A circle was drawn in the sand of Bou-Saâda, in the Algerian desert. Inside it stood Aleister Crowley in a scarlet robe. Two metres from the circle lay an equilateral triangle, and in the centre of the triangle were the Latin letters of the name that was to call out its dweller.

Outside the circle, with a notebook in hand, stood Crowley's pupil and lover — Victor Neuburg, a twenty-four-year-old poet, in a white robe. His task was one thing: to set down every word spoken from within the triangle.

The name in the triangle was: CHORONZON.

Crowley made an offering — three doves, whose blood was poured inside the triangle. Blood — to give the entity a form. Without form, Choronzon could not be heard.

Then the Enochian calls of the Tenth Aethyr were uttered — Zax. The Aethyr of emptiness. The Aethyr where the Dweller in the Abyss is at home.

The desert silence did not answer at once. But then — a voice came.

So Choronzon introduced himself. Not by a name — by a denial. Not "I am Choronzon", but "I am I" — and nothing else to add. Tautology as nature.

Then Choronzon began to show forms. First — the image of a beautiful woman, and his voice was soft, alluring. Then — a sage in a hermit's robes, and his voice was consoling. Then — a serpent.

Choronzon spoke much. But between his words were pauses, and in those pauses Neuburg sensed — this is not one voice. It is every voice speaking at once, and only one at a time comes to the surface.

Choronzon said this many times. Each time — in a different language.

Choronzon himself named his number. Neuburg wrote it down.

It was not a boast and it was not a threat. It was a definition. Choronzon — fragmentation as a principle. Wholeness that has refused itself.

Neuburg slashed at the air with the knife, repeating the names of God. Choronzon spoke in his own voice, repeated his words a beat late, laughed his laugh.

Neuburg did not know whom he was answering — Crowley, Choronzon, or himself. In the desert it was all one.

After several hours — no one knows exactly how many — Choronzon's voice began to weaken. The pauses between his phrases grew longer. Into one of those pauses came the last phrase.

Then — silence. Not a departure. Simply an absence.

When the sun rose over Bou-Saâda, Crowley and Neuburg burned their ritual robes and smoothed out the sand on which the circle had been. Neuburg's notebook held eighteen pages — Choronzon's words, recorded verbatim.

Two years later Crowley published this record in "Liber 418: The Vision and the Voice". The book can still be bought today. Neuburg's pages are inside.

Crowley himself wrote afterwards: "After Choronzon I was no longer the magus who entered the circle. I was the one who had heard. Choronzon did not kill me — he did worse. He told me, in my own words, every secret I thought my own."

Choronzon said much. Crowley wrote it down. Neuburg confirmed it. The book has been open to readers for one hundred and sixteen years.

One question remains. The same one Crowley carried with him to his death in 1947.