Question on Liber L
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So what Edward said, meant what I wished to say, but didn't.
Caste system and Thelema. Doesn't seem logical to me.
chrys333 -
allow me then to quote a few lines and paragraphs from a lesser know essay written by Crowley
Groans from the Padded Cell
(The Minority Report of the Editorial Rooms).... Today all this is absolutely changed. Every important branch of work is so specialized that a man must give his whole life to his particular job for 40 years or more before he is capable of holding his own in it. Such a man must obviously be chosen from the start on the ground of inclination and capacity. He must be allowed ample leisure. He must be secured freedom from all worries and anxiety, or he will never arrive at competence. A university education is not nearly enough. It is only a general ground-work. When a man leaves a university he wants at least 10 years uninterrupted work in his particular line before he even begins to succeed in it. In other words, the complexity of civilization demands an elaborate caste system. For one thing, the habit of authority is absolutely necessary to any one who is to fill a position of responsibility. Put a man who has done mental work all his life into an important position. He inevitably becomes a "Jack in office," harsh, overbearing, and tyrannical. On the other hand, if you take a boy and give him well trained servants, he will, when he becomes a man, get things done with perfect suavity and good feeling and absence of fiction.1 This is why you can take a boy from Eton or Winchester and send him out to rule a province in India. The "Competition-wallah," the boy of no birth or breeding who obtains a position in the Indian Civil Service by intellectual merit, is a disastrous failure.
There must, however, be an end to all this talk of equality of opportunity. It will always be necessary to have a great majority of the population engaged in mechanical tasks. It is evidently quite impossible to give every man and woman even a university education. Most people have to earn their living by the time they are sixteen. Even if this experiment were possible, it would be absurd, because the university education would unfit the average individual for the necessary work of life. It is no good to teach a man political economy and Greek, and then set him to make rivets in a boiler factory for the rest of his life. ........ Now undoubtedly much mischief is wrought by having a caste which is hereditary and nothing more, because the said degenerates and imbeciles interfere with the working of the social machine. Our business is to get the right man in the right place; and the hard and fast rule of primogeniture has in many cases worked badly. One may concede that ultimately it is bound to work badly is all cases. ....
... What then is the ideal form of government? The greatest of all the political lessons of history is that society is founded on the family, and the family on the land. A strong agrarian class is the best defense against invasion, physical or moral. "A bold peasantry, its country's pride, when once destroyed, can never be supplied." There is something in the contact with earth and air and water and sun which makes men vigorous. All strong and stable states have had Cincinnatus for a unit. The power of England has always lain in the landed nobility and gentry. Each great estate has been the nucleus of a peasantry with "soul" -- with a peculiar pride in itself. The lords of the land, great or little, were also the fathers of the people. Each took a particular and individual interest in each of his tenants....
... And it is the soul which determines the action of a true man. A nation swayed wholly by economic considerations is a nation lost alike to God and to man. "Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, When wealth accumulates and men decay."
The first business of government is to guard the hardihood of the race. So we must see to it that every child is healthy and well-fed, inured to sport, to hardship within certain bounds. The spirit must be free, the passions strong and well regulated, the intellect unhampered by old wives' fables. We must assure to every one the first necessaries of life, shelter, food, warmth, and the easy exercise of the power of reproduction, without shame or sentimentality.
We must make a firm, almost a paternal bond, between the "lord" and his dependents. If an employer were soundly whipped whenever one of his men or women had a preventable sickness, it would change things considerably! The happiest, the most healthy, the most prosperous class in recent history were the slaves in the South before the Civil War, wherever the owner was a decent Southern Gentleman, and not a Yankee nigger-driver with no interest in the slaves beyond dollars. If America is to survive, nay, to become a nation, it must be by the development of an enlightened feudalism....Let me repeat that last line, it must be by the development of an enlightened
feudalism"Look up the whole essay and compare this with the Feudal system that is the basis of Gorean city structure, and you see where I am coming from.
Also contrast These very clear views, with the this modern liberal misrepresentation of Thelema. -
Froclown, 93,
I think you misunderstand what Crowley meant by an *enlightened *feudalism. Also, a 'strong agrarian class' might have prevailed in his day, but no modern society has one.
But finally, while I respect Crowley for having tried to describe a society in which we all would prosper, I have never been convinced by his sociological and political theories. I think he is often at his weakest in these areas - certainly he is much less incisive in them than he is on mystical topics.
I'll stick with my 'liberal' ideas.
Over and out on this one,
93 93/93,
EM
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@Froclown said
"...because their is no attempt whatsoever to discern in general what classes of WILL expression are common and create social roles that approximate these classes of WILL. Nor is their a panel of experts that analyze the character of each individual to aid them in the discipline and self-awareness necessary to discern where one fits in that system of orbits.
...Thus a caste system is preparing possible orbital shells, such that those with a Will to fill them will have some where to express that WILL. I see no harm in that, and much good. Better than our system that has no scientific means to plan society in harmony with the individuals that occur their.
Experts will immediately be appointed to work out, when need arises, the details of the True Will of every individual, ... strictly scientific standards will be the sole measure by which the executive power shall order the people. "
Yet, you yourself acknowledged in another thread that:
@Froclown said"Scientific illuminism teaches that the rational mind alone is not able to grasp ones TRUE WILL"
I responded by further noting that the rational mind alone is not able to grasp the true will of a particular society either. I would have thought it also goes without saying that one individual is not able to grasp ANOTHER individual's true will, whether "strictly scientific standards" are used or not. This being the case, I cannot believe any panel of experts would have any actual authority to determine where I belong based on their assessment of my true will: because such an assessment can only be made by ONE person, me.
@Froclown said
"Thus we need a social system that recognizes the limits of each individual and does not attempt to push people into roles they are not suited for. "
I have a radical proclamation: such a system is already in place! And even better, it hasn't been designed by humans. It's called existence. It is necessarily a "social system" since existence is characterized by relationships, and it completely recognizes the limits of each individual, and it never attempts to push people into roles they are not suited for. Note your fish example as a perfect illustration of this.
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@Sphynx said
"Why is there so much emphasis on violence and conquest in Liber AL?"
@ThatNarrowFellow said
"I expect because it was written during the Victorian era ..."
Oh? Check out today's news (Iraq, Afgan, Assorted African Nations, Korea, etc, etc) - Not much has changed. No agreement - human nature was and is aggressive and it turns violent whenever it thinks it can get away with it.
@ThatNarrowFellow said
"It seems like some people would like to say, "Everyone's got their own individual true Will, but it has to be violent and orgiastic." This is a mistake. "
Agreement on this. There are obviously people whose "Will" is pacific and gentle. Even if human nature (like most animals) tends to be violent, it is often best to avoid such nonsense (if possible). -
let me refine what I meant
The rational mind unaided by objective records of ones expressed behaviors and the results of those behaviors, is not sufficient to discern what its own best interest might be, let alone what actions are in it's won best interest. One does no innately know thyself, one must mavke a study of onself on scientfic means, which includes calling upon unbiased third parites to help interpret data in a bind so better a double blind assesment sf the data.
The True WILL can then realized once all of the bits of datum, are incorperated and assemelated holistically by the unconscious transrational faculty, ie a samadhi and satori upon the conscious data, which unites and infuses that unbiased information into the personal identity and personality.
To put this another way, one creates knowledge of and enters into communication with the holy gaurdian angel. That being ones most objective self that generally only reveals inself with subjective ego bias and distoritions of the conscious mind, cleared of these distortions by objective accounting of ones behavior.
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I'd like to comment briefly on something as it harkens back to something I said way earlier in this thread. Froclown wrote that a fish's true will is to swim. Now if this if his interpretation of True Will, then I can understand why he writes what he writes. But, a fish's True Will is not to swim. You have taken out that one must discover their True Will. I doubt fish can do this. Let alone have a C & K of the HGA to guide or enlighten them to their True Will. So it seems this process was taken out of Froclown's writings, as if True Will was already conscious for everyone. Froclown also leaves out people who think they know their True Will but do not. These later two actions would account for most of the decisions in Froclown's writings, and I'm sure, the world of Gor as well.
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I think I covered that.
Fish don't have a conscious rational mind that works on symbols and language, so a Fish is always in knowledge and conversation, in fact a fish does not need conversation at all its angel (in this case elemental) manifests directly in the fishes actions,
anyway, the discovery of the True WILL, is the discovery that everything you think, feel, and intuit is askew, the True Will is Pure behaviorism, the self stripped of all cognition and the notion of an active agent, It it the body voided of the conscious mind. The conscious mind does not make discisions, because really the HGA has Willed the sort of conscious thoughts, the logic it will accept and reject, and the whole general personality
A fish simply is driven by its elemental spirit
A human can how -
Also fish live in nature, we live in constructed social systems, that attempt to protect us from elements of the wilderness, but often the society can frustrate our goals and instincts in the precess.
Thus the idea is to create a society that allows the free expression of ones natural WILL, while at the same time facilitating our needs. Thus the role of the social system is to put the right man in the right place, and to assure that each man is specialized and content in the roll society has devised for him, in that way he can contribute his whole being in the field of his expertise and feel a sense of personal satisfaction following his own WILL, without having to take into account other people. Yet due to expert social planning the Brute WILLS all fit together in such a way as to produce net gain in communal well being,
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I usually side with what Crowley wrote, but to me this is such bunch of nonsense.
"It is no good to teach a man political economy and Greek, and then set him to make rivets in a boiler factory for the rest of his life. ....
"Not even Crowley can say what's good for a man that has knowledge of Greek and political economy. If he decides to go work in a factory, so be it. You don't put what is good for society before what is good for the individual. That's what is wrong with this essay. It is written with the wrong insight.
" The happiest, the most healthy, the most prosperous class in recent history were the slaves in the South before the Civil War, wherever the owner was a decent Southern Gentleman, and not a Yankee nigger-driver with no interest in the slaves beyond dollars. "
This is one example of Crowley at its lowest.
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Its only considered low by you, because your brainwashed with capitalist liberal-democracy ideals.
That sentence is not low at all, it expresses exactly how, prosperity is not a function of absolute rugged individualism shunning all social influences, the ideal human condition is not to strive for personal wealth and thus alienation of oneself to a high throne.
Rather it shows that having a role to play in a higher order, in the community, a goal beyond oneself, where ones unique WILL is fulfilled in that higher ends, that is what determines success, for most individuals.
The Slave with a master who takes an interest in how not only in pumping out product for dollars, but has in fact is concerned that he is doing a service to the world, by producing the best product he can, having a clean safe farm, and slaves that are happy and healthy, to contribute to that over all situation. The slaves taken care of by such a master are of course subject to discipline, but they would also be granted a lively hood far beyond their means, if freed and forced into share cropping. They were also protected from the unhampered racism of to day due to their status as being the property of a well known master. Same one could just go up an shoot a rogue negro in those days and never face a trial, but if you shoot a man's slave, you will have to pay property damages.
Where as the as Crowley put it Yankee-nigger driver, had no concern for the slaves themselves and basically ran industrialized farming systems, that abuse the nature of the slaves, did not care if they were happy, did not care to run beautiful respectful plantations, they run factories that chewed up slaves and spit them out. Just like the early industries did to orphans and any one else forces to work for them, under the whip of the time clock and the constant danger of being crushed or burned, for a nickle a day. These people were free, in the sense they can just not go to work and not get paid, but they are more oppressed by far than the feudal serf or the southern slave.
The point is here that we mush take into account more factors than material wealth when we discern the WILL of the individual and the corrective good of society.
And this is were Midevil feudalism is far superior to modern Capitalism and Socialism is ever worse. -
@Froclown said
"Its only considered low by you, because your brainwashed with capitalist liberal-democracy ideals. "
Anyway, you are not addressing my point. You don't need a master before or after discovering your True Will.
Having a master before you discover your True Will, would make it very difficult (almost impossible) since you live for your master. (You can't do your spiritual retreat to perform the Abramelin Operation just to give an example)
Having a master after discovering your True Will makes no sense, since you live to serve your HGA and to do YOUR True Will, not your masters will.
(Unless your master is your guru and you have discovered that you need to serve your guru as part of your True Will)The whole essay is flawed from a thelemic point of view.
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"Oh? Check out today's news (Iraq, Afgan, Assorted African Nations, Korea, etc, etc) - Not much has changed. No agreement - human nature was and is aggressive and it turns violent whenever it thinks it can get away with it. "
93 Sphynx,
I think you've misunderstood my point. I'm not saying that human nature does not include violence (although I'm not sure it does to the point you suggest); I'm saying that at the time The Book of the Law was written society was much more restrictive in regards both to the nature of sexuality and the healthy expression of aggression. The effect of writing extensively on sexual license and violence would have been sharper on the average 19th century Londoner than it is on the 21st century New Yorker. Honestly, compared to today's HBO programming TBOTL is pretty tame.
My point in bringing it up is not to argue that Thelema is some kind of pacifist, hippie philosophy, but rather to offer an objection to Froclown's model. My objection is not the caste system, per se, but the implication that everyone should be solving their differences by beating the snot out of each other. It makes no sense for us to expect Stephen Hawking to defend his position as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics every year through mortal combat.
I think Froclown has rendered my objection null by quoting that bit from Crowley in which mention is made of arbitration committees or some such.
Hope this clears up my position.
Love=Law
- C
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well, in the A.'.A.'. one basically has a guide or master who is one grade a head. For from working out ones True WILL all on ones own, the purpose of this guide is to look over ones notes and practices, in order to grant a degree of objectivity, that is missing if one only judges ones own actions for oneself. One also has a understudy which one helps guide into one own grade. Thus one learns the lesson of being a subordinate and a superior role.
This I agree is quite far from the total one sided Domination of the Gorean slave, but it does make my point that True WILL is an objective scientific discovery, not a merely personal subjective inner journey of biased opinion. (Else wise I can just lie to myself and became totally deluded and basically psychotic)
The Gorean situation of the totally dominated slave, I do not indent for the initiate still working up to the HGA ritual, nor is it meant for the Adeptus 5=6, it is meant for the Adeptus major, on the verge of crossing the abyss. That is one who is attempting to fully withdraw from the physical manifestation, tho enter the abyss. Crossing the abyss means to fully dis-incarnate, and this means giving one self up, Mind, body and soul. It means renouncing every material possession of the body, even ones clothes. It also means you must give up every last claim to any human right, you must give up your health as well as your wealth, You must numb your mind, and kill your heart. It must be given freely or stripped away from you. Thus by total submission the slave becomes nothing.
Not only submission to one master, the slave submits fully to any and every free person. Owns nothing, has no rights, and does not even own her own name, even speaking in third person.
This is the way into the abyss, even the HGA is given up, one is slain fully and totally. The fully trained slave is an empty shell, the bade in the abyss, she is the adeptus exemptus.
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@Froclown said
"but it does make my point that True WILL is an objective scientific discovery, not a merely personal subjective inner journey of biased opinion. "
My understanding is limited here, but I was under the impression one's true will is really only intelligible to him or herself, and is received from subjective experiences.
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@Froclown said
"but it does make my point that True WILL is an objective scientific discovery "
93,
I wouldn't go that far. All you've really proven is that according to the A.'A.' system objective reflection or supervision is useful in directing one towards the True Will. If the discovery itself were objective, then you might as well turn everything over to your master and wait 4 to 6 weeks for him to process and encapsulate your True Will for you.
I hope that's not what we're moving towards.
Love=Law
- C
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Subjective thoughts are themselves objective events in space time.
To know ones True Will is not to hold a bit of linguistic information in ones mind, like my Will is to bake pies or my Will is to sail a ship, Rather the True WIll is more of an inner compass that ones conscious directed activity is or is not aligned with. The way in which the WILL expresses itself or the means by which one achieves it, are various and depend upon the individual and the environment at the time.All I am asking is that the nature of individuals be studied so that the classes of person or the modes of Will expression can be within a reasonable degree of uncertainty calculated and then a social environment set up so that individuals of every class of Will have the opportunity to reach their fullest potential expression of that Will, in a constructed system where each class supports the other classes, and a whole greater than the sum of each Will emerges in a societal aggregate of WILLs.
In order to discern what actions are effective means to achieve ones Will and which ones are not requires objective study. Subjectively one may feel as if the euphoria or heroin injections have satisfied ones WILL, one may confuse pleasant sensations with achievement of Real life goals, just as did the eaters of the Lotus or Ulysses's Crew on Cleo's Island. However an objective perspective shows than one is actually just lying around drooling on oneself, not actually accomplishing anything, lot a alone ones True WILL. Thus in this case the drug Euphoria is an escape, a running away from ones WILL, by short cutting the Doing of the WILL, with an chemical than simulates the reword of Ra-hoor-kuit. Thus, Drug addiction is fear disguised as love.
Small amounts of heroin used to reduce pain so that one can go to work and be productive however, is an example of a drug used as a tool to achieve the WILL.
But, one needs an objective perspective on this, or else one may be unable to tell the difference.We see the same action supports the Will of one and kills it in the other. Thus are examples of caste considerations, or rather medical consideration of who it shall be beneficial and who detrimental to be granted heroin rations to. (makes much more sense than a general moratorium against heroin use for all)
Likewise other consideration can be used to discern who will benefit from country living and manual labor, due to biological physique and psychological disposition, and who would be more suited to office labor, due to perhaps asthma or allergic reaction to country air, yet a sharp mind for figures and a touch of perfectionism.
To assure than the right person is suited to the right job, will result in the greater satisfaction for all. The office will not run smoothly if just one slow witted galoot who would have been a powerhouse on the farm, is hired to fumble through accounting forms, leaving the others to clean up his mistakes. The Farmer will likewise have little use for a scrawny little neurotic accountant, who can't lift a hay bail, and can't stop sneezing long enough to milk a cow.
Then we get into the fact that the neurotic an the galoot where told their whole lives they can be anything they want to be, and were pressured by peers and family to be this or that, not on suitability but on family tradition, or economic issues only. They were not given specialized training to be what they are cut out for, and thus even if the neuratic does fall into the accounting job, he will not be a trained as he could have been, if he were primed to be an accountant his whole life. Olympic athletes are the top of their game, not because after highschool they got tired of smoking pot and drinking for a few years and though, Hey I think I want to be a sprinter, maybe Ill join the Olympics. Rather from a very early age, they were selected for their ability and that potential was nourished, the child trained, disciplined and the WILL directed towards one and only one Goal the gold metal.
Thus would it be with every Cast. Each finding its own Goal the most worthy and necessary keystone in the whole society, and no one feeling resentful or jealous of other caste's roles.
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@Froclown said
"The Farmer will likewise have little use for a scrawny little neurotic accountant..."
The biggest thing about AC's use of the phrase True Will for me, is that he seems to see it as something fixed. Like if your True Will is to be a farmer, you should be a farmer for life and the best darned farmer that you can be. I don't know any career I would want to do for my entire life. I've enjoyed job changes and new avenues to explore.
If it's argued that True Will doesn't necessarily mean a profession, then we shouldn't attempt to impose it's usage upon us in that way - ie. the caste system.
I am Legion and Loving it
PS froclown - that farmer, if he's smart, will take advantage of any good accountant willing to help. Maintaining a farm is really difficult in the USA, and every bit helps. Also there is always work to be done on a farm, even from the weaker members of the race.
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Scarecrow, 93,
It would likely be misleading to say something like "My True Will is to be a farmer," or "Being an astronaut is my True Will." The actual occupation is the end-product in most cases.
The formulae for those TWs could possibly be: "To exist close to the earth" or "To know the glory of the stars." The two occupations would fit these primary phrasings, but not exclusively so. I could see a marathon runner enacting the first formula, and someone who painted visionary images conforming to the second.
How the TW is enacted in life can easily shift from time to time, and decade to decade. As our understanding stretches, it might even need revising after a time, to become more inclusive of what our lives are about.
93 93/93,
EM
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Alright - let's suppose that your idea of the True Will is what Crowley means by the True Will. In such as case do you see how you could possible implement a caste system based on this scheme?
My point is that you couldn't.
What I was trying to get at is that if the True Will of someone isn't as detailed as a profession... then it's impossible to put people into castes.
Castes based around "existing close to the earth" or "knowing the glory of the stars" seem impossible.
On another note... "existing close to the earth" and "knowing the glory of the stars"... really?
True Will discussion are usually very bizzare and this one qualifies. Would you venture to put forth some specific examples of people and what you believe their True Will was, so that I can understand your interpretation better?