THELEMA · LESSON 2 OF 5 · 14 MIN
The Book of the Law
Cairo in the spring of 1904, the stele numbered 666, three hours of dictation, and the speakers Nuit, Hadit and Ra-Hoor-Khuit.
Everything in Thelema goes back to three hours in Cairo. In the spring of 1904 Aleister Crowley and his new wife, Rose Edith Kelly, were on an extended honeymoon in Egypt. Crowley had left the Golden Dawn behind, and in their rented apartment he set up a temple room. What happened next is told in his own later accounts, in his diaries, and by his biographers; it is a story whose facts are argued over, and it is given here as he told it, with the dates the sources agree on.