The Misunderstanding of Thelema

In 1904, Aleister Crowley produced one of the most profound and bizarre books ever written - The Book of the Law. Some see it as a masterpiece, others see it as absurd, even obscene. The heart of this Law is this: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law," and, "love is the law, love under will." Any Thelemite will know these phrases by heart, as they are repeated endlessly throughout Crowleyan literature. But what do they mean? What mainly frustrates me is this ignorant, mainly Christian, fear of the first phrase, as many read it as a legitimization of hedonism. To make this assumption is to completely disregard the rest of the entire Book of the Law, and to essentially obfuscate all the actual usefulness of Thelema. This is backwards thinking, as well as absolutely foolish. I am not a Thelemite, nor do I adhere to all of their beliefs, but I do understand where our man Aleister was coming from, and I am equally aware that he was not a total lunatic. Crowley's writings exhibit some of the most profound genius and inspiring commentary I have ever read, and I believe it is about time we dismantle this bogus myth that Crowley was a huge raving Satanist.

To understand "Do what thou wilt," one must first understand what will actually is. How can one effectively condemn a practice without understanding the semantics of its literary origin? Will is the most sublimely individual divine purpose intended for each being, each "aggregate of experience," which are gods in and of themselves. You are a Buddha/Christ/god, but you simply don't know it yet. You are unaware of your infinite potential because you are so entranced by the world around you. You accept living at face value, and you do not accept the infinity of Godhead. These are the conditions of true sin - the denial of the radiant godliness within you. This connection to macrocosmic godhead is what Kabbalists term the Holy Guardian Angel (HGA). Knowledge and Conversation with this essence/being is essential to understanding one's true will and nature. Everything we do in the name of our foolishly sacred egos is flawed. You are also connected to everything else, and when you make decisions that revolt against the flow of the macrocosm, the macrocosm will shut down on you, and quickly rectify your revolt. This is the law of karma, the God of revenge portrayed by Zeus and the LORD of the Israelites. Becoming aware of your place in the flow of the macrocosm is crucial to becoming an enlightened, considerate, and effective being, as knowledge of this allows you to shut your individuality up for 5 seconds in order to perceive everything else as a part of you. Why would you wish to do harm to that which you see yourself as being one with? At least this is the old Christian concept. In Thelema, we have a slightly different opinion, one that describes God as very impartial to human desires, and simply wanting to experiment with its own infinite possibility as the Logos of All (Pan; Pamphage, Pangenetor). This does open up the potentially distressing door that suggests God has created evil, and actually is evil, yet, if we believe that God has created everything, then we must be mature enough to then draw the conclusion that God has also created evil out of its infinite, impossible to understand, love of ALL.

Therefore, to "do what thou wilt," is to submit to the true will of God. It is Islam. It is the monastic asceticism of the Christians. To call it "Satanism," simply because Crowley was a sex fiend and a drug addict is absolutely stupid. St. Augustine was a sex fiend too; Hildegard von Bingen may have been an epileptic; and Julian of Norwich was so obsessed with the blood of Christ, she wanted to experience the passion for herself. But are these people considered crazy? Of course they are, to some extent. But does that throw into question the validity of their cosmologies? Religion is not logic. Religion as the expression of an individual's connection to the All has existed far longer than science, in fact, it is one of the core aspects of human experience, and yet, now because the idol science has emerged triumphant from the so-called "darkness" of the Middle Ages, we all lay prostrate to it with our faces planted in the ground, as opposed to looking at the sun. Human reason is a mere offshoot from a Godhead that has no limits to what it can conceive of. What hubris and vanity the human race flaunts when it parades its harlot Science in the face of an incredibly indifferent God! I lament with Jeremiah when he wails, "Jerusalem, Convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum!" We have forgotten the face of our gods-as-one-God, and in doing so, we have turned our back upon the true human tradition. If conservative Christians want to argue for the merits of tradition, surely they should revisit the ancient traditions that begat "Christianity" in the first place, which had come from even older pagan traditions. All of these faiths are synonymous. Christianity is nothing new: God-in-man-the-redeemer sacrifices himself to save the maiden trapped in Hell and brings her to the throne of the stars. This is the human mythological doctrine in short, and "do what thou wilt" is simply a part of it. You must submit to God in order to be saved by God. This is also supposedly in the Christian theology, though they would prefer to call the entire Bible the Word of God and then selectively partition this Word as the see fit. Need to preserve slavery? Go to the Bible. Don't want gay marriage? Go to the Bible. Don't want women to say what's on their mind? Go to the Bible. But shall we also stone these women when they have affairs and make mistakes? Shall we also have our eyes gouged out because we've looked at someone we find attractive and lusted after them, even though we are not married to that person?

To conclude, religious law is riddled with social constructs imposed for the sake of maintaining order. Yet, for Crowley, none of these are necessary if we all simply listen to the Divine Law stemming from Godhead, which descends upon our deaf ears like the flames of the Holy Spirit. This is Will. Thelema is hedonistic in its doctrines promoting the enjoyment of life's abundance, which God chose to make. Love it for its idea, and experience the lust inherent in physical life, but condemn it as an empty shell, and instead listen to the siren song of inspiration that crafted the shells in the first place. "Do what thou wilt," therefore, is not hedonistic, nor is it Satanic. Crowley believed in God, he simply reconfigured it to be something different that it is capable of being. The Goddess is both the Queen of Heaven, the Whore of Babylon, the Earth Mother, Mary, Isis, Nepthys, Nuit, Hathor, etc. She is ALL of these things because she is the highest source of femininity, and none of these are better than the other, for they all love their creations equally, and do not differentiate between them.