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Liber XXXII · Thelema

Liber XXXII · Thelema · Chapter II: Holy Books

The Stele of Revealing: Ankh-af-na-khonsu and Thelema

The Stele of Revealing: the Egyptian funerary stele of the priest Ankh-af-na-khonsu that Crowley saw in Cairo in 1904, its imagery, texts and use in Thelema.

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The Stele of Revealing is a painted wooden funerary stele made for Ankh-af-na-khonsu (Egyptological spelling Ankhefenkhonsu), a priest of the god Montu at Thebes who lived around the seventh century BCE. Aleister Crowley saw it in a Cairo museum in March 1904, under the exhibit number 666, and treated it as the sign that led to the writing of The Book of the Law. For Thelemites it is the founding icon of their religion; for Egyptologists it is a fine but ordinary example of Late Period Theban funerary art.

The Object and Its Owner§

Ankh-af-na-khonsu bore titles connected with the temple of Montu, the falcon-headed war god of the Theban region, and belonged to a family of priests who served the great temple complexes of Karnak. His stele was one of many wooden grave goods recovered from priestly tombs in the Deir el-Bahari area of western Thebes during the excavations directed by Auguste Mariette in the 1850s. Such stelae, painted on a gesso ground over wood and rounded at the top, were placed in the burial to secure offerings and safe passage for the dead.

The front, or recto, carries the main image. The reverse, or verso, carries lines of hieroglyphic text drawn from funerary formulae of the type collected in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, asking that the deceased may go forth by day, receive offerings and pass safely among the gods. The dating rests on style and on the genealogy of the priestly families named in comparable objects; specialists usually place it in the late eighth or seventh century BCE, at the junction of the Kushite and Saite periods, and some prefer a slightly later date. Nothing about the stele was unusual in its own world: it is a well-made product of a workshop that served the Theban priesthood.

After its discovery it entered the collection of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, first housed at Boulaq on the Nile. The collection moved several times before settling in the new Egyptian Museum on what is now Tahrir Square in 1902. Crowley's accounts speak of the "Boulak Museum," using the older name; the stele's display number at the time he saw it was 666, a coincidence on which much of its later fame rests.

The Imagery: Nut, Behdety and Re-Horakhty§

The upper register of the stele is framed by the elongated body of Nut, the sky goddess, arched over the scene with her hands and feet touching the earth, a standard image of the vault of heaven in Egyptian art (see Ancient Egyptian Religion). Beneath her hovers the winged sun disk, the form of Horus of Behdet (Behdety) that guarded the tops of doorways, stelae and shrines throughout Egypt.

Below, the priest stands in a white garment before an offering table heaped with food and flowers. Facing him, enthroned, is Re-Horakhty, "Ra who is Horus of the Two Horizons," a falcon-headed form of the sun god crowned with the solar disk and uraeus. Short columns of hieroglyphic text between the figures name them and record the priest's titles. The composition is conventional: the dead man presents himself to the sun god in the hope of joining the solar cycle of death and rebirth.

Crowley's reading of the scene§

Crowley saw in the stele a declaration about the coming age. In The Book of the Law the arching goddess becomes Nuit, infinite space and the body of the stars; the winged disk becomes Hadit, a name Crowley derived from Behdet, the infinitely small point at the core of every being; and the enthroned god becomes Ra-Hoor-Khuit, Crowley's rendering of Re-Horakhty, the crowned and conquering child of the new Aeon of Horus. The priest himself, as Ankh-af-na-khonsu, appears in the book as a scribe and prophet figure, and Crowley came to believe that he had been this priest in an earlier life. The theology built on these three figures is discussed in Thelemic Doctrine.

Cairo, March 1904§

Crowley and his wife Rose Edith Kelly arrived in Cairo early in 1904 on their extended honeymoon. According to Crowley's later account in The Equinox of the Gods (1936), Rose fell into an unusual state in March after a magical working in their apartment and began to tell him that "they" were waiting for him and that the one waiting was Horus. Crowley, sceptical, tested her with questions about Horus that he believed she could not answer, and then took her to the museum to see whether she could pick out the god.

In Crowley's telling, Rose walked past several images of Horus and stopped at a small wooden stele in a case on an upper floor, identifying the falcon-headed god as the one who was calling. When Crowley saw that the exhibit was numbered 666, the number of the Beast of Revelation that he had taken as his own since adolescence, he took this as confirmation. He arranged for a French translation of the stele's hieroglyphs through the museum's staff (later accounts name the assistant curator Émile Brugsch), and from it composed verse paraphrases of the texts. A few weeks later, on 8, 9 and 10 April 1904, he wrote the three chapters of The Book of the Law.

Historians cannot check most details of this story, which comes almost entirely from Crowley's own retrospective writings, composed when he was already presenting himself as the prophet of a new aeon. Biographers such as Lawrence Sutin and Richard Kaczynski accept the outline while noting that Crowley shaped the narrative to emphasise his own initial reluctance. The museum episode is nonetheless one of the best-attested parts of the Cairo events, since Crowley had the stele photographed and copied soon afterwards.

The Stele in The Book of the Law§

The stele is woven into the text of the book it is said to have inspired. The Book of the Law names it directly, calls it the "stélé of revealing," and instructs the prophet to obtain it and set it in his temple. It also refers to it by more startling names, a characteristic example of the book's provocative style. Crowley's verse paraphrases of the stele's inscriptions were incorporated into the third chapter, and the published editions of the book have usually printed photographs of both sides of the stele alongside the facsimile manuscript.

Crowley read the texts on the stele as speaking with the voice of the dead priest addressing the gods, and his paraphrases turned these Late Period formulae into hymns of exaltation: the soul rising through the heavens, the god of the horizon hailed, the speaker identifying himself with the divine powers. Thelemites use these paraphrases liturgically. A widely used adoration drawn from them is spoken after the solar salutations of Liber Resh, and passages from them appear in other rites.

Number and qabalah§

The number 666 was already central to Crowley's self-understanding as "the Beast," and he regarded the exhibit number as a deliberate sign rather than chance. The Book of the Law also attaches a number to the stele itself, inviting the kind of qabalistic calculation discussed in Tarot and Qabalah in Thelema. Sceptical readers point out that museum display numbers were assigned without reference to Crowley, and that a person primed to see meaning in 666 would find it compelling. For believers the coincidence is part of the miracle; for historians it is part of the psychology of revelation.

Replicas and Ritual Use in Thelema§

Crowley had a painted replica of the stele made in Cairo, and copies of the image have been part of Thelemic practice ever since. In the Gnostic Mass, the central public rite of the Ordo Templi Orientis, a reproduction of the stele stands on the super-altar at the east of the temple, flanked by candles, above the Book of the Law. Many Thelemites keep a copy in private shrines, and the image is reproduced on the covers of editions of The Book of the Law and on the ritual furniture of lodges.

The stele functions in Thelema somewhat as an icon does in Eastern Christianity: not an object of worship in itself, but a material witness to a revelation and a focus for devotion. Its three figures provide a visual summary of Thelemic theology, and the dead priest who stands before the god is often taken as a model of the aspirant presenting himself to the divine. Crowley's personal identification with Ankh-af-na-khonsu also gave the stele a biographical dimension, linking the prophet of the new aeon to an Egyptian priest of the old.

The Stele Today and Its Scholarly Context§

The original stele remains in the collections of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, where its display and storage location has changed over the years. Egyptologists have published the stele within studies of Theban priestly families and Late Period funerary art, and its texts are understood today as standard formulae rather than oracular statements.

Scholars of religion treat the stele as a revealing case study in modern esotericism's use of ancient Egypt. Like many occultists of his generation, from the Golden Dawn to the Theosophists, Crowley looked to Egypt as the homeland of an original wisdom and read Egyptian art through the symbolic systems of Western occultism. The stele shows that process with unusual clarity: an artefact of a well-understood funerary religion was given a new meaning as the charter of a twentieth-century religious movement. Whatever one thinks of the revelation, a museum label read with the eyes of faith became a sign.

Frequently asked questions§

Where is the Stele of Revealing today?§

The original is held by the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Its exact display location has varied, and it has sometimes been in storage rather than on public view. Replicas are widely used in Thelemic temples and private shrines.

Who was Ankh-af-na-khonsu?§

He was a priest of the god Montu at Thebes, usually dated to the late eighth or seventh century BCE, for whose burial the stele was made. Crowley believed he had been this priest in a former life, and the name appears in The Book of the Law.

Why is the Stele of Revealing numbered 666?§

The number was the museum's display or catalogue number when Crowley and Rose Kelly saw it in March 1904. Crowley, who already called himself the Beast 666, took the coincidence as a sign that the revelation was meant for him.

What do the figures on the stele represent?§

In Egyptian terms they are the sky goddess Nut, the winged disk of Horus of Behdet, the sun god Re-Horakhty and the priest making offerings. In Thelema they are read as Nuit, Hadit and Ra-Hoor-Khuit, with the priest as Ankh-af-na-khonsu.

Sources and further reading§