Student Guide

1.5 House style and the style sheet

A publisher, journal, or series may set house rules of its own, and those rules prevail in its publications. In a paper written for a course, the requirements of the course or its instructor prevail in the same way, and Ashlar governs what they leave open (see 2.51). Where a house adopts Ashlar with exceptions, it should publish the exceptions with its submission guidelines.

Every book or article has one style sheet, begun by the author and extended by the editor. It records the choices made for the work: the forms of recurring names and terms, any latitude Ashlar allows and how it was used, and any house exception that applies (see 2.2, 2.23).

2.51 The paper written for a course

Of the duties this chapter gives an author, those that prepare a manuscript for a publisher do not apply to a paper written for a course: manuscript files (see 2.3), figure files and alt text (see 2.10–2.11), permissions (see 2.15–2.20), and the submission package (see 2.21). The course decides the paper’s layout and what is handed in, and where its requirements differ from this guide, they prevail (see 1.5).

All the other duties apply. Keep a style sheet (see 2.2), and declare the paper’s voice as 2.33 directs. Quote a restricted source only as its kind allows (see 2.34). Make the disclosures 2.47 requires, placed as in an article, and report machine assistance as 2.48 and 5.53 direct. Once a paper is published or offered for publication, every duty this chapter gives an author applies to it. For when to cite a source, see CMS chapter 13.

2.32 Practitioner and scholarly voice

A sentence in the scholarly voice makes a claim the writer defends on evidence any reader can weigh, whatever the reader believes. A sentence in the practitioner voice speaks from within a tradition, on that tradition’s terms and authority. In the scholarly voice, report the tradition’s claims as claims and attribute them to those who hold them. In the practitioner voice, cite scholarship as fully as a scholarly work does, and on the same terms.

2.34 Kinds of material

Classify every restricted source before writing, and record its kind on the style sheet. The kind decides what may be quoted.

Material of every kind may be discussed: its existence, date, provenance, general character, place in a body’s structure, and the scholarship about it. Liber XV, the Gnostic Mass, printed in The Equinox, vol. 3, no. 1 (1919), is published material. For citing privately circulated and oath-bound sources, see 6.68–6.74.

2.36 Availability and permission

That a document can be found on the internet, in a library or archive, or in a commercial reprint settles nothing about whether it may be quoted. Cite a restricted document according to its kind, and never link to a copy of it (see 6.74). An argument that wide circulation has changed a document’s standing is made in the prose, with evidence, and the editor treats it as a claim. A copy of unknown origin is not a source against which a quotation can be checked (see 2.12).

3.67 Accuracy

Reproduce a quotation exactly as its source has it: words, spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and italics. Check every quotation against the edition you cite (see 2.12). A passage you know only from another writer’s quotation is cited as quoted there (see 5.11). A saying attributed to an author that you cannot find in a printed or otherwise checkable source is not quoted as that author’s. Quote a living speaker directly only from a recording or a transcript made at the time; otherwise report the words indirectly.

6.28 Online transcriptions

Quote received texts and the other works of the corpus from a printed edition or a facsimile. An online transcription may help a writer find a passage. Check every word of a quotation found that way against the printed edition named in the bibliography, and cite that edition. Where the online text is itself the subject (its history, its readings, its use by a community), cite it as a website (see 5.46) and name the edition it claims to reproduce, if it names one.

3.68 Run-in and block quotations

A prose quotation of one hundred words or more, or one that fills eight or more lines, is set as a block. A shorter quotation runs into the text, in quotation marks. Quote a single verse of a received text run in, and set two or more verses as a block, beginning each verse on a new line. Set as a block any quotation of a ritual that includes a rubric or a speaker’s designation. A block quotation takes no quotation marks of its own. Quoted matter within it takes double marks, and a quotation inside that takes single; a received text keeps its own marks (see 3.70). A reference to a received text goes in parentheses after a run-in quotation, and in parentheses after the final punctuation of a block, in either citation system; it never goes in a note (see 6.13–6.17).

3.70 Class A and received text

Reproduce text from a Class A book, and any received text, exactly: spelling, capitalization, punctuation, italics, line breaks, and apparent errors. None of the changes listed in 3.69 applies to it. Do not alter its initial letter or its punctuation to suit your sentence, and add nothing inside it, in brackets or otherwise. A comma or period that belongs to your sentence never goes inside the closing quotation mark; it follows the reference in parentheses, or the closing mark where no reference follows. You may begin a quotation within a verse or end it before the verse’s final mark; where the words will not otherwise fit your sentence, recast the sentence. Reproduce a misprint in the edition you quote and discuss it, if at all, in a note. Which texts are Class A, and which editions control them, is set out in 6.6 and 6.8–6.10.

3.71 Partial and omitted verses

A verse of a received text may be quoted in part, as one continuous run of its words. Do not omit words from within the run you quote, and do not mark the beginning or end of a partial verse with ellipsis points. The reference is to the whole verse, or to the clauses quoted, in a lettering the work follows (see 6.13). Where whole verses are omitted between verses quoted in a block, mark each omission with a line of three spaced periods, and cite the verses quoted, not a range that includes the omitted ones (see 6.16). Quote passages from different chapters separately.

6.13 The form of a verse reference

Write a reference to a received text divided into chapters and verses as the siglum, a space, the chapter number, a colon, and the verse number, with no other spaces. Both numbers are arabic, whatever numerals the edition prints. Use no unit abbreviations and no periods. Where a passage needs a closer locator than its verse, a lowercase letter may follow the verse number, closed up, to name a clause in a lettering the work names where it states its edition (see 6.5); a range of clauses takes an en dash. A reference to the whole verse is always correct, and no work is required to use letters. A source quoted in a work keeps its own form of reference inside the quotation.

6.14 Books without chapters or numbers

Cite a received text that has no chapters as a single chapter numbered 1, in the form given in 6.13. Supply the chapter number even though the edition prints none. Where a book numbers a verse 0, cite it as 0, and a verse 00 as 00, which precedes 0; never shift the numbering to begin at 1. Whether a book is divided into chapters is taken from the controlling editions (see 6.6). Unnumbered text that the edition prints after a verse, before the next verse or at the end of the book, belongs to that verse. A part of a book that its edition leaves unnumbered, such as a prologue, is cited by its name; a verse within it takes the part’s initial in place of the chapter number.

Where the edition prints no verse numbers at all, supply them only as 6.30 directs for Liber Trigrammaton. Cite any other such text by the divisions it prints, or as a whole, and point to a passage within it by quoting the passage’s opening words in the sentence.

6.15 Ranges

Join the two ends of a range with an en dash, without spaces, and give both numbers in full. A range that runs from one chapter into the next repeats the chapter number after the dash. Do not use f., ff., or et seq.; give the range.

6.16 Several references

Give the siglum once for several references to the same work. Within that work, separate verses of one chapter with commas and separate chapters with semicolons. Separate references to different works with semicolons, and repeat the siglum for each work. List references within a work in ascending order, and list different works in the order the argument uses them. In author-date text, a reference to a received text and an author-date citation may share one parenthesis, the received text first and the two separated by a semicolon.

6.17 References in running text

Place a reference to a received text in parentheses in the text, in both citation systems. A note may discuss a verse, but the reference stays in the running text. After a run-in quotation or at the end of a sentence, the parenthesis comes before the closing punctuation; after a block quotation it follows the final punctuation (see 3.68). In prose, name a work by its title. Use the siglum inside the parenthesis, and in the sentence itself only where a passage is examined closely and the reference is the subject under discussion. Do not begin a sentence with a siglum.

6.30 The other Holy Books

Cite each of the other Holy Books by the siglum given for it in 8.29, by chapter and verse, with chapter 1 supplied where the book has no chapters (see 6.13–6.14). Give each title in full at first mention, in the form 8.29 gives it, keeping any Hebrew or Greek element and any ligature. Crowley’s commentaries on several of the Holy Books are his own works, separate from the texts. Cite each as commentary on the verse, by the page of the edition in which it was read (see 6.19).

Liber Trigrammaton is printed without numbers. Number its twenty-seven verses, each set beneath a trigram, from 0 in the order printed: Tri 1:0 is the verse beneath the trigram of three points, and Tri 1:26 the last. The small trigram that ends Tri 1:9 belongs to that verse. State this numbering where the work states its edition (see 6.5). Where a source numbers the verses another way, from 1 or by the value of a trigram read as a numeral, say so and convert in your own prose. Neither Crowley’s English letters for the trigrams nor a trigram’s value in any numerical system serves as a reference. Cite Liber Tau, a single plate, as a whole.

6.3 No author for a received text

Cite a received text by its title, or in a reference by its siglum and division. Leave the author position empty in every form: notes, bibliography, text citations, and reference list alike. Do not name as author the person who received the text or wrote it down, the source the tradition credits, or Anonymous, and do not add attributed to or attrib. to the title. The person who received the text is named in the bibliography entry, in a sentence after the title (see 6.4).

6.5 Stating the edition and sigla

A work that cites a received text by siglum states once which edition its references follow (see 6.6), and any lettering of clauses it uses (see 6.13), either in the list of abbreviations or in a note at the first reference. Where the work has a list of abbreviations, each siglum it uses appears there (see 8.5). After that statement the references stand in the text, in parentheses, with no further notes.

6.4 Received texts in a bibliography

Begin the entry with the title, in the form 3.47 gives it. Follow the title with a sentence beginning Received by, which names the person who received the text and gives the place and date of reception where the edition used records them. Where someone else wrote the text down, the words written down by and that person’s name follow, after a semicolon. Then give the edition used, introduced by In, as for a document in a modern collection (see 5.36). The reception sentence reports the tradition’s account in those words and no others. It does not name the source the tradition credits, and it takes no quotation marks, qualifier, or [sic]. The entry files under its title. A reference-list entry is the bibliography entry with the year of the edition used moved to follow the title (see 5.57).

6.33 The Comments on Liber AL

Four documents are known as comments on Liber AL. Crowley’s Old Comment (OC), New Comment (NC), and Djeridensis Comment (DjC) comment on the book verse by verse. The Tunis Comment (Tun) is a short statement printed at the end of many editions of the book under the heading “The Comment” and signed Ankh-f-n-khonsu. Never write the Comment without saying which is meant. Cite the Old, New, and Djeridensis Comments by the verse commented on, with on in roman between the siglum and the reference; cite the Tunis Comment as a whole. The three verse-by-verse Comments are Crowley’s works and take him as author in the bibliography, with the edition in which each was read; they are not received texts. The Tunis Comment is entered under the name it is signed with (see 5.16).

5.2 Notes or author-date

Use notes and bibliography: numbered notes keyed to the text, with a bibliography at the end of the work. Author-date citation, in which a parenthetical reference in the text points to a reference list, is also acceptable (see 5.54–5.57). A work uses one system throughout. A journal or series may require either.

5.7 The first citation of a work

Give a full note at the first citation of a work in an article, and at its first citation in each chapter of a book. Use the short form after that. A full note gives the author’s name in normal order, the full title, and the facts of publication in parentheses, separates its elements with commas, and ends with the locator. A bibliography entry inverts the first author’s name, separates its elements with periods, gives the facts of publication without parentheses, and has no locator.

5.8 Short forms

A short note gives the author’s surname, a short title, and the locator. Shorten the title to no more than four of its key words, in their original order, and drop an initial A, An, or The. An article or chapter title keeps its quotation marks. A motto or office-name is never cut down to one of its words. A Liber title shortens as 3.49 directs. Where two works would shorten to the same form, lengthen one of them by its next key word.

5.9 Ibid. and other Latin forms

Do not use ibid. Repeat the short form, even for a source cited in the note immediately before. Do not use op. cit., loc. cit., or idem.

5.11 Citing a source found in another

Cite the source you read. Where you know a passage only as it is quoted in another work, cite the original as fully as that work allows, then quoted in, then the full citation of the work you read, and list both in the bibliography. An argument about the exact wording, layout, or hand of a document rests on the document or a facsimile of it, never on a quotation in another work (see 4.49, 6.26).

5.33 Edited editions of Crowley

Cite an edited edition of Crowley’s work under Crowley, with the editor after the title and the edition named. Where you cite the editor’s introduction, commentary, or notes, cite them under the editor. An introduction or foreword without a title of its own is named generically, in roman: lowercase in a note, capitalized in a bibliography entry. The bibliography lists the edition under Crowley and gives a cited introduction an entry of its own under the editor.

5.36 Chapters in edited books

Cite a chapter or essay by its author and title, followed by in and the book, with its editors. In the bibliography entry, give the chapter’s full page range. A document reproduced in a modern collection is cited as that document, with the collection as its location, and never as the editor’s writing; Golden Dawn papers follow 6.48, and other documents of the adjacent corpora follow 6.47–6.57.

5.38 Journal articles

Cite an article by its author, its title in quotation marks, the journal’s title in italics, the volume and issue in arabic numerals, the year, the page range, and the DOI or URL. Omit the month or season when the volume and issue are given. In a note the page cited takes the place of the range. Give a journal’s title without its subtitle and in full: Aries; Correspondences; The Pomegranate; Nova Religio; Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft. Abbreviate a journal’s title only as 8.39 directs.

5.46 Web pages

Cite a web page by its author, if it names one, the page’s title in quotation marks, the site’s title, the date of publication or revision, and the URL. Where the page shows no date, add an access date (see 5.31). A site’s title is set in roman unless it is also the title of a book or periodical. Where a page names no author, begin its bibliography entry with the site’s owner or sponsor, and omit a site title that only repeats that name.

5.30 Archived copies

Before submitting a work, make an archived copy of every online source you cite that has no DOI, using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine or Perma.cc, and keep a copy of your own. Journal articles and books listed in a national library’s catalog need no archived copy. Where the page has changed since you read it or has gone, replace the live URL in the citation with archived, the date of capture, and the archived copy’s URL.

Where a page cannot be archived, as behind a login, keep your own copy and give it to the editor on request. Privately circulated and oath-bound material is never placed in a public archive (see 2.34, 6.74).

5.53 AI-generated material

Say how you used a chatbot or similar tool, in the text, a note, or the preface, and cite any content it generated, quoted or paraphrased, where it occurs. A tool used only for spelling, grammar, or phrasing needs no disclosure (see 2.48). The tool is not the author. Cite its output in a note only, naming the tool and its version, the company that makes it, the date the content was generated, and the prompt or a summary of it; give the URL of a shared copy of the conversation where the tool provides one, and say if you edited the output. AI-generated material is not listed in the bibliography. A translation, transliteration, transcription, or gematria value a tool produced is disclosed in a note, checked against the sources, and cited to them (see 2.48).

3.5 Qabalah, Kabbalah, and Cabala

Write Qabalah for the Hermetic and Thelemic tradition, Kabbalah for the Jewish tradition and its texts, and Cabala for the Christian Cabala of the Renaissance and early modern period. Choose by the tradition the sentence concerns, and keep any other form found in a quotation or a title. The adjectives follow their nouns: Qabalistic, Kabbalistic, Cabalistic.

The name of a particular system keeps the spelling its proponents give it, in your own prose as well as in quotation. The English Qaballa (EQ), the system of English letter values first worked out by James Lees in 1976, is spelled with two l’s and no final h (see 6.63).

In Hermetic and Thelemic contexts the Sephiroth take the Word List’s received forms: Kether, Chokmah, Binah, Chesed, Geburah, Tiphareth, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, Malkuth. In discussion of Jewish Kabbalah, romanize their names as 4.14 directs.

3.6 Magick and magic

Write magick, a lowercase common noun, for the practice as Crowley and Thelemic writers name it. Write magic for the phenomenon in other traditions and in historical or anthropological discussion, the magic of the Golden Dawn and of Crowley’s other sources included. The adjective is magical in every sense; magickal appears only in quotations and titles. Capitalize Magick only where a title or a quotation does.

3.40 Terms of art

Capitalize a term that names a unique Thelemic doctrine, attainment, or being: True Will, the Great Work, the Holy Guardian Angel, the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, the Law of Thelema, the Abyss. Lowercase the same words in their ordinary senses, and capitalize nothing for reverence alone. Will is capitalized only in True Will. Every other will is lowercase, including the pure will of AL 1:44, the divine will, and God’s will; where the True Will is meant, write True Will. Quotations keep their source’s capitals (see 3.67). Thelema, Thelemic, and Thelemite are capitalized. A class designation is Class and a capital letter. The Holy Books, as a body of texts, are capitalized and roman; The Holy Books of Thelema, in italics, is the subtitle of the controlling editions (see 6.6). The following pairs set capitalized terms beside lowercase uses of the same words.

3.44 Italics and quotation marks

Italicize the titles of books, periodicals, and other whole published works. Each of the Holy Books, and every work with a Liber title, takes italics whether it was published alone or within a larger work. Set in roman, in quotation marks, the titles of articles, chapters, poems, and other parts of a larger work that have no Liber title. For the scriptures of other religions and their books, and for titles within titles, see CMS chapter 8.

3.56 Date order

Write a date as day, month, and year, with no commas. A month and year take no punctuation between them. A range of days within one month gives the month and year once. Quote a date in the order and form its source uses.