Vowels in many ancient languages were considered to be
sacred, their use restricted to construction of the sacred, secret name of the highest
deity. Within such a secret spelling would be incorporated important religious &
magickal truths. Thus the sacred knowledge would be preserved__yet remain
hidden.
In ancient Hebrew, in Egyptian, and in others, vowels were entirely
omitted from the written language to avoid their profanation: e.g. in the spelling of the
sacred name I H V H, which we often transliterate as "Jehovah", adding in the
omitted vowels.
With no written records, the true pronunciations of sacred words of
power were able to be kept highly secret, for whoever knew the correct pronunciation of
the name of another's god prevailed. Note that the use of dots beneath the consonants to
indicate vowel inflections is a relatively recent convention.
This bears upon the spelling of the name Aiwass, the name
given as his own by the praeter-human Intelligence who channeled the text of Liber AL
through Aleister Crowley. There are many diverse spellings and numerations of this name
based on Qabalah, both in Hebrew and in Greek. Among them are Aivas ~ 78; Aiwaz ~93;
and Aifacc ~ 418; as well as Aiwass, which we will discuss.
If we "paste the sheets from right to left" in the
construction of a qabalistic spelling of this sacred name, we move sunwise from
right to left as we do when facing north, and as both ancient Hebrew, and often Egyptian
scripts were written.
Proceeding sunwise through the vowels as they preside over their
stations of the year, we begin with O of growth and re-birth, represented by the Spring
Equinox, and the beginning of the Sacred Year, the psychic year, and the beginning of the
year in the New-Aeonic calendar.
Next is the letter U of culmination at the Summer Solstice; then the
vowel-station of Autumnal Equinox, the letter E of balance, and of shifting focus. With
Eve of the Winter Solstice we are brought the letter I of death, and finally, the Winter
Solstice itself gives us the birth-letter of the first day of the new year, the letter A.
At the East of the name Aiwass we have the letter S of the
solar Hawk, symbolic of the child Horus of whom Aiwass said himself to be the messenger or
Angel. The S-month directly follows the anniversary of the channeling of Liber AL
in early April; while S by E.Q. corresponds to the sixteenth path of the Tree of Life, and
to The Hierophant, Atu V of the Tarot, who is the Initiator of the present Aeon.
Atu XVI, The Tower, is also known as War. Crowley notes that it
"seems to indicate the quintessential quality of the Lord of the Aeon" as
described in Liber AL, III. 3-9; 11-13; 17-18; 23-29; 46; 49-60; 70-72, and that
"it [Atu XVI] may be taken as a preface to Atu XX, The Last Judgment, i.e., the
Coming of a New Aeon."
Atu XX, The Aeon, has further been described by Crowley as "the
message of that angel who brought news of the New Aeon to earth." Shin, the
corresponding Hebrew letter transliterates as S in English. Thus S as signature-letter
denotes the identity of the Logos of the Aeon, the Angel Ra-Hoor-Khu.
It has been said by Crowley and by others that the central truth
humanity will come to understand in the New Aeon is that just as the sun does not die each
evening to be re-born again each day at dawn, so too physical death does not end the cycle
of our lives. For death and birth are simply opposing curves in a recurrent cycle, twin
curves of the snake of Life.
Thus using our seasonal vowel-sequence, beginning with S as the
signature-letter of the speaker, we have the spelling AIEUOS. Reading AIEUOS
sunwise: Our lives begin at the O of rebirth, or Initiation by The Hierophant, the letter
S. We then proceed to the culmination of our powers signified by the letter U. Then, our
powers decline, signified by the letter E, and finally we move through to death, the
letter I. But death no longer ends the cycle of our lives, for we end instead with the
letter A, of birth and of beginnings. The cycle ~ encompassing both death and life ~
begins and ends with birth.
Giving each letter its E.q. value, AIEUOS adds to 31 ~ the
number discovered by Charles Stansfeld Jones to be the "key of it all", the key
to Liber AL, and the number of "unity", "god",
"not". The thirty-first path of the Tree of Life is that of The Aeon, Atu XX,
the glyph of the Angel of Ra-Hoor-Khu as discussed above, and the essence of the Spirit of
the Aeon. Thus AIEUOS may be identified not only as a praeter-human intelligence,
or simply as Crowley's own Holy Guardian Angel, but as the universal embodiment of the
Spirit of the Aeon, and emanator of the 93-Current expressed in Liber AL.
Placing each letter of the name within the Sephira associated with its
number reveals the operation of the formula of N.O.X. ~ E unites with I producing O and U,
which in their union again become E and I ~ A is the summit, the final dissolution into
the Unity which is Nought.
