A Fools Journey Through The Universe
Riding On The Back of The Swan

The Fool In The Mirror

The Book of Thoth by Aleis­ter Crow­ley and Lady Mar­guerite (Frie­da)  Har­ris
for the First Time Unveiled and Opened with
The Key To It All — The Mayet Method of The Open­ing The Book Of Thoth
With The Mir­ror Of Thoth and Ora­cle of Oz

The leg­end of Per­ci­vale, inte­gral of the mys­tery of the Sav­iour Fish-God, and of
the San­graal or Holy Grail, is of dis­put­ed ori­gin. It appears cer­tain­ly, first of all,
in Brit­tany, the land best beloved of Mag­ick, the land of Mer­lin, of the Druids,
of the for­est of Broce liande.

Some schol­ars sup­pose that the Welsh form of this
tra­di­tion, which lends much of its impor­tance and its beau­ty to the Cycle of
King Arthur, is even ear­li­er. This is in this place irrel­e­vant; but it is vital to
real­ize that the leg­end, like that of The Fool, is pure­ly pagan in ori­gin, and
comes to us through Latin-Chris­t­ian recen­sions: there is no trace of any such
mat­ters in the Nordic mytholo­gies. (Per­ci­vale and Gala­had were “inno­cent”: this
is a con­di­tion of the Guardian ship of the Grail).

Note also that Mon­sal­vat,
moun­tain of Sal vation, home of the Graal, the fortress of the Knights
Guardians, is in the Pyre­nees.

It may be best to intro­duce the fig­ure of Par­si­fal in this place, because he
rep­re­sents the west­ern form of the tra­di­tion of the Fool,

1 Call him “Har­le­quin”, and a Tetra­gram­ma­ton evi­dent­ly bur­lesquing the Sacred Fam­i­ly
spflngs to sight: Pan­taloon, the aged “antique-antic”; Clown and Har­le­quin, two
aspects of the Fool; and Columbine, the Vir­gin. But, being bur­lesque, the tra­di­tion is
con­fused and the deep mean­ing lost; just as the medieval Mys­tery- Play of Pon­tius an
(1 Judas became the farce, with oppor­tunist top­i­cal vari­ants, “Punch and Judy”.
p.59
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and because his leg­end has been high­ly elab­o­rat­ed by schol­ar­ly ini­ti­ates. (The
dra­mat­ic set­ting of Wag­n­er’s Par­si­fal was arranged by the then head of the O.T.
O.)
Par­si­fal in his first phase is Der reine Thor, the Pure Fool. His first act is to
shoot the sacred swan. It is the wan­ton­ness of inno­cence. In the sec­ond act, it
is the same qual­i­ty that enables him to with­stand the blan­d­ish­ments of the
ladies in the gar­den of Kundry. Kling­sor, the evil magi­cian, who thought to ful­fil
the con­di­tions of life by self- muti­la­tion, see­ing his empire threat­ened, hurls
the sacred lance (which he has stolen from the Moun­tain of Sal­va­tion) at
Par­si­fal, but it remains sus­pend­ed over the boy’s head. Par­si­fal seizes it; in
oth­er words, attains to puber­ty. (This trans­for­ma­tion will be seen in the oth­er
sym­bol­ic fables, below.)
In the third act, Par­si­fal’s inno­cence has matured into sanc­ti fica­tion; he is the
ini­ti­at­ed Priest whose func­tion is to cre­ate; it is Good Fri­day, the day of
dark­ness and death. Where shall he seek his sal­va­tion? Where is Mon­sal­vat, the
moun­tain of sal­va­tion, which he has sought so long in vain? He wor­ships the
lance: imme­di­ate­ly the way, so long closed to him, is open; th£ scenery
revolves rapid­ly, there is no need for him to move. He has arrived at the
Tem­ple of the Graal. All true cer­e­mo­ni­al reli­gion must be solar and phal­lic in
char­ac­ter. It is the wound of Amfor­t­as which has removed the virtue frorn the
tem­ple. (Amfor­t­as is the sym­bol of the Dying God.)
Accord­ing­ly, to redeem the whole sit­u­a­tion, to destroy death, to recon­se­crate
the tem­ple, he has only to plunge the lance into the Holy Grail; he redeems not
only Kundry, but him­self. (This is a doc­trine only appre­cia­ble in its ful­ness by
mem­bers of the
Sov­er­eign Sanc­tu­ary of the Gno­sis of the ninth degree of O.T.
O.)

The Croc­o­dile (Mako, son of Sd; or Sebek).
This same doc­trine of max­i­mum inno­cence devel­op­ing into max­i­mum fer­til­i­ty is
found in Ancient Egypt in the sym­bol­ism of the Croc­o­dile god Sebek. The
tra­di­tion is that the croc­o­dile was un pro­vid­ed with the means of per­pet­u­at­ing
his species (com­pare what is said above about the vul­ture Maut). Not in spite
of, but because of this, he was the sym­bol of the max­imuin of cre­ative ener­gy.
(Freud, as will be seen lat­er, explains this appar­ent antithe­sis.)
p.60
Once again, the ani­mal king­dom is invoked to ful­fil the func­tion of father­ing
the redeemer. On the banks of the Euphrates men wor shipped Oannes, or
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Dagon, the fish god. The fish as a sym­bol of father­hood, of moth­er­hood, of the
per­pet­u­a­tion of life gen­er­al­ly, con­stant­ly recurs. The let­ter N. (Nun, N, in
Hebrew means Fish) is one of the orig­i­nal hiero­glyphs stand­ing for this idea,
appar­ent­ly because of the men­tal reac­tions excit­ed in the mind by the
con­tin­u­al rep­e­ti­tion of this let­ter. There are thus a num­ber of gods, god­dess­es,
and epony­mous heroes, whose leg­ends are func­tions of the let­ter N. (With
regard to this let­ter, see Atu XIII.) It is con­nect­ed with the North, and so with
the star­ry heav­ens about the Pole Star; also with the North wind; and the
ref­er­ence is to the Watery signs. Hence the let­ter N. occurs in leg­ends of the
Flood and of fish gods. In Hebrew mythol­o­gy, the hero con­cerned is Noah. Note
also that the sym­bol of the Fish has been cho­sen to rep­re­sent the Redeemer or
Phal­lus, the god through whose virtue man pass­es through the waters of death.
The com­mon name for this god, in south­ern Italy to-day, and else­where, is Ii
pesce. So, also, his female coun­ter­part, Kteis, is rep­re­sent­ed by the Vesi­ca
Pis­cis, the blad­der of the fish, and this shape is con­tin­u­al­ly exhib­it­ed in many
church win­dows and in the epis­co­pal ring.1

In the mythol­o­gy of Yucatan it was the “old ones cov­ered with feath­ers that
came up out of the sea”. Some have seen in this tra­di tion a ref­er­ence to the
fact that man is a marine ani­mal; our breath­ing appa­ra­tus still pos­sess­es
atro­phied gills.
Hoor-Pa-Kraat.2
Arriv­ing at high­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed theogony, there appears a per­fect­ly clear and
con­crete sym­bol of this doc­trine. Har­pocrates is the God of Silence; and this
silence has a very spe­cial mean­ing.
1 “IXOYC, which means fish
And very apt­ly sym­bol­izes Christ.”
‑The Ring and the Book.
The word is a Notariqon of Iesous Chris­tos Theou Huios Sot­er (Jesus Chnst, Son of God,
Sav­iour.)
2 The Fool is also, evi­dent­ly, an aspect of Pan; but this idea is shewn in his fullest
devel­op­ment by Atu XV, whose let­ter is the semi-vow­el A’ain, cog­nate with Aleph.
p.61

(See attached essay, Appen­dix.) The first is Kether, the pure Being invent­ed as
an aspect of pure Noth­ing. In his man­i­fes­ta­tion, he is not One, but Two; he is
only One because he is 0. He exists; Eheieh, his divine name, which sig­ni­fies “I
Am” or “I shall Be”, is mere­ly anoth­er way of say­ing that he Is Not; because One
leads to nowhere, which is where it came from. So the only pos­si­ble
man­i­fes­ta­tion is in Two, and that man­i­fes­ta­tion must be in silence, because the
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num­ber 3, the num­ber of Binah-Under­stand­ing-has not yet been for­mu lat­ed. In
oth­er words, there is no Moth­er. All one has is the impulse of this
man­i­fes­ta­tion; and that must take place in silence. That is to say, there is as
yet no more than the impulse, which is unfor­mu lat­ed; it is only when it is
inter­pret­ed that it becomes the Word, the Logos. (See Atu I.)
Now con­sid­er the tra­di­tion­al form of Har­pocrates. He is a babe, that is to say,
inno­cent, and not yet arrived at puber­ty; a sim­pler form of Par­si­fal, he is
rep­re­sent­ed as rose pink in colour. It is dawn- the hint of light about to come,
but not by any means that light; he has a lock of black hair curl­ing around his
ear, and that is the influ ence of the High­est descend­ing upon the
Brah­maran­dra Chakra. The ear is the vehi­cle of Akasha, Spir­it. This is the only
salient sym­bol; it is the only indi­ca­tion that he is not mere­ly the bald baby,
because it is the only colour in the blob of rose pink. But, on the oth­er hand,
his thumb is either against his low­er lip or in his mouth; which it is, one can­not
say. There is here a quar­rel between two schools of thought; if be is push­ing up
his low­er lip, he empha­sizes silence as silence; if his thumb is in his mouth, it
empha­sizes the doc­trine of Eheieh: “I shall Be”. Yet in the end these doc­trines
are iden­ti­cal.

This babe is in an egg of blue, which is evi­dent­ly the sym­bol of the Moth­er. This
child has, in a way, not been born; the blue is the blue of space; the egg is
sit­ting upon a lotus, and this lotus grows on the Nile. Now, the lotus is anoth­er
sym­bol of the Moth­er, and the Nile is also a sym­bol of the Father, fer­til­iz­ing
Egypt, the Yoni. (But also the Nile is the home of Sebek the croc­o­dile, who
threat­ens Har­pocrates.)
Yet Har­pocrates is not always thus rep­re­sent­ed. He is shown by cer­tain schools
of thought as stand­ing; he is stand­ing upon the
p.62
croc­o­diles of the Nile. (Refer above to the croc­o­dlle, the sym­bol of two exact­ly
oppo­site things.) There is here an anal­o­gy. One is remind­ed of Her­cules-the
infant Her­cules-who spun the wheel in the House of Women; of Her­cules, wh9
was a strong man, who was inno­cent, who was ulti­mate­ly a mad­man, who
destroyed his wife and chil­dren. It is a cog­nate sym­bol.
Har­pocrates is (in one sense) the sym­bol of the Dawn on the Nile, and of the
phys­i­o­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non which accom­pa­nies the act of wak­ing. One sees, at
the oth­er end of the octave of thought, the con­nec­tion of this sym­bol with the
suc­ces­sion to the roy­al pow­er described above. The sym­bol of Har­pocrates
itself tends to be pure­ly philo­soph­i­cal. He is also the mys­ti­cal absorp­tion of the
work of cre­ation; the H~ final of Tetra­gram­ma­ton. Har­pocrates is, in fact, the
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pas­sive side of his twin, Horus. Yet at the same time he is a very ful­ly-fledged
sym­bol of this idea, which is wind, which is air, the impreg­na­tion of the Moth­er
God­dess. He is immune from all attack because of his inno­cence; for in this
inno­cence is per­fect silence, which is the essence of viril­i­ty.
The egg is not only Akasha,1 but the orig­i­nal egg in the bio­log­i­cal sense. This
egg issues from the lotus, which is the sym­bol of the Yoni.
There is an Asi­at­ic sym­bol cog­nate with Har­pocrates, and though it does not
come direct­ly into this card it must be con­sid­ered in con nec­tion with it. That
sym­bol is the Bud­dha-Rupa. He is most fre quent­ly rep­re­sent­ed sit­ting on a
lotus, and often there is behind him spread the hood of the Ser­pent; the shape
of this hood is again the Yoni. (Note the usu­al orna­ments of this hood; phal­lic
and fruc­ti­form.)
The croc­o­dile of the Nile is called Sebek or Mako-the Devour­er. In the offi­cial
rit­u­als, the idea is usu­al­ly that of the fish­er­man, who wish­es pro­tec­tion from
the assaults of his totem ani­mal.
There is, how­ev­er, an iden­ti­ty between the cre­ator and the destroy­er. In Indi­an
mythol­o­gy, Shi­va ful­fils both func­tions. In Greek mythol­o­gy, the god Pan is
addressed “Pam­phage, Pan­gene tor”, all-devour­er, all-beget­ter. (Note that the
numer­i­cal val­ue of the word Pan is 131, as is that of Samael, the Hebrew
destroy­ing angel.)
So also, in the ini­ti­at­ed sym­bol­ism, the act of devour­ing is the
1The Black Egg of the ele­ment of Spir­it in some Hin­du schools of thought. From it the
oth­er ele­ments Air, Water, Earth, Fire (in that order) pro­ceed.
p.63
equiv­a­lent of ini­ti­a­tion; as the mys­tic would say, “My soul is swal­lowed up in
God”. (Com­pare the sym­bol­ism of Noah and the Ark, Jonah1 and the Whale, and
oth­ers.)
One must con­stant­ly keep in mind the biva­lence of every sym­bol. Insis­tance
upon either one or oth­er of the con­tra­dic­to­ry attri­bu­tions inher­ent in a sym­bol
is sim­ply a mark of spir­i­tu­al inca­pac­i­ty; and it is con­stant­ly hap­pen­ing, because
of prej­u­dice. It is the sim­plest test of ini­ti­a­tion that every sym­bol is under­stood
instinc­tive­ly to con­tain this con­tra­dic­to­ry mean­ing in itself.

Mark well the
pas­sage in The Vision and the Voice, page 136:
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“It is shown me that this heart is the heart that rejoiceth, and the
ser­pent is the ser­pent of Da’ath, for here­in all the sym­bols are
inter­change­able, for each one con­taineth in itself its own oppo­site. And
this is the great Mys­tery of the Super­nals that are beyond the Abyss.

For
below the Abyss, con­tra­dic­tion is divi­sion; but above the Abyss,
con­tra­dic­tion is Uni­ty. And there could be noth­ing true except by virtue
of the con­tra­dic­tion that is con­tained in itself.”
It is char­ac­ter­is­tic of all high spir­i­tu­al vision that the for­mu­la­tion of any idea is
imme­di­ate­ly destroyed or can­celled out by the aris­ing of the con­tra­dic­to­ry.
Hegel and Niet­zsche had glim­mer­ings of the idea, but it is described very ful­ly
and sim­ply in the Book of Wis­dom or Fol­ly. (See cita­tion, below, Appen­dix.)
This point about the croc­o­dile is very impor­tant, because many of the
tra­di­tion­al forms of “The Fool” of the Tarot show the croc­o­dile def­i­nite­ly. In the
com­mon­place inter­pre­ta­tion of the card, the Scho­liasts say that the pic­ture is
that of a gay, care­less youth, with a sack full of fol­lies and illu­sions, danc­ing
along the edge of a pre cipice, unaware that the tiger and croc­o­dile shown in
the card are about to attack him. It is the view of the Lit­tle Bethel. But, to
ini­ti­ates, this croc­o­dile helps to deter­mine the spir­i­tu­al mean­ing of the card as
the return to the orig­i­nal Qabal­is­tic zero; it is the “He’ final” process in the
mag­i­cal for­mu­la of Tetra­gram­ma­ton. By a flick of the wrist, she can be
trans­mut­ed to reap­pear as the orig­i­nal Yod, and repeat the whole process from
the begin­ning.
1Note the N of Jon­ah, and the mean­ing of the name: a dove.
p.64

The inno­cence-viril­i­ty for­mu­la is again sug­gest­ed by the intro­duc­tion of the
croc­o­dile, for that was one of the bio­log­i­cal super­sti­tions on which they
found­ed their theogony—that the croc­o­dile, like the vul­ture, had some
mys­te­ri­ous mehod of repro­duc­tion.
Zeus Arrhenothelus.
In deal­ing with Zeus, one is imme­di­ate­ly con­front­ed with this delib­er­ate
con­fu­sion of the mas­cu­line and the fem­i­nine. In the Greek and Latin tra­di­tions
the same thing hap­pens. Dianus and Diana are twins and lovers; as soon as one
utters the fem­i­nine, it leads on to the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the mas­cu­line, and
vice ver­sa, as must be the case in view of the bio­log­i­cal facts of nature. It is
only in Zeus Arrheno thelus that one gets the true Her­maph­ro­dit­ic nature of the
sym­bol in uni­fied form. This is a very impor­tant fact, espe­cial­ly for the present
pur­pose, because images 6f this god recur again and again in alche­my.

It is hard­ly pos­si­ble to describe this lucid­ly; the idea per tains to a fac­ul­ty of the
mind which is “above the Abyss”; but all two-head­ed eagles with sym­bols
clus­ter­ing about them are indi­ca­tions of this idea. The ulti­mate sense seems to
be that the orig­i­nal god is both male and female, which is, of course, the
essen­tial doc­trine of the Qabal­ah; and the thing most dif­fi­cult to under­stand
about the lat­er debased Old Tes­ta­ment tradition,1 is that it rep­re­sents Tetra
gram­ma­fon as mas­cu­line, in spite of the two fem­i­nine com­po­nents. Zeus
became too pop­u­lar, and, in con­se­quence, too many leg­ends gath­ered around
him; but the impor­tant fact for this present pur­pose is that Zeus was pecu­liar­ly
the Lord of Air.3 Men who sought the ori­gin of Nature in the ear­li­est days tried
to find this ori­gin in one of the Ele­ments. (The his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy describes
the con­tro­ver­sy between Anax­i­man­der and Zenocrates; lat­er, Empe­do­cles.) It
may be that the orig­i­nal authors of the Tarot were try­ing to pro­mul­gate
1 It was a trib­al neces­si­ty of the sav­age wan­der­ers to have an unciv­i­lized and sim­ple
Demi­urge for god; the com­plex­i­ties and refine­ments of set­tled nations were to them
mere weak­ness. Observe that the moment they got a Promised Land and a Tem­ple,
under Solomon, he went “an~whoring after strange women” and gods. This infu­ri­at­ed
the Diehard prophets, and led with­in a few years to the breach between Judah and
Israel, thence to a whole sequence of dis­as­ters.
2 The ear­li­est accounts relate the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the three active ele­ments as Dis
(Plu­to) to Fire, Zeus (Jupiter) to Air, and Posei­don (Nep­tune) to Water,
p.65.

the doc­trine that the ori­gin of every­thing was Air. Yet if this were so, it would
upset the whole Tarot as we know it, since the order of ori­gin makes Fire the
first father. It is Air as Zero that rec­on­ciles the antin­o­my.
Dianus and Diana, it is true, were sym­bols of the air, and the San­skrit Vedas say
that the storm gods were the orig­i­nal gods. Yet, if the storm gods real­ly
presided over the for­ma­tion of the Uni­verse as we know it, they were cer­tain­ly
storms of fire; to this astronomers agree. But this the­o­ry cer­tain­ly implies an
iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of air and fire, and it seems as if they were thought of as before
Light, that is, the Sun; before cre­ative ener­gy, that is, the phal­lus; and this
idea con­tin­u­al­ly sug­gests itself, that there is here some doc­trine con trary to
our own most rea­son­able doc­trine: one in which the orig­i­nal con­fu­sion of the
ele­ments, the Tohu-Bohu, is to be put for­ward as the cause of order, instead of
as a plas­tic mass on which order impos­es itself.
No sys­tem tru­ly Qabal­is­tic makes air in the con­ven­tion­al sense the orig­i­nal
ele­ment, though Akasha is the egg of spir­it, the black or dark blue egg. This
sug­gests a form of Har­pocrates. In that case, by “air” one real­ly means “spir­it”.
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How­ev­er this may be, the actu­al sym­bol is per­fect­ly clear, and should be
applied to its prop­er place.
Diony­sus Zagreus. Bac­chus Diphues.
It is con­ve­nient to treat the two gods as one. Zagreus is only impor­tant to the
present pur­pose because he pos­sess­es horns, and because (in the Eleusin­ian
Mys­ter­ies) it is said that he was torn to pieces by the Titans. But Athena
res­cued his heart and car­ried it to his father, Zeus. His moth­er was Deme­ter;
he is thus the fruit of the mar­riage of Heav­en and Earth. This iden­ti­fies him as
the Vau of Tetra­gram­ma­ton, but the leg­ends of his “death” refer to ini­ti­a­tion,
which accords with the doc­trine of the Devour­er.
In this card, how­ev­er, the tra­di­tion­al form is much more clear­ly expres­sive of
Bac­chus Diphues, who rep­re­sents a more super­fi­cial form of wor­ship; the
ecsta­sy char­ac­ter­is­tic of the god is more mag­i­cal than mys­ti­cal. The lat­ter
demands the name Iac­chus, where­as Bac­chus had Semele for a moth­er, who
was vis­it­ed by Zeus in the form of a flash of light­ning which destroyed her. But
she was already preg­nant by him, and Zeus saved the child. Until puber­ty, he
was
p.66

hid­den in the “thigh” (i.e., the phal­lus) of Zeus. Hera, in revenge for her
hus­band’s infi­deli­ty with Semele, drove the boy mad. This is the direct
con­nec­tion with the card.
The leg­end of Bac­chus is, first of all, that he was Diphues, dou­ble-natured, and
this appears to mean more bisex­u­al than her­maph­ro­dit­ic. His mad­ness is also a
phase of his intox­i­ca­tion, for he is pre-emi­nent­ly the god of the vine. He goes
danc­ing through Asia, sur­round­ed by var­i­ous com­pan­ions, all insane with
enthu­si­asm; they car­ry staffs head­ed with pine cones and entwined with ivy;
they also clash cym­bals, and in some leg­ends are fur­nished with swords, or
twined about with ser­pents. All the half-gods of the for­est are the male
com­pan­ions of the Mae­nad women. In his pic­tures his drunk­en face, and the
lan­guid state of his lingam, con­nect him with the leg­end already men­tioned
about the croc­o­dile. His con­stant atten­dant is the tiger; and, in all the best
extant exam­ples of the card, the tiger or pan­ther is rep­re­sent­ed as jump­ing
upon him from behind, while the croc­o­dile is ready to devour him in front. In
the leg­end of his jour­ney through Asia, he is said to have rid­den on an ass,
which con­nects him with Pri­a­pus, who is said to have been his son by
Aphrodite. It also reminds one of the tri­umphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm
Sun­day. It is curi­ous, too, that, at the fabled birth of Jesus, the Vir­gin Moth­er is
rep­re­sent­ed as being between an ox and an ass, and one remem­bers that the

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let­ter Aleph means Ox.
In the wor­ship of Bac­chus there was a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the god, and he was
cho­sen for his qual­i­ty as a young and vir­ile, but effem­i­nate man. In the course
of the cen­turies, the wor­ship nat­u­ral­ly became degrad­ed; oth­er ideas joined
them­selves to the orig­i­nal form; and, part­ly because of the orgias­tic char­ac­ter
of the rit­u­al, the idea of the Fool took def­i­nite shape. Hence, he came to be
rep­re­sent­ed with a Fool’s cap, evi­dent­ly phal­lic, and clad in mot­ley, which
again recalls the coat of many colours worn by Jesus, and by Joseph.

This sym­bol­ism is not only Mer­cu­r­ial, but Zodi­a­cal; Joseph and Jesus, with twelve
broth­ers or twelve dis­ci­ples, equal­ly rep­re­sent the sun in the midst of the
twelve signs. It was only very much lat­er that any alchem­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance was
attrib­uted to this, and that at a time when the Renais­sance schol­ars made
rather a point of find­ing some­thing seri­ous and impor­tant in sym­bols which
were, in real­i­ty, quite friv­o­lous.

Hoofnote By Mayet
The Swan of fairy­tales for exam­ple the 12 Swans that the sis­ter knit­ter the sweaters for and missed an arm on the last one is also an anal­o­gy of the for­ma­tion of the Y Chro­mo­some from an error in the “cloning of X”

Baphomet.

There is no doubt that this mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure is a mag­i­cal image of this same
idea, devel­oped in so many sym­bols. Its pic­to­r­i­al cor­re­spon­dence is most eas­i­ly
seen in the fig­ures of Zeus Arrhenothelus and Babalon, and in the
extra­or­di­nar­i­ly obscene rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the Vir­gin Moth­er which are found
among the remains of ear­ly Chris­t­ian iconol­o­gy. The sub­ject is dealt with at
con­sid­er­able length in Payne Knight, where the ori­gin of the sym­bol and the
mean­ing of the name is inves­ti­gat­ed. Von Ham­mer-Purgstall was cer­tain­ly right
in sup­pos­ing Baphomet to be a form of the Bull-god, or rather, the Bull-slay­ing
god, Mithras; for Baphomet should be spelt with an “r” at the end; thus it is
clear­ly a cor­rup­tion mean­ing “Father Mithras”. There is also here a con­nec­tion
with the ass, for it was as an ass-head­ed god that he became an object of
ven­er­a­tion to the Tem­plars.

The Ear­ly Chris­tians also were accused of wor­ship­ping an ass or ass-head­ed god,
and this again is con­nect­ed with the wild ass of the wilder­ness, the god Set,
iden­ti­fied with Sat­urn and Satan. (See infra, Atu XV.) He is the South, as Nuit is
the North: the Egyp­tians had a Desert and an Ocean in those quar­ters.
Sum­ma­ry.

It has seemed con­ve­nient to deal sep­a­rate­ly with these main forms of the idea
of the Fool, but no attempt has been made, or should be made, to pre­vent the
leg­ends over­lap­ping and coa­lesc­ing. The vari­a­tions of expres­sion, even when
con­tra­dic­to­ry in appear ance, should lead to an intu­itive appre­hen­sion of the
sym­bol by a sub­li­ma­tion and tran­scen­dance of the intel­lec­tu­al. All these
sym­bols of the Trumps ulti­mate­ly exist in a region beyond rea­son and above it.
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BOOK OF THOTH PART2A
The study of these cards has for its most impor­tant aim the train­ing of the mind
to think clear­ly and coher­ent­ly in this exalt­ed man­ner.
This has always been char­ac­ter­is­tic of the meth­ods of Ini­ti­a­tion as under­stood
by the hiero­phants.
In the con­fused, dog­mat­ic peri­od of Vic­to­ri­an mate­ri­al­i­sa­tion, it was nec­es­sary
for sci­ence to dis­cred­it all attempts to tran­scend the ratio­nal­ist mode of
approach to real­i­ty; yet it was the progress of sci­ence itself that has
rein­te­grat­ed these dif­fer­en­tials. From the very
p.68

begin­ning of the present cen­tu­ry, the prac­ti­cal sci­ence of the mechani­cian and
the engi­neer has been forced fur­ther and fur­ther towards find­ing its the­o­ret­i­cal
jus­ti­fi­ca­tion in math­e­mat­i­cal physics.
Math­e­mat­ics has always been the most severe, abstract, and log­i­cal of the
sci­ences. Yet even in com­par­a­tive­ly ear­ly school­boy math­e­mat­ics, cog­ni­sance
must be tak­en of the unre­al and the ir ratio­nal. Surds and infi­nite series are the
very root forms of advanced math­e­mat­i­cal thought. The apoth­e­o­sis of
math­e­mat­i­cal physics is now the admis­sion of fail­ure to find real­i­ty in any
sin­gle intel­li­gi­ble idea. The mod­ern reply to the ques­tion “What is any­thing?” is
that it is in rela­tion to a chain of ten ideas, any one of which can only be
inter­pret­ed in terms of the rest. The guos­tics would undoubt­ed­ly have called
this a “chain of ten aeons”. These ten ideas must by no means be con­sid­ered as
aspects of some real­i­ty in the back­ground. As the sup­posed straight line which
was the frame­work of cal­cu­la­tion has turned out to be a curve, so has the point
which had always been tak­en as the type of exis­tence, become the ring.
It is impos­si­ble to doubt that there is here a con­tin­u­al­ly clos­er approx­i­ma­tion of
the pro­fane sci­ence of the out­er world to the sacred wis­dom of the Ini­ti­ate.
* * *
The design of the present card resumes the prin­ci­pal ideas of the above essays.
The Fool is of the gold of air. He has the horns of Diony­sus Zagreus, and
between them is the phal­lic cone of white light rep­re­sent­ing the influ­ence from
the Crown1 upon him. He is shown against the back­ground of air, dawn­ing from
space; and his atti­tude is that of one burst­ing unex­pect­ed­ly upon the world.
He is clad in green, accord­ing to the tra­di­tion of Spring; but his shoes are of the
phal­lic gold of the sun.
In his right hand he bears the wand, tipped with a pyra­mid of white, of the Allfile:///D:/Books/Non-Fiction/Magick+Esoteric/Crowley/The book of Thoth/thoth2a.htm (15 of 63)28.02.2004 22:48:43
BOOK OF THOTH PART2A
Father. In his left hand he bears the flam­ing pine- cone, of sim­i­lar sig­nif­i­cance,
but more def­i­nite­ly indi­cat­ing veg­etable growth; and from his left shoul­der
hangs a bunch of pur­ple grapes. Grapes rep­re­sent fer­til­i­ty, sweet­ness, and the
basis of ecsta­sy. This ecsta­sy is shown by the stem of the grapes devel­op­ing
into rain­bow- hued spi­rals. The Form of the Uni­verse. This sug­gests the
Three­fold
1Kether: see the posi­tion of the Path of Aleph on the Tree of Life.
p.69
Veil of the Neg­a­tive man­i­fest­ing, by his inter­ven­tion, in divid­ed light. Upon this
spi­ral whorl are oth­er attri­bu­tions of god­head; the vul­ture of Maut, the dove of
Venus (Isis’or Mary), and the ivy sacred to his devo­tees. There is also the
but­ter­fly of many-coloured air and the winged globe with~its twin ser­pents, a
sym­bol which is echoed and for­ti­fied by the twin infants embrac­ing on the
mid­dle spi­ral. Above them hangs the bene­dic­tion of three flow­ers in one.
Fawn­ing upon him is the tiger; and beneath his feet in the Nile with its lotus
stems crouch­es the croc­o­dile. Resum­ing all his many forms and many- coloured
images in the cen­tre of the fig­ure, the focus of the micro­cosm is the radi­ant
sun. The whole pic­ture is a glyph of the cre­ative light

 

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nuit