Ch.11 Adore the Spirit of Me (WMB 11.u)

Extract from: Wicca: Magical Beginnings written by d’Este & Rankine, 2008 (Avalonia.) PB / Kindle @ https://amzn.to/3Ay4HJr.

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Lift Up the Veil

The earlier Lift Up the Veil charge, dated to roughly 1949, draws more directly on material written by Aleister Crowley, especially in the second part of the charge spoken by the High Priestess. The material in this instance is drawn directly from Liber Al (The Book of the Law) and Liber XV (The Gnostic Mass), but in most instances the material found in Lift Up the Veil is also found in Law of Liberty which as we have already seen played an important role in the inspiration for the later rewrite of the Charge.

In the Gnostic Mass the priestess declares what is known as the Nuit speech saying: “I love you! I yearn to you! Pale or purple, veiled or voluptuous, I who am all pleasure and purple, and drunkenness of the innermost sense, desire you. Put on the wings, and arouse the coiled splendour within you: come unto me!” (AL I.61) which is the inspiration for the first part of the second half of the Lift Up the Veil charge. Interestingly, this also appears in The Law of Liberty where the Nuit speech is broken into two parts as a result of Crowley’s commentary.

This is then strangely followed by the words spoken by the priest, who is the manifestation of the male principle Hadit in the Gnostic Mass saying: “I am the flame that burns in every heart of man, and in the core of every star...” (AL II.6). Furthermore, Crowley also utilises this piece of prose in Law of Liberty. In both instances it is the words of Hadit, the masculine divine speaking and once again inexplicably puts words originally intended for the god into the mouth of the High Priestess who is representing the feminine divine! This recalls the earlier remark about Gardner’s possible involvement in creating the charges.

The next line that follows this in the Lift Up the Veil charge again draws from Crowley’s Law of Liberty for its inspiration. Here the Priestess says: “Let it be your inmost divine self who art lost in the constant rapture of infinite joy” which is clearly influenced by'' He is then your own inmost divine self; it is you, and not another, who are lost in the constant rapture of the embraces of Infinite Beauty.”

Lift Up the Veil ends with a paragraph which is composed of a further amalgamation of Crowley’s material. Firstly, we find “Let the rituals be rightly performed with joy & beauty!” originally from Liber Al (AL II.35), which is also used by Crowley in Liber XV and is used verbatim in Lift Up the Veil. This is then followed by another line which draws inspiration from Law of Liberty being “Remember that all acts of love and pleasure are rituals” which does not appear in Liber Al or Liber XV at all. Next is a line which takes its inspiration from Liber Al “Beauty and strength, leaping laughter and delicious languor, force and fire, are of us” (AL II.20) a line which once again also appears in Law of Liberty. Lift Up the Veil ends in a similar way to the later rewritten Charge taking inspiration from Liber LXV, lines 59-60, “But I have called unto Thee, and I have journeyed unto Thee, and it availed me not. I waited patiently, and Thou wast with me from the beginning” blended with what seems to be original material.

Extract from: Wicca: Magical Beginnings written by d’Este & Rankine, 2008 (Avalonia.) PB / Kindle @ https://amzn.to/3Ay4HJr. Shared here with the intention to inspire and inform the now and future generations interested in Wicca and other Pagan traditions inspired by it.