I’ve made a couple more essays available on lulu.com. The following essays are now available in printed form:
Again, these are all provided at the cost of printing only. PDF copies are available for free download, from lulu.com and from the writings section of this site.
(This essay is also available in printed form)
Will is, clearly, the fundamental concept of Thelema. It is what the Greek word Θελημα literally means, and it figures in all three of the core statements of Thelemic conduct:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. (AL I, 40)
So with thy all; thou hast no right but to do thy will. (AL I, 42)
There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt. (AL III, 60)
as well as in:
For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect. (AL I, 44)
Love, naturally, is the second of the two fundamental concepts of Thelema, but as we know from AL I, 57, it must be “under will,” and subordinate to it. As Crowley puts it in Liber II, “Love is as it were a by-product of that Will; it does not contradict or supersede that Will; and if apparent contradiction should arise in any crisis, it is the Will that will guide us aright.”
It would behoove us, therefore, to give some thought as to what this “will” of Liber AL actually is. We can begin by returning to Liber II and examining what the “Message of the Master Therion” really says:
Thou must (1) Find out what is thy Will. (2) Do that Will with (a) one-pointedness, (b) detachment, (c) peace.
From this statement, we can identify some of the characteristics that this particular idea of “Will” [Throughout this essay we will capitalise the first letter of “Will” when referring to the Thelemic concept, to distinguish it from more mundane and common interpretations of the word. The Book of the Law itself does not do this, neither does it at any time employ the term “True Will”.] (and there are other ideas which are both useful and instructive) must possess. On a basic level, whatever this particular idea of Will is, it clearly must be possible to do something else; that is to say any definitions of Will which entail all actions soever being in accordance with it do not fit this statement. Further, from the first injunction, whatever this particular idea of Will is, it clearly must be possible — at least in theory — for an individual to “find out what” it is; that is to say it must be something relatively definite, and reasonably knowable. Read the rest of this post »
Today’s hexagram is Lü, “Treading (Conduct)”, with no changing lines.
The judgment refers to “Treading upon the tail of the tiger. It does not bite the man. Success”, and Wilhelm comments that:
The weak follows behind the strong and worries it. The strong, however, acquiesces and does not hurt the weak, because the contact is in good humor and harmless. In terms of a human situation, one is handling wild, intractable people. In such a case one’s purpose will be achieved if one behaves with decorum. Pleasant manners succeed even with irritable people.
The image states that “thus the superior man discriminates between high and low, and thereby fortifies the thinking of the people”, to which Wilhelm adds:
Among mankind also there are necessarily differences in elevation; it is impossible to bring about universal equality. But it is important that differences in social rank should not be arbitrary and unjust, for if this occurs, envy and class struggle are the inevitable consequences. If, on the other hand, external differences in rank correspond with differences in inner worth, and if inner worth forms the criterion of external rank, people acquiesce and order reigns in society.
It is tempting to read AL II, 58 into this: “Therefore the kings of the earth shall be Kings for ever: the slaves shall serve. There is none that shall be cast down or lifted up.” However, the King of Liber AL maintains his position essentially through force and natural aristocracy, whereas the superior man referred to in the Ching faces the ever-present threat of social unrest toppling him; Wilhelm’s commentary clear attributes the tiger, the “strong”, to the “people”.
A key difference is that despite the fact it is the “Book of Changes”, one of the key points of focus in the Ching is the search for stability in the face of change. AL appears not to give two hoots for stability, it exhorts the “law of the strong”, and that’s that; the Book of the Law is not concerned with social cohesion. Read the rest of this post »
I’ve made a couple of essays from this site available in printed form on lulu.com, for those who — like me — prefer quality printed material to reading online. The print quality from Lulu is extremely good, and getting a copy would be well worth it for those interested in such things. I don’t make any money from sales of these essays — copies are provided at the cost of printing. Some of the essays will be modified slightly for print form but are otherwise extremely similar to the ones you’ll find in the writings section of this site at no cost at all.
I’ll be making more selected essays available in this way as time goes by. At some point in the future I may also release a single-volume collection.
Enjoy, or not, as is your preference.
Tonight’s reading is I, “The Corners of the Mouth (Providing Nourishment), changing to Chia Jên, “The Family (The Clan)”.
“Providing nourishment” refers to giving the proper sustenance to the proper things. Wilhelm quotes Mencius as saying:
The body has superior and inferior, important and unimportant parts. We must not injure important parts for the sake of the unimportant, nor must we injure the superior parts for the sake of the inferior. He who cultivates the inferior parts of his nature is an inferior man. He who cultivates the superior parts of his nature is a superior man.
There is a position that can be argued that if one takes care of the superior parts, they will take care of the inferior parts in their turn, but if we sustain directly the inferior parts then all will suffer.
The image of this first hexgram includes: “Thus the superior man is careful of his words and temperate in eating and drinking”, to which Wilhelm comments:
For tranquility keeps the words that come out of the mouth from exceeding proper measure, and keeps the food that goes into the mouth from exceeding its proper measure. Thus character is cultivated.
This views the superior man in a type of symbiosis — he nourishes himself through food and drink, but he also “nourishes” the external world through his speech and action. He must moderate his food and drink to both avoid damaging his body through abuse, and to avoid overusing the resources of his environment. Similarly, he must moderate his speech and action both to cultivate that environment, and to prevent that environment from turning against him; his interests go hand in hand with its interests, since it must support him, and he must therefore cultivate it. Providing the right kind of nourishment at the right time keeps both himself and his environment healthy. Read the rest of this post »
Tonight’s reading gives Ch’ien, “modesty”, moving to Shêng, “pushing upward”.
Wilhelm comments on Ch’ien:
It is the law of heaven to make fullness empty and to make full what is modest; when the sun is at its zenith, it must, according to the law of heaven, turn toward its setting, and at its nadir it must rise toward a new dawn … It is the law of earth to alter the full and to contribute to the modest. High mountains are worn down by the waters, and the valleys are filled up.
This is mirrored in the image:
Thus the superior man reduces that which is too much, and augments that which is too little. He weighs things and makes them equal.
It is this “making things equal” that is important, here. “Modesty” appears to be an odd word to use; “moderation” sounds like it might be better, or even “temperance” without its connotations of teetotality. The purpose of “making things equal” is to avoid imbalance. Wilhelm uses the example of social balance, removing the inequalities which may lead to social unrest, but we need not restrict ourselves to this. The “middle path” has been emphasised in most religions and spiritual systems; Liber Libræ (slightly “adapted” from the Golden Dawn’s “On The General Guidance and Purification of The Soul”) states:
Remember that unbalanced force is evil; that unbalanced severity is but cruelty and oppression; but that also unbalance mercy is but weakness which would allow and abet Evil. Act passionately; think rationally; be Thyself.
From a Thelemic perspective, it is this last injunction which is important. An imbalance of force suggests one has strayed from the will, since we suppose that the will is in harmony with the “order of things”. Everyone should be familiar with the experience of getting extremely excited about one thing or another, only to end up rather disappointed with it. This is a result of the conscious mind whipping up all manner of fantasies about the thing in question which are out of all proportion to the thing itself, i.e. they are unbalanced. Similarly, the disappointment results from the promises of the fantasy not being delivered, rather than from some defect inherent in the thing itself. Either way, both the excitement and the disappointment serve to distract the individual from his primary concern which is reality, by causing him instead to focus on reverie. Read the rest of this post »
I’ve added a random tarot divination application to the resources section of the site. There is currently (and may never be) any interpretation of the cards, just a random selection of ten cards in a Celtic cross layout which can be used as a starting point.
In his introduction to the Book of the Law, Crowley writes:
Every event is a uniting of some one monad with one of the experiences possible to it.
“Every man and every woman is a star,” that is, an aggregate of such experiences, constantly changing with each fresh event, which affects him or her either consciously or subconsciously.
Each one of us has thus an universe of his own, but it is the same universe for each one as soon as it includes all possible experience.
This model of the self as “an aggregate of … experiences” is worth further investigation.
When we act, consciously or otherwise, we do so on the basis of a combination of three elements:
For instance, if we put a hand into a fire, the likely response is that we will shortly remove it again at quite some speed, because our physical being is designed to instictively take action to protect against damage to itself. Similarly, if it is night-time, and we desire light, we may respond by flicking the light switch, since past experience has taught us that doing so almost invariably results in light appearing. And of course, without the presence of fire around our hands in the first place, and without the presence of both relative darkness and an electrical light system in the second, we will not be able to make these choices.
The significance of our physical beings is largely fixed. For example, we cannot breathe unaided underwater, fly unaided, spend long periods of time exposed to extreme temperatures, survive without a head, pick up a six hundred ton boulder, or eat gold. Similarly, we may expect the experience of somebody deaf and blind from birth to differ significantly from that of someone not so afflicted. Yet there are some elements under our control that can have a significant effect. It is reasonable to assume that a ninety pound weakling will have a substantially different experience of the world than will a brawny six-foot muscleman, and that the differences in physique will be themselves contribute significantly to that varying experience. Similarly, the presence or degree of a particular physical skill may have a large effect. Yet the methods of developing these physical qualities are relatively well-known and straightforward, so will not be of special interest to us here. Read the rest of this post »
[From private correspondence]
Correspondent: What exactly is ‘permanent’ in each person?
Their existence as a unit. When someone dies, the story of their life is written and sealed. What they did, what they were, the sum totality of their lives isn’t going to change, ever. It is fixed. This is why “death is the crown of all.”
You can’t think of “permanent” in this sense as meaning “exactly the same on May 5th, 1980 as it was on January 12th, 1991” or anything like that. “Die daily!” illustrates that what constitutes the “self” changes with every passing moment. The self is not a momentary thing, it is a collection of point-events.
In one sense, that collection of point-events grows throughout life, and stops growing upon death, giving it a fixed, concrete nature. In another sense it was of a fixed, concrete nature before it even “began”. In either sense, “permanent” does not have to mean “currently in manifest existence”; the Battle of Hastings is part of history, for example, and it will always be a part of history. Permanently.
Again, “Do that and no other shall say nay,” since once you’ve actually done something, it cannot be undone, regardless of whether or not its effects can be reversed; once it’s happened, that happening cannot be reversed, and has become permanent. Similarly, the collection of happenings that constitute the self, once happened, cannot “unhappen,” and so are permanent.
The “Hadit that is the core of every star” is that centre upon which all these point-events concentrate to give an identity; a house-brick is ultimately a collection of sub-atomic particles, strings, whatever they are, and whatever it is that surrounds the brick is similarly constructed, and on a small enough scale there is nothing to really determine “brick” from “non-brick.” Furthermore, over time it may start off as sand, progress to being a half-brick, and progress further to being not a brick at all. Nevertheless, at this point in time, a house-brick it remains. It is that individuality, that identification of it as a discrete unit, an individual, that it the “Hadit at its core.” Same thing applies to people. Read the rest of this post »
[From private correspondence]
Correspondent: How do you tell the difference? How do you know what is Will and what is mind?
By investigating the mind and determining how it works, and what things arise from it. This is what mindfulness is all about, moving away from the perception of “I am angry” towards the perception of “my mind is having a thought that it is angry.” Continual application to this practice improves one’s ability to determine what is real, and what arises in the mind.
Can you recognise a thought when one arises? How about an emotion? A belief? An opinion? All of these things are imaginary. The process of mindfulness is become aware of these things, of learning to continually observe them and to identify them. Sufficient practice results in the knowledge, not just the understanding, that when you say “my mind is having a thought that it is angry” instead of “I am angry,” you are perceiving accurately. Sufficient practice gives one the ability to reliably perceive the falsity of all these things. Instead of forcing yourself to say “my mind is having a thought that it is angry,” it becomes the natural way to think, although obviously you don’t verbalise it like that all the time. Once you think that way, it becomes easy to say “this stuff is from the mind.” The Will is what is left over. This has to be known through experience and not merely understood.
Some things are obvious. To take a trivial example, “I don’t like cabbage” is clearly a manifestation of my Will. Similarly, “I hate French people” clearly isn’t, to anybody who’s not a total idiot. Then there’s the in-between stuff that you have to sift out through this practice of mindfulness.
“Know thyself” — know the workings of your mind so you can perceive what it does, and how it misleads you. Asking “How do you tell the difference?” is like asking “How do I go from not being able to fly an airplane, to being able to fly an airplane, without ever having to get into an airplane or having to take any lessons?” By practice, by investigating the nature of your being, that’s how you know. How do you know how to drive a car? Because you learned how to do so. There is no alternative than to get into the mind and to observe what it does, over an extended period of time, and to develop a proficiency in doing that. It’s a skill, like any other.
134 posts and 412 comments.
