Since it’s topical, here’s a reprint of a similarly themed but less verbose post I made back in May 2006, in a thread entitled “The Nature of God”, which has affectionately become known as “Erwin’s Khabs & Khu post”:

First, definitions. The “Khabs” is the individual essence, an individual’s true nature. Since nature depends entirely on behaviour (even the colour of an object is determined by how it interacts with light) this is really indistinguishable from true will.

This individual essence is, of course, an integral part of totality, and being so integral cannot perceive itself as separate to the universe. This being so, it cannot consciously experience from a position of self awareness. Thus, it “clothes” or “veils” itself with self awareness and consciousness. This awareness gives the individual essence the appearance of being able to direct its own actions and being able to experience from an individual (i.e. separate) point of view. This clothing, this veil, is the “Khu”.

It is this veiling of the individual essence, the creation of the sense of self, which is the source of all suffering – the sorrows that “are but as shadows (II:9)”, but as described above it is also clearly the source of all experience. This is the story of creation outlined in Liber AL, “For I am divided [made separate] for love’s sake, for the chance of union [experience]. (I:29)” Nuit, being the sum of all possibility, cannot experience those possibilities without creating self aware individuals, since experience requires at least one object doing the experiencing, and other object being experienced. Therefore at least one of those objects must be aware of itself as being distinct from the other.

The “old aeon” approach to the problem of suffering is familiar, to be reborn through effort. The key is that it was assumed an individual had to develop, to reach a new state, to become something more than – or more simply, something other than – he already is. This belief is widely held today, as can be evidenced by all the self help books (“How you can change your life!”), moral guidance (“do the right thing!”), career guidance (“how to get ahead at work!”), mental health treatments (“be more like us!”), oppressive socialist governments (“fit into society!”) and any host of other phemomena you care to mention. Whatever the problem is, the solution today is always to do something different, be something different, be someone different. Whatever the topic of interest is, you can be sure that whatever you are, or whatever you are doing, is wrong, and that the way forward is to fix it, to do or to become something else.

The quote from I:8 that I gave puts a lie to this lunacy. “The Khabs is in the Khu” – the individual essence, the true will, is inside what you commonly call yourself. “not the Khu in the Khabs” – what you commonly call yourself is not something that needs to reach out to an external object, whether it be god or anything else, to fulfill itself. The Khu is merely the vehicle of the Khabs, to give any credence to its idea of self-interest is madness; the Khu is not the true individual, but its possession.

The confusion of the old aeon is that suffering – awareness – is a symptom of a problem, and that that problem needs to be fixed by joining with – in other words, becoming – something else, something new. The answer of the new aeon is to recognize that suffering as what it is, “shadows…that pass & are done (II:9)”, and to simply (!) shift the seat of consciousness to the individual essence, the true will – “Worship then the Khabs (I:9)”. Suffering is a phenomena of the consciousness, and the consciousness belongs to the individual, not he to it. One does not (usually) feel pain when one’s car is damaged. He will then naturally conduct himself properly along the lines of his true will (since the shadows will no longer distort it) instead of according to some arbitrary moral code (“The word of Sin is Restriction (I:41)”) which characterized the last two millenia, i.e. he will “behold my light shed over you (I:9)”. Those who mistake the suffering they experience for their own – they who mistake their Khu for themselves – are trapped, for they base their entire existence on a mistaken belief, that they must become something other than they are, when in reality they must do exactly the opposite, to “become more themselves than they already are”, i.e. to smooth the veils of the Khu until they become transparent. By definition, you cannot become something other than you are without physical death, so the cycle of misery will be endless until this point if you accept this erroneous concept.

“Yea! deem not of change: ye shall be as ye are, & not other. Therefore the kings of the earth shall be Kings for ever: the slaves shall serve. There is none that shall be cast down or lifted up: all is ever as it was. (II:58)”

AL I, 8 is the first verse of many we come to in the Book of the Law that frankly looks odd. “Every man and every woman is a star” we can grasp. “Be thou Hadit, my secret centre, my heart & my tongue!” is obscure, but parses without much difficulty. But “The Khabs is in the Khu, not the Khu in the Khabs”? What on earth does that mean?

The answer is not complex, but is subtle, and can be difficult to grasp. But its position as verse 8 of 220 should give some clue as to its importance, and indeed in these twelve words is summed up the key message of Chapter I.

According to Budge, “Khabs” literally means “star”, whilst “Khu” literally means “spirit”. Another translation is “starry sky” and “spirit-soul” respectively, which is close to the same thing. In Crowley’s “new comment” he says:

Khabs is the secret Light or L.V.X.; the Khu is the magical entity of a man…Khabs means star…This “star” or “inmost light” is the original, individual, eternal essence. The Khu is the magical garment which it weaves for itself, a “form” for its being beyond form, by use of which it can experience through self-consciousness.

Here “Khabs” is referred to the “individual, eternal essence” which is referred to in AL I, 3, “Every man and every woman is a star”. “Khu” is referred to the “magical entity of a man”, his being, his consciousness, his sense of identity and separateness, “by use of which it can experience through self-consciousness”. This sense of identity is precisely what is normally meant by “spirit” or “soul”. Note that this is, however, the exact opposite of the normal placement of the soul, which is assumed to be the inner core. The Book of the Law, on the other hand, suggests that it is in fact the soul which is the shell, and that there is some other individual essence – the Khabs – inside that.

It is necessary to dig a little deeper in order to understand this. Crowley talked at length in various places about his “0=2” equation, which illustrates in simple terms the basic Thelemic cosmology. This rather idiosyncratic use of algebra is more easily understood when written 0 = (-1) + (+1), the two terms on the right hand side of the equation cancelling each other out to equal the zero on the left hand side. Entire essays have been written devoted to this concept alone, and more detailed discussion will have to be deferred. We will settle here for remarking that it explains (in metaphysical terms, at least) how something can come from nothing, and how that same something can go back to nothing.

The Book of the Law describes these processes in AL I, 29-30:

For I am divided for love’s sake, for the chance of union.

This is the creation of the world, that the pain of division is as nothing, and the joy of dissolution all.

The “division” refers to the division of zero into (+1) and (-1), the symmetrical extension from a point, whilst “dissolution” refers to the reverse process, the combination of (+1) and (-1) and their absorption back into zero. These are the two boundaries of the life-cycle of all manifest things, creation and destruction, birth and death. The infinite variety of manifest things is explained by the observation that (+438,112,329) + (-438,112,329), for instance, equals zero just as much as (+1) + (-1) does.

The equation also illustrates how – according to this theory, at least – nothing can ever be added to or removed from the universe, since the sum total of all existing things will always be zero, whether there is nothing in the universe, or it is teeming with life. And this observation gets us closer to not only the how of creation according to the Book of the Law, but also the why. Read the rest of this post »

“The Comment” to the Book of the Law contains the following sentences:

The study of this Book is forbidden. It is wise to destroy this copy after the first reading.

Whosoever disregards this does so at his own risk and peril. These are most dire.

Those who discuss the contents of this Book are to be shunned by all, as centres of pestilence.

All questions of the Law are to be decided only by appeal to my writings, each for himself.

which have provided no end of difficulties for commentators on the Book. The traditional interpretation is the the Book itself expressly forbids the reader to either study or discuss the Book, that those who offer commentaries on it are to be shunned, and that everyone must “decide what Thelema is for themselves”.

This view is flawed on a number of levels. From a very basic standpoint, nobody, ever, has any choice other than to “decide what Thelema is for themselves”, commentary or not. Knowledge and insight cannot be transplanted from one brain to another, and even if it could, that knowledge and insight would not be the same without a complete mind transfer and the context that goes along with it. It is not the case that somebody studying the Book in isolation will interpret it for themselves, but somebody studying the Book in conjunction with a commentary will not. The commentary itself would require personal interpretation, and no matter how clearly the commentary was written, the understanding gained by the reader is inevitably going to be different, perhaps significantly, from the understanding possessed by the commentator. So, regardless of the interpretation of the Comment itself, the implication that commentary must be avoided in order to prevent a “pollution” of the reader’s own pure interpretation is nonsense.

Secondly, if the Comment actually does mean what it is usually claimed to, then it completely contradicts itself in several places, most obviously in the injunction that “all questions of the Law are to be decided only by appeal to my writings” – how so, if “the study of this Book is forbidden”?

Moreover, the Comment also echoes a number of key phrases from the Book proper, including “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” right at the top. Examine that sentence carefully, noting the conspicuous absence of the words “oh, except for the Law that says the study of this Book is forbidden, of course”. We also have “there is no law beyond Do what thou wilt” at the end, again strangely failing to add “except for the additional law that says the study of this Book is forbidden”. Finally, we have “all questions of the Law are to be decided only by appeal to my writings, each for himself” again. Notice that first word, all questions of the Law, including whether or not the study of this Book is lawful. Suppose we appeal to the writings of Ankh-f-n-khonsu, and decide, each for ourselves, that the study of the Book is lawful? Crowley himself often directly encouraged the study of the Book, most notably in Magick Without Tears, where he advises his correspondent in the very first letter to “make The Book of the Law your constant study”. If we assume that “Ankh-f-n-khonsu” is synonymous with Crowley (which some debate), then an appeal to his writings clearly leads us to this conclusion, and presumably, in this case, we can discard the injunction against it. Furthermore, anybody who disagrees is clearly in direct breach of their own interpretation of the Comment, by attempting to decide for us that our study of the Book is unlawful. So, to anybody who claims that the Comment forbids the study of the Book of the Law I respond that it also permits it, three separate times, and three-to-one wins the day, quite apart from the fact that if it does forbid it, then it also forbids your forbidding, so there. Read the rest of this post »

Thelema is, at the end of all analysis, an individual rather than a social philosophy, and the concept of “ethics”, as commonly understood, is wholly absent from it; as Crowley says in his “new comment” to AL II, 28:

There are no “standards of Right”. Ethics is balderdash. Each Star must go on its own orbit. To hell with “moral principle”; there is no such thing.

Yet, by examining what the Book of the Law has to say on individual conduct we can nevertheless draw some conclusions as to the type of “ethics” that are implied in Thelema, since other stars form part of the environment with which the individual must interact. And to do so is to clear up some widely held misconceptions on the subject.

The Book of the Law provides only one “commandment” to the individual by which he must (if he wishes to be taken seriously as a Thelemite, at least) govern his conduct, which is “Do what thou wilt”. Excluding the Comment, this phrase appears in two places in the Book, and is very closely paraphrased in a third:

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. (AL I, 40)

So with thy all; thou hast no right but to do thy will. Do that, and no other shall say nay. (AL I, 42-43)

There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt. (AL III, 60)

The language here is unequivocal; “Do what thou wilt” shall be the whole of the Law (AL I, 40), and there is no law beyond it (AL III, 60). Furthermore, not only is “Do what thou wilt”, the only “commandment”, but it is also the only right (AL I, 42), and it is an indefeasible one (AL I, 43). Crowley sums this up in Liber II:

Do what thou wilt – then do nothing else. Let nothing deflect thee from that austere and holy task. Liberty is absolute to do thy will; but seek to do any other thing whatsoever, and instantly obstacles must arise.

There is no scope for argument, here; the language in the Book itself and in Crowley’s commentaries is absolutely unambiguous, and this is crucial to understanding the subject. A thriving cottage industry has arisen providing a variety of divergent interpretations on verses from Chapter I such as AL I, 3 (“Every man and every woman is a star”), AL I, 22 (“Let there be no difference made among you between any one thing & any other thing”), AL I, 41 (“The word of Sin is Restriction”), and AL I, 57 (“Love is the law, love under will”) in order to twist the text to fit any number of wild and fanciful notions of “right conduct”, yet it is a plain fact that any such notions can only possess validity to the extent that they conform to – and arise necessarily from – the three verses quoted above. The only flexibility of interpretation that we have is in deciding exactly what “Do what thou wilt” means in the first place.

The single most widespread and systematic mistake that people make when considering the ethics of Thelema is to suppose that “Thou hast no right but to do thy will” includes an obligation to allow everybody else the freedom to do their wills unhindered by you. It doesn’t. Not only is this concept absent from the Book of the Law, but the Book exhorts precisely to the contrary Read the rest of this post »