THE DEAD RELIGION oF THE OLD AEON OF OSIRIS “Days of national Prayer.”
no. 1 There followed: the “colossal military disaster” to the B.E.F. [British Expeditionary Force; Dunkirk Retreat]
no. 2 There followed: the collapse of the French Armies and the treachery of the French Government.
no. 3 There followed: the Huns drove us and our allies from Cyrenaica and Greece, and overran Jugoslavia.
An Errata note inserted in the first publication reads:August 15. A fourth Day of national Prayer is announced for September 7. i trust that the publication of the Hymn on page nine and the invocation by the V sign of Apophis and Typhon may avert the calamities called upon us by this last borborygmus of the “clamorous rump” of the dead cult. 666.On Valentine’s Day 1941, Crowley thought about a “Magical ‘Union of Men’ to beat Nazis.” The V-sign would be their symbol, a magical symbol, a symbol that would evoke and invoke magical force, but accessible to all: “V [is] for Valentine [sexual love] and Victory” he wrote. By the year’s end, Crowley’s printed publica-tions would all bear the rubric: “Aleister Crowley, creator of the V-sign.” Idea of Magical “Union of Men” to beat Nazis. I need (a) symbol to bring victory. […] (b) a plan (Secret Lodges n[o].g[ood].) (c) a way to put it across. V for Valentine and Victory. V.V.V.V.V. 8˚=3˚ is rather hot, because of L.V.x. and the Sign of Apophis and Typhon and the Horns of g [Capri-corn] The Devil! See Lévi on Vintras. P.S.
Vis Vau וּ a nail: seal in H[itler]’s coffin. But 2=זּ a sword much better; and Z is N for Nazi knocked sideways! But Z isn’t much of an initial: Zeal about the only relevant word, and to English people the letter itself seems frilly. A א[Hebrew Aleph] is of course a Swastika!
Crowley’s train of thought here is not as difficult to follow as it may first appear. Crowley had two symbols in mind: an exoteric one (the ‘V’) and an esoteric one. The reference to “V.V.V.V.V.” refers to an initi-ated state of consciousness he had experi-enced as part of his spiritual development before World War One. The V’s were the first Latin letters of his (then) new motto, adopted when he became a “Master of the Temple” (or ‘8˚=3˚’ in the Golden Dawn system). “In my lifetime I have conquered
the universe by the force of truth.” The note of victory is there.
The ‘V’ in L.V.X. is again a Latin ‘U’. Lux is Latin for Light. The aim of Crowley’s magical training in his youth was that his being would be flooded with light, illumi-nation, divine spirit. ‘L.V.X’ in the Golden Dawn Order in which he first trained also referred to the ‘Light of the Cross’, since if the two lines of the ‘L’ and the ‘V’ are extended from the points of intersection they form crosses, and so L.V.X is also equated with I.N.R.I. (written on the cross of Je-sus) which the Bible interprets as ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews’, but which was also understood by alchemists as Igne Natura Renovatur Integra: ‘The whole of Nature is renewed by Fire’, among other things.
The heat of the Sun was understood in its burning aspect by the Egyptians as the sun-god Seth, whose Greek form was Typhon (the origin of our word ‘typhoon’). The sign made in Crowley’s first order for ‘Typhon’ was to hold two arms outstretched upwards – a ‘V’ sign, and the middle letter of L.V.X. So the ‘V’ represents also the vigour and force of Seth who has killed Osiris (according to the famous Egyptian myth). Osiris was symbolised over the chest in a cross-armed gesture, forming an ‘X’ or cross, while Isis, his mother, her weeping gesture was symbolised by the ‘L’. So L.V.X meant ‘L’ for birth (Isis), V for death (Seth or Ty-phon), and ‘X’ for rebirth (Osiris), the ancient, life-renewing life-formula.
‘V’ then, for Crowley, represented the new Aeon made possible by the death of Osiris (the old religious and magical formula). Its fulfilment required the cleansing of the world by spiritual fire (this had begun, Crowley claimed, in 1904). The fruit of the new formula would be, fulfilling the Egyp-tian myth, the divine Child Horus – crowned and conquer-ing solar deity, the Victorious, whose revelation had come to Crowley in 1904 in Egypt in the city Al Kahira, the City of Victory: Cairo.
Crowley then adds more weight to the V symbol. He sees it in the horns of the goat, Capricorn, who
is also an image for Typhon – lusty, bold, wild. The horned one is also the common idea of ‘The Devil’, who, for Crowley is an image of the life-force, of sex, at the core of our nature. Sex is not evil and the ‘Devil’ as Christians have been taught to fear ‘him’ does not exist. The horned one is Pan – Greek for ‘the All’ – the god of Nature. Man’s martial instincts, connected to the sex force – and before that, the True Will – would see off the repressive, anti-life, anti-love force (Crowley opined that the original Christian spiritual impulse had been perverted beyond simple repair). What was good in it, Crowley be-lieved, was part of the Thelema inheritance: the same went for the other major religions. In point of fact, what he called ‘Thelema’ had existed for millennia, but it was obscured.
Crowley’s note, “See Lévi on Vintras” refers to the French “Professor of Transcendental Magic,” Eliphas Lévi who once recorded a visit from a disciple of the crepuscular occultist Eugène Vintras (1807-1875). The account appears in Lévi’s Key of the Mysteries (which Crowley translated; Rider, 1977, p.113). The visitor spoke to Lévi of Vintras’s making of “miraculous hosts.” These peculiar eucharistic hosts had symbols on them which appeared as blood. One had the pentagram, the magical symbol for man (head and four limbs) but which superstition said was a symbol of a fatal evil when inverted with the two points up. Crowley’s footnote asked how the pentagrams could have been ‘invert-ed’ if the hosts were round! Another of Vintras’s hosts bore the image of “two hermetic serpents. But the heads and tails, instead of coming together in two similar semicircles, were turned outwards, and there was no intermediate line repre-senting the caduceus. Above the head of the serpents, one saw the fatal V, the Typhonian fork, the character of hell. […] The meaning of the character was then this: Antago-nism is eternal.” This was all grist to Crowley’s symbolic mill. The ‘V’ meant implacable opposition.
Crowley then wondered if a Hebrew letter might also serve as a worthy symbol. He toys first with the Hebrew letter Vau וּ which means a hook or pin. Crowley extends the idea to a nail: a nail in Hitler’s coffin. But then thinks of the Hebrew letter zayin זּ which means ‘a sword’. The sword divides, chiming in with the idea of Lévi’s ‘eternal antagonism’, symbol of the unresolved ‘2’. That is, there will be no peace with Hitler; he, and the state of mind he repre-sents, must be destroyed utterly. Crowley then noted that the English equivalent of zayin was the letter ‘Z’ – and a Z is an ‘N’ or ‘Nazi’ knocked sideways! Nice idea, but he didn’t think it would work. Finally, he considered the Hebrew letter Aleph אwhich means an ‘ox’. You would get the horns and the stubbornness of the undefeated, but, alas, its basic form is the same as a Swastika; one would not wish the world of magic to give the Nazis any more ideas!
The V’s ‘had it’. It would be ‘V for Victory’.
The summer of 1941 saw the British V-campaign get go-ing. Crowley felt he was getting his message through:But my time is coming! It is sure to leak out sooner or later that I invented the “V”campaign. I have been won-dering whether you had spotted it. Of course, I never expected it to take the form it has actually done – it was out of my hands after the first strike, and the B.B.C themselves don’t know – at least I hope not, or there will be trouble for somebody!7
On 11 August 1941, the day Thumbs Up! appeared, Crowley wrote to his friend Edward Noel Fitzgerald: Thanks to Lord Haw Haw [Irishman William Joyce; pro-Nazi radio propagandist], it is now generally known that I invented this campaign. He has pointed out, quite justly, that I have persuaded some 100’s of millions of people to worship the Devil! […] Of course I am denying strenuously that I ever had anything to do about it, as the bloke who slipped it over on the idiots of the BBC would get into the most hellish trouble if it were ever found out that he knows me. All the same, it will help my subtle intrigues if you pass the word along that I did it! I have something else in my capacious sleeve that needs to be prepared.8
With the V-campaign such a success, Crowley wondered whether to publish a pamphlet outlining its deeper meaning – that V represented the Victory of Man in the new Aeon. Crowley hoped to use the publicity to encourage the forces that would make a true, as opposed to a temporary, victory for mankind after the inevitable Victory Day. The victors of the War would be the free Man and free Woman, revived by free-flowing sexual and spiritual energy, bathing the planet in a new, morally cleansing light and a fresh innocence expressed in love, boundless energy, and unbridled scientific curiosity.
To imagine that Crowley would be content to leave a legacy of witchcraft, new ageism or a reputation as ‘the founder of modern occultism’ would be to underestimate both his intelligence and his seriousness. His canvas was considerably greater in scope.
Crowley’s elaborate preparations for a V-sign illustrated pamphlet never materialised. He was probably warned off the project by a close contact in the Foreign Office as being too dangerous in propaganda terms. What if the Nazis could claim Britain was reliant on (black?) magic to win the war?
In Crowley’s remarkable book The World’s Tragedy (privately printed in Paris in 1910) he hadwritten:I hope one day to be able to leave the English hypocrites to their own beastliness, and live in my own world. Until I am wanted; in the hour of battle. He wasn’t really wanted. Crowley’s spiritual revolution is still too much, especially when encountered directly, for most people. And yet, even a casual reflection on the events that continue to rock the world might give one to thinking that a New Aeon is indeed emerging and, in some places, has emerged already.
Footnotes
1. Letter from 140 Piccadilly, W1, Aleister Crowley to Louis Umfraville Wilkinson (1881-1966), 1 August 1942; D9, Yorke Col-lection.
2. Memorandum, Royal Court Diaries, 1941, NS22, Y.C.
3. Helios – Or the Future beyond Science, in the hand of Leah Hirsig, 4 June 1924, 3P.M. Au Cadran Bleu, Chelles, France. OS 11, Y.C.
4. 25 May 1938; EE2, Y.C.
5. NS 22 Royal Court Diaries 1941, Y.C.
6. NS22 Royal Court Diaries, Y.C; 14 February 1941.
7. EE2, Y.C. Letter to friend Gerald Hamilton.
8. Folder 117, Y.C.
9. NS. 117. Y.C.
TOBIAS CHuRTON is a writer, composer, film-maker and world author-ity on Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry. An Honorary Fellow of Exeter University, faculty lecturer in Western Eso-tericism, Tobias holds a Masters degree in Theology from Brasenose College, Oxford. His new book Aleister Crowley: The Biography – Spiritual Revolutionary, Romantic Explorer, Occult Master – and Spy was recently published by Watkins Publishing (see review of this book on page 77). His website is www.tobiaschurton.com.
no. 2 There followed: the collapse of the French Armies and the treachery of the French Government.
no. 3 There followed: the Huns drove us and our allies from Cyrenaica and Greece, and overran Jugoslavia.
An Errata note inserted in the first publication reads:August 15. A fourth Day of national Prayer is announced for September 7. i trust that the publication of the Hymn on page nine and the invocation by the V sign of Apophis and Typhon may avert the calamities called upon us by this last borborygmus of the “clamorous rump” of the dead cult. 666.On Valentine’s Day 1941, Crowley thought about a “Magical ‘Union of Men’ to beat Nazis.” The V-sign would be their symbol, a magical symbol, a symbol that would evoke and invoke magical force, but accessible to all: “V [is] for Valentine [sexual love] and Victory” he wrote. By the year’s end, Crowley’s printed publica-tions would all bear the rubric: “Aleister Crowley, creator of the V-sign.” Idea of Magical “Union of Men” to beat Nazis. I need (a) symbol to bring victory. […] (b) a plan (Secret Lodges n[o].g[ood].) (c) a way to put it across. V for Valentine and Victory. V.V.V.V.V. 8˚=3˚ is rather hot, because of L.V.x. and the Sign of Apophis and Typhon and the Horns of g [Capri-corn] The Devil! See Lévi on Vintras. P.S.
Vis Vau וּ a nail: seal in H[itler]’s coffin. But 2=זּ a sword much better; and Z is N for Nazi knocked sideways! But Z isn’t much of an initial: Zeal about the only relevant word, and to English people the letter itself seems frilly. A א[Hebrew Aleph] is of course a Swastika!
Crowley’s train of thought here is not as difficult to follow as it may first appear. Crowley had two symbols in mind: an exoteric one (the ‘V’) and an esoteric one. The reference to “V.V.V.V.V.” refers to an initi-ated state of consciousness he had experi-enced as part of his spiritual development before World War One. The V’s were the first Latin letters of his (then) new motto, adopted when he became a “Master of the Temple” (or ‘8˚=3˚’ in the Golden Dawn system). “In my lifetime I have conquered
the universe by the force of truth.” The note of victory is there.
The ‘V’ in L.V.X. is again a Latin ‘U’. Lux is Latin for Light. The aim of Crowley’s magical training in his youth was that his being would be flooded with light, illumi-nation, divine spirit. ‘L.V.X’ in the Golden Dawn Order in which he first trained also referred to the ‘Light of the Cross’, since if the two lines of the ‘L’ and the ‘V’ are extended from the points of intersection they form crosses, and so L.V.X is also equated with I.N.R.I. (written on the cross of Je-sus) which the Bible interprets as ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews’, but which was also understood by alchemists as Igne Natura Renovatur Integra: ‘The whole of Nature is renewed by Fire’, among other things.
The heat of the Sun was understood in its burning aspect by the Egyptians as the sun-god Seth, whose Greek form was Typhon (the origin of our word ‘typhoon’). The sign made in Crowley’s first order for ‘Typhon’ was to hold two arms outstretched upwards – a ‘V’ sign, and the middle letter of L.V.X. So the ‘V’ represents also the vigour and force of Seth who has killed Osiris (according to the famous Egyptian myth). Osiris was symbolised over the chest in a cross-armed gesture, forming an ‘X’ or cross, while Isis, his mother, her weeping gesture was symbolised by the ‘L’. So L.V.X meant ‘L’ for birth (Isis), V for death (Seth or Ty-phon), and ‘X’ for rebirth (Osiris), the ancient, life-renewing life-formula.
‘V’ then, for Crowley, represented the new Aeon made possible by the death of Osiris (the old religious and magical formula). Its fulfilment required the cleansing of the world by spiritual fire (this had begun, Crowley claimed, in 1904). The fruit of the new formula would be, fulfilling the Egyp-tian myth, the divine Child Horus – crowned and conquer-ing solar deity, the Victorious, whose revelation had come to Crowley in 1904 in Egypt in the city Al Kahira, the City of Victory: Cairo.
Crowley then adds more weight to the V symbol. He sees it in the horns of the goat, Capricorn, who
is also an image for Typhon – lusty, bold, wild. The horned one is also the common idea of ‘The Devil’, who, for Crowley is an image of the life-force, of sex, at the core of our nature. Sex is not evil and the ‘Devil’ as Christians have been taught to fear ‘him’ does not exist. The horned one is Pan – Greek for ‘the All’ – the god of Nature. Man’s martial instincts, connected to the sex force – and before that, the True Will – would see off the repressive, anti-life, anti-love force (Crowley opined that the original Christian spiritual impulse had been perverted beyond simple repair). What was good in it, Crowley be-lieved, was part of the Thelema inheritance: the same went for the other major religions. In point of fact, what he called ‘Thelema’ had existed for millennia, but it was obscured.
Crowley’s note, “See Lévi on Vintras” refers to the French “Professor of Transcendental Magic,” Eliphas Lévi who once recorded a visit from a disciple of the crepuscular occultist Eugène Vintras (1807-1875). The account appears in Lévi’s Key of the Mysteries (which Crowley translated; Rider, 1977, p.113). The visitor spoke to Lévi of Vintras’s making of “miraculous hosts.” These peculiar eucharistic hosts had symbols on them which appeared as blood. One had the pentagram, the magical symbol for man (head and four limbs) but which superstition said was a symbol of a fatal evil when inverted with the two points up. Crowley’s footnote asked how the pentagrams could have been ‘invert-ed’ if the hosts were round! Another of Vintras’s hosts bore the image of “two hermetic serpents. But the heads and tails, instead of coming together in two similar semicircles, were turned outwards, and there was no intermediate line repre-senting the caduceus. Above the head of the serpents, one saw the fatal V, the Typhonian fork, the character of hell. […] The meaning of the character was then this: Antago-nism is eternal.” This was all grist to Crowley’s symbolic mill. The ‘V’ meant implacable opposition.
Crowley then wondered if a Hebrew letter might also serve as a worthy symbol. He toys first with the Hebrew letter Vau וּ which means a hook or pin. Crowley extends the idea to a nail: a nail in Hitler’s coffin. But then thinks of the Hebrew letter zayin זּ which means ‘a sword’. The sword divides, chiming in with the idea of Lévi’s ‘eternal antagonism’, symbol of the unresolved ‘2’. That is, there will be no peace with Hitler; he, and the state of mind he repre-sents, must be destroyed utterly. Crowley then noted that the English equivalent of zayin was the letter ‘Z’ – and a Z is an ‘N’ or ‘Nazi’ knocked sideways! Nice idea, but he didn’t think it would work. Finally, he considered the Hebrew letter Aleph אwhich means an ‘ox’. You would get the horns and the stubbornness of the undefeated, but, alas, its basic form is the same as a Swastika; one would not wish the world of magic to give the Nazis any more ideas!
The V’s ‘had it’. It would be ‘V for Victory’.
The summer of 1941 saw the British V-campaign get go-ing. Crowley felt he was getting his message through:But my time is coming! It is sure to leak out sooner or later that I invented the “V”campaign. I have been won-dering whether you had spotted it. Of course, I never expected it to take the form it has actually done – it was out of my hands after the first strike, and the B.B.C themselves don’t know – at least I hope not, or there will be trouble for somebody!7
On 11 August 1941, the day Thumbs Up! appeared, Crowley wrote to his friend Edward Noel Fitzgerald: Thanks to Lord Haw Haw [Irishman William Joyce; pro-Nazi radio propagandist], it is now generally known that I invented this campaign. He has pointed out, quite justly, that I have persuaded some 100’s of millions of people to worship the Devil! […] Of course I am denying strenuously that I ever had anything to do about it, as the bloke who slipped it over on the idiots of the BBC would get into the most hellish trouble if it were ever found out that he knows me. All the same, it will help my subtle intrigues if you pass the word along that I did it! I have something else in my capacious sleeve that needs to be prepared.8
With the V-campaign such a success, Crowley wondered whether to publish a pamphlet outlining its deeper meaning – that V represented the Victory of Man in the new Aeon. Crowley hoped to use the publicity to encourage the forces that would make a true, as opposed to a temporary, victory for mankind after the inevitable Victory Day. The victors of the War would be the free Man and free Woman, revived by free-flowing sexual and spiritual energy, bathing the planet in a new, morally cleansing light and a fresh innocence expressed in love, boundless energy, and unbridled scientific curiosity.
To imagine that Crowley would be content to leave a legacy of witchcraft, new ageism or a reputation as ‘the founder of modern occultism’ would be to underestimate both his intelligence and his seriousness. His canvas was considerably greater in scope.
Crowley’s elaborate preparations for a V-sign illustrated pamphlet never materialised. He was probably warned off the project by a close contact in the Foreign Office as being too dangerous in propaganda terms. What if the Nazis could claim Britain was reliant on (black?) magic to win the war?
In Crowley’s remarkable book The World’s Tragedy (privately printed in Paris in 1910) he hadwritten:I hope one day to be able to leave the English hypocrites to their own beastliness, and live in my own world. Until I am wanted; in the hour of battle. He wasn’t really wanted. Crowley’s spiritual revolution is still too much, especially when encountered directly, for most people. And yet, even a casual reflection on the events that continue to rock the world might give one to thinking that a New Aeon is indeed emerging and, in some places, has emerged already.
Footnotes
1. Letter from 140 Piccadilly, W1, Aleister Crowley to Louis Umfraville Wilkinson (1881-1966), 1 August 1942; D9, Yorke Col-lection.
2. Memorandum, Royal Court Diaries, 1941, NS22, Y.C.
3. Helios – Or the Future beyond Science, in the hand of Leah Hirsig, 4 June 1924, 3P.M. Au Cadran Bleu, Chelles, France. OS 11, Y.C.
4. 25 May 1938; EE2, Y.C.
5. NS 22 Royal Court Diaries 1941, Y.C.
6. NS22 Royal Court Diaries, Y.C; 14 February 1941.
7. EE2, Y.C. Letter to friend Gerald Hamilton.
8. Folder 117, Y.C.
9. NS. 117. Y.C.
TOBIAS CHuRTON is a writer, composer, film-maker and world author-ity on Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry. An Honorary Fellow of Exeter University, faculty lecturer in Western Eso-tericism, Tobias holds a Masters degree in Theology from Brasenose College, Oxford. His new book Aleister Crowley: The Biography – Spiritual Revolutionary, Romantic Explorer, Occult Master – and Spy was recently published by Watkins Publishing (see review of this book on page 77). His website is www.tobiaschurton.com.
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