From private correspondence. The correspondent refers to my essay True Will, quotes AL I, 42-44, and asks “Why then, in so many circumstances, did so many people oppose Crowley or come into his way with an unfavourable outcome for him?”

I presume you are referring to “no other shall say nay,” here. My essay The Ethics of Thelema is more relevant to this part than True Will is.

There are two “classical” answers. The first is that, if Crowley was opposed and was “beaten,” then obviously he wasn’t doing his true will. The second is that maybe he was doing his true will, but was beaten by somebody else who was doing their true will, but was stronger than he was.

The “real” answer depends on exactly what we mean by “true will”. If we take “true will” in the sense defined by Liber II – i.e. “Thou must (1) Find out what is thy Will. (2) Do that Will with (a) one-pointedness, (b) detachment, (c) peace” – then the simple fact is that doing your true will is no guarantee that you will not be opposed, or even beaten. Using “true will” in this sense means that “no other shall say nay” is not literally true, if we understand that to mean that nobody will stop you. Not only is it possible to be stopped, but it’s possible to be stopped by someone who is not even doing their “true will.”

There is another answer, using a slightly different definition of “true will” that argues that if you were beaten, it was obviously your “true will” to be beaten. This is a definition of “true will” which is hard to argue with, but not practically very useful.

A third – and, to my mind, best – answer arises if we reconsider what we mean by “say nay.” We have so far been assuming that it means that nobody will stop you. Instead, we could suppose that it means that nobody has the right to say you should not be doing it. They may have the ability to stop you from doing it, but they do not have the ability to make your actions “wrong.” In this sense, that verse signifies that provided you are doing your “true will,” you don’t have to worry about anybody criticising you (or, at least, you don’t have to accept that criticism) because the fact that it is your will is the only justification you need. For example, if it is your will to be a homosexual, you don’t have to worry about feeling guilty for doing something “wrong,” because “no other shall say nay” means that nobody else has the ability to correctly judge whether or not your actions are wrong (although they may still have the ability to stop you) because your own will is the only valid judge of such things.

This is what I consider that verse to really mean, in simple terms, rather than suggesting that somebody cannot physically prevent you from carrying out your will. Notice that that verse comes two verses after “The word of Sin is Restriction,” which means that any moral code whatsoever is purely restriction, and contains no truth or utility. The following verse, “pure will … is every way perfect” means (amongst other things) that “willed” actions cannot be correctly criticised on moral grounds (or any other grounds, for that matter). The context supports this interpretation strongly, as does reality.