Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
The imminently interesting and informing Tom Rowsell of Survive the Jive, a video-essay channel that focuses on reconstructing the religion of Proto Indo-European civilization and how it survived in its diaspora, gave a talk on Transhumanism at the PAGAN FUTURES conference in London in the summer of 2022. His message as a whole was to be wary of the motives, goals and methods of the secular religion’s pursuit of hollow immortality. He asserts that in defiance of this movement there has been a rise in its polar opposite, religiously as well as politically, in the form of a revival of rigorous pursuit of ritual and lifestyle observation of the old ways, (Germanic) Paganism namely. But what I wish surprised me was this line around 5 minutes in:
The decentralized, protean and whimsically syncretic nature of new age neopaganisms makes defining their theological tenets a rather futile endeavour. However, Neoplatonists and reconstructionist forms of paganism like German religion absolutely do care about theology and cannot be represented like new age pagans as operating without religious authorities, theology or religious texts. Do what thou wilt shall not be the whole of the law, [sic] nor even part of it, as far as we’re concerned.
This cheap shot at Thelema and Aleister Crowley undermines his very point. Thelema has religious authorities, theology and religious texts, and while Thelema may be a new religion it is really only such in that it is an old word, Thelema, being defined in a new context, the New Aeon, by a new authority, Aleister Crowley, and if there’s any ambiguity about its theology, values or necessity it is not due to a lack of texts but perhaps because of an excess. Crowley left us with a few hundred pages of “Holy Books” considered to be of religious authority beyond himself and exponentially more volumes that elaborate and celebrate the message.
The blame for the decreasing popularity of Thelema and understanding of Aleister Crowley lies upon the shoulders of those who have purported to continue his work since his death. I’ve gone on in numerous places about how OTO has been compromised by American leftists who put conformity to secular messaging ahead of fraternity, theology and even their own oaths, and A∴A∴ has published very little over the previous half century to promulgate Thelema beyond the initiatory interests of its aspirants. But to delimit one’s understanding of a religion to the vanities of its vocal tourists is a disservice to its real spirit and yet explicated theology. Just as he feels the need to draw a distinction between earnest pagans such as himself and the new agers who put on puppet shows with his gods, so too must ardent Thelemites disavow e-girls and prog trogs that purport to speak for Aleister Crowley or who, much worse, attempt to deconstruct Thelema, which is a fancy way of saying destroy.
In the remainder of this piece I’d like to highlight a few areas where Thelema really distinguishes itself from the cult of secular nihilism that the west has been adhered to. My goal is not to sell Thelema to Mr. Rowsell or his fans, nor is it to pretend Thelema is subject to interpretation and could be looked at from the right or from the left equally. The two pedants pointing at a figure on the ground arguing whether it’s a 6 or a 9 need only consult the person who described it, and I believe the scribe Aleister Crowley had an instinct and ambition that jives with Mr. Rowsell’s railings against the death cult of modernity.
Transhumanism as Transcendentalism
In step with Nietzsche, who Crowley considered to be a sort of proto prophet, Crowley rails against Christianity and other religions of the Old Aeon for being death obsessed. The virtue of suffering for its own sake was seen by Crowley as a sin against life, and the idea behind it was the escape from the present world with all its trials and troubles in pursuit of a Hinterwelt, Nietzsche’s term, that was divorced from reality. Crowley instead believed that incarnation was a joyful thing willingly entered into by a free soul wishing to pursue its karma and find mastery, victory and strength. Life in its most basic functions is likewise to be celebrated, and Crowley ridicules the childless as eunuchs and proclaims it to be the frontal duty of every woman to bear children. He goes so far as to declare abortion to be a cardinal sin and a transgression against life that would warrant the death penalty for the offending mother.
Transhumanism is the secular version of transcendental escapism, a pursuit of immortality by self important atheists swaddled to the point of suffocation by their obsession with interiority. There is conflation of Crowley with transhumanism by Alex Jones and others, but this comes from a misreading of the purpose of his rituals that are transmutative rather than transcendental. Discussion of him alongside Marina Abramovic, the spirit cooking lady, is undeserved. Crowley’s description of bloody sacrifices are sex-magical euphemisms where Crowley understood sexual fluids to have some eucharistic potency that could translate into a new incarnation or could vivify the vehicle of someone currently incarnated. In several places, including upper degree OTO rituals, Crowley warns against using the Elixer of Life unless absolutely necessary, for the artificial prolonging of someone’s incarnation comes at the risk of running from death and the transformation that it brings.
Transhumanism as Globalism
Along with the vainglorious transcendence of one’s own life comes the transformation of all life into one non distinct mass of people, if they could even be called that by that point. Crowley’s “Do what thou wilt” was not a call to abandon sex, culture, caste and country, or even race for that matter. Aleister Crowley was a proud Englishman and spoke at great length about the dignity and power of his people. If he railed against anything it was the globalist force of Christianity that had stultified the natural instinct.
Alexander Dugin once studied Crowley and considered Thelema an option for a religious movement in Russia, something Crowley himself wanted when he appealed to Stalin to have the Gnostic Mass implemented as a state religion. Dugin’s push for multi-polarity rather than globalist hegemony resonates strongly with Crowley’s unfortunately titled The Jewish Problem Re-stated, wherein Crowley considers different cultures to have their own karma and trajectory and it was incumbent upon persons within that tribe, the one referenced or any tribe, to resolve and advance the will of their own people. What would have recently been considered a progressive, pluralist and anti-colonial attitude is now considered unconscionable today among the liberal milieu, but for Crowley the karma that one invokes upon incarnation is not merely the condition of the body and brain but also the circumstances of the individual, the people, and the celestial bodies. The diversity of the human experiences was something to be enjoyed, not levelled. In step with Spengler in his Der Mensch und die Technik, Crowley viewed colonialism as a temporary convenience for the colonizer and colonized alike, but one that’s likely to have blowback for both.
Transhumanism as Abdication
The most obvious sign of transhumanism today is the individual’s rejection of their duty to their own particularity. The celebration of the life of the decadent no-account wastrel is the religion of the secularist. It is the modern equivalent of the ascetic who adopts practices to make themselves uncomfortable, except hairshirts have been replaced by ridiculous trappings, self-flagellation and scarification has been replaced by body mutilation and sexual chastity has been replaced by castration through chemicals or surgery. The most common flag thrown at Thelema is the belief that Do what thou wilt encourages all of this errantry, but the opposite is true.
Crowley’s use of the term freedom is very misleading. Whereas we think of freedom as possibilities or rights, The Book of the Law reads, “Let it be that state of manyhood bound and loathing. So with thy all; thou hast no right but to do thy will.” 220.1.42. Crowley says it is the “strictest possible bond,” and it is a specific calling or task, a vocation, and most likely not one that is divorced from the needs of your family or society. Rather, it’s one of universal ordination, however particular or grandiose. In the good old days, there was no doubt that the blacksmith’s son’s will was to apprentice under his father and ply the trade dutifully and beautifully. But Thelema is an apocalyptic religion in the sense that it recognizes the current transition mankind is going through is much more existential, severe and bewildering than previous collapses. The necessity to go about discovering your will is in part due to it no longer being obvious, and this is because the individual has been divorced from their nature in this cold gray land of the modern world. For Crowley, everything needed to be reconstituted, not only the inner nobility of duty but also the noble social order of hierarchy crowned by benevolent aristocracy.
The New Aeon and the New Age Movement
It’s odd that mid-century discussions of the Age of Aquarius were characterized by hippie whimsey when Aquarius is ruled by Saturn. They danced for Aquarius but apparently just expected more Pisces. And on the other horizon lies Leo, the Beast, in all his haught and power. But Thelema fell victim to the progressive movement like everything else after having incubated in California for several decades, and all the details and teachings Crowley left behind were subject to scrutiny by people who just considered Thelema a redundancy that applied a religious veneer to lifestyle liberalism. But Thelema is not that - it is a religion of life with defined mythology (much of it Mr. Rowsell would like to know leans on the Western Mystery Tradition and Proto Indo-European mythology) and mysticism, and clear instructions on how the individual and their society can be symbiotically rectified in the face of these new neon dark ages that Crowley believed would define the first several hundred years of this New Aeon. It is a religion for the world that refracts in distinctive ways through societies where it lays root, but this root does not deracinate the other plants. Rather it grows in between like mycelia, facilitating growth, communication, hardiness, and transformation. Thelema is the answer to Nietzsche’s Parable of the Madman as to how we might redeem ourselves from the sins of our ancestors who traded the perennial life in exchange for temporary comfort and pleasures, and now all that’s left of the fruit of their indiscretion is the bitter core.
For those who cared to read this far and chance to abide in this bliss or no:
Love is the law, love under will.
The central problem of Thelema in regards to preserving European traditions and folk religion is it is a *universalist* approach - it's Masonic in its scope, outside of nation and blood and soil.
While Crowley certainly loved Wagner, he has no interest in Germanic religion or even Celtic religion in any reasonable sense - he new ages out on the buffet of the past, equating all together in a meaningful (and blasphemous) pastiche.
Similarly, he was a hipster of his time, fascinated by the East and all the forbidden things that were
exotic. He doesn't extole European virtues - he's too busy, as noted by Yorke in "666, Sex, and the O.T.O." buggering Arab boys and doing lines of coke.
Note as well the passing over of the British folk tradition that is Enochian magick - it's included because it was with the Golden Dawn, is central to his Holy Books, but is ignored utterly after the failed return to Algeria in 1910 after the 1909 reception of 418. He doesn't stress its importance, doesn't really understand it, and ignores and manipulates the manuscript of 418 (which I painstakingly restored over several years, unlike those vaunted literary guardians).
Nowhere does Crowley even acknowledge orlog in relation to that "divine will" of Thelema - nor does he name said gods or show any reverence to them. The gods themselves are largely meaningless to him, things to be used and discarded at will like whomever he was bedding for a time.
I wish I could be more complimentary of the man, but I've spent decades on a man I grew to despise the more I got through the archives.
One other mistake you make is the assumption that the people criticizing him in the folk-based movements aren't familiar with his teachings and philosophy. Flowers, McNallen, McVan, et al - all the modern progenitors of the Germanic folk revival - know him intimately. They studied ANYTHING they could get their hands on.
But there's no divorcing Thelema as practiced from the universalist taint of the Judeo-Christian egregore and Freemasonry without substantial revision.