aleister crowley - prophet of a new aeon - priest of the ancient gods

Aleister CrowleyProphet of a New Aeon

Priest of the Ancient Gods

(c) 2011 Paul Feazey

Aleister CrowleyThe Prince-Priest

The Beast


Introduction

Paul FeazeyOwner & Editor

LAShTAL.COMThe Aleister Crowley Society

This presentation includes information from biographies of Crowley by Kaczynski and Churton.Images (c) OTO are reproduced with kind permission.


God of the moon - ‘the wanderer’. Adopted son of Amun and Mut


First Visit: 1902

• Failed climb of K2 (aka Chogo Ri)

• Left Bombay on 30 September 1902

• Arrived 14 October 1902 on the SS Egypt, staying for three weeks

• Wrote to Gerald Kelly on 25 October: ‘How I look forward to civilisation... Cairo is a filthy low place with no beauty at all, unless you go to the Nile.’


First Visit: 1902

• Avoided the Pyramids: I won’t have 40 centuries looking down on me.

• Shepheards Hotel and brothels

• Left 5 November 1902 for France


First Visit: 1902Shepheards Hotel

New in 1897 and luxurious


Second Visit: 1903• Arrived in November 1903 with Rose

• Honeymoon

• Overnight 22 November 1903 in the Great Pyramid’s King’s Chamber

• Preliminary Invocation of the Goetia: no need for candles

• Suggestion is that Rose conceived during this visit

• Left in December 1903, headed for Ceylon


Third Visit: 1904• January 1904, Crowley wrote ‘Why Jesus Wept’:

• Arm! Arm, and out; for the young warrior of a new religion is upon thee; and his number is the number of a man.”

• 9 February: AC and Rose arrive in Egypt through Port Said.

• 11 February: ‘Lord and Lady Boleskine’ reported as staying at the Grand Continental Hotel, Cairo.

• 16 February: Back to Port Said (Eastern Exchange Hotel). Planning to leave?

• 18 February: Stays with Rose at the Tewfik Palace Hotel, Helwan, as Prince Chioa Khan (Great Beast).


Third Visit: 1904


Third Visit: 1904

The Michel Ayoub Pasha Building is visible to the right. The statue of Soliman Pasha is also visible in the middle of the place.


Third Visit: 1904


Third Visit: 1904

• March 14: AC and Rose move into a flat in Cairo.

• March 16: Rose began repeating, "They are waiting for you." Crowley’s apparently flippant remark re “Waiter”.

• March 17: Rose entered into the same state and began repeating her remarks: "It's all about the child" and "All Osiris".

• Visit to Museum. Perhaps not surprising that AC was shocked when he saw the stele...


Third Visit: 1904

• March 18: Thoth Invocation was repeated, "Revealed that the waiter was Horus, whom I had offended and ought to invoke."

• March 19: Composes and performs the Invocation of Horus. Twice.

• March 20: "Startling" success. "The Equinox of the Gods had come" and he was to formulate a link between the solar-spiritual force of the new epoch and mankind.

• April 8, 9 and 10: Reception of The Book Of The Law.


• March 23: “The ritual is of sex; Mars in the house of Venus exciting the jealousy of Saturn or Vulcan.”

Third Visit: 1904


Fourth Visit: 1905

• Left Boleskine 6 May 1905 for Cairo: “He spent a week in Cairo ... to see the stele of Ankh-f-n-Khonsu.” (Symonds: The Beast 666)

• Port Said - sailed “on the beautiful breast of the Nile” with a male lover and wrote poem, “Said”.

• Then on to a failed attempt to climb Kangchenjunga and to shoot muggers in Calcutta.


Museums

• Did Crowley visit the Boulaq Museum?

• The contents of the cache including the Stele of Revealing were placed in the Boulaq after their discovery in 1858.


Boulaq Museum


Boulaq

• Work in progress in 1902 to move the objects from the Boulaq to the Cairo Museum.

• Chaotic disruption to the Boulaq: items are transported in 5,000 wooden carts.

• Cairo Museum opened on 15 November, ten days after Crowley’s first departure.


Cairo Museum


Museums• Crowley wrote that he’d seen the stele in

the Boulaq Museum but at a time when the stele was at the Cairo Museum.

• What if Crowley - aged 27 - visited the Boulaq Museum, saw the stele and was photographed with it?


Crowley’s reproduction of the stele, The Equinox I:8

(1913).

Oil on canvas.


Published 1907-09


• April 1906, summoned Aiwass with Sr Fidelis (Elaine Simpson).

• Aiwass: “Return to Egypt with same surroundings... Go with the Scarlet Woman, this is essential... Live in Egypt as you did before... Go at once to Egypt...”

• January 1920, Jane Cheron - 4’ silk reproduction of the Stele.

Intentions


Intentions

• Several diaries called The Magical Record of Ankh-f-n-Khonsu.

• AC planned a visit during the writing of the Djeridensis Comment (letter to Norman Nudd, 1923 or 1924): “Fuller should walk with him to Egypt by way of Tunis ... and ‘abstruct’ from the Cairo Museum the original stele ... and help carry it to Boleskine.” (Symonds: The Beast 666)


Rose - ‘Ouarda’

• Rose Edith Kelly - Skerrett - Crowley - Gormley

• Born 23 July 1874

• Sister of Gerald Kelly

• Grand-daughter of founder of ‘Kelly’s Directories’

• Widowed in 1901 from Major Skerrett


Rose - ‘Ouarda’• Mother of 2 children: Nuit Ma Ahathoor Hecate

Sappho Jezebel Lilith (born 3 months after Cairo Working, died the following year) and Lola Zaza (1906 to 1990)

• Divorced from Crowley in 1909 - same year Crowley chose to publish AL

• Committed for alcoholism in 1911

• Married Dr Gormley

• Died 1932 aged 57


Rose


“Hassan or Hamid”

Our head servant, Hassan or Hamid, I forget which.

A tall, dignified, handsome athlete of about 30. Spoke good English and ran the household well;

always there and never in the way.


“Hassan or Hamid”

• Hassan !"# = ‘handsome’ or ‘benefactor’

• Hamid $%&# ‎ = ‘praised’


• aka Ankh-ef-en-Khonsu - Ankh-af-na-Khonsu - Ankh-f-n-Khonsu - Ankhefenkhonsu - ꜥnḫ-f-n-ḫnsw

• “The deceased, priest of Mentu, Lord of Thebes, the justified one for whom the doors of the sky are opened in Karnak.”

Ankhefenkhons I


Ankhefenkhons I

• "His life is in Khonsu.”

• “Flourished around 725 BCE.” Time of the Nubian kings (ie Piankhi).

• Usually considered the 25th Dynasty (747-656 BCE). AC went with Budge’s 26th Dynasty.

• Budge thought the 26th Dynasty started in 666 BCE.


Ankhefenkhons I

• Egyptian “priests” not as we would understand the term. Often translated “prophet” these days. Tended to be a hereditary role.

• Ankhefenkhons was a Kher-heb priest, responsible for reciting sacred texts and serving as oracle.


Ankhefenkhons I

• Ankhefenkhons’ mother was the Lady Taneshi aka Ta-neshet: ‘Sistrum Bearer’ of Amun, the god most closely allied with Montu.

• His father was Besenmut aka Bes-en-Mut I

• He was married to Neskhons.


Ankhefenkhons I

"...has left the multitudes and rejoined those who are in the light, he has opened the dwelling place of the stars; now then, the deceased, Ankh-af-na-khonsu, who has gone forth by day in order to

do everything that pleased him upon earth, among the living."


Ankhefenkhons IAppears that he served at the Temple of Mentu


Ankhefenkhons I... but resided in the Temple of Khonsu


Macclesfield Museum H: 6.0 cm., W: 1.6 cm., D: 1.5 cm.


• Funeral stele of Neskhons, wife of Ankhefenkhons


GodsThen Now Function

Nuit Nut Sky goddess

HaditBehdetyHorus of Behdet (Edfu)

Winged solar disk - defender of Re. “A mathematical expression rather than a god.”

Ra-Hoor-Khuit Re-HorakhtySolar aspect of the combined Re and Horus

HorusSky god and god of war. Conqueror of Set. Worshipped throughout Egyptian history.

Mentu MontuFalcon-headed god of war. aka ‘Horus of the Strong Arm’. Son of Amun.

Khonsu KhonsGod of the moon - ‘the wanderer’. Adopted son of Amun and Mut


Aiwass

• “I was the writer of a liberal book.”

• Arabic: “Aiwa” = Yes


Aiwass

He seemed to be a tall, dark man in his thirties, well-knit, active and strong, with the face of a savage

king, and eyes veiled lest their gaze should destroy what they saw.


Aiwass

• Was Aiwass (“a tall, dark man in his thirties, well-knit, active and strong”) actually Hamid (“a tall, dignified, handsome athlete of about 30”)?

• “The ritual was of sex.”


Aiwass

• “They are waiting for you.” A couple of days later, Crowley recorded in his diary that Rose had revealed to him “the waiter was Horus.”

• “I note in my diary that the food was ‘beastly, and abominable, and absurdly dear’. If I remember correctly, it was cooked by a Greek and served by an Armenian.”

• Այվազ = Ayvaz = Armenian for “servant attending on the guests”


Aiwass

• So...

• Aiwass = Այվազ = Waiter = Servant = Hamid

•Այվազ = θέλημα


Stele

• Unusually, framed by the sky-goddess Nuit (aka Nuith aka Nut).

• Unusually, wooden (covered with stucco).

• Unusually, inscribed on the rear. Verses from The Book of the Dead to ensure that his heart supported him at time of judgement.

• Also, a spell to enable “the astral form of the deceased to revisit the earth at will.”


Montu was depicted

wearing a pair of tall plumes, to distinguish Montu from other hawk-

headed deities.


Summary

• Not just one visit: four.

• Stele was apparently not ‘discovered’ until the third visit

• Visits to Port Said, Helwan and Cairo. But not Luxor (‘Warrior lord of Thebes...’)

• Apparent confusion over Museums


Summary

• Publication of AL when AC and Rose divorced

• Very young-looking Crowley photographed “in 1910” with stele ... and volume of The Holy Books

• Crowley’s intention to return

• Aiwass / Aiwaz / Ayvaz / Aiwa / Hamid


aleister crowley - prophet of a new aeon - priest of the ancient gods

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