Unity Uttermost Showed

by T Polyphilus

text of opening remarks
for the Seventh bi-annual National O.T.O. Conference
Seattle, Washington
Sol in Leo, Luna in Pisces, dies Veneris, Anno IV xvii


Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

I am honored to answer the invitation of the Conference Committee
to address a gathering of so MANY worthy initiates.
And there are MANY others to whom we are linked
through our rites, customs, and heritage
MANY throughout the United States Grand Lodge
MANY around the world in more than forty countries.
MANY who invoke the ONE
Unity Uttermost Showed

These words are paraphrased from the Stele of Revealing
which is the sacred suicide-note of Ankh-f-n-khonsu
the ancient Priest of the Princes
who overshadowed our Edwardian Brother
and made of him the Prophet 666.

Unity Uttermost Showed
We use these words to adore the Lord of the Aeon
the Crowned and Conquering Child
manifesting in the macrocosm as the Sun
and in ourselves as the generative mystery,
the libidinal Fire of the Spirit.

Ra-Hoor-Khuit is that “Supreme and Terrible God”
“God” that rhymes with “showed”—
Supreme and terrible “goad”?
Is he a stick to compel us?
The desert sun scorching our backs?
Is Hoor-pa-Kraat the carrot to lure us
a cool oasis summoning us into the Silence
of a Unity that cannot be shown?

Genuine unity seems to belong to another world.
A blissful Night of Pan
far distant in Time and Space.
We live in a world of division
and often enough, the root of conflict
is a local eruption of the universal force
of Love itself:
“the dividing of friend against friend,
the severing of brother and brother”

There is no god but Man
and each man harbors god’s jealousy.
We know Man with his Why:
The MANY, says Perdurabo, is our Universe,
it is Consciousness itself,
the Abyss of Hallucinations,
the Hell in which we undergo
the Tragedy of Man.

And yet the selfsame Perdurabo
boasted of his front-row seat
at the Comedy of Pan:
“The Universe is the Practical Joke of the General
at the expense of the Particular,” he said.
And the General and the Particular
are themselves two different conceptions
of UNITY or Wholeness.

The General is whole because it includes all variations.
Everything that seems “wrong” to me
is simply an adornment of the Universal Beauty,
a mole on the cheek of Her
before whom time is ashamed,
the mind bewildered,
and the understanding dark.

The Particular is whole because it cannot be divided:
it is the Atomic essence of its own identity.
Everything that seems “right” to me
is only a function of my Point of View,
and that great goal that I think is most “other”
is just an alienated image of my unrealized Nature.

And yet the Prophet teaches us:
The Magical Will must be single
unassuaged of purpose,
delivered from the lust of result,

not compromising between alternatives
but transcending them
to effect the necessary change.
We have Tragedy and Comedy to spare,
both are necessary,
but neither is sufficient
to our own attainment
or to the fulfillment of our Order
in its mission to humanity.

A Magician must feel the tragic stick
a Magician must taste the comic carrot
a Magician must hear the call
that comes from the Invisible Light:
where the stainless Child declares
I am light, and I am night,
and I am that which is beyond them.
I am speech, and I am silence,
and I am that which is beyond them.
I am life, and I am death,
and I am that which is beyond them.
I am war, and I am peace,
and I am that which is beyond them.
I am weakness, and I am strength,
and I am that which is beyond them.
Yet by none of these can man reach up to me.
Yet by each of them must man reach up to me.

Only after answering that call again and again
will the Magician be able to say in Truth:
I am free, and I am bound,
and I am beyond freedom and bondage.
I am knowing, and I am ignorant,
and I am beyond knowledge and ignorance.
I am disciplined, and I am indulgent,
and I am beyond discipline and indulgence.
I am courageous, and I am fearful,
and I am beyond courage and fear.
I am silent, and I am eloquent,
and I am beyond silence and eloquence.
I am divine, and I am mortal,
and I am beyond deity and mortality.

“Holy, Holy, Holy are these Truths that I utter,
knowing them to be but falsehoods,
broken mirrors, troubled waters;
hide me, O Lady, in Thy Womb!
for I may not endure the rapture.”

Join me in this stress, O Brothers and Sisters!
Please stand.
Let us together raise the spell of Ra-hoor-khuit:

a ka dua
tuf ur biu
bi a’a chefu
dudu nur af
an nuteru

(repeat ten times)

(interrupting before an eleventh repetition:)
No chant,
no ceremony,
no initiation makes us One.

There is no bond that can unite the divided but love, ...
Love is the law, love under will.


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