Introduction to Thelema - pt 1

vel Novum Aeon

[Originally presented as the first of three lectures given at Yes We Cannibal in Baton Rouge in 2020]

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

I’d like to begin with a history of Thelema and Aleister Crowley’s relationship with it to give the talk some context, then give a tour of Crowley’s mysticism that he inherited from his pre-Thelema traditions and wed with some world religions and his own visionary experiences, and conclude with a look at Crowley’s ideas of yoga and magick, how they intersect and how we can understand them as distinct practices that work together for the aspirant.

Thelema, which means Will in Greek, is the “word of the law” in The Book of the Law, a book written by Aleister Crowley in 1904 but not, according to his account, a product of his own intellect. Thelema is the “Will” in “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,” a verse from this book, a verse that is usually coupled with another verse, “Love is the law, love under will.” These two verses address questions of ethics in the discussion of love, law, and will, and these concepts find their relevance in several historical narratives including that of continental or classical philosophy, Abrahamic religion, and a linear and pessimistic historiography of Proto Indo European civilization. 

Aleister Crowley believed the reception of this book from praeterhuman and transcorporeal entities was of Aeonic historical consequence, which is to say that it initiated a new era in the human experience that he called the New Aeon, that of the Child, referring to Horus, the Greek name for Ra Hoor Akhty, Horus of the Two Horizons. This was juxtaposed against the previous Aeon, that of Osiris the father, characterized by prescriptive societies and a redemptive myth of vicarious atonement for the sin of incarnation through suffering and faith in institutions. In ways Crowley believed his New Aeon would participate in trendy cultural movements such as scientific positivism, radical individualism and liberal legal developments, but in other ways the New Aeon would partake of values that preceded the Aeon of Osiris, going back to the Aeon of Isis, the mother, characterized by faith in nature’s abundance and cyclical existence of eternal return rather than linear history that anticipates an ultimate and inevitable catastrophe such as Apocalypse, Ragnarok or the Samson Option. 

Crowley was not originally moved to explicate Thelema to a broader audience. After the initial reception of The Book of the Law Crowley, pushing 30 and newly wed to an Irish lass, was still enjoying circumnavigating the globe and pissing away his inherited wealth. It was a few years later that he aggressively revisited the Qabalah-oriented model of the initiatory order he’d devoted himself to leading up to the reception of The Book of the Law, that of the Golden Dawn, and began receiving additional books, most of which are a tenth the size of The Book of the Law. To my knowledge the most recent publishing of this collection was entitled “The Holy Books of the A∴A∴,” excluding The Book of the Law, as the editor felt these later additions to Crowley’s corpus of received text were decidedly more focused on the initiatory system Crowley was working on rather than the Aeonic scope of The Book of the Law. Their manner of reception was also different, The Book of the Law being dictated by a spirit and the later books being received through some form of automatic writing. Initially all these texts, which he called Liber this and Liber that, were reserved for aspirants to the system of A∴A∴ as special material appropriate to certain initiations, suitable for meditation and required to be memorized for advancement. Later in Crowley’s life they were made available to the public, The Book of the Law itself being published and distributed not so much as mystical instruction but rather as a sacred text in the vein of Abrahamic prophetic literature that promulgates a new Law, one might say a new Covenant, designed by a body of transcended adepts to assist mankind into the next step of the evolution of human consciousness. Crowley consider himself in step with a line of Magi that begins with Laozi and others and includes Moses, Dionysus (or Jesus), and Mohammad, and then him.

To the modern student approaching Crowley’s work the regiment of study is not readily apparent. Crowley expected curious parties to approach his material through one of his initiatory orders where certain spheres of esoteric knowledge are gradually taught and where reading lists were made available. There were several attempts at introductory works, including his commentaries on The Book of the Law (later published as The Law is for All), which explains Thelemic morality for the layman, and also his Liber ABA, a massive tome currently published at twice its intended size due to the incredible amount of footnotes, endnotes and appendices provided. I maintain that despite its daunting size and scope that it is still the best cover-to-cover introduction to this material. But it is possible for the student to become lost in the weeds absent an instructor to help keep everything in perspective. 

It took Crowley a while to transition from a teacher of esoteric subjects and provider of initiations into his role as “World Teacher” or Prophet of the New Aeon. A catalyst for this was the incredible historical changes he witnessed in his life, coming of age at the end of the 19th century a wealthy Englishman during the height of the British Empire but then living through the Great War and the collapse of the western aristocracies. He was occasionally optimistic, early on as a young magician and then later in his life with the political innovations of Europe promising something newer and better. He attempted to insert himself into early 20th century revolutions. He proposed The Gnostic Mass could form the basis for the state religion of Stalin’s Soviet Empire. He thought his OTO could imitate Musolini’s Brown Shirts and protect the working class and the aristocrats alike from the socialist smash. He even believed he’d managed to get a copy of The Book of the Law to the leader of the Socialist German Worker’s Party in the 1930’s, whose name I won’t say but I think you know who I’m talking about. Crowley’s attraction to these movements was primarily as an opportunist targeting fledgling governments that were confrontational with Christianity and of a more masculine and intrepid nature than western liberal democracies which he saw as dainty, vulgar and petty. Ultimately his attempts to install himself as a Rasputin or Himmler were unsuccessful and the collapse all around Europe and around the globe was an ill omen for his New Aeon.

While we are tempted to be dismissive of Crowley and the importance of his message because of his failure during his life to become a conquering Mohammad or Joseph Smith, both of whom he admired, and also daunting is the very minimal traction Thelema has gained in the world since his death, I believe there is a greater lesson apparent: don’t get ahead of yourself. Crowley’s hopeful message during his life - that the Law of Thelema provided an expeditious method of attainment whereby one can live a joyous life as a conquering soul in the discovery and doing of their will - expected the Aeonic transition to be a productive one. But the initiation of the New Aeon resembles the initiation of the soul, and the first stage upon the path is a dark one. Aleister Crowley wrote near the end of his life that the New Aeon will begin with several hundred years of darkness, war and collapse, and the 20th century, the first century of the New Aeon, has exhibited this. 

It’s easy to forgive Crowley his optimism. He had a lot going for him around the reception of The Book of the Law. The Nietzschean tone of the book is anything but timid. He came from a romantic, Masonic and liberal tradition that had a lot of global achievements to boast. He thought he was catching the wave at exactly the right time, but it was a massive tidal wave and things don’t always go as planned. Discouraged but not dissuaded, his message instead was to hold on tight, work to spread the message, but also to be guarded against the indiscretions of the profane who have a habit of executing religious and political upstarts. His OTO, counter-revolutionary in its attempt to preserve the aristocracy but revolutionary in its aim to recruit them and transform society from above, would also be targeted by unstable, paranoid and illiberal governments. OTO members were targeted by the Nazis, including Karl Germer, Crowley’s successor in OTO and A∴A∴, who was originally imprisoned in Columbiahaus (the concentration camp, not the record store), more of a white collar prison for political enemies in Berlin, but was later moved to Esterwegen. Nazis became keen on Crowley when his student Kuntzel translated The Book of the Law (Das Buch des Gesetzes) and other materials into German and distributed them to her aristocratic friends - a major backfire and a big wake-up call for Crowley. 

As a curious aside, surely Germer was upset with Crowley for getting him incarcerated. The proof they used to incarcerate him was a letter they intercepted from Crowley to Germer where their activities are explicit. So between giving incriminating materials to Hitler and writing unencrypted letters involving illegal activities to Germer, Crowley did not do favors to his friend. The move to the harsher Esterwegen concentration camp came after Crowley and Sasha, Karl Germer’s wife, tried to pull strings to get him released. There may have been a strange moment on Germer’s arrival in Esterwegen where inmates were marked with a color-coded triangle to group them by reason of incarceration. Jews bore the yellow hexagram that said “Jude,” and you may be familiar with the pink triangle for gay men. Political prisoners, Germer’s classification, bore a down-pointing red triangle, which Crowley says was given to him in a vision as a symbol special to Horus and the New Aeon, the “descending tongue of grace,” which sits centered on the breast of the black Tau robe of the initiate, such as Germer wore. So, after the three mistakes of Crowley that landed Germer in a western front concentration camp, Germer was immediately adorned by the same red triangle of Horus by his captors that he’d received during initiation. Ever the stalwart German, Germer made use of his time in meditation and achieved Knowledge and Conversation while incarcerated.

"Civilization is crumbling under our eyes and I believe that the best chance of saving what little is worth saving, and rebuilding the Temple of the Holy Ghost on plans, and with material and workmanship, which shall be free from the errors of the former, lies with the O.T.O." —Aleister Crowley

All of this is to say that Aleister Crowley began as a wealthy young man interested in mystical attainment through magical means and esoteric instruction and early on into his life a number of experiences, including mystical experiences and the reception of a body of “sacred” literature, compelled him into shifting gears towards sharing a message of historical consequence with a much broader audience, that being the contents of The Book of the Law, more specifically the Law of Thelema, and it was his task to promulgate this new law to the world. Before he leaned into his role as world teacher he focused on an initiatory order that advanced the teachings of the Golden Dawn, from where he got so much of his early instruction, this new order being the A∴A∴. Later he assumed control of OTO. Initially he saw OTO as an esoteric initiatory order that could synergize with A∴A∴ to stimulate personal attainment, but later he looked at OTO as a revolutionary order that could promulgate Thelema and ally aristocrats to install his teachings legally and culturally. During his life neither A∴A∴ nor OTO boasted a large membership, neither did they ingratiate themselves with the ruling class to any consequential degree, but Crowley had many intelligent and accomplished artists, writers and even social movers as students and colleagues.

A∴A∴ and OTO both exist today, where A∴A∴ is still focused on individual instruction and initiation, publishing periodicals less so, and OTO, while it has thousands of members in many different countries, does very little to promote Thelema today aside from continuing to do the Gnostic Mass and initiations when they’re not too busy fretting over the flu. As someone who was a member of OTO for almost two decades it pains me to say that the only thing that’s worth it about them is that they do Crowley’s initiation rituals and celebrate the Gnostic Mass, even though the iteration someone today is likely to encounter is less than what Crowley would have wanted. However, today, there are many intelligent and motivated Thelemites around the world who will probably do much better promoting Thelema once the current OTO gerontocracy punches out.

A∴A∴ is different, and that brings up the next subject, Crowley’s mysticism. 

Aleister Crowley was in his early 20’s when he began to encounter esoteric religious literature that spoke of orders of people, and orders of beings, that are vested with the responsibility of all creation. It wasn’t even the 20th century when Crowley, who had for years been compelled to be intimately familiar with the bible (and forty years later he told his son to make sure he was very familiar with the same), set off to discover the source for these secret utterances and calls to action. AC’s search led him to the Golden Dawn, a collection of sincere occultists in late 19th century England who were practicing a brand of magick that was a combination of gradual initiations along the Qabalistic Tree of Life, regular ritual practices that borrowed heavily from Qabalistic symbolism and who were expected to learn a great deal about Qabalah, esoteric correspondences, numerology and Renaissance occult symbolism derived from alchemy and mythology. In this humbler time they would not have considered it an insult that so much of their teachings were derivative of adjacent and recent mystical schools, including offshoots of Freemasonry. But they did have a secret source of instructional material called the Cipher Manuscripts, watermarked 1808, by which they claim to have gotten in touch with one Anna Sprengel, a German Rosicrucian, who chartered their new enterprise.

What the Golden Dawn claimed followed suit with Madame Blavatsky, and echoed the mythology espoused in Cloud Upon the Sanctuary, which Crowley considered the book that got him started on this path. They espoused there is a congregation of transcendent masters who have managed to preserve their wherewithal and power beyond the flesh and who continue to affect the course of mankind from their higher vantage by, primarily, offering instruction to individual aspirants still laboring in the flesh upon the earth. This body of the highest initiates have variously been referred to as Boddhisatvas, Mahatmas, Saints, or Secret Masters or, eventually for Crowley, Secret Chiefs. The people running the Golden Dawn stated they were in touch with this body of the high initiates and it was from them that the genius of their ceremonies derived. For them, and for Crowley, the authority of the visible head of an order was premised on their connection to the invisible head of this august body, the Great White Brotherhood. 

Among the literature of the Golden Dawn was a translation of great importance called The Book of Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, wherein is advertised a months-long ritual vigil whereby one attains Knowledge and Conversation with their Holy Guardian Angel. There are similar rituals in the PGM and the prayer for the genius was a normal religious affair in at least the classical world of the Mediterranean. Abramelin’s method was not the first revival of this ancient ceremony. The earliest manuscripts pseudoepigraphically given to Abraham of Worms are dated 1608, and he lived circa 1400. Brian Johnson’s book Necromancy in the Medici Library discusses the flurry of similar manuscripts being proliferated in the 15th century during northern Italy’s magical revival, called the Renaissance. Johnson translates a spell that is extremely similar to Abramelin’s. It is ascribed to Michael Scot, a Scotsman who lived and studied in Italy circa 1300. These earlier versions describe the spirit being sought as a sort of tutelary wraith, a dead person who is capable of communicating all knowledge to the magician. This ritual, the attainment of the angel, would be the principle reason that Crowley had a falling-out with the G∴D∴.

Crowley left to Loch Ness to prosecute this attainment but returned to London at the request of his mentor and friend, Mathers, the head of the G∴D∴, who had moved to France and then experienced friction with the London chapter. Much of this was due to his affection for Crowley and wanting to advance him into the adept grades of the Rosy Cross, but the London chapter refused to welcome him into their interior order, because unimpressive people feel better about themselves when nobody noteworthy is around. As the G∴D∴ crumbled Crowley began globe trotting, believing the G∴D∴ was corrupt in that it did not require the attainment described in Abramelin’s book as a condition of real membership in the interior order. Crowley understood that inasmuch as their legitimacy as conservators of the mysteries was derived from their connection to the ascended masters that an adept must be someone who has achieved some actual connection to them, an intermediary, an Angel. Therefore those people who described themselves as adepts were not so because their only distinction from those below them, in the “Outer College,” was that they had completed the course material and kept a low enough profile to not arouse the jealousy or irritation of their fellow pretenders. Crowley therefore believed the hierarchy within the GD was not based on attainment but was artificial and its members were therefore frauds. He parted ways with the G∴D∴.

“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 XXXIII, An Account of A∴A∴ [Crowley’s Cloud Upon the Sanctuary]

A few years later he designed the A∴A∴ and with some of the more impressive G∴D∴ people created a new order, one that subsumed the work of the G∴D∴ and pinned real attainment, real initiation, to the experience of the Angel and then the experience of the Abyss, or rather the crossing of it, where the aspirant might find rest in the cradle of royal Bacchus, might find sanctuary beyond the Nile, the Nothing, within the City of the Pyramids, the twilight of the Duat, the home of the gods, the campground of the Secret Chiefs. This attainment of Crossing the Abyss was something the G∴D∴ believed was not within the realm of possibility of a living person. It became a focal concern of Crowley and theme in his Holy Books, a way of not only being connected to the Great White Brotherhood but to be received into their number, to commune with them regularly. Crowley began his operation to become an adept, defined as being in communion with your Angel, circa 1900 while still in the Golden Dawn and considered the ritual complete within the next several years with the reception of The Book of the Law. AC later considering the speaker, Aiwass, to be his angel, and this attainment was also cemented when he was kicked by a donkey in China. Shortly after the donkey incident he was in Japan and had a vision of being received into the Great White Brotherhood and within a few years he found himself in Algeria, in the Sahara, experimenting with a late Renaissance magical system popularly called Enochian (related to the Angels of Enoch) where he parted the veils of even loftier domains and was initiated into the Great White Brotherhood as a Master of the Temple, tantamount to a Boddhisatva who takes upon the sorrow of the world by vowing to return until no unilluminated soul remains.

In the remainder of this talk, advancing a more functional understanding of the difference between yoga and magick within the mysticism of Thelema. 

The Qabalistic mapping of the progress of an initiate upon the Tree of Life finds its explicit origins in Freemasonry but dates much further back, at least a couple thousand years where we find descriptions of the Sephirah and paths in works like the Sefer Yetzirah. Inasmuch as much of what’s now considered Qabalistic mysticism was appropriation of Gnostic concepts and these Neoplatonic ideas go even further back then the understanding of the Tree of Life as a model of emanation of the divine that conceals a method of return is a staple in European mysticism. We see ten sephirah and twenty two paths, and as each of them has a peculiar power, appropriate allegory or category of symbolism, and a relative importance then each of them implies some necessary stopping point or grade. In the system of the G∴D∴, and of the A∴A∴, there are ten such grades, explicitly corresponding to the Sephirah. In the system of OTO there are ten numbered grades and an additional 12 in-between grades (if you include EGC sacraments), totaling 22, the number of the paths. However, for Crowley there were only two initiations of significance. Perhaps it’s better to call them states or orders of being, destinations, or attainments. Again, this is the Angel and the Abyss, Life and Death, Light and Night or Lux and Nox in the Latin. The Book of Sacred Magick of Abramelin the Mage wherein is described the method of K&C with HGA comes from a tradition of esoteric Qabalistic literature where the Hebrew term Devekut was often used to describe this attainment, that meaning “clinging,” as if you’re connected to some new plateau or hierarchy. Crowley referred to Abramelin as the source for his terminology and understanding of the method, and he went on to write a few more. The second step, the crossing of the Abyss, is first explicitly engaged within Thelemic mysticism as an achievable initiation while living. Crowley believed that such an attainment was not new, just that access to it had become readier in this New Aeon. Similarly Crowley found many parallels of the “Holy Guardian Angel” in previous traditions, the worship of the Augoeides or personal Daimon being a popular observation in the classical Mediterranean world. Christ was seen as a universal and preferable alternative to this pagan medium, so much so that the worship of the genius annually on one’s birthday became a forbidden practice in Christian Rome. That’s right, it was a capital crime to celebrate your birthday.

What is very peculiar about these two initiations, in contrast to basically every other initiation or “grade,” is that it implies communion with a new order of beings. Abramelin’s term was “knowledge and conversation,” in the original German this “knowledge” was Kennen, to know something experientially rather than semantically. Kennen shares a PIE root with kindred, Gnosis and also with Knowledge, and Gnosis is translated in the New Testament usually to mean knowledge in a deeper sense of Christ. As mentioned previously, with Jesus Christ as the substitute for the HGA for early Roman Christians, Gnosis of Christ and Knowledge of the HGA are very akin. So where Knowledge means to experience or become aware of the religious significance of, Conversation means to talk to. But actually, con is with and versus means to turn. Versus’ PIE root is Wer, which variously means to lift, turn, cover or watch out for. From this we get the word weird, which is English for Wyrd, the Proto-germanic term for fate, and one’s fate may take many turns. So, to converse means to turn towards someone, to engage them, to give them attention, and possibly to turn to go their way, that path. And, it also means to talk to. So in one sense K&C means to discover and redirect, but it also means to conversate, and Abramelin and Crowley believed that more literal understanding to be the case.

The Law of Thelema is “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” The “Will” in question does not, according to Crowley, refer to some spontaneous interest or want. Rather, it referred to a sort of vocational calling for the individual that might manifest differently depending on one’s lot in life, nature, or especially their progress on the path. It may be more nebulous or more specific. But, Crowley believed that this imperative solved all questions of ethics, that it was a watch-word of freedom for all and that the discovery of your own individual will was crucial so that you could begin executing such in the world expediently. He also believed that the doing of the will would right your work and invite illumination and harmony in the world. 

Crowley originally identified this angel as a psychological phenomenon, attempting to be a sort of Buddhistic skeptic or neo-yogi rationalist like Vivekananda, whom he respected. He would variously call the Angel the higher self, true self, or the genius in the sense of your crispness of intuition. However later in his life he backed away from this pointedly, in Magick Without Tears Cap 43:

I have tended rather to elaborate this theme, because of the one personally important question which arises in more recent letters; for I believe that the Holy Guardian Angel is a Being of this order.  He is something more than a man, possibly a being who has already passed through the stage of humanity, and his peculiarly intimate relationship with his client is that of friendship, of community, of brotherhood, or Fatherhood.  He is not, let me say with emphasis, a mere abstraction from yourself; and that is why I have insisted rather heavily that the term “Higher Self” implies “a damnable heresy and a dangerous delusion.”

It it were not so, there would be no point in The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage.

Apart from any theoretical speculation, my Sammasiti [mindfulness] and analytical work has never led to so much as a hint of the existence of the Guardian Angel. He is not to be found by any exploration of oneself. It is true that the process of analysis leads finally to the realization of oneself as no more than a point of view indistinguishable in itself from any other point of view; but the Holy Guardian Angel is in precisely the same position.  However close may be the identities in millions of ways, no complete identification is ever obtainable.

But do remember this, above all else; they are objective, not subjective, or I should not waste good Magick on them.

This is relevant because Crowley is suggesting a real, rather than interpretive, Euhemerization (divine figures arising from mortals) as a possible origin of these angels. He proposes elsewhere that of his Saints list in the Gnostic Catholic Mass that some more ancient saints such as Krishna, Thoth or Dionysus might have once been men who collected some other tales about them and only their divine natures and powers are remembered today. So while he concedes that many spirits may be “incomplete microcosms” in that they are partial in being emmentations of the natural world, be it elemental, planetary, zodiacal or otherwise, he proposes that we humans inspirited by light have used the power of spirit to order the elements into a more or less functional quintessence whereby the powers of nature can be mastered and the conquering spirit thereby exalted into higher planes of being and achieve some sort of post-corporeal existence. 

So what does this “conversation” include? From Liber II AC writes:

The obvious practical task of the magician is then to discover what his will really is, so that he may do it in this manner, and he can best accomplish this by the practices of Liber Thisarb (see Equinox I(7), p. 105) or such others as may from one time to another be appointed.

The conversation with your angel is the beginning of a personal initiatory engagement with the angel. Your angel becomes your guide directly and leads you to a greater discovery of your will. Your angel informs you of the natures and powers of your own being, your spiritual lineage, and of magical formula appropriate to your own person. For Crowley, the discovery of your Will begins with the Knowledge and Conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel. Therefore, the initiation into the adept grades is being informed of the unique essentiality you bring to the table of the world today. This is to say, the first real initiation for Crowley, that of the Angel, is you learning from a new order of beings that were once in your mortal predicament what you need to do to resolve your karma in order to continue in your aspiration and, perhaps more importantly, right the world. And as the crossing of the Abyss is likewise entering into Duat and engaging the next order of beings, the ascended masters, those who navigate and steer the ship of mankind, one is again entering into a new place of instruction on how to help in this endeavor. Therefore, the two real initiations in Thelema, the Angel and the Abyss, are about entry into a new order of being wherein you are given instructions on how personally and then strategically you might improve the human condition by manifesting illumination in word and deed by collaborating with this immortal brotherhood.

Now on to magick and yoga.

Crowley liked sciency sounding definitions of terms. This was because he had an optimistic view of science’s ability to resolve spiritual questions, which was a very contentious subject in his time and other mystics, such as the traditionalist school, looked at scientism as a profaning position that would ultimately reduce spiritual questions to quantifiable conjecture that appealed to the lower rationalistic instincts. Rene Guenon’s Reign of Quantity is a fantastic book and I believe he is ultimately right in that almost all modern occultists are rationalists and amateur psychologists. Crowley was more given to that earlier in life when he was reducing the HGA and the goetic demons to psychological or neurological features. But, even after he aggressively denounced that reductionism, he still liked the positivist idea of “Scientific Illuminism,” and he often gave important terms very broad definitions. For instance, perhaps most famously, he defined Magick as the “Science and Art of causing change in conformity with the will.” Rather than appealing to the magician and giving an example of how one would apply occult sciences and magical instincts to affect the course of human history through sorcery, in accordance with the Will, Crowley instead invokes the example of a man who wishes to write a letter. He uses his disk, the paper, his wand, the pen, to etch a talisman, the contents of his letter, and then he conjures a mercurial spirit, the postman, to deliver his will, which is his word, his magick, to say the Governor’s office to convince that loser to stop making children wear masks.

Crowley didn’t use the terms “high” or “white” magick, those being modern inventions of post-Crowley grifters. But he did use the term “black” magick, perhaps only to respond to allegations, but gave it a sciency definition or at least one that was in step with his definition of magick. Black magick is the pursuit of anything that is not in accord with your Will. They are vanities and the obsession over them is the obsession over things that are only tangentially a part of your personhood and are more likely just phantasms that you were mesmerized into confusing your self with by enterprising hucksters such as politicians or marketing mercenaries. At this point the internet and social media can be accurately described as a gateway to another dimension populated by nothing but spurious and toxic beings good at nothing but preying upon the vanities and insecurities of neglected children and weak-willed adults. Crowley continued that black magick, being the doing of something not in accord with your will, puts the incommunicado majority in a tough spot, but he said the best thing for those to do who do not know their will is to work hard to discover their will and some magick, in a classical or practical sense, might be appropriate to that, such as invoking Jupiter (whether a planetary spirit or a rural property mortgage broker) to secure a quiet place where one might complete the Abramelin Operation. 

Magick, for Crowley, is tied to the doing of the will. Crowley said in Antecedents of Thelema that Thelemite and Magician are practically synonyms. The will, for Crowley, is of cosmic ordination and significance, and the only ethical thing one can do is to discover and do one’s own will. The Will is discovered with the assistance of the angel, and the angels and greater orders of being are responsible for moving mankind along in an ennobling direction. Therefore magick, for Crowley, is at least the communication with higher orders of beings to learn what to do. Most, if not all, of Crowley’s described magical ceremonies are designed to prepare for this, stimulate this, and make firm this attainment.

Yoga, for Crowley, is essentially considered supportive of magick. Though Crowley says several times in his life that he was more of a yoga guy than a magick guy, and The Book of the Law was conceived during one such period, his most mature thoughts on the subject, later in his life, are recorded in what’s now a short publication called Eight Lectures on Yoga, originally a lecture, and also in Magick Without Tears. He consistently refers to magick as a mechanism of getting in contact with higher planes, an extraversion to yoga’s introversion, and in those higher planes one extends one’s power and mastery, learning and growing with the soul-stuff in those places and interacting with the spirits. He says in one place that while Magick is the art of communicating with spirits Yoga is the practice to get better at understanding what they’re saying. Yoga offers things like concentration, focus, which is a crucial skill to anyone who has attempted subtle body work or projecting one’s astral body into new planes. This also helps with equivalent skills such as spirit sight and spirit hearing, which is interacting with spirits during conjurations, scrying or seeing, where being able to hold on to the state of consciousness appropriate to the communication is something you need to passively do while you’re also attempting an inquiry, request or sacrifice. Yoga also helps you fixate on certain principalities, keep your cool, and abstract your mind to be able to receive novel impressions. Crowley marks that much of the attainment of the grade of Master of the Temple is yogic in nature, and he’s referring to how the attainment of the 8th of 8 limbs of yoga, Samadhi, death, was necessary for him to snap his mind into the world beyond the Abyss. But, it was through invocations that Crowley initiated contact with those Secret Chiefs, in Cairo, then Shanghai, then Japan, and then in Algeria. Just the same, one spends a lot of time preparing for K&C with HGA, and then comes the prayerful and lengthy invocation, and then one spends a lot of time affirming that connection.

In the last part of this lecture I’d like to propose a terminological distinction derived from Thelema regarding magick and yoga. I hope my point has been made thus far that magick is principally attempting to communicate with spirits in higher orders of being to be graced with instructions designed to assist you in discovering and doing your Will and to further the Great Work. Yoga is therefore an umbrella term for practices designed to facilitate this communion. Yoga means Union, according to Crowley, but its etymology comes from the PIE yeug, to join, where we get the term yoke, as in to fashion together beasts of burden to pull a plough or chariot. Yokes were symbols of toil and discipline, and yoga is breaking yourself with practices to be able to focus, empty or abstract the mind. We must therefore ask how much of what is popularly described as being “magick” is either magick or yoga. 

Take for instance the practices of the Golden Dawn that lead up to the adept grades where, at least in Crowley’s system of A∴A∴, Knowledge and Conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel is implied. Again referring to the 10-step Tree of Life diagram of initiation, the four lowest Sephirah, whose grades constitute the “Outer College,” are all preparatory and have specific tasks involving practice, memorization and knowledge. You begin with simple rituals and rising on the planes. Then you advance to the first two limbs of yoga, which is learning how to sit still and breathe regularly. Then you advance to some additional practices but otherwise a ton of memorization of Qabalah, which is an interpretive mechanism for making subtle communications and organizing thoughts and memories. Then you advance to more specific invocations outlined in very rudimentary texts. Unlike in the Golden Dawn, some of these A∴A∴ expectations in the Outer College are subtlety invocatory. However, the majority of this work is about discipline, concentration, focus, clarity, abstraction and subtleties, and achieving clarity. All of it is therefore preparatory for the first and real invocation, that of the Angel. Therefore I maintain that all of these practices are essentially yoga and not magick. For instance, the Ritual of the Pentagram is a staple of the magician’s daily diet of exercises as specified in De Cultu in Liber Aleph, and its basic form is purely an exercise in imprinting Qabalistic signifiers into the mind and subtle body of the magician via meditative focus on symbols. This is yoga. However Crowley did slightly modify the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram and installed in it something that is perhaps more meditative, as he suggests in his Notes. He later modified the ritual several times, ending with Liber V vel Reguli, which is explicitly magick in the sense that it is inviting communion with the governing forces of the Aeon.

This procedure is nothing new. All religions, antique and modern, focus heavily on purification so that the singular object might be received and maintained more perfectly. This is usually some combination of ritual baths, Struggle Sessions to atone for transgressions and confession of devotion to the ineffable, called faith. Older religions would require feats to validate your place within the tribe, which is inextricable from the religion, like puberty rituals where you go out and kill an animal on your own or sew your own tapestry or join a Mannerbund or something. By the Early Modern Period this had become something of a science for Christendom. There was a very mechanical process for invigilating right behavior and evidencing your fidelity to Christ’s Kingdom. But because of some combination of the stodginess of this, institutional failures of the Church of Rome and violent incursion of Islam into Catholic lands, some peoples, movements and even Kingdoms began to part ways and develop new aesthetics and ascetic procedures. One such example is the Alumbrados of post-Reconquista Iberia, which is the earliest explicit “Illuminati” group, who attempted to develop a devotional methodology to personally communicate with Christ. This later turned into allegations of Satanism and of Priests hanging themselves on a Cross while nuns copulated with them to “release souls from purgatory.” But the question was a good one: how do you make yourself worthy of God’s attention, maintain that state of grace, and at the same time not become the victim of an imposter spirit? Ignatius of Loyola followed on the Alombrados’ heels with his Spiritual Exercises in the mid 16th century, and a century later yet another Iberian, our St. Miguel Molinos, offered his wildly popular Spiritual Guide that Disentangles the Soul. But even before Ignatius there were many Italians and Bavarians forming spiritual orders devoted to exploring the mysteries of Qabalah, Qabalah-inspired meditations that are very in step with some of the latter limbs of Yoga such as Dharana and Dhyana, and that were even using devotional practices and models derived from antiquity. It is from this Renaissance that Thelema derives much of its mystical vocabulary and interests, and while “magick” has been the blanket term for much of this “yoga” is a more accurate one. But, Magick has been the purpose for at least the past 600 years in that the primary concern of these Renaissance magicians was to enter into conversation with higher orders of beings, be they angels, saints, or even Christ himself. 

It should come at no surprise that many contemporary occultists focus on more mechanical rituals such as those the Golden Dawn advertised. In my definition they are yoga rituals and not magick rituals, but as yoga rituals they are only subservient to the person attempting to discipline their vessel into being able to accomplish the real invocation. But for most occultists the yoga is enough. Remember that Crowley defined yoga as the introversion, the looking inwards, the sammasati or mindfulness, the shaping of a person into something smart and athletic. However, it ends there. I believe the propensity to focus on these technical accomplishments is because of the therapeutic society that we live in today where attainment is a psychological and Epicurian effort. It’s premised on the idea that you are born flawed but can be happy if you’re only a better version of yourself, and in this labyrinth of self importance that people slave away, yoked to the herd morality from which they derive their idea of betterment. But there is no magick therein, because the Great Work, the advancement of mankind to the Next Step, is accomplished through clinging to the higher, communicating with the eternal and denying that our own conceit and content is the end all be all of attainment. 

“Nor is there any rest, Sweet Heart. Save in the cradle of Royal Bacchus, the thigh of the most holy one.” - Liber VII vel Lapis Lazuli, Cap 4, v. 14

This has been a heavier lecture and I haven’t been able to describe everything in exactly the way that I wanted to. This is because Thelema really turns traditional mysticism on its head, especially Christian mysticism and its increasingly common parodies such as the new age movement. Terms like free will, self, enlightenment, transcendence and so on really have no place in Thelema. We are not transcendental idealists attempting to escape the world by inverting into nothingness or escaping into a state of blissful inconsequentiality like Nirvana or Heaven. We are warrior monks attempting to execute our will and establish the dominion of the Law of Thelema upon the earth so that the wedding of flesh and spirit might be consummated in every action and the genius of mankind, which is the Will to Power, which is the Will, might express itself freely. 

Love is the law, love under will.

[part 2 of this talk is scheduled for the 12/12]