DLAC1{ P£ARL TH£ JOVRNAL OfTH£ COlL£G£ ofTH£L£MA , It ,' ,.' 0j("- " - --~- ,..-!:" .: Vol. 1, NO.3 BLACK PEARL COLLEGE OF THELEMA BlAC1{ PEARL TH£ JOVRNAt OFTH£ Cott£G£ OFTH£t£MA "I have descended, 0 my darling, into the black shining waters, and I have plucked Thee forth as a black pearl of infinite preciousness. " - Liber LXV, Cap. III, v. 60 Founded in Service totheA:.A:. Vol. I, No. '3. Vernal 'Equinox: • Anno XCIV.(IV6) EDITOR James A. Eshehnan EDI1'OR'S LETTER Editor's Letter by Fra; A.H. ....................................... 3 ASSISTANT EDITOR Anna-Kria King FEATURES Let the Scarlet Woman Beware by'Fra. L.F. ....... ............ 8 ASSOCIATE EDITORS Liber Gimel by FraterAleph Ben Ali ... ....................... .. 12 Joe Larabell, Gregory Peters, CeremoniaLMagick,Part 3: Health & Prosperity of the Order by Fra. A.H: ..... ............................................. ....... 26 Phyllis Seckler The Vision & ~e Voi~: lEthyrs 24,23 & 22 with As.trological & Qabalistk'Commemary bY Fra. A.H. 31 ART DIRECTOR Anna -Kria King COLUMNS Qabalists' Qorner: '1 L bY Ike Becker ............................. 5 It's In the Basics: The Pentagram Ritual bY Frater Yod ...... 14 Gems from THE EQUINOX Uy Aleister Crowley ............. 21 Reviews: Recent Books, Cla:ssics, &: Musick ................... 22 PUBLISHED BY COLLEGE OF THELEMA POETRY Anima Babalon~sbY , Howard Baptiste .......... ............ , ... .. 2 Executive Director The Lady1s Prayer <by.lt.i/hes A. Eshelman ...................... 2 Phyllis Seckler My Mother's C6dar Chest bY Anna-Kria King ........., ... " . .. 7 An End to Despair 'bYBa'a Seb Ankh ........ .. .. .... .. ........ 11 Deputy Executive Director The Pentagram bY Aleister Crowley .............................. 19 J ames A. Eshelman I Must by Frater Fiat Lux (Frank Salt) .......................... 20 What Joy by Soror Meral ................................ c. ........ 30 Treasurer Waiting by Soror Meral ............................................ 36 Anna-Kria King Nuk IbIn Suti bY Fra. S.H.A. (418) ............................. 49 Secretary Joe Larabell ARTWORK Archangel lroa,ges bY Jon Sewell & Doug Blake ............... 19 BLACK PEARL Vol. I, No.3, March, 1998 E.V. Published biannually, at the Equinoxes, by the College of Thelema (A Not-for-Profit Religious Corporation), 222 North Manhallan Place, Second Floor, Los Angeles. California 90004-4018. Copyright © 1998 by College of Thelema. All rights reserved. Annual subscription rate: $12.00 for two issues, postpaid (U.S ,). Per issue price: $6.50, postpaid (U.S.). Second class postage paid at Los Angeles, CA and additional mailing offices. Donations, legacies, contributions and bequests made to the College of Thelema are tax deductible in the United States. Submissions of articles, artwork, poems, lyrics or other contributions are welcome. By such submission, author/creator grants to Black Pearl one-time publication rights, with all issues kept in print in perpetuity. Send editorial correspondence, review materials, manuscripts, and other submissions to: Editor, Black Pearl, at the above address. For reply and/or return of materials, enclose SASE; no responsibility is assumed for lost or unreturned submissions. Publisher assumes no responsibility for products or services advertised by anyone other than College of Thelema and /or Temple of Thelema. Opinions expressed are those of the authors or advertisers, and do not necessarily reflect those of the editors or publishers. Cover art by Kimberley Edwards. ... 7 .. $o ANIMA BABALONIS THE LADY'S PRAYER (Soul of Babalon) Soul of Night, sanctify my soul; Thou! One! All! Naught! mend this body of Light, Infinite Mother whose Name is inscrutible! make me whole. Be Thou adored! Blood of Night, inebriate me; My Will, which is Thine, be realized, waters from the Grail of Light, a Thou who art both Earth and Heaven. purify me. Fulfill the needs of our Flesh That we may devote our Souls unto Thee. Passion of Night, strengthen me; Lead us each to embrace, by love under will, among your Children of Light Nature's equilibrating Justice. I will be. Lead us to experience all Thy boundless possibilities And at the hour of my ordeal, And thus deliver us from restriction. sweetly caress with a Kiss of Night Oh Thou! and I will heal. Who art the Kingdom! In Whom is given all Power! Soul of Night, sanctify my soul; Who hast the Secret Glory! mend this body of Light, Everlasting! make me whole. AUM. HOW ARD BAPTISTE JAMES A. ESHELMAN 2 Editor's Letter: EBONSEA OF THE UNKNOWN Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. There is nothing from which we can learn, save from the Unknown. Yet, in the face of the unillumined and uncharted Unknown, wherein no discernible nor identi­ fiable object reflects back the sunlight of thought, our Reason is stunned by the black vacuum of our own not-knowing. We fear the dark, and we hide. We withdraw from the enormity that would devour us, that dark immensity which reminds us so much of the unknown and uncharted darkness of death. We balk before the ebon sea whose depths are unimaginable, whose opposing shores are nonexistent, and in which we should surely drown. It is an ancient and primal human instinct. Human as well, however, is the spirit of the pioneer, impelled to penetrate the Unknown with ravenous, rapacious potency - defiant of death, and devouring the devourer of its own ignorance. In the pathways of our spiritual awakening, it is the Unknown and Unknowable that we con­ stantly desire. Spiritual pioneers are today, in this new reon, entering strange territory that few have explored, and far, far fewer have settled. Yet antique maps exist; they are accurate, and por­ tray the terrain with extraordinary fidelity. Four centuries ago, St. John of the Cross wrote with understanding of "this dark night of loving fire, [that] as it purges in the darkness, so also in the darkness enkindles the soul." All who dare to know the Divine will be engulfed by its silence. All who desire spiritual Light encounter periods of darkness, some of such profound black despair that they undo the fabric of all self-definition. But is not the profound, that is, the deep, what we seek? Oh, how long it takes to KNOW that the engulfing dark void is not absence of the Divine Light, but is that Light, of such intensity that we cannot withstand it, nor bear it until we grow a little stronger! It is the embrace of deific love, the fabric ofthat selfsame spiritual Unknown that we seek and have sought. As an experienced and discerning palate is to fine wine, so mature our inner fac­ ulties to the appreciation ofthis wine, aged from our own spiritual lifeblood. One traditional title of that ONE who leads us in our spiritual quest is "Lord of the light and the darkness." The Hebrew ~~N, Aleph, is an anagram both of N~:J, pelah, meaning "miraculous, wonderful," and of ~:JN, ophel, meaning "darkness, obscurity." Our quest leads us rhythmically into light and darkness, into wonder and obscurity, as from day into night before returning us to a new dawn. Our greatest light is followed by darkness and despair, in which it feels either that God has abandoned us, or that we have abandoned Her. How do we know this supernal blackness is not merely the pathological depression it sometimes resembles? St. John identified three ways. First, during such times we lose not only all pleasure in or consolation from spiritual things, but from every thing soever - the secular as much as the sacred. Second, we find ourselves focused more on the Divine, not less, despite the sometimes vacuous sense of abandonment. Third, our former means of worship and communion fail us; our old formulre seem as empty devices (often invoking 3 BLACK PEARL our rage at our pain), for the means by which our Beloved seeks to commune with us is now other - more subtle and more interior - and, in time, we hear this, too. We seek to run, whether forward or back, and are struck immobile, brought to stillness. We desire to cry out, whether of anguish or oflove, and are without voice, driven into silence. We can do nothing - except love, in that stillness and that silence. Our dryness, first painful and parching, ignites with a heat that "burns the bones," with yearning intense that cremates what we were. "But it is death, and the flame of the pyre. Ascend in the flame of the pyre, 0 my soul! Thy God is like the cold emptiness of the utmost heaven, into which thou radiatest thy little light" (Liber VII, I: 39). It is with such thoughts that I welcome you to Issue No. 30fBLACK PEARL. ~ At the end of 1989, I was called out of retirement with a fraternal Order to which I then still belonged, to travel to Australia and New Zealand as an initiator and ambassador. In New Zealand, I had the very great pleasure to meet Frank Salt, who had been a member of the Whare Ra Temple of the Smaragdum Thalasses (New Zealand Stella Matutina) for many decades, beginning in the 1930s. He had served his temple as Demonstrator (the S:. T:. term for Prremonstrator) for much of that time. The two afternoons I spent with him in Auckland were the high point of the entire trip. Though of advanced years, he was physically strong and spry, and had a spiritual vitality I have rarely seen in anyone, of any age. The hours spent were quite remarkable. In the course of the first of these visits, he brought out his hand-painted S :. T : . Tarot deck, to show me some ofthe errors in the commercial Golden Dawn deck Robert Wang had published. As we looked at Key 13 (which closely resembled the B.O.T.A. version), he became reflective about the movement of the river which flows along and then turns sharply west to pour into the peace and brilliance of the setting Sun.