Steven Cranmer
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Hello,
My name is Steve Cranmer. In the 1990s I was active in the Usenet group alt.magick and maintained a Golden Dawn FAQ there for several years. (That document is dormant, but old versions are available from many sources via Googling...) My interests in esoteric topics include things like Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Renaissance-era Hermeticism, the Golden Dawn, and Thelema.
I consider myself a Thelemite, but my interest in Crowley drops off somewhere around the year 1915. I love the Class A books and I'm fascinated by the A.'.A.'., but I don't have much of an interest in the OTO or the, um, related practices that occupied Crowley for the latter part of his life.
I had an extended snail-mail correspondence with Jim Eshelman sometime around 1994 (after I purchased a copy of the first edition of his A.'.A.'. book). At the time, I wasn't really ready for Thelema as a personal "religion," but I've been growing into it over the past decade. I continue to be amazed at the sublimity of Liber L (I also dislike the spelling "Liber al") and especially also Liber VII.
I'm also a professional astronomer. Being both a scientist and a Thelemite is probably an unusual combination, but it shouldn't be all that unusual for Scientific Illuminists like us! I guess I'm not interested so much in the "paranormal" aspects of magical practice, but more in the transformative and symbolic aspects of ritual and a broader Thelemic way of living in the world.
After reading the high quality of discussion in this forum, I am finding myself wishing there was some ToT presence in New England (I work in Cambridge, Mass)!
Steve
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Welcome, Steve - good to hear from you again.
Closest Temple of Thelema presence to New England would be NYC or Toronto, depending on exactly where you are located.
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@Steven Cranmer said
"In the 1990s I was active in the Usenet group alt.magick and maintained a Golden Dawn FAQ there for several years."
Welcome! I've had that FAQ in the Golden Dawn section of my library for at least a decade, I think. Can't admit to having read it in a very long time, but as soon as I saw your name I sensed some familiarity, and I guess this is it...
@Steven Cranmer said
"I'm also a professional astronomer. Being both a scientist and a Thelemite is probably an unusual combination, but it shouldn't be all that unusual for Scientific Illuminists like us! I guess I'm not interested so much in the "paranormal" aspects of magical practice, but more in the transformative and symbolic aspects of ritual and a broader Thelemic way of living in the world."
As a very amateur astronomer, I certainly don't see anything unusual about it; familiarity with the heavens and adoration of Nuit go hand-in-hand on my individual journey. What's your speciality?
Again, welcome! It's a pleasure to have you here....
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Love and L.V.X.
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@zeph said
"As a very amateur astronomer, I certainly don't see anything unusual about it; familiarity with the heavens and adoration of Nuit go hand-in-hand on my individual journey. What's your speciality?"
Hi Zeph,
I hope it's not a horrible cliche for a Thelemite astronomer to study the Sun, but it's true. My research involves both observations and theory of the hot, expanding outer atmospheres of the Sun and other stars. If you're morbidly curious and if you need a cure for insomnia, you can google "Steven Cranmer's home page" and find out more. (I feel reticent to have the URL be listed here directly, since I'm supposed to make sure there's no confusion about my opinions vs. the opinions of my institute and the govt agencies that fund my work.)
Since I spend a lot of time thinking about how the Sun compares to the other stars, sometime I should start a thread comparing CCXX I,3 (Thelemic ethics of stars having their own proper motion) with the idea of invoking Ra-Hoor-Khuit by "shining like the Sun." These two aspects of Thelema fit together perfectly in my view, but I never see combined discussion of these "stellar" and "solar" metaphors.
Steve