Faith and Gnosis in Thelema

vel Certa Fides

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Thelema as an umbrella culture is staked on the importance placed on the individual Will, but this is not our distinguishing trait as there are no few religious and philosophical traditions both past and present that expound on this. Our uniqueness lies in an understanding of how this Will comes to be known and done, and our answer is the Knowledge and Conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel.

K&C, if you’ll pardon the abbreviation, is also not peculiar to our tradition. On one hand you have an understanding of the angel as the inner genius that, expressed, inspirits one’s life with a richness of understanding and meaning that guides the individual towards their idiosyncratic talent the universe requires of them. Emerson praised this sort of Gnosis half a century before Crowley, such as in his essay Self-Reliance, and he was among many others from the western Christian tradition. On the other hand there’s the understanding of the angel as a discarnate entity who, having achieved some mastery while living, survives death to mentor men. Again, there were many who spoke to this Gnosis coming from eastern and western traditions, Crowley providing a list of cross-cultural corollaries in The Temple of Solomon the King. He did assert in the end of his life that the angel is its own being, not some higher self or personal qualia. 

Crowley found uniqueness in his appreciating how this sort of ethical mysticism can resolve issues of both philosophy and religion. He believed that the individual’s relationship with their genius might vary where some require a more methodical approach to achieving this Gnosis, ie Magick, while others might have a lucid and natural communion. After Nietzsche and Emerson, Crowley called these latter people artists. However achieved, Crowley believed it was imperative for each individual and so for all people to discover and do their Will, to initiate this communion with Genius, which is Gnosis. His understanding of both individual liberty and cultural progress was rooted in this goal. For Crowley, this is good. So, what is evil?

Crowley wrote in Liber Librae, “Nevertheless have the greatest self-respect, and to that end sin not against thyself. The sin which is unpardonable is knowingly and wilfully to reject truth, to fear knowledge lest that knowledge pander not to thy prejudices.” The language here deviates from a common understanding of Thelema as it speaks of sin and pardon in a religion where, “There is no grace, there is no guilt. This is the Law: Do what thou wilt!” But the logic is sound as the denial of truth and knowledge, both of which can be understood as an experience of Gnosis, is a denial of one’s very capacity, a sin that is not a slight to some deity but instead as a grave offense to the one true god, one’s self, specifically one’s capacity to commune with the divine. 

Liber Librae is Crowley’s adaptation of the Fourth Knowledge Lecture of the Golden Dawn, given to the Practicus, specifically “ON THE GENERAL GUIDANCE AND PURIFICATION OF THE SOUL,” and preserves the tone and nod given to the Sermon on the Mount. For instance, from the GD version, “When men shall revile thee and speak against thee falsely, hath not the Master said “Blessed art thou.” This is a reference to the last of the Blessings of KJV Matthew 5:11, “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.” The Master speaking is Jesus Christ. Crowley preserved this honorific in his Liber Librae. The Sermon on the Mount is the first of the Five Discourses of Matthew. The third discourse also bears some relevance, or rather what immediately precedes it. In the beginning of Matthew 12 Jesus apologized for his followers harvesting grain on the Sabbath. The Pharisees challenged him to heal on the Sabbath, and he did so, but then Jesus fled to avoid arrest. The pharisees mocked Christ, calling him “ἀκάθαρτον,” Akatharton, which means mixed, of mixed spirit. In Matthew, Jesus says, "Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” When Jesus was being called an “evil spirit” by the Pharisees, he informed them that it was one thing to blaspheme him, but it was unpardonable to blaspheme the Holy Spirit. That sin was final. The third discourse comes in the next chapter, 13, in the form of numerous parables, most of which are seed related. 

What is here important is the parallel between Liber Librae and the Sermon on the Mount and the equating of the “Eternal Sin” of Matthew 12:31-32, “Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.” In Liber Librae, “Nevertheless have the greatest self-respect, and to that end sin not against thyself. The sin which is unpardonable is knowingly and wilfully to reject truth, to fear knowledge lest that knowledge pander not to thy prejudices.” This “sin” is the denial of the Holy Spirit, the possibility of communion with genius, which is gnosis, which is “truth.” The “knowledge” feared is the gnosis of spiritual vision. The “prejudices” are those personal vanities that scatter the will. 

The author of the GD lecture understood the metaphor of gnosis vs thoughts in Matthew. The “scattering” of Matthew 12:30 is echoed in the GD lecture, “To obtain magical Power, learn to control thought. Admit only true ideas which are in harmony with the end desired, and not every stray and contradictory idea that presents itself.” 

Crowley elaborates in The Heart of the Master, “Also, to deny the Law of Thelema is a restriction in oneself, affirming conflict in the Universe as necessary. It is a blasphemy against the Self, assuming that its Will is not a necessary (and therefore a noble) part of the Whole. In a word he who accepts not the Law of Thelema is divided against himself: that is, he is insane, and the upshot shall be the ruin of the Unity of his Godhead.”

When the Jesuits went to China, hundreds of years ago, and they set out to translate the Bible into classical Chinese, they were at pains to find a word that paralleled the Holy Spirit in its mystical magnitude (without conjuring the image of a friendly Chinese ghost). To appreciate the mystical vernacular of the Chinese language the Jesuits studied Daoism and found a very common spirit, they translated “Holy Spirit” as “Dao” in Chinese, understanding that this Way, the Way, was their Way, Truth and Life. I would add that this Holy Spirit, this Dao, is the Will. The spirit must be holy, not mixed. Gathered, not scattered. One thing, not two, not divided against itself. 

The Will, a product of Gnosis, K&C, is crucial to liberation. To deny (the necessity and therefore nobility of) the Will, or to deny (the possibility and presence of) K&C, is the irredeemable restriction, sin. To we who are Thelemic Gnostics, there is no refuge for Agnostics, those who assert the impossibility of Gnosis, or Knowing. This is not to tease those who have casually identified as “agnostics” in their life when it would have been more accurate for them to say that they are lazy or uninformed, the Lumpenphilosoph. The offender here is more the Atheist, scorned in Mackey’s Masonic Encyclopedia as “One who does not believe in the existence of God. Such a state of mind can only arise from the ignorance of stupidity or a corruption of principle, since the whole universe is filled with the moral and physical proofs of a Creator.” The knee-jerk of the new atheist would mock this “creationism” because the handicap of his imagination reduces his capacity to understand the thesis at about the level of a toddler watching Fantasia and wondering if Mickey was the creator. Rather, abstractly, the creative force that we accept as being responsible for the universe is Chaos, whose ebbs and flows through the nothingness of space evidence the maxim “As Above, So Below,” or As Big, So Small, for the macrocosm and microcosm follow self-same patterns and the hermeticist recognizes within his person the very same formulae that echo through eternity. Mackey also references the Book of Constitutions of 1723, “A Mason is obliged by his tenure to obey the moral law; and if he rightly understands the Art, he will never be a stupid Atheist, nor an irreligious libertine.” 

Anyone who denies the Holy Spirit is not a Christian. 

Anyone who says they do not believe in the Holy Guardian Angel is not a Thelemite.

Crowley also comments on the atheist in his essay Gematria as printed in “777 and other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley,” that:

Atheists are of three kinds, 

1. The mere stupid man. (Often he is very clever, as Bolingbroke, Bradlaugh and Foote were clever.) He has found out one of the minor arcana, and hugs it and despises those who see more than himself, or who regard things from a different standpoint. Hence he is usually a bigot, intolerant even of tolerance. 

2. The despairing wretch, who, having sought God everywhere, and failed to hind Him, thinks everyone else is as blind as he is, and that if he has failed — he, the seeker after truth! — it is because there is no goal. In his cry there is pain, as with the stupid kind of atheist there is smugness and self-satisfaction. Both are diseased Egos. 

3. The philosophical adept, who, knowing God, says “There is No God,” meaning “God is Zero,” as qabalistically He is. he holds atheism as a philosophical speculation as good as any other, and perhaps less likely to mislead mankind and do other practical damage than any other. Him you may know by his equanimity, enthusiasm, and devotion. I again refer to Liber 418 for an explanation of this mystery. The nine religions are crowned by the ring of adepts whose password is “There is No God,” so inflected that even the Magister when received among them had not wisdom to interpret it.”

But another dilemma of dogma arises for those of us who believe in the promise of “certainty, not faith.” How can someone who lacks gnosis be expected to believe in it? The answer is given by Crowley in his Preliminary Remarks, the introduction to Part 1, Mysticism, of Book 4, Liber ABA. Crowley bemoans the bankruptcy of vainglorious religious inquiry, commenting, “No religion has failed hitherto by not promising enough; the present breaking up of all religions is due to the fact that people have asked to see the securities.”  He proposes instead to not start from theory but instead from observation, by turning to the written accounts to look for themes and commonalities. This is the method of Scientific Illuminism, a hermetic science and anthropic one, similar to what Emerson called the Joyful Science and Nietzsche called “The Gay Science” or “Die fröhliche Wissenschaft,” where fröhliche means Gay or Joyful. Frolick comes from fröhliche, a sort of defiant enthusiasm, a gaiety where spirit and creativity might make manifest. Wissenschaft is science. Crowley writes:

But what of the origin of religions? How is it that unproved assertion has so frequently compelled the assent of all classes of mankind? Is not this a miracle?

There is, however, one form of miracle which certainly happens, the influence of the genius. There is no known analogy in Nature. One cannot even think of a "super-dog" transforming the world of dogs, whereas in the history of mankind this happens with regularity and frequency. Now here are three "super-men," all at loggerheads. What is there in common between Christ, Buddha, and Mohammed? Is there any one point upon which all three are in accord?

No point of doctrine, no point of ethics, no theory of a "hereafter" do they share, and yet in the history of their lives we find one identity amid many diversities.

Crowley goes on to illustrate how they, along with numerous others, share some core aspects of their lives and so in their teachings. 

Elaborate lives of each have been written by devotees, and there is one thing common to all three -- an omission. We hear nothing of Christ between the ages of twelve and thirty. Mohammed disappeared into a cave. Buddha left his palace, and went for a long while into the desert.

Each of them, perfectly silent up to the time of the disappearance, came back and immediately began to preach a new law.

Making every possible deduction for fable and myth, we get this one coincidence. A nobody goes away, and comes back a somebody. This is not to be explained in any of the ordinary ways.

What was the nature of their power? What happened to them in their absence?

History will not help us to solve the problem, for history is silent.

We have only the accounts given by the men themselves.

It would be very remarkable should we find that these accounts agree.

Of the great teachers we have mentioned Christ is silent; the other four tell us something; some more, some less.

Buddha goes into details too elaborate to enter upon in this place; but the gist of it is that in one way or another he got hold of the secret force of the World and mastered it.

Of St. Paul's experiences, we have nothing but a casual allusion to his having been "caught up into Heaven, and seen and heard things of which it was not lawful to speak."

Mohammed speaks crudely of his having been "visited by the Angel Gabriel," who communicated things from "God."

Moses says that he "beheld God."

Diverse as these statements are at first sight, all agree in announcing an experience of the class which fifty years ago would have been called supernatural, to-day may be called spiritual, and fifty years hence will have a proper name based on an understanding of the phenomenon which occurred.

The methods advised by all these people have a startling resemblance to one another. They recommend "virtue" (of various kinds), solitude, absence of excitement, moderation in diet, and finally a practice which some call prayer and some call meditation. (The former four may turn out on examination to be merely conditions favourable to the last.)

We do not believe in any supernatural explanations, but insist that this source may be reached by the following out of definite rules, the degree of success depending upon the capacity of the seeker, and not upon the favour of any Divine Being. We assert that the critical phenomenon which determines success is an occurrence in the brain characterized essentially by the uniting of subject and object. We propose to discuss this phenomenon, analyse its nature, determine accurately the physical, mental and moral conditions which are favourable to it, to ascertain its cause, and thus to produce it in ourselves, so that we may adequately study its effects. 

So there is an understanding that these great masters of times past have a common narrative - prince to pauper to prophet - and that the real redemption came from a common experience - Gnosis. They describe having witnessed God, Theophany, and it’s important to remember that Gnosis is knowledge gotten through experience or vision. These prophets experienced certainty and preached faith, but not a sating faith. The faith they preached was one of observation of practices that might lead to a similar experience. So too is Gnosis translated in KJV 1 Timothy 6:20-21 as science, “O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen.” In terms of Scientific Illuminism, Postulants were enjoined to repeat the experiments of prophets to see if similar results are achieved. This was not just to discover if the original scientist was or was not a fraud but also because the end was seen as desirable, both for its ability to satisfy the religious instinct and also because of the sort of man it produced, a Holy Man, a man of virtue whose illuminating experience turned them into a lighthouse for those lost at sea, a catalyst for the ennoblement of civilization. This was another common thread among holy men not here mentioned by Crowley, that their Gnosis transformed their worlds. In Liber 33, Crowley’s version of “Cloud Upon the Sanctuary,” he writes:

But as men multiplied, the frailty of man necessitated an exterior society which veiled the interior one, and concealed the spirit and the truth in the letter, because many people were not capable of comprehending great interior truth.

But all exterior societies subsist only by virtue of this interior one. As soon as external societies wish to transform a temple of wisdom into a political edifice, the interior society retires and leaves only the letter without the spirit. It is thus that secret external societies of wisdom were nothing but hieroglyphic screens, the truth remaining inviolable in the Sanctuary so that she might never be profaned.

Liber 33 speaks mostly in terms of initiatory societies, but to Karl Eckartshausen’s romantic idea of human evolution this was meant in larger terms of the development of civilization. This would agree with Eliade and St. Constant’s ideas of all societies beginning as initiatory ones and the deterioration of this spiritual understanding of civilization has led to a great entropy in the ennoblement of humanity.

There is another cause for faith for those who have yet to achieve K&C, which is the fruits of those who have. Just like shielding your eyes from the Light of the sun so that you can bear witness to its effect upon the earth, Life, you don’t have to see the sun to know that there’s a cause for all the abundance upon the planet. When we witness innovation, creativity, ardour, excellence and virtue, we witness the expression of genius. When we seek beauty we find truth, and the truth that we find is a resonance between our heart and the heart of the creator of that beauty. The Master Mansur al Hallaj wrote, “I saw my Lord with the eye of my heart. I asked, ‘who are you?’ He replied, ‘you.’” 

There is a natural faith that comes through a deeper sense, a hermetic experience of the resonance of hearts that inspires faith that there is something within and beyond the gross impression of nature and humanity. The Master of the Temple experiences the Trance of Wonder, from the final phrase of the Oath of a Master of the Temple. "I will interpret every phenomenon as a particular dealing of God with my soul." Crowley writes in Little Essays Toward Truth, Wonder:

It is necessary to add but one brief word to this elementary essay: this Trance is of its nature not only passive and intuitive. Its occurrence floods the mind with Creative Energy; it fills the Adept with Power, and excites in him the Will to work. It exalts him to the Atziluthic World in his Essence, and in his manifestation to the Briatic. In a very special sense, therefore, it may be said that the Postulant is most intimately united with the Supreme Lord God Most High, the True and Living Creator of all Things, whensoever he attains to enter this most Majestic Pylon of the Trance of Wonder.

With all this let not the aspirant fear faith, for there is a natural faith in the integrity of those who came before, and also an understanding that civilization, when strong, has a quality that evidences ennoblement as well as nurtures it. Blasphemy in Thelema is to deny excellence, the Troglodyte is blind to this beauty and resents those who preach its immanence and the path of communion, to deny the great Anthropic truth, that there is no god but man, he who is to be overcome.

Love is the law, love under will.