Chaos - the Forgotten Father

vel Tripudium Stella

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

The question of Chaos is seldom explored by Thelemites, but this god plays a large role in Thelema, Thelemic mysticism and Crowley’s effort to develop a complete and consistent pantheon along with a Thelemic cosmogony and existentialism. In this essay I intend to explore Chaos’ role with reference to classical sources and the Libri of Aleister Crowley, and also discuss how Chaos might fit into an overall schema. My goal is to make Chaos more conceptually tangible and do some justice to the forgotten father. I also intend to address exactly why Chaos is ignored, which is due partly to the difficulty in reconciling the classical understanding of him with Crowley’s incorporation of him in the Gnostic Mass.

Chaos is the first figure venerated in Crowley’s Gnostic Catholic Mass, his OTO’s “central public and private ceremony” that, like the Roman Catholic Mass, contains a Creed wherein participants go through several articles in a sort of confession of faith, a creed or credo, meaning “I believe.” Chaos comes first, taking the position of the “One God, the Father Almighty” of the Apostle’s Creed, and is similar in being the creator, lofty and vast. Chaos is usually mentioned in concert with Babalon, she to whom much more attention has been paid, and where she is night and woman he is bright and man. The challenge comes in reconciling this understanding of Chaos with his roots in Ancient Greece and Crowley’s vision of him alike, where he is understood as the blackness that preceded creation.

The subject is further complicated as Chaos’ appearance in Crowleyana is mostly confined to the Gnostic Mass and material tyled to the highest grades of OTO, the former being an abstruction of the latter. OTO material connected to the Supreme Secret is dense and Crowley expected aspirants to discern its nature and application through their own ingenium. Further complicating things is OTO’s seeming rejection of the cornerstone of their mysticism, the secret itself, out of preference for affirming gender newspeak.

This essay will review some classical sources to determine possible roots of the Greek Chaos for the sake of comparative religion. Crowley uses obscure etymology as much as Qabalah to give students a hint about deeper meaning, but if any exists here it is something he would’ve intuited rather than read. Some attention will be paid to mystery school material as Chaos and his proxies had more of a role in Orphic traditions than in public discourse, but that material is obscure. The primary resource for this essay is Crowley himself as it’s his understanding that is most relevant without some vain deference to antique obscurities.

Χαος

Χαος has traditionally been translated to “gap” or “chasm” as a Greek word of Proto-Indo European origin, traced back to ǵʰeh₂-, which means gape. According to Skeat’s Etymological Dictionary, a volume Crowley claimed he always had at his side, it refers to “an empty space” or “abyss,” and also “a confused mass.” This latter meaning comes from Ovid’s 5th century BC Metamorphoses, where Chaos is described as “a rude and undeveloped mass/ that nothing made except a ponderous weight/ and all discordant elements confused/ were there congested in a shapeless heap. However the first mention of Chaos is Hesiod’s 7th century BC Theogony, which reads (lines 116-125):

The First Gods
In the beginning there was only Chaos, the Abyss,
But then Gaia, the Earth, came into being,
Her broad bosom the ever-firm foundation of all,
And Tartaros, dim in the underground depths,
And Eros, loveliest of all the Immortals, who
Makes their bodies (and men’s bodies) go limp,
Mastering their minds and subduing their wills.
From the Abyss were born Erebos and dark Night.
And Night, pregnant after sweet intercourse
With Erebos, gave birth to Aether and Day.

Chaos is here the parent of all, his name being gender neuter in the Greek, similar to the Elohim of Genesis which was incidentally written around the same time. He’s referred to as an “immortal” or “timeless” God, along with Nyx, Tartarus and Eros. Some interpret Hesiod as saying these four progenitors occurred simultaneously and the listed order is irrelevant. Later, the Orphics would take Chaos in a new direction, proposing that everything, including and most importantly Eros, were a product of his early act of creation. Perhaps Chaos was the originator and the other three were formed about him - Nature, Hell and Eros, where Eros is Reason, Love and Light.

Hesiod did not write Theogony in a vacuum. He was breaking the silence of what’s called the Greek Dark Ages, that being the relative absence of literature that existed between the fall of Mycenae with the Bronze Age Collapse (circa 1200bc) and the coming of historians and epics. Hesiod was a citizen of Cyme, in Asia Minor near modern day Izmir, which was something of a cross-roads between Phrygia and Greece and may be the origin of Greek letters. Scholars posit that in this eastern frontier of a resurging Greece the letter Χ, Chi, was more asperative than in the west, sounding more like the “k” in “making” than a hard “k” like in “Kraftwerk.” The previous 500 years had given this region of the Mediterranean a more Anatolian hue, but not much more, but more importantly the Indo-European religion of the Myceneans had mingled to some degree with it’s Anatolian neighbors.

Χαος’ linguistic roots may be lost to history. Classicists seem conflicted or dismissive about any reference this may make to adjacent traditions. Χαος may be an initiated name, revealed by Hesiod, of some nearby cult. The Mycenean religion is largely unknown as it was practiced in secrecy. Many of their gods are only known by epithets, their true name not being divulged publicly. Perhaps Χαος is one of these, a mystery-name for the Mycenean Hades or Zeus. Perhaps Χαος is an appropriation of some Phrygian, Semetic or Egyptian god, but a linguistic connection is not obvious. Elohim is an attractive consideration as a local mythological corollary, but the etymology is lacking. It may be that either, or both, were an epithet for a proto tradition, perhaps coming from Babylon or Egypt. Χαος could also be a corruption of Dyeus, discussed later, laundered through Anatolia. Or Χαος could be a simple term for some lofty take on the primordial state, perhaps just a slap of the nominative -ος suffix onto the Mycenean word Ka, which means “one” or “first.” Whatever the root, it’s unlikely that Hesiod invented it. Much of Theogony reads like Indo-European literature, specifically the Völuspá where the völva are the muses, Odin is Hesiod, and it opens with reference to Ginnunga, the gaping yawn, and follows with an account of different orders of creation. The Greeks and the Norse were Indo European and the persistence of oral traditions in the PIE diaspora makes it possible that Hesiod was telling an ancient tale of his IE forbearers. This opens an avenue of speculation where Chaos does not refer to a void but rather to a space where magick and gods dwell. Aristotle shared this understanding of Chaos as a place, saying Chaos simply referred to a space where things exist.

Hesiod was also writing during the golden age of pre-Socratic philosophy, alongside Homer. Χαος is not mentioned in Homer, nor in other contemporaries of Hesiod. However Χαος is often discussed alongside Apeiron, without-bounds, an infinite one whose nature was discussed by numerous parties. Thales proposed that the nature of the Apeiron was that of water. Heraclitus proposed fire as the nature of the eternal one. The Pythagoreans believed there was an Apeiron but its limitlessness was delimited by the intersection of other forces, such as the elements. In this sense Χαος as “gap” may mean that originally forces were apart from one another, and then they intersected and produced the Cosmos in an incidental harmony. Xenophanes understood the connection with Chaos and Apeiron, writing, “The upper limit of earth borders on air. The lower limit reaches down to the unlimited [Apeiron].” Apeiron was also responsible for creation through division, similar to Ymir in Völuspá and also the Akaphelon in the Bornless One invocation, who is identified with Bes and Apophis.

In a work that was only translated two years after Crowley’s first vision of Chaos, Nietzsche’s “Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks,” Nietzsche does a sort of diagnosis of the pre-Socratics by considering their personalities in light of their understanding of this question. Nietzsche’s position seemed to be that each of these several philosophers reflected their own personhood, beliefs and predilections into the undefined idea of Chaos.

Later classical authors, including those connected to the Orphic/Eleusinian mysteries, took liberties with Chaos. Aristophanes’ 4th century BC play The Birds, reads:

At the beginning there was only Chaos, Night, dark Erebus, and deep Tartarus. Earth, the air and heaven had no existence. Firstly, black-winged Night laid a germless egg in the bosom of the infinite deeps of Erebus, and from this, after the revolution of long ages, sprang the graceful Eros with his glittering golden wings, swift as the whirlwinds of the tempest. He mated in deep Tartarus with dark Chaos, winged like himself, and thus hatched forth our race, which was the first to see the light.

The break of the primordial darkness formed two different darknesses, the darkness of the sky above and the darkness of the deep below. These wed and Eros was born, light, and winged like his grandfather Chaos. They then somehow coupled within Tartarus and our illuminated race came into being. Chaos coupling with Eros is often used as an explanation that Chaos is female. The Eleusinian reading of Chaos vis a vis Aleister Crowley will be gone into later.

Hesiod mostly concerns himself with another narrative trajectory though. Chaos gets one line, but the majority of Theogony involves the origin of the other Gods, and then the creation of the Titans, the war between the Titans and the Gods, and several tales of the son usurping the father.

Crowley’s Orphic Gnosticism

The first mention of Chaos in Crowleyana is in Crowley’s vision of the 4th Aethyr, PAZ, had on the morning of December 16th, 1909, in Biskra, Algeria.

So I am torn asunder, nerve from nerve and vein from vein, and more intimately — cell from cell, molecule from molecule, and atom from atom, and at the same time all crushed together. (Write down that the tearing asunder is a crushing together.) All the double phenomena are only two ways of looking at a single phenomenon; and the single phenomenon is Peace. There is no sense in my words or in my thoughts. “Faces half- formed arose.” This is the meaning of that passage; they are attempts to interpret Chaos, but Chaos is Peace. Cosmos is the War of the Rose and the Cross. That was “a half-formed face” that I said then. All images are useless.

Blackness, blackness intolerable, before the beginning of the light. This is the first verse of Genesis. Holy art thou, Chaos, Chaos, Eternity, all contradictions in terms!

The 4th Aethyr is the 4th to last for the aethyrnaut Crowley, and he admits that the closer he gets to the end of the Aethyrs the more difficult it is to express the visions in intelligible ways. Supernal things, he describes, are mysteries, and the real mysteries are incommunicable, or as Chaos is described, “ineffable.” In this Aethyr we have some classical references such as Chaos being blackness, but also Chaos as being referenced in the first verse of Genesis, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Crowley’s nod to Genesis recalls an observation by classicists regarding Chaos being the creator in addition to him being likened unto Water, recalling Genesis 1:2, “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”

Crowley’s vision of an ineffable blackness that is breaking apart (which is collapsing together), and this eternal state of peace is contrasted from the “War of the Rose and the Cross,” which is Cosmos. And these precipitate the formation of “the beginning of the light.” Genesis 1:3, “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” In the New Testament, Cosmos is translated as “the world” but this is often interpreted as “the people.” In John 3:16 “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” But in John’s First Epistle 2:15 believers are warned to “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” In both verses Cosmos is used. For Crowley, Cosmos seems to be the hermetically ordered phenomenal world that seeks balance, but in this balance comes a stagnation and Chaos is the force that renews creation through destruction. This is depicted in the 4th Aethyr in the interaction between Chaos and Madimi:

He hath a thousand arms, and in each hand is a weapon of terrible strength. His face is more terrible than the storm, and from his eyes flash lightnings of intolerable brilliance. From his mouth run seas of blood. Upon his head is a crown of every deadly thing. Upon his forehead is the upright tau, and on either side of it are the signs of blasphemy. And about him clingeth a young girl, like unto the king's daughter that appeareth in the ninth Aethyr. But she is become rosy by reason of his force, and her purity hath tinged his black with blue.

They are clasped in a furious embrace, so that she is torn asunder by the terror of the god; yet so tightly clingeth she about him, that he is strangled. She hath forced back his head, and his throat is livid with the pressure of her fingers. Their joint cry is an intolerable anguish, yet it is the cry of their rapture, so that every pain, and every curse, and every bereavement, and every death of everything in the whole universe, is but one little gust of wind in that tempest-scream of ecstasy.

Aristophanes’ Eleusinian telling, that positions Chaos as Eros’ parent, may have been known to Crowley. In The Book of Lies, where he wrestles with many of the mysteries brought to him by the Aethyrs, Chaos appears again in Chapter 25, the Star Ruby, as the god-name projected into the east in this “new and more elaborate version of the Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram.” Juxtaposed in the west is Eros, while Babalon is in the north and juxtaposed to Psyche in the south. Here, Chaos is Father, Eros is Son, Babalon is Mother and Psyche is Daughter. Pan is then evoked in the center as the final fifth name.

He comments on Chaos and Babalon in the same volume in “The Glow Worm” Chapter 11 (the fourfold name χάος plus the sevenfold name Βαβαλών):

Below [Nuit, Hadit, Ra-Hoor-Khuit] is a seeming duality of Chaos and Babalon; these are called Father and Mother, but it is not so. They are called Brother and Sister, but it is not so. They are called Husband and Wife, but it is not so.

The reflection of All is Pan: the Night of Pan is the Annihilation of the All.

Cast down through The Abyss is the Light, the Rosy Cross, the rapture of Union that destroys, that is The Way. The Rosy Cross is the Ambassador of Pan.

Crowley alludes that the Glow Worm may have a subtler meaning, and it does. In the Greek, lampouris, λᾰμπῠρῐ́ς, means “lamp-bearer,” and it is a winged beetle rather than a worm. Eros was the light-bringer for Psyche, and Eros is the Rose and the Cross, the Angel. Eros is the ambassador for Pan, and Pan’s name is evoked in the Star Ruby. Pan, the Devil in the Tarot, is referred to as the “Lord of the Gates of Matter, Child of the Forces of Time” in Liber 78. This recalls PAZ, where Crowley records, “Oh, blue! blue! blue! whose reflection in the Abyss is called the Great One of the Night of Time; between ye vibrateth the Lord of the Forces of Matter.”

For the Eleusinian mysteries, the candidate was brought into the darkness in order to find the light. Chaos was not the primordial darkness of a dualistic cosmogony, he was the originator of these three: light, the light-bearer, and the illuminated mankind. Crowley notes on PAZ that “Chaos is the Great Father, in one particular aspect.”

Aristophanes’ Chaos was the all-father in two senses. His creative act began with the creation of the universe, but he followed up on this creation by coupling with Eros to create mankind from within Tartarus. This resembles a gnostic cosmogony where the original creator was lost for a space but then returned through Christ who, a psychopomp like Orpheus or Eros, would lead the souls from Tartarus into the day, a torch-bearer to lead the blind one from Plato’s infernal cave.

Crowley’s Gnostic Catholicism

Liber XV, The Gnostic Mass, is a celebration of the central secret of the OTO through dramatic ritual. The ritual is begun in the fashion of John with the introduction of the Logos, The Book of the Law, and is immediately followed by the recitation of The Creed. Credo means “I believe” and over the course of the first six articles those in attendance, led by the Deacon, state that they believe in this and that. The subject of faith in Thelema has been discussed already, and whether this Creed is a list of beliefs that Thelema is premised on or not is not gone into by Crowley. Looking at the Gnostic Mass as a magical ritual, Crowley notes that a ritual is preceded by an oath, which is a sort of statement of conditions and objectives, almost like how a scientific experiment would premise its structure on relevant and defined axioms.

The most striking thing about this Creed is that it opens like the Nicene creed and contains many similar articles. Our Creed is presented below in order while an English version of the Nicene creed is presented below in italics but out of order.

I believe in one secret and ineffable LORD; and in one Star in the Company of Stars of whose fire we are created, and to which we shall return; and in one Father of Life, Mystery of Mystery, in His name CHAOS, the sole vicegerent of the Sun upon the Earth; and in one Air the nourisher of all that breathes.
I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.

And I believe in one Earth, the Mother of us all, and in one Womb wherein all men are begotten, and wherein they shall rest, Mystery of Mystery, in Her name BABALON.
For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.

And I believe in the Serpent and the Lion, Mystery of Mystery, in His name BAPHOMET.
I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made.

And I believe in one Gnostic and Catholic Church of Light, Life, Love and Liberty, the Word of whose Law is THELEMA.
I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.

And I believe in the communion of Saints.

And, forasmuch as meat and drink are transmuted in us daily into spiritual substance, I believe in the Miracle of the Mass.

And I confess one Baptism of Wisdom whereby we accomplish the Miracle of Incarnation.
I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

And I confess my life one, individual, and eternal that was, and is, and is to come.
and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

AUMGN. AUMGN. AUMGN.
Amen

The Nicene Creed is structured primarily to remind the laity of the important narrative elements of the Gospels. The Creed of the Thelemites, to borrow W. T. Smith’s title for it, describes a sort of emanation or hierarchy that goes from god to man. There are some references to Mary in The Book of the Law that pair her with Babalon after a fashion, and the Pan/Eros/Baphomet connection to Christ was discussed above. But for the present we will focus on the first articles of both creeds.

God the Father is also referred to by Christians as “Our Father, who art in heaven.” The “heavenly” nature of the father is less premised in the bible than one might think. Beyond creating the sky and being a party to a number of weather emergencies, there’s practically no reference to the “sky daddy” such as atheists like to evoke as a strawman to accuse Christians of superstition. In fact the “sky father” of the Lord’s Prayer is only present in Matthew, he who “art in heaven.” But the Sky Father is well premised throughout the Yemnayan Diaspora and is referred to as Dyeus Pater, literally Sky Father.

While his existence is not directly attested by archaeological or written materials, Dyeus Pater is considered by scholars the most securely reconstructed deity of the Indo-European pantheon, as identical formulas referring to him can be found among the subsequent Indo-European languages and myths of the Vedic Indo-Aryans, Latins, Greeks, Phrygians and so on. In the Greek Dyeus Pater becomes Zeus Pater, in the Latin this is Jove Pater, Jupiter. From Dyeus we get Deus, Dieu, Day, Theos, and so on. I would venture that Chaos is a further corruption of Dyeus except I lack evidence and the linguistic mutation would be highly unusual, but that did not stop Sabazius from making that connection in his book Mystery of Mysteries. I believe Crowley also saw this connection and assumed an etymology.

Dyeus Pater is understood more to be the sky itself in its vastness rather than the sun, which was actually seen to be feminine in nature by the Indo-Europeans, a characterization preserved in the Gayatri Mantra. Dyeus Pater is the daylight sky, and his consort is Dʰéǵʰōm, Degom, the earth-mother, described as the “black earth,” and “mother of all” and also the final resting place. Compare this to the Second Article of the Creed. Curiously, classical PIE languages as well as some of their modern descendants referred to “humans” as “Earthlings,” borrowing from Degom. Degomomn is “earthling.” By contrast her consort, Dyeus, had Deywos, literally “skyling,” which is a root word for celestial beings in the PIE-diaspora, including Devas and possibly the Greek Daemon, which Crowley considered a corollary to the Angel. This frames the paternal force as a celestial one and the maternal force as a terrestrial one, and the wedding of the earthling aspirant with the skyling angel is no less the coupling of Chaos and Babalon. This reading of the bright Sky-father as the father of angels parallels with the dark-winged Chaos as the father of the winged Eros, the light-bearing loverboy immortal who wedded the mortal and irresistible princess, Psyche, the soul, in Apuleius’ 2nd century novel The Golden Ass. Crowley regarded this book highly enough to include it in his A∴A∴ reading list, marking that its "valuable for those who have wit to understand it."

Setting aside classical sources and PAZ for the moment, the First Article of the Creed of the Thelemites illustrates clearly that Crowley understood χάος to be consonant with Zeus or Deus and implying sky, light, air and sun.

The Lord

A more careful reading of the First Article can shine some light on the nature of Chaos. Rather than being one long run-on sentence, the three semi-colons that break up the First Article suggest a four-fold nature to this deity to match his four-lettered name. Bullet-points are mine, but the semi-colons are original and show the partitioning:

·         I believe in one secret and ineffable LORD;

·         and in one Star in the Company of Stars of whose fire we are created, and to which we shall return;

·         and in one Father of Life, Mystery of Mystery, in His name CHAOS, the sole viceregent of the Sun upon the Earth;

·         and in one Air the nourisher of all that breathes.

The first two sections show an interplay that is evoked quite a bit in the Gnostic Mass, that of “the Lord” as opposed to “the Sun.” A hint towards this is in the Nicene Creed, “visible and invisible,” which Crowley omitted from his First Article but brought up later in the first two Collects, “The Sun” and “The Lord.” The Collects follow, mirror, and explicate The Creed.

I believe that the “secret and ineffable LORD” is the same that’s evoked early on in the Gnostic Mass, almost immediately following the recitation of The Creed. The Priestess drops the veil from the Priest’s tomb in the west and draws three crosses over him while saying “By the power of ✠ Iron, I say unto thee, Arise. In the name of our Lord the ✠ Sun, and of our Lord ✠ ..., that thou mayst administer the virtues to the Brethren.” The blank left by Crowley after the third cross is an obvious reference to something omitted. In a private document, Crowley wrote “I.X.” in this blank. Some have argued that it’s a reference to the IX° of OTO, wherein is the central secret. Some argue that it is the initials for Ιησους Χριστος, Jesus Christ, arguing that the dots following the two letters precludes it from being roman numerals. I believe it may refer to the initiator in the Eleusinian mysteries, the torch-bearer Ἴακχος, Iacchus, referred to plentifully in Liber VII Chapter 4. But in truth, the reference is to the same thing, the paternal trinity of Father (Iacchus), Son (Jesus Christ) and Holy Ghost (IX°). This trinity that describes the central secret of OTO is evoked later in the Gnostic Mass, “O Pater estin O Huios dia To Pneuma Hagion,” the father is the son via the Holy Ghost. In Orphic terms this is the transmission of the light from Chaos, the “the darkness that holds light in his hand,” to Eros, the light.

This trinity is further explored by Crowley in the rituals of the OTO, in the V° the formula of INRI, the “analysis of the keyword.” In the Golden Dawn this formula was an Athanasius Kirchner-esque revelation of the nature of the Holy One by using Qabalah to draw a line from INRI to IAO. INRI is translated as Virgo/Isis, Scorpio/Apophis, and then Sol/Osiris. For Crowley in OTO it is Virgo/Iacchus, Scorpio/Asi (who is Isis), and Sol/Orus where Ὧρος is Horus, or Father-Mother-Son. Horus is the son of Iacchus in consideration of Crowley’s lecture on the III°: "Aries, whose mysteries are those of Spring and called the Greater Mysteries, wherein the Slain God is celebrated by his name Iao, Jupiter, Jehovah, Iacchus, Zeus, Shu, Jesus, Osiris, etc.” Others say that Horus is the son of Set, the ass-headed god who was compared by the Greeks to Chaos.

The masculine trinity of the masculine Gnostic Mass of the masculine mystery of the OTO is referred to unerringly in Crowley’s Liber Agape. It is reserved for IX° Hermits in OTO. It also repeatedly refers to “Our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Baphomet writes:

Behold the Trinity Most Holy One and Indivisible, IAO. One is the Most Holy Trinity; and Three are its Persons or Masks. One is its Spirit, One its Individuality, its Permutation One, Ararita! It is the Seed that persisteth in all mutation, being Itself, immune and omniprehensive, IAO SAB AO.

Now the Father is One, erect, single, eternal.

And the Son is One, in the likeness of the Father, yet in this nature double, being God-Man. And herein is a Mystery; for being the Word he is the Spirit, going forth from the Father and creating the worlds.

And the Spirit is One, not begotten but proceeding, the seed of which Father and the Son are in very truth but vehicles and guardians. And the nature of the Spirit is Liberty, and as the wind, He goeth as it listeth Him to impregnate the worlds.

And as the Son is double, so is the Spirit double; for He is both male and female. […] He is the Mother. He is the Womb. He is the Sperm that fertilizes the Ovum; nay, but He is that fertilized and self-living thing which is neither sperm nor ovum, but their marriage, the Perfect Tincture, the Medicine of Metals, the Philosophical Stone, the Universal Medicine, the Elixer of Life. […]

From this duplicity of speech hath sprung infinite confusion in the vulgar mind. For they understand not that man is the guardian of the Life of God; woman but a temporary expedient; a shrine indeed for the God, but not the God. Thus do they blaspheme who worship the false Trinity of Father-Mother-Son: blind mouths that gape poison, let them perish in the Day of Be-with-Us.

Moreover, the Holy Spirit is the Unity in the Trinity; for the Father and the Son are indeed guardians of the Quintessence, heirs to the Quintessence, of the substance of the Quintessence, but they are not the Quintessence itself. And this is of the Godhead; but in Earth it is the Son that combineth Father and Spirit as it were Man and Woman, God and man.

Without going into too much numerology, there are some odd plays here. There is the one, the father. There’s also the two and three, the double-natured son who is both father and son. There’s the four and five, the spirit which is dual in nature. This is one way Crowley gets quintessence, implying five, the pentagram, from the trinity. Here is a good place to recall Pan, “the all,” who is the object of invocation within the father-mother-daughter-son pentagrams of the Star Ruby. Pan’s value is 131, 1-3-1, the father and the son, self-same 1’s, guarding the trinity of the Holy Spirit, and again the sum of these three numbers is five, the pentagram. Pan recalls Baphomet, the Third Article in our Creed. Cited above from The Book of Lies, Pan is the reflection of All, where All is Cosmos, a force of balance that exists in counter-balance to Chaos.

The spirit being spoken of by Crowley in both the OTO documents and in the Gnostic Mass is the property of men and their gods. Macrobius’ Saturnalia states that the essence of every god is solar, goddess lunar. Crowley reiterates this in the Fifth Collect, “The Saints,” which opens “Lord of Life and Joy, that art the might of man, that art the essence of every true god that is upon the surface of the Earth, continuing knowledge from generation unto generation, […] we worthily commemorate them worthy that did of old adore thee and manifest thy glory unto men.” There is occasional fuss that there are no women listed among the saints, but the reason why should now be obvious - the Gnostic Mass tells the story of how men accomplish the Great Work and the continuity of gnosis in both spirit and soul.

The interplay of the esoteric “Lord” with the exoteric “Sun” in the Gnostic Mass is suggested in the first article of the Creed to be two aspects of one thing. While it’s tempting to say that the fourfold First Article is four aspects of Chaos, the first part refers to this “Lord” as “secret and ineffable,” essentially both unknowable and unnamable. Perhaps this can map Qabalistically onto Kether, the Crown, such as a Lord would wear, a unified one that can’t be spoken of without being distinguished from. However, Crowley explained in The Book of Lies that “Chaos and Babalon are Chokmah and Binah [the second and third sephirah], but they are really one; the essential unity of the supernal Triad is here insisted upon.” The second Collect of the Gnostic Mass gives us insight:

Lord secret and most holy, source of light, source of life, source of love, source of liberty, be thou ever constant and mighty within us, force of energy, fire of motion; with diligence let us ever labour with thee, that we may remain in thine abundant joy.

The identity here is confirmed in being “Lord secret” and the four L’s of Light, Life, Love and Liberty form the swastika that Crowley mentions in 777 as appropriate to Kether, but also suggests that it is the posture of Atu I, The Magus, whose office is in Chokmah. From 777:

The Crown is the meaning of Kether. It refers to the Supreme Divinity which the magician assumes in his working. The Swastika symbolize whirling energy, the initiation of all magical force—the Rashith ha-Gilgalim. There is a great deal of varied symbolism in this instrument, notably sexual; it demands a great deal of study to appreciate fully the virtue of this weapon. The Lamp is not a weapon; it is a light shining from above which illuminates the whole work.

The first Collect is the complimentary “Sun,” which notably lacks a couple L’s:

Lord visible and sensible of whom this earth is but a frozen spark turning about thee with annual and diurnal motion, source of light, source of life, let thy perpetual radiance hearten us to continual labour and enjoyment; so that as we are constant partakers of thy bounty we may in our particular orbit give out light and life, sustenance and joy to them that revolve about us without diminution of substance or effulgence for ever.

Here there is no mention of “Love,” that being the property of The Lord, nor is there mention of “Liberty,” that being “the nature of the spirit.” The “Lord secret” is perhaps the “center and secret of the sun” referred to in the Anthem:

Thee I invoke, abiding one,
Thee, centre and secret of the Sun,
And that most holy mystery
Of which the vehicle am I.
Appear, most awful and most mild,
As it is lawful, in thy child!
For of the Father and the Son
The Holy Spirit is the norm;
Male-female, quintessential, one,
Man-being veiled in Woman-form.

Man is motion, woman is form. Man is spirit, woman is soul. This explains Crowley’s remark that “Woman has no soul.” She is soul in the understanding of soul as a layer upon spirit, the medium of manifestation and refraction of the one light.

Some alchemists such as the medieval Raymond Lully and Renaissance Michael Maier discussed the reciprocity of the vivifying power of the sun with the heart of man and described the secret center of the sun as being the heart of man and the center of the heart of man as carrying the sun’s fire. This recalls 220.2.6, “I am the flame that burns in every heart of man, and in the core of every star. I am Life, and the giver of Life, yet therefore is the knowledge of me the knowledge of death.” This is Hadit speaking, and in OTO’s V° Chaos is equated with Hadit and Apophis. There’s too much to go into for the former equivalent and the aspirant is encouraged to study constantly in The Book of the Law, but the ineffable nature of Chaos is understood through this equivalence. 220.2.4 “Yet she [Nu, my wife] shall be known & I never,” is explained in Crowley’s metaphysics as the perceiver and doer, Hadit, is the subject, while Nuit is the object. A subject cannot know or operate on itself, and he is “everywhere the centre,” 220.2.3.

Regarding the Apophis connection, Crowley notes in Liber Agape:

One is the Essence of God; and One is the Essence of Man.

Yet since God is only One because He is Three in One; so man is only One when he is Two-in-One.

As God’s Essence abideth in Himself, so also with the Essence of man.

Yet man not being himself wholly, but part of himself, this essence is not wholly in him.

It is found in perfection only without himself, and he can only attain it by virtue of the Sacrament of the Eucharist.

[…]

The sacrament is administered under two kinds, Bread and Wine.

In his notes on Liber Samekh’s “Bornless One” invocation, where the Bornless One is invoked as being “Myself Made Perfect,” and also as Besz and Apophis, Crowley describes the nature and purpose of the Bread and Wine.

He hails Him as BESZ, the Matter that destroys and devours Godhead, for the purpose of the Incarnation of any God.

He hails Him as APOPHRASZ, the Motion that destroys and devours Godhead, for the purpose of the Incarnation of any God. The combined action of these two DEVILS is to allow the God upon whom they prey to enter into enjoyment of existence through the Sacrament of dividual "Life" (Bread - the flesh of BESZ) and "Love" (Wine - the blood or venom of APOPHRASZ).

The equating of the Angel to the Serpent is the dominant motif of Liber LXV. Here we see the destructive forces of Chaos vs Cosmos as the father which creates through disruption. His Eucharist breaks up stultified matter so that it might wed itself to the light. They are like catalysts that assist the aspirant to reach his activation point so that the chemical reaction takes place.

The Sun

The second part of the First Article reads “and in one star in the company of stars of whose fire we are created and to which we shall return” and is a clear reference to our star, the Sun. Heliocentrism and phallicism are well discussed elsewhere in Crowley’s writings and by other commenters, but his emphasis of that is more than a Neil Degrasse Tyson snub of ancient men believing the earth was the axis of the universe. Crowley here states that we are created of the sun’s fire and shall return to it. The idea of returning to the sun is an ancient one. We see reference to this in the Story of Sinuhe, the earliest mention of the Egyptian monad-god Aten, where the devotee reunites with the sun-disk Aten upon his death. Akhenaten believed the same, and in his Hymn addresses that all life is in and of him. I am unaware of earlier mentions of the soul ascending into the sun on death, but in step with this ancient world precursor to monotheism we have Abrahamic tales of something similar happening, both in Jesus’ Ascension and that of Mohammad, but perhaps also with Enoch or Isaac.

Dissolution is normally discussed in terms of breaking apart in water, but the etymology se luo means to break away. In The Book of the Law Cap 2 v 21 we read “Think not, o king, upon that lie: That Thou Must Die: verily thou shalt not die, but live. Now let it be understood: If the body of the King dissolve, he shall remain in pure ecstasy for ever.” and then in v 44, “Aye! feast! rejoice! there is no dread hereafter. There is the dissolution, and eternal ecstasy in the kisses of Nu.” While Nuit is “Infinite Space, and the Infinite Stars thereof” (AL 1:22) she “bends in ecstasy to kiss/ The secret ardours of Hadit,” (AL 1:14) who describes himself as the snake or serpent and says “I am uplifted in thine heart; and the kisses of the stars rain hard upon thy body.” With this in mind, the “dissolution” spoken of in The Book of the Law may refer to a reunification with the Lordly solar essence, a replenishment in the “force of energy; fire of motion” as the Phoenix who bathes mid-day in the wellspring in Philae.

Regarding this “return” to the sun’s fire of which we are created, consider the Third Article, that of Babalon, that refers to the “one Womb wherein all men are begotten, and wherein they shall rest.” The fiery paternal force returns to the sun while the earthly maternal force returns to the earth. Remember the reference to “thou, the true fire within the reed, brooding and breeding, source and seed.” A reed having fire in it recalls an important image of Crowley’s, mentioned in Chapter 15 of The Book of Lies, “I am not I; I am but an hollow tube to bring down Fire from Heaven.” Again, the father and the son are merely vehicles for the creative fire, the light, Gnosis.

Of the First Article’s fourfold nature we have The Lord, the mysterious initiator, and then The Sun, the source of light and life, and then a third aspect that seems to contradict that. It reads, “and in one Father of Life, Mystery of Mystery, in His name CHAOS, the sole viceregent of the Sun upon the Earth.” That Chaos is the Viceregent of the Sun seems to imply that he can’t be the sun.

One reading may be that Crowley here made the connection of Chaos/Zeus/Dyeus here and considered the sky to be the viceregent of the sun. The sky itself had its own viceregents though. Dyeus’ consort, Degom, Earth, became the root-word for humans - Dgemon and Dgeyos literally meant “earthling.” Just the same, Dyeus is the root for Deywos, “skyling,” and is the root word for celestial beings in many traditions. But this part of the First Article refers to Chaos as such - can he be both Father (Chaos) and Son (Eros) in one? Crowley wrote in Liber Agape that “the Son is One, in the likeness of the Father, yet in this nature double, being God-Man. And herein is a Mystery; for being the Word he is the Spirit, going forth from the Father and creating the worlds.”

This final statement regarding the spirit explains the fourth and final part of the First Article, “and in one air the nourisher of all that breathe.” Breath is spiritus in Latin, as in the Holy Spirit, Pneuma Hagion in Greek referenced above as being the way by which the father and the son are one and for which they are but mere vehicles.

Crowley’s First Article of the Creed of the Thelemites subsumes the entire trinity confessed in the Nicene Creed - Father, Son and Holy Ghost. It is singular in nature but a four-fold trinity of Father, Son and Spirit, and the fourth point is their ineffable unity, the Centrum in Trigono Centri, the black-robed officer in Crowley’s Rite of Jupiter who bears a Swastika and who emerges white and gold as Iacchus, the Holy Spirit, bearing a cup. This cup is referenced in Liber Tzaddi, “Only your mouths shall drink of a delicious wine - the wine of Iacchus; they shall reach ever to the heavenly kiss of the Beautiful God.”

Chaos is referenced as a progenitor and never as a Titan by the Greeks, but Crowley may have seen otherwise in the vision of PAZ. We read, “O thou Titan that hast climbed into the bed of Juno!” Juno’s consort was Jupiter, a corruption of Dyeus Pater. The titans were the offspring of Uranus and Gaea, Heaven and Earth. While Dyeus is the root word for Daemon, which Crowley considered equivalent to the tutelary spirit the Romans called the Genius, the Genius was only for men. Women instead had a Juno.

PAZ refers to Juno as the “Queen of Heaven is in travail of child, and his name shall be called Vir, and Vis, and Virus, and Virtus, and Viridis, in one name that is all these, and above all these. VVVVV is a somewhat mysterious character in Thelema, but he is spoken of in the Class A Holy Book Liber Porta Lucis, the Gate of Light:

I behold a small dark orb, wheeling in an abyss of infinite space. It is minute among a myriad vast ones, dark amid a myriad bright ones.

I who comprehend in myself all the vast and the minute, all the bright and the dark, have mitigated the brilliance of mine unutterable splendour, sending forth V.V.V.V.V. as a ray of my light, as a messenger unto that small dark orb.

Then V.V.V.V.V. taketh up the word, and sayeth:

Men and women of the Earth, to you am I come from the Ages beyond the Ages, from the Space beyond your vision; and I bring to you these words.

This injection of light into darkness recalls the Eleusinian myth of Chaos creating his counterpart Eros to illume the world. Earth is described as a “small dark orb,” and Aristophanes said that Chaos’ first daughter, Nyx, laid an egg in the darkness, Erebos, who is Chaos’ first son. Eros hatched from this egg after a while. Just the same the Yezidi’s Eros, Melek Taus (literally King of Heaven or Dyeus Pater), the Peacock Angel, birthed the universe from the Cosmic Egg.

De Natura Chaos

I began writing this with the hopes of finding some conceptual image to offer up to give Thelemites a more tangible sense of Chaos. I even vaingloriously thought that I would find a good etymological root to the name, proof positive that he’s either a corruption of Dyeus Pater or something other than a gap. I should have taken Crowley’s description of him as “supreme and ineffable” as a cautionary note.

Scrying the 4th Aethyr, Crowley marked, “Holy art thou, Chaos, Chaos, Eternity, all contradictions in terms!” It seems simple that the creator would have all things wrapped up within himself but would evade reduction to any one thing. This is a mystery spoken of in traditions Crowley saw as adjacent to Thelema. Crowley enjoyed the Al-Ikhlas Sutra, considering it a suitable mantra in Liber ABA, which goes, “Say: He, God, is One. He is the ultimate source. He does not beget and is not begotten, and nothing is like unto him.” Al-lah, which Crowley defined as “the nothing,” is a sort of “positive nothing,” a thing in itself that eludes definition but inspires all meaning and form. He is therefore known by his 99 epithets just as the ancient gods were referred to by honorifics and descriptors rather than their true name.

Chaos’ nature as the all father is elaborated by Crowley’s appreciation of the traditional trinity of Father-Son-Spirit. The father is one, alone, and ineffable, but we understand his nature through the works of his Son, who is inspired, a leader, and possesses magical gifts. The son redeems the world, which is woman, society, and soul. He also extends the continuity of the father into future generations through procreation and sacrifice. The Father is venerated as the source for the tradition and its vitality. This is similar to how Odin was worshipped by ancient northern people where kings would trace their paternal genealogy back 9 generations, but the 9th in the line of fathers would be Odin.

More on the nature of Chaos can be grasped by Crowley equating him to Hadit. Chaos then becomes a living figure from The Book of the Law. Chaos is understood as Hadit in OTO mysteries, and this works well with Crowley saying that “Babalon” is the “secret name” for Nuit mentioned in 220.1.22. Hadit is “the Magician” and “the Exorcist” and “the secret Serpent.” He is “alone” and unworshippable because he is “the worshipper.” The Scarlet Woman, understood by J. D. Gunther to refer to the Master of the Temple, will achieve thus according to 220.3.45: “Then will I lift her to pinnacles of power: then will I breed from her a child mightier than all the kings of the earth. I will fill her with joy: with my force shall she see & strike at the worship of Nu: she shall achieve Hadit.” Therefore the achievement of Hadit is accomplished by the achievement of Nuit in some sense, Hadit being himself the ultimate subject to Nuit’s object.

So is Chaos achieved through action and doing. One becomes Chaos by being a perfect medium for the will, a hollow tube that brings down fire from heaven. But as Crowley noted in OTO documents, this is more the work of the son. In John 14:6 before parting Jesus told the apostles to go forth, but reminded them “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”

Final Thoughts

Unlike aniconic Abrahamic traditions, Crowleyana of whatever class is replete with mentions of what other traditions usually call “gods.” Crowley sometimes refers to them as gods, but really it’s a term of convenience and veneration. Crowley notes in one of my favorite chapters of Magick Without Tears that undefinable terms really don’t assist in understanding things and are more likely to tempt you towards some vulgar and dated speculation. 220.1.21 reads, “With the God & the Adorer I am nothing: they do not see me. They are as upon the earth; I am Heaven, and there is no other God than me, and my lord Hadit.” Nuit and Hadit are gods perhaps in the sense that they are immutables from Aeon to Aeon, like Hesiod’s immortals such as Chaos.

220.3.22 reads, “let all be worshipped, for they shall cluster to exalt me.” This is in contrast to Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians 10:21, “Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of [daemons]: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of [daemons].” But Chaos as Hadit recalls (220.2.8) “Who worshipped Heru-pa-kraath have worshipped me; ill, for I am the worshipper.” Hadit also marks in 220.2.23, “I am alone: there is no God where I am.” How are we then to honor the ineffable father? It is by following his commandments, the present one being “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” The action of the aspirant who devotes all to Nuit and lives in the spirit of Ra Hoor Khuit is the veneration of Hadit and of Chaos. It is the out-going of glorious action that exhibits his nature, “so that as we are constant partakers of thy bounty we may in our particular orbit give out light and life, sustenance and joy to them that revolve about us without diminution of substance or effulgence for ever.”

But it is not only in personal action that the father is honored but also in procreative action. Having children was considered a crucial part of the life of a Thelemite, described in no uncertain terms by Crowley and discussed in my previous article An Order for Families and also in my article on Thelema vs transhumanism. Life is the Light, and the extension of that life into future generations is the most basic and necessary step to “transmit the Light of the Gnosis” and “continue knowledge from generation unto generation.” As shown in Crowley’s banned essay, “The Whole Duty of Woman,” Crowley also believed in a special something that was carried from fathers to sons, thanks in large part to mothers, that was crucial for the revolution of the Aeon.

The popular misandry of OTO has caused its leaders to reject this central mystery of life. Crowley does not say that woman is redundant any more than man, marking that “the seed of which Father and the Son are in very truth but vehicles and guardians.” Crowley could be interpreted as saying that sex is an expression of the genome and men and women contribute differently to the continuity of Gnosis, which is life. To be a materialist, perhaps he’s suggesting that the je ne sais quoi is contained within the Y-Haplogroup but its prismatic refraction is a product of the X-Haplogroup. But leadership in OTO denounces Crowley as a “vitalist” and, in redditor fashion, point to a wikipedia article as proof that it is dated, unscientific and debunked. They claim that in Crowley’s time people didn’t know that the ovum carried genetic information, as if parents and husbandmen had their eyes closed for the past tens of thousands of years. They deliberately ignore that the above referenced bi-sexual nature of Baphomet refers to the Holy Spirit and instead use Crowley’s remarks regarding this as a nod to gender trends. Ensorcelled by cultural nihilism, contemporary so-called Thelemites continue to deconstruct - an academic term that means to obfuscate and undermine - this magical interplay of the sexes, both in rejecting the central mystery of the OTO if they’ve happened to be informed of it and by attempting to destroy the “gender binary” and “gender essentialism” of the Gnostic Mass.

OTO rejects its own central mystery, that of the Holy Spirit, not only circuitously as explained elsewhere but overtly, and its leaders are therefore guilty to the deepest degree of what our own “Lord Jesus Christ” described as the Unpardonable Sin, not the denial of him the Son but of It the Holy Spirit. The peculiar thing is how reflexive their new progressive spinoff of Thelema is. They rush to affirm trends in sexology before it’s even demanded of them. Thelema has its own understanding of gender and sex as articulated primarily in OTO’s most secret instructions. They deploy this secrecy as protection for why they can’t discuss the preservation of the “gender binary” in the Gnostic Mass, though that hasn’t stopped them from letting penis-having humanoids from assuming the role of Priestess. But their oaths of secrecy do not explain why they would adopt a gender ideology that is irreconcilable with that of their teachings or would let students go uncorrected when they mis-interpret symbols.

Perhaps they exist in a disordered state, a confused mass, because they break bread and share wine to disrupt the gross nature but fail to invoke the light. The typical Last Man bonehead lacks all deference to the mysteries and anxiously grasps for anything as they slide down into the abyss called because. The fundamental difference between the aniconic humanitarian progressive and their pre-modern Christian antecedent is that the former lacks the humility of the latter. They recall Liber Librae, “Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? There is more hope of a fool, than of him.” Thelemites would do well to stop spinning in circles calling themselves gods and instead to humble their ignorant and blind persons and invoke the light from beyond, the Father’s blessing, ineffable and omniprehensive.

Love is the law, love under will.