jcsbimp01

I dreamed about that book again: the one that doesn't exist in real life, black-leather-bound and with secrets of magick written in red and black ink, that starts with a Tarot-trumps-based guide to being an Initiate into its secrets. This dream, however, did not have that book as an object, but started with me thinking about it. Then I went and got my own similar real book (except that even this book only exists in my dreams, although while dreaming I was somehow convinced otherwise), this one a large-format paperback with a black cover and similar content. It appeared to be part of my collection of works by Crowley, and I decided to look for the first time past the first couple of lessons/chapters, in order to see what was covered later in the book. At a point about two-thirds through the book was a message written in some sort of cipher by Crowley, with of course the notation that the Initiate would be able to read its message when given the proper level of spiritual/magickal understanding. I started to thumb through later pages to see if there was some sort of symbolic clue given for deciphering the message, only to find a series of about a dozen or fifteen heavier pages, each with a photograph of some sort of ancient secret writing, sometimes etched into tablets, sometimes sculpted into stone. Then, as I turned just past that, I saw that indeed someone had written notes on Crowley's cipher: It was based on the simple substitution with tic-tac-toe and X-shaped grids that I learned when I read about codes and ciphers in elementary school. Cool, I thought, the rest of these will have simple explanations, perhaps, as well. I was eager to start deciphering, but then the thicker pages broke free of the paperback's binding, and I was too busy trying to get the book back into one piece to read any of the secret messages before I woke up.