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Liber XXXII · Thelema

Liber XXXII · Thelema · Chapter II: Holy Books

The Holy Books of Thelema: Crowley's Class A Inspired Texts

The Holy Books of Thelema explained: Crowley's Class A texts such as Liber LXV and Liber VII, how they were written in 1907 and how Thelemites read them.

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The Holy Books of Thelema are the texts that Aleister Crowley classified as "Class A", writings he regarded as inspired rather than composed and which, he said, must not be altered in any way. Besides The Book of the Law (1904), the group includes some dozen shorter books written chiefly in a burst of inspiration in late 1907, among them Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente (Liber LXV) and Liber Liberi vel Lapidis Lazuli (Liber VII). Together they form the scripture of Thelema, read devotionally, studied in the A∴A∴ curriculum and used in ritual.

Class A: What Makes a Thelemic Book Holy§

In the official publications of his order, the A∴A∴, Crowley divided his instructional writings into five classes. Class A contained books that were not to be changed at all, because they were held to express truths beyond the understanding of the writer. Class B consisted of works of ordinary scholarship; Class C of suggestive and literary material; Class D of official rituals and instructions; Class E of manifestos and public notices. A few books, such as The Vision and the Voice, combine material from more than one class.

The classification separated what Crowley believed he had received from what he had written as a scholar or teacher. He did not claim to understand every part of the Class A texts himself and recommended that each reader interpret them according to their own insight. The first and paramount Class A book is Liber AL vel Legis, The Book of the Law, received in Cairo in April 1904, whose history is told in Thelema and The Book of the Law. The others were attributed not to the messenger Aiwass but, in most cases, to Crowley's own higher self in the grade of Master of the Temple, signed with the motto V.V.V.V.V.

The Inspired Writings of 1907§

The background to the Holy Books lies in Crowley's spiritual life after Cairo. During a journey across southern China in 1905–1906, and in the months that followed, he performed a long series of invocations of his Holy Guardian Angel, the higher spiritual being whose "Knowledge and Conversation" is the central goal of his system. He recorded that he attained this experience in October 1906.

In 1907, with George Cecil Jones, his former teacher in the Golden Dawn, Crowley founded the A∴A∴ as a new order of spiritual training. In the autumn of that year, over a period of a few weeks, he wrote a series of texts in what he described as a state of exalted trance: the words came quickly, he wrote them down without premeditation, and he later found in them meanings and numerical correspondences he had not consciously intended. He insisted that he had acted as a scribe rather than an author. A few further books were added between 1908 and 1911, including passages of The Vision and the Voice recorded in Algeria in 1909, described in The Vision and the Voice.

The Principal Holy Books§

The Holy Books are known by Latin titles and by numbers, which Crowley chose for their Qabalistic significance.

Liber LXV: The Heart Girt with a Serpent§

Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente (Liber LXV) is usually considered the most beautiful of the Holy Books. Its five chapters, corresponding to the five elements, describe in poetic dialogue the relationship between the aspirant and the Holy Guardian Angel, addressed as Adonai. The central image is of a heart around which a serpent is coiled, a symbol of the soul embraced by the divine. The number 65 is the value of Adonai in Hebrew gematria.

Liber VII: The Book of Lapis Lazuli§

Liber Liberi vel Lapidis Lazuli (Liber VII), subtitled "a sketch of the Egyptian Qabalah", contains seven chapters associated with the seven planets. Crowley described it as the "birth words" of a Master of the Temple: a cycle of ecstatic hymns addressed to a god of love and dissolution, written in a language of erotic and mystical intensity that recalls the Song of Songs and the poetry of the Sufis.

The Shorter Books§

The other Class A texts are brief and diverse:

  • Liber B vel Magi (Liber I), an account of the grade of Magus and its word.
  • Liber Porta Lucis (Liber X), the message of the Masters to humanity, describing the sending of a light into the world.
  • Liber Trigrammaton (Liber XXVII), twenty-seven figures built from a point, a whole line and a broken line, a cosmogony reminiscent of the Chinese trigrams.
  • Liber Stellae Rubeae (Liber LXVI), a symbolic ritual of the serpent Apep, which Crowley regarded as an obscure and dangerous text of sexual magic.
  • Liber Tzaddi vel Hamus Hermeticus (Liber XC), a call to initiation, offering the aspirant the joys of the path.
  • Liber Cheth vel Vallum Abiegni (Liber CLVI), on the mystical self-surrender symbolised by the cup of Babalon.
  • Liber Arcanorum (Liber CCXXXI), on the twenty-two trumps of the tarot and their genii; see the Thoth tarot.
  • Liber A'ash vel Capricorni Pneumatici (Liber CCCLXX), on the creative magical force symbolised by Pan and the goat.
  • Liber Tau (Liber CD), on the tarot letters as stages of initiation.
  • Liber Ararita (Liber DCCCXIII), on reducing the many to the One through the symbolism of the hexagram; ARARITA is a Hebrew divine name formed as a notariqon, an acronym of the letters of a sentence.

Publication: ΘΕΛΗΜΑ, The Equinox and the 1983 Edition§

Crowley first published the Holy Books in 1909 in a privately printed three-volume edition titled ΘΕΛΗΜΑ (Thelema). Several of them also appeared in his periodical The Equinox, which he issued twice a year from 1909 to 1913 as the official organ of the A∴A∴. These printings were small, and for decades the texts circulated mainly through rare copies and later reprints.

In 1983 the Ordo Templi Orientis issued The Holy Books of Thelema as volume III, number 9, of The Equinox, with an introduction setting out the history of each text. A companion volume, Commentaries on the Holy Books and Other Papers (1996), printed Crowley's own commentaries on Liber LXV and Liber VII. Shorter anthologies of the Equinox material, notably Gems from the Equinox edited by Israel Regardie (1974), helped bring them to a wider readership.

Reading and Using the Holy Books§

Thelemites use the Holy Books in several ways. They are read devotionally, often aloud, and individual passages serve as meditations or as the basis of personal invocations. The A∴A∴ curriculum, published by Crowley in The Equinox, prescribes the study of particular Holy Books at particular grades; Liber LXV in particular is associated with the aspiration to the Holy Guardian Angel. Passages also appear in Thelemic ritual and in the liturgical life surrounding the Gnostic Mass.

Interpretation is deliberately open. Crowley's commentaries offer one reading, often Qabalistic, but Thelemic organisations generally treat the texts as inexhaustible and decline to impose an official exegesis. The emphasis falls on personal experience: the texts are meant to evoke in the reader the state in which they were written.

Revelation, Inspiration and Literary Art§

Scholars approach the Holy Books in the same way as other modern revealed or "channelled" scriptures. They note their place in a long line of inspired writing, from Romantic theories of poetic inspiration to the trance texts of nineteenth-century Spiritualism, surveyed in Automatic Writing and Spirit Writing. They also note the clear continuities with Crowley's earlier verse: the rhythms, imagery and Qabalistic preoccupations of the Holy Books are recognisably those of the poet who had published a dozen volumes before 1907.

For believers these continuities are no objection, since an inspired text may naturally use the voice of the person who receives it. For historians, the Holy Books are central evidence of how Crowley understood his own religious experience and of how Thelema, after 1904, developed a body of scripture larger than its founding revelation. Their relationship to The Book of the Law and to the Egyptian object at its origin, the Stele of Revealing, remains a central theme of Thelemic study.

Frequently asked questions§

What are the Holy Books of Thelema?§

They are the writings Crowley classified as Class A, held to be inspired and not to be altered. They include The Book of the Law and a dozen shorter books, most written in late 1907, such as Liber LXV and Liber VII.

Who wrote the Holy Books of Thelema?§

Crowley wrote them down, but he regarded himself as a scribe. The Book of the Law was attributed to Aiwass, and most of the others to his own higher self as a Master of the Temple, signed V.V.V.V.V.

What is Liber LXV about?§

Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente describes, in five poetic chapters, the relationship between the aspirant and the Holy Guardian Angel. Its central image is a heart encircled by a serpent.

Where can the Holy Books be read?§

They were collected in The Holy Books of Thelema (1983), with Crowley's commentaries on two of them published in 1996. Several also appeared in The Equinox between 1909 and 1913.

Sources and further reading§