Aiwass

Non physical entity in Thelema

Aiwass is the name given to a voice that the English occultist and ceremonial magician Aleister Crowley reported to have heard on April 8, 9, and 10 in 1904. Crowley reported that this voice, which he considered originated with a non corporeal being, dictated a text known as The Book of the Law or Liber AL vel Legis to him during his honeymoon in Cairo.

Crowley went to great pains to argue that Aiwass was an objectively separate being from himself, possessing far more knowledge than he or any other human could possibly have. He wrote "no forger could have prepared so complex a set of numerical and literal puzzles". As Crowley writes in his Confessions: "I was bound to admit that Aiwass had shown a knowledge of the Cabbala immeasurably superior to my own" and "We are forced to conclude that the author of The Book of the Law is an intelligence both alien and superior to myself, yet acquainted with my inmost secrets; and, most important point of all, that this intelligence is discarnate." Finally, this excerpt (also from Confessions, ch.49):

quote|1=The existence of true religion presupposes that of some discarnate intelligence, whether we call him God or anything else. And this is exactly what no religion had ever proved scientifically. And this is what The Book of the Law does prove by internal evidence, altogether independent of any statement of mine. This proof is evidently the most important step in science that could possibly be made: for it opens up an entirely new avenue to knowledge. The immense superiority of this particular intelligence, AIWASS, to any other with which mankind has yet been in conscious communication is shown not merely by the character of the book itself, but by the fact of his comprehending perfectly the nature of the proof necessary to demonstrate the fact of his own existence and the conditions of that existence. And, further, having provided the proof required. he goes on at length in comparison to various other deities and spiritual concepts, but most especially to The Fool. For example, he writes of Aiwass: "In his absolute innocence and ignorance he is The Fool; he is the Saviour, being the Son who shall trample on the crocodiles and tigers, and avenge his father Osiris. Thus we see him as the Great Fool of Celtic legend, the Pure Fool of Act I of Parsifal, and, generally speaking, the insane person whose words have always been taken for oracles." Perhaps more importantly, Crowley later identified Aiwass as his own personal Holy Guardian Angel and more. Again from the Equinox of the Gods: "I now incline to believe that Aiwass is not only the God once held holy in Sumer, and mine own Guardian Angel, but also a man as I am, insofar as He uses a human body to make His magical link with Mankind, whom He loves, and that He is thus an Ipsissimus, the Head of the A∴A∴". Yet even while eventually identifying Aiwass as his Holy Guardian Angel, Crowley still went to even greater lengths in his later years to insist that Aiwass was an objective entity apart from himself, even going as far as to declare in no uncertain terms that the Holy Guardian Angel is not only entirely objective, but is also not to be confused with the "Higher Self," as in his final work, Magick Without Tears: "The Holy Guardian Angel is not the 'Higher Self' but an Objective individual. . He is not, let me say with emphasis, a mere abstraction from yourself; and that is why I have insisted rather heavily that the term 'Higher Self' implies 'a damnable heresy and a dangerous delusion'. . If it were not so, there would be no point in The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage." In Magick in Theory and Practice, Aiwass is firmly identified by Crowley as "The Devil," "Satan," and "Lucifer," whose "emblem is Baphomet." This assertion is made while Crowley is discussing "The Devil." After explaining that "The Devil" does not exist, he goes on to clarify his statements by explaining that "The Devil" is in reality a label for the God of any people that one dislikes, and this fact has led to so much "confusion of thought" on the subject that Crowley prefers to

A number of authors have expressed the view that Aiwass was most likely an unconscious manifestation of Crowley's personality. Occultist Israel Regardie argued for this view in his Crowley biography, The Eye in the Triangle, and considered that The Book of the Law was a "colossal wish fulfillment" on Crowley's part. Regardie noted that in 1906 Crowley wrote: "It has struck me – in connection with reading Blake that Aiwass, etc. 'Force and Fire' is the very thing I lack. My 'conscience' is really an obstacle and a delusion, being a survival of heredity and education." Regardie argued that because Crowley felt that his Fundamentalist upbringing instilled him in an overly rigid conscience, when he rebelled against Christianity "he must have yearned for qualities and characteristics diametrically opposed to his own. In The Book of the Law the wish is fulfilled." Charles R. Cammell, author of Aleister Crowley: The Man, the Mage, the Poet, wrote that The Book of the Law was "in part (but in part only) an emanation from Crowley's unconscious mind I can believe; for it bears a likeness to his own Daemonic personality." Writer Israel Regardie and academic Joshua Gunn have argued that the stylistic similarities between The Book of the Law and Crowley's other writings are evidence that Crowley rather than a discarnate entity was the sole source of the book.