"I'm a Thelemite, not a Crowleyite." Thoughts?
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I like Crowley, and think he was an amazing person and guide--and also kind of a shitty person at times. To me, it's super liberating to realize that attainment can take place in spite of flaws*. The Christian model I grew up with said I had to try to imitate a sinless man, and would never be able to.
*Though I don't mistake that for meaning that his flaws were irrelevant or to be emulated--we each are responsible to work with the flaws we have.
What Crowley writes about spiritual practices are often really helpful and practical, although they demand a lot from me in terms of parsing meaning, and reading very carefully. I misunderstand him all the time.
Still, I ain't Catholic, and he ain't the Pope. I bear the consequences of my choices, so I get the final say in them, not him.
What Crowley writes about politics or other areas of life have no bearing on my politics. I don't see why they would.
The comment? I agree with you that it's contradictory.
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."
That includes how I respond to the comment, right?
"The study of this Book is forbidden."
Passive voice. Forbidden by whom? My church forbad me from reading anything occult. So it's a true statement, that I ignore.
"It is wise to destroy this copy after the first reading."
Wise is relative. It could be wise to destroy this copy, but even wiser to keep it.
"Whosoever disregards this does so at his own risk and peril. These are most dire."
Everything I do is at my own risk and peril. And shitty things are bound to happen to me. And then I'll die. Yep.
"Those who discuss the contents of this Book are to be shunned by all, as centres of pestilence."
Actually, I'm mostly ok with that.
"All questions of the Law are to be decided only by appeal to my writings, each for himself."
Yep, I don't decide what it means for you, and you don't decide what it means for me.
"There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt."
I was going to say that my will to piss on the comment. But actually, I don't have that much problem with it. It is my will, however, to piss on the notion that it means what people think it means at first glance.
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It happened talking to my Jesuit friend. He's like a super-apologist for the Catholic church. He tried to say some B.S. about how Galileo really should have been more humble in the face of the Pope because he was wrong, the whole universe does not revolve around the Sun. And I just thought about how full of shit he was and how he was going to do his apologetics thing no matter what.
And I realized... I'm tired of playing apologetics for Thelema. I have to contort myself to make it not be what Crowley seemed to be screaming that it is.
And I'm tired of it. It feels like a lie.
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It's weird. I feel like I needed it at one point to free myself of Christianity.
But now I look at it more through Crowley's eyes than you guys' eyes, and it just seems so violent, and hateful, and unbalanced.
It's not that I'm not torn about it. I am. I'm just losing the ability to defend it to myself.
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That's the only real thing, whatever we call it.
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Those character traits of A.C. the man - would he & could he really be To Mega Therion if they were any other?
P.S. It's interesting to observe how we tend to get triggered by some specific A.C.'s trait (or writing, or moral or aesthetic proclivity, etc) and how it tends to happen at a point in our life when we need that exact kind of trigger to cross a certain threshold of our own development.
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I dig this thread. I went through this so often in my many decades relationship with Thelema and Crowley.
Of all the interpretations of Crowley that I wind up settling with, it is the interpretation of Crowley by Robert Anton Wilson that I choose to rest with. Crowley was a wizard trickster. He confessed his own flaws (as is part of the ordeal of higher passages) and showed them to us, even played with them, and hopefully scared the shit out of us with them.
He was a fascinating man. I don't view Liber Al in the same light as Crowley. Liber Al came from the higher intelligence within him, and at the end of the day Crowley was an artist. All artists are fucked up
The truths and ah-ha's I have discovered through Liber Al and Crowley are so beautiful and such a deep part of my life now, it is as if I discovered them without the need for Crowley at all...if that makes any sense.
Maybe everyone gets the Crowley they deserve?
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@danica said
"Those character traits of A.C. the man - would he & could he really be To Mega Therion if they were any other?
P.S. It's interesting to observe how we tend to get triggered by some specific A.C.'s trait (or writing, or moral or aesthetic proclivity, etc) and how it tends to happen at a point in our life when we need that exact kind of trigger to cross a certain threshold of our own development."
Where's that "Like" button? Is there an upgrade to "Love" I can give this?
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@danica said
"Those character traits of A.C. the man - would he & could he really be To Mega Therion if they were any other?
P.S. It's interesting to observe how we tend to get triggered by some specific A.C.'s trait (or writing, or moral or aesthetic proclivity, etc) and how it tends to happen at a point in our life when we need that exact kind of trigger to cross a certain threshold of our own development."
My thought exactly. It is important to criticize everyone and everything, even the prophet of your own religion. This is how we grow.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Crowley's True Will was "To teach the next Step", and he most certainly did so.
But as for me: when I got to know my True Will, I understood that parts of Crowley's practices and way of life were contradictory to my True Will, but not necessarily to his. And that is completely fine, so long as the Law remains the Law. -
It seems that it is always going to come back down to primitivism versus progressivism.
Do religions evolve?
Is the beginning of a religion the golden age to which we should always try to return, or is the birth of religion a seed that grows and develops into something inherent in that seed but not that seed?
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"Do religions evolve?"
If they don't, we get a new one.
I believe Crowley saw Islam as a course-correction for the self-denying martyrdom of Christianity.
Similarly, I see some course-correction in Thelema, especially in the emphasis on passionately championing the self (while realizing that the self is an illusion, and there is only one thing we all are a part of).
But no, I am not into fundamentalism. I don't think we should hype a religion's early years as it's "golden age". I think it's a tempting logical fallacy to imagine that there was an ideal that could have been amazing, if it hadn't been ruined/corrupted. It's easier to hype something that could only hypothetically exist, than improve something that does.
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"AL I.3 "Every man and every woman is a star."
The New Comment
This thesis is fully treated in “The Book of Wisdom or Folly”. Its main statement is that each human being is an Element of the Cosmos, self-determined and supreme, co-equal with all other Gods.""AL II,18: “These are dead, these fellows; they feel not. We are not for the poor and sad: the lords of the earth are our kinsfolk.”
The New Comment
This idea is confirmed. Those who sorrow are not real people at all, not 'stars' – for the time being. The fact of their being 'poor and sad' proves them to be 'shadows,' who 'pass and are done.' "That he refers to them as "not real people at all" by itself is precisely the same technique of dehumanization used by genocidal maniacs, and it is what the psychopath feels to be true.
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@Hermitas said
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That he refers to them as "not real people at all" by itself is precisely the same technique of dehumanization used by genocidal maniacs, and it is what the psychopath feels to be true."Well, I guess. If that's the view you want to have about it. I mean, we homo sapiens did destroy the neanderthal in our physical and mental evolution to get to this place on the Internet where we can discuss these ideas.
Or, rather than genocidal thoughts, perhaps what if we just treated these "sorrowful" "neanderthals" without bother? They are not of us.
What if that was an interpretation?
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What I'm thinking these days...
Hadit and Nuit are polar opposites. Opposites.
Besides comparing what they affirm (no difference versus difference), you also see a little of this in the third chapter: ". . . with my force shall she see & strike at the worship of Nu: she shall achieve Hadit. . ."
Notice here how they are juxtaposed.
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So, I'm sitting here thinking that there's got to be a better way to think about these two contrasting perspectives other than to say that "Every man and every woman is a star... except when they are not," which is what Crowley did in the New Comment.
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My best answer is to consider each an extreme and opposing perspective. Each is an abyss of its own perspective.
The two are mediated between by one's True Will, which makes all the abstract perspective into concrete action that lies somewhere in neither extreme.
Anyway, best I got for now.
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It's so completely frustrating to me. You have two things that imply the Book of the Law isn't what it superficially seems:
". . . for who doth not understand these runes shall make a great miss. He shall fall down into the pit called Because, and there he shall perish with the dogs of Reason."
and
" . . . The Book of the Law is Written and Concealed."
Yet we look and there's the master himself interpreting the damned thing literally.
I just need to step away for a while.
...if possible.