True Will... How do you put it to use in daily life?
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Hi frzzlmom,
I'm not sure of TOT's position, but Thelemites generally do not discuss the Book of the Law because of the Tunis Comment:
The Tunis Comment
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
The study of this Book is forbidden. It is wise to destroy this copy after the first reading.
Whosoever disregards this does so at his own risk and peril. These are most dire.
Those who discuss the contents of this Book are to be shunned by all, as centres of pestilence.
All questions of the Law are to be decided only by appeal to my writings, each for himself.
There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.
Love is the law, love under will.
The priest of the princes,
Ankh-f-n-khonsuHmmmmm I am curious about that "single, deeper idea"...but if I'm correct in my hunch, even AC refused to discuss it openly.
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@h2h said
"Hi frzzlmom,
I'm not sure of TOT's position, but Thelemites generally do not discuss the Book of the Law because of the Tunis Comment:"
It depends on your definition of Thelemite...
But anywho, this topic was discussed here quite lengthely before, myself being involved in it. here -
Well It is my thinking that since Crowley and It seems others puplished these writings over and over and commented on the texts that is it meant for discussion and study.
I am paraphraising but,,,does the Book of the Law also say some thing to the effect that fear is not of us?
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@h2h said
"Those who discuss the contents of this Book are to be shunned by all, as centres of pestilence."
@V.V.V.V.V. said
"Ye shall journey far into a land of pestilence and evil; ye shall encamp in the river of a foolish city forgotten; there shall ye meet with Me. - Liber LXV IV:62"
616
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It’s curious how ppl interpret the Tunis Comment.
Jim, for example, sees it as an “emotional outburst” whereas I am of the opinion AC could barely keep a straight face as he penned those lines. Consider: the reader is presented with Liber Legis, the central law of which is “Do What Thou Wilt” and utterances such as “the word of sin is restriction” that ends with a Comment full of prohibitions and restrictions.
Is this AC’s intelligence test for the reader? Maybe.
The only point I can see in the Tunis Comment is either 1) the Cairo Working and Liber Legis is a hoax and AC is attempting to ensure the game continues as long as possible or 2) the Tunis Comment “seals off” of further commentary on Liber Legis since it is the final word on the New Aeon.
But considering it is “Aiwaz” who allegedly authored Liber Legis, how do we understand the comment “All questions of the Law are to be decided only by appeal to my writings”. Whose writings? Ankh-f-n-khonsu? Aiwaz?? AC???
Certainly the motifs in Liber Legis echo in AC’s other books, but then this would throw into question the authorship of Aiwaz and support the view that Liber Legis was an elaborate hoax and crowning achievement on the part of AC.
Perhaps the Tunis Comment was written to prevent discussions like this from arising…
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@h2h said
"It’s curious how ppl interpret the Tunis Comment.
Jim, for example, sees it as an “emotional outburst”"
BTW that's because of the circumstances of its writing. That is, it was written during an intense bout of grief overwhelm. That's what I meant by the characterization.
"whereas I am of the opinion AC could barely keep a straight face as he penned those lines."
Those weren't the circumstances of the writing.
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93,
I don't want to get too far off topic, but, if Frzzlmom doesn't mind, what were the circumstances of the writing of the Tunis comment?
Love=Law
- C
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@ThatNarrowFellow said
"I don't want to get too far off topic, but, if Frzzlmom doesn't mind, what were the circumstances of the writing of the Tunis comment?"
One of Crowley's disciples, a man he saw as having enormous potential in spreading the Law, committed suicide after going whacko after studying Liber L. obsessively.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"One of Crowley's disciples, a man he saw as having enormous potential in spreading the Law, committed suicide after going whacko after studying Liber L. obsessively."
Do I parse the above correctly that you're saying the suicide was the trigger? From that I've found, Norman Mudd committed suicide in 1934, 9 years after the Tunis Comment was written. Do you mean someone other than Mudd?
I thought that the impetus came more from Mudd's personal (idiosyncratic?) interpretations of the Book of the Law that AC didn't like so much. The most famous one of these, I think, was Mudd's interpretation of the word "adulterous" in III:34 -- i.e., only if Leah was married to someone else (like Mudd!) could her relationship with AC truly be called adulterous!
Steve
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Frzzlmom - I apologize for taking your thread off-topic, but kindly bear with a few more questions.
Jim - your story about the circumstances surrounding the Tunis Comment is a first for me (but I have not read any biographies on AC). Would you please cite sources so I can check the information myself?
My questions:
What was the name of the disciple? Was this story about the disciple’s suicide from reading Liber Legis told by AC himself or confirmed by others? What were the grounds for believing a causal relation existed between reading Liber Legis and the subsequent suicide? Did he leave a suicide note saying something to that effect?If the Tunis Comment was indeed influenced by such circumstances and meant to be taken seriously, it would reinforce the interpretation of AC’s profound ambivalence toward Liber Legis and give more credibility to the Cairo Working, perhaps explaining why it took him years to accept the book.
On the other hand, I am highly suspicious of AC's anecdotes, be it the Cairo Working, the story about his conversation with Reuss regarding the "supreme secret of the OTO" etc. I regard this skepticism as the proper attitude of Scientific Illuminism, that one should never take anything on faith.
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@h2h said
"Jim - your story about the circumstances surrounding the Tunis Comment is a first for me (but I have not read any biographies on AC). Would you please cite sources so I can check the information myself?"
My notes and references are buried somewhere - probably can't easily get to them. Not remembering off hand whether this was published or in some of Jane Wolfe's correspondence or diaries.
"If the Tunis Comment was indeed influenced by such circumstances and meant to be taken seriously"
I simply don't think it should be taken seriously at all - other than, perhaps, as a good idea. Other than that, I don't think it's worth the paper he wrote it on. I disavow it entirely.
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@h2h said
"What was the name of the disciple? Was this story about the disciple’s suicide from reading Liber Legis told by AC himself or confirmed by others?"
I can't answer for Jim, but see my post above about Norman Mudd. I googled a bit for the anecdote that I remembered about the word "adulterous" in III:34, but I couldn't find it. I wonder if a search of Kenneth Grant's early books might find more about it. (Grant must have had access to many of the Crowley-Mudd letters, since many quotes from them are peppered in...)
"On the other hand, I am highly suspicious of AC's anecdotes, be it the Cairo Working, the story about his conversation with Reuss regarding the "supreme secret of the OTO" etc. I regard this skepticism as the proper attitude of Scientific Illuminism, that one should never take anything on faith."
Agreed. The Cairo Working mega-thread over at lashtal.com (which both h2h and I contributed to a bit) had surprisingly more skepticism and variety of opinion than I thought it would. A good sign for Thelema, I'd say!
Steve
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@ThatNarrowFellow said
"93,
I don't want to get too far off topic, but, if Frzzlmom doesn't mind, what were the circumstances of the writing of the Tunis comment?
Love=Law
- C"
No problem..I think you have a valid guestion...since some of the people who repond to this topic seem quite fearful of this line of study..
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Thanks frzzlmom.
@Jim Eshelman said
"My notes and references are buried somewhere - probably can't easily get to them."
Just the name of the disciple would be enough
@Jim Eshelman said
"other than, perhaps, as a good idea."
Why might it be a "good idea"?
Steve,
Mudd could not be the disciple referred to if he committed suicide 9 years after the Tunis Comment. Btw I was also surprised at the skepticism and variety of opinion on the Cairo Working mega-thread and agree that this is a good sign for Thelema. That Lashtal thread deserves a little explanation, but I will start a new thread for that.
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@Jim Eshelman said
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@ThatNarrowFellow said
"Firstly, I don't think I can agree with you that no two Wills can contradict one another."I regard this as being a root postulate of Thelema, virtually the baseline of its entire moral, physical, and metaphysical philosophy, and certainly of its practice."
If you know the basics of astronomy, you would know that stars do collide and explode. And what twinkles!
The baseline of Thelemic moral philosophy is Do what thou wilt. There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.
"Ah! There I agree with you. Restriction of circumstance can cause the appearance of such conflict. But, I hold, the actual conflict doesn't exist."
What do you define as 'actual conflict'? Physical death?
"It depends on what you mean by that. I think one of the deeper truths inherent in the twin aspect of Horus is that peace is power and power is peace - they are an identity. (Or: Real strength is silent, not noisy.)"
I disagree - this is a prejudice. Power is in chaos & turmoil as well as in peace. They are just labels anyhow. True Peace is unrestricted Movement.
"You're (I think understandably) mixing a whole lot of planes here. The integrated, articulatable knowledge of one's True Will shouldn't be confused with the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel - it's often a much earlier step. "
Then why does Crowley make them coterminous in a multitude of ways? I find your division of them more confusing than showing them to be two sides of the same coin.
IAO131
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@Aum418 said
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@Jim Eshelman said
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@ThatNarrowFellow said
"Firstly, I don't think I can agree with you that no two Wills can contradict one another."I regard this as being a root postulate of Thelema, virtually the baseline of its entire moral, physical, and metaphysical philosophy, and certainly of its practice."
[...] The baseline of Thelemic moral philosophy is Do what thou wilt. There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt."
Yes - and what, then does this mean? It is popular in some quarters (including but not limited to those young in Thelema( to interpret this from a primarily Hadit point of view. It's a mistake to exclude the Nuit aspect, wherein it is understood that no part exists except as it is part of the whole. "Do what thou wilt" does not have an individual acting indifferent to or unrelated to the environment (for example) - rather (using the metaphor of astronomical bodies whose paths are determined in part by the perturbations of all other matter in the universe), one's way is necessarily a product of the the way of each and all.
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"Ah! There I agree with you. Restriction of circumstance can cause the appearance of such conflict. But, I hold, the actual conflict doesn't exist."What do you define as 'actual conflict'? Physical death?"
Irrelevant. Nothing so mundane. I suppose one way of explaining is to say that the universe does not require incompatible things from its various components.
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"It depends on what you mean by that. I think one of the deeper truths inherent in the twin aspect of Horus is that peace is power and power is peace - they are an identity. (Or: Real strength is silent, not noisy.)"I disagree - this is a prejudice. Power is in chaos & turmoil as well as in peace. They are just labels anyhow. True Peace is unrestricted Movement."
This is probably a semantical difference. I agree that chaos and turmoil have energy in play and released. But to the extent a being is moving with increasing power, that being is moving with increasing peace.
In any case, it isn't a prejudice - it was a discovery. That is, it wsn't a pre-judgment or theory, it was an observation.
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"You're (I think understandably) mixing a whole lot of planes here. The integrated, articulatable knowledge of one's True Will shouldn't be confused with the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel - it's often a much earlier step. "Then why does Crowley make them coterminous in a multitude of ways? I find your division of them more confusing than showing them to be two sides of the same coin."
Admittedly, he often wrote of them in confusing ways, though in a couple of places he made clear a distinction. - My distinction is because these are (usually) such dramatically different developmental stages along the path, sometimes separated by many years.
I'm sorry if drawing distinctions between two related but distinct things confuses you. The language that usually has served me best is to say that the True Will is the "voice" of the HGA moving through one - not a spoken voice any more than "knowledge and conversation" means "facts and dialogue," but rather the word of your being vibrated within the vehicles of your manifestation. The conscious identification and grasping of this commonly occurs long before the particular intimacies that are meant by the phrase "knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel."
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@Jim Eshelman said
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@Aum418 said
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@Jim Eshelman said
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@ThatNarrowFellow said
"Firstly, I don't think I can agree with you that no two Wills can contradict one another."I regard this as being a root postulate of Thelema, virtually the baseline of its entire moral, physical, and metaphysical philosophy, and certainly of its practice."
[...] The baseline of Thelemic moral philosophy is Do what thou wilt. There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt."
Yes - and what, then does this mean? "
It means that you cannot say a priori that any action is wrong.
"It is popular in some quarters (including but not limited to those young in Thelema( to interpret this from a primarily Hadit point of view. It's a mistake to exclude the Nuit aspect, wherein it is understood that no part exists except as it is part of the whole. "Do what thou wilt" does not have an individual acting indifferent to or unrelated to the environment (for example) - rather (using the metaphor of astronomical bodies whose paths are determined in part by the perturbations of all other matter in the universe), one's way is necessarily a product of the the way of each and all."
Thats exactly my point: from the Nuit view, stars do collide and its fucking magnificent.
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"What do you define as 'actual conflict'? Physical death?"Irrelevant. Nothing so mundane. I suppose one way of explaining is to say that the universe does not require incompatible things from its various components. "
This isnt irrelevant at all. If you say there is no conflict but people are still being raped and murdered, most people would disagree with you. Are you simply saying that since there is conflict - pain, sorrow, death, etc. - that they are part of the natural way of things and therefore not 'conflicting'? I am absolutely certain that when most people read "stars don't collide," they think of arguments and physical interference.
"This is probably a semantical difference. I agree that chaos and turmoil have energy in play and released. But to the extent a being is moving with increasing power, that being is moving with increasing peace."
Semantic indeed - I just enjoy contradicting well-held ideas like that attainment = peace.
"In any case, it isn't a prejudice - it was a discovery. That is, it wsn't a pre-judgment or theory, it was an observation."
Observations are interpretations filtered through your own prejudices. That being said, I get what you're saying.
"Admittedly, he often wrote of them in confusing ways, though in a couple of places he made clear a distinction. - My distinction is because these are (usually) such dramatically different developmental stages along the path, sometimes separated by many years. "
I see: Convenience is our Canon of Truth.
"I'm sorry if drawing distinctions between two related but distinct things confuses you. The language that usually has served me best is to say that the True Will is the "voice" of the HGA moving through one - not a spoken voice any more than "knowledge and conversation" means "facts and dialogue," but rather the word of your being vibrated within the vehicles of your manifestation. "
I see: HGA is the static 'entity' and the True Will is the dynamic aspect thereof. Would this be a fair assessment of your view?
"The conscious identification and grasping of this commonly occurs long before the particular intimacies that are meant by the phrase "knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.""
I see, like the Vision of Adonai in Malkuth?
When Crowley says "You must know your True Will" do you think he is talking about knowledge as in "My Will is to do X" or is it more of an experiential 'knowing' as in gnosis... becoming one with your Way? I tend towards the latter since it seems reason can do nothing except limit & restrict the will by trying to define it.
IAO131
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@Aum418 said
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@Jim Eshelman said
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@Aum418 said
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[...] The baseline of Thelemic moral philosophy is Do what thou wilt. There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt."Yes - and what, then does this mean? "
It means that you cannot say a priori that any action is wrong."
I agree - a priori and out of context. But knowing that a particular action is wrong is quite different from knowing the underlying principles of how the universe works. (Dave Letterman's "Will It Float" bit is a wonderful example of this. Knowing the relevant laws of physics concerning boyancy doesn't mean you can a priori know whether a particular thing will float - until you know more of the particulars about the particular thing.)
As an aside, and with acknowledgement that the meanings of "right" and "wrong" present a whole 'nuther layer of the intellectual debate - In context, I think every being does know, or have the capacity to know, what is right in a particular situation. Only personality layering and aberration interfere with this. One of the hallmarks of advancing spirituality is the frequency and reliability with which an individual makes right choices. But, intellectually and out of context, you can't second guess the rider in the saddle.
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"What do you define as 'actual conflict'? Physical death?"Irrelevant. Nothing so mundane. I suppose one way of explaining is to say that the universe does not require incompatible things from its various components. "
This isnt irrelevant at all. If you say there is no conflict but people are still being raped and murdered, most people would disagree with you."
I consider it irrelevant whether they agree with me.
Also, we were discussing True Will, not the uncountably vast number of actions that aren't in conformity with True Will. Human personalities have enormously powerful Won't Power that resists (at the cost of much pain, especially to the resister) acting in conformity with True Will.
"Are you simply saying that since there is conflict - pain, sorrow, death, etc. - that they are part of the natural way of things and therefore not 'conflicting'? I am absolutely certain that when most people read "stars don't collide," they think of arguments and physical interference. "
BTW (since you keep bringing it up), I haven't said "stars don't collide" once in this thread. I've said that there is no inherent conflict between any two or more expressions of True Will in the universe.
So, back to your main question in the quoted section - Yes, there is friction, conflict, sorrow, and of course death etc. in human interaction, the field of nature, etc. I'm saying that, inasmuch as most people spend most of their time acting both ignorant of and at odds with their own True Will, this is all irrelevant to the question of whether there is any inherent conflict in the arena of True Will.
To be clearer: In this matter, I'm using the definition of conflict as "a state of disharmony between incompatible or antithetical persons, ideas, or interests." (There is polarization between antithetical elements, but that's an expression of their harmony - the essence of polarizations.)
"I see: Convenience is our Canon of Truth."
This is an issue of a label, and labels exist entirely for convenience. If the label is to be useful, it has to be attached to something more or less specific, and then we can use it to discuss similarities and differences between two things with different labels. (MadamImAdam.)
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"I'm sorry if drawing distinctions between two related but distinct things confuses you. The language that usually has served me best is to say that the True Will is the "voice" of the HGA moving through one - not a spoken voice any more than "knowledge and conversation" means "facts and dialogue," but rather the word of your being vibrated within the vehicles of your manifestation. "I see: HGA is the static 'entity' and the True Will is the dynamic aspect thereof. Would this be a fair assessment of your view?"
Nope. Nothing static (in any sense of the word that makes sense to me) about the HGA.
Let me add to the above (even though I think I've said this before, but maybe not clearly enough): The perception (by whatever means) of the nature of oneself and one's right momentum in life, and the conscious assimilation of those perceptions and ability to articulate them, commonly occurs before the time that one experiences the source of those intimations, and usually long before one has become so intimately familiar with that source that one can and will consciously surrender the template of one's subconsciousness to its ongoing writing.
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"The conscious identification and grasping of this commonly occurs long before the particular intimacies that are meant by the phrase "knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.""I see, like the Vision of Adonai in Malkuth? "
Kinda, yeah. (This at least distinguishes "Vision of the HGA" from "K&C of the HGA."
"When Crowley says "You must know your True Will" do you think he is talking about knowledge as in "My Will is to do X" or is it more of an experiential 'knowing' as in gnosis... becoming one with your Way? I tend towards the latter since it seems reason can do nothing except limit & restrict the will by trying to define it."
There is at least one place - I spent 10 minutes looking for the quote last night, but couldn't find it (shoulda spent 11!) - where he quite specifically says that you should be able to articulate it in a simple, elegant sentence. Now, that sentence isn't going to mean as much to someone else as it means to you, but it is likely to be self-evident to those who know you best. It should summarize, in a concise phrase, the root principle underlying every desire, motivation, nightmare, peak moment, embarassment, etc. of your whole life, and yet entirely explain you to yourself.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"There is at least one place - I spent 10 minutes looking for the quote last night, but couldn't find it (shoulda spent 11!) - where he quite specifically says that you should be able to articulate it in a simple, elegant sentence."
And in the 11th minute he prevailed!
@Duty said
"5. Find the formula of this purpose, or "True Will", in an expression as simple as possible."