More minor updates.

Progress on Book of the Beginnings vol. ii is still at an absolute crawl, largely because I keep getting distracted.  Finished giving a once-over to The Natural Genesis vol. ii; that has now been uploaded, along with a bunch of corrections to the Mead Hermetica and the text sections of Hartmann's butchery of Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians (I no longer have the use of the graphics software I used to re-set and partially colour the plates, so no further improvements there; I did however replace the crappy re-drawings of two emblematic figures from a largely unconnected [1] German alchemical work which Hartmann used as header images for the text sections with better versions from a copy of the Azoth sive Aureliae Occultae Philosphorum on Google Books).

While the "16th century" part of the full title of the Geheime Figuren is questionable, many of the known sources can be dated to the first half of the 17th century, with one of the earliest (the emblematic figure Mons Philosophorum and its accompanying text) appearing in a German alchemical compendium first published in 1604, Alchymia Vera [2].  The figure "Poculum Pansophiæ" appeared in a Rosicrucian work printed in 1618, the Speculum Sophium Rhodostauroticum of "Theophilus Schweighardt."  The two alchemical tracts, Tractatus aureus de lapide philosophorum and Aureum Seculum Redivivum were both printed in German in 1625 or earlier, and were translated into Latin and bound up in the collection Musaeum Hermeticum ("Restored and Enlarged" edition 1678, English translation in two vols. 1893, many reprints).  The figure accompanying the text of the "Emerald Tablet of Hermes" appeared in the Azoth sive Aureliæ Occultæ Philosophorum, also known as Von den verborgenen Philosophischen Geheimnussen der heimlichen Goldblumen u.s.w., printed in both Latin and German versions at Frankfurt in 1613, although comparing the German texts of the Emerald Tablet in the latter volume and the Geheime Figuren suggests the latter was back-translated from the Latin translation of the German of "Basil Valentine" (which had in turn probably been made from an earlier Latin version).  The versified "explanation" of the Emerald Tablet is not identical to that in von den verborgenen u.s.w. or Azoth, unless very loosely paraphrased / back-translated.  About half the symbolic diagrams derive from a work which circulated in manuscript in German in the 18th century known as the "D.O.M.A. text," an early copy of which has been dated to "around 1650." [3]

[1] The work in question does, in fact, appear to have been one of the sources of the Geheime Figuren although the material specifically drawn from it, being in the "drittes und letzes Heft" of those copies of the Altona printing that were split into three sections, was omitted in Cosmology.  It also contains two emblematic figures which later appeared in Eliphas Levi's Histoire de la Magie and subsequently in the Portal ritual of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, as "The Great Hermetic Arcanum" and (slightly modified), the "more ancient form" of Tarot Trump XIV ("Hermetic Magic" in Levi).

[2] Pointed out for example by Christine Eike in a 2018 article about the sources of the Geheime Figuren at pansophers.com.  EDIT: Adam McLean previously pointed this out in a discussion in 1999 on the Alchemy website: see discussion archive here (search the page for "Mons Philsophorum").  Since the date of "1604" on the figure also appears on the title page of the book it was printed in, a reference to the myth in the Fama (pub. 1614) is unlikely, nor indeed is it clear that the compiler of the Geheime Figuren took it in such a sense; the various elements composing the figure are part of the stock symbol-set of alchemical emblem-works of the period and have no specific connection to Rosicrucianism.

[3] Rafel T. Prinke, "Lampado Trado"; published in the Hermetic Journal in 1985 and posted on the AlchemyWeb Site.

It is the number of a man.

Fixed some errors in The Sword of Song (mostly some forced line-breaks and hyphens left over from my previous ill-advised attempt to conform layout to the Collected Works printing while still having the thing set in Times New Roman) & gave it proper front & back board designs based on those from the original edition.

Current progress on Massey:

A Book of the Beginnings: vol. ii.. up to p. 208 of 684.  Later: Stalled because I got annoyed at Massey's abuse of the Book of Enoch (I Enoch), specifically using the preamble to a section which deals in an undisguised manner with  astronomical matters and the calendar to argue that a different (and on various evidences, probably somewhat later) section of the compilation being a pure astronomical allegory and not in fact an account of the mythical and actual history of the Israelites and their ancestors, mixed up with traditions contained in the "Book of Watchers," the first section of I Enoch.

The Natural Genesis, vol. ii: up to p. 340 of 536.
Ancient Egypt: up to p. 869 of 944 (pagination is continuous between vols. i & ii).

After summer is winter, after winter summer (4)

Got sidetracked from Massey & gave another once-over to the C.P. Blue Equinox; now much more closely conformed to the print edition as regards pagination, layout & style, and a few more typos / transcription errors / OCR errors in various texts fixed.  Advertisements still omitted.

Back to the Beginnings (5)

The works of Gerald Massey are, of course, in many respects products of their time.  In particular, of the Egyptology of the time; while Massey's conclusions were not those of the mainstream either then or now, he was still relying on the texts, translations & work on the language then available.  In many passages, the argument depends on now-rejected translations and transliterations, or on getting originally distinct glyphs confused, or has been shown to be nonsense by later discoveries.

For example, owing to the demonisation of Set during the Late Period, many of his names and images were systematically effaced, and it took a while for them to be positively identified. This had the effect that when Egyptologists in the mid nineteenth century were trying to identify which Egyptian deity classical Greek writers were talking about when they used the name "Typhon" (who in Greek myth is the son of Tartarus and Gé, and apparently a personification of destructive powers of nature, either volcanic or atmospheric), some ... mistakes ... were made.  Samuel Sharpe, who also managed to mis-identify an inscription showing the eighteenth-dynasty Aten cult as belonging to the period of Persian rule, in his Egyptian Mythology and Egyptian Christianity (1863) and elsewhere, identified an image of a hippopotamus-goddess, possibly Tawaret or Ipet (the hieroglyphic caption does not match either name: it is consistent with her being "Sheput" (Špwt), mentioned in passing in Budge's Gods of the Egyptians), as "Typhon."  This may have had the knock-on effect of spawning an entire school of speculation.

The main hieroglyphic dictionary and translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead (generally cited as simply Ritual) cited in A Book of the Beginnings and The Natural Genesis was that by Samuel Birch, which was originally published in 1867 as an appendix to a monumental work called Egypt's Place in Universal History by C.K.J Bunsen, occupying a substantial part of the page count of the fifth volume.

The Book of the Dead version translated by Birch is late -- it is a Ptolemaic-era copy of the "Saïte Rescension" which had became more or less standardised during the Late Period.  It is from this copy that the numbering of the first 165 "Chapters" or spells in Egyptological literature derives.  New Kingdom papyri do not follow this order (though chapters are not arranged at hap-hazard and there is evidence of both sequence and thematic grouping).

For Ancient Egypt, Massey also made use of a translation by P. le Page Renouf (mainly based on New Kingdom papyri), which had been published by instalments in the Transactions of the Society for Biblical Archaeology from 1892 onwards.  It was unfinished at the time of Renouf's death (1897); the remaining chapters were translated by E. Naville and the whole published in book form in 1904.  Massey also occasionally cites an early edition of E. A. Wallis Budge's translation (first published 1890).  His comments on the Papyrus of Nu seem to miss the point that, while the person for whom the papyrus roll was prepared was quite credibly named for the god of the primæval abyss of water, "the Osiris Nu" referred to that person and not a compound God, and the texts in which that name appeared would be the same if it was the Osiris Nu or the Osiris Ani or the Osirs Bes-n-Mut.

The translation of the Book of Enoch (I Enoch, or Ethiopic Enoch) cited is that by Richard Laurence, first published in 1821 ("revised and enlarged" third edition, 1838).  Chapter numbering in this translation differs slightly from that in the more recently translation by R. H. Charles, a critical text using more manuscript sources than Laurence.

Progress update:

Book of the Beginnings -- proofed / formatted to vol. ii p. 128 (of 684)

Natural Genesis -- current pass at vol. ii. p. 272 (of 535)

Ancient Egypt -- current pass at p. 691 (i.e. a bit over a third of the way through vol. ii).

Back to the Beginnings (4)

As you might have surmised, my work on Massey's major works ground to a halt shortly after the last post I made under this head.  I think it was about that time that my computer's mainboard died.  I still do not have a decent copy-text for vol. ii of The Natural Genesis and my last two backups of the Word document appear to have gotten corrupted meaning the whole thing will need to be reconstructed.

Book of the Beginnings, vol. i seems to be basically done.  Vol. ii is done to p. 84 of 684.

The Natural Genesis, vol. i -- looks like I managed to finished the latest pass on that.  Vol. ii -- hang on, it loaded this time.  Odd.  Done to p. 68 of 535.

Ancient Egypt.  Current pass is a third of the way through vol. i; this is a much quicker process than for Nat. Gen. as the original text was someone else's key-entry & generally accurate save for a few lines missed by eye-skip, mainly I'm just going through making sure layout & pagination matches print edition.

[UPDATED RATHER THAN MAKING A NEW POST.]
A Book of the Beginnings -- vol. i has now been assembled and uploaded.  Done another 40 or so pages of vol. ii.
The Natural Genesis -- vol i. assembled and uploaded (replacing the 2008 issue).  Done another 50 pages or so of vol. ii.
Ancient Egypt -- vol. i. assembled and uploaded (replacing the old issue); about a fifth of the way through vol. ii.

Yet by-and-by I hope to weave a song of Anti-Christmas Eve

The CP edition of Crowley's The Sword of Song (aka Liber LXVII, Class C), with layout & style completely re-done from the old version (& hopefully more readable) and many,  many transcription errors fixed (I think the 'g' key on my keyboard was broken when I first typed it) can now be read on Scribd.  Going to give it a proper cover some time with the '666' design and AC's name in Hebrew from the first edition, but for now all the actual text should be there (the "epilogue" in the old typeset wasn't part of the orignal work but was mistakenly included from vol. ii. of Crowley's Collected Works).

After summer is winter, after winter summer (3)

On the one hand, the existence of the Equinox scans at keepsilence.org makes re-doing the CP re-sets possible without the need to dig out my physical copies of the reprints.  On the other hand, it also makes doing it somewhat redundant.

They don't have any of the Equinox issues after III (1), though.

III (2) was not issued as intended -- Crowley ran out of money after it reached page proof stage.  The full contents list has not to my knowledge been made public, but many of the works intended for it are known and some, probably amounting to well over half the full page count, have been published in one form or another -- "The Gospel According to St. Bernard Shaw" a.k.a. Liber 888 a.k.a. "Jesus" a.k.a. Crowley on Christ and "Liber Liberi vel Lapidis Lazuli" (Liber VII) being the major ones; "Liber Collegii Sancti" (Liber 185) and Crowley's versification of the Khing Kang King (Liber XXI) were also reportedly included.  The most notable as-yet-unpublished text known to have been part of this would have been the continuation of Liber 165, "A Master of the Temple" (Achad's magical diaries).  It was claimed in 2003 that a reconstruction from surviving page proofs was in preparation; this was mentioned again in an editorial note to a 2006 revised edition of Aleister Crowley and the Practice of the Magical Diary (which included the published part of Liber 165), where that volume's editor, James Wasserman, stated it would also include Achad's "Liber 31," but nothing has been heard of it since.

III (3) was The Equinox of the Gods (London: O.T.O., 1936), which consisted of The Book of the Law (typeset and reproduction of manuscript) and Genesis Libri AL, the latter being an outline autobiography of Crowley up to around 1904 and an account of the circumstances of the writing of Liber AL, originally prepared and typed up during the 1920s to serve as an introduction to the full commentary on the book.  It was later declared to be part IV of Book 4 (it was not so designated on publication).

III (4) was Eight Lectures on Yoga (London: O.T.O., 1939) which does exactly what it says on the tin.

III (5) was The Book of Thoth (London: O.T.O., 1944), a work on the Tarot sometimes designated Liber LXXVIII (it was not so designated on publication, but fits the description of a projected work under this number mentioned in the Blue Equinox).

III (6) was Liber Aleph (West Point, California: Thelema Publishing Company, 1962).  Crowley had attempted to get this into print on a few occasions previously; it had been advertised in the first English edition of The Heart of the Master (1938) as Equinox III (4), and in the first edition of Eight Lectures on Yoga as III (5); it was one of a number of previously unpublished Crowley works, or expanded editions of works published during his lifetime, issued under the direction of Karl Germer who succeeded Crowley as head of the O.T.O.  This work is presumably still in copyright, being first published in the USA and almost certainly validly renewed at the appropriate time (given it came up for renewal shortly after McMurtry's group won their court case over the Crowley copyrights, and a corrected edition was issued a few years later).

III (7) was probably the shortest volume published in the series, Crowley's Shi Yi, a verse-paraphrase of the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching with . . . well, not much else; a brief note, an index of the hexagrams and a description of AC's preferred method for creating the hexagrams (while faster than the traditional methods, it generates exactly one "changing" line per hexagram rather than the 0-6 from the 3-coin or yarrow stick methods); issued in 1971 by H. P. Smith's Thelema Publications, it is now rare and has apparently never been reprinted.

III (8) was Crowley's mucking-about of the Tao Teh Ching.  Crowley had attempted to get his rewrite of Legge's translation into print during the 1940s, and an optimistic advertisement in the first edition of Eight Lectures on Yoga described it as "ready shortly," apparently to be bound up with his Liber XXI, a verse-paraphrase of the Khing Kang King (to use the now-obsolete Romanisation), a short Taoist writing which appeared in translation in an appendix to Legge's Texts of Taoism.  These plans fell through, and the work remained unpublished until 1976 when it was issued as a new number of the Equinox series by H. P. Smith's Thelema Publications in California, and nigh-simultaneously by Askin in London, edited by Stephen Skinner.  A new edition in 1995 included Liber XXI as an appendix.

Between 1975 and 1981, an organisation claiming to represent the A.'.A.'., under the direction of Marcelo Motta (an A.'.A.'. student / disciple / "Follower" of Germer, who had done most of the leg-work for the original publication of Liber Aleph), issued four numbers of "Equinox vol. V," arguing that all even-numbered volumes of the series were intended to be "Volumes of Silence."  The first of these contained an edited version of Crowley's commentaries on The Book of the Law with additional commentaries by Motta.  The bulk of the second was taken up by a commentary on Liber LXV.  The third, The Chinese Texts of Magick and Mysticism comprised Crowley's paraphrases of the Yi Jing, Dao De Jing and Jin Gan Jing (to use the Romanisations employed on the dust-jacket of that volume) with commentaries by Crowley and Motta.  The fourth, Sex and Religion included the "Paris Working" and Crowley's Bagh-i-Muattar, both with commentaries by Motta, "The Wake World" from Konx Om Pax, Ida Craddock's Heavenly Bridegrooms (an erotic-mystical work which had been favourably reviewed by Crowley in the Blue Equinox) and a preface in which Motta verbally abused various Thelemites, writers on occultist subjects and former members of his organisations, prompting a successful action for libel by some of the people attacked.

The Holy Books of Thelema (or simply ΘΕΛΗΜΑ) a compilation of the A.'.A.'. "Class A" publications, first published in 1983, was retroactively designated Equinox III (9) in later reprints.

In 1986, Equinox III (10) was issued by the O.T.O. under William Breeze, who the previous year had succeeded as head of the organisation as revived by Grady McMurtry in the 1970s.  A significant part of the page count of this number was taken up with reprints of public O.T.O. documents and A.'.A.'. "Class E" papers from the Blue Equinox, as well as a summary report of a court case between McMurtry, his organisation and some of his associates on the one hand and Marcelo Motta and his organisation on the other, which barring a few rejected claims of libel (one from Breeze) was conclusively won by McMurtry et al.

In 1992, one number of Equinox vol. VII was issued by one of the various groups claiming succession of Marcelo Motta's organisations.  It contains nothing that warrants mention here (and my copy is currently buried in a stack of banana boxes).

(The above is not to be confused with The Equinox Vol. VII: British Journal of Thelema, some 11 numbers of which have been published from 1988 onwards.  This derived from the New Equinox which began publication in the 1970s and included some of the earliest published writings on Chaos Magick.)

In 1996, the O.T.O. under Breeze, in alliance with a group claiming to represent the A.'.A.'. under some former students of Marcelo Motta (including Breeze himself) who fell out with him in the 1970s, issued Commentaries on the Holy Books and other papers as Equinox IV (1).  The bulk of this was Crowley's commentary on Liber LXV, although it also contained the illuminated manuscript of Liber Pyramidos, rarely seen before that, shorter commentaries on other "Class A" texts (mostly reproduced from Crowley marginalia to the Equinox and his copies of the original Θελημα), some other A.'.A.'. texts and a largely redundant re-issue of Crowley's commentary on Blavatsky's Voice of the Silence.

A second number of Vol. IV appeared in 1998, as The Vision and the Voice with Commentary and other papers; the bulk of this, as indicated by the title, was the text of Liber 418 with Crowley's extended commentary (previously published by Germer in the 1950s); it also included the "Paris Working" (Liber 415) as well as the "Abuldiz Working" (records of the communications with a discarnate entity which led to the writing of Book 4) and the "Bartzabel Working" (the record of an evocation of the Spirit of Mars, the ritual script for which had previously been published in Equinox vol. I no. 9).

A third number has been repeatedly advertised as being in preparation, originally as The Urn and Other Papers, later as The American Diaries, to include Crowley's magical diaries from his time in America and related texts (besides "The Urn" (Liber LXXIII), it is believed these are to include "The Amalantrah Working" (Liber 729), "Σταυρος Βατραχου" (Liber LXX) and the surviving portions of "The Hermit of Aesopus Island" and "The Book of the Great Auk"; possibly also "Rex de Arte Regia" which was part-published in The Magical Record of the Beast 666 in 1972).  In 2013 it was described as being nearly ready for the press.  It has not so far manifested in the waking world.  [EDIT May 2023: Still no word of it, some 20 years after it was first publicly said to be in "proofreading and editorial."]

At the same time as IV (3) was said to be nearly ready for press, a planed fourth number of volume IV was said to be in preparation as The Early Diaries (it had previously been mentioned in the 2006 edition of Aleister Crowley and the Practice of the Magical Diary, where it was specifically stated to cover Crowley's diaries 1898-1908).  Nothing has been heard of it since.

Lege — iudica — atque ride

Gave a once-over & some stylistic improvements to the edition of Crowley's Book of Lies I prepared way back when & uploaded to Scribd.  Also some minor tweaks to a few of the other shorter libri, but nothing worth specifically noting here.

After summer is winter, after winter summer (2)

Some things I can still work on.  While I'm currently using a cheap low-end laptop, it's a 2018 cheap low-end laptop and most of the app software I'm using is a decade older so not super demanding.  Just given a once-over to my edit of Crowley's Magick in Theory and Practice and stuck on Scribd (it looks like earlier releases are still doing the rounds, and have even been cited in works issued by what I previously regarded as reputable publishers).

After summer is winter, after winter summer.

Once again mundane considerations have intervened & put ongoing projects on hold.  I had started on giving a once-over to the edition of Equinox vol. I that I typeset way back from some plaintexts that had been doing the rounds for a while.  I might just upload the existing PDFs to Scribd in the meantime, although there are flaws in most of them that need fixing.  [Translation: I have had to move out of the flat I've been living in for 18 years and my Equinox reprints are currently in a box at the bottom of a stack of 5 of 6 banana boxes filled with books.]

Edit: In the meantime you could do a lot worse than check out the "Keep Silence" edition of the Equinox -- these are page images from the first editions (also sold as physical copies in a print on demand edition), complete with all advertisements &c.  Same site also has AC's Collected Works, and first editions of Book 4 parts I & II, The Book of Lies & a few others.  Obviously such a project would have been impossible back when those plaintexts were originally created and impractical (in terms of cost / availability of Internet bandwidth, hosting &c.) when I started work on the CP re-sets.

Link not related.

Clarification re: Scribd

Scribd, while it has been increasingly pushing its subscription service in recent years (and removing functionality such as the ability to "follow" other users and comment on posted texts), still allows documents that are not marked as premium content -- which should be the case with all CP titles -- to be read online without the need to make an account (an increasing number of documents on Scribd these days only display the first few pages as a "preview" to users without a subscription).

To actually download PDFs requires either (a) creating and signing in to a free Scribd account or (b) linking to a Google or Facebook account.  I'd suggest the former.

Issuu.com, on the other hand, does not allow downloading of PDFs posted on a basic account, which is why I hardly uploaded anything there.

EDITED TO ADD: On the plus side, I haven't had to contest any false-positives from Scribd's copyright enforcement bot for nigh on two years.

To protect our indiscretions from the profanities of the mysterious (3)

The history of the Antient and Primitive Rite is tortuous, tortured and largely mythical

J.M. Hamill, "John Yarker: Masonic Charlatan?" — Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, no. 109 (1996).

The amount of hedging and vagueness in the brief account of the history of the Rite of Memphis and A. & P. Rite prefaced to the Manual of the Degrees reflects the sketchy and frequently contradictory nature of the accounts of the rites which I have managed to find in printed and online sources (the Wikipedia pages in particular are poorly-sourced and appear to have been a victim of edit-warring).

For instance, the date for Marconis handing over control of the Rite of Memphis to the Grand Orient of France is variously given as 1852 and 1862; the G.O. is variously characterised as having Memphis "effectively closed down," forbidding working all but its first three degrees, or mandating the reduction of the 90+ degrees to 33; some commentators on the Rite have questioned whether Seymour actually received a character from Marconis making him 96° and authorising him to establish the Rite in the U.S.A.  Hamill (op. cit.) ascribes the reduction to Marconis; the anonymous author of the "Publisher's Introduction" to a reprint (1990s) of an English translation of Marconis' Sanctuary of Memphis claims that Seymour was responsible for the reduction and speculates that he was motivated by a desire to compete with the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite (who expelled him in 1865).  Still others state that Seymour was not merely expelled from AASR by the Supreme Council, Northern Masonic Jurisdiction, but also kicked out of the Cerneau group he subsequently joined (of course, it is possible that this was after said Cerneau group was absorbed by the "regular" NMJ Supreme Council).

Yarker had apparently at some point by 1876 obtained an authority for the Rite of Mizraim of 90°; this was originally distinct from the Rite of Memphis, indeed the two were frequently at odds; Marconis repeatedly denounced Mizraim in his Sanctuary of Memphis.  Be that as it may, an account of the Mizraim degrees of unclear provenance, in Internet circulation as scans of a printed text, is prefaced by an edict from Yarker authorising conferring of Mizraim degrees by name upon members of his A. and P. operation (the 4°-46° on 11°s, the 47°-66° on 20°s, the 67°-86° on 30°s and the final four degrees on members of the roughly corresponding official grades 31°-33° of the A. and P. system).

For the record, Hamill's study of Yarker in AQC concludes by answering the question posed by its title with a firm negative.

"The charge of being a degree-monger was a spiteful slur on his character put about by those who did not know him. [...] A charlatan is by definition dishonest, the last word that could be used against Yarker."

To protect our indiscretions from the profanities of the mysterious (2)

And, done.  Probably riddled with OCR errors I missed, but for now just glad to have this one out of the way.  At least it gave me an excuse to knock up a graphic of the Unspeakable Press spider framed by the Square & Compasses.

The subject line of this post parodies a pompous phrase in the openings of some of these rituals (e.g. the 6° and 7°), which, along with other parts of that opening, was borrowed by Aleister Crowley for one of the rituals of the Ordo Templi Orientis.

To protect our indiscretions from the pronfanities of the mysterious

Main typesetting of Manual of the Degrees of the Antient & Primitive Rite is almost done -- just the last couple of rituals to do, then set up page headers, design a cover & possibly give the text a second pass to ensure a suitable admixture of pedantic / sarcastic footnotes, tho' I might just get lazy & copy-paste a few more from Lectures of the Antient & Primitive Rite.

Like, why the hell is Charon showing up in the judgement scene from the Book of the Dead, and why, instead of taking two small coins from the Can. as traditional, does he instead give him a small coin and a dog-biscuit?  Why is Hermes there, not identified with either Anubis as psychopomp or Thoth as scribe of the gods and the intellectualised Divine Wisdom, but distinct from both?  Why does a Rite that repeatedly bangs on in high-sounding language about religious tolerance take sides in a sectarian squabble between two rival groups of Yahveh-worshippers?  How can someone who has even read Herodotus and the books of Kings and Chronicles claim in all seriousness that from the construction of Solomon's Temple to the Persian conquest of Egypt there was a general state of peace in the ancient Near East? Why did I stay up all night working on this stuff?

I needed time to think, to get the memories from my mind

A few more additions and minor updates to the collection of Crowley Libri.  Added links to Libri V (the ritual of the Mark of the Beast), 185 (Liber Collegii Sancti), 335 (Adonis, a short play published in the Equinox), 850 (the Rites of Eleusis), 860 (John St. John, A.C.'s magical diary from a stay in Paris in October 1908); fixed an error in the notes to Liber XIII.

In respect of the last, I hereby apologise to Richard Kaczynski for uncritically repeating (or possibly simply imagining) the attribution to him of the heavily flawed typed transcript of Crowley's "Ritual CXX: of Passing through the Tuat" that has been doing the rounds for decades.  My own typeset of that ritual, fixing the lacuanæ in the earlier transcription and adding detailed & pedantic notes identifying which Book of the Dead chapters Crowley was borrowing from, along with sarcastic comments about ten and a half foot long green porcelain boats, is being held over for copyright reasons (the text not having been published during the author's lifetime, it did not enter the public domain at the end of 2017, and every indication is that the current holders of the copyright do not want it published).

Currently slightly over halfway through re-setting Manual of the Degrees of the Antient & Primitive Rite.

Apropos of the post title.

EDIT: fixed broken YouTube link.