Caroline
clerk #2
I located this additional reference for the seal:
Kenneth Grant said:Crowley used the sevenfold star as a basis for the Seal which he designed for the Great White Brotherhood. The major emblem of the Silver Star is thus the sevenfold seal upon the Yoni of the Star Goddess. In the yonis, or triangles appear the seven letters of the Name B.A.B.A.L.O.N. Centrally, a vesica is shown, blocked or barred, indicating the presence of the secret seed; the point has become the line, the diameter has become the circumference.
This seed is the "hermit", the hidden, masked, anonymous male essence in the process of begetting its image as the Sun-son upon the Mother goddess. This is therefore the Seal of Set who opens his mother's womb, as Sothis the Star opens the Circle of the Year. His infinite light breaks open her Night and causes her to appear as infinite Darkness.
The symbolism stems from the mythological phase of human evolution, a phase long antedating the patriarchal systems of later societies, either sociologically or religiously considered. It stems from that period of time when the male's role in procreation was as yet unsuspected. The symbolism therefore reflects a stage in human consciousness when the mechanics of regeneration were conducted by the priests under the guise of the beast, thus rehearsing the primal drama of fecundation, when the Great Goddess was imaged in animal form, upon all fours. Nuit, arched over the earth, translated this symbolism into an anthropomorphic image.
The ritual assumption of god forms, as taught and practised in the Golden Dawn, has, nevertheless, a more profound significance than the rehearsal of primitive sociological phases of
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human behaviour, and Crowley's assumption of the mask of the Beast was no mere gesture of identification with primitive processes. He assumed the role with the magical intent of affirming his identity not only with pre-eval atavisms but with those transcendental powers which, when properly controlled and directed, he was able to incarnate at will. This forms the basis of his magick.
John W. Parsons, head of the Californian Lodge of the O.T.O., (from 1944 until his untimely death in 1952), sums up this magick:
"To go deep you must reject each phenomenon, each illumination, each ecstasy, going ever downward, until you reach the last avatars of the symbols that are also the racial archetypes."In this sacrifice to the abysmal gods is the apotheosis that transmutes them to the beauty and power that is your eternity, and the redemption of mankind."Neurosis and initiation are the same thing, except that neurosis stops short of apotheosis, and the tremendous forces that mould all life are incysted—short-circuited and turned poisonous. Psychoanalysis transforms the false ego symbols, and exteriorizes them into false social symbols; it is a confusion of conformity and cure in terms of group behaviours."But initiation must go on until the barrier is passed, until the misty bastions of infantile Trawenfells change into the rocks and crags of eternity; the garden of Klingsor into the City of God."
It does not matter, ultimately, whether the new dimension, the redeeming factor, the "Saviour", is a beast or a god, so long as the formula of Matter is transcended, or, more precisely, so long as the Spirit (Shin) and Matter (Teth) are realized as One.
Grant, Kenneth (1972) The Magical Revival. Skoob Publishing.