The U.S. OTO Frequently Asked Questions page contains the following:

What if it’s your True Will to do [some bad thing]?

This is the philosophical puzzle at the core of Thelema, and like most puzzles, it resists easy solution. One school of thought considers “Do what thou wilt” to be a descriptive rather than a normative law, similar to the distinction between the speed-of-light limit imposed by the physical nature of the Universe and a posted highway speed limit. Given that your having carried out a given act indicates that you both intended it to occur and successfully made this intention manifest, it is evident that you have conformed to the laws governing such actions; q.e.d. The other school argues that the Law should be seen as a goal to be achieved, and that it is very possible to act against your (true) Will. In this view, it is posited that were all to do their own Wills and nothing else, there would be no strife.

Another post on Kjetil Fjell’s blog called Adequate tension with the surroundings attributes the OTO’s failure to develop into a religious movement of anything other than miniscule size to a lack of strictness:

Where even the term thelemite itself has become so vague that when someone talks about how much he hates the tenets of the Law of Thelema, people will reply gladly that they are so happy that this person has found his Will as a Thelemite and are doing it as opposed to all those who merely mimic Crowley’s. Where obvious borderline psychopaths, people with poor social skills, people who are attending the great parties and because they like the people are accepted as equal to stable and committed members who are knowledgeable and have achieved success with it’s teachings. The list is nearly endless, but in general it can be summed up with that we have an extremely permissive culture, one that is so permissive that it even tends to drive away people who otherwise are supportive of the tenets of the Law.

As it stands, this is a sensible enough observation. Fjell calls it “counterintuitive” but it really shouldn’t be – exclusivity is a major reason why people join groups in the first place, and exclusivity is incompatible with extreme permissiveness. To grow a group, people have to want to belong to it, and in order to want to belong to it there needs to be some more-or-less exclusive criteria or standard which defines the group as a group and makes it attractive. As Fjell says, “strictness promotes an increase of numbers…people join something because it gives something different than they can get elsewhere.”

However, when considering actual Thelema – as opposed to Fjell’s space-alien brand of Thelema – we’d suggest that the aforementioned quote from the OTO’s FAQ reveals the real problem with a lack of what we might term “strictness”. Although Fjell-Thelema may be concerned with “getting into contact with praeterhuman intelligences”, actual Thelema is concerned with discovering and performing the will, or “true” will. Yet, as the OTO’s FAQ page shows, the official position of the largest organisation of Thelemites declares the will – the one central concept of Thelema – to be a “philosophical puzzle”.

The cause of the problem, of course, should be clear. Another question from the same FAQ declares:

Do I have to believe in some particular dogma to join O.T.O.?

If you decide to pursue full membership, as a I°, you will be stating that you accept the Book of the Law as written, without wishing to change it. Even in the Minerval degree, you will be making a commitment in the strongest terms to uphold the ideals of freedom set forth in the Book of the Law. However, how you interpret the Book of the Law and its significance is largely up to you.

This idea that a Thelemite should be free to “interpret the Book of the Law” in whatever way he pleases arises, naturally, from a misunderstanding of the short comment to The Book of the Law. The mischievous phrase in question:

All questions of the Law are to be decided only by appeal to my writings, each for himself.

quite clearly refers to “questions of the Law”, not “what the Law is”. All questions about “what is lawful?” are the things that are “decided…each for himself” – what the Law of Thelema actually is in the first place is not one of those things. Since the Law of Thelema – “Do what thou wilt” – declares conformity to the will of the individual to be the only factor relevant in determining the lawfulness of an act, and since the will of the individual is knowable only to that individual (notwithstanding Crowley’s bizarre idea in The Scientific Solution of the Problem of Government that “experts will immediately be appointed to work out, when need arises, the details of the True Will of every individual”) then it is perfectly obvious that each individual needs to figure out what is lawful for himself. What he does not – or should not – get to do is to decide what the Law of Thelema is, or what “will” means in a Thelemic context, because if he does, then “Thelema” becomes infinitely flexible and therefore nothing at all.

What we have with the OTO, then, is an organisation ostensibly created to support Thelemites in their central task of discovering and performing their wills, not only refusing to take a position on what the will actually is, but actually declaring it to be a “philosophical puzzle” which probably has no solution. This is a bizarre situation by any standards. In the 105 years since the “reception” of The Book of the Law, the largest organisation of Thelemites is still unwilling and unable to say what it even is they are trying to do. This is a far more serious situation than simple laxity in enforcing standards – without taking a position on the central issue of Thelema there can’t even be any standards to enforce, since nobody has a clue what they are supposed to be doing, to the point where some OTO members are now openly declaring “Thelema” – which, we feel compelled to remind the reader, means “will” in Greek – to not be about the will at all, but about contacting space-aliens through the indomitable power of prancing around a circle in a funny hat. How’s that for being “permissive”?

Fjell bemoans what he sees as the OTO’s “strong culture…where people who correct others on what the doctrines of the Law states by referencing the founder of the religion, are vilified as fundamentalists, zealots, divisive people and above all as crowleyites,” but we’d suggest that where the OTO really needs to begin is to have a doctrine in the first place, because as the extract from the FAQ shows, right now they don’t have one, and its members are free to declare The Book of the Law to mean any old garbage they choose. If the OTO needs any guidance in developing such a doctrine, then we’d suggest they begin by taking a look at Aleister Crowley’s writings, since he wrote copiously and clearly on the subject of will – and on “bad thing[s]”, for that matter – to the point where there should not be any confusion. Then, once they have a doctrine worth committing to, they can start trying to get people to commit to it.