Stele of Revealing in 1997. Photo Andrew Collins, enhanced by Sue Collins.
Today is an important occult anniversary. It marks the occasion when Aleister Crowley first saw the artefact that played a central role in his reception of The Book of the Law. Here is a brief account of that event. A full version of the whole story, including what followed a few weeks later is featured in my Aleister Crowley and the Aeon of Horus.
Rose and Aleister.
The most important event of Crowley’s life occurred in Cairo in 1904 when he believed that he received a holy scripture for a newly dawning epoch, the Aeon of Horus. The previous year, when on honeymoon with his wife Rose, they had briefly passed through Cairo and spent the night in the Great Pyramid. At that time Crowley was not actively involved in ceremonial magic of the western mystery tradition. He had dedicated a lot of time and energy to work within the Golden Dawn between 1898 and 1900. After that he had put it all aside to climb mountains, study yoga and Buddhism, and play the role of the world traveller and romantic poet.
The evocative environment of Egypt and the desire to impress his wife tempted him to perform what he would later refer to as a little “exhibition game” of magic inside the King’s Chamber. This may have acted as a stimulus for the sequence of events that followed a few months later. In February 1904, they were back in Cairo. By March, Crowley was involved in Golden Dawn type magic again. His wife began to experience altered states of consciousness and conveyed a message to Crowley that “they” were waiting for him. Crowley always stated that, until that moment, she had shown no interest or aptitude in the magical realm. At first he was dismissive of the material but the trance like states persisted and, under his questioning, she began to reveal details that compelled his attention.
Rose.
On March 18th Rose said that it was the Egyptian God Horus who was “waiting.” As a result of this, Crowley performed two ceremonial invocations to him. They were interesting because the ritual details were supplied by Rose and did not conform to Golden Dawn procedures. She went on to state that the “Equinox of the Gods” had come. The old world, the epoch of Christianity, had been destroyed by fire on the inner planes. At that crucial time, Crowley was to formulate a link between the solar spiritual force and humanity.
Horus.
During the whole of this process, Crowley held to a certain attitude of scepticism towards the strange behaviour of his wife. Over a period of a few days he applied twelve tests to verify the genuineness of the communication from Horus. They mainly consisted of him asking Rose to pick out various attributes of Horus, such as the planet associated with him, his weapon, enemy, and Golden Dawn colour and numerical designations. She was entirely successful in every instance. Given her complete lack of knowledge of Egyptology, Crowley considered that the statistical odds against her picking them all correctly by chance were astronomical.
The most spectacular “proof” came when, on March 21st, he took her to the Cairo Museum to see if she could identify an image of Horus. She passed by a number, which greatly pleased Crowley, as he was irritated to see his wife seeming to have a melodramatic episode like the kind of fake mediums he despised. Amidst the “Boulak collection,” a group of items brought from another museum that had closed in 1890, she then exclaimed “There he is,” pointing down the end of a corridor to an exhibit that was not yet clearly in view.
Mobile phone pic of Stele in its current location.
It turned out to be a wooden funerary stele of one Ankh-af-na-Khonsu, a Priest of Mentu, a God of War, dating from about 725 BC.
Mobile phone pic of funerary sarcophagus of Ankh af na Khonsu currently located just outside room holding the Stele.
Detail on Ankh af na Khonsu sarcophagus.
On it was an image of Ra Hoor Khuit, who is a kind of amalgam of Horus and Ra. This was interesting enough but what clinched the matter for Crowley was seeing that the exhibit number was 666.
The original 666 exhibit card is still displayed although the Stele is now catalogued under the number 9422. Photo Andrew Collins.
This famous number, attributed to the Great Beast of the Book of Revelation, and the happy hunting ground of numerologists and nutters down through the ages, was one that Crowley had already personally adopted as his own. His parents had been members of a fanatical Christian sect and his mother had used the name of the Beast to castigate her young son. He had happily accepted this as a token of rebellion. Today educated pagans consider that it represents the energy of the sun. Some of the other tests could be interpreted as Rose somehow reading her husband’s mind. This would be remarkable in itself but not as striking as the idea that an ancient Egyptian God was seeking to communicate. From that point onwards, Crowley allowed himself to go along with the strange adventure.
Thanks to Daniel Gallagher for leading me to funerary sarcophagus of Ankh af na Khonsu and Richard Sprigg for clarifying some details on the 'Boulak collection'I was unaware of at the time of writing my book.
