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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Rex de Arte Regia Saturday/Sunday, 19/20 January 1918
Opus[1] LII, LIII, LIV
19-20 Jan. Saturday 9.00 p.m. - 7.00 p.m. Sunday.
This great Magical Operation was devised to acquire Magical Force.
Operation: (ת)
1. 666 as Luna with the King of the Moors.
2. The Black King and the White Queen.
3. 666 as Sun with ditto. All within the Triangle. The Elixir was made in a new form of 2:1 proportions—Sol plus Sol plus Luna, Sol being antithetical in colour. Jupiter, moreover, was invoked by his sacred incense.
4. Sunday 20th, about 4.00 p.m. Wound up Operation by a very spontaneous 3 [as above]. (666 Φ [Phallus] in K[teis] [vagina] or π [mouth] 555 [Roddie Minor].) We then went upon the Astral Plane. Eve [Roddie Minor] had got certain visions which struck me as significant, chiefly because of some similarity between them and the later Virakam [Mary d'Este Sturges] visions. 'It's all in the egg' and so on, from a wizard who is in charge of a naked boy (Horus, as I suppose). After various minor adventures, we came upon the Wizard and the Boy in the Wood. The Wizard is a Magus (? 9º = 2o ?, more likely Beth, Atu 1), always throwing visions at Eve to put her off; but she appealed to me, and he then answered. He gave his name as AMALANTRE (with the T a Tau). I asked him for an explanation of the E, and got AE, then H, then AH. This gave him as 729 which equals 93 or 36. I then asked (not disclosing this number of course) for a geometrical figure of equivalent Magical Value. She got a 'queer triangle' (apparently equilateral with an H at two angles, nothing at the third) and then a 'solid' figure 4. These two together do of course indicate a cube of 3 or 3 squared in a way; but the Wizard, getting a clearer idea of her question, broke right away and said, 'The segment of an octagonal column'. That is, the combination of figure 8 and the Phallus. Now, this pointed straight to BAPHOMET. Could this word be, after all, the combination of the 8 and the 2, as it should be? For years I have striven to get a satisfactory spelling for Baphomet, and failed utterly. The Wizard gave BAFOMET (in Hebrew, not Greek), and explained O as Vau and E as Yod. I asked whether TH was one letter or two, and got the answer, 'One', a Tau. I then asked what must be added to make the word eightfold; but even before he could answer, I saw (mentally) that a final Resh would make its numeration 729. Then I saw the justification, Baphomet being traditionally Mithraic. It now means, therefore, quite simply FATHER MITHRA. The R has been suppressed as a blind—it blinded me all right!—and because the Sun has been concealed (in the Aeon of Osiris, I suppose). Looking in Liber D for further confirmation, I find 729 = קוע שטך, the curse of Satan. Of course! Look at the frontispiece to my Rituel de la haute Magie, where I have figured the Devil of the Tarot as Baphomet. This is a great and wonderful Arcanum, and I doubt not will lead to many further mysteries of the most holy Kingdom. (P.S. It did.)
Note: One of the Wizard's favourite veils was the Winged Beetle—the 'Concealed Sun!'
1—[Crowley performs a magical sexual operation.]
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