Nema - Maat Magick: a Guide to Self-Initiation

Maat was known to the ancient Egyptians as the Goddess of Truth and Justice. The present book concerns a communication from the highest level with special regard to self-initiation into Her Mysteries.

It is difficult to place Maat Magick in its true context and perspective without invoking all sorts of seemingly unrelated events which span many decades. It is a very skillfully crafted work, possessing a subtlety and depth not immediately apparent However, the addition to Magic of the letter k warns us that we are skirting Crowley territory.

Ten years after Crowley's death, in 1947, a batch of letters written by his magical son, Frater Achad, revealed that the territory was a veritable minefield, and that controversy over the Mysteries of Maat was the fuse which eventually alienated the two men.

Not long before Crowley's death, and totally oblivious to the tension existing between these two great magicians, I asked Crowley when Maat's Aeon would dawn. World War II was grinding to a halt, and contrary to the spirit of general rejoicing, Crowley declared that the war had not yet begun! He was referring, of course, to turbulent years ahead as the Aeon of Horusinaugurated by his receipt of The Book of the Law in 1904really got underway. A little abashed, I asked again when he thought the Aeon of Maat would appear. He replied, curtly, Maat can wait. Maat did wait, but not as long, perhaps, as Crowley expected. The year following Crowley's death, that is in 1948, Frater Achad announced the Inauguration of the Aeon of Maat in a series of documents included in the correspondence aforementioned. I studied these documents with some care when, eventually, I came to see them, and Achad's plausible arguments and evidence all but persuaded me that he might be right; but something was lacking. That something was the transmission which Nema, prophetess and the author of this book, received from an extraterrestrial entity named N'Aton, some sixteen years later. It appears in this book as Liber Pennae Praenumbra, a simple, straightforward statement possessing none of the torturous complexities inherent in Achad's proclamation; yet it contains profound metaphysical and spiritual implicits. Nema skillfully brings these to the fore, as well as providing a clearcut manual of practical magical working for those with a ceremonialbent. It is all here; the theory and the practice of a magical culture which, in its fullest development, emerges as a profoundly mystical experience of Truth stripped of every conceivable glamorof all magick, in fact. None but Nema, writing today, could encompass so vast a range of insights in so forthright a manner.

In a recent letter to me, Nema described her Astral temple: My Astral Temple (an ankh-shaped sandstone structure) sits on the Plain of the Starsa desert of sand of pink-lavender (mauve?) color, through which shine a myriad of stars and galaxies. I discovered it in 73.

The description reminded me, inevitably, of an experience shared by members, myself included, of New Isis Lodge in 1955, just prior to transmissions from a source we called the Mauve Zone. The experience involved a structure shaped like the astro-glyph of Venusas near in shape to an ankh sign as made no difference. It was of massive proportions and vertically rooted at a crazy angle in a mauve-hued desert of drifting sand which rippled like water under a steady breeze. Into the top of the sign there flowed three curved streams of light, bluish-white and intensely bright. This sign was eventually modified and adopted by the Lodge as its magical Seal.

It may or may not be significant that we saw in the vast landscape, partially immersed in the sand, what appeared to be several similar structures, their upper parts alone visible. They resembled half-moons with a triple fire-tongue playing on their domes. Nema, who knew nothing about them, was the first person to describe details analogous in respect of the two chief featuresthe ankh-shaped structure and the color of the desert.

It was owing to the Lodge experience, and the Inner Contacts which it established in its aftermath, that I came to view the structures in the light of receiving-stations or temples of Initiation, although I had not thought of them in connection with Maat. If, indeed, they did have such a connection, then the New Isis Lodge stumbled upon a magical zone in whichnearly twenty years later, in 1974Nema received Liber Pennae Praenumbra.

One of the more profound and yet practical lessons to be derived from Maat Magick is, surely, that we do not have to wait for Maat. For those who live and work NOW in the Light of Maat, Heraeon is already at hand. The concept of successional aeons is shown to be a misconception; we live in the aeon we project all about us, as our life, as our world. It follows that as we cease projecting we shall render ourselves available to Maat, Herself. That is our Truth and the Truth of what we ceaselessly project.

Kenneth Grant
London