INTRODUCTION
			------------

			     I.

			  THE BOOK.


1. This book was dictated in Cairo between noon and 1 pm. on 3 successive days
   April 8th, 9th and 10th in the year 1904.

      The author called himself Aiwass, and claimed to be "the minister of 
   Hoor-Pa-Kraat"; that is, a messenger from the forces ruling this earth at
   present, as will be explained later on.

     How could he prove that he was in fact a being of a kind superior to any 
   of the human race, and so entitled to speak with authority? Evidently he 
   must show KNOWLEDGE and POWER such as no man has ever been known to possess.

2. He showed his KNOWLEDGE chiefly by the use of cipher and cryptogram in
   certain passages to set forth recondite facts, including some events which
   had yet to take place, such that no human being could possibly be aware of
   them; thus, the proof of his claim exists in the manuscript itself. It is
   independent of any human witness.

     The study of these passages necessarily demands supreme human scholarship
   to interpret - it needs years of intense application. A great deal has still
   to be worked out. But enough has been discovered to justify his claim; the
   most sceptical intelligence is compelled to admit its truth.

     This matter is best studied under the Master Therion, whose years of 
   arduous research have led him to enlightenment.

     On the other hand, the language of most of the Book is admirably simple,
   clear and vigourous. No one can read it without being stricken in the very
   core of his being.

3. The more than human POWER of Aiwass is shewn by the infuence of his Master,
   and of the Book, upon actual events: and history fully supports the claim 
   made by him. These facts are appreciable by every one; but are better
   understood with the help of the Master Therion.

4. The full detailed account of the events leading up to the dictation of this
   Book, with facsimile reproduction of the Manuscript and an essay by the
   Master Therion, is published in 'The Equinox of the Gods'.





				II.

			   THE UNIVERSE.

   

   This book explains the Universe.

   The elements are Nuit - Space - that is, the total of possibilities
of every kind - and Hadit, any point which has experience of these 
possibilities. ( This idea is for literary convenience symbolized by the
Egyptian Goddess Nuit, a woman bending over like the Arch of the Night Sky. 
Hadit is symbolized as a Winged Globe at the heart of Nuit. )

   Every event is a uniting of some one monad with one of the experiences
possible to it.

   "Every man and woman is a star," that is, an aggregate if such experiences,
constatntly changing with each fresh event, which affects him or her either
consciously or subsconsciously.

   Each one of us has thus a universe of his own, but it is the same universe
for each one as soon as it includes all possible experience. This implies
the extension of consciousness to include all other consciousness.

   In our present stage, the object that you see isnever the same one that
I see; we infer that it is the same because your experience tallies with mine
on so many points that the actual differences of out observation are 
negligible. For instance, if a friend is walking between us, you see only
his left side, I his right; but we agree that it is the same man, although we
may differ not only as to what we see of his body but as to what we know
of his qualities. This conviction of identity grows stronger as we see him
more ogten and get to know him better. Yet all the time neither of us can 
know anything of him at all beyond the total impression made on our
respective minds.

   The above is an extremely crude attempt to explain a system which reconciles
all existing schools of philosophy.



				III.

			  THE LAW OF THELEMA.(1)



    This book lays down a simple Code of Conduct.
    
    "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."

    "Love is the law, love under will."

    "There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt."

    This means that each of us stars is to move on our true orbit, as marked
out by the nature of our position, the law of our growth, the impulse of our
past experiences. All events are equally lawful - and every one necessary,
in the long run - for all of us, in theory; but in practise, only one act is 
lawful for each one of us at any given moment. Therefore Duty consists in 
determining to experience the right event from one moment of consciousness
to another.

   Each action or motion is an act of love, the uniting with one or another
part of "Nuit"; each such act must be 'under will,' chosen so as to fulfill 
and not to thwart the true nature of the being concerned.

   The technical methods of acheiving this are to be studied in 'Magick',
or acquired by personal instruction from the Master Therion and his appointed
assistants.




				IV


			   THE NEW AEON


	The third chapter of the Book is difficult to understand, and may be 
very repugnant to many people born before the date of the book (April, 1904 ).

	It tells us the characteristics of the Period on which we are now
entered. Superficially, they appear appalling. We see some of them already
with terrifying clarity. But fear not!

	It explains that certain vast 'stars' ( or aggregates of experience )
may be described as Gods. One of these is in charge of the destinies of this
planet for periods of 2,000 years.* In the history of the world, as far as we
know accurately, are three such Gods: Isis, the mother when the Universe was 
conceived as simple nourishment drawn directly from her; this period is marked
by matriarchical government.

	Next, beginning 500 BC, Osiris, the father, when the Universe was 
imagined as catastophic, love, death, resurrection, as the method by which 
experience was built up; this corresponds to patriarchical systems.

	Now, Horus, the child, in which we come to perceive events as a 
continual growth partaking in its elements of both these methods, and not to be
overcome by circumstance. This present period involves the recognition of
the individuals the unit of society.

	We realize ourselves as explained in the first paragraphs of this 
essay. Every event, including death, is only one more accretion to our 
experience, freely willed by ourselves from the beginning and therefore also 
pre-destined.

	This "God," Horus, has a technical title: Heru-Ra-Ha, a combination
of twin gods, Ra-Hoor-Khuit and Hoor-Pa-Ktraat. The meaning of this doctrine
must be studied in 'Magick' ( He is symbolized as a Hawk-Headed God enthroned.)

	He rules the present period of 2,000 years, beginning in 1904. 
Everywhere his government is taking root. Observe, for yourselves the decay of
the sense of sin, the growth of innocence and irresponsibility, the strange 
modifications of the reproductive instinct with a tendency to become bi-sexual
or epicene, the childlike confidence in progress combined with nightmare fear 
of catastrophe, against which we are yet half unwilling to take
precautions.

	Consider the outcrop of dictatorships, only possible when moral growth 
is in its earliest stages, and the prevalence of infantile cults like
Communism, Fascism, Pacifism, Health Crazes, Occultism in nearly all its 
forms, religions sentimentalised to the point of practical extinction.

	Consider the popularity of the cinema, the wire-less, the football
pools and guessing competitions, all devices for soothing fractious 
infants, no seed of purpose in them.

	Consider sport, the babyish enthusiasms and rages which it excites, 
whole nations disturbed by disputes between boys.

	Consider war, the atrocities which occur daily and leave us unmoved
and hardly worried.

	We are children.

	How this new Aeon of Horus will develop, how this Child will grow up,
these are for us to determine, growing up ourselves in the way of the Law of
Thelema under the enlightened guidance of the Master Therion.


* - The moment of change from one period to another is technically called
    The Equinox of the Gods.



				V.
			
			   THE NEXT STEP.



	Democracy dodders.

	Ferocious Fascism, cackling Communism, equally frauds, cavort crazily
all over the globe.

	They are hemming us in.

	They are abortive births of the Child, the New Aeon of Horus.

	Liberty stirs once more in the womb of Time.

	Evolution makes its changes by anti-Socialistic ways. The 'abnormal'
man who foresees the trend of the times and adapts circumstance intelligently, 
is laughed at, persecuted, often destroyed by the herd; but he and his heirs, 
when the crisis comes, are survivors.

	Above us to-day hangs a danger never yet parallelled in history. We 
suppress the individual in more and more ways. We think in terms of the herd.
War no longer kills soldiers; it kills all indiscriminately. Every new measure
of the most democratic and autocratic  governments is Communist in essense.
It is always restriction. We are all treated as imbecile children. Dora, the
Shops Act, the Motoring Laws, Sunday suffocation, the Censorship - they won't
trust us to cross the roads at will.

	Fascism is like Communism, and dishonest into the bargain. The 
dictators suppress all art, literature, theatre, music, news that does not
meet with their requirements; yet the world only moves by the light of their
genius. The herd will be destroyed in mass.

	The establishment of the Law of Thelema is the only way to preserve
individual liberty and to assure the future of the race.
	
	In the words of the famous paradox of the Comte de Fenix - 

	"The absolute rule of the state shall be a function of the absolute
	 liberty of each individual will."

	All men and women are invited to co-operate with the Master Therion
in this, the Great Work.



						O.M.