A Hand that Quickly Writes and Moves Away

This piece represents a sister art piece to ‘A Human Number’, and continues to explore how we humans have an almost primal drive to see patterns and meaning in places where, logically, there are none.

The initial idea for this came from a re-reading of an account by Aleister Crowley upon his claim that he had been visited by an angel, named Aiwass, and given the text for his (in)famous Book of the Law - also named Lieber Al vel Legis. Crowley said he wrote The Book of the Law on the 8th, 9th and 10th April 1904, between noon and 1:00 pm. He and his wife were spending their honeymoon in a flat close to the Boulak Museum in the fashionable European quarter of Cairo.

Crowley described his encounters with the angel as an awareness of a voice speaking from over his left shoulder in the furthest corner of the room. He wrote down Aiwass’s utterances during a kind of ‘automatic writing’ experience. The resulting script was supposed to be kept secret, but Crowley changed his mind:

'The Book of the Law annoyed me; I was still obsessed by the idea that secrecy was necessary to a magical document, that publication would destroy its importance. I determined, in a mood which I can only describe as a fit of ill temper, to publish The Book of the Law, and then get rid of it for ever. This book has been published on several formats, and contains the famous phrase, ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.’ My interest was piqued by a mysterious 'grid' page toward the end of the manuscript. On it, Crowley had written sacred text and randomly drawn a diagonal line through some of the letters. In his own words, 'for in the chance shape of the letters and their position to one another: in these are mysteries that no Beast shall divine. ... Then this line drawn is a key: this circle squared in its failure is a key also. And Abrahadabra …

All very esoteric and mysterious, right? That depends on your pov. Crowley's former secretary, Israel Regardie, argued that Aiwass was an unconscious expression of Crowley's personality. She also stated that although Crowley initially regarded Aiwass as one of the secret chiefs, years later he came to believe that the angel was his own Holy Guardian.

Whatever the true source of Crowley’s inspiration, the book has entered into the great canon of spiritual texts, beginning a whole religion (Thelema) and inspiring many great creative figures from Fernando Pessoa to Jimmy Page.

So, being an atheist myself, I decided to see what patterns and meanings I could find by constructing my own version of Crowley’s grid page.

I took the lyrics from a song I wrote several years ago called ‘Fools Errand’ . They were inspired by some of the imagery in the Book of the Law and so I thought them appropriate. Mapping out a copy of Crowley’s grid, I then glued on some leather/honey-coloured paper and wrote the lyrics on there in stanza form.

After applying my own random diagonal stroke using indian ink, I looked at the letters that the line passed through. They were: 'h' 'o' 't' 'e' 't' 's' 'l' 'h' 't' with the tail end of the line just touching the letter ‘y’ (so I added this in brackets - a bit like a tarot card reversed or upside down. Possibly important but not that important - a footnote, if you will).

I then took the corresponding number of each letter (h= 8, o=15 etc.) and added them together. The total was 152. Looking for some kind of spiritual significance to this number, I looked at various sources, including the Quabbala. One seemed to jump out at me: the notion of ambition and struggle. Could this sum up my whole approach to art at the moment.

(You can see these elements mapped out underneath and to the side of the main script.)

Here is a summary of my Sceptical analysis:

• The lyrics I used were not a sacred text, but inspired poetry from a variety of elements, including the Book of the Law. Was Aiwass being filtered through many layers of influence or did this just represent my wishful thinking?

• I probably misapplied the ‘grid’ technique, choosing the numerical value of the letters themselves rather than the referenced grid squares.

• I chose the meaning of 152 from a variety of those on offer. Did I just direct myself toward one that appealed to me? Another meaning was ‘Overseer’, for example , and I don’t like to think of myself in terms of that word. Then again, perhaps that is what I’m doing as an artist - making decisions at every stage about composition, materials, colours etc.

See what I mean? Looking for meanings in preconceived patterns, perhaps.

In conclusion, I’ve produced a piece of art that I’m pleased with. Something I might not have achieved without overthinking my approach in the manner I’ve described.

So glad the total didn’t come to 666!

Footnote: The title of the piece comes from a Dio song (who was not into Crowley btw). Do you know which one?