The End of the Aion
Chapter 13 The Work of the Adept
There are actually two questions we need to address here, though the second will depend on an affirmative answer to the first; 1. as
discussed above, is there an underlying order to the world, a purpose, a reality beyond the gross matter we are made of and, 2. is this force understandable; can we observe its actions (however subtle), discern its intent and even communicate with it?
As to the first question, it is a matter of perspective, or perhaps, perception. In spite of the modern world and all of its supposed advances, the idea that the Universe is in some sense irrational, numinous and operating under laws that transcend both the physical and the temporal limits of our ordinary lives is still the status quo, in spite of those who wish to declare such ideas as primitive and superstitious. And these ideas, detached from the cultural myth structures of our supposedly backward ancestors are, quite simply, terrifying. It is no coincidence, I think, that the explosion of religious fundamentalism has came on the heels of the 20th and now 21st
centuries adoption, however superficially, of rationalism, scientific supremacy and technology that comes very close to Arthur C. Clarke’s threshold of being indistinguishable from magic. Fundamentalism, of course, is a childish escape behind fictional absolutes, a false salve for a wound that can be ignored but never healed; the dislocation of man from nature in favor of convenience and consumption. It may be that this is a phase in the evolution of man, a transition state before a greater evolution into something we can only imagine. But for many, it feels like the death throes of civilization.
In his massive and fascinating three volume look at just this question – from the perspective of politics and social ordering – Peter Levenda sums up the disjointed psyche of the modern West, exemplified in America; Our culture in the West—formed as it is by a faith in science, a reliance on the technological—has convinced us to ignore the
unseen. There is a web of connections between visible events and visible, measurable phenomena that we cannot see, cannot measure—
so our response has been to ignore this web in favor of what we can see and measure. The blind leading the blind. The drunk looking for
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his keys under a lamp post because the light is better there. We know—
can describe—the stages of growth of flowers, animals, people… but not the life force itself, the drive: what engineer, inventor and mystic Arthur Young called “the quantum of action.” Of this we know nothing, and are happy to know nothing. And thus we become victims.149
Again, this could be viewed as simply a case of primitive instincts not yet bred out of Homo Sapiens, though this is mythologizing science, so to speak, creating a “rational” answer which is merely a tautology;
the instinct exists because it exists.150. But there seems to be an older, ancient really, perspective that is a part of the human psyche, though it can be drowned out with all the absurdities of the information age, which simply knows, apriori of any education or indoctrination, that the spiritual is real, more real in fact than anything we can touch or smell, outside of the cycles of birth – life – death. We may each see it colored by our experiences and personalities, as pure and perfect Light or dark and malevolent and devouring, or more probably, as amoral and or unconcerned with our petty lives and pathetic achievements.
Primitive man sought to appease, not confront it. And yet, there were a few, extraordinary individuals, as Dee and Crowley and Parsons perhaps were. Once science was a part of their search, before it became Science and opened its eyes, declaring, like the Gnostic creator (demiurge) Ialdabaoth, there is no god (or reality) other than me! Yet no matter how much lip service is paid to that idol, the fact is that the world has continued to be as vast and mysterious as it was to the our ancestors; if anything, we can simply see a little farther.
Therefore, in answer to the first question, we may answer, that yes, whatever this order, this presence may “actually” be, it is as real as thought, as love, as hope. Maybe more so.
149 Sinister Forces A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft Vol 1, The Nine, Peter Levenda, Trine Day, 2005
150 As in, for example, explaining love as a survival instinct. While that may sound like an explanation, in fact it says nothing about love as experienced or for that matter anything else, as it would be just as easy to say love is completely separated from the survival instinct and in fact often causes the survival instinct to be “overruled”.
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As for the second question, we have already touched upon it. In fact we have been talking about it all along. If that reality beyond the senses is anything other than delusion then the simple fact that it can be felt, however fleetingly, is all the evidence that is needed to show that indeed we can, in some sense, relate to it. These are simply the first steps however; we need not start from these shadowy and
incomplete ideas for we have the records left us by the “Leapers of the Abyss”, as Kenneth Grant calls them, and if we will we may follow the maps they have left us.
It is the nature of such questions that the answers, incomplete and unsatisfactory as they are, lead only to more questions. So it is with our subject here. Having come thus far we may now ask, what is the nature of these hidden – occult – powers or forces? What are they, what is their relationship to humanity and, ultimately, what do they want?151 Here we may look to the “maps” mentioned earlier, the records of those who have sought to answer this question, not through intellectual exercise152, but through experience, experiment, action.
Magick. Crowley famously defined magic (magick in his usage) as the art and science of causing change in accordance with the will. More than that, however, magick is the means by which the mortal may connect with the immortal, the transcendental, the eternal.
Magick is not, however, a pursuit of simple answers nor easy result.
For individuals like Crowley and Jack Parsons, the questions were, often as not, discovered along the way. We should keep this in mind as we now return to Parsons Babalon Working and consider not only the success or failure of his operation – and his life – but also what we can learn from the sojourn “in the witchwood under the Night of Pan”153
151 It is a logical extension of this line of reasoning, since it makes no sense for whatever lies behind this phenomenon to have a relationship with humans unless there is a reason. Whether good bad or indifferent, these spiritual beings seem, often as not, to initiate contact so we may therefore conclude – or at least hypothesize - that there is a motive.
152 though it must be said that Dee, Crowley and Parsons were all, irregardless of their personal faults and idiosyncrasies, remarkably intelligent men.
153 Jack Parsons, Liber 49, Verse 30 (see Book of Babalon)
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