The Presences in the Majors

It is even more fitting and interesting that the very next deity we meet is Ma’at, the goddess of Truth, or ‘straightness’, who is sometimes seen as a counterpart to Thoth. She is introduced on page 25 of the introduction, along with many other ideas from Crowley’s cosmology - the Stele of Revealing, Aeons, and Hieroglyphs – all stemming from Crowley’s key mystical experience, the reception of the Book of the Law in Cairo, 1904.

Ma’at is equated by Crowley in the text to Themis, the Greek goddess of Justice, whom we will meet later, in the card of Adjustment, one of the renamed cards in the deck.

At the outset of the book, we are thus introduced to these two deities; Thoth and Ma’at, the creative word and the truth, the scribe and the measure. This pairing becomes the two pillars between which the cards vibrate. They were the deities at either end of the solar Barque or boat which carried the Sun-god across the heavens. There is also a mystery here of the Aeons, but it is beyond the scope of this present article.

Still within the introduction, we again meet Thoth, this time also called Tahuti , on page 34 and the footnote to page 35. Thoth is also chosen to preside over the deck as a symbol of “concentration” and “the meditative spirit”. [143]

Finally, in the introduction we are introduced to a very significant figure in Crowley’s own cosmological schema constructed from the ancient Egyptian pantheon; Nuit, sometimes Nu , Nut or Nuith , the goddess depicted as the arching night sky with the stars upon her body. It is not surprising that Crowley mentions this goddess when touching upon the Star card, but of course, as with many other things in the Book, there is a deeper matter at hand.

Crowley switched the correspondences of the Hebrew letters between two cards; the Star and the Emperor. This was based on a line in his Book of the Law , “Tzaddi is not the star”. There is no scope to further explore this matter here, but suffice it to say, the goddess Nuit is an overarching concept in the Thelemic schema and of great import to the cards of the Book of Thoth .

Moving out of the introduction and into the main text, part two on the Atu or Majors, we begin to see the diversity of Crowley’s appropriation of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses and his incorporation of them into his own cosmology. The additional deities we meet between Atu 0 (Fool) and Atu V (Hierophant) are:

• Mat (Maut)
• Sebek
• Hoor-pa-Kraat
• Horus
• Set
• Osiris
• Isis
• Nephthys

These eight above and the prior three (Thoth, Ma’at and Nuit) are the bulk of the deities in the deck and book, so worth using as a basic checklist for research before returning to the text – see also below for a comprehensive research list grouped into families. The additional deities, Egyptian forms and variations from Atu VI (Lovers) to Atu XXI (Universe) are:

• Sphinx
• Hermanubis
• Khepra
• Heru-Ra-Ha
• Hadit
• Ra-Hoor-Khuit
• Hrumachis

In these we see a perennial problem with approaching ancient Egyptian deities, which is that they are syncretic and variant; not only are some deities a combination of other deities, but they change their form, function and name according to their role and even the time of day or night. Thus, Horus has a form as the hawk-headed god, but also as the child, Har-pa-Khered, which the Greeks knew as Harpokrates. Horus could also be combined with the Sun-god, Ra, in the form of Re-Harakhty.

This is somewhat bewildering and made more confusing by variant modern spellings. The sun-god also has different names for his form at different times of the day, i.e. Kheph-Ra is “Ra at midnight”.