I am the warrior Lord of the Forties: the Eighties cower before me, & are abased. I will bring you to victory & joy: I will be at your arms in battle & ye shall delight to slay. Success is your proof; courage is your armour; go on, go on, in my strength; & ye shall turn not back for any! (AL, III, 46)
The earth, let her be governed by her parts; and let there be division in her, that the glory of her may be always drunken and vexed in itself. Her course, let it run with the Heavens, and as an handmaid let her serve them one season: Let it confound another, and let there be no Creature upon, or within[,] her the same … one and the same. All her members[,] let them differ in their qualities, and let there be no one Creature equal with another. The reasonable Creatures of the earth, or Man[, l]et them vex and weed out one another. And the dwelling places, let them forget their names, the work of man and his pomp: Let them be defaced[,] his buildings, let them become Caves for the beasts of the field[. C]onfound her understanding with darkness, for why? [I]it repenteth me I made man[. O]ne while[,] let her be known, and another while a stranger, because she is the bed of an harlot and the dwelling place of him that is fallen. O you heavens arise[.] The lower heavens underneath you [,] let them serve you[.] Govern those that govern, cast down such as fall, bring forth with those that increase, and destroy the rotten[.] No place, let it remain in one number. Add and diminish until the Stars be numbered. (The Call of the Thirty Aethyrs)
Human-caused climate change was identified by the Swede, Svante Arrhenius, in 1896 (“On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground”), eight years before the Cairo Working, when Aleister Crowley declared that the world would be destroyed by fire, ending Western (i.e., Judaeo-Christian) civilization. It is almost certain that Crowley did not know Arrhenius’s work, but Aiwaz predicts that the [19]40s shall be a time of war, battle, and “slay[ing].” This verse predicts the Second World War. But what of the [19]80s? The literal meaning of “cower” is Old German, *kuren, “to lie in wait.” “Abase” is Old French abaissier, “diminish, make lower in value or status.” (Cf. III, 9: “Lurk! Withdraw! Upon them! this is the Law of the Battle of Conquest: thus shall my worship be about my secret house.”) One of the general expectations of extreme climate change is that the human population will experience a major die-off of billions of people.[1] The type of society projected to exist after the consequences of extreme climate change, say, 2050-2100, are strikingly similar to the most dystopian passages in the Book of the Law (see, for example, Six Degrees Could Change the World). In addition, the right-wing establishment reaction (Nixon, Thatcher, Reagan, Bush, Trump, etc.) began in earnest during the 1980s, guaranteeing that climate change would not be addressed. The 1980s also saw the death of R. Buckminster Fuller, who probably came closer than anybody to how to address the problems facing technological humanity going forward. From this perspective, the Book of the Law may be regarded as a prophecy of a post-climate change world. A forty-year and/or eighty-year cycle may also be implied.[2] The dystopian tone of the Book is now clarified. Elon Musk wants to move to Mars because he fears the world is on the verge of a new Dark Age.
Consensus begins to form, 1980-1988
In 1982, Greenland ice cores drilled by Hans Oeschger, Willi Dansgaard, and collaborators revealed dramatic temperature oscillations in the space of a century in the distant past. The most prominent of the changes in their record corresponded to the violent Younger Dryas climate oscillation seen in shifts in types of pollen in lake beds all over Europe. Evidently drastic climate changes were possible within a human lifetime.
James Hansen during his 1988 testimony to Congress, which alerted the public to the dangers of global warming.
In 1973, British scientist James Lovelock speculated that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) could have a global warming effect. In 1975, V. Ramanathan found that a CFC molecule could be 10,000 times more effective in absorbing infrared radiation than a carbon dioxide molecule, making CFCs potentially important despite their very low concentrations in the atmosphere. While most early work on CFCs focused on their role in ozone depletion, by 1985 Ramanathan and others showed that CFCs together with methane and other trace gases could have nearly as important a climate effect as increases in CO2. In other words, global warming would arrive twice as fast as had been expected.
In 1985 a joint UNEP/WMO/ICSU Conference on the “Assessment of the Role of Carbon Dioxide and Other Greenhouse Gases in Climate Variations and Associated Impacts” concluded that greenhouse gases “are expected” to cause significant warming in the next century and that some warming is inevitable.
Meanwhile, ice cores drilled by a Franco-Soviet team at the Vostok Station in Antarctica showed that CO2 and temperature had gone up and down together in wide swings through past ice ages. This confirmed the CO2-temperature relationship in a manner entirely independent of computer climate models, strongly reinforcing the emerging scientific consensus. The findings also pointed to powerful biological and geochemical feedbacks.
In June 1988, James E. Hansen made one of the first assessments that human-caused warming had already measurably affected global climate. Shortly after, a “World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security” gathered hundreds of scientists and others in Toronto. They concluded that the changes in the atmosphere due to human pollution “represent a major threat to international security and are already having harmful consequences over many parts of the globe,” and declared that by 2005 the world should push its emissions some 20% below the 1988 level.
The 1980s saw important breakthroughs with regard to global environmental challenges. E.g. Ozone depletion was mitigated by the Vienna Convention (1985) and the Montreal Protocol (1987). Acid rain was mainly regulated on the national and regional level.
Modern period: 1988 to present
2015 – Warmest Global Year on Record (since 1880) – Colors indicate temperature anomalies (NASA/NOAA; 20 January 2016).
In 1988 the WMO established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change with the support of the UNEP. The IPCC continues its work through the present day, and issues a series of Assessment Reports and supplemental reports that describe the state of scientific understanding at the time each report is prepared. Scientific developments during this period are summarized about once every five to six years in the IPCC Assessment Reports which were published in 1990 (First Assessment Report), 1995 (Second Assessment Report), 2001 (Third Assessment Report), 2007 (Fourth Assessment Report), and 2013/2014 (Fifth Assessment Report).
Since the 1990s, research on climate change has expanded and grown, linking many fields such as atmospheric sciences, numeric modeling, behavioral sciences, geology and economics. Articles on climate change science are now frequently published in major journals such as Science by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Nature, in addition there are focused journals on climate change research such as Nature Climate Change, Climate Change, Journal of Climate, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change,and International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management; furthermore, many journals on related subjects continue to publish articles that build out the science behind climate change (e.g. Quaternary Research).
Source: Wikipedia, “History of Climate Change”
Horus leaps up thrice armed from the womb of his mother. Harpokrates his twin is hidden within him. SET is his holy covenant, that he shall display in the great day of M.A.A.T., that is being interpreted the Master of the Temple of A∴A∴, whose name is Truth. (Liber CCCLXX, v. 7)
Love one another with burning hearts; on the low men trample in the fierce lust of your pride, in the day of your wrath. (Liber CCXX, II, 24)
In this context it is surely significant that the Egyptian god SET (ShT), the Secret Name of Horus (Hoor), the Lord of the Eon, is the god of Desert Heat (i.e., Global Warming). This corresponds to the notion of the destruction of the world by fire (the “day of judgment” or “day of wrath”), corresponding in the Indian system to the end of the age, the Kali Yuga.[3] “Set /or Seth; also spelled Setesh, Sutekh, Setekh, or Suty) is a god of the desert, storms, disorder, violence and foreigners in ancient Egyptian religion. In Ancient Greek, the god’s name is given as Sēth (Σήθ). Set is not, however, a god to be ignored or avoided; he has a positive role where he is employed by Ra on his solar boat to repel the serpent of Chaos Apep. Set had a vital role as a reconciled combatant. He was lord of the red (desert) land where he was the balance to Horus’ role as lord of the black (soil) land.” (Wikipedia, “Set”) A little-known fact is that Horus and Set had an incestuous homosexual relationship. Crowley identifies the New Eon of Horus in his magnum opus, Magick in Theory and Practice, with the advent of bisexuality or homosexuality, a fact noted by Crowley’s secretary, Israel Regardie, a qualified psychotherapist.
Thelema also exhibits affinities with the Gnostic Sethians, including an ultimately unknowable, trans-rational, and trans-linquistic divine reality; primordial divine wisdom; the spiritual elevation of the feminine or “goddess” principle; doctrines of emanations and eons or epochs; the universal archetype of a “war in heaven”; an apocalyptic theory of history; a theory and practice of vertical, visionary ascent; a spiritual hierarchy or hierarchies; the identification of salvation with enlightenment through wisdom; emphasis on personal experience; individualism; “arithmology”; divine sexuality; and the rejection of orthodox and exoteric religiosity (these features also characterize Mayahana and especially Vajrayana Buddhism). Yaldabaoth, a serpent with a lion’s head, is the demiurge (cf. Choronzon). The temptation by the serpent and the eating of the “forbidden fruit” becomes an initiatory act, whereby Adam and Eve regain the spiritual power stolen by the demiurge, identified with the God of Abraham, who attempts to rape Eve. The serpent, Satan, is thus a heroic, salvific figure, rather than the enemy of humanity. The Gnostic Nag Hammadi library was rediscovered in 1947. The Moslem Yezidis also have a similar view of Satan (Iblis), which caused Crowley to identify Aiwaz with Satan (see, for example, Liber Samekh).
Asar on Asi did beget
Horus twin brother unto Set.
Now Set and Horus kiss, to call
The Soul of the Unnatural
Forth from the dusk; then nature slain
Lets the Beyond be born again.(from “The Twins,” Aleister Crowley)
I will give you a war-engine. With it ye shall smite the peoples; and none shall stand before you. (Liber CCXX, III, 7f.)
Crowley reveals Aiwaz’s plan for humanity in Magick Without Tears, published posthumously: “Aiwass is of a different Order of Being from ourselves. Consider a gold-refiner. ‘Analysis shows 20% of copper in this sample; I’ll beat it in a current of oxygen; that will oxidize the copper. Shake it up with sulphuric acid; then we wash away the copper sulphate, and that’s that.’ He does not consider how the copper feels about it; indeed, he doesn’t believe that the copper knows about it at all.”[4]
The reference to the “war-engine” suggests the atomic bomb. At the time of its discovery (1945) the United States could have used its discovery to take over the world, as predicted in the Book of the Law. However, it chose not to do so. Once the Soviet Union developed the atomic bomb (1949), the opportunity passed, since a global nuclear conflict would certainly destroy the human race. Please note that I am not advocating anything here; I am merely stating facts. Since the Book of the Law does not advocate the total extermination of humanity, after 1949 it was clear that the use of atomic weapons could not fulfil the prophecy of the Book of the Law or Aiwaz’s plan, as summarized above by Crowley. Moreover, the use of atomic weapons would only alter the power structure of the world. In itself, it could not change the nature of humanity itself.
With the advent of global warming, the situation has changed again. It is now recognized that global warming has the potential to exterminate all but a few thousand human beings (worst case non-extinction scenario) in a relatively short space of time. This is, of course, not the first mass extinction event that has afflicted humanity. The human species was reduced to a few thousand individuals or less as recently as seventy-five thousand years ago. Repetitive “mass extinction events” of this type are part of the Indian spiritual tradition, both Hindu and Buddhist. It seems highly likely that an event of this type is what is being alluded to in the Book of the Law (this is now called “genetic bottleneck theory” and is accepted science). The literal meaning of “war-engine” is PIE, *wers, “to bring into confusion” + “mechanical device,” obviously referring in the largest sense to the advent of industrialism itself. That is to say, industrialism itself will act as an “engine” that will bring about a chaotic state that will destroy (a large segment of) the human race. The Buddha also predicted the advent of an “age of science” (satthanantarakappa) that would result in the end of the age and the near-total annihilation of humanity (see Digha Nikaya, sutta 26). William Blake might be regarded as our prophet of this global awakening.
Aleister Crowley knew nothing in 1904 about the Russian Revolution (1917), Adolf Hitler (he was 15 in 1904), atomic energy, or climate change, yet the Book of the Law accurately identified the 40s and the 80s as the two critical decades of the 20th century, with the 1960s (which Crowley both predicted and inspired) as their midpoint. The original measurement of climate change was made in 1902, just two years before the advent of the New Eon. The Book of the Law is, therefore, if nothing else, an authentic and inspired prophecy of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Notes
- Cf. “I will give you a war-engine. With it ye shall smite the peoples; and none shall stand before you” (AL, III, 7f.). Confer James Lovelock, “Culling the Human Population.”
- Alternatively, one might regard the 1940s as the decade of the conquest of fascism, and the 1980s as the decade of the conquest of communism, i.e., the two critical struggles for freedom of the 20th century in favour of “Americanism.” While true, this is really naive because it posits Americanism as a permanent end state, whereas what remains now is the conquest of Americanism (i.e., the ideology of consumerism, or of hyper-consumption based on fossil fuels) itself (2024?). Perhaps climate change will propel America into a global dictatorship, whereas China and Russia will have their own problems. Perfect recipe for world war.
- The advent of the Kali Yuga is assigned to the year 3102 or 3104 BCE, and is generally held to endure for 432,000 years. However, there is considerable disagreement over this point, some authorities suggesting that the Kali Yuga will end in 1999, 2030, or 2442 CE, the latter representing the end of a cycle beginning in 1939 (see “When Will the Kali Yuga End?“). A five-thousand year period is also mentioned, followed by a “golden age” of ten thousand years, which would place the advent of the New Age in about 1898. The Mayan “Fifth Age,” which began in 3114 BCE, ended in 2012. Another article by Bibhu Dev Misra, which appears on Graham Hancock’s website, puts the end of the Kali Yuga in 2025. Crowley himself states that his New Eon might last anywhere from a hundred to two or even ten thousand years. Technically, therefore, Crowley’s eon could end any time, or as soon as the formula of HOOR is fully worked out.
- Cf. “I don’t give a damn for the whole human race – ‘you’re nothing but a pack of cards'” (The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, p. 34). What a Joker he was.
Further Reading
The Book of the Law as a Prophetic Text
The Book of the Law as an Anarcho-Fascist Manifesto of a New World Order
Is Thelema Alt-Right?
The Politics of Thelema
Thelema and Climate Change
Towards a Progressive Interpretation of the Book of the Law
The Secret Door 