Post Modern Mythology #3
The Beast Of Cairo
Every religion that has ever existed holds a prediction as to how the world will end. Invariably, every new generation of man at some point convinces itself that theirs will be the last.
But just as it began, the world ends slowly, while every man, woman, and child goes about their day as if it were any other day. And every day after that until the grasp of Entropy wins its eternal tug-of-war with Novelty.
Little time has passed since Fredrick drove himself into madness after witnessing the death of the Old God. Living under the plight of paralysis for the last waning years of an agonizing decade, Fredrick finally met the oblivion he’d been staring at all his life.
His sister, who’d been his caretaker once remarked that only a few months before his death, he spoke his last words to her. Breaking a long and final interval of silence, he said— “It’s all so beautiful, isn’t it?”
There are repugnant people in the world.
Dastardly villains to the ‘nth degree.
Vile and wretched creatures who stretch their tar-covered limbs out from the deepest pits of damnation.
Rapacious vermin.
Grasping and clawing at whatever they can, because they can.
Who’d sooner turn out the flesh of a child than curb their insatiable lust for want.
Wickedly consuming all that there is to be consumed.
And then, there is Mr. Crowley.
The forthcoming proclamations of Aleister Crowley’s own importance, he claims, were not by his own words or omission, but that of something so astonishingly beyond human, that any attempt to conceive it would render the perceiver incapable of distinguishing between it, and falsity.
A hedonist and practicing Qabalist sorcerer in the most literal sense, Mr. Crowley’s uncivil departure from a well known, occult secret-order had seen him taking a more entrepreneurial path in his works.
Soon he’d meet and steal away his newly beloved wife, Rose, from her high-born father who hoped to marry her off to some prestigious fellow with an equally great (or greater) surname than his own. How devastated Rose’s father must have been to discover that she eloped with a madman whose only notoriety was having authored a long series of crude and pornographic poetry, and had garnered the reputation of being “too evil” and “too out of control” to continue fraternizing with “devil worshippers”.
These events took place approximately 10 years prior to mankind’s first unsuccessful attempt at suicide1. Often referred to by historians as World War One.
There were two things one can affirm Aleister Crowley truly loved. The mastery of Magick and the power said to be obtained therein. And complete, unrestrained, sexual ecstasy.
It should come as little surprise that Aleister and his newly beloved Rose should choose the top of the pyramid of Giza to consummate their marriage. And with Aleister’s connections with a notable Cairo museum, gaining access to it was fairly easy.
Naturally Rose shared Aleister’s tastes for the more… unorthodox pleasures, and therefor such a consummation would include several additional parties— both men and women for the newlyweds to enjoy.
And what better manner to begin such a festival of love for the self-proclaimed Antichrist than to invoke the spirits with sexual rites and passages to accompany them in their orgiastic dance.
Circles were drawn. Incense and hashish burned. Daggers, cups, coins, and wands laid carefully about. And thus the ritual began.
Hours passed into the night as the waning crescent moon hovered low in the sky above their naked bodies, meshed together in an uncanny mixtures of sweat, tears, and even blood.
Moans crying out in foreign tongues
Throaty chants and infernal screams
Ecstasy set loose upon stars
Tantric dances, yogic trances
Wills jointed together as one
Numinous cosmic orgasm.
All was going delightfully well, until in the middle of it all, Rose broke away and sat straight up, a deep vibrational pitch bursting from her mouth as she began to float above them. The other patrons began gasping and shrieking in fright at the supernatural interruption.
Rose’s head jerked in strange and eerie motions, speaking gibberish in a voice that was not her own. Most of the others became so frightened that some considered leaping to their own demise to escape, but only at the command of Aleister did they hold fast, and take up their daggers, ready to banish whatever demon may have come about.
Aleister was quick to recognize Rose’s gibberish as an odd amalgamation of Ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic. Quickly, he took up a pen and began to scribe everything she was saying.
Even at the crest of sunrise, the orgy having long concluded, its patrons dry and itchy with sand and tired with hangover, Rose was still locked in the same horrifying trance. Blabbering away in a voice too deep for a woman so small— more of the same nonsensical and tonguey gibberish. Aleister’s pen still scribbling away in a tireless effort to keep up.
They managed Rose down to the estate where they’d been staying, with Aleister soon dismissing the other members. He stayed up with her for three additional days, his hands only moving and mind only working thanks to the copious supply of liquid-cocaine, interviewing this newly conjured spirit who now occupied Rose.
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,” Rose spoke several languages at once, crude and yet somehow eloquent, overlapping one another in a voice that was not her own. “Behold and see, the dawn of my nemesis, Nuit, arching her back across the sky, and kissing the flowers of the earth.”
A strange and eerie light emanated from her eyes, and as Aleister gazed into them, he saw the birth of the cosmos. A sudden somethingness leaping from the void of nothingness. A paradox stretching in every direction, never concluding, and never really beginning. An inconceivable ness that simply was. Void of why or because.
Rose’s body spoke again. “Take up thy pen, O scribe. And writeth the truth I expound unto thee.”
“Announce thyself and speaketh thy name!” Aleister’s hands moved in swimming-like motions, fingers interlocking in manners with they ought not, honing his gaze back onto Rose. “For you are in the presence of the Master Therion!”
Rose’s head cracked to the side, her eyes rolling backward. A screech rang out from her throat, teeth sickened yellow with a jaundice hue. “Behold! I am the Minister Aiwass of Hoor-Paar-Kraat!” Her limbs jerked in violent contortions, nails and lips blackened by something unseen. “Ra-Hoor-Kraat hath taken his seat in the East at the Equinox of the Gods.2”
A pressure filled the room, nearly sucking the air from Aleister’s lungs. He fell to one knee, but held himself firm as wind swept up loose sheets of paper, swirling abound like a swarm of flies.
“Thy art bound by the word of the Master. State thine purpose on this plane!” Aleister commanded.
“O’ prophet, O’ scribe, thou be of princes, not absolved nor assuaged. But ecstasy be the joy of the Earth. To me! To me!”3
An invisible force thrust Aleister to the ground, forcing him into a reluctant prostration. And the Beast within Rose continued.
“Hear me, ye people of sighing!
The sorrows of pain and regret!
Are left to the dead and dying!
The folk that not know me yet!”4
Darkness shrouded the room, casting a great shadow over Aleister’s eyes. Alone, frightened, and kneeling before a golden throne that stretched high into the invisible sky. Upon it sat a terrible fright, something of black skin and long claws. Its complete form hidden by the darkness. A pair of red eyes gazing down upon him from on high.
Aleister’s voice trembled as he spoke, “Thy appear on the throne of Ra, Supreme and Terrible God!” He mashed his forehead against the sandy floor. “Deliver ye message, O’ Aiwass, Minister of Ra-Paar-Kraat.”
The eyes gazed down upon him, burning with the fury of a ten-thousand fold vengeance. “Now let it be first understood, that I am a God of War.5 Choose ye an island. Fortify it! Dung it out with engineering of war. I give this unto man, and with it ye shall smite the peoples, and none shall stand before him.”6
Aleister looked up at the Beast, an infernal radiance brimming from its thorny edges. “Why hast thou taken hold of my beloved Rose?”
“Let the scarlet woman beware! Should her heart feel pity and tenderness, then my vengeance shall be known. I will slay me her child, and cast her into the streets where she will die cold.”7
Aleister pleaded with the Beast, “Speaketh thy secret, O Lord of the abyss. I see, I see. Olympus has a new king!”
“I am the secret and fourfold. Blasphemy against all gods and men. Curse them! Curse them! Curse them!”8
Aleister gasped, “The twin seas dyed red with the blood of innocence! Where be the gods of Abraham?”
“The negligent Father has withered to dust. I peck out the eyes of the Lamb! My wings flap sandstorms in the face of the faceless desert-prophet.9 What was theirs is now mine. And on the souls of their worshippers I shall dine.”
“What of the enlightened ones to east?” Aleister begged.
“I tear out the flesh of the Brahman and Buddha, and bind their worshippers in chains of discontent! Brother shall fight brother in my name.10 Glory of nations shall be laid at the foot of my altar. Kings neutered and Queens raped. Into bitterness shall the world be plunged so that the unquenchable thirst of blood reign the hearts of men.”
The darkness around Aleister began to fade. The red-eyed God, Aiwass, sitting on his golden throne grew distant, his voice but an echo on the horizon.
“I am the Lord of Silence and Strength.
There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.
My nemesis shrouds the night sky.
The end is the word.
The word is Abrahadraba.11
Love is the Law.
Love under Will!”
Rose collapsed to the floor, and Aleister rushed in to hold her. Her body was limp and her eyes were gray with cataracts, and her breaths were delicate and light, but he was all the more grateful they were present. His own body shook uncontrollably as he embraced her close to his chest. Her eyes fluttered, slowly turning to their original color.
Gazing up at him she meekly asked, “Aleister, what… what happened?”
He was still staring at the void in which the Beast had disappeared. The hallowed words still echoing in his thoughts. “The truth Rose. We’ve learned the terrible, terrible truth.”
After the death of their first-born child, Aleister would have Rose committed to an insane asylum where she would stay for several years before being released and remarrying.
Both of them lived to witness the first horrors Aiwass had promised. A Great War fought with machines of unprecedented destruction. The fall of kings, the rape of queens, and the butchering of their bloodlines. And although Aiwass was certain that would render mankind bent and broken, he discovered, much like his predecessor, that mankind was far more resilient than expected. For now.
Rose died five years prior to the second Great War, but Aleister would live on to see and hear of the horrors to come. The dawn of the world-destroying atomic might that would surely scorch the earth clean of the human parasites that infested it.
But just as Entropy yanks its end of the rope, basking in the surety of its own victory, would Novelty appear behind it, laughing and giggling at Entropy’s expense.
I hope you enjoyed this third part of Post-Modern Mythology! Join me for the next chapter aptly named - Albert’s Delightful Bicycle Ride
If you’re interested in delving into more context regarding this series, consider checking my Introduction to Post-Modern Mythology, or the preceding Parts One and Two.
Also check out my first novel Chapel Perilous, now available in paperback and Kindle Unlimited.
Much Love and Happy Spring Equinox!
-B
Citation Disclaimer:
Some of the statements used in this piece were lifted directly from Aleister Crowley’s - Book of the Law (BoL). And while that work is well within public domain, I still feel it necessary to oblige the reader with the knowledge of their use. Some of them are direct quotes, and many others are paraphrases or passages I reworded for literary style. Finally, there are some that are fabrications of my own making that are yet still undeniably inspired by his piece that are too obscure to cite.
The numerical values assigned at the end of each BoL citation refer to 1) Chapter 2)Verse
Credit to Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse Five.
BoL 1:49
BoL 1:52
BoL 2:17
BoL 3:3
BoL 3:4-8
BoL 3:43
BoL 3:49-50
BoL 3:51-52
BoL 3:53 & 59
BoL 3: 70, 60, 70, 75 (respectively)
I always liked the counterpoint of Crowley's insane life with the two world wars. Such a mad century.