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Liber AL vel Legis, also known as The Book of the Law, is the central sacred text of Thelema, a spiritual philosophy founded by Aleister Crowley. The text was dictated to Crowley in Cairo, Egypt, over three days in April 1904 by a discarnate entity called Aiwass. It outlines the fundamental principles of Thelema, particularly the central tenet: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”
How the book came to be written
In his later account, The Equinox of the Gods (1936), Crowley gives the dates as 8, 9 and 10 April 1904. The introduction printed in later editions of the book adds that he wrote between noon and 1 p.m. on each of those days. Aiwass, the voice he took down, is named in the text itself as the minister of Hoor-paar-kraat, and the book calls its scribe Ankh-af-na-khonsu, after the priest named on an ancient Egyptian stele that Crowley and his wife saw in a Cairo museum, later called the Stele of Revealing. The text appeared in The Equinox, Vol. I, No. 10 (1913), under the title Liber L. vel Legis. The text is cited below from that printing.
The Law of Thelema
The name Thelema comes from the book itself, which says that the word of the Law is the Greek thelema, meaning will. The primary principle is “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” Thelemites read this not as unrestricted hedonism but as discovering and living in accordance with one’s True Will, an individual’s unique purpose and alignment with the cosmos. The text points the same way when it praises a “pure will” freed from “the lust of result” (I:44).
The core statement of the Law appears in the first chapter.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Liber AL vel Legis I:40, The Equinox, Vol. I, No. 10 (1913), p. 13 (short excerpt for review and study)
The Law is paired with love, but love directed by will.
Love is the law, love under will.
Liber AL vel Legis I:57, The Equinox, Vol. I, No. 10 (1913), p. 15 (short excerpt for review and study)
Each person is treated as a unique and sovereign being.
Every man and every woman is a star.
Liber AL vel Legis I:3, The Equinox, Vol. I, No. 10 (1913), p. 11 (short excerpt for review and study)
The third chapter restates the Law as the only law.
There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.
Liber AL vel Legis III:60, The Equinox, Vol. I, No. 10 (1913), p. 31 (short excerpt for review and study)
Structure of the book
The book has three chapters, each spoken by a different deity.
- Chapter I, Nuit’s revelation. Nuit, the goddess of infinite space, speaks about infinite possibilities, love and unity. Thelemites read her words as an invitation to discover their True Will in harmony with the divine.
- Chapter II, Hadit’s revelation. Hadit introduces himself as the complement to Nuit (II:2), and Thelemites read the chapter as a focus on individuality, personal will and the spiritual journey inward. The chapter opens with “Nu! the hiding of Hadit.”
- Chapter III, Ra-Hoor-Khuit’s declaration. Ra-Hoor-Khuit, a form of Horus, calls himself “a god of War and of Vengeance” (III:3). Crowley, in The Equinox of the Gods, names this god “Lord of the Aeon,” and Thelemites read the chapter as proclaiming the dawn of the Aeon of Horus, emphasizing strength, war and the destruction of old religious paradigms.
The first chapter also declares that the old order has been set aside: “Abrogate are all rituals, all ordeals, all words and signs” (I:49), because Ra-Hoor-Khuit “hath taken his seat in the East at the Equinox of the Gods.” In The Equinox of the Gods, Crowley claims that the book will “establish a new epoch in history,” and writes that “The new Aeon is the worship of the spiritual made one with the material, of Horus.” From this comes the Thelemite name for the present age, the Aeon of Horus.
A text not to be changed
The book instructs its scribe “not in one letter” to change it, and to comment on it instead (I:36). The Equinox of the Gods therefore reproduces the handwritten manuscript in facsimile, so that the text could not be corrupted.
