Lib120

This is a Thelemic ceremonial magic ritual text, Ritual CXX ("Of Passing through the Tuat"), attributed to Aleister Crowley and drawn from his personal diary materials, accompanied by an editorial introduction that situates it within the organizational structure of the Order of Thelemites — a three-grade initiatory order (Zelator, Adeptus, Magister) running parallel to Crowley's Argentum Astrum system. The editorial introduction addresses specific textual problems, notably ambiguities in directional attributions for the four elemental quarters across Crowley's various ritual systems, and explains the ritual's function as the opening, closing, and Zelator initiation rite (Schedule A) within the Order. The ritual itself is built almost entirely from ancient Egyptian funerary symbolism: invocations of Ra-Hoor-Khuit, Nuit, Hadit, and the Ogdoad, with extended quotations from Crowley's own *Liber AL vel Legis* (the Adorations from the Stele of Revealing) and passages closely adapted from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The Zelator initiation rite, "Passing through the Tuat," is a physically intense death-and-rebirth drama in which the candidate fasts, is wrapped as a mummy with mouth and nostrils stopped, placed in a coffin in a darkened temple, and progressively unwrapped by an officer reciting funerary texts — making the initiatory ordeal literal rather than merely symbolic. Anyone interested in Crowley's lesser-known organizational work outside the O.T.O., or in how Egyptian funerary religion was adapted into twentieth-century Western esotericism, will find this a concrete primary source.

Lib120

Related pages View as graph →