42

DUST DEVILS

In the Wind of the mind arises the turbulence called I.

It breaks; down shower the barren thoughts.

All life is choked.

This desert is the Abyss wherein is the Universe. The Stars are but thistles in that waste.

Yet this desert is but one spot accursèd in a world of bliss.

Now and again Travellers cross the desert; they come from the Great Sea, and to the Great Sea they go.

As they go they spill water; one day they will irrigate the desert, till it flower.

See! five footprints of a Camel! V. V. V. V. V.

COMMENTARY (ΜΒ)

This number 42 is the Great Number of the Curse. See Liber 418, Liber 500, and the essay on the Qabalah in the Temple of Solomon the King. This number is said to be all hotch-potch and accursed.

The chapter should be read most carefully in connection with the 10th Aethyr. It is to that dramatic experience that it refers.

The mind is called "wind", because of its nature; as has been frequently explained, the ideas and words are identical.

In this free-flowing, centerless material arises an eddy; a spiral close-coiled upon itself.

The theory of the formation of the Ego is that of the Hindus, whose Ahamkara is itself a function of the mind, whose ego it creates. This Ego is entirely divine.

Zoroaster describes God as having the head of the Hawk, and a spiral force. It will be difficult to understand this chapter without some experience in the transvaluation of values, which occurs throughout the whole of this book, in nearly every other sentence. Transvaluation of values is only the moral aspect of the method of contradiction.

The word "turbulence" is applied to the Ego to suggest the French "tourbillon", whirlwind, the false Ego or dust-devil.

True life, the life which has no consciousness of "I", is said to be choked by this false ego, or rather by the thoughts which its explosions produce. In paragraph 4 this is expanded to a macrocosmic plane.

The Masters of the Temple are no introduced; they are inhabitants, not of this desert; their abode is not this universe.

They come from the Great Sea, Binah, the City of the Pyramids. V. V. V. V. V. is indicated as one of these travellers; He is described as a camel, not because of the connotation of the french form of this word, but because "camel" is Hebrew Gimel, and Gimel is the path leading from Tiphareth to Kether, uniting Microprosopus and Macroprosopus, i.e. performing the Great Work.

The card Gimel in the Tarot is the High Priestess, the Lady of Initiation; one might even say, the Holy Guardian Angel.