The Book of the Law

The central sacred text of Thelema

Liber AL vel Legis, commonly known as The Book of the Law, is the central sacred text of Thelema. Written by Aleister Crowley, with his wife Rose Edith Kelly who wrote two phrases into the finished manuscript, Crowley claimed it was dictated to him by a preternatural being calling himself Aiwass. The book's three chapters are largely written in a first-person narrative by the Thelemic deities Nuit, Hadit, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit respectively.
Through the reception of the Book, Crowley proclaimed the arrival of a new stage in the spiritual evolution of humanity, to be known as the "Æon of Horus".The primary precept of this new aeon is the charge to "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law".
The book contains three chapters, each of which was alleged to be written down in one hour, beginning at noon, on 8 April, 9 April, and 10 April in Cairo, Egypt, in the year 1904.Crowley says that the author was an entity named Aiwass, whom he later referred to as his personal Holy Guardian Angel.
Crowley himself wrote "Certain very serious questions have arisen with regard to the method by which this Book was obtained. I do not refer to those doubts—real or pretended—which hostility engenders, for all such are dispelled by study of the text; no forger could have prepared so complex a set of numerical and literal puzzles[...]"
The book is often referred to simply as Liber AL, Liber Legis or just AL, though technically the latter two refer only to the manuscript.