The Choice

[Nau7ik]

I was doing some reading on the Fool and learned some interesting things: the crocodile is a symbol of virility; of maximal creative energy. This is in relation to the innocence of the Fool. The crocodile was unprovided with the means of perpetuating its species, according to ancient Egyptian tradition. Because of this, he became a symbol of maximum creative energy.

This quote from the Book of Thoth really resonates with me; it’s deep:

Arriving at highly sophisticated theogony, there appears a perfectly clear and concrete symbol of this doctrine. Harpocrates is the God of Silence; and this silence has a very special meaning. (...) The first is Kether, the pure Being invented as an aspect of pure Nothing. In his manifestation, he is not One, but Two; he is only One because he is 0. He exists; Eheieh, his divine name, which signifies “I Am” or “I shall Be”, is merely another way of saying that he Is Not; because One leads to nowhere, which is where it came from. So the only possible manifestation is in Two, and that manifestation must be in silence, because the number 3, the number of Binah—Understanding—has not yet been formulated. In other words, there is no Mother. All one has is the impulse of this manifestation; and that must take place in silence. That is to say, there is as yet no more than the impulse, which is unformulated; it is only when it is interpreted that it becomes the Word, the Logos. (See Atu I.)

Zero/0 refers to the Unmanifest, the negative veils of existence; One refers to Kether, which is pure Being; Two refers to Chokmah/Wisdom/the All-Father. The Fool is the path between Kether and Chokmah, one and two.

Harpocrates is the graeco-Egyptian equivalent of the Fool.

The crocodile of the Nile is called Sebek or Mako—the Devourer. [...]

There is, however, an identity between the creator and the destroyer. [...]

So also, in the initiated symbolism, the act of devouring is the equivalent of initiation; as the mystic would say, “My soul is swallowed up in God.” (Compared to the symbolism of Noah and the Ark, Jonah and the Whale, and others.)

Crowley suggests that we constantly keep in mind the bivalence of every symbol. “And this is the great Mystery of the Supernals that are beyond the Abyss. For below the Abyss, contradiction is division; but above the Abyss, contradiction is Unity. And there could be nothing true except by the virtue of the contradiction that is contained in itself.”

The concept complexes which are the archetypes should flow one into the next. And we should try not to hang onto one or another of the contradictions of the symbol. Perfectly in alignment with Ra’s balancing exercise: allowing the opposite to rise in mind side by side it’s opposite.

I’m here calling “the Choice” the fool. With what I shared above, the doctrines are identical. The Fool/Choice plays a dual function. 1) the leap of faith as the “fool”, and 2) the initiation of “the Choice”. In my opinion, 0. The Fool/Choice is a deep, powerful, profound concept/idea/archetype.