Okay friends, time for a thread! Recently I've been reading rather deep into this image. You've probably seen it before, but I think there's more going on here than people realize.

Crowley's LAM, Kenneth Grant, Blavatsky, Tantra, and the UFO phenomenon

So we've all seen this before, the Lam entity. Drawn by Crowley in 1918 (long before accounts of American UFO abductions became common), it's provided a lot of fodder for the idea that alien contact is in fact a spiritual, rather than extraterrestrial phenomenon.

But let's look at the image's background. In 1918 Crowley was living in New York with a married woman, Roddie Minor. She acted as something of a medium for him, and was apparently a fan of the opium and hashish he'd give her.

She would be his fourth Scarlet Woman, ostensibly incarnating the goddess Babalon. Crowley nicknamed her The Camel, a name that is, upon investigation, simultaneously humorous and incredibly important for understanding the Lam picture.

The Hebrew letter Gimel is (debatably) drawn from a pictograph representing a camel's hoof-print. Gimel corresponds with the 13th path of the Sefirot, the "middle way" between the left and right-hand paths. Crowley writes about this in the Book of Lies.

Note that this middle path also passes directly through Da'ath, remember this I think it's important.
Additionally, note the camel on the corresponding Thoth tarot card The High Priestess.

Crowley goes on to equate the Camel and Gimel with the concept of V.V.V.V.V. There is a lot of debate over what/who V.V.V.V.V. is, but a compelling idea is that it's Crowley's Magus, aka his future self after having completed his Great Work.

While the 5 Vs are likely meant to evoke the points of the pentagram, there's also clearly a sexual-magical component. What part of a woman's anatomy evokes the camel's hoof

Anyway, Crowley, using Minor as a medium, performed a complex ritual and channeling he called the Amalantrah working. Over the course of it he was visited by a hallucinatory wizard (with a gun!) who told him "it's all in the egg".

Crowley would take this as the last challenge for him to complete his Great Work. Leaving Minor behind, he traveled back to Europe where he was at some point contacted by the Lam entity, signifying he had completed the work.

It's interesting to note how these visitations seem to bookend portions of Crowley's life. Being visited by Aiwass in 1904 started this saga, Lam finished it in 1918. It's hard not to notice that Lam's bulging head resembles an egg, as well as an ankh, and an owl.

Owls being associated with the UFO phenomenon is a whole other bucket of syrup, maybe I'll do a thread on that later.

So Crowley draws Lam, and includes it in his commentary on Helena Blavatsky's Voice of the Silence. He notes that Lam closely resembles the Tibetan Lama, meaning treader of the path. The... middle path?

The Voice of the Silence is an interesting read in and of itself, being a manual for Buddhist (ish) meditation and ego-death, including pranayama. Interesting to note that Pranayama practices are associated with sensory experiences sometimes evocative of UFO contact.

Lam's number is stated to be 71. If we go back to the Book of Lies where the camel stuff is from, what is the 71st section? An exhortation of pranayama.

In a slightly ominous twist the 71st section of The Voice of the Silence is a description of the light of the Holy Guardian Angel. The book began with a warning against Devilish magical powers, some of which may disguise themselves as angels of light.

So let's jump forwards a ways. In 1945 Crowley gave the drawing of Lam to fellow magician Kenneth Grant after Grant got him some heroin. If you haven't read Grant his writing is even stranger than Crowleys.

While I won't claim to understand most of Grant's work, he's marked with a preoccupation with Da'ath, the Qliphoth, and strange Setian cthonic spirituality. Remember how much about Lam pointed to Da'ath and the middle path?

After Crowley's death there was a split within the OTO. It's too long a story to tell, but just know Grant split off of mainline Thelema to form the New Isis Lodge. Fascinatingly, he was in contact with Eugen Grosche/Gregor Gregorious. This guy look familiar lol?

And how strange is it that in Germany one of Gregorious's associates Guido Wolther was also making drawings that look like aliens? This one portrays something he thought was the demon Behemoth.

Anyway, Grant details a method for contacting Lam. He wrote that this is very dangerous and should only be undertaken with magical precautions such as a salt circle, but then Grant wrote that everything he did was dangerous.

First, he writes a bit about Kundalini, the twin fire snakes felt during pranayama meditation. Pranayama and the middle path AGAIN!

Next, while this might sound like a mid 2000's creepypasta, he says the best way to do it is to stare into the eyes of the Lam portrait. The eyes will enlarge and seem to swallow the person staring, and they will have a powerful feeling of falling before contact.

Now I've spent around 10-15 minutes doing this myself. To my alarm, I found it kind of seems to work. As the image blurs from you staring a long time, the shadows under the eyes seem to form larger black eyes. If you don't want to do it yourself I've tried to replicate this here.

Now, it's impossible not to notice how closely this resembles the classic black bug eyes of a Grey alien.
Maybe I have too much DMT in my system still or something but this started to freak me out and I thought for sure my door moved a little during this exercise.

Maybe my cat bumped it and I didn't see, I don't know. But that's enough for this topic for a while. What do you think about it?