kaos

was called ostensibly to protect others from repeating his practice. He is “Keeping
Silence”. This would also explain why the 10 th was edited and revised the day after, to
edit out references that made it clear that Choronzon was Crowley possessed by the
demon, except for the previously unpublished diagram. It makes sense now. Ah well,
we have got somewhere. It seems strangely obvious all of a sudden. I suppose my not
remembering the confusion inherent in previous published versions of Liber 418, and
not realising there was anything here that constituted something of an informal oto
“secret”, and you not realising the diagram with the Seer in the Triangle had now been
published, enabled us in the end to see what was clear all along but had been purposefully
occulted.
This is corroborated by a sentence on p 165:
This last was spoken from the triangle in the natural voice of the Frater, which Choronzon
again simulated. But he did not succeed in taking the Frater’s form—which was absurd!
Here Crowley is having a bit of a joke, and he appends a note to the above statement:
“In this Æthyr are certain silences maintained.” Clearly he is using the term “Silence”
in its technical occult usage, ie lying through one’s teeth. In The Confessions of Aleister
Crowley I see now that he states: “During all this time I had astrally identified myself
with Choronzon, so that I experienced each anguish, each rage, each despair, each insane
outburst.” Given such clues, it is odd that it took until 1998 before the charade was
publicly ended.
Interesting point you make about what Crowley did with the dagger after slaughtering
the pigeons. He couldn’t exactly throw it outside the Triangle could he, because that
would be allowing some of the sacrificial blood to fall outside of the Triangle, thus
allowing Choronzon to manifest in the Universe. As for its present whereabouts, Kenneth
Grant claims to have it. There’s material on the later history of this magical dagger in
Grant’s Hecate’s Fountain (p 5 and pp 11–12). Apparently it “accidentally” featured in a
number of Grant’s New Isis Lodge rituals (which may or may not have taken place
solely in Mr Grant’s mind). There’s a photograph of it in his Outside the Circles of Time.
As for Makhashanah, I can’t blame Crowley for relegating his “Word of the Aeon”
to the status of inconsequentiality, after all I have done precisely the same with Jubalcain.
It appears Crowley regarded Makhashanah as merely a coded form of Abrahadabra
rather than a word in its own right, not considering that it was Abrahadabra that should
have been sidelined. I guess he found that difficult because Abrahadabra is enshrined in
Liber AL, but even so how could he keep a straight face proclaiming Abrahadabra as
any kind of magick word.
132