An Apology of Sorts

So recently I have been tremendously humbled by information that I really should have known before, but simply was ignorant of. As you may have read, I wrote a post earlier this month defending Aleister Crowley on the grounds that people were misunderstanding his interpretation of the word "will." I would essentially like to rescind that defense, as, after reading more about him in a lovely book on the history of sex magic by Hugh B. Urban, I have found that Mr. Crowley was in fact culpable of intense hedonism. Now, I had already known about his sexual antics and drug use, but I was unaware that he filed these practices under the heading of "do what thou wilt." Needless to say, I am heartily disappointed. As a side note, the ego for Crowley is based on the Freudian concept, which in turn is based on the sexual identity. Therefore, by completely destroying the conventional sexual self, one can supposedly liberate the ego from its restrictions - this would explain why the eating of feces in the heat of sexual passion if one is motivated to do so is not necessarily a bad thing... At least according to Crowley. I'm not sure how I feel about that, frankly. I believe that there is something to that that could be considered relevant, however, at the same time, much of these believes of his were invented to feed his own growing drug addictions and personal licentiousness.

With that being said, I feel it is necessary for me to redefine law contained in The Book of the Law for myself as such: submit to the virtues of the highest-self, and commit to fulfilling this will with a sense of courage and purpose. Take it upon yourself to interpret the Law as works best for you as an individual, but do not take it upon yourself to blaspheme the Law by appropriating it to fit the cravings of your lowest-self. To do this seems utterly backwards to me, seeing as hermeticism arises from a tradition focused intently on the redemption of the lower-self through the glory of the highest-self.

Ultimately, perhaps I can't shake off my upbringing as a Christian. Maybe part of me just really wants to hold on to those traditions that I appreciate so much in medieval culture. However, I still respect Crowley for his sophisticated and witty writings, as well as his penchant for testing the boundlessness of God. I respect that he is one of the few Qabbalists to stand by the fact that if God has created everything and is truly omnipotent, then God must be equally "evil." Crowley tried very hard to prove that the darker aspect of life, what we term "evil" because we are afraid of it for whatever reason, is not necessarily evil in the eye of God. God transcends the limitations of "good" and "evil," and does not consist wholly of one or the other. It would be naive to assume that It does.

Anywho, this is just some further food for thought. This also does not mean that I will stop using the Thoth Tarot, nor will I stop contemplating what Thelema could mean for people, being a highly individualistic belief system. But I will admit that I have lost some faith in one of my main esoteric teachers and influences. This is what we must do as contemplative beings though; take piecemeal what we admire in one person's cosmology and forge to it our own, or the thoughts of others, until we have a vast network of concepts that is equally independent of the influence of others and is entirely unique unto ourselves. To be sure, each man is a master of his own temple - that's one Crowley quote that I'll keep under my belt.

Cybele and the Queen of Wands

So recently I had to read about the cult of Cybele for one of my religion classes, and I was so intrigued by the description of her in our text book. In her book Religions of the Hellenistic Roman Age, Antonia Tripolitis writes that "In the earliest extant representations dating from ca. 6000 B.C.E., she is seated on a rocky throne, a woman of immense proportions. On either side of her throne stands a leopard, and on each leopard's head she rests a heavy hand protectively and triumphantly." This is quite clearly the same description of the Queen of Wands from Crowley's Thoth Tarot.

The connection is intriguing, as Cybele is a goddess associated with domination and ecstasy, and is revered with wild dancing and loud music. She is also incredibly magnetic and jealous, as her beauty alone caused her consort Attis to castrate himself out of awe. This would explain the Queen of Wands' swooning facial expression, as well as her Bacchic staff symbolizing the mysteries of bliss attributed to that god, and her hand placed on top of the leopard. Furthermore, Cybele was known as "the mother of the gods," and was associated with Chronos's wife Rhea. This matches perfectly with Crowley's Liber 777, in which he too equates Cybele to Rhea and places them in the sephira of Binah, as Binah is also the Great Mother.

This begs the question then: what are the attributions of the other queens in the Thoth deck? I have a guess that the Queen of Disks is a form of Juno, and that the Queen of Swords is Kali (which would explain the random sarong she's wearing), but I can't seem to nab the Queen of Cups. Could she be another iteration of Isis? Her lotus resting upon the ibis crane because she was the mother of all invention in the Hellenistic period? Perhaps.

If anyone knows of a source that explains this, either in Crowley or in Israel Regardie (these would be the first authors I would check), please let me know! I'd love to know if anyone has noticed this before, and if this kind of logic is useable for the entire court. Some of the Princesses are relatively easy to decipher, but the Princes are pretty difficult to pin down, perhaps for a reason.

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.