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Liber XXXII · Thelema

Liber XXXII · Thelema · Chapter II: Holy Books

The Vision and the Voice: Crowley's Enochian Aethyrs (Liber 418)

The Vision and the Voice (Liber 418): Crowley's 1900 and 1909 visions of the thirty Enochian Aethyrs with Victor Neuburg, Choronzon, Babalon and the Abyss.

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The Vision and the Voice, also known as Liber 418, is Aleister Crowley's record of a series of visionary journeys through the thirty "Aethyrs" of the Enochian system of John Dee and Edward Kelley. Crowley explored two of them in Mexico in 1900 and the remaining twenty-eight in the Algerian desert in November and December 1909, with the poet Victor Neuburg acting as his scribe. The book introduced Babalon, Choronzon and the City of the Pyramids into Thelemic thought and is regarded by Thelemites as one of their most important visionary texts.

Enochian Background: Dee, Kelley and the Thirty Aethyrs§

The Enochian system originated in the angelic conversations of the Elizabethan mathematician John Dee and his scryer Edward Kelley in the 1580s. Among the material they recorded was a series of nineteen "Calls" or "Keys" in an angelic language, the last of which could be adapted to each of thirty "Aethyrs" or "Airs," realms arranged in concentric order from the thirtieth, called TEX, nearest the world, to the first, called LIL, nearest the divine. Each Aethyr has a three- or two-letter name, and the nineteenth Call is recited with the name of the chosen Aethyr inserted.

Dee and Kelley did not use the Aethyrs as a ladder of visionary ascent in the way later magicians did. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn reorganised Dee's material into a system of elemental tablets and correspondences, and taught its members to "travel in the spirit vision" by meditating on symbols. Crowley combined these approaches: he used the nineteenth Call as an invocation and then described what he saw, treating the thirty Aethyrs as a map of progressively higher spiritual states. Egil Asprem's study of modern Enochian magic shows how far this practice developed from Dee's original intentions.

Mexico 1900 and Algeria 1909§

Crowley first tried the method in Mexico in 1900, shortly after his break with the Golden Dawn leadership, and recorded visions of the thirtieth and twenty-ninth Aethyrs. He then put the work aside, judging that he was not ready to go further.

He returned to it in late 1909, during a walking journey through Algeria with his disciple Victor Neuburg. Travelling south from Algiers through Aumale and Bou Saâda towards Biskra, the two men stopped at intervals, often outdoors or in simple lodgings, and Crowley invoked one Aethyr at a time, working downward in number from the twenty-eighth. The series began in late November and ended with the first Aethyr in mid-December 1909.

The method§

According to Crowley's account, he held a large golden topaz set in a wooden cross painted with symbols, recited the Enochian Call, and then described aloud the scenes, figures and voices that appeared to him, while Neuburg wrote down his words. Crowley spoke of the experience as a combination of vision and audition, hence the book's title. He often did not know where a vision would lead and sometimes broke off when he felt he could not proceed. The resulting texts mix landscape description, dialogue with angelic and symbolic beings, poetry and doctrinal pronouncement.

Choronzon and the Tenth Aethyr§

The best-known episode is the tenth Aethyr, ZAX, which corresponds in Crowley's scheme to the Abyss, the gulf separating the higher, supernal part of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life from the lower spheres. Its inhabitant is Choronzon, a name Crowley took from Dee's records, described as the "Dweller in the Abyss," a force of dispersion, incoherence and egoism rather than a personal devil.

On 6 December 1909, in a lonely valley near Bou Saâda, Crowley performed this Aethyr as a ceremonial operation rather than a simple vision. Neuburg sat in a protective circle as scribe, and Crowley sat in a triangle outside it, the place where spirits are evoked in grimoire tradition. In the record, Choronzon spoke through Crowley and appeared in a series of shifting forms, flattered and threatened Neuburg, and finally tried to cross into the circle, where Neuburg drove it back with a magical dagger.

Readers have interpreted the episode in many ways. Thelemites usually treat it as a genuine encounter with the forces of the Abyss and as part of Crowley's ordeal of crossing it. Biographers have noted the psychological intensity of the relationship between the two men and Crowley's capacity for dramatic performance, and some suggest that Neuburg's experience was shaped by his master's role-play. The record itself is ambiguous enough to support either reading, and it remains one of the most discussed texts in modern ceremonial magic.

Babalon, the Abyss and the City of the Pyramids§

Beyond Choronzon, The Vision and the Voice lays out much of Crowley's mature mystical theology. The Aethyrs above the Abyss describe the condition of the Master of the Temple, the grade in which the adept surrenders his individual ego completely. Those who achieve it are said to become "Nemo," no one, and to dwell in the City of the Pyramids under the night of Pan, each reduced to a little heap of dust whose essence has been given up. Those who refuse the surrender and try to keep their ego intact are called Black Brothers, and the text describes them in harsh terms. Crowley later claimed that during these weeks, and in a sexual rite performed with Neuburg on a mountain near Bou Saâda dedicated to Pan, he passed this ordeal himself.

The visions also give the fullest early portrait of Babalon, the Scarlet Woman, whose name Crowley spelled to fit his numerology. Drawing on the Whore of Babylon in the Book of Revelation, the twelfth Aethyr and several others present her as a holy figure, the Mother of Abominations transformed into a goddess of ecstasy and surrender who holds a cup into which adepts pour their blood, a symbol of the total offering of the self. Manon Hedenborg White's study The Eloquent Blood traces how this image was later taken up by Jack Parsons in his Babalon Working and by later Thelemites and feminist interpreters.

The number 418§

The title Liber 418 refers to the numerical value Crowley gave to ABRAHADABRA, which he called the word of the new aeon, and to the Hebrew letter Cheth spelled in full, associated with the Chariot card of the tarot. The twelfth Aethyr's imagery of the charioteer bearing the cup of Babalon links these themes, illustrating how Crowley interlaced vision, number and symbol (see Tarot and Qabalah in Thelema).

Publication, Classification and Influence§

The Vision and the Voice was first printed as a supplement to The Equinox, volume I, number 5, in 1911. Crowley assigned it to Class A, the category of texts he considered inspired and not to be altered, while also recognising that parts reflected his own limitations at the time. Later editions added his commentaries, and a fully annotated edition was published in 1998 under the editorship of the Ordo Templi Orientis.

The book's influence has been considerable. Within Thelema it supplies the doctrine of the Abyss and the grade of Master of the Temple used in the A∴A∴ system of training. It gave Babalon her place in Thelemic theology, provided Kenneth Grant and other Typhonian writers with material for their speculations, and inspired many later magicians to undertake their own explorations of the Aethyrs. For historians of esotericism it is an exceptional document: a dated, detailed record of a sustained visionary practice, showing how a modern magician turned an Elizabethan angelic system into a vehicle for personal and religious transformation.

The text also has literary qualities. Its mixture of apocalyptic imagery, Egyptian and Christian symbolism and lyrical passages reflects Crowley's ambitions as a poet as well as a magician, and passages from it are read aloud in Thelemic gatherings in the way psalms or visionary scriptures are read elsewhere.

Frequently asked questions§

What are the thirty Aethyrs?§

They are thirty spiritual realms named in the Enochian material of John Dee and Edward Kelley, invoked with the nineteenth Enochian Call. Later magicians, above all Crowley, treated them as a graded series of visionary states from the thirtieth, TEX, to the first, LIL.

Who wrote down The Vision and the Voice?§

Victor Neuburg wrote down the 1909 visions as Crowley dictated them in Algeria. Crowley himself recorded the two visions of 1900 in Mexico.

What is Choronzon?§

Choronzon is a name from Dee's records that Crowley used for the "Dweller in the Abyss," the force of dispersion and egoism that the adept must pass on the way to the highest grades. The evocation of Choronzon in the tenth Aethyr is the book's most famous episode.

Why is it called Liber 418?§

Crowley numbered the book 418, the value he assigned to ABRAHADABRA and to the Hebrew letter Cheth spelled in full. Both are tied to the theme of the Great Work completed and to the Chariot card of the tarot.

Sources and further reading§