John the Baptist and The Chariot

It may be strange to connect John the Baptist to VII The chariot, but there is good reason for doing so. The Nativity of John the Baptist, celebrated each June 24th, roughly coincides with the transition into the sign of Cancer on the 21st. Cancer, of course, is the sign associated with VII The Chariot. Cancer also being the cardinal sign of water represents the initial onrush of that element. Remember that John baptized with water, as opposed to Christ, whose coming John foretold, but who baptized "in the Spirit."

The Chariot is associated with the Holy Grail, the womb of life, the cup of the Goddess, in which is poured blood. In Christian symbolism blood and water are synonymous, which is particularly interesting given Cancer's watery nature.

The transition into Cancer on the 21st, coinciding with the Summer Solstice, represents the pinnacle of the sun's strength throughout the solar year. The solstice is the longest day of the year and all subsequent days steadily shorten. On this day the sun is at the height of its power, and in the scheme of the solar year, is when it seems most indestructible. This is a theme carried out in the Roman celebration of Sol Invictus, though this holiday was celebrated around the time of Christmas (around December 24th when the sun seems to "regenerate" after its steady decline in force through the fall).

Perhaps what remains mysterious is why the Church decided to place John the Baptist's Nativity a the same time as the transition into Cancer and the Summer Solstice. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that John himself "was not the light, but came to testify to the light." Because of this we can see his connection to Cancer (being watery), and a more general connection to the sun (as Cancer is not ruled or associated with the sun directly in any way). Therefore John's association is more aquatic than solar. In some ways we can see John as the Cup Bearer, he who bears the Grail filled with the Blood, which is solar, which is synonymous with Christ. Perhaps we can even vaguely associate John with a form of Binah, the Goddess. Indeed, John the Baptist is often depicted as an effeminate youth in Renaissance art. John conveyed the solar redemptive message, but was not the essence of redemption itself.

Let us also take note of The Chariot's associations with paths and directions. Being the bridge between Binah, the Mother of Form, and Geburah, the Power of God, The Chariot represents the form of power, or rather form being empowered. Really the distinction is irrelevant. Regardless, the energy of Geburah is given form through the Understanding the Soul is capable of. Enlightened by Wisdom, the Understanding first begets Mercy, whose main operation is to generate, but so that all things may be balanced Understanding also begets Power, whose primary function is to energize and destroy. The Chariot therefore destroys all other paths but the One True Path, which is True Will, which is Destiny, which is the cornerstone of personal Salvation, which is the Holy Guardian Angel, which is Christ.

Remember, too, that John the Baptist is always associated with the prophecy of Isaiah that says, "The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, 'Prepare, ye, the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.'" John prepared the way, clearing it for the future sowing and reaping represented in Christ's Life, Death, and Resurrection. John made the path straight, much like the path of the Chariot. In other words, the Chariot represents a direct route for energy to take. It teaches us that the most potent energy, the most triumphant energy, is that which is grounded to only one direction and purpose. Ultimately that purpose must be solar in nature (and therefore connected to Light, Life, Love, and Liberty), must be geared towards Self, and must therefore be self-redeeming. Baptism, as we know, destroys original sin. It washes away our transgression and wipes us clean. Clearly this is a reference to Geburah's destructive and cleansing quality. Sin is the condition of life in which the consciousness is swept side to side by distractions, impulses, and desires. It is the condition of multiplicity, of disorder, and disobedience. It is to have no power over the world because one does not have power over oneself. The only recourse is purification through destruction. Through metaphysical baptism (which the ritual and sacrament of Baptism reflects), one may transcend to the victorious state of the Chariot. This is a state of being in which one becomes a vessel, a conduit for the Living God, and follows His precepts. And to follow His commandment is to Love Him, and truly "there is nothing that can unite the divided but love." The Chariot therefore also represents a condition of intense love in which the individual is lost in the mystery of the Eternal Self, which is the God of the personal Universe - the architect of one's experience over the Aeons. "There are love and love. There is the Dove and the Serpent Choose ye well!" Love, we must remember, must eradicate differentiation. In The Chariot, one is so knit to the Path of God by the power of love that one becomes as the prophets Elijah and Enoch, and "goes to walk with God." To do so is to never be known again and is akin to Nirvana. 


This condition is thus a state of grace and perfection - remember that the Chariot's number is 418, ABRAHADABRA, the cipher of the Great Work, and the word that opens all doors. When one delves deeper, one also draws the connection between ABRAHADABRA and Harpocrates, the god of Silence, the Babe in the Egg of Blue, whose Silence is the secret key to all locks, whose amorphous essence is the answer to all mysteries. Being associated with Kether, Harpocrates is also the Spirit. 


Everything connects. Baptism through water, which is blood, leads to grace, which is victory over the world and the self (an interior version of the exterior projected world); the path of grace leads to baptism in the Spirit, which is Salvation. Salvation is love of the Eternal Self to such a degree that one commits to following the path laid out by the Eternal Self in all things. Their path becomes straight, though surrounded on all sides by the desert. 

The Sacred Feminine: The Christian and Thelemic Perspectives

The Hodegetria

Since we are in a Marian devotional month in the liturgical calendar, I have of course been meditating a lot on the Virgin Mary and her allegorical purpose. Personally, I believe that she is one of those figures in the Bible that cannot be taken at all literally, and that she must solely be interpreted allegorically. Otherwise she makes no logical sense, and of course we must always put our faith to trial by the fires of intellect and experience. In recorded history prior to the invention of artificial insemination, there are no births by Virgins as far as I am aware. There are many in mythology, however! So quite clearly Our Lady, like many figures from the Bible, is a mythological personage who expresses a sublime philosophical idea regarding nature. This is not to lower her position or to degrade, for by all means she is still mightily exalted. Thus we must regard her nature as such, and not view her with certain mundane interpretations.

I think what my first issue thinking about Mary was that she is known as "the mother of us all." Now, I understand that to many this would have to do with the fact that Mary is also the Church, and through her we are baptized in the name of Christ. Thus we are "reborn." But are we not already baptized in Christ merely by existing? For "through Him all things were made." He is that which is, and through Him beings have their ability to exist. Nothing may be said to exist unless it partakes in a fundamental union with the Logos. (I prefer to refer to Christ as the Logos for that is what He represents. It is better to use general terms such as these in order to not exclude anyone who is not necessarily "Christian." Because of course the Logos/Christ is not a concept only contained in Western thought, and we should remember this.) Again, the Logos is that fundamental defining purpose for an existing being. It is its DNA, if you will - the coding for its manifested existence.

But the Logos in and of itself is useless. Like a man with no female partner, it cannot create by its own means. Therefore it must create for itself a feminine counterpart, or a passive extension and image of itself. If we look at the Sephiroth, this is clearly illustrated for us. Kether, sometimes referred to as the first Logos, first mover, etc., begets Chokhmah and Binah, the Father and the Mother respectively. Kether is the original point of unextended, impartial existence. Nothing can be said about it other than the fact that it exists. Chokhmah, the more overt Logos and the first sephirah on the Pillar of Mercy, is Kether's first more defined force or wisdom. Now we can say something about the original point of existence - we can characterize its will. However, we cannot really understand it. Binah, understanding and the first sephirah on the Pillar of Severity, teaches us the limitations of this wisdom and thereby balances out Chokhmah's infinite stream of force. The harmony between these two factors, the masculine active will and the feminine passive will, or the Will of God with the Image of God, results in the birth of something definitive and glorious. It is the birth of the Word made Flesh.

I hope now you see the obvious correlation between the Sephirotic/Neo-Platonic philosophy and the Christian Mystery of the Incarnation. They are strikingly similar. The Virgin Mary is a representation of Binah, the Divine Feminine, and Christ is more or less Chokhmah and Kether sort of conglomerated, or the Divine Masculine. It's difficult to really fit Christ into the Sephiroth because they're simply different systems of interpretation, and they do not intersect seamlessly. Christ is somewhat akin to the Ain Soph, Kether, Chokhmah, and Tiphareth all at the same time. I believe it depends on how we are talking about Him. If we refer to the Logos as that which is coeternal with the Father, then we are referring to the Ain Soph. If we mean Him to represent the Cornerstone of any existing being, then we mean Kether. If we speak of Him as the Life or Will of any existing being, then we mean Chokhmah. And finally, if we mean to speak of Him as Jesus Christ, the dying and resurrecting man-God, then we mean to say Tiphareth, or consciousness at the level of Tiphareth.

Regardless, the Virgin Mary still fits very neatly into the category of Binah, or even the Ain Soph Aur. For our purposes, however, let us stick to the idea of Binah, and leave the Ain Soph Aur for even more lofty discussions. Frankly, the whole business of Ain-anything is really confusing, and is meant to be so. Being at the very top of the Tree of Life, it is the most hidden, the most esoteric, the most difficult to describe, and yet it best describes the idea of God as unmanifested, unmade Being. But leaving all that aside, let us instead return the original Marian myth: the Annunciation. In the story, Mary is visited by the angel Gabriel, who pronounces her to be the future Mother of God. She humbly accepts the divine command issued by the archangel, calling herself "the handmaid of the Lord," and as a result is infused with the Holy Spirit and conceives Jesus. By giving birth to God, Mary in effect gives birth to all things that are made, and essentially baptizes all those things in the waters of her womb in the name of Christ. Note that Mary's name has the obvious etymological connection to the word "mare" in Latin, which translates to "sea." St. Jerome was the first Christian writer to write about this connection prominently, and it is from him that we get the imagery for the famous Marian hymn Ave maris stella (Hail, Star of the Sea). Mary therefore has an overt connection to the ocean and the womb. In Genesis as well, remember that "the Spirit of God moved across the waters" and brought life from chaos.

Atu III The Empress represents the Feminine
as the Vessel of Nature. Her letter is Daleth
which means "door." Her path on the
Sephiroth connects Chokhmah to Binah.

Mary then is not just a humble maiden mother. She is the womb of Nature, and is the Feminine will to live. She is rightly called "the door of life," for through her all things are born. The sacred Word that Christ represents is "Life," and she is its vessel. When she accepts the Divine Will to Live, she accepts Life in its most chaotic form. Remember that Chokhmah is barely defined, and Kether has virtually no definition. Chokhmah in particular is simply the infinite force and vigor of Life itself, the original impartial point of existence extending its energy outwards. With the third point, Binah, that energy is confined in the shape of a triangle - a metaphorical womb. Mary is associated with virtue and prudence because she Understands the proper course for Life. She is coequal with the Father, Chokhmah, and is the final direct expression of Kether, the Crown. By her means, Kether is able to manifest itself in space and time, and thereby experience itself as a made Being.

However, because she is "virtuous" does not mean she is so in any human sense of the word. Virtue is highly subjective, and in this case the example she sets for us by her humility does not mean we should humble ourselves to the point of absurdity. For example, women should not necessarily be housewives and remain subservient to men. Chastity is not necessarily a "good" thing, for by it we restrict the force of Life. Mary's passivity is the acceptance of Life in whatever form it can come in. She is understanding of God's wisdom because she knows how best to limit it for its own wellbeing. This limitation is more or less known as death. The Divine Feminine is the great recycler, being both the Fertile Mother and the Sterile Mother. She is fairness and justice in its highest notion, for she is balanced. For as much life she brings forth she also brings forth as much death. But this is how existence is allowed to remain intact. Can you imagine if nothing died? It'd be anarchy! In some ways we should be really thankful for death, even though it's obviously something most of us don't look forward to (myself included).

Now to bring in Mr. Crowley on this. Crowley equates Binah with the Whore of Babalon, and Chokhmah with Father Chaos, which of course all sounds very Satanic and icky. But at the same time, these descriptions make sense. Chokhmah has no sense of restriction, whereas Binah is the original notion of restriction. However, Binah does not restrict herself from impregnation with God's Will, no matter what form it decides to come in. We are more than aware of the diversity of Life - Life constituting all existing things, be they "alive" or "inanimate." The Divine Will to create Life then is equally diverse, and infinitely so. Binah/Mary as the humble Feminine accepts these creations and births them, but on the condition that they must eventually die. Binah/Mary as the Virgin remains ever fruitful, for her womb is never deprived of its fertility. She loves all of her creations equally, and subjects all of them to the same fair treatment out of this love. The love she has extends beyond the individual and encompasses the Universe. This is how the desires of the individual are not necessarily equivalent to what is actually best for that individual, given their relationship to the Universe at large.

So those of us who are lucky enough to raise their consciousness to the level of Binah effectively "die." They lose all sense of individuality, because they have ascertained their connection with the World. Their personal desires and identities are rendered meaningless in the sight of all that is made. Binah, like the Virgin Mary, shows us the Way of God, which is in Christ. She is our Guide, our Fountain of Life, our Protector, our Mother. The medieval tropes that continue to survive in modern Marian prayers certainly have some validity to them. By knowledge of the Mother we may come to knowledge of the Father/Son, and through knowledge of Him, we attain knowledge of God.

Gabriel with his scroll dispenses the
Will and Word of God to the Virgin
in the form of the Holy Spirit.

I'm sure some of you are still feeling weird about the correlation I have drawn between the Virgin Mary and the Whore of Babalon. I admit it is a stark comparison. First of all, remember that Crowley's whole linguistic methodology was based on juxtaposition. He used old concepts and renamed them things people found repulsive. By doing this he teaches us a great lesson - we cannot decide what God should and should not be based on subjective personal or cultural preference. God simply Is. Second of all, remember what Crowley says about existence above the Abyss, that "contradiction is unity." The concepts of virginity and whoredom are polarized against each other. But who can really say one is "positive" and the other "negative?" Above the Abyss, their contradiction becomes unity, and they come to represent the same thing impartially.

I think what is most important about all this is to see the foolishness of Christian morality regarding sexuality and women. It is not necessarily God's Will that everyone should be chaste, nor is it possible that he prefers chastity to sexuality. It is not reasonable to say that woman is below man. Outside of the realm of sexuality and women, it is also foolish to say that baptism only occurs through the Church, when simply by being born we are baptized through Mary in the name of the Logos. Etc.

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.

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.

VI The Lovers: Reconciling Christianity and Thelema through the Writings of Teresa of Avila

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)