each pushed against its neighbors, seeking to gain more ground for itself. One might lose ground for a time, but was never completely extinguished; if all its territory in one place was taken by its neighbors, it simply sprang up again in another place where the pressure was low. And it seemed to me that each of these living "parts" was in fact the cause of some idea that lives in the minds of men, or rather of those shared perceptions and ideals that make up the identity of a nation or a group. Because each part is unique in its essence, it follows that all groups must be in conflict with each other at one time or another. Harmony is the result of likeness or complementarity of nature; where likeness does not exist, there must be friction and conflict. Thus the idea of complete unity among nations is doomed to fail, as is the unity or harmony between groups within nations. If a certain type of belief or government is overthrown in a certain part of the Earth's population, it will simply appear again in another part, or as a minority belief within a particular culture. The voice said: "Thou hast grasped it. Thus it was said to Dee that these parts governed the governments of the Earth, and that one could manipulate those governments through the use of the power of the corresponding part. It extends through all levels of

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organization within the world; since all individuals are unique, they must at sometimes be in conflict with their neighbors. And thus it was said in the Thelemic book that Horus, god of War, is the ruler of this world. "We would emphasize again that the parts of the Earth, and the Aethyrs from which they spring, are not expressions of the unity of existence, but of the aspect of discord. In this they are the complement, the necessary balance to the divine and angelic Names derived from the Great Table by orderly means. Those names and hierarchies show the unity aspect, the merging of the discord of events into the singleness of spirit. Here we deal with the shattering of that unity, with its expression in the unspeakable variety of unique events taking place in the world at any moment. "Now, in order to continue, we would have you wait for an hour or so, and relax. For there is more to see, but the time is not quite right. Return again today. 7/16/1994 8:04 p.m. (I did not return to the vision until now because the timing felt wrong.) I again recited the Call for LIL and invoked PASCOMB. After a few minutes the force of the Part came strongly. The Voice continued. "Now, you have grasped the connection between the power of these Parts and the actions of government. Truly, the world is in a constant state of war, from the standpoint of the Aethyrs. And the most active, violent of those wars at present take place not upon the physical plane, but upon the planes of emotion and reason, For each Idea has power within these worlds, and any Idea which is supported at its core by the creative power of God (as most are) cannot be eradicated wholly from the world. "Even should it be wholly washed away from the minds of all living beings, it would arise again spontaneously. For it requires not the power of men to maintain its existence; its has an energy separate from their recognition and support. Should it be washed away, then at some future moment, some man or woman would (through natural affinity) touch its power with their mind, and it would instantly become real within the world again. "This war is perpetual, and the only thing that changes its character are the slow changes in the consciousness of God, as its creative plan evolves over time. At any given point in time, some ideas are emphasized by these changes and others de-emphasized. Thus in the previous age did social ideas take an extreme hierarchical form with those on the bottom serving those on top, while in this present age are social ideas more oriented towards the masses of men and their needs.

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"But the dominance of one sort of ideal does not eliminate the others; they remain always, and insinuate themselves into the functioning of society and of life in the details of activity where they cannot gain dominance in the overall rulership. And if that dominance of an ideal should fail, then others -- temporarily suppressed -- regain their prior place. Thus the rapidity with which the Soviet Union devolved into its cultural predecessors; the local cultures had not been absorbed by the ideal, but only overlaid, partially smothered by it. "And the war is reflected even in the functioning of the living things of the world. For each type of animal and each type of plant is at war with those upon which it feeds, even as it is dependent upon them. And each unique being fights against its neighbors for its share of the available resources. Trees wage slow, years-long battles against each other; lesser plants feed upon the detritus of that war, and wage their smaller wars beneath. And so on. "Never shall this conflict be done, no, not even should the Kingdom of Heaven come. For it is the nature of the third of the three Great Aspects of God's creation (of which the body, emotions, and mind are a part) that every particle and composite being within the world shall respond uniquely to the power of God's creative will. Where the proper goal of each is unique [i.e., it's "true will" under the power of the divine] then conflict inevitably arises. (On an unspoken level, it was also mentioned that unity lies only in the Second and First divine aspects, those of Love and Will (or Being), both of which are entirely spiritual in nature, and come into the manifest world only through the action of initiated sapients.) "There is no unity within the manifest world, nor shall there ever be. Those who seek to impose such a unity, through law or morals or "correct behavior" are doomed to failure. God wishes it so; were the manifest world one in all ways then it would no longer be a fit material for His creative activity, and for the creations of those lesser beings who dwell within it. Creation is change, and change always brings conflict. "Now we have said enough and would end here, if you will." I said I had no questions that had not already been answered in the nonverbal subtext of the presentation. I thanked those who spoke, and ended the vision.

Valgars, Part 3 of 91, 3rd of LIL. Zodiacal King: Alpudus. Ministers: 5362. Mundane association: Mesopotamia.

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7/19/1994 1:10 p.m. Recited the Call for LIL and invoked VALGARS by the power of the zodiacal king Alpudus. The vision opened with an image of the glyph of Pisces as in the previous vision. The glyph was colored a deep ocean blue. Immediately the crossbar of the glyph broke in two places, close to the curves. The remaining part of the bar contracted to a dot between the two curves, the parts of the bar still connected to the curves were absorbed into them. The two curves rotated about their centers so that their lower ends came together. For a moment a half-moon seemed to grow off of the top of the right-hand curve, so that the whole figure seemed like an Enochian letter "B". The dot between the curves became a diamond. But the half-moon quickly disappeared and the figure turned blood-red, becoming the glyph of Aries. The glyph tilted away from me and moved away at the same time. From below an image of the Earth came into view, and the glyph descended, coming to rest with its two arms conjunct with the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. The dot between the arms marked the location of Baghdad -- actually slightly north and west of there; perhaps ancient Babylon. The point where the arms met did not quite touch the Persian Gulf; it ended in the marshes where the two rivers meet. The view descended towards the Earth, and I saw that it was indeed Babylon that was depicted. The region surrounding the city was green with growing crops and grassland; not the dry waste of current-day Iraq. Across the river to the west I could see forested hills. The city was enclosed in a long wall, save for a short stretch of the river bank near the center of one wall. This gap did not seem to be deliberate, but rather the result of erosion undermining the wall. Within there seemed to be a smaller area with high walls as well; perhaps the area of the palace and main temples. Now the viewpoint rotated around the city to the eastern gate. A long thoroughfare extended west to an unfinished ziggurat. I saw people moving down the avenue towards me; they passed through the gate and dispersed to the four directions. The Voice spoke: "The tower you see is of course the so-called Tower of Babel. And the people are dispersing as was said in the biblical myth. But it was not the hand of God which produced this effect, except indirectly, through the power of the Part governing this

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region. The symbolism of the Tower is of course the symbolism of Mars, ruler of Aries. And it is the characteristics of the sign and its ruler that are here represented in one aspect. "You know of course that Aries represents the initial outpouring of force that begins any project, any work of creativity. It is the force that overcomes the inertia of matter and moves it into a different state. But this force is short of duration; it gives out quickly, burns itself up. If the work of creation were to continue, it would need to be imbued with the longer-lasting force of Habit or Custom, which maintain the new state. But that is to be seen elsewhere, not here. "What is shown here is the illusory unity provided by the imposition of force upon disparate, chaotic elements each having their own unique nature. Such unity never lasts; as soon as the force is exhausted, or directed towards a different goal, then it dissolves into its initial elements again. This is as we said in the previous Part, here manifested in its actuality. "The various cities of the lands between the two rivers at times tried to impose their rule on their surroundings by force. Their rulers sensed in their minds the nature of the power of this Part, and attempted to manifest it. But such rulership was not natural to the area, was imposed upon a pre-existing "culture" in which smaller specialized settlements coexisted in a complex network of trade. "In this earlier culture, the specializations of each town depended upon the resources available in their area. One being close to clay deposits would engage in the manufacture of pots and bowls. Another having flint would make cutting and digging tools. Yet another might have timber, or medicinal plants, fertile grain-growing lands, or grasslands for cattle. Each of these would make the most of its local resources and trade along the network for the other items they needed. "This is not unlike the current-day state of the world economy, though in miniature. And the failure of the imposed rulerships of the great cities gives a lesson that might be learned today. "The early centralized rulerships were initially accepted for the same reason that every government since has been accepted. It seemed advantageous to the people of the towns to give over a portion of their production in exchange for protection from the larger losses to criminals and raiders along the trade routes. But once the principle of centralized rule was accepted, things rapidly went downhill. "The rulers must draw more and more on the productivity of the towns in order to widen their rule. The wider the borders of the kingdom, the larger the portion of production that must be spent on defense and internal regulation. This is simple geometry. Eventually the

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point of diminishing returns is passed; the rulers can no longer take enough resources out of the economy to maintain their rule. The hardship for those from whom it is taken increases until they are no longer willing to support the "national" government, and the system collapses. "In the Babel incident, it is this failure of resources that is the true cause of the disruption. The craftsmen who were building the tower were drawn from many peoples in the area, each of them with their own customs and variation on the regional speech. When the rulers could no longer pay for their services, they perceived this as a sign of divine disfavor; their confidence in the communal project was lost, ethnic tensions increased, and finally they left to return to their home towns. "This is the failure of every government that seeks to rule by force, from ancient Uruk and Ur to the present day. In those earlier cases, the process was sometimes advanced by deterioration of the climate, or -- more commonly -- by the failure of crops upon which the city-dwellers were dependent. "The region of the Earth governed by Valgars shows this tendency with particular emphasis. One after another came conquering rulers; many of them inspired by the imaginary "glory" of the memory of their predecessors. The early cities, the Babylonians, Assyrians, the Baghdad of ancient times and the present, all have sought to rule and each has fallen back into chaos when their power was no longer sufficient to the task. Over and over the same story is replayed. Even now, the ruler of Iraq perceives himself as the incarnation of an ancient Assyrian ruler, dazzled by the vision of restoring ancient glories even as his nation is rent asunder around him. "Like the flow of the two great rivers, the power of this Part seems mighty in its beginning and continuation, but in the end it collapses into chaos; as the two rivers become lost in the great marshes of their combined delta. When their waters finally reach the sea, they get there through a myriad of tortuous channels, not in the great unified flow that their beginnings promised. And so it ends, always. "Now we would like for you to continue with these visions; it seems to us that you would be doing a service thereby. But be not concerned if there be interruptions, hiatuses in the work. For this is necessarily a long-term project, and it is certain that other tasks and opportunities will come between at times. Do what thou will, when thou will, and we will be accessible to you. We are done, for today." I thanked the Voice for its presentation, and ended the vision. Seer's comments:

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This completes the Parts attributed to LIL. It is too early to speculate on the complete course to be presented, but some obvious connections can be made between these three parts. First, all three deal in some way with the chaos or disorder that precedes the initiation of a creative act -- and which may well be stimulated by the first inflow of creative force. There is an increasing constraint upon the unorganized materia as the visions progress: Occodon defines outer boundaries, Pascomb organizes the content of those boundaries into conflicting elements, Valgars shows the first attempts to bring the materia into conformance with a creative will. Second, each vision deals with a region that is (loosely speaking) bounded by water on two sides. Egypt by Lake Victoria and the Mediterranean Sea, Syria (mundane equivalent of Pascomb) by the Euphrates and Jordan, and Mesopotamia by the Euphrates and Tigris. The repetitive occurrence of opposed curves in the astrological glyphs is probably connected with this. I get the sense that the "failure of government" theme of the three visions is a reflection of the fall from unity embodied in the Call of the Aethyrs. Were we taking the Parts in the reverse sequence, (as Crowley did with the Aethyrs themselves) it may be that these parts would show the final return to unity in the divine. The presence of Babylon in the third vision is odd, since Babylon has its own Part later on in the series (number 80, Mathula). The region named Mesopotamia in Liber Scientia is called Upper Mesopotamia today. I suspect that whatever beings were the Voice of this vision were simply using it as a convenient substitute for the city of Sargon the Great, who created the first empire with a true centralized government in upper Mesopotamia circa 2500 BC, and whose empire ended 160 years later in much the way described. The latter name was apparently buried too deep in the silt of my unconscious mind to be dredged up on short notice; it popped into awareness about fifteen minutes after the vision ended.

Dongnis or Doagnis, part of ARN. Zodiacal King: Zarnaah Servitors: 3636 Equivalent to Cappadocia in Liber Scientia. August 24, 1994 circa 2:00 p.m. Everything is dark, dark. And in the center is a deeper darkness, that feels like a circular sinkhole in the fabric of the space, a cylinder of emptiness in the midst of things.

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Now it seems as if this cylinder is becoming lit from some source inside it. Lines of light trace a rectilinear grid over its inner surface, and it becomes filled with a light like daylight. It begins to rotate on its long axis. Simultaneously, my viewpoint rotates about it in a horizontal plane so that I am seeing its length from an outside point perpendicular to the axis and equidistant from its ends. Its rotation is such that the upper side is rolling away from my viewpoint. I can still see the grid inside it, vaguely through its surface. The grid becomes clearer, and begins to shine from the outside as well. The shining potions become raised in relief against the surface, and the whole takes on a sense of solidity. Suddenly the cylinder begins to move away from me rapidly. It leaves behind an imprint of its shining lines, like the cylindrical seals used by ancients governors. It seems to be creating the surface it is imprinting as it rolls along. The cylinder recedes into the distance and vanishes. The long, paper-thin surface it left behind now begins to curl upwards at the sides. The long sides come together, but in such a way that the grid-lines at right angles to its length are offset by one line at their meeting point. The new cylinder thus formed has straight lines along its length; the cross-lines, which were rectilinear in the original cylinder, now form several helices around it, due to the offset. Those parts of the "surface" that were not imprinted now dissolve, leaving a cylindrical net of glowing lines. This process propagates itself along the length of the surface until any still-unconnected parts are lost in the distance. Nothing else happens for a few minutes. While all this was happening, I got a vague impression that the helical net is a representation of the universe -- no, specifically of the solar system. Each of the helices represents a planet's course through space, while the straight lines represent the course of the system as a whole. And by correspondence, it also represents the psyche and experience of man, wherein events are cyclic but progress forward in time. Now a voice said, "How else shall chaos be taméd? How else shall the disorder of creations' energies be brought into order? How else shall balance be attained? Is it not said, 'Her course let it run with the heavens, and as a handmaid let her serve them'? "Change cannot be stopped or frozen; that way lies the grave, and the end of things. Yet it can be diverted, and set to run along a limited set of paths; paths which lead, in the end, to the achievement of the creator's purpose. "Here in this region, the powers previously shown, the powers of creative energy unleashed within the Earth, are for the first time brought into ordering, so that the

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dynamic changes that take place in the world, by the will of god, shall all be (in the long run) of benefit to his purpose. "Yet is this ordering hidden from the minds of men, and the lesser beings who inhabit the earth; they see only the surface of remaining disorder, the clashing of powers as they compete for influence over events. Thus is it said 'Confound the understanding of her with darkness'. "Now let us move away from this for a time, for this is a profound mystery, and not to be revealed in its entirety. By other means might we know more of the action here. Let the 3636 ministers who dwell herein make themselves known." A multitude of beings appeared. Most of them were dressed in judicial robes, some with the white wigs of English tradition. All carried implements in their hands; some a gavel, others a scale, others yet a book of laws. And among them was one who carried about him the image of the Six of Pentacles in the Rider deck; this one projected this image so strongly that the rest were hidden. The voice said, "This card is called 'Material Success', and yet the image shows not a man among his wealth, as would be the case for that meaning, but a man standing with his head above the other people, carrying a set of balances raised in the air above their line of sight, while with his other hand he distributes gold to the lowly, some to one, more to another, none to others. "Thus it symbolizes the function of this region; events conform to a balance on a high level, yet that which comes into the manifest world (represented by the kneeling figures) is of a seemingly random and capricious nature. And he who acts within those higher levels knows of the balance, yet cannot act within the world in a purely balanced manner. Thus he seems unfair, even cruel, to those who know not the God of Justice and his works and purpose. They unconsciously recognize his inner wealth, and view him with fear, and envy, and resentment, and with the urge to spoil. Thus does his balance evoke imbalance. "So also with the ministers of Doagnis; they are concerned not with the justice of their acts as seen by the uninitiated, or by the lesser creatures of Earth. They act only to set god's limitations upon the chaos of his creative energies, to channel the Timeless according to the dictates of Time. For the outcome of those limitations in the worlds of men, they care not at all. For the world is an illusion to them, a place of horrors and joys quickly passed, ephemeral and unreal. Tis all a stage to them, and the men and women only players; they know that when the players remove their masks and exit the stage, then is the play seen for what it was, and the great trials of life are dismissed as a momentary dream.

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"Now, you could penetrate further into this place, but it seems not necessary at this time. Come again when you will, or go on to another region. Fare you well." The sense of the voice's presence faded. The image of the Six of Pentacles remained for a time, then it too faded. I left the vision. Seer's comments: According to the system I was directed to use for these visions, the Zodiacal King ruling Doagnis is attributed to Libra. The overall sense of the vision, however, was more Saturnian. The hole, cylinder, and rectilinear designs of the early part are all related to that planet, as are the general themes of Time and imposed order. Even when Libra does appear, in the ideas of balance and justice, it is a lesser or degenerate form of the sign's ideal. Justice is not seen as a balancing of injury and compensation, or of mediation between conflicting goals, but simply as selective restriction on the individual expressions possible in nature. The consequence of such a view is often extreme injustice. The three regions of LIL shown in previous visions all had something to do with the theme of "failure of government", consequent upon the fall from the unity of pure divinity. Perhaps it is not so surprising that this first region of ARN should go to the opposite extreme, seeking to impose an artificial unity (as represented by the rectilinear grid) as a substitute for the real thing. The justice and order shown here is the false justice of the religious or political fanatic, the person who fears the unspeakable variety of existence, and therefor seeks to restrict it to "safe" or "correct" manifestations. It is the order of the person who mistakes his own internally generated image of god for god itself, who mistakes his own limited perceptions for those of god, and seeks to impose them on all others. Compare the justifications following the appearance of the Six of Pentacles with those of any idealist, revolutionary or religious politician. Like those people, the beings here justify their cruelties in the real world by claiming to follow a "higher purpose", saying that the miseries they force on their fellow beings are necessary to promote the higher good. Like the Voice of this vision, they even lay the blame for it on those they oppress, saying "It's all their fault if they can't see the Great Purpose."

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Pacasna, part #5, 2nd of ARN, ARN. Zodiacal King: ZIRACAH Ministers: 2362 Mundane region: Tuscia Thursday, August 25, 1994 3:05 PM As soon as I thought about doing this vision, my head was filled with light, of an odd quality. The old sci-fi hack's term "sleeting radiation" seemed perfectly appropriate. It felt like my head was being irradiated by some point-source that just happened to be coincide with its center, but was in no way directly connected with it. The radiation gave the impression of packets of energy that zapped outwards from the source, each leaving behind a streak of energized paths in the neurons of the brain. Each streak produced a sense of bubbling energy in the brain. I vibrated the Call and appropriate names, and recorded the above paragraph. After vibrating the names for several minutes more, a space started to appear. Rather than appearing and then remaining steady, it would become visible for a moment, then it would disappear again, then reappear. Rather like watching a movie with a pause between frames. The space did not seem to exist when not visible; there was no sense that events there had advanced any in the time between appearances. Finally the appearance steadied. But the situation was not entirely improved thereby; now it seemed as if the space had two aspects, which I was viewing simultaneously. In one of these views, I saw many people dressed in violet-colored robes with trim in the complementary yellow. Each carried some sort of box held before him. The boxes were decorated with ribbons of many colors, which drifted and waved about as they moved. I got the sense that the boxes held holy relics of some sort, or were themselves relics. Each of these people moved on a unique path through space, never touching or colliding with others. As they moved, one or another of them would sing a note. And as that note reached the ears of certain others, they would in turn sing -- usually a different note, but one in the same key. Only a few responded to any particular note, but all of them were responding to some note within any short period of time. The overall effect was of a light rain in which the landing of every drop produced a different tone. It also seemed that every time one of them sounded a note, the ribbons on the boxes they held extended a bit further out into the surrounding space, each ribbon still waving in invisible currents. Eventually the entire space was filled with crisscrossing ribbons, practically obscuring their origins.

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The other view was less striking. Balls of light moved on slow orbital paths through the space. Occasionally one would throw out a smaller bit of light, which would move along until it hit another large ball. The receiving ball would momentarily brighten and expand its diameter; after an irregular period of time it would in turn throw out a smaller ball of light, at the same time dimming and becoming smaller. Turning back to the first view, I examined the boxes more closely. Each was made of square panels with smooth square borders covering about one-sixth of their width. The center of each panel, each side, was filled with intricate carvings in every imaginable style and subject-matter. The carvings moved as I watched, so that the pictures unfolded their stories. The movements went in jerks -- a change, then a short wait, another change, and so on. E.g., in one showing a mass of ivy, the vines would slowly move and sprout new leaves, live a time-lapse image of plant growth. In another a macabre scene showed a woman being slowly burned at the stake while peasants and a demon in priests robes watched, danced, and talked among themselves. In another a composer slowly set notes of a score onto paper. I had the impression that if I looked long enough I could find the whole world's history and human activity represented in the sides of these many boxes. But at the same time I sensed that these scenes were superficial. They did not in any way reflect the contents of the boxes; they were all "outside" and no "inside". Examining the interior of one box I found -- more boxes. Each was like the one that contained it, in that it had ribbons waving about it and panels with pictures. It seemed that each of the major boxes contained its own universe of smaller boxes, and possibly each of these in turn contained its own internal universe. And if I suppressed knowledge of the enclosing level of boxes for a moment, it seemed that these smaller boxes connected not only with those in their own "universe" but as well with those in every other. I began to weary of looking at this Chinese-puzzle world, and thought it was time for the Voice to come and make some explanation of things. After a few moments, it did so. "You have already recognized the essence of this vision, and I will leave it to you to explain in your notes. Let us touch upon some other concerns at this time. "The boxes are, as you guessed, entities of some sort or another; not always, or even usually, human, but organizations of matter into complex forms. Any of the kingdoms of nature might be represented, or any of many other unrecognized systems. "Each such entity carries with it not only the behavior it presents to the world (in the form of the pictures) but also its own complete history of existence, and [emphasized] the

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history of every component that went into its making, back to the very beginnings of things. And each of these components continues to interact with the rest of the universe in its own terms, even as it acts as a part of the larger whole. This is the true living order of existence, as opposed to the sterile, dead order of the previous vision. Explain the rest as you will; it is no great difficulty for you. "Now, what I intended to remark upon was the manner in which you might progress further in your understanding of the Enochian universe and its god. This is a matter not entirely related to these visions of the Parts, and so should not be done by me. Bide a moment and another will come and tell you." I waited. After several minutes there were brief shadowy images of a figure standing before me. Nothing more happened, so I got up and went to the bathroom, then sat on my bed and meditated for a while. There was a feeling that I needed to be in a different space in order to understand what was coming. Reaching out to sense that space, I tried to discard the power of the Part and adopt the new one. Shortly I had a brief sight of the Comselha circle, as seen from high above. As described elsewhere, I noted a toroidal field of force around it, with a beam projecting upwards from the hollow center. I felt myself drawn into this beam. Gradually it drew me upwards until I was within sight of the interstellar nexus being built on the edge of the Earth's aura. I noted that it's construction seemed to be coming along well. Only a couple of unincorporated sections remained at a distance from the main structure, and that structure was solidly anchored by heavy beams directed at nearby stars and the Earth. The core levels appeared to be completely finished; I could see no gaps in the sphere. A larger surrounding sphere was almost complete; I sensed that several individual lines of force still needed to be anchored. Moving into the center of the sphere, I saw a glyph high up on one wall. I could not see it clearly, but it appeared to be a cross between the Hindu OM and the glyph of Capricorn. Perhaps this was a designator for stars or constellations in that direction? Other glyphs also appeared, but even more difficult to see, as if as yet their force had not be completely set in place here. Sunday, August 28, 1994 1:03 PM For some reason, I wasn't very happy with the vision of Pacasna, and decided to do it again, just to see if anything else could be seen.

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Vibrated the Call twice, vibrating the name of the Aethyr a few times in between. Called upon Ziracah to direct the ministers dwelling in Pacasna to come to my aid and demonstrate the power of their part of the Earth. Almost immediately I got the same sense of "bubbling energy" the opened the previous vision. No images appeared, but I started getting intuitions about the Parts. It occurred to me that these first two parts of ARN represent, in an odd way, the "mother" and "father" aspects of existence. Doagnis placed a heavy emphasis on Time and Regulated Motion as the sources of Order. Pacasna places the emphasis on Energy and Innate Relationship as a sort of non-imposed order, with an added fillip of Unpredictability. So their essential natures are contrary. It also occurred to me that Doagnis places more emphasis on the influence of the "higher" worlds, represented by the astrological forces, where events are collected into a sort of synthesis by their relationship to those forces. Whereas Pacasna places emphasis on the seemingly chaotic manifestation of events within the "lower" worlds, where the unique natures of things have their expression -- as represented by the highly varied pictures that appeared on the sides of the boxes. (Note that the boxes are all "outside" and no "inside", as might be said of manifestations in Malkuth as the world of shells. Thus the duality of the two parts is shown again, and the theme of Division common to the Parts in LIL is continued as an unspoken background. One might also contrast the two as representing respectively the relativistic and the quantum mechanical views of reality. The events in Doagnis occurred in smooth, continuous changes of state; events in Pacasna occurred in discrete "jumps". And again, in Doagnis there is a definite hierarchy of above and below. In Pacasna hierarchy is a matter of arbitrary viewpoint; events on all levels are essentially similar, and take place at the same time, with no way to tell which level of events is causative or most significant. I also get the impression that the three Parts in ARN are in mirror sequence to those of LIL. Where in LIL the order goes 1-2-3, in ARN it goes 6-5-4. Thus I am doing the Parts in backwards order, as far as their interrelationship goes. It may be that this is the reason for my sense of dissatisfaction with the visions; I am seeing the end before the beginning. Having received these intuitions, the energy of the Part lapsed, and I stopped attempting to receive more.

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Dialioa, sixth of 91 Parts of the Earth, third of ARN. Zodiacal king: Ziracah Ministers: 8962 Derived from the Water Tablet. Mundane association: Asia Minor. Monday, August 29, 1994 2:10 p.m. Vibrated the Call and the appropriate names. I first saw the sigil of the Part drawn within a circle on the ground. The name of the Part was written in both Enochian and English letters in a border around the circumference, so that the whole had the appearance of a simple talisman. Next a woman appeared within the circle. She had blonde hair and her face was hidden behind it. She was crouched down on her right knee, her right hand on the ground. Her left arm was raised and bent back as if she was trying to remove something from the back of her neck. She wore a she wore a white summer dress of some light fabric. Her posture reminded me of the Crowley's Tarot card "The Star". But even more, it recalled one of Rodin's more striking sculptures, called (I believe) "The Helmet-maker's Beautiful Wife". The sculpture shows a crone in a similar posture, and carries a tremendous freight of sorrow for lost things. The figure in the circle sends forth a sense of great sorrow, and of being one on whom an unbearable load has been placed. (I am reminded as well of another sculpture, I think also by Rodin, called "Caryatid Fallen Under Her Stone".) Now the figure before me cries: "Woe! Woe! And again Woe! I am beset by those above me and those below. The ones above me seek to bind me to them in unity; those below seek to disperse me into chaos. Yet in myself I am neither one nor many, and their pressure wearies my soul to death. How shall I escape these evils?" An angel comes forward from the upper right of my field of view, dressed in violet robes. It pulls the figure out of the circle, and takes its place in the same posture. After a few moments it hardens into stone, or forms a shell of stone in its own shape, to take the load. The angel then leaves this stone figure like a ghost leaving the body, and stands beside the circle with the original occupant, who is now clearly a young woman of an airy nature. The angel makes a sign like alchemical sulfur towards me, apparently expecting it to be returned; I do so. Then another sign like the "V" of LVX, but the impression is of a descending triangle over a cross. Again I return it.

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The angel turns to the woman, and performs a series of gestures I don't recognize. But I know as they are done that they spell LILITH, followed by a gesture of releasing. As the gestures are completed, the woman goes through an astonishing number of transformations in an instant, becoming many different women in turn. Without, seemingly, changing her essential nature. Finally she turns into a woman of some nonSemitic Middle Eastern race; long wavy black hair, dark eyes, olive skin, in the skirt-andgirdle outfit seen in some pictures of ancient priestesses. Snakes appear, curled around her wrists. Then she vanishes, absorbed into the fabric of space itself. "Know" the angel said, "that all acts of creation act upon a pre-existing substance." Answering a question in my mind he said, "There was no first act of creation; all has ever been in process. And this substance precedes even that process. None of any level of reality know its origins or destiny. "This substance, protean, ever-changing, livingness itself, is that out of which all creations come. Binah is its reflection in our world, though it surpasses Binah in all ways, and surpasses the Wheel and the Point as well. And here it is reflected again in the substance of the Aethyrs, as it must be in any of its children. "You will see her anon in other Parts, as she takes on other roles with respect to this creation. But in this place, as you have sensed, she is acted upon by the force of the other two parts within ARN, as the substance upon which each seeks to impose its form of order within the world. And so she was first seen as placed under a burden, as the pressure of one and the other sought to mold her into their preferred form. "But in her essence she is above both, contains both, and cannot be so limited. And the action of those Parts causes to be formed instead an image, an illusory construct (of a lesser order of existence) which fulfills their intent. "Now the previous two Parts represent, each in their way, the primary themes of the substance aspect of existence within this world. [The word "substance" was emphasized.] On the one hand, smooth motion, cyclic appearances, direct causation and spiral progressions; on the other hand, sudden jumps, indeterminacy, acausal relationship, and dynamic, mutually affective interactions. "The lesser cannot contain the greater, and so their action is futile in the extreme; certainly no great part of the divine substance shall be formed to their will. They cannot even contact it in its essence, for their level is not high enough. But part of its manifestation [emphasized], the product of previous cycles of creation, is amenable to their intent, and visible to their eyes. And this portion they take for the whole, and press upon.

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"And in the process they summon, for a time, by its intrinsic connection with Her, something of the true substance. This gives new life to the old manifestation, allowing it to mutate and change in accordance with their will, taking on the desired characteristics without losing anything of its past history. It groans like a living thing under the burden of their will, until it is changed and the changes established as a permanent nature. "The task being complete, the summoned portion of the divine woman's power is released, and the manifest substance goes more or less its own way, in response to the subsequent promptings of the creators involved. The direct activity of the higher substance lapses, and whatever portion of its livingness was involved returns into itself. "It is in this releasing process that we ministers of Dialioa have our work. Our task is to ensure that the higher substance does not remain, for to do so would be to give greater weight to the actions upon its manifestation than is desirable. There would be a continuing impression of the will upon the substance aspect. "This is a subtle thing, but must be understood. The substance forms the base of a creation, and has certain characteristics inherent as a part of that creation. But the purpose of the creative act, the goal of the creator's impulse, grows out of the substance along another, different dimension. It is an overlay upon the substance, not an inherent part of it. "To understand this, consider that the image in a painting, and the emotional, mental, and spiritual expressions built into the image, are not inherent in the paint which the artist used. The pigments have certain qualities, yes, but they are merely raw stuff of making, and it is only in their artful combination that the higher purpose is revealed. That purpose is never apparent to the consciousness of the atoms in the paint, but only to creatures of the same or higher type than the creator. It simply does not exist in the paint itself. "Thus also with the manifest portion of the divine woman's substance. If her essence were to remain in the manifest substance beyond the time when it has been prepared as the raw material of a creative act, then the material would attempt to respond to the higher purpose of the creator, and attempt to build that purpose into itself. This is not desirable, for if it attuned to one stage of the creative act, then it could not properly respond to the later stages. "It would be as if a glob of red paint became infused with an indelible quality of "violence", so that it could never be used except in paintings of a violent nature. Were the artist to attempt to use it to paint, say, a rose in the hand of a young girl as an expression of innocent appreciation of beauty, then the violence of the paint would send the artist's intent awry. The artist wishes his material to have just those generic qualities that make it widely useful, and no more."

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Here a pause of a few minutes. "Now is this woman, this Lilith who takes all things into herself and gives them substance, too much to be known within a single Part -- or even within a single Aethyr. The Pan behind Pan is she; he is a silly country bumpkin by comparison. Nuit she is, and Babalon of the Thelemites, and many others; and none of these images touch even the hem of her garment. The entire universe descends out of her womb, yet she is not stretched or strained thereby. Time before time, Space before space, being that precedes all being is she. One Mother to whom the many Fathers apply themselves, she remains yet virgin. No one truly knows her, yet all descends from her, is contained in her, all is maintained out of her life. "Endless -- literally endless -- superlatives could be applied to her, and leave none the wiser. Therefore will we cease. But she will come again, in many forms, as we continue this path of the Parts. And she will come to you again in time, as she has in past times. "We are done." Seer's comments: The appearance of Lilith in this vision struck me as familiar, so I dug out my copy of Vision and the Voice and re-read the section for ARN. There are some general similarities of symbol, despite a contrast in the details. My own symbol-set is substantially different from Crowley's, and this of course affects the results. As well, A.C. was working his way up through the Aethyrs, trying to force a return to unity against the general flow of their force. Here we are working from top to bottom, in line with the flow. The zodiacal king ruling this Part is again Ziracah, Aquarius. Thus the opening image reflects the Water-Bearer of the Tarot card. But there is a strong Saturnian element in the aura of burden, oppression, and sorrow that surrounds her, and this expands into a more general Binah nature. The cry of the figure supports this position; "those above" are Kether and Chokmah, whose force descends and gives form to the unconditioned primal substance of Binah. "Those below" represent the dispersal of the Abyss, and the transformation from transcendental wholeness into the myriad of finite events that make up existence in the lower, non-transcendental spheres. She is neither one nor many because the distinguishing characteristic of the primal substance is its total lack of distinguishing characteristics. It is NOT anything that can be comprehended or imagined by a finite consciousness. Finally a minister of the Part appears and (being like in nature to the Part) takes the place of the woman for the completion of the transformation into finite form. Just as the Saturn

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aspect represents a minor and lesser part of Binah. The creation of a finite form having been completed, the angel releases the remaining substance back into its transcendental state by invoking the yet higher state of which it is a reflection. My own conception of Lilith comes from the goddess-religions of the age of Taurus; she has nothing of the demonic aspects added by the male-oriented cultures of the following Aries age and perpetuated by the fears of the Piscean age. She is an aspect of Innana or Ishtar as All-goddess, specifically the starry night-sky, as her name LIL-ITh might be translated as "night's essence". The last form she takes in the vision before vanishing is the form of that goddess. This same form appeared in Crowley's vision, but he interpreted it in terms of the corrupted tale of Eve and the Serpent. The function of the priestess of Lilith was to attract men to the temple for the performance of the sacred rites. In Thelemic terms, she is the priestess calling "To me! To me!" And each woman, in her initiation into the temple, took on the role of Lilith with some man, invoking her "under her stars", becoming the goddess for a period of time. Any child issuing from such union was considered a child of the goddess and some god, not of the human bodies through whom the act was performed. In the higher aspect represented here, she is the primordial "stuff" out of which all creative entities form their creations. The creative, "male" counterparts are the multiple entities of the region Pacasna, a multitude of Hadits to her Nuit. To make the connection between Lilith and Nuit even firmer, the former name might be interpreted as LI-LITh. "LI" means "To me" or "unto me", the call of Nuit; LITh means "none", Nuit's nature. The remainder of the vision deals with aspects of the divine creative process, and is best understood through meditation. I believe that the overall nature of this Part can be summarized as concretion of essence followed by release of any excess essence. This completes the regions of the Aethyr ARN. It has occurred to me while re-reading the visions that there is some connection with Achad's Tree being developed here. The visions of LIL might represent the descent of the creative force from Kether to Chokmah, via the path of Jupiter. Thus representing the initial imbalance that results from movement away from the Still Point. The first region of ARN, with its heavy Saturnian flavor, is the secondary descent from Kether to Binah, via the path of Saturn. Note the resemblance between the "grid" of that vision, and the grid surrounding the hermaphrodite in Crowley's version of the card, or the bindings of the wreath around the herm in other versions.

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The second region of ARN, strongly Aquarian-Uranian, would then represent the passing of the male creative power from Chokmah into Binah via the path of Aquarius. The final region is Binah itself, the primordial stuff reflected into the lesser area of creation that is the Earth. Obviously, with 91 Parts there is going to be a lot of overlap somewhere along the way, in any correlation between them and the Tree. It seems more likely to me that the Parts will only occasionally become congruent with the Tree, and that the rest of the time they will touch on things outside that matrix.

Samapha, number 7 of 91 Parts, first of ZOM. Zodiacal King: Zarzilg. Ministers: 4400. Mundane association: Hyrcania (NE Iran, on shore of the Caspian Sea). Thursday, September 01, 1994 3:29 PM Vibrated the Call and invoked the names as usual. The sigil of the Part stood before in vision for a time; an air of aggressive presence radiated from it. I absorbed some of this radiance into myself, and as I did so began to see into another space behind it. The second space was filled with light of a bright, electric-green color, just slightly greener than Mt. Dew soft drink. Within it were tiny flakes of another shade of green, also electric, so that the overall effect was of a liquid with particles suspended in it. Nothing happened for a time, and my thoughts drifted off into things I might add to the book. After a brief time my attention returned, and I noted that my astral body felt as if it were occupying the same place as the sigil. Gradually the viewpoint drifted forward through the sigil. Turning, I saw it as a gate into the space where I now stood. My viewpoint was now split in two, half continuing to see the green space, the other half in whatever place the gate of the sigil led to. I vibrated the name of the Part for several minutes. Nothing more happened. Finally I gave up on trying to get the Part to manifest as a vision, and tried instead to simply get its energies to come into my body. I withdrew all my attention into my body and reoriented to this new purpose.

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The effect was immediate and overwhelming. I was hit with a flow of force that threatened to dissolve my awareness into a swirl of particles and blow it away. For a few moments I was so disoriented that I almost fell out of my chair. Leaning back and closing my eyes, I tried to relax my magickal body to accept the forces. For several minutes there was chaos; the force, like an abrasive wind, whipped away parts of myself that were not in tune with it, stripping off parts that were attuned to lower levels of reality and leaving behind only their higher-plane equivalents. Finally the worst of it was over and I began to see clearly again. It was apparent that on some level everything removable had been stripped away from me, leaving only a skeletal structure of adamantine hardness. There did not seem to be any pattern or balance to what remained; it was simply composed of those parts of my structure too tough to be affected; within my aura they formed a structure as random and jagged as the casting of a deep-sea worm. The force continued to flow, and it became apparent that these remaining parts were in some way either restricting that flow, or casting a shadow such that I could not see this Part clearly. Perhaps both. Worse, it was clear that the very mind-set necessary to my visionary work was itself adding to the restriction; perhaps my nature as a being was simply incompatible with the forces here. This constricting feeling became stronger. I assumed the asana called "The God" in the hope that this would allow a freer flow. It did not. Physical symptoms began to appear -shortness of breath, feelings of constriction from my clothes, wristwatch, and glasses. After several more minutes I got up, stripped off all of it, and sat on my bed in half-lotus. This eased the physical sensations (but did not completely erase them) and I could give my attention fully to adjusting to the force. For the next half-hour I gave my attention to deliberately relaxing the parts of myself that were resisting, one by one. Eventually I had to stop from exhaustion; the work was that hard, and remained incomplete. I lay down and drifted in a half-trance for a while, then got up and completed this record. I am tempted to skip this Part and go on, but I resolved at the beginning to do them in order, and it seems best to continue, despite the difficulties. I would guess that it will take at least two more sessions before I can penetrate into the Part fully. Friday, September 02, 1994 1:17 PM Vibrated the Call and appropriate names as usual.

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Upon vibrating the name Samapha, I became filled with an energy much like yesterday's; power with a very high vibration rate, which tended to throw off anything it contacted that was not of a compatible nature. While still completely in my body, it seemed that this power had somehow cast off parts of my aura, leaving behind structures similar in function but of a much higher quality. There was also a sensation of heat distributed throughout my body, but particularly noticeable on the insides of the thighs and calves. Turning my vision to the astral level, the first thing I saw was an image of the Tarot card "The Lovers". This lasted only an instant; a third figure was added between the man and woman, and the background transformed until it was the card "Judgment". Specifically, the version seen in Wang's G.D. deck. The angel was within a white triangle surrounded by a circle formed from the Great Serpent. (I suddenly understood that the green field that opened yesterday's vision was in the flashing colors of fire. The electric green would flash with red, and the darker green flakes would flash with scarlet.) Now a voice said: "Judgment has come; but what is it that is to be judged? A man? No. A demon? No. Only that which is of the nature of the Fire can pass through the Fire. As it is said: ultimate sparks of intimate fire. "That which is of the Earth is not of us; nor that of the Sun, nor that of the Realms of Death and Destruction; we are wholly within the highest. Power is ours; power to create the world, power to destroy it again. We are the essence of the divine creative will, personified and made manifest. We descend from on high, and that which we touch is burned to ash, burned to make way for that which is to come, in glory, from the all-highest. "And shall you pass us, O man? Not at this time; we speak not for the future. "We descend from on high, and everything before us is laid waste. The gardens of Isis are desiccated and burned. The might of Horus is laid low. The dissolving seas of Set are evaporated into steam, which rises up into the sky and disperses. The realms of Thoth survive, but are transforméd; only glittering crystalline threads remain where once were living thoughts of the purpose of god. "Call us the Teeth of the Serpent. For as the Serpent rises up the Tree, so his head is in Kether, and his teeth clasp the Still Point. There is nothing manifest that is closer to that point than we; for even though our Path is not the first, yet our nature is not changed from the Point, while those that descend to the left and to the right do deviate in nature from the essence. Being of the path of balance, we retain its nature."

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(The vision had a tendency to dissolve back into pure power, and this power kept building up in my magickal body. I could not sit still, and went outside to sit on the grass for a time, hoping the plants' vibrations would cool me off a bit. Seemed to work.) "Now, the Serpent of the Tarot card is not the serpent who climbs the Tree. The former has his tail in realms beyond this world; and in wrapping himself about the Still Point he becomes a sphere of sevenfold vibrations radiating therefrom. "And so are we, though wholly of this world, the reflection of events beyond. As was the goddess of the previous vision. "Where she was the reflection of the ineffable substance from which all things come, so are we the reflecting of that which stimulates things to come out of her. We are the serpents who wrap themselves around her outstretched arms. The dual helical coilings they show are the nature of our motion; spiraling down into the lower worlds, yet balanced because we turn in both directions at once. And this is the swirling power that you felt yesterday, stripping off the dross from your magickal bodies, leaving behind only a pattern of godstuff, for a time. (Brief pause here.) "There are other aspects of this Fire that descends from Kether; it takes on other forms as it passes through the so-called Abyss, and as it approaches Tiphereth below. That which destroys when confronted in its essence can be the support of being when diluted. And the key to the vibrations that make up the worlds; the sevenfold vibration of the Great Serpent is reflected in the sevenfold nature of the lower worlds. "But these aspects are taken by others; we ourselves are not the ministers thereof, but only of the destruction manifested of pure divine will. Therefor is our number 4400; the number of Fire and blood and sparks, but writ large in the sky by the will of god. "Take you of our essence, o man." The visual aspect had faded while the voice spoke. Now a cup of white gold appeared before me, upon which was raised the image of the Greater Countenance enclosed in a triangle, which was enclosed by the circle of the Great Serpent. (Yet it seemed that the Countenance was somehow greater than that which enclosed it.) The cup was surrounded by an aura, again of glowing white. I took the cup in my hands, and they seemed stripped of solidity, so that from halfway up my forearms there were only the ghosts of hands to be seen. I could not feel the cup, but only a vibrating numbness.

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For some reason I did not drink, as is the usual custom in such instances. Instead I raised the cup above my head and brought it downwards through my body from head to toe. When it reached the bottom there was an upwards pull; I moved it until the hollow of the cup was congruent with my heart, where the pull stopped. I released the cup and it gradually dissolved, releasing its fire into the magickal body. "We prepare you for that which is to come. As you continue in these visions you will find our power of use; perhaps not in any obvious fashion, but as support and sustenance when none other is available. "For now, continue as you have. You shall know when the time is right for each vision. Do not seek to push too hard, do not be in too much of a hurry. For the absorption of that which is gained shall make each further step easier. "For now, farewell." The energy of the Part remained, but the sense of contact ended. And so I closed the vision and returned fully to my body. Seer's comments: The connection to Achad's Tree hinted at in previous visions is here made overt. In that Tree, the path of Fire connects Kether with Tiphereth. So these visions have so far covered all the paths that descend from Kether, plus the reciprocal path of Aquarius between Chokmah and Binah. The aspect of Fire dealt with here is entirely transcendental. As the minister indicated, there are two other aspects of this path that will be dealt with elsewhere. The ministers describe themselves in various cabalistic ways, explained in the following footnotes where they are not obvious. All of these indicate that the ministers represent the first extension of the divine will into the Pillar of Balance. They are not Kether itself, but are as close to it as it is possible for a manifest being to come. Beyond this they hint at connections to realms transcending even the Supernal Triad, as the complement to the Goddess of the previous Part. The Sumerian theme is continued by relating them to the Serpents on the arms of that Goddess. Why they should use this ancient form is not known. I would think that the modern Nuit and Hadit, with which I am much more familiar, would be a better choice; especially considering the other references to Liber AL. But their connection with Hadit is only hinted at, subsumed into the older version.

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Virooli, part 8 of 91, second of ZOM. Zodiacal King: Alpudus Ministers: 3660 Mundane association: Thracia (European Turkey, Eastern Greece) Sunday, September 04, 1994 1:35 PM Vibrated the Call of the Aethyrs and the appropriate names as usual. The first image was of a man in bronze-age armor walking from downstage right to upstage left. He wore greaves, cuirass, helmet and arm guards, all finely detailed with images of martial scenes. At his left hip he wore a bronze shortsword. In the background I could hear sounds of many men marching in order. Gradually this image was overlaid and supplanted by an image of the Tarot card "The Tower". Particular attention was somehow called to the gap between the crown and the top of the tower, at the point where the lightning strikes it. A voice said: "How shall the power of the Mother be transmitted into the lands of the Son? Shall it be as a torrent of water raging in a stream bed? No. Shall it be as mighty winds hurling objects about? No. Shall it be as an hundred mighty earthquakes that shake the world? Perhaps, but not at this point. No. It shall be as a stroke of lightning which burns the mortar of his castle to a dust of lime, and loosens the connections between the stones. "For was it not said to you, Our god is a god of terror and wonder? Was it not said to you that he shall destroy your dwelling places and make of them a place for the beasts of the field? He shall stretch your souls to bursting, tear the seams and threads that hold them together." (While this was said I was flashing on my own thoughts on this matter, explained in substantial detail in the paper Divine Creation and Initiation and somewhat in The New Aeon.) "What shall be said of this place, o man, that you have not already understood to the roots of your being? For you have gone through this process times without number, and known the terror of its inception and the wonders that lie at its end. Is it not so?" I said yes, it was. "Just so. And in the ending of the life of man the life of god begins; there is no gap between, simply blindness and unwillingness to look.

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"Now to explain briefly to those who might read: The Tower is the Mind of Man, the Ruach, which comprises all that he is as an individual. It begins deep in the Earth and is built by the powers arising in the lesser sea, the roots of emotions in Man. These are the urges of the physical organism to survive, and grow. "Very deep are these urges; they originate in the cellular level and so are carried up through all the levels of organization within the living finite being. The cells have an intrinsic urge to coordinate and compete with each other to form organs and bodies. Similarly, after many intermediate levels, the various specialized parts of the mind have the urge to form a complete self-aware mental being out of their disparate functions and purposes. "The process of initiation carries this further; through conscious effort and direction, the mental being so produced in turn increases the coordination and linkages between the parts that created it. This is the prime function of the Adept. "The end-result of this process of coordination is a being whose entire finite existence is closely tied together into a single functioning unit. This is the Tower as we speak of it here. At this point I felt we were getting distracted from the essence of the matter, and cut off the vision for now. Monday, September 05, 1994 I seem to be having the opposite problem with this part than I had with the immediately previous one. There I had trouble entering; here, I am so thoroughly familiar with the effects of the Part's power, and have internalized it to such a degree, that the power tends to follow the existing paths in myself rather than forge new ones. I recognized the process of the Part instantly, and my recognition pulled the presentation into established lines of thought. I felt that there was no point in allowing the Voice to rehash things I could explain better myself. Everything that exists consists of many lesser parts in a relationship to one another. In simple physical objects the relationships tend to be relatively static. In living beings the relationships are a dynamic homeostasis. Entities on magickal levels -- including those we call the personality and the soul or solar self -- are also complex systems in a dynamic balance. Whenever a new source of activity or energy is introduced into a dynamic system, it produces a disruption of the existing patterns of balance. Some relationships are broken entirely; others are stretched out of shape and their action distorted. The connections

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between all parts of the system become looser and behave in strange ways until the new source is incorporated into the system. We see this on every level of human experience. A new environment tends to make us anxious or puts us into a heightened state of alertness until we can define our relationship to it. An unusual object confuses our senses until we become familiar with it. Social interactions in a group change when a new member is admitted. And so on. Initiatory magick is nothing more (and nothing less) than a constant, willed repetition of this process. The magician invokes some source of magickal energy, or some being(s) existing on a higher level of organization than himself. The response brings new contacts and energy into the complex system that is himself, producing a "mind-expanding" experience, stretching and breaking the habitual relationships between parts. Incorporation of these new contacts and energies into the system produces a new dynamic balance and a broader scope of perception. Certain levels of organization are relatively stable, and relatively common in group-experience; these we call "grades" of initiation. In Achad's Tree of Life, the path of Mars connects Binah with Geburah. And the movement from the latter to the former provides the archetype of the process represented by this Part. Like any other energy, the entrance of Binah energy into the self produces a disruption and stretching of relationships. Since Binah is a transcendental power, it cannot be fully absorbed or integrated into a finite being. The integration must take place within the transcendent realm. During the initial inflows of transcendent energy, and for some time afterwards, the finite self isn't capable of actually perceiving them. All it can perceive are the effects; a raising of awareness coupled with the "stretching" of itself to a point of near-dissolution. This is the experience of the False Sephira, Da'ath. It recognizes that something outside its perceptual range is causing the effects, but cannot see those causes; its internal relationships and library of experiences are not the right sort to reflect transcendent events. Thus it "sees" a gap in existence, a blankness beyond which it cannot penetrate. This is the perception of the so-called "Abyss". Like Da'ath, it is an illusion or hallucination due entirely to inadequate perception; it has no existence except as a construct in the mind of some person. But the process of adaptation goes on despite the blindness of the conscious self. The difference from previous cases is that a configuration of internal relationship centered around a sense of individuality, around a reflective "I", cannot absorb the transcendental powers. To integrate them into the being, the parts that make up the individual self have to achieve a permanently "looser" relationship to each other, and become reoriented so that they respond directly to the impulses coming from the transcendental levels.

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The relationships among the parts are not greatly changed by this; everything that made up the individual soul is still present and active. The only difference is that the individuality that was created by their intense interactions is superseded as governor of the being by the transcendental aspect. It's importance gradually diminishes and it fades away. It is the state of permanently "stretched" connections among parts that is the essence of this Part of the Earth. It's initiatory aspects are the most immediately important, but it appears in many other aspects of existence as well. The analogous activity on the physical level would be a solid heated to just below the point where it liquefies. In the biosphere, it would correspond to the increased activity in some kingdom of nature brought about by a sudden increase in the available nutrients. E.g., a year with an unusually bountiful crop of nuts and fruits would produce an increase in the population of the animals that eat them. This in turn would create pressure and competition among them for territories, an increase in the population of predators, etc., all of which would require general adjustments in the relationships among the biosphere's various systems.

Andispi, ANDISPI, 9th of 91 Parts, 3rd of ZOM. Zodiacal King: Lavavoth Ministers: 9236 Mundane association: Gosmam (an unknown mountainous region, presumably near either the Arctic or Antarctic circles, in which there is much gold. Poss. Alaska?) Sunday, September 11, 1994 Procedural change: Up to this point my procedure has been to simply vibrate the Call of the Aethyrs and the names of the Zodiacal King, Part, and Aethyr, and allow the vision to manifest in whatever way it happens upon. This has produced a rather wide variety of presentations in the preceding visions. In the hope of producing some additional consistency, I am changing the procedure. Before vibrating the Calls and names, I will enter a neutral magickal space and inscribe a circle with a narrow border on the ground. In the center of the circle will be the sigil of the Part, along with its name in English and Enochian characters. In the border, at the top of the circle, will be the name of the Zodiacal King in English. In the border at the bottom will be the name of the Aethyr in English. The intent of this is not to make a "magickal circle" in the normal sense. In fact, I will stand outside the circle during the invocations. Rather it is more like a talisman "writ large", an

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attractor for the forces invoked and an anchor-point. Any invoked force or being will not be expected to stay within the confines of the circle, but can move about or change the surroundings as appropriate to their presentation. Sunday, September 11, 1994 1:50 PM Invoked Andispi according to the revised procedure. The image of the circle quickly gave way to another space, wherein there was a big red valentine-style heart, with a smooth, shiny surface like vinyl. An arrow was stuck through the center of this heart from back to front. I got the impression that there was a thin cord or thread attached to the arrow. The scene went into motion and the arrow passed entirely through the heart. It then looped downwards and again hit the heart, this time from below. It passed out through the cleft at the top and again looped around to the bottom. It repeated this procedure many times, each time leaving behind it a loop of thread which billowed outwards from its attachment points. Soon the heart was surrounded by lines like the lines of a magnetic field. The arrow then vanished. The voice said: "Is it not said that our god is a god of Love? And yet, what is Love? There is the dove and the serpent, but are these all? No. The rainbow is also a sign of Love, after another fashion. And it is this Love that binds the universe together." (Humorous background thought of apologies to Lucas and Spielberg.) For a moment there was a flash of the Great Serpent of the Judgment card seen previously. Now the Serpent transformed himself into a circular rainbow, which pulsed, sending off shock waves in the seven colors throughout the space. I thought of a Cepheid variable throwing off a spherical shell of light, and of the heart of a moment before, and understood that they were representations of the same idea in different forms. "Seven are the thoughts of God; seven are the stars of the Bear, each a beating heart sending one of those thoughts into the universe. The Dragon wraps about them and basks in their light, warming himself at their fire. He is heated by the thoughts of God until he glows with a white heat himself, and must throw off that heat as light into the circle that is the zodiac. And within this circle dance the Seven who are gods to this world." At this point I noted that my own aura was echoing the pulses of the Serpent, and was surrounded by a rainbow ring. My attention became wholly engrossed in the pulsing radiance for a time, and thought stopped.

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Gods, what a sensation! It was as if my magickal body had become seven bodies, each of a different color and note, and all my thoughts and knowledge, and all the structures of my being, had been decomposed into these primal notes and separated by their colors. No thought or perception that required admixture of these notes could exist. No composite things at all. Each of these bodies was distinct, though for the most part they moved together, one leading and the others following after a few moments, giving an impression like the video effect where motion of an object leaves a trail of ghost images behind it. "Now," the voice said (and my consciousness quickly collected itself), "as it is in the heavens, so it is on this world, within the range of being called the human Tree of Life. The Dragon is concealed within the Supernals; he absorbs the vibrations emanating from the Still Point, and transforms them, stepping them down so that they can make the seven lower worlds of the Tree. (I say 'he' but there is no true sex here.) "The Dragon is everywhere in the Supernals, but his motion downwards comes primarily through the path of the Arrow, from the sphere of Wisdom. For as the Solar system gods are within the zodiac, so are the spheres within the sphere of the Fixed Stars. (Save for Binah, who is both within and without.) And you remember, o man, that upon a time it was said to you that Saturn is properly Malkuth, not Binah. "This is the highest function of the path of the Arrow. Now see the image as it should be for this aspect." The image of the Tarot card "Temperance" appeared before me, but with some differences. The angel of the card was enclosed within the half-circle of a rainbow, the ends of which were at the level of the angel's elbows. There were no mountains in the background, just the night-sky, with the Bear and the Dragon visible through the arch of the rainbow. The circle of the zodiac surrounds the figure and rainbow. The angel's arms formed an upright triangle, forearms horizontal, hands with palms facing each others, separated by about a hand's length. In front of him was a square altar, on which stood a cup or grail whose vertical cross-section was a downward-pointing triangle. From out the angel's palms flowed two streams of rainbow liquid, which mixed together between them and fell the short distance into the grail. "You understand this aright. Explain as you will, by your ingenium." (The voice had apparently been monitoring my thoughts as I examined this image. "It is this last step, the admixture of what was separated, that is rightly the place of Andispi. The separations of the thought of God were present in the previous visions of

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LIL, but hidden in the general chaos of the beginning of creation. They are here re-mixed in the moment of transmittal from the transfinite to the finite aspects of existence. "Know you that it is the glory made manifest that is our place, the heavenly powers brought into the vision and being of men. We are pure still, not admixed, each a different one of the notes of God's voice. Thus when we touched you did the mixed become separated. That which passes through us becomes mixed in its descent, as the Tarot image shows. "Now to other things: Pursue these visions as you will, each in its own time." Here the voice paused a while, though the sense of contact did not diminish. "We are done." I thanked the ministers for their presentation, and closed the vision. Seer's comments: Andispi is the first Part ruled by Lavavoth, whose attribute in the system being used for this project is Sagittarius. It's symbols play a large part in the presentation for this Part. Sagittarius is an odd sign, with multiple aspects. It is the sign of one-pointed focus towards a goal (represented by the arrow). It is also the sign of what is erroneously called "synthetic" thinking, usually with Gemini and Mercury representing the opposite pole of analytic thinking. I say "erroneous" because the Sag mode of perception and thought involves both taking apart of perceptions (analysis) and joining or blending of multiple perceptions (synthesis). The same is also true of Gemini. It would be more correct to say that Gemini deals with the object-like aspects of perception, while Sagittarius deals with the vibration-like aspects. Within their separate aspects, each has the capacity to distinguish salient features of experience, and to make connections between experiences based on those features. In this vision, these functions of Sagittarius are shown as part of a more universal process, the one by which transcendental powers are translated into finite events. We begin with a reprise of the Great Serpent image seen in Samapha. As was said there, "in wrapping himself about the Still Point he becomes a sphere of sevenfold vibrations radiating therefrom." That point is expanded here, though the symbolism is a bit confusing.

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The heart and the Cepheid variable are similar in that they both pulse with a single rhythm. That is, each has a single vibration, and could thereby be said to be the archetype of a particular energy. One might associate them with Kether, but I am not certain. Having shown them, the vision expands this idea and shows the stars of Ursa Minor as the seven manifest vibrations of some invisible divine entity. BN OISh, Hebrew for Ursa Minor, has the same value as ThBL, Hebrew equivalent of "cosmos". The shortened version OISh, also used by the Voice, has the same value as RQIO, "heaven" or "firmament". This can be taken as a confirmation that it expresses a set of universal principles or powers. The constellation of Draco spatially "wraps around" the Bear, figuratively absorbing the vibrations shed by the Bear's stars. In turn the Dragon re-radiates and distributes the heat in a different form, bringing the cosmic power down to the solar level in the form of the zodiac. And within the Zero of the zodiac another seven powers move and act. In Achad's Tree of Life, the values of the paths connecting the Supernal Triad sum to 510. This is the value of ThNIN, the Hebrew name for Draco. Thus, as the Voice says, he is "concealed within the Supernals", reflecting the cosmic scheme down into our local scheme. As Ursa Minor represents the cosmic "thoughts of God", so Kether represents the will of some entity existing outside the limits of our Tree. The Dragon in the Tree transforms the power of Kether into a form consonant with those limits, and sends it downwards through Chokmah and the path of Sagittarius, which connects Chokmah with Chesed. So we have a complete parallel between the cosmic and local schemes: Cosmic Local -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------A Hidden God, Still Point at the center of Kether expressing through seven Suns Constellation Draco Draco as Supernal Triad Zodiac constellations Chokmah as Sphere of the Zodiac Seven Planets Vibrations that eventually form the Seven lower Spheres of the Tree In the modified Tarot image, the upward-pointing triangle is the Supernal Triad; the downward-pointing triangle is the second triad, and the square altar represents the

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"elemental" worlds below Tiphereth. The overall symbolism of the image compresses the two parallel lines above into one. The vision of Andispi completes the three Parts within the Aethyr ZOM. Comparison with Crowley's vision of ZOM yields only one point of similarity: the symbolism of the Great Serpent surrounding the Still Point. This takes only two paragraphs in Crowley's account; the rest is concerned with confusion, delusion, and various horrible versions of sublime images. One might wonder at the differences, but should not be surprised. It was Crowley's belief that the first three Aethyrs resided entirely within Kether; his inability to penetrate them is thus somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is also clear from the footnotes to The Vision and the Voice that Crowley decided in advance what he should be seeing in each Aethyr, according to a questionable set of attributes for the Enochian characters. His results largely reflect his expectations, with the occasional unusual insight forcing its way through a thick curtain of inappropriate symbols. The current seer had a substantially different view of the matter going in. What is surprising is that the results have not conformed to my expectations to any great degree. I expected to find a lot of differing powers, but all of basically the same level of reality. That is to say, a "horizontal" distribution like political divisions on a map, with varying customs and themes in each "country". Instead, it is shaping up more into a vertical progression, though not so orderly a one as might be expected; we are not following the paths in sequence down the Tree. While not conforming to my expectations, the visions are certainly conforming -- in a general way -- to my knowledge and symbols. I have used Achad's Tree of Life exclusively for almost a quarter-century; the symbolism of the G.D. Tree, which figures so largely in Crowley's vision, is entirely alien to my perceptions. But there are surprises as well; the Sumerian goddess Inanna has not figured largely in my previous work, aside from a few invocations of her Venusian aspect; the more cosmic aspect here is new to me. The Great Serpent has hardly figured at all; I discovered the connection to the Supernal Triad years ago and could not make sense of it, and so forgot it. The Parts in the Aethyr ZOM present in essence three aspects of Fire: Pure, divine Fire in Samapha, destructive Fire in Virooli, creative Fire in Andispi. These are presented in terms of the three paths of Achad's Tree that descend vertically from the Supernal Triad, and thus transmit the divine will into the manifest worlds. Note that only the highest aspect of each path is shown, that which has the greatest influence from the sephira at the top of its length. If indications are correct, we can expect that somewhere further on we will see Parts that show the paths' powers with the upper and lower sephiroth in balance, and with the lower sephiroth dominant.

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There are some odd reversals presented among these aspects. The divine fire erases its creation; the destructive fire dissolves into unity in Binah; the creative fire of Love or Art, instead of unifying, brings about a deconstruction of unity into a sevenfold diversity. No doubt much meditation will be needed before I can explain this. Examining the previously-done triads of Parts, we see some continuing patterns. In each Aethyr, one part represents a "positive" pole, another an anti-positive (but not necessarily "negative") pole, and a third that balances or transcends them. An alternating "vertical" polarity is overlaid on this: in the Parts for the First and Third Aethyrs, the first Part in the sequence was the balancing form. In the second, it was the last in sequence. There may be an additional threefold connection among these first three Aethyrs as well. The overall flavor of the first Aethyr seems to me to be more or less neutral; the second Aethyr was clearly "female", the third clearly "male" in mode. We will see after the next nine Parts whether this pattern continues.

Thotanp, part 10 of 91, first of PAZ. Zodiacal King: Lavavoth Ministers: 2360 Mundane association: Thebaidi. (Thebes and environs.) September 15, 1994 While preparing the picture of the sigil for this Part, I found myself unconsciously vibrating the name of the Part and its Zodiacal King. Checking the astral to see if anything had happened as a result, I saw the image of a downward-pointing arrow punched halfway through a horizontally positioned thin disk. The disk was colored like an archery target, in the spectral colors but not in the spectral order; from the center outwards the colors were yellow, orange, green, red, blue, indigo, violet. This puts the colors in the astronomical order of the planets, save that the Moon is in the outside circle. (A sourceless thought explained that violet was Uranus in this case, not Luna, the latter being an occultly "dead" planet at this level, and a mask for Uranus at all levels.) Later when practicing visualizing the sigil, the image of a square, flat-roofed temple formed in the square portion of the sigil, and the other lines became stone-paved paths leading to the Temple. The final vertical stroke of the sigil became a wider path or road running alongside a river. The temple was somewhat generic in styling; made of stone, columns supporting a roofed portico completely surrounding the enclosed central portion.

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The columns had the papyrus-leaf headers of Egyptian work, but nothing else was particularly distinctive. When each of these things happened, I considered starting the vision immediately. However, the timing felt off, so I did not do so. Monday, September 19, 1994 4:11 PM Note: Uranus is currently transiting square my Neptune, and inconjunct my Pluto. I have been experiencing an unusual mental and physical excitation, somewhat similar to an adrenaline rush, but extended over time. Don't know how this is going to affect my ability to penetrate the part. My consciousness feels somewhat distanced from things, compared to its normal states. Invoked the Part according to the revised procedure. My viewpoint tilted upwards so that it was above the sigil, looking down. Behind the sigil I saw into a space wherein the arrow-and-target described above was present. It floated in a rich blue sky among clouds. Now invisible ripples seemed to move out into space from the colored disk, like ripples on a pond. These expanded and became spherical. Each ripple passed through the Earth below, leaving behind a general vibration in the aura of the planet. Continuing outwards into the solar system, they expanded until they hit one of the planets, at which point they disappeared and the planet sent back a strongly focused ray to the Earth. Examining the Earth more closely, it seemed to be composed of a multitude of tiny, elemental-like creatures, each of a different quality. It was these that were excited by the ripples, not the physical substance of the planet. Their activity increased and took on a churning quality, roiling upwards and down again like the turbulence cells in a flask of boiling water. I realized that these "cells" were the Parts, in their horizontal aspect. The rays of the planets also appeared to affect these cells of elementals. Some of the cells became distorted from the ideal cylindrical shape, becoming mushroom-shaped, or like an hourglass, or a stalagmite. Others bent in one direction or another. Seen from far-off, there was a sort of pointillist effect, or like a test for color-blindness where an image was formed from dots of different colors. In this case, they spelled out the word "Life". (I heard the word "ChIH" in the back of my mind as I read it.) The Earth rotated, the planets moved in their courses, and the image shifted. Now the image of a woman's face took up the entire surface of the world for a moment, seeming as if seen through a gate into another space. The image shifted again and the air above the

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planet seemed completely filled with castles or cathedral-like structures. Each of these had a different word above its gate, but I could not read them from this position. Ripples went out again from the arrow and target, repeating the previous movements. And again, and again. Each time the structures covering the world mutated and transformed, so that everything was in constant motion, but even the motion was structured. (All of these things were formed out of the elementals. I could see them like tiny, irregularly-shaped planes that shifted and turned under the impact of the ripples and the rays. There was a surprising economy in their movements; no one elemental ever changed very much from its previous position, but the cumulative effect of their shifts was a dramatic change in the overall structure.) The force was getting washed out, so I withdrew from the vision at this point. Wednesday, September 21, 1994 3:31 PM Performed the invocation as per revised method. Very difficult getting into the visionary state -- think the Uranus transit is still interfering. Finally got in, and visualized the sigil within a circle on the ground. After a few more minutes vibrating the names, a cylinder formed in the air above the circle, and within it there appear again the image of the Temple described above. I was looking at it from the northeast, and in the middle distance behind was a red sandstone cliff, with two great gods carved into it, and an opening in the wall between them. Karnak? A voice said: "The Nile is an arrow that passes between the gates. And at its midpoint of its travel stands the Holy City, interpreting that which is above to that which is below, and that which is below to that which is above." (I took this to mean that, as Thebes stands between Upper and Lower Egypt, so this Part stands between the upper and lower regions of existence. I.e., between Chokmah and Chesed.) The voice continued: "Enter into the Temple, o man." I stepped into the circle and felt a distinct difference in the quality of the power there. Very bright, like intense desert light, but unfocused, without a center or source. It permeated everything, and myself, without being disturbed or diverted by it. I was like Gulliver in Lilliput; too big to fit the scenery. I tried reducing my size and could not do so. Finally I shed part of my astral body and reformed a small one to fit the scale of things. The larger part remained ghost-like above the river.

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I seemed to be in Egyptian garb, unintended. A kilt made of red and blue panels, and a torc of gold with designs in black enamel or inlay. Bare torso, skin a reddish color. There was something funny about the shape of my head, but I could not see it from outside. Moving to the temple, I mounted three shallow steps onto the portico. A tall square opening allowed entrance to the interior. Entering, I was immediately struck by a wave of power radiating from a statue in the center of the building. At first I thought it was a reflection of the waves seen coming from the target in the earlier vision, but decided I was interpreting prematurely. The statue at the center was a statue of Set, seated in the asana called "The God". He held nothing in his hands. Concealed within his upright ears there seemed to be the twin curves of the symbol of Uranus, with the cross between them just above his skull, and the dependent circle residing just behind his eyes. The voice: "Now is it given to you to become the priest of the god Set, as you have been his [some concept involving qualities of "gate", "bearer", and "avatar"] in the past. You have stood before men and upheld his power, even as they attempt to usurp his image to their own designs. "You stand between the higher and the lower, combining both, as Set does so stand. Neither one nor the other, your feet are in the worlds of men, and your head is in the heavens; you blend them with Art where others cannot see to link." (All this time I was shifting back and forth between a position in front of the god, and a position identical with his. When outside his body I could hear the speech; when inside all was silence, and a terrible concentration of force.) "And know that this is the sense of the Tarot card of this Path. The angel stands with one foot on the ground, which is the Four-fold Establishment of Chesed; the other foot is on the Great Sea of Binah. He has taken up the substance of both in his cups, and combined them through the formation of vibrations, which are the waves that pass between the cups. All this under the rainbow, as it is done. And in the background above the mountain is the radiant spark of Hadit, the creative impulse, in this case emanating from Chokmah. For who but a Magus could wield the power of the Mother? Who else but a Magus could stand upon her and not sink? "Do you seek a Word to give to men? Seek not; it is not necessary. For this task is above the worlds where a Word is given to men; it is an Artful weaving of the transfinite with the finite, the creation of a new link in the chain of achievement, the opening of the path to the stars. Not the establishment of a Power. No. Not the creation of a religion or a guide for their lives, but the opening up of Freedom, full, clear, and without restriction.

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"Weave the substance with the form, the divine with the world. Weave your threads together so tightly that men cannot see through to the Abyss. Let the evil of separation be banished, let it be gone forever. "You are not leading men, but opening the Door wide, and allowing them to pass through. And having come out of the house of the Mother, where shall they go? Wherever they will. None shall stop them or say them nay. The Greater World is wide, and there are no further gates, nor boundaries. O men, visit the many houses wherein the creators dwell; learn from them, assist in their work. But if this is not desired, then build your own house. "Now, we who dwell here, in the Thebes of the spirit, salute this work and He who conceived it. Let it be done rightly and with straight ways. Amen." Seer's comments: Thotanp is the second of three Parts in sequence attributed to Sagittarius in the system used for these visions. In descending Achad's Tree of Life, the path of the Archer is the first to cross from the transcendental to the finite realms, as the previously-viewed path of Mars is the first to cross in ascending the Tree. In the Part Andispi, the highest part of the path, dominated by Chokmah, was considered. The separation of the divine light into spectral colors there suggests a wave-mode equivalent of the division into independent points which represented Chokmah in a previous Part. It also suggests the dispersion typically attributed to the so-called Abyss. Here the path is equally influenced by Chokmah and Chesed. In Monday's vision, the separated colors are re-organized and made into a single entity, represented by the target. The outward-moving "rings" of power are typical of the expansive quality of Jupiter. These have both a direct and an indirect effect upon the Earth. The direct effect transfers the divine will-aspect of Chokmah into the Earth as an archetype in Chesed. The indirect effect, through the planets, creates a dynamic state in which the archetype can be developed and fully manifested over time. (Shown by the effect of the planetary "rays" on the "cells" in the Earth's aura.) This Part seems to show another factor contributing to the state of conflict between the Parts, as shown in the visions for LIL. The stimulation of the ChIH (attributed to Chokmah) forces the Parts into a state of activity, with their individual reactions to the stimulation producing the conflict. Yet at the same time the Chokmah force creates a linkage between the Parts, so that on a higher level their activity is coordinated. Wednesday's vision translates the Chokmah - Chesed linkage into religious terms. As in the first Part, the Nile represents a flow of power from the divine towards the material

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pole of existence. The deserts bounding it were related to the pillars of Gemini in the first Part; here the Nile becomes the downward-moving arrow of divine intent, passing through the "gate" formed by those pillars. Upper Egypt becomes a metaphor for the transcendental realm, Lower Egypt for the finite realms. Thebes, at the point between, translates one to another. As the center of religious power, it "translated" divine decree into directives for mundane action. And at nearby Karnak and the Valley of Tombs, the dead were "translated" from the mundane realm back into the divine. Being a center of religious power, it properly belongs to Jupiter, ruler of Sagittarius and Chesed. (Note that Thebes is also "in between" from an historical perspective; its time of power was during the "Middle Kingdom".) The remainder of Wednesday's vision becomes more personal, but maintains the theme of linkage between the transcendental and finite levels. In one of the major themes of my magickal practice, the god Set governs the golden rectangle in the Tree of Life formed by the sephiroth Chokmah, Binah, Chesed and Geburah. Thus his realm includes both finite and transfinite levels of existence. The seer's own nature is next said to be identical to the god, though on a smaller scale. His task is to erase the illusion of separation from the minds of men, showing the transfinite and the finite to be one world, with no gaps or breaks between them. (None of this is news to the seer; he has been doing this for several years now.) The mention of the grade of Magus is not an affirmation of an existing state, but a promise for the future.

Axziarg or Axxiarg, 11th of 91 Parts, 2nd of PAZ. Zodiacal King: Lavavoth. Ministers: 3000. Mundane association: Parsadal (capital of ancient Persia). Thursday, September 29, 1994 approximately 2:00 p.m.. Invoked Axziarg according to the revised procedure. My viewpoint rotated to above the circle, and the center of the circle became transparent. Moving through it, the first thing I saw was a man on horseback riding very fast. There was no landscape around this figure. He wore leather clothes and carried a large pouch on a strap across his shoulder.

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My viewpoint retreated and a landscape formed. He was riding southwest over a high plain, with a line of mountains in the distance to the north. The viewpoint retreated further and I could see that he followed a road leading from just southwest of the Aral Sea to a point somewhat to the north and east of the Persian Gulf. Descending again at this endpoint, there was a city whose central portion was made of large stone palaces and public buildings, surrounded by many other quarters of buildings made of rammed earth or mud. Roads radiated out from the city in all directions. I happened to notice that over one of the gates to the central city, there was carved a figure like the winged disk, save that the central disk contain some complex design with a motif of rays -- possibly a stylized wheel? Now it seemed that the great Arrow of the previous two visions was descending from the sky over this city. Slowly but not ponderously it descended. As it came close to the ground a great wheel of magickal force seemed to begin rotating in some space coincident with the city. It rotated in several dimensions at once -- "a wheel turning upon itself". The closer the arrow came, the faster that wheel turned. The arrow touched the ground, and dissolved into it; at the same time the outer portion of the wheel's rim exploded into a million smaller arrows of many colors, all of which flashed outwards over the face of the earth. I could not see exactly where they landed, but suddenly many other smaller wheels appeared, spread over an area that reached to the Mediterranean in the west and into India in the east. All these wheels were of different sizes and turned in different directions and in different planes. A voice spoke: "In the end of its journey, the power of the Arrow becomes the power of the Executive, combining authority with communication to create coordination among disparate parts. This is not the power of a King, for the King draws all to himself and seeks to make it one under his command. The executive's power is the power of Principle, or of Policy, the ability to see the design whole, and to show to each part the place in that design to which its nature fits it. Thus each part remains independent in most of its activities, but works those activities under the design. "And who is to say whether the design or the part's nature dominates? For where greater design and individual nature are fitted, there is no conflict. The lesser acts according to its nature, and the design is fulfilled. "Thus is the power of the Will of God, the father-aspect, brought into the lower worlds. Those who seek to impose some design on men, by Law or by Force, are not at one with that Will; and thus do their schemes go awry, in the end. For the Will is change, and the seeking of change for the growth of Art; it never ceases to move and evolve. But the rules of Law and Force seek only stasis, a prevention of change, an eternal repetition of what has been already accomplished.

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"There is no law in the Will of God, save only this: Thou shalt change as your nature dictates; thou shalt evolve, will you or not. And if you change beyond the bounds of Law, what of it? Law touches only was has been; it does not see what is truly new, but always lags behind. Leave behind the definitions that Law places on reality; create new definitions according to your nature and the Will. Law shall not see them until they too, in their time, become established." (The sense of this paragraph is that one circumvents the restrictions of established reality by creating a new reality in which its restrictions are irrelevant.) "O man, you who hears these words, so too must thou do. For the work of the divine is a creative work; one cannot rely on the thoughts of the past to create the future. The following of teaching is for those on the Path [of initiation], those who do not yet know the will of God direct. This is right and proper, for the Path is a traveling in blindness; a groping through concealing thickets wherein the goal cannot be seen. Those who tread it have no knowledge of what is to come to them or of what they seek, and therefor have no recourse but to seek out the signposts and markers of those who went before them. "But you have stepped out of the thicket into the limitless fields of the divine, wherein every direction is good, and every step opens up an infinite number of new directions, all of them good. Freedom is yours, the full freedom that the gods have among themselves. But what shall you do with it? Shall you stand in one place, frozen by the multitude of choices open to you? No. Move you must, and move you shall. "No guides are there to direct your course, no authorities to trammel your will or limit your choices. Creation is the only rule here; Art the only goal, Change the only means. You must throw off all the limits and rules of the past, even those of the divine Mother. She is not the creative power, but the stuff of creation. Therefor those who are at one with her are not creators; they only wait. [That is, the state of stillness characterizing the Masters of the Temple is not a creative state. See Crowley.] To create you must break that oneness again, and become a star in her firmament, a power that makes her substance the material of your Art. "Like every creator, you must speak the One Word: Amgedpha! "Take your place in the company of stars. Nine years ago were you lifted into the arms of the Mother, and presented to the gods. Nine years ago were you held up as you took your first steps within that world. For nine moons of moons have you worked there, and proven that you could stand there unassisted. For nine years have you been the One who is None; now you must become the None who is One. "Take your place. And how shall you do this? Thou shalt will it, and it shall be so."

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"We are done." Seer's comments: This is the last of three Parts in sequence associated with Sagittarius. Following the interpretation suggested in earlier Parts, it represents the lowest aspect of that Path, which connects Chokmah with Chesed in Achad's Tree of Life. Therefor the Chesed influence dominates here. The capital of the Persian Empire is fitting for this part, since the governance of that empire had much in common with the conditions described here. The empire was held together by a large system of post roads, and a sophisticated messenger service similar to the American Pony Express. The rider who opens the vision is a symbol of both Sagittarius and this link of empire. The capital city of the empire is seen as the hub of a Jupiterian wheel, and then as a different sort of wheel, a chakra. Under the stimulation of the incoming divine will from Chokmah, this wheel first becomes energized and then radiant. Its radiation stimulates the activity of other chakras within the "body" of the empire. Each of these lesser chakras is a Persian satrapy, which takes the power of the central wheel and transforms it according to its own nature. This is in keeping with the Persian practice: overall policy was set in the capital, but the policy was generally adapted to the customs and needs of the regions and their special ethnic groups. This blending of disparate regions under a single policy is a social equivalent of the synthetic aspect of Sagittarius. The mental equivalent is the abstraction of meaning from different ideas or experiences and unifying them in a meta-idea, something which connects to them, but exists on a higher level than the things it connects. In magickal work, this aspect is seen in the way in which many seemingly unconnected things, such as colors, divine names, geometric symbols, Tarot images, etc., become unified into the experience of a particular "pure" magickal power. The presentation next segues into something which is not strictly connected with the nature of the Part. It seems to be a contrast between Chokmah and Chesed on one hand, and Binah and Geburah on the other. The nature of the Father or Will aspect is set against that of the Mother; the nature of one is to change, the nature of the other is to support and maintain. The remainder of the vision gets personal. There was a great deal happening that was not recorded, because it was non-verbal and non-image-like; it will take time to absorb before it can be translated into words. It is obvious that the ministers are setting me up for initiation into something like the grade of Magus. There are enough connections between

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what they say and events over many years (and things I have been thinking in the last few weeks) to make such a step seem appropriate. The idea is so attractive that I am tempted to resist it out of principle, as being too good to be true. But I did that the last time this sort of thing happened, and later regretted that I had done so, wishing I had instead thrown myself into the spirit of the moment, and left evaluation for afterwards when the powers had subsided. For the moment I will simply wait, keep inner silence, and see what happens in succeeding Parts. The "One Word", Amgedpha, is an Enochian word meaning "I begin anew." The English of this word was first used to me by the Enochian angels in a series of twelve short meditations called The Zodiacal Round. These meditations deal with the zodiac as the steps in the divine creative process. The first verse, attributed to the name ORO and the sign Pisces, reads: And God said: "The time has come to create again. Let the old forms be washed away. I begin anew." Shortly after, I was converting Laycock's Enochian dictionary into a database, and discovered the Enochian word. I have no idea of the context in which it was given to Dee. The event mentioned in the following paragraph occurred during the series of explorations recounted in Touring the Earth Tablet and The Book of the Seniors, and represented my first halting entry into the Supernal triad. Neither then nor now did I consider that event to be an initiation into the Binah grade; by my own standard, that initiation was accomplished less than two years ago. The lunar symbolism also connects to events of that time. One evening I was told, out of the blue, that some important but unspecified event would take place in a certain number of lunar months, and that in the interim I would learn to "stand on my own" in the Supernals. My memory says that I never did "hear" the exact number of months involved. But counting the lunar months from the end of the Earth Tablet working to now, it is about six months less than nine lunar years, or about 111 lunar months. Since 111 is the value of ALP, Aleph, The Fool, the last sentence of this paragraph serves as a confirmation of this calculation, given before I did it. The "One who is None" refers to the relationship between the finite solar self and the transcendental being of Binah, whose nature is Not. This relationship occupied most of my attention during the period mentioned. The "None who is One" refers to the transition from Binah into Chokmah. Having become Nemo or no-one, dissolving himself into the no-thing-ness of the Mother, the Master of the Temple must now reformulate himself as a star, a creative point of power in Chokmah.

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Pothnir, Part 12 of 91, 3rd of PAZ. Zodiacal King: Arfaolg Ministers: 6300 Mundane association: India (Pakistan and India south and west of the Ganges) Friday, September 30, 1994 2:00 PM Began to get images as soon as I formulated the intention to invoke Pothnir. The first of these images was like the Tarot card The Sun, with some modifications. The sun in the image was still smiling, but an intent fierceness overlaid its original beneficence. There was no crown to the hill within the wall; it had vanished and only an emptiness remained. Below the hill the male and female children still danced with hands linked, but now they wore costumes representative of Life and of Death. And those costumes switched from one to the other with great rapidity, so that I could not tell which of them was truly Life, and which Death. The second was of the Ganges, seen from space above India. It was oriented so that it was more or less horizontal to my point of view, with its mouth in the Bay of Bengal to the right, its origins in north central India to the left. Gradually this image was overlaid with one of the Tree of Life, and the river was identical with the path connecting Geburah and Chesed. Now I vibrated the Call of the Aethyrs, and invoked Pothnir according to the revised method. The circle disappeared, and I was in a city in India, looking at it from a point in the center of the river. Stone steps lined the bank in front of me, and these steps were filled with people coming down to wash in the holy river. Some were penitents, holy men, or mourners dressed only in loincloths and smeared all over with ashes. Others were families in colorful garb, carrying bundles of flowers or baskets of fruit and food; some made sounds with bells, cymbals, and other instruments. Mourners and celebrants alike entered into the river and began to wash themselves. There was a sense of intense heat in the air, sourceless, as if the sky had caught fire and was radiating heat downwards from every point of its area. And the sunlight was equally intense. The heat penetrated everything. With the non-living things, it passed right through. Among the living, those who were not in the river seemed to absorb a certain amount, but then began to re-radiate it, forming a spherical shield that protected them from absorbing more. But with those who were in the river, the water carried away the heat as fast as it was absorbed, so that while the people did not contain any more of it at

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any moment than those on land, a great deal more of it passed through them. Each, according to their needs and desires, was cleansed and sanctified thereby. I knew without seeing directly that somewhere upriver others were burning the bodies of the dead, and throwing the ashes into the river; or simply tossing in the coffins unburned. I sensed that even further upriver was a palace or seat of governance. And at the very headwaters was a survey tower, built by the British as a benchmark point for their mapping of the continent. At this point I sensed that I was still too washed out from yesterday's invocation to get much more here. I decided to end the vision and try again another time. Sunday, October 02, 1994 1:50 PM Vibrated the Call and invoked the Part per the revised method. During the Call, I "heard" a multitude of voices echoing the words as I spoke them. The voice said: "What is creation but the em-body-ment of the Will in the shifting streams of Life and Death? The Sun arises and dies daily; the moon dies monthly and is reborn. The Serpent sheds its skin in season, rising anew from the shards. "The ideas and thoughts of men also have their time, bursting with vigor onto the scene, living their life, becoming outrun by the changing world, dying and drifting downwards in the waters to become the sediment out of which future dreams spring and grow. "So too with the thoughts of God, though their season is long and many men come and go before its time is run. Think you that a single life, a single mind, might embody all of even one of God's thought? It is not to be. I saw again the Ganges with the people there. But now it seemed that those people were all of humanity, living their lives out. Their various cycles were out of phase, so that at any moment there were always a great many in every possible stage of their cycles. The heat beating down on them was the will of the divine. And while that will was one and remained one, it became many in touching the people. In each one it touched, it dissociated part of itself that was fitted to the person's nature and phase. And at no moment was the will of the divine fully expressed even by all of those it touched together. The people went through their cycles of life and death, and as they changed the parts of the divine will that touched them also changed; a particular thread of that will might continue with one person for a time, and then jump to another person, only to be replaced by another thread in the first person. All of them were constantly acting out a portion of

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the divine will, but it was not always the same portion. Nor was its manifestation in them constant; it changed as their cycles changed them. It seemed that only after many generations had come and gone was the will completely expressed. It unfolded gradually in time, reached a peak at which a great many of the people seemed to resonate with a single vibration, and then faded again. And another thought of God was waiting to take up those who were no longer needed to express the old one. "There is no Word that man can speak, that expresses the complete will of God for a time and place. Such are merely aspects of the will that have greater force in the attention of men at that moment; a great many other aspects also are present and operating, but the consciousness of Man does not see them clearly. "You yourself have seen powers operating in this time whose range of expression and effect dwarfs that of Thelema, or any other 'magickal Word'. You have tried to describe them for men, and in the end admitted failure; their scope was even beyond the range of your vision. "Knowing this, o man, can you think that in your time of true magehood you will do better? It is a consummation greatly to be wished, it is true, but it is not to be. Not for you, or for any man. And if this is so with respect to the god of this world, how much more so will it be when you enter into the greater universe, and bring its powers to bear upon this world? "No. Thou hast made the Gate, and will become the gatekeeper. But the keeper cannot know all that passes through his realm and places of power. You cannot stop the suns from shining through the gate, save by closing and sealing it. And that you will not do, for it would defeat your purpose. "Most of those who pass through will do so unannounced, will work their effects, and depart again unremarked. This world will be touched by many, and be the better for it. Neither we who are the ministers of God, nor those into whose ranks you were admitted in the late time, can do anything about this. Nor would we wish to, remarkable as that might seem. For you work not for us, nor to our purposes, but to those of yourself, and one other. And in this, she is the ruler whose word is law. "Now, as you descend again into the worlds of men, passing through the Parts of the Earth, there will be many and various things said that will be of interest. Continue on. "We are done."

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I ceased to seek either vision or voice, but the altered state of perception produced by the Parts power continued for a time. Nothing more of interest appeared before it faded. Seer's comments: This is the first Part governed by Arfaolg, whose attribute in the system being used is Scorpio. But the content of the vision seems to be rather a combination or intersection of the Path of Scorpio with the Path of the Sun. The first two images seen are an explicit statement of this. In Achad's Tree, the upper hexagram sometimes symbolizes the daily path of the Sun, the four inner triangles with apices in Tiphereth, Geburah, Chesed and Kether representing the quarters of the day. The path of Scorpio connected Chesed with Geburah, and represents the horizon, the point of transition between the upper world and the underworld, between the lands of the living and the dead. In the vision, the Ganges becomes another metaphor for this path, watery to fit the element of Scorpio. The intense daytime heat of India becomes the power of the Path of Sol, which intersects Scorpio's path in its descent from Chokmah to Tiphereth. The image might well be a representation of the process of incarnation. Those who are not in the river absorb only so much of the Sun's power, and then achieve a state of relative stasis. Those who have entered the river, whose lower halves are in the worlds of night, of incarnation, have connected themselves to both poles of existence. Power flows through them and thereby transforms them. The last image of Friday's vision simply uses real landmarks along the Ganges as symbols for other paths that cross or touch the path of Scorpio. Those tossing coffins into the river are the path of Fire, the palace is the path of Capricorn, the tower the path of Mars. Sunday's vision jumps back up the path of Sol towards Chokmah, showing the same scene from the transcendental viewpoint, and uses it to show some more ideas pertinent to the task of a Magus.

Lazdixi, Part 13 of 91, first of LIT. Zodiacal King: Olpaged Ministers: 8630 Mundane association: Bactriane (Northern Afghanistan, southeast Turkemenazi)

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While memorizing the names and sigil for this Part, I got an image of a large outcropping of rock jutting out from a grassland. The image went into a time-lapse mode. The grasslands dried out under the sun and turned to desert. The wind blew away the sand from around the outcropping, making more of it visible. Finally the wind eroded the outcropping until it took the form of a crouched lion, like the Egyptian Sphinx. Friday, October 07, 1994 approximately 2:30 p.m. Invoked Lazdixi according to the revised method. The circle opened, and through it I could see a region of what would be called "high plains" in America. High plateaus interspersed with rolling hilly country. Sparse grass covered the flatter portions, with clumps of low bushes present, usually on the downhill sides of large boulders. Overall the region appeared arid, though a river could be seen running from west to east at some distance to the north. The sun shone with great intensity, but the air was cold, and a biting wind blew from the east. A camel caravan appeared from the southwest, moving northeasterly to intersect the river. I could see the point it was aiming for; the river spread out and became shallow over an area of fine gravel. Obviously a well-used ford. My viewpoint moved around to the north of the ford, looking south. A long line of forbidding mountains could be seen there, tapering off into more plains in the west. The land in between all sloped gradually in my direction. Now the image of a lion's head appeared, huge and ghostly above the mountains. There was a strong impression that the spirit-lion held all this land as its territory, but that it held itself aloof, not deigning to insert itself into events there. A strong Leonian emanation came from it, and I spent several minutes just attuning myself to it and absorbing it. [Looking back a week later, my memory gives the impression that the mountains were the body of the lion, so that it was half spiritual and half material. Or half transcendental and half finite. There is a sense of this lion crouched over the trade route like a house cat dozing over a trail of ants; aware of the movement in front of it, but not terribly impressed by it. None of these impressions were present at the time of the vision; they appeared only when I examined my memory of it.] The caravan reached the ford and began to cross. Suddenly the ground began to shake in an earthquake. The rumbling and roaring seemed to contain the lion's voice hidden within it. The gravel of the ford shifted, and one of the camels became mired in it to the knees, breaking its leg in the process. Several other camels broke away and began a panicked run

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to the south, directly towards the lion. The remainder were brought under control by their handlers, who held them still and waited out the quake. The camels who had run eventually fell into fissures opened by the quake, and died. The handlers took what was useable from the camel in the river, then killed it. The loads were rearranged on the remaining beasts, and the caravan continued to the northeast, towards Samarkand. Now the voice spoke: "The voice of the Lion is the voice of the Sun, ruling over the wastelands of the spirit. Those who seek to cross his territory do so at their peril, for though he does not act or speak of himself, yet the whole world does speak with his voice. Even his own Word is imperiled therein, for the world cares not, but acts according to its nature. "Oh ye who seek the spirit of God, beware! Oh ye who seek to bring the spirit to Man, beware! For herein are the material and the spirit of God both shattered into a million fragments in the shaking of the Voice. Can you hold your place, O Man, in the quaking of the world? Is your will steady and free of attachment, o Mage? If not, then all your works shall be as naught. "That which arrives at journey's end is not that which began the journey. A child of that beginning, it may be, if all is done aright. But never is the thing itself brought undisturbed and intact through the travels. Look you:" The scene changed to a more abstract plane. I seemed to be in some occult space which refined reality into a few essentials, sort of a laboratory miniature. To one side of the space, a diagram of the Tree of Life stood, as if as a key for reference during experiments. My viewpoint was at Chokmah, looking down the path of Sol towards Tiphereth. What I saw next is difficult to describe meaningfully, though I saw it clearly. First a concentrated point of Will was ejected downwards along the path of Sol. About a third of the way down, it seemed to hit an invisible wall and shattered. Sparks flew out in all directions along curving paths, like the trails of subatomic particles in a cloud chamber. Next, a "beam" of Will was directed downwards. It was clear to my senses that the directing entity had the intent of producing a specific effect or form on a lower level, and was trying to control the way in which it’s will moved so as to produce that effect. Again, it reached about a third of the way down the path. This time the "beam" was split up into many different beams of different colors. These beams passed through the area of dispersion and recombined on the other side. They did seem to produce some effect there,

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but the effect was clearly not what the will-er had intended. I got the impression that it was distorted or perverted to the point of uselessness. The third event was the most difficult of all to describe. It seemed that this hypothetical will-er was again sending downwards an intent to create; but this time it reached only so far as the point where the others dispersed. There it spread out into some pattern which did not directly reflect the original intent, but did maintain its cohesiveness. But at the same time, this creator somehow caused a stimulation in the sphere of Tiphereth, producing a directed energy which rose upwards towards the midpoint. The effect this energy produced was an active willingness to respond to the downwarddirected will, and to convert it into a form on the lower levels. This power of responsiveness rose up until it was almost at the same level as the pattern of Will. As they touched, all the finite substance in the area immediately re-configured itself so as to accurately reflect (as far as possible) the Will's pattern. This reconfiguration started at the point of contact and worked its way downward, changing at every level, until it came back to Tiphereth and manifested there as a centralized, cohesive entity. I got the impression that this final entity was exactly what the original intent had wanted produced, even though the intervening levels did not seem to reflect the original intent, but only the pattern it had created. (I know I am not saying all this right, but it is the best I can do.) The voice continued: "The meeting place between the finite and the transfinite is a problem not only for those who seek to cross it going upwards, but also for those who, from the higher level, seek to create something in the world. The will alone cannot truly create, for the stuff of the world has its own nature that does not, as yet, fully reflect that will. "Thus in the first instance, when a creator simply formulated his will in its most compact form, and sent that will into the world, it did shatter and fail. And in the second instance, when he sought to control the manifestation directly across the interface, did it also fail. "For an act of creation to succeed, it requires not only the [transcendental] Will, but an active readiness in the stuff of the [finite] world to respond to that will, to relate to the intent of that will and bring its various elements into a relationship which reflects that will. "This directed readiness, this willingness to relate and to shape itself to the Other, is what we call Love. It arises not from the instincts or the emotions, or the intellect, but only from the heart. The Will alone will always fail, as will Love alone; neither by itself can fulfill the

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needs of Creation. But together, they produce the flowering of all Creation. Thus it is said that "Love is the Law, Love under Will". "Now, this combination may be attained in several ways. For those incarnate creators, such as yourself, it is often the case that his own being serves as both poles of the equation. He stands simultaneously in both the finite and the infinite. From the latter, he directs his creative will down into the worlds; from the former, he generates the magnetism of the heart that causes the world-stuff to respond to and reflect that will. "The great god Heru-Ra-Ha is the symbol of this. For he contains within himself Had, a god of Chokmah as we have previously seen, and Ra, a god of this path of Sol, and Horus, who is the Son, and therefore Tiphereth. He is the archetype of all true creators, who stand in both worlds at once. (There is another, related interpretation of Him, as you know.) "Other great creators choose not to embody both poles in themselves. Instead, they themselves stand wholly within the transcendental realms, sending their will downwards. And they seek out disciples, cooperating beings of a lower level of initiation, to be the lesser pole. The combined souls of these disciples, seeking to respond to the divine impulse of (as they think it) their deity, bring down and manifest the creative impulse, through their love of the divine. "Of this second sort, the creation of the Thelemic current of magick is the best recent example. For Crowley, though he claimed to be the Magus of the current, was not truly its creator; he was only the prophet, the fore-speaker, who brought word of this creation into the minds of men, showing them that there was an opportunity available to participate in an act of divine creation. It was not Crowley's work, but the response and the seeking of those who heard his words, that truly established the Thelemic current. "We have said enough for now, and see that you have business that must be attended. Reinvoke later, if you will, or stop and comment upon what has been said. But think also on this in your meditations, for if you are to become a true creator you must understand it fully within yourself. "We are done." (Continuing about 3:45 p.m....) "Now there are many and subtle things that might be said about this Part, but we will say only a few. "First the Tarot Card, which reflect in its own way the principles which we speak of. For at the top of the card is the Sun, the creator shining the light of his will onto the lower

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worlds. And below him is the ring-pass-not which divides (and unites) the transcendental and the finite realms from each other. This ring is being torn down by such as yourself, and will vanish in future times. And below the ring, is there not the symbol of human love? Male and female joined together in joy and love, in the delight of play under the Sun. And is not the play of children commonly so, that they take some vision of things as they are in the world of adults, and act it out within the more limited reach of their own realm? They take the willto-be of the adult, and make it their own will-to-become, exactly as the disciple takes the will of the creator. "Thus is love under will expressed in this card. "Another thing to be considered is the reason why creation always stems from the transcendental level. Those who act on lower levels do not truly create, save when they receive an inspiration from the divine, and translate it into the worlds as Art. All else is simply the repetition of patterns and capabilities already present, mere elaboration, however marvelous it seems. "The substance of the four worlds of matter -- that is, of the physical, astral, intellectual and image spheres -- is purely responsive. Its responses are marvelously complex, but without the continued insertion of power from some outside source, they quickly devolve into inertness. Thus if the power of the sun were withdrawn from the earth, all would eventually freeze and die. Similarly on the inner levels. "The substance of the three worlds of relationship, of Love, are more active in their seeking, but their nature is to transfer power from above to below, not to generate it themselves. They create an intermediate vehicle for the divine will, a vehicle which in its turn stimulates the material worlds into activity. " (This vehicle is a soul or some other centralized entity in Tiphereth. A soul magnetically influences the stuff of lower worlds, causing it to bring a creation into matter.) "New things do arise within the lower worlds, for the elements of chance and randomness are intrinsic to their nature, and the interactions of various created beings and things produce many complications and elaborations not inherent in the original impulses of Will that created them. This is the lower nature of Horus, Ra-Hoor-Khuit, in which conflict between beings causes an endless unfolding of unusual aspects of creation. But these must either be in line with one of the existing currents of creative activity, or must be seized by some creator for the potential he perceives in them. Otherwise, they live for a time and dissolve back into the general noise of existence.

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"The transcendental Will is the only source of new creative activity within any of the worlds; being transcendent, it is not limited, has no defined characteristics, and therefore can go beyond what is to what may be. The lower worlds are all defined; they are substance containing definite, and therefor limiting, natures. Each can only act in accord with its nature. But the Will modifies that nature, adds to the capabilities of the substance, makes them more than they were." At this point I felt the power was waning, and decided to cut things off. Seer's comments: According to my atlas, the opening scene is an accurate description of conditions in the Bactrian region, though no doubt the image was somewhat compressed compared to the reality. Lazdixi is the first Part to be governed by Olpaged, Zodiacal King of Leo in the system being used. But the vision clearly relates to the path of the Sun, which connects Chokmah with Tiphereth. The aspect of that path being considered here is somewhat higher than that seen in the previous Part, Pothnir. The Bactrian region is used as a metaphor for the Wasteland, an equivalent of the so-called "Abyss" in certain versions of the Grail myth. A portion of the ancient trade route to China becomes the path of Sol. And a ford in a river becomes the functional equivalent of the false sephira Da'ath, where things fall apart. Note the fine gravel, the shattered remains of previous destruction. A caravan becomes either a creative impulse moving downwards into matter, or a human soul reaching upwards into the spirit; all depends on the viewpoint chosen. Samarkand, central stop of the trade route, is the goal of this caravan, so probably it is an impulse moving down to the central sephira Tiphereth. A sphinx rules over this wasteland; and like the traditional sphinx, it challenges travelers. Not with riddles; the sound of its voice is apparently a sufficient challenge. But there is a riddle implicit in the situation nonetheless, as shown in the abstract lessons that follow. The riddle is, how to send a creative impulse of divine Will from Chokmah into the lower worlds, in such a way that its intent is not destroyed in the region of the Abyss? The abstract lessons show that sheer force of Will is not enough, no matter whether that will is sent in a single pulse, or as a continuing flow of will-to-control. A complementary impulse, originating from below, is required for the Will to make itself known in the finite worlds.

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Some difficulties in the transit from the divine to the finite levels are discussed, and it is shown how these are overcome through the Thelemic law of "Love under Will". The phrase is shown to not only be a philosophical principle, but a necessity of the process of divine creation. And that this is true both for the lone Magus, and for beings of higher levels. (As a practical matter, I believe this vision indicates that the proper mode of creation involves sending energy from the heart chakra and the ajna chakra into the throat chakra, and there combining them, so that the voice of the mage embodies both their powers.) The part following the interruption is educational but not terribly significant, IMO. There was a lot shown that was not contained within the words, and which I couldn't translate or retain myself. So the potential import was lost. As an aside, it might be noted that the Bactrian region was historically one where shattered order was the rule. Under the Persians it was chronically rebellious, splitting off from their empire several times. It was one of the last regions conquered by Alexander the Great prior to his death and the dissolution of his empire. And today, as northern Afghanistan, it is a region where tribal and, even more, family loyalties are given a higher place than any larger community. Towns and cities in the region are really nothing more than collections of family enclaves, walled off from each other and guarded with a zealous paranoia. This fragmentation seems to me to accord with the conditions given in the vision. As one American reporter remarked on returning from the region, "The Russians should have known better than to invade a place where people fight wars for fun."

Nocamal, 14th of 91 Parts, 2nd of LIT. Zodiacal King: Alpudus Ministers: 2306 Mundane association: Cilicia (Southeast seacoast of Asian Turkey, abutting the Gulf of Alexander) Friday, October 14, 1994 10:12 PM Invoked Nocamal according to the revised procedure. The vision opened, and I seemed to be a giant standing above the Earth. Below me I could see a fertile crescent of plain bounded on the north and west by mountains bordering a

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plateau. To the south was a sea; I could see waves traveling leagues to strike the shore and be refracted back again. More mountains, more like large hills, to the east. My body shrank so that it was closer to the scale of what I was seeing. To the northeast, there was a deep gorge cutting through the mountains. To either side of its entrance high rocks jutted upwards like pylons or weather-worn pillars. The sky was overcast here, but bright light shone down the gorge from the other end. Coming down the gorge was a procession of men, going in pairs. All of them wore belted robes with the hoods thrown back; the robes were a rich violet color. Their headgear was red, and came in many styles. Before them, riding on a white horse, came Death with his banner, as in the Tarot card. Death reined in between the pillars, and the men continued on, one of each pair passing to either side of him. As they came into the plain, the spread out to either side so that they formed a crescent with its points facing to the southeast. Death now moved somewhat forward, so that he was near the focus of the crescent, and lowered the banner he carried in the direction he faced. On the banner was a stylized silver rose, and this rose was exactly at the focus. It seemed to me that the line of the gorge, plus the curve the men made, plus the circle of the rose together made the symbol of Pluto. A power seemed to radiate outwards onto the plain. Like Pluto's force, it worked underneath the surface. Above ground, it was merely a great brilliance; below ground, it worked as if drawing or pushing things irresistibly upwards into the light of day. Now hands and feet and heads began to appear out of the ground. Soon people were pushing and dragging themselves out of the ground, like drowning swimmers who had just dragged themselves out of the water, and stood there gasping for breath, in sheer amazement at still being alive. These all faced Death and bowed deeply. Death raised his banner again and set it in a stirrup or cup on the left side of his saddle. He spoke: "It is not my power that has raised you up; only the gates of passage are mine; the lands beyond are otherwise, and there will you go." And in an instant all present (except Death and his men) were transported to the other end of the gorge, from which the light earlier shone. Here it was bright all around, with a sort of red-tinged brilliance. I could see no details of the land. But above in the sky was a great angel, arms held out and down at 45 degree angles, left leg crossed over right, so that he formed the symbol of alchemical sulfur. Somewhere behind his head shined a star, like one of the fiercer of the stellar brethren, so far away that it had no disk, but so brightly burning that it was nearly blinding. And

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around this star shimmered a ring of vibrating rays, of all the colors, concealing the Great Serpent. This ring gave the impression that the angel had a halo, but I knew it was not so. I waited for a few minutes more, but nothing more seemed to be forthcoming, and there was no Voice. So I ended tonight's vision, to try again tomorrow. Saturday, October 15, 1994 6:44 PM As the vision opened, I was high above the plateau seen before. Below I could see many people streaming out of the gate to the lower seacoast plain, following a path that went through the relatively barren land here. But only a portion of the path was visible; as it passed northwards, it --and everything else -- dissolved again into a brilliant featureless glow that covered the north from top to bottom. As the people moved north, they too seemed to dissolve. First their bodies became reduced to a series of connected reflective planes -- sort of a Picasso-like or post-modern rendition of a human body. Then these too dissolved, and as they approached the glowing region, they became sparks of fire and passed through. I followed the sparks into the glowing region, and found that it was not a region at all, but simply an interface. I felt like one of those medieval images of a monk traveling through the spheres of the pre-Copernican heavens; he breaks through the sphere of the fixed stars and is suddenly confronted with the glory of God. But here that is reversed; I broke through the seeming glory of the divine, and beyond it is the blackness of space, filled with stars. The sparks coming through with me waft away on an invisible breeze, transforming into stars among the many already there. "What is it that draws the souls of men upwards, o mage? Do you think it is the Will of God? It is not. Do you think it the encompassing nurturance of the Mother? It is not. No, it is the pure, unaltered fire, the essence of Being, reaching down into the created worlds and pulling itself to itself. For all things created are, at their root, Fire; and Fire speaks to Fire. "Take away that Fire, and creation dissolves into nothingness. Bring that Fire, and creation also dissolves, but after another manner, gradually, and with the gains and experience of its many lives retained. "Now, in this Part, as in all the others, we are concerned not with powers and principalities, not with things, but instead with transitions and relationships, the movement [emphasized] from one state to another. And what greater movement is there than this, the drawing of souls out of matter, and their return into the heavens from which they came?

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"Fire is Life. This is the word of Chokmah. But Fire is also Light, and this is the greater word of Kether. The one creates, the other returns, and brings about return. And who can say if they are truly two and not one? Not I, nor any of my kind. "In the early stages of this vision, you saw the hidden Fire, that fire which is at the core of all finite things. And the power of Pluto is like unto the power that draws those fires out of their insulating nests, their comfortable abodes, and frees them once more to stand above the worlds." Here my attention was directed back to the moment in yesterday's vision when Death radiated his force into the Earth. Then it was focused upon a single particle within the Earth. It seemed to me that in this state the sparks of Fire were in a form of stasis, or a deep sleep, in which they did not expend any of their intrinsic energy. When the Pluto-like energy touched a spark, it was brought into a state of activity and began expending its energy. Its "insulation", its material form, somehow sealed it off from drawing in more energy to replace that being spent; thus the sense of drowning -- more properly, suffocation -- that I had noticed. The spark (which is a human soul, in some cases) forces itself upwards in order to have free access to that which it needs to renew itself. "In the next stage of the transition, the sparks are free of their containers, yet retain the memories thereof, and the patterns of action established there. They live within the greater Fire, and draw sustenance therefrom, but are still in some ways not purely of fire themselves. Here the greater Fire acts to reduce them, to abstract them burning out the dross, purifying, converting the memories of matter into patterns of energy. This is the reduction of life-experience to a set of symbolic relationships, as is done by those in the socalled "adept" grades, which the Thelemites call the "Lover" grade. "And eventually even these are burned away, turned to vapor and dissipated. And there is nothing left but a spark of Fire, indistinguishable from any other, indistinguishable from the Greater Fire itself, but still unique. And this spark passes back into the realms from which it was sent in the beginning. "Thus, you might call this Part the Part of Sublimation by Burning. That which enters under its power is made more rarefied, closer to its own essence, by the power of Fire. "There is nothing here of great import to your personal work at this time; you have seen this power at work many times before, and the lesson has been learned. In the future you will see it again, but not yet. "And thus we complete this vision of the Part. We are done." Seer's comments:

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Here we return again to the Path of Fire, connecting Kether with Tiphereth in Achad's Tree of Life. But at a somewhat lower level than in the previous contact. What was seen here covers the path's action in the region between the two horizontal paths it crosses: that of Aquarius between Chokmah and Binah, and that of Scorpio between Chesed and Geburah. The sigil of Nocamal bears a surprising resemblance to the shape of the Part's mundane association. The starting point of the sigil would be at about the location of ancient Antioch; the next two lines would be the seacoast of Cilicia, the remaining lines the Taurus Mountains separating it from the rest of Anatolia. Tarsus, the city of the apostle Paul's birth, would be just about at the point of the sigil's upper "v". The gorge of the opening image and its gate-like entrance are a poetic rendering of the Cilician Gates, a pass through the mountains that was, and still is, one of the main routes into the middle east from Anatolia and Europe. Here it is used as a metaphor for the Path of Fire. The connection with Paul is perhaps apropos, since a blinding light is seen later in the vision. As in the Part Pothnir, the vision suggests an interaction between the descending path and the path it crosses, so that the Fire is transformed by the Scorpio influence into a generative or re-generative power. The "dead" are raised up out of their coffins of matter, as in the Tarot card "Judgment", but this is done through the process of death itself, acting as a front for the fiery power. The final image of Friday's vision confirms the path being dealt with by showing a somewhat modified image of the Judgment card. Some elements from the previous vision of this path are repeated to affirm that it is a continuous process. Saturday's vision continues the confirmation. The people pass through the gates and enter into the Wasteland, the region of the so-called Abyss. Beyond the Wasteland there seems to be only light; perhaps an expression of the way the divine is perceived from the finite levels. But the light turns out to be another front; from "above" the Abyss, the divine is seen not to end in some conclusive oneness, but instead opens up into a region of infinite possibilities. The Voice explains the remaining aspects of the vision well enough.

Tiarpax, 15th of 91 Parts, 3rd of LIT. Zodiacal King: Zinggen Ministers: 5802 Mundane association: Oxiana

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Saturday, October 22, 1994 12:14 PM While memorizing the sigil, I got an image of what seemed to be a river between two lands. It was rather narrow along most of its length, but spread into a circular lake towards one end. And as the waters left the lake again, they spread out into very many small channels, like those in a river delta. This picture then became more abstract, the river banks turning into two lines like long-handled spoons with the hollows of their bowls facing each other. Invoked Tiarpax according to the revised method. A voice said: "Is this the Sun among us, who shines with the glory of God, yet to the Earth is as a light of comfort? Who among us would have this light for his own, let him only look up, and it shall shine upon him. "To no one in the world is it denied. Nay, even if he shall be in the caves of the Earth, it shall shine and warm him, giving hope in despair, encouragement in seeking, joy and life everlasting in the finding. "This is the Sun who lights the Earth, giving to her elements the spirit that binds and raises them." While this was said I was surrounded in vision by shimmering curtains of light, like auroras brought down to earth, constantly in motion. "Would you penetrate the curtains the divide the Earth from the Sun, o men? (Not you, o seer.) It is easy; simply become like the Sun, giving of yourself without thought of self, or of return. No other way is as quick, or as certain. For the light of the Sun is the Love that encompasses all without exception, giving freely; not because it desires return, or desires to be raised up by others, but simply because its nature is to do so. "If you make distinctions among those to whom you would give, then there is failure. For to distinguish is to exclude, and the Sun excludes none; neither does it make any difference between one thing or another. It shines, as it is said, on the just and the unjust, on the sinner and the saint, on the man and on the woman. Therefor do you also, if you would rise into his realm. "Now rend those curtains before you, o mage." I performed the sign of Rending the Veil. And suddenly before me stood the Great Table of the Elements, but as I had never seen it before. The Table had multiplied itself in all directions, forming a lattice that filled all space and time. And each square of all those

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Tables (which were still one Table) was a living world in itself. And it seemed that every one of that near-infinite number of squares was connected to my own body; not a one of them was left out, and no part of my being remained unconnected to them. Similarly each was connected to some aspect of the Earth, with not one aspect left unconnected. Soon the difference between body and squares diminished, and it seemed that there was nothing but the Table, the activity in its squares, and a mysterious aware "something" that bound them together. I remained in this state for quite a while; I didn't count the minutes. "Do you understand the concept of sacrifice, o men? When the divine threw down into matter those sparks of itself that became men and women, it was not a fall. There was no sin involved, no rejection of the divine. How could that be? For they were the divine itself. And when those souls further threw themselves into matter, again it was not for rejection of that which is above, but for the saving of that which is below. "Every life of every man and woman who has ever lived has been a sacrificial act, aimed at the saving of the matter of the world. 'Saving' in the sense of bringing it out of the state of inert negativity into a state of activity; then bringing it into a state of alignment with the divine will. And eventually, bringing it into a state where it is itself indistinguishable from the divine. Many aeons of time will this last task take; and all the men and women of Earth will be long gone to other realms before it is done. But it is begun here, and much has been accomplished. "Every man and every woman is a savior, whether they will it or not, whether they know it or not. Every act that takes place within the worlds of Earth is a saving act, serving that purpose no matter what it seems to them. Those who are selfish, even those who are exclusively evil in their acts, they still serve this end. Their mere presence, as suns within the world, serves to make them so. By binding themselves to matter they bring the light to it, within the limits of their individual power; they raise up that matter, teach it to remain in an active state, make it more responsive to future acts of the divine will. And so it shall go. Sunday, October 23, 1994 12:43 PM "Now, you have known in past times that certain portions of the Tablets of Enoch are dedicated to the purpose of saving matter, of bringing it into a spiritually active state as described. And in another did you see -- and act upon -- the certainty that the Tablets as a whole are dedicated to the Great Work. Is not your tower of light founded upon this notion?

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"Yet be aware that the Tablets as a whole, the Great Table, take, in a sense, the position of the Sun with respect to the worlds of Earth. Just as the sun shines down upon all from above, so too are the powers of the Tablets a light that penetrates the earth at all points, but does not originate therein. The angels touch the earth, but they are not of the earth; their realms connect to it along a dimension that does not impinge greatly upon the events that take place there, but only upon the energies that support those events. "This is a difficult saying, I know. Let me try again. "The Tablets and their angels and powers, they are the distributed and elaborated form of a divine concern for the earth that is, in its essence, a great, singular, solar Love. The power of that Love is freely given to men, without conditions set thereupon; they may take it and make use of it as they will. The one who created the Tablets and Calls is like the sun described yesterday; it makes no distinctions upon whom it shines, nor does it seek anything in return. "Yet those who use the Tablets and Calls, as you have done, inevitably find themselves being touched by that being's Love, and they become (each within their momentary limits) the vehicles and channels of that love; as it is said, pouring down the fires of life and increase continually upon the earth. The greatest of them become identified with that Love, and with the one who expresses it; they seek to become as that being, making themselves over into gods, seeking to create, in their own ways, an equivalently powerful expression. Have you not done this yourself, in your recent previsions?" (The Voice speaks of some thoughts I have had -- really visions of possibility -- in which I had thought of means of bringing down the divine light into the world in such a way that it would bypass all the constrictions that existing structures in the four worlds place upon powers that pass through them. I was trying to find a way to bring that power directly into the roots of things, so that they would be illuminated from within, so to speak. Not until this moment had I connected these thoughts with the way the Enochian god has set up its creation, though my ideas were the same in essence.) "As to whether and how you will succeed in your seeking, I know not; it is not within my power, or that of any in this place, to see. "Continue on in your exploration of the Parts. There is much more to be seen in coming weeks and months. "We are done, and bid you to fare well." Seer's comments:

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Tiarpax connects with the city of Alexandreia Oxiana, which lies on the Oxus river between the ancient regions of Bactriana (see Part 13) and Sogdiana, current-day Uzbekistan. The Oxus drains west into the Aral sea, and Oxiana is rather far from the river's delta, so the opening image could not relate directly to the physical properties of the region. However, the city was one of Alexander the Great's easternmost outposts, intended to be a mustering and jump-off point for conquests further to the east. Perhaps the images relate to the flows of men into and out of the city, rather than to flows of water. The presentation that follows the image is clearly related to the path of Sol in Achad's Tree, and is probably our final visit to that path is this series, assuming the close connection between Tree and Parts continues. The zodiacal king, Zinggen, is related to Pisces in the attributes being used for this work, and his influence probably accounts for the concentration on the Love aspect of Sol, and the avoidance of the more common Kingly symbolism. The presentation is unusual for being almost entirely verbal, with only one image in the body of the "vision". There were a great deal of unrecorded non-verbal, non-image-like perceptions in the background, but these related mostly to my personal work. Sometimes profound truths become so common that they are trivialized in the public mind. More intelligent persons reject them as platitudinous, outmoded, or evidencing lack of thought among those who propound them. In our time this has happened to the idea of love as a means of spiritual achievement, especially among those in process of separating themselves from the burden of Christian thought. It is perceived as "white-light fuzzy bunny" spirituality, suitable only for "small" or relatively "unevolved" souls. But this is not the case in fact. No less a personage than Lao Tzu recommends precisely this method as the means of achieving the highest spiritual states: Men and women who wish to be aware of the whole truth should adopt the practices of the Integral Way. These time-honored disciplines calm the mind and bring one into harmony with all things. The first practice is the practice of undiscriminating virtue: take care of those who are deserving; and also, equally take care of those who are not. When you extend your virtue in all directions without discriminating, your feet are firmly planted on the path that returns to the Tao. -- Lao Tzu, _Hua_Hu_Ching_

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Magicians should consider just what it is they seek out of initiation. Isn't it the achievement of states of being ever closer to the "positive" pole of existence? Some might perceive that achievement in terms of increasing power over events, others in terms of union with the divine, others yet in terms of increasingly inclusive perceptions of the nature of existence. Yet in every case it is movement towards that pole that is the means. And what is the state described here but the achievement of a completely positive relationship to existence? Power flows outwards without conditions or expectation of return. Exclusiveness, specificity, and expectation of return are all aspects of the "negative", receiving pole of being. To the extent that one of us wants a particular result from our use of power, wants to gain something for oneself out of a magickal act, to precisely that extent one is separated from the achievement of the ultimate positive spiritual state.

Saxtomp, 16th of 91 parts, first of MAZ. Zodiacal king: Gebabal Ministers: 3620 Mundane association: Numidia (current-day Algeria). (Note: Dee's sigil for this Part contains two lines, and does not connect the letters in the sequence they appear in the Part's name. I am using a version that does connect them in order.) Friday, October 28, 1994 Several times in the last few days, I have tried to penetrate this Part, and found extreme difficulty in doing so. I had sensed even before beginning that there was something strange about it, and so attempted to get some contact with the energy before trying to get a vision. It was not so much that the energy was hard to summon; it came when invoked. The problem lay in identifying my consciousness with it. The first impression I got of it was of a windstorm of flame, a fiery version of the dustdevils seen in the desert. Along with this impression, there was a sense of wild abandon, which brought to mind thoughts of dervishes, and of gypsy dancers. When I tried to identify my awareness with the energy, I found myself being thrown away from it, with a sideways vector, as if I had been grabbed by the whirlwind and thrown

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away again. I kept trying, and found that with a little effort, I could focus my awareness in the still center of the whirl. But it required an absolute centering of my attention in the root of the sahasrara chakra, and complete detachment from the normal activities of the mind; I had to keep a state of complete stillness. The moment my attention moved away from the focus point, I was thrown out of the center of the whirl and spun around it. Even the small relaxation of focus necessary to summon a vision was enough to upset the balance. I spent an hour on each of the last two nights practicing that focus. Each time I achieved a state where the consciousness dissolved totally into the energy. Everything that distinguished me as an individual disappeared, and there was nothing left but Fire. (I don't know if this qualifies as a form of samadhi or not.) Awareness of time's passage vanished; when I came out of the state I was surprised to find the roughly twenty minutes had passed. To my internal clock, it seemed like no more than thirty seconds or so. Coming out of the state each time, it felt like my energy-body was entirely flame, an orange-red conflagration enfolding and penetrating my physical body. My heart rate was accelerated and irregular, my temperature felt a little elevated, and I was covered in a thin film of sweat. I was panting as if I had run a long way. Possibly in reaction to this, I now find myself slightly reluctant to try entering the Part again. I've put off starting several times already today, on the faintest excuse, and a couple of times with no excuse at all. (In fact, I'm going to do so again as soon as I save this file, and play Nethack for a few minutes.) Saturday, October 29, 1994 2:09 PM Invoked Saxtomp according to the revised procedure. Immediately I got a sense of the Part's power, as a rod or beam of fire stabbing downwards through my body. Similar in some ways to the "king's beam" in my Enochian Temples, but without the helical torsion. There was also a sense of compression, as if the beam were squeezing down as it got closer to its lower end, which also manifested as a feeling that I could not breathe. I did pranayama for a few minutes while vibrating the name of the Part internally. The pranayama quickly made me dizzy, so apparently there was no real problem with the amount of air I had been getting. My physical body developed the "tingly" sensation that is common with some Hindu discipline I once learned, but the name of which I've now forgotten. While concentrating on the physical, I lost sight of the sigil in its circle on the astral. I reformulated it and invoked the names again.

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"Now the Fires of God have come into the Earth; for the Sun in Tiphereth is the fifth element, and therein is the Elemental conjoined with the Spiritual. "That Fire, that originated in the Still Point of Kether, once again becomes the Point, at the center of the circle. It is concentrated by the power of Pluto concealed within the Path of Death, and injected into the worlds of the elements as the Scorpion injects its poison. And like that poison, it pervades the body, killing it, but only in preparation for a new life to come. Not one part of that body can remain alive, if the spirit within is to rise up. "But the power of God descends upon Tiphereth not only through the path of Fire, but also through the paths of the Sun and the Devil. And it is these three conjoined that are the reason for the whirling power you sense in this place. Now look:" Before me I saw a desert coast somewhere in northern Africa, sand coming down directly to the water. Some way inland there was a great whirlwind of fire, standing still in the wasteland. The vision changed, and now it seemed that Eblis was standing in the whirlwind; indeed, he was the whirlwind, but took on a quasi-human shape above it as well, a djinn formed all of flames and heat, laughing in great delight. A sound of music came up, music of the sort usually associated with the Arab countries in movies. A drum provided a jerky, polyrhythmic beat; some sort of stringed instrument gave a droning continuo; and a squealing woodwind glissaded up and down the scales in quartertones. Two figures appeared outside the whirlwind, one dressed all in black, the other in white. They wore loose-fitting pants and shirts, and scarves covered all of their heads but the face below the eyebrows. And it seemed that the rings holding the headcovers on were really crowns. These two figures danced around the whirlwind. Or was it dancing? Each held a swords and moved it in katas as it circled. There was great violence in their movements, but also great style, as if each step had been choreographed and practiced to perfection. The music became more and more frantic, and the figures passed around the whirlwind with greater and greater speed, until they were blurred beyond distinguishing. One caught a fleeting glimpse of a form occasionally within the blurring, but its clothing was neither one nor the other, but instead was some varying shade of gray. "Confound their understanding with darkness, says the Call. And so it is; not the darkness of Night, but the darkness of inescapable Ignorance. For the divine is in their world, but

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they see it not; they see only the illusions of the mind. And thus it is God himself who is the Deceiver." Now many seekers came up and surrounded the whirlwind and the blurred ring of the speeding dancers. (They could not see Eblis.) I could see them wondering and talking among themselves, saying "Surely this is the divine itself before us." And one by one, from various points around the circle, individuals would rush forward and dive into the blur, shouting "Allahu Akbar!" But they were instantly thrown out again, to land tumbling in the sand. Every one of them, as they sat up, had on their faces an expression of awe and wonder, and in their eyes was a piece of the Fire. Others of the seekers gathered around each as they stood, and the awed ones began speaking with great animation of what they had seen. After five or six had jumped in and been ejected, it became apparent that not one of them had seen the same thing within the blur. Persons who moved from one group to another began to point out the differences in what the jumpers were saying about their experiences. And those jumpers left off talking to their groups, and began to shout at each other with great vehemence, each proclaiming the rightness of their own experience and the falsehood of the others'. Suddenly they drew swords and began to hack at each other. Their followers did likewise, and soon a general melee surrounded the whirlwind. And in the middle stood Eblis, unmoving, and laughed within himself. The image faded out. Said the Voice: "Thus is the balanced triad of the divine become the false duality. And the ignorant do not see it. They take the blurred images of the interacting opposites, and make of them a false crown, taking a figure of their own minds for the real thing. And the consequence of this is eternal discord. "Seek not Truth in God, o men. For truth is a function of the mind, and god is not in the mind. In God there is no truth; the divine is beyond truth or falsity, beyond knowledge. The which is known is always a lie, and belief always a delusion. "And so it goes. We are done." Seer's comments: Saxtomp is the first of the Parts in sequence to be derived from the Tablet of Fire. Its zodiacal king, Gebabal, is attributed to Cancer, and this is also the first Part to be ruled by that King. The fiery whirlwind is a good symbol for this combination, since the symbol of

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Cancer is sometimes interpreted as a whirlpool. Those with imagination might also note that if you put the number of the Part next to the total number of Parts, (i.e., as 1691) you again get the image of a whirlpool, this time between two pillars. The vision seems to be a -- "peritheosis", if I may coin a term -- of the Path of Fire in Achad's Tree, recounting something of its ending in the sphere of Tiphereth. The power of Kether descending through the path here anchors itself in Tiphereth as a hidden point of power within the expansive, inclusive power of that sephira; just as the point of Kether is at the center of the astrological symbol for the Sun. It is impossible to express the sense of total abandon, of total disregard of the self, that this fiery energy produced during the days when I was attuning myself to it. There was an almost uncontrollable urge to immolate myself in some act of holy destruction. It was only when I achieved a state of perfect silent centering that it disappeared; but then the finite self disappeared with it. The physical effect was also interesting; I don't think there was any real physical heat involved, but my body was certainly convinced that it had been exposed to heat. The "Hindu discipline" mentioned at the start of Saturday's working I now recall to be an introductory exercise of Kundalini yoga. The arms are held above the head at 45 degree angles, with the thumbs extended straight up. Then the engages in deep rapid breaths for a couple of minutes. This produces a sensation of energy descending the arms to strike the heart. Then the arms are raised further until the thumbs touch, and a similar flow of energy comes directly down the spinal column. Note the similarity between this and the descent of divine power from the Supernals through the paths of Fire, Sol, and Capricorn as mentioned later. Eblis is the Islamic Satan; when God commanded the angels to worship Adam, Eblis said "Me thou hast created of smokeless Fire, and shall I reverence a creature made of dust?" Thus he has a fitting connection with this path. In the current context, one might think of him as the hindmost portion of God. I cannot seem to form a coherent comment about the remainder of the vision at the moment, though its implications are fairly obvious.

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Vavaamp, 17th of 91 Parts, 2nd of MAZ. Zodiacal King: Arfaolg Ministers: 9200 Mundane association: Cyprus. Wednesday, November 02, 1994 2:21 PM The vision opened, and I was looking at Cyprus from the east and above. The sigil of the Parts was overlaid upon it; beginning at the southwestern corner, moving north a ways, then inland. The first acute angle corresponds with the top of Mt. Olympus. Then jogging north west again, then east along the central plain, roughly along the line between the Greek and Turkish zones. The picture changed, and now it seemed I was looking at the River Styx. Beyond it was a dark land under the shadow of thick clouds. But in the far distance at stage right (southwest, from my new vantage) the mountain of the gods shone in the sun. A road led in that direction. Charon was not to be seen, but I crossed over anyway. The land was much like some of the Tarot cards for Death; bodies ill-buried all around, pieces of them sticking up through the surface. A giant trash-heap or compost pile. Next Charon appeared with a load of the dead. These exited his boat listlessly, heads downcast. They all wore pale, flesh-colored robes, while their skin was the color of raw meat; I got the impression that the robes were their skin, already sloughing off in the process of decomposition. As they followed the road into the deadlands, they began to sink individually into the ground without disturbing it. The road shifted its position so that they were distributed rather evenly over a wide area before they were all below the surface. I could see into the ground, and saw they continued to walk forward. As they did, globs and chunks of their flesh came off, like bits of soil broken off a clod, and were left embedded in the soil. A ghostly outline of their form remained where the flesh had parted, an abstract sketch of what they once were. (This all seems almost like a precursor to the vision of Nocamal that was previously obtained.) A stately music begins to sound in the background. Like one of the slower movements of a Bach concerto, or a processional by Handel. But with a lot more basso than either of them would give it. Something very --- "architectural" about it. For a few moments I became one of the dead. As the flesh sloughed away and the outline was exposed, that outline became enwrapped in royal robes. Rich, ermine-trimmed,

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heavily-embroidered clothes, curly wigs underneath coronets. And the figures swelled up with power, not the kingly power of Sol, but the more generic "nobility" of Jove. (I am getting confused. From the presence of the mountain, I thought this vision was dealing with the intersection between Scorpio and Capricorn. But this part seems to relate more to Scorpio as it connects Geburah and Chesed.) Now these figures began to arise from the ground, all them royally dressed. They looked among themselves in mutual recognition, as if to say "We are the Elect". Servient beings came, and escorted them to a castle -- no, a palace; it had no defensive use. And within the palace was lavishly appointed; refined music played in the background, artful tableaux were staged in the larger rooms. Libraries sufficient to delight the scholarly, kitchens producing delicacies for the Epicurean, drawing rooms full of art, versatile baths, endless other possibilities. The figures moved among these delights, sampling them, speaking to one another. But all these things, while magnificent, were as ghostly as the people who used them. Then I noted that not one of the rooms had windows facing the mountain. Even the extensive gardens had walls high enough to block that view. And the one place that the residents avoided was the single door that exited in that direction. Even though not seen the mountain seemed to loom over them, exerting a subtle pressure that they unconsciously avoided. After a while, one resident among them began to notice the door towards the mountain. He spoke about it, and suddenly found his cohabitants uneasy, avoiding him. Conversations would stop when he entered a room, then go on in more hushed tones. They didn't actively exclude him, but a subtle sense of distance grew up between him and his fellows. Finally he opened the door and looked out towards the mountain. Daily he did so, and began to compare the wide spaces outside to the narrow rooms and corridors of the palace. A sense of constriction began to set in; he spent more and more of his time looking out the door. Finally he decided to go through it, and could not. A guard appeared and demanded that he shed his noble robes, wig, and crown. He did so. The guard demanded he remove his underclothes as well. And when he was completely naked again, he was allowed to pass. Looking around outside, he found he was in a wasteland, its border demarcated as an extension of the wall of the palace. He could see death's compost-heap on the other side of that line, but none of it spilled over; the land here was dry ground, covered by sparse dry

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grass. The road to the mountain was off to one side of the palace, and he headed for it. Reaching it, he moved onwards, alone. (I stopped at this point to rest. The tension of maintaining the vision was getting to me.) Seer's comments: A nice little allegory. The atmosphere of the vision reminded me of Piers Plowman, though the content bears no relation. And like all good allegories, the explanation is liable to be longer than the story itself. Once again we see the Path of Scorpio in Achad's Tree, and in much the way it was seen in the Parts Pothnir and Nocamal. The palace seen here may well be the same one seen briefly at the end of Pothnir, a representation of Scorpio's intersection with the path of Capricorn, which connects Tiphereth and Binah. Certainly the plain of Death is the same place seen at the start of Nocamal. But the body of the vision is more concerned with the movement from Geburah to Chesed, along the path of Scorpio rather than across it. Scorpio is primarily concerned with the concentration or distillation of a life-essence from things in which it is hidden. In the cycle of the year, it represents the concentration of the life of a plant into its seeds, with the consequent death and decomposition of the plant's body. Through its modern ruler, Pluto, it connects with the principle of refinement through heat and pressure, in the way that concentrations of pure elements are precipitated out of the magma of the Earth's mantle, and formed into jewels or crystals by the pressure there. Both of these bear on the process seen in the vision. Chesed, the sphere of Jupiter, represents the essential pattern behind the manifestation of a thing in the finite worlds. It is the archetype of which the eventual physical manifestation is an instantiation. But it should be stressed that these are not archetypes in the Platonic sense. Each manifest thing has its own, individual Chesed-aspect; there is no super-archetype of which all things of a certain class are manifestations. As an example, every tree in the world has its individual "essence-pattern" in Chesed, but there is no pattern representing the essence of all the worlds trees in itself. Such seeming super-archetypes appear only as the result of human (or other sapient) minds creating them through their associative functions; the relationship between such creations and the manifestations on which they were based is extremely variable. In the natural structure of the world, the individual archetypes of things instead resonate with each other according to the similarities of the energies of which they are composed, forming a complex centerless network of inter-communications.

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In the Golden Dawn-descended traditions, the task of the adept in Geburah is to gain practical experience at magick, learning to invoke specific magickal energies, perceive their nature, and manipulate them. He is expected to gain a wide experience of these powers, and the various ways in which they can manifest themselves. This exposure to magickal powers serves a hidden purpose as the occult equivalent of the heat and pressure within the Earth; and by this heat, the person's essence, their individual archetype, is gradually separated from the bodies of manifestation in which it has been concealed. The magician gradually becomes aware of the magickal energies that are the hidden cause of his own manifest behaviors. Every thought, perception, and action begins to reveal its magickal essence, and as he progresses along the path of Scorpio towards Chesed, individual manifestations become perceived as particularizations of abstract categories of magickal power. The conscious begins to identify more with the abstract power than with the individual actions, producing a sense of separation between the individual self-inessence and the variegated actions of manifest life. Eventually the person reaches a point where all the actions, thoughts, and perceptions of his manifest life have been reduced to their least terms, as a set of abstract, "pure" magickal powers, and a set of fixed relationships or interactions between those powers. The consciousness becomes almost wholly identified with this essential pattern, and the person becomes an Exempt Adept in Chesed. A parallel process occurs with respect to his perceptions of the rest of the magickal universe, with the consequent result that his knowledge of that universe becomes almost fully integrated into a few "archetypal" patterns of powers and relationships. This integration of self and of knowledge is the highest positive achievement possible within the bounds of the Ruach. At no time before or after does the person have as great an understanding of his individuality, or as great a capacity for interpreting and explaining events. As Crowley points out, such people often become leaders of "schools of thought". They become the "nobility" among the thinkers of the world. The body of the vision is a visual parable of the process I describe here. But as Exempt Adepts are the most knowledgeable of men, they are also the most blind; and it is the same process by which they achieve their success that they are blinded. In cognitive terms, the process of refinement, of extracting "essences", by which the adepts work is a process of abstraction. That is, of selecting a small amount of information out of the total available according to some criteria, and discarding the rest. Repeated abstractions inevitably produce a hierarchical thought-structure, with each higher level being more inclusive but less detailed than preceding levels.

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Hierarchic thinking reflects the structure of the human mind. In fact, the process of initiation from Yesod through Chesed is primarily a process of becoming consciously aware of the various innate levels of the mind's structure, and serially re-organizing the contents of the mind to suit each level's nature. But the universe is not so simply organized; in fact, entities at any particular level of existence are constantly interacting with, influencing and being influenced by, entities at all other levels. There is no hierarchy, but instead an amazing network of information flows and resonances, in which entities at any level can produce significant influences on events. Most of this activity is lost to consciousness in the discovery of essences and archetypes; it is "filtered out" before it reaches the conscious self. Thus in the vision the Exempt Adepts and the essential world in which their awareness is focused are pale ghosts. Nevertheless, these unincorporated aspects of existence are continuously influencing the person despite his general lack of awareness. Eventually enough incidents of "things that don't fit" accumulate that the E.A. has to admit the inadequacy of his model of the universe. This in turn leads to realization by the Ruach of its own innate limitations and restrictions. (In the vision, the model, the perceived essences, are the kingly clothes; the Ruach is represented by the underclothes. ) Before the person can move on, he has to abandon reliance upon both, and become once more a small naked being in a big universe. When this is done, he becomes a "Babe of the Abyss".

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The Second Part for the 91 parts of the Earth

Zirzird, Part 18 of 91, 3rd of MAZ. Zodiacal King: Gebabal Ministers: 7220 Mundane association: Parthia Monday, November 14, 1994 2:25 PM Invoked Zirzird following the revised method. As I vibrated the name of the Part, after the Call, a conical formation rose up out of the center of the circle, its lower part contiguous with the bounds of the inner circle. It was a tall narrow cone, of about my own height. It seemed to transform for a moment into a snow-covered mountain, upon which goats leapt upwards in great arcs. Then it was simply a whitish cone again. The scene changes once more, and now there comes the escapee from the castle of the previous vision. No longer naked, he seems to have caught some of the goats and made rough clothes out of their skins. Far away behind him the castle can be seen, blank side facing me. (It seems we are on a height.) And the road into the wasteland comes in this direction before vanishing from sight below a ridge. The man trudges along an upward trail. He carries a staff in one hand, and has a pack made of tough, woven grasses on his shoulders. He reminds me of the ancient man whose body was recently found frozen in a Swiss glacier. (It is odd, but I feel the presence of the Devil of the Tarot card behind this vision.) Now I see him from behind, looking up the mountain. The top is hidden in clouds; he is approaching the snowline just below the clouds. He attempts to follow the trail into the snow, but his feet begin slipping; he can make no progress. By straining mightily, he manages to get a few feet further, but the farther he goes, the more difficult it becomes. It seems that gravity is increasing, pulling him backwards.

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Finally he is exhausted, and he slides back. Tumbling, he passes the snowline and rolls a ways down the trail before stopping and sitting up. A bit of snow follows and swirls around him, as if teasing him, and then falls to the ground. He repeats his attempt two or three times, sliding backwards at the end each time. Now a ghostly overlay comes on the scene. Hidden in the clouds, the tarot Devil sits upon the top of the mountain, which does not end in a point, but in a wide, flat area exactly at the level where the clouds begin. The mountain itself is the black cube of the tarot card, and the gravity is the chain that ties the male and female figures to the cube. The climber is one of those figures, though he does not know it. The Voice says: "Men are tormented by the Great Illusion; the illusion that there is some pinnacle of achievement to be reached through striving against the pull of Earth. Thus they push ever upwards, seeking a topmost point that does not exist. "As the Sun seems to climb to the peak of the sky, and rule over the day therefrom, so do men, looking upwards in the Spirit, see what appears to be a great spiritual Sun above them, ruling over the worlds in which they live and move. And so they climb towards it, seeking to partake of its nature. "But it is not inherent in the heavens that there be such a pinnacle. The peaks of mountains are the result of gravity, of the pull of the Earth; and where that pull is not, neither is there any top to be reached. All spreads out in all directions; one place is not inherently "higher" than another. The categorizations of the Earth-bound existence collapse in the face of new conditions. "That Sun, which seemed so high and so great, is, from that wider vantage (i.e. outside the Earth's influence) to be nothing more than a single point of light in an immensity so great as to be beyond any comprehension. "The very act of striving against the Earth affirms that one is bound to the Earth; rather, give up that upon which the pull of Earth acts, abandon it to become one with the Earth. And then, that which remains may fly outwards." I waited for a while, but nothing more seemed to come. I thus closed the vision. Seer's comments: This vision continues the previous one, and borrows from it to keep the symbolism compact. The mountain here is the same one seen in the distance there. The mundane

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region connected with this Part, Parthia, doesn't seem to have any direct connection with what is seen. The previous vision was connected with Cyprus, and this mountain is the Mount Olympus on that island. Since that "Olympus" is not the original, it is not the home of the gods, but instead a false image of that place, a suitable home for the Father of Lies. The tarot card The Devil is associated with the zodiac sign of Capricorn, and connects Binah with Tiphereth in Achad's Tree of Life. The sign governs all struggles upwards against resistance, whether that be a physical struggle to climb a mountain, or a struggle upwards in the hierarchy of some organization. By association it rules all organizations with pyramidal structure. I believe that this Part is in some sense the complement of the Part named Tiarpax, seen previously. There it was shown how the finite self, by emulating its "true father" in the act of undiscriminating love, becomes one with the divine. The process shown was one of attraction through similarity. Here we look at the complementary process, which is one of "pushing away" that which is below, in order to rise higher. Either one can serve as a means of spiritual advancement. The problem is that, unlike Chokmah, Binah has no discernible characteristics, no innate tendencies of its own. It is the negation or cessation of all possible manifest characteristics and tendencies. Thus any perceived goal the person has in his struggle upwards is necessarily a projection of his own nature, or the generalized nature of the Ruach, represented by its center in Tiphereth. It is an illusion that conceals the true goal. As long as one pursues such a projected goal, one is blind to the real goal. And simply pushing away from the finite aspects of being cannot get one into Binah. Rejection creates a bond with the thing being rejected; even as one pushes it away, one becomes more tied to it. Trying to reach Binah solely in this manner is like trying to touch the Moon by standing on a hill and jumping at it.

Opmacas, Part 19 of 91, 1st of DEO. Zodiacal King: Zarnaah Ministers: 6363 Mundane association: Getulia (Western Sahara, south of Morocco)

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Saturday, November 26, 1994 3:14 PM Invoked Opmacas following the revised method. There came into my sight an image of the glyph of Libra. This glyph became threedimensional, and took on the color of brass or bronze. At the pivot point was a point of searing white light, on which the arms rested. My viewpoint approached the balance, then took a quick left turn, moving out along one arm of the balance. At the end of the arm, an ornate hanging hook was attached to the arm by a cross piece; I realized the hook and crosspiece were the glyph of Saturn. At the end of the other arm of the balance, a glyph of Jupiter was attached, hanging from curled-over end of the glyph's curved member. It curled around the arm and had it's weight so distributed that the vertical cross piece of the glyph was balanced directly below the arm. But it seemed that this vertical piece was formed like a wavy-bladed knife (a kris?) with the point upwards, made out of some white metal, possibly tin. Instead of a hilt and handle at the lower end of the blade, there was a sphere of the same metal, with a surface sand-blasted into a grayish finish. (The whole looks like a single sperm cell; it also reminded me of Chokmah. As I thought this, I received confirmation of it.) Now back at the other end of the balance, I saw that the lower end of the Saturn glyph was curled over into a small hook. Attached to this hook were four braided ropes. These descended and surrounded a much larger black ball. There was a sense of tremendous weight to this ball, though it was balanced by the gray sphere, which gave no such sense. This ball had an insubstantial outer layer, into which the ropes sank slightly. Next came a tough integument of some sort, covering a jelly-like filling that took up most of the volume. Inside the filling the world floated, seeming at once to be whole, and to be decomposed into its myriad parts, down to the tiniest atom. The Voice said, "What is the divine creative will without that upon which to expend itself? And what is the substance of being without that which fertilizes it and causes new things to arise from its infinite potential? Neither is whole without the other. "With this Part, we transfer fully from the male side of the Tree to the female side. Though some earlier parts contained powers from this side, this was because they were necessary to maintain a balanced relationship in the activity of the male paths, or in the action of the neutral path of the central pillar. For example, the Parts of Capricorn, Fire, and Sol are so closely connected at their base that their powers interact and influence each other perpetually. To take one away from the other would be to disturb that balance.

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(A pause.) "As the winds shift in the fall, and the light becomes the dark of the year, so here does the balance of the Parts shift. And so is Libra the sign of this change. But the rulers of Libra are both feminine, so the shift is weighted towards the dark and does not return to the light until the weight of the male side is enhanced in the power of Aries. "Love and Structure, acceptance and support; these are the powers of the feminine side of the tree, as they are the essential powers of the female human. And nourishment of growth; for is not the arc of Luna concealed within the sign of Saturn? And it is the waxing Moon, spilling its newly regenerated power into the world. "And yet, one might object, further down this side are the powers all male. Why is this so, if the left-hand pillar is the side of the feminine? "For this cause: that the power of Capricorn is the Mountain, the Mons, the ultimate solidity of the feminine principle of Structure. The male power of Mars climbs its heights, but without the mountain, its power would be expended uselessly. And so also for the Path of Mars; for the Tower is a thing of rock, of stone, and these are Saturn. The soldier conceals himself within the tower for defense, hiding in the Mother; so also he attacks the tower, seeking to penetrate the Lover. In both instances his actions would be futile without her; for aggression and thrust cannot exist without that against which to direct its energies. And spiritually this is rightly the feminine, where among the debased power is pitted against power in uncreative activity. "And in yet another sense, the tower is not a phallus at all; but Caer Benoic or Carbonek, the castle that shelters the Grail. "And so on down the Tree. In Virgo is the feminine power brought even further down; and we shall see Scorpio again, as it relates to this side of the Tree. Much more is to be given, never fear. "For now, we are done." I thanked the Voice, and asked if I should invoke this Part again. The indication was that I should not, but should instead continue on. Seer's comments: As all the Parts are representative of a dynamic change of state, so here also. The form of change is the simple and well-understood shifting of the balance. The Zodiacal King Zarnaah, who rules this Part, is connected with Libra in the system of correspondences

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used for this work. Note that 19, the Part's number, is the mirror-image of 91, the total number of parts. The balance here is viewed as between the divine masculine expression and the divine feminine, and introduces a new sequence of Parts descending from Kether primarily through the Pillar of Severity, where those previous were in the Pillars of Mildness and Mercy. But here the two aspects seem to be in equilibrium and very tightly bound to one another. Bronze is a combination of a "female" metal, copper, with a "male" metal, tin; thus the balances seen in the image are a merger of the two aspects. Jupiter and Saturn are the paths that descend from Kether (the pivot of the balance) to Chokmah and Binah respectively in Achad's Tree of Life, and are themselves traditionally considered a complementary male and female pair. This becomes even more explicit in the representations of the "weights" on the ends of the balance as a sperm and ovum, and as the sephiroth generally labeled as the Father and Mother within the Tree of Life. There follows a somewhat revisionist interpretation of the paths of Capricorn and Mars. These are traditionally "male" in nature, but the viewpoint emphasizes the necessity for the presence of an opposite, "female" aspect of existence before these powers can be used with effect. Mountains have often been seen as feminine in nature; association with the breasts and the Mons Veneris are common. The Goat is nothing without the mountain on which to climb. The Tower of Mars is viewed here not as the phallus, the embodiment of the male principle, but rather as the object of that principle's efforts. The inside of the tower is emphasized, its nature as an enclosure, and thus it is transformed into a symbol of the kteis, the vagina and womb. Thus the male power can be protected inside it, like a child in the womb, while another male power seeks to penetrate it and place itself inside.

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Genadol, Part 20 of 91, 2nd of DEO. Zodiacal King: Hononol (Taurus) Ministers: 7706 Mundane association: Arabia (Arabian Peninsula, except the Red Sea coast and Yemen.) Monday, December 19, 1994 12:03 AM Invoked Genadol according to the revised procedure. A curtain split before me, and behind it was the glyph of Taurus, in gold on a black background. The black was abysmally deep; nothing of light could be seen in it. Now the glyph split into two parts, the crescent becoming the moon in the night sky, the circle becoming a gold coin; the latter fell to earth, spinning through the air. (The coin has a simple, equal-armed cross embossed upon it.) White tears seemed to leak from the lower arm of the moon, or to condense upon it. Each one swelled and fell off, changing in midair to another coin. The air was quickly filled with coins and other things of great value, all condensing from an invisible menstruum around the moon. The darkness is very pleasant, and seems infinite in extent. "This is she of whom it is said, she brings forth all things, but is never empty; she holds all things in herself, but is never full. Out of her comes the world in all its glory, indeed, all worlds are within her at all times. The Father's seed concentrates her substance, but can never exhaust it." (I don't know whether the above paragraph was my own thought, or another's.) Now all the things falling through the air finally hit the Earth, and are absorbed into it; they disappear from sight, but the sense of their value, of riches and wealth, remains. The Earth itself becomes those riches. My sight draws nearer to the Earth, and it seems that I am above the southern part of the Arabian peninsula, close to its southeast corner. And I see below a caravan, bringing frankincense and spices north-westwards across the desert. Camels and asses are loaded high; richly-woven carpets pad them, other carpets cover the loads. Sounds of jingling bells and sweet music follow them. A thought comes to me: the sun is the destroyer in this land, the moon the succorer. For the heat of the day wears down all things, burning the life from them. But under the moon men can work or travel in comfort. And deeper in time, this was the land of the goddess, as were the lands to the north; her hidden influence still lingers, sustaining the faith of those who now direct that faith to another god. (Something here also about the lunar crescent being the symbol of all these lands even today.)

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Seer's comments: This Part is the first attributed to Taurus among the 91. Taurus is ruled by Venus and has Luna exalted; thus it is, in a sense, the ultimate "feminine" sign. This seems appropriate for the first Part to follow the "shifting of the balance" described in the previous Part. The black background is Binah, the infinite, transcendental no-thing from which any thing finite is produced. The horns of the Taurus glyph become the Moon as image or mask of Binah, the "bright, fertile Mother", AIMA. Stimulated by the Father she produces a liquid essence from which anything may be (and is) made. The fruits of the Mother then fall into the Earth and become one with it, so that the Daughter partakes of her Mother's nature. Material wealth in general is attributed to Taurus, as is trade in goods. The camels of the caravan are Lunar by connection with the planet's Hebrew letter. The form of frankincense reflects the drops falling from Luna in the previous image, as does the means by which it is produced. July 9, 1995 1:20 p.m. Invoked Genadol according to the usual procedure. The sigil of the Part (upon which I was standing) fell away beneath me, and merged into the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia. My body expanded until it seemed that my feet were in Arabia, and my body stood extending far above the Earth. I could not see my body, but only feel it. Once again I heard the voice, saying faintly "This is She from whom all things come, yet She is not empty; this is She who holds all things in Herself, yet is not full; this is She who showers upon the Earth her everlasting life and wealth. She has taken the Father's seed and made it one with the Earth her daughter." Essentially the same as in December's vision; only small changes in wording, no change in meaning. The voice reduced to a faint chanting in the background, from which no more words could be distinguished. Now another voice comes and says: "Where Eden was, now stands a desert. For the evil of man has eaten up Her life here, and taken all the wealth therefrom, and carried it away unto distant lands. There is naught left but the bones of the world here. Yet even the marrow of those bones is being taken; and soon shall naught be left of her glory save dry dust and stone, unto the center of the Earth. "Yet in another place is Eden still as it was; naught is lost to the world. Memory fades, yet in the essence of things is the past preserved. She holds it in Herself, and shall bring it forth again in those days when men desire to restore the world. As a vision shall it come to them in those days, and through their knowledge and will shall it be made manifest again.

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"Now looks upwards, o man, unto the places from which you came." I looked towards the stars, and the pull of Earth beneath me faded. And it seemed that all the stars there are were compressed within a ring of glowing golden color, surrounded by that ring. The glow extended inwards, enclosing the stars from above and below in a lenticular shape. Knowledge came that the lens is a mystery of Her, for from above or below it shows the circle of enclosure; while from any side view it is the Vesica Piscis, the gate from which things are born. Thus the lens comprises both the womb and vagina, but in a manner different from the glyph of Venus; for since the lens is both womb and gate, things are born from Her yet they remain perpetually enclosed within Her. I contemplated this lens for a while in silence. Then a great beam of light appeared and passed through the lens, being focused to a point by it. And I knew that this beam was a male power of some sort. The voice said: "Within the Earth is the Mother complemented by the Father; she brings forth that which His creative will signifies. And so it is in the greater world as well; the entire universe is a vehicle by which a greater Father works his creative will. What that will is, none knows; for that Father is incomprehensible even to the highest gods. How much more lacking is our own understanding? We know that it is so, but little else. "And here is the ultimate mystery: that there is one Mother, but many Fathers. For the Mother who acts within the Earth is the same who holds the universe in her womb. There is no division in her. But the sources of creation are not one; many creative beings act upon her to bring forth their creations; each such being is a Father, and works his will alone and separate from the rest. The men of Earth (comprising also the women of Earth) work their wills upon her, and bring forth new things within the world. The gods work their wills upon her and bring forth stars, and planets, and those greater structures that are invisible to men. "Each works their own will, but despite this, there seems to be a unity, a coordination among their creations. Some of this is because the lesser creators act within a field that greater creators have already shaped somewhat; thus within any given world it seems that there is one Plan shaping everything. But the greater and more comprehensive unity comes from the fact that all are dealing with the substance of the same Mother, bringing forth their creations out of Her, so that all of their creations are Her children and show family resemblances to each other. "Contemplate the Mother, o man, and know Her. Much that comes after in this series is dependent upon Her, and comes directly from Her womb into the world." I did so for some time.

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"We are done." Seer's comments: The principles of male-vs.-female in these visions seems to have many echoes with Liber AL. Nuit is "continuous" as the Mother here has "no division in her." Hadit can be many places, is multiple, just as in the early visions of this series we saw the male force in the form of countless sparks of divine creative fire. The union between the continuity of the former and the diversity of the latter is the ever-changing, ever-renewing world of events, depicted as the 91 Parts themselves in these visions, and as Ra-Hoor-Khuit in Thelema. I wonder at the paucity of ideas relating to Nuit in Thelemic doctrine. There are a few practical works related to her -- the Gnostic Mass, Liber NV. Liber NV seems too glib and hacked-together to me; it shows little real understanding. Explications of her nature and its philosophical consequences are non-existent in A.C.'s works; even in The Vision and The Voice she is hardly visible. I suppose the prophet of the Brat-God had too little sympathy with her to do the job right.

Aspiaon, Part 21 of 91. 3rd of DEO. Zodiacal King: Zinggen. Ministers: 6320. Mundane association: Phalagon (a region unknown to Dee. Possibly Faliscan, an area of southern Etruria.) July 12, 1995 3:45 PM The vision opened with a brief image of torrential rain, gone almost before it was seen. Then it seemed as if I were in a region of deep, still, clear water, but colored purple or mauve of the shade sometimes seen in the body's internal organs. [7/13/95 -- The color of the inside of the womb during a woman's fertile days of the month, when it is engorged with blood.] Within this water -- if water it is -- there floated many small pearl-like spheres, distributed thinly throughout the volume I could see. The voice said: "Each of these 'pearls' is a world; no, not a single planet necessarily, but a region wherein a single creative theme is being manifested. It might, in time and space, be a planet, or a sun, or a person or some other thing. But here within the womb of the

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Mother, in the amnion of her body, are these creations the simple things you see. They are precipitated out of her undivided fluid by the stimulus of the Father's seed; each seed is at the core of one of the pearls you see, and she builds upon it those things necessary for it to become manifest." Another brief image here. I moved toward one of the pearls and passed into it. Passing the boundary, an unending variety of things exploded outwards around me. Everything was in a tremendous state of activity, things changing into other things, new things constantly arising, old things disappearing and re-appearing in a modified form. I couldn't grasp but a small portion of what was going on. Then I was as suddenly back where I began, and all that activity was shut off as if it had never been. All this took place within a second, but seemed longer in terms of experience. "That which is inside them, which is their nature, is of no importance here. For she transcends all such creations in herself. She is not affected by them, nor is she in any way active within them. (Though she is present therein at all times, yet she does not act or move.) [That is, the particular theme being expressed inside a "pearl" is a wholly internal matter, and is irrelevant to the realm which contains it. Anything that expresses a specific nature is not Her.] "They see her not, who are within such a pearl; they know her not, nor can they come to her without abandoning that which they are. For she is free of all conditions, all distinctions, all differentiations and limits; she is the 'none' that encloses their "sum". [I heard "sum" as a three-way cabalistic pun, meaning "sum" in the sense of "totality", "some" in the sense of quantified thing-ness, and the Latin "sum" or "I am".] "She is Nought, yet All cannot contain her; the smallest portion of her would overflow it. (And this word 'portion' is a lie even to speak in her presence.) "Go you to her, o man, and become her servant. She it is that is your true core of being, the unchanging, end- and beginning-less [a word not comprehended here] of you. Not Set, for he is her Servant as you are, and made you out of her at her direction. Not any god is at the core of your being; there is no core, only endlessness." (I don't know whether this statement is specific to myself, or a general statement of man's condition. The unspoken subtext seems to say the former; The god Set is my "father", but in some circular fashion his creation was the will of the Mother, according to terms she somehow specified. How an undifferentiated, non-acting whatever-she-is could do this is beyond my understanding.) "We are done for the moment. Come again to this place before going on."

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Friday, July 14, 1995 1:33 PM Once again I get a brief glimpse of torrential rains, then the image changes to a mountainous seacoast, possibly a peninsula jutting out into the sea -- I cannot tell from my viewpoint, which is out over the sea. (near Sorrento, south of Naples?) Three sharppeaked mountains are the peaks of the Part's sigil. Now my viewpoint sinks into the sea, first through brightly-lit water full of colorful fishes, then through darker, blue-violet water. Finally into a region where the water is dark, not with the absence of light, but because its color is ultraviolet, beyond my sight. Strange shapes form and dissolve, hardly seen in the moments they exist. One seems to be a wire-like outline of a cube, but with a hole in the middle. (That is, a spherical region of absence is suspended in the center of the cubical frame.) Another looks like a dog with three heads, each one pointed to a different point of an equilateral triangle. Or is it a trefoil brass candle-holder? I cannot tell. A Russian icon of Jesus, complete with gold-leaf halo, comes and goes again. His left hand is held down and palm-forward, with the thumb and first two fingers spread and the other two fingers folded against the palm. The right shows the same gesture, but with the hand raised to breast-height and the fingers pointing upwards. The icon tilts backwards until only its edge is visible, and then floats upwards out of sight. I do not know what this means. The voice says: "That which is the source of creation is also a source of destruction. For are not the waters below as they are above? [That is, the Mother surrounds all creations, so she is as much "below" them as she is "above" them in their internal coordinate system, even though that system is meaningless in her own context.] "She is the power that burns in the depths of being, that churns up the detritus of ancient days and brings it forth into the light. She is the acid that eats at the roots of being, and hell is in her as much as is heaven. If one sinks into those depths, then one encounters her in a seemingly evil aspect, as she destroys him. She is the ending-place of the Black Brothers as she is of the White, though they know it not and would deny it if they could. "We say these things not to scare, but simply as fact. She is there; her being surrounds all. In either direction one comes to her, at the ends of creation." I felt myself continuing to sink into the water, and the forms ceased to appear. Momentarily there was a sense of many disconnected particles flashing about. Then it felt as if I had passed through some sort of membrane and had fallen out of some enclosed

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region into a larger one. The flashing particles became stars filling the sky below me, while above was a great sphere of a dark purplish-silver color. And now I wasn't falling "down", but "away" from that sphere. And as I moved away, I saw that what I thought were stars were actually galaxies. I could sense all the individual stars that composed each one, and all the living planets that circled those stars. And on one of those planets was the mountainous peninsula I saw at the start of the vision. "The end is the beginning. There is, in truth, no beginning or end within a creation; it circles back on itself to be fully enclosing in all dimensions. The smallest becomes the largest, and the largest circles back to become, in time, the smallest. And outside all dimensions She supports them, and feeds them." Now I am back in the mauve sea of the first vision, with the pearls floating around me. And every one of them contains all that I have seen here, the entire circle of creation from largest to smallest. I feel myself dissolving into that sea. (Here the seer abandoned the vision and went to meditate. He found himself dissolving and re-forming many times over the next half-hour, at which time he reformulated himself by his will and went about his daily business.) Seer's comments: Here again we have a presentation related to the Mother aspect of divinity, without any reference to a particular path of the Tree of Life. Perhaps this and the previous two visions serve as a general introduction in a way roughly analogous to that in which the three Parts of LIL served for the Parts as a whole and for the Father aspect. Note the contrast between the theme of division and conflict there and the theme of non-division and continuity here. The deep, still water of the opening image reflects the Piscean attribute of the Zodiacal King. Possibly the rain does as well, as a representation of the biblical Flood. The mauve coloration of the water may be a blind for the invisible "ultraviolet" that is the King Scale color of the sign. The presentation of the Mother as "undivided", etc. is typical of Binah, but I believe that a higher state is meant here, with Binah being its reflection, or that portion of it that can be experienced within the limits of the terrestrial Tree of Life. In standard cabalistic terms the Mother of Binah is co-equal with or slightly inferior to the Father in Chokmah, where here it is stated to be definitely superior in some sense.

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However, the next three paragraphs definitely relate to Binah; whether they also relate to that higher level I cannot know. The movement into and back out of the pearl connects to one Binah experience in which the finite levels are perceived as being "sealed off" in some way from the transcendental levels, with the internal finite events being irrelevant or meaningless within the larger context. In Friday's vision the Piscean element is stronger. The sea becomes the true Piscean King Scale color. The forms all relate in some way to Pisces experiences: the cube and hole are the perception of the emptiness of a purely finite existence; Cerberus is Hell or suffering; the candle-holder is devotion to God, overcoming suffering; and Christ is the final salvation. The whole series is a summary of the religious (as distinct from the magickal) interpretation of the universal formula of INRI. The vision then returns to the idea of the Mother as the Universal Container. The words speak of the Black and White Brothers, but the unspoken subtext had a slightly different import. Whether one moves towards the seeming unity of the Father, or towards the chaos at the roots of being, one eventually encounters her and must dissolve oneself in her to attain her level. In fact, with the principle that there are many Fathers, as spoken earlier, the difference between the endpoints disappears. If there are a multitude of creative realms on the cosmic level then the conditions there must be similar in gross outline to conditions on the sub-atomic level. Thus in the final image one turns into the other.

Zamfres, Part 22 of 91, 1st of ZID. Zodiacal King: Gebabal. Ministers: 4362. Mundane association: Mantiana (a mountainous region along the western border of current-day Iran, where it meets Turkey and Iraq. East of Lake Van, west of Lake Urmia.)

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Invoked Zamfres according to the usual custom. Vibrating the name Gebabal produced an unusually strong response. As the vision opened I was looking at the mundane region (of Zamfres) from above. For a moment the two lakes to either side became the eyes of some god looking back at me; the twin rows of mountains running north-south between them became the bridge of his nose. The spreading Tigris-Euphrates flood plain to the south became the fleshy part of his nose. Then the eyes closed, and a pressure I was not aware of eased, as if some great being had judged me and found me too inconsequential to deal with. The glyph of Cancer formed about the lakes, each at the center of one of the glyph's circles. The two curved arms above and below encircled and enclosed the region ruled by Zamfres. The voice said: "Ea rules the great subterranean sea, and his eyes upon the world are those lakes that you see. Therein, it is said, he concentrates the salts that would otherwise dispel the purity of his realm; for the underground sea is fresh, not salt water, and the springs of the Earth do come forth from it. "Now in the spring of one year did the waters below burst forth; not in refreshing fountains but in great gouts of water that did destroy all about. And the rains came as well, out of season, and with the tears of Ea, that flow from his eyelids, did inundate the lands of men. "Fifteen cubits did the waters rise, and the cities and fields of men were awash. Covered over were the cities of men, for they did dwell beside the rivers. Covered over were the fields of men, not with the life-renewing floods of normal times, but with the destroying waters. And the great Temples and groves of the Mother were all destroyed. "It is said that Enlil caused this destruction, because the noise of men kept him from sleeping. And this is not so, for the noise did bother him not because of loss of sleep, but because that noise was raised in worship of the Mother, holy Inanna, and little of it was raised in his own praise. Thus did jealousy, hid secretly in the heart, cause the destruction of the world by water. "And in this time was one man saved, along with his people. Ea whispered in his ear, the ear of Ziusudra, and did cause him to raise up a ship fit to withstand the flood. And this ship was itself an act of worship -- did it not have seven decks, and were not they divided each into nine compartments? Thus it was a Temple of the World, to hold all the world within it.

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"And into the boat did Ziusudra take all that was needful for the restarting of the world. Of people and animals and goods did he take all that was needful, and all his wealth as well. And in the time of the flood, when the rains came with great destruction, and the waters rose up to destroy men's abodes, and the great wind out of the south blew, then did Ziusudra enter his boat, and come to be saved. And all his people with him. "The great south wind, raised by the god, did blow the ship northwards, unto the brow of Ea. And there, when the waters receded, did it come to rest. And when the birds did show that the Earth was safe to trod upon again, then did Ziusudra come forth with all his people and make great sacrifices to the gods. And the gods were needful of this, and partook of the sacrifice with great hunger. As it is written: 'The gods hovered about the sacrifice like flies about the offering.' "And the gods did rebuke the Destroyer for seeking to bring about the end of Man. For without man, who would feed the gods? Who would supply them with offerings of meat, and grain, and beer? And who would, in their own time, replace them? And so the gods placed a protection upon mankind, that they not again be destroyed. "And Ziusudra and his wife, they made into gods; granting them the immortality of the gods, and giving them to dwell ever after in paradise, beyond the mouths of the waters." "And so goes the tale of the flood, o man. And you have wondered over it, seeking its significance. But what other significance could it have but that great process hidden in INRI? [A thought of annoyance from me evokes an amused tone from the Voice.] You cannot escape it, o man, it is everywhere. Consider: It is Inanna, the earth-mother, of whom Enlil is jealous. Enlil himself brings destruction, and so is Scorpio-water. Ea who is Shamash preserves him, and forces Enlil to give him a "soul even like unto that of the gods." Earth, Death-Water, Sun, and Air or Spirit -- thus again does INRI intrude into the affairs of men. "Now there is more to be seen here, now that this is out of the way. This is indeed the power of Zamfres manifesting, and in another time we will show you a different view. "Come again, and see. We are done." Seer's comments: I had been invoking Zamfres informally for a couple of days before this vision. About all I got out of these invocations was a mild obsession with the Flood story. But it didn't seem quite to connect. I suspect that this recitation of the Babylonian Flood story is to get this

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(possibly superficial) interpretation of the Part's power out of the way, so that something more direct and meaningful can come through. The vision of the previous Part mentioned the "waters below"; Ea is a personification of them. Since the entire world (from the Babylonian viewpoint) is part of this Face of Ea, this is a repetition of the idea previously put forth that water surrounds the universe. The "tears of Ea" are the meltwaters that normally caused the Tigris and Euphrates to rise and renew the soil of Mesopotamia in spring. These come from the mountains surrounding the two lakes Van and Urmia, and thus metaphorically leak from the eyelids of the god. One can imagine the Babylonian version of the Flood having some basis in reality. The topography of the region is such that it wouldn't take a great deal of extra water to flood most of the inhabited areas of Mesopotamia. In the days before flood-control, the Mississippi and Missouri rivers regularly flooded much larger areas. Unusually heavy rains could easily produce such an effect without any miraculous intervention. Since Enlil is the god of storms, he would naturally be blamed for it by the survivors. Ziusudra's boat is said to be a Temple of the World. He was instructed to build it as a cube 120 cubits in every dimension; thus its three dimensions sum to 360, the numerical symbol of the circle (which originated with the Babylonians). Within the circle of the universe, it has seven levels for the seven planets. Each level has nine compartments, which I speculate corresponds not to the usual lunar symbolism, but to the nine fruits on the Tree of the World -- roughly equivalent to the sephiroth. So it encompasses both the heavens and the Earth within its design. The interpretation of the story in terms of the INRI formula distorts the attributes of the gods somewhat. In Babylonian terms Ea is a god of Water and Enlil is an Earth-god. With Anu they make up the prime triumvirate of the pantheon. They correspond to the Greek triumvirate of Poseidon, Pluto, and Zeus, who divided up the world between them. But the association is probably valid anyway. The Earthy aspect of the story is the prediluvian world of Mesopotamia -- fertile, wealthy, and happy. The Scorpio aspect is the Flood itself. Ziusudra survives by creating a microcosm -- metaphorically discovering his solar self. And the granting of a god-like spirit raises him into the Airy realm of the final "I" of INRI. Incidentally, the Part's mundane region, Mantiana, was at one time the Kingdom of Ararat, the same "mountains of Ararat" where Noah's Ark landed after the biblical version of the story.

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Wednesday, July 19, 1995 After yesterday's work, I had an increasingly strong conviction that I hadn't really penetrated into the core of the part. The vision of the Flood seemed at least somewhat appropriate, given the zodiac association of the ruling King; but I felt that it had been thrown off by the Part as a diversion, or in the way that some lizards will sacrifice their tails in order to escape being eaten. Late last night (this morning rather, around 12:30 am) I invoked the Part again with the intent to examine its energies and see if I could get a clearer perception of what was going on. I did not record the work at the time, in order that I could give all of my attention to the task. The first invocation produced a sense of energy basically similar to what I got during the vision. But there was also a sense of something behind it that was of a different, deeper character. Repeating the invocations, I began to perceive the superficial energies as a shell surrounding this core; it seemed to produce a centripetal effect in anything that touched it. That is, it imparted a sideways vector, the way a spinning object will knock away anything that hits it at some odd angle. I did additional invocations, calling repeatedly upon the God of Hosts and the Enochian God by his twelve names, in addition to the usual names associated with the Part. This seemed to increase the power of that central core, but did nothing towards enabling me to enter it. At some point, I decided a diversion of my own was in order. If the defenses of this place were set against my usual astral body, then perhaps using a different one would enable me to pass them. For many years I have worked at developing a second astral body in female form; it is a construct intended to provide a sensory base in which I could explore the "feminine" mode of my own personality. It was never intended to be used for magickal work, but I tried to use it so now. Leaving my regular magickal body in place, I transferred my awareness to this other body, and moved it around to one side of the region I was trying to enter. Then I tried to slip in while the defenses were still focused elsewhere. It seemed to work, to some extent. I felt that I was "inside" the region and was feeling its power around me instead of from outside. Almost as soon as I entered, some slight modifications occurred to the body. An Egyptian "Crown of the North" -- shaped somewhat like a red shmoo -- appeared on my head, with the plumes of Maat mounted to either side of it. The facial features took on a nilotic cast, and the eyes turned from green to brown. The hair remained black. (I was seeing this reflected on the inside of the aura around the body.) A dress formed around me, reminiscent of the styles in ancient Egyptian stele.

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I moved further in, and more changes took place. The crown disappeared, to be replaced by a built-up hair style (I forget what women call it -- beehive?) with the hair threaded around with thin golden ropes. My hair became very wavy where before it was straight. The dress changed into the "Cretan" style -- breasts exposed but pushed up by a tight corset-like jacket, long skirt. Bracelets in the form of serpents appeared on my wrists. I felt several inches taller as well. In both of these forms, I felt very like a priestess. But it was as if I was remembering and taking on an old form rather than manufacturing the feelings from my imagination. Now I was simultaneously in this body, and viewing it and its surroundings from above and behind her. I made some sorts of gestures -- the nature of which I don't recall now -and called upon the Gods and the names of the Part again. A brilliant aura formed about me, and it seemed that stars played about on its surface. There appeared before me a large group of beings; I could not tell if their forms were male or female. The each wore clothes like those of a dervish-dancer, save that a small cap with cylindrical sides about two inches high was added. And instead of the dervish's white, these were covered in intricate geometric patterns, in which red and yellow predominated. These beings began to dance, a dance composed mostly of spinning motions but with an occasional leap or lifted leg. Their skirts flared out as they spun, revealing bare feet. Their spinning motion carried them each sideways, moving in arcs punctuated sometimes by small loops. Their was no regular pattern to their movements; the motion carried them randomly around the visible area, and sometimes out of it. I took these beings to be the ministers of the Part, and their motions to be in some way dictated by the Part's energies. I watched, trying to feel the power behind them. After ten minutes of this, I began to feel myself drifting from a meditative state towards sleep, so I ended the work and returned to my physical body. Waiting to fall asleep, I still felt my female astral body distinctly, though it remained more or less congruent with my physical body. An aura remained around me, in which a horde of tiny, shimmering pentagrams flashed about. Eventually this subsided, and I slept. Writing this all down, I seem to have re-invoked something of last night's power. I can hear the Voice of the Part saying: "Hail unto She who is the night-sky; she has come to us! She whose eyes and hair are the darkness of night; whose crown is made of stars; whose necklace is of lapis set in silver. She who encompasses all within herself; from whose womb all things come, and from whose breasts comes the milk of her heart to feed them. This is she whose power is one with all gods; whose womb opens to them that they might create children to fill all lands

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and times. Whom the Serpent serves in all things; acknowledge Her, o Serpent, and be one with her!" I feel that this last is directed at me, and raise my awareness in a focus of greeting and contact. "Now comes the Serpent, her servant in all things, who has carried her will in the world since the time of man was not yet born. He is the Snake whose burrowing undermines all realities, dispersing their solidity [or, possibly "breaking their forms"] so that her power shall shine in the depths as it does in the heights of the night-sky. Think ye, o man, that your work is in vain? Think not so; it shall be fulfilled. That which comes as a sun in the sky is not all of the spirit; that which penetrates unknown is often more effective, and shall have longer effect. [I don't know what inspired these last comments.] "O Serpent, come you now or later, and you shall see what is here. Come in your female form, girt about with your ensigns of office, and we shall let you enter here and know for all to see." I feel that I need a little more practice before trying to use my female body in my normal visionary mode; it is too difficult to split my focus between seeing and recording. So I indicate that I will do so at another time. "Then we are done for now. Farewell." Friday, July 21, 1995 10:46 AM Invoked Zamfres with the usual method. I formulated my magickal body in a female form, dressed as a priestess of Inanna. The sigil of the Part rose up out of the circle and hung before me in the air. A second copy of it split from the first, flipped over on its vertical axis and moved to one side. Now a long staff like a shepherd's staff came up from below and stopped between them; it was a plain wooden staff with a small knob on the top end. The two sigils became serpents, and moved inwards to wrap themselves around the staff. Their tails touched the staff, their heads faced outwards to either side. The voice said: "The Serpent is Her symbol of Life, for serpents were at one time thought to be generated spontaneously out of Her substance; the livingness of the world became too full, and concentrated and manifested itself in these sinuous forms.

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"Later on it became known that the powers of life in the body flow also in these forms around the staff of the spine. And so this symbol before you was formed as the embodiment of Her power. This has been Her symbol since time immemorial, in many places; only in more recent times did some steal it for the symbol of a male god. "Take the staff, for it is yoursas Her servant in all things." I reached out and grasped the staff and felt a rush of kundalini-like power through my body. I only held it for a moment and then it merged with me; the knob of the staff in the center of my head, the heads of the serpents coincident with my eyes. And now before me I again saw the image of Mesopotamia and the regions north of it. It seemed that the Tigris and Euphrates delineated the sides of some mystical staff overlaid upon the land; they were actually the Serpents entwined about it. The two salt lakes became the heads of the Serpents, and the mountains to the north between them became the knob of the staff. "All this land is Hers, o priestess; it always has been and always will be. Though the mangods rule, yet their activities are those of children playing in a house their mother made, not understanding how she maintains it even as they make use of it unthinking. "It is here in her Womb that she brought forth her gifts to mankind; writing, agriculture, crafts and cities; history, the memory that lasts beyond the lives of a generation; the cooperation of great numbers to ease the labor of all. In this place were they born, and here will her other gifts return to mankind in other days. "What boots it if for a time the children play, while Her attention is elsewhere? She made these things for them, and if they now think they are Lords of Creation, in time they will remember and come back to her. The motions of time [i.e., the last few thousand years of history] are a short holiday afternoon to her, as well you know. "When they hunger with the true hunger of the divine, then will She answer them; when they tire of snacking on Seed, and desire the nourishing Milk, she will feed them until they are full up. In the meantime, she lets them go; how else do children grow, but through play and experiment?" A playful atmosphere comes to the vision. At the same time I feel the clitoris of this body hardening and sticking up out of its fold. A flashed image comes of a woman's sex in a state of arousal. "And this that you see is the true origin of the Serpent's symbolism. She sticks her head out of the furrow when the flows of life are at their greatest. Of such small things are great

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truths formed. [A sense of giggling, teasing amusement here.] Only a man, divorced from the land, could think that his ponderous club sticking up in the air is the embodiment of the snake's power. No; the snake stays hidden in the folds of the Earth, close to its burrow, and only comes out into the light of day when the rains fill up the Earth and the spring overflows." [The correspondences of this metaphor should be obvious.] At this point both the vision and the voice dissolved into a rich turquoise illumination. For twenty minutes or so I assumed the throne asana (with both physical and astral bodies) and simply experienced it. The voice returned: "Now, what would we say to a woman who comes here? You shall not know. For even though you come in the image of your past selves, yet in this present time is your finite being shaped to other purposes, as you know. No matter the accuracy of your reproduction [of your past self] it lacks the foundation in daily life to truly comprehend the basis of womanhood; and memory [of past lives] fails when the nerves and body are not suitable. "And even a woman of your times would have trouble finding the essence in this place; for the thoughts of the world [i.e. public and social expectations] are a pressure upon all, shaping and distorting even where the individual is suited to see what we have here. "Yet we would say to her: Come here, and experience the freedom of the goddess. Know the exaltation of womanhood as it was in times before the dominance of men. Know what it is to love who you chose, when you chose, without obligation, without being owned or limited even by the pressures of society. Know what it is to chose the fathers of your children as you will, with full awareness that the children will be yours, and yours alone, with neither obligations to or duties expected from those men. Know the great freedom, as it once was and as it will be again in future times. "Beyond this, we will not speak at this time [on this subject]. "Now, o servant of the goddess, prophet of the snake: Remember as you can these past times, and incorporate them into yourself. You will see, in time, where all this is leading; even Understanding is insufficient when the times are not yet right for revelation. It may be they will never be right, while this body of yours yet lives. The future is not, despite the claims of some; there is no inevitable destiny to events, requiring that they come will-ye or nil-ye. All is change, all is flux, until the moment of manifestation comes. "You have known that some of your duties in this life are contingent upon events; if those events never come, then other things will be found [for you to do]. It matters not; great

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destiny or small, it is all the same. Do as your nature and the circumstances dictate, and let what shall come do so in its own manner. Seek not to form events; the responsibility for this lies elsewhere. Dance the dance, and enjoy. "You are many things, too many to describe or enumerate. You are fully a human being, yet you are also like unto the servants and ministers of God. You are the lost past and the distant future. You carry a god within you, and are one with that god, and yet you are not [one]. Everything that one might say about you is contradicted in some particular. All categories fail in describing you. Therefore explain not, describe not, and ignore descriptions; simply be, and act. [Something here about future visions in this series, which I did not catch.] "We are done." Seer's comments: As near as I can gather, this Part defines the relationship between woman as a finite being and the Mother as transcendental Being shown in the two previous parts. Even the portion I was able to experience (during the meditative hiatus) was astounding. There was a great deal I intuitively apprehended about the attitudes necessary to perfect such a link; but I find them impossible to describe. All the English terms that bear on the matter are pejorative in one way or another; the language lacks any means of speaking of it in a positive manner. It is easy enough to read over this vision and the previous two Parts and extract the essentials. What is not so easy is to imagine a social context in which these things are the height of respectability; in which the woman who achieves them has not only her personal will to sustain her, but religious cachet and a supportive social structure to help her maintain the state. I doubt it would be possible to fully realize all aspects of the relationship in any "civilized" social context that exists today; they have all been too poisoned by Aryan attitudes. Other than this, there is little to say. The sections dealing with the Serpent symbolism are self-explanatory. Overall, the three days work on this Part all relate in a general way to the zodiac sign of Cancer. Cancer is primal Water, hence the Flood symbolism. Cancer is the sign of Motherhood, so the rest fits in well enough. The erratic dancing of the ministers might be associate with Cancer as the Crab, which moves in skittering, sideways jerks.

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There is also some small indication that we are moving out of a general presentation on the divine Mother and back into presentations more closely related to the paths of the Tree of Life. The image of the Mother as star-goddess relates to the path of Aquarius, which connects Binah with Chokmah in Frater Achad's Tree of Life. No doubt this connection will be explained more closely in other Parts.

Todnaon, Part 23 of 91, 2nd of ZID. Zodiacal King: Olpaged (Leo) Ministers: 7236. Mundane association: Soxia (Sinkiang or Xin Jiang province in western China.) (Note to myself: The sigil for this Part doesn't match Dee's version. Check it before doing. [7/23/95 -- Dee's version is more compact. My version takes the letters in their proper sequence, but adds a superfluous line, making seven line segments instead of the usual six. There seems to be some rule that you can't jump the line except to an adjacent square.]) Sunday, July 23, 1995 11:27 AM The vision began with an image of a featureless circular area of a brownish-yellow color, surrounded by a necklace made of tiny rosette-like forms mounted on a thin chain. The rosettes each appeared to have a blue center, with white petals in a single circle around the center. Each petal was trapezoidal, the long parallel side as the outer edge. They seemed to be made of some enamel or ceramic. Now the image shifted slightly and the central portion became a barren sandy waste, the rosettes became oases around its edge, and the chain became trade roads between them. The image shifted again, and now there was a great lion, roaring and leaping about with frantic energy. His fur stuck out from his body in every direction, every hair vibrating, but moving in a different way from all the others. Flames came from his mouth, but did not harm anything -- there was nothing but sand there. There was no purpose to his movements, no object or intent. I felt a sense of pity for him, wasting his energy in violent, empty motion. Now a woman appeared, dressed in a thin white robe. She was golden-haired and had brown skin. She placed her hand upon the lion as he came past in his leaping, and he immediately stopped; but still he quivered with power looking for an exit. The woman

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stroked the lion for a time. Then she lay down on his back, resting her head on his neck, with her body and legs along his spine. Her aura had radiated a sense of soothing calmness. Now it took on a very odd quality, sinuous and serpent-like. Gravity seemed to have no effect upon her; she was attached to the lion by some inner force of hers which negated anything else that might affect her. She began to glide around the lion's body, keeping full contact with it at all times. Like a snake wrapped around a tree she circled and looped around him, down and under, up and over, in every direction. "Glide" is the precise word; she encountered no friction at all as she moved. Very sensual. A change came over the lion from her actions. His energies before were not only without direction, they vibrated in every possible manner simultaneously, and changed and shifted chaotically. But the woman's actions seemed to bring order to them, sorting them out by type and nature, and brought focus to them as well. His fur settled and smoothed, his mane combed itself into neatness. It seemed that the woman coupled with the lion for a moment, and took a measure of his power into herself. As she did her aura expanded to totally surround the lion, enclosing him as her womb enclosed his member. A sense of great pleasure filled the air; entirely sexual but in no way tense. Now the woman glided around again to the lion's back, and sat astride him. He looked about for a moment, and then began to move purposefully away from this place. It was his own purpose he followed; the woman rode him, but did not direct his course. The voice spoke: "It was said that Babalon was a harlot, but this is not so, save in the minds of the perverted who can imagine no other view. She is qadish, the pure and holy one, and it is her holiness that allows her to take all men into herself. By doing so she affirms herself, transcending all natures by enclosing them. If one man is wicked, it matters not to her; if another is good, she takes him as joyfully. Each benefits thereby, and her sanctity is increased by her actions. "Yet if man is so caught up in his own "superiority", if he thinks he must degrade her to raise himself up, if he refuses her divinity in her acts of love; then he loses her and must go alone in the world, unsanctified, wasting himself in empty works. For it is she who gives focus and order to his work; in his union with her is his true will revealed. She does not guide; his own nature guides him. Yet without her does his nature go astray.

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"Give praise to the holy one, mother and lover, the source of comfort. Her love surpasses understanding, yea, surpasses even the crown. In the secret places of the unmanifest, she is All, and None; there is nothing she does not encompass within herself, yet she is greater than all of them together. Meet her joyfully, o man, and embrace her as your lover. At this point I fell into a meditative trance on the energies of the Part. No further vision came. Monday, July 24, 1995 12:57 PM The vision opened with another view of the necklace seen yesterday. But now the yellowbrown area in the center was a large high-cabochon cut topaz; the center of each rosette was an ice-blue diamond, and the petals were feathers, in which all colors coruscated beneath their overall whiteness. The whole was a huge brooch or medallion, mounted on a ribbon colored like a lapis stone; the ribbon was the Milky Way. It was worn around the neck of some great being who could only be sensed vaguely, not seen. I seem to be having some trouble; nothing more wants to come. Odd, since when I was sitting on my bed invoking the Part, all sorts of visions rushed about me. Now sitting in front of my computer, there is nothing. While doing the invocation I had two important realizations, received mostly in a visual/intuitive form. Translated into words: First, concerning the nature of the Enochian system. I have said many times that this magick connects with absolutely everything that exists, on Earth or off it. It touches every part of the universe regardless of whether it is part of our Earthly scheme of creation. My work with the "Lotus of the Temple" shows that it connects to some very strange places indeed. As has been stated several times in these visions every "male" seed, every act of creation by some entity, creates a region -- a "zone of power" -- with a definite thematic and energetic content. That is, it is limited in the sense that anything with a definite nature excludes from itself things not of that nature. Since the Enochian magick connects together a multitude of different creative zones, it follows that it cannot be a "creation" in the same sense that those zones are; otherwise some regions must necessarily be excluded from connection by its incompatible nature. The Enochian magick must instead be a manifestation of the "female" aspect of divinity, as it has been described in this and the preceding Parts; the Enochian God may very well be an Enochian Goddess. This would account for the way the magick always seems to enter a particular region along some dimension that doesn't exist inside the region; and for the peculiar "twist" it

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sometimes puts on our view of a region. The connections exist in the transcendent aspect of the divine Woman, so would appear to be irrational or indescribable within any particular finite frame of reference. It would also account for the way that the "regular" angels and gods of the Tablets often show deeper natures totally different from their superficial, "elemental" classifications. The second realization concerns the Call of the Aethyrs. The recent Parts describe the universe as a single transcendental Female aspect, within which a multitude of creative "fathers" work their will. These creations do not exist in isolation; they interact with each other. Being of many different (and complex) natures, they must necessarily come into conflict as often as they are compatible or irrelevant to each other. Within the enfolding Mother's influence, they sometimes compete, sometimes cooperate, and are sometimes irrelevant to each other. In short, they form a complex dynamic system -- an "ecology", if you will -- in which everything affects everything else, but in ways that do not have predictable outcomes. If we accept this view, then the "curse" of the Call becomes nothing of the kind; it is simply a poetic description of the actual way of things. I will not analyze the Call in detail until I think about this further. There was also an appearance by the lion, but it only repeated things from the first vision, from its own viewpoint. Nothing significant in its speech. Wednesday, July 26, 1995 12:45 PM The vision opened looking into the topaz at the center of the brooch seen previously. The Lion appeared therein, and suddenly I was the Lion, looking outwards. The lion's mane rose from his head and formed a cloud around it, as if held out by static electricity. As suddenly, all of the lion except the mane collapsed into a tiny point and disappeared; there was nothing left but these charged lines radiating out in every direction, a sphere with no point at its center. My awareness went into these lines. I noted that each of them was a different color and seemed to carry a different type or frequency of energy. Individual lines changed their position in the sphere constantly, so that there was no steadiness or continuity. Now I saw the glyph of the Sun before me. Sparks of lightning leapt from the central point to the peripheral circle all around its circumference. A hand came in from outside the picture, and cut the circle; the circle disappeared and all the energy of the point went into the lightning leaping outwards; the point also disappeared. The lines of lightning spread out and vanished from the picture, each taking an erratic, spinning path. The voice said:

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"The Father is the Son shorn of his enclosure, which is the contribution of the Mother. The nature of the Father is to project itself outwards in all directions; it loses itself in the motion, and is no more. Without the enclosing love of the Mother, the Father expends his power to no purpose; it neither creates nor exalts its creator. "She reflects his power back upon itself, enclosing it and forcing it into a narrow passage. It is thereby constricted, but its remains intact and undispersed. "She also provides a focusing effect. Without her enclosure, the power radiated in every direction, each individual type moving by itself . Now, with her circle about Him, the energy is folded over on itself; that is, powers that are harmonic with each other, which belong to the same "chord" of vibration, are gathered together and focused on a particular point on the rim of the enclosed region. Remember the original image of this part:" I saw again the first image of the Part, a chain of rosettes around a hot barren area. The rosettes now each seemed to vibrate with a different quality, shining outwards into the surrounding world and also back towards the center of the ring. "The many qualities inherent in the Father's original impulse cannot be re-unified. They cannot be brought back together in the center of the circle and fused into a single point. Different groups of those energies are inherently incompatible with each other; once separated, they never rejoin. "The real powers of the Son lie in these nodes upon the perimeter of his region; there is no true center, no individual, no point-like interior "I" to be found. But the nodes interact with each other, exchanging energy, cooperating and interfering with each other in many ways. And this intense interaction generates the illusion [word emphasized] of an individual, whose nature is determined by the pattern of those interactions. "This is the meaning of the Buddha's dictum, that there is no permanence within the skandha of consciousness. For consciousness (and especially self-consciousness) arises out of the interaction of these nodes of power, which are not themselves conscious. And consciousness is entirely dependent upon their interaction; its specific state at any point in time is determined by the momentary state of those interactions in their ongoing, perpetual changes. "If they change, so it changes. And yet...[brief pause] it seems at times as if this metacreature, this abstract gloss upon the reality, itself is able to generate a will-to-change within the nodes from which it arises. Does this mean that it actually does have some existence separate from its supports? No; for what appears to be self-will arises not out of the illusory Self, but in a higher realm all together. It is a third factor, beyond the Father

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and Mother as they exist in the Tree, which enters into the equation. All will is really the divine Will, expressing itself through the medium of a Son. "This divine Will is of great importance; for it is the source of the urge to evolve, to move upwards in the planes of existence, which is the process of initiation. It is the Will which makes such changes possible at all; without it there would be only gradual, almost accidental movements in that direction, quickly lost again. It comes from outside [emphasized] to work changes within the finite being. Why does it do so? We know not. How does it do so? By its own nature. When does it do so? According to its own judgment (if judgment it truly has), and not according to the desires of the being in whom it acts. Once it comes, it is always present to some degree, but that degree varies greatly in intensity, and therefore in what can be accomplished. "But when the will appears in the man, it does not dictate the nature of change, but only enables it. It is the task of the Son to seize the time and move upwards according to its current state, its preparation for the moment, and its desires of achievement. "Now in the previous Parts, it was shown how the woman might become the Mother, through direct identification of their natures, by creating a congruence between the acts and perceptions of the finite woman and the transcendental nature of the Mother. One might interpret this as being mainly a religious mode of work, but it is not so; it is a truly magickal mode of work, and only the blindness of men makes it seem otherwise to them. "Here in this Part we have the key to how a man might come to know the Mother. This way is the traditional way; we give here a slightly different viewpoint on the matter. "The "circle" which the Mother gives to the Son, the enclosing and defining perimeter, is not Herself as such, but only a reflection. It is a ring-pass-not in the Theosophical sense, a boundary which contains his energies and focuses them. It is a limitation or wall in a way that she herself is not, and is itself finite, not transfinite as she is. "But the Mother herself (in her manifestation as Binah) can perform the enclosure of the Son's energies as well as can that lesser circle. She already does so, in fact, but the lesser circle blinds us to her presence. "When the nodes of a finite being have organized themselves and their interactions to the greatest extent possible, and have eliminated any stray vibrations from external sources, and have reached the highest possible "charge" of power within the limits of the lesser circle; and the Will is present in full force. Then it is possible for the man to break down the lesser circle, to cut it away as did the hand in the image we showed you, and release its energies outwards.

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"Since the existence of the individualized "self" is dependent upon that circle, and upon the nodes of power it creates from the Father's energies, then the destruction of that circle causes the destruction of that self. The energies of the nodes are released and expand outward as is their nature when unconstrained, their interactions stop for a time, and the illusion of Self ceases. "But their movement is not entirely unconstrained, for without the lesser circle, the Mother can come into direct interaction with them. If each node is endowed beforehand with enough energy, then when it is released the Mother's nature takes it and encloses it in her being as it would an impulse directly from the Father. It becomes concentrated again, but as water flows into a hollow, not as fire is concentrated in a spark. "We are not saying this well; it is a difficult thing. Perhaps an image would assist:" I saw a glyph of the sun, with tiny points of power situated at various points around its circumference. These points were very intense, like the sparks of an arc-welder. Sharp lines of light shot between them, defining their interactions. Then the circle was cut and the sparks were released. Each moved outward radially, expanding from intense points to less intense spheres of power as they went. The view expanded to keep them all in sight, and as it did so I realized that they were expanding into a great sea, a region of a watery nature, whose nature had been previously concealed by the narrowness of the view. As the spheres of power moved out in this region, their nature changed. They seemed to take on a liquid quality themselves. Their power was not reduced, but the urge-to-expand (or urge-to-expend themselves) disappeared and was replaced with a kind of "contentment" with their current state, a sense of being in some way at rest. The outward motion ceased and they were all left floating in the sea. Indeed, aside from the obvious visual distinction, I could not perceive any difference between these spheres of power and the surrounding water; they seemed identical in every other way. Now new visible flows began to connect them, and these two were not in any appreciable way different from the water in which they were. The voice spoke again: "You see, when the powers are released and expand into the larger realm of the mother, they cease to be what they once were, and take on her nature. It is not actually the same "sparks" that started outwards which come to rest at the end of the movement. Rather, their power is expended in her substance, and causes to arise an expression of her

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infinitude that is of a similar nature; she is all things in herself, and that which arises is simply a display of one aspect of what she is. "The sparks of the Father (arising out of the dead Son) are no more; what remains is entirely of Her. Yet the pattern of the Son's nature is mostly intact, taken back into herself. Consciousness returns with the interactions of herself with herself within the pattern. Yet the "self" that arises in out of that pattern knows itself to be nothing but Her, indistinguishable from Her, inseparable from Her. The appearance of a man, but not a man; the infinity of Her is always present, the things which make him perceptible within her substance are mere wavelets in her vast sea. "Now, because nothing of the Father remains in him, this transcendent once-man can itself become the Mother to a new impulse from the Father. And this is a key to the grade of Magus. A new union of the divine parents comes about, with the pattern within her receiving the Father's seed, and making it into a son to manifest within the finite worlds. "But we have said enough, and more than enough. We are done." Seer's comments: The image that opens both day's work is based on the actual geography of the Sinkiang region of China. There is a central desert, enclosed on either side by two seasonal rivers, fed by meltwater from the surrounding mountain ranges. Along the courses of the rivers are a chain of non-seasonal oases that are the main habitable areas of the region. Once again we are dealing with another aspect of the divine Woman. We can see a progressive presentation over the course of the last few Parts: 19 Opmacas: Declaration of a shift in the visions from primarily "male" powers to primarily "female" powers. Several traditionally male Paths of the Tree are dealt with in a form that emphasizes the hidden female factor. 20 Genadol: The divine Mother as a thing-in-herself. Presentation of her most "cosmic" aspect, as Infinite Space and, perhaps, whatever it is that encloses space and time. 21 Aspiaon: The relation between the Mother and the finite worlds of creation, and with finite self-aware beings as a general category. 22 Zamfres: The relation between the Mother and women, typified through the symbolism of the old Goddess religions.

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23 Todnaon: The relation between the Mother and men, typified through the traditional experience of "crossing the Abyss", but with a few twists on the usual interpretation. The visions themselves seem self-explanatory, when taken together. I don't see any need for further comment.

Pristac, Part 24 of 91, 3rd of ZID. Zodiacal king: Zarzilg (Gemini) Ministers: 2302. Mundane association: Gallia (France, Belgium, and Luxembourg) Friday, July 28, 1995 2:00 p.m. The vision opened with an image of France seen from space. The sigil of the Part was superimposed thereon; the left two segments were the coast of France, the point at the top was the mouth of the Rhine, and the remaining segments became the Rhine river. A voice said: "Gallia omnis est diviso in tres partes." Julius Caesar's famous line. The word "omnis" was emphasized. Then the voice added: "Aquitania, Belgica, et Celtica." Then, speaking English: "And the foremost of these is Aquitaine." Now the image changed to one like the card "The Lovers", save that the angel was clearly female, and the two other figures both male. One man looked upwards towards the woman, the other looked down at the earth beneath his feet. Their clothes changed into that of the medieval upper class. The woman elaborately gowned in white, with a golden tiara holding up an elaborate hairdo. The man looking up was dressed in red and white, with a lion embroidered on the front of his tunic. The other man was dressed in earthy colors, mostly black. I somehow knew these people to be Eleanor of Aquitaine, and her two sons Richard and John. The voice said: "The mother cannot contain her nature within a single vessel, within the realms of Air; therefor does she divide herself, giving to one the love of the Spirit, to the other the love of the Earth. And between them do her twin sons encompass what can be held of her in the nature of men.

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"One seems to look downwards, the other upwards; yet both look towards her. Is she not the enclosing womb, both above and below, and upon all sides? Therefor do those who worship Earth and its wealth worship her as well as those who look upon her divinity. "Think not that one [son] is greater than the other. They are not above and below, but rather balanced in perpetual interchange. The one who rides high in the sky as often as not is the one who looks downward; he who enters the Earth often serves her Spirit. Who should know this better than you, o son of Set? "If one son should die, fear not: he shall return. For the Star is reborn from his passage through the underworld; the Snake shed his skin and rises anew. The Conquering Child does not conquer in truth, for his rival is always present, even in death. And his turn in death also comes, when the Serpent wraps him in its coils and smothers his light and glory. "And there is a third always present in their perpetual conflict; for they are bound by her Love. It is only in the realization of that love in themselves that the conflict ends; for when realization comes, there will remain no difference between them. In the burning passions of love shall they fuse into none, and bring the world back to lay in the Mother's lap. "Their conflict is truly love, though its form is violence. Yet the Love of Her is present even in the world, without their presence; she sponsors it and promotes it in those who feel her being, whether they know it or not. Desire, romance, the ideals [idealizations?] of men for women, these are of Her as well. They form the perpetual unseen background to the transitory, foreground conflicts of her sons." [And I am reminded of Frank Herbert's line, that no historian notices the woman working in the field to support her children, because her husband has been called off to war. This is yet another form of love.] "Now we have said enough; you understand, and can explain if you will. We are done." Seer's comments: The visions continue their presentation of various aspects of the Mother. This time it explains the reason for the dual nature of her Sons. And as usual, there are many echoes of Liber AL and Nuit. The world of the Son, the Air or Ruach, is characterized by dualities and oppositions. The human mind naturally falls into thinking of things in dualistic terms, of "A" and "not-A", of "higher" and "lower". The message of this Part is that even within the Ruach these dualisms are false, because there is always a third factor present, which is the relationship

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between them. If there is no connection between two things, then they cannot be opposites. Connection requires similarity of nature, a negation of differences in some dimension, which is a power of the Mother. The dualities of the Ruach are really expressions of the Nought of the Mother, and her undivided nature is constantly present in the connection or Love that binds them together. "The whole of Gaul is divided into three parts." Given the emphasis on the word "whole", one might take this to mean that Gallia is itself a representation of the divine mother, and the divisions are in some way manifestations of her. (Apropos, France is usually symbolized as a woman.) The A-B-C listing of those divisions is certainly significant, but I don't know how. The second image changes the symbolism of the Tarot card to fit better with the traditional "Twins" myths, in which both human characters are male. In the unspoken subtext of the vision, there was a definite sense that the woman is Nuit, and the men are Hoor-pa-Kraat (Richard) and Ra-Hoor-Khuit (John), thus calling in the symbolism of Liber AL. Eleanor of Aquitaine is perhaps the best possible representative of the Mother in (relatively) recent history. She was a great patron of the arts, the inspiration for the idealized Love of the troubadours' Romantic movement, and for the high-minded conceptions of chivalry that went with it. But at the same time she had great political savvy and a was competent ruler. These natures, united in her, were split in her sons. Richard inherited the Romantic nature, running off to follow dreams of glory in the Crusades; John inherited her political nature, and sought to fuse the loose confederacy of English nobles into a genuine monarchy. Thus her own undivided nature becomes dual in the transition to the male mode. Following this, the vision delves into some alternate symbolism for the same thing. The "one who rides high in the sky" is Horus, the one who "enters the Earth" is Set. These two are then connected with Thelemic symbolism: Horus is the Star, Set is the Snake. (This is a revisionist use of these symbols.) Since both poles of a duality are necessary for either to exist, neither ever "conquers" the other. If one pole should be "killed", a new opposing pole is immediately generated, with a new relationship joining them.

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Oddiorg, Part 25 of 91, First of ZIP. Zodiacal King: Hononol (Taurus) Ministers: 9996. Mundane association: Illyria (Eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, including most of former Yugoslavia. As a Roman possession, expanded to include eastern Austria and western Hungary.) Geoffrey James erroneously lists Assyria for this Part. Friday, August 04, 1995 3:21 p.m. The vision opens with an image of the glyph of Taurus; the crescent separates from the circle, as in the 20th Part, but here it moves upwards to become a sliver of moon in the last stages of waning, where before it was a waxing crescent. There is a bitter taste to the air, like alkaline dust. It brings with it feelings of loss and defeat, of memories so old that their joy cannot be recalled, of things buried and dead. A faint wailing can be heard, as of many women crying for their dead lovers. Now the voice says: "The moon wanes; the moon wanes; her blood is dried up, her moisture withdrawn into the darkness, her life leached into the Earth carrying away with it all save the dry bones of the land. ["Leached" in the sense that water leaches caves out of limestone.] Her children cannot find her; her husband has sought for her and been disappointed. Nothing remains save the aching hearts of those who have known her, and hunger for her presence. "We who remain when she is gone have nothing but ashes and heartbreak; our lives are torn and rent, their wholeness shattered and scattered to the four winds. [I get the impression that the spirits of the Parts are those who remain. Possibly this has something to do with the curse of Division that is the Call of the Aethyrs.] Were she here, we would be one; but she sleeps the sleep that is like unto death, and none can awaken her save one. And he wanders blind through the deserts of men, taking their curse upon himself for their sake, and hers.

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"Would that he could find her, and put the taste of himself upon her lips! Would that she would awaken thereby and make us whole again! Would that she would comfort us in her embrace, erasing the tears and heartache of her absence! "O Men! Do as you would; without her all is futile, your actions, however great, an aimless wandering. Your joys, however powerful, a bitter dust. Nothing lasts; nothing endures; nothing triumphs that does not also fall again. Look on your own works, o you mighty ones, and despair! For they shall not endure. Time shall wear them down to dust, and that dust shall blow away. "Woe! Woe! Woe! Yea, four and five times woe unto us, and unto you, that our works are of no effect. There is no Progress, but only change; an endless recycling of old times, of old things, dressed up in youthful bodies, but not made new thereby. "Bitter, bitter, bitter are our hearts." On a parallel track, happening simultaneously with the above, the wailing in the background grew stronger. An image appears of many women, their heads covered with shawls and dressed in black robes, wailing in sorrow and lamentation. The pound their hands against an ancient wall, a mere fragment of some greater structure that once stood there. It is the "Wailing Wall" in Jerusalem. The voice said: "Before Solomon, even before Yahweh was a glimmer in the mind of some priest, did women come here to lament the passing of their loved ones. For did not She also lament at the passing of Her lover, Dimuzi? The stones of the wall are Her tears, which made the dust into mud, which hardened into Stone. Her sacred precincts are gone, buried under the rubble of later ages; yet Her memory still comes up from the depths of women, and expresses itself in Her place. "Yet it is not for Dimuzi that they weep, nor truly for their loved ones. It is for Her that they lament with such force, and for themselves. After many years, they still feel the loss of her light and life, and lament the degradation that loss brought upon their kind. [That is, upon women.] The force of Heaven was withdrawn from them, and they were trampled under the feet of men. Woe has been their lot, and woe is what they express." (I can sense there is more, but I cannot endure this place any longer. I am being crushed by the despair here. I am withdrawing from the vision.) Monday, August 07, 1995 1:03 PM

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As the vision opened, the sigil of the Part was before my eyes. Behind it, an image of the Adriatic Sea appeared, with the sigil overlaying a portion of the eastern side roughly contiguous with what is currently called Bosnia. The image enlarged and at the same time transformed in some way, so that a circular region became like a lunar landscape -- or like land cratered by artillery bombardments. The surrounding region became darker, barely visible. The voice said: "Woe, woe is their lot; from the beginnings of time until the end, nothing but woe and pain. For they have conspired with evil and been touched thereby. Evil eats itself, while good seeks to destroy it; thus nothing they do can have a good end. Now there was a sound of a great many marching troops. Out of the darkness surrounding the visible circle, there came a horde of men dressed in armor. Each bore a shield with the sun emblazoned on it; each carried a long spear or pike with a golden tip. Each wore a white surcoat with a red eagle upon it, and a black border. These men streamed towards the area along paths from all sides. Like streams, these paths were narrow at their beginning but widened as they progressed. All these paths merged as they approached the encircled area, and the men spread out to surround it, their spears all pointing inwards, forcing back whatever might seek to leave the circle. I get the impression that this all refers both to the Roman conquest of the region, when it was a refuge for pirates and raiders, and to the Nazi invasion, and to the current conflict there. The image transformed so that the lunar component became dominant, and it was the Moon during a solar eclipse. The men surrounding it became the corona of the Sun. The voice said: "When the darkness reaches its greatest extent, then does the Sun blaze forth, overcoming the loss of the Mother with the glory of the Son. So too in the ages of history, for as the Mother's force faded in the world, so did that of the Son, the WarriorKing, come forth and move into its ascent. The aged Father lies hidden in darkness (as Osiris is in the Underworld) a shadowy, ghostly influence upon events; meanwhile the Son reaches forth and conquers what his Mother built. "And you ask: Where is the Daughter? I say: She is her Mother, but laid low; there is no difference between them, save that the Son's foot is now upon her neck, holding her down that she might be more conveniently raped. And in that rape does the Son see himself reborn, producing out of her a child which is all His, and none of Hers.

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(The unspoken subtext says the Aryan belief was that the deceased father of a king became his tutelary spirit, wielding only a hidden advisory influence over his actions, while the king's conquests -- and the "glory" accrued thereby -- were all from the son's own work. They also believed that a male child was a spiritual duplicate of its father, taking nothing from its mother. So having many male children was a form of immortality, a perpetuation of one spirit through many bodies. The woman was a mere vehicle for this Solar Progress, and did not participate in it herself. But she could become "spoiled" if another man had her, causing the sons to be of a mixed nature. Hence their obsession with making sure that all the children of their wives were theirs. And the Hebrew practice of killing all the men and married women in a conquered territory, while saving the virgin women. And their practice of killing a married woman who had been raped -- she could no longer produce "pure" sons of her husband.) "It matters not that the Son's belief is false. So long as he believes it, it perpetuates itself in the minds of men even while their bodies partake secretly of their mother's nature. "And thus the power of the Mother, her life and nurturance, fall down into darkness. What once covered the world now must lie hidden, until the Son eventually falls. Her powers of life, death, and renewal have been arrogated by the Son, but he cannot maintain them; death he can manage, and creation; but support and growth? These are not in his nature. Nor are his creations all that he desires, for they must [emphasized] partake of their mother's nature in order to live; thus they always go astray from his plans. "Now, in the succeeding Parts, we shall see her again, as often as necessary. But for the moment we shall be passing on to different ways of looking at things, as the Parts shift in their relationships and their powers take over different regions of existence on this world. What was once so, is not now; what is now, will not be so. Change is perpetual in the Parts, and what we see now may not be, when another comes again. But these seven Parts shall remain Hers for some time to come, and shall continue as expressions of Her many natures, which are one. "We are done." Seer's comments: This vision is clearly related to the Moon in its final stages of waning, when the feminine power is withdrawing from manifestation. Traditionally this is a time of ill-luck, of sorrow and death. Things begun at this time are doomed to failure; other things experience a nadir of vitality, an inability to go forward, and disruption from random events. The futility of such times is reflected in Friday's vision. The "wailing wall" scene iconifies it in the mythos of Inanna/Ishtar, in the sorrow she feels at the death of her lover Dimuzi or

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Tammuz, and then extends it into an expression of the endless suffering of women under the Hebrew dispensation and its successors. Monday's vision suggests that the endless fighting of the Balkan regions is due to a connection with this darkest of the Mother's phases. It then moves into the final disappearance of the Mother's power, in a perfect eclipse. At the moment of greatest darkness the female powers vanish or are conquered by the Solar powers. The army surrounding the Balkan region in the vision is a stereotyped Roman legion, surrounding and vanquishing the darkly-lunar local forces. Rome is solar because of the "twin sons" myth of Romulus and Remus. The red eagle is not the alchemical symbol (which is feminine) but the Eagle of the Legions. When the Son takes over, the sorrow of this last phase of the Mother's power is perpetuated, as if the female powers were "frozen" in that instant of time. The vision relates this to the conquest of the Middle East by the Aryans, and the consequences for the women of the area. It suggests that the invasion was due to the waning of the Mother's power on a cosmic level, related to the passage of the equinox from the sign of Taurus into Aries. The entire series of Parts from Opmacas to Oddiorg can be seen as representing a single complete revolution of the Moon, passing through all her phases. Opmacas represents the first instant after the new moon, when the balance between the Lunar and Solar forces is just barely shifted in her favor. Oddiorg is the final few instants preceding the new moon. Part 22, Zamfres, is the full moon. The remaining Parts in the sequence represent the quarters of her orbit. Genadol is the waxing crescent moon. Aspiaon is the waxing gibbous moon. Todnaon is the waning gibbous moon, and Pristac is the waning crescent moon. As with any group of four, there is a temptation to connect these with the elements. But aside from the clear connection between Pristac and the element of Air, such an association fails. Zamfres, the full moon, has more in common with water than any of the remaining four. Perhaps a better way would be to view the cycle as taking place in a vertical dimension, with the waxing phases representing a movement into complete manifestation, and the waning phases a movement back out of manifestation.

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Cralpir, Part 26 of 91, 2nd of ZIP. Zodiacal King: Lavavoth (Sagittarius) Ministers: 3620. Mundane association: Sogdiana Wednesday, August 09, 1995 1:32 PM The vision opens with the image of a minute point in a dark space. No, there is no space, only the point itself. Now a line begins to extend downwards out of the point; but before it can extend very far it bifurcates, and splits again, and again. The angles of the splits are strange in some way; they seem to defy measurement or definition. A fractal function of some sort seems to be implied; or something of which a fractal is a reflection. The splitting continues, each branch of a split extending only a small bit before it splits again. Soon the whole space (and now there is definitely "space" present) is filled with them. The original point is totally obscured, though it seems I can sense a small clear area immediately around it, hidden by the confusion of lines. It seems to me that each of the bifurcations represents a choice. Rather, the possibility of a choice, for nothing is really manifest in this vision; these lines all exist on some level prior to finite manifestation. I don't know how I know that. Somehow this maze of lines represents the infinite potential present in the extension of the Point. Now the view recedes so that the lines become smaller. Soon they are entirely lost from view, even though they still fill the space I am looking at. All that is left is a featureless something that seems to vibrate intensely with the possibility of things becoming out of it. All these potentials seem perfectly balanced; there is no tendency of any sort, in any direction. The vision continues to recede, and as I view ever larger amounts of space, another image slowly takes form. First a pair of crossed lines, intersecting at such an angle that a rectangle drawn between points equidistant from their intersection would be a golden rectangle. Now a closed curve appears centered on their intersection. It is not a circle or an oval, rather as if a golden rectangle had been distorted towards an oval shape. The curve turns into a wreath. In the center of the wreath a naked female figure appears. Unlike the Tarot card, there is no scarf hiding the crotch; it is certain that the figure is not androgynous. She stands in the pose of Botticelli's Venus. Her right hand rests between her breasts, pointing upwards; the thumb of her left hand rests on her mons veneris, the first two fingers pointing downwards, the others curled under, so that her genitals are framed in the "V" of her hand. One gets the impression that she is stimulating herself with her middle finger.

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The voice said: "This is the Virgin of the World, the third of the powers emanating from the divine. [That is, the third path, not the third sephira.] She is the complement to the Will of the Divine, and the Life of the Divine; without her, nothing would be. And she is greater than they, in a sense, for she must contain within herself all the possibilities that they might manifest. And she is less than they, for she serves them (in the end) with immaculate perfection. "And yet at this point, nothing is done. She is still pure, unsullied; nothing of her potential has been made into form. We who dwell in this Part bask in her unspeakable perfection; we know her, yet she is not touched thereby. God created her for Love; she is all desire, and the object of desire unfulfilled. The creatures [i.e., the four elemental animals] do not encircle her; she encircles them. They come out of her womb in the moment she becomes known. "Now, if you would understand and know her, o man who is a mage, then do this: In the dark of the night, when the world is still, vibrate the Call and the name of this Part. Assume the god-form she shows here, and invoke her as you know how, with the pleasure of the body. And if she comes to you and embraces you, you are indeed among the blessed of Earth; for only those who are of the highest may know her. And in that moment will you be willing to give all. "Any further voice could be only silence. We are done." Thursday, August 10, 1995 I tried the invocation as suggested but didn't get much from it. A few moments when some force surged in, but nothing more. Perhaps it was necessary as a conditioning process, to get my being more accustomed to the power. Will invoke again the regular way tomorrow. Friday, August 11, 1995 12:12 p.m. After the invocation, no vision came immediately. Instead I had a strange sensation in the region of my heart, as if something were blowing away all tensions -- indeed, all conditions and qualities of any sort -- and leaving behind a clean, airy sort of energy. It seemed to well up out of nowhere, extend up and down my torso and out the five extensions of the body, blowing out the ends of my fingertips, toes, and the top of my head. For a moment I felt like one of those diagrams of the etheric body in the old Theosophical books. The power began to blow out through my skin as well, and the innermost shell of my aura filled with it, at the same time taking on the form of a vesica piscis around my body. The

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sensations from my astral body disappeared, and for a few moments the vesica was my body, its outline my skin, its inside a gate opening into a realm where there was nothing but this power. The sense of identification faded enough for me to hear the voice: "Only those who become her can know her. Not the mind, not the body, not even the soul and spirit can know her as she is. If there is any sense of outside, of separation from her, then she is not known; only in being [emphasized] her is knowing possible. For she remains virgin throughout all the ages; the ages are not of her, but are beneath her. [That is, Time has not yet come into being at this level.] The creations of man or god touch her not; she is above them, wholly. Now look again." I fell back into the state (I can't call it a "vision") again; barely conscious of time and sequence. After some time, I saw the image of the Virgin seen before, but the wreath around her was now a vesica like the one surrounding me. She seemed far away, then close, then immediately before me, without any perceptible transition. Her body touched mine, and I literally melted, starting from the bottom up. In moments, all of my body below the heart level had vanished entirely; there was nothing but her and the power out of which she came. I didn't find this at all disturbing; rather, there was a great sense of release. Where the vanished parts had been, there was nothing but her; it seemed that there never had been anything but her, and never would be. The vanishing continued until I was only a head, looking straight into her eyes from a few inches away. The head vanished and I was a naked viewpoint under her regard. Then even that difference vanished. (This whole process was very sexual, in a way. It was accompanied by a sensation like what I imagine one sort of female orgasm to be -- the "wave" or "oceanic" sort -- save that it was permanently and without effort at the crest of the wave, a continuous and unending orgasmic peak.) Now it seemed that I was her, and she was a gigantic figure. The vesica that shortly before had been myself was now her own genitals, glowing in an orgasmic peak. And out of her the entire world flowed -- no, gushed -- in a great unending stream. She pours the world out of herself, and this is the cause of her pleasure. (I am not saying this right, but it is as close as I can get.) She (I) stands with legs apart, head back, her spine arched forward, and revels in that pouring-forth. The eroticism of this is indescribable, and I doubt I will be able to remember it afterwards; it is too much. I cannot call this process "creative", in the way that the Father is creative. For there is no focus, no distinction, no discrimination, no purpose or intent. It is all the same to her; what comes forth, comes forth, and is as it should be. But at the same time it is creative, after

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another fashion, for there is nothing passive about the process; it is willed, positive, in no way submissive or receptive. She needs no Father, no husband or complement; she is selfactivated, self-fulfilling. Her act is her own triumph, not the fulfillment of another's will. [A few minutes pass.] I passed in and out of that state several times, each time being out of it for longer. The voice was right; even this close to the event, I cannot remember it clearly. You can only be that power in its essence, you cannot view it from "outside". I could easily re-enter that state, but for the moment I choose not to do so. It could be addictive. It occurs to me that the last words the voice spoke in Wednesday's vision is a quite literal prophecy of today's experience. The words were: "And in that moment will you be willing to give all." This superficially echoes Liber AL 1:60: "But to love me is better than all things: if under the night-stars in the desert thou presently burnest mine incense before me, invoking me with a pure heart, and the Serpent flame therein, thou shalt come a little to lie in my bosom. For one kiss wilt thou then be willing to give all;...". In the context of the Liber AL verse, "willing" is used in the sense of "amenable", implying that the magician, having been touched by Nuit, would want to abandon all that he is and has for more of her. But here another sense is used -- "active intent in the process of being carried out". At the moment of identification, the Virgin of this vision was will-ing the world out of herself; her intent was to "give all". Thus at the moment I became her, I was literally "willing to give all". This sort of cabalistic near-pun is not uncommon with Enochian entities. Enough. I dismiss the forces of the Part. Seer's comments: Wow. With this vision, the Parts return to their previous pattern of describing themselves in relation to the Tree of Life. (The seven visions of the Mother seem to take place outside this pattern.) In this case, the path in question is that of Saturn, connecting Kether with Binah in Frater Achad's version of the Tree. Note that this does not accord with the attribute of the Zodiacal King Lavavoth, which is Sagittarius. Little is seen of Saturn, either; only the mathematical images in the first day's vision. The remainder arises exclusively from the Tarot card.

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The highest aspect of this path is being presented. It is a complement to the vision of the "Teeth of the Serpent" seen in Part number seven, Samapha. In order for the creative aspect of the divine to manifest its power, it requires a field in which (or on which) to act -a canvas and materials with which to work; a stone to sculpt and a space in which to put it. This Part shows the first breathing-forth of that complementary aspect from the still point of Kether. It will not manifest in its stable form until Binah; it is the first movement towards Binah that is being expressed. At its most abstract levels, the space of our universe seems to be based on irrationals. That is, on properties that cannot be precisely defined in whole numbers or as ratios of whole numbers. When the finite mind, the Ruach, tries to define it, it always eludes the effort; one can come arbitrarily close, but never quite reaches it. Thus "all their words are skewwise." Pi is such an irrational; the field of fractals tiling space is another. So is the Golden Ratio. All these can be demonstrated but not quantified. Wednesday's vision shows the formation of Space as a field of infinite potentials. Pick any point in the fractal pattern of lines, and it leads to a limitless series of possible actions. The divine creative force, acting on this field and choosing its course in accord with its design, brings about the manifestation of unique occurrences. The potential choices available in the field are so great that no one creative act -- or indeed, any number of creative acts -can exhaust them. But there is no tendency towards one or another type of creation inherent in the space; its limitless choices are in perfect balance against each other. And at this point in the process, none of that has occurred; the field is still coming into being, and is untouched. The shape of the wreath is one discovered by a Swedish mathematician in the 1950's or 60's. A solid figure with this cross-section has the odd property of being able to balance on end, even though the end is curved and appears to be unstable. I don't know if it was actually based on the Golden Ratio. The vesica piscis is a figure whose two axes express the Golden Ratio in their proportions. Thus the irrational, elusive nature of space becomes associated with the Divine Feminine. The appearance of the Virgin transforms all this into a symbolic form, by which the actual power of the path might become accessible. The speech about her is a distorted reflection of the actual power, with a bit of short-term prophecy thrown in for good measure. About Friday's vision there is little more to say. You had to have been there.

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Doanzin, Part 27 of 91, third of ZIP. Zodiacal King: Zarzilg Ministers: 4230 Mundane association: Lydia August 14, 1995 4:44 PM At first I could get nothing but a luminous salmon-pink cloud or haze, very ill-defined. Tried doing the Call again, and didn't get much more. For a few moment, the circle turned into a stylized sun, with many triangular rays coming out of it in three different lengths; perhaps it was a compass rose. After that, the vision turned into a welter of fragmentary images, clearly confused and without connection. It seems the time isn't right yet to do this Part. I'll try again later, or tomorrow. Tuesday, August 15, 1995 1:38 PM Invoked Doanzin again last night. Didn't get anything more in the way of a vision. Spent about an hour doing pranayama while using the name of the Part as a mantra, and trying to infuse my astral bodies with the energy of the Part. I did get the sense that some intervening magickal influences (i.e., astrological) are influencing my perceptions in directions incompatible with this Part. Perhaps it would be best to wait until they pass; but that would be a couple of weeks from now. Not sure I want to wait that long -- might lose the momentum for continuing. Also got the distinct impression that this Part will not continue the path-related presentations that seemed to be starting again with Cralpir. Instead, this Part is sort of a introduction or overture to the following three Parts, with the fourth following them being some sort of coda. Neither the mundane association (which seemed rich with possibilities) nor the zodiacal attribute will have much to do with what is seen. Odd that musical metaphors come to mind -- is this significant? I recall when I first looked at the information for the Part and its mundane association, I kept getting the image of a lyre or lap-harp. I thought this was just a random mental association based on the similarity of sounds -- Lydia / lyre. But maybe there's more to it. Another odd impression that came concerned the Parts as a group. In some dimension they are not really a series, but rather like the circular queues used in low-level programming. There is no beginning or end; you can enter at any point and start reading. The sigils of the Parts are the "addresses" of bytes in the queue. And while your readpointer is at one position (i.e. the Part you are invoking at the moment) other "pointers" can be at other addresses in the queue, changing, modifying, or replacing the "information" stored there. So by the time you follow the queue around to your starting

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point, what you see there might be entirely different than on the previous pass. I haven't the faintest idea what these "other pointers" would be, or what would cause them to come into action. Friday, August 18, 1995 3:48 PM Invoked Doanzin again according to the usual method. It's like there are two entirely different natures to this Part -- perhaps more. One of those I sense seems to lead off towards a presentation on creativity or art. The other leads into a presentation on the "outside" [of the Aethyrs, and the Earth in general] and how that outside penetrates and modifies conditions here. I suppose either one of these might connect with the mundane region; Lydia was known for its culture and arts, and the country made its living off of trade. I feel stuck like Nasrudin's donkey, between two choices equally interesting. It seems wrong somehow to choose either one. There must be some point at which these natures merge. No use; I can't move into either one. I'll work some more at absorbing and adapting to the Part's power, and try again another day. Friday, August 25, 1995 I didn't do any more invocations after the last entry. It became clear that there was a buildup of power interfering with my ability to get a clear vision, and that the buildup was increasing in intensity. Seemed best to wait until it faded before trying again. The interference appears to have been partly related to the powers invoked in the previous series of visions, and partly due to astrological events. The astrological interference reached its peak around 2:00 AM this morning, and quickly fell off thereafter. Another day or two and I expect it will be gone. There is some question in my mind whether the results of the invocations of Doanzin done thus far have any relation to the actual nature of the Part. It may be that what was seen was mostly related to the interference, and not to the thing interfered with. When trying again, will need to be careful to avoid unconscious expectations based on it. Sunday, August 27, 1995 12:38 PM The vision opened with an image of the northwestern Pacific area seen from above. Specifically, of Japan, the Kurile Islands, and the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia. There

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was a very strong impression of Kamchatka as a place of unrestrained wildness, and of Japan as a place of unrestrained order, both arising out of the same underlying force. (All these areas are volcanically-built lands.) Now the image is distorted, twisted in some way about an invisible center. Kamchatka is pulled downwards and Japan pulled upwards and both curve around. They become the Tao symbol, with Japan the Yang and Kamchatka the Yin. Mt. Fuji becomes the small point of darkness within the Yang, and some mighty volcano on Kamchatka becomes the small point of light within the Yin. Another image begins to develop overlaying the Tao. It is the image of a man of Asian features, dressed in some sort of ceremonial garb. He sits in full lotus position, hands resting on his knees. He wears a loose black long-sleeved shirt, a black skirt with vertical silver stripes. A pointed straw hat (also black) is on his head -- it has a wide brim, like a coolie hat, with a narrow conical center. Over the shirt he wears a ceremonial breastplate with shoulder-pieces that flare out horizontally into points. Upon the center of the breastplate the Tao symbol is shown, overlaid with a pentagram. (The whole image is a nested double of the numerical series 1-2-5. In the outer series, the invisible powers of the Earth are One, the peninsula and Japan are Two, and the Man is Five -- the outline of a pentagram is formed between his knees, shoulder-pieces, and the top of his hat. In the inner series, the Man is One, the Tao symbol is two, and the pentagram symbol is Five.) I feel an urge to sit facing this figure, and do so, assuming the lotus position. A flow of power begins between us. I sit for some time absorbing it. (I seem to be still overbalanced on the Yin side at the moment; the forces in the figure are perfectly balanced against each other, producing stillness. In myself they are producing a small amount of torsion.) It seems that the unrestrained wildness of Kamchatka (and of the greater Yin) is the unconditioned transfinite "stuff" of Binah, out of which anything at all might come; the unrestrained order of Japan (and the greater Yang) is in some way reflective of Chokmah, the creative force which seeks to create everything in its own image out of the stuff of Binah. It is not "Order" as such -- that is, it is not Saturnian. Rather it is ceremony, a pattern of stylized, dynamic movements which define the sorts of ordering that take place in the finite creation. These movements are not themselves Order, but they create order. In a similar way the stylized ceremonies of traditional Japan don't necessarily make sense in themselves, but their repetition by all the people produces a definite social ordering. It is not quite "unrestrained creativity", though that is closer to Chokmah as I understand it. Now it seems that the pentagram comes out of the interaction of the Yin and Yang; their union produces five children. But these five are not the traditional Elements. Instead they

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are the five "planes" of finite manifestation within which the lower seven sephiroth reside: the Atmic, Buddhic, Manasic, Astral, and Physical planes. There is a rough correspondence between these and the Elements, in terms of their "density": in order, Spirit, Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. But the innate natures of these planes are not at all elemental. The Atmic plane is the finite expression of Will. But Will cannot be expressed in a single form within a finite creation; therefor its expression is dual. Geburah represents the force or power aspect of Will, while Chesed represents its unifying aspect. These define the nature and purpose of the finite creation. The Buddhic plane is the plane of consciousness, of awareness. Here the "self" of the creature resides. It is subordinate to the Will aspect and therefor controlled by it. Its occasional belief that it is "in control" is largely an illusion. Its nature is "connection" or "relationship" or "love" in the divine sense; the conscious being -- under the Will -- reaches out and connects to the rest of the world, so that that will may be fulfilled. The Manasic plane is the plane of Mind in the narrow sense. Its manifestations are two: Intellect and Desire. The first gives order to the sensory experience of the conscious being. The second gives meaning to that experience. The Astral plane is the plane of the senses and the feelings derived therefrom. Being watery, it reflects all about it, and so contains the Five and the Two within itself in small form. (The One is not to be seen here.) The Physical plane is what it is. (This stuff about the planes seemed to come from outside myself, but I did not hear any voice speaking it.) From a transcendental viewpoint, Man is the Pentagram not because he contains the five elements within himself, but because he is the only incarnate creature of this world capable of integrating all five of the finite planes into a single active whole. The same planes are present in all things, but in most things the higher planes are inactive. In turn, Man contains the Yin-Yang and the pentagram within himself in lesser form. Geburah and Chesed are Yin and Yang, and the lowest five sephiroth are the Pentagram, following the traditional attributions. I sense that I should rest and meditate upon all this before going on. Saturday, September 02, 1995 1:32 PM

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I didn't do any invocations of Doanzin during the last week. Unlike the previous period, there was no sense of resistance or of being in the wrong frame of mind to perceive it. Simply, the time didn't seem right to continue. I think maybe I am running out of steam for the current series of visions. Invoked Doanzin with the usual procedure. The vision opened the same as last Sunday's, but went through all the movements in a couple of seconds, ending with the completed figure of the pentagrammatic man inside the Tao symbol, with another Tao on his breast with a pentagram inside it. Now the man stood up, and the Tao faded from behind him. He assumed a position reminiscent of the dancers shown on Hindu temples -- arms and legs in stylized positions, frozen in mid-movement. His head faced to his left; his left arm was held across his torso with the palm of the hand raised and facing to the right. His left leg was also raised, and the calf and foot almost horizontal to the right. His right arm was raised so that the upper arm was level, the forearm vertical, the hand with the palm facing to the left. He held something like a dorje or a small lightning-bolt in that hand. The right leg held his weight, and was bent slightly at the knee, towards his left. I got the impression that the posture represented a swastika with five arms, whirling rapidly. I don't think a real person could assume this posture; the image seems to be based on an impossible perspective. A five-armed swastika now appears visibly, and the man fades from view. The swastika is whirling rapidly clockwise, throwing off sparks in all directions as it turns. It is like a whirlpool in some way; it sucks in substance from the lower planes at its center, and throws that substance out again in some random direction through its arms. There is a constant recirculation forming an invisible egg-shape with the swastika at its top. (Now it seems to me that this figure is at the location in the Tree called Da'ath, and is rotating in a horizontal plane.) Within this egg shape, the image of a babe appears; much like the ending of 2001. The babe sucks its thumb. It's legs are drawn up; I cannot determine its sex, if any. This is very difficult; I have been infected in some way with the whirling of the swastika, and it is twisting my vision. I have the urge to rest for a while in a certain posture. I did so, and now my whole visual field is composed of tiny dots whirling around. At this point I became very dizzy and disoriented, and stopped the vision. Seer's comments:

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This Part has been very difficult to work with, and I am still not certain that I have seen it's nature correctly. The last two invocations appear to be internally and mutually selfconsistent, at least. Most of the Parts so far seem to express qualities of change, dynamic activities within the world, rather than of specific qualities, energies, or spheres. The "lunar" series of visions (posted this last summer) might appear an exception but, as explained in the last comment for that series, they express one complete cycle of the changes of the Moon. The dynamic events expressed in Doanzin seem to be a general expression of the way in which the transcendental spheres produce the finite spheres "below" the "Abyss", and the way in which the lower spheres organize themselves and return to the transcendental state. It is all very abstract. The vision of August 27 represents the "downward" part of the cycle, with the divine unity dividing itself into male and female aspects, which create the fivefold "child" that is the finite realm. Kamchatka belongs to "Mother Russia" -- a punning affirmation of its "Yin" nature. As well it is a place very little touched by human beings, in which drastic changes of ecology and terrain occur on a regular basis. It contains many unique plant and animal species, thus representing the way in which Binah is unrestrained by the "status quo" of the lower spheres. Japan has its long military and warrior tradition to make it appropriate as the "male" side of the Tao. It is intensely -- almost repressively -- organized, in contrast to Kamchatka. As I said, neither of these qualities seems appropriate to Chokmah; the explanation given in the vision seems a bit too flip to be correct. I suppose one might instead think of these two regions in planetary terms, seeing Kamchatka as Uranus and Japan as Saturn. The portions of the vision concerning the five lower "planes" in the Tree of Life are fairly standard stuff. But note the emphasis that the conscious self is not the controlling aspect of the individual nature. This is worth long consideration. The September 2 vision seems to briefly outline the "return" portion of the cycle. The lower five become concentrated and unified into a single being (I assume to be the conscious soul in Tiphereth). This consciousness raises itself up to the highest level of its finite nature, absorbing the two spheres of the finite Will into itself in the process (as represented by the lightning bolt and orb in the hands of the figure). The conscious self becomes the focus for all the energetic activity of the being. Finally it produces the "babe of the Abyss" out of itself, and dissolves into random components again.

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It was suggested in one of the earlier visions that this Part is an introduction to the next three Parts, all of which have names that come from the Black Cross, a.k.a. the Tablet of Union. In Crowley's model of the Aethyrs, these three parts would be associated with the so-called "Abyss", the region of the Tree bounded by Chesed and Geburah on the lower side, and by Binah and Chokmah on the upper side. If Crowley is correct, the symbolism of the last two visions of Doanzin would seem to be appropriate.

Lexarph, Part 28 of 91, first of ZAX. Zodiacal King: Zinggen Ministers: 8880. Mundane association: Caspis Monday, October 02, 1995 1:11 p.m. I am standing at the interface between sea and sky. Small waves chase across the surface of the sea, and its depths have the crystal clarity of Caribbean waters, save that they are tinted purple, not blue. The sky is a brilliant luminous yellow, and the air it encloses has an even greater clarity or transparency than the sea; it actually seems to bring things into a clearer focus than would normally be possible, so that all sorts of fine details would be visible, were there anything to look at here. Looking into the sea, I see a number of medusae, small mushroom domes with a fringe of small tentacles. Their radial structure is visible through their transparent bodies. They remind me of astrological charts; a small circle in the center, a larger one as a circumference, radial spokes connecting the two beneath the domed surface. [In passing, I note that deeper in the water there are fish, who never come to the surface but live their whole lives in the darker parts of the sea. They don't seem aware of the surface above them.] These medusae seem to be striving upwards towards the surface, but most run out of energy before getting there, and fall back into the depths to regenerate and restore themselves. There is a constant flow of them up and down through the water. Deeper down, I can see them dissolving into smaller components in a sort of death; these are not true medusae, but some sort of colonial organism. The small component creatures dash through the water, feeding on something unseen for a while. Then they get together again and form a new medusa, with a structure slightly different from their previous form. Now my attention becomes focused on one of them that is coming close to the surface; it strives very hard, harder with each stroke upwards. There is an asymptotic effect as it

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approaches, more effort producing less movement. It never quite reaches the surface, but when it gets within an inch or two, the light from above burns it. I can see it shrinking as it loses mass -- the water is being forced out of it by the heat, along with a great deal of its substance. In a painful reaction it everts itself, and something small is released from its center. This small thing rises up through the air-water interface, not as if it were pushing itself upwards, but rather as if it were attracted magnetically by the realm above. It rises to a point a few feet above the surface and remains suspended in the air. It is a tiny sphere with two blade-shaped rays sticking out of it, somewhat like the shape of the ajna chakra, save that the rays are oriented vertically. Now the rays multiply; first three, then four, five, six, and so on in a very rapid way. I quickly lose count; there seems no end to the process. Simultaneously, the sphere becomes slightly smaller, and transforms into a geometric shape. In time with the rays, it runs through the classic geometric solids and into more complex shapes with many facets. All the time it gets smaller, but the facets remain clear due to the quality of the air around it. It continues shrinking until it is a geometric point, but a point that contains within it an endless and evolving set of aspects. I hear a crack of lightning from above, and the sound of thunder. I sense that some great power has entered into this realm, and the sounds were the opening of the gate that it used. Whatever it is, it is invisible; I feel it moving downwards, filling the air around the tiny star and outwards to a great distance, but see nothing of it. It encloses the star as a parent might take a child in its arms, and I seem to hear a voice saying: "This is my own child, in whom I am well pleased." There is a sense that this power is in some way hooking itself to the star, putting the star on a tether, so to speak, so that it cannot be lost or mislaid. And now the power moves the star back into the water. It is like a baptism, a blessing. It raises the star, and though nothing different about it can be seen, there is a sense that it has been tempered in some way -- "solidified" is the wrong word, perhaps "confirmed in its innate qualities" would be closer. Again and again the star is dipped, and each time it comes out it is slightly different, while remaining entirely itself. A voice speaks: "That which comes from the water must return to it. Not for the continuation of development, of evolution; rather to clean it of the detritus of its birth into the higher realm. For when it is once left, the waters of the great sea become an acid, dissolving that which it once embraced and fed. And only that which is truly of the higher nature survives the immersions of the glorious baptism." [I heard several different phrases here: "the baptism of power and glory", "the baptism of life", "baptism of the All-highest", many others all mixed together.]

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I am not sure how to describe what happens now. An aura or field of power begins to form around the star. It is being projected out of the star in some way, and its content is a reflection of the star's nature, elaborated. But at the same time the aura is a gate, into a great world possessing those same qualities. Looking through the edge of it, I can sense something of that world. It is a hyper-world: that is, it is not restricted as is our finite world of Earth with its levels and fixed natures; it exists as an expression of the infinite potential of Binah, and is never separated therefrom. But at the same time, it exists in that greater realm of which Binah is merely the local expression. (I understand what I am seeing, but cannot speak it properly.) [A note added later -- it seems to me now that there wasn't any "gate" into that world; rather, the world was created in some way through the interaction of the star with the "stuff" of that higher realm of which Binah is the reflection.] Again the voice speaks: "To the Master of the Temple, and to the Magus, are all realms opened. They need not stay within this realm of Earth; their duty to her is ended, their freedom once again regained. To them are the stars opened, and all the worlds thereof. To them the infinite reaches of space become their playground; the stars their toys, jewels to fix the attention of any child, their motions the motions of the life they have come to live. "If any deny this, saying: 'there is nothing beyond nirvana', saying 'there is nothing beyond God', saying 'the Tao is all', it is only because they are blinded by the robes of Earth in which they wrap themselves. There is no end, anywhere. We say it, who stand at the gate. And of all the angels of the divine, who should know better than we? Our god says it: there is no end. So it must be. If he should lift you out of the Earth and give you the stars, would you cling to the skirts of his robe, or would you step forward to embrace that which he shows you is a wider world, in which even he is not supreme? "There is no dominance in this wider realm; no rulership of one over another. How can that be, when every step within it changes it, in ways that no god can anticipate? All are equal here, save only in the size [ scope? breadth?] of the changes their movement makes. And when the results cannot be anticipated, what boots it whether they are large or small? A movement by a small one might overturn the changes of a great one as readily as the reverse. "There is no Path in this wider realm. How can there be, when none knows where it is going? One creates one's own path, by the very movements that change the world. And if there should arise on that path that which is not desired, simply move in another way, another direction. [Note: I got the impression that the way to prevent these changes from being chaotic is to make one's movements rhythmic. If the movements repeat in a regular pattern, so then the

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changes will take on the same rhythmic quality, and over time will develop according to what might loosely be called "themes".] "That is enough, o mage. End this, and write your comment. We are done." Seer's comments: From the first instant of this vision, I had a strong feeling of having been here before, though I can find no specific instance in the records I still have on-line. Certainly some of the later section of the vision repeats themes that have presented themselves before in my work. The astrological attribute of the Part's King is Pisces, but the quality of the vision connects closely with the sign of Aquarius, whose path connects Binah with Chokmah in Achad's Tree of Life. Several elements relate to the sign: the clear, focusing air is a traditional association. The star rising into the air is Mercury, the planet exalted in Aquarius. (The Hebrew name for Mercury, KVKB, literally means "the star".) The lightning and thundercrack of the god's entrance is Uranus, the ruling planet, which governs all electrical phenomena. The themes of change and freedom from limitation are also Uranian. The sea of this vision encompasses all of the finite world, as Binah contains all the lower spheres within itself. The medusae are people of the "adept" grades, those who are conscious, living souls; they struggle, like the phototropic medusae, to get closer to the light. The fish in the deeper waters are those whose lives are wholly concerned with existence in the "real", mundane world. With the star, we have a somewhat soggy representation of the three grades of Liber AL. The "colonial" nature of the medusae repeats a principle seen previously in these visions: that the soul is not a unitary or singular entity, but one composed of many parts in interaction. The "self" is not a constant, but has a variable nature dependent upon the pattern of those interactions, and the relative level of activity of the various components. Change the pattern, and the self changes with it. The star that arises from the desiccated husk of this self is a mystery even to a Master of the Temple. Its nature is totally elusive; it moves through all things as if they were vapor, taking on the nature of whatever it is in contact with. It has permanence of being but no permanent aspect of any sort. It is the essence of the finite self, but is not the self. It is identical with God, and it is not god. It may be the Universal Mercury; I do not know. This Part, then, represents the final movement of that star out of the Abyssal Sea and into the clear air of the Supernals. This would be in accord with the traditional association of

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ZAX with the Abyss, since in an upward movement (that is, going from TEX to LIL) this would be the last of the three Parts of ZAX to be encountered. The Part is also an opening into what has been called, in my earlier work, the "Star-roads". Information about this has been fed to me in small dribbles over the last ten years. A quicker and more complete revelation may not be possible. This may be because my level of initiation is not yet high enough, and because understanding it requires a radical reorientation from the traditional magickal view of the universe; a reorientation as drastic as that between the Ptolemaic and Copernican views of the physical universe. The magickal realms resist such changes; to bring it into manifestation requires overcoming a great inertia. In any case, the specifics given here probably aren't important to anyone but a Master of the Temple or Magus. The one point of general significance is that this view nullifies Crowley's contention that Magi can only work with Words that are subordinate to the Word of the Aeon.

Comanan, Part 29 of 91, second of ZAX. Zodiacal King: Alpudus Ministers: 1230 Mundane association: Germania (Note: Neither Turner's version of Liber Scientiae nor the diagram of the sigils on the Great Table shows a sigil for the three Parts of ZAX. To maintain the method used for these visions, I am creating a sigil for Comanan that traces the exact positions of the characters on the Great Table.) Monday, October 30, 1995 11:50 AM The vision opened with a view of northern Europe. The sigil of the Part was imposed thereon. The vertical bar going from the corner of the Baltic where Lithuania meets Prussia, down to near Budapest. The city itself lay just outside the cut-off corner of the sigil. The horizontal bar went east, roughly following the course of two rivers (Danube and Donau?) to the region of Bern. The western border is defined by the sigil of Gallia. Now the area within the sigil shatters into many irregularly-shaped pieces, each of which turns a different color. They fly towards me and past me, revealing behind them a region

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of endless sky, as if seen through a window, in which stands a Ram. It seems to me that this ram butted the area from behind, causing the shattering. A voice speaks: "What matter is man and his works, in the face of God's power? For they are futile and without gain, and the slightest touch of His Will causes them to fall into dust. What matter is man, that God should be mindful of him? Of no matter, and God is not mindful. "That which is below is merely a shadow; if it should be gone in an instant, then what loss?" Now the Ram steps forth through the gap, and begins to trample the surface of the Earth. His hooves leave marks in the shape of the Part's sigil, and wherever a hoof stamps, there are the works of man made into naught. All of Europe is covered with his prints, and then he heads south and east, trampling through the Holy Lands, and on eastward into the ancient lands of India. As he moves he seems to sense something, and his course begins to bend towards a specific goal, lying somewhere in central India. My viewpoint comes closer to the Earth, and races along the projected path of the Ram. I pass along a great plain lying hot under the equatorial sun. Over the horizon there rises a tower, very phallic, a giant lingam of polished, light-colored stone. About its head there is a halo or aura of power. It is neither a creative nor a destructive power, but simply Power, without object and complete in itself. It does not radiate or extend itself, it simply is, and all about it seems to become less real by comparison with it. (I hear voices in the background chanting the name of Shiva, and feel a sense of anticipation in the air, an electric stillness like that preceding a thunderstorm, but much more intense.) The chanting becomes more -- frantic? no, enthusiastic -- and I am compelled to join it. The name Shiva arises out of me unbidden, an unconditional, uncaring joy arising with it. In a few moments I feel wonderfully exalted. While the chanting increased in force, the power the was formerly around the head of the tower covers a greater area, until a large sphere around the tower is filled with it. The ram now charges over the horizon from the northwest, making straight for the tower. He has become smaller, no longer of a size to trample a continent, but has lost none of his force. He races forward, and as he reaches the edge of the circle, he makes a great leap upwards. He flies towards the cap of the tower, head lowered as if to butt it. His head touches the tower, and suddenly -- nothing. Everything has disappeared save for the sense of Power. It seems as if, in an instant too short to notice, the entire world -- the entire universe -- had shattered into its ultimate components and vanished. Nothing is left but the brilliance of the Power of Shiva.

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(My own astral body has also vanished; I seem to be nothing but a naked viewpoint.) Time has stopped; space has stopped. After a timeless time, which could as easily have been aeons long as moments, I seem to be hovering in some hyper-realm, outside the circle of Shiva. Colored wisps are slowly fading into the darkness around it, like the dispersing smoke of an explosion. Nothing is happening; I wait. The wisps finally disperse completely. After waiting a while longer, I decide to re-enter the sphere. I do so. Discord! I am immediately assaulted by a thousand different sounds and images. The air is filled with screeching, out-of-tune noises, like the world's worst amateur orchestras, each player out of synch with all the others, each orchestra playing a different melody, each competing to overwhelm the others by sheer volume. The area is also filled with cacodemons, each zipping about along a different path. They collide frequently and continue on their way. If they could be said to be going anywhere; their movements seem entirely random. Each carries a little fragment of an image in his hands, like a jigsaw-puzzle piece. Where is the overwhelming Power that was here before? All that seems to be left is fragments, shells, detritus. Now it seems that some sort of ordering power has come back into the region. I cannot detect it directly, but the sounds are coming into harmony with one another, taking up the same rhythm. As each sound falls into perfect synchronization, it is subsumed into a general note or chord. Similarly, the movements of the cacodemons are becoming more regular, and they are drawing away from me. They begin to array themselves in offset rows, so that the feet of one are between the heads of the two in the row below. They tile the entire surface of the sphere like the demons and angels in an Escher print. Now each one holds up its fragment of an image before it; the fragments merge into one another, and suddenly the world is whole again. I am back on the plain before the tower of Shiva. The voice says: "When the spark of will in the Son meets the Power from whence it came, then the world it created for itself is utterly destroyed. All order is lost, all coherence

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vanishes. The spark withdraws into its God, leaving behind only fragments of its shells. These have no tendency to unity left in them; it resides entirely within the spark. "And since that which is a Man is such a shell, it also is destroyed when it's spark reunites with its God. "And yet, such a union is not always permanent, or it seems not so. Something comes forth again from the divine, something which partakes of the nature of that former spark, while not itself like unto a spark. Are they the same? One cannot say. For in God are all things become naught; the discontinuity defies all attempts to unite the Before with the Afterwards. One only knows that the shattered world is reformed, though not unchanged. "We who dwell in this Part serve only in the re-uniting of the God with its Son; our task ends when the world is destroyed. That which comes after is the work of something beyond our ken. "There is naught else to say. We are done." Seer's comments: The body of this vision seems to have less to do with the mundane region than some of the others we have seen. Yet there seem to be some minor connections. I recall that Alice Bailey once said that the personality of Germany (as distinct from its "soul") was governed by the Ray of Will. And both Germany and Poland have suffered from the fragmentation shown here at various times in their history. This was particularly the case in medieval Poland, where the custom of primogeniture did not hold sway, and the sons of a noble divided his land among themselves. The consequence was that the "states" became smaller and more numerous with every generation. And since what passed for the Polish government of the time required unanimous consent among the nobles, nothing ever got done at the national level. One might liken the Polish state, without a powerful king to focus the national will, to the conditions described here. The remainder of the vision is fairly clear. Alpudus is attributed to Aries in the system used for these visions; combined with the power derived from Comanan itself (as part of the Black Cross) it produces a vignette on the divine and personal wills. One might take the opening portion of the vision to represent the personal will as it acts when not under divine guidance; it more or less stumbles around, destroying as much as it creates, without any long-term benefit. Having sensed the divine, its movements become more purposeful and directed; it concentrates itself (as it gets smaller in the vision) and

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focuses on attaining contact with its divine origin. (The hoofprints of this beast are, amusingly, reminiscent of the "footprints of the Camel" in Crowley's visions.) Finally it unites with its divine counterpart; the Eye of Shiva is opened, and the world is destroyed.

Tabitom, Part 30 of 91, third of ZAX. Zodiacal King: Zarzilg. Ministers: 1617 Mundane association: Trenam (an unknown region. Kelly reported: "Here appear Monkies, great flocks. The people have leather coats, and no beards, thick leather, and Garthers.") Wednesday, November 08, 1995 2:16 PM The vision opened with an image of southeast Asia and Australia. My attention was drawn to the great sweep of islands lying between them, from Malaysia onwards into the east in a more or less horizontal line. The Philippines were not included. Like the Japan/Kamchatka region of an earlier vision, I got the impression that these were all connected by a single crack in the Earth's crust, and that they were all linked at a hidden level. Now the image swooped in on one of the larger islands. (I sense that it doesn't matter which island, they are all the same. But it seems to be either Borneo or New Guinea.) It comes down until I can see the central mountains of the island, and further until I can see a great valley between the mountains. I see a village there. Huts of various shapes, some round, some long, some simple, others rather elaborate. In one of the larger buildings, the men of the village are plotting a raid; each is dressed in his ceremonial paint and headdress; each has a loincloth on, with one of those weird penile sheaths attached to the outside, like a primitive codpiece. They have wide leather straps around their upper arms and their thighs, to which small pieces of feathers are attached to make colorful designs. Each sits with a spear at his side. One of the men holds a spherical gourd about six inches across. A hole has been cut in one side, and he sticks his mouth into it. I cannot see what he is doing -- is he trying to lap up something from inside it? Or inhaling something? He pushes his mouth against the gourd with great force for a while, moving his head around. Then suddenly he pulls the gourd away, and leans his head back with a great shout. The other men shout as well, and pound their hands on the ground in rhythm. Their shout becomes a loud chant in time with the pounding. The first man is shaking, his eyes rolled up; he sways and spasms, his arms flying about. He begins to babble. I cannot understand

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the words that any of them say, but his speaking seems to be different, a speaking in tongues. His voice rises higher and higher in pitch, until it is near a scream. Suddenly his voice is a scream; his spasming ceases to be random, and becomes evidence of some great pain. Now parts of his body begin to falls off; it sheds little pieces of flesh and bone with every movement. The other men are alarmed and move backwards, leaving a wide space around him. Even as he falls apart the man shakes even more, until he is shaken into a low pile of fragments, which continues to quiver. Still quivering, the pile liquefies and flows down out of sight through the cracks in the floor. The other men are silent, and go out of the hut, dispersing to their homes in the village. The image freezes, and a voice comes: "When men seek to know what lies beyond their world, when they try to divine the consequences of movement into the god-worlds, then the prophecy is always the same: Death and Destruction! The gods are jealous of their realm, and would let no man enter therein; the attempt brings death now, or death later, but death nonetheless. (There is a second sense to "no man"; i.e. they would let Nemo enter.) "And if one fears, as these do, then truly is the death a real one, with nothing left over. But if one fears not, and advances, then is the world made new, and all things become the divine without ever changing what they are. "Fear is the killer; Fear takes that which is man and makes it nothing, less than dust. Where Fear is, the spirit is not. "Cast aside fear, o you men and women, cast it aside, we say! Or turn your violence upon it, destroy the destroyer, kill that which would kill you. Then kill your violence in turn. "If one is empty of fear, then the death of the spirit is nothing, a moment's disturbance in the continuation of being; that which arises from it is not human, but it contains the human within it. Nothing is lost. "If we were to continue the vision at this time, then we would show you that fear truly rules in this land. [i.e., the earthly regions governed by Tabitom] But you comprehend it in essence, though the vast extent of their Fear is beyond your comprehension. You may remark upon it yourself for those who read. "But it were best to wait and come again to this place, and see what occurs on a different level of existence. Then you will have a clearer picture of Tabitom as it is." I decided to end the vision, thanked them, and stopped.

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Seer's comments: The more primitive cultures in the region shown are among the most paranoid on Earth, thus their association with fear. It is believed that no one dies a "natural" death; every death is the work of some sorcerer, which must be avenged before the spirit of the deceased can find rest. Usually some member of a nearby tribe is determined to be the sorcerer, and the required revenge becomes an excuse for a raid. The other tribe feels the same way, of course, so both tribes exists in a state of perpetual low-level war. The mythologies of the region are filled with malevolent gods and evil beings of various sorts, all of them out to destroy the individual. Among these is the "man-ripe-makingsnake", whose bite turns its victim into a puddle of goo, like the shaman in the vision. These tribesmen seeking an augury are linked to those who look at the transition from the normal human levels of the Tree of Life to the transcendental levels. As the tribesmen live in fear of death, so do those who think of the so-called "Abyss" as a terrible experience. In either case, the fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I was considering doing this vision a couple of nights earlier, but decided instead to work on a short introduction to the 91 Parts Working. It seems that perhaps a bit of the Part came through despite my change of intent, since the introduction I wrote began with a couple of paragraphs about fear in magick: The price of initiation is to be ceaselessly surprised; to live in a world where the only certainty is that what you believe to be Truth, believe to be real, even what you believe to be yourself will be changed in ways that you cannot anticipate. No matter how great our knowledge and experience, it is always surrounded by the infinite darkness of the unknown; and out of that darkness things can come at any moment to transform our world. One must advance towards the darkness without fear. Not because there is nothing to fear; rather because fear forces the unknown into its own ugly shape, a shape that we all know too well. Nothing truly new can come into our consciousness while fear dominates. Deny fear its power, deny it any right to control you, and the magickal universe becomes a place of endlessly unfolding wonders. Embrace the unknown and it will reward you by opening up its unspeakable, astonishing variety. Thursday, November 09, 1995 3:26 PM The vision opens with the image of a man in the blue robes of an Exempt Adept. He is seated on the cubical stone; his elbows are on his knees, and he holds the sides of his head in his hands, as if he were in pain. The sides of the cube show the glyphs of the planets,

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excepting Sol, which is in the center. The glyphs are in bas-relief, and are surrounded by highly elaborate images related to the planet in question; I sense the intent is to show that these powers are fully developed and under the Adept's control. Now I can see into the man's head, and it seems that it is divided into several small chambers; each chamber has within it the image of a smaller man or woman. These reach out their arms and grasp the hands of the ones in adjacent chambers. (It seems they can touch each other, though they cannot move outside their individual cells.) They try to pull themselves closer to each other, to come together in the middle of the man's head, where the sahasrara chakra has its root. They strain together, coming closer to the center, but as they do the power of the divine flowing in through the chakra repels them with increasing force, as does the wall of each one's cell. They strain ever harder to come together, but suddenly each loses its grip on the others, and they are thrown back into the far corners of their respective chambers. Now they are all dizzy and infuriated; they shout at each other and at the pillar of power that is the root of sahasrara. They are all very agitated; they bounce randomly around their chambers, causing the walls to bend when they hit. The man grips his head tighter and moans with despair. It seems that he would kill himself if he could, but that would require more coordination of those compartmented beings in his mind than he can muster. So he sits and suffers helplessly. This whole cycle repeats itself several times. Now the voice says: "Can that which is divided into many parts become that which is single and without distinctions? No; it is not to be. The many shall ever be many; the one (which is None) will not have them. "How then might a man -- who is a thing of many parts -- become One? That which is the man cannot; he is a thing of the finite worlds, each of his parts distinct and qualified. But there is that in him which is already of the divine. Being already united (and even "united" is a false distinction) it has no need to become One, but merely to make itself known and to take the consciousness into itself. "But the consciousness is bound into those many parts, which it thinks to be itself. (Though it is not so.) It must become un-bound; it must unravel the skeins it has built around itself, or have them unraveled by a higher power. And what is the loosening of the bindings of Self but the death of the Self?" Now in the image the pressure from the column of the Sahasrara becomes ever greater, forcing the various small beings in the man's head out and away from itself. They are

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pushed back into the far corners of their compartments. Still it increases, and there comes into it a noticeable vibration, which shakes everything it touches intensely. The little beings are so shaken; and like the shaman of the previous vision, they are shaken into pieces, then into a sludge. Finally this sludge is shaken so intensely that it becomes gaseous, losing all form whatsoever it had. The gases (all colored differently) expand and fill the various chambers, and simultaneously cease to be affected by the power of the chakra. That power now radiates without hindrance through the head of the man. The man looks greatly relieved and almost happy. "Only when the distinctions are destroyed can the divine shine through. That which remains of the parts of the man are no longer distinct, save for the faint coloring each supplies as the light of the divine shines through it. But this is not the end; look again." I look at the man, and see that the sahasrara is now fully active and illuminated. Its edge expands and curls down until the man's entire head is enclosed within it. The flow of its force is a sphere turning on itself, sweeping clockwise and counter-, inwards and outwards, all at the same time. This sweeping motion seems to have some effect on the gases. They do not recondense, but within them there appears an image (and it is only an image) of what was there before; each part's little being can be seen, but overshadowed and made transparent to the force of the divine. They no longer attach to each other, but the power of the divine somehow allows communication between these images in a reflection of their previous activity. The man stands up and turns to look at the cube on which he sat. He smiles and shakes his head. He goes out of the image for a moment and returns pushing a comfortable-looking padded chair or small couch, which he places behind the cube. He goes out again, returns with a can of Pepsi-Cola and a bag of potato chips. He sits in the chair and pops open the can; he opens the bag and sets it on the cube. Then he leans back, puts his feet up on the cube, and relaxes, eating and drinking at leisure. I sense that the voice begins to say something else, then decides it unneeded. It indicates without speaking that there is no more to see or hear for now, so I end the vision. Seer's comments: Up to the Exempt Adept grade, the path of initiation (follow cabalistic methods) is one of building connections between things; between the parts of the mind; between various things in the contents of the mind; between the mind and the "external" magickal universe. The magician builds meta-connections on top of connections, traveling up through layers of greater and greater inclusivity until the almost the entire being is melded into the

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experience of a small number of archetypes and related "pure" energies. The accompanying initiations are grand experiences, so much so that they pass beyond superlatives. The cubical stone of the vision is the structure he has built through this work. But these archetypes, while definitely of a very high level, are still finite in some sense; they are conditioned, they have definite perceptible qualities even if they do not have a perceptible form. There is a limit to their possible mergings; at some point one reaches an irreducible minimum of them necessary to describe the magician and his perceived reality, and that minimum number is always greater than One, just as the cube has more than one face. The momentum of the magician's work all pushes towards achieving an impossible union between these archetypal elements. All the force he has tries to push them together, while their distinct natures exert an equal force against it. Like the little beings inside the man's head, they can relate and interact with each other, but cannot become other than what they are. The Adept of the vision reflects the problems of the human who is approaching the socalled "Abyss". He finds that he reaches a point where all his straining will not take him permanently to a higher level; no matter how hard he pushes, he always falls back to his previous condition afterwards. And the rebound from his efforts often puts him into a state of temporary mental disorganization, where the bindings between his archetypal elements are stretched in equal proportion to the effort he had exerted. This stretching is actually of benefit, though it is a hideously unpleasant experience. The very unpleasantness encourages the transcendental spark within the finite being to cease its lifelong habit of identification with that person. Even though that spark is still not aware of its transcendent nature, it begins to perceive the finite being as a hindrance. Gradually it reaches a state of negativity or rejection with respect to the personal Self, and this rejective force starts a breakdown in the skein of connections he has made over the years, releasing the energy bound in it into a diffuse state. (In the vision, this corresponds to the expansion of the sahasrara and its shaking-to-pieces of the beings in the man's head.) As a consequence of all this, the great structure the adept has built through his work becomes just another object-among-objects in the world of his finite perceptions. The excitement of building it leaves him, as do the glorious experiences he had in the process. Life becomes plain and prosaic again for a time, and all he can do is wait until the moment is right for the final movement into the transcendental levels. This is represented by the last image of the vision, where the cubical stone becomes a mere coffee-table for his snack.

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Examining the three Parts for the Aethyr ZAX, it is apparent that they confirm a relationship between this Aethyr and the transition between the finite and transcendental realms. But considered in the overall sequence of Parts, Crowley's correspondences between the Aethyrs and the sephiroth are not confirmed. We have already descended to Tiphereth via several paths before encountering these three. Each of them looks at the same process, but with the emphasis upon a different aspect in each. Since the Parts appear to be going in a sequence from top to bottom of the Tree of Life, the most transcendental of the three was seen first, and the most finite last. Note that in the vision of Lexarph, the dominant theme is that of Aquarius, the horizontal path that lies immediately above the "Abyss" in Frater Achad's Tree of Life. In the vision of Tabitom, there are several references to Death, Scorpio, the horizontal path that lies immediately below it. The vision of Comanan, with its references to Shiva, relates to the path of Fire, which connects Kether and Tiphereth, and crosses both of the other two paths. Note also that the "official" attributes of the Parts reverse the order of the dominant attributes in the visions. Where the latter go in the sequence Air, Fire, Water, the former go in the sequence Water, Fire, Air. One might speculate that the element of Earth is also present, but concealed, since the double cross formed by the paths on the Tree is the same cross seen on the staff of the Heirophant, the card of Taurus. The submerged medusae of the first vision correspond to the Adept of the last; the transition between water and air in the first vision corresponds to the second vision. Tracing additional connections, it seems that the Tower of Shiva in Comanan becomes the pillar that is the root of the sahasrara chakra in Tabitom. The frantic chanting in Comanan might become the shaking vibration of the Tabitom vision. Each of the visions contains parts of the others.

Molpand, Part 31 of 91, 1st of ICH. Zodiacal King: Lavavoth Ministers: 3472 Mundane association: Bithynia (northern Anatolian coast, bordering the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea as far east as the Ince peninsula.)

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(Note: The first fifteen Parts came from the Water Tablet. The next fifteen came from the Fire Tablet and the Black Cross. Molpand and Usnarda return to the Water Tablet before more Parts from Fire are presented.) Saturday, November 11, 1995 7:47 p.m. (I note that today is exactly ten years from the start of the Earthworks project, which was the beginning of my maturity as a magician, and of my significant Enochian works.) Difficulty getting the invocation started today. Every time I formulated the intent to do it, someone or something would interrupt. The last interruption was a cat who jumped up in my lap and put his face directly in front of mine, staring intently, while I was vibrating the Call of the Aethyrs. I ignored him and continued; he lost interest as soon as I completed the Call, and left the room quickly. The vision opened with the image of a rayed sun; in front of the sun stands a god or angel in white robes, with his arms spread in benediction. In front of him is a small shield with a circle engraved upon it. No, I am wrong, the shield and the sun are actually the Enochian sigil of Fire, with the central two circles pulled forward so that the being can stand between. But it is all in gold and silver, not in the colors the G.D. uses. Beneath the sigil and directly beneath the hands of the being are two pillars, both white. One (under the being's right hand) is topped with a sun, with twelve triangular rays; the other (under the being's left hand) is topped with a crescent moon, surrounded by thirteen rays, but with the points directed inwards. I get a couple of quick impressions at this point. First, that the two pillars are the columns of the Tree. Second, that the horizontal bars in the sigil of the part are the horizontal paths of the Tree. Third, that the three pairs of letters in the god-names of Six letter (in the Lesser Angles of the Tablets) are equivalent to the pairs of sephiroth at the ends of the horizontal paths. (This last does not feel like a non sequitur, but I do not grasp the significance of it.) I vibrate the name of the Part again, and the sigil of the Part appears imposed on the pillars, like the path of the Lightning Flash. [The implication is of the Flash, even though it is reversed with respect to the usual form.] Now the sigil seems to move, and become a series of waves passing through the channel between the pillars as if they were a wave guide. At the bottom of the pillars the waves spread out and towards me, becoming a series of circular waves as on the surface of a still pond. The image of the pillars and angel is distorted and then hidden by these waves, as would be an image reflected in water. The circular waves pass beyond my sight in every direction, with new ones continually replacing them.

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Now a new set of circular waves enter in from the four diagonal corners of the field of view, as if the original wave has been reflected by some surfaces out of sight. These waves interact with the outgoing waves to produce an interference pattern. The pattern is four rectangular arrays of diamond-shaped high-points in the water, separated by vertical and horizontal lines passing through the origin of the outgoing waves. These lines seem to be areas where the interacting waves cancel each other out. The positions of the points seem fairly stable, though the continual movement of the water lends them a shimmering quality. And now a new overlay comes in, and each point is surrounded by a square; all the squares join to their neighbors, and they become the four tablets of the Great Table. The points of water suddenly become like little flames, each enclosed in its square. A little flame of divine power, I think. The receptiveness of Water has become a positive upward striving, fiery in nature. Each of the flames is a prayer to God; and the four Tablets are in themselves an invocation of the highest God of the Enochian universe. Now the original image becomes visible again behind the Tablets. Its influence had never truly departed, just been concealed for a time. The force moving between the pillars provides a vertical organizing influence, so that the tops of the arrays of squares (as viewed from my POV) become "up" rather than all squares being on an equal level. And the flames become organized into the Names written on the Tablets, with their hierarchies and functions. The upward striving of the prayers that are the Tablets produce a response from the angel (which I now perceive to be an image of the Enochian God). But where the original impulse moving downwards was fiery, this response is watery, like a blessing with holy water. And a voice says: "How can God not respond, when that which calls is Himself? How can He ignore the prayers of the little flames, when each flame is the expression of His own desire? "God has extended himself into the world, and created therein a continual flow of himself, going from the lowest to the highest levels of existence. He puts forth his power, and the Tablets are created in response; the Tablets put forth their enflamed hearts in prayer, and He responds by lifting them up. So it ever has been, from the moment of our creation; so will it ever be, until Time stops and the worlds are again withdrawn fully into himself. "And why has God done this? So that man might have the means of rising to meet him. For where God is not directly touchable by man, yet these little flames (which are equally God) are accessible to all, be they even of the lowest. And in the voices of the Calls can

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man attach himself to those flames, and make them a part of himself; and thereby is he made to be God in part, rising, like all the flames of the Tablets, up unto God in his heaven. "And yet, you think, is it not said: 'it repenteth me I made man'? But think again: does not repentance require contrition, that is, the will to make right what was ill-done? And so it is; for God, in his expulsion of man from his high estate, did great ill; towards a good end (as you know) but it brought evil and pain upon humankind which was not deserved. And so god, in contrition for his acts, has freely given unto man that which will bring him back to his estate. "And also has he sent his angels unto those who could bring his act to the attention of men, in their time. And sent others to use his creation as it should be used, that the secret minds of men might sense its purpose and become attracted, each in their own time. "Let those be lifted up, who were thrown down; let those be made whole who were split into many parts; let those be given life who were dead to the spirit; and let those who have lived in hell be given heaven. When and as they chose it, and not as God wills. [This emphasized.] "For He forced man into his scheme, and true contrition, true remedy of his acts, thus requires the abdication of force. He must give freely where he once took; he must place each in their desired places, where once he gave no heed to desire. He must give choice, where once there was no choice given. And his act of contrition must continue until every man, both male and female, has transcended the consequences of His acts. "And what of you, o man, who is also a mage, and something like unto a small god? We see in your mind the glimmerings of some understanding, but not all; therefore let us make it clear. "It is true that you were the instrument of the Fall that God engineered, the seed (let us say) upon which the manifestation of humanity was formed. [The implication is of "seed crystals", not of plant seeds.] Therefor, you think, you might also require some act of contrition in this regard. Yet it is not so, for when you caused men to fall, did you also fall with them, and take upon yourself the same burdens as they; forgetting your high estate, forgetting your rightful place among the stars (save for that unending, unquenchable longing). You have lived as a man, suffered as a man, even though this was not necessary to the accomplishment of the task. And thereby have you mitigated any ill that you might have done. "Why then, you think, does your magickal oath -- the only oath you have ever taken with the full force of your being -- in so many ways reflect the requirements of God's contrition?

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It is simply said: you are one of us. Like we who were created by God, you (who were not so created) have accepted the joy of Being in and with God. We give as God wills, because we were made so; you give as God gives because you love God, and do his work. And if God desires to give freely and without restriction unto man, in mitigation of his acts, why then, so do you do. What more reason need there be? "Now we have said enough for now. Rest you, and think upon what is said. And in the light of day, continue with this sphere, this Part, and see what more is to be seen. Our blessings and love upon you, our brother and lover, and go well. We are done." I ended this vision. Seer's comments: I don't know whether this vision expresses the actual content of the Part, or is simply a commemoration of the anniversary mentioned. Since I got flashes of the opening image the preceding day, during preparations, it might possibly be the former, but with the content tailored somewhat to the day. Another session with this Part will tell. The revisionist myth of the Fall, and my supposed part in it, are described in detail in _The Book of the Seniors_, a series of visions from the Earthworks project. This present vision links the Enochian system into that myth directly for the first time. The idea that God might make mistakes, or at least suffer the pangs of conscience, is rather radical from a standard religious point of view. But it is perfectly consistent with the views expressed in my Enochian work over the last ten years. There is no "absolute" God, no "ultimate" creator. There are only local gods, though "local" is an elastic term; it might include a portion of a single world, or an entire galaxy. For a variety of reasons, gods in the Enochian view are neither omniscient nor omnipotent. The most important of these reasons is that the creations of different beings interact with each other, producing results that are not predictable by any being. In an environment of multiple creators, the unexpected is to be expected; surprise lurks for every being, no matter how evolved. The intrinsic unpredictability at the roots of matter adds yet another dimension of surprise. One can imagine that the actual results of an act of creation, including unexpected aspects, might show a creator a better way that it could have been done in the first place. Or that, having taken action to stop the effects of some error, a creator might want to change his mode of action to get on with the desired course of things. Either one of these might apply to the God depicted by the ministers of Molpand.

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Or they might not. In any case, it seems that the Enochian magick has been provided as the spiritual equivalent of a public elevator, useable by anyone with a minimum of skill and proper intent. My experience and observation confirms that this is true in practice. Even those who use the system with the most puerile of motives find themselves changed by it, and pulled into the path of initiation if they have any tendency at all in that direction. My experience also confirms that there are no conditions of any sort attached to this magick. It is a great and valuable gift, given freely and without expectation of return. There is no quid pro quo; one need not worship (or even believe in) its god to gain its benefits, nor conform one's thoughts and actions to any particular course. The only price is that one is transformed by it, in accord with one's own nature. That nature is brought closer to its perfection, slowly made more divine over time. Tuesday, November 14, 1995 1:35 PM The vision opened with a view of northern Anatolia, centered upon the peninsula that points northwest towards Constantinople. Now the sigil of the Part is overlaid on the peninsula, distorted to fit. Its topmost point is at the crossing between Asia and Europe; it's lowest crossbar at the base of the peninsula. The view moves in towards the great city; I see it from above, and in the center is the beautiful temple, Hagia Sophia. [Interrupted once again at this point, by a delivery truck with new kitchen furniture. An hour later, I get back to the vision...] This is the pre-Islamic version of the Temple, without the four minarets. It may even be the original; the dome seems lower than I remember it. But there are four buildings in a square around it, at some distance. Each of these seems in some way to be a manifestation of one of the elements, or one of the four directions. (I suspect they never existed in reality; I don't recall anything of the sort.) There is a sub-vision saying that this image also relates in some way to my Enochian Temples. Not to the basic temples, but to the meta-temple that sometimes forms when the magickal charge is particularly intense. This meta-temple is also "hagia sophia" -- "divine wisdom" in manifestation. In fact, the form of the meta-temple is almost exactly that of Sophia; roof domed instead of the conical form of the regular temples, vaulted entrances, large open interior space, etc. The four smaller buildings might be representations of the regular temples surrounding the meta-temple.

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[See the visions in The Lotus of the Temple for one appearance of the meta-temple. See Enochian Temples for a description of the temples of the Tablets.] Now the view backs up into the sky again, and it seems that the Sophia is glowing with some inner power. It radiates, but is constrained by the bounds of the peninsula on which Istanbul stands, in the east and west. On the north some other power presses down, again constraining it. So the power flows south, crossing over the straight and into Anatolia. The power flows down the peninsula, and when it reaches the base, it spreads out in a semicircle, covering the area between the seas and Ankara. This area remains filled with power, but now it flows outwards in circular waves, just as in the previous vision. To the northwest, the wave strikes something, and the response is the precipitation of a multitude of documents; reams of papers falling through the air and littering the countryside. To the southwest, it strikes the communities of northern Africa; some of these build walls around themselves, and become silent. To the northeast, it strikes many communities, and these become centers of radiation themselves, putting out their own circular waves. And in the southeast, a great flame springs up, and washes over the face of the Earth. (I get the impression that all this is some obscure cabalistic pun or joke, true in its own way, but put forth in a mood of fun. Now it becomes clear. The Europeans reacted to Byzantine Christianity intellectually, producing tons of theology to show that their own Roman version was the True Church. The peoples of northern Africa reacted by producing monastic communities, wherein weird combinations of Christianity and local faiths were practiced. The Russians and eastern Europeans got into the spirit of the thing, trying to become more Byzantine than the Byzantines. And the Arabs reacted by producing Islam. These all correspond to the four Tablets in the revised Great Table. ) This isn't getting anywhere. The interruption threw me off stride. I need to stop for a while and regroup before continuing. 8:23 PM The vision opens as if a veil was torn in two, and with it was ripped away the "space" in which my circle was formed. Now that circle hangs in the air like something out of a Dr. Strange comic book; I am still standing on it, but simultaneously see it from above and behind. In front of the circle, huge in comparison, lies the meta-temple spoken of earlier. It is composed of energy, pearlescent and allochroous, but with every edge outlined in black. On each face of the Temple, a pointed vault like the upper half of a Vesica Piscis marks an entrance.

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There is a definite sense of "reaching upwards", of invocation in the fabric of this temple, like the prayer-flames seen before, but multiplied ten thousandfold. It is a prayer so strong that there is no question but that it will be answered, and is answered continuously. At the same time, there is a sense of reaching outwards, of a power of divine love projecting in every direction from it; not calling or pulling, but freely flowing into the world. (This and the prayer-force may be the same, separated only in my mind.) A deep, resonant tone sounds; a tone from a bell so perfect that it sounds before the mallet strikes it. The tone repeats; and again. Then it is silent, but all of space still resonates to it. A voice says: "What can man know of God, save what God gives to man? And yet, if God gives all, and is free and in all, then man can know God in all things, through all things. It matters not if one says "This is Holy" of one thing, and of another "This is not holy." For every man sees the divine in the ways that his (or her) nature allows. And every aspect of their nature has God at its root. Therefor if one is to know God, then one should know himself; as completely as possible. And then one should leap beyond oneself. It matters not in which direction one leaps; one is as good as another. God is in every direction, including no direction. [That is, the direction that is not a direction.] "And this Temple, built by God upon the foundation of yours, is as much Hagia Sophia as is that mundane place of that name. Moreso, since this Temple is wholly of God; its every stone is of the divine substance, wrought into form." I see now visions of my four temples of the Tablets, each one bright with the colors of the squares out of which it was built. And the altars of those temples are in their outside positions, surrounding each as the small buildings of the earlier vision today surrounded the Hagia Sophia. And these four temples surround the meta-temple as their altars surround them. "Think not, o man who is a mage, that your temples caused God to build his because he liked their form, or because you are in some way in his favor; we speak not of that. But as was said, the four Tablets are themselves a prayer unto the Great God who is the creator of the Calls and Tablets, who gave them to man for his use. And as by his covenant he responds continuously to those prayers, so then must those prayers, when built into a yet mightier form, produce a yet mightier result. You had the shaping of it, but the power that called and the power that answered are both of the divine. "And yet, this form is also eternal; have not many men sought to use it in their construction of places of worship? Not only the Sophia, but also those others, foursquare to the world, but with a domed eye unto God. [E.g., St. Peter's]

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"And every one of these, in this minds of their creators, brought the power of the divine into the world. So you are not greatly different from them, save that yours is of a finer and more effective substance to begin with. "Now, if your Temple is opened by a man, it cannot be but that he will be raised closer to the divine thereby; for in it is the power to lift and transform, which is the essence God gave to the Enochian powers, brought into a state of perfect effectiveness. No man can touch it and be unchanged by it. Thus few have used it, though it is widely known. Men fear change, even as they seek it; and when they sense that change is utterly certain, that their souls will be transformed, then do they back away, and cover over their fear with thoughts of due caution. "Only the brave, the desperate, or the truly adventurous dare take it to its full power; for others, the thought of it is transformation enough. Let them be; seek not to encourage. Those who should [use it], will. And if in several centuries, only a triple handful should follow where you have led, then you have had success. Not all things are best measured by quantity. "We are nearly done now. Let us finish by saying that what you have seen is a true representation of the powers in this Part. It is not just a commemoration, as you have thought; the timing is the work of the divine, enabling that which has been to come together with that which is now, in perfect alignment. Speak to this, and you will speak true. Amen." The presence of the voice faded, and along with it the images. I ended the vision. Seer's comments: The mundane association shown follows the original attribute for the Part, save that it appears to include European Constantinople/Istanbul. The next Part in sequence, Usnarda, is supposed to be that city according to Kelly. But Usnarda's mundane association is called "Graecia", which suggests that the "great citie with the sea hard by" that Kelly saw is in fact one of the seaports of that land, possibly Piraeus. Unlike the immediately preceding Parts, this Part is entirely "below the Abyss". It works in the realm of archetypes, not in the unconditioned transcendental reality. Thus it is concerned with the formation of such archetypes, particularly those that draw men towards the divine. With the movement down into this region of the Tree of Life, the creative Will or Being of the Supernals becomes transformed into a power of Love, of relationship. It is an active, connecting power. The powers of all the lower sephiroth are subsumed into Love, for

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every one of them is a power that deals with relationships between things. "Love under Will" is not a philosophical principle that we can follow or not, as we chose; it is a basic and unavoidable condition of existence. The god's stated reason for creating the Enochian magick itself fulfills the conditions for being called an act of (unconditional) Love under Will. Every archetype is an embodiment of Love. Every one is a distillation of some quality that is present in a multitude of things, and therefor expresses an essence of the relationship between them. The form of the Hagia Sophia and the meta-temple is an archetype of archetypes, representing the relationship between the transcendental Being (represented by the dome of Heaven in each) and the finite world as a whole (represented by the foursquare bodies of the Temples). And within the finite world, the relationship is reflected again, in the four buildings that surround the Sophia, and the four elemental temples around the meta-temple. The elemental temples in turn reflect it down one more time, in the four sub-elemental altars that are placed in the quarters around each temple. This is similar to the pattern shown in the Part named Doanzin, save that the fifth point of the pentagram is here the dome of the temple. When the Voice says that it is God who calls and God who answers, it speaks not only of the Enochian system as such. In every true calling towards the divine -- whether by prayer or by invocation -- it is the divine essence in the human being that calls, and it is the divine that responds.

Usnarda, Part 32 of 91, 2nd of ICH. Zodiacal King: Zurchol. Ministers: 7236 mundane association: Graecia (specified to be Constantinople or Istanbul, not Greece, by Kelly). The vision opens with an image of South America; it rotates 180 degrees, so that south is at the top, and zooms in rapidly on the southern coast of Brazil, and focuses on the city of Rio de Janiero. The sigil of the Part is overlaid on the bay around which the city is built. The Sugarloaf is between the start and endpoints of the sigil. Now it seems that I am looking at the city from one of the hills surrounding it. I am one with the great statue of Jesus that lifts its arms over the city. A voice speaks from behind me; I (or the statue) resonate with that voice, and project it outwards onto the city. It speaks in Enochian, a variation on bits from the first Call: "Casarma ohorela, od farzema

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znrza adna od gono IDOIGO." Unto you I made a law, and you raised your voices and swore obedience and faith unto Me. This is not the voice of the Part, but of some god. The city responds with joy to the voice; it seems that Carnival is in progress. Sounds of happy, stimulating music drift up to where I am; also voices, none of them sorrowing. "The Law was not restriction," says the voice, "but rather to take joy in the love of God. And to live one's life in that joy. The world has too much pain; should god add to it? No; therefore do not excoriate yourselves, nor do pain unto others in My name. Flay not your bodies and souls; you do Me no praise thereby." "You are vessels for My love; fill yourselves to overflowing, for there is more than all of you can hold. Pour yourselves out onto the world, for there is always more to fill you again, ever and without end. Amen." I get a couple of impressions here. First, a true Carnival is not a period of license which must be repented at a later date. It is in itself an uplifting of the world and a connecting of the world and the body to the divine, through celebrations and joy. The word is "carne-", flesh, plus the word for "to lift", literally an elevation of the flesh. And when the flesh (that is, the worldly being of the person) is lifted as high as it can get through celebration, then should the attention be put away from fleshly joys and directed to the divine, so that it can come down and fill the person, raising him or her yet higher. Now I get an image of thousands of people trekking up the side of the mountain on which I stand, carrying lamps and candles to represent the flame of love for the divine that is in their hearts. Another voice comes, this one seeming to be the voice of the Part: "When one climbs the Mountain of God, one must suit one's actions to the nature of the height at which one is traveling. On the lower slopes, the land is covered with plants and sweet fruits of tree and vine; therefor in traveling those slopes one should appreciate what the divine has put there for one's pleasure, and share of that abundance with one's fellowtravelers. "But on the higher slopes, the divine gives a different sort of abundance. The plants recede, leaving only stony ground; all that is needed to push oneself ever higher. But in their place, there is the clear air of the Spirit, and the light of the Sun unhindered by the clouds of the lower regions. One partakes of this, and his spirit is fed thereby, and is strengthened for the journey unto the pinnacle.

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"And when one reaches the pinnacle and unites with the beloved, then one turns and from that peak sends the divine love back into the world, to those who have not yet attained. There is nothing more to be done, within the worlds of men; nor is there need for any more." ["Unites with the beloved" is deliberately ambiguous. The beloved can be either the divine itself, or another person who is also at the pinnacle. If the latter, then the two burn themselves up in the act, and each becomes wholly god for a time.] The image and the presence of the voice fade away, though the spirit of the Part remains. I end the vision. Seer's comments: The Zodiacal King ruling this Part is attributed to Capricorn; hence the images of mountains predominate. There were several side-impressions not mentioned above; they flitted away too quickly, or were lost in the generally pleasant feel of the Part's power: The Sugarloaf is an image of the Yoni; placed between the endpoints of the sigil, at the mouth of the Rio bay, it implies that this love pouring into the world comes from Binah, specifically from that aspect of Nuit which resides in that sphere. The statue of Jesus on its own mountain is an expression of that transcendental love within the finite world; an image of the divine for those who can not yet see it directly, a goal for them to work towards. Thus the voice of the God passes through the statue before passing down to the world. The themes of sacrifice and suffering often associated with the Christian savior are wholly absent; only the love is present. The voice of the god later implies that the sacrifice and suffering are perversions rather than an intrinsic part of the symbol of his Son. This flavor of this Part has a lot in common with the previous one. The same theme of invocation and response underlies it. The god sends his spirit into the world, producing a response from the people; the people invoke the god in joy, and he responds. As seems usual in these visions, certain Christian ideas are confirmed, while others are simultaneously turned on their heads. Carnival is typically considered a period of officially-sanctioned sinning, a sort of safety valve for the pressures built up by being "good" the rest of the year. It is followed immediately by a period of self-denial and repentance in Lent. But here the Carnival is itself a form of praise of the divine; not sin at all, but simply the sort of worship appropriate for the level of existence on which it occurs.

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The worldly being is raised up, through worldly joys, to the margin with the world of the soul. The period of fasting that follows simply continues the raising; having reached the highest level possible through worldly activities, one has to put them aside as distractions and use different techniques to go higher. Repentance and self-abuse are not part of it. The final achievement within the finite world is represented by the union of the worshiper with the "beloved". This is meant in both a symbolic and a practical sense. In the previous Part, I said that Love (in the sense of unconditional Relationship) is the one aspect that all spheres "below the Abyss" have in common, and the one commonality between all the Ideals that are the products of cabalistic and magickal synthesis. Love is in fact the ultimate synthesis that can be achieved within the finite levels of existence. Further, the experience of that unconditional Love, existing in the pure state of Love, brings one closer to the transcendental levels than is possible in any other state of consciousness, without actually entering into the transcendental spheres. It forms a nearperfect counterpart to the nature of Binah, minimizing (though not eliminating) the problems of transition into that sphere.

Ponodol, Part 33 of 91, 3rd of ICH. Zodiacal King: Hononol. Ministers: 5234 mundane association: Lycia (small country on the southern coast of Anatolia.) Thursday, November 23, 1995 2:23 PM Invoked Ponodol using the usual method. As I completed vibrating the associated names, a cloud of white smoke drifted down outside, momentarily obscuring the view through the bank of casement windows in my workroom. I thought there might be a fire, and ran outside to check; examination of the house from all sides did not reveal any fire, or any other source for the smoke. I returned to my room and invoked the names again. The vision opened with an image of men and women working in a field. They are in a long valley beneath a massive mountain range. Bare rock begins not far above the valley floor, and half-starved goats poke among the rocks for food. The people wear smocks of

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rough-woven cloth, or simple breechcloths. Their implements do not appear to be of very good quality. Now a troop of soldiers comes down the valley from the northeast, marching down a dirt road through the middle of the valley. They carry spears and short swords, both with bronze blades, and wear back-and-breast armor and plain helmets with noseguards. They seem derisive or contemptuous of the people they are passing, as if they were not worth the trouble of raiding and looting. The soldiers continue southwards, apparently on their way to some seaport. The voice says: "Those who travel the clear roads of life, towards the obvious goals, sometimes pass by the greatest of treasures without seeing. And those who seem the lowliest sometimes hide in their midst that which would give any man pause, should he come across it in some other venue." Now it seems that the people are moving towards the side of the nearest mountain, and are chasing away the goats from one particular area. They roll aside a great stone (which seems much lighter than its size would warrant) revealing the mouth of a tunnel. Some of them enter; others gather weapons and move to various vantage points along the sides of the valley. I follow those who enter. The tunnel passes along for a ways, turns a short corner to the left, and opens into a large cavern. There is a large platform made of gold in the center of the cavern, guarded by two statues. The statues are bulls, crouched in the usual "sphinx" posture, made of some black stone. Their heads would be about shoulder-height on a man. Golden ornaments decorate the bulls; collars intricately carved with scenes of some goddess, nose-rings, gilded horns, hooves and tail-tufts. A great rectangular panel is at the back of the platform; it shines with a bright light, illuminating the whole cavern. I cannot tell if the light is from some natural source or not. The people gather rich garments hung around the edges of the room, and don them. These are all in earthy colors, of the sort one might see on an Indian blanket from the American southwest. But the designs are much more elaborate, and less abstract than any Zuni or Hopi blanket. I see trees with great fruits, more images of women or goddesses standing on platforms on the backs of crouched cattle, others I cannot discern clearly. It seems that the outside of this hill is a sort of Potempkin village in reverse, making things to seem less than they are.

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The people gather around the edges of the platform, and stand facing inwards. They stay a while in silent contemplation, or perhaps in preparation for some work. There are thirteen of them, seven on the front, three to each side, behind the bulls. My viewpoint rises to the ceiling; I can see the top of the platform now. There is a circle scribed on it, its outer ring inlaid with alternate rays of lapis lazuli and ivory (or perhaps horn?). In the center is a rather simple sigil, thus: [insert sigil] [The sigil is somewhat like a cursive capital "S" with a long tail.] A small star like an asterisk appears at the starting point of the sigil, but not touching it. The floor around and beneath the sigil darkens, and other asterisk-like shapes appear, seemingly at random and of various sizes. The floor takes on an appearance of depth, and it now looks like a stylized image of a starry sky, seen through a porthole. Not a sound has occurred; all this has taken place in complete silence. A stylized sun rises out of the depths; it has a small central disk, surrounded by wavyedged rays like flames. I count thirteen of them. The rays seem too large for them all to be connected to the disk, but they are; and without overlapping or crowding each other. Some spatial distortion must be in effect to accomplish this. The sun obscures the lower portion of the sigil, between the two tails. The sigil is pulled slightly into the depths by its presence. Now the people step onto the platform one at a time, and walk out onto the sun-symbol. As both feet touch the symbol, each vanishes as if sucked down into it. Soon all of them are gone. I move to follow them, but something stops me; and the voice says: "You shall not, at this time." I wait for a while. Then the depth-like quality of the circle gradually fades, as do the asterisk-stars. The circle is again gold in the center, with the sigil inscribed on it; but the sun remains inscribed as part of the sigil. I am instructed to leave and invoke again another time. I return fully to my body and end the vision. Seer's notes: Lycia is one of those rare places on Earth where absolutely nothing of importance ever happened. An appropriate venue for something hidden among the lowest.

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I get the impression that the thirteen-rayed sun is from a religious mythos in which the year is measured by a lunar calendar and zodiac rather than by the twelve-sign solar zodiac. Given the Bulls guarding the holy place, this might be a representation of the symbols from some religion of that ancient age. (As I write this, an image comes to me of the Moon's orbit, tilted with respect to the ecliptic plane. It precesses rapidly, looking like a barrel-hoop someone has spun and allowed to lose its momentum. The inside of this hoop is divided into sections with pictures, but I cannot see them clearly -- it is all moving too fast.) The diminution of the sun's central circle is important in some way, but I do not know what way. Friday, November 24, 1995 3:52 PM Invoked the Part according to the usual method. Prior to doing the invocation, while reading over the previous day's vision, I began to get images of abstract sigils of some sort, one after another. These, it seemed to me, were the "signs" that should be around the rim of the wheel of Luna's orbit, as mentioned in the comments. I got the first four of them, and then the got the sense that I should do the invocation and begin the vision. I am standing in the circle of invocation, upon the sigil of the Part. Around me the air clears to reveal the wheel of the Moon, but now viewed from its center. Behind it, and crossing it in two places, is the wheel of the zodiac. Now the voice says: "Is it not said: 'His eyes are the Lights of Heaven'? And is it not said that 'in his hands the Sun is as a sword and the Moon a through-thrusting fire'? And are not his Tables made twelve by thirteen? And thus is the Moon equal to the Sun, in the powers of our God. "See, o man who is a mage, see and know as we show you these things, that the powers of God are twofold; and what you see is his feminine part. Now look." I looked at the wheel of Luna, and it rotated around me so that the descending node was in front of me. A sigil showed to the right of the point of intersection, the first of those I sensed earlier. It is like the sigil of Cauda Draconis, save that two little lines extend upwards beyond the curls at either side. And now an image of a woman appears behind the sigil, and the sigil itself becomes a cauldron or stewpot which she holds by its two handles. She holds it in front of her lower belly.

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"This is she who nourishes the world, giving of her substance that men might live. Do her honor, o men, for she is your savior in truth; without her, you would not be." Now the circle moves slightly to the left, and I am looking at the next sigil going clockwise. This one looks like a round-bottomed "W", with a tail going off to the right from the right-hand point of the "W". An image appears behind the sigil. It is a rear view of a nude woman seated on the edge of a pool; the "tail" of the sigil is part of her right leg, the "W" is her seat. She seems to be washing herself carefully, especially her pudenda; and now it seems that she is washing a newborn child.

"This is the third of the sigils, not the second. Record it as such." Done. The wheel turns again, and I see another sigil. This one looks somewhat like a modernistic Lamed. The image forms behind; a woman bare from the waist up. She holds a child in the crook of her right arm, and offers her breast to the child. The horizontal bar of the sigil is her left arm, the slightly curved upper vertical is the child's head; the slanted lower vertical is the left side (her left) of her torso, curving down to her waist.

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"This is the fifth of the sigils; record it as such." Done. The wheel turns again, and another sigil comes into view. This one is too complex to describe in words, a set of curves attached at their endpoints. The image behind it shows a left profile of a pregnant woman, near to term, raising a two-year-old child to the Moon. At some moments it seems that she offers a basket of grain and fruits instead. This section contains the ascending lunar node.

(I sense this is the seventh sigil in clockwise order.) The next division clockwise is dark; I can see nothing there. In the following division, I see the image of a woman in a field. She is in an odd posture, half-squatting. Her feet are apart and turned outward, her knees bent so that her calves are vertical. Her back is straight.

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With her right hand she drops seeds into a hole; her left holds pointed staff, point downwards. The sigil is hard to see. It appears to start at her right shoulder, making a smooth curve to the left and then back to her right foot. Another curve rises up to her left hand, touching her womb at its midpoint, and then down the staff, ending in a small curl. Almost like a backwards "N".

"This is the ninth of his signs. Record it as such." Done. The energy of the Part seems to be flagging, but I get an indication I should continue. The circle turns again, and the next sigil I see is a very simple one, like an upside-down "V" with both arms the same height, but the right-hand arm stretched out farther away from the top point than the left arm. An image forms behind it of a woman in right profile, pushing a wheelbarrow or cart laden with foodstuffs. The sigil begins at her right foot, goes up to where her hands grasp the barrow's handles, and down again to the barrow's wheel.

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"Now you see the eleventh sigil in order. Do you record it as such." Done. The wheel turns again, coming to the section just before the descending node. Here the sigil is like an "m", but with three upwards loops, the middle one larger than the two outer ones. An image forms behind it of a woman seated in a chair; her arms are around the shoulders of two children, hugging them close; a girl-child on her right, a boy on her left. She wears a look of contentment.

"And the final, thirteenth, sigil is done. Do you look at these as The Seven, o man, and comprehend them thus. And invoke again to acquire the sigils of The Six, another day. And with that shall you know the woman-self of God complete. And we are done for this time." I thanked the voice of the Part, and ended the vision. Seer's comments: As Dee said in another context, "this diversity of reckoning by sixes and sevens I cannot yet well reconcile." And I should add, by twelves and thirteens as well. Perhaps these seven relate to the Lunar phases shown in Parts 20 through 27. But note that there is no consistent relationship between orbital position and lunar phase; the rapid precession and the Earth's movement mean that Luna can be in any phase at any point in its orbit. I get a vague impression that these thirteen feminine "signs" alternate negative and positive, as do the signs of the traditional zodiac. If so, then the Six will show a more positive, effortful, or outward-looking aspect than the ones seen today. My initial impression is that these seven all relate in some way to reproduction and the care of the children. Free-associating: 1 - Pregnancy. The sigil suggests a full womb, with the ovaries on either side. Or a woman's belly at full term, protruding out between the hip bones. The image supports

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either one of these, with the "cauldron" held directly in front of her womb. If "The Seven" are planets, this would fit well with Luna. 3 - Cleansing the body and newborn of the mess of birth. The shape of the sigil suggests waves on a pond, as well as that shown by the image. Mercury/Hod as Water? Perhaps something to do with Mercury's medical connections. 5 - Feeding the newborn. I don't see how this would fit with Venus/Netzach, which is more closely related to "values" of various sorts, and to personal motivation. Except that the urge to care for a child is a strong form of motivation. 7 - A dedication, perhaps akin to a christening ceremony? Or perhaps a public presentation of the child to show it without defects? The sector's position at the ascending node would tend to support the former. It is odd that the woman is shown as again pregnant; is there some sort of duality or double-cycle involved? Note that the thirteenth image shows two children. Sol/Tiphereth of Luna? Note that as in the regular zodiac, there is a division in type between the "signs" on either side of the equinoctial axis (or its lunar equivalent, the nodal axis). Those on the lower side are personal in nature, those on the upper side more public and general. 9 - Planting. I thought that this might be Mars, but the eleventh sigil brought with it a strong sense of effort being expended. This one might be Jupiter. 11 - Reaping. Mars. 13 - Completion = Saturn. Survival of the children through the effort of previous sectors. Saturday, November 25, 1995 1:09 PM As the vision began, the circle moved out from under my feet to a position in front of me. The names and sigils vanished from its face, and the center became first an image of the "sun" seen in the first vision, then a circle divided into thirteen parts. This circle gained width, and became the ring of the "lunar zodiac" seen yesterday. A voice says: "Blessings, blessings, blessings, unto she who is our life, and the life of all things; for she has divided herself, that that life might be made to flourish upon the Earth. Give of yourself in the same way, o woman; for upon you is the continuance of things founded and maintained. Let not the ways of men deceive and divert you; for they who rise high do also fall; they who govern are governed in their turn, though they know it not. Their glory fades, and is forgotten in a moment; another takes their place. They have no certainty, save that of eventual loss.

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"But that which runs with the heavens, [i.e., that which follows the Moon's cycle] continuing ever, that is not lost. Its constant change is its stability; it continues, with certainty, bringing forth the world. And why should one who has this desire the momentary glories of men? [In response to my thought about the seeming chauvinism of this:] "Now, we seek not to put women "in their place"; their nature should be glorified itself, not denigrated. And if one who, having known the Moon, wishes also to know the ways of men, then what of it? She can do both, in her time, as men cannot. Yet she should not become lost in those ways; for they take her away from herself. To become an imitation man, fighting as he fights, ever striving, is no achievement. "Now take us away from this o Goddess, and let this man look upon the cycle again." Now the top of the ring [which has remained visible throughout this speech] tilts towards me, and the ring moves over and around me so that I stand again in its center. I realize suddenly that this ring is reversed from the actual state of things. In the physical world, the point I have been calling the "descending node" is actually the ascending node. The voice says: "That which is ascending in the movement of the moon is descending in the movement of the nodes; [that is, in the precessional movement] therefore is this shown aright." The ring rotates around me so that the first and third sigils are visible. In the empty sector between, a new sigil appears. This one is composed of three downward-pointing spikes, followed by a curve composed of about one-third of a circle. A smaller curve begins the sigil.

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An image appears behind the sigil. It is of a naked pregnant woman seen from the front; she is slightly crouched over, as if just hit with a stomach cramp. Streams of water burst forth from between her legs; these are the three spikes of the sigil. It seems that this is the initial strong contraction of birth, which bursts the amniotic sac and lets forth its fluids. "This is her Strength" says the voice, "what man can match it, for length and intensity of effort? [I.e., the entire effort of childbirth.] What man could endure it, if he could experience it? Let it be marked as the second of thirteen, and the first of Six." Done. "And be it known that another strength is hidden therein; look again at the sigil." Now the image behind the sigil is a side-view of a woman, facing to my left. The initial small curve of the sigil is her mons pubis; the large terminating curve is her gluteus. The three spikes emanate from the folds of her labia; one from her clitoris, one from her urethra, one from her vagina. They are like lightning bolts of a vivid purple hue. "This is a mystery, o man, one which you are not well fitted to decipher. Though it is not beyond you." The ring turns so that the third and fifth sigils are now before me. In the blank sector between, another appears. Three curves, each curved towards the center. Too simple to describe without a lot of verbiage. An image forms behind it of a woman lying in bed. She is propped up on large, comfortable pillows, surrounded and covered from the waist down by down comforters. There is a sense of richness about the scene, of material

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comforts gathered to her use. Her knees are raised beneath the blankets, and her child is propped up against them. She examines the child with a look of joy.

"This is her Glory, to see the fruits of her labor before her, and to know she brought it forth. And in the night does she hold her Treasure to her, and sing praises of the goddess within herself. Mark this as the fourth of thirteen, and the second of the Six." Done. "Now turn to the last of this side." The ring turns so that the fifth and seventh sigils are before me, and a new one appears between. Two concentric quarter-circles, curved towards the upper left; a line like a reversed "j" connects them at their right ends. An image appears behind the sigil, of a woman bending down over a crib, wrapping blankets around a child therein. The child looks up at her with an expression of awe.

"This is her Responsibility, that her creation needs be supervised and protected, and its needs seen to for many years of Time." "Mark this as the sixth of thirteen, and the third of the Six." Done.

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The ring turns again to show both seventh and ninth sigils. In the space between them, the image of a woman making bread appears. She faces me, and kneads the bread on a table in front of her. Around her are the implements of cooking, and for various home crafts. I cannot see the sigil clearly, and wait for it, looking closely. Once again, three simple curves; I feel like there ought to be a fourth, but cannot discern where it would appear in the sigil. Now there is a sense that a sun is shining down upon her from the upper right corner of the image, from outside whatever dwelling contains her, and that this is an invisible presence that I mistook for a fourth line in the sigil.

"This is her Wealth, that she have the resources to maintain her creation and make it grow; and she is the Magician who combines that wealth according to her Art." (I note that her posture is remarkably like that of the Magician tarot card. And now it seems that the sigil is the profile of the house in which she works.) "Mark this as the eighth of thirteen, and the fourth of the Six." Done. The ring rotates to the next blank sector. Once again I have trouble seeing anything; the power of the Part seems to be fading quickly. I wait, and a sigil slowly appears. Three curves again, this time forming a "W". But where the sigil of the third sector was a roundbottomed "w", this one has points below, and a single half-circle making up the center section.

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Now an image appears. It is of a small village green, upon which children play while their mothers watch from seats around the perimeter. The two outer arms of the sigil are like lanes leading in to the green.

"This is her Joy, that her children are healthy and active, and become more themselves as time passes. And their play is her play, the relief from duty and the chance for relaxation of responsibility, by sharing it with others like her. Mark this as the tenth of thirteen, and the fifth of the Six." Done. The ring moves once more, to the last of the blank sectors. Here there quickly appears another sigil, a small half-circle above, curve downwards; below, a shallow, long-armed "V". A fourth line goes from the left end of the "V" to the left end of the semicircle. The image develops as quickly. The woman is lying under a tree. It is night and she looks up at the sky, wherein a full moon shines. Her face reflects the Moon's light, becoming moon-like itself.

The voice says: "This is her Peace, that she become like her goddess; still and reflective, yet ever changing. The steady rhythm of her change becomes like silence. "And this is the last of the Six. Mark it as such, and include the sigils in your record. "Now it is best that you invoke this Part once more, that we might show you some other things about it. For this concentration on the details distracts from those other aspects. Keep as you have been doing in your other exercises, as these have a cumulative effect with what is being done here in Ponodol. Seek us again, on another day, and we will finish.

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"For now, we are done." I thanked the voice, and ended the vision. Seer's comments: I admit to having some difficulty dealing with the image of woman presented here; it seems too medieval and chauvinistic. But perhaps I am like those soldiers in the first vision, incapable of appreciating what I am seeing. A peasant woman from Mexico or India might find it perfectly appropriate and valuable. My impression is that these sectors called "The Six" have planetary attributes like the previous "Seven", save that there is no sector for the Sun in this group. The sectors fit more or less into the sequence presented previously, but with the planets running in almostreverse order: 2 - Mars. The muscular effort of childbirth is emphasized, and woman's greater resistance to pain. The lightning-bolts are another form of Power, which (as was said) I don't immediately understand. Possibly something to do with the chakras related to the three body-parts, viz. Frater PVN. 4 - Jupiter, due to the "sense of richness" and "treasure" references, and in the priestly sense because she sings praises to her goddess. 6 - Saturn, as authority/responsibility, and as Time. 8 - Mercury, from the obvious Magician references, and because the sigil is her House (BITh, means "house") 10 - Venus, from the references to joy and play. Netzach as the sphere of the Persona, in the refs. to her children "becoming more themselves". 12 - Luna, for obvious reasons. If this is in fact a symbolization of a "lunar zodiac" then I don't quite see the logic of it. There is a certain sense to the placement of the planetary attributes, which can be seen if the thirteenth sector is placed at the top of the wheel; most of the planets are equidistant from it on either side. It would make even more sense if my tentative attributes for the third and fifth sectors were switched around. This is reasonable in the case of the third sector; the "nymph by the pool" image is a long-standing Venusian symbol. But I cannot see how Mercury would fit with the breast-feeding image of the fifth sector. Sunday, November 26, 1995 2:29 PM

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Invoked Ponodol according to the usual procedure. I found myself back in the Temple of the first vision of this Part, standing between the two bulls that guard the circle. The center of the circle is back in its "starry" form, and the thirteen-rayed "sun" seen before is still there, as is the sigil. Now upon the rays of the sun I can see the sigils given to me over the last two visions, and in the body of the "sun" I can see a glyph of Luna, a crescent moon overlaying a full moon. (I put the word "sun" in quotes because I do not believe it is actually intended to represent Sol. Rather, the formation is like a shield or escutcheon.) The voice of the Part tells me I may now walk forward, and I do so, stopping when I stand upon the shield. After a moment it seems as if I am falling through the shield, while simultaneously being pulled through the glowing panel at the back of the Temple. I get the impression that in some way these two movements are really the same movement seen in different ways. Now I am in a long hall, moving rapidly along its length. It curves in many directions as I pass. Every ten feet or so, the halls is guarded by another pair of Bulls. The style with which these are made changes gradually. At first they are realistic representations, as one might see in a modern sculpture or a Hindu temple. Moving further, they become stylized in different ways in turn: Assyrian, Minoan, Egyptian, several others I do not immediately recognize. The final few look like three-dimensional versions of the Neolithic cavepaintings; more abstract than even the most modern styles, but expressing the movement and shape of the animal in a few elegantly smoothed curves. Now the cave ends, and I am in a primeval glade, with a pool in the middle. The full moon reflects perfectly in the pool; there is no wind to disturb the waters. And around the pool are the thirteen figures who passed this way before me in the first vision of the Part. I can see that these are all women. They gaze down at the pool in rapt attention, each focused on the Moon's reflection. Now they shed their garments and enter the pool from all sides. Their entry does not disturb the waters; the Moon's reflection remains the same. Each puts her cupped hands into the water and lifts them up again through the area of the reflection. They pour the water over their heads. Gathering more water, they pour it over their breasts; yet more, and they pour it over their bellies, so that it drips down their clefts. They sink down slightly so that the water is up to their waists; they join hands and begin a prayer of some sort, directed at the Moon in the sky.

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A wind comes down from the sky, the breath of the Moon. And now the waters of the pool are disturbed. The ripples reflect randomly for a while, but then they come together, distorting the image of the Moon in such a way that it becomes the image of a bull's head. This image becomes more solid-seeming, and suddenly a Minotaur bursts up through the surface; large, muscular, with dark-brown skin and a mane of crinkly black hair down the back of his head. He wears no clothes. He is very well-hung, uncircumcised, and fully erect. He bellows and roars as if in some intense anguish, or as if full of some power that he cannot contain, which will torment him until he releases it. He grabs and mounts each woman in turn, taking the first face-forward, human style. The second he takes from behind, the third from in front, alternating around the circle until he has taken all of them. Thus he has taken seven in human fashion, six in the manner of the animal. With each woman he mounts, he seems to become slightly less solid, and slightly less wild. By the time he takes the last, he is a shadow, and seems exhausted. The women, however, are energized, each in a different way; I can tell by the colors of their auras. The Minotaur falls backwards into the center of the pool, all but his head covered by the water. His eyes roll up in his head and he sinks completely below in a swoon. The waters are still once more, showing the full Moon's reflection. And now the voice says: "In these most ancient times, every child was a Child of the Moon; a child of the Goddess begotten upon her worldly equivalents. The Bull -- and therefore every man -- was simply a vehicle by which her Power was transferred from the heavens to the Earth, by which her innate Fecundity was made manifest. Men, those vehicles, were constructed by Her so that they could not keep her power for themselves, but must ever release it to the women who serve her. "It was said (perhaps with some humor) that if men even tried to hold that power, or simply could not release it, it would drive them mad. Men's urge to hunt and fight, to poke animals and each other with their spears, was a sign of this madness; a mad substitution of one spear for another. For when a man had truly released all the Moon's energy unto its rightful recipients, then the man became relaxed, docile, and disinclined to any efforts. (A side comment from somewhere unknown: "Or as your feminists might say, man is woman's way of making more women.") I get a flash here, of an ancient religion in which each woman was initiated into adulthood by sexual congress with a priest wearing a bull-mask; a formalization of the myth. This carried on into civilized (in the sense of "citified") times in the rituals of the Goddess in

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Mesopotamia and elsewhere. And in the agricultural cultures, the power of the Moon contained within the man was sometimes put to purposes of fecundating the fields instead of fecundating women, by slaying him there. But more often a priestess would take the power into herself, and then afterwards distribute it among the fields. Perhaps also it has something to do with the traditional idea that a coven must contain exactly thirteen witches. (And I am reminded, parenthetically, that many years ago I was told that Set's first form among men was with the head of a bull of some wild species of cattle; I still have the sketch of that head somewhere around here. The lunar quality of the horns in that sketch is even more pronounced than in domesticated cattle.) "Woman is ever the foundation of culture. It's customs and practices must be centered around her body and its needs. When this is not so, then that culture is subject to the violent rises and falls that are man's way; such cultures inevitably fail. Such cultures might rise high, as now, but they as surely fall again, to a level where again the needs of woman and children again become paramount in everyone's minds." There is more, but I cannot hear it, only sense it dimly. Something to do with the need for a jump in perspective if current levels of technology and comfort are to be maintained. That is, to a perspective that places its priorities as stated here, but has a breadth of vision to account for how the limits of our environment and resources affect the survival of all women and children. And now the Moon of the vision fades, falling down below the horizon, and everything becomes dark. I cannot see any more; I end the vision. Seer's comments: The basic theme running throughout these visions is that the female principle is the principle of continuation and maintenance, as the male principle (seen in other visions) is that of creation and change. Without the female principle, change would be chaotic; each change wiped out entirely by the next. With the female foundation, change becomes progress, each necessarily building on the changes that came before. The female contains the male, both in the amatory and the spiritual senses; in her, the power of change is modified by the power of continuation to become Rhythm or cyclic manifestation. Physically, her body follows the Moon. Socially her children recreate, in a new phase, the cycle of birth-life-death that she herself goes through, allowing for the extension of culture over time. Spiritually the transcendental Mother takes the impulses of the many Fathers and transforms them into enduring forms. The universe, manifestation of the divine Mother and Fathers, evidences cyclic behavior in all of its parts.

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The tunnel of this vision is a symbol of the enduring presence of the female principle, underlying all societies while remaining essentially unchanged itself. The bull-statues are in many different styles, but they remain bulls nonetheless. The thirteen women obviously relate to the thirteen sectors of the "lunar zodiac" in the previous two visions of the Part. When the Minotaur takes them, each becomes energized in a different manner. Possibly these thirteen women/sectors are archetypes of different kinds of women, represent different personality focuses within the overall theme of womanhood. I will leave that for those better suited to judge.

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The Third Document for the 91 parts of the Earth

Tapamal, Part 34 of 91, 1st of LOE. Zodiacal King: Zurchol Ministers: 2658 Mundane association: Onigap (deduced by Turner to be Yucatan and Central Mexico, on the basis of Kelly's descriptions.) Tuesday, November 28, 1995 4:57 PM Considering the Part last night, I sensed that I would have difficulty getting into it; probably because its nature is at odds with those Parts from ICH. This one is dark and wild by comparison. This invocation is a warm-up, to get me used to the energies and focused into their ways. Invoked according to the usual procedure. There is some confusion; I get images that relate to widely separated parts of the world. One of these is Kali as the Dark Mother, wearing a necklace of skulls, dancing on the bodies of the dead. Then the image changes and I see a man; he might be an Indian from Central America, or he might be Polynesian of the breed who settled Rapa Nui and set up the god-statues in their own image. The man is wearing a necklace of long feathers, brightly colored like the plumage of parrots or birds of paradise. Beads of turquoise and gold separate the feathers and keep them rayed across his chest. He has some sort of hat on, or it might be a crown, made of stiff leather; it forms an upright ring around his head. It has squarish, stylized glyphs or pictures embossed upon it. He wears a skirt of red, heavy cloth, mid-thigh length. He holds a war-club in his left hand, and an obsidian knife with a gold handle in his right. He stands in the middle of a field of corpses, and his legs are stained with blood up to the

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knees, as are his arms to the elbows. If this is Yucatan, the man must be either Maya or Toltec; I don't know enough to tell the difference. This man is a panther, or his name is "Panther", or his power is that of a panther -- like a totem animal; perhaps all three of these. He killed all those around him, and none dared to resist him. There is a terrible freedom in his eyes, and an even more terrible sense of separation from other men; he sees no limits on his actions, none at all. His spirit laps up the life-force of the dying and becomes exalted from it. He sees himself as a great cat stalking the land, taking whoever he meets for his prey, forcing the lesser beings to build a den suited to his stature and then to answer to his will. In his own mind, he is a power beyond all other powers; even the gods are within his control. I don't want to see any more at the moment. I know without it being spoken that this Part relates to the path of Capricorn, which connects Binah with Tiphereth in Achad's Tree. This is the "Devil" aspect of the path, in its worst form, in which the individualized self tries to take on the unlimited, undifferentiated quality of Binah while retaining its "selfness". Friday, December 01, 1995 4:35 PM Invoked Tapamal according to the usual procedure. A great deal of resistance to entering this Part. I do not know what it is, but there is an intimation of great danger; somewhere, something is gibbering in fear, and this is leaking over into me. A quick flash shows the sigil of the Part overlaid on Central America. It roughly follows the west coast of Yucatan, with the final line cutting across to the Pacific at the ithsmus west of there in Mexico. Guatemala is also contained within the power of the Part. I am in complete darkness now; an oppressive darkness, as if shielded from even the dim light of the night-sky by some canopy above. The air is extremely humid, and carries smells and tastes of decay. Still the fear is present, somehow preventing me from entering any further -- or rather, from seeing what is surely all around me. The fear narrows perceptions. I tell myself that it is not my own fear that I am feeling, and immediately there is a sense of opening up, as the space around me expands into a whole world. A pair of yellow cats-eyes open and peer at me from ten or twelve feet away. It is a jaguar, as black as its surroundings. Only the eyes and a faint sheen on its fur distinguish it.

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Now I am in the jaguar, looking out from its eyes. The surroundings are not dark from this viewpoint; I am in a jungle, looking at a very small hole in it created by a fallen tree, too small to even be called a clearing. A capybara or some similar large rodent huddles underneath the tree, tense and ready to flee at any moment. I can feel the jaguar's mouth watering. It gets ready to charge and pounce on the rodent. But the rodent senses something and quickly jumps away into the undergrowth. The jaguar paces forward and sniffs at the spot where it had been. It looks both ways along the tree-trunk, then turns to the right and moves silently towards the exposed rootball of the tree. Coming around the roots, it looks at their underside. It sees several small rodents hidden among the roots. It bats at the roots with one paw, and manages to hook one of them out on its claws. It grabs it with its mouth, crunches it once, and swallows. The other rodents squeak and cower deeper in the roots. The jaguar takes and eats another, and then walks away, looking for bigger game. The voice says: "To the small and weak, death is a great hunter; one who cannot be overcome nor propitiated. One may only hope that it takes another and leaves one alone for another day. "It is the fear of the hunted that you felt on entering this Part, o man who is a mage; its terror mirrors the terror of men when they confront the 'Abyss' [I could hear the quotes] unprepared. Binah is the huntress and the darkness that conceals it; her absence of qualities is sheer terror to those whose self demands that existence be qualified. What choice does such a one have, in the face of Her, save to freeze or to flee? "One can step forward into the jaws of death, but for many that is no choice; the seeming extinction of self is an unacceptable solution. One may flee, but once the hunter has the scent, there is no true escape; the emptiness pursues, and one lives one's time in fear of negation. One may freeze, ceasing movement and change, but that too is a death; the nature of life is change, and if one fights change, then one is soon exhausted, and dies despite one's efforts. I get images here of a stepped pyramid with a small temple at the summit. Priests stand before an altar in front of the temple, and a human sacrifice is tied on the altar, his chest forced upwards so that the breastbone is exposed to the knife. And the sense is that this is identical with the "Devil" card of the Tarot, with its man and woman chained to the altar. "The priests fear the negation of Binah, which they perceive as a great hungry emptiness, not as the glorious fullness that it is. And they sacrifice others to propitiate that emptiness, never thinking of sacrificing themselves. And in doing so, they become that very

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emptiness that they fear so greatly; it seeps into them and permeates them, eating away at them until they are only shells. Neither the soul nor the greater life is left to them; they are hollow and dead; there is no immortal part left in them. "And in the end, the sacrifice becomes their own survival, for a time. They no longer seek to placate a hungry god, but to suck up the life of those killed to counteract the emptiness that eats away at them. But even this does not avail them; pieces of themselves continue to slough away like the body of a leper, until nothing cohesive is left, and they are gone forever. "Now there is no point in continuing; you understand all too well, and rightly do not wish to. Come again to the next Part in order, and continue on. We are done." I ended the vision. Seer's comments: My being is not suited to dealing with this Part. I had my experiences of ultimate Fear very early in my magickal career. Since then it has not played a very great role in my development; Pain (a different Martial aspect) replaced it for most purposes. One should not place too much confidence in either my perception of the Part or my comments thereon. Capricorn and its Tarot card have many possible interpretations, most of them of a positive nature. The sign is the sign of initiation, of the effort and discipline necessary to achieve a goal, and the high place that one comes to through that effort. But the sign's ruler, Saturn, is not only the planet of structure and discipline, but also of endings and terminations. Mars, exalted therein, is not only the Work and Will of the magician, but also the planet of violence and fear. The negative, degenerate qualities of the sign and planets predominate in this Part. The man seen in Tuesday's vision is an historical personage. One of the early Mayan kings, the one who created most of their empire, was named "Jaguar" or "Red Jaguar", something of the sort. If I remember correctly, the custom of the times was that nobility captured in battle were sacrificed by the winning king to the gods of his kingdom, and apparently went to their deaths willingly. Death-oriented religions and cultures -- as the Mayans, Aztecs and some Kali-cults -- are one part of the path's nature. The perceptual state of this king is another example of the grandiose form of schizophrenia mentioned in connection with an earlier Part. Here it is depicted as the result of a downflow of Binah-force, in its form-destroying aspect, combined with the selfexaltation typical of the Solar consciousness.

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Friday's vision depicts these two forces in a more common form, in which the superior Binah-force does not combine with the Solar, but instead overshadows it. The result is the fear, terror, and sense of imminent destruction of the traditional "Abyss" experience as described by Crowley. The Binah-force enters the person along a dimension that he cannot perceive and in which he is incapable of acting. He is effectively helpless before it, and has no real escape. Hence its depiction as the invisible Huntress. Several possible reactions to this situation are shown. The best, but least desirable from a Self-interested viewpoint, is to actively submit oneself to the death-experience. "Freezing" and "fleeing" are the two instinctual variations of the flight-or-fight syndrome; neither is successful in doing more than delaying the inevitable. If one has gone far enough on the path that one has contacted the Binah energies, it is already too late to avoid their effect; the conscious self is the last part of the being to perceive the contact, so it is already well-established. "Freezing", that is, resisting the changes it makes, is also futile; the finite cannot overcome the infinite, only make the effects more painful. The remaining response is one that leads to the creation of a Black Brother. The being seeks to separate itself from the transfinite by objectifying it, creating a finite image between himself and it. Crowley called this image Choronzon, the "demon of the Abyss"; for others it might be Satan, Chthulhu, Set, Huitzilopochtli, or some other such image. The being then attempts to propitiate this demon -- and delay his own demise -- by feeding other people as substitutes. Note that if we were going up the Tree instead of from the top down, this Part, with its emphasis on Fear, would come before the Parts from ICH, all of which relate to the ultimate finite synthesis called "love". Even though it is still a finite Ideal, one cannot experience it in its purest form so long as one retains the conception of oneself as a completely distinct, separate entity. This experience of the death of self seems a necessary precursor.

Gedoons, Part 35 of 91. 2nd of LOE. Zodiacal King: Cadaamp. Ministers: 7772 Mundane association: India Major (Southeast Asia and India east of the Ganges.)

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Monday, December 04, 1995 9:30 PM For a while I could see nothing except vibrating lines of many colors filling my visual field; these were like the visual effects that sometimes come when peaking on LSD. They were accompanied by a sense of fragmentation also similar to that of an acid peak. Then I was looking down on southeast Asia from the direction of India. The sigil was overlaid thereon. The sigil started at about the location of Haiphong in Vietnam, curled around the southern end of the region and northwards, ending just east of the easternmost mouth of the Ganges. The Malaysian peninsula was not included. Now comes the image of a man, down on his knees and with his head bent close to the ground. He is wearing a coolie outfit or one of those pajama-like suits the Viet Cong used to wear. But he does not seem to have Asiatic features; I cannot place him in any ethnic group. It is hard to tell what he is doing. He seems to be sorting out tiny grains of something from the dirt; he is picking up individual grains of rice and eating them. Bugs also, and anything else that comes in front of his eyes. He does not look up at all. The image widens. I can see a truck parked a short way away. It is piled high with sacks of rice; one of these has a leak -- this is the source of the grains the man seeks. It seems he could just stand up, walk over to the truck, and take much more rice than he is finding on his knees. Why doesn't he do so? Is he even aware that the truck is there? He sits up straight for a moment, and knee-walks a few feet down the road -- away from the truck. Then he bends over again and goes back to his picking. The voice speaks: "One can become so accustomed to one's routines of survival that one does not see riches even when they are nearby, and free for the taking. One can become so accustomed to hunger that a full stomach is not even imaginable, nor can the means by which it can be gained. That which is reliable, though it yields scant gain, is taken over the chances [it may have said "changes" instead] that would bring more. "So too in the spiritual quest, one can get so used to one's routines of "development" that one continues them even when they no longer produce good results. When the culture is steeped in routines and ritual to begin with, then the purpose of practices may be forgotten entirely, and the practices be assumed to be the end in themselves. "

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I get side-images of monks in a monastery, going through their daily rituals of work, worship, and meditation. Everything is timed exactly; just so much time for work, so much in the temple, so much in one's cell. Then doing it all over again. Other images of the prayer-wheels that Tibetans like so much, equally stylized, equally useless when the purpose is forgotten. "The intent of ritual activity -- we do not mean the ceremonials of magick -- are to free the mind from concern with the daily round of living. To free the mind from the need to make decisions, to make efforts, that would distract from the pursuit of the goal of enlightenment. But what use, if the rituals are themselves so time-consuming that no time is left for the mind to be free to roam? "Inspiration, the descent of the spirit, does not come when the mind is occupied, but when it is without occupation; open, relaxed, attentive but not seeking." The voice stops abruptly. The sense of the speaker's presence is no longer there. Nor does any further image appear. The power of the Part can still be sensed, however. I wait for a while, simply focused and ready, not seeking more. Then for a few moments, the shimmering lines and the disorientation of the opening return. Then they pass again. The voice continues, now seeming to come from a distance: "One can free the mind without such ritualistic activity; it is a matter of careful judgment, of examination of the details of life, and the elimination of all those that are not essential. Then do the rest as the moment demands, and take no thought for it beyond the moment of its accomplishment. Nor be seeking forward in thought to the next task -- it shall come in its own time, and be done when its time comes, not before. Such is the way of the Taoist sages. "Let time become naught; let the days cycle by as they will, and care not whether it be spring or fall, summer or winter. Care not for the passage of the years; make them invisible to your sight and thought. Do what is before you when it is before you, and leave it when it is done. Out of this comes a natural ordering of life, superior to any ritual ordering. "And when the concerns of life are so reduced to their essentials, then Time opens up in which the spirit can come in, and the being is prepared for it to be received. The myriad tiny moments that separated tasks before now join together into larger moments, even days, when nothing need be done except attend to the spirit. Tasks adjust themselves naturally, when they have room to do so.

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"Now come you to the next of the Parts; this one is done as well as needs be. Comment, and go on. We are done." I thank the voice, and end the vision. Seer's comments: Gedoons is the first of the Parts to be governed by Cadaamp, the Zodiacal King of Virgo in the system used for this work. The vision seems to be a general treatment of the sign. The characteristics of Virgo are attention to detail, and a love of routinized activity. This detailconsciousness often comes at the expense of the wider view; routinization at the expense of opportunities. The opening image of the man gleaning rice-grains expresses this. In Frater Achad's "reformed" Tree of Life, the path of Virgo connects Hod, the sphere of the intellect, with Geburah, the sphere of directed activity. It is also one of the three vertical paths connecting the lowest triad of the Tree with the middle triad. As such, it represents one of the means used to move from the mundane-oriented region of the Tree into the spiritually- and magickally-oriented region. The intellect, the part of the mind that deals with words and converts experience into word-groups, is extremely sensitive to events. Everything we see, everything that happens in our life, produces an immediate spate of activity in the intellect, which often continues long after the event itself is passed. We create descriptions of the event, play with inner dialogs of how we should have reacted to it for best effect, decide on contingency plans for future occurrences of similar events, and so on. Anticipated events (and purely imaginary events) produce equally furious activity, even though the events almost never occur in the way we anticipate. The intent of the monkish lifestyle is to reduce this activity of the intellect by taking away the opportunity and need for it. "Silencing the inner dialog", as Casteneda puts it, is the first step towards becoming aware of the spiritual world. When the person eschews possessions, there is no need for concern with acquiring or keeping them. When the person abandons status and recognition, family and society, social affairs become much simpler. When basic survival is assured through a minimum of communal work, or through begging, then many mundane fears fall by the wayside. The intellect loses most of its usual sources of stimulation. Those remaining minimum activities are then converted into a routine, so that even they do not stimulate the inner dialog very much. But it is easy for certain personality types to make such routine into ritual, and make the ritual an end in itself, focusing on it instead of becoming unconscious of it. Without a constant re-direction of the attention away from the routine and towards the inner world, it becomes empty activity.

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The "Taoist" view extolled by the voice of the Part is a higher form of this principle, in which even routine is abandoned. The activities of life and mind become a direct reflection of the innate cycles of activity of the spiritual self. The consciousness dwells in the present, and as those energies of which it is an expression vary over time, so does the focus of its attention. Everything is done as the present moment dictates, with neither anticipation of possible futures, nor mulling over of past events. Achieving this does not constitute "enlightenment", though one might get that impression from certain famous texts. Rather, it is the perfection of the relationship between action and thought on the one hand, and the individual will, the "atmic impulse" on other.

Ambriol, Part 36 of 91. 3rd of LOE. Zodiacal King: Ziracah. Ministers: 3391 Mundane association: Orcheny (Islands in the marshes of the lower Tigris and Euphrates.) Note: James shows a different, discontinuous sigil for this Part. Thursday, December 07, 1995 1:44 PM While practicing the visualization of the sigil prior to the invocation, I heard an astral voice cry: "The Elixer! The wonderful Elixer!" in tones of awe. I was momentarily filled with a feeling of wonder, then it faded again. Invoked Ambriol according to the usual procedure. The center of the circle opened, and below me I could see Australia. The sigil of the Part was overlaid on it. The start of the sigil was around Darwin. It followed the coast east to the opening of the big gulf, then jogged southwest into the desert. The parallelogramatic section of the sigil enclosed most of the Northern Territories and northern Queensland, roughly contiguous with the watershed that drains into the gulf. Now an image of The Star is overlaid on the land and sky. My viewpoint revolves around so that I am looking at the region from above the gulf. The water-carrier has one foot on the gulf, the other on the land south of it; she pours out water from her left-hand jug upon the mountains and hills to the south, and it drains down through the watershed to the gulf. She pours water from her other jug over the sea, and it forms a typhoon, which stirs up the waters of the gulf and flings them upwards. Above her head a bright star appears. It is not Polaris (as in previous visions) but Achernar, shining with blue-white intensity. And it seems there is another water-carrier among the stars above, and she pours down her water upon this star, from whence it flows and meanders northwards until it reaches the celestial equator near the Hunter's

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feet. There it enters a lake surrounding the Hunter's foot; Rigel spins redly and its heat vaporizes the water, which disappears into the background of the sky. Now the image of the earthly water-carrier and her surroundings begins to waver, as if seen through disturbed water; soon only the waves of the disturbance are visible. Simultaneously, the river in the sky becomes more regular in shape, a series of up-anddown strokes. The waves above and the waves below combine and form into the glyph of Aquarius. The voice speaks: "As above, so below. They are one; there is no separation between them, save in the falsely discriminating minds of men. Why should the sky not affect the Earth? And wherefore should not the Earth equally affect the sky? They have run together since the beginnings of Time, and all within their horizon is but a single realm, unbroken, an unhatched egg." (I get an impression here that the waves of the Aquarius sigil somehow represent the "solve et coagula" formula in action. Each downward point of a wave is a condensation of substance; each upward point is a dissolution of substance into a vaporous state. Just so, the water condenses and falls on the land; it flows to the sea and is again evaporated. Just so, the clouds of gas in space condense into stars; these concentrate until their heat is too great; then they explode their substance into vapor again. (And each of the Earthly water-carrier's jugs is one end of a process that contains several repetitions of the formula; an additional polarity overlaid on the basic process. So also the celestial river, running from Achernar to Rigel, is a process containing multiple repetitions of the formula. What this overlaid process might be, I do not yet know.) The voice speaks again, answering my thought: "What else could it be, o man, but the distillation of the wonderful Elixer, the essence of all things? And it is all one process, above and below. So the waters of the world carry with them the essences of the lands they pass through; these are carried upwards in the evaporation to become one with the Aires. Some condenses again with the rain, but other parts are carried higher. And in the highest Aires are they boiled off of this world by the power of the Sun, to become part of the great seas of space. "So too in the worlds of men; they reincarnate ever, each time become more themselves, more their own essence. At any point in time, some return again to the Earth; others achieve a high enough place that they are released from the bindings of this world into the greater universe. And what happens then, is not for us to say; but the process continues ever onwards."

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"Now think of what we have said before: the release of a man from this world is the true beginning of his life, a life of freedom from all save self-defined limits. There is nowhere barred to those who leave, nowhere they might not pass. Those who travel the star-ways take from this world their own distillation of its essence, and carry it with them wherever they might pass. Thus is the Earth rejoined with that realm from which she blocked her attention in a long-ago time. With each such passing a tendril of her substance is carried along; these bind to what they pass, and the links are re-made that once were broken. "And in these links will the higher process, that which takes place among the stars, eventually be brought down to Earth again. The false division will be healed, the separation in the minds of men destroyed forever. The illusion that Here is not There [i.e., that the Earth is not part of the Heavens] shall be overcome, and men once more pass freely from realm to realm, even those who have not yet earned their passage into the greater life. "Now go, and come again another day, and you will see more, more clearly. We are done." I ended the vision. Seer's comments: Achernar is the first star of the constellation Eridanus, the River. It's name comes from an Arabic phrase meaning "end of the River". Whether it was supposed to be the headwaters or the mouth is debatable; here it is the former. Rigel in Orion lies very close to the other end of Eridanus. It is actually a blue-white supergiant, not a red star as described here. But the visible star is part of a four-star system composed of two binaries; the complex orbits of these four might be likened to a cosmic equivalent of the typhoon produced by the Earthly water-carrier. The Achernar end of the River is close to the Phoenix. The other end is at Orion. Orion lost his sight and then regained it thanks to the rays of the Sun; the Phoenix dies and is reborn. It seems to me that both might be an expression of the principle being shown here. Others of the voices have said that the "star-roads" are endless, the travels upon them never reach a final goal. Therefore this distillation process must also be endless; the Elixer is never completed, but always in process. Sunday, December 10, 1995 12:50 PM Invoked Ambriol according to the usual procedure.

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The night sky appears above the circle, and then it seems that I am standing in the floodplain of that region described in the previous vision, hills to the south and east, desert to the west, the great gulf to the north. And in the sky, the sigil of the Part becomes one with Eridanus, though they are nothing alike in shape; somehow there is an identity between them. And now I am in that sky-river, gliding down it in a marvelous boat. The boat seems to be made of jewels or stars itself, bound together with some kind of magick force. It seems the essence of Night, that boat, and it passes through places and times where no others could pass. It adapts, changing its shape and nature as it moves, conforming to the qualities of the spaces around it. In the bow of the boat stands the eldest Set, in his form from before his demonification. He is also like Night, and carries a myriad of stars within him. He bears a long thin staff in his right hand, and in his left is a sphere that is like an eye, and somehow also like a grail. He also seems to change his nature as the boat moves along; his aura is never the same from one moment to the next. Yet on some other level there is continuity; adaptation and change are his nature. There is something very confusing here; at one moment it seems that the spaces change as we pass through them, and at another that this god is changing the spaces. Or perhaps he is creating them? The voice speaks: "There is a subtle dance of powers going on here, o mage; as there is for all those who travel the star-roads. It is not like the Earth, where the changes man takes upon him in incarnation are forced, to a great extent, by the existing state of the world. Rather, here in the spaces of freedom the world changes as the being who moves in it changes. Each new potential manifested by a being instantly becomes one with the existing state of the universe, becomes embodied in it with those qualities already established. And the manifestation of those qualities in space reflects back upon the traveler, causing additional changes and adaptations in his nature. "Thus there is a continual unfolding of both universe and the being who travels; each takes on marvelous new qualities, creates things previously unknown. And thus each road is a river; not a fixed thing of earth, but a fluid, adaptable, ever-changing flow. There are no guides here; how can there be when each step and motion creates newness? There is no hierarchy here, no rulership of one power by a greater power; how can there be, when the attempt to rule changes the conditions as much as any other action? Only voluntary cooperation among beings -- that is, Love under Will -- allows them to be fellow-travelers for a time, joining their creative powers in a dance of endless surprises.

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"Take you the bow position in this boat of years, for a time, and see what happens." I move to the front of the boat, and in that motion become the god who stands there. I look forward. After a time the boat passes into a distinct space, a sphere within which certain qualities seem to maintain themselves over time. In that space, passing by on the left of the boat, I see my Temple of the Tablets. And below the boat, in the relative terms of this space, I see a network of cubes, the faces of each one connected to their nearest neighbors by lines of light. These cubes are each a set of Tablets, like unto those of the Enochian magick, but not identical. This network extends down and away in every direction, seemingly endless. Then I see another Temple forward and on the left; this one is of Fire. (The first was of Air.) And looking far away to starboard, I see two more, in the other two elements. Together they form a great square above the sea of cubes; and as I move towards the midpoint between them all, another, greater Temple forms within those bounds. It towers over the others and seems to include them. I reach the midpoint, and pass through the central beam of power in that greater temple. It fills me and seems to expand me for a moment. The boat seems caught in an eddy, whirling around within the beam three or four times before passing out of it again, and going on. The boat quickly passes out of that space and moves on. After a time, another thing comes closer out of the surrounding space; this one is the Comselha pattern I devised for the powers of the Tablets. It is like Oz in the old movie, high, pointed towers, but in the middle of a circular plate. As I move closer the space around me splits into three interrelated parts. In one, the basic circular pattern is to be seen, my original design. In another, "above" the first in some way, it is the city that grew out of that design. And in the third, above and larger than either of those, it seems an entire nation of powers has formed upon that circular plan, each square of the original design become a huge territory. The boat passes out of this as well, and back into the undifferentiated spaces again. And the voice says: "Though the change is inevitable within the star-roads, yet one can see landmarks there, creations that have gained a permanence of sorts in comparison with their surroundings. These serve as reference points and points of rendezvous for those who travel the roads. The ones that you see are of course your own, which have gained such permanence; there are many others, a few of which you have seen in your visions. "One can travel from landmark to landmark, having confidence of arrival. Yet the paths between are always different, always changing. And even these landmarks change slowly,

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as those who arrive lend some of their own power and experience to the permanent spaces. "But there is joy in striking out into the unknown, as well you know. One still encounters such landmarks, but one never knows when or where they will appear. And the blessing of surprise is added to the joy of going and arriving." While this was said, we passed by other things. One like an upside-down ankh, the hole of which appeared as a tunnel passing through spaces ordered in endless vertically-oriented layers or planes. Another was a bow whose string vibrated in complex wave-forms. Another was a cube whose inside was larger than its outside. And others, too far away to see clearly. The boat gave a sudden rocking motion, and it was back in the stream of Eridanus, moving through the sky towards Orion. All those other landmarks had vanished. Looking down, it appeared that the "water" of this stream was compose of souls, all being rushed along by some unseen force. They did not appear disturbed or helpless; rather there was a sense of partying, of travel for its own sake; they appeared content with their circumstances. The overall flow of souls was fairly constant, but one could distinguish groups within the flow, marked by some common quality. The flow carried them onwards, faster than the boat was moving. "Those who make the roads by their travels are not the only ones who can travel them. Given the right circumstances, any being may do so, but only in a passive way. These others must follow the streams and currents previously laid down; what they see along their way is not of their creation, but the developing and elaborating result of a true Traveler's work. And in doing so they too have a freedom of sorts; they are not free of their own natures, but they are free of any given world. Our Earth is a temporary exception, soon to be relieved of that restriction. "These too are part of the wonderful Elixer being distilled from the worlds; never forget that. Their nature contributes as much to its quality at any time as do those whose work is on higher levels, and is by their own will." "Now we have said enough. Comment as you will, and go on to the next of the Parts. We believe you will find it intriguing. We are done." I ended the vision. Seer's comments:

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This vision returns to some very old themes of my work. And from my own viewpoint, doesn't really reveal much that is new about them. Much is promised, very little is delivered. As described here, the "star-roads" seem not much different from the traditional view of the "astral plane", which changes according to one's will, and according to the unconscious impulses one projects upon it. Other visions have in fact depicted them as a sort of superastral, a plane which is the Yesod of a Tree in which our entire Tree of Life constitutes Malkuth. This meta-Yesod is supposedly the residence of those beings who incarnate as planets, and many others of equal scope. A vast society of such beings has been hinted at. Beyond that, there is nothing more to say at this time. The night-boat of Set seems to be a complement to the boat of Ra.

Gecaond, Part 37 of 91, 1st of ZIM. Zodiacal king: Lavavoth (Sag.). Ministers: 8111 Mundane association: Achaia (southern Greece) Saturday, December 16, 1995 8:31 PM As I practiced visualizing the sigil, I got an image of it overlaid on Greece. It began at the Bay of Amvrakikos on the west side of the mainland, went south between the Ionian Isles and the mainland, east through the Gulf of Corinth, further east around Athens, then north and back west through the Gulf of Evvoia (sp?). The Peleponesos was not included. Parnassus and Delphi were situated almost exactly in the center of the sigil. It seemed to me that a thin line of light was sticking upwards out of the mountain, and another was sticking down into the Delphic temple. And these two lines were somehow acting like the cables of an elevator -- they remind me of the space elevator in Clarke's novel, though the lines are nothing more than short segments. There was also an impression that there was a hole in the Earth at the location of Delphi, with a short conical upper section, leading to a narrow, cylindrical main section below. There seemed no bottom to the hole. I could get nothing more in this vision. Seer's comments:

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The energy of this project seems to be running out, as it did last year at about this time. Perhaps this is a good place to stop for now. If the past two years are any indication, the energy will come back some time after the summer solstice.

Laparin, Part 38 of 91, 2nd of ZIM. Zodiacal king: Olpaged. Ministers: 3360. Mundane association: Armenia (modern Armenia and Azerbaijan)

Docepax, Part 39 of 91, 3rd of ZIM. Zodiacal king: Alpudus. Ministers: 4312 Mundane association: Cilicia Nemrod ("up in the mountains beyond Cathay").

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