777 REVISED 777 first published London and Felling-on-Tyne, The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd., 1909. Reprinted with much additional matter, London: The Neptune Press, 1955 This electronic text issued by Celephaïs Press from somewhere beyond the Tanarian Hills, and manifested in the waking world in Leeds, Yorkshire, England 2003 E.V. Release 0.996: 19.05.2008 Further proofing may be needed. Please report errors to [email protected] citing revision number (c) Ordo Templi Orientis JAF Box 7666 New York NY 10116 U.S.A. 777 REVISED VEL PROLEGOMENA SYMBOLICA AD SYSTEMAM SCEPTICO-MYSTICÆ VIÆ EXPLICANDÆ, FVNDAMENTVM HIEROGLYPHICVM SANCTISSI- MORVM SCIENTIÆ SVMMÆ \yyj \yhla jwr tja A REPRINT OF 777 WITH MUCH ADDITIONAL MATTER BY THE LATE ALEISTER CROWLEY Celephaïs Press Ulthar - Sarkomand - Inquanok – Leeds 2008 LIBER DCCLXXVII.—Vel Prolegomena Symbolica Ad Systemam Sceptico-Mysticæ Viæ Explicandæ, Fundamentum Hieroglyphicum Sanctissimorum Scientæ Summæ. A tentative table of correspon- dences between various religious symbols. “A Syllabus of the Official Instructions of A∴A∴,” Equinox I (10). LIBER DCCLXXVII. A COMPLETE DICTIONARY OF THE CORRE- SPONDENCES OF ALL MAGICAL ELEMENTS, re-printed with extensive additions, making it the only standard comprehensive book of reference ever published. It is to the language of Occultism what Webster or Murray is to the English language. “Præmonstrance of A∴A∴,” Equinox III (1). CONTENTS * EDITORIAL PREFACE (to 777 Revised) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi INTRODUCTION (from the first edition) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix THE TREE OF LIFE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvi TABLES OF CORRESPONDENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 TABLE I: The whole scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 TABLE II: The Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 TABLE III: The Planets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 TABLE IV: The Sephiroth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 TABLE V: The Zodiac . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 TABLE VI: The Paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 * VARIOUS ARRANGEMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 NOTES TO TABLES OF CORRESPONDENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 APPENDIX: THE YI KING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 * EXPLANATIONS OF THE ATTRIBUTIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 * THE NATURE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MAGICAL ALPHABET 124 * BRIEF MEANINGS OF THE PRIMES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 * WHAT IS QABALAH? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 * WHAT IS A “NUMBER” OR “SYMBOL”? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 [Items marked with an asterisk represent material added in 777 Revised] EDITORIAL PREFACE* 777 is a qabalistic dictionary of ceremonial magic, oriental mysticism, comparative religion, and symbology. It is also a handbook for ceremonial invocation and for checking the validity of dreams and visions. It is indispendisble to those who wish to correlate these apparently diverse studies. It was published privately by Aleister Crowley in 1909, has long been out of print and is now practically unprocurable. Crowley, who had a phenomenal memory, wrote it at Bournemouth in a week without reference books—or so he claimed in an unpublished section of his “Confessions.”† It is not, however, entirely original. Ninety per cent of the Hebrew, the four colour scales, and the order and attribution of the Tarot trumps are as taught in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn with its inner circle of the Rose of Ruby and the Cross of Gold (R.R. et A.C.) This Order is still in existence, though it has changed its name and is dormant, for it no longer accepts probationers.‡ It was the * [This preface appeared in the 1955 first edition of 777 Revised and is believed to be by Gerald Yorke (Frater V.I.) who edited the revised edition. — T.S.] † [Published in a slightly abridged form as The Confessions of Aleister Crowley edited by John Symonds and Kenneth Grant, London, Jonathan Cape, 1969; reprinted Harmandsworth, Penguin Arkana, 1989. The passage cited appears at the end of chapter 59 of this edition (p. 533). — T.S.] ‡ [Yorke may be alluding to the Alpha et Omega, which was the name adopted by that part of the G.D. which remained loyal to Mathers shortly after the schism of 1900 e.v. It went into dormancy after the G.D. rituals and Knowledge Lectures were published in 1937-40 by F.I. Regardie, an expelled former member of the Stella Matutina (the other main group to emerge from the split). A number of groups claiming to be or claiming derivation from the Golden Dawn are now in existence, some recruiting more or less openly (one even trademarking the name and emblems of the order). I will not here comment on such claims. — T.S.] vi EDITORIAL PREFACE vii fountain head from which Crowley and W.B. Yeats drank in their twenties. In this school they learned the traditional Western symbolism which coloured so much of their poetry and their thought. In it they were taught ceremonial magic, how to skry, and the technique for exploring the subtler realms of the mind on the so-called “astral plane.” Crowley, however, was not content with the traditional qabalistic teaching of this Western Hermetic Order with its stress on magic and demonology. He travelled eastwards, becoming a fair Arabic scholar and studying the Mahommedan secret tradition under a qualified teacher in Cairo. Going on to India he learned the elements of Shaivite Yoga at the feet of Sri Para- nanda, who was Solicitor-General of Ceylon before he became a sadhu. In Southern India he studied Vedanta and Raja Yoga with “the Mahatma Jnana Guru Yogi Sabhapaty Swami.” He was thus qualified to equate the Hindu and Qabalistic systems. Allan Bennett, his friend and teacher in the Golden Dawn, had become the Burmese Buddhist bhikkhu Ananda Metteya. Crowley studied under him both in Ceylon and Burmah, and so was able to add the Hinayana * Buddhist columns to 777. Although he walked eastwards into China he never found a qualified teacher of Taoism or the Yi King. His attributions of the trigrams to the Tree of Life and his explanation of the hexagrams in Appendix I to 777 were based on Legge’s translation. Crowley was 32 when he wrote 777. Later as his knowledge and experience widened he became increasingly dissatisfied with it. He planned an enlarged edition which would correct a few errors, incorporate much new material, and bring the whole into line with The Book of the Law. He worked on this in the nineteen twenties, but never completed it. What he did finish is published here—most of it for the first time. The task of editing has been * [More normally known as Therevada. Hinayana (“lesser path”) is an abusive epiphet used by followers of the “Mahayana” school for those who do not accept their elaborations and admixtures. — T.S.] viii 777 REVISED restricted for the most part to the omission of incomplete notes. The new material, which is marked with an asterisk in the Table of Contents, consists of an essay on the magical alphabet, a short note on Qabalah and a new theory on number. Then the more important columns in Table I are explained. These explanations include a few corrections and a number of important additions to the original Table. Those who wish to work with these Tables should extract the additions from the text, and add them to the appropriate lines of the column concerned.* Finally some new columns and “arrangements” have been included, partly from The Book of Thoth, and partly from holograph notes in Crowley’s own 777. The editor has assumed that Crowley intended to incorporate these in the new edition. For the few interested in Gematria the numerical values of the Greek and Arabic alphabets have been added.† Crowley never completed 777 Revised, but he left enough material to justify its posthumous publication. N∴ * [This has already been done in the re-set version of the Tables which follow. These additions are distinguished by being in double square brackets [[like this]]. Further, the additional columns from 777 Revised have been integrated into the main table. See my notes at the end for a more detailed discussion of this treatment. — T.S.] † [In the re-set Tables following, numeration of Coptic has also been added.] INTRODUCTION THE FOLLOWING is an attempt to systematise alike the data of mysticism and the results of comparative religion. The sceptic will applaud our labours, for that the very catholicity of the symbols denies them any objective validity, since, in so many contradictions, something must be false; while the mystic will rejoice equally that the self-same catholicity all- embracing proves that very validity, since after all something must be true. Fortunately we have learnt to combine these ideas, not in the mutual toleration of sub-contraries, but in the affirmation of contraries, that transcending of the laws of intellect which is madness in the ordinary man, genius in the Overman who hath arrived to strike off more fetters from our understanding. The savage who cannot conceive of the number six, the orthodox mathematician who cannot conceive of the fourth dimension, the philosopher who cannot conceive of the Absolute—all these are one; all must be impregnated with the Divine Essence of the Phallic Yod of Macroprosopus, and give birth to their idea. True (we may agree with Balzac), the Absolute recedes; we never grasp it; but in the travelling there is joy. Am I no better than a staphylococcus because my ideas still crowd in chains? But we digress. The last attempts to tabulate knowledge are the Kabbala Denudata of Knorr von Rosenroth (a work incomplete and, in some of its parts, prostituted to the service of dogmatic interpreta- tion), the lost symbolism of the Vault in which Christian Rosen- kreutz is said to have been buried, some of the work of Dr. Dee and Sir Edward Kelly, some very imperfect tables in Cornelius ix x 777 REVISED Agrippa, the “Art” of Raymond Lully, some of the very artificial effusions of the esoteric Theosophists, and of late years the knowledge of the Order Rosæ Rubeæ et Aureæ Crucis and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Unluckily, the leading spirit in these latter societies1* found that his prayer, “Give us this day our daily whisky, and just a wee drappie mair for luck!” was sternly answered, “When you have given us this day our daily Knowledge-lecture.” Under these circumstances Daath got mixed with Dewar, and Beelzebub with Buchanan. But even the best of these systems is excessively bulky; modern methods have enabled us to concentrate the substance of twenty thousand pages in two score. The best of the serious attempts to systematise the results of Comparative Religion is that made by Blavatsky. But though she had an immense genius for acquiring facts, she had none whatever for sorting and selecting the essentials. Grant Allen made a very slipshod experiment in this line; so have some of the polemical rationalists; but the only man worthy of our notice is Frazer of the Golden Bough. Here again, there is no tabulation;2 for us it is left to sacrifice literary charm, and even some accuracy, in order to bring out the one great point. This: That when a Japanese thinks of Hachiman, and a Boer of the Lord of Hosts, they are not two thoughts, but one. The cause of human sectarianism is not lack of sympathy in thought, but in speech; and this it is our not unambitious design to remedy. Every new sect aggravates the situation. Especially the Americans, grossly and crapulously ignorant as they are of the rudiments of human language, seize like mongrel curs upon the putrid bones of their decaying monkey-jabber, and gnaw and tear them with fierce growls and howls. * [Notes indicated by numbers—due to the present transcriber—are found at the end of this volume. — T.S.]