11

THE GLOW-WORM

Concerning the Holy Three-in-Naught.

Nuit, Hadit, Ra-Hoor-Khuit, are only to be understood by the Master of the Temple.

They are above The Abyss, and contain all contradiction in themselves.

Below them is a seeming duality of Chaos and Babalon; these are called Father and Mother, but it is not so. They are called Brother and Sister, but it is not so. They are called Husband and Wife, but it is not so.

The reflection of All is Pan: the Night of Pan is the Annihilation of the All.

Cast down through The Abyss is the Light, the Rosy Cross, the rapture of Union that destroys, that is The Way. The Rosy Cross is the Ambassador of Pan.

How infinite is the distance from This to That! Yet All is Here and Now. Nor is there any There or Then; for all that is, what is it but a manifestation, that is a part, that is a falsehood, of THAT which is not?

Yet THAT which is not neither is nor is not That which is!

Identity is perfect; therefore the Law of Identity is but a lie. For there is no subject, and there is no predicate; nor is there the contradictory of either of these things.

Holy, Holy, Holy are these Truths that I utter, knowing them to be but falsehoods, broken mirrors, troubled waters; hide me. O our Lady, in Thy Womb! for I may not endure the rapture.

In this utterance of falsehood upon falsehood, whose contradictories are also false, it seems as if That which I uttered not were true.

Blessed, unutterably blessed, is this last of the illusions; let me play the man, and thrust it from me! Amen.

COMMENTARY (ΙΑ)

"The Glow-Worm" may perhaps be translated as "a little light in the darkness", though there may be a subtle reference to the nature of that light.

Eleven is the great number of Magick, and this chapter indicates a supreme magical method; but it is really called eleven, because of Liber Legis, I, 60.

The first part of the chapter describes the universe in its highest sense, down to Tiphareth; it is the new and perfect cosmogony of Liber Legis.

Chaos and Babalon are Chokmah and Binah, but they are really one; the essential unity of the supernal Triad is here insisted upon.

Pan is a generic name, including this whole system of its manifested side. Those which are above the Abyss are therefore said to live in the Night of Pan; they are only reached by annihilation of the All.

Thus, the Master of the Temple lives in the Night of Pan.

Now, below the Abyss, the manifested part of the Master of the Temple, also reaches Samadhi, as the way of Annihilation.
Paragraph 7 begins by a reflection produced by the preceding exposition. This reflection is immediately contradicted, the author being a Master of the Temple. He thereupon enters into his Samadhi, and he piles contradiction upon contradiction, and thus a higher degree of rapture, with every sentence, until his armoury is exhausted, and, with the word Amen, he enters the supreme state.