The Magister 1

by Marcus Katz

Exercise: The Unfinished Universe

  Whilst the praxis and techne work in the Neophyte grade of the Crucible Club are most definitely inward-focused, we also look outwards to the universe in our theoria assignments. In particular, we contemplate the notion of time, and share here one such practice outside the Club.

  The representation of time is so fundamental to our experience that it is no surprise it features in our magical work almost from the first practice. We attend to a daily practice at a particular time sometimes that practice is to make observations of the Sun, a fundamental marker of time itself.

  Whilst later work begins to question the other two aspects of the triad of our being – namely self-image, and values and beliefs - we should begin early to question our notion of time. In fact, the successful working of a ritual or divination will have already questioned the basic understanding of how time works, and how events are actually interrelated.

  We saw with Plato’s conceptualisation of time, that we see a ‘like-ness’ or image of time, spatially moving, in accord with number. Our mind perceives time in terms of space. We talk of looking forwards to a brighter future, or putting the past behind us.

  It is more interesting too that time – as spatially represented – has what are called modalities or qualities (in NLP), and that these can be changed in our mind.

  Whilst the future may look dim or it may be bright – these are qualities that are only representations, they are not reality.

  The most significant modality of space is movement. Here is an exercise:

  Sit for a moment. Notice that at the present moment, you are present. So is the room. Everything you can sense is here with you now. So is outside. You can extend this outwards in your imagination – the Moon is here with you now, in this present moment, a physical object out there in space. So is the Sun and all the planets, and the galaxy in which we are located and all the galaxies that exist out into the deep field of space.

  Now consider this, as a moment passes. Where did they all go? As they existed in that space – where are they now? Consider this for a few moments.

  Start to think about a minute from now. There are things in that space of that minute ahead that exist, will exist, with you in that moment ahead. Now wait for that moment to arrive and acknowledge that you are there, present with those things.

  Now do the same, but this time, as you wait, consider – and check – this one fact ... do you feel/sense that moment ahead moving towards you as you wait, or are you moving towards it?

  This simple sensation – this unconscious representation – is almost so fundamental to our sense of reality that it goes unremarked, to my knowledge.

  And yet it is so powerful when you change it.

  Whatever way you perceive it automatically (and in my experience, it’s about 50/50 for most people I’ve checked this with), try taking a few moments each day imagining that it is the other way and see how that changes you. You may also be surprised how it filters out into other changes in your behaviour and even actions over the course of a month practising it.

  Manifestations of Maat

  It is evident that Crowley developed his teaching of the Aeons from both Lévi (who took it from Joachim of Fiore) and the Golden Dawn. In fact, in a Golden Dawn original manuscript of The Last Judgement tarot card, we see these Aeonic deities being labelled clearly – which would have no doubt impacted upon Crowley as a young man entering the Order.[136]

  We will extend this into looking specifically at the Aeon of Maat, and the concept of Maat as it was presented through the Golden Dawn. We will then look at Crowley’s few references to Maat, and her revival in the work of contemporary magicians such as Maggie Ingalls (Soror Nema).

  Maat in Ancient Egyptian Cosmology

  The Goddess Maat, sometimes described as the counterpart of Thoth (God of Scribes and Knowledge), had as her hieroglyph a symbol which represented the straightness of a plinth supporting a throne. From the earliest texts mentioning Maat, where the word is used to denote a concept rather than a personification, the ideas of straightness, uprightness and justness predominated, in the context of morality and natural justice.

  The goddess Maat is hence a personification of this idea of universal balance. The plinth which is her hieroglyph is also seen as the primeval mound from which the Creator-God emerged, thus indicating that balance pre-existed creation in some manner. Maat, according to Wallis Budge, assisted the Creator-God in the work which was ordered by Thoth, the divine intelligence.

  In Chapter XV of the Book of Coming Forth by Day, Maat is described as “everlasting and never-changing,” and in symbolic terms, she and Thoth set the course of the Solar Boat of Ra, which is in turn piloted by Horus, Ra’s son. Sometimes Thoth is described as setting forth the boat in the east, whilst Maat receives it in the west; in other texts they both stand either side of Horus on the ‘Holy Barque’ itself. This information may be suitably embodied in rituals and workings of Maat, and can also be used to demonstrate the progression of the Aeons.

  Maat’s emblem is the ostrich feather, against which the heart of the deceased is weighed in the Judgement Scene. Cirlot notes that as a determinative sign in hieroglyphic script, the feather enters into such words as ‘emptiness’, ‘dryness’, ‘lightness’, ‘height’, and ‘flight’.[137] The feather as a quill is taken as a symbol of the creative word, which in Ancient Egyptian cosmology was uttered by Thoth, and in Christian terms is the Logos. Often other gods or goddesses were depicted as holding the feather, to symbolise their adherence to Maat.

  In later texts, Maat was seen as the daughter of Ra, the solar god. Often she, as a feather, was presented to ‘them that love her’, or, as in the Vignette of Chapter XCVII, presented to a god by the deceased, or by another god on behalf of the deceased. This again was in order to represent the petitioner’s adherence to Maat.

  Maat in the context of the Golden Dawn Magical Society

  Maat, as the Goddess of Truth, appears in the rituals of the Golden Dawn. The founders of the Order utilised many aspects of Egyptian cosmology in their teachings and rites from 1888 onwards, although Egyptology as a science was still in its infancy – the great find of Tut-ankhamen’s tomb did not occur until 1922, for example.[138]

  The Hall of the Neophytes is called (in the Golden Dawn docu- ment Z1), the “Hall of the Dual Manifestation of Truth,” which is a variation on the original translation of “The Hall of Two Truths.” It is here, then, that the Goddess Maat presides, with particular focus through the role of the Hegemon, who is the “presider of equilibrium,” and “reconciler between the light and the darkness.” It is also stated directly that the Hegemon is the “representative of the Goddess of Truth and Justice,” in the form of the name Thmaa-Est. During the initiation ritual itself, the Hegemon – whose name means ‘leader’ – acts as a guide, prompter and answerer for the candidate, and the office is described as being analogous to the higher soul of the candidate.

  The late Israel Regardie wrote, “the aspiring, sensitive, and the intuitive consciousness, the Neschamah, is represented by the Hegemon who ever seeks the rising of the light.” The Hegemon also carries a sceptre which is a symbol of religion, but not the religion of the masses – rather the religion of one who seeks to align himself to Maat.

  This idea of ‘two truths’ can be explained as follows. In Z2, Thoth is invoked as the archetype of the initiation process, and Maat is seen as the expression of that truth in one’s outward dealing with the world. As Soror Nema states, “Magickal Currents and Formulae express the various facets of the eternal truth – each true in its purity, but none encompassing all facets. The whole of truth may be comprehended only when one has transcended particular formulae in one’s world-view ... the eternal truth must be spoken anew for each generation.”

  Thus, the Ordo Rosae Rubae et Aureae Crucis (‘Order of the Red Rose and Gold Cross’), whilst using essentially the same symbolism as their outer order, the Golden Dawn, would have seen its significance fr
om a substantially different viewpoint. It is here that we can also identify the difference between mysticism and religion – the goal of all mysticism is the magical grade of Ipsissimus; the goal of all religion is to convey that mystical truth in a more tangible form suitable to the time. The ‘word’ of the Maat current is IPSOS (‘self ’), which conveys the idea of a progressive union at an individual level between the paths of religion and mysticism – which all too often are seen as disparate and antagonistic concepts.

  Maat and the Aeons

  Although the word Aeon has many meanings, it is here used to denote the periods of time and types of magical current designated by Aleister Crowley in the early part of the 20th century. This system divides history into approximately 2,000 year blocks. These blocks are assigned the names of Egyptian gods and goddesses which relate to the general magical approaches taken during that time. For example, the Aeon of Isis was matriarchal and based in agriculture, whereas the Aeon of Osiris which followed has been dominated by a number of father gods. Crowley predicted, through his reception of The Book of the Law in 1904, that an Aeon of Horus was starting, which would be the age of the “crowned and conquering child.” This age would be preceded by a phase of destruction and war, and the old concepts of previous generations would be entirely overturned: “... the rituals of the old time are black.”[139]

  Horus is, like Mars, a God of War and Vengeance, and this was seen by Crowley as fitting for an Aeon of the “Law of the Battle of Conquest.” Crowley made only a few mentions of the Aeon following Horus, for example in a diary entry of 1923, where he refers to a “wordless Aeon,” and in a commentary to The Book of the Law where he states that an Aeon of Maat would follow that of Horus.

  However, in 1936 Crowley wrote a letter to Charles Stanfield Jones, a magical student known as Frater Achad, where he admitted the possibility of an Aeon of Maat arriving simultaneously with the Aeon of Horus. It is Frater Achad who first claimed that the Aeon of the Daughter commenced in 1948, and would run parallel to the Aeon of Horus. This is known as the ‘twin current’. He explained this apparent overlap by viewing the cycles of time as running in spirals, so each Aeon runs above and below the others at any given time. However, it was not until the publication of Outside the Circles of Time by Kenneth Grant (1924-2011), another of Crowley’s students, that the idea began to receive wider attention.[140]

  Indeed, Grant, when writing the earlier Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God (1973), makes no mention of this view – see the chapter, ‘The Angel and the Aeon’ – but saw the Aeon of Maat as an age of synthesis and reintegration following the age of analysis and disintegration presided over by Horus.[141] By 1980, though, in Outside the Circles of Time, the case was being made for a ‘double current’. Although this book is convoluted and obscured by difficult concepts such as the ‘dark side’ of the Tree of Life, and the gematria of the qlippoth, it does serve as a vehicle for the work of Soror Nema, who at that time was a member of the O.T.O. working in the United States.

  Before moving onto more recent approaches, Aeons then can be summarised as the manifestation of characteristics portrayed by Egyptian deities, and while these archetypal forces are active at all times in human development – past, present or future – at sometimes one or more will predominate either as a reflection of human development at that point, or as a potential avenue for further development.

  Soror Nema and Maat Magic

  On 14 January 1975, Soror Nema (then known as Soror Andahadna) received – in much the same way that Crowley received The Book of the Law – a text entitled Liber Pennae Praenumbra, or The Book of the forthshadowing of the Feather. She writes, “As I began an entry in my diary, Liber PP began writing itself non-stop.” Later, she received what she calls “an unquestionable directive” to forward a copy of Liber PP to Kenneth Grant, with whom she had not previously had contact. Further work led to much of the material found in Outside the Circles of Time, which makes the plea that humankind awakens to Maat through an evolutionary crisis point, ensuring the manifestation of N’aton, a being composed of our global consciousness.[142]

  This move to a new, racial consciousness is one of the central themes of Maat magic.[143] The social structure of humanity is presented as taking on a new form, bearing similarity with hives, where local communities work together in a self-sustaining framework. This has since been developed to take advantage of network paradigms, and the Internet itself can be seen as such a movement towards global awareness and mutual ‘telempathic’ union. An earlier precedent can be found in the alchemical writings of Sendivogius, talking of the coming of a “fourth age” when “mercy and truth will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from heaven. There will be one shepherd and one fold, and knowledge will be the common property of all without envy. I look forward to all this with longing.”[144]

  Meshikan is the name given by Soror Nema to the single city which ‘travels’ in her vision of the future. This is examined in more detail later, but Nema sees that “It [the future species] consists of a planetful of individuals who participate in a gestalt-consciousness which expresses a super-persona, whose name was given as N’Aton.”[145]

  Of Meshikan, she writes: “Individuals dwell in small enclaves, or Hives, whose populations range from a few hundred to about a thousand. There is but one true city on the planet, Meshikan. It is mounted upon a platform and travels from continent to continent. Its function is to serve as the administrative and archival centre of the Race. In our time, there is no desire to crowd together in cities. We are en-rapport through individual participation in the gestalt.

  The Hive Temple functions as a centre for religious gathering, artistic display (as a museum/theatre of creative and performing arts), and other local administrative functions.”[146]

  The name Meshikan may also have a Biblical source: “the second half of the book of Exodus is devoted to a description of the Mishkan. The English translation of this word, ‘tabernacle’, is somewhat archaic and hardly serves to convey a clear meaning, so I will use the Hebrew. ‘Mishkan’ derives from a root meaning ‘to dwell’. It was the focus of spiritual life which enabled God’s presence to dwell amongst the children of Israel in the wilderness, and it became the pattern on which the Temple in Jerusalem was later built. The Mishkan was the transportable tent of meeting between God and the Children of Israel.”[147]

  This vision is not unique; a member of a group called the Illuminated Congregation of Melchizedek (ICOM) wrote that in the early 1970s he had a series of vivid and related visions and dreams, one of which matches Nema’s description rather perfectly:

  In another vision I was a teenager living in France, in a small village, and one day something special happened ...

  There was a buzz of excitement in the village. The Floating City was coming! I knew this was my opportunity; I was stifled by the village atmosphere and, although I didn’t want to stay on the Floating City, I knew that, if I could get aboard, I would be able to find out about – whatever it was that I was looking for! I did get aboard – but I snapped out of the vision before anything else became clear.

  There was a lot of other stuff, but it was more emotions and ‘background knowledge’ than events I can describe. While these things were happening to me, my ‘future self ’ was taking stuff for granted that, after I ‘came to’ were incomprehensible. Anyway, I was left with a pile of stuff, that seemed to be clearly about the future, and was coherent in itself, but bore no clear relation to anything that I had read or had been thinking about. I had read a lot of Science Fiction, but even where similar things had happened in books, this had a different quality about it – less real than my ordinary life, but much more real than anything I had imagined while reading – and the whole didn’t fit into any single idea that I had read about. The ‘Floating City’ had no conceivable ancestors except in Gulliver’s Travels – but it wasn’t like my mental image from that book. I didn’t know what to do with the impressions and images, but I
couldn’t forget about them, so I just stored them in my head and got on with my life.”[148]

  An early article by Soror Nema stressed that “on the individual level, Maat magic is a philosophy of self-discovery through meditation, ritual, experimentation, art and communication. The principles of Maat can and should be applied to every act, from the most rare and exalted to the most mundane.”

  Maat Magic Today

  Maat magic is still developing. Soror Nema published two books, Maat Magic: A Guide to Self-Initiation and The Way of Mystery, in 2003. A number of books have been written that echo the Maat philosophy of social change based upon magical principles. The work covers such authors as the Christian philosopher, Teilhard de Chardin, and futurologists such as Alvin Toffler and Barbara Hubbard. The world of science fiction is also a rich seam, beginning with A.C. Clark’s Childhood’s End. So we can see that from the magical perspective we rise above immediate fads and attachments in contemplation of the movement of humanity through vast Aeons of time. Whether these are characterized by signs of the zodiac, Egyptian deities or plants of the field and garden is useful but secondary. The primary purpose for dwelling and developing these models is to make a state-change in ourselves to put ourselves in the true perspective – that we are here for such a brief moment, and whilst the Aeons pass, every second counts.

  We will now look at applying the Aeons to real life events at a political level. It is useful to apply the concept of Aeons and their nature to all large-scale cultural, artistic, political, and scientific events to see them in a larger perspective and ourselves in a true one in time. We will also introduce and develop the concept of ‘magical currents’.