Last night I dreamt I was reading a book by Aleister Crowley in which a sentence stood out talking about the subjectivity of magick; this is intimately connected with the placement of the circle in thelemic ritual in which there are two agents: Had and נו (NV) – hence the headline of this article.

In the objective episteme of magic(k) the magic circle serves a protective or even better a conservative purpose against the enemy without. In this episteme one calls forth actual demonic, angelic and/or godly forms/entities and one does so that the given entity manifests itself in the triangle of art. Should it break through the boundary of the triangle of art then only the magic circle would hold the entity back from attacking the magician. This is what happened to Crowley and Neuburg when Crowley confronted Choronzon in an attempt to cross Da’ath; that story reveals the classic purpose, the conservatism of a magic circle.

However Had reveals some quite happy news as he says “I am alone: there is no God where I am.” What does this mean? That there can be no monotheism, that only polytheism is applicable? Crowley does demonize the Christian God and understandably so thinking of his adolescence in the care of an ignorant and fundamentalist mother. I think not this is it. I actually think that Had is revealing something quite different from that, which is the basis of subjectivity in magick: there are no demons, no angelic hierarchies, and no gods, there is only the geometric point and the circumference, only Had and נו, and the circumference does not set a limit or a boundary beyond which is un-knowledge, it defines all as ecstasy (cf. AL I:27). If נו truly is ecstasy and omnipresence (AL I:26) it leaves no room for intellectual and/or precautious manoeuvres concerning the proper caging of fictitious powers. Such precautions manifest a ‘because’ in ritual, an ever so little residue of preoccupation in ritual which however otherwise willed is an active opposition against נו (keep in mind AL II:27-28).

The thelemic magick circle has its own philosophy defining practice. The answer to the requirement of נו (i.e. “Be thou ever as Hadit unto me”) is: “I shall be a burning red in thy gold”, both sentences stems from a series of meditations I did a couple of years back and obviously they are derived from diverse places in Liber AL vel Legis. They talk of ecstasy and of course they do so by figuratively speaking of the intercourse between man and woman, Had and נו. Here is my claim: there is no magick beyond sexmagick whether that is autosexual or not. Not the manifesting of demonic entities, but the connection with נו is the true meaning of ritual – in other words transgression. This also means that the magick circle is meditative in nature, sexual in practice and, Lacanian speaking, real in meaning, i.e. ultimately speaking the crossing of Da’ath from the foundation of Tiphareth.

The above needs a little explication. Whereas e.g. the Buddhist Nibbana is a negative definition of enlightened freedom, i.e. free from suffering and individuation, נו being purely abstract as the circumference is beyond definition, beyond a goal let alone an aim. The ‘because’ of nibbana belittles it. To say נו is All to miss the point entirely, as all only can serve as a metaphysical generalisation connecting to and derived from finite amounts. Nor can one understand נו from a Platonic point of view, where e.g. the ideal form of the circle is what makes possible the infinite numbers of particular circles. Hence one cannot think of נו as a universal as opposed to a particular.

The beauty of נו as I see it is the abstractness of it, it being נו understood as a concept, for I think that neither נו nor Had objectively can be thought of as entities, but rather they serve as rhizomatic structures for thinking and practice. Hence נו cannot be narrowed down to a dichotomy, it is not one, i.e. anything positive, from which everything else can be deducted (cf. Kether), nor is it the negative number, which does have ontological autonomy, but nevertheless is a simple mirroring of the positive – a flat confirmation of the dichotomy. Have this in mind when rereading the aforementioned AL I:27,

O Nuit, continuous one of Heaven, let it be ever thus; that men speak not of Thee as One but as None; and let them speak not of thee at all, since thou art continuous!

But the revealing is a speaking out. There is a rather subtle difference on stake here: נו is created in the speaking of (avarahadavara), but in being created it is particularised in letters and ‘it’ becomes a ’she’ and is thus fictionalised. The symbolic order of Liber AL vel Legis is not it then, but on the other hand the only way it can be revealed. In letters, then, do not speak of her “as One but as None” although she is not revealed at all in letters in spite of their communicative endeavours. It is not communicable, it is not possible to fathom it by lettering it. It is the dialectics of One and Naught. Again referring to Lacan, the real which is our actual desire, cannot speak out outside of a symbolic order, but it can be experienced through the ecstasy of e.g. orgasm.

Now, is it possible to live continuously in ecstasy? “Be thou ever as Had unto me”. I seriously doubt it. נו again and again uses the phrase always or ever unto me. It means let every action be a willed action (cf. Lon Milo DuQuette’s definition of magick), which on the other hand means that every conscious action will and is always directed towards נו, but most of the time by way of the symbolic in which the real lies dormant as objet petit a. Being conscious about that we can actually act as Had unto נו by way of the symbolic. This is the actual circumference of being. The circle is the meditative reminder of the real and in the symbolic (i.e. most of our non-ecstatic actions) of the presence of objet petit a. That is why I can talk about the thelemic circle as being a progressive circle as opposed to the conservative circle of objectivism. Hence I set forth subjective magick as meditative and objective magic as manifestational.

The role of Had I will try to put forth in a later post.