Crowley and the Cairo dictation of 1904

Aleister Crowley said a voice he called Aiwass dictated Liber AL vel Legis to him in Cairo over three days from 8 April 1904.

Aleister Crowley said that a voice he called Aiwass dictated Liber AL vel Legis to him in Cairo during his honeymoon, on 8, 9 and 10 April 1904. By his account every one of the three chapters was spoken and written down in one hour, starting at noon on each of those days. One retelling says that on 8 April he felt a dark, overwhelming presence behind him. Crowley considered the voice to come from a being without a body. His wife, Rose Edith Kelly, corrected two phrases in the manuscript. The chapters speak for the gods Nuit, Hadit and Ra-Hoor-Khuit.

Accounts of how it began differ. In one, Kelly fell into a slight trance and spoke as though the god Horus had taken hold of her, wanting to reach her husband. Crowley doubted she was capable of it, took her to Bulaq Museum, at Cairo's edge, and asked her to point out a picture of Horus. She passed several obvious figures and chose a plain wooden funeral stele, whose catalogue number was 666. In another, Rose first had a dream and continued to hear a voice that said people awaited her. All of it rests on Crowley's own testimony.