Dealing with the third chapter of the book of the law is difficult for most of us magic/mystic types. There is a visceral intensity to it that sits uncomfortably within us, if you’re anything like me. That might be understandable, and maybe even wise in times of peace. Yet, as events in my country and others undermine the stability of our societies, Ra-Hoor-Khuit’s rhetoric may become more relevant. Not necessarily to condone violence, but rather to empower us through even the most difficult times.
To get to how we should read the third chapter, we need to place it in the context of the other two. Nuit is the infinite expanse of openness that is all. Hadit is the blazing point of awareness that gives rise to our consciousness and the experience of reality. The central act of Thelemic mysticism is to dissolve the fixed perception of reality, or the consciousness of the self, into pure, open awareness. The Dissolution lays bare the reality of all existence as empty living luminosity, whose nature is synonymous with love.
Nuit declares that Ra-Hoor-Khuit has taken his “Seat in the East” and that he has established the law: Do What Thou Wilt. The Seat in the East, for any not in the know, is masonic/HotGD speech for being the Master of the Lodge/Hierophant. He has become the initiator, or primary deity in a new mystery tradition. The Law is essentially a declaration of Free Will, the power to choose for one’s self and act accordingly.
Hadit, who can be considered the Eye of Ra, establishes the notion of Thelema being a religion for the strong, joyous, and proud, calling those who are so called “Kings” or Lords of the Earth. It is in the third chapter that we begin to learn how to realize.
Abrahadabra! The Reward of The Crowned and Conquering Child
As with the preceding two, the mystic interpretation of this chapter, and the figure of Ra-Hoor-Khuit as a whole, is not primarily literal. So what is he then?
He is the Will. The power within us to act, to do, to be. There is no possibility of realization without him. He is the power of our minds to focus awareness, to overthrow the oppression and hopelessness of dualistic thinking. Just as the sun banishes the dark of night, so does Ra-Hoor-Khuit banish the darkness of our own reification. If Nu is En Sof, and Had the light thereof, then Ra-Hoor-Khuit is Adam Kadmon.
The path of the Thelemic Mystic is not one of extreme asceticism. We do not simply give in to the will of the world as passive witnesses, waiting just to die. We are warriors who live in the world and fight for our realization. We do not hide like monks or priests, but live in the world, seeing the sacred and profane as continuous. We face, head on, our own limitations. We confront the error of our habitual thinking and we work to correct it. We choose an island, one single point of focus, and fortify it! We hold it with all our might.
And Ra-Hoor-Khuit holds with us. He expands our arsenal of weapons at our disposal. He gives us vigor in our fatigue. He gives us, in a word, Magick. It’s the agency to choose, and the strength to follow that choice through.
Therefore, we are to strengthen ourselves with discipline and commitment. We are to push past our comfort zones when comfort becomes a cage. We are to fight with tooth and nail, beak and talon. The blood that flows is our own, the solid world of our minds left bleeding its life’s blood. As the world of our illusions dies, we drink its blood and flesh as something new. The wounds of appearance bleed the light of awareness, and the taste is literally divine.
The world of our thinking wants to make us small. Alone and insignificant in a dead, mechanical, unfeeling universe. Nuit has already told that this isn’t the case. That the ultimate reality is Love. Hadit’s presence within us makes it clear that the emptiness at the root of all is not a dead vacuum, but a scintillating expanse of pure divinity.
But for us to realize that for ourselves, we need something more. We need a Hero (or Heru,) something to give us an example, an inspiration that assures us that not only is liberation possible, but that anything is possible. That through the miracle of the Law, infinity itself is endlessly playing out countless possibilities right here, right now.
When it seems like hope is gone, like there is nothing we can do, Ra-Hoor-Khuit is there, ready to lend strength and power. Not to save us, like some kind of Messiah, but to enable us to save ourselves. To give us the vigor to fight on, even in the face of insurmountable enemies. We fight on.
Power like this comes with a responsibility, as any Spider-Man fan can tell you. As it is well said, mercy without strength is weakness. Strength without mercy is cruelty. The wild fire of the sun can burn us as easily as not, yet the key to wielding the fire isn’t to shy from it. We cannot flinch in fear. We must burn it off through trial, through ordeal. We must be refined, because that which can burn was always already fire. Like a flame in a coal, its end imbedded in its beginning.
This is the logic to his incense. The meal itself separated from the chaff, the holy oils which are identical to the alchemical sulfur. The honey is the rarified nectar of the sun itself. It’s the gold in the philosopher’s stone. The leavings of red wine are the alchemical mercury. Finally, in the fresh blood, is life itself.
Just as the sun sits at center of the planets, binding them to its power, so does Ra-Hoor-Khuit bring each and every one of us into his fold. To wield his power raises more power, the power of powers. To find him within is to know Omnipotence.
Therefore should we accumulate power, to fight as brothers! Side by side, arm in arm. Power linked to power, Bonded by the root of the Dissolution. By the force of this love are all obstacles overcome, from the grossest to the most subtle level. We teach and guide each other, learn from one another. In this way do we sharpen our spears and swords to ultimate fineness.
The Iconoclast
To unseat such an enormous weight as our own beliefs, we must be willing to cross the line. Our holiness is the orthodoxy’s heresy. Our freedom is their blasphemy. Our victory is their apocalypse.
In such transcendence we find not destructionor damnation, but love and life, light and liberty. For them, the shadows are the reality, and so they cling to their fear and death like a cornerstone. To shatter those foundations is our whole purpose. Our bliss, the fruit of our labors, is all the proof we need. We welcome the ones who seek as we do, but never do we permit the traitors to harm us.
Thus is the universe of illusions crushed, and naught remains.
Thus is the soul lifted from its confining structures, its girders.
The Babe in the Egg
The self-slain that stands on the cusp of becoming is the silent child. Wrapped in the womb of Nuit, alive with the light of Hadit. It was always there, and always will be, in the perfect equilibrium of the Void Places of Spirit.
As Ra-Hoor-Khuit is the guardian at the gates of the temple, so is Hoor-Paar-Kraat the stillness in the sanctum. There is no need for a guardian angel, no abyss to cross. The Hawk-headed Mystical Lord of Silence and Strength is with us always.
Aum. Ha.
The Void Places of Spirit 