Aleister Crowley's disdain for Christianity is well known. As he considered himself the Anti-Christ, believing in his mission to destroy the Church, his writings and cosmology tend to be violently skewed, riddled with imagery many find Satanic and disturbing. Granted, one can relate this to the fact that Horus - the supposed ruler of the new Aeon - is attributable to Mars (see Israel Regardie's The Tree of Life), and is therefore meant to be vengeful and merciless, quite the opposite of the usual Christian message of suffering and humility. Crowley's attempt to reconfigure Atu XII, The Hanged Man, as a hieroglyph not of suffering but of redemption echoes this anti-Christian sentiment. I would like to suggest in this article that Crowley's Thelema and Christianity can in fact be reconciled, and should be, for in this age it is necessary for us to see the similarities between our various beliefs. I believe that is one of the true messages of the new Aeon supposedly set upon us. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) was declared the first female Doctor of the Church in 1970, meaning that she wrote sufficiently enough about orthodox Church doctrine in a lucid and revelatory way to be considered on par with St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and St. Gregory (highly,
highly revered sources of masculine Christian discourse throughout the Medieval/Renaissance
periods). Teresa is known mainly for her experiences of divine ecstasy, as remarkably depicted in the Bernini sculpture (left). Her descriptions of these experiences, as well as her methods of prayer, are quite obviously related to the Neoplatonic/Kabbalistic/alchemical/
Magical/Hindu understanding of prayer and enlightenment, which Crowley based his Thelema on.
Enlightenment in much of these Western doctrines according to the Golden Dawn, Crowley, and countless others, was conceptualized by the revolving Tetragrammaton formula - YHVH - by which the physical body is redeemed by Knowledge and Conversation between the conscious self and the Highest Self (Holy Guardian Angel), spiritual marriage with that entity, and eventual union with that entity in order to rise to Godhead, by which one recognizes the root of their divinity, inherent oneness with everything, and attains enlightenment. (More on this below.)
Teresa's spiritual experiences are very similar to this. First, she explains that she stopped praying aloud as was the common practice, but rather focused inwardly and remained silent, meditating on Christ's presence within her. She writes, "When picturing Christ in the way I have mentioned... I used unexpectedly to experience a consciousness of the presence of God, of such a kind that I could not possibly doubt that He was within me or that I was wholly engulfed in Him." This is by definition the meaning of the Lovers trump. It is a recognition of the spiritual "other" as part of the self, known to alchemists as the first stage of coniunctio (marriage) - ironically called separatio. In fact, Teresa herself understands this relationship as a marriage, referring to Christ as her Spouse many times. I feel that in her case, the terms Spouse carries much more weight than in reference to any general nun who considers herself spiritually betrothed to Christ upon taking the veil. The beautiful moment she describes which became the inspiration for Bernini's statue is the real marriage, the moment when she sees an angel unlike any other ("in bodily form, which is not usual with me; for though angels are often represented to me, it is only in my mental vision"), who plunges a fiery spear into her heart and sets her"wholly on fire with a great love of God." (Princess of Disks much? Impregnated with the divine seed of the phallic Yod? Hmmm...)
Additionally, Israel Regardie explains in his Tree of Life that much of the process of enlightenment is conducted out of the body through Astral Projection (self-willed out-of-body experience), and that is precisely what St. Teresa undergoes. Teresa says, "Oh, my God, how clear is the meaning of that verse about asking for the wings of a dove and how right the author was... It is evident that he is referring to the flight taken by the spirit when it soars high above all created things, and above itself first of all; but it is a gentle and a joyful flight and also a silent one." Similarly, "In these raptures the soul seems no longer to animate the body, and thus the natural heat of the body is felt to be very sensibly diminished." This is a typical sign of the absence of the astral body (obviously not the entire body, which would result in death). Her point that the journey is silent is particularly intriguing, since Crowley speaks endlessly of Harpocrates, the Lord of Silence who is the twin of Horus and is representative of the silence of meditation and the element of spirit (see The Book of Thoth).
Also intriguing is Teresa's emphasis on the worth of the body to God, something also harking back to the Tetragrammaton formula. In Tetragrammaton, each letter represents one of the four elements - Y = fire, H (primal) = water, V = air, and H (final) = earth. In Tarot, we see this as the court cards, each letter corresponding to Knights (Kings), Queens, Princes (Knights), and Princesses (Pages/Valets) respectively. The Princess (earth) is the child born of the marriage between the Knight and the Queen (fire and water), and is the lesser twin sister to the more divine son, as represented by the Prince. She is expected to marry the Prince, ascend to the throne of her mother, kill the old Knight and replace him with the Prince, and thereby redeem the earth (the harrowing of Hell, the Ascension of Mary). The body is synonymous in Hermetic Kabbala with earth, and therefore one of the goals of enlightenment is to better the condition of physical existence, to bring spirit back down into more perfect union with matter (the creation process in the first place, the blessing of the Holy Spirit) in order to redeem it.
Teresa's writings oddly enough include details of this experience: "The Lord is pleased that the body should have a share in [the ecstasy] because of its obedience to the will of the soul. After the recovery of the consciousness, if the rapture has been deep, the faculties may remain absorbed for a day or two... and be as if in a state of stupor, so that they seem to be no longer themselves." This is clearly an unknowing nod to the Kundalini Awakening, which Crowley insisted upon as the goal of meditation
(Atu XI Lust) (Kundalini seen right) and the key to enlightenment. Furthermore, Teresa writes, "[Ecstasy] is much more beneficial than union: the effects it produces are far more important and it has a
great many more operations, for union gives the impression of being just the same at the beginning, in the middle and at the end, and it all happens interiorly. But the ends of these raptures are of a higher degree, and the effects they produce are both interior and exterior." Frankly, I think that's brilliant. Teresa recognizes the positive outward effect these ecstasy's produce, and discusses their merit in the same vein as Crowley, who attributes ecstasy to madness and divine bliss (Bacchus, as in Atu 0 and XV in The Book of Thoth).
And finally, Teresa makes interesting remarks on the nature of True Will - the entire point of Thelema. She writes that before she experienced God within herself she was very disobedient to the will of God. She claims that "the Lord became more desirous of preparing me for the state of life which was best for me." In a similar vein, she says, "O God, in how many ways did His Majesty gradually prepare me for the state in which He was to be pleased to use me! In how many ways, against my own will, did He constrain me to exercise restraint upon myself!" This can be seen as an example of "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." Teresa understands that God has a higher purpose for her that she must adhere to, lest she remain wallowing in sin and attachment to the world. Is it also not interesting, albeit probably coincidental, that the imagery of the angel piercing her heart like Eros is very similar to the imagery in Atu VI, The Lovers, in which Eros is directing the arrow of Thelema (True Will) at the heart of the Empress/Luna/Venus, who is marrying the Emperor/Sol/Mars ? (See The Book of Thoth for the explanation of these planetary associations, as well as a bit about the crucial role of Eros in this formula.)
Thus, it is indeed possible to reconcile Christianity with Crowley's Thelema, and in fact, I believe they help elucidate each other. The mysteries of one are often explained better in the other, and I have found studying both to be very helpful. In the perfect words of Goethe, "Alles vergengliche," (All is allegory), and ultimately Christianity and Thelema are both intricately orchestrated allegories. In this example, both found union (to continue the theme) in the archetype of The Lovers, a card representative of openness to other sources of inspiration. I'll just leave it at that.
(All quotes by Teresa were taken from her autobiography The Life of Teresa of Jesus, edited by E. Allison Peers)
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