Footnotes

*1. There is a region called Nuristan in present-day Afghanistan. Formerly an area in what was called Kafiristan (Land of the Unbelievers), it was forcibly Islamicized only in 1896 and continued to be part of the notorious “tribal areas” of that country. Up until 1886 the people practiced a sort of pre-Islamic paganism, which was an archaic version of lndo-Iranian religion. They remained unconquered by various invaders over the centuries. The region was made famous by Rudyard Kipling’s story The Man Who Would Be King (1888).

*2. The name is made up of the first parts of his name Fra(nz) + Ba(rdon) + either the first letters of the two versions of the name of his hometown T(roppau) + O(pava) or the formula T(empli) + O(rientis)

*3. The 2001 film Shadow of the Vampire successfully evokes some of this ambiance, albeit in a highly fictionalized framework.

*4. This was a Marxist political party founded in 1917 which merged with the Socialist Workers Party in 1931. After the party was banned in 1933, members continued to work in an underground capacity against the National Socialists.

†5. The Greek word thelema (θέλημα) indicates “will,” “volition,” or “desire.” It appears sixty-three times in the New Testament and is ascribed to man, to God, and to the Devil as well.

*6. The relationship between the entities called Lucifer and Satan, as seen in the FS doctrine, is made quite clear in the figure illustrating the composite nature of the Saturnian sphere (see figure 2.2). Satan is merely the “lower octave” of the Saturnian sphere, of which Lucifer, the Light-Bearer, is the “higher octave.” This is a purely (neo-)Gnostic viewpoint and has little or nothing to do with Judeo-Christian understanding(s) of the names involved.

*7. This is first and most strongly alluded to in The Book of the Law (I:49): “Abrogate are all rituals, all ordeals, all words and signs. Ra-Hoor-Khuit hath taken his seat in the East at the Equinox of the Gods; and let Asar be with Isa, who also are one. But they are not of me. Let Asar be the adorant, Isa the sufferer; Hoor in his secret name and splendour is the Lord initiating.” Upon this Crowley himself commented: “The Formula of the New Aeon recognizes Horus, the Child crowned and conquering, as God” (The Law Is for All, 106).

*8. A prosaic but accurate translation would be: “A woman who is not afraid of night or death, is worthy and will be initiated.”

*9. This translation is the one used in publications of correspondence between Gregorius and Crowley (see Aythos, Die Fraternitas Saturni, 2, for Gregorius’s letter to Master Therion dated 27° [1926]); perhaps “Love without Pity,” or “Pitiless Love,” would be a more poetic rendering of the original German phrase “mitleidlose Liebe.”

*10. “I am perplexed . . .” are reportedly Crowley’s last words (see Symonds, The Great Beast, 454).

*11. This is the title of a poem by Gregorius written in 1943; here.

*12. This odic force is much discussed in FS literature. The term was coined by Karl von Reichenbach, who defined the force as a “power penetrating all matter and space” and who derived the name from the name of the Norse god Odin, which he thought of as the “All-transcending” (Reichenbach, The Odic Force, 92–93).

*13. These four “Egyptian tests” were supposed initiatory trials based on the four elements Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. It is from Mozart’s The Magic Flute that this Masonic tradition seems to have had its greatest impact on the lore of the FS.

*14. Albert Pike (1809–1891), the Grand Commander of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite in Charleston, South Carolina, was reputed in some circles to have established a Luciferian agenda centered in a Palladian Order within the AASR. The dubious source for most of this is a flurry of anti-Masonic literature produced on the European continent in the late 1800s. The Italian poet Giosuè Carducci (1835–1907), who received a Nobel prize for literature, was a harsh critic of the Catholic church and the author of a blasphemous “Inno a Satana” (Hymn to Satan).

*15. This mysterious unnamed substance could be an extract of mandrake or damiana. This suggestion is based on the correspondence between these herbs and the Moon in Crowley’s Liber 777 (cf. The Qabalah of Aleister Crowley, 98).

*16. The chandara chakra (not one of the seven “major” chakras) is located above and to the left of the navel (see Lysebeth, Pranayama, 216).

*17. The theory behind the use of the pendulum in the cosmosophy of the FS is that the electro-magnetic fields of polarity by and through which the pendulum is thought to work are fundamentally linked to the most basic Saturnian paradigm of the juxtaposition of opposing cosmic forces.

*18. Editor’s note: This ritual procedure involving blood sacrifice is included for historical purposes only. The purpose of this procedure is an intense release of energy. Similar—and for the present culture more effective—results can be obtained either through symbolic representations of this procedure (using consecrated wine in place of the blood), or through an augmentation of the sexual energies of the Priest and Priestess by the other brothers and sisters, who can bring themselves to orgasm at this point in the rite, using the sexual fluids as the blood would have been.

*19. In the lore of tantrism this has the effect of suddenly opening a flood of energy to the muladhara (or “root”) chakra. This is also the chakra associated with Saturn. In more physiological terms the action may enhance the intensity of the male orgasm, and hence the amount of energy produced, through stimulation of the prostate gland.