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Comments by (jk) on William Breeze's (AKA Hymenaeus Beta) note 318 (Breeze's words in green):
On page 764 of Breeze's Second Revised Edition of Magick
Note 318 (note to page 543)
This series runs as follows: 000, AIN, NOTHING; 00, AIN SOPH, The Boundless; 0, AIN SOPH AUR, The Boundless Light; 1, Kether, and so on.
This is actually Breeze's note to Crowley's text (which in the first edition is on page 531), and which says: "The numbers 000 to 10 are printed in heavy block type. They refer to the three forms of Zero and the ten Sephiroth or numbers of the decimal scale." In my copy of the Symonds-Grant Magick, this page does not have this textual introduction, but simply gets into key-scale tables.
Crowley gives this order without the zeros in Liber 777 (1909), columns ii-iii,...
True, and this is the order as noted above given in the Key Scale tables in the Symonds-Grant Magick, BUT, and this is very important, Crowley chose not to indicate the number of zeros here, and instead only listed the three veils as expressions of a single idea or zero. So, the question then is where DOES Crowley indicate the correct number of zeros, and what difference should that make? What in fact does one zero mean compared to two or three, in other words? Moreover, do three zeros (regardless of the words associated with them) correspond to the hyperbola or the ellipse, and why so? One thing—if the zeros are counts of actual veils you would get one association, but if it is a count of implicit veils, or potential veils, you get another kind of count. In other words, if AYN implies all three veils (as in triply-veiled) it is 000, and AYN SVP AVR which is the outer or least negative veil, but also the least abstract or implied, is 0. But, if AYN SVP AVR is a count of actual veils—displayed or expressed—then obviously it would receive 000, and AYN would receive 0. Perhaps, depending on how you look at it, either system could be used, or especially in particular constructions one "proximity" would be applied and another in a different construction. It seems AYN SVP is always 00 regardless.
...and in his discussion of the Naples Arrangement in "The Book of Thoth" (1944), p. 32, but this last cited arrangement was partially reversed (to 000=AIN, 00=AIN SOPH, 0=AIN SOPH AUR) on posthumous publication in "777 Revised" (1955) pg. 39, perhaps by the editor G. J. Yorke.
What Breeze means by this is unclear. The arrangement in BoT, page 32 is: AYN—AYN SVP—AYN SVP AVR, which is exactly the same order as given on page 39 of "777 Revised". So what bit was "partially reversed"?
Also contradicting Crowley...
But is any of this actually "contradicting Crowley"? To say "yes" suggests Crowley simply wasn't paying attention to important details. This is possible, but Crowley was known for being meticulous and concerned about getting things just as he wanted them. Something so basic as a mistaken, or contradictory, reversed order on a fundamentally important illustration seems uncharacteristic of his general approach—unless, as has been suggested, his mental abilities were waning in the writing of BoT.
...is "The Book of Thoth", appendix B, page 266, where the diagram gives a reverse order entirely.
The order given, counting from the outside (or top) in (or down), is of course: AYN SVP AVR—AYN SVP—AYN, with the latter indicated as the ellipse, and apparently the closest Veil to 1-Kether. But is that the correct or most coherent explanation of the diagram? Note the explanation given about this in the Triple Veils Supplement.
Note also that Crowley in BoT, in explaining the illustration, clearly says: "The ellipse, the parabola, and hyperbola, show the three Veils of the Negative." He gives "ellipse" first, just as he habitually gives AYN first when listing the Veils. And while it is true the attribution of the one zero to AYN seems contradictory to what he has earlier very clearly stated, that AYN is first and the counting starts with 000, it is also true that AYN SVP AVR should not be symbolized by a limited symbol such as the ellipse. Both AYN SVP and AYN SVP AVR are "limitless", just as the parabola and hyperbola are endlessly extended. Only the ellipse can be AYN, and NOT because AYN is or can be limited, but only because it is the simple, symbolic, expression of 0—zero. It is, in other words, the perfect graphical representation of the mathematical and philosophical idea of Nothing. And it encompasses or concentrates, Kether and the resultant Tree.
So, the answer to this apparent contradiction may lie in Crowley's comments about the function of these geometrical metaphors.
This diagram was produced in Germany c. 1925 (by an artist named Hopfer)...
And isn't this the same Hopfer who was an OTO member and with whom Crowley met in 1925? It seems odd that Crowley would use a graphic, one that had been kicking around for nearly 20 years, that, according to Breeze, plainly contradicted his intended meaning concerning fundamental ideas of his system. Why would Crowley do such a thing? Further, this same graphic is used to provide an illustration in Germer's edition of Magick Without Tears and provides the basis for how Symonds-Grant interpret this same dogma in Magick. Again, why repeat the error, if it is an error?
...and may reflect the artists' reliance on a diagram by S. L. Mathers, who discusses the formation of Kether in exceedingly vague terms in his introduction to "The Kabbalah Unveiled",...
And now the "rub" begins to show itself. Yes, that foolish artist must have been following "exceedingly vague" Mathers, that nitwit from whom Crowley had stolen just about every idea he could manage. Note the continuation of the (C)OTO anti-Mathers policy. If anyone should follow Mathers' lead, it can only result in a contradiction of Crowley, who we should think would never have been fool enough to do such a thing—except when he needed an occult idea to nick.
...and provides a diagram (plate ii) that gives the order AIN SOPH AUR, AIN SOPH, AIN and Kether concentrically.
But is that the correct interpretation? The "order" may not be something indicated in the illustration at all, because, again as noted in the Triple Veils Supplement, the metaphor Mathers was using was intentionally and literally nebulous—but not necessarily vague.
Mathers is more definite in his notes to the text; see for example p. 44, where he specifies AIN SOPH AUR as the immediate precursor to Kether.
Mathers' comments on page 44: "But the first idea of equilibrium is the Ancient One (the first Sephira, or Crown Kether), because it is the first potential limitation of the boundless light [AYN SVP AVR] which proceeds from the Limitless One [AYN SVP]."
And Crowley's remarks in BoT: "One may now proceed to imagine any point in this "light" to select it for observation; the fact of doing so makes it Positive. This gives the number 1, which is called Kether, the Crown."
And Crowley says above this: "THE SYSTEM BEGINS WITH AIN-NOTHING."
But to say how it begins may not describe how it works or relates to 1-Kether. In fact, Mathers goes into some detail of the difficulties of dealing with the language involved in describing the different negatively existing states and that of 1-Kether, which itself is a kind of AYN, or nothing. And so AYN, the Absolute Negative, is directly reflected in the now expressable and expressed positive AYN of Kether. They may then be more closely related, even with Kether as the concentration of that negative energy negated or removed—so POSITIVE—at the very center (or the concentration of the Void) of Nothingness or AYN. What then of AYN SVP and AYN SVP AVR? They are descriptions of process, not of substance. God's mind is not AYN SVP but rather AYN SVP is the desire and motive of God, moving to create. AYN SVP AVR is the Limitless (Negative) Light emitted from this process of motion toward an object, a particularization. Before however anything can be particularized and realized in 1-Kether, the potential for its existence, positively expressed, must be allowed for or created. This intense Negative Light is certainly closer to 1-Kether in the sense of being the last part of the Negative which appears to give rise to it. But it is misleading to imagine AYN SVP AVR as the state or condition mirrored in 1-Kether. That instead is AYN.
For clarity, wherever applicable in this edition, Column I, the Key Scale, has been amended to give these zeros.
Is not this "clarity" merely begged by Breeze, instead of demonstrated? These are not easy ideas, even when one is sure of what can be clearly stated about them. If one, on the other hand, is not much concerned about clarity and rather seeks to achieve a political end by trimming facts and figures to blend with a certain myth about the unique authority of one's "prophet", he is not interested in doing proper research into the questions of history, but is instead invoking history to perform propaganda. If that is in fact the object of William Breeze in his role as an "editor" of Aleister Crowley, one should quite reasonably question his willingness and perhaps even his ability to honestly report the facts of these often problematic issues.
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