The Vision & The Voice (Liber 418) is a visionary text that resulted from an extended magical operation undertaken by Aleister Crowley and his magical partner Victor Neuberg in the Algerian desert in 1909 over the course of roughly 30 days. With Crowley acting as Seer and Neuberg as Scribe, the two magicians utilized the Nineteenth Key, the Call or Key of the 30 Aethyrs, to invoke and scry the 30 Enochian Aethyrs. The text records Crowley’s initiation into the grade of Magister Templi, the 8°=3□ degree of the A∴A∴, his magical and mystical Order. The ordeal of this initiation Crowley referred to as Crossing the Abyss in which the identity of the individual ego is annihilated, an identification with the True Self achieved, and the subsequent reabsorption of that Self back into the Infinite. Crowley is gradually lead to this pivotal experience over the course of the visions, with many of Aethyrs offering preparatory instruction for the ordeal which awaited him. In this post I will focus on one such preparatory experience; namely, the reception of the alphabet of daggers in the 19th Aethyr, POP. The alphabet of daggers provides the initiate with a practical method of withdrawing thought back into the primordial chaos from which all thought arises.
The critical experience of Crossing the Abyss consists in the annihilation of the individual ego; however, such an experience requires preparation. As one approaches an encounter with the Abyss, the illusory nature of all thoughts, of any definitive conception that things are or ought to be one way or another, is exposed. It turns upside down all the conceptions that we use to frame and identify ourselves and the world. In the negative light of the Abyss anything we say or think, or think we know, we don’t. In thinking we know the thoughts that we think, we plunge ourselves deeper and deeper into confusion. Since an encounter with the Abyss exposes the inherent falsehood of all thought–the deceptive essence of thought itself–such an encounter necessitates different, and quite ancient, modes of thinking. For the Abyss not only strips us of our deluded and outworn conceptions, but also brings us face to face with the Ancient of Days, to the primordial chaos out of which all thought and concretization emerges. As our awareness returns to this primordial chaos, thought can spring forth new and afresh, with the awareness that if all though is untrue, then anything we may say or think is false; and, if anything we say or think is false, then any such act is an act of magic, an illusion, the weaving of a spell, the casting of an enchantment.
Many of the passages in Liber 418, along with Crowley’s commentary upon them, reveal the necessity of this new mode of thinking, a new logic capable of navigating the essentially deceptive nature of thought.
And this is the great Mystery of the Supernals that are beyond the Abyss. For below the Abyss, contradiction is division; but above the Abyss, contradiction is Unity. And there could be nothing true except by virtue of the contradiction that is contained in itself.
(The Vision & The Voice, 5th Æthyr, p. 205)
The idea is that Truth may be stated by denying a falsehood. This land us in the quagmires of ‘Zigzagginess,” the paradox of Epaminides [the Cretan–“all Cretans are liars”], et hoc genus omne [Lat., “and everything of this kind”]. One great point of the Initiated Doctrine is that the Ruach (the Mechanism of Thought) is in its essential nature self-contradictory (my italics). From now on, the Angels of the Æthyrs begin to speak in the language of Neschamah; they use the logic which pertains above the Abyss. The student will, accordingly, find statements which must be reversed and reversed again and again; both are true and false at once; neither is true or false–and so on.
(The Vision & The Voice, 21st Æthyr, p. 90, n. 2)
Knowledge is not, and cannot be, the crown of Consciousness, if only because the Logic beyond the Abyss convicts it of essential self-contradiction. Daäth, as seen by the Magister Templi, is so far from being the opposite of Ignorance that it is actually a demonstration that the Intellect is incapable of Truth.
(The Vision & The Voice, 3rd Æthyr, p. 214, n. 1)
The essence of thought, then, is self-contradiction–every thought is both simultaneously true and false–and yet, paradoxically, the solution to this enigma is a logic that is at home in contradiction, which explicitly traffics in contradiction, which assumes that contradiction is unity. The poison is the cure. The very condition that undermines all thought is the same condition that liberates it. In these visions Crowley is being instructed in this new, yet ancient logic that enables the initiate to return thought to its source.
To drive this point home we need only look three years into the future, to 1912, when Crowley first publishes The Book of Lies (Liber 333). Crowley acknowledges that it was years before the experiences he underwent in the Algerian desert would come to fruition; and, it is in Liber 333 that we see Crowley explicitly working out the implications of these experiences. We can already see in the title of the text a reference to the teachings received in those visions. ‘333’ is the number of Choronzon, the Dweller in the Abyss, and the book is a book of lies, the precise opposite of what any sane person would hope to encounter in a book. But not only that, the method of returning thoughts to their source is directly referenced in the subtitle.
The Book of Lies: Which is also Falsley called BREAKS The wanderings or falsifications of the One Thought of FRATER PERDURABO which thought itself is untrue.
Crowley comments on the title:
The number of the book is 333, as implying dispersion, so as to correspond with the title, “Breaks” and “Lies”. However, the “one thought is itself untrue”, and therefore its falsifications are relatively true. This book therefore consists of statements as nearly true as is possible to human language.
Here we already see Crowley making use of the new (or rather ancient) logic given to him in his Algerian visions. To wield thought and language with the conscious awareness that thought and language are inherently false is, paradoxically, to approach truth. Once we become conscious of the duplicitous nature of all thought, we learn the logic that allows us to return thought to its source, and thereby gain the means by which we can become adept in wielding thought successfully, with full awareness of its nature and function.
This finally brings us to the vision of the alphabet of daggers. To reiterate, this vision occurs before any explicit crossing of the abyss and can therefore be seen as preparatory for that event. Nonetheless, the vision provides critical insight into this new logic and the method of returning thought to its source. The vision begins…
At first there is a black web over the face of the stone. A ray of light pierces it from behind and above. Then cometh a black cross, reaching across the whole stone; then a golden cross, not so large. And there is a writing in an arch that spans the cross, in an alphabet in which the letters are all formed of little daggers, cross-hilted, differently arranged. And the writing is: Worship in the body the things of the body; worship in the mind the things of the mind; worship in the spirit the things of the spirit.
(This holy alphabet must be written by sinners, that is, by those who are impute.)
“Impure” means those whose every thought is followed by another thought, or who confuse the higher with the lower, the substance with the shadow…(The Vision & The Voice, 19thy Æthyr, p. 101 – 102)
Here we see that the alphabet is to be used by those who have yet to recognize the illusory nature of all thought. The alphabet–the use of which enables one to return all thoughts to their source–is purificatory. For every thought to be followed by another thought is for thought to be detached from the primordial source out of which it springs; to confuse the higher with the lower is to mistake the content of thought with the reality it attempts to represent; to confuse the substance with the shadow is to take the appearance (mental image) for the thing itself. This is what the alphabet of daggers is intended to correct.
It should also be observed that what Crowley sees written in this alphabet of daggers is a warning not to confuse the planes. “Worship in the body the things of the body…”, etc. This is absolutely crucial, for while the recognition of the illusory and deceptive nature of thought reveals its insubstantial nature, the laws of thought still hold with the domain of the illusion. To take this insight as license to disregard the rules that govern the illusion is to confuse the planes. While our being is infinite and eternal, we still find ourselves in a world of concrete manifestation and therefore are still subject to its terms and conditions.
The vision continues…
The golden cross has become a little narrow door, and an old man like ‘The Hermit’ of the Taro has opened it and come out. I ask him for admission: and he shakes his head kindly, and says: It is not given to flesh and blood to unveil the mysteries of the Æthyr, for therein are the chariots of fire, and the tumult of the horsemen; whose entereth here many never look on life again with equal eyes. I insist.(The Vision & The Voice, 19thy Æthyr, p. 102)
This Hermit–having passed into the inner recesses of Being–knows that every mortal impulse that keeps us attached to the world is stripped away as we merge into that primordial source. This is why the vision “is not given to flesh and blood” and why anyone who enters therein “may never look on life again with equal eyes”. The chariots of fire and the tumult of the horsemen, as we’ll see next, prevent mortal thoughts from penetrating the mystery of the Æthyr.
The little gate is guarded by a great green dragon. And now the whole wall is suddenly fallen away; there is a blaze of the chariots and the horsemen; a furious battle is raging. One hears nothing but the clash of steel and the neighing of the chargers and the shrieks of the wounded. A thousand fall at every encounter and are trampled under foot. Yet the Æthyr is always full; there are infinite reserves.
No; that is all wrong, for this is not a battle between two forces, but a mêlée in which each warrior fights for himself against all the others. I cannot see one who has even one ally. And the least fortunate, who fall soonest, are those in the chariots. For as soon as they are engaged in fighting, their own charioteers stab them in the back(The Vision & The Voice, 19thy Æthyr, p. 102-103)
Crowley makes a note in regards to the alphabet of daggers that “every idea, however apparently atomic is to be analyzed” and further remarks that the warriors in the vision are the ideas that the alphabet is to analyze. It becomes clear, then, that these warriors are all the thoughts that constantly pass through our mind. When we single out any one of these thoughts we will find that it is in its essence self-contradictory and incoherent. In fact, Crowley gives numerous examples of how such an analyses might proceed throughout his writing.
The primary insight is that whatever we say or think is only a fragmentary shard of the truth, and on its own, detached from the whole, has no way of supporting itself. It is the shadow rather than the substance. As mortals, we identify with our thoughts (i.e., shadows) ; and, when we identify with a thought we take it to have a self-subsisting validity. When a thought is taken to have a self-subsisting validity it makes a demiurgic claim to authority. Anything that opposes it is represented as a threat, an attempted coupe. But every thought is just as false as every other thought (and therefore equally true), since it is only the totality of all thought that is capable of representing the whole. To identify with one thought as opposed to another is then to deny the reality of the whole. Since one is in fact that wholeness, whole in the depths of their being, to deny any thought is to deny oneself and to set a up a conflict within oneself.
This is the meaning behind the alphabet of daggers: the analysis of any thought reveals its inherent falsity; and, once the falsity of all though is comprehended, any thought can be entertained with equal plausibility. The capacity to entertain any thought without attachment allows one to grasp all thought, which is the same as having no thoughts at all. This is why the vision is not given to flesh and blood, for to be stripped of all thought is to be stripped of one’s mortally conditioned mind.
The vision continues…
And in the midst of the battlefield there is a great tree, like a chinar-tree. Yet it bears fruits. An now all the warriors are dead, and they are the ripe fruits that are fallen–the ground is covered with them.
There is a laugh in my right ear: “This is the tree of life.”(The Vision & The Voice, 19thy Æthyr, p. 103)
The first image to attend to here is the Chinar tree (Platonus Orientalis), which Crowley notes is “One of the noblest trees of Hindustan”. Why does this beautiful and majestic tree appear in the middle of this deadly clash and conflict of ideas? If the warriors are representations of ideas, then thoughts are the fruit that hang from the tree. Yet, when these fruits (ideas) fall from the tree they die and rot away; that is, these thoughts are never cultivated. For all thoughts are like the fruit of this tree. As the fruit is connected to its source of nourishment through stalk and stem, so thoughts are sustained by the primordial depths of psychic life from which they arise. Just as the fruit detached from the branch of the tree will fall to the ground and rot, so too will thoughts detached from this primordial source be fruitless and lead to destructive civil war.
As Crowley notes…
“The Tree of Life bears fruit of innumerable ideas. They are all self-destroying and valueless unless organized by Understanding”(The Vision & The Voice, 19thy Æthyr, p. 103, n. 3)
And of course ‘Understanding’ is the Neschamic faculty of the soul capable of transcending the dualistic and self-contradictory nature of the individual ego. An awareness that remains true to the primordial ground out of which all thoughts arise is capable of wielding thought with the expertise of a skilled craftsman whose tools are merely a device for manifesting a deeper transcendent vision of reality.
Immediately following this teaching, Sebek, the crocodile god and Saturnian Destroyer swallows the entire Aire. Out of this destruction comes a vision of the Angel of the Æthyr, the “Priestess of the Silver Star” who beckons us at every level and every stage to return to the immortal and timeless ground from which All arises. She leads us deeper and deeper into the mysteries of Night where All is annihilated and returned to its primordial origin. To return thought to its source is to go deeper into that mystery, gradually stripping away everything, “all ideas, all experiences, Life itself”, stripping us bare of our mortal coil, returning us to the divine childlike innocence of Godhead itself. It is in the return to this source that thought and thinking can go aright, in which the fruits of the tree of life can be harvested. In the awareness of the primordial ground and source of our being we can engage thought without attachment to thought, since thinking has been returned to its source. In being returned to its source, its illusory nature has been revelated, allowing us to wield it as a spell, an enchantment, in pure will unassuaged of purpose.
Liminal Matrices 
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