kaos

that. He said it all.” For me, ideas, concepts, images, currents, all these things and more,
if they are true (in the sense of existing in some form above and below the Abyss), have
a certain timeless quality. And the nature of timeless things is that terms like new and
old are irrelevant to the things themselves. 156 is a new current: it does indeed run
contrary to the 93 current as temporally expressed in 1989.
I don’t doubt that it was new to Joel back then, and it was new to me when he first
stated it in this forum. And, 156 is the same old current: it is expressed in multiple
places in multiple ways in the stuff that Crowley and doubtless others have transmitted
to us.
I have here a quote from Liber XV I found last night: “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. 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.”
No explanation. A little orthodoxy seemed somehow appropriate.
SATYR
[Ed’s note—Kenneth Grant says in a footnote on the name chaos in the above quotation
from the Gnostic Mass: “In Crowley’s copy of Magick, this name is replaced by that of
aiwass, Crowley’s Holy Guardian Angel, but is here used in a cosmic sense, the vehicle
or medium of the Solar-phallic current.” In the above correspondence Satyr says that
the beast “approximates to” chaos, but as I understand it, and pointed out in KAOS 13
on p 12, chaos is a secret name of the beast, something I believe was originally stated
by Kenneth Grant. On p 21 of Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God (London: Frederick
Muller, 1973) Grant writes concerning the number 156:
It is also, according to Liber 418, the number of Chaos, which is a concept of singular
importance in the qabalah of Thelema for it is a secret name of The Beast. Babalon is
thus identified with her true Lord.
Crowley describes Babalon as the bride of Chaos in Liber Cheth (Liber 156), Verse 1:
This is the secret of the Holy Graal, that is the sacred vessel of our Lady the Scarlet
Woman, Babalon the Mother of Abominations, the bride of Chaos, that rideth upon our
Lord the Beast.
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