A New Revision of the Rite of the Bornless One

July 18, 2006

A New Revision of the Rite of the Bornless One
by Shade Oroboros 817

This is the current incarnation of my ongoing attempt to make the vital Ritual of the Bornless One a deeper experience by examining and to some extent rewriting the text based upon several translations. This was originally an ancient Greco-Egyptian-Gnostic ritual exorcism, which generations of magicians subsequent to the Golden Dawn have adopted as the prime Invocation of their Holy Guardian Angels; perhaps its best-known incarnation is that formulated by Aleister Crowley as ‘Liber Samekh Theurgia Goetia Summa (Congressus cum Daemone) sub figura DCCC’. I have performed it many hundreds of times in my life, and believe that it has a powerful and cumulative effect in the unfolding of the True Will.

However, I still remain a bit confused by Mr. Crowley’s instruction to visualize a ‘Solar-Phallic Hippopotamus’. In general, when his notes call for visualizing a particular animal I would suggest shapeshifting to it, in the manner of the assumption of god-forms; and I have found that a Baphometic Bull may work better as earth than the more Taurt-like Hippopotamus. His remaining elemental forms are the Lion for fire, Dragon-serpent for water, and Bird (Hawk?) for air; the elemental links to the various sections do not exist in the original text and are most likely a Golden Dawn or Crowleyan innovation.
I would like to make it quite clear that I am by no means discarding Crowley’s essential version, which (with its extensive appended notes) should by studied in Magick In Theory & Practice. Further instructions for the Attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel appear throughout his works, notably in the Eighth Aethyr of The Vision & The Voice. The concept was first presented in the late-medieval Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melim the Mage, although again in an overly elaborate form. An earlier version of my revision also appears in Your Guardian Angel & You by Denny Sargent.

What I have done here, first of all, is to essentially restore the ‘barbarous names of invocation’ to the most accurate and scholarly transliteration available: that of The Greek Magical Papyri In Translation, edited by Hans Dieter Betz (University of Chicago, 1986), the definitive collection of the body of early spells from which this text is drawn.
These all-too-often obscure words of power combine various god-names, magical and numerical formulas, and vowel-vibrations whose origins are now lost in time. Crowley revised and analyzed them in terms of his own Thelemic Cultus; without losing sight of his work I have reverted to the earliest text in hopes of finding new insights. Many very similar rites may also be found in Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power edited by Marvin Meyer & Richard Smith (Harper, 1994); the early fathers of the Coptic Church and many of the Gnostic sects were much involved with angelic invocations, while similar contacts with the Daimon or Genius appear in pagan traditions.

Other sources consulted include Ceremonial Magic by Israel Regardie (Aquarian Press, 1980). Virtually a user’s manual for this process; it collects all the various earlier versions up through the Golden Dawn and Crowley, including the original Greek text. Next was the very useful Hermetic Magic by Stephen Edred Flowers (Weiser 1995), who remarks: “Note that the body of the working is a summoning but in the course of the summoning the magician is transformed from a summoner to the entity being summoned and ultimately to the god himself.” Lastly I employed Seven Faces Of Darkness: Practical Typhonian Magic, by Don Webb, Runa-Raven Press 1996. Webb in turn has remarked that “The ‘Holy Headless One’ is identified in other texts as being behind the constellation Draco. He is Set in the form of the Bata serpent.” Crowley, and especially Kenneth Grant of course, identify Set with Hadit.

Based on all of these versions and my own personal practice I have also revised the English elements to a somewhat less florid and Victorian form, although I have been unable to completely avoid the dramatic use of some Thee’s and Thou’s. Some few divine names combine Crowley’s forms with my own preferred versions. I have taken several creative liberties with these sections, which is rather the point of this exercise.

Throughout the whole of Liber Samekh there runs a sonorous refrain:

“Hear me, and make all spirits subject unto me, so that every spirit of the firmament and of the aethyr, upon the earth and under the earth, on dry land and in the water, of whirling air and of rushing fire, and every spell and scourge of God may be obedient unto me!”

While not repeated in the original version, it adds considerably to the dramatic impact. Since this work has been a genuine attempt to renew my use of this rite in a form less rote, here are two alternate versions:

“Subject to me all daimons so that every daimon, whether heavenly or aerial, or earthly or subterranean, or terrestrial or aquatic, might be obedient unto me and every enchantment and scourge which is from God.” (Betz and Flowers)

“Subject to me all daimons, so that they obey me whether they are of the Mind, or the Fates of heaven, or the air, or the earth, or beneath the earth. I am seeing the Absolute and henceforth every spell and scourge will work my will.” (Webb)

The following names of God, which have been restored to their original place at the opening and closing of the text, should be written on a strip of papyrus or cloth which is to be worn as a headband: AOTH ABRAOTH BASYM ISAK SABAOTH IAO! In the Greek original this sequence consists of 24 letters (the total number of their alphabet) beginning with Alpha and ending with Omega, the First and the Last. All such names are best vibrated or howled, rather than merely chanted or intoned.

Invoke Often!
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The Ritual of the Unborn One
AOTH ABRAOTH BASYM ISAK SABAOTH IAO!

Thee I summon and invoke,
Thee, the Unborn One!
Thee who created earth and heaven,
Thee who created night and day,
Thee who created darkness and light!
Thou art Asar-un-nefer, Thou art Ra-Hoor-Khuit,
whom none hath ever seen!
Thou art Ia-Bez, thou art Ia-Apophis!
Thou hast divided the just and unjust,
Thou hast created female and male,
Thou hast formed seeds and fruit,
Thou hast made men & women to love one another,
and to hate one another.
I am n’Aton Thy prophet,
Unto whom Thou hast revealed Thy mysteries,
the ceremonies of Khem.
Thou hast produced the moist and dry, and all manner of life.
Hear me! I am the messenger of Ptah-Amoun-Ra:
I will speak Thy true name, handed down to the prophets of AL.

Hear me!

ARBATHIAO REIBET ATHELEBERSETH ARA BLATHA ALBEU EBENPHICHI CHITASGOE IBAOTH IAO!