De-finitions

Existence

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Mirriam-Webster says:

1a)(obsolete): reality as opposed to appearance.

1b) reality as presented in experience.

1c)(1): the totality of existent things. (2): a particular being (all the fair existences of heaven — John Keats)

1d) sentient or living being : life.

2a) the state or fact of having being especially independently of human consciousness and as contrasted with nonexistence (the existence of other worlds).

2b) the manner of being that is common to every mode of being.

2c) being with respect to a limiting condition or under a particular aspect.

3) actual or present occurrence (existence of a state of war).

After demonstrating his existence with complete certainty with the proposition "I think, therefore I am", Descartes walks into a bar, sitting next to a gorgeous priest. The priest asks Descartes, "Would you like a drink?" Descartes responds, "I think not," and then proceeds to vanish in a puff of illogic.

~ Ceridwen

Aleister Crowley's "treatise on existence" (1913) and his later commentary (1952), from The Book of Lies (The Chapter that is not a Chapter):

"ΚΕΦΑΛΗ Η ΟΥΚ ΕΣΤΙ ΚΕΦΑΛΗ

Ο!(1)

THE ANTE PRIMAL TRIAD WHICH IS

NOT-GOD

Nothing is.

Nothing Becomes.

Nothing is not.

THE FIRST TRIAD WHICH IS GOD

I AM.

I utter The Word.

I hear The Word.

THE ABYSS

The Word is broken up.

There is Knowledge.

Knowledge is Relation.

These fragments are Creation.

The broken manifests Light.(2)

THE SECOND TRIAD WHICH IS GOD

GOD the Father and Mother is concealed in Generation.

GOD is concealed in the whirling energy of Nature.

GOD is manifest in gathering: harmony: consideration: the Mirror of the Sun and of the Heart.

THE THIRD TRIAD

Bearing: preparing.

Wavering: flowing: flashing.

Stability: begetting.

THE TENTH EMANATION

The world."

"COMMENTARY (The Chapter that is not a Chapter)

This chapter, numbered 0, corresponds to the Negative, which is before Kether in the Qabalistic system.

The notes of interrogation and exclamation on the previous pages are the other two veils.

The meaning of these symbols is fully explained in "The Soldier and the Hunchback".

This chapter begins by the letter O, followed by a mark of exclamation; its reference to the theogony of "Liber Legis" is explained in the note, but it also refers to KTEIS PHALLOS and SPERMA, and is the exclamation of wonder or ecstasy, which is the ultimate nature of things.

NOTE

(1) Silence. Nuit, O; Hadit; Ra-Hoor-Khuit, I.

COMMENTARY (The Ante Primal Triad)

his is the negative Trinity; its three statements are, in an ultimate sense, identical. They harmonise Being, Becoming, Not-Being, the three possible modes of conceiving the universe.

The statement, Nothing is Not , technically equivalent to Something Is, is fully explained in the essay called Berashith.

The rest of the chapter follows the Sephirotic system of the Qabalah, and constitutes a sort of quintessential comment upon that system.

Those familiar with that system will recognise Kether, Chokmah, Binah, in the First Triad; Daath, in the Abyss; Chesed, Geburah, Tiphareth, in the Second Triad; Netzach, Hod and Yesod in the Third Triad, and Malkuth in the Tenth Emanation.

It will be noticed that this cosmogony is very complete; the manifestation even of God does not appear until Tiphareth; and the universe itself not until Malkuth.

The chapter many therefore be considered as the most complete treatise on existence ever written.

NOTE

(2) The Unbroken, absorbing all, is called Darkness."

the entire Book of Lies, etext, including introduction

~ Ceridwen