The Book of Lies by Aleister Crowley: 93 Chapters of Paradox and Prophecy

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What Is The Book of Lies?

The Book of Lies, Liber CCCXXXIII (Book 333), was first published in London in 1913 by Wieland and Company. Its full title is extravagant and deliberately paradoxical: Which is also Falsely Called BREAKS, the Wanderings or Falsifications of the One Thought of Frater Perdurabo, which Thought is itself Untrue. A Reprint with an Additional Commentary to Each Chapter.

The book consists of 93 chapters (numbered 0 through 91, with an unnumbered final chapter), each no longer than a single page. Some chapters are poems. Some are prose meditations. Some are complete magical rituals compressed into a few lines. Some consist of a single word or symbol. Chapter 0 is nothing but a question mark. Chapter 46 is a blank page. The variety is deliberate: Crowley used every literary form available to him to encode different types of magical instruction.

To call The Book of Lies a "difficult" text understates the case. It is deliberately resistant to interpretation. Crowley designed it to function like a Zen koan: a statement that defeats rational analysis and forces the reader into a different mode of understanding. Many chapters make no sense on first, second, or tenth reading. Some reveal their meaning only after years of magical practice. Some may be genuine nonsense, included to test the reader's willingness to admit that not everything contains a hidden meaning.

The Title and Its Paradox

The title operates on multiple levels simultaneously, which is itself a demonstration of the book's method.

At the first level, "lies" means falsehoods. The book is a collection of statements that are not true.

At the second level, the subtitle clarifies: these are "falsifications of the one thought of Frater Perdurabo, which thought is itself untrue." If the original thought is untrue, then its falsifications (distortions) might, by double negation, be closer to truth than the original. The lies in the book are lies about a lie, which makes them paradoxically truthful.

At the third level, the title is a statement about the nature of language itself. Crowley held that all verbal formulations of mystical truth are necessarily false, because mystical experience transcends the categories of language. Every attempt to express the inexpressible is a "lie" in the sense that it inevitably distorts what it describes. The Book of Lies is therefore the most honest possible title: it acknowledges upfront that its contents are approximations, distortions, and falsifications of a truth that cannot be spoken directly.

The 93-Chapter Structure and Thelemic Numerology

The 93 chapters are not an arbitrary count. In Greek gematria (the practice of assigning numerical values to letters), the word Thelema (Will) has the value 93. So does the word Agape (Love). "93" is the fundamental number of Thelemic practice: Thelemites greet each other with "93" as shorthand for "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" (whose key word, Thelema, equals 93).

By structuring the book with 93 chapters, Crowley embedded the Thelemic formula into the work's architecture. The book is literally "made of" Will and Love, the two pillars of Thelemic ethics and practice.

Beyond the chapter count, individual chapter numbers carry Qabalistic significance:

• Chapter 0 ("?"): Ain, the void before manifestation
• Chapter 1 ("The Sabbath of the Goat"): Kether, the first emanation, the unity from which all multiplicity emerges
• Chapter 25 ("The Star Ruby"): 5 squared, the pentagram ritual. 25 = 5x5, the microcosm perfectly squared
• Chapter 36 ("The Star Sapphire"): 6 squared, the hexagram ritual. 36 = 6x6, the macrocosm perfectly squared
• Chapter 44 ("The Mass of the Phoenix"): 4+4=8, the number of Mercury and of the magical formula of reversal
• Chapter 69 ("The Way to Succeed..."): The sexual-magical chapter whose content allegedly revealed the O.T.O.'s central secret
• Chapter 77 ("The Sublime Fool"): The number of Oz (the goat), and the Liber Oz formula of human rights under Thelema

Chapter 0: The Question Before All Questions

The book begins with Chapter 0, which contains only a question mark. No text. No title beyond the numeral. Just: ?

In Qabalistic terms, zero corresponds to Ain (Nothing), the absolute void that precedes even Ein Sof (the Infinite). Before there is anything to know, there is the capacity to question. Before there is any statement, there is the impulse to ask. The question mark is the seed from which the entire book, and by extension the entire universe of discourse, grows.

This is not mere cleverness. It establishes the book's fundamental orientation: inquiry, not assertion. The Book of Lies does not tell you what to believe. It poses questions in increasingly elaborate and paradoxical forms. The reader's task is not to find "the answer" but to develop the capacity to hold the question without resolution, which is itself a form of magical attainment.

Chapter 36: The Star Sapphire

Chapter 36 contains the Star Sapphire (Liber XXXVI), the Thelemic ritual of the hexagram. This is one of the book's most practically significant chapters: a complete, workable ritual compressed into a single page of text.

The Star Sapphire parallels the Star Ruby (the Thelemic pentagram ritual in Chapter 25). As 25 is the square of 5 (the number of the pentagram, the microcosm), 36 is the square of 6 (the number of the hexagram, the macrocosm). The placement of these two rituals at their Qabalistic chapter numbers demonstrates the mathematical precision underlying the book's apparently chaotic structure.

The Star Sapphire is an official ritual of the A.'.A.'. (Argenteum Astrum, Crowley's magical order). It encodes sexual-magical symbolism in its directions, god-names, and gestures. Crowley's own commentary states: "It would be improper to comment further upon an official ritual of the A.'.A.'." This refusal to explain is itself part of the teaching: some things can only be understood through practice, not through reading about them.

Chapter 44: The Mass of the Phoenix

The Mass of the Phoenix (Liber XLIV) is one of the most widely practised rituals in contemporary Thelema, and it was first published here in The Book of Lies. It is a short daily Eucharistic ritual designed for solitary practice.

The ritual involves the practitioner cutting a small cross on their breast with a consecrated dagger, inscribing specific characters on a "Cake of Light," burning the cake, and consuming the ashes mixed with a cup of wine. The symbolism is of death and rebirth: the Phoenix that immolates itself and rises from its own ashes. The daily performance of the Mass of the Phoenix is a renewal of the magician's commitment to their True Will, enacted through the body rather than merely affirmed in thought.

Chapter 44's number reduces to 8 (4+4), the number of Mercury in Qabalistic numerology. Mercury is the planet of the magician, of communication between the human and the divine, and of the meaningful process itself. The Mass of the Phoenix is, in this reading, a daily act of Mercurial transformation.

Chapter 69 and the O.T.O. Secret

Chapter 69, titled "The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs," is the most notorious chapter in the book. According to Crowley's own account (in his Confessions), when Theodor Reuss, the international head of the Ordo Templi Orientis, read this chapter, he accused Crowley of having publicly revealed the central secret of the O.T.O.'s IX degree.

Crowley claimed that he had arrived at the knowledge independently, without having been told the O.T.O. secret. Whether or not this claim is true, the encounter led to Crowley's promotion within the O.T.O. and eventually to his assumption of leadership of the order's British section (Mysteria Mystica Maxima).

The chapter's content is brief and appears, on the surface, to be childish wordplay. The double meaning operates through puns and innuendo that encode practical sexual-magical instruction behind a veil of nursery-rhyme nonsense. This technique, hiding genuine operative instructions inside apparent triviality, is characteristic of the book as a whole.

The Mathematical Structure of the Book

The Book of Lies is, among other things, a mathematical artifact. Crowley embedded numerical structures at every level:

• 93 chapters: Thelema = Agape = 93
• Book number 333: Choronzon, the demon of dispersion, half of 666 (the Solar number)
• Chapter numbers as squares: 25 (5 squared, pentagram) and 36 (6 squared, hexagram) contain the two primary Thelemic rituals
• Prime-numbered chapters: Often contain particularly concentrated or important content
• Chapter sums: Many chapter numbers reduce (by adding their digits) to numbers with specific Qabalistic significance

This mathematical embedding means that the structure of the book is itself a teaching tool. The position of each chapter within the sequence is not arbitrary but carries meaning that adds a layer to the chapter's textual content. A reader who ignores the mathematics misses a dimension of the book's instruction.

The Koan Method: How the Book Teaches

The Book of Lies operates pedagogically like a collection of Zen koans. A koan is a statement or question that cannot be resolved through rational thought. "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" is the most famous example. The purpose of a koan is not to be answered but to push the mind past its habitual categories into direct experience.

Many chapters of The Book of Lies function identically. They present statements that are simultaneously true and false, meaningful and absurd, profound and trivial. The reader who tries to determine "what Crowley really meant" in a particular chapter is often missing the point. The chapter is not saying one thing. It is creating a tension between multiple meanings that the reader must hold in consciousness simultaneously.

This is the same technique used in the Hermetic tradition's mythological and symbolic teachings, in the Sufi poets' paradoxical love poetry, and in the Jewish Kabbalistic tradition of gematria and notariqon (where every word simultaneously means several things depending on which interpretive method you apply). Crowley was drawing on all of these traditions while adding his own characteristically provocative style.

Crowley's 1921 Commentary: Help or Misdirection?

Around 1921, Crowley wrote a short commentary on each chapter, and these commentaries were included in subsequent editions. They provide Qabalistic context, identify some of the encoded references, and occasionally explain the surface meaning of particularly obscure chapters.

However, the commentaries should be read with caution. Crowley acknowledged that some commentaries are themselves misleading by design. A commentary that appears to explain a chapter may actually be directing the reader's attention away from the chapter's real meaning. This is consistent with Crowley's general practice of testing his readers: genuine understanding must be earned, not given.

The most useful commentaries are those that identify the Qabalistic significance of chapter numbers and point the reader to related texts in Crowley's corpus. The least reliable are those that appear to offer definitive interpretations of the chapter's meaning, because these often close down the multiple readings that the chapter was designed to hold open.

Literary Context: Crowley as Poet and Wit

The Book of Lies showcases a side of Crowley that his more systematic works (Magick in Theory and Practice, 777) do not: his literary talent. Crowley was a trained poet who had studied the Classics at Cambridge and published extensively in verse. His early poetry received mixed reviews but was taken seriously by contemporary critics.

In The Book of Lies, Crowley works at the intersection of poetry, philosophy, humour, and magical instruction. Some chapters are genuinely beautiful as poems. Some are brilliantly funny. Some manage to be both simultaneously while also encoding practical magical content. This combination of literary quality and operative instruction is rare in the Western esoteric tradition, where most magical texts are either beautifully written but practically vague (like much Hermetic literature) or practically useful but literarily dull (like most grimoires).

Crowley himself acknowledged that The Book of Lies held a special place in his affections. It allowed him to express aspects of his personality, the playful, paradoxical, humorous aspects, that the formal structure of his other works did not accommodate. The book is, in a sense, the most personally revealing of all Crowley's magical writings, precisely because its form is so free.

How to Read The Book of Lies

The Book of Lies is not a text you read from cover to cover in an afternoon. It is a text you live with over years. Here is a recommended approach:

1. First pass: Read the entire book quickly, without stopping to analyze. Get a sense of its rhythm, its variety, its tone. Note which chapters produce a response, intellectual, emotional, or aesthetic, and mark them.
2. Study of selected chapters: Return to the chapters that caught your attention. Read them slowly. Look up the chapter number in Qabalistic tables. Read the commentary. Research any mythological, magical, or literary references you do not recognize.
3. Ritual chapters: If you are a practicing magician, learn and perform the Star Ruby (Chapter 25), the Star Sapphire (Chapter 36), and the Mass of the Phoenix (Chapter 44). These are complete rituals that become clear through practice in a way they never become clear through reading.
4. Ongoing engagement: Keep the book available. Open it at random. Read a single chapter. Let it work on you throughout the day. The book reveals different aspects of itself at different stages of the reader's development.

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