" 6 – What would a “typesetter/printer” make of the curious cartoon figures illustrating the page? "
I have written on the Buddha [...] = 0 some time ago - however I am curious as to what the jotting right after the word Buddha is. Any ideas anyone?
"Maybe someone should consult a specialist in Eastern languages with reference to the three letters beneath the crest, and then wonder which hotel may employ this phrase, and crown..."
I am not a specialist in Eastern languages (specifically Arabic and Persian) although I learned ancient Hebrew in my early twenties. I have read a fair amount of the Quran and a wide variety of Sufi literature, including the Persian Sufi poets, and learned the Arabic script as well as the extended Persian version of it. My best bet is it signifies the word Choa in Persian. Persian like Arabic is written right to left and many of the letters of those scripts take different forms depending on whether the letter is at the beginning middle or end of a word.
In the case of the letters Crowley writes (if he was the one who wrote it), the first letter is actually the way the letter would be written if it were at the end of the word, not at its beginning. It is the Arabic letter Jim with three dots below, which makes it a letter of the extended Persian - Arabic script - with a sound more like ch then the j of Jim (which corresponds in value to the Hebrew Gimel with a different phonetic sound (in Hebrew ג (Gimel) is usually the G sound - but just the English G which can also sound like a J - in Arabic it sounds almost invariably like a J)
In the writing of these letters in the manuscript they are conjoined as Arabic and Persian calligraphy allows the artist to not obey strict orthography. The reason why I think it signifies Choa in Persian is both due to the fact that Crowley used Choia Khan as his name while in Cairo - if indeed the newspaper account someone once cited is correct - and in Persian it signifies either
"An unguent or fragrant paste of four ingredients (viz. sandal, agallochum, saffron, and musk; or ambergris, saffron, musk, and the juice of the flowers of the Abor tristis)"
and some other meanings. Crowley varies the identical Hebrew letters of life, living being, beast, root of the word elsewhere adding א to get it to equal 666 through the names of its letters.
Here is a better pic of the "crown" and the "word".
I guess it is without a question that this not a creation by Crowley, he simply wasn't able to do that kind of clean calligraphy. In fact, the ink, with which he crossed it out, isn't the same ink (print) of the calligraphy. I have by the way to this date not found any pic of crown with that kind of star attached. My Arab friends tell me that the calligraphy is not an Arab word, but probably Urdu. It might be a word pronounced "tchava", but I am still waiting for a reply of an expert forum on Urdu to make sure. In any case it would be a rare kind of hotel stationary, being a double folded page, but who knows. To me it seems unplausible that it is from some Cairo hotel. Cairo was a striving city at that time, very open to the western culture, and I cannot imagine AC and his wife (with all the money that he still had then) weren't staying in one of the top hotels at that time, none of those having a "logo" like that. Also, Crowley and Rose were just coming back from a long trip through Asia when they arrived in Cairo. He might have brought that paper along from somewhere.
There appears to be a radical difference in the images. If you have better resolutions of the manuscript please email it to this pauper!
My transliteration and translation of the letters is a mere hypothesis. Nonetheless I do not think it beyond the bounds of probability that Crowley practiced a little eastern calligraphy. But whether he wrote it or not, or whether the page originates from a hotel in Cairo or not - it is simply a matter of trying to make sense of what is actually written on the page. The triple dotted Jim is also used in Urdu. I have yet to look up the word.
It actually has some similar meanings as in Persian
There appears to be a radical difference in the images. If you have better resolutions of the manuscript please email it to this pauper!
The one I posted is the best I got. I just have retouched Crowley's crossing-out strokes and the wrinkle in the page. Also, AC just cancelled it by crossing it out and all the scribbles on that page do not suggest that it was very important to the case. The back side, which I saw but have no pictures of, also shows some cabbalistic scribbling with Liber L themes. So it has connections with Liber L but in my opinion dating from a later date. Anyway, so far I have not been able to find out where that sheet of paper really comes from.
Did you write down those scribblings? I have found that some of AC's most obscure remarks shed light upon his corpus. If you did please share them!
Well, I have to be honest, I have to ask for permission. I am not a member of the OTO who hold the copyrights and of course this is totally unpublished and I am very grateful that I was allowed to see it, so I guess I will just ask. I will respect the decision and I hope you do too. You might try your luck with the Harry Ransom Research Center and get a copy yourself (of course without publishing rights but for private research).
Do not worry about it Lutz - if it is easy go for it - it is not that I am that perplexed about the man - but it is always fun to learn an odd tidbit or two. One of these days I may make it to Austin and take a look. Sometimes librarians can be very helpful, and you can call the reference desk, and they will tell you what it written on a page or two.
When I was around 14 (back in the 70's) a young lady who was in college at the University of Texas at Austin, and was learning how to teach children, worked an internship at Redondo Beach Public High School in California where I was attending, and she procured for me on loan from the Ransom Research Center a copy of the Confessions of Aleister Crowley, and a very early hardback edition of the Book of the Law (with only the old comment - so you can imagine what a slim obscure book it was to me at the time - I had already been given probably at age 12 or 13 a copy of the Castle hardback edition of Magick in Theory and Practice with all the appendices - but still!)
We moved from California to Delaware at the end of that term and I left the two works in my locker. Hopefully the school had enough sense to have them returned to Austin!
the OTO who hold the copyrights and of course this is totally unpublished.
Is the (c)OTO's claim that certain hi-resolution images of the AL ms. are under copyright, because they are recently made?
If so, this is not a valid copyright claim in US law.
The AL ms. itself is certainly in the public domain- the content, and facsimile images of the ms., have been published hundreds of times. The ms. itself was created in 1904 (or 1902 or perhaps 1906 if we believe RTC). If it is an unpublished ms., it went into the public domain in 2017 (life of author + 70 years)- all unpublished works by AC are in the public domain. If, as is more likely, courts were to view it as having been published (since, err, it was), it is probably a pre-1926 publication, and thus in the public domain (95 or more years after publication).
The fact that a particular hi-res image of a public domain work may have been created recently does not make it copyrightable subject matter in the US. See wikipedia discussion of the leading case, and subsequent cases, here. According to that article, the (c)OTO would not have a copyright claim under UK law either. See also this general guide to terms of copyright in the US.
And if anyone might be intimidated by their litigious reputation, and reputed legions of lawyers, note that the US copyright statute would generally allow a defendant sued for reproducing a public domain work to recover their attorney costs from the party who sued them.
The (c)OTO does still own a few AC copyrights, but not very many, and not for very long.
2025 sees them lose rights to MITP, the two published volumes of the Hag (the material in the four unpublished volumes is already public domain), Moonchild, and The Stratagem and Other Stories. After 2025, the only really valuable copyright they will still own is The Book of Thoth and the Thoth cards. That they own til 2039, so 17 more years of royalties there. And Magick Without Tears is good til 2040.
The (c)OTO have literally zero financial incentive to publish any AC works at this point, and are highly unlikely to ever do so again. There is that whole "promulgation" thing, but that doesn't seem to be a big concern with them.
@ignant666 You may be right. I don't know. Just let us say that this not a really a question of copyright. I was given the opportunity to see the backside of the cover folder, something that - if I remember correctly - never ever saw daylight once, nor was it even mentioned anywhere. It is/was - I am not sure - available from the Harry Ransom Center as far as I know. 20 years back, when I ordered a copy, I did not think about to have the backside copied too. So I did not get it. I was shown this privately with the obligation that it is private, and I won't share it. So I will be waiting for a permission. Not because of copyrights, because of courtesy. I have asked, though, and I am awaiting an answer.
As the Doctor of Law, that you are (I guess), you are probably a lot more aware of what is legal. I am not. I will wait for an answer from the OTO (yes, that is who I am talking to, without being a member, and everyone is allowed to do the same. Not to forget I wrote to a lot of organisations I am not a member of and usually people are quite nice and helpful. I once wrote to the Eastbourne Gazette to inquire about AC and a very friendly lady copied all his articles for me, until then unpublished).
Fair enough, and i was not telling anyone what they ought to do, and
1) i make no representation whatever to have any idea at all about German/EC copyright law, and
2) i hasten to also add that i was simply making general, easy-to-verify statements about the term of copyright, and copyrightable subject matter, under US law, and not offering legal advice to any person. I do not practice law, and urge all persons to consult an attorney before doing, or not doing, anything whatever.
3) To clarify, while i am in some sense a "Doctor of Law" in that i hold a degree that says "Juris Doctor" on it, in the US we don't call folks with law degrees "Doctor", as they do in many/most non-English-speaking countries. Technically, the JD, like the MD, is a "professional" non-doctoral degree. I am Dr. ignant because i also have a research Ph.D. From a German perspective, i am thus Doktor Doktor.
Obviously when dealing with any sort of gangster or shakedown artist, it may be wise to comply with their terms. And a gentleman's word is his bond, of course.
Just wanted to clarify that, if the (c)OTO are claiming they own copyrights over these images, they are gangsters and/or shakedown artists.
I might even be Doktor Doktor Professor, if the latter title survives into retirement.
I think the first version sounds more natural, and it is not in any sense that i can understand "incorrect".
The "improved" "have had" version could be read as implying that the school should somehow have had the sense to have returned the books prior to discovering them on clearing out the lockers. The first version avoids this possible ambiguous construction, and is just more natural English usage.
Signed,
Doktor Doktor ignant, who corrected undergrad and grad student (and fellow faculty members') prose for usage, grammar, syntax, and euphony for more than 20 years
I do detest most Dead, "Feedback" being their only tolerable "tune". I actually looked at the track-listings on their first few albums, thinking "Aren't there some old ones i like?" Nope. I have come in my old age to love a ton of hippie shit i once despised, but not the Dead so far. Or most likely by death.
I remember when Jerry died. I was tutoring this very beautiful young woman (the errant daughter of a very famous Republican family) for the law school entrance exam. I had very long hair at the time. She came in for her lesson and told me Jerry had died, i think expecting me to share her grief due to my long hair. I recycled an old joke about Calvin Coolidge, and replied "How could they tell?" when she told me the sad news.
Later, i went to a Mexican restaurant where my bass-player was tending bar, and hung with all my punk-rock pals getting smashed on a drink he invented for the occasion called a "Dead Hippie".
I believe, however, that we digress from the topic here.
(of course without publishing rights but for private research).
"Fair Use" privileges are extended under law - at least in the USA (USA+UK=93) - for "brief quotes in reviews."
So any person could get the doc, write a review, quote the quotes, make a reviewer's comment, and ensure that the review get published from the USA - or any other country that allowd such "fair use."
The (c)OTO have literally zero financial incentive to publish any AC works at this point, and are highly unlikely to ever do so again.
"Abaddon! The Opening of the Eye!" - IV* P.I. "Perfect Initiate" [I think]
"It is gone - it is all done there comes and end to all the fun. The lofty phoenix has burned this day, leaving soot and ashes from its play." - The Rising Phoenix
You may be right. I don't know. Just let us say that this not a really a question of copyright. I was given the opportunity to see the backside of the cover folder
I (we?) understand your position. We (partners in civil and cosmic karma law) jumped in regarding what "anyone" could do with "any" document under various circumstances. I do not think anyone is trying to pryit out of you, or to convince you to publish what you saw.
Instead, we are advising other ninjas on general tactics.
Fair enough, and i was not telling anyone what they ought to do
But I was. I did it. I told anyone how to beat the rap in a simple and self-congratulatory manner. Where does that leave me ... and who will (be the one to) follow?
I hasten to also add that i was simply making general, easy-to-verify statements about the term of copyright, and copyrightable subject matter, under US law, and not offering legal advice to any person. I do not practice law, and urge all persons to consult an attorney before doing, or not doing, anything whatever.
You should add the part about "These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA, etc."
the JD, like the MD, is a "professional" non-doctoral degree
My O.M.D is in that category. My University also offered a Ph.D. in Oriental Medicine, which involved the OMD curriculum, plus a research project resulting in a dissertation and an oral defense. I already had a Ph.D. in Education, so I passed (rejected) on that part, but the Univ immediately hired me to sit on the oral defense committee.
In the healing community, an MD, OMD, DC. OD, DO are are considered "clinical" degrees. The gov recognizes all of them as "professional." So when a Doc of Oriental Med upgrades, he/she got a Ph.D. - But the upgrade for an MD (or DDS) is a Master of Science. So when we see Frater Bigwig, MD, MS, we should not say "so what?" as it's a really high specialization marker.
I might even be Doktor Doktor Professor, if the latter title survives into retirement.
But here's the thing. After retirement, nobody else gives a Shinola any more. Smart retirees keep active in some small manner (consulting, writing books, posting on LAShTAL) - this tends to keep the dok-prof afloat.
I am almost and absolutely in agreement here. When all my college friends went to Dead concerts I did not go (Zardoz in Boleskine (in Sacramento) was a big Dead fan - when Kenneth Anger was put up in my room we did not discuss it) Years later I finally got to see the Dead and it was one of those magical moments in which you had heard all those those songs and you did not know that was the name of the band. Same thing happened with the Stones in SF at Candlestick on how many micro grams of synthesized psilocybin- of course it is always fun to hear Truckin when you are happening to cruise down the road. Otherwise ... I too have learned to detest the Dead!
After retirement, nobody else gives a Shinola any more.
Not so sure they ever did, but i suppose the checks did clear.
I prefer being addressed by my first name (which in these parts is ignant, my last name being 666); i just don't tolerate "Mr." Too many years of blood, sweat, and beers went into my doctorate for that.
There is actually a PhD-level doctoral degree in law awarded by some institutions. Usually one must have a BA, a JD and an LLM (Master of Laws; post-JD advanced law degree) to get in. My PhD is not in law but criminology.
It is just important to clarify anything that might look like the unauthorized practice of law or otherwise provoke the wrath of the state bar licensing folk, like not countering the suggestion that one has a "Doctor of Law" degree. Probably they do not read lashtal, but better safe than sorry.
"Fair use" is an available defense to infringement of copyright claims, but not nearly so powerful a defense as demonstrating that the allegedly copied matter is not subject to copyright, like, for example, works that are mere "slavish reproductions" (like extremely accurate hi-res photos) of public-domain works.
"Fair use" pretty much requires a trial to convince the court your defense is valid. Proving the work is public domain can mean summary judgement (winning pre-trial), and more importantly, "the bad guys" (a technical legal term for "the other side") paying your legal costs.
Of course. Your pre-doctoral studies are well archived somwhere in these threads via your candid confessions. I will never forget the part about the hand grenade.
This page was, until now, an unpublished work. It was written by a person who died in 1947. All unpublished works by persons who died in 1947 entered the US public domain in 2017.
There is no possible claim of US copyright over this ms. page, or of any reproduction of it. Maybe in some other country there is. But in God's Country, anyone is free to use this image on t-shirts, lunchboxes, or any other medium they care to, to use it in their own books and other writings, to do any damn thing they please with it. And to collect their attorney costs if someone says they can't.
The fact that some libraries, museums, occult orders, etc. claim they own "the rights" to public domain works they physically possess doesn't make it so.
I don't know. Maybe AC's works are protected by UK copyright which has the 2039 rule for unpublished works. But anyway, as I said I was asked not to pass it along and so I was awaiting an okay out of courtesy, not because being afraid of getting sued or breaking any laws that may or may not be clear to me.
I can't understand the UK copyright term rule for unpublished works as articulated by wikipedia, and know of no UK resource comparable to the Cornell US copyright term chart i linked to, and i know little about UK law. So i express no opinion as to whether this particular page is copyright in the UK. Perhaps sell those lunchboxes only in the US?
It makes zero sense to me as a policy matter, in that the published works of AC, and his many pseudonymous works, have apparently been in the UK public domain since 2017, but all unpublished works by authors who died prior to 1969 apparently are copyright until 2039. Why legislators should think it worthwhile to do this is obscure to me- do Shakespeare's heirs (if we can find them) truly deserve royalties on a newly discovered play? Why do they get bupkes if it's first published in 2040, but a goldmine a year earlier? But then i am not a Member of Parliament.
It appears that it would be wise not to make lunchboxes with the back-page image on them and sell them in the UK. You can do so with any images you can get of any of the other pages of the AL ms. (since they've all been published many times and are in the UK public domain, as well as the US), but not this newly published one.
@herupakraath - You are mistaken*, as i discuss above.
Mere "slavish reproduction" of a public-domain work by taking a photograph (or here, most likely, by doing a hi-res scan) does not involve enough original creativity to create a copyrightable subject matter out of a public-domain work.
Again, probably best to refrain from speaking when you don't know what you're talking about.
* Except to the extent that it is copyright in the UK, as a copy of a newly published unpublished work; the photo itself is probably not copyrightable under UK law, and the copyright belongs to the (c)OTO, not to the photographer/scanner.
There you all go, have fun, play around and see what he was after!
A first publication on Lashtal again.
Thank you, copyright holders.
Love=Law
Lutz
And thank you for posting it.
I happened to notice something--if you don't mind me jumping back into the discussion--that makes the photo worth the effort.
If the cover page is an oversized makeshift envelope that was used to hold the galley proofs for The Collected Works somewhere around 1906-1907, why does the image show Crowley working out the gematria of ThELHMA for the first time? As rudimentary as the equations are, they are easily recognized as the first exploration of a word with gematria, which had to have happened long before 1907.
Crowley, while working out the letter values, realized that two of them are 30 and 8, and knew he could add them, then multiply the result by 11 to arrive at 418. The equations represent a fundamental marriage of two core numbers that Crowley was utilizing in 1904, and should be viewed as substantial evidence the cover page/folder was present during the Cairo Working, and was used to store the Liber L. manuscript, that and the fact it has LIBER L written on it in huge letters.
Well, we will never know. AC had had (grammar?) 4 (iirc) typescripts made in Cairo, so the folder could also have been used for that. It also *could* have hold the manuscript pages together, on the other hand we know that it is way too small to really house it. I any way it came together with the galley proofs into the Fuller collection at the Harry Ransom Center.
substantial evidence the cover page/folder was present during the Cairo Working, and was used to store the Liber L. manuscript.
Well it seems to indicate that it was present during the Cairo working, but your second conclusion is not really convincing.
Again, probably best to refrain from speaking when you don't know what you're talking about.
The subject of the photo is irrelevant to it being someones creative property. If the material photographed is copyrightable there could be two copyrights involved, that of the photographer, and that of whomever holds the rights to the material photographed.
@herupakraath - Thank you for linking to an official UK source that supports my position, and points out that you are dead wrong; perhaps best to actually read the sources you cite before citing them?:
[A]ccording to established case law, the courts have said that copyright can only subsist in subject matter that is original in the sense that it is the author’s own ‘intellectual creation’. Given this criterion, it seems unlikely that what is merely a retouched, digitised image of an older work can be considered as ‘original’. This is because there will generally be minimal scope for a creator to exercise free and creative choices if their aim is simply to make a faithful reproduction of an existing work.
@herupakraath The thing is, that since it says exactly what was to be printed I am still more convinced that it was used as directions for Fuller and probably housed a typescript he was given. To me it seems unconvincing that AC took the manuscript out of its folder after two years just to tell Fuller what to print. And I do not think that the addition on the title page are anything more than exactly that: directions what to print. But of course so far we have not enough proof for either of our theories.
Also, of course you cannot just photograph copyrighted material and by that gain copyrights also. Moreover, the pic is not a photo I took but just a clipping of the scan I received. There is some more sketching on the back (you can see a little part of it, the pencilled triangles), which I have to decipher first and will post at a later date. And many perfect fingerprints...
From Fuller's catalogue of Crowleyana in his possession that finally went to the Harry Ransom Center:
So it is clear that the folder housed the Ballantyne proofs in Fuller's possession. Why on earth would AC give him the original Liber L cover page? And if he did, why wouldn't Fuller mention it? I think it is probably contemporary with liber L's beginnings, but nothing more.
You are full of imperatives today ("easily recognized," "had to have happened"). Please calm your spirit. Do not become a carbon-copy of rtc. "Proof" is required for all Imperative proclamations.
"Proof" is required for all Imperative proclamations.
Not, apparently, when your name and birth-place is encrypted in the II:76 Cypher. Then you just proclaim away, fantasizing freely, and fact-free. Because you are Chosen, and Special.
But then, sadly, i have to [unfortunate term deleted]-slap you.
There is no time/date stamp on the pic, and whether this was the "first time" is not verifiable.
Not verifiable, but conclusive. If Crowley was aware the enumeration of ThELHMA is 93, he would have had no reason to write it down on the folder as though he had just learned of it, and no reason to write it on the back of a folder, as though it were a spontaneous first effort. Crowley could have calculated the values for the pairs of letters without writing the actual letters down, and without totaling them to arrive at 93, but he did.
@ignant666 The paragraph you quote is referring to modified photos that someone else has already taken. Original photographs are copyrightable, period.
The paragraph you quote is referring to modified photos that someone else has already taken.
No, it isn't; re-read.
There is no mention of "modified photos that someone else has already taken", nor is that topic discussed under some other terminology. The section is called "Are digitised copies of older images protected by copyright?" There is no mention of the "older images" necessarily being photographs. They could be, say, images of pages of a 1904 manuscript.
You simply lack the understanding of the terminology to understand plain statements.
No, they aren't, if, as in this case, they lack all originality, because then they aren't "original photographs"! Again, re-read. Although it probably won't help, because you can't understand what you are reading.
This is a pointless discussion. You are wrong, cite authorities that clearly show you are wrong, and keep trying to argue.
If Crowley was aware the enumeration of ThELHMA is 93, he would have had no reason to write it down on the folder as though he had just learned of it
What a stretch of conclusivity. You are losing ground faster and faster on the slippery slope of guessing, while saying, "This MUST have been the ONLY way to interpret the unwritten details of a shaky legend."
I am not involved in the details here (so as to avoid fainting or spontaneous combustion), and I'm not out to attack your persona. But as a trained judge, I must inform you that you are losing ground, and that nothing MUST have been this way or that without "proof."
Oh, Shinola and the Four Scheissez! Now we're going to have to open either The Octagon of Geburah or The Grand Tribunal (of Geburah) again. Which will it be?
"Are digitised copies of older images protected by copyright?
An older image, by definition, has to have been already taken, and if the image has been digitized and retouched, it has been modified. Are you being intentionally obtuse? If not, what makes you think the image in question is a digitized, retouched copy of an older photo?
I was under the impression that someone took a photo of the folder, which they did, and either they, or whomever they work for, own the copyright to it, regardless of your questionable interpretation of the law.
OK, pal, yeah, you win. Well, no. Has anyone ever paid you for your "interpretation of the law"? Which law school were you trained at again?
You have clearly demonstrated that you simply can't read and understand quite clear prose.
One more time: Taking a photo, or doing a high-res digital scan, that is simply a copy of an existing work does not create a new copyrightable work.
This is because there is nothing creative about taking a photo which is simply a reproduction of an existing work. It doesn't matter whether the prior work was a painting, a photo, an etching, or a page of a manuscript. This argument is obviously far stronger when, as here, the "artist" has simply laid the document on a digital scanner and hit "Scan".
That's what the UK copyright guidance you linked to very clearly says, despite the fact that you can't understand it. That's also what the US courts have held. I have tried to educate you here, and it just isn't working.
No photos are involved. Just scans, no retouches. The scanner creates no new copyrights. Of course every digitised image of a copyrighted "thing" doesn't change anything about the copyrights. Try to visit the Yorke Collection, photograph the stuff and publish it because "but I made the photos!". See what happens.
