PAZ moves from a sixfold star in furnace-coloured cloud to a terrifying many-armed figure. That later Thelemic imagery is Crowley’s 1911 addition to the fourth name in the 1912 roster.
- Aethyr number
- 4 of 30
- Earthly-part positions
- 10–12
- Crowley’s 1911 chapter
- Printed pp. 137–141
Dee’s Liber Scientiae is the earlier manuscript setting. The Equinox I:8 (1912) supplies the spelling and number used here. Crowley’s Vision and the Voice (1911) supplies the much later vision described below.
The fourth order and its three part positions
The Equinox I:8 lists PAZ between ZOM and LIT. Applying Whitby’s description of the first twenty-nine groups yields earthly-part positions 10–12 for the fourth Aethyr. This calculation indicates sequence only. It supplies no modern geographical identification and no evidence for a particular vision, even though the same short name is later used to head a visionary chapter.
Dee’s Liber Scientiae survives in the British Library’s Sloane MS 3191, which the catalogue distinguishes from the folios containing the Claves Angelicae. The 1911 PAZ chapter begins at printed page 137 of Crowley’s supplement, PDF page 138 of the facsimile checked here. That later publication reports an occult experience; it is not a transcription of Dee’s manuscript scene.
Sources: The Equinox I:8 (1912), p. 125 ↗ · Whitby, John Dee’s Actions with Spirits, vol. 1, pp. 141–142 ↗ · British Library, Sloane MS 3191 catalogue ↗ · The Equinox I:5 supplement (1911), printed pp. 137–141 ↗
PAZ governor names: ordinals 10–12
The Equinox I:7 (1912) groups three names under PAZ on printed page 239. These are the spellings in that later table; the comparison labels below identify only forms that differ in a modern Great Table reconstruction.
- 10 THOTANP2010 comparison form: THOTANF
- 11 AXZIARGSame spelling in the 2010 comparison appendix
- 12 POTHNIRSame spelling in the 2010 comparison appendix
From the star to a many-armed figure
The stone is first described as bright and nearly empty. A voice calls attention to a sixfold star, and blue and gold angels fill the newly seen space. The centre then resolves into a god with many arms, weapons, lightning-like eyes, and a crown of deadly emblems. A young woman clings to him. Their embrace is rendered as both violence and rapture, a disturbing attempt to hold conflicting sensations together.
The narrator pauses to qualify his own report. He says a continuous sound cannot be compared with ordinary sounds and that his nonvisual spiritual senses are poorly trained. An interior voice consequently limits what could be received or communicated. That admission is useful evidence about the text’s self-presentation; it cautions against a modern summary that turns PAZ into a simple promise of union or power.
Sources: The Equinox I:5 supplement (1911), printed pp. 137–141 ↗
Contradiction, the Sphinx, and the closing warning
An angel says the event exceeds the seer’s understanding. The subsequent prose collapses apparent opposites: being pulled apart is also being pressed together, while Chaos is described as a kind of peace. The rhetoric moves through night, cosmological balance, and the death cry of a Sphinx. These are ideas in Crowley’s 1909 account, not meanings that can be read directly from the letters of the sixteenth-century name.
The text ends by telling the seer to leave the vision and wait for the third Aethyr. It names the angel Hua and closes at Biskra, Algeria, on the morning of December 16, 1909. The third chapter follows on the same printed page 141, under ZON rather than the later roster’s ZOM. This shared page edge is why the PAZ locator runs through 141 even though the next heading also appears there.
Sources: The Equinox I:5 supplement (1911), printed pp. 137–141 ↗ · The Equinox I:8 (1912), p. 125 ↗
Source editions and page locators
- The Equinox I:8 (1912), p. 125 ↗
- Whitby, John Dee’s Actions with Spirits, vol. 1, pp. 141–142 ↗
- British Library, Sloane MS 3191 catalogue ↗
- The Equinox I:5 supplement (1911), printed pp. 137–141 ↗
The 1911 link opens a facsimile scan of the original supplement at PDF page 138, corresponding to printed page 137. The 1912 issue link is a modern reconstruction. This page paraphrases the original printing and does not treat the visionary report as independently verified.
Continue reading the Aethyrs
- 3. ZOM The third name is ZOM in the printed list and ZON in Crowley’s earlier vision heading. Both witnesses stay visible here.
- 5. LIT Many avenues converge at a guarded shrine, then the chapter returns for a second encounter centred on a child and an arrow.
- 2. ARN A long vision with false starts, biblical speculation, a white rose, and a late burst of images.
- 6. MAZ Crowley’s images move from an eight-rayed star to an urn holding the ashes of an old book of wisdom.
- 1. LIL First in the older numbered list, final in Crowley’s published movement through the thirty names.
- 7. DEO A Venus-shaped keyhole opens onto changing figures, yet the chapter closes without the promised voice.