Cakes of Light

In the third chapter of The Book of the Law, verses twenty-three through twenty-nine give the ingredients for cakes which are to be eaten as well as burned unto Ra-Hoor-Khuit. The verses also suggest killing the beetles and creeping things sacred to RHK of which the cakes shall become full, if they are laid before RHK and kept consecrated by prayer.
These Cakes of Light are prescribed in the Mass of the Phœnix; they're suggested in the Gnostic Mass and for the eucharists of two and three elements described in chapter twenty of Book 4, part III.

Contents

Chapter Three

23. For perfume mix meal & honey & thick leavings of red wine: then oil of Abramelin and olive oil, and afterward soften & smooth down with rich fresh blood.
    The New Comment: Meal: ordinary wheaten flour. Leavings: the "beewing" of port should be good. Oil of Abramelin: take eight parts of oil of cinnamon, four of oil of myrrh, two of oil of galangal, seven of olive oil {WEH NOTE: This is not the recipe given in Abramelin, though it seems at first correct. That recipe took the proportions from the dry ingredients. If the essential oils are used instead at the same proportion, the mixture will be much too strong. In fact, the oil of cinnamon may injure the eyes or raise blisters if used at this strength!}.


24. The best blood is of the moon, monthly: then the fresh blood of a child, or dropping from the host of heaven: then of enemies; then of the priest or of the worshippers: last of some beast, no matter what.
    The New Comment: A: menstrual blood. B: possibly "dragon's blood".
    These two kinds of 'blood' are not to be confused. The student should be able to discover the sense of this passage by recollecting the Qabalistic statement that "The blood is the life", consulting Book 4 Part III, and applying the knowledge which reposes in the Sanctuary of the Gnosis of the Ninth Degree of O.T.O. The 'child' is "BABALON and THE BEAST conjoined, the Secret Saviour", that is, the Being symbolized by the Egg and Serpent hieroglyph of the Phoenician adepts. The second kind is also a form of BAPHOMET, but differs from the 'child' in that it is the Lion-Serpent in its original form.
    The process of softening and smoothing down is thus in this case that of vitalizing the Eagle. It is inadvisable to word this explanation, in terms too intelligible to the profane, since uninitiated attempts to make use of the formidable arcana of Magick presented in this passage could lead only to the most fulminating and irremediable disaster.


25. This burn: of this make cakes & eat unto me. This hath also another use; let it be laid before me, and kept thick with perfumes of your orison: it shall become full of beetles as it were and creeping things sacred unto me.
    The Old Comment: This incense was made; and the prediction most marvellously fulfilled.
    The New Comment: These Beetles, which appeared with amazing suddeness in countless numbers at Boleskine during the summer of 1904 E.V. were distinguished by a long single 'horn'; the species was new to the naturalists in London to whom specimens were sent for classification.


26. These slay, naming your enemies; & they shall fall before you.
    The New Comment: See Liber 418, First Aethyr, final paragraphs.


27. Also these shall breed lust & power of lust in you at the eating thereof.
    The Old Comment: These experiments, however, were not made.
    The New Comment: The word "lust" is not necessarily to be taken in the sense familiar to Puritans. It means robustness, 'merriment' as of old understood: the Germans have retained the proper force of the term in "lustig". But even the English retain "lusty".
    The Puritan is undoubtedly a marvel. He has even succeeded in attaching a foul connotation to a colourless word like "certain" -- "In a section of the city with a certain reputation women of a certain class suffering from certain diseases are charged with performing certain acts" is a common enough item in the newspapers. It allows the fullest play to the dirtiest imaginations -- which appears to be the aim of the societies for the Suppression of Vice, and their like.


28. Also ye shall be strong in war.


29. Moreover, be they long kept, it is better; for they swell with my force. All before me.
    The New Comment: It is not altogether clear whether the beetles or the Cakes are referred to in this strange passage. The proper way to discover the truth of this is to experiment.
    There is a considerable amount of evidence in my possession which throws light upon this part of the chapter; but no important purpose would be served by producing it at present. These are circumstances when apparent frankness defeats its own ends as well as those of policy.

Cakes of Light

For any official celebration of the Gnostic Mass where the members of the congregation partake of communion, individual members of the congregation may bring their own Cakes of Light, which they have prepared themselves for their exclusive personal consumption. Such Cakes of Light must be clearly labeled and distinguishable from all the other Cakes of Light. They may be individually wrapped, if necessary, in wax paper or the equivalent.

For all official celebrations of the Gnostic Mass, except for those private celebrations of the Gnostic Mass at which all participants have specifically requested otherwise, the Cakes of Light provided by the celebrants to the congregation shall be made with the following ingredients and with no other ingredients:

1. Meal (any ground edible grain);
2. Honey;
3. Leavings of red wine;
4. Oil of Abramelin (a blend of cinnamon, myrrh, galangal and olive oils);
5. Olive oil; and
6. Optionally, one of the following ingredients may be added:
   
   • Livestock blood obtained legally from a butcher shop or a farm; or
   • Ash from Cakes of Light made according to any reasonable interpretation of CCXX III:23 and which have been burned in accordance with CCXX III:25.

The Cakes of Light are placed on the Paten before commencement of the ceremony. Communicants shall not be provided with lancets or other means of extracting blood at any official celebration of the Gnostic Mass.

Chapter Twenty: Of the Eucharist and the Art of Alchemy, pt. I

The Eucharist of two elements has its matter of the passives. The wafer (pantacle) is of corn, typical of earth; the wine (cup) represents water. (There are certain other attributions. The Wafer is the Sun, for instance: and the wine is appropriate to Bacchus).
The wafer may, however, be more complex, the "Cake of Light" described in Liber Legis.
This is used in the exoteric Mass of the Phoenix (Liber 333, Cap: 44) mixed with the blood of the Magus. This mass should be performed daily at sunset by every magician.
Corn and wine are equivalent to flesh and blood; but it is easier to convert live substances into the body and blood of God, than to perform this miracle upon dead matter.
The Eucharist of three elements has for basis the symbols of the three Gunas. For Tamas (darkness) take opium or nightshade or some sleepy medicine; for Rajas (activity) take strychnine or other excitant; for Sattvas (calm) the cakes of Light may again be suitable. [The Cakes of Light are universally applicable; they contain meal, honey, and oil (carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, the three necessaries of human nutrition); also perfume of the three essential types of magical and curative virtue; the subtle principle of animal life itself is fixed in them by the introduction of fresh living blood.]

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“How can wine leavings be controversial?“ one might ask. Simply put—most people do not know what they are. A survey of recipes fi nds that most makers are using something that I shall lovingly refer to as ‘wine goo’. This goo is made by a simple reduction of red wine or port, conducted at low temperature to avoid scorching the wine, and evaporating off the ~10% ethanol and the large amount of the water contained in the wine, until left with a few tablespoons of a thick wine syrup. My first batch of Cakes was made with one of these recipes replete with wine goo. Some lucky few get the lees from wineries, which are essentially pulp, grape skins, salts, and dead yeast. I am not one of those few so my search continued.

I wondered: are either lees or goo what was originally intended? As always, when faced with this question, I turned to the commentary for direction or elucidation. After all, who would know better than Crowley how he interprets this? In the “New Comment” in the Law is for All, Crowley writes:

Meal: ordinary wheaten flour; leavings: the “beeswing” of port should be good; Oil of Abramelin: take 8 parts of oil of cinnamon, four of oil of myrrh, two of oil of galangal, seven of olive oil.

Plain enough, right? We know what those oils are and the wheaten flour is easy, but what is this ‘beeswing of port’ he references? During the fermentation process, leavings settle to the bottom of the casks which contain salts that are ultimately formed into cream of tartar. This tartarate is found in the lees of wine (remember the salts), but is best formed as a secondary crust in port and some wines, pure in consistency, that comes off in shining flakes or scales that resemble bees’ wings, hence beeswing of port.

The scales of tartar are a byproduct of the wine making process and have been used in baking for years. In fact, grapes are the only significant natural source; it is only in modern times that we are unaware of this byproduct, as we tend to follow recipes more than understand the chemistry involved. What is the purpose of cream of tartar in baking? Even though I have it in my spice rack, I could not have told you what it actually does before making my own Cakes of Light led to this research, except its use in meringue. A recipe calls for it, I use it, but I did not know.

In A Text-book of Sanitary and Applied Chemistry, or, The Chemistry of Water, Air, and Food (Summerfield, 1917), I found the following entry:

Sodium bicarbonate and cream of tartar are often used to render dough light. The first of these may be mixed with the flour, and the latter with the water that is used in mixing the dough, or both may be sifted and mixed with the flour… The tartarate is made from “argols” that are collected in the bottom of wine casks in the process of fermentation.

This instruction, however, calls for the mixing of baking soda and cream of tartar (and incidentally makes baking powder), which makes the dough lighter primarily due to the acid-base reaction of the alkali sodium bicarbonate and the tartaric acid salt, releasing carbon dioxide, thus lightening the dough with microscopic pockets of gas. Our recipe does not call for baking soda; however, there is some argument for the cream of tartar leavening the dough through its own reaction to heat. Honey itself is an acidic compound, though, so why would we want to use cream of tartar, another acidic component? When used without the corresponding base, it is said to make the dough stiffer and stronger, holding its shape well, thus making it a key ingredient in making your own play-dough.

A stronger dough is sensible for making the perfume described in Liber CCXX, III: 23-4. I can also see how it would be useful in making our Cakes, as can anyone who has seen a Cake explode into a rain of crumbs. Could that be its only purpose? Is it simply to lend stability to the shape of the Cakes? Or could it have an interaction with the honey?

In candy-making, an acid (cream of tartar or lemon juice) enhances a process called inversion in the disaccharides such as sucrose, wherein the carbohydrate breaks down into its component sugars, modifying the texture of the candy. Honey being a polysaccharide would benefit from this ‘inversion’ by preventing the crystallization of the honey in the Cake, which can lead to the hard, crunchy Cakes you may have experienced. Honey is also hygroscopic and will bring moisture to the Cakes as they sit, stalling the process of going stale.

In the article on Cakes of Light from Wikipedia, a recipe for making your own wine leavings is given, where grape juice is fermented in a jug. It seems to be a very easy way to accumulate “thick leavings of red wine,” but I find it unsuitable for my uses. Since the commentary by Crowley calls for beeswing by name, he specifies which salt from the wine-making process we should use. The leavings resulting from fermentation does not lead to the production of tartaric acid alone, but to a blend of tartaric, malic, and citric acids and their salt derivatives. The quantity of each acid being determined by the growing location of the grapes used in the production of the grape juice, as the relative acidity is dictated by climate and soil. For those who wish to use the more complex “thick leavings” rather than the more purified salt identified by Crowley, the Wikipedia recipe provides an easy method to generate leavings.

Using McGee’s On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, as a guide, I developed a basic recipe using the proportions of a type of Cake that had the least amount of eggs (which are obviously not an ingredient, but the lost moisture they provide was easily replaced with honey instead of the more standard sugar found in Cake recipes). The temperature shown is optimum for avoiding hard texture or peaked surfaces in Cake-baking. This temperature is higher than most Cake of Light recipes call for, but seems reasonable based on baking experience.

I baked the thick and shiny batter in two formats: individual cookies and a very thin sheet Cake. The formula was off , and it tasted a li le like play dough, with too much cream of tartar and not enough honey. It was also discolored from the addition of ash, and frankly, the wine flavor and color were missed by some tasters. The Cakes themselves were best made in the sheet and then cut with my smallest biscuit cutter. [I have since switched to an OXO Good Grips Tomato Corer for better sizing and ease of use.] They came out light, thin, and easily eaten, not requiring a large amount of liquid to wash down, which can be annoying in a Cake, and the honey did not crystallize.

The following recipe was developed to correct the flavor and the hue:

1/2-cup whole wheat flour.
3/4-cup all purpose flour, unbleached.
1/2-tsp cream of tartar
1/2-tsp gnostic ashes
1 1/4-cup pure honey.
1/2-cup olive oil with several drops of Abramelin oil.

Pre-heat the oven to 350°F. Mix the dry ingredients in a small bowl, sifting for best texture. Mix the liquid ingredients in a large bowl, whisking until well mixed and somewhat aerated. Fold in the flour mixture slowly, until thoroughly moistened. Pour batter out on jelly roll pan or other large rectangular pan, ensuring a thin Cake.

Bake 10-15 minutes, until edges begin browning. Let cool, and cut with small circle cutter. Makes 30 to 100 Cakes, depending on size of the circle.

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Agapé, Volume IX, Number 3/4
hermetic.com/legis