College of Thelema: Thelemic Education

I've learned a lot of things in the past few years from divination. Maybe this would be of help to someone else:

-Everything takes longer than you think it will.

-Reading more is always a good thing. Higher information input is better.

-Willpower alone is not enough. Discipline is built up step-by-step and is destroyed easily.

-My immediate intuition is not always a good guide for whether I will get along with someone. A better heuristic I am testing is if the person is a friend of a friend, I will tend to ultimately get along with them.

-I take too long to pivot and get stuck in bad situations for too long.

-Focus/obsession is necessary to drive real results.

-The mind distorts things and blows them out of proportion.

-It's important to start things, however imperfectly, because you'll come back to them and improve. You only make real progress in the returning.

-Having a strong routine makes me happy in the long-term.

I want agon to stop.

I think he might have been

David Myatt famously praised 9/11. I was thinking about terrorism from a demand-based standpoint.

So we interpellate on the Earth, and peoples' sutures are projecting. So say I'm a martial arts expert. But you lose in some other sutured field of expertise. But that's not why, right?

But, as people know, to people, on the planet, that's why.

So you're still thinking about this guy when you notice there's terrorism on the planet. And hey, I'm pool on the Earth for terrorism. So say I join a terrorist organization to YOU.

And that's where there's terrorism on the planet to people, and say the pool generally doesn't want it on the planet. That's where we're afraid of terrorism. So we can describe/define terrorism as "annoying."

It reminds me of an episode of the Sarah Silverman Show, a show I didn't find that funny. There are two guys in a long-term relationship, and one of them suggests the other should try something new at the diner, say, a Tab soda. This is instead of a Coke, which he usually orders.

So the other guy's like, yeah, why don't I just order a Tab soda? And the other guy has to keep going along with it. Are you going to go back on that?

So we get really into Tab soda. And this goes on and on for the duration of the episode, to the point where they even drive a Tab soda car and visit the Tab soda factory. Cause yeah, why don't I order a Tab soda?

So we all have demand for terrorism, so say I'm a terrorist TO YOU, because I don't want your demand, but I'll pool it on the planet with terrorism.

So what this works out to is you get "that's who I am to people" with "not-pool" as a terrorist and "that's why."

So what I'm wondering is, was David Myatt just a really nice guy who they thought they pooled (but really didn't) and decided to go Tab Soda on the pool's demand with terrorist? Cause that's who I am to you?

I was looking at a picture of him at a monastary, and honestly, he looks maybe a bit awkward, like me in Facebook pictures at high school as an usher at a wedding.

And that's why he's Anton Long?

I was thinking about this topic again recently, especially on the subject of causality.

So if we are able to make a prediction, it would imply we have some knowledge of causality, that we can tell an effect from its cause, or something along those lines.

But is it possible we can take swap causality for a better word here?

I was reading a book, Parallel Distributed Processing, about machine learning recently. Machines and artificial intelligences, when learning, don’t discern cause from effect. Rather they make associations and strengthen the associations the more they appear together. This idea is also found in the works of David Hume. We can say two phenomena appear together, and we may tend to associate them together, but we cannot say that one phenomenon causes the other.

We don’t know causality; rather we have learned associations.

If we take away the concept of causality, and replace it with associations, we may have a better model to work with, especially as concerns divination.

Lacan has a concept called the suture, which covers up the cut. The cut is the person’s original trauma. The suture, in covering up the cut, basically allows one to discern others’ motives (“because”), but we are basically always projecting here, or in the dark. The suture I have found to be associated with “That’s why” or because. When you reach the point of ultimate causality, that is the suture. But the suture uses heuristics. We’re never really sure of others’ motives or actual causality. We’re generally projecting.

So that’s where divination comes in. We are making divinations, predictions, with our suture. If we kill the “Thats’s why”, though, as in Thelema, we can replace the wall of causality with the machine learning model of associations. If we are good at making predictions, that would imply we have strong associations.

I’m also thinking about why Crowley recommended not making divinations with respect to one’s true will. Maybe if “it must needs be” then you will have to find a way regardless.

But I think divination might be useful in learning about your own suture and associations. It would also probably be useful, especially when you are “wrong” or judge your associations not up to par, to figure out what others’ sutures and associations are like, such that you could get a better understanding of other people.

Replacing causality with associations feels really good, it feels much more love under will.

“Science, art, philosophy and the like are our prime care…We must intensify, concentrate, exalt this side of our nature.” – Aleister Crowley, letter to Jane Wolfe

“So the adept has military genius, or much knowledge of Greek; how do these attainments help his purpose, or the purpose of the Brothers?” – Liber Thisharb

I've been reading the Story of Civilization by Will Durant and going over the works I haven't read yet, mostly from the Renaissance on. It's amazing how many people have contributed to make mankind, and our civilization, what it is today. We have so many great geniuses contributing to mankind: Erasmus and Machiavelli, Spenser and Moliere, Diderot and Rousseau.

My interpretation of Crowley's corpus is that he was trying to create genius. This idea is put forth most bluntly in Postcards to Probationers:

@Postcards to Probationers said

THEOREMS
I. The world progresses by virtue of the appearance of Christs (geniuses).
II. Christs (geniuses) are men with super-consciousness of the highest order.
III. Super-consciousness of the highest order is obtainable by known methods.
Therefore, by employing the quintessence of known methods we cause the world to progress.

From there, the methods given are his works, all the Libers and documents and books which serve the purpose of serving mankind.

I've been trying to create my own methods for the creation of this genius as well. I believe it involves discipline and work. I've read a lot of "success" books and have tried out what I could to see what would work from a non-esoteric standpoint. Crowley, Nietzsche, Vivekananda and the others can take care of the esoteric, dharmic aspect of it.

In my theory the first aspect of this is the compound effect. Little is accomplished instantaneously. But hard work over time wields results. According to Malcolm Gladwell the world's experts get 10,000 hours of deliberate practice before they attain mastery.

If one were to work 3 hours a day at a task they could have 10,000 hours of deliberate practice in as little as ten years. Even people further along in life could become a world expert at something entirely new within ten years.

This expertise would certainly require a lot of willpower to push oneself into the task. Luckily there are methods to increase willpower from a scientific standpoint. These include exercise, proper nutrition, meditation and proximity to nature (The Willpower Instinct, 2011). Doing each of these things increases willpower and the likelihood you will train at your appointed task.

Once you get good at something you are more likely to like doing it. This idea stems from the book So Good They Can't Ignore You (2012). Your expertise compounds.

I think there is a lot to be done for mankind. We have people seriously pushing the envelope. Elon Musk is trying to get people into space, all the information in the world is available at our fingertips on this device, and all it takes is to do it. If you have a Truth that is not in line with the current everyday reality, that does not negate that Truth. It just means you might have create the conditions for that truth yourself. That might involve work, raising your standards and serving mankind.

According to Tai Lopez, a lot of the work to be done for those starting out is to learn as much as you can. Once you have learning, you will know enough to be able to make a contribution to humanity. A lot of people think Tai is a scam-- why wouldn't they-- but I think a lot of people of my generation are lost and this is helping. He recommends to read a book a day. As a reader I like this. It only takes a few hours and you feel stronger every day. I personally want to have passive income streams and I know I'll feel better about that if I am providing a genuine value and service to humanity.

I'm still going over my reading of all the world's geniuses and influencers, but am finding that it's entirely different to be in a world populated by these geniuses than by "what other people are thinking" or your inner critic. According to 20th century self-help guru Jim Rohn we are the sum of the five people closest to us. It's better to be closest to the great geniuses that carved their own way through history than to those you hate.

"Always in our company. - Everything that is of my kind, in nature and history, speaks to me, praises me, spurs me on, comforts me - everything else I don't hear or forget right away. We are always only in our own company."- Nietzsche, The Gay Science

I'm finding more and more the task is to raise mankind. We still cannot think properly, and one cannot think alone. So much of our thought is based on left-right, up-down, binary thinking.

Further I perceive ill-health. Man needs to become healthy. Nietzsche, another body-based, somatic thinker, stressed health: "I will myself healthy." We take on the characteristics of those around us-- we take their disease and we take their health. We want sentiments and nobility (Plutarch's Lives) and the White School of Magick. Also healthy animal spirits, Greek.

If we lived in a healthy society

What are you doing to contribute to history and make your mark on humanity?

I want to make humanity healthy for the purpose of filosophy and new values, new judgments, new methods and new sentiments. Maybe I'll have to become a doctor.

There are a couple of things about right and left acceleration that can be clarified with Lacanian psychology.

It will require a bit of thinking.

In this picture we have Lacan's four discourses: www.scielo.br/img/revistas/interc/v39n2//1809-5844-interc-39-02-0099-gf02-en.jpg

In all discourses here the top left is Agent, bottom left is Truth, top right is the Other, bottom right is the Product.

S1 is the Master Signifier (Phallus), $ is the Barred Subject, S2 is Knowledge, and a is the Little Other.

For right acceleration we have the Master's Discourse. The agent here is the master signifier, the phallus. The reference is to the Hegelian Master (Phenomenology of Spirit), who is in a "fight to the death" with the other for recognition. The result of the fight for recognition is the truth, the barred subject.

The issue with this discourse is that the Master cannot comprehend his own discourse. He can say what his discourse is, but he cannot say what it is with any understanding. Before he would have understanding he is in the fight to the death with the other.

The contrast to the master, in Hegel, is the slave. The master fights for recognition among men, but the slave works for mastery of nature (bodhisattva-like).

With some right accelerationists I have seen, they are perverts. They take the right-wing jouissance and pervert it. That's why it's so much fun.

We want jouissance and adventure. The only place there's really desire is in the prisons and in the brothels.

For left acceleration we have the University Discourse. The agent is knowledge and the truth is the phallus/master signifier. The other is treated as the other and the product is the barred subject.

So this is like communism. We can overcode the society, but as long as we are doing it with the phallus, it is still worthless. We don't want phallic jouissance. We want creativity and viruality. We want new ways of interacting with each other. The University Discourse imposes a new form of knowledge whose product would still be the barred subject, who has to deal with the same worthless phallic jouissance. It would not give us a utopia or a paradise, and it would not relieve us from demand.

This is why this discourse makes people mad. They are telling them how things should be, and as such the truth of their discourse is still the phallus. Why "should" it be that way? The immediate answer is because of the phallus, because I said so. This is not desire.

The objection the left may give is "But that's what the right does." But the answer to that is "So you have ressentiment." And therefore the sublation is to accelerate. We move into the phallic discourse, we appropriate it for our desire.

My view of the left-wing politics is that we want it so that people are treated at their subject point and allowed in the society's signifying chains. That is to say, so they can act naturally, love is the law, regardless of how they are as a barred subject. For example, handicapped people are often not treated as subjects like capable people. We wince when we see someone like that because how can they be okay with that? It doesn't look healthy. But stuff like that, handicaps, trans people-- the barred subject is where people can't help being how they are. And they already exist as castrated. The need is not to overcode society with a different phallic discourse, those people will still be castrated. The need is to move into and through phallic jouissance to where people can feel safe and okay in their lives. We need to be evil enough, or not even, to interpellate these people at their subject points.

And this can't be a "should," because that's phallic and that's the University Discourse. This is where right acceleration comes in, as in perversion they move past phallic discourse into absence and desire.

The idea is to accept every evil and pervert it. The right can be evil, because I already don't understand it: I adore it.

Deleuze was far-left, and his philosophy is based more on Nietzsche than Marx. We want to create new affects, new ways of treating each other and playing with each other. I think left-wingers should come up with a higher ideal. There are so many good ideas out there. Why aren't they advocating paradise on earth? We could bring down the kingdom of heaven.

"Because of the phallic discourse." Right.

Hence, even if the left is ressentiment, we must move into it, leveling everything in our path. Perhaps we will find something of value.

Nietzsche Quote

"Briefly and regrettably, they belong to the LEVELLERS, these wrongly named "free spirits"—as glib-tongued and scribe-fingered slaves of the democratic taste and its "modern ideas" all of them men without solitude, without personal solitude, blunt honest fellows to whom neither courage nor honourable conduct ought to be denied, only, they are not free, and are ludicrously superficial, especially in their innate partiality for seeing the cause of almost ALL human misery and failure in the old forms in which society has hitherto existed—a notion which happily inverts the truth entirely!

What they would fain attain with all their strength, is the universal, green-meadow happiness of the herd, together with security, safety, comfort, and alleviation of life for every one, their two most frequently chanted songs and doctrines are called "Equality of Rights" and "Sympathy with All Sufferers"—and suffering itself is looked upon by them as something which must be DONE AWAY WITH.

"We opposite ones, however, who have opened our eye and conscience to the question how and where the plant "man" has hitherto grown most vigorously, believe that this has always taken place under the opposite conditions, that (and here's the badass part)for this end the dangerousness of his situation had to be increased enormously, his inventive faculty and dissembling power (his "spirit") had to develop into subtlety and daring under long oppression and compulsion, and his Will to Life had to be increased to the unconditioned Will to Power—we believe that severity, violence, slavery, danger in the street and in the heart, secrecy, stoicism, tempter's art and devilry of every kind,—that everything wicked, terrible, tyrannical, predatory, and serpentine in man, serves as well for the elevation of the human species as its opposite—we do not even say enough when we only say THIS MUCH, and in any case we find ourselves here, both with our speech and our silence, at the OTHER extreme of all modern ideology and gregarious desirability, as their antipodes perhaps? What wonder that we "free spirits" are not exactly the most communicative spirits? that we do not wish to betray in every respect WHAT a spirit can free itself from, and WHERE perhaps it will then be driven?"

--Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

I hope people will understand this, I know it's difficult.

"Let thy pity be a divining: to know first if thy friend wanteth pity. Perhaps he loveth in thee the unmoved eye, and the look of eternity." --Thus Spoke Zarathustra

I think you are repressing Lacan's object a. Object a is "a void presupposed by a demand." This is your jealousy. Object a is connected with semblance and representation.

There is no discourse that is not a semblance, there is no Other of the Other, there is no such thing as a sexual relationship.

The discourse that might not be a semblance is "There is no discourse that is not a semblance."

The sexual relationship doesn't stop not being written. This is your repression.

Given the whole and the not-whole, the universe is the place in which, due to the fact of speaking, everything succeeds- that is, succeeds in making the sexual relationship fail in the male manner.

From the ladies' side, it is on the basis of the elaboration of the not-whole that one must break new ground. Were there another jouissance than phallic jouissance (feminine jouissance), it shouldn't be/could never fail to be that one. This jouissance speaks, and the first effect of speaking is that is speaks of something else. It makes you capable of serving some purpose, since you don't know how to enjoy otherwise than to be enjoyed or duped, because it is the jouissance that shouldn't be/could never fail.

There is no such thing as a sexual relationship and there is no Other of the Other.

The Real cannot be written. There is no discourse that is not a semblance. The Real is impossible. The Real of jouissance is impossible.

Of interest may be Lacan's four discourses, notably hysteria and the master's discourse: www.google.com/search?q=lacan+hysteria+matheme&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiyxOCF6_LdAhVCx1kKHcAaBf8Q_AUIDygC&biw=1920&bih=969#imgrc=fVX9shFLe8nrZM:

Thanks for the reply.

I don't think "actualizing oneself as the opposite gender" is the accurate way to put this phenomenon. My experience of this is that the desire will do it for you. You are not running the machine; the machine is running you.

@Land, Meltdown, Fanged Noumena, p. 456 said

"Level-1 or world space is an anthropomorphically scaled, predominately vision-configured, massively multi-slotted reality system that is obsolescing very rapidly.

Garbage time is running out.

Can what is playing you make it to level 2?

Meltdown has a place for you as a schizophrenic HIV+ transsexual chinese-latino stim-addicted LA hooker with implanted mirrorshades and a bad attitude.
"

He references vampiric lesbianism a couple times throughout Fanged Noumena and Crowley too in the chapter on Qabbalah. I take these as references to Deleuzo-Guattarian becoming-womans, whom the book is indebted to.

"I would take a more Austin Osman Spare approach and heed this as a reference to Self-Love. If one insists on a gender-based context, I would still lean towards simple androgyny (or even masturbation) rather than a call to actualizing oneself as the opposite sex."

I agree with the self-love interpretation.

That said, I am less inclined to agree the latter part of your quote, considering the author of my quote also wrote:

@Crowley said

"Now I'll shave and make up my face like the lowest kind of whore and rub on perfume and go after Genesthai [Russell] like a drunken two-bit prick-pit in old New Orleans. He disgusts me sexually, as I him, as I suspect…[T]he dirtier my deed, the dearer my darling will hold me; the grosser the act the greedier my arse to engulph him!"

Further, we are talking about acceleration here. If we are to admit androgyny and masturbation I see no reason for desire to stop itself when it finds out it has woman's desire.

Further, we don't have the structure to talk about these beneficial processes (becoming-woman) in Thelema like we do in postmodern philosophy, in spite of the fact that Crowley was using them himself. I went through them myself and had to dig them out of Crowley, D&G, Rimbaud and Lacan. They are more powerful than anyone gives them credit for --because most people won't do them--. It's how you get voodoo.

I had to dig them out of those respective authors in the first place because everyone else is too dull to see them, or pretending they are too dull to see them. You feel "crazy" to be this much more able than others, and that ultimately is the reason I am posting. Yes it's real. Maybe it'll help someone else who stumbles on this forum out of interest in Crowley, or help other people who are actually capable.

To abstract this process, and see the world where we admit our desire is valid, is in my estimation normal. The fact that we can't abstract this is no longer my failure but yours.

It may be uncomfortable, but it's real --and part of an actual process for humanity--. Why it's a process and not already done is my contention. That's the context of the thread I have here.

Namaste.

My impression of Crowley was that he was running Anti-Oedipus, he was very knowledgeable on Freud, psychoanalysis and the other philosophers of his time.

I like Nick Land and Mencius Moldbug, I think Alain Badiou is amazing too.

I think all of this philosophy is ahead of its time, it's a shame too, the concepts just need to be put into words such that people will see them and understand them.

I wanted to write more on psychosis in this thread.

Tu vs Vous

In French and some other languages there is a distinction between Tu (the friendly you) and Vous (the formal You or "You All"). This distinction is important in grasping psychosis. Tu is S(a), the subject with respect to the little other (talking to your friend), where Vous is S(A), the subject with respect to the Big Other (addressing your military commander or giving a speech to thousands of people).

This distinction can also be made in English. There's a difference between talking to your friend vs. giving a speech or being addressed by someone with power over you. Some people insist on being Vous.

Thus fear of public speaking is ranked worse than fear of death.

You Are Who I Say You Are

A typical subject of psychosis is someone who, maybe they don't have the best father, so they rely on the social field for their formal S(A). Maybe they're "crazy" for the sake of their father. If S(A) breaks down due to life circumstances [read spiritual breakdown, divorce, etc.], they may be kicked into psychosis. The metaphor here is a three-legged stool that loses one of its legs. If that was going to happen, if you can feel it was always going to happen that way, you may have this structure.

If the stool breaks, it's possible to not be allowed back in the social field with your same S(A). That is to say, your history and psychic structure don't matter. Where this person (Vous) interpellates you is your S(A). This is known as subjectification. That is to say, it's possible to treat a person at their S(A) with your conception of them rather than the Big Other's. That is to say, S(A) becomes S(Father(A)) or S(Brother(A)). This is way more common than one might expect. One thinks of BDSM master- slave contracts, but unspoken, "informal" and in real life.

Examples of this include Theon Greyjoy from Game of Thrones (who was brainwashed and subjectivized such that he himself would not try to escape) and Dora K. from Freud's journals. Dora was an 18-year-old girl whose father was having an affair with another woman. The father would implicate Dora as the "bait" for the woman's husband so he could carry on the affair without that man's interference. The father billed Dora as "crazy", so he sent her to Freud, then withdrew her as soon as the treatment started to help.

Breakdown

If the stool breaks down, homosexuality is the way out of psychosis. This feels catastrophic- Tell Theon Greyjoy "Just Go Gay" and wipe out your entire history as an existent being- but it generally ends up expanding the subject's worldview and turns out okay.

To look at it another way this is just the continual breakdown of the self.

To look at it a third way is to "Note that there are now two sexes in one person throughout, so that each individual is self-procreative sexually, whereas Isis knew only one sex, and Osiris thought the two sexes opposed. Also the formula is now Love in all cases; and the end is the beginning, on a higher plane." (Magick in Theory and Practice, Chapter V, IAO).

But if we are to move into the New Aeon, as good perverts, we must admit that "It is certain that every letter of this cipher hath some value;" (Liber LXV, I:52)

So we go "Right!!" as Good Psychotics And "The strong brown reaper swept his swathe and rejoiced!"

Fear of God

Everything can be pushed into the Fear of God. Even a subjectivized being still has the social field. To fear god over everything is to go Moses on the social field. This is a gamble to break out of psychosis or to go further into it. Theology, I have noticed, can be correlated strongly with psychosis. That is to say, if God is everyone-else, or if God is Nature, that is working with S(A).

I apologize for all the talk of the social field. This was pushed onto me, so as a Good Pervert I am sexualizing Public Humiliation, Satanic Sacrifice, Biosemiotics, Subjectivization, and the entire Social Field Turning Against Someone. Fuck with me. But Dear God stop giving me the Gimp Cagers and Snuff Filmers.

Transexuality

Psychosis is also correlated with transexuality. Freud's study on psychosis focused on Judge Paul Schreber, who escaped psychosis through his becoming-woman.

To put someone else in psychosis as your S(A) gives you a trans-phallus. Both the psychotic and the person putting him in psychosis are transexual. Fascists who "hate" transexuals are perverts on trans folk. They recognize the trans psychosis but for some reason think the game has rules. If you were really fascist, if you really wanted to hit the limit, you'd go trans yourself.

"The False Veil of Innocence Must Be Rended in Approaching the Law."

But in Western society it's still taboo to be trans. It's like being black.

We (my perception of the-state-of-things) still don't have the everyday language to talk about these things. When we talk about psychosis, S(A) and transexuality we are talking about nature. Love is the Law. Even when one is singled out in psychosis their libido still flows out of the void.

To develop the language to talk about this stuff in everyday life is, I think, a start to being able to deal with nature as it is, rather than as trans-psychotic-perverts (Moi) would have Vous think it is.

Sorry Alice. That was a very abstract idea.

I'm about 2/3 done with his seminars and have gleaned much more knowledge from reading them.

Desire and Language

It's possible to take desire from language. Consider a child learning how to speak. They want to enter into language in order to be able to communicate with the adults. This is their desire to enter into language. We still have this same desire. This was for me the appeal of Erowid and drug literature like Fear and Loathing or Junky. The authors' entrance into a new language, in this case the language of the drug world, resulted in their also taking desire.

I think it's possible to take desire continuously. Doing so would create a "Living Language." If a group of people had no ressentiment, meaning they would not interfere and let things take their course, we could continuously take and let a language evolve, phenomenologically describing states and naming them.

I actually took a lot of desire from Crowley's work and his associated lexicon.

Desire and the Big Other

Lacan has a very beautiful formula for how we take desire. I wish I could draw the diagram out.

Basically desire flows from the Big Other, A, (our idea of everyone else) up to $ <> D, the barred subject's desire or phantasy. This barred desire flows horizontally into a limit, the phallus. Moving downward from the phallus, through the line of anal sexuality, we hit S(A), or the subject with respect to the Big Other.

Enjoyment and Sexual Discourse

"The woman is in a position, with respect to sexual enjoyment, to punctuate the equivalence of enjoyment and the semblance [semblance here being her discourse-- what clothes she likes, what she finds hot for herself, how she enjoys, etc]...

In this lies the distance man finds from her. That the semblance is here enjoyment, for the man, is sufficiently indicated by the fact that enjoyment is semblance [He enjoys her discourse, clothes, etc.]...

The woman knows enjoyment and semblance, if they are equivalent in a dimension of discourse, are nonetheless distinct in the test, that the woman represents for man the truth."

No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship

There is no such thing as a sexual relationship. Belief in the existence of a sexual relationship is one way people get "Choronzon'd."

Jouissabsence vs. Jouisspresence

There are two types of jouissance: jouisspresence, or the standard phallic jouissance, and jouissabsence, the feminine form of jouissance. Males have jouissabsence too, it is right underneath jouisspresence and generally is "unrecognized."

Females have a mixture of jouissabsence and jouisspresence. Males do too, but as males, generally only the jouisspresence is recognized.

Idealism and Gender

No philosopher, not even Berkeley, has ever pushed idealism so far as to deny the existence of two distinct sexes.

Virtual Sexuality

"In copulation the subject cannot really possess the body that he embraces. He does not know the limits of possible jouissance, I mean the one that he can have of the body of the Other, as such, because these limits are uncertain... Here we find the fainting function (the little death) to which he loses the third element of the relation of the couple."

Hitting the limits of jouissance by the reduction of the "three" of a sexual relationship down to the two. (The third in the relationship being the others besides me and you). I think there is a Kabbalistic metaphor here, of reducing Binah to Chockmah.

Ethics and the Big Other

I don't think any idea of society is ethical. It's better to have general resentment against an individual than it is to push them against the entire society or an entire group of people. The "everyone-else", meaning everyone else in the world, is the closest thing to God there is, and to invoke this against a person is unethical. That is not their subject point. I think this is one reason Satanism, especially including ONA-style Satanism, can frighten people. They don't invoke the Big Other, and are more ethical (right) for it.

But this formula flows back into the one articulated above in "Desire and the Big Other." I think most desire is female-- that is, desire is the desire of the other, or an image of oneself; and with that image the possibility of a new world.

If anyone is interested in reading Lacan, most of his work, including untranslated seminars, is available at www.lacaninireland.com/web/translations/seminars/. Finding out every other seminar is already translated online has been a great boon for me.

The concept of medical insurance is based on the idea that, in the social field, you don't have to chop off your dick with a pair of rusty scissors or get an abortion with a coat-hanger. You get to feel safe.

First idea is that we follow the law. I took this idea from the Church of Satan. You are allowed to be a Satanist in America if you follow the law. You have all your rights, as a Satanist, if you follow the law. I believe the Temple of Set followed in this tradition.

Next you are allowed (as far as you are able) to be asocial. That is to say, what you do and what you think about, insofar as you follow the law, has nothing to do with anybody else. You are allowed to think and act as you wish. One Satanist example was picking your nose. Picking your nose is breaking a cultural norm. But so what? It's convenient. You're a Satanist, you can pick your nose if you want. This extends to other acts, insofar as you follow the law.

From here, you can be as you want to be, a Satanist, protected by the law. Now you are allowed to feel as you feel, and you don't have to go looking to others for confirmation.

In other words, you have a form of medical insurance.

We can extend this. Once we have one asocial individual, willing and able to be polite, he can extend his medical insurance to others.

First tenet is to "make it safe." We want the other person to feel safe in the conversation. We don't want to make them feel judged or under pressure. We are trying to communicate, not force.

If this is done unconsciously, if we are always trying to "make it safe" for the other person, they will attain medical insurance. We want them to be able to talk without pressure. This isn't scarcity-minded or a zero-sum game. You will get to talk and be heard if you are polite and respectful. We are making it safe. Most people are starved for this type of conversation. We would like it to be the new norm. We will get to know each other.

This new safety is further enforced by the government. The government is appreciative when people actively follow the law. They would like to keep us safe, as that is their job, and by following the law and respecting them, we are making their job easier and more satisfying.

Further, when normal people stop screwing each other over, the people we actually don't want, serial killers and the like, get revealed, because with the newfound libido, they can't keep a secret anymore. It might very well turn out that these people are the only reason all of us don't have medical insurance in the first place.

This is another reason we love the police and actively help them. We want the government to protect us so we can just be Arjuna and interact with each other without pressure or fear of social castration. You can be safe in what you want to do.

"There is a law now."

@Ab-ul-Az said

"

We should be careful what we mean by 'free love', if that equates a busy-body sexually with different people during a short period of time while having the opportunity to be in a stable relationship then something is off. We should be neither exceedingly suppressing it, nor subliming it, as the Master himself said.

I'm also of the belief that spiritually sensitive people can't survive such lifestyle, as they create rapports easily and their auras become effected.

Eventually, as initiates, we'll have to meet our twin, and experience hieros gamos, the well known alchemical marriage. I doubt an entrance back to Shamballa is made alone, or is it?"

I agree with Avshalom, that's what girls do when they call each other sluts.

You think females-to-society don't have the same drive to attack and rape everything that moves that we do?

They do, that's their dick. They have to cover it up because people won't/don't recognize them. They get it taken away from them so constantly that that's what "female" becomes.

My view of this topic has grown to be more nuanced.

I think common male behavior towards females is the issue. Females are treated as given without a penis. This is incorrect. Females have a penis.

I always wondered why females aren't treated like males. That is to say, why do people project them as in a subservient role?

Females have a death drive interpellated. When you project them in a subservient role, which you are probably basically doing because that's how it works in America, you are using your projection of the society. In this sense they are implicitly coerced. But society is not a real thing.

I used to project females have a death drive interpellated (as in they are "fellow adventurers") but stopped a long time ago. That's what kids do.

If you project them in a subservient role consciously, when you do so, the female has to fold himself into your projection of him because you are operating with the force of the entire society and all of its inertia. The male can take advantage of the female place in society.

This is where people become "horny for a superego." They have to get turned on, they get wet, basically because evolution is preparing them to become raped.

If you read the book Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski, you will find that female arousal does not correlate with wanting sex. A girl being horny does not mean she wants sex. The correlation given in the book is around 50-50. Half the times a girl is aroused does not mean she wants sex.

They should probably invent two different words, one for "not-really" horny and another for actually turned on.

When "not-really" horny, the female is being libidinally coerced into cooperation. They implicitly agree with the scenario at hand- one because it's happening, and two because that is how you are projecting the society is operational.

I can't be passive energetically either, my natural state, for the same reason females can't. If females are allowed to operate naturally, with their penises interpellated, somebody's always going to freak out, it seems. Most males are not very attuned, and will fight to make sure females don't have penises. Somebody always wants to block the natural flows.

That's what I think the problem is. Females aren't allowed to be treated as individuals with their own penis, volition, self-consciousness, will, decision-making apparatus, etc.

Free love would be A-OK if we admitted girls have cocks.

These are some of the things I've been thinking about/discovering recently. It helps me think to engage in dialogue with other people and this forum is a good resource for that. If you have your own discoveries feel free to post them.

Persuasion & the Elixir of Life
There are a few classic books on persuasion (as in sales techniques) that can be fun when used BY the elixir of life. These books list techniques like "Give them an ideal to live up to" or "Throw down a challenge" or "Get a commitment" as tactics. I've found the elixir/elan vital/whatever you want to call it will take the persuasion techniques you learn and use them for its own purposes.

One of the primary tactics in How to Win Friends and Influence People is to make the other individual desire something-- here, the Elixir itself is desire, where it appears to Desire Desire, and where it also Desires Others to Desire (Desire).

Good books to check out are How to Win Friends and Influence People, Influence, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Persuasion, and George Hutton's corpus on Kindle.

Jealousy and Desire
If you've looked into Esther Perel, a marriage counselor's recent books (Mating in Captivity and the State of Affairs) you'd have discovered her thesis that jealousy is a good thing: it is in fact desire. She believes that sometimes cheating is a way to revitalize a marriage if both partners still want to make it work.

I've also noticed that jealousy is just hot. If you're Lacanian on jealousy, if (the Middle Word in History) you can remain in control through the jealousy, you will be able to harness the jealousy and push through it and you will become Extremely Horny. You will become Unloosed.

Further, I was Pooled as a Cluckold (as in "We Pooled You as a Cluckold") early on in my Magical Career, and noticed one can also become Lacanian as a Cluckold. This is basically Hardwired Homosexual Jealousy. This is where people have Humiliation Fetishes. It's also (prospectively) one of the most intense chemical rushes I can imagine. Only Lacanian Rape can compare.

The Kingdom of Heaven
"There are some sodomites which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some sodomites which were made sodomites of men: and there are sodomites which have made themselves sodomites for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it!" (Bagh I Muattar)

There is no limit to idealism. Until we have brought down the Kingdom of Heaven, and razed it, we are not finished with you. And that's why we're all guilty here-- Mother Mary, Full of Grace, the Lord is With You, Blessed Are You Among Women-- Why Isn't It Done Yet?

Becoming Hot
I used to make fun of fat people out of hatred. This was because we're all animals-- who cares? If fat animals are going to make fun of fatter animals, and pool me, I'm gonna do it too.

Later, I realized I was wrong about everything. They make fun of fat people because we want to look good and it feels good for everyone to look good.

Therefore one of the most important things in life is to be attractive. We think part of this is hormonal. The concept of "Full" and "Hungry" correspond to desire. If you think "I'm Fat", go "Gay" where that thought is. I think this is a female formula. It helps if someone can help you and do it for you (as in they want to help you become hot or hotter, and can help you realize where that thought is).

We're thinking "cup bearer" or "stripper" for the males.

On Language and Concepts
Basically every sentence can be reduced to its linguistic form. It doesn't matter what the content of the sentence is and it really doesn't matter whether the sentence is True or False (this would be based on an axiomatic system anyway). All that matters is what people believe. So basically, you can say anything you want, and if people believe it, it's True.

The important thing is reducing things to their linguistic form. If every sentence is reduced to a linguistic form, nothing has any meaning any more. We're just talking. But the important thing is we can say anything we want.

Lalangue
Another concept by psychologist Lacan: language is libidinal. What we say is just chattering, it doesn't matter what we say. This is revealed on the psychoanalyst's couch when one is allowed to say anything they want without needing to be right. But this is how all language works- no one is ever right in the eyes of the Big Other.

On Prospecting
I don't think progress is necessarily made in one life time. I am pessimistic for the libido. That said, I think over-forecasting one's own gains, lying about one's life, and acting like your life was amazing and nothing could possibly compare might make future generations believe just that. I think that way about the 1960's.

Telling people your life was way better than it was will make future generations raise their standards when they look back on how things used to be.

Compounding for the Future
If someone really wanted to help future generations, they'd invest a ton of money now and order someone not to withdraw the money for a couple hundred years or so.

According to Warren Buffett the best way for the average person to invest is to buy index funds, which grow with the entire market. The market (like your libido and your idealism) might crash, but it will always grow back even higher.

Everything is under control.

The Lovers card is pretty complicated. I notice the two females together with the males produce some sort of formula or process. I can feel it but can't really articulate what it is. We also have Cupid or Karma shooting an arrow, a puppetmaster and a male statue and a female statue. Also the Ten of Swords (Ruin) is in the background.

I wonder if the male and female statues are representing ideal male/female forms. I also wonder if they are actual famous statues from art history. Crowley references the Venus of Milo in the Book of Lies.

The puppetmaster I also understand intuitively but don't really get. Who is this figure? He, plus Karma (Desire) seem to be motioning the Universe. The male/female dichotomy is in the card, but not as openly as in the Rider-Waite version of the card. We almost have the boys separated from the girls as in elementary school.

Another New Aeon card I have been considering is the Aeon. The figure in front is an invisible-transparent Harpocrates and behind him we have Ra Hoor Kuit.

I don't know much about Harpocrates symbolism (outside its association with silence) but the ideas I'm getting now are that Harpocrates is the Geist or Spirit, the Silent Philosopher standing and thinking. Behind him we have Ra Hoor Kuit, the Lord of the Aeon, ruling over Harpocrates' thoughts. We only have the thoughts we do due to the society we live in and the people we associate with. The thoughts we have are based on the knowledge we have as a society, which will change throughout history (the aeons). The thoughts of a person in ancient Greece will be different from a medieval monk which will be different from our current way of thinking.

I also see Ra Hoor Kuit as the "current reterritorialization" of humanity; humanity's current, generalized map of reality. As I see it, if someone discovers something new or has an original idea, Ra Hoor Kuit's function is to allow that new idea to be expressed, if it is True, even if it differs from the expectations of humanity.

What Harpocrates thinks is dependent on what Ra Hoor Kuit, the Aeon, allows him to think. It took time for atheism to become accepted. I wonder if this is because people expected others would start acting entirely out of control, breaking all the laws, etc. if atheism was widespread and no one believed in God. This is an extreme example; from an everyday perspective, what we think about is what everybody else thinks about, and our philosophy is kept on Earth by the genetic, God-given "What should I eat today?" and "I have to go to the bathroom", along with social behavior type thoughts.

I think Harpocrates represents the Thinker of the one Thought, the once-in-a-while stroke-of-genius thought that occurs outside of the banalities.

But this is just my opinion and my development of my own philosophy.

Okay so the first thing to keep in mind is that according to psychologist Lacan, as long as doing good is a superego injunction, the most revolutionary thing one can do is to be evil.

Accelerate Left: Here we are Stalin. We are egalitarian and all-encompassing. The sickle is sweeping over entire countries. We are equalizing. Everyone is our comrade. The Great Leap Forward is happening. Stalin is the Great-Father instituting equality for all.

Accelerate Right: Here we are Hitler. We are part of a massive institution holding jurisdiction over all. The swastika stands on a massive banner. We are superior. We are discriminatory, or not even. We are part of an in-group. Hitler the Father will lead us to victory.

Either way millions of people will die.

Strap on your war boots, best foot forward...

Deleuze and Guattari are two other important philosophers I believe are continuing Crowley's work. I'm going to attempt to define a few of their terms and concepts to articulate their ideas. It's rather complicated and at first appears to rely on a lot of assumptions, but the truth is the ideas work.

The first concept is from Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. The first chapter goes into the schizophrenic cycle. Basically, if an individual decides to "detach" themselves from the herd-society and move their life in their own way, they are going to go through a few specific processes. The first is that they will decode the society (or the socius, or the social field). In this sense they are decoding the flows of desire in the society, which they do in order to move in their own direction. This is called desiring-production. (I in IAO).

Once these flows are decoded, the individual is left with their own desire, theoretically detached from the society. They are "free-floating" in the Timothy Leary sense. However, the society still exists and the individual is still hooked up to it as if to a machine. One approaches the "body without organs" but can never reach it. The individual may freak out here ("dark night of the soul") and invoke the paranoia-machines. (A in IAO).

The next stage is becoming-woman. The individual is consummated with their own desire by becoming further and further female. This appears to be the mechanism through which psychosis becomes desire. One of the main sources here is Judge Daniel Paul Schreber, who wrote Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, which Freud wrote a case study on. Both books are worth reading. (O in IAO).

Becoming-woman is frightening in that one is consummating one's own desire rather than the society's. But that is part of the schizophrenic process.

Voices told me I had to go female a few weeks ago, so I went to my college class wearing women's underwear. Everyone was very subdued. Then I freaked out after class, believing that the Good Apocalypse was going to happen, so I bought a bra at Wal Mart to signify I am female. They were playing "It's the End of the World" by REM on the radio and the woman on the radio was, I think, was intoning messages about how everyone is going to be gender-fluid and transsexual. I also invested in Victoria's Secret stock (Limited).

When I got home I had to eat bread and pizza. (I usually eat low-carb). Then I went on 4chan wearing women's underwear and masturbated to transsexual porn. George H.W. Bush died, or something like that, and that was a government hoax because he was a Black Brother. The government earlier that morning tapped my computer and were restricting access to information. Cat burglars from the ONA broke in and subdued my dog. As it turns out, I myself am a government experiment, or the Messiah, genetically modified in order to deterritorialize the Earth. Everything is under control. The government knows about this, but the truth is, it's a good thing I (or They) did this, as everything is easier if people feel okay and are happy.

So it appears, even if you lose control, you can simply go transsexual. The bad part, I would imagine, is if you lost super-ego control as a transsexual. That is what I am scared of.

Another concept in Anti-Oedipus is schizoanalysis. One "attacks" another's drive in order to move it in the direction of their desire, or one "trades slaves" with the other. Desire can often be unbearable. Going female is difficult. One sometimes needs jouissance, or pain, underneath the desire, in order to operate properly and with skill.

Moving from Anti-Oedipus into A Thousand Plateaus is the idea of a plane of consistency. When one operates cognitively one is operating from a plane of consistency. The opposite of this is when you're insane or in psychosis. Theoretically you could do anything if you could convince people that it's okay to operate "on my own plane of consistency."

A rhizome, I believe, is the underlying plane of desire of a group of people. I don't know if that's the right definition. I have still not become-female enough to be inside the rhizome (I have paranoia-machines there) because I am scared.

Deleuze and Guattari are anti-humanist. Things like the face are not that important when compared with other animals. For example, where we have a face, sting rays have stingers, or ants have six legs. The face is privileged anthropologically.

Reality (?) is stratified. When we think of something, it is always stratified with respect to an abstract-machine. For example, if we are trying to think of how to convince someone to leave (your desire), it is foregrounded with respect to a background abstract-machine consisting of historical ideas on how you might get someone to leave. There is the desire, then there are the ideas on how to achieve the desire.

Their last book, What Is Philosophy? defines philosophy as the creation of new concepts. Deleuze and Guattari were very creative philosophers who themselves valued creativity. Instead of judging something based on a traditional morality or holding objections against ideas, they attempt to ask "What does it do?" or "How does it work?" Not "That is Wrong" but "That's One Idea and That's What It Appears to Do."

One of the most beautiful lines in Anti-Oedipus was "We just want to be left in peace and innocence."

I think German soldiers in World War 2 were given copies of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I don’t really see the correlation between him and Nazism though outside of the fact he was German. You’re right about his sister. He was ostracized for a few years in philosophy but his image has since been cleaned up; not to say everyone likes his philosophy.

Another one of his ideas is that of perspectivism, that everyone has their own viewpoint which tends to confirm itself. To go “beyond good and evil” is to make up one’s own values out of love for life. This turns into the will-to-life which at its peak turns becomes the will-to-power. His “contempt for the masses” and “love of the overman” I read as coming out of sadness. Nietzsche’s contempt is love in the sense that he seeks to inspire others in the play of forces, to “knock them out of trance.” Better to spare no one in your tragic Dionysian rage than to leave one complacent.

He was a brilliant philosopher but so much of his work is so sad and unrealized. There’s an aphorism in Daybreak or the Gay Science that says that in my time on Earth I hoped to meet with human beings, but all I found were apes of their ideals.

“We are still not thinking.”

I’ve never heard of agon but I looked it up and it sounds like the play of forces.

I've noticed a difference in tenor between some Thelemites that are into Nietzsche and others that are not as familiar with his ideas. I thought it would be helpful to explain some of Nietzsche's philosophy.

As a prefigure, Nietzsche is directly referenced in Crowley's work as the best example of the "White School of Magick" in Magick Without Tears and as an injunction to "Read Nietzsche!" from the Magus figure in The Ordeal of Ida Pendragon.

The easiest way to explain Nietzsche is through the concepts of master/slave morality and sentiment/ressentiment.

In Master Morality the master decides that what is Good for Me, is Good. What is Not Good for Me, is Bad.

In Slave Morality the slave, unable to himself be a master, decides what is Good for the Master, is Evil. To the slave, Revenge against the Master is Good.

In this situation the Master's "Good" is positing a value. This value is usually unconscious, but with Nietzsche's philosophy, the idea is to pick one's own value, one's own idea of the "Good", and run with it.

With values we come to the idea of sentiment. When one posits a value ("What is Good For Me"), they are expressing a sentiment. This sentiment is almost "objective": in Crowley's terminology one could call it a magical current.

To have ressentiment is to move in against another's sentiment, to judge another's sentiment based on a current of ressentiment. Ressentiment is Revenge or Justice based on Slave Morality: one can simply like one's own sentiment for the sake that they choose it and they like it.

Nietzsche's philosophy is a philosophy of "Yes", of affirming sentiments and adding to them. A way to consider this is improv. "Yes, And...", always adding to the current.

The play of sentiments is the focus of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and On the Genealogy of Morality goes into Master and Slave Morality. Nietzche is a beautiful writer and his aphoristic books move into the nuances of his philosophy.

It's a bit cheesy for me now, as you end up so god damn ashamed for liking life and yourself, but:

"For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer! At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due: — it will want to rule and possess, and you with it!"

I've been thinking about the Thoth Tarot deck lately and two of the most interesting card designs to me are Adjustment and the Lovers.

Adjustment was changed from Justice in the (Old Aeon) Rider-Waite tarot pack. The idea is that there is no justice in the universe: the best we can do (and what we must do) is adjust to the conditions of the universe.

The best example I can think of here is the idea of the Ego, the idea that we are consciously in control of ourselves as individuals. This is not really the case: we are all essentially brainwashed. To put it another way, we are conditioned. We don't consciously choose to get up and brush our teeth every day, we do so out of unconscious habit. These habits are mostly based on our culture.

Beyond that we are animals with specific biological instructions. We didn't ourselves (as The Animal) choose to have teeth, for example, or to require food to live. Those are simply the Conditions that we find ourselves in.

Justice also implies revenge, which implies an inferiority to the person we are vengeful towards.

And so we move from Justice to Adjustment.

The Lovers card I am not as familiar with, but I have noticed something that might be of interest.

From Liber Artemis Iota: "The student should assimilate the doctrine of the “Black Brothers.” To refuse to fulfill any of one’s possibilities is the direct negation of the Great Work."

On the card we have a white brother and a black brother. Possibly this means that in the New Aeon, with Adjustment implied, we are all Black Brothers, or the Black Brother is an equivalent or a counterpart to the White Brother.

It might be kinda cool to be a Black Brother.