Question about De Via Properia Feminis
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@ar said
"I'd always thought that Crowley was referring to something besides physical gender. Inasmuch as he states in other works (MTP, Cap. V) that, in the Aeon of Horus we are "two sexes in one person", I assumed he was in the above passage making a statement of position with regard to the proper relations between these parts of the Self."
The use of "woman" and "man" literally means beings of specific physical genders. The contrast of them with "their souls" (or immaterial aspect) would, by itself, seem to mean on a crit read that the words refer to the material aspect. One could reasonably say, of course, that since "soul" isn't defined in the passage, then we don't quite know what it means (e.g., whether Nephesh or Neshamah).
But Crowley was a master of language, and was writing Liber Aleph with the greatest economy and precision he could muster. He didn't refer to the Male and Female in the abstract, but to women and men.
Also, the style and tone are quite recognizable to anyone familiar with literature (and especially British literature) of the time: It is the tone by which men would gather in private clubs and discuss Women in their absence. It is the tone and style of Crowley commenting that it is so damnably hard to find a women with the capacity to be an equal in sex magick that one might as well just find the most convenient piece of ass, keep it all from her, and go on by oneself.
He was speaking of human females: human beings in female bodies: women. He was trying to paternally pass on to his magical son his own frustration with women and some fatherly advice. Though more acceptable, it resembles the hillbilly father who, on learning his son had married a virgin, advised, "Boy, if she weren't good enough for her own kin, she sure as hell ain't good enough for you."
OTOH we can return to the question of, "What exactly did he mean, in this instance, by soul." He does seem to say that this woman, if she's good enough, can be rewarded "a Man-soul" in her next incarnation. Judgmental sexism aside, this does suggest he means Nephesh and nothing deeper. (Although, as has been pointed out, Fortune had the insight to see that a female body tends to come with a masculine Nephesh, and a male body with a female Nephesh: masculine and feminine, in this case, being matters of function and not of form.)
I think, though, that one can't separate these views from those adjacent in Liber Aleph, concerning the Star or deep spiritual aspect, where women are said to be "hollow stars," etc.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"One of the biggest and most obvious flaws in the passage is that physical gender varies from life to life. This is one of the easiest observations to make from past life records. Therefore, anything that tries to link current physical gender to the architecture of the spiritual being reincarnating must be wrong."
This along with your following post brings out the nature of the problem here.
The Hindus and Greeks had several words for what we simply call "soul". Crowley is obviously not referring to anything related to a condition of eternal nature but that which is associated with this incarnation. For those that identify their eternal Being with this temporary physical form the idea can be very confusing.
The Dion Fortune observation is good. I read one author who claimed to be reporting inner discourse with exalted Masters and her viewpoint was to observe that the XX chromosome was complete and the XY was incomplete, the 'Y' being a partial 'X'. The male form in this world therefore felt a certain emptiness, or incompleteness that he needs to fill and until he does he is always out of sorts and seeking fulfillment. If the Goal is not Spiritual in nature or at least God-oriented the behavior that manifests can be quite bizarre.
Apparently, among those males who can make the correct sequence of choices and pursue the Goal vigorously the 'hole' in his being can be filled with something transcendent and he becomes like a super-man upon completion of that morphing. The female can't experience this particular event because she simply does not have that incomplete aspect that needs to be completed, to begin with.
The construction realized by this 'completion event' carries into all future incarnations. Hence a future incarnation as female might be said to be "Man" in the Gnostic sense where Son of Man meant something wholly separate from mere 'man'.
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@Antianeirai said
"Is this the current accepted stance of Womanhood in Thelema?"
All questions regarding the stance of womanhood in Thelema should be referred to the Book of the Law. A quick perusal should dispel any doubts you may have about "sexism" in the ranks. Such attitudes are frowned upon.
The irony: Crowley was rather "feminine," as far as that term goes.
In fact, Astrologically speaking, he was quite nearly a woman himself! Hmmm--Cancer Rising; Sun and Venus in Libra; Moon in Pisces.He was probably speaking emotionally.
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@JPF said
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The irony: Crowley was rather "feminine," as far as that term goes. In fact, Astrologically speaking, he was quite nearly a woman himself! Hmmm--Cancer Rising; Sun and Venus in Libra; Moon in Pisces.He was probably speaking emotionally.
"Well, yes, tropically speaking...
Personally, I tend to read him as a Virgo Sun, but I think that only serves to further your point anyway.
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93, All,
Jung: antisemitism, Freud: cocaine and adultery, Crowley: misogyny.
Yeah, I'm fairly certain this is all superficial. Plus, regardless of all attempts, politics is not religion.
93s,
Oz-L.A.Y.L.A.H.
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"Jung: antisemitism, Freud: cocaine and adultery, Crowley: misogyny."
lol... I love all those proper nouns and none of the common ones.
When geniuses create systems so large and complete that they place in our hands the ability to turn those same systems against their own creators in order to dissect, classify, and highlight the inconsistencies of those great creators' own personality flaws and personal lives with great precision, I still think we have to thank them for that gift. At the end of the Day, I think we approach something nearing those persons' ultimate judgment of themselves if they had the same advantages of time and perspective that we do.
Yeah, ...I can live with that.
In fact, I think that may be the only thing I'm willing to settle for...
"I am the 'warrior lord' of my forties. My eighties cower before me and are abased..." - Liber Midlife-Crisis
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@Frater LA said
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@JPF said
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The irony: Crowley was rather "feminine," as far as that term goes. In fact, Astrologically speaking, he was quite nearly a woman himself! Hmmm--Cancer Rising; Sun and Venus in Libra; Moon in Pisces.He was probably speaking emotionally.
"Well, yes, tropically speaking...
Personally, I tend to read him as a Virgo Sun, but I think that only serves to further your point anyway.
"I stand corrected. His Sun was at 26 degrees. With a Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury in Libra, however, I think it safe to say that he was moreso a Libra with very clean fingernails.
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Thanks for the reply Jim, I was worried for a minute after reading that passage
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There is no soul and no reincarnation.
When Crowley talks about such things, he is using reincarnation as a mechanism to say. "Stop dreaming about being something you are not, If you are born a woman then be a woman, stop trying to live up to the male standards and instead be the best woman you can be. The Add on "If you do good maybe you can be a Man next time around" is just a mental trick to get people to move on and not get hung up on the fact that they will NEVER be what they think they should be, and get to work accepting what they are.
Even in Liber Thisarb it is clear than Crowley does not believe in past lives, rather he believes that our ONE and only Life contains mental images and unconscious archetypes that are false memories which are symbolic ques to understanding one's TRUE WILL.
If anything in Thelema there is only one soul, the whole cosmos, NUIT, which manifests in the particular Hadit.
The general whole that becomes the particular. This can be better understood though the study of Holography, Fractile geometry and the Cosmology of Giordano Bruno.
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Froclown, as usual, is silly. (Just being a clown.)
He insists that Crowley did not mean what he flatly said, and in particular did not mean reincarnation when he wrote a detailed practice about reincarnation.
Instead of meaning what he actually said, he meant (all along) what Froclown wants to say.
I'm sure this is true.
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He said himself that These practices are seeming memories of past lives, and not to accept them as litteral truths unless you can match up your memories with recorded facts.
He also stated that one is not to take anything seen in visions as Objective facts or of having Philosophical Validity. They are merely personal symbols, and that doing certain things cause certain results.
Just because you have a head full of visions that you are a Roman living in 50 AD, does not mean that that person ever even existed and it certainly does not mean that YOU are that person.
Also just because Crowley wrote a book that in a past life he was ankh-f-na-khonsu does not make it so. It means he wrote a fictional story that collaborated with his beliefs and helped to express them in depiction, by analogy to events in that story, which he set in Egypt.
YOU ARE NOT CLEOPATRA, and neither is anyone else.
You are atoms, that is all. an arrangement of physical stuff. In the cosmic dust storm some of the dust happened to swirl up and become a human, and in a few decades it will fall apart again. That is all there is to Life.
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93,
Froclown said:
" He also stated that one is not to take anything seen in visions as Objective facts or of having Philosophical Validity. They are merely personal symbols, and that doing certain things cause certain results.
Just because you have a head full of visions that you are a Roman living in 50 AD, does not mean that that person ever even existed and it certainly does not mean that YOU are that person.
"From the confessions of Aleister Crowley, Cap.86, first page:
"There are also some fairly strong arguments for the actuality of such memories. Events in the past sometimes throw light on the present. For instance, when I came to remember what happened to me in Rome, Naples and Paris, I understood certain obscure instinctive feelings about those cities which had always been unintelligible, and were in direct conflict with my conscious ideas about them."
You ignored the part where Crowley flat out contradicts your opinions. Yes, he insists that there's a gray area here, but he doesn't fall into the trap of the nay-saying dogmatism you present. Nor does he ever, anywhere, deny the reality of what we term 'soul,' as you did in your previous post.
You can create your own religion, as you have done, but you can't cite the Prophet of another one with a different theology, and claim him as your authority.
93 93/93,
Edward
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@Froclown said
"He also stated that one is not to take anything seen in visions as Objective facts or of having Philosophical Validity. They are merely personal symbols, and that doing certain things cause certain results. "
Sounds like good advice. (I think he might have said that probably because they are NOT objective facts. Aren't "visions" subjective by definition?)
@Froclown said
"YOU ARE NOT CLEOPATRA, and neither is anyone else. "
Can you agree that someone was Cleopatra at some point along the timeline?
@Froclown said
"You are atoms, that is all"
Prove it.
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I can show you atoms, I can show you diagrams and studies in detail the molecular structure of cells, tissues, organs, how they all work together, how they interact physically and chemically, and how those physical events explain in detail exactly how any process in the human body functions.
Can you show me even one tiny scrap of non-physical soul, or spiritual essence?
If you can show me some element that is not a Physical thing I will accept that a soul might exist. But thus far Science has not found one shred of evidence for a soul and it there is no events which occur than necessitate that we postulate a Physical explanation.
Spiritual, non-material values, etc. In the way I use them refer to collective efforts, "The spirit of good faith" and the higher values of brotherhood or honor, building a reputation or contributing to a reciprocal relationship, rather than a "material" value of hoarding up a personal collection of goods.
Yes, relationships and reputations are material events also, they are systems of interactions and memories (Chemical-physiological patterns of brain matter) but since these are complex systems of things, in language we reduce the system to a single word, conceptualized as a simple noun, but since that simple noun is really a set of actions we can't draw it's limits as we can with say APPLE. So the term "spiritual" or non-physical has come into use to describe Physical systems of events which are linguistically reduced to conceptual nouns.
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I don't have to prove a negative.
Ie no non-physical substance exists. Ie no soul exists.
You have to prove that soul exists also metempsychosis.
If Crowley believed that souls exist is irrelevant, as Thelema is not believe what Crowley believed.Also it is obvious that Crowley was hopeful to prove the supernatural and he wanted souls to be true, but he also demanded skepticism and proof, of which he never in his life time found conclusive evidence.
And since his day we have found mountains of evidence that support the null hypothesis (No supernatural events exist).
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@Froclown said
"I don't have to prove a negative. "
I did not ask you to prove a negative. Your claim was stated positively. Now prove it.
@Froclown said
"You have to prove that soul exists also metempsychosis. "
No I don't. I never made that claim.
@Froclown said
"Also it is obvious that Crowley was hopeful to prove the supernatural and he wanted souls to be true, but he also demanded skepticism and proof"
I am no expert on Crowley but I have not seen thus far where he was trying to 'prove' the supernatural. Can you show where he tried this? (He may have... like Houdini and others... I simply do not know).
But you still need to prove your claim.
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Atoms are the basic building blocks of EVERYTHING, in fact atoms are the only things than exist because EVERYTHING is made of atoms, there is nothing else out from which to build anything.
YOU and all humans are THINGS that exist in the universe, THUS You are Atoms and nothing else.
There is no need to postulate that anything that is not included in EVERYTHING that exists in the universe, is necessary to human life. Thus a human is a thing in the universe made out of Atoms, ie physical matter, ie the ONLY ontological substance which exists ANYWHERE.
QED
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@Froclown said
"YOU and all humans are THINGS that exist in the universe, THUS You are Atoms and nothing else. "
That's a description of the composition of matter. It says nothing about existence which is immaterial. (It doesn't even comprehend all forms of energy.)
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That is because there is not anything which is "immaterial"
Energy is properties of particles, the effects atoms have on each other, properties are not things in themselves.
Nor is energy immaterial, energy is a physical process.
Technically Energy is the property of a physical system that defines the potential work (Change of mass through time) which that system is capable.