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Crowley, Aleister - Book of Lies - The Vigil of St Hubert
Identifier
000701
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Aleister Crowley devised a set of techniques that were designed to slowly and inexorably wear down the will and ego by acts that serve to defeat it. His approach was based on both attrition and humility, but Crowley’s attrition was remarkably kind, far kinder than many of the approaches that come under this term.
Loads of symbols again - a game - you find them. He meant it as a game too - cram as many symbols in as you can keeping it only moderately comprehensible.
Crowley suggests a small number of ways in which the ego can be subdued including that of avoiding the use of the words ‘I’ and ‘me’ in conversation, but I have to say that on the whole this area is perhaps less developed in his method than the others and he has relatively few suggestions on how you do this. What you need to do is emphasised a lot in his books, but how you do it is not always explained.
But one clear way was making love - complete subjugation to your partner.
A description of the experience
Aleister Crowley – Book of Lies
THE VIGIL OF ST. HUBERT
In the forest God met the Stag-beetle.
"Hold! Worship me!" quoth God. "For I am All-Great, All-Good, All-Wise . . . . The stars are but sparks from the forges of My smiths. . . ."
“Yea verily and Amen," said the Stag-beetle, "all this do I believe, and that devoutly."
“Then why do you not worship Me?"
‘Because I am real and you are only imaginary."
But the leaves of the forest rustled with the laughter of the wind
Said Wind and Wood ‘They neither of them know anything!’
Aleister Crowley – Book of Lies
St, Hubert appears to have been a saint who saw a stag of a mystical or sacred nature
The Stag-beetle must not be identified with the one in Chapter 16. It is a merely literary touch.
The chapter is a resolution of the universe into Tetragrammaton; God the macrocosm and the microcosm beetle. Both imagine themselves to exist; both say "you" and "I", and discuss their relative reality.
The things which really exist, the things which have no Ego, and, speak only in the third person, regard these as ignorant, on account of their assumption of Knowledge.