City of the Pyramids

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Categories: A.'.A.'. | Thelema | Thelemic terms | Vision and the Voice

The City of the Pyramids is the mystical home to those adepts that have crossed the great Abyss (see the Tree of Life), having spilled all their blood in the Graal of Babalon. They have destroyed their earthly ego-identities, becoming nothing more than piles of dust (i.e. the remaining aspects of their True Selves without the self-sense of "I"), and become impregnated as a Babe within Babalon. Within, they take on the name or title of Saint or Nemo (Latin for No-Man). In the system of A.'.A.'. they are called Masters of the Temple. It is a step along the path of spiritual purification, and a resting place for those who have successfully shed their attachments to the mundane world.

Of these adepts, it is written in The Vision and the Voice (Aethyr 14):

These adepts seem like Pyramids—their hoods and robes are like Pyramids.

And the Angel sayeth: Verily is the Pyramid a Temple of Initiation. Verily also is it a tomb [fn. It is also a phallus, which dies itself to communicate life to others]. Thinkest thou that there is life within the Masters of the Temple, that sit hooded, encamped upon the Sea? Verily, there is no life in them.

Their sandals were the pure light, and they have taken them from their feet and cast them down through the abyss, for this Aethyr is holy ground.

Herein no forms appear, and the vision of God face to face, that is transmuted in the Athanor called dissolution, or hammered into one forge of meditation, is in this place but a blasphemy and a mockery.

And the Beatific Vision is no more, and the glory of the Most High is no more. There is no more knowledge. There is no more bliss. There is no more power. There is no more beauty. For this is the Palace of Understanding: for thou art one with the Primeval things.

The City exists under the Night of Pan (or N.O.X.) within the sephiroth of Binah on the Tree of Life.

In Confessions (p. 620-621), Aleister Crowley describes his vision of entering the City of the Pyramids:

I was instantly blotted in blackness. Mine Angel whispered the secret words whereby one partakes of the Mysteries of the Masters of the Temple. Presently my eyes beheld (what first seemed shapes of rocks) the Masters, veiled in motionless majesty, shrouded in silence. Each one was exactly like the other. Then the Angel bade me understand whereto my aspiration led: all powers, all ecstasies, ended in this—I understood. He then told me that now my name was Nemo, seated among the other silent shapes in the City of the Pyramids under the Night of Pan; those other parts of me that I had left for ever below the Abyss must serve as a vehicle for the energies which had been created by my act. My mind and body, deprived of the ego which they had hitherto obeyed, were now free to manifest according to their nature in the world, to devote themselves to aid mankind in its evolution. In my case I was to be cast out into the Sphere of Jupiter. My mortal part was to help humanity by Jupiterian work, such a governing, teaching, creating, exhorting men to aspire to become nobler, holier, worthier, kinglier, kindlier and more generous.

The next phase of initiation—in A.'.A.'. the grade of Magus—is to have the Great Fire burn the dust of their bodies into a white Ash.

References

Crowley, Aleister. (1998). The Vision & the Voice : the Equinox, IV(2). York Beach, Me. : Samuel Weiser.
___. (1979). The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. London;Boston : Routledge & Kegan Paul.

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