The
Vision and the Voice
Liber CDXVIII
Being the Visions of the Angels
Of the 30 Aethyrs
By
Aleister Crowley
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Facsimile edition with extensive introduction
presented complete in 6 volumes
Available in four limited editions
This edition limited to only 93 sets
6 volumes bound in full dark sapphire leather
and housed in a silk slipcase
Click the links for details of the other limited sets
25 sets in clamshell box at £777.00 each
156 quarter leather sets in slipcase at £220.00 each
333 cloth bound sets in slipcase at £156.00 each
‘The Method of Science : the Aim of Religion’ – Aleister Crowley
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The Vision and the Voice is one of the world’s most significant religious, mystical and occult documents, it displays in fine literary form the terrifying beauty of true mysticism whilst revealing the practical secrets of the magical path of summoning the hidden powers of the Universe and of crossing the Abyss of existence.
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For the first time in human history a great mind launched itself upon uncharted realms of the spiritual world, known as the 30 Aethyrs, and recorded in detail the method and results, ultimately crossing the vast Abyss that lies between the universe as we know it and the terrible Void of non-being.
The 30 Aethyrs are a series of mysterious realms inhabited by angelic and other beings, these can be entered by the use of technical ‘Calls’ or keys revealed by angelic messengers to the famous Dr.John Dee over 400 years ago, and which are recorded in an extraordinary language and alphabet known as ‘Enochian’ – the original historical manuscripts are in the British Museum.
The 30 Aethyrs are thus a previously uncharted territory of the soul of humanity and mind of man expressed in visions, and it is a complete series of these visions, as well as the practical instructions to obtaining them, which the original notebooks contain.
The Great Seal of Truth: revealed to Dr John Dee by the
angelic messengers of the Enochian realms
This makes ‘The Vision and The Voice’ by Aleister Crowley one of the most significant documents in the entire literature of religion, mysticism and occultism since the dawn of recorded history.
Here for the first time we present the complete original notebooks which Aleister Crowley used to document his dangerous spiritual experiments from Mexico in 1900 to Bou Saada in the Algerian desert in 1909.
The Oasis at Bou Saada by Maxime Noire 1909
Each set contains exact facsimiles of the original handwritten notebooks extending from 1900 – 1909 with a fully accurate transcription, with over 250 pages of detailed introduction with practical instruction and extensive history of the methods Crowley employed, the circumstances surrounding his experiments and the original texts from which he drew.
Aleister Crowley kept these notebooks from the late 1890’s through to the end of the experiments in 1909 where he journeyed back from Algeria and published some of the material in his periodical ‘The Equinox’, the complete handwritten notebooks remained with him until the end of his life in 1947 and have never been published in this complete form before.
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The publication of these notebooks is thus a great event in the literature of religious thought, psychology of mystical experience and the practise of occultism, equal to the revelation of such important texts as the ‘Secret of the Golden Flower’ and Carl Jungs ‘The Red Book’.
The volumes begin at number ‘0’ and from there run through I, II, III, IV, V with the first volume ‘zero’ containing all the introductory and supplementary material with full bibliography:
Volume 0 : Introduction, bibliography &c. 302 pages
Volume I : facsimile and transcription of the notebooks containing the 30th – 19th Aethyrs, 290 pages
Volume II: facsimile and transcription of the notebooks containing the 18th – 13th Aethyrs, 150 pages
Volume III: facsimile and transcription of the notebooks containing the 12th – 9th Aethyrs, 132 pages
Volume IV: facsimile and transcription of the notebooks containing the 8th – 5th Aethyrs, 176 pages
Volume V: facsimile and transcription of the notebooks containing the 4th – 1st Aethyrs, 208 pages
- Volume V also contains “A Comment upon the Natures of the Aethyrs”, never before published, a ground-breaking contemporary summary by Crowley about his experiences and its relation to the system of the A.`.A.`.
- In clear and concise language, Crowley describes the procession of the aspirant through the A.`.A.`., culminating in the mystical marriage “even with Babalon Herself.”
Aleister Crowley was a Cambridge educated scholar, a student of philosophy and religion, a mystic, a poet, a mountaineer, experimental occultist, practitioner of yoga, novelist, social innovator and an original thinker in the fields of psychology, mathematics, symbolism and modern art.
His personal impact on the development of individual freedom of thought and expression in the modern period is enormous, his influence on the field of personal religion and its impact on the mind of man is equally vast and still in the process of being studied and understood by students of modern culture.
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Crowley’s achievements are many but his daring and detailed experiments in the un-mapped areas of the human mind are one of his most enduring legacies.
Taking what must be regarded as the most hidden road to the secrets of the universe, the 30 Aethyrs, Aleister Crowley vividly describes both the mythic energies and powers at work there such as the goddess Babalon, and does battle with its greatest terror: the force of chaos and psychological destruction itself: that great and mighty demon CHORONZON.
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The high point of Aleister Crowley’s many years of experiment was in fact an epic struggle with a force that lay deep within his own psyche and which was mirrored in those terrible forces of nature which manifest to humanity as the powers of evil.
In this battle Crowley transcended his ego and crossed the Abyss to attain the mystical grade of ‘Master of the Temple’, a state of enlightenment described by many as one of the highest possible.
Crowley placed his soul and sanity in the balance, he won the battle and came back from the desert with an experience equal to that of any mystic in history, yet he added to it the tools to give mankind its own path to perfection. Within the pages of ‘The Vision and the Voice’ we find recorded every instance of detail necessary to duplicate for ourselves the most extraordinary experiences.
A page from the notebook on the 30th Aethyr
Aleister Crowleys pencil notes on magickal correspondences at the end of the first notebook. The complete notebooks give a detailed picture of his thinking and techniques at the time of these experiments.
Historical background
John Dee and the revelation of the Enochian angels
The secret writings of John Dee (1527 – 1608) were discovered by Sir Robert Cotton in the hidden compartment of an old chest at his home in Mortlake, published by Meric Casaubon as ‘The True and Faithful Relation of what passed between Dr Dee & some spirits’ in 1659
Dees influence as religious reformer, mathematician, navigator, astrologer and sorcerer were considered equal in his day, but it is as a magician that we now remember him.
Doctor John Dee
Dees primary contact with the angelic hierarchies commenced in 1581 with the assistance of one Barnabas Saul and later the more famous Edward Kelly
Throughout a series of experiments using a crystal ball, Dee was given a book called LOAGAETH which was written in an unknown language and alphabet.
The alphabet of the Angels
From this strange ‘book’ called Logoaeth, were later derived a long series of messages by the use of a crystal, in what is known as Enochian, which are referred to as the ‘Calls’ or keys of the Aethers, a series of dimensions which interpenetrate the known universe.
On some occasions the angelic figures appeared within the crystal and at other times were seen by the clairvoyants in the physical world.
Dees crystal sat upon the wax disc called ‘sigillum aemeth’ (Seal of Truth) , and this in turn sat upon a table having under its legs four further wax discs, the model for this renaissance ‘time machine’ was clearly the vision of the ‘wheels within wheels filled with seeing’ that is described in the vision of Ezekiel.
What Dee is effectively doing is to reconstruct the circumstance and dynamic of the experience of prophetic vision, joining the upper and lower worlds.
The Holy Seven-fold Table
The seven tables shown in the diagram are called the seven ‘Ensigns of Creation’. Dee was instructed to make these tables in tin , but in the end they were painted upon the Holy Table, as he was given leave to do.
The presentation of the seven ‘Ensigns’ is a rather complex affair but clearly relates to the six days of the Creation and quite probably to the alchemical search for the Philosophers’ Stone.
Dee and Kelley continued their magical operations throughout the early 1580s and Dee was kept busy noting down more and more information concerning spirits in the universe, particularly when the magical system took a turn in direction with the introduction of details of the thirty airs or ‘Aethyrs’, the hierarchy of spiritual planes which remained uncharted til Aleister Crowley undertook to explore them.
Aleister Crowley was first informed of the existence of these extraordinary or supernatural realms of the Enochian angels when, as a young man in 1898, he entered a secret society in London called the Golden Dawn.
From the Vault of the Adepts of the Golden Dawn
The Golden Dawn had amongst its members many remarkable people including the poet W.B.Yeats, the astronomer Brodie Innes and the Egyptologist M.W.Blackden.
The head of the Golden Dawn was one S.L.MacGregor Mathers, and it was to Mathers that Crowley was a devoted student. Rising in the grades of the society with great speed, Crowley soon came into contact with its Inner Order curriculum which included a version of Dr John Dees Enochian system, modified to suit its place in the orders teachings.
Crowley soon realised that the power of this angelic or Enochian system had remained untouched for centuries, and that the great adventure of exploring the 30 Aethyrs of the angelic universe had not yet been taken up.
Oscar Eckenstein 1859 – 1921
Crowley travelled to Mexico in 1900 principally to engage in a mountaineering expedition with his friend and mentor Oscar Eckenstein, but he also took with him his first Enochian Notebook with its all important series of occult instructions relating to the teachings of the Inner Order of the Golden Dawn which included material lent to him probably by the occultist Alan Bennett who later became influential in the Buddhist movement.
It was during this stay in Mexico that Crowley devoted himself entirely to studying the magical curriculum of of the Golden Dawns Inner Order in particular his newly acquired ‘Adeptus Minor’ degree.
Adeptus Minor Rose Cross of the Inner Order of the Golden Dawn
A strange interlude follows upon Crowleys Mexico adventures that relates to his Enochian Studies and to his involvements with the higher degrees of occult and masonic societies. Crowley was introduced to one Don Jesus de Medina with whom he founded the ‘Order of the Lamp of the Invisible Light’, an order whose purpose was to focus the planetary forces of nature into physical talismans surrounding an ever-burning lamp. Our introductory volume contains a reconstruction of Crowleys ‘LIL’ talismans and a discussion of their significance.
This new order, or temple of LIL as it was known was a brief interlude but strangely connected to the Enochian world revealing itself to Crowleys mind, as the first or lower ‘aethyr’ or level of the enochian multiverse was in fact named ‘LIL’
Why exactly did Crowley begin these Enochian operations in Mexico is unclear, but we know that from them descended the LIL temple and its talismans, examples of which are preserved in the Warburg library copy of Crowleys book the ‘Goetia’, the planetary nature of these conjurations later being put to great effect in his ‘Rites of Eleusis’ performed at Caxton Hall in 1910 with musical accompaniment by violinist Leila Waddell.
Aleister Crowley performing the Rites of Eleusis
Crowleys investigations into the 30 Aethyrs and the Enochian System in general were hampered partly by the complexity and unexplored nature of the material and partly by the manner in which the Golden Dawn papers presented it: a synthetic addition to an already successful magical blueprint of the Universe.
The condition in which Crowley inherited this arcane material and the extent to which he worked upon it to smooth out its inconsistencies may be seen from a page of one of his notebooks where the magical ‘correspondences’ (literally speaking the active connections between objects, planes of existence and the entities they may contain) are carefully compared:
Page of the notebook showing Enochian correspondences
As we see with the ‘LIL’ temple talismanic notion, one of the key tasks with any occult system is to effectively marry up the higher and lower worlds, providing a sound and coherent system or correspondences between the Enochian angelic worlds, its language and alphabet and the signs of the zodiac, the elements and finally the sixteen ‘geomantic’ or divinatory figures of earth.
Reconstruction of the LIL talisman of Jupiter
With the creation of the embryonic ‘Order of the Lamp of the Invisible Light’ (L.I.L.) was Crowley attempting to somehow fix or ‘earth’ the connection to the lower Aethyr also called ‘LIL’ ? We may never know, what we do know however is that the surviving seven talismans, once decoded, do add to our understanding of Crowley’s occult work at this crucial juncture, and it is significant that the Order of L.I.L. ended at about the same time that Crowley’s experiments with the Enochian Aethyrs were interrupted.
Aleister Crowley in the robes of his Order of A⸫ A⸫
It was not until the summer of 1909 that Crowley attempted to complete his explorations of the 30 Aethyrs. This time he was better armed, having already formed his own mystical and magickal Order of the A⸫ A⸫ a system designed to examine scientifically every aspect of religious discipline and experience from yoga to divination, meditation to ceremonial occultism.
Victor Neuburg 1883 – 1940
In November 1909 journeying to Algeria with his pupil and scribe Victor Neuburg Crowley began again the work of the Aethyrs, this time he would be able to overcome the metaphysical barriers that barred his passage years before and attain the visionary heights which eluded him in Mexico.
Neuburg recalls in ‘The Magical Dilemma of Victor Neuburg’ that no-one, not even Dee himself had attempted to scry or investigate the 30 Aethyrs or layers of the Angelic realm, he commented that he and Crowley ‘went to sea in a seive’ !
Between November and December 1909 trekking across the Algerian desert, Crowley and Neuburg invoked each Aethyr in turn, this was a physically and mentally gruelling experience culminating in one of the most dangerous magical feats ever attempted.
On 3rd December Crowley and Neuburg attempted the climb of Mount Dal’ el Addin, at this point in his spiritual career Crowley believed he had overcome a psychological dualism which divided the spiritual and material realms, convinced he had in fact attained the occult grade of ‘Master of the Temple’ he made a sacrament of a sexual union with Neuburg and descended the mountain.
It was on the 6th December that the test of this was laid at Crowleys and Neuburgs feet: the vision of the 10th Aethyr which lies across the Abyss, the power of universal chaos personified as the demon ‘Choronzon’.
It was in the act of defeating this demonic entity, this great barrier lying across the threshold of his enlightenment, that Aleister Crowley defeated the great illusion of duality, the existence of which separates man from god. The crossing of the Abyss is a metaphor that essentially correlates to Saint John of the Cross’ term “the dark night of the soul.” A similar metaphor is given in Buddhism where one has “crossed the stream” to the other side, from samsara to nirvana.
‘The Demon Crowley’
In the early afternoon of December 6th 1909, Crowley and Neuburg walked away from the town of Bou Saada where they had been staying and onto a valley of fine sand, they constructed a circle and triangle and fortified it with the blood of three pigeons Crowley had bought from Bou Saada for the purpose.
During the ceremony Crowley appeared to Neuburg in the form of a seductive woman, a blasphemous demon, an old man, a snake and finally the Demon Choronzon itself, Lord of Chaos.
Suffering numerous attacks, insults and physical assaults, Neuburg eventually controlled and quelled the spirit until it appeared in the form of Crowley himself. Thus the demon was mastered, the operation was at an end.
Crowleys mind fills the pages of ‘The Vision and the Voice’, his experience of the 30 Aethyrs was a battle with his own being, and ultimately with Being itself.
The work of the Visions continued until the 18th of December and on last day of December 1909 Crowley and Neuburg set sail for Southampton.
The text of ‘The Vision & the Voice’ was published by Crowley as part of his series ‘The Equinox’ and remains to this day one of the great expressions of experimental occultism.