2: The Mask of Ma Ki Nan
2: The Mask of Ma Ki Nan
Silver-gilt and verdigree effect mask with applied decoration forming the ninth figure of Liber Trigrammaton: the pearlescent disc on forehead representing the Dao; the golden domino across the eyes, the unbroken yang line; and the silvered bars embossed with the Tibetan characters spelling 'Lam' eitherside of the mouth, the broken yin line of the figure.
Acrylic and metal leaf on a cartonnage of papier-mache and gesso.
Approx. 25cm x 19cm x 4cm
The second of my Seven Masks draws its inspiration from the ninth figure of Liber Trigrammaton. 'Received' by Crowley in December1907, just over a year after his departure from China, Liber Trigrammaton sub figura XXVII is the only Class A Holy Book of Thelema to specifically use Daoist symbols. Liber Trigrammaton consists of 27 three-lines figures composed of the various combinations of a single dot, representing the Dao; a solid line that, as in the Yi King, represents the light, active Yang principle; and a broken line representing its counterpart in the Chinese Dyad, the dark, quiescent Yin.
Each of the 27 trigrams has a short verse attached to it that describes the cosmogenic 'Fall' of the universe from the original, undifferentiated purity of the Dao. The ninth trigram, for example, says:
And the Master of the Temple balancing all things arose; his stature was above Heaven and below Earth and Hell.
A small Japanese notebook in the Yorke Collection contains what appears to be preparatory material for a commentary on Liber Trigrammaton. York tentatively dates the notebook to circa. 1912 on the basis of a various geomantic charts and records of Tarot divinations it also contains.
There are indications that the notebook was used and re-used over an extended period, so it is difficult to precisely date the Liber Trigrammaton material. In fact, Yorke notes that a tabulation of the 27 trigrams was a 'first draft of Liber Trigrammaton', which would date it to 1907. Of more interest here is the draft of a title page that reads:
The Aphorisms of Ma Ki Nan
Upon the
Trigrams
Of
The Holy Kwaw
Being the mutations of the Tao
With the
Yin and the Yang
This is the only reference to a 'Ma Ki Nan' that I have come across, and it appears to be, like the 'Holy Kwaw', another of Crowley's 'Chinese persona'. But it is interesting to note their association with Liber Trigrammaton because Crowley openly acknowledged that this Holy Book was in fact 'an account of the cosmic process corresponding to the Stanzas of Dzyan in another system'. That other system belonged to Madam Blavatsky and the Book of Dzyan one of the secret teachings she claimed to have received from initiated masters, not from China, but during her seven years in Tibet.
'The Way' was published for the first and only time during Crowley's life as the frontispiece to his commentary on Madame Blavatsky's The Voice of the Silence in the so-called Blue Equinox in 1919. The Voice of the Silence is in fact based on supposed fragments of another of Blavatsky's 'secret books', the Book of the Golden Precepts.
Crowley dismissed Blavatsky's claims of an ancient Tibetan origin for her 'secret books' but he did believe that The Voice of the Silence contained an explanation of the initiatory path as far as the grade of Magister Templi or 'Master of the Temple'. And that may be why he included it as a supplement to the Blue Equinox.
In August 1916, Crowley formally recognised Charles Stansfeld Jones (1886-1950) as a Magister Templi and claimed him as the 'magical child' prophesised in The Book of the Law. In evidence of Jones' advancement in the magical hierarchy, Crowley included in the Blue Equinox Liber CLXV, 'A Master of the Temple', an account of Jones' early attainments.
But it wasn't simply Jones' magical career that concerned Crowley. In the structure of his magical order, the Argentium Astrum, it was a necessary precondition for Crowley to appoint a successor to himself as Magister Templi before he could assume the even more exalted grade of Magus. That, he hoped, would finally allow him to enunciate the 'Word' of Aeon that he had initiated in Cairo in 1904. But it wasn't 'Chiao Khan', the 'oriental' persona Crowley had adopted in Cairo that returned from the magical retirement on Esopus Island in 1918 bearing the "Key to the whole of the Chinese wisdom", nor 'Ma Li Nan' but the Magus Ko Hsuan.