postmodern Satanism

ever. There cometh one to follow thee: he shall expound it. Butremember, o chosen one, to be me; to follow the love of Nu in thestar-lit heaven; to look forth upon men, to tell them this glad word.”II:75-76“This book shall be translated into all tongues: but always with theoriginal in the writing of the Beast; for in the chance shape of theletters and their position to one another: in these are mysteries thatno Beast shall divine. Let him not seek to try: but one cometh afterhim, whence I say not, who shall discover the Key of it all. Then thisline drawn is a key: then this circle squared in its failure is a key also.And Abrahadabra. It shall be his child & that strangely. Let him notseek after this; for thereby alone can he fall from it. Now this mysteryof the letters is done, and I want to go on to the holier place.”III:47-48The two passages quoted above from Aleister Crowley’s definitiverevelation, Liber AL vel Legis, form the so-called “Riddle of AL”, andhave remained intractable in spite of a variety of proposed solutions.It is my stated thesis herein that this is no accident, for the simple factthat there is no solution to be had. Clues to this fact are litteredthroughout AL, such as in III:2, where we discover the curiousstatement that “spelling is defunct”. Or in III:39, where “for in it is theword secret & not only in the English” (my emphasis). These twoquotes will be examined in more detail below, but first, a few generalcomments on Crowley, Gematria, and the Aeonic shift.In 1882, when Aleister Crowley was a mere seven years of age, theQuadrature Problem was proven impossible when C.L.F. vonLindemann demonstrated the transcendence of Pi. There can be nodoubt that this Zeitgeist had an impact on Crowley, whether he wasaware of it or not. The demonstrable failure of rationalism toadequately describe reality was becoming more and more of awidespread phenomenon during Crowley’s life, with the pioneeringworks of both Kurt Godel and Max Planck being roughlycontemporaneous with the magickal career of the Great Beast. Thelate nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were witness to thegreatest cluster of paradigm-shifts within the entire Westerncivilization, greater even than those of the Enlightenment.