Race & Thelema
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Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
I say the most important point one could raise in Crowley's defense on this matter would be that he was in his mid-20's at the turn of the 20th century; during this time, these sort of sentiments were far from uncommon. Certainly, many of his contemporaries would not support such a disposition and many may have gone as far as to shun such convictions. However, of the aforementioned, few and far between are those responsible for a body of work equal to Crowley's in terms of scholastic depth, artistic prowess, and cultural impact.
Love is the law, love under will.
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It is quite clearly expressed by Crowley that Races are different, they have different traditions from very different histories. That races can express noble qualities or the opposite, depending in large measure, upon how they are treated by the peoples around them. That Thelema is interested in cultivating and gathering those individuals of all races which express noble qualities is also clear. It is shown that the flavor in which the highest qualities of a man are expressed vary from Race to Race, so also the lowest qualities.
Crowley of course concerning himself with quality over quantity would rather like to have seen a 2/3 the population of the world destroyed in some great war, or famine, so long as it left the most noble 1/3 or less as potential adepts. Likewise the many inferior folk he insists of whatever race are mere cattle, concerned with base, things. The put health, wealth and vanity at the top of their priorities, while the noble place, Science, art and spiritual matters as their priority. Thus the base need to be ruled over by the noble. "Kings shall be kings, the slaves shall serve".
However, Crowley also was no fan of the big business model or the metropolitan lifestyle that lured the family farmers and craftsmen into a life of low plane, intemperance, gambling, and in the low minded they always would sink lower rather than resolve problems on a higher plane, eventually leading to theft, arson and murder. The higher sort of man, of course could engage in these vices carefully without destroying his spiritual constitution, if he took care to direct them towards the higher ideals of his TRUE WILL.
It any event, the global merging of races and cultures in the big cities and their global economic schemes, the industrial revolution, were problematic to Crowley. The Craftsman continues in the tradition of his race and his WILL to work and create is noble, he puts himself into his production, it reflects himself and his people. But the factory worker is merely the slave of a machine, his creativity stifled, his product an expression of mechanical efficacy rather than the LOVE of a skilled artisan.
So ideally, you would keep everyone race and culture together in small groups, you would retain the artistry and differences in the races. each would take pride in his art and craft, as on expression of and positive contribution to his people. Thus the most noble of every race, the adepts of Thelema would be the upper class of every race, each expressing it's own flavor of thelema, the perennial truth expressed in the symbols of the race. The adept of the same race and culture as the people he governed. Leading each my example of virtue, helping to ensure each traditional craftsman, farmer, artist, etc. is facilitated by the governing system to produce the greatest possible contribution to the whole.
In this way each race will be guided by the highest expression of the race, and thus degradation of members to engage in the lowest expression of the race minimised, and as each member of a race performs at it's highest expression the race as a whole performs at it's highest expression, and thus on the global level, all the races interact at the most noble and refined level. Just as organ in the body works to perfect itself, which is also the perfect health and function of each cell of the type that builds than organ, and when each organ is perfected, the body as a whole is perfected and healthy.
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"So ideally, you would keep everyone race and culture together in small groups"
I figured as much.
Your argument is pretty much: Why can't we have the most reactionary, rigid, segregated society possible, with only one modification - it'll be entirely just!
It's a nice thought experiment, but when it only serves to further the agenda of people who were simultaneously spouting it, and actively working towards genocide, you can see that it is just the most qlippotic elements of the Osirian age, masqueraded as higher thought.
I seriously wonder what your point-of-view would be if you put down the books and do 6 months of daily LBRP and Middle Pillar Ritual. For fairness sake, I'd participate in the same experiment, to see how my POV shifts without immersing myself in constant political theory/philosophy/utopianism/etc. Are you game?
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Froclown stated-"So ideally, you would keep everyone race and culture together in small groups, you would retain the artistry and differences in the races. each would take pride in his art and craft, as on expression of and positive contribution to his people."
In my opinion, that would be the recipe for the death of art and the turn to revolt. The true artist would follow something that could not be confined and see that expression manifest in love or war. You are forgeting the Will of the individual. Not everyone needs to discover it through a system. What you describe is like prison, but worse.
I do enjoy your thoughts and appreciate the time and detail you put into it. Thanks
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The purpose of art is to express the cultural tradition of the race and thereby to express as a prophesy the direction in which each race is headed.
It used to be that if you go to France you could expct to see people drinking wine, eating cheese, wearing barrets and other French things. Now, France is not different than anywhere else in the world, everything is all mixed up and there is nothing gained by travel. You can eat the same cheese at home as in Paris, and neither is the cheese and wine of some one whose family tradition and culture is represented in the product, it's all made in a factory by mechanical specifications with no variation of personal craftsmanship at all.
The replacement of traditional cultures with mass produced systems of global production, is what ruins art. It also destroys all sense of personal identity as some one who lives by and expresses the values of your Family, Race, community, city, and nation, with the bland common base traits of merely a human, equal to and like all other humans. It makes you nothing, a common part that is superfluous and replaceable by any other human part in the machine. Thus you have no WILL of your own, you are not a unique product of a long line of genes, and cultural traits, you are just a common replaceable mass produces space filler.
your WILL is a product of your history and the structure of the society and environment into which you are genetically affixed. Like your heart is affixed to it's WILL in your body. The heart is not something that can be replaced by the liver or the kidney, it serves a specific function, and it can't do just any old thing it might want, by virtue of being a heart and by the system that evolved into which it came to be a heart, it has one and only one function, which it must learn and do.
Like wise your TRUE WILL is that ONE and only ONE function which you MUST learn and do, that is a product of what you are and how you came to be in the system of the world.
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That "one thing" that you mention, isn't one thing.
Teaching mankind the next step in this Aeon, may be a single, well stated idea with the force of the universe behind it, but is not one thing. A heart is useless in an emesis basin.
Art is deeper than terrior, as wine is. Ask the dude who turns the bottle a quarter turn, ad infinitum.
Eating cheese in Paris is much different than eating cheese in Akron. One may be preferred by another.
I don't mean to throw these out like this, but it's just how I see it. You may be completely right.
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Thee are no Higher forces.
The material forces of environment and heredity determine WILL, there is no SPIRITUAL anything.
A leopard can not change it's spots, it has to discover what it is, and learn to be satisfied being a leopard and learn to stop dreaming about being a fish or a bird, that is what initiation is all about, giving up the fantasy that you can be anything you want to be and learning to be what you actually are.
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There's Briah, but all I see in your posts are Yetzirah and Assiah. I've also heard tell of Atziluth, but haven't glimpsed it yet.
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@Froclown said
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A leopard can not change it's spots, it has to discover what it is, and learn to be satisfied being a leopard and learn to stop dreaming about being a fish or a bird, that is what initiation is all about, giving up the fantasy that you can be anything you want to be and learning to be what you actually are."Aren't you defining a slave by these comments? Maybe, if you gave all the people with dreams the right drugs, they might not want anything more than what they were born with...
The will is a divided thing, until it isn't. The impulses coming from your physical ancestry can be seen as a totally separate will to your conscious will. If you practice you may have had the experience of knowing that you should sit and meditate, in fact you took an oath, but another will inside you wants to go out and play.
It seems to me that the question of the will is much more complicated than simple heredity. The soul enters the world trailing clouds of glory, and the soul can easily have a different lineage to that of the body it finds itself in.
As for changing your stripes, or spots if you are a leopard. Admittedly, real change is not easy, but it is possible.
"But an Ibis that meditated upon the bank of Nile the beautiful god listened and heard. And he laid aside his Ibis ways, and became as a serpent, saying Peradventure in an hundred millions of millions of generations of my children, they shall attain to a drop of the poison of the fang of the Exalted One."
Cupio. Latin for 'I desire!'
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There is no soul, and the slave is one who is not content being what he was born to be and pines after fantasy. A black servant on a plantation is only a slave when he believes he should be free. When he is content to serve in his station, he has no discontentment within himself. The feeling of bandage comes from the desire to be more or other than you are.
The metaphorical language of alchemical birds and serpents has no bearing on any of this. The alchemical process is to burn off those extra fantasies about being what you are not, and coming to know and accept who and what you are, then focus all that you have on being that which nature has set out for you.
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@Froclown said
"There is no soul, and the slave is one who is not content being what he was born to be and pines after fantasy. A black servant on a plantation is only a slave when he believes he should be free. When he is content to serve in his station, he has no discontentment within himself. The feeling of bandage comes from the desire to be more or other than you are.
The metaphorical language of alchemical birds and serpents has no bearing on any of this. The alchemical process is to burn off those extra fantasies about being what you are not, and coming to know and accept who and what you are, then focus all that you have on being that which nature has set out for you."
But how do you know what this so called 'black servant' really is? Maybe he is actually a free soul who happens to find himself in the untenable situation of servitude? And what do you say to all those African Americans who, feeling something terribly wrong about the their situation, managed to change their outward situation and free themselves?
Just curious...
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a baby boy is born, sits in the dirt, and dies an old man. That's the end of the mystery. We can close shop and all go home.
...meanwhile I am going to go eat some cheese, dream of paris, and lie down on my leopard skin blankie.I am glad we can have different opinions, even if mine is a lie.
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Because there is no self that is not a product of the physical environment. There is no SELF at all, only environment.
Every particular is merely a focused manifestation of the general, you are not some autonomous entity that happens to be forced into a world that may not suit that individual. The Individual is part and parcel of the environment, and each particular part has a Dharma or duty related to what it is.
In the Gita Krishna explains to Arjuna that it is his Duty as a Kashatrya caste to lead the war against even his formal friends and family, because he was incarnated as that caste he MUST do the duty of that caste.
As for the american slave issue, the problem was that the slave owners did not use the slave according to it's nature. They pushed the slaves to do too much work, the punished them too harshly, did not provide adequately for them, treated them poorly as less than animals. The rebellion against masters who acted in such degraded ways, was perfectly part of the natural WILL of the slave.
Where the master was a noble gentle man, who knew how to tread servants, the slaves seldom rebelled, they were treated well, give reasonable work, not abused out of cruelty, fell fed and housed, etc. The slaves served out of respect and love of the master rather than fear, Thus the Slave was doing it's WILL, by serving.
The Slave than serve are doing there WILL exactly as the Kings.
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@Froclown said
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As for the american slave issue, the problem was that the slave owners did not use the slave according to it's nature. They pushed the slaves to do too much work, the punished them too harshly, did not provide adequately for them, treated them poorly as less than animals. The rebellion against masters who acted in such degraded ways, was perfectly part of the natural WILL of the slave.
The Slave than serve are doing there WILL exactly as the Kings."
Except for these particular Kings were taken against their will or will that be rebuked because they didn't know their true will and how do I know it wasn't their will to be taken?
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How do you propose that we undo every time when anyone in the past happened to break the law and used something in a way inconsistent to it's nature.
We can't change the past, we can only like as we are in our incarnation which is the vector sum of history, the right and the wrong acts of history create the Karma which defines one's Dharma in the present.
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@Froclown said
"How do you propose that we undo every time when anyone in the past happened to break the law and used something in a way inconsistent to it's nature.
We can't change the past, we can only like as we are in our incarnation which is the vector sum of history, the right and the wrong acts of history create the Karma which defines one's Dharma in the present."
You are right on in my sight...we can't undo. However, I think we keep the specific group of slaves you mention out of the context of the possibility that they suffered indignantly because they didn't have their ownThelema together.
Again, Froclown. Thanks for your words.
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Well, it would be a case by case basis. In some cases and indeed most at least somewhere along the way the slave owner party is at fault for abusing the slave. In other cases the slave may have not been abused, and yet rebelled out of line with it's will, perhaps overly romantic ideal about what a much easier and better like he would has liberated from the master, much a a child in a good home with kind parents may run away in a huff, believing the parents reasonable rules are too strict and the full impart of having to live alone in a cold ditch somewhere does no weigh on his mind in that moment of emotional action.
Certainly the entire venture of enslaving a race was in itself a violation of the law, carrying with it, a karma of it's own. But aside from that, the deed having already been done, the resentful behaviour of the slave, would not bring liberty, but would and did re-enforce the master's belief that slaves were violent and untrustworthy, leading only to greater cases of abuse and restriction. Where as the cheerful obedience of the slave, leads to trust and respect from the master, who in this case can not help but concede the humanity of the slave. Through indulgence in his Kingly vices, the master invites the slaves greater privileges and over a few generations, the families of masters and slaves, behave more like long time family friends, rather than as enemies. The relationship becomes less one sided and more mutual.
This would be the Magicians means of resolving the problem of slaver on a higher plane. The Sorcerer would seek lower planes right away, theft, poisoning, running away, sabotage, hiding from work, voodoo curses, which in the end would turn the back on him, as is apt to happen with black magick.
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In very broad strokes....I see it as the more you are in line with your will the closer you are to the center and your pendulum steadies and hums, your star burns bright as veils are lifted. For whatever reason, should a disruption in will occur the more the pendulum swings, the more the veils appear, the more chaotic energy is released, bumping other pendulums, stars, people, etc, whatever. A MAJOR misuse of prana from an individual or a group of individuals directed willfully at another star has an impact, unless you know aikido
In effect, metaphorically the laws of physics come into play until the matter is resolved....in years, lifetimes, etc. In my view, it very well may be worked out in cultures where the energy is equilibrated, depending on the prana involved and it's course, it may be embedded in DNA, but the universe is impacted...the prana came from somewhere.The point you make about the slaves learning or accepting the conditions is only one half of the pendulum swing and to expect it to resolve on another plane, well, I don't see it. Love under will, is a huge freakin' responsibility, mess with it and expect a dire judgement.
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Froclown, I think I understand your position, I just don't like it. I like you, just not the proposition.
I'm more than willing to be a bull in the china shop if I feel, as I often have, that things are stayed, unproductive, dead. Many of my students have been young people from working class families who were afraid to admit to themselves that they wanted to be artists because everything in their origins—family, class, the predisposition of their friends—ran counter to their hearts desire. Needles to say, I have had no qualms about encouraging them to just do it, much to the dismay of their parents. I suppose I was breaking some universal law by your standards then.
Of course, we could argue that my genetic inheritance and environment have determined me to do just what I have done and to be exactly the way that I am; or else we are left wondering where my predilections came from. If we are only environment then it should not be possible for me to act the way I have acted without some originating force in my past eventuating in my actions.
But here is my problem, and why I am still responding to this thread: I am bound to regard this deduction as little more than a word game, plain and simple, because I really, and I mean really don't know why I do what I do. Your logic and reason cannot help me know anything for certain in this regard because it's just another belief system. To just assume it has to be an environmental factor for logic's sake is to relinquish my responsibility to think and try to understand. Until I really know why, I don't, and that's the honest truth.
love and will
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No it has to be "environment" because everything is there included. Every force that occurs in every action is included in the physical equation of it's causality, there is no room whatsoever for any other mysterious force acting out side the laws of physics. These is on close examination no room for an autonomous internally directed force.
Rather the WILL of the individual is the WILL of the entire cosmos which is an extension of oneself, while on the other hand the self is merely a concentration of the whole cosmos. Taking everything as a continuous whole, you and the external conditions are all part and parcel of one "divine plan". You can not peel yourself out of your social conditions as if Here is me and my WILL and there is the world there with it's ways. YOU and the world are one. If you are at odds with the world, it is because you are reactionary to it, rather than embracing. You are rejecting part of the life set out for you in fear, rather than Embracing fully the way of the TAO, ie your TRUE WILL, which spells out your name, and that spelled out fully is your entire cosmogony.
TRUE WILL is not free will and it is not determinism. It rectifies the two, because True Will is sets the SELF to include the external conditions, such that one might say the self that is continuous with all things freely wills each causally determined event.
Of course a wise man once admitted that to the the chap running late for the train, he is not concerned with grand cosmic theories than he may be destined to miss his ride, and his mantra "Blow destiny" serve well enough to banish such pessimism from undermining his moral.