On a recent reply to a post on John Crow’s blog concerning values, “Keith418” posted this:

Where do values like this come from? Many of us suspect a transcendent origin for certain values.

“The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value — and if there were, it would be of no value.

“If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.

“What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in; the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental.

“It must lie outside the world.”

– Ludwig Wittgenstein, from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

This may be one reason why humanism reveals itself to be utterly nihilistic – it cannot posit real values because it denies a transcendent source for values and has cut itself off from the place that these real values must originate. In addition, we can see why the people trying to separate Thelema from magick and transcendental magical work are also doomed to fail – because they eliminate, from the start, the very place people need to go to find the values they will bring into reality in the very struggle Schmitt describes.

This piece of astonishingly inept reasoning highlights exactly the kind of way in which belief can prevent the kind of “critical thinking” that, in this case, the believer strongly advocates. Read the rest of this post »

In our last entry, Sun enters Ascendant of Aries, we discussed Aleister Crowley’s definition of “magick”:

the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will

and commented on how the principle question relates not to the “causing Change” part as many suspect, but to the “conformity with Will” part. In other words, the principle purpose of magick is not in learning how to cause change, but learning which changes to make, which changes are “in conformity with Will”. In this entry, we will expand upon that idea.

“Will” is a concept which, although apparently simple, is not so easy to understand. True Will is an exploration of the fundamentals of the idea, describing how the will reflects the preferences of the “true” self, as opposed to the “imagined” self. It is a common misconception within the Thelemic community that Thelema essentially equates to “choose your own path”. As we have shown previously, nothing could be further from the truth; True Will demonstrates that, whatever will is, it is not something that can be chosen.

On a practical level, the essential task of Thelema is to distinguish between what one actually is, and what one imagines oneself to be; between what one actually prefers, and what one imagines oneself to prefer; and, from a “magick” perspective, between the external environment one actually prefers, and the external environment one imagines oneself to prefer.

As we stated in the previous entry in this series, Crowley considered the attainment to the “Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel” as:

the essential work of every man; none other ranks with it either for personal progress or for power to help one’s fellows. This unachieved, man is no more than the unhappiest and blindest of animals. He is conscious of his own incomprehensible calamity, and clumsily incapable of repairing it. Achieved, he is no less than the co-heir of gods, a Lord of Light. He is conscious of his own consecrated course, and confidently ready to run it.

The use of the phrase “unachieved, man is no more than the unhappiest and blindest of animals” is important. The distinction between what one is and what one imagines oneself to be appears to many people to be a relatively minor distinction, that if they sit down by themselves at night and think really hard, deep down they can tell easily what they really are; that although they can act tough in various situations, deep down they know that they are as frightened as everyone else. But Crowley’s use of these words arises from his understanding that this is not the case, and that imagination the average man has of himself and his environment diverges so enormously from the actual truth of the matter that he really has no hope at all of ever “following his will” unless he takes some relatively drastic steps to remedy the situation. The average man – including the average “student of the occult”, the delusionary practices of this field of study arguably serving to leave such “students” in the “less insightful than most” category – really does have no idea at all what the nature of his “true self” actually is, and as such really cannot hope at all to ever achieve success in “causing Change to occur in conformity with Will” whilst this situation continues. Read the rest of this post »

On a lighter than usual note, this entry will consist of a review and discussion of John Crow‘s “The Missing Calls to the Great Work”, an interesting and thoughtful essay in an otherwise uniformly disappointingly lacklustre and low-quality second edition of the “Journal of Thelemic Studies” magazine.

In the essay, Crow summarises some points relating to themes he covers on his blog dealing with the “Thelemic community” rather than with Thelema itself, grouped into three main areas:

1. Availability of information;
2. Attempts to categorise Thelema as a religion; and
3. Attempts to separate Aleister Crowley from Thelema.

Each of these areas will be here examined in turn. We rarely give much attention to what my be termed the “social aspects” of Thelema on this blog, instead focusing on the individual aspects of it, but it will be an interesting and entertaining diversion to make an exception.

Availability of information

Aside from the question of “secret” O.T.O. ritual information – which we will not consider here – this section deals not with the question of whether information should be available, or even with the effects of a wide availability of information, but with what Crow calls “information egalitarianism”:

Another problem of the ubiquity of the information is an assumption that just because the information is available to all, then everyone can understand it. This is undoubtedly false. In spite of this, the prevailing attitude is that if someone can read a document, then their understanding is the same as everyone else’s … Because any hierarchies of understanding have been leveled, the idea of differing levels of understanding, and more importantly, that others may understand a text better, is simply not an option for consideration … Moreover, no one can tell anyone else about the text, nor describe a deeper meaning because the text was read, and therefore all that can be known about the text is known.

This kind of attitude is indeed a plague on the “Thelemic community” and on the “occult community” in general. The problem is compounded in the case of Thelema in particular due to the common mistaken interpretation that the Comment to The Book of the Law prohibits sensible discussion of the book, and that everybody has the right to “decide what Thelema is for themselves.” More generally, the common misconception that “spiritual experience” – which is unverifiable – is a better indicator of truth than reason – which is verifiable – leads certain people straight to the belief that their fatuous and vapid opinions are “just as valid as anybody else’s”. Either way, a view held all too frequently is that everybody has some sort of “right” to be correct in their opinions, that their “interpretations” of a given book or concept should and do carry as much weight as anybody else’s. In particularly obnoxious cases, some people try to claim that their opinions only carry weight “to them”, as if calling a view a “personal opinion” somehow automatically invalidates criticism of its nonsensicality. Read the rest of this post »

In One Star in Sight, Crowley writes of the grade of Magister Templi:

The essential Attainment is the perfect annihilation of that personality which limits and oppresses his true self.

This entry will deal with the question of that “annihiliation.”

In The Khabs is in the Khu, we presented a model of the self – the Khabs – surrounded by a “vehicle,” or “garment” – the Khu – which the self requires in order to manifest. The essential purpose of the Khu is to engender a sense of separation from the universe, so that it may be perceived from a particular point of view, enabling the generation of experience. In the same work we described how this results in suffering; the self does not perceive itself to be separate from the universe, and hence cannot suffer, but the Khu does, and can. The task of the aspirant is to identify his being with the Khabs, rather than with the Khu as is usual, to relocate his seat of awareness from his personality to his self, the identification with the personality being that “which limits and oppresses his true self.” Success in this task constitutes the attainment to the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.

The attainment of the grade of Magister Templi, on the other hand, and the ordeal of the Abyss, is not to merely relocate the seat of awareness, but to “annihilate” the personality altogether. This is a concept that, not surprisingly, many people have enormous difficulties coming to terms with. “How can a Master of the Temple manifest in this world without a personality?” is the obvious question, perhaps leading one to conclude that there aren’t any Masters of the Temple at all.

“Annihilate” means, etymologically, “to reduce to nothing,” the identity of the Latin root “nihil” with “nothing” being visible in words such as “nihilism” and “nil.” This immediately raises an interesting observation. If, being rudely wakened by our alarm clock, we take a hammer to it and smash it into pieces, we really have not “annihilated” anything; all we have done is to divide the object into a number of smaller parts. We have not “reduced the clock to nothing”; on the contrary, in fact, what was previously only one thing is now a much larger number of things, so we have moved in the complete opposite direction.

What has been “annihilated” is the identity of the object as a clock. However we choose to define “clock,” it must be in terms of something which is at least potentially capable of keeping time. An electronic alarm clock does not cease to be a clock simply as a result of unplugging it, and neither does a broken clock cease to be a clock, otherwise it couldn’t be sensibly described as broken. However, a completely smashed “clock” is no longer a clock, since it is beyond repair. A completely smashed “clock” is no more an actual clock than is a collection of cogs, hands and springs in a clockmaker’s drawer. Read the rest of this post »

The vernal equinox marks the time at which the length of the day begins to exceed the length of the night once again (technically, it doesn’t; due to the refraction of light in the atmosphere and because the Sun appears to be a disk rather than a point, the length of the day exceeds the length of the night for more than half of the year), an event which can be imaginatively associated with the “triumph of light over darkness,” and as such it appears natural at this time to turn one’s attention towards thoughts of practical action. The tarot card associated with the ascendant decan of Aries is the Two of Wands, “Dominion,” reinforcing this idea of imposing one’s influence on the world.

This idea really gets to the heart of the study and practice of “magick.” Aleister Crowley defined magick as “the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will,” and this definition warrants close examination.

In our last entry in this series, Sun enters Cadent of Pisces, we spoke of the “path of least resistance,” and discussed this in conjunction with an idea found in the Tao Te Ching: “Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.” We described this in terms of avoiding opposition to what is natural, specifically of preventing the mind from interfering with the natural inclinations of the self. If we extend this idea slightly, we can apply the ideas of another chapter from the Tao Te Ching:

Whoever takes the empire and wishes to do anything to it I see will have no respite. The empire is a sacred vessel and nothing should be done to it. Whoever does anything to it will ruin it; whoever lays hold of it will lose it.

If we substitute “nature” for “empire” in this extract, we appear to have a direct warning against the kind of “magick” that Crowley was describing, which does indeed seek to “do [something] to it.” The rationale for this warning would seem to arise naturally from our previous discussion; to “wish to do something” to nature on the face of it implies a desire to interfere with the “natural order of things,” presumably on the grounds that the mind “knows better,” and the assumption behind this warning is that the mind does not know better, at all. Read the rest of this post »

In our last entry, Sun enters Succedent of Pisces, we wrote about the wisdom of seeking “the path of least resistance,” and in the closing decan of what is often considered to be the weakest of the twelve astrological signs, with the vernal equinox just around the corner, it may appear appropriate to turn our attention to this idea more closely.

The concept of the “path of least resistance” will be familiar to Taoists, who term it wu-wei, most often translated as “non-action.” In the third chapter of the Tao Te Ching, we find:

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

This injunction can seem like a command to passivity and meekness, yet a closer examination reveals it not the be the case.

If we consider the natural world, we can get a better understanding of this concept. The planets, for instance, move inexorably in their appointed orbits, never ceasing, day after day, yet it would seem strange for us to call this “action.” Jupiter does not wake up each morning, and decide that it would be a good idea for it to continue in its orbit today. It moves in that way because it is its nature to move in that way, if we consider a significant part of its “nature” to be its current velocity.

As Newton told us in his first law of motion, “a physical body will remain at rest, or continue to move at a constant velocity unless a net force acts upon it.” We may rightly define “action” – in the “non-action” sense – as a disturbance of some kind, but clearly not simply a disturbance from a state of rest, since the “natural state,” in the absence of action, is to maintain a constant velocity, whether or not that velocity is zero. Yet equally we cannot sensibly equate “action” with the “net force” in Newton’s law, since a net force – the gravity of the Sun being the most significant component of that force – is constantly imposing on Jupiter’s orbit, causing it to follow a curved path rather than a straight one, but Jupiter still does not “act” in order to remain in its orbit.

Within the confines of Newton’s law, we quickly run out of options, since a body either remains in a constant velocity, or it is disturbed by a net force, and if “action” is neither of these things then “action” does not exist. If we look to a dictionary definition of action, then one of the many we will find is “an act that one consciously wills,” and this leads us to our answer. The only way in which we could sensibly describe Jupiter as “acting” is if it were to somehow spontaneously divert from the “net forces” which keep it in place. Of course, according to Newton there is no way in which this can happen, but the idea of it will be useful to us. Read the rest of this post »

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. Read the rest of this post »

An recent news article on LAShTAL.com generated the following comment from an individual calling himself “mendaxveritas”:

Beyond that, the point is simply that it is unwise to employ methods that arguably violate the principles of The Book of the Law. The cause of liberty is not advanced by taking advantage of laws that themselves are an affront to liberty. If “hate speech” laws (in Australia or elsewhere) get turned on us at some point, we’re going to look really stupid if we’ve been using those laws ourselves to shut down those who have offended us, and we’ll look hypocritical if we suddenly start arguing (correctly) that hate speech laws are an offense against free speech.

and then responding to criticism:

Your distinction that only “willed” speech should be considered protected by Thelemic principles sounds superficially reasonable, but it is impractical for a legal system. Unless you can propose a means for a court of law to determine whether a given act of speech was “willed” or not in Thelemic terms (which seems tantamount to determining the true will of the speaker), the distinction is not one that a court or a legislature can use, even assuming a society devoted to Thelema (which isn’t what we have now in Australia or anywhere else).

Many people make the mistake of trying to turn Thelema into a socio-political system, and in particular attempts to equate Thelema with libertarianism deserve further examination, because they turn out to be fundamentally mistaken. Read the rest of this post »

At the heart of Thelema is the concept of “will,” or “True Will” as it is sometimes called, the idea that there is a course of action most “proper” or most “natural” to each individual, and that his happiness, satisfaction, fulfillment, actualisation – call it what you will – is maximised by whole-heartedly following such a course of action. At the heart of most types of pagan or neo-pagan philosophies is the idea that one should live “in harmony with nature,” each element fulfilling its proper function whilst trusting in the equilibrium of nature – which we now know to have been established through a long and reductive process of evolution, eliminating those organisms that are unable to survive in this equilibrium – to provide for all thereby. The essential identity between these two ideas should be clear; if the “nature” of an organism has developed in order to facilitate survival in the environment as a whole (or, more accurately, those organisms whose nature is not so conducive have been eliminated) then acting in accordance with the nature of the individual organism equates to acting in harmony with nature itself. This approach can be contrasted with other “religious” views (such as Christianity and Buddhism, which treat nature as “sin” in the former case, and “suffering” in the latter) as well as secular philosophies (such as humanism, which seeks to elevate some elements of nature above others in pursuit of a manufactured social ideal) which view nature as something to be overcome in some way, rather than as something to acquiesce in.

One question that is sometimes raised in the investigation of the “nature-based” idea is this: if everything has arisen from “natural” processes (which we must assume to be true – even “man-made” objects have been made as a result of natural processes, i.e. the process of the development of organisms with an ability to make such objects – unless we wish to posit the strange idea of a creator-god who has created nature but is apart from it, and even then we would have to ask why such a pre-existing god should not be considered to be “part of nature”) then how is it possible to act in a way contrary to nature? From an environmentalist perspective which is often encountered with neo-pagans in particular, we might ask how, for instance, the widespread destruction of forests could be considered to be “against nature,” if such acts are carried out by human beings whose instincts, desires and thoughts have arisen through a process of natural development. On a more strictly Thelemic side, we may ask how one could ever not act “in accordance with will” if their actions arise as a result of the conjunction between themselves (which have arisen naturally), others (who have also arisen naturally) and their environment (which can be called “nature” itself).

For this idea to make any sense at all, we have to assume that there is some significant input to the decision making process which can sensibly be described as “not natural,” or the approach in its entirety becomes groundless. To look for such an input, we have to consider more carefully what is meant by “natural.” Read the rest of this post »

As the Sun enters the ascendant decan of Pisces, we turn our thoughts to nature. The main distinction between Thelema and paganism (“paganism” here referring to actual folk religion, as opposed to the modern phenomenon of “neo-paganism” and Wicca which are little but thinly veiled versions of Christianity with the exception that the morbid sexual hysteria is slightly less obvious in the former case) and the major “world religions” can – from one point of view – be boiled down to this question.

For the purposes of this entry, let us assume that the objective of religion or spirituality in any of its forms is some form of self-improvement or life-improvement, in the broadest possible terms. The fundamental premise of Christianity (and all the Abrahamic religions, for that matter) is that human nature is sinful, and acts as either the primary or sole barrier to this improvement. As Saint Paul put it in his Epistle to the Romans:

For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.

The underlying premise of this rather twisted piece of “logic” should be familiar to all, namely the phenomenon of finding oneself seemingly unable to do what one wants to do. The annual ritual of the New Year’s resolution that many people subject themselves to is an illustration of this, a ritual line in the sand which one heroically hopes one’s habitual indolence and weak will shall from thereon in find to be impassable. Read the rest of this post »