kaos

either because this was obvious in skrying the Æthyr or because Crowley claimed to be
the reincarnation of Edward Kelly.) I find this a most unconvincing statement,
particularly given that in Liber LXXXIV vel Chanokh, first published in The Equinox
Vol. I, No. VIII (September, 1912) under a more verbose title, Crowley gives the same
line as “It repenteth me that I have made Man”. The Vision and the Voice appeared in an
earlier issue, Vol. I, No. V (March, 1911), so presumably Crowley changed his mind
about the line and reverted to Kelly’s original.
In pondering passages such as that from the 19 th Key—and recalling how it was
ushered into existence by angelic dictation to Kelly, and how Aleister Crowley used this
call that contains this passage in the original Enochian to skry all 30 of the Æthyrs,
thereby obtaining parts of what appears to be a fragmented story about Chaos and
Babalon, that later went on to draw myself and Amodali to initiate the kaos-babalon
156 current, and to separately inspire “The Black Lodge of Santa Cruz”—I am given to
wonder what the long-term gameplan of the angels actually is. Donald Tyson believes
Enochian magick is intended to bring on the Apocalypse (Enochian Magic for Beginners
[1997] and in more detail in “The Enochian Apocalypse” in Gnosis 40, Summer 1996).
Tyson asks: “Were John Dee’s Enochian Keys of magic intended to unleash violent
occult forces that would hurl us into another age?” Tyson answers his own question in
the affirmative, and has been much ridiculed by serious occultists because of it:
I will present what I believe to be the angels’ secret agenda, which they concealed from
Dee: to plant among mankind the ritual working that would initiate the period of violent
transformation between the present aeon and the next, commonly known as the Apocalypse.
It begs the question why Tyson would want to write a book “for beginners” on such a
magick. There is no doubt, however, that there is a great deal of Apocalyptic imagery in
the Keys, but the Apocalypse as Donald Tyson perceives it is essentially the doomladen
version of Christianity. To me the Enochian Keys and their relation to the 156 current
are about the rediscovery of one’s true self through The Fall and coming to know the
female stranger the Great Whore Babalon whose bed one comes to lie in and whose
story is a Mystery to behold emerging in fragmentary visions throughout the Ages. It is
a hidden myth the most vital broken sherds of which are deeply embedded in our own
flesh from a distant past we have lost our understanding of, the confounded “dark”
understanding of Babalon. How does this link in with the Apocalypse? Crowley in his
Confessions puts it well:
The nineteenth Key contains the text of the original curse on creation. Each phrase
formulates some calamity. I had always shuddered at its horror as I recited it. But now,
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