It is in his writings about the Aethyrs (The Vision and the Voice) that Crowley hides the most important of his teachings. From my own meditations it occurs to me that had Dee received tablets from different angels, such as from the fiery, watery or material universes, he might have had real power and not merely airy or “mental” power. (Not to disparage the power accruing to Knowledge, it being the strongest known to man!) He’d have had, in addition to knowledge: Will, Daring and Silence. Just so, of Water, we cannot speak, and of Fire we have not prepared. But of earth, who has endured his preparation and initiation, can venture a call for materialization of a universe. Such possibilities should cause the magus to feel a strong shudder of fear, for, according to Babylon, to create a world is to destroy a God.
Thus for “materialization” we’d need new vocabularies to correspond to the hooks (vavs) of the Aethyrs. The build-up would be similar, but the “Aires” would now be “Earthes.” For instance, PAZ (in Enochian, “Be as they”), might be PAGZ (“Be NOT as they”). Since the Aires are all 3-lettered, presumably Earthes would be 4-lettered, Waters 2-lettered and Fyres 1-lettered. However, if the Ayres all have 3-lettered names, there is a reason for that. The other elementals might have different numbered names only if we think of them as separate and perhaps the 4th is simply the “understood” rest of the quaternity. At any rate, now we see why there are only Aires. We’d better learn their meanings before we attempt any materializations.
AFFECTLESS — Making no pretense of feeling or reaction to anything.
AGE OF AQUARIUS — The (approximately) 2000 year cycle of the Precession of Equinoxes and the end of the Piscean or Christian Aeon. Characterized by Humanism as opposed to religious dogma. Its beginning is sometime in the 19th-21st Centuries. In the year 1995, Uranus, the ruler of Aquarius, after entering that sign for the first time since 1920, must remain there well into the 21st Century. According to some authorities, however, the Piscean Age did not begin until 80 A.D. and so we cannot observe effects of the New Aeon prior to 2068. Such a view ignores common sense, because macroscopic celestial events cannot be earth-synchronized precisely and all ages overlap considerably. Moreover, the signs of the zodiac do not correspond to the constellations and if we force astrology to conform to the positions of the constellations we jam it into an unbecoming strait jacket. The signs were never intended to correspond to the positions of the constellations and are of uniform length to accomodate the sol/lunar mansions within 360°. As in determining degrees and aspects in a horoscope, so the Grand Horoscope of the Universe must be interpreted with wisdom as well as with mathematical exactitude.
The Ages are derived from the fact that the Great Year, or Platonic Year, is 26,000 years long, which divides roughly into twelve periods, twelve being conveniently (though inaccurately) the number of zodiacal signs. A more accurate division, of course, would be 13. (See NEWTIME.)
AGE OF HORUS — Another 2000-year cycle beginning in 1904 when Crowley received The Book of the Law from Aiwass (some say the age began with the birth of Crowley’s son). Stands for constant progress. Horus grows from a helpless infant to the highest seat of the gods, whence integrating with Ra. Horus, as the impulse to manifest, is the constant enemy of his brother, Seth, who represents the inexorable dragging down of negation and nothingness.
AGE OF ISIS — Precedes Age of Osiris. The Wife-Mother of Osiris seeks his bones throughout the universe, finding all but the phallus. All this cosmic travelling suggests that Isis must be identified with Sirius, the Dog Star.
AGE OF MAAT — Supersedes Age of Horus (via Frater Achad) in 1948.
AGE OF OSIRIS — Equivalent to the dying Age of Pisces. God of vegetation and cycles, Osiris is very earthy (compare the Capricorn birth of X). Osiris is also a Christ-figure, who, though murdered by Typhon, cut to pieces and his bones scattered in the Nile, yet was reassembled and born again. Osiris, in short, is the Conquest of Death, whereas Horus, in a more subtle sense, is the understanding that Life and Death are equivalent.
AGE OF PISCES —The ending precessional Age, Pisces, was the sign of X, characterized by ignorance, slavery and materialism. According to Jung, the first fish is the first thousand years of Christ, however the 2nd millennium’s fish is under the rule of the Devil.
AGON — In the Mysteries this is the battle with the adversary.
AIDS (GENETIC WAR) — Since some of us still believe the virus is man-made, specifically designed to attack the most important alternative to reproduction (male homosexuality), we cannot see it as responding to psychic suggestions to change its habits. If it were a naturally occurring life-form, it would be automatically part of the evolutionary stream and quite attuned, even ready for “mental” implementation of punctuated morphogenesis. We’re beginning to see that this is indeed a “war” and learning at the same time that war at every level derives from a basic misunderstanding of human social interaction and hardly occurs at all within the biosphere itself.
Evolution is neither a battle for the survival of the fittest, nor is it the chaotic result of random mutations. We now know that the origin of species proceeds in cooperation with and as part of the conscious continuum of all life. Evolution, when the time is right, moves by quantum leaps to sudden new stages, as if by common consent. It’s only through human interference that some single, bizarre weed winds up choking everything else out. In the highly unnatural case of the AIDS virus, what we are seeing is a device specifically designed to pollute all the streams of human life at once (generation, nurture and maintenance). IT is a quite human-like biological “tyrant,” bent on specific genocide.
In studying Sheldrake’s “punctuated” evolution, we suddenly understand why our intuition has already told us that the HIV virus was man-made. As a naturally occurring genetic leap, the HIV virus is too fantastic to consider. Even if abrupt evolutionary leaps are the rule, not the exception, and even if revolution itself is part of the omni-conscious sphere of synchronous reality-alternation, it’s still too giant a biodic quantum leap for a virus suddenly to decide to take up residence within the human DNA factory merely in order to bypass the annoying “somatic individuation” phase. Viri don’t become that sophisticated that quickly. It’s the equivalent of the next generation of the human race suddenly being born with fully-functioning wings sprouting out of the shoulder blades.
The theory, of course, amongst bio-metaphysicians is that the body is merely a highly practical mechanism for the housing and passing on of the genetic code. One of the body’s more clever defenses is the brain, designed to repair itself, built to last at least twice as long as any other organ and encased in a hard, nearly impregnable shell (the skull). But the cerebrum isn’t just a defender of the body. It has, so to speak, a mind of its own and its own goals preempt the instincts. What’s more, the cerebral goals conflict with the goals of the genes. AIDS and the whole contemporary world of the 90’s — with its pollutions, rain forest depletions, baby boom, etc. — constitute the side-effects of a genetic war directed specifically against the cortex, occurring on a deeply subnatural level of the global collective unconscious.
As there are mental and spiritual planes, so there are various material planes. The “common consent” of the whole earth consciousness has been shattered in our time and the result is an insane interplanary (sic) war between the goals of the DNA and the goals of the human brain. Ideally, these goals should coincide, as with planned eugenics. Instead, we have mindless acquiescence to the genetic urge to procreate at any cost — regardless of overpopulation. Genetic consciousness knows only bodily success. It has no way of perceiving the larger context which is visible