Aleister Crowley – The Star Sponge Vision or (Scientific Proof of the Existence of ‘God’)

Mixed media marker and pencil.

I give unimaginable joys on earth: certainty, not faith, while in life, upon death; peace unutterable, rest, ecstasy; nor do I demand aught in sacrifice.

Liber AL ch. I, v. 58.

Among the prolific writings of Aleister Crowley there appears in chapter 82 of his Autohagiography ‘Confessions,’ record of an experience he refers to as The ‘Star Sponge’ Vision. Crowley reveals the Vision began as the result of a Meditation while on Magickal Retirement at Lake Pasquaney, New Hampshire, in the year 1916. In his recollection, he states, “I lost consciousness of everything but a universal space in which were innumerable bright points, and I realised this as a physical representation of the universe, in what I may call its essential structure. I exclaimed, “Nothingness with twinkles’… I thereupon completed my sentence with the exclamation, ‘but what twinkles!” Crowley then discusses his realisation of the interconnectedness of every star with every thought, or in other words, the interconnectedness of each unit or point of consciousness and its co-dependence upon every other.

He became conscious of the fact that “the structure of the universe was highly organized, that certain stars were of greater magnitude and brilliancy than the rest.” (This, of course, is not to say that All Stars do not have Equal Rights!) Years later, with images from the Hubble Telescope at our disposal, ‘Star Sponge,’ and “Nothingness with twinkles,” stand as incontrovertibly accurate characterisations of the various regions of Deep Space captured in the breathtaking imagery beamed back from this eye in the sky. Exemplified in the context of Crowley’s commentary, which specifically recounts the structure of the Universe and is suggestive of the expansion and evolution from one particular Point, aka The Source, God, or Singularity. Then on to a Stellar Nursery where the first stars of “greater magnitude and brilliancy than the rest” are born – the Qabalist’s Chokmah or the Gates of Heaven. Branching out to the galaxies and stars as we know them, followed by the wondrous complexity and diversity we witness today through our particular human lens here on Earth – Malkuth.