I
n his memoirs Crowley claims that Mathers had used magick against him, citing the death of several of his hunting dogs and the madness of a household servant and in response he himself evoked the great fly spirit Beezlebub to dispatch his adversary. It is conjectured that this was what caused the final downfall of Mathers for after he had lost control of the Golden Dawn his fortunes had faded, and although he attempted to revive his magickal order in a new incarnation called the Alpha et Omega, he was never fully successful and he died in relative obscurity in 1918. Bennett had gone to live in Ceylon for health reasons and with the end of the Golden Dawn Crowley once again found himself at a loose end. He spent the first years of the Twentieth Century on various adventures from climbing mountains in Mexico and Kashmir, learning Yoga with his old friend Bennett in Kandy and living the life of a wealthy English Gentleman on the Continent. This period of Crowley's life came to an end in August 1903 when he married Rose Kelly who was to be the catalyst for the most important event and defining moment in her new husband's life.
22
AVALON Magazine
The Equinox of the Gods Crowley took his new bride on a honeymoon to the subcontinent, traveling via Paris and Marseilles and pausing in Cairo where the newlyweds spent a night in the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Crowley claims to have used the Preliminary Invocation from the Goetia to invoke the astral light sufficiently well to read by. After this the couple traveled on to Ceylon where Rose announced that she was pregnant and the couple decided to return to England, stopping for an extended stay in Cairo in rooms that Crowley had let for the season there. During this stay in the ancient city Crowley repeated the Invocation from the Goetia in an attempt to show his wife the Sylphs, the spirits of Air. Rose either refused or failed to see these entities and instead she 'got into a strange state of mind' and kept repeating, dreamily yet with intensity, "They are waiting for you". It transpired that the entities that Rose was referring to were the ancient Egyptian God Horus and his minister, the great Angel Aiwass. After further investigation Crowley, with the help of the previously un-magickal Rose, determined that he would perform a ceremony to invoke Horus during which he was instructed to enter his temple at noon on three consecutive days prepared to write what was dictated to him while he was there. In his book The Equinox of the Gods Crowley describes the experience that ensued: The three days were precisely similar, save that on the last day I became nervous lest I should fail to hear theVoic e of Aiwass.They may then be described together. I went into the “temple” a minute early, so as to shut the door and sit down on the stroke of Noon. On my table were my pen--a Swan Fountain--an d supplies of Quarto typewriting paper, 8” x I0”. I never look ed round in the room at any time.TheVoice of Aiwass came appa rently from over my left shoulder, from the furthest corner of the room. It seemed to echo itself in my physical heart in a very stran ge manner, hard to describe. I have noticed a similar phenomenon when I have been waiting for a message fraught with great hope or dread.The voice was passionately poured, as if Aiwass were alert about the time limit. I wrote 65 pages of this present essay (at about my usual rate of composition) in about I0 ½ hou rs as against the 3 hours of the 65 pages of the Book of the Law. I was pushed hard to keep the pace ; the MS. shows it clearly enou gh.”- The Equinox of the Gods
http://avalonmagazine-net.webs.com