In talking tonight to Christopher, some ideas emerged for how to tell those unfamiliar about our path—Thelema (“Will” in Greek)—in unadorned language. This is an inspired philosophy originally channeled by the controversial British Adept Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) and carried on by his students, their students, and so on.
The basic premise: in this Aquarian age we are all potential Gods. In other words, in principle any of us can become avatars of the One True God that takes on many different masks depending on culture. To become capable of realizing one’s unity with Spirit takes two basic steps. First, she develops an authentic way of life. Second, she draws down divine energies into herself.
An Authentic Way of Life
The Law of Thelema
The aspirant starts by studying her own incarnation to the point that she understands her own Law and lives it. Drawing on The Book of the Law, she progressively takes responsibility for discovering her innate moral code.
Some who adopt Thelema on a superficial level believe that is the easiest path, since we preach that nothing is forbidden in principle. However, the requirement to discover one’s own, true Law actually makes Thelema one of the hardest paths to follow. Her goal is to find and remain in her own “true orbit”. She is to become more and more perfectly herself.
The Law of Thelema inherently implies respecting all others as divine centers or “stars” in their own right, no matter how different their Will may be from our own. “Wants” or desires may clash, but the Will is unitary, despite that each human being channels it in a unique way.
Embracing Body and Sexuality
She also becomes intimately familiar with her own body (Malkuth) and sexuality (Yesod), developing both knowledge and comfort. These are important because her body forms the bricks with which she builds her Temple, and the specific shape of her sexuality forms its Foundation. Likewise, she performs exercises involving the Muladhara chakra (Yesod). These are not sexual in nature, but they allow the Kundalini to rise safely and gradually as she progresses. Being familiar and comfortable with her bodily existence begins the process of becoming an avatar.
Balancing Mind and Emotions
Over time she progresses to examining all of her beliefs so that she can rely on them only to the extent that they are justifiable. She also learns to think Qabalistically at all times for the simple purpose of making all of her knowledge (Hod, mind) into a web capable of receiving inspiration from Above. She also develops devotion, truly worshipping her inner deity in all phenomena she encounters in her daily life (Netzach, emotions).
She then harmonizes her entire lower self and shines her Spirit through her Sun (Tiphareth) upon the Earth. This is the natural stopping point for most aspirants.
A Vessel for the Holy Guardian Angel
Second, if she decides to go further, she begins to draw divine energies (her Angelic Self) down into her Temple (lower self).
At this point, she undertakes various exercises to begin to still her ego-center. Somewhat misleadingly, we call this process “ego dissolution”. It really just means making the ego receptive and passive to the Higher Will. That often involves letting go of lower things for higher, although there’s no telling ahead of time what those will be.
A Warning to All Who May Be Contemplating This Path
This point brings me to what Chris brought up tonight: we owe it to people to warn them about the potential downsides of this path. The aspirant is progressively confronted with parts of herself that she may not want to deal with. As she tells the Universe to progressively cleanse and purify her vessel, It responds. As her vibration rises, some of the things her ego might be attached to are shaken off—jobs, relationships, just anything in her life that doesn’t match her authentic self to that degree.
Things only get harder if she begins the second step, to nullify the illusion of personal will and progressively allow her Divine Self (“Angel”) to occupy her body, soul, mind, etc. She will begin to run up against her deepest complexes and have to overcome them. At that level, she cannot go back to being asleep. She can try, but she will be miserable.
Sinister Saints
The other difficult thing is nomenclature. Thelemites love to bicker about what this path is really all about. Are we sinister and Satanic? Are we Godly and pious? The answer to these and many other contradictory questions is “Yes”.
Aleister Crowley was raised in Victorian times in an extremely fundamentalist Christian sect. So, on the one hand, he worked hard to shock people into viewing him as virtually the Devil incarnate. He fought vigorously to expose the hypocrisy and ugliness of the vulgar Christianity that surrounded him. In many ways, we worship Prometheus, Lucifer, Loki, the Serpent in the Garden of Eden… by whatever name you call a God who stole fire for humanity so that we might become like the Gods ourselves.
On the other hand, and equally controversial to a completely different crowd, Thelema is basically a pro-sexuality Gnostic Christianity brought to the next stage of human evolution. It is gnostic in that (like Jesus Christ, whether he existed or not), we aspire to nonverbal, direct experience of Spirit. It is Christian-like in that we aspire to be real Sons and Daughters of God—real Christs, in no less robust a way than Jesus was. So contrary to what many supposed Thelemites will tell you, we are not rejecting the past but simply taking the lessons of the Piscean Age forward into the Aquarian one. Now, we don’t worship Jesus; we follow his model or the model of those like him and become Christs ourselves. Arguably, that’s what He was saying all along anyway.
Aspiring Avatars
In talking tonight to Christopher, some ideas emerged for how to tell those unfamiliar about our path—Thelema (“Will” in Greek)—in unadorned language. This is an inspired philosophy originally channeled by the controversial British Adept Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) and carried on by his students, their students, and so on.
The basic premise: in this Aquarian age we are all potential Gods. In other words, in principle any of us can become avatars of the One True God that takes on many different masks depending on culture. To become capable of realizing one’s unity with Spirit takes two basic steps. First, she develops an authentic way of life. Second, she draws down divine energies into herself.
An Authentic Way of Life
The Law of Thelema
The aspirant starts by studying her own incarnation to the point that she understands her own Law and lives it. Drawing on The Book of the Law, she progressively takes responsibility for discovering her innate moral code.
Some who adopt Thelema on a superficial level believe that is the easiest path, since we preach that nothing is forbidden in principle. However, the requirement to discover one’s own, true Law actually makes Thelema one of the hardest paths to follow. Her goal is to find and remain in her own “true orbit”. She is to become more and more perfectly herself.
The Law of Thelema inherently implies respecting all others as divine centers or “stars” in their own right, no matter how different their Will may be from our own. “Wants” or desires may clash, but the Will is unitary, despite that each human being channels it in a unique way.
Embracing Body and Sexuality
She also becomes intimately familiar with her own body (Malkuth) and sexuality (Yesod), developing both knowledge and comfort. These are important because her body forms the bricks with which she builds her Temple, and the specific shape of her sexuality forms its Foundation. Likewise, she performs exercises involving the Muladhara chakra (Yesod). These are not sexual in nature, but they allow the Kundalini to rise safely and gradually as she progresses. Being familiar and comfortable with her bodily existence begins the process of becoming an avatar.
Balancing Mind and Emotions
Over time she progresses to examining all of her beliefs so that she can rely on them only to the extent that they are justifiable. She also learns to think Qabalistically at all times for the simple purpose of making all of her knowledge (Hod, mind) into a web capable of receiving inspiration from Above. She also develops devotion, truly worshipping her inner deity in all phenomena she encounters in her daily life (Netzach, emotions).
She then harmonizes her entire lower self and shines her Spirit through her Sun (Tiphareth) upon the Earth. This is the natural stopping point for most aspirants.
A Vessel for the Holy Guardian Angel
Second, if she decides to go further, she begins to draw divine energies (her Angelic Self) down into her Temple (lower self).
At this point, she undertakes various exercises to begin to still her ego-center. Somewhat misleadingly, we call this process “ego dissolution”. It really just means making the ego receptive and passive to the Higher Will. That often involves letting go of lower things for higher, although there’s no telling ahead of time what those will be.
A Warning to All Who May Be Contemplating This Path
This point brings me to what Chris brought up tonight: we owe it to people to warn them about the potential downsides of this path. The aspirant is progressively confronted with parts of herself that she may not want to deal with. As she tells the Universe to progressively cleanse and purify her vessel, It responds. As her vibration rises, some of the things her ego might be attached to are shaken off—jobs, relationships, just anything in her life that doesn’t match her authentic self to that degree.
Things only get harder if she begins the second step, to nullify the illusion of personal will and progressively allow her Divine Self (“Angel”) to occupy her body, soul, mind, etc. She will begin to run up against her deepest complexes and have to overcome them. At that level, she cannot go back to being asleep. She can try, but she will be miserable.
Sinister Saints
The other difficult thing is nomenclature. Thelemites love to bicker about what this path is really all about. Are we sinister and Satanic? Are we Godly and pious? The answer to these and many other contradictory questions is “Yes”.
Aleister Crowley was raised in Victorian times in an extremely fundamentalist Christian sect. So, on the one hand, he worked hard to shock people into viewing him as virtually the Devil incarnate. He fought vigorously to expose the hypocrisy and ugliness of the vulgar Christianity that surrounded him. In many ways, we worship Prometheus, Lucifer, Loki, the Serpent in the Garden of Eden… by whatever name you call a God who stole fire for humanity so that we might become like the Gods ourselves.
On the other hand, and equally controversial to a completely different crowd, Thelema is basically a pro-sexuality Gnostic Christianity brought to the next stage of human evolution. It is gnostic in that (like Jesus Christ, whether he existed or not), we aspire to nonverbal, direct experience of Spirit. It is Christian-like in that we aspire to be real Sons and Daughters of God—real Christs, in no less robust a way than Jesus was. So contrary to what many supposed Thelemites will tell you, we are not rejecting the past but simply taking the lessons of the Piscean Age forward into the Aquarian one. Now, we don’t worship Jesus; we follow his model or the model of those like him and become Christs ourselves. Arguably, that’s what He was saying all along anyway.