#ordo templi orientis
TWO rituals devised by Crowley involve the use of blood. They are the Mass of the Phoenix and a certain secret rite of the Gnosis taught in the Sovereign Sanctuary of the O.T.O. The Mass of the Phoenix has been published as Liber XLIV, both in the Book of Lies and in Magick. The number 44 is the Hebrew word DM (Dam), which means “blood”. It signifies the red source of creation from which man (i.e. A-dam) was created; ChVL, the phoenix, also adds up to 44. The other blood-rite has not been published.
In the Mass of the Phoenix, the magician gashes his breast and absorbs his blood orally; in the rite of the Gnosis he unites himself with the source of the manifestation of the’ Form (i.e. the yoni), and consumes the wafer soaked in blood. The act is thus a sacrament, imbued with the magical current of his own energy expressed in terms of Will; it is an electro-chemical formula. Blood is the great materializing agent, both for spirits that would incarnate in this world (or on this plane) and for spirits which, remaining in another world, wish to assume a shape in order to impress their presence upon human beings. Homer, and other writers of antiquity, have described magical rites involving the use of blood that manifested theshades of the departed to visible appearance. Blood also forms the physical basis for the materialization of elemental and daemonic forces.
The theory underlying Blood Rites is based on the biblical identity of Blood and Life (Gen. 9. iv.). The feminine seminal source is equated with the masculine energ (prana, ruach, Spirit). Hence blood is the vehicle of Spirit, and the means of mani festing spirits.
The dual components, male and female, refer to the soul of darkness and the soul of light, the spirits of Set and Horus respectively-these, again, are Hoor-paar-Kraat and Ra-Hoor Khuit, the dual polarities of Heru- Ra-Ha (Horus), through which the balance of the Cosmos is sustained. In moral terms this duality expresses itself as good and evil. In the symbolism of the Gnostics, the serpent and the dove are the typical glyphs of this polarity, and in The Book of the Law it says:
“There is the dove, and there is the serpent. Choose ye well! He, my prophet, hath chosen, knowing the law of the fortress, and the great mystery of the House of God.” The entire body of Crowley’s doctrine is a comment upon the balanced interplay of these two forces: the downward demon pull, the upward angel.
Confusion of symbolism has arisen because of the transition from feminine to masculine interpretations of Primal Energy. This was caused by the gradual evolution of ideas and the shifting of emphasis from one to the other, which has already been explained at some length. Similar transitions of symbols into their opposites are well known in connection with the Christianization of pagan deities; the process is markedly appar ent in the Voodoo Mysteries, where the “saints” retain their original dark powers along with their newly acquired virtues.
The twin forces in Crowley’s system are Ra-Hoor-Khuit (Herakhty) and Hoor-paar-Kraat (Harpocrates), the two aspects of Heru-Ra-Ha (Horus). Their significance as spiritual entities can be understood only with reference to the basic mysteries of physiology upon which they ultimately rest.
Applied to man, these twins embody the idea of the soul and the spirit. The soul is theastral shade, the stellar light in darkness represented by Set and Sirius; the spirit is the solar body of light, represented by the sun. One is of the night, the other of the day.
The Egyptian determinative of the human double was the sunshade, which combined these two ideas in one image. It was called the khaibit, and it survives in the English word habit, as something repeated or doubled, something put on or off as occasion demands. Every individual assumes and relinquishes this habit, or shade, each time he sleeps and awakens. During sleep, the light and dark aspects of the shade are unified and appear to be identical; unless the sleeper is an initiate, in which case he is conscious of the distinction. In death-which is a longer sleep- the two become discrete, the dark shade hovering over the corpse, the body of light finally breaking away from its twin and soaring aloft like a golden hawk.
Kennet Grant
The Magical Revival
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