The Illusion of the Abyss

by Benjamin Rowe, copyright 1997

The word "abyss" has seen widespread use in the occult community, with many

different meanings. In various times and places it has been used to represent everything
from the Christian Hell to existential angst. In this century, among the many occultists
influenced by Aleister Crowley, the term has taken on a specific reference to the process of
transcendence, the events by which a person's awareness transforms from an individualized
state into a transcendental or "enlightened" state. Crowley called this process "Crossing the
Abyss".

Crowley's description of the process is highly dramatic and equally idiosyncratic. It is

also extremely vague, consisting of a few symbols and metaphors that he used throughout
his life, without ever attempting to expand or explain them, or to explain in detail the
relationship between the transcendental and human levels of being. Perhaps this vagueness
is the reason for it popularity; it provides a simple, easily-grasped image, however mistaken
it might be.

Crowley perceived the "Abyss" as a literal gap in the stuff of creation, separating the

human levels of existence from the transcendental or divine levels. He describes this gap as
a region of nullity and terror, in which anything that enters is torn asunder. (In this much, he
was following a long-established theme in Hebrew cabalistic lore.) In order to attain to
enlightenment, the magician must "leap" into this Abyss, where his human self is ripped
apart and destroyed. If he has established enough momentum in his climb towards the
divine levels, then the divine spark in himself (freed from its bindings to his human self) will
be carried over to the other side of the gap to become a Master of the Temple, the magickal
grade equivalent to the basic enlightened state.

Somewhere along the way from one side to the other, Crowley says, the magician must

also confront and temporarily become the "Demon of the Abyss", whose nature is
Dispersion. Crowley named this demon Choronzon, a name for Satan from the works of Dr.
John Dee; but the characteristics he assigns to the demon owe more to the "Dweller on the
Threshold" from Bulwer-Lytton's

Zanoni

novels. It is unclear how this confrontation relates

to the destruction of the magician's human self.

Crowley's description of his own "crossing of the Abyss" is recorded in his book

The

Vision and the Voice

. The record conforms closely to his metaphor of the process. However,

his depiction disagrees in many ways with those provided by other enlightened people
across the years; it also disagrees with my own experience of that process, which was

achieved through the same means Crowley used: John Dee's "Enochian" magickal system,
coupled with the system of lore from the Western traditions of ceremonial magick and the
cabala.

From the perspective of my own experience, the whole "Abyss" concept is nonsense.

There is no gap between the divine and human levels of existence; the transcendent being is
already constantly present and active in every person. Since this is the case, there is nothing
to "cross" or "jump". The discontinuity, to the extent there is one, is entirely a matter of
perspective; the transcendent view

is

dramatically different from the Self-centered view

common to the lower levels. But there is a constant connection and interaction between the
divine and the human; they make up a single, undivided system.

Rather than a separation, our normal lack of awareness of the divine aspect of

ourselves is a matter of ignorance. Through ignorance, reinforced by a lifetime of
conditioning and habit -- and reinforced even more by magickal disciplines -- the
transcendent being in a person is deluded into believing it is something that it is not: an
individualized "self" or "soul", operating in the mundane world through the medium of a
personality mask. In its ignorance, it becomes so thoroughly identified with this self (which
is a constructed thing) that it becomes unaware that it is anything other than that self. You
might think of it as a weird sort of dharana or deep meditation; a concentration on an object
of meditation (the self, in this case) so intent that the difference between the perceiver and
the perceived disappears.

Achieving transcendence therefore is not a matter of creating a bridge over a gap, or of

leaping a gap, or anything of that sort. Rather, it is a matter of awakening the already-
present transcendent being from its state of identification with the self, getting it to realize
and act from its natural state.

What it takes to do this can vary widely. It might require something a catastrophic as

the complete destruction of the "self", as in the typical Abyss myth; but it could equally be as
subtle and gentle as a breath of air slipping out through an open window, leaving the self
completely intact. In my own case, it was somewhere between these extremes. There were
some long and rather painful steps leading up to it, but the final event was quick,
undramatic, and utterly simple.

To put the event in context, there are two main thrusts to the magickal/cabalistic

approach to initiation. First, through invocations, astral explorations, meditation, etc., it
seeks to open up the hidden portions of the mind (both sub- and superconscious), to bring
their activity under conscious direction, and to make use of them to explore and perceive the
corresponding aspects of the universe at large. The scope and control exercised by the
individual is constantly increased, and the various parts brought into a state of tight
coordination.

At the same time, the cabalistic side of the work seeks to bring about an ever-

increasing synthesis in the _contents_ of the mind. Through the use of correspondences, the
chaos of raw experience is gradually reduced. Ideas and experiences get organized into
hierarchies, each level abstracting something from the lower ones, so that ever-greater
numbers of events become instances of ever-simpler ideas. Eventually things coordinate into
an elegant system of archetypes, energies, and relationships.

By the time the person has achieved and absorbed the highest purely human level and

become an "Exempt Adept", both these processes have pretty much been exhausted. Those
parts of the person's being that are capable of being controlled and coordinated by the
individual self are as integrated as they are ever going to be. The contents of the mind have
been reduced to an integrated scheme and an encompassing philosophy. He is the Compleat
Individual, so to speak. Such people -- as Crowley notes -- tend to become leaders of
"schools of thought" for spreading their philosophy; or they become priests or social leaders
of some sort.

Crowley talks about the next stage of the process as if it were something to be

consciously decided; but in fact, if it happens out of anything except necessity, the person is
probably jumping the gun. (I should note that the description that follows is from my own
experience, coordinated with a very few other people's; your mileage may vary. And this
applies

only

to the magickal/cabalistic approach; it doesn't seem to occur -- at least not

with the same severity -- in the more mystical approaches of the Eastern systems.)

The Exempt Adept now enters into a period of increasing "dryness", what I call

"wandering in the wasteland", following the myth of the Grail Knights . I don't know how this
associates with the so-called "dark night of the soul" -- descriptions of that never resonate
for me. He has reached a point of diminishing returns in both his magickal and cabalistic
endeavors.

His magickal work still raises his consciousness above its normal level; but instead of

staying at that higher level, he always seems to fall back to the point where he started, or
advances only the most minute increment -- far too little for the amount of effort expended.
And such advances as he makes eventually turn out to be only variations on what he has
already accomplished, not something truly new. There seems to be some sort of asymptotic
principle in effect. Each increment he moves above his current level requires substantially
larger amounts of effort; he can expend all the energy at his command without getting to a
stable higher level.

A similar state exists with respect to his cabalistic work. He continues to make

elaborations on his synthetic scheme, but finds that new additions and expansions decrease
in frequency. At the same time he becomes aware that there are aspects of existence that
cannot be fit into his present scheme without destroying it utterly and starting over from
scratch; he doesn't know what these aspects are, exactly, but he can sense them looming
over the horizon.

And his finely coordinated Self seems to be spinning its wheels in most of its

endeavors. He can still act out the functions of the Exempt Adept, but gets less pleasure and
fulfilment out of doing so. He can't get a grip on things, on a way to use this great Self of
his; he feels like he is trying to act in a frictionless environment.

The reason for all this is that the Adept is looking for something that isn't there -- that

is, a continuation of the path as he has experienced it so far, with its blinding revelations,
ecstatic highs, encompassing archetypes, etc. There just isn't any more of that, above his
current level; such things are characteristic of the human-accessible magickal realms, not
the transcendent realms. But he doesn't know that.

Needless to say, the Adept in this situation is a pretty miserable character. Not all the

time; usually he can go about his business in the character of the Adept without any
difficulty. But periodically the futility of it all hits, and the despair and desperation can reach
incredible levels of intensity. What he wants, more than anything, is to get OUT, without
seeing any way of doing so. Like the mythical Christ on his cross, he calls out to his god, and
gets no answer. All he can do is suffer alone.

But even despair has its limits; when nothing one does can have any effect on the

situation, one eventually just gives it up. He gets beyond hope of anything happening,
beyond despair that nothing is happening, and just lives life as it comes, without any
particular plans or expectations, without any desire beyond the moment. He goes on
because that is what he does, and for no purpose. This whole process can go on for a long
time. In my own case, the period of increasing despair lasted over five years, the period of
"just living" lasted another five.

The actual awakening of transcendent being seems an anticlimax after the wasteland

period. Even now, four years after the fact, I am uncertain exactly what triggered the
moment when it awoke. All I recall is that some chance remark by a person in an online
discussion group caused me to make an assessment, and the being noted that it was no
longer identical with the self, but was aware without dependence upon the facilities of the
individualized "soul". It was now the no-thing-ness of Binah, instead of identifying with the
differentiated activities of the lower spheres. It could put the self on, like a set of clothes,
and off again at will.

What happened then is another story. But a few things to note:

-- Despite being very unpleasant, there was no destruction of the individualized self

involved; the transcendent being simply "stepped out" of it, leaving it more or less intact, for
the moment. A rather substantial re-orientation of it took place later, but it was still
undamaged.

-- There was no "jumping into the Abyss"; in fact, no Abyss as such.

-- There was no confrontation with the Demon Choronzon, or any other supposed

"denizen" of the "Abyss". No apparently external horrors of any sort, not even Chthulhu.

-- No particular invocations were involved in triggering the event. It took place during

an hiatus in my Enochian work, and that work was directed to other purposes in any case.