Nuit (alternatively Nu , Nut , or Nuith ) is a goddess in Thelema , the speaker in the first chapter of The Book of the Law , the sacred text written or received in 1904 by Aleister Crowley . Nuit is based on the Ancient Egyptian sky goddess Nut , who in Egyptian mythology arches over her husband/brother, Geb ( Earth god ). She is usually depicted as a naked woman who is covered with stars.
16-766: Within this system, Nuit is one part of a triadic cosmology, along with Hadit (her masculine counterpart), and Ra-Hoor-Khuit , the Crowned and Conquering Child, which are depicted on the Stele of Revealing . She has several titles, including " Our Lady of the Stars ", and "Lady of the Starry Heaven". In The Book of the Law she says of herself: "I am Infinite Space, and the Infinite Stars thereof", and in other verses she
32-736: A battle with Set and his army. Both versions of Horus appear in the Egyptian image that Thelemites call Stele 666 , a Dynasty 25 or 26 offering stele formerly in the Boulaq Museum, but now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, also known as the Stele of Revealing . Ra-Hoor-Khuit Heru-ra-ha ( lit. ' Horus sun-flesh ' ) is a composite deity related to ancient Egyptian mythology revered within Thelema ,
48-418: A convenient metaphor". Another called the model "overly simplistic" and has devised their own more complex gender formulation. Hedenborg-White goes on to note that "studying contemporary Thelema requires sensitivity to the fact that Thelemites are not passively bound to orthodoxy in their religious practice." Hadit Hadit / ˈ h æ d i t / (sometimes Had ) refers to a Thelemic deity. Hadit
64-500: A local form of the goddess Hathor at Athribis, who guarded the heart of Osiris . "Khut" refers to the goddess Isis as light giver of the new year; some older sources say that it can also refer to the fiery serpent on the crown of Ra . The passive aspect of Heru-ra-ha is Hoor-pa-kraat ( Ancient Egyptian : ḥr-pꜣ-ẖrd , meaning "Horus the Child"; Egyptological pronunciation : Har-pa-khered ), more commonly referred to by
80-595: A religion that began in 1904 with Aleister Crowley and The Book of the Law . Heru-ra-ha is composed of Hoor-paar-kraat and Ra-Hoor-Khuit . He is associated with the other two major Thelemic deities found in The Book of the Law , Nuit and Hadit . The Stele of Ankh-ef-en-Khonsu , known within Thelema as the "Stele of Revealing", links Nuit, Hadit, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit to the ancient Egyptian deities Nut , Behdety , and Ra-Horakhty . The active aspect of Heru-ra-ha
96-486: Is Ra-Hoor-Khuit ( Ancient Egyptian : rꜥ-ḥr-ꜣḫtj ; sometimes also anglicized as Ra-Hoor-Khu-it, Ra-Har-Khuti, or Ra-Har-Akht; Egyptological pronunciation : Ra-Horakhty or Ra-Herakhty ), means 'Ra (who is) Horus of the Horizon'. Ra-Hoor-Khuit or Ra-Hoor-Khut is the speaker in the third chapter of The Book of the Law , where the relationship with Heru-ra-ha and Hoor-pa-kraat is detailed in verse 35: The half of
112-620: Is called " Queen of Heaven ", and "Queen of Space". Nuit is symbolized by a sphere whose circumference is nowhere and whose center is everywhere. Hadit is the infinitely small point at the center of the sphere of Nuit. Some quotes from the first two chapters of The Book of the Law ( Liber AL vel Legis ): The following are quotes from Crowley's commentaries to The Book of the Law . Manon Hedenborg-White writes that "[...] Nuit and Hadit are constructed as gendered opposites in ritual and literature, and their divine functions and attributes are linked to their sex." She observes that Claiming that Nuit
128-467: Is established as a crucially important category in relating to the divine. She goes on to note the practitioners of Thelema may subvert this view through polytheism, incorporating deities such as Kali from Hinduism as well as the Greek god Pan to represent different forms of femininity and masculinity. She also notes that one of her Thelemic informants questions the gendering of Nuit, calling it "merely
144-421: Is female and receptive and Hadit is male and active is thus not a mere description, but a performative utterance that creates these deities as gendered in the minds of those who experience them, and reproduces assumptions about what femininity and masculinity is. By disregarding other physical aspects that might otherwise define the deities and linking their sex to the human sexes of male and female in ritual, gender
160-481: Is joy. If I lift up my head, I and my Nuit are one. If I droop down mine head, and shoot forth venom, then is rapture of the earth, and I and the earth are one. There is great danger in me..." The earlier, Egyptian version, went by the name of Heru-Behdeti or Horus of Behdet ( Edfu ), Haidith in Greek . Thoth let him take the form of the solar disk to help a younger version of Horus—Re-Horakhty, or Ra-Hoor-Khuit —in
176-455: Is the principal speaker of the second chapter of The Book of the Law (written or received by Aleister Crowley in 1904). Hadit identifies himself as the point in the center of the circle, the axle of the wheel, the cube in the circle, "the flame that burns in every heart of man, and in the core of every star", and the worshipper's own inner self. When juxtaposed with Nuit in The Book of
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#1732772741470192-574: The Greek rendering Harpocrates ; Horus , the son of Isis and Osiris , sometimes distinguished from their brother Horus the Elder, who was the old patron deity of Upper Egypt. Hoor is represented as a young boy with a child's sidelock of hair, sucking his finger. The Greeks, Ovid , and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn attributed silence to him, presumably because the sucking of
208-592: The Law , Hadit represents each unique point-experience. These point-experiences in aggregate comprise the sum of all possible experience, Nuith. Hadit, "the Great God, the lord of the sky", is depicted on the Stele of Revealing in the form of the winged disk of the Sun , Horus of Behdet (also known as the Behdeti). However, while the ancient Egyptians treated the Sun and the other stars as separate, Thelema connects
224-471: The finger is suggestive of the common "shhh"-gesture. Aiwass , the being who dictated The Book of the Law to Crowley, introduces himself as "the minister of Hoor-paar-kraat" in the book's first chapter. Also known as "The Babe in the Lotus", Hoor-paar-kraat is sometimes thought of as the younger brother of Horus. The former interpretation in the works of Aleister Crowley portrays Ra-Hoor-Khuit—in place of
240-516: The sun-god Hadit with every individual star. Furthermore, The Book of the Law says: "Every man and every woman is a star." Hadit is the Secret Seed. In The Book of the Law he says; "I am alone: there is no God where I am." He is "the flame that burns in every heart of man, and in the core of every star." He is identified with kundalini ; in The Book of the Law he says, "I am the secret Serpent coiled about to spring: in my coiling there
256-522: The word of Heru-ra-ha, called Hoor-pa-kraat and Ra-Hoor-Khut. Within Thelema, Ra-Hoor-Khuit is called 'Lord of the Aeon ' (which began in 1904 according to Thelemic doctrine), and 'The Crowned and Conquering Child'. An appellation of Ra , identifying him with Horus , this name shows the two as manifestations of the singular solar force. According to Crowley, the five-pointed "star of flame" symbolizes Ra-Hoor-Khuit in certain contexts. "Khuit" also refers to
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