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[from http://www.religioustolerance.org/thelema.htm ] Subject: STELE OF ANKH-AF-NA-KHONSU THE LAW OF THELEMA The Stele of Ankh-af-na-khonsu _________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION The Law of Thelema is a religion of uncertain extent, numbering perhaps as many as a quarter of a million adherents worldwide, with a strong intellectual presence on the Internet. It is an independent religion in its own right, with its own unique tradition, canon, beliefs, and practices. Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) contributed greatly to the "magical revival,"as it has been called, during the first half of the 20th Century. His written works have had a profound effect on the practice of Magick. In addition, Satanism, as currently practiced by the Church of Satan and similar groups, have relied heavily on a sensationalistic interpretation of his writings. There are even marks of his influence in the writings of Gerald Gardner, the individual most responsible for the recreation of Wicca circa 1950. It seems likely that Crowley was commissioned by Gardner to write at least part of the Wiccan Book of Shadows, regarded as the Bible of modern Wicca. Unfortunately, many conservative Christian authors have associated Crowley's beliefs and practices with Mediaeval Satanism. The latter was a form of Satan worship that did not exist in reality. It was invented by the Christian church in order to provide the theological and legal justification for the Witch burnings of Western Europe. As a result of this association, most of the writings by Fundamentalist and other Evangelical Christians about the Law of Thelema and Crowley are hopelessly inaccurate, and may be safely ignored. The following accurate material was provided by Alexander Duncan, B.A. (Hon.) (Dept. of English, York University, North York, Ontario, Canada) (e-mail: shri@globalserve.net). Permission to copy, reproduce, or distribute this material is freely granted provided there is no charge and the name, e-mail address, and URL of the author is included in every copy. _________________________________________________________________ BACKGROUND Thelema is a development of: * the Judaeo-Christian apocalyptic writings, especially the Revelation of John in the New Testament so-called, * the Enochian angelic utterances recorded by Edward Kelly and John Dee (the famous Elizabethan humanist scientist), and preserved for posterity by Meric Casaubon in his True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some Spirits (1659), * mediaeval and Renaissance Cabala, hermetism, and magic, and * the modern magical revival, beginning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, associated with such names as Eliphas Levi, William Butler Yeats (considered by many scholars to be the greatest poet of the twentieth century), and Samuel Liddell "Macgregor" Mathers (co-founder and last Chief of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn). Like Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, founder of Theosophy, by which he was strongly influenced, Crowley forged a bridge between the Western mystical and magical traditions and Oriental spirituality, especially Hindu Tantra and Buddhism, which was just beginning to be known and understood in the West. Crowley's spiritual philosophy also bears many points of similarity to complex or analytical psychology, developed later by Dr. Carl Gustav Jung. _________________________________________________________________ HISTORY The word "Thelema" is derived from Francois Rabelais' Abbey of Theleme, described in the First Book of his philosophical farce, The Histories of Gargantua and Pantagruel (1533), which gave rise to the semi-serious philosophy of Pantagruelism. Although this book has the appearance of an intellectual comedy, some authors have found hermetic and occult allusions in it, and Rabelais himself appears to have been well versed in hermetism. For example, the book ends with an eulogy of "the herb pantagruelion," which appears to be cannabis, and the Oracle of the Bottle may be mystically interpreted. The essential principle of the philosophy of Pantagruelism is laughter, by which life may be simultaneously enjoyed and derided, thereby achieving the religious goal of indifference or detachment without the need for a debilitating asceticism. This idea, it may be noted, is not too dissimilar from the Way of the Heyoka in native American spirituality, which seeks to achieve personal and social regeneration by means of the formula of reversal, stringently applied. Pantagruelism is also distinguished by its emphatic and extreme affirmation of the life of the body, and a deep and passionate hatred of the Christian Church. In its modern form, the Law of Thelema was first promulgated by the poet Edward "Aleister" Crowley (1875-1947) in 1909, after five years of doubt, in his long poetic account of the mystical path, Aha! Here he celebrates Thelema as the apotheosis of the mystical quest, and paraphrases the Book of the Law, the gospel of Thelema, dictated to him (by his own account) by a "praeterhuman intelligence." Only son and heir of a wealthy brewing family, Crowley's father, a retired engineer and amateur evangelist of stern fundamentalist persuasion, died when Alec was only 12, leaving him in the sole care of a neurotic mother and her immediate family, by all accounts a bunch of mean-minded religious bigots and fanatics. His father's death seems to have been a turning point in Alec's life, prior to which he seems to have been a dedicated if immature believer in the literal truth of the Bible, which he admitted even in adult life underlies all his thinking. During this formative period the child was hardly allowed to read anything else! Alec was also a weak and sickly child, which condition was exacerbated by the numerous punishments and privations inflicted by the severe Plymouth Brethren private schools to which he was sent. The imminence of puberty seems to have awakened a spark of rebelliousness, however, and throughout his adolescence Alec turned increasingly against the religion of his ancestors. He developed a keen interest in the ways of the world, especially mountain climbing, sex, and fine literature (especially the poets Swinburne and Shelley). He became increasingly independent. By sheer dint of willpower Crowley overcame his physical weakness and became one of the most adventurous (some would say reckless) mountaineers of his generation, and a personal friend and fellow climber of world class mountaineer Oscar Eckenstein. Crowley's intellectual brilliance was early apparent. Crowley even claimed to remember the circumstances of his infant baptism! Late in adolescence Alec took up the game of chess, in which he rapidly excelled, earning his chess "half blue" at university. In 1895 he went up to Cambridge to study the liberal arts, with the intention of becoming a professional diplomat or a chess master. Crowley studied with feverish intensity, following a largely self-directed program in which he made a point of reading every reference to any other author or work in every book which he read. He read voraciously, especially literature and poetry, post-Cartesian philosophy, the sciences, and occultism, sleeping very little and studying much of the night, spending his summer vacations climbing in the Alps. As the heir of a small fortune Crowley was free to do as he liked, and he did so with characteristic ferocity. The year 1898 was a second turning point in Crowley's career. In this year he left Cambridge University without taking a degree, having resolved to become a professional poet; he published his first book of poetry, now a collector's item, entitled Aceldama: A Place to Bury Strangers In. A Philosophical Poem, by a gentleman of the University of Cambridge,; and he was initiated in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, certainly the most important and influential occult order of recent times. In the course of the next seven years Crowley published at his own expense more than two dozen collections of poetry and verse dramas, quickly acquiring a reputation as an important minor poet and fine publisher of the period, attracting the attention of no less a critic than G. K. Chesterton. During 1905 to 1907, Crowley self-published his Collected Works in three small print volumes. Crowley became well-known in famous literary circles of the day, and was a personal friend of the sculptor Auguste Rodin, S. L. M. Mathers, and Allan Bennett (the Buddhist monk and Golden Dawn occultist who led the first Buddhist mission to the West), amongst others. Crowley's poetry is extremely lucid, fluent in many different forms, lyrical, controversial, and intellectually and morally challenging. In his poetry the lyricist and the didactician struggle for supremacy. The central themes of Crowley's early poetry are the metaphysical problem of the relationship between the Infinite and the finite, the ethical problem posed by the insatiable nature of human craving, the desire for liberty, and the biological nature of life, and the religious problem of how to resolve these dilemmas within the context of post-Cartesian rationalism, scientism, materialism, Darwinism, skepticism, and the implicit nihilism of the modern. Not a set of themes calculated to please the bourgeois, several of Crowley's works were condemned as obscene, though they would hardly receive a second glance today. They were destroyed by Her Majesty's Customs, and are consequently very rare. Also rare is his third book of poetry (which is not included in his Collected Works), entitled White Stains. At a time when Oscar Wilde died in prison for so-called "sex crimes," Crowley's honest and unfettered exploration of sexual themes, including his own homosexuality, must be regarded today as extremely courageous (if not downright foolhardy)! The third and most important turning point in Crowley's career came in 1904, in the same year in which he published S. L. M. Mathers' translation of the Goetia of Solomon the King, with an introductory essay by Crowley himself entitled "The Initiated Interpretation of Ceremonial Magic," in which he developed a theory of magic as a system for awakening unconscious psychic potentials. By this time Crowley had completely mastered the occult system of the Golden Dawn under the personal tutelage of Bennett and Mathers, the Order's two most advanced practical occultists. He excelled at skrying and traveling in the spirit vision and in evocation. He had achieved considerable success in raja yoga, achieving the lesser trance state known as dhyana. He had moved far beyond the "satanism" of his immaturity, through the esoteric Christianity of the Celtic Church, and had even rejected Golden Dawn magic as a tangential distraction from the main purpose of his life: the completion of the "great work" of uniting the personal consciousness with the divine. Crowley was entering his mature religious phase; he had embraced the Theravada Buddhism of his mentor, Allan Bennett, somewhat secularized and colored by Hindu Tantra and a profound comparative understanding born in a deep study of Professor Max Muller's Sacred Books of the East Series and the works of Sigmund Freud. Crowley had married the beauty and socialite Rose Edith Kelly, daughter of the painter Gerald Kelly, the previous August. Still very rich indeed, the Crowleys embarked upon a world tour, returning to Crowley's Boleskine estate at Loch Ness, Scotland via Cairo, Egypt in March, 1904. On their visit to Cairo the previous autumn Crowley and Rose had spent the night in the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid, where Crowley had showed Rose the Astral Light, a subtle bluish illumination which was bright enough to enable Crowley to read the ritual without the use of a candle. This time, Crowley, who had done no other magic for several years, resolved on a whim to show Rose the sylphs, the elemental creatures of the air, and began the evocation with the Preliminary Invocation of the Goetia, Crowley's favorite. Suddenly and quite unexpectedly Rose became spontaneously entranced, repeating over and over again, "They're waiting for you. All Osiris. It's all about the child." Rose insisted that Crowley perform a magical ceremony before an open window in their Cairo flat without any of the traditional preparations. His second attempt, conducted towards midnight on the day of the spring equinox, revealed that the "child" was Horus, the divine offspring of the Egyptian gods Isis and Osiris. According to Crowley he was told (through Rose's clairvoyance?) that he, Crowley, was to forge a new link with the Secret Chiefs of the Order of the Golden Dawn, as Chief of the Order, which office Mathers had forfeited. He was to inaugurate a new historical epoch for mankind, the Aeon of Horus, based on the "magical formula" of the Crowned and Conquering Child, which was to supplant the previous formula of the Dying God for the next two thousand years. Shortly afterwards, to prove the validity of her clairvoyance, Crowley conducted Rose to the Boulak Museum, where neither one had ever been. She took him straight to an exhibit of the funereal stele of Ankh-af-na-khonsu, an obscure XXVIth dynasty Theban priest; Crowley stated that she recognized the image of Ra-Hoor-Khuit (Horus) from such a distance that Crowley himself could not make it out! When Crowley looked at the exhibit, he was shocked. It bore the exhibit number 666, the very number with which Crowley (based on his mother's religious fantasy, it appears) had, since the age of 12, identified himself personally, as the number of the Great Beast of the Revelation of John, the Antichrist himself! This coincidence or synchronicity enormously impressed Crowley, and caused him to obey his wife implicitly when she instructed him to enter the "temple" (the living room of their flat) at 12 noon on April 8, 9, and 10, 1904, and write down what he heard, apparently without any preparations of any sort. When Crowley entered the temple at the appointed time, he claims that he physically heard a voice coming from behind his left shoulder, as well as experienced a vivid subconscious impression of a regal presence of Persian or Assyrian countenance. The voice was devoid of any accent. For one hour it dictated; then it stopped. The voice returned at noon on April 9 and 10, thus dictating the three chapters and sixty-five pages of what came to be known as the Book of the Law, the gospel of the New Aeon of Horus. It seems likely that Crowley's perception of time was altered during this experience, i.e., that he himself experienced an altered state of consciousness (ASC), since Crowley experienced the dictation as normal speaking speed, but in fact from the time involved and the length of the manuscript it can be deduced that the voice spoke at about half the normal rate. The Book itself represents itself as the revelation of a being calling itself Aiwass, "the minister of Hoor-paar-kraat," the form of the god Horus as a child seated on a lotus flower. Many years later, Crowley discovered that Aiwass, or 'Iwaz, is in fact a Semitic proper name. By the end of his life Crowley was convinced that 'Iwaz was in fact a real person, a "secret chief" who could form a physical body out of the elements at will, with whom Crowley himself enjoyed a unique and intimate communion. Following the dictation of the Book of the Law, the Crowleys returned to Boleskine near Loch Ness. Crowley admits that he disliked the Book intensely, and wanted to get rid of it, sticking the manuscript in an attic. However, he did obey the injunction of the Book to make and burn a special incense, composed of several rare oils mixed with blood. The Book promised: "This hath also another use; let it be laid before me, and kept thick with perfumes of your orison: it shall become full of beetles as it were and creeping things sacred unto me." Shortly afterwards Crowley's estate was plagued by an infestation of unusual insects, similar in appearance to the Egyptian scarab beetle with a single protruding eye at the end of a long stalk, which the experts in London to whom Crowley says he sent a specimen were unable to identify. For five years Crowley ignored the Book of the Law, but the accidental discovery and rereading in 1909 of the book in his attic at Boleskine resulted in a conversion experience in which he accepted the Book and his role as described therein. This resulted in the writing of his long poem on the mystical quest, Aha! From that moment forward the Book of the Law became the foundation of his whole work, on which he based his spiritual and writing career for the next thirty-eight years of his life. Though he would suffer a terrible ostracism and poverty for his claims Crowley never doubted that he was the chosen emissary of the Secret Chiefs, and the prophet of a New Aeon for mankind. He died unrepentant and unflagging in his faith in himself as the avatar of a new epoch of human civilization, a social outcast and an undischarged bankrupt, with few followers or friends. _________________________________________________________________ BELIEFS The Book of the Law was the first of thirteen holy books, which Crowley wrote in a state of high trance. He also authored several "holy notes" and two borderline texts, The Vision and the Voice and The Paris Working, to which Crowley assigned a mixed status. However, Crowley never claimed that he was not the author of the later holy books, which were written shortly after he "crossed the Abyss," i.e., annihilated the ego and attained the grade of Master of the Temple in the system of the Order of the Golden Dawn, which Crowley renamed the Argentium Astrum or Silver Star. The longest of these are the Book of the Free or the Blue Stone (Liber Liberi vel Lapidis Lazuli), describing his attainment of the grade of Master of the Temple, and the Book of the Heart Girt About by the Serpent (Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente), describing his attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of Aiwass, his "Holy Guardian Angel." Both books were written in rapid succession in 1907, and are masterpieces of mystical utterance, unsurpassed anywhere in the literature of comparative spirituality. These books constitute the critical canon of Thelema, and are considered by faithful Thelemites to be beyond rational criticism. All of Crowley's writings are considered to be authoritative to some degree, based on a system of classification which Crowley himself assigned to most of his works. Though Crowley wrote an extensive commentary on Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente, it is the Book of the Law which has been the most extensively commented upon, largely by Crowley himself. Thelemites believe that the Book of the Law contains a system of vital precepts for the New Aeon, including the outline of a new political and spiritual vision of man and society which is destined to supersede all historical religions and societies. However, in 1925 Crowley dictated the last holy book, The Comment, in which the study and discussion of the Book of the Law is forbidden, upon pain of anathema. According to the Comment, "All questions of the Law are to be decided only by appeal to my writings, each for himself." The Comment was written at a time when Crowley's small community of Thelemites was being divided by differing interpretations of the meaning and purport of the Book of the Law. The majority of Thelemites follow Crowley's lead in interpreting the Comment to mean that no Thelemite may dictate to another how he or she chooses to interpret the Book of the Law., and that all interpretations are equally valid, but only for the person originating the interpretation. This has led to an anarchy of conflicting interpretations, and an extreme subjectivism in which the prohibition on studying the Book has been completely ignored. On the other hand, it is difficult to understand how Thelema is to be articulated, or why the Book was written at all, if the prohibition on studying the manifesto and foundation document of the New Aeon is taken literally. This has led to the view, articulated most thoroughly by Kenneth Grant, that the Book of the Law is written in a kind of code (sandhyabhasa), and that only the surface or literal meaning is forbidden. This would explain some very difficult and perplexing passages in the Book of the Law which are otherwise very difficult to explain or justify, as well as many obscure and clearly symbolic passages and several explicit references to a "hidden meaning." Thus Thelemites have become divided since Crowley's death into an exoteric school, to which the majority adhere, of which the most public exponent is the so-called "Caliphate" denomination of the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), and a minority esoteric school associated with the name of Kenneth Grant, who also claims the headship of the O.T.O. Both schools may be traced back to Thelemites who knew and worked with Crowley prior to his death, but neither one received a definitive charter from the Master, despite claims to the contrary. The only one who did, Karl Germer, died in 1962 without appointing a successor. There is also an anarcho-fascist school the adherents of which reject all forms of association and are quite antisocial and even violent in orientation. Although Crowley sought during his life to address the "elect," since his death many borderline and pathological personalities, such as Charles Manson, of whom Crowley himself would not necessarily have approved, have brought disgrace and disrepute to his name and the philosophy which he was instrumental in articulating. An increasing number of Thelemites are becoming disenchanted with these alternatives, but no clear "fourth school" has as yet emerged. The only writer of any real interest to have emerged out of the Thelemic community since Crowley's death is Kenneth Grant, now in his 70s, who is however widely criticized for his extremely personal, eclectic, and some would say bizarre interpretations, his willingness to incorporate the ideas of persons and philosophies of which Crowley himself disapproved, his perversity, and the dubious nature of some of his claims. A comprehensive discussion of the ideas which constitute the philosophical infrastructure of the Law of Thelema is far beyond the scope of this essay. Therefore, the following is a brief outline only of some of the principal ideas of the Book of the Law. The Book of Law presents a mystical metaphysics which seeks to reconcile pluralism, dualism, monism, and mystical nihilism in a single all-embracing cosmic conception. This conception is presented in terms of an elaborate symbology which encodes a profound philosophical system. Thus, the universe of phenomena is regarded as the product of the coitus of Nuit, the goddess of Infinite Space, and Hadit, her lord and consort, in which Nuit stands for the continuous and Hadit the discontinuous aspects of Creation. This dualistic conception masks a deeper monism, since Nuit and Hadit are one, and an ultimate nihilism, since all emerged out of Nuit, the Absolute Void of Not or Nothingness. This Nothingness is not, however, a merely static conception of simple emptiness. It is the dynamic foundation of the phenomenal world, which inevitably seeks to produce this plurality as a necessary function of its essential being, which transcends rational articulation but which may be intuitively appreciated by analogy with the parturitive bliss of maternity. Hence the ultimate divine principle is described in feminine rather than masculine terms. Strictly speaking, she represents an androgynous femininity, since she includes Hadit, the masculine principle, within herself. Nuit herself is dual, containing within herself an implicit nothingness which is completely reserved ("pale" and "veiled"), and an explicit parturitive nothingness which delights in the sheer multiplicity of her fecundity ("purple" and "voluptuous"). This plurality emerges out of the interaction of the continuous with the discontinuous, Nuit and Hadit. Its ultimate level is the Khabs ("light"), intuitively represented by the Star Sponge Vision so-called. In this vision, which Crowley experienced and built up over many years, the phenomenal universe is represented as an infinity of "stars," discrete atomic point-events identical with the ubiquitous principle of differentiation represented by Hadit. All are joined by infinite numbers of rays, each of which is also a "star," all discrete, yet completely filling the intervening space (i.e., continuous). This is "reality." What is experienced as "reality" by the embodied individual is a selection of the totality of possible point-events limited by the sensory range of the particular complex of "stars" which the individual has succeeded in incorporating into his conscious point of view, the materiality of which is an illusion of that same sensory complex and its need to preserve its vital integrity in a world whose basic nature is conflict, predation, and survival. Thus, the Book of the Law conceives of each conscious individual as a perfectly simple, and therefore indestructible, point of view in an infinity of possibilities all striving to return to their source and origin in Nothingness by gradually extending themselves over time to build up into their conscious sensorium an ever increasingly complex system of point-events, until they incorporate into themselves the totality of all that is, i.e., infinity. By definition, this evolutionary process must take infinite time. In addition, there is an hierarchy or "chain or being" in which an indefinite number of points of view have achieved all possible levels of conscious evolution, ranging from the totally ignorant yet divine simplicity of the perfectly unique monad to the ultimate divine consciousness of the universe itself, each centered in its own unique universality. There are, therefore, prehominids who subsist on the threshold of human incarnation, post-hominids who constitute evolved souls going over into a higher form of discarnate (from our point of view) existence, as well as an hierarchy of evolutionary states defining the range of human incarnation itself. These range from the bestial, somatic pashus to the psychic, pneumatic "kingly men." The purpose of human life, therefore, is conscious evolution from a lower to a higher state, from unconsciousness to superconsciousness, from animal existence to divine existence, from the real to the ideal. Since the fundamental nature of the original Nothingness is parturitive, this process is eternal and never-ending. Thelemites believe that in the New Aeon of Horus, the Crowned and Conquering Child, human consciousness is destined to make a major evolutionary leap comparable to that which resulted in the transition from Neanderthal to Cro-Magnon man, resulting in the creation of a new biological subspecies, the so-called "kingly man." This transformation, known as the Next Step, will result in the universal acquisition of the state of cosmic consciousness or universal illumination, technically equivalent to the advent of the "Age of Aquarius." However, it will take several centuries at least to reach this state, before the kingdom of Ra-Hoor-Khuit can be properly established. This transitional epoch, which began in 1904, will be characterized by unprecedented suffering and violence, during which mankind will be purged and purified of the dross, his gross, carnal, material nature, and physically and psychically transformed. The prophecies in the Book of the Law of this transitional epoch are terrifying: "Worship me with fire & blood; worship me with swords & with spears. Let the woman be girt with a sword before me: let blood flow to my name. Trample down the Heathen; be upon them, o warrior, I will give you of their flesh to eat! Mercy let be off: damn them who pity! Kill and torture; spare not; be upon them! Thus the First World War (seen by many contemporaries as the Armageddon); the Second World War (the biggest blood bath in human history, the very decade of which was clearly prophesied in the Book of the Law); and the Holocaust (the greatest genocide in the history of man), all of which occurred in the first forty years of the Aeon, are regarded by Thelemites as a mere prelude to an ever increasing wave of purificatory violence which is engulfing the human race, and which can only be transcended by the qualitative transformation of man himself. This process is largely out of human control, and is being directed by the Secret Chiefs of the Great White Brotherhood, an order of highly evolved post-humans who are expediting the course of human history in order to achieve the transformation of man as quickly and expeditiously as possible. However, the Great White Brotherhood itself is in conflict with the Black Brothers, who seek to retard the course of human evolution and keep man in a state of material servitude, bondage, and suffering. The latter organization has infiltrated almost all popular religions. Thus, mankind is locked in a struggle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, in which the forces of the light are perceived by all traditional sources of enlightenment as "black," and the forces of darkness are perceived by the multitude as "light." This struggle is rapidly escalating and most Thelemites look forward to an imminent crisis in which the struggle will become explicit and openly manifest. The purpose of the Book of the Law is to found the order of Thelemites who will aid the Great White Brotherhood in the furtherance of the cause of human evolution as their terrestrial representatives, by giving to mankind the keys of spiritual knowledge and conscious self-evolution. The Book of the Law and the other Holy Books of Thelema represent the true gnosis, purged of the perverting doctrines of the Black Brothers. Aleister Crowley, the prophet himself, represents the herald of the coming race of post-humanity. In addition to its metaphysics and spiritual advice the Book of the Law presents a practical political and ethical system of uncompromising purity and integrity. In particular, the new ethics completely overturns the traditional obsession with self-abnegation, world renunciation, pity, compassion, and altruism. It is this pseudo-spirituality which has led mankind to its present impasse, by fostering the self-division which is resulting in the "return of the repressed" and which is the root of all insanity, by inculcating a hatred of life which is destroying the planet, and by preserving and protecting the weak and the unfit, resulting in biological decadence, deterioration, and the curse of totalitarianism collectivism, both communist and (even more insidious because unperceived) mass-market-driven urban industrialist capitalism. Against these perversions Thelema utters one Word, which, being interpreted, is "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." That is, by establishing a new society in accordance with the law of life itself mankind shall achieve self-realization, life affirmation, and perfect freedom and vitality. By creating a society in which only the divine can live, men shall become divine or die. Thelema is necessarily anti-democratic. Democracy presents an absurd and impossible ideal, since the "general will" is unconscious. Therefore the degeneration of democracy itself is inevitable. In accordance with its essential insistence on the sovereignty of the individual, the Law of Thelema is necessarily committed to absolute autocracy. However, the autocrat himself must be wholly identified with the True Will of the whole of the society. That is, he must have achieved the perfect annihilation of the ego. Thus, the autocrat must be a spiritual king, the chief of the Great White Brotherhood himself, his "court" those who have similarly "crossed the Abyss." Moreover, this will be a constitutional autocracy, in which the equal sovereignty of all, guaranteed by open international borders, will be protected by an order of military renunciates second only to the Great White Brotherhood. In an autocracy without borders the autarch would have little opportunity to abuse his power, since the population could leave at any time. Thus, Thelemites do not accept the popular prejudice that democracy is the only political system that is compatible with freedom. Indeed, in its inherent tendency to devolve into conformity, mediocrity, and collectivism, Thelemites regard populist mass-market democracy as ultimately subversive of every form of liberty except that "liberty" which it chooses to tolerate for its own ends, which is to say, no liberty at all. The similarity of the Thelemic form of government to that practiced in pre-occupation Tibet and Bhutan should be noted. Indeed, Crowley's life and personality exhibits numerous similarities to that of Padmasambhava, the "Second Buddha," who brought Vajrayana Buddhism to Tibet, and other Oriental holy men, who do not necessarily adhere to bourgeois popular notions of morality or correct behaviour. _________________________________________________________________ PRACTICES After founding his own occult order, the Fraternity of the Silver Star, in 1907, on the basis of the Cairo Working, and his biannual periodical publication, The Equinox, in 1909, Crowley began to digest the spiritual wisdom of mankind into a coherent practical system based on the Cabalistic Tree of Life. Crowley's intuition that underlying the enormous variety and diversity of human historical religiosity lies a universal, common spiritual inheritance has been largely confirmed by the psychological researches into the "archetypes of the collective unconscious" of the followers of the Zurich School of C. G. Jung, and contemporary ethnological researches into shamanic spirituality. Terence McKenna has argued convincingly that the original spiritual intuition and indeed the primary impetus for the first awakening and development of human consciousness resulted from the accidental ingestion of the psychoactive principle of psyilocybin mushrooms, DMT, by our prehominid ancestors. DMT is also manufactured endogenously in the human brain, and is found in many different varieties of plant life. Subsequently, prehistoric shamans developed a whole technology of psychospiritual transformation to effect the same result as DMT without the use of any drug, of which twelve discrete consciousness altering techniques have been identified: Concentration, Entrainment, Hypostimulation, Empowerment, Ordeals, Imagination, Purification, Breath Work, Posture, Reversal, Indoctrination, and Dream Work. All spiritual practices, wheresoever and whensoever situate, regardless of culture, symbology, or dogmatic orientation, resolve into a combination or permutation, of greater or lesser complexity, of some or all of these essential techniques. All these techniques have one thing in common: they all induce a transformation of the human psyche, which Jesus called metanoia, "new mind." It is analogous to the NDE ("near-death experience"), in which consciousness undergoes a radical disassociation from so-called consensual reality and the perception of a new order of reality, which has been called "imaginal reality," which has its own autonomous teleology and which is even capable of "relativizing" consensual reality in certain circumstances. Crowley undertook to develop his own system of "scientific illuminism" based on his practical researches into comparative mysticism, the result of years of world travel, documented in the twenty-six official publications of the A.'.A.'. in Class D, and elsewhere in his extensive discursive writings. These publications document a system of mental self-development which includes invocation, self-control, regular ritual empowerment practices, sex magick (so-called), devotional worship, four hours of daily meditation, breath control, guided visualizations, the manipulation of objective symbols, concentration, and other practices designed to develop the True or Magical Will and disorient and disorganize the egoic attachment to consensual reality. A more extensive list identifies 156 discrete practices referred to or discussed by Crowley. Since Crowley regarded each aspirant as an absolute individual, with his own unique path to self-realization, he refused to set out a universally applicable regimen of practice. Aspirants were required to select the practices that appealed to them personally and document and report their progress to their Superior, only on the basis of which advice for further practice was provided. Dogmatic or ideological considerations did not enter, though aspirants were required to memorize the Thelemic Holy Books and pass intellectual examinations in various courses of study. Nonetheless, a basic underlying pattern of practice does emerge from Crowley's writings which is more or less enjoined upon all aspirants, including: * the daily performance of a ritual of "invoking" or sanctification immediately upon awakening in the morning * the blessing of one's bath water * the adoration of the Sun at sunrise, noon, sunset, and midnight, followed by one hour of meditation * the repetition of a formula recalling the central imperative of one's life, viz., the Great Work, before eating * taking one's meals in silence * avoiding the mass media * the regular use of the Thelemic greetings * a formula for the repudiation of the Black Brothers (i.e., Christian clergy) whenever and wherever they are encountered * the regular wearing of amulets and talismans * the daily imbibition of an Eucharist at sunset * burning one's excrement and nail parings and careful disposal of one's urine * the daily performance of a ritual of personal empowerment * the study and memorization of the Holy Books of Thelema * the practice of self-control and obedience * simplicity of life * the daily adoration of the Moon and one's Star * the daily adoration of the phallus * the performance of a ritual of "banishing" or purification immediately before retiring for the night * sleeping in a consecrated circle * devotion to the Goddess as one falls asleep * the performance of rituals and the celebration of feasts at significant periods of the year * the regular practice of sex magick _________________________________________________________________ BOOK REFERENCES The following books by Aleister Crowley are recommended for additional information: * The Book of Lies. Rev. ed. Weiser, New York, NY (1952). * The Book of Thoth. Weiser, New York, NY (1969). * The Book of Wisdom or Folly. Rev. ed. Weiser, York Beach, ME (1991). * The Confessions. Rev. ed. Penguin, London (1989). * Gems from The Equinox. Llewellyn, St. Paul, MI (1974). * The Holy Books of Thelema. Weiser, York Beach, ME (1983). * Magick in Theory and Practice. Castle, Secaucus, NJ (1991). * Magick without Tears. New Falcon, Tempe, AZ (1973). * 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings. Weiser, New York, NY (1973). * The Works of Aleister Crowley.3 vols. Yogi, Des Plaines, IL (undated). _________________________________________________________________ INTERNET REFERENCES * Alexander Duncan has a Thelema home page at: http://www.globalserve.net/~shri/Thelema.html _________________________________________________________________ EOF
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