A lecture by Michael Staley 1994 from OrdoTempliOrientisPhenomenon Website
If Lam is an extra- terrestrial entity, then,
In fact, I would go further, and say that the prime importance of Lam is as an example of this type.
It flings the whole topic of extra-terrestrialism, and hence the heart of magick itself, into sharp relief.
We will have established that to seek traffic with Lam is to seek to move beyond human consciousness.
Thirdly, conclusions and future directions.
Extra-terrestrial entities are areas within those reaches, and the Magick of real interest and worth is that which facilitates traffic with such entitles.
These entities are, ultimately, not something separate from the magician: not something ‘out there’, but equally an aspect of the continuum of consciousness as is the magician. To explore these reaches of consciousness, traffic is had with such entities; thereby, more and more of the continuum is thrown into relief. This may seem at first sight to be a solipsist conception, the universe as nothing more than an extension of the magician. In fact, the converse is the case: the magician is an aspect of the universe, and initiation is the unfolding realization of this, much as a temple emerges from darkness into the light of day.
There is a continuum of consciousness, an ocean of awareness, in which we are at once parts and the whole. This is essentially advaita, a sanskrit term meaning ‘not divided’. Many people in the West, Thelemites included, seem to find advaita repugnant. And yet, Thelema has its roots in advaita and similar doctrines such as the sunyavada, the emptiness at the heart of matter, articulated so beautifully in Prajnaparamita Buddhism and later in Ch’an.
Traditions such as these attempt to guide the intuition of the aspirant towards the apprehension of a non-dual reality by means of paradox. This is not indulgence in mental gymnastics, but because reality is beyond the dualist categories of subject and object, existence and non-existence, emptiness and manifestation, and hence ultimately inexpressible in terms of reason. This does not mean that we need to abandon reason, or give up trying to express mystical insight in language - far from it. We just need to be aware of the limitations of language and reason, that is all.
Initiation has been defined as ‘the journey inwards’, though whether this journey is viewed as internal or external journey makes little odds, since both amount to the same thing.
It is the assimilation of magical and mystical experience - a process of understanding, of insight.
The nature of this insight is an awareness that consciousness does not rest with the individual, but is universal or cosmic; there is a continuum, not a multiplicity of isolated units.
Awareness is no longer restricted to the terrestrial vehicle; the focus shifts, attuning to wider and deeper ranges of consciousness beyond. The sense of individuality is a restriction or dungeon only so long as we incarcerate ourselves, a bondage forged by our own preconceptions. We are all facets of the universe. There is no individual self which endures, but the flux and flow of perception, like wave after wave surging forth.
The wave is a transient form of the water, giving way to another wave. Consciousness roils, throwing forth shadows from its depths; these shadows are the glamours of manifestation, a perpetual play which flows and shimmers, urgent and alive, sweeping this way and that.
We are drawn from these shadows: not as monads, self-existent and eternally enduring; but as transient ripples of consciousness which flow outwards, melding and coalescing with other ripples. In this incessant weaving amidst the continuum of consciousness, self and not-self mingle and fuse, slipping back and forth, trespassing wantonly across apparent boundaries which have always been fluid.
Only in recognizing individuality as illusion, and ceasing to cling to it, can we see past what we are not, to the fecund infinity of that which we really are.
The blood is pressed into the Cup of Babalon, this continuum, this melting-pot, from whence springs the gamut of existence, and to where it returns. It is reconciliation: not of the melding of self and other, the microcosm and the macrocosm, the apparent individual and the rest of the universe, which have never been apart anyway; but of our awareness of that deeper identity.
As initiation runs its course, awareness becomes wider and deeper, increasingly alive to reaches which lie beyond. It is not a steady process, but unfolds by leaps of intuitive insight, a process of remembering, of reintegration.
Entities are apparent, ranges of consciousness, equally vehicles of the cosmic Self. There is a sea of sentience; we traffic with wider and deeper ranges, and there is assimilation: “For I am divided for love’s sake, for the chance of union”. Entities such as Lam and Aiwass are no more entitles in their own right than are human beings: not remote, august beings, but equally shadows in the sweep of sentience.
However, ‘alien’ has here a relative sense - wide though our assimilation of consciousness might be, until we have awoken completely then anything outside of our present conception of self is seen as ‘alien’. Such is the intrusion of alien consciousness - alien, that is, to the conscious, terrestrial vehicle; alien in the sense of being beyond the self-imposed boundaries of that terrestrial vehicle; but ultimately not alien, since nothing exists outside consciousness.
The sense of alien intrusion via the matrix of creative imagination was expressed, again by Lovecraft:
Note the reference to these “alluring & provocative abysses” pressing in.
These reaches are not something passive and quiescent, scenery to be admired, but reach out and actively make themselves felt. - Crowley’s traffickings with Aiwass and Amalantrah are examples of such alien contact. Crowley usually needed a medium for such communication. In the the Amalantrah Working, this mediumship was provided by several Scarlet Women, who were sensitised by sex, drugs, and alcohol in various exotic combinations, and became oracular.
The Visions experienced by the medium were frequently meaningless to her, but oracular and intended for the comprehension of Crowley. Communication was sometimes explicit; usually it was subtler, by means of numbers, symbols, I Ching hexagrams, Tarot cards, and so forth.
Communication in this fashion may seem perverse and willfully obscure. However, the use of gematria and symbols can spark intuitive leaps, flashes of insight that are not easily expressed in words. Thus, Workings such as that with Amalantrah, or The Vision and the Voice, go beyond the subjective - although there is bound to be some such tincture, like light shining through coloured glass.
These are records of alien contact, of traffic with extra-terrestrial forces, and their worth is substantiated by the fact that, years later, other occultists are able to study these records and make creative use of them, continuing with some of the threads.
Again, the Angel is no passive entity: on the contrary, the initial impulse for the Knowledge and Conversation comes from the Angel, not the aspirant.
The Holy Guardian Angel dwells at this point, where the terrestrial merges into the infinite and eternal; it is the point which is everywhere and at all times, veiled by the chimera of identity with the terrestrial vehicle, revealed by the dissolution of that chimera. The Angel is ever present, a fountain of living waters from which we can drink at any time. Magical and mystical experience is the life-blood of initiation, a stream from which we are eternally supping.
Blavatsky’s text is about the need for the aspirant to contact the well-spring within, the mystical core of being, which she epitomized as the Voice of the Silence.
The techniques which she advocates for this are meditational. It is, I think, significant that Crowley associated the portrait with this text, indicating quite clearly that he regarded Lam as the embodiment of that Voice.
The portrait was republished in Grant’s book The Magical Revival in 1972, and several times since. There is much material on Lam in the more recent books by Grant; however, a definitive interpretation has yet to develop. This is because we are dealing with something the import of which is only just emerging.
The supreme glyph of Enlightenment is the lightning-flash, the swift awakening to Reality, which illuminates the landscape previously shrouded in darkness. The lightning flash can be triggered at any time, and by anything, when the conditions are propitious.
The accumulation of glamour around the Cult of Lam makes it a Gateway which is pre-eminently accessible, however.
The association is underlined by the assignation of 71 to both the portrait and the Commentary, as is made clear by the inscription which accompanied the portrait as originally published:
A metathesis of LAM is ALM, also 71, a Hebrew word meaning ‘silence, silent’. The Silence is the noumenon which underlies and infuses phenomena, the continuum of which all things whatsoever are simultaneously facets and the whole.
The Silence is the quietness at the heart of noise, the stillness at the heart of activity, the being at the heart of going, and the emptiness at the heart of matter.
These juxtapositions may seem merely revelling in paradox; the fact is, though, that reason is a tool of limited application, and paradox is a means of pointing beyond apparent contraries. The ‘Way’ or ‘Path’ is a reference to the Tao. The ‘Treader of the Path’ is the Initiate, treading the path of initiation.
This brings to mind the concluding lines from “Pilgrim-Talk”, in Crowley’s The Book of Lies:
Harpocrates or Hoor-paar-kraat is the unmanifest twin of Ra-Hoor-Khuit, manifestation. The distinction between these twins is figurative only; they are aspects of each other, neither separate from the other. The term ‘Dwarf-Self’ is often used: ‘dwarf’ in the sense of yet to manifest, adolescent, prepubescent. This is the Hidden God, a term used throughout the Egyptian Book of the Dead to glyph the sun in the Underworld or Amenta, the radiant heart of dynamic energy which is at the core of manifestation, and which is veiled by the image of Shaitan-Aiwaz, 93.
Hoor-paar-kraat is a term often used synonymously with the Holy Guardian Angel. It may also be seen in terms of the Tetragrammaton, where Ra-Hoor-Khuit is the Vav, and Hoor- paar-kraat the He final. This identifies Hoor-paar-kraat with the Aeon of Maat, the continuum or extra-terrestrial reality, a Communion in which we are at once Celebrants and that which is celebrated. As Treaders of the Way, we are not something separate which merely traverses from one point to another: we are the Way.
Liber Aleph is a central work of Crowley’s, where he makes clear the deep affinity between Taoism and Thelema; without an appreciation of this affinity, Liber Aleph appears as little more than a scattering of aphorisms. The Amalantrah Working needs to be seen in the context of this initiation of Crowley’s..
Crowley inaugurated regular sessions, which usually took place at the weekends. He seemed interested primarily in its use as an oracle for his affairs over the forthcoming week. Although there were many such short-term oracular pronouncements, there was also a wealth of more substantial material.
Consider, for example, the following:
The Egg is a commonly-occurring glyph throughout the visions of the Amalantrah Working. It is of course a glyph of birth - the egg which contains the potential of all that is to come. There is a reference in one of the visions to Geburah ‘applied to’ the egg. Geburah is in this context the sword which cleaves the egg, or the lightning flash which sunders it, giving birth to the potential secreted within. Since elements of this particular vision are the foundation for much of the subsequent analysis, an extract from the Record follows.
Roddie Minor, the Seer, whose magical name is Achitha, is questioned by Crowley:
The references to the lotus flower in association with the egg, and later the child, are significant. They suggest the Babe in the Egg, Harpocrates, often depicted as seated upon a lotus flower. The mountain is a symbol of initiation, of communing with the gods; examples are Mount Arunachala and Mount Kailas, and the story of Moses ascending the mountain to receive the Word of God.
We have here something more forceful than the more common conception of Silence and Being. There is a perichoresis, or interpenetration of dimensions between the aspirant, the Fire Snake, and the manifested universe. The Shakti which manifests as the universe, and the Shakti which is concentrated as the Fire Snake, are not two: they are the same.
In Outer Gateways, Grant speaks of,
The portrait of Lam also shows a well-developed Ajna chakra, which can be seen as a stylised ankh. Together with the pattern of the umbra mentioned earlier, the shape of a cup or chalice is clearly there. GL also means a ‘bowl’ or ‘chalice’. In the record of the last surviving session of the Amalantrah Working, Gimel and Lamed are mentioned as being the two sides of Perfection. This suggests that if Gimel and Lamed are the two sides of Perfection, and Gimel and Lamed as Bowl or Chalice, then Perfection is the Supreme Chalice or Graal, the Cup of Babalon, the Womb of the Mother.
This interpretation is underlined by a passage in Crowley’s Commentary to Liber LXV (The Book of the Heart Girt with the Serpent):
This passage underlines the mention earlier of Geburah “applied to” the egg, the lightning flash being in this context a type of Geburah. Perfection also suggests the Tao. Crowley assigned the number 157 to his edition of the Tao Teh Ching. This is the addition of 83 and 74, the values of Gimel and Lamed spelt in full, thus reinforcing the reference to them as the two sides of Perfection.
We have, then, an identity between the Tao and the Cup of Babalon, both being Perfection; and, of course, “The Perfect and the Perfect are one Perfect and not two; nay, are none!” (AL.I.45).
The reference to “a spring shut up, a fountain sealed” is from the Song of Solomon:
This indicates a pregnant womb, rather than a celebration of virginity: to shut up or seal is to obstruct something which has formerly flowed. In the womb is the hermit, Hoor-paar-kraat, the “secret seed”, the Hidden God, released from the egg by the shattering force of the lightning flash of illumination. In Olla, Crowley defines Silence as the Path of the Lightning Flash.
Silence in this context is not simply the absence of noise or movement: it is the “still, small voice”, Hadit or the Bindu from which manifestation unfolds, the potential which gives rise to the actual, the noumenon which underlies phenomena. The Egg of Silence is typified by Lam; to embark on the Cult of Lam is therefore to evoke the Hidden God, the Holy Guardian Angel. This is Initiation, the journey inwards which is simultaneously the journey outwards, for the microcosm and the macrocosm are not two but one.
This Gateway, and these tranches, are nothing new. The goal of all magical and mystical traditions is Gnosis - the awakening to Reality. The nominalisations of this goal are legion, but all paths lead to Rome. Similarly, each Initiate will have his or her own Gateway, but each Gateway will open out onto the same Reality.
In the course of my own magical work, I have developed the following short evocation of the Gateway:
This evocation concentrates some of the themes which we have touched upon. The mantra ‘Talam-Malat’ celebrates the Lam as the Gateway, and is uttered several times before it lapses into silent vibration. ‘Talam’ is the semen-honey offered in the Mass of Maat; the word is a fusion of Lam and Maat.
Its number is 81, KSA, the full moon which is both the flowering of the lunar cycle and the point of return to the New Moon; similarly, Maat is both the flowering of the Aeonic cycle and the point of return to the Pralaya or dissolution. The second half of the mantra, ‘Malat’, a mirror image of the first half, emphasises this sense of backward-turning.
However, these
techniques can never be a universal template; rather, they are but a
basis upon which the Initiate rears his or her own Temple of
Illumination, the inner shrine of which is Silence.
However, the point about the Angel is that it is not the aspirant who calls forth the Angel, but the Angel who calls forth the aspirant. In the absence of the impulse from the Angel, even Liber Samekh will be sterile. The Angel is not some entity with a message in a bottle for the aspirant, but a much greater, pan-dimensional being of whom the aspirant is just a facet. Lam is then a Gateway to Initiation; one amongst many, true, but the glamour around the Cult of Lam makes it an accessible Gateway.
The Cult of Lam is in its infancy - it is, after all, the Babe in the Egg - and I am sure that it has the potential to develop into an extremely potent Gateway to Initiation.
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