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    This will hang on the walls of Thelema Lodge from this date forth that his memory will not be forgotten. Donations are welcome to help with the cost, all who contribute will have their name engraved on the back of the plaque. Contact the Lodge for details.

Notes:
1. Describe the spiritual aspect of the "Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram" which we append,
   with its explanation. The abstruse nature of mastering poems is well reflected in this one.

(I) Touching the forehead, say Ateh (unto Thee)
(II) Touching the breast, say Malkuth (the Kingdom)
(III) Touching the right shoulder, say ve-Geburah (the Power)
(IV) Touching the left shoulder, say ve-Gedulah (and the Glory)
(V) Clasping the hands upon the breast, say le-Olahm, Amen (to the ages, Amen)
(VI) Turning to the East, make a pentagram with the desired weapon. Say
(VII) Turning to the South, the same, but say
(VIII) Turning to the West, the same, but say
(IX) Turning to the North, the same, but say
(X) Extending the arms in the form of a cross, say
(XI) Before me Raphael
(XII) Behind me Gabriel
(XIII) On my right hand Michael
(XIV) On my left hand Auriel
(XV) For about me flames the Pentagram,
(XVI) and in the Column stands the six-rayed Star

Repeat (I) to (V), the Qabalistic Cross

Those who regard this ritual as a mere device to invoke or banish spirits, are unworthy to possess it. Properly understood, it is the Medicine of Metals and the Stone of the Wise.

2. This ritual was given to Neophytes of the Order of the Golden Dawn.
3. The moon, as before, signifies Aspiration to the Highest.
4. For the "Flaming Sword" is the "Pentagram unwound".
5. The arms being extended, and the magus being clad in a Taw-shaped robe and a nemmes,
    his figure would cast a shadow resembling the Ankh, or "Key of Life."
6. Khabs am Pekht, Konx om Pax, Light in Extension. The magus's words which seal the
   current of light in the sphere of the aspirant.
7. Cf. Omar Khayyam the Sufi.
8. Binah, the revealer of the Triad of Light.
9. Ruach Elohim (See Genesis I) adds up to 300 = = Fire.
10. by shape hath a triple tongue.
11. These archangels are at points on the "Tree of Life" which cause them to surround
   as described one who is 'crucified' thereon.
12. Raphael dwells in Tiphereth, Beauty.
13. Gabriel, dweller in Yesod, where are the Kerubim.
14. Michael, lord of Hod, an Emanation of a watery nature.
15. Auriel, Archangel of Netzach, to which Fire is attributed.
16. The path of , or Saturn and Earth, which leads from Malkuth to Yesod indeed,
   but is dark & illusion. This first step upward attracts the bitterest opposition
   of all the Enemies of the Human Soul.
17. As asserted in the ritual.
18. It flames both above & beneath the magus, who is thus in a cube of 4 pentagrams
   and 2 hexagrams 32 points in all. And 32 is , the sacred word that
    expresses the Unity of the Highest and the Human.
19. As in ritual.
20. Supreme affirmation of Unity with the Highest in the Lotus, the universal
    symbol of Attainment.

Ltr 12/7/47 F.Harris to Frederic Mellinger:

Ltr 1/2/48 F.Harris to K.Germer.

Ltr 1/19/48 K.Germer to F.Harris.

Notes:
1. Crowley's natural son by P.McAlpine, Aleister Ataturk McAlpine.
2. Probably the book in question is Crowley's last, Olla, but others were in preparation.
3. This was the "Aleister Crowley Publication Fund", collected from the donations of members
   of Agape Lodge in California and supplemented by the Germers.
4. SIC, should be Noel.
5. Crowley's natural son by P.McAlpine.
6. Crowley.
7. Germer had written some rather anxious letters in an effort to keep Gerald Yorke at a distance
   from the Estate proceedings.
8. Symonds had apparently not taken a very active part in the Estate at this point, Wilkinson mainly
   acting at first in the role of literary executor. Later Symonds took custody of Crowley's
   papers for shipment to Germer, and Germer wrote in protest of delay while Symonds wrote
   his Biography.
9. See this column in the TLC for May, 1992 e.v. for more on this point.
10. Re-printed with corrections in OTO Newsletter #7-8, May 1979 e.v. as "The Last Ritual".
11. Mostly the members of Agape Lodge in California, but there were other OTO members on
   the East Coast of the USA at the time.
12. This painting for "The Last Ritual" was subsequently published in 1969 e.v. by Louis Culling
   in his The Complete Magick Curriculum of the Secret Order GBG. Typically, he
   printed it up-side down!
13. Agape Lodge members for the most part.
14. It took about a quarter century, until the 1970s. Even then the quality wasn't good enough
   until the late 1980s.

from the Grady Project:

Previously published in The Grady Project #2 (December 1987 e.v.).

PARAPHRASED POINT AT ISSUE: Does the following citation show that Crowley held Thelema not be a Religion:

Call it a new religion, then, if it so please your Gracious Majesty; but I confess that I fail to see what you will have gained by so doing, and I feel bound to add that you might easily cause a great deal of misunderstanding, and work a rather stupid kind of mischief.
The word does not occur in The Book of the Law.
                         -- Magick Without Tears, Letter #31

1) ... Crowley's correspondent for the letters in Magick Without Tears, is allowed by Crowley to call it (Thelema) a new religion, but he fails to see the advantage for her doing so.

2) The word "religion" does not occur in The Book of the Law.

    Taking the simpler first, it is true that the word "religion" does not occur in Liber AL, but that doesn't stop Crowley from using it in his commentaries on Liber AL in several instances, as I will show below. On the first point: calling Thelema a "new religion" is not the same thing as simply calling it a "religion". A question thrown against the merits of calling a thing "new" does not stick of necessity to the thing apart from newness.

    In the context of the greater part of this MWT letter Crowley discusses the definition of "religion", issuing a trial definition of: "A religion then, is a more or less coherent and consistent set of beliefs, with precepts and prohibitions therefrom deducible." Crowley goes on to say that he often ( not always) uses the word "religion" in the sense of Frazer in opposition to "science" or "Magic." Crowley then develops for a bit the idea of influenceable deities or similar beasties in contrast to his ideas of "Laws of Nature" both for Science and Magick. He concludes this preamble with the paragraph just before our citation:

To sum up, our system is a religion just so far as a religion means an enthusiastic putting-together of a series of doctrines, no one of which must in any way clash with Science or Magick.

    Now, this is not enough to decide what Crowley thought of the matter one way or another. More of a body and weight of evidence is necessary. Even in the face of a direct denial of the qualifier "religion" to "Thelema", which denial is not here, the weight of other references by Crowley would have to be taken into account. Following are selected citations from Crowley's Opus on the point. It will be seen that Crowley uses different implied definitions of "religion" at different times, but the body of the text leads to a common conclusion that Crowley freely considered Thelema to be a religion in general; A A and O.T.O. to be particular religions in practice. Here are a few of Crowley's expressed views, among very many to the point:

COMMENTARIES TO LIBER AL-major points:

To AL I,63:
    I wish here to emphasise that the Law of Thelema definitely enjoins us, as a necessary act of religion, to "drink sweet wines and wines that foam". Any free man or woman who resides in any community where this is verboten has a choice between two duties: insurrection and emigration.

To AL III,19:
    But that apart, the proof of any discarnate intelligence, even of the lowest order, has never before been established. And lack of that proof is the flaw in all the religions of the past; man could not be certain of the existence of "God", because though he knew many powers independent of muscle, he knew of no consciousness independent of nerve.

To AL III,22:
    Our religion therefore, for the People, is the Cult of the Sun, who is our particular star of the Body of Nuit, from whom, in the strictest scientific sense, come this earth, a chilled spark of Him, and all our Light and Life.

To AL I,52:
    Therefore, the Love that is Law is no less Love in the petty personal sense; for Love that makes two One is the engine whereby even the final Two, Self and Not-Self, may become One, in the mystic marriage of the Bride, the Soul, with Him appointed from eternity to espouse her; yea, even the Most High, God All-in-All, the Truth.
    Therefore we hold Love holy, our heart's religion, our mind's science.

To AL I,56:
    All religions have some truth.
    We possess all intellectual truth, and some, not all, mystic truth.

To AL I,63:
    All those acts which excite the divine in man are proper to the Rite of Invocation.
    Religion, as understood by the vile Puritan, is the very opposite of all this. He - it - seems to wish to kill his - its - soul by forbidding every expression of it, and every practice which might awaken it to expression. To hell with this Verbotenism!

It is possible to base a religion, not on theory and results, but on practice and methods.

...
    The history of mankind teems with religious teachers. These may be divided into three classes.
    1. Such men as Moses and Mohammed state simply that they have received a direct communication from God. They buttress their authority by divers methods, chiefly threats and promises guaranteed by thaumaturgy; they resent the criticism of reason.
    2. Such men as Blake and Boehme claimed to have entered into direct communication with discarnate intelligence which may be considered as personal, creative, omnipotent, unique, identical with themselves or otherwise. Its authority depends on "the interior certainty" of the seer.
    3. Such teachers as Lao-Tzu, the Buddha and the highest Gnana-yogis announce that they have attained to superior wisdom, understanding, knowledge and power, but make no pretence of imposing their views on mankind. They remain essentially sceptics. They base their precepts on their own personal experience, saying, in effect, that they have found that the performance of certain acts and the abstention from others created conditions favourable to the attainment of the state which has emancipated them. The wiser they are, the less dogmatic. Such men indeed formulate their transcendental conception of the cosmos more or less clearly; they may explain evil as illusion, etc., but the heart of their theory is that the problem of sorrow has been wrongly stated, owing to the superficial or incomplete data presented by normal human experience through the senses, and that it is possible for men, by virtue of some special training (from Asana to Ceremonial Magick), to develop in themselves a faculty superior to reason and immune from intellectual criticism, by the exercise of which the original problem of suffering is satisfactorily solved.
    "The Book of the Law" claims to comply with the conditions necessary to satisfy all three types of inquirer.
    Firstly, it claims to be a document not only verbally, but literally inspired. "Change not as much as the style of a letter; for behold! thou, o prophet, shalt not behold all these mysteries hidden therein. ... This book shall be translated into all tongues: but always with the original in the writing of the Beast; for in the chance shape of the letters and their position to one another: in these are mysteries that no Beast shall divine. Let him not seek to try: but one cometh after him, whence I say not, who shall discover the Key of it all."
    The author claims to be a messenger of the Lord of the Universe and therefore to speak with absolute authority.
    Secondly, it claims to be the statement of transcendental truth, and to have overcome the difficulty of expressing such truth in human language by what really amounts to the invention of a new method of communicating thought, not merely a new language, but a new type of language; a literal and numerical cipher involving the Greek and Hebrew Cabbalas, the highest mathematics etc. It also claims to be the utterance of an illuminated mind co-extensive with the ultimate ideas of which the universe is composed.
    Thirdly, it claims to offer a method by which men may arrive independently at the direct consciousness of the truth of the contents of the Book; enter into communication directly on their own initiative and responsibility with the type of intelligence which informs it, and solve all their personal religious problems.
    Generally, "The Book of the Law" claims to answer all possible religious problems. One is struck by the fact that so many of them are stated and settled separately in so short a space.
...
    The existence of true religion presupposes that of some discarnate intelligence, whether we call him God or anything else. And this is exactly what no religion had ever proved scientifically. And this is what "The Book of the Law" does prove by internal evidence, altogether independent of any statement of mine.

There is, therefore, no reason for refraining from the plain statement that, to anyone who understands the rudiments of symbolism, the Master's degree is identical with the Mass. This is in fact the real reason for papal anathema; for freemasonry asserts that every man is himself the living, slain and re-arisen Christ in his own person.
    It is true that not one mason in ten thousand in England is aware of this fact; but he has only to remember his "raising" to realize the fundamental truth of the statement.

I claim for my system that it satisfies all possible requirements of true freemasonry. It offers a rational basis for universal brotherhood and for universal religion.

12. The Order of Thelemites is categorically opposed to:
    (a) All superstitious religions, as obstacles to the establishment of scientific religion; ...

    What is the curse upon religion that its tenets must always be associated with every kind of extravagance and falsehood?
    There is one exception; it is the AA, whose members are extremely careful to make no statement at all that cannot be verified in the usual manner; or where this is not easy, at least avoid anything like a dogmatic statement.

... I agree with practically every word reported of the Yogi Jesus, and nearly every word of the Essene. True, I reject Salvationism, and the Jewish element of prophecies fulfilled, and the praise of the Law of Moses; but trust humbly that any deficiency in these respects may be more than made up by superfluity in another. For not only do I hold the cult of John Barleycorn to be the only true religion, but have established his worship anew; in the last three years branches of my organisation have sprung up all over the world to celebrate the ancient rite. So mote it be.

    In the West religion alone has never issued from chaos; and the hour, late though it be, has struck when without fear or trembling adepts have arisen to do for Faith what Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton did for what is vulgarly known as "Science."