and philosophy of the Book, Aiwaz is a severely suppressed part of me. Crowley himself was initially opposed to the book and its message. "I was trying to forget the whole business." The fact of the matter was that I resented The Book of the Law with my whole soul. For one thing, it knocked my Buddhism completely on the head. ... I was bitterly opposed to the principles of the Book on almost every point of morality. The third chapter seemed to me gratuitously atrocious. Shortly after making a few copies for evaluation by close friends, the manuscript was misplaced and forgotten about. It would be several years before it was found, and the first official publication occurred in 1909. The Book of the Law annoyed me; I was still obsessed by the idea that secrecy was necessary to a magical document, that publication would destroy its importance. I determined, in a mood which I can only describe as a fit of ill temper, to publish The Book of the Law, and then get rid of it for ever. Original manuscript A facsimile of the original handwritten manuscript was published in The Equinox, Volume I, Number VII, in 1912. In 1921, Crowley gave the manuscript its own title, "AL (Liber Legis), The Book of the Law, sub figura XXXI", to distinguish it from the typeset version. It is now sometimes referred to as simply "Liber XXXI". The original manuscript was sent on Crowley's death to Karl Germer, the executor of his will and head of the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.). On Germer's death no trace of it could be found in his papers. There matters rested until 1984, when Tom Whitmore, the new owner of a house in Berkeley, California, began searching through the junk left in the basement by the previous owner. Among the used mattresses, lumber, and outdated high school textbooks were two boxes of assorted papers and newspaper clippings dealing with Germer's affairs, the charter of the O.T.O. and an envelope containing the manuscript of The Book of the Law. Whitmore donated the papers to the O.T.O. Changes to the manuscript The final version of Liber Legis includes text that did not appear in the original writing, including many small changes to spelling. In several cases, stanzas from the Stele of Revealing were inserted within the text. Chapter 1 For example, chapter 1, page 2, line