Liber CLXXXV - Collegi Sanctii - Uncharted Knowledge

This is a formal instructional and initiatory document — specifically *Liber CLXXXV (Liber Collegii Sancti)* — from the A∴A∴ (Astrum Argenteum), the Western esoteric magical order founded by Aleister Crowley in the early 20th century within the broader Hermetic and Thelemic tradition. The text sets out the graded structure of the order by detailing the specific tasks, study requirements, oaths, timelines, and behavioral obligations for successive initiatory grades: Probationer, Neophyte, Zelator, and Practicus (with higher grades implied). Each grade requires a minimum period of work (ranging from eight months to a year), memorization of specific sacred texts (such as Liber LXV, Liber VII, and Liber CCXX), mastery of practices including posture, breathing, ritual magic, divination, and "Spirit Vision," and the swearing of a formal oath whose language shifts grade by grade from "obtaining knowledge of the nature and powers of my own being" toward "obtaining control" of progressively deeper foundations of selfhood. A distinctive feature is the document's insistence that initiates openly proclaim their membership — explicitly rejecting secrecy as "the enemy of Truth" — while simultaneously warning that once a certain threshold is crossed, there is no return to ordinary life, only progress toward "the City of the Pyramids or the lonely towers of the Abyss." Anyone considering this text should know it is a primary-source organizational charter, not commentary or history, and reads as a dense procedural rulebook whose full meaning presupposes familiarity with Thelemic cosmology and the order's wider corpus of instructional texts.

Liber CLXXXV - Collegi Sanctii

Related pages View as graph →