Choronzon and the Pit
By James Donahue
Back when we lived for a while in Springerville, Arizona, we had an address of 333. Our telephone number had triple threes, and when we rented a Post Office box we were given the number 33. We laughed nervously about this because we were, at the time, deep into a study of Alistair Crowley and other esoteric writers who linked the numbers to the demon Choronzon.
It was a trying time in our lives since my late wife, Doris, was ill and dealing with altitude problems. And I was operating a county bureau there for the White Mountain Independent, located some 60 miles away. We joked that we were trapped in Choronzon’s Pit.
Indeed the name Choronzon was popularized in Crowley’s writings and his magical system of Thelema. He described Choronzon as a “dweller in the Abyss. He described this demon as “a temporary personification of the raving and inconsistent forces that occupy the Abyss.”
We joked in those days of having fallen into Choronzon’s Pit where we would remain trapped forever. Actually for us it was just a joke and we never believed we were ever trapped. If this entity was real we believed we always had power over it.
Crowley did not invent the character of Choronzon. This demon first appeared in the 16th Century writings of occultists Edward Kelley and John Dee in Dee’s system of Enochian magic. Crowley appears to have picked up the story from there and brought it into his own mystical system of Thelema. It was the belief among the Thelemites (Crowley’s followers) that Choronzon’s function was to destroy the ego, thus preventing the adept from moving beyond the abyss of the occult.
In his book Confessions, Crowley posted this interesting description of Choronzon:
"The name of the Dweller in the Abyss is Choronzon, but he is not really an individual. The Abyss is empty of being; it is filled with all possible forms, each equally inane, each therefore evil in the only true sense of the word—that is, meaningless but malignant, in so far as it craves to become real. These forms swirl senselessly into haphazard heaps like dust devils, and each such chance aggregation asserts itself to be an individual and shrieks, "I am I!" though aware all the time that its elements have no true bond; so that the slightest disturbance dissipates the delusion just as a horseman, meeting a dust devil, brings it in showers of sand to the earth."
I suppose I can say I am happy to report that our time in Springerville was brief. Because of my wife’s failing health we moved back to Michigan to live once again at sea level. We loved our time in Arizona, however, and really hated to leave.
By James Donahue
Back when we lived for a while in Springerville, Arizona, we had an address of 333. Our telephone number had triple threes, and when we rented a Post Office box we were given the number 33. We laughed nervously about this because we were, at the time, deep into a study of Alistair Crowley and other esoteric writers who linked the numbers to the demon Choronzon.
It was a trying time in our lives since my late wife, Doris, was ill and dealing with altitude problems. And I was operating a county bureau there for the White Mountain Independent, located some 60 miles away. We joked that we were trapped in Choronzon’s Pit.
Indeed the name Choronzon was popularized in Crowley’s writings and his magical system of Thelema. He described Choronzon as a “dweller in the Abyss. He described this demon as “a temporary personification of the raving and inconsistent forces that occupy the Abyss.”
We joked in those days of having fallen into Choronzon’s Pit where we would remain trapped forever. Actually for us it was just a joke and we never believed we were ever trapped. If this entity was real we believed we always had power over it.
Crowley did not invent the character of Choronzon. This demon first appeared in the 16th Century writings of occultists Edward Kelley and John Dee in Dee’s system of Enochian magic. Crowley appears to have picked up the story from there and brought it into his own mystical system of Thelema. It was the belief among the Thelemites (Crowley’s followers) that Choronzon’s function was to destroy the ego, thus preventing the adept from moving beyond the abyss of the occult.
In his book Confessions, Crowley posted this interesting description of Choronzon:
"The name of the Dweller in the Abyss is Choronzon, but he is not really an individual. The Abyss is empty of being; it is filled with all possible forms, each equally inane, each therefore evil in the only true sense of the word—that is, meaningless but malignant, in so far as it craves to become real. These forms swirl senselessly into haphazard heaps like dust devils, and each such chance aggregation asserts itself to be an individual and shrieks, "I am I!" though aware all the time that its elements have no true bond; so that the slightest disturbance dissipates the delusion just as a horseman, meeting a dust devil, brings it in showers of sand to the earth."
I suppose I can say I am happy to report that our time in Springerville was brief. Because of my wife’s failing health we moved back to Michigan to live once again at sea level. We loved our time in Arizona, however, and really hated to leave.