Response to the article “ON THE FILL/KILL CORRECTION (3)”

7/28/2019 Response to the article “ON THE FILL/KILL CORRECTION (3)”

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Response to the article “ON THE FILL/KILL CORRECTION (3)”

I have restrained myself to the crucial points of the case. Although HB’s mention of matters such as

newly discovered Crowley Scions and the invention of the modern hot-tub was interesting, they’re not

crucial to the debate. I have also restricted myself from commenting on the discussion made by HB over

the Crowley/Aiwass reception mythos, since a HGA is for life, not just for 3 days in Cairo. ;-)

Logic and the Consecrated by long use argument.

The fatal flaw in the argument HB is advancing, is one of basic logic. He makes the assumption that

either the “fill me” OR the “kill me” must be an error, when the more logical position that is backed by

the “consecrated by long use” argument is that both the “fill me” AND the “kill me” versions are correct

in the texts they are published in.

The preservation of textual errors & the encrypted text of Liber AL vel Legis.

Frater HB has cited 4 instances where textual problems are preserved by Crowley – namely the non

Class A texts of the Gnostic Mass, the essay Berashith, and the booklet ‘The Sword of the Song’ and

‘Collected Works’ . He attempts by this to show that Crowley was capable of showing disdain for the

work of proofreading, and we won’t argue with that. However, the cited works are not works that

contain encryption, as Liber AL does. An error in these other works is a trivial thing and easily corrected.

However – an error in an encrypted text can throw the entire construction of a cipher off causing the

irreparable loss of any concealed content. Therefore, the thing to note about encrypted texts is that

they are constructed from the outset with exacting attention to detail. They have to be checked andrechecked by the author during the process of their creation. We can be supremely confident that,

unlike the works cited by Frater HB where a spelling error makes no difference to the text (other than to

cause some annoyance to fussy readers), that Liber AL vel Legis was carefully considered with the

utmost respect and attention given to the preservation of its interlocking ciphers.

Proofreading such an encrypted text requires that any would be editor of the text has intimate

knowledge of the encrypted content and the mechanisms of the ciphers construction. It is a black mark

against the scholarship of Fater HB that he has given absolutely no weight or consideration to the fact

that Liber AL vel Legis is an encrypted text, as claimed by Aeister Crowley. Indeed, in his lengthy

justifications for changing the book, HB has completely ignored the fact that Liber AL vel Legis is not asimple ‘open text’. He has failed to address the simple fact of the matter, that Liber AL vel Legis is a

Class A that should not be changed as to do so may cause the loss of the encrypted content. I therefore

contend that unless HB can show that he has knowledge of every single cipher in the book, then he is

not qualified with the requisite scholarship to make changes to the text without destroying the

encrypted content.



Crowley asserts that Liber Al vel Legis is an encrypted text in several works. In ‘Notes for an Astral Atlas’

(http://hermetic.com/crowley/book-4/app3.html) he writes in reference to Liber AL and Aiwass of:

“(b) His power to conceal a coherent system of numbers and letters in the text of a rapidly -

written document, containing riddles and ciphers opening to a Master-Key unknown to the

scribe, yet linked with his own system; this Key and its subordinates being moreover a comment on the text.”

And further in that work comments:

…to bind the whole into a compact cryptograph displaying mastery of English, of mathematical

and philosophical conceptions, of poetic splendour and intense passion, while concealing in the

letters and words a complex cipher involving the knowledge of facts never till than existing in

any human mind, and depending on the control of the arm of the scribe, though He thought He

was writing consciously from dictation; and to weave into a single pattern so many threads of

proof of different orders that every type of mind, so it be but open and just, may be sure of the

existence of AIWAZ as a being independent of body, conscious and individual, with a mind

mightier than man's, and a power beyond man's set in motion by will.

And in chapter 7 of the Equinox of the Gods he also explicitly discussed cryptography in connection with

Liber AL vel Legis:

I may admit a Qabalistic or cryptographic secondary meaning when such confirms, amplifies,

deepens, intensifies, or clarifes the obvious common-sense significance…

A problem is explicitly declared to exist; in all such cases I shall seek for a meaning hidden by

means of Qabalistic correspondences, cryptography, or literary subtleties.

III, 73. The ambiguity of the instruction warrants the supposition that the words must somehow

contain a cryptographic formula…

For example, the first proposition is proved by the cryptography connected with 31, 93, 418,

666,[pi], etc

(b) of an harmony of letters and numbers subtle, delicate and exact, and (c) of Keys to all life's

mysteries, both pertinent to occult science and otherwise, and to all the Locks of Thought; the

concealment of these three galaxies of glory, I say, in a cipher simple and luminous , but yet

illegible for over Fourteen years, and translated even then not by me, but by my mysterious Child

according to the Foreknowledge written in the Book itself, in terms so complex that the exact

fulfilment of the conditions of His birth, which occurred with incredible precision, seemed beyond

all possibility , a cipher involving higher mathematics, and a knowledge of the Hebrew, Greek

and Arabic Qabalahs as well as the True Lost Word of the Freemason , is yet veiled within the

casual silk-stuff of ordinary English words, nay, even in the apparently accidental circumstance

of the characters of the haste-harried scrawl of My pen.

Many such cases of double entendre, paranomasia in one language or another, sometimes two

at once, numerical-literal puzzles, and even (on one occasion) an illuminating connexion of

http://hermetic.com/crowley/book-4/app3.html






letters in various lines by a slashing scratch, will be found in the Qabalistic section of the

Commentary.

I, a master of English, was made to take down in three hours, from dictation, sixty-five 8" x I0"

pages of words not only strange, but often displeasing to me in themselves; concealing in cipher

propositions unknown to me, majestic and profound; foretelling events public and private

beyond my control, or that of any man.

I should not have tolerated the discords, jarred and jagged, of manner, as when a sublime

panegyric of Death is followed first by a cipher and then by a prophecy, before, without taking

breath, the author leaps to the utmost magnificence of thought both mystical and practical, in

language so concise, simple, and lyrical as to bemuse our very amazement. I should not have

spelt "Ay" "Aye," or acquiesced in the horror "abstruction."

And finally, in the Book of Thoth, (pg.87) Crowley writes that:

… the letters Aleph Lamed constitute the secret key of the Book of the Law, and this is the basis

of a complete qabalistic system of greater depth and sublimity than any other. The details of thissystem have not yet been revealed. It has been thought right, nevertheless, to hint at its

existence by equating the designs of these two cards.

Clearly Crowley thought the ciphered and encrypted content to be of the utmost importance to him,

and he sought to protect it by deeming Liber AL vel Legis to be a Class A work that may not be changed,

nor criticize by even the visible outer head of the OTO. Frater HB has no special exemption that

removes him from this highly specific injunction against changing the Book of the Law.

The Windram ‘K’.

What may appear to be an error in the eyes of Frater HB as he is proofreading, may infact be intentional

and part of the encrypted content. Several commentators find it highly significant that there are 220

instances of the letter ‘K’ in Liber CCXX (before HB’s edit), and there are 61 instances of the letter ‘K’ in

chapter I. The most probable reason for Crowley’s preservation of the “fill me” in Liber CCXX is to

preserve the instances of the ‘K’ in the text to exactly 220.

If there is an error to be seen at all when it comes to this case, then I suggest it is more likely that the

error is the ‘K’ in the margins of Windram’s copy of Thelema. In a complex work such as Liber AL which

contains many interlocking ciphers and codes, it must have been extremely difficult for Crowley to keep

track of them all. The most likely explanation is that he briefly forgot why Liber AL vel Legis contained

“fill me” instead of the “kill me” that he had developed a certain preference for in 1912 onwards. I

suggest that after he made the notational ‘K’ in the margin, Crowley later recalled the matter of the 220

‘K’s. Having satisfied himself on this point, he deliberately chose not to change the ‘Fill me’ to ‘Kill me’

in the next 3 printings of the work.



Bartzabel & the 1912 paraphrase of the Stele.

Regarding the ‘fill me’ in the Evocation of Barzabel, HB writes:

“I think it possible that, when writing “Bartzabel” in May 1910, Crowley had simply forgotten

that his Stèle Paraphrase had originally read “kill me,” and working fast, copied out the wording

in Thelema with slight variants, or was writing from memory of his readings in Thelema. The MS.

of “Bartzabel” does have a white heat quality about the writing.”

There are two problems here. The first is that we do not know that his Stele Paraphrase originally read

“kill me”. The earliest copy we have of the Stele paraphrase is f rom 1912, so this is an assumption being

stated as a fact.

The second problem is that in the scanned copies he has provided of the handwritten MS of Bartzabel,

then we find that Crowley proofed the work and made corrections to it in a heavier pen, so we would

expect Crowley to have made corrections to the ‘fill me’ if it had been a typo, yet he did not.

Thirdly, as HB notes himself, there are variations that are more common to the later 1912 version of the

Stele paraphrase than they are to Thelema. Some commentators have suggested that Bartzabel (1910)

represents an intermediate phase between the version published in CCXX and the 1912 version of the

paragraph is the Stele, suggesting that the 1912 version was transcribed from Bartzabel , and not from

the original Stele paraphrase. The evidence for this reading of events is compelling, given that both

Bartzabel and the 1912 Stele have the same spelling of the name Ankh-f-n-knonsu, while it can be

unambiguously shown that the typist in Cairo (1904) was reading “Ankh-af-na-knonsu” from the vellum

book. This is very strong evidence that the original paragraph of the Stele as written in the vellum book

was originally “fill me”.

However, while HB notes about the spelling of the name change that “This was probably due to Crowley

editing the Egyptian transliteration for his own poem, and possibly writing from memory” he does not

make the next obvious logical assumption that the ‘kill me’ version on the 1912 paraphrase of the Stele,

just like the spelling change to the name in both Bartzabel and the 1912 paraphrase, is one of those

editing decisions Crowley made about his own poem. No explanation has ever been given as yet by HB

for why he assumes the original paraphrase of the Stele said “kill me” and not “fill me” as is found in

Liber 31, 220 & Bartzabel. The ‘two typo theory’ now openly espoused by HB fails when put to the test

of Occam’s razor.

As for the case HB tries to make in the Appendix, he bases his argument on the logical ‘OR’ statement

positing that there must only one correct version of the paraphrase of the Stele for every work that itappeared in print, so either ‘fill me’ or ‘kill me’ must be incorrect. However - this is not representative

of the arguments put forward by most commentators that support the position that ‘fill me’ is correct

for Liber CCXX. The ‘fill me’ favourers have almost universally adopted a logical ‘AND’ statement and are

quite happy to accept both ‘fill me’ and ‘kill me’ versions of the Stele paraphrase in the requisite texts

they appear in.



Alrah .’. 93 93/93. 2nd

June 2013.

Response to the article “ON THE FILL/KILL CORRECTION (3)”

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