—The name of the land that was purchased with Judas’s thirty pieces of silver. Means “field of blood.”
ACTEON — A hunter who chanced to see the chaste goddess, Diana, nude in her midnight bath. Diana, being also the bright light of the Full Moon and its nearly hallucinative brilliance, he was immediately struck by anamnesis and “remembered” the naked omnipresence of pantheistic Divinity in all creatures, including himself — so that, in this amazing illumination, he literally became one with everything, including the stag he had been chasing, whereupon his own dogs (not being in on the revelation) tore him apart.
’AD — Mythical giants of Arabian pre-Islamic history.
ADONAI — (Greek, Adonis.) Hebrew for “Lord,” but in Thelemic practice it can stand for the HGA, the Augoeides or “Higher Self.”
ADYTUM — A temple, oracular shrine or holy of holies which only priests may enter.
AEON — The personification of an age. New Aeons are referred to as “Equinoxes of the Gods.” Power exradiating from Divinity, sharing in the creation & government of the universe. Most founders of religions or fully initiated magicians attempt to inaugurate their own personal aeons or “ages.” (See AGE OF AQUARIUS.)
AETHYRS — (Or Aires.) Each of us stands at the center of the Universe, within a four-part series of tablets, cornered by the elemental Watchtowers. Beyond lie the aethyric dimensions of the Astral, the mental circle, the Abyss, the spiritual circle and the divine. The Aethyrs themselves are Dr. Dee’s thirty otherworldly dimensions of consciousness, which he describes as “angelic” (or Enochian). They can be reached, however, only through the 19 “Keyes” or “Calls,” the first 18 of which summon the Angels of the magic squares. The 19th call lifts the magician’s mind to the Aethyrs and can be used to summon any one of the Aires. Actually there are 49 Calls (Zero being the first), but only the latter 30 are the Aethyrs themselves. There are, also, 92 Governors, whose names can be found in the Watchtowers. At least 3 Governors are assigned to each Aethyr. There are also 24 Seniors, 4 Kings, 192 Angels and 128 Demons in the 4 Watchtowers.
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
