Thoughts That Come To Mind When Reading
Chapter 6 and Its Associated Commentary of
The Book Of Lies by Crowley.
Outside of occult circles, Aleister Crowley's The Book of Lies is little known. Nonetheless, it is probably one of the greatest intellectual achievements of the twentieth century. Crowley fancied himself a great writer of poetry, fiction and various treatises pertaining to magical and occult topics. Unfortunately, he wasn't really that great. One gets the impression from reading his works in conjunction with his various biographies that most of the time he projected his fantasies of being a great artist into his works as a kind of emotional compensation for his deficiencies on other levels. Taken as a whole, Crowley's literary output is at best mediocre, in literary terms that is, not necessarily in other terms. This makes his Book Of Lies all that much more interesting. Compared to his other works, The Book Of Lies is a diamond in the rough. Not only is it a fantastic literary achievement, it is as well an extraordinary philosophical work conveying insights so far in advance of the twentieth century intellect that the book is mostly meaningless to the modern mind.
The Book Of Lies consists of 91 one page chapters written in verse form on the left hand side of the page. On the facing right hand page he provides his own commentary of each chapter. The depth and subtlety of the book simply cannot be described. Each chapter is rich in meanings on many levels and each reading leads to new discoveries and insights. In this essay I would like to focus simply on one chapter from The Book Of Lies, chapter 6, and give the thoughts that are stimulated in my mind by both the chapter and his commentary.
Chapter 6 of The Book Of Lies is simply called
"Caviar", and is so short it can be reproduced in full
here:
"The Word was uttered; the One exploded into one thousand million worlds.
Each world contained a thousand million spheres.
Each sphere contained a thousand million planes.
Each plane contained a thousand million stars
Each star contained a thousand million things.
Of these the reasoner took six, and, preening said; This is the One and the All.
These six the Adept harmonized, and said: This is the Heart of the One and the All
These six were destroyed by the Master of the Temple; and he spake not.
The Ash thereof was burnt up by the Magus into The Word
Of all this did the Ipsissimus know nothing."
His commentary is then:
"This chapter is presumably called Caviar because that substance is composed of many spheres.
The account given of Creation is the same as that familiar to students of the Christian tradition, the Logos transforming the unity into the many.
We then see what different classes of people do with the many.
The Rationalist takes the six Sephiroth of Microprosopus in a crude state, and declares them to be the universe. This folly is due to the pride of reason.
The Adept concentrates the Microcosm in Tiphareth, recognizing an Unity, even in the microcosm, but, qua Adept, he can go no further.
The Master of the Temple destroys all these illusions, but remains silent...
In the next grade, the Word is re-formulated, for the Magus in Chokmah, the Dyad, the Logos.
The Ipsissimus... is totally unconscious of this process,
or, it might be better to say, he recognizes it as Nothing, in
that positive sense of the word, which is only intelligible in
Samasamdi."
And thus is chapter 6 of The Book of Lies. Crowley is actually quite clear about what he is trying to get across, however, much knowledge is assumed on the part of the reader. I am not interested in attempting to analyze this material in its entirety, for this would take us far afield from what I personally get out of this chapter. And so it is my personal interpretation that will now be discussed. It is interesting to note though that the number six plays prominently in this chapter, the chapter actually being a statement on the numerological meaning of the number six. The numerological meaning of six is incompleteness.
Like anything else, one walks away from art (literature, in this case) with what one sees in it. And what one sees in a thing is grounded in one's interests and preferences, but at a deeper level, in one's needs and capacities. And so it is with my interpretation of this chapter. What I see here is Crowley describing reality in terms of worlds, spheres, planes and stars and things. If we add up all the worlds, spheres and planes, etc., this gives a total of 1 x 1045 objects within the "Many", the "microcosm", or I would prefer to say within the physical plane. Crowley's figures are comparable to the kinds of numbers scientists use when they talk about such things as the number of stars in the universe, or the total number of atoms, or the number of nerve connections in the human brain. However, I am sure that Crowley is meant to be metaphorical here and not literal. Likewise, his description of "Creation" sounds very much like the present day picture of the "big bang" theory. Considering that this was written in 1913, and the first big bang model can be attributed to Alexander Freidman circa 1922, one would have to wonder where Crowley got his facts.
But in spite of the similarities of his view of creation to
the modern scientific view, what jumps out at me in the chapter
is the line:
"Of these the reasoner took six, and, preening said:
This is the One and the All."
And even in his commentary he says, "This folly is due to the pride of reason." There is a wisdom here that is little understood in the contemporary intellectual world. What Crowley calls "the folly due to the pride of reason", I see as the pretension of the intellect. A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. That one sees six things among many, many, many trillions of things, and declares those six to be the "One and All" is not only foolish and unwise, but smacks of delusion as well. It is so common for intellectuals to have such an attitude today that one wonders what it is that is really behind such an attitude.
The issue does not so much revolve around intellect or reason per se, for these are simply functions of the mind. It is the pride and pretension that surrounds the intellect that is the real issue. Where do these come from? Does reason imply pride, does intellect imply pretension? A similar question is "Does fire imply murder?" In a sense it does, one can use fire to murder, but as well one can use fire for lots of things other than murder. Most likely, it is a similar case with pride and reason. Reason implies pride and pretension, just as fire implies murder, but likewise, reason implies much more than pride or pretension. What I am saying is that reason and intellect are not obligated to be associated with pride and pretension. But still, in our culture they are associated to a dangerously high degree.
We have scientists who will take their pet discovery in whatever their narrow, specialized field and stand and proclaim "Yes, this is it! This is God's divine plan of Nature!" There is no need to even mention names, labels such as "Grand Unified Field Theory" make the point quite nicely. With a handful of mathematical equations and obscurely abstract concepts, modern scientists will proclaim that they finally have Divinity in the palm of their hand, or at least programmed into their computers.
In this respect, Crowley's statement in his commentary is
relevant:
"The Rationalist takes the six Sephiroth of
Microprosopus in a crude state, and declares them to be the
universe."
This statement is rich in cabalistic symbolism which it is not my purpose to dwell upon here. What this statement roughly translates to is: The rationalist takes the material world of his senses, and declares this to be the totality of all that is. Indeed this is the case. Things haven't changed much since 1913!
Obviously Crowley was addressing the blatantly materialistic mind set of his day. But in spite of advances in science, especially relativity theory and quantum theory, the essence of materialism has not changed, it has only grown subtler. The matter, time and space that were once taken to be so real by the nineteenth century materialist have been exorcised by these two theories only to be replaced by abstract mathematics and obscure intellectual notions. The outer garments of materialism have changed but the essential attitude still remains. It is essentially an attitude that is flippant in the face of religious and metaphysical realities, denying these because they cannot be weighed, photographed or measured. The implication in Crowley's comment is that the rationalist is simple-minded, or "crude" as he says, about metaphysical matters.
There has in the West for the past 400 or so years been a strange preoccupation amongst scientist of trying to one-up and second guess God. Not only is this pretentious, it seems a little neurotic as well. Granted that modern science has its historical roots as a counter response to a scholastic and overly rigid medieval Church, but one would think that 400 years is enough time to shed one's skin, so to speak or to grow beyond childish preoccupations. Of course not all modern science is this way. The issue resolves back to the attitudes of individual scientists.
Schrödinger didn't possess these neurotic tendencies to one-up God. But Einstein did. "God does not play dice with the universe", he said. How did Albert know this? Was he locked on to some divine revelation unbeknownst to lesser mortals? Perhaps he had a direct telephone hotline with God, and he could call at his convenience to discuss the relative merit of particular scientific theories with the Divine Chief?
It is easy to become cynical addressing this issue. It is frustrating to see this type of over-inflated egotistical pomposity pass for knowledge. Einstein is considered a great genius, and lesser intellectuals marvel at his ability to second guess God. It is a sad indication when this is accepted intellectual behavior. Not that it should be repressed or forbidden. One would hope though that seekers of knowledge would do so in a spirit of humbleness and appreciation. But it is not so. Knowledge is a disposable commodity in an intellectual fast-food marketplace.
What is behind this pretentious attitude of scientists? Why do people act this way with regard to knowledge in general, and modern science in particular? Where such attitudes were 400 years ago the quite legitimate response of an inevitable cultural transition, today such attitudes are little more than a front put up to mask what is really on the inside. Like the coward vainly trying to muster up courage, the scientist who wants to believe he knows something, but is not quite sure, has to hide his uncertainty. Instead of admitting his uncertainty, which it should be obvious by now is an inherent part of the scientific endeavor (Like Crowley says elsewhere in the Book Of Lies: "Proof is only possible in mathematics, and mathematics is a matter of arbitrary convention." Again, interestingly, this was said some years before the publication of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (1925) or Gödel's "On Formally Undecidable Propositions..." (1932), in which scientists formally came to recognize this truth), he instead turns to ideas he does not respect or believe in in the first place, such as religious and metaphysical ideas, and belittles them in his own eyes, and in the public eye, in an attempt to console himself (I suppose it is not fair to say that modern scientists only belittle religious ideas. They like as much to make fun of historical notions as well, as for example the nineteenth century notion of the "ether", which still exists today, only now it is called the "quantum vacuum"). The modern scientist comes off as an intellectual bully. But like any bully, he is only a coward. What is ironic is that he claims he is an intellectual, and the public clamors to him and sees him as a great intellectual, but in reality his mind is so little and so closed that he cannot for one second appreciate the subtle beauty and infinitude implied in the word God. It is indeed the circus of the absurd.
Still, let us probe deeper and ask why again. Why does the scientist present such an attitude? For one, it is acceptable behavior in the community of his peers, a behavior that is little more than a vestige of a once valid, but no longer valid viewpoint.
But in terms of contemporary society, the real reason such attitudes linger is because there is no really vital love in the collective heart of our society, and thus no love in the sciences our society creates. The scientist grows up with no love in his individual heart, thus, no appreciation or empathy for the "nature" he pretends to study. What could be the awe-struck imagination of the seeker of truth is, in our society, the bland and passive disinterested curiosity of the mediocretin. This facet of the scientific attitude has its roots in a historical Christianity in which God was outside his creation, and this attitude was transformed into an approach toward truth in which truth was an objective reality independent of the seeker. Science today has little to do with "truth", feeling it has outgrown its connection to "Natural Philosophy", though this does not stop scientists from passing judgement in such arenas of thought.
So if this story is even the slightest approximation of the
truth, it is obvious that not only is reason and intellect
innocent from pride and pretension, but that the pride and
pretension reflect a culture with no respect or love, only fear.
For pride and pretension are two of the many faces of fear, and
the intellect, being of the subtle and infinitely plastic quality
of the mind, will have no choice but to be bent into a distorted
reflection of this fear.
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