Black Dragon of Putrefaction in Evil

[FiatYod]

From the second volume of The Equinox, at the part that describes the Ritual of the 1° = 10° Grade of Zelator, before the Closing, the Hierophant says:

Learn then to separate the pure from the impure, the refined and spiritual gold of the Alchymist from the Black Dragon of Putrefaction in Evil.

What does the "Black Dragon of Putrefaction in Evil" refer to? What are its origins?
I've never come across this term, so I tried to look it up, but found nothing specific.

[seekinghga]

Here's one of my favorite references to the topic by Crowley from his Little Essays Towards Truth, cap. Truth.

"I beseech you earnestly, dear Brethren, to grapple manfully as mighty wrestlers with the ideas in these Little Essays: to understand them—

" ...with the extended flame of far-reaching Mind, measuring all things except that Intelligible. But it is requisite to understand this; for if thou inclinest thy Mind thou wilt understand it, not earnestly; but it is becoming to bring with thee a pure and inquiring sense, to extend the void mind of thy soul to that Intelligible, because it subsisteth beyond Mind.

"For thus not only will you develop the spiritual intuition, the very Neschamah of your divine Being, but (in the degree of your Concentration of your power to slow down and finally to stop the irritable movements of your ratiocinative machinery) to transmute these Essays—the Prima Materia of your Great Work; passing through the stage of the Black Dragon, in which your rational ideas are wholly destroyed and putrefied, you will succeed in enflaming them in the fierce Furnace of your Creative Wills, until all things burn up together into one blazing mass of living, of relentless Light."

- http://hermetic.com/crowley/little-essa ... truth.html
(Accents added by me.)

See also Crowley's New Comment to Liber AL, II:74.

[FiatYod]

Here's one of my favorite references to the topic by Crowley from his Little Essays Towards Truth, cap. Truth.

"I beseech you earnestly, dear Brethren, to grapple manfully as mighty wrestlers with the ideas in these Little Essays: to understand them—

" ...with the extended flame of far-reaching Mind, measuring all things except that Intelligible. But it is requisite to understand this; for if thou inclinest thy Mind thou wilt understand it, not earnestly; but it is becoming to bring with thee a pure and inquiring sense, to extend the void mind of thy soul to that Intelligible, because it subsisteth beyond Mind.

"For thus not only will you develop the spiritual intuition, the very Neschamah of your divine Being, but (in the degree of your Concentration of your power to slow down and finally to stop the irritable movements of your ratiocinative machinery) to transmute these Essays—the Prima Materia of your Great Work; passing through the stage of the Black Dragon, in which your rational ideas are wholly destroyed and putrefied, you will succeed in enflaming them in the fierce Furnace of your Creative Wills, until all things burn up together into one blazing mass of living, of relentless Light."

- http://hermetic.com/crowley/little-essa ... truth.html
(Accents added by me.)

See also Crowley's New Comment to Liber AL, II:74.

So it is a stage of one's process of spiritual development?
From the comment you quoted and the New Comment that you mentioned, it seems like Crowley refers to it as a good thing, a step that comes before a glorious step, whereas in the Ritual that I originally quoted they seem to refer to it as the exact opposite of the "refined and spiritual gold of the Alchymist"...
Now that I look for an Alchemical meaning to it, some used to refer to antimony as "Black Dragon", but I don't think it has anything to do with this Ritual.

[seekinghga]

So it is a stage of one's process of spiritual development?
From the comment you quoted and the New Comment that you mentioned, it seems like Crowley refers to it as a good thing, a step that comes before a glorious step, whereas in the Ritual that I originally quoted they seem to refer to it as the exact opposite of the "refined and spiritual gold of the Alchymist"...
Now that I look for an Alchemical meaning to it, some used to refer to antimony as "Black Dragon", but I don't think it has anything to do with this Ritual.

It represents the envenomation of duality. The error becomes so atrociously displeasing that one discards it forever.

[edit]
The mind is still able to perceive the duality. For instance, the senses apprehend a difference between a sandwich and an apple. The intuition, however, continuously detects the aberration of division and instinctively rectifies it in union. One may say that the end result of the Black Dragon stage represents an aspect of the unifying element of the formula of "love under will."

The Trance of Sorrow is probably the common catalyst for entering upon this stage. Regardless, the gist of it is that one becomes disillusioned with all possible contents of belief, the mind becomes tainted and foreign seemingly. The remedy is applied when one becomes totally detached and disidentified from the thoughts of the mind and sees them merely as a medium for idea, and not as one's self. Even Thelema and The Book of the Law are stripped from the aspirant before the end. There is a definite breaking point at which this all occurs, and there is a prone tendency to laughter at the ridiculousness of it when it's over.

Liber Legis is then no longer a book that you simply refer to. It burns inside now as holy fire, it is alive and in your eyes always.

"The Perfect and the Perfect are one Perfect and not two; nay, are none!"