Thelema, liberalism and the organic community state
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93!
I will try to set this out fairly, to show both sides and what i see as a fundamental misunderstanding if Thelema.
Thelema seems to attract allot of people who take "do what thou wilt" to mean much the same thing as hippie writes and neopagans have made of campbell's "follow your bliss"
Now liberalism does teach that you are to express yourself and to shun others mockery and societies expectations and artificial demands upon you and other alien influences, and this is very much in keeping with Thelema in practice. But there is a subtle shade of difference. The ideal state of being as the liberals call it of humanity is to discover that we are all equal and should be treated equally, and have equal potential to create for ourselves our own Will or destiny, and even go so far as to say we create our own reality, subjective or intersubjective via sharing our personal views. The idea here is everyone is equal but yet non relational on a fundamental level, than by peaceful choice to be permissive, accepting and supportive of everyone else, we create a world that is free of negative vibes, frustrations, competitions, suffering or hardships, and we can all join hand in hand and sing kumbaya. So says the liberal view.
But Thelema is not this liberal world, Thelema is guided by a "God of war and vengeance" not one of peace and love. Sure love is the law, but it is virile sexual love, attraction of the self to the world and the desire to take the world and make is ones own, a drive to unite with life, as opposed to anxiety and fear of life. It is not the sentimental love of the hippies, the mutual Submission and surrender to allow the other. It is not a peace where both armies lay down arms, but a peace where a stalemate of locked swords results in a treaty.
The organic state is a traditional social order where who and what a person is is defined by the necessary and vital role one performs in the state, outside the state one is nothing just a wild animal, a beast with no name, no caste, no social reputation, and no rights. As such rights and life's purpose are a result of title and social role, which ultimately emanated from the king, just as life and light emanate from the sun and all animals and plants receive light from the sun and each has a vital and unique role to play in nature, as part of an organic whole, just as in the body each organ has a function to do. Not the cobbler could no more be an artist or a lord, than a rabbit could wear a costume and be a lion, nor the liver act as the heart. Thus, every member of the whole state knows they function and fulfills it, content unless hardships or disharmony between the parts arise. Then the state would take corrective measures to restore the harmony.
Now the organic state was based on the divine right of the king or atlases some link between the kind and the cultural foundation of the people, often religious paganism, ie the king as one of the gods in the flesh. But there are many unspoken and unquestioned social beliefs that defined the people, their roles and family traditions, and kept everything in order, the priests and the rituals used symbols to convey these subtle values and foundational ideas to the people, as well as to initiate higher rung nobility into proper modes of behavior fitting of their ranks, etc.
Over time technology changed and family craftsmen lost their jobs to industry, science questioned the faith of the priest class and travel mixed cultures so that people began to see their unquestioned foundations did not match other cultures values, and so this leads to wars, over whose culture of the true one, eventually this proves fruitless and relativism is set up, which becomes nihilism. Then the market forces use the void of social order and values to sell us lies and false promises, like the American dream and liberal humanism, futurism, and entitlement notions. All to keep us mired in dreams while they exploit us for their profit machine, which destroys what is left of culture, individual identity, and the physical ecology.
Thelema, is an attempt to restore those foundational values, and to help the individual to discover not to create whom they are, within the foundational values, cultures and religious symbols system of Thelema, which is based not in faith in corruptible priests and does not require absolute sacrifice to a state with an agenda alien to the individual. Rather it is based on doubt and skeptical scientific analysis to every proposition it makes, voluntary affiliation, and creation of a state with a goal in harmony with maximizing the liberty of the individual will.
That Will not being the liberal follow your bliss, but to know and express your social teleos, as the cobbler knew his will and destiny was to cobble, as it was his place in the world, which he was born I to, and had a long family history of the art and craft passed down to him. We need to reestablishing the organic state, but rather than on the various superstitions which our modern knowledge finds absurd, on the self exploration and personal acceptance of the law of Thelema which is universally applicable and individually expressible.
A cobbler who mends shoes and knows that to be his destiny and life's purpose is a king, while some one who just takes a job to pay the rent, and try to get buy in a society they feel no personal connection to, only interested in attaining a degree of wealth and health, necessary to survive, and feels no higher connection to the land, the people, to family, culture, religion, or state, is not a thelemite, but a drift less pariah, lost in a consumerist sea of shallow images and shallow support and political correctness, never fighting to discover himself or to establish a place in a world of truly higher systems.
True spiritual things are tradition, soil, blood, and kingdom, not hocus pocus astral planes and dream worlds.
"do what thou wilt" means "shoe maker stick to your last"
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May I say that your attempt to explore both the positive and negative potential of both sides of your debate makes this post stronger than what I've read from you before.
However, I still think one big weakness of your essay is that it presupposes isolated tribes of craftsmen that exist before trade and travel mixed culture. When the reality is that humans have been mixing cultures and trading and traveling for as long as there have been craftsmen.
If you try taking the same approach to cultural mixing and isolating forces, analyzing them each as necessary forces with, again, positive and negative potential, I think your argument could improve greatly.
Balance is the foundation of strength.
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Here I quote Crowley
“The many religions of the world have all lost their power to guide chiefly because the development of means of transport and of international commerce have convinced the educated that any one religion is about as good or bad as another for the purposes of social discipline, and that none has any validity from the standpoint of actual fact, or historical or philosophical truth.
The remedy is evidently to be found only in one way. There must be found a formula based upon absolute common sense, without one trammel of theological theory or dogma, a formula to which no man of intelligence can refuse assent, and which at the same time affords an absolute sanction for all laws of conduct, social and political no less than individual, so that the right or wrong of any isolated or concerted action can be determined with mathematical accuracy by any trained observer, entirely irrespective of his personal idiosyncrasies.
This formula is: Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”
Taking a note here of "without one trammel of theological theory"
Also what he means here is large scale mixing of cultures, not a rare event than some strange and mysterious merchants from the far east visit the city. And this subsequent questioning of theological foundations of social values, is exactly what Nietzsche meant by the atheists and intellectuals murdered God.
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Well, I was just giving you some feedback (which you can of course, take or leave) not trying to engage in a debate. Carry on!
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Here let me simplify.
Thelema makes no claims to save poor wretches from their own weakness, or their personal identification with weakness, their fretting over sinful natures, their lack or courage. Nor does it claim to set everyone equal, to release anyone from longing, from strife, or to ease the suffering of the hurt. What it does do is calls to the elite few and strengthens their resolve and master morality against the slave morals of the liberal modernists, to restore quality over quantity. And reestablish the aristocratic hierarchy of the organic state, the traditional world of evola, guenon, Plato and aristotle, under a new formula of solar phallicism to restore resolve of the master morality and personal sense of power and authority against the forces of nihilism, equality, and Christian slave values in all their forms. Even unto restoring christianity itself to a white school, purging it of it's slave perspective and establishing Jesus not as a vicarious sacrificial martyr but as the solar principle, expression of the death rebirth cycles, the formula of his era.
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- Then the priest fell into a deep trance or swoon, & said unto the Queen of Heaven; Write unto us the ordeals; write unto us the rituals; write unto us the law!
34. But she said: the ordeals I write not: the rituals shall be half known and half concealed: the Law is for all.
35. This that thou writest is the threefold book of Law.Here is where that quote is from.
Clearly this deals with the ordeals and rituals, not for whom the law applies, or to whom it will benefit etc.This is to say, the Law is to be applied to the ordeals, the rituals know and unknown, and that law is this very book.
The proper way to write it as you express it to mean, is "the law applies to everyone"
This is not what is written, in fact there is a list followed by a colon, and then words the law is for all.The proper way to read is that the clause following a color applies directly to what proceeds the colon, ie the law exists in respects to all of these listed.
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"The stops as thou wilt; the letters? change them not in style or value!"
So you can't make a fundamentalist case based on the punctuation.
Verse 34 originally had quite different punctuation (though it did still have that colon): "But she said the ordeals I write not the rituals shall be half known and half concealed: the Law is for all."
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@Jim Eshelman said
""The stops as thou wilt; the letters? change them not in style or value!"
So you can't make a fundamentalist case based on the punctuation.
Verse 34 originally had quite different punctuation (though it did still have that colon): "But she said the ordeals I write not the rituals shall be half known and half concealed: the Law is for all.""
To be simple, ordeals and rituals are one thing: The Law is another thing.
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Besides the law is available to anyone who would accept it, and it is the law of the strong nietzsches master morality, it is there for anyone who would renounce slave morality and take up elitism, aristocracy, pride, courage, and the law of battle, ie survival of the fittest or might is right.
Who would denounce so called morality, and use reason and discipline and strength to express ones power over others and over oneself. To hold oneself to the highest standards of scientific test, and to discipline one perceptive and cognitive apparatus against confirmation bias, trust in feelings rather than objective evidence, and control of ones behavior to prevent acting on emotional rather than evidence, reason and strategic planning.
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@Froclown said
"Besides the law is available to anyone who would accept it, and it is the law of the strong nietzsches master morality, it is there for anyone who would renounce slave morality and take up elitism, aristocracy, pride, courage, and the law of battle, ie survival of the fittest or might is right.
Who would denounce so called morality, and use reason and discipline and strength to express ones power over others and over oneself. To hold oneself to the highest standards of scientific test, and to discipline one perceptive and cognitive apparatus against confirmation bias, trust in feelings rather than objective evidence, and control of ones behavior to prevent acting on emotional rather than evidence, reason and strategic planning."
There's a difference between a Law and waxing philosophic over that law (as you do so well). A Law does not need your opinion or approval to be. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law (know it or not, that law is upon all). And there are a myriad ways to accept a Law and to promulgate a Law, yours is only one way and I don't find it all that effective for you because you seem to chatter over much rather than DO.
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So it's more than just Geburah in Yetzirah?
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No, here is what most of you are saying.
Do what thou wilt, is the law, so You or some authority has to let me do my will, I have to let you do your will, everyone is entitled to do their own will.
That is not what it means, it's not an entitlement, you are not entitled to do your will by others permission, and you are not called by some divine authority to not interfere or allow others to do their will, or in any way step down or out of the way, or to even aid them on their will.
Rather it is a call to each one of us to look within and say, when have I stepped down, when have I but my interests second, when have I acted in a way that was not fulfilling to my purposes, either out of ignorance, compassion, fear, or just unquestioning loyalty to any principle. When might I have allowed others to walk over my interests in the name of democracy I just went along with the majority vote, in the name of fairness and compassion I suffered in order to let the weaker get ahead. When have I in the fulfillment of one interest or desire, acted in a way that frustrated my other desires, even my more valued goals for the sake of that lesser valued desire.
When did I put the interests of the lower, the weaker, the mob, the law, morality, the good cause, gods cause, etc. Before my own cause.
And Thelema says, no do not do that. Do what thou wilt.
See the first paragraph of Max Stirner "The Ego and Its Own"
www.lsr-projekt.de/poly/enee.html#all
And no, it is no objection to point to the organic state as a cause alien to ones own.
For the organic state is an egoist type of system, where one serves for egoist reasons, the kings rule over the slaves for their own purposes, and ultimately by suiting the tasks and lifestyle to the need of the individual it makes them more productive, less resentful and rebellious, this benefits the kings ego goals. And the slaves by voluntarily banding together under the community and serving the state it is to benefit their own goals and need for security and disciplined order. -
@Froclown said
"No, here is what most of you are saying.
Do what thou wilt, is the law, so You or some authority has to let me do my will, I have to let you do your will, everyone is entitled to do their own will.
That is not what it means, it's not an entitlement, you are not entitled to do your will by others permission, and you are not called by some divine authority to not interfere or allow others to do their will, or in any way step down or out of the way, or to even aid them on their will.
Rather it is a call to each one of us to look within and say, when have I stepped down, when have I but my interests second, when have I acted in a way that was not fulfilling to my purposes, either out of ignorance, compassion, fear, or just unquestioning loyalty to any principle. When might I have allowed others to walk over my interests in the name of democracy I just went along with the majority vote, in the name of fairness and compassion I suffered in order to let the weaker get ahead. When have I in the fulfillment of one interest or desire, acted in a way that frustrated my other desires, even my more valued goals for the sake of that lesser valued desire.
When did I put the interests of the lower, the weaker, the mob, the law, morality, the good cause, gods cause, etc. Before my own cause.
And Thelema says, no do not do that. Do what thou wilt.
See the first paragraph of Max Stirner "The Ego and Its Own""
When did you put all that in my mouth? I never said any such thing.
Are you attempting to have my Will and your will conflict? Then I say you are far from DOing your Will. Fortunately oxygen is plentiful, otherwise I'd consider your use of it a threat to my supply. But that is not so.
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In any event doing your will is not something you are granted or entitled to, it not a freedom you grand or entitle others to have. It is a degree of liberty that you must rise up and take for yourself, the foundation of the law is not on a natural order, gods will, or some such thing, is rests solely on your willingess to fight and kill for it.
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@Froclown said
"In any event doing your will is not something you are granted or entitled to, it not a freedom you grand or entitle others to have. It is a degree of liberty that you must rise up and take for yourself, the foundation of the law is not on a natural order, gods will, or some such thing, is rests solely on your willingess to fight and kill for it."
The Law is a natural law, it is exemplified within all of Nature. Just because your mind can't grasp the simplicity, that doesn't make it so. And all your caterwauling about forcing people to learn the Law is very much against the Law - so good luck with that.
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Yes the law is in nature, in nature there is no compassion, no pity, no democratic mob rule, no animal bends to another unless it is by fear and violence. Natures is kill or be killed at every point. And every animal is struggling its own survival, trampling over the nonexistent "rights" or every other animal.
That is the law.
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@Froclown said
"Yes the law is in nature, in nature there is no compassion, no pity, no democratic mob rule, no animal bends to another unless it is by fear and violence. Natures is kill or be killed at every point. And every animal is struggling its own survival, trampling over the nonexistent "rights" or every other animal.
That is the law."
Of which I am agreeing with. But your insistence of declaring your intention to trample over the weak suggests you are not doing your Will. You wouldn't even see the weak if you were busily Doing anything besides looking for the weak. Trample as you must and STFU (shhhhh)
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It is important also to counter democracy, egalitarianism, modernism, postmodernism, liberal humanism, and all other slave values that produce laws and moral opinions and fortify the mob to riot and rule over the individual will. We have whole armed millitias and many institutions dedicated to repressing the Will and action of the higher men, strongly dedicated mobs of slaves persistent against the ubermensche and striving to create the conditions that support the last man, and to thwart the necessary conditions from which arise the noble spirit of the aristocrats.
Thelema should not be one of these.
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@Froclown said
"It is important also to counter democracy, egalitarianism, modernism, postmodernism, liberal humanism, and all other slave values that produce laws and moral opinions and fortify the mob to riot and rule over the individual will. We have whole armed millitias and many institutions dedicated to repressing the Will and action of the higher men, strongly dedicated mobs of slaves persistent against the ubermensche and striving to create the conditions that support the last man, and to thwart the necessary conditions from which arise the noble spirit of the aristocrats.
Thelema should not be one of these."
Thelema is not one of them (unless one confuses bodies and individuals as being Thelema).