The Curriculum · The Second Order: R.C.

5°=6□ Adeptus Minor

Time

Until the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel is attained, and then within, in the College of the Holy Ghost.

The reading ↓

The work of the grade

His oath: to attain the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. The Great Work itself, and the sole task of the grade: by the rite of Liber VIII, drawn from the Eighth Aethyr, by the operation of Abramelin, by Liber DCCC, or by the method the Angel himself appoints. He wears the Probationer’s white with the Eye of Horus set in the pentagram, for the end of the road is the beginning glorified.

Admitted Within to the College of the Holy Ghost, the Adept takes up the practice of the formula of the Rosy Cross, now under the Angel’s own direction. The A∴A∴ requires membership in no other body. Here the golden robe replaces the white.

The Task of an Adeptus Minor

Let the Adeptus Minor attain to the Knowledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel.

The Oath of an Adeptus Minor

Liber CLXXXV, Liber Collegii Sancti, Publication in Class D, printed on loose sheets for the Order about 1909.

Without: the Knowledge and Conversation

The Grade of Adeptus Minor is the main theme of the instructions of the A∴A∴. It is characterised by the Attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. This is the essential work of every man; none other ranks with it either for personal progress or for power to help one’s fellows. This unachieved, man is no more than the unhappiest and blindest of animals. He is conscious of his own incomprehensible calamity, and clumsily incapable of repairing it. Achieved, he is no less than the co-heir of gods, a Lord of Light. He is conscious of his own consecrated course, and confidently ready to run it. The Adeptus Minor needs little help or guidance even from his superiors in the Order.

His work is to manifest the Beauty of the Order to the world, in the way that his superiors enjoin, and his genius dictates.

To attain the Grade of Adeptus Major, he must accomplish two tasks: the equilibration of himself, especially as to his passions, so that he has no preference for any one course of conduct over another, and the fulfilment of every action by its complement, so that whatever he does leaves him without temptation to wander from the way of his True Will. Secondly, he must keep silence, while he nails his body to the tree of his creative will, in the shape of that Will, leaving his head and arms to form the symbol of Light, as if to make oath that his every thought, word and deed should express the Light derived from the God with which he has identified his life, his love and his liberty, symbolised by his heart, his phallus, and his legs.

It is impossible to lay down precise rules by which a man may attain to the knowledge and conversation of His Holy Guardian Angel; for that is the particular secret of each one of us, a secret not to be told or even divined by any other, whatever his grade. It is the Holy of Holies, whereof each man is his own High Priest, and none knoweth the Name of his brother’s God, or the Rite that invokes Him. The Masters of the A∴A∴ have therefore made no attempt to institute any regular ritual for this central Work of their Order, save the generalised instructions in Liber 418 (the 8th Aethyr) and the detailed Canon and Rubric of the Mass actually used with success by Frater Perdurabo in His attainment. This has been written down by Himself in Liber Samekh. But they have published such accounts as those in The Temple of Solomon the King and in John St. John.

One Star in Sight, Appendix II of Magick in Theory and Practice (Paris, 1929).

Within: the College of the Holy Ghost

Admission Within follows the attainment Without. The Adept who has attained the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel is admitted to the College of the Holy Ghost, where the formula of the Rosy Cross is taken up again, now worked under the Angel’s own direction rather than in preparation for it. The A∴A∴ requires membership in no other body to receive this teaching.

The robe changes with the admission: the white of the Probationer, marked with the pentagram, gives way to gold, marked with the cross and rose.

Crowley published nothing fuller than this about the Within in his own name.

Admission Within is not the end of the work with the Angel, only the start of a settled relationship with Him. Contact at this stage is real, but not yet complete; across the three Adept grades that follow — Minor, Major, and Exemptus — it continues to deepen, and does not fully mature until the Third Order. Part of the Adept Within’s own labor is to walk two further paths on the Tree of Life, those of Mem and Lamed, and to carry a younger aspirant’s own training forward to this same grade, the same way every member of the Order has been carried.

One Star in Sight, Appendix II of Magick in Theory and Practice (Paris, 1929).

The reading

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1. Liber I Liber B vel Magi
2. Liber VIII (the Eighth Aethyr) from the Dominus Liminis list
3. Liber XXXVI (The Star Sapphire) from the Zelator list
4. Liber XLIV The Mass of the Phoenix
5. Liber LXV Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente from the Probationer list
6. Liber LXVI Liber Stellae Rubeae
7. Liber CLVI Liber Cheth vel Vallum Abiegni
8. Liber DCCC Liber Samekh
9. Liber DCCCLXVIII Liber Viarum Viae from the Neophyte list