Being the Ritual of the
Formulation of the Flaming Star
For the Philosophus
ATAT Publication in Classes C & D
by
Frater Apollonius
4° = 7▫
AN CVI 2010 e.v.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
"Now ye shall know that the chosen priest & apostle of infinite space is the prince-priest the Beast; and in his woman called the Scarlet Woman is all power given. They shall gather my children into their fold: they shall bring the glory of the stars into the hearts of men."—AL:I.15
“Also I welded together the Flaming Star and the Sixfold Star in the forge of my soul, and behold! a new star 418 that is above all these.”—DCCCLXIII:I.11
The pentagram is a traditional magickal symbol; a five-pointed star with the Pythagorean elements attributed to its five points. It is Eliphas Levi in the mid-19th century, who generates a new analysis of this star in his master thesis Transcendental Magic:
"A reversed pentagram, with two points projecting upwards, is a symbol of evil and attracts sinister forces because it overturns the proper order of things and demonstrates the triumph of matter over spirit. It is the goat of lust attacking the heavens with its horns, a sign execrated by initiates."
He then further illustrates a connection with the Goat of Mendes; the mysterious symbol of Baphomet and connects this with the Devil Atu of the Holy Tarot. In The Key of the Mysteries, he writes:
"The flaming star, which, when turned upside down, is the hierolgyphic [sic] sign of the goat of Black Magic, whose head may be drawn in the star, the two horns at the top, the ears to the right and left, the beard at the bottom. It is the sign of antagonism and fatality. It is the goat of lust attacking the heavens with its horns."
But a few years later, Aleister Crowley re-evaluates the pentagram and determines that an averse or inverted pentagram represents the descent of spirit into matter—the involution, and what we might refer to as the formulation of the Flaming Star. To this end, Liber Reguli (the prince) is the beginning of the assertion, that yet needs to be matured into one final statement; declaring one’s kinghood. And so the following incantation (from Crowley’s scholion) should be recited at the climax of the ritual and before the final gesture.
I also am a Star in Space, unique and self-existent, an individual essence incorruptible; I also am one Soul; I am identical with All and None. I am in All and all in Me; I am, apart from all and lord of all, and one with all.
I am a God, I very God of very God; I go upon my way to work my will; I have made matter and motion for my mirror; I have decreed for my delight that Nothingness should figure itself as twain, that I might dream a dance of names and natures, and enjoy the substance of simplicity by watching the wanderings of my shadows. I am not that which is not; I know not that which knows not; I love not that which loves not. For I am Love, whereby division dies in delight; I am Knowledge, whereby all parts, plunged in the whole, perish and pass into perfection; and I am that I am, the being wherein Being is lost in Nothing, nor deigns to be but by its Will to unfold its nature, its need to express its perfection in all possibilities, each phase a partial phantasm, and yet inevitable and absolute.
I am Omniscient, for naught exists for me unless I know it. I am Omnipotent, for naught occurs save by Necessity my soul’s expression through my will to be, to do, to suffer the symbols of itself. I am Omnipresent, for naught exists where I am not, who fashioned space as a condition of my consciousness of myself, who am the centre of all, and my circumference the frame of mine own fancy.
I am the All, for all that exists for me is a necessary expression in thought of some tendency of my nature, and all my thoughts are only the letters of my Name.
I am the One, for all that I am is not the absolute all, and all my all is mine and not another’s; mine, who conceive of others like myself in essence and truth, yet unlike in expression and illusion.
Love is the law, love under will.