An Omen For Armageddon: Parts IV - VI

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An Omen For Armageddon

Part Four - 23 Skidoo And Kick Out The JAMs: The Illuminati Elves At Work And Play...

by Vincent Bridges

I first heard about the illuminati elves in the pages of Dr. John Lilly's Center of the Cyclone, page 231 in fact. Lilly has the entertaining idea that the various contacts with higher, or just different, intelligences found in religion and occultism can be explained as contact with time travellers from the distant future who work as agents of what Lilly calls Cosmic Coincidence Control Center. These agents, "the elves," create a network of synchronicity that acts as a thermostatic regulator on human consciousness and its evolution.

Here's how Lilly puts it on page 231: "Such a network exists and functions... throughout this planet. I suspect it extends farther than our earth, but this has yet to be publicly demonstrated unequivocally beyond the private experience of myself and others." Indeed, coming from the man the New York Times described as "a walking one-man syllabus of Western civilization" we might consider his comments as authoritative.

And the "elves" seem to have been at work on Lilly's book as well, hence that page 231 synchronicity. This number of course can be turned into a date, January 23rd, which is another 23, and a pointer toward Columbia's, both as a faux goddess and as a space shuttle, moment of maximum danger. So what is so special about the number 23?

Contrails from what appears to be the space shuttle Columbia streaking across the sky over Texas, Saturday, Feb. 1, 2003.

First off, it seems to be an intuitive trigger of some sort related directly to our DNA. We receive 23 chromosomes from each parent to create the embryo of what we will become, and within our DNA itself, there is an unexplained bonding irregularity, a sort of stutter in the code, every 23rd angstrom in a DNA chain. This is not news to the Kabbalist, who has already figured out that 23 is the numerical value of such Hebrew words as "parting, removal, separation," "joy," "a thread," and "life," all of which point to sexuality and DNA.

There is also that arcane piece of argot from the turn of the century - 19th to 20th that is - "23 skidoo," the origins of which are shrouded in mystery. Aleister Crowley, a supposed illuminati himself, entitled the 23rd chapter of his classic Book of Lies "23 skidoo" and revealed that the secret was "get out." This has led some wags to speculate that the final secret of the Illuminati is that you don't realize you are in until it is too late to GET OUT. 23 skidoo...

There are 23 axioms in Euclid's geometry, and 23 percent of the universe is "dark matter." In telegrapher's code, 23 means "break the line," while in the I Ching hexagram 23 is called Breaking Apart. I could go on and on, once you start looking for 23s you begin to find them everywhere. One of the best books in which to look for 23 synchronicities is Arthur Koestler's Challenge of Chance. Perhaps the best way to think of it is as a symbol for what some physicists have called QUIP, or the quantum inseparability principle, a theory that holds that every particle affects every other particle in the universe.

And what of January 23rd? The calendar of the Catholic Church informs us that January 23rd is the wedding night of Mary and Joseph, a supposedly uneventful evening according to doctrine. But what if it wasn't so uneventful? Nine months later would give us a birth date for Jesus of October 23rd,coincidentally the date Columbia was unveiled for the public in 1862. This birth date also fits in well with the story of the Magi found in Mathew's Gospel. It would certainly have taken them several months to travel from the Turkish highlands of central Asia to Palestine in time for the January 6th Epiphany.

To the early Church, the Feast of the Epiphany, which marked the arrival of the Magi, the marriage at Cana and the baptism of Jesus by John, was much more important than Jesus' nativity. For some sections of the Christian community, such as the Cathars, the Epiphany was the most significant moment in the church calendar. Some obscure secret seemed to hide behind the juxtaposition of these three events, a secret that threatened to change the very concept of Christianity as taught by the official church.

There is no Biblical basis for a nativity feast and what Gospel evidence there is suggests Jesus was born in the late fall, as noted above. The early church had no traditions or celebrations of the nativity until the 3rd century, it didn't become common until the 4th century and it wasn't until the 5th century that it officially became December 25th, which was chosen for reasons of religious politics not any sense of spiritual or historical correctness. The act of saying a mass in honour of Jesus' birth, hence Christ's mass or Christmas, on the birthday of his most powerful pagan rival, Mithra, is plainly and simply an attempt to absorb and redirect the rival cult's followers, in effect saying that Christ is more powerful than Mithra because he supersedes him. It also undercuts the importance of the Epiphany, including the Magi as an afterthought to the nativity instead of as the central focus of the story.

The calendar adjustment in the 18th century also helped confuse matters. Adding 11 days meant that Christmas was now January 5th and 12th Night, or the Feast of the Epiphany was now January 17th. Most organizations within the church ignored the shift and celebrated the festivals on the same old days, but there were some who found this juxtaposition of the Epiphany and the traditional Feast of St Anthony, the saint already associated with January 17th, very appealing. One of those groups was the Catharist neo-Templars of Johann Augustus Starck, Weishaupt's initiator into the mysteries.

This has led in modern times to another group of Merry Pranksters, the so-called Priory of Sion, seizing upon this and various medieval mysteries such as the treasure of Gisors and Rennes-le-Chateau to make public the very secret connections most prized and carefully hidden by Starck's Catharist Neo-Templars. A cottage industry has grown up around these matters, without anyone realizing its illuminationist sources. Key events in this mythos that happened on January 17th include the Satanist takeover of the Catholic Church in 1377, King Rene's birthday in 1408 and Flamel's successful transmutation in 1387, as well as various events in and around Rennes-le-Chateau.

Note that January 17th, the feast of St. Anthony and the New Style date of the Epiphany, is only five nights away from January 22nd/23rd, the eve of Joseph and Mary's wedding night. In this one coincidence, we find a cluster of very revealing synchronistic clues. There is a sexual component in both the marriage at Cana and the Holy Couple's wedding night, as well as John the Baptist's acknowledgement of Jesus as his son during the Baptism. The visit of the Magi is a symbol of the larger spiritual current and a nod to the original illuminated ones. And tying it all together is the number five, which, as the union of the first masculine number, 2, and the first feminine number, 3, represents growth and sexuality in all its forms. In Tantric practices, 23 is the number of days in the male hormonal cycle, which is of course five less than the feminine cycle of 28 days.

That gives us an illuminated goddess of freedom purposefully tied into a complex of number synchronicities that suggests the true secret of illumination is somehow sexual, and both the secret and the illumination behind it are connected to an alternative view of Christianity. Columbia was first unveiled on 10/23/1862, which as I noted above is 10 + 23 = 33 and 1+8+6+2 = 17. Added together again they are 17 + 33 = 50; also 3 + 3 = 6 and 1 + 7 = 8, 8 + 6 = 14, and 1 + 4 =5. If we take the 23 from the date, then 10 goes into 50 five times. This gives us both our link to the masons, 33, and also 5, 17 and 23, our master numbers of the illuminati elves. The installation date, 12/2/1863 also yields the key numbers, 12 + 2 = 14, 1 + 8 + 6 + 3 = 18 and 1 + 8 = 9. Added together again, 14 + 9 = 23. (Also, 12 + 2 +1863 = 1877, which added together is also 23/5. The same can be done for 10/23/1862; 33 + 1862 = 1895, which adds across to 23/5.) Note that while both dates have prominent 5/23 connections, only the unveiling date has the hidden 17.

Before we get to that hidden 17, the starting point of this labyrinth of synchronicity, I must, in the interest of full disclosure, admit that since my birthday is 5/23/1952, I am sort of the Illuminati poster child in terms of the key numbers. I was informed of this at a pagan gathering several decades ago by a beautiful red-headed witch who took one look at the numerology of my birth date and wanted to know: Who I was kidding? First I say my name is Vincent Bridges, an obvious put-on, and then I give her a birthday that reeks of the Illuminati; what am I, some kind of wise guy?

I explained that it was indeed both my real name and my real birthday, and she explained to me about the secret of 23, the five ages of Illuminated history and how everyone born in 1952 (1 + 9 + 5 + 2 = 17) had the hidden 17 that was the mark of the Discordians, a bunch of jokers who were apparently in a kind of time war with the forces of the Illuminati. If I wasn't kidding her, then anytime anyone who was in the know heard my name and my birthday they would know that I was the one who would conquer the bridges between all the different factions of the Illuminati. Later, back at her tent, she asked if I was the reincarnation of Adam Weishaupt. To really mess with her mind, I replied: No, I'm the reincarnation of Aleister Crowley... 23 skidoo...

But to return to the hidden 17... Remember that Nostradamus spaced his two comet quatrains, II/46 and II/62, 17 quatrains apart, inclusive. And the one moment in the flight of the Columbia that could be completely planned, assuming the launch went off on time, was the moment of orbital insertion, just after midnight GMT on January 17th, 2003. The astrology of this moment matches, with eerie exactness and prophetic consequences, the moment of Columbia's ceremonial installation on the Capitol Dome in 1863. Coincidence? Perhaps not...

When we take 1/17/2003 apart in the same manner as the other dates we find something truly curious. Not only is the year directly a 23, less the 0s in 2003, but 2 + 3 = 5, and 1 + 17 = 18, 5 + 18 = 23, or 2 + 3 = 5. Only years that add to five can change, or bridge, the 17 into a 23, such as 1904, 1 + 9 + 4 = 14 = 5. Also 1913, 1922, 1931, and 1940 add to five, as do 1967 and 1976, 1958 and 1985, and 1949 and 1994 as 23s, which then also reduces to a five. On each of these eleven years, January 17th transforms into a 23/5. Other years that add up to 17 are 1907, 1916, 1925, 1934, 1943, 1952, 1961, 1970, and on these eight years January 17th transforms into 17, or an eight as the sum of 1 + 7, the next number in the Fibbonacci series of 2, 3, 5, 8 which generates approximations of phi, the golden ratio.

In the Tarot, Trump number 17 is The Star, traditionally attributed to the Hebrew Letter Tsadi and the zodical symbol Aquarius, which makes it very appropriate for a goddess like Columbia, who after all has such a significant ascendant in Aquarius, and the space shuttle Columbia, dying as a flaming star in the month of Aquarius. Therefore, it is easy to see Nostradamus' hidden 17 as a clear indicator of the Star, the comet of the shuttle Columbia, the star in the morning sky that heralds the coming Final Crusade with the Islamic world.

However, to understand that most closely guarded secret of the Justified Ancients of Mammu, the JAMs behind the Illuminati, we must turn to that quintessentially Victorian bad boy, Aleister Crowley, and his modern day disciple Robert Anton Wilson. Get ready to kick out the JAMs before we all 23 skidoo...

Next: Young, English And Rich: Cairo, 1904, On The Eve Of Armageddon...

©Copyright 2003 Vincent Bridges
Published by permission.

©Copyright 2003 by AlternativeApproaches.com

An Omen For Armageddon

Part Five - Young, English And Rich: Cairo, 1904, On The Eve Of Armageddon...

by Vincent Bridges

We face in the near future not the end of the world, although it could be that as well, but the death of History, the bragging chatter of alpha-male apes huddled around their primary techno-achievement, fire, and the birth of Myth, which is the collective dream of a new kind of "humanity." Many ancient cultures from around the planet, including some of the most sophisticated, have assigned to this time period the label, "THE END." The temporal calculations from the Great Pyramid end in 2001, and the Mayan calendar hits reset in 2012, a year that also adds to five, with the helical alignment of the winter solstice sun and the center of the galaxy.

The year 1987, the year of the faux Mayan Harmonic Convergence, was also the last year of the traditional Kalachakra calendar of ancient Tibet, the end of 16 cycles of 60 years since the Kalachakra teachings were released from the mythical kingdom of Shambala in 1027. The Black Hat sect of the Nyngma-pa, or Ancient Ones, teach that the 17th cycle, which began in 1987, will be the last. This cycle will be brief, ending in the emergence of Shambala after a period in which each element will be exalted in every other element. This comes to 25 years, 5 years for each of the five elements, and brings us to 2012...

Curiously, the legend of Shambala gives some meaning to the seemingly nonsensical astrological information in the song, "Age of Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In" from the hippie musical Hair. The Vishu Purana, one of the oldest of the Hindu classics, mentions Kalki, the Hindu Messiah, an avatar of Vishu who will be the last King of Shambala. Kalki is very similar to Kulkan, the Mayan White Messiah, and he is shown leading a great army of enlightened beings against the barbarians. "He will then re-establish righteousness upon the earth; and the minds of those who live at the end of the age of strife shall be awakened, and shall be as pellucid as crystal... As it is said 'When the sun and the moon, and ...Tisha, and the planet Jupiter are in one mansion, the golden age shall return.'"

We are living at the end of a great cycle of strife. In 1999 The Great War, the War to End all Wars we thought, finally wound down in the Serbo-Croatian hills where it began 85 years before. The rumble of mortar fire in the streets of Sarajevo and Kosovo were the dying echoes of the thunder from the Western Front of the Great War. The barbarian Communist Chinese vandalize and commit genocide at will in Tibet, the land of the Dharma, as the Precious Guru Padmasambhava foresaw. And that last bastion of freedom and democracy, America, is rapidly slipping into rogue nation status as it pushes its oil dollar hegemony into military action. To awaken, to receive that clarity "pellucid as crystal," it is clear that we must resolve the problem of power.

Nostradamus said that after a cycle of great disaster, at the moment when the motor of the centuries engages for the next round, a new and even greater cycle of disaster looms ahead. The comet is the sign of the coming moment of truth, our last chance to stop the impending cataclysm of all out war along religious lines. To do that we must understand the message behind the omen in the sky; we must traverse that last arc of the spiral, that last corner in the labyrinth and come face to face with what awaits us at the center...

In 1904, the first "five" year in the 20th century, Edward Alexander "Aleister" Crowley and his new bride, the former Miss Rose Edith Kelley arrived in Cairo on an extended honeymoon. The young Crowley, still shy of 30 and in the midst of a Saturn return, was already an accomplished Alpinist, a celebrated, in some circles at least, minor poet and a veteran of several occult societies. Little did he and Rose suspect, as they checked into the second floor corner room at Shepherd's Hotel in the heart of downtown Cairo that they were about to make magickal history and inaugurate a 93-year period that would serve as the prologue to the Apocalypse.

To give the reader an idea of how fast the change occurred, in just over a decade, the world would be at war and Shepherd's would become British Imperial headquarters, a vital link in the chain of command between London and Delhi. The suite of rooms occupied by the Crowleys became part of the offices of the Arab Bureau, a semi-secret group of spies and plotters that included T. E. Lawrence. Out of the Arab Bureau's manipulation would come in time all the complications found today in the Middle East, including the nation of Israel and the royal families of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the deposed royal family of Iraq. But of course, that's just another coincidence...

For the first month or so, it was great fun. "Eddie," as Rose insisted on calling Crowley, posed as a Persian nobleman and went in search of Arabic instruction from the masters at Al Ahazr mosque. Rose wandered the markets in Khan il Khalili and visited the chic set who lived on houseboats and in new French-looking mansions over in Giza. They played golf at Helwan, and decorated their new flat in the fashionable European section of Cairo, a few blocks north and east of the Boulak Museum and a short walk from the terrace restaurant at Shepherd's where Cairo society met for lunch.

Rose and "Eddie" were young Edwardians loose in Cairo for the season after a lengthy honeymoon that had already included a stay in Egypt the previous fall, as well as Paris, Naples, and Ceylon. They were young, English and rich, the world was their playground, and, as Crowley commented, their "marriage was an uninterrupted sexual debauch" until the strange events began in Cairo. But by early March, Rose was three months pregnant and things had changed.

The previous November's whirlwind tour of Egypt had been wonderful, full of excitement and flash. The best hotels and romantic excursions such as riding the Pullman to Aswan and on by camel to Abu Simbel, where, at the end of the known world, the great Pharaoh still looks down on the barbarians in awe inspiring solemnity. And then, as a special treat, "Eddie" arranged for them to spend the night of November 22nd/23rd in the Great Pyramid. It was terribly romantic, even if a little silly when "Eddie" began to chant and read poems, and Rose was sure to her dying day that this was the moment when she conceived. Two days later, they were on the train to Port Said, bound for India and on to China.

In Bombay, Rose broke it to "Eddie" that she was pregnant. He replied, right-o then, let's go kill something for a month or two and then if you're right, it'll be back to doctors and nurses. And off they went to Ceylon. By mid January, it was obvious she was right, and so they headed back to Cairo. They rented the new flat, and moved out of Shepherd's, on March 14th and Rose settled in to nest.

But "Eddie," who had continued his playboy lifestyle, off studying Arabic and playing golf while Rose nested, suddenly decided it was time for a little magickal sex play, ala last November's memorable evening in the pyramid. On the evening of March 16th, he tried the same invocation and found that Rose was suddenly very upset by the whole thing. She fell into a trance and kept repeating: "They are waiting for you..."

This was not the result Crowley was looking for; he wanted her to see the sylphs and was annoyed when she didn't. The next day, he tried again with similar results. Crowley said later that his intent was to entertain her, showing her the sylphs was like going to the cinema or the music hall. It didn't work, and on the 17th Rose was even more distressed, insisting that They were waiting, and adding that it was all about the Child, all about Osiris...

So just what was it Crowley was invoking that produced this reaction? He calls them sylphs or the elementals of Air, which is technically correct, but they are really the "angelic" beings who inhabit the Air quadrants of the Enochian Tablets, which is actually something quite different. To evoke them, one must use various calls or keys in the Enochian language, received from "angelic" beings by Dr John Dee in the 16th century. These calls have profoundly apocalyptic language and context and their use in such a way, and at such a time and in such a place, is in fact a request to "higher intelligence" to supply information on that apocalypse. And this, seemingly, is just what the "angels" proceeded to do...

This is an important point to keep in mind, and it helps make sense of what happened later. On the night of November 22nd/23rd 1903, Crowley vibrated Enochian in the King's Chamber, producing amazing results. The chamber was filled with an odd violet blue light that grew bright enough for Crowley to read the invocations without the aid of an electric torch. And Rose conceived a child... "It's all about the Child..." Rose responded to the invocations in March.

Perhaps it was for Rose, but Crowley wanted to know what was going on. He invoked Thoth, and received a more coherent response. Rose announced that it was Horus who was waiting, that Crowley had offended him and he should be invoked in a new way as the sun. While Crowley protested that he found this absurd, in truth Rose had struck a nerve. Crowley had offended Horus.

Not only had Crowley never invoked him, but also just four years before, Crowley had been involved in the messy break-up of one of Victorian England's most influential occult societies, The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Crowley had at first sided with S. L. "McGregor" Mathers in the dispute, but they soon had a falling out and were on the verge of all out psychic warfare by 1904. Mathers identified with Horus, the Horus the Elder of Upper Egypt, the war god who slew the serpent of chaos. To be in conflict with Mathers was indeed an offence to Horus.

But to Crowley the psychic and psychological ramifications went even deeper. Young Alex, as his family called him, had had a troubled relationship with his father and had never gotten over his father's death just when he was just hitting adolescence and needed a father figure most. Mathers, in his own quirky way, had filled that missing father role for the young Crowley. Now, as happens to most fathers and sons, it was time for Crowley to rebel and find his own way. On the verge of becoming a father himself, and perhaps denying it subconsciously, this reference to the complex emotions around Horus was guaranteed to grab Crowley's attention.

Crowley took Rose's advice seriously and on March 20th attained spectacular results after a disappointing first try on the 19th. This ritual was outlined by Rose and filled in by Crowley following her suggestions. It was indeed a new way, as it was quite emotional in tone, much closer to the devotional style of bhakti yoga than the crisp and commanding postures of ceremonial magick. In it can be found in embryo most of the motifs and metaphors that would blossom forth in a few weeks as the Book of the Law.

Perhaps Rose, with her shrewd womanly intuition and keen emotional intelligence, simply devised a powerful and effective way to keep her dear "Eddie" at home and focused on her and at the same time exorcise some of his own internal fears and guilt about fatherhood. Or perhaps the invocations in the Great Pyramid had made contact with some sort of "higher intelligence" who did indeed have a message for anyone who would, or could, listen.

At any rate, the ritual brought amazing results. Here's how Crowley summed it up in his small diary, The Book of Results: "20: Revealed that the Equinox of the Gods is come, Horus taking the throne of the east and all rituals, etc. being abrogated. 20: (contd.) Great Success in midnight invocation. I am to formulate a new link of an order with the Solar Force." In another diary, he recorded: "Hoori (Horus) now Hpnt (Hierophant), " another reference to the changing of the officers of the Golden Dawn on each equinox. Now, Horus is the Hierophant of the Age, not just the season.

Crowley wrote these notes in the early morning hours of the vernal equinox, March 21st, 1904. Clearly his reference to the Equinox of the Gods referred to both the events of that equinox, and the larger Great Year of precession. His successful invocation of Horus had inspired in him a new understanding of the coming precessional shift in the zodiacal age. Just as Pisces had been the age of Jesus/Osiris, the Dying God, the new age was to be one of the Crowned and Conquering Child, the New Horus.

One other curiosity must be noted. On the morning of March 17th, 1904, Cairo experienced a beautiful annular eclipse of the sun. As the sun rose that morning the eclipse was already in progress. Venus, the morning star in Aquarius, faded briefly and then reappeared as the eclipse strengthened. The effect was that of a beautiful ring of fire, bulging slightly toward the silvery glow of a morning star that refused to fade. This strange portent in the dawn sky was discussed in the local papers, including the Cairo edition of the London Times, on March 18th and 19th. Crowley could not have missed the news articles even if he had missed the event itself. .

And so, by the 21st of March, Crowley was hooked. He had smacked the Tar Baby and was on his way to the briar patch. For the next 43 years, the rest of his life, Crowley lived in the shadow of what happened in those next few weeks. He followed the will-o-wisps whispers of the illuminati elves down a long twisted path toward a kind of reverse sainthood, in which his most perverse jokes would become religious movements and his most profound philosophical musing would become fuel for the rantings of disaffected and overindulgent punks the world over.

Next: "Tsadi is NOT the Star..." The Star Goddess Speaks...

©Copyright 2003 Vincent Bridges
Published by permission.

©Copyright 2003 by AlternativeApproaches.com

An Omen For Armageddon

Part Six - "Tsadi is NOT the Star..." The Star Goddess Speaks...

by Vincent Bridges

The events of the weeks from the 21st of March to April 7th, leading up to the three-day marathon dictation of the Book of the Law, are shrouded in confusion and intentional obscurity. In all of Crowley's voluminous writings, only these few weeks are skimmed over, as Crowley, the man who could describe a mountain ascendant in graphic detail 40 years after it happened, claimed memory failure and intentionally misleading entries in his diaries. This is so curious as to require an explanation, but Crowley passed it off as a result of his distaste at the content of the Book of the Law; a feeble excuse at best.

So what did happen? Pieced together from all of Crowley's evasive comments over the years, we can put together a somewhat suppositional chronology. On the afternoon of the 22nd, probably on the terrace at Shepherd's, Crowley met an Anglo-Egyptian initiate, probably of some Egyptian Sufi order, possibly the sheik with whom Crowley had been studying the Arabic Qabala. He discussed the situation with him and possibly received some advice. Do nothing further tonight, but do a divination on the 23rd and we'll meet again on the 24th. Crowley apparently followed this advice and did a long complicated Tarot and I Ching reading. Although Crowley recorded this divination, he nowhere published or described its contents.

On the 24th he again met his Sufi initiate. Crowley's personal magickal record called him "Idris" or Enoch in Arabic. Beyond this point, silence falls. Sometime in this period, Crowley and Rose visited the Boulak Museum and Rose identified her Horus communicant with the Stele of Anhk-f-n Knonshu, exhibit number 666 in the catalogue. This impressed Crowley even further and, perhaps through his initiate's contacts, he had a copy and a translation made. By April 7th all was in readiness, awaiting only Rose's signal to begin.

Aleister Crowley

Crowley's personal diary gives us some clues to what happened in the interval between the 24th and the 7th, but Crowley claimed that he couldn't remember what they stood for, the entries were in code, or that they were faked as blinds to his real, now forgotten activities. Apparently, although the dates are blotted out, Crowley made at least one more contact with his Sufi friend. Also, on April 6th, we find the curious note: "Go off again to H, taking A's p." H could be Helwan or Heliopolis, and given the role "Aiwass" was about to play, the "A" could possibly be him. Crowley was always very cagey about the subject, although he did claim that he was or had been, a living person.

Could the Book of the Law, in however oblique a fashion, have come from Crowley's encounter with a real illuminated tradition within Islam? Could he have been provided with the insight and techniques required to make contact with the voice of the Aeon? The truth will likely never be known, and Crowley himself seems to have observed in this case a vow of silence more significant than any other in his life.

On April 7th, Rose instructed Crowley to be ready at noon on the next three days to write down what he heard for one hour. He complied, and over the next three days transcribed, from an astral voice that vibrated in his chest when he heard it, one of the most amazing, and beautifully written pieces of mystical prose in the English language. The talents of Blake or Shakespeare would be hard pressed to top it, and it is much better than Crowley ever did before or after. That alone should give us pause.

The first day, April 8th, Crowley entered his magickal space a little early and sat down with fountain pen and a stack of clean white paper. Precisely at noon, Crowley sensed a form in the corner of the room, Aiwass, who acted as a kind of spiritualist control or MC, introducing the acts as it were. The act that first day was the star goddess Nuit, the second day that of Hadit or Horus the Elder and the third that of Set masquerading as "Ra Hoor Khu(i)t." Together these three entities sketched out a prophetic pattern and underlying psychic motif for the next 93 years, from 1904 to 1997.

Since this is neither an analysis of the Book of the Law or a biography of Crowley, we must now narrow our focus to one specific section of the first book and the teachings of the Star Goddess at the end of time. In verse 57 of the first book we find the following:

"57. Invoke me under my stars! Love is the Law, love under will. Nor let the fools mistake love; for there are love and love. There is the dove, and there is the serpent. Choose ye well! He, my prophet, hath chosen, knowing the law of the fortress, and the great mystery of the House of God.

"All these old letters of my Book are aright; but Tsadi is not the Star. This also is secret: my prophet shall reveal it to the wise."

There are many resonant points in this verse. Let us note the dove/Columbia synchronicity and its contrast with the serpent. The injunction to choose well can be seen as a warning. Earlier, in verse 52, the prophet is warned that if he doesn't follow the rules carefully, and in fact makes any kind of choice at all, then he can "expect the dire judgments of Ra Hoor Khuit," that is the Setian influence and prophecies of the third book. The "ye" used in the verse can also be second person plural, meaning all of us has the choice to make.

What the Star Goddess is saying, giving us fair warning as it were, is that if we don't remain focussed on Her help and guidance during this time of transition, this change of the Age, then "direful judgements" will follow. However, if we refuse to choose, which is choosing well indeed, and if our rituals, our spiritual practices, are ever unto Her, then it will be possible to regenerate the world. As proof of this, and to give as deep as possible a meaning to the concept, the Star Goddess then revels the secret of the great conspiracy of the last age: "All these old letters of my Book are aright; but Tsadi is not the Star."

In attributing the letters of the Hebrew alphabet to the images of the medieval psycho-technology known as the Tarot, we come upon the deeper archetypal forces at work within this great conspiracy. The zodiacal sign Aries is attributed to the Tarot Trump The Emperor, a good choice given the Imperial quality of the Aries current, and its survivors such as the Roman Empire and the Orthodox Church. The sign of Aquarius is attributed to the trump called The Star, the image of a beautiful young woman pouring the Sea of Crystal, the Milky Way, out upon the earth. This image is appropriate, for the most amazing advance of the early Aquarian era is space flight, the urge to reach the stars. The images and the astrological concepts match, but until the Star Goddess spoke in 1904 the attribution of the Hebrew letters confused the issue.

The fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, HEH, the pictogram, originally, for a window, was assigned to the Emperor and Aries. TSADDI, the seventeenth letter of the Hebrew Alphabet (and pictogram for a fish hook) was equated with The Star and Aquarius. It seems as absurd to speak of opening a window on Imperial Authority as it does to say the Stars fish for souls, hooking them and pulling them out of their environment. Yet, patriarchal violence is killing our planet and our spirits, dehumanizing our functions until we no longer feel the rhythms of the earth tides. And there is something eerily suggestive of the image of "stars fishing" in the tales of UFO abductions.

These attributions seem even more odd when we consider the passage in the Bahir, or "Book of Illumination," where the transformation of Gimel into Daleth and then into Heh is described. Gimel is the High Priestess in the Tarot and Daleth is the Empress - why then would they transform into the Emperor?

The Bahir also tells us that Tsaddi is composed of the letters Nun and Yod, or Death and the Hermit in the Tarot. To be hooked by the stars is to endure the death of the ego-self might be the simplest way to put it. This certainly describes the old ways of ascetic renunciation, the only path to transcendence in the fallen or "quarantined" condition of humanity. But in the new age of Horus these concepts have changed.

If "Tsaddi is not the Star," then what is attributed to the Star? The obvious attribution for Tsaddi is the Emperor, given the prevalence of Caesar, Kaiser and Tsar as Imperial titles, which means that Heh is assigned to Aquarius. This shift in attributions produces the correct alignment of meanings. In the new alignment, the Emperor's attributions are Aries (the sign of Imperial structures and patriarchal religions) and Tsaddi, with its element of embracing the spiritual necessity of the death of body and of personality. This gives us a clear archetypal view of the disease of patriarchal violence. The Emperor is the very symbol of the alpha-male dominance and power-over-life thanotropic spiritual illness that caused the "Fall" and got this planet quarantined in the first place; the very illness that is about to drive us into total war over oil dollars and American economic control of the world..

This gives us the image of the Star-Window, which returns The Star to its original meaning of spiritual guidance. The Star-Window is open, and the progression from the Bahir suddenly makes supreme sense: The Priestess becomes the Empress, and then transforms into the Star Goddess. Even the name of God in Hebrew, YHVH, returns to its original sense. Where once we could read YHVH as Hermit-Emperor-Hierophant-Emperor, all male dominant qualities (suggestive in another sense of the masculine Yod controlling the name, Eve, of the original mother), now the name of God reads, Hermit, Star, Hierophant, Star, or a balance of male and female potencies. The meaning shifts from outer authority of Power-over, which is essentially the ability to destroy, to inner authority, Power-with, the co-creative function of the intuition, which is the ability to change and evolve.

The shift was announced in 1904 and actually began 88 years later in the summer of 1992 and will be complete in 2012, 108 years and nine months after the shift was announced. Some people thought of it as a time shift - from a 12/60 rhythm to a 13/20 rhythm for the Dreamspell pseudo-Mayanists - while others saw it in terms of photon clouds and UFO landings. Every man and every woman ("every man and every woman is a star," the Goddess announced) on this planet began to come to terms (in whatever way they could) with their and our stellar nature and origins. History has begun to unwind, to unravel back through feuds and antagonisms that are centuries and even millennia old. We have truly come to the last decade of history, and what comes next is up to us. The choices we will make in the next few weeks and months may determine the fate of humanity for the next 13,000 years...

Next: The Center of the Labyrinth

©Copyright 2003 Vincent Bridges
Published by permission.

©Copyright 2003 by AlternativeApproaches.com