1909, based upon the Enochian visions described in The Vision and the Voice, Crowley would claim the Grade of Magister Templi within his A.’.A.’. The comment published with The Vision and the Voice in 1911 CE outlines the doctrine of Aeons drawn from the repeated use of the term “Aeon” in his visions and their association with Horus as “Crowned and Conquering Child.” However, “Aeon of Horus” is explicitly never mentioned in the visions.
These visions discuss the Being-condition known as Magister Templi and the other two Degrees of the Third Order, Magus, and Ipsissimus. In particular, the Magus is discussed as necessary for bringing a “New Aeon” into the Vision of the 27th Aeyther, with more details about the Magus in visions of the 6th and 4th Aeythers.
Starting in 1910 CE, Crowley began pushing himself to fully understand the Magus Degree. This process would lead to new contacts in the realm of esoteric orders. It would hold a significant relocation to New York as well.
In 1912 CE, he published The Book of Lies, which triggered Theodore Reuss, head of the quasi-Masonic Ordo Templi Orientis, to contact him, claiming he had revealed the Secrets of that Order’s upper Degrees. Crowley claimed that wasn’t possible as he was not privy to those Degrees, but intuited once Reuss came to him that it was of a sexual nature and triggered by “Psalm 36 – The Star Sapphire.” This was Crowley’s version of the Golden Dawn Hexagram Ritual re-written for the A.’.A.’. It is interesting for my purposes as the central moment of this rite includes the appearance of the Egyptian neter Set, one of the few times Set is explicitly mentioned in Crowley’s rituals, as the sign of the individual linking with their unique Divine Pattern.
Now aware of the Secret of Reuss’ OTO, Crowley would be sworn to its IX°, taking the name Baphomet, the devil figure of the Templar accusations as reimagined by Eliphas Levi. He learned that Reuss had adapted the method from the Paschal Beverly Randolph influenced Hermetic Brotherhood of Light for the rudimentary sex magical practices of his OTO. To these, Crowley would add his fertile sexual imagination, creating a battery of sexual techniques as attested in his technical writings for the OTO and his diaries of his New York period. The particulars of Crowley’s technical writing on sex magic from the 1912 CE to 1914 CE period hold a few interesting implications for Setians; however, their confidential nature will not be explored in this present series.
In 1909 CE, Charles Stansfeld Jones (1886 CE–1950 CE) joined the A.’.A.’. after reading an issue of The Equinox. With Crowley’s association with the O.T.O., Jones joined this Order and would also become the head of the Order’s North American activities operating in British Columbia, Canada. Jones would spend a lot of time working on the ciphers in the Book of the Law as a part of his A.’.A.’. He worked first under J.C.F. Fuller and then Crowley himself.
In 1914 CE, Crowley relocated to New York to avoid the First World War and pursue writing, painting, and his Task as a Magister Templi. This would become a period of intense magical Work, leading him to his attainment as Magus, whose Word was θέλημα [Thelema], and whose name was To Mega Therion, “The Great Beast, whose number was 666. As foretold in The Vision and the Voice, he would proclaim a New Aeon to humanity as Magus. By the rules of the A.’.A.’. he would need to find a replacement for himself as a Magister Templi and did so by Recognizing C. S. Jones as such on October 12, 1915, at the same time as his Recognition as Magus.
The period of correspondence afterward between Crowley and Jones, collected as Liber Aleph, shows the formation and formalization of Crowley’s Doctrine not only of the Aeons but also of the Magus in the A.’.A.’. and historically. He identifies seven previous Magi: Lao Tzu, Thoth, Krishna, Gautama, Moses, Dionysus, and Mohammed. History, not being Crowley’s strong suit, does not address these chronologically but rather as a means for outlining what he saw as the essential contributions of these figures to his understanding of his new Aeon as a magico-poetic process. Each would be identified with a Word that summed up their entire philosophy much as θέλημα summed up his own.
After his Magus experience, the Book of the Law would be recast as the sign of the beginning of the New Aeon, which had taken Crowley some 11 years to develop sufficiently to act as its Magus. The period of private exchange with Jones and other Initiates of the A.’.A.’. and OTO would lead to a renewed sense of purpose, culminating in the publication of The Equinox Vol III No. 1 in the Spring of 1919 CE. The complete system of the A.’.A.’., which contained detailed information on the Magus Degree, was provided in “One Star in Sight,” published as a part of Crowley’s Magick In Theory and Practice, published in 1929 CE. He would suggest in this text that a Magus could either Utter a Word that would instigate a New Aeon or perform an Utterance that would enhance the existing Aeon in some fashion.
Thus, in Crowley, we find all of the various lines of thought discussed in this series brought together. Through the Name of the Beast taken from Revelation, with an understanding crafted from Messianic Kabbalah and honed by the Enochian system, with the Gnostic doctrine of Aeons and the magico-philosophic traditions of Logos, sutured together under the Zoroastrian title a Remanifesations of all of these streams and the articulation of a new Being State was Recognized as attainable while alive: the Magus.
Setemheb 