Stoicism was a Greek school of philosophy which flourish from around the beginning of the third century B.C.E. until the sixth century C.E. It was highly influential, and became “the foremost popular philosophy among the educated elite in the Greco-Roman Empire.” [Amos & Lang] It is of interest because many of its tenets bear a striking resemblance to those of Thelema, and since the author of The Book of the Law chose to verbalise his own philosophy in the Greek word Thelema, it is not unreasonable to wonder as to whether or not there is a connection.

Russell, in his A History of Western Philosophy, describes the basic principles of Stoicism as follows:

Virtue consists in a will which is in agreement with Nature … In the life of the individual man, virtue is the sole good; such things as health, happiness, possessions, are of no account. Since virtue resides in the will, everything really good or bad in a man’s life depends only upon himself. He may become poor, but what of it? He can still be virtuous. A tyrant may put him in prison, but he can still persevere in living in harmony with Nature. He may be sentenced to death, but he can die nobly, like Socrates. Therefore every man has perfect freedom, provided he emancipates himself from mundane desires.

The reader will instantly recognise the idea of “a will which is in agreement with Nature” as being identical to how we ourselves have described “will,” most recently in the Calendar Series entries for Sun enters Ascendant of Pisces and Sun enters Succedent of Pisces. In an earlier post we described how “will” could simultaneously be considered on three distinct planes:

1. All actions are willed;
2. Actions free from “internal restriction” are willed; and
3. Actions free from both “internal restriction” and “externa restriction” are willed.

Russell’s description of Stoicism puts his idea of “a will which is in agreement with Nature” squarely into the second of these definitions. He says that a man free from internal restriction “has perfect freedom,” since whatever environmental circumstances he might find himself in, he remains free to react to them in whatever way he chooses provides that he retains a clear and unbiased attitude to them. The man who is unable to “emancipate himself from mundane desires” does not enjoy this freedom, because those desires “pollute” his outlook by drawing unfavourable comparisons between the actual state and some desired state (the 2008 entry for Sun enters Ascendant of Aquarius examines this idea of “pollution” in more detail). That pollution guides him into responding in certain predictable ways to certain events (e.g. the man who thinks it is his “right” to not be offended will react adversely to comments that he believes to be offensive, regardless of whether those comments actually do adversely affect him in any meaningful way) and this degree of predictability acts as a restriction on his freedom; the man who slips into fits of apoplectic rage upon hearing perjorative terms is being ruled by his sensibilities, and thus has abdicated his freedom.

The common “understanding” of will from a Thelemic perspective is framed in terms of liberty (refer to an examination of the error inherent in this idea for a more detailed discussion), in the sense that others should refrain from inhibiting his “ability to do his will” and that he in turn should refrain from inhibiting theirs. Yet there are many forces and factors from which man cannot be “free,” gravity being a prime example, and others including the inability to fly unaided and the inability to resist extremes of temperature. As we saw in True Will, it is meaningless to say that will must imply a freedom from this kind of force, since if it were so then will could never manifest and would therefore be a useless conception. In this sense, the harmony of an action with will is independent of external circumstances, and depends only upon whether the response to those circumstances – whatever they may be – is “proper,” or “natural.”

This is precisely the sense in which “virtue” is employed in Russell’s description of Stoicism. “A tyrant may put him in prison, but he can still persevere in living in harmony with Nature.” If an individual is imprisoned, he is still perfectly capable of acting in accordance with how his nature dictates that he should act in those circumstances, and this holds true for any set of circumstances.

The Stoic approach is therefore one of improving well-being as a result of removing the tendency of the mind to react negatively to particular sets of circumstances, and instead to regard all circumstances objectively and impartially, so that he may act freely and appropriately instead of in a manner dictated to him by his emotions. This idea of “reacting negatively” highlights another striking correlation with Thelema. The Stoics held that unhappiness and suffering were a product of ignorance, a product of failing to understand the actual nature of the universe, and thus essentially unreal. This idea mirrors very closely the idea that “existence is pure joy; that all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass & are done; but there is that which remains.” (AL II, 9)

A further parallel comes from Epictetus’ view that “Each human being is primarily a citizen of his own commonwealth; but he is also a member of the great city of gods and men, where of the city political is only a copy.” The first clause is merely another way of stating “Every man and every woman is a star,” (AL I, 3) the second merely pointing out that there are other stars. Equality and universal brotherhood were important concepts to the Stoics, but this idea of “equality” needs to be understood carefully. Some “Thelemic” commentators, such as John Crow in his entry on “Thelemic values,” take a very simplistic view of equality, viewing it as almost indistinguishable from talent. Conversely, both the Stoic and Thelemic concepts of “equality” illustrate the simple idea that all human beings are similar in nature, regardless of how relatively proficient they may be at certain tasks. All human beings are born into this world with nothing, and all human beings will leave this world with nothing; the petty incidents of their lives are ultimately of little to no importance in the scheme of things. Every human being is born, lives, dies, breathes air, drinks water, has thoughts, and struggles through life, and in this sense the fundamental similarities are far more prominent that the superficial differences. Of course, the fact that differences in status, wealth and ability have no importance in social relationships to the Stoics, this does not imply that they have no place at all; just as the man of wealth should not consider himself to be somehow “superior” to the poor man as a result of his riches, so the poor man has little grounds to feel aggrieved at his own poverty. This idea of “equality” in no way translates to a need for equal distribution of either wealth or opportunity, and is wholly unrelated to ideas of “social justice.”

The Book of the Law itself mirrors this idea in that statement that “he kings of the earth shall be Kings for ever: the slaves shall serve. There is none that shall be cast down or lifted up.” (AL II, 57) The idea that “If he be a King, thou canst not hurt him” (AL II, 59) illustrates that it is the very equality of humankind which removes the need for “social justice”; if each man is indeed “a citizen of his own commonwealth” then he is responsible for his own well-being, and that absolves any other from the need to take special care of anybody else’s. Two men may fight on equal terms – “As brothers fight ye!” (AL III, 59) – and the stronger will prevail. As Crowley says in Duty, “love and war … are of the nature of sport, where one respects, and learns from the opponent, but never interferes with him, outside the actual game.” In any form of sport, the participants enter the arena having willingly agreed to the rules, enabling each of them to compete to the best of their abilities without having to give their opponent any dispensation for any relative weakness they may possess; indeed, to do so would defeat the whole purpose of the game. In this sense, it is the very equality of man, his kingship of his own domain, his acceptance of the “rules” of the game of life, that preclude him from taking any exception to the circumstances that might befall him: “the keen and the proud, the royal and the lofty; ye are brothers!” (AL III, 58) It is not a similarity in ability that makes people “brothers” in this sense, but a similarity in outlook; one need only “step up” to his kingship in order to attain it. One is reminded of the respect that Viscount Montgomery and Field-Marshal Rommel felt for one another, a respect that in no way prevented them from attempting to destroy the other and his forces, knowing full well that only one of them would ultimately win the encounter.

Accordinly, just as with Thelema, “philosophy” for the Stoics was not a dead set of principles, but a way of life; a set of practices designed to bring them to the continuous apprehension of these “truths.” Marcus Aurelius suggested that you:

Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All of these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill… I can neither be harmed by any of them, for no man will involve me in wrong

This kind of systematic training of mental responses has parallels not only in Thelema, but also in Buddhism, as an attempt to “de-condition” the conscious mind from its accustomed perjorative responses to circumstances which possess no moral qualities in themselves.

There are distinctions, of course, one of the primary ones being that the Stoics believed truth could be attained through the application of reason, and that this truth could be used for guiding the individual along his “natural” path. In contrast, the role of reason in Thelema is to destroy any such “guiding principles,” so that the individual attends only to his essential nature instead of to the representation of it in his mind.

It must be stressed again and again that neither the similarities nor the distinctions should come as any great surprise; in well over five thousand years of human thought we should indeed be surprised if many of the same themes did not crop up time and time again, since human experience shares so much in common across individuals and cultures, as we have observed. It is a mistake to view Thelema or any other philosophy as essentially revolutionary, but rather as a progressive development, often involving an element of re-discovery. That development need not even be seen as being in any positive direction; the needs of philosophy will adjust based on the needs of the philosophers, and changing times and attitudes will naturally tend to emphasise different, sometimes opposing concepts. The striking similarities we can observe between Thelema and the much older system of Stoicism should if nothing else make the reader highly suspicious of any tendencies to view Thelema as revolutionary, and even more suspicious of any revolutionary zeal he might feel or of any importance he might place on concepts such as “transgression”; to do so is precisely to ignore the emphasis on nature that both of these systems provide, and instead to focus on the restrictive values of the conscious mind, and hence to miss the point entirely.