According to some reports he had a piece of paper with the square for "To find a great treasure" in his pocket when he died. This undoubtedly contributes to those reports that Crowley was a rubbish magician because he was always trying to use magick to get rich and yet he died "penniless in a flophouse" (I know, I know, it's a painful lie but it just won't go away).

Perhaps Crowley thought the "great treasure" was spiritual rather than a stack of gold coins (which he already had, anyway).

I personally carry one of the other squares at the moment.

edit: "Perdurabo" 2nd edition, p548:

'In his pocket was an Abramelin talisman "for a great treasure" and an old letter, tattered from repeated unfoldings and foldings.'

I'm not sure which square it was; 16/3 in the Mathers version of the text is labelled "for a great treasure" but the square given is incomplete.

93!

Fascinating, thank you. So he did use Abra-melin magick, he just hardly ever wrote about it, apparently.
I wonder what the letter was?

93 93/93
Swami

I was going to be cruel but inspirational and advise you to buy "Perdurabo" to find out, but here:

'Dated September 10, 1939, it read: "The Director of Naval Intelligence presents his compliments and would be glad if you could find it convenient to call at the Admiralty for an interview."'

Interesting, I never knew those two facts.

According to Grant, the talisman for a great treasure was found in his "pocket-book," but I have also heard "pocket" and I have read "under his pillow" (from some original newspaper clippings). The location is immaterial. The meaning is obvious: He was using it, causually perhaps. In his later days he screamed and yelled and bullied for "money, money and more moey" from Agape Lodge. See Martin P Starr's The Unknown God: WT Smith and the Thelemites. Crowley's personal letters to various initiates shows his operating position in his "golden years." The demeanor of a drug addict is apparent. The demand for money was primarily for drugs. He had enough donated income (mostly from Germer, Burlingame and others) to live comfortably
- but it's those damned, expensive drugs that put a strain on the purse.

When Solar Lodge came into possession of Crowley's Book of Abramelin Talismans, that particular talisman was missing (all the others were intact) - it seems as though Gerald Yorke got "sticky fingers" and he retained the talisman and used it to procure a vast treasure of spriritual information and texts. It was my job to restore the missing talisman to the collection. the details of that adventure were briefly described in the first edition of Inside Solar Lodge, but the story gets even better when described as being under the influence of legal Sandoz LSD-25 in the forthcomong Behind the Veil.

Each of the Talismans in the collection bore a trace of resudual fluid. A dried up imperfection in the surface of the parcgmenr. At Cefalu, Crowley remarked on how he "called up and banished many a demon." I have always assumed that this was the point where he completed his Abramelin operation, calling up each of the named sprits and mixing up amrita with the bond to the spirit, locked inside a parchment square written in Enochian characters,

Anyway, if Crowley didn't use them (am I feel that he did), then Solar Lodge certainly did.

Oh, was that when they robbed Mrs. Germer? The Caliph still has the rug they rolled her up in. Lots of old props and possessions in the International Grand Lodge Collection.

Exactly. The 1967 (partial and selective) illegal, outrageous acquisition of certain OTO archives.

And they even have Liber AL printed by Solar Lodge (copy 000) used in the Solar Lodge ceremonies; And they even have Solar Lodge's Yi King bound in tan sued, sold to the Frater Superior by myself along with a moderate amount of correspondence, some of which was quoted in Inside Solar Lodge - Outside the Law.

The story gets even more interesting (much more interesing) in the forthcoming Inside Solar Lodge - Behind the Veil.

* I was under the impression that they (OTO, Inc) was trying to distance themselves from the term(s) Caliph and Caliphate - but what do I know?

Frankly Shiva, I'm inactive in the American Order. I came in a few years after Grady died, took all of my Man of Earth Oaths to Hymenaus Beta, my 5th under a Bishop who has broken from the Order, and have stood back and away from the decisions made by our Supreme and Holy King of North America, practicing the 4th Power of the Sphinx for the last decade. Last July was the 23rd anniversary of my Minerval. Over the years, I've met many of the "Grand Old Men", H.B., Sabazius, Lon, Mr. Wasserman, Slater, Alan Cabal, West Coast Patrick King & Pasch, and the list could go on and on, and I've had the pleasure of ongoing friendships with several of them. As a result, I've gotten a lot of inside opinions and information, and access to materials that most of my Brothers and Sisters have not had the opportunity to enjoy.

The Order I joined is not the Order today, for better, or for worse. It will always be the Caliphate to me. OTO Inc. was not a Corporation I ever took a vow to-- I don't make Oaths to Corporations. Furthermore, despite recent changes in American law, I refuse to believe that Corporations are people until the State of Texas executes one.

My dear Brothers and Sisters in the Order, friends and lovers I have known for decades, remain my Dear Brothers and Sisters. But my path, I see, now lies in different, if parallel, lines of the Great Work. And it is to those ends I seek.

I was quite suprised to learn of your correspondence and connection with the Caliph when I saw him credited in your book. I never thought he'd go there, based on some rather adamant statements he made when I knew him, living in Austin, a decade ago. I'll be purchasing your next book; I subscribe to Weiser Antiquities notifications list and check their pages a couple times a week-- your signed editions must have gone phenomenally fast for me to have missed the opportunity. 😉 Good on ya. Hope I can get the next one signed. You are one interesting, if cantankerous cat, but I'm a garrolous old fighting Democrat myself, so we're gonna lock horns occasionally. I'll try and not be too pointed in my arguments in the future. (Walter Five lays down the olive branch, and walks away)

Many other habe said the same thing. Jerry Conellius is one that openly said so.
The "Caliphate" is representative of Grady. I acknowledge Grady as the Phoenix who rose from the asjes of Solar Lodge. After Grady they turned the rules around and things started to change.

Corpoations are "entities" that have the rights of a person (To sue, to be sued, to pay taxes, to fill out papers).

Private opinions and "politically correct" statements may vary. He was always polite to me and even furnished photos for the book from the arvhives.

Thanks, Shiva

Getting back to topic, what do you all think of Dehn's expanded edition that came out, what, five years ago?

One reviewer I respect said "A completely new feature of the present edition is the inclusion of "Book Two", a collection of medieval magical recipes. The original manuscripts contain a total of 160 recipes, but Dehn only includes 36 representative examples in this edition. "Book Four" contains the famous magical squares. It is here that Dehn's textual methods are most obscure and disappointing, as many of the problems posed by the squares remain unresolved. As an example, the first word of square 18 should read "EKDILUN", and we can arrive at this corrected reading quite easily by approaching the squares as though they were Sudoku puzzles. But Dehn does not correct any of the squares in this way, and he remains silent as to which manuscript his chosen reading came from. Many other squares can be resolved logically by the Sudoku method. Other squares, such as 41 or 46 can only be resolved up to a certain point, after which we need to choose a reading from one or other of the manuscripts, which Dehn, as mentioned, does not report. "

Aaron Leitch created a short document where he basically finishes Dehn's job, and presents the corrected magical word squares; sometimes offering more than one option where the "correct" version would be up for discussion.

In terms of Crowley's hand-made, parchment squares, it might be of interest to know that he used the Mathers (book) letters, but he inscribed them with Enochian characters.

So much of this technical detail is good for intellectual research, and will serve to offer up hours of endless debate. So what? In PRACTICE, these details don't matter. What matters is one's state (level) of consciousness - and all the formal doo-dads are just a way to connect. For example, in Inside Solar Lodge - Outside the Law, I wrote this amazing story:

"As my identity was suspect, I was locked in a special cell with an orange lock that was reserved for federal prisoners and dangerous criminals. However, when the sixth day arrived I realized that I was being held overtime. The guards didn’t want to hear about it so I conspired by magickal means to get out of the cell through the mental construction of a talisman. It worked.
I then walked up to the front desk of the jail and explained to the policeman in charge that I had been sentenced to five days for driving without a driver’s license, but this was the sixth day.
The cop asked for my name and went to his files. After searching the files, he said, “I have no record of you even being here! "
(c)2007 by ASI

No reader has ever questioned me about the methodology of this bizarre escapement (escape). How does one "mentally' construct a MENTAL ABRAMELIN TALISMAN THAT OPENS HI-SECURITY JAIL DOORS? I'll not be going into detail, but first you must decide that you'll be getting out (Will). Then you imagine (make a mental image) of the square. Then you draw it in saliva with your right index finger on th concrete jail floor. All without reference to the book - because the cops have the book in their possession.

Then you forget it - and within 2 hours you are taken out of the cell to have a shower, and then they forget about you and you can go anywhere - including walking out the back door and entering the great wasteland of the Sonoran desert.

Congratulations! This is your 666th post, Shiva!! 😀

Thank you for noting that synchronicity. It's rather funny that the subject material should have been of such a (Magickal?)(Weird?)(Unbelievable?)(Way, far away, out there?)(Outrageous?) nature.

As a matter of fact, it was anpi the one who noticed it first and told us on the Babble-On Box, but you said you never look there, so I thought to ring a bell here.
Now I better step aside and let this thread follow its proper course. 🙂

H.