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Liber XXXII · Thelema

Liber XXXII · Thelema · Chapter IV: Thelemic Doctrine

Nuit, Hadit and Ra-Hoor-Khuit: The Gods of the Book of the Law

Nuit, Hadit and Ra-Hoor-Khuit, the three gods of The Book of the Law: their Egyptian origins, what each means in Thelema and how Thelemites interpret them.

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Nuit, Hadit and Ra-Hoor-Khuit are the three divine speakers of The Book of the Law, the text Aleister Crowley received in Cairo in 1904. Each speaks one of its three chapters: Nuit is infinite space, the boundless goddess of the stars; Hadit is the infinitely small point at the centre of every being; and Ra-Hoor-Khuit is the child born of their union, the warrior god who rules the new age. Their names and images come from an Egyptian funerary stela, but their meaning in Thelema is a modern religious philosophy.

The Three Speakers of The Book of the Law§

The Book of the Law is unusual among scriptures in giving each of its chapters to a different divine voice. The first chapter is spoken by Nuit, who describes herself as the goddess of infinite space and promises love, freedom and ecstasy to her worshippers. The second is spoken by Hadit, her complement, who speaks of himself as the secret centre of things. The third belongs to Ra-Hoor-Khuit, whose voice is martial and commanding. Crowley received the chapters on three successive days, 8, 9 and 10 April 1904, through a voice he called Aiwass; the reception is described in Thelema and The Book of the Law.

Thelemites often speak of the three as a trinity, but they are not three persons of a single godhead in the Christian sense. They are better understood as three aspects of reality: the field of all possibility, the point of experience within it, and the active manifestation that results from their meeting. Crowley wrote extensive commentaries on all three chapters, collected in The Law Is for All.

Egyptian Sources: Nut, Behdety and Re-Horakhty§

The names of the three speakers were drawn from the painted wooden stela of the Theban priest Ankh-ef-en-Khonsu, which Crowley and his wife saw in the Boulaq Museum in Cairo in March 1904; see The Stele of Revealing.

  • Nut, the Egyptian sky goddess, arches over the top of the stela, her body stretched across the heavens. In Egyptian religion she was the mother of Osiris, Isis, Set and Nephthys, and was believed to swallow the sun each evening and give birth to it each morning. Her star-covered figure was painted on coffin lids and tomb ceilings to protect the dead. Crowley rendered her name as Nuit.
  • Behdety, "he of Behdet", is the winged sun disk that hovers beneath Nut on the stela. Behdet was a name of Edfu, a centre of the cult of Horus, and the winged disk was a protective emblem placed above temple doorways throughout Egypt. Crowley's Hadit appears to be derived from this name.
  • Re-Horakhty, "Ra-Horus of the Two Horizons", is the falcon-headed god enthroned before the priest, a fusion of the sun god Ra and the sky god Horus. Crowley's form Ra-Hoor-Khuit adapts this name.

Egyptologists stress that in their original setting these figures were conventional elements of a Twenty-fifth or Twenty-sixth Dynasty funerary monument, expressing a hope for the dead man's safe passage. For Egyptian religion in its own terms see Ancient Egyptian Religion. Crowley's reinterpretation turned them into the gods of a new revelation, filtered through Victorian Egyptology and Golden Dawn symbolism.

Nuit: Infinite Space and the Stars§

In Thelemic doctrine Nuit is the totality of all that is possible: infinite space and the infinite stars within it. She is the circumference whose centre is everywhere. The first chapter of The Book of the Law contains several of Thelema's most quoted teachings in her voice, including the declaration that every man and every woman is a star and the statement of the law "Do what thou wilt", explained in What Does "Do What Thou Wilt" Mean?.

Nuit presents herself as a goddess of love and joy rather than of sorrow and sacrifice. She says that she is divided for love's sake, for the chance of union, a phrase Crowley read as the key to the whole cosmology: existence arises because the infinite divides itself in order to experience the bliss of reunion. She describes the kind of worship she desires in sensuous terms of perfumes, jewels, wine and love, and she promises her devotees certainty rather than faith, here and now rather than after death.

In ritual, Nuit is invoked in the Gnostic Mass, whose Priest addresses her as a circle of stars, and her image appears on the Thoth tarot card The Star and on The Aeon. Thelemites commonly depict her, after the stela, as a blue-black arching woman spangled with gold stars.

Hadit: The Point at the Centre of Every Star§

Hadit is Nuit's complement. Where she is infinite extension, he is the infinitely small point, present everywhere and nowhere. In the second chapter he describes himself as the flame that burns in every heart and in the core of every star, and as the one who goes, in contrast to the one who is. Crowley interpreted him as the principle of motion, consciousness and experience: the individual point of view through which the infinite possibilities of Nuit are known.

Hadit is often called the secret self or the innermost core of each person. His imagery includes the winged globe and the serpent, and he is associated with energy, will and the joy of existence; the second chapter contains some of the book's most exuberant passages, celebrating ecstasy and strength. Crowley noted that the name Had is concealed in the centre of the word Abrahadabra, the Word of the new Aeon.

Some commentators have compared the pair of Nuit and Hadit with the Hindu Tantric polarity of Shakti and Shiva, the goddess as dynamic power and the god as pure consciousness, a comparison Crowley himself encouraged in places; see Tantra: History and Practice. The parallel is suggestive rather than exact, since the roles of the two partners do not map neatly onto the Thelemic pair.

Ra-Hoor-Khuit: The Crowned and Conquering Child§

The third speaker is the product of the union of Nuit and Hadit: manifestation itself, the world as it actually appears. Ra-Hoor-Khuit is a form of Horus, the child of the Egyptian divine family, and he is the ruling god of the new age that Crowley called the Aeon of Horus. The third chapter of The Book of the Law is spoken in his voice, and its tone is martial and uncompromising, full of the language of war, vengeance and victory.

Ra-Hoor-Khuit has a twin, Hoor-paar-kraat or Harpocrates, the silent child with a finger at his lips. Ra-Hoor-Khuit is the active, outward-facing aspect of Horus, Hoor-paar-kraat the passive, inward-facing one; together they form the double god Crowley called Heru-ra-ha. The harsh rhetoric of the third chapter has long troubled readers. Some Thelemites read it as a description of the spiritual struggle by which the individual overcomes inner obstacles; others as prophecy of the upheavals of the twentieth century. Crowley's own commentaries move between both readings.

Interpreting the Thelemic Trinity§

The relationship of the three gods is often expressed by the equation 0 = 2, which Crowley had first proposed in an essay of 1902, "Berashith", before The Book of the Law was written. The equation states that nothing can be resolved into a pair of opposites that cancel each other out: the universe, in this view, arises from nothing without violating its essential unity. In Thelemic terms Nuit (the infinite) and Hadit (the infinitesimal) are the two poles whose union is both nothing and everything, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit is the world that results.

Thelemites interpret the trinity at several levels: as cosmology, as a map of consciousness, and as a ritual pattern enacted in the Gnostic Mass and in daily practices such as the solar adorations of Liber Resh. Writers in the Typhonian current associated with Kenneth Grant have offered further esoteric readings, linking Nuit and Hadit with stellar and Sethian symbolism. The doctrinal context as a whole is surveyed in Thelemic Doctrine.

Frequently asked questions§

Who are Nuit, Hadit and Ra-Hoor-Khuit?§

They are the three gods who speak the three chapters of The Book of the Law. Nuit is infinite space, Hadit the point at the centre of every being, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit the child of their union who rules the Aeon of Horus.

Where do the names Nuit and Hadit come from?§

They derive from figures on the Stele of Revealing: the Egyptian sky goddess Nut and Behdety, the winged sun disk of Horus of Edfu. Crowley adapted the names in 1904.

Is Ra-Hoor-Khuit the same as Horus?§

He is a form of Horus, taken from the Egyptian god Re-Horakhty on the stela. In Thelema he is paired with Hoor-paar-kraat, the silent child Harpocrates, as the active and passive aspects of one god.

What does 0 = 2 mean in Thelema?§

It is Crowley's formula for the creation of the universe from nothing as a pair of opposites. In Thelema it describes the union of Nuit and Hadit, the infinite and the infinitesimal.

Sources and further reading§