While reading Edward Butler’s article, “Polycentric Polytheism,” I was struck by his use of two concepts—the Pythagorean concept of panta-en-pasin and Indra’s Net—to shed light on the problem of “hard” versus “soft” polytheism. This brought to mind similar concepts and metaphors in Aleister Crowley’s writings and the consequences they have for Thelemic theology and soteriology.
Panta-en-pasin is short for panta en pasin, oikeiõs de en hekastõi. It comes from proposition 103 of Proclus’s Elements of Theology where it is translated as “all things are in all things, but in each appropriately.” This is not the same thing as saying that all things are in one thing, but rather that all things are in each thing, and in a way specific to that thing. In the context of polytheistic devotion, this means that the individual gods are not simply different names or culturally specific aspects of one God. Rather each god is in and of itself a unique totality, containing within itself all things, but in a way peculiar to it and expressive of its own individuality.
Butler finds a similar idea in Indra’s Net. The god Indra possesses a net studded with jewels, each one of which reflects all the others, as well as the reflections themselves. In this metaphor, each jewel is both an individual god and a totality. This is possible by virtue of the way relation and totality are portrayed in the metaphor. As Butler says:
Both panta-en-pasin and the metaphor of Indra’s net express the concept that individuality implies relation, but in a surprising way. Relations are not something external added onto individuals; instead, relations are in individuals in some fashion—relations with other things are the presence of things themselves in one another […] Moreover, if we are really to appreciate the metaphor, then we must assume that there is no point of view on the whole net other than the reflections in each jewel. The jewels are not merely perspectives on the totality—rather, the universe itself is nothing other than these myriad perspectives. We may take any jewel, at any time, as the center of the net, and plot the whole system of relations starting from it and ending with it. Compare this idea with the formula, preserved for us in the medieval text Liber XXIV philosophorum (but perhaps of ancient pedigree) that speaks of the divine (‘God’) as “a circle whose center is everywhere and its circumference nowhere.”
Edward Butler, “Polycentric Polytheism”
Crowley occasionally speaks about stars (immortal souls) in a way reminiscient both of panta-en-pasin and Indra’s Net. Consider this passage from the New Comment on AL I.4 (“Every number is infinite; there is no difference”) which also references Liber XXIV philosophorum:
This is a great and holy mystery. Although each star has its own number, each number is equal and supreme. Every man and every woman is not only a part of God, but the Ultimate God. ‘The Centre is everywhere and the circumference nowhere’. The old definition of God takes new meaning for us. Each one of us is the One God … I may add that in the Trance called by me the Star-Sponge […] this apprehension of the Universe is seen as an astral Vision. It began as ‘Nothingness with Sparkles’ in 1916 E.V. by Lake Pasquaney in New Hampshire, U.S.A. and developed into fullness on various subsequent occasions. Each ‘Star’ is connected directly with every other star, and the Space being Without Limit (Ain Soph) the Body of Nuith, any one star is as much the Centre as any other. Each man instinctively feels that he is the Centre of the Cosmos, and philosophers have jeered at his presumption. But it was he that was precisely right. The yokel is no more ‘petty’ than the King, nor the earth than the Sun. Each simple elemental Self is supreme, Very God of Very God. Ay, in this Book is Truth almost insufferably splendid, for Man has veiled himself too long from his own glory: he fears the abyss, the ageless Absolute. But Truth shall make him free!
Aleister Crowley, New Comment on AL I.4
In this and similar passages throughout the commentaries, there is no single God’s eye view on being. Rather, each individual star or god is the center of its own universe. There is no God-of-gods or meta-God present in such a universe; nor, insists Crowley, is there need for one. Consider this diary entry of Crowley’s which he quotes in the New Comment on AL I.3 (“Every man and every woman is a star”):
Therefore you have an infinite number of gods, individual and equal though diverse, each one supreme and utterly indestructible […] If we presuppose many elements, their interplay is natural. It is no objection to this theory to ask who made the elements—the elements are at least there; and God, when you look for him, is not there. Theism is obscurum per obscurius.
Crowley, diary entry, 14 May 1919, 6.30 p.m., as quoted in NC on AL I.3
One might aver that stars are themselves merely parts of Nuit. “Khabs—’a star’—is an unit of Nuit, and therefore Nuit Herself.” (New Comment on AL II.2) This would imply that an individual soul cannot be understood on its own terms but must be understood as a part of a larger, more encompassing reality. This implies a unitary, monistic theory over and against the pluralistic picture I’m painting.
While it is true that Nuit is in some sense prior to the stars as the “heaven” in which they dwell, it would be an error to try to understand Nuit as a unifying substance. Much like the One of Plato’s Parmenides, Nuit neither exists nor is one. (See Parmenides 141e and compare with AL I.27.) This simple but perplexing truth is proclaimed by the Priest at every celebration of the Gnostic Mass, but it is difficult to understand and easy to forget.
The ethical implication is easy enough to grasp, though. If no star need concern itself with any reality higher than itself—if the star is the preeminent spiritual reality in Thelema—then there is nothing left for it do other than its own will.
Also note that, by virtue of being “an unit of Nuit,” each star is “therefore Nuit Herself.” It is not possible for something to simultaneously be a part of something else and yet also be that thing. A rectangle is created by limiting infinite space (i.e., by enclosing part of it with lines). The rectangle is thus part of space but not identical with the whole of infinite space itself.
Clearly something like a part-whole logic is operative in the relationship between Nuit and stars. As Crowley says in the New Comment on AL I.29 (“For I am divided for love’s sake, for the chance of union.”):
[The individual] becomes able to experience the truth of the statements in the Book of the Law, the nature of Nuith and Hadith, and of himself as a Star, unique, individual, and eternal, but yet a part of the Body of Nuith, and therefore identical with all other stars in that respect.Crowley, New Comment on AL I.29, emphasis mine
The problem is that if stars are to Nuit as a particular shape is to space, then there is no way in which a star can be a unit of Nuit but also Nuit Herself. It also makes it difficult to understand in what sense stars are “unique” and “individual”. Two identical rectangles can only be differentiated from one another extrinsically, i.e., with reference to their positions relative to one another in space. Yet the demand that each soul be not just a part of the universe but the center of a universe implies that each is self-determining and absolute, in need of no perspective apart from its own. Admitting the difficulty, Crowley immediately adds to the New Comment on AL II.2, “This doctrine is enormously difficult of apprehension, even after these many years of study.”
The difficulty vanishes once we recognize that the sum total of reality is contained within each star, just after a unique manner—in other words once we accept panta-en-pasin. Panta-en-pasin does not mean that we assert pluralism over and against holism. It means connecting pluralistic and holistic logics together into a single framework in which totality is expressed in and through individuals—and only in and through individuals—but in an infinite number of absolutely unique ways. (Compare with AL I.4.)
Crowley gives this abstract idea visual representation in his report of his “star-sponge” vision, which itself bears a striking resemblance to Indra’s Net.
I was on a retirement in a cottage overlooking Lake Pasquaney in New Hampshire. I lost consciousness of everything but an universal space in which were innumerable bright points, and I realized this as a physical representation of the Universe, in what I may call its essential structure. I exclaimed: “Nothingness, with twinkles!” I concentrated upon this vision, with the result that the void space which had been the principal element of it diminished in importance; space appeared to be ablaze, yet the radiant points were not confused, and I thereupon completed my sentence with the exclamation “But what Twinkles!”
Crowley, New Comment on AL I.59
The next stage of this vision led to an identification of the blazing points with the stars of the firmament, with ideas, souls, etc. I perceived also that each star was connected by a ray of light with each other star. In the world of ideas, each thought possessed a necessary relation with each other thought; each such relation is of course a thought in itself; each such ray is itself a star. It is here that logical difficulty first presents itself. The seer has a direct perception of infinite series. Logically, therefore, it would appear as if the entire space must be filled up with a homogeneous blaze of light. This however is not the case. The space is completely full; yet the monads which fill it are perfectly distinct.
Again we have the idea of each soul necessarily connected with all other souls and ideas (everything in each thing or panta-en-pasin), and yet the interconnectedness of each soul with the rest of reality in no way effaces the individuality of the soul but rather contributes to or even constitutes its uniqueness. All are connected, and yet/therefore, “the monads […] are perfectly distinct.” There’s no evidence Crowley was aware of Indra’s Net, so the idea that he spontaneously came up with a metaphor so similar is striking.
A crucial point of difference between Thelema and ancient polytheism is that Crowley makes no distinction between gods and individual human souls. The stars Crowley speaks of are the essences of individual human beings: “Every man and every woman is a star” and “There is no god but man.” This is quite different from a religion in which gods utterly transcend human affairs and being itself.
This raises a problem for Crowley. If each person is in essence a god—indeed, the Ultimate God—then why do we find ourselves to be limited beings? Butler expresses the dichotomy thusly:
We humans primarily experience this reflection of all-things-in-ourselves as a kind of radical dependency. We realize that everything that happens, and everyone who is now and has been, determines what it is possible for us to be or to become. Due to this universal human experience, Buddhist interpretations of the metaphor of Indra’s net tend to stress the emptiness and dependency of all beings.
Edward Butler, “Polycentric Polytheism”
But polytheistic devotion implies that the Allness of a God involves much greater power to shape reality than ours, simply on account of the constraints that our mortal nature places upon we humans. Were there something that had more power to shape reality than the Gods, it would rightly be considered a God instead, or to a greater degree. If nothing had the power to shape reality, then any responsibility for our actions would be forfeit. So we are more or less compelled to think of the universe as a place in which persons have agency, as well as restrictions upon that agency. Furthermore, it is logical to assume that Gods are the kind of persons with more agency than us, and probably have the most agency that is imaginable.
Crowley explains this seeming contradiction through his dynamics of incarnation. While a single star or soul contains the sum total of all relations with other stars within itself, when it represents those relations to itself, it does so in a partial or piecemeal fashion utilizing time, space, and causality.
This Soul being a monistic consciousness, it is unable to appreciate itself and its qualities, as explained in a previous entry; so it realizes itself by the device of duality, with the limitations of time, space and causality.
Crowley, New Comment on AL II.21
But the partiality of this projection comes with a price: the illusion of sorrow.
[H]ow comes it then that there should be even an illusion of Sorrow? Simply enough; by taking a partial and imperfect Vision. An example: in the human body each cell is perfect, and the man is in good health; but should we choose to regard almost any portion of the machine which sustains him, there will appear various decompositions and the like, which might well be taken to imply the most tragic Events. And this would inevitably be the case had we never at any time seen the man as a whole, and understood the necessity of the divers processes of nature which combine to make life.Crowley, Little Essays Toward Truth, “Sorrow”
Thus in the New Comment on AL I.27, Crowley expresses the same idea, now utilizing the language of the fall from Genesis:
To know itself, each such Star, or Soul, must eat of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, by accepting labour and pain as its portion, and death as its doom. That is, it must reveal its nature to itself by formulating that nature as duality. It must express itself by a series of symbolic gestures ostensibly external to it, just as a painter reveals one facet of his Delight-Diamond by covering a canvas with colours in such a way that the picture seems at first sight to represent something outside himself.
Crowley, New Comment on AL I.27
The human being should be comprehended from two perspectives simultaneously. On the one hand, each of us is an absolutely unique, indestructible god or star, identical with the sum total of existence but after a unique fashion. Since this monad contains the sum total of existence within itself, it is in need of nothing external from or apart from itself, and therefore it is perfectly autonomous.
But this monistic soul projects part of this totality into space and time, thereby creating a partial image, which is a particular human life. This particular human life cannot be understood monistically, at least not from the finite human perspective. For example, the fact that I was born to Christian parents in the United States in the 20th century can only ever appear to me as an accident. Subsequent events in my life can only appear as fortune or misfortune, the results of antecedent causes I cannot comprehend. No aspect of my life, my personality, my action, or my thought can be understood apart from its connection to a larger, causally interconnected whole. This projection that I am is only comprehensible through the holistic logic of parts and wholes, never monistically or individualistically.
But when the human being is framed this way, the solution to the problem of suffering immediately suggests itself:
[T]he ‘Shadows’ of which [the Book of the Law] speaks are those interferences with Light caused by the partiality of our apprehension. The Whole is Infinite Perfection, and so is each Unit thereof. To transcend the Trance of Sorrow it is thus sufficient to cancel the subject of the contemplation by marrying it to its equal and opposite in imagination.Crowley, Little Essays Toward Truth, “Sorrow”
The path of liberation in Thelema at least in part consists of right understanding of the nature of phenomena. What makes any appearance illusory is not the appearing itself but rather the way in which we fail to grasp those appearances holistically, taking them instead monistically. This is nowhere more evident then when we turn our attention toward ourselves, thus the importance in Thelemic soteriology of transcending subject-object duality. This implies that the terminus of the path of liberation is ultimately the same for everyone.
[L]ife is an attempt to realize one’s own nature in one’s own soul.
The man who fails to recognize it as such is hopelessly bewildered by the irrational character of the universe, which he takes to be real; and he cannot but regard it as aimless and absurd. The adventures of his body and mind, with their desires for material and moral well-being, are obviously as foredoomed to disaster as Don Quixote’s. He must be a fool if he struggles on (against inexorable fate) to obtain results which he knows can only end in catastrophe, a climax the more bitter as he clings the more closely to his impossible ideals.
But once he acquiesces in the necessity of the course of events, and considers his body and mind as no more than the instruments which interpret himself to himself by means of dualistic presentation, he should soon acquire a complete indifference to the nature of the incidents which occur to him.Crowley, New Comment on AL I.29
But the totality is contained within each star after a completely unique fashion. This implies that when the star projects part of itself into space-time, it is not always going to experience exactly the same thing. Each projection will reveal the totality of the universe after a unique fashion. In other words, each projection will be a unique human life. For each of these human lives, the path back to the realization of divinity will be at least slightly different and in many cases very different or perhaps even impossible.
But, o my Son, although thine ultimate Nature be Universal, thine immediate Nature is Particular. Thy Way to the Centre is not oriented as that of any other Being, and thine elements are no kin, but alien, to his. For Shame! Is it not the most transcendent of all the Wisdoms of this Cosmos, that no two Beings are alike? Lo! This is the Secret of all Beauty, and maketh Love not only possible, but necessary, between every Thing and every other Thing. So then, lest thou in thine Ignorance take the false Way, and divagate, must thou learn thine own particular and peculiar Nature in its Relation to all others. For though it be Illusion, it is by the true Analysis of Falsehoods that we are able to destroy them, just as the Physician must understand the Disease of his Patient if he is to choose the fitting Remedy. Now therefore will I make yet more clear unto thee the Value of thy Dreams and Phantasies and Gestures of thine unconscious Body and Mind, as Symptoms of thy particular Will, and show thee how thy mayst come to their Interpretation.
Crowley, Liber Aleph, “De Differentia Rerum” (emphasis mine)
The particular path of the dissolution of falsehoods particular to a human existence is what Crowley refers to as the dissolution of complexes.
We are not to regard ourselves as base beings, without whose sphere is Light or “God”. Our minds and bodies are veils of the Light within. The uninitiate is a “Dark Star”, and the Great Work for him is to make his veils transparent by ‘purifying’ them. This ‘purification’ is really ‘simplification’; it is not that the veil is dirty, but that the complexity of its folds makes it opaque. The Great Work therefore consists principally in the solution of complexes. Everything in itself is perfect, but when things are muddled, they become ‘evil’.
Crowley, New Comment on AL I.8
Crowley connects the particularity of the complexes which must be overcome to the particularity of the will of the individual.
For thy Will moveth through free Function, according to its particular Nature, to that End of Dissolution of all Complexities, and the Ideals and Standards are Attempts to halt thee on that Way. Although for thee some certain Ideal be upon thy Path; yet for thy Neighbour it may not be so.
Crowley, Liber Aleph, “De Legibus Contra Motum”
But while each individual may have their own path to take up the mountain, depending upon the particularities of their incarnation, the summit is ultimately the same.
Yet know this, that every Opposition is in its Nature named Sorrow, and the Joy lieth in the Destruction of the Dyad. Therefore, must thou seek ever those Things which are to thee poisonous, and that in the highest Degree, and make them thine by Love. That which repels, that which disgusts, must thou assimilate in this Way of Wholeness. Yet rest not in the Joy of the Destruction of each complex in thy Nature, but press on to that ultimate Marriage with the Universe whose Consummation shall destroy thee utterly, leaving only that Nothingness which was before the Beginning.
Crowley, Liber Aleph, “De Nuptiss Mysticis”
In this passage we see the union of both analyses—the monistic and the holistic—to create a single picture of liberation. To return a partial appearance back to its place in the whole is effectively to marry it with its opposite, thereby cancelling it. To accomplish this with all appearances—in particular those one calls “I,” “me,” or “mine”—is to annihilate the sense of separateness or partiality altogether, destroying the base of suffering and returning the appearance of one’s own self back to the true self, which is the totality of existence. But the fact that each star is also irreducibly individual and absolutely unique is experienced downstream as the uniqueness of the particular complexes that must be overcome in order to achieve the final annihilation.
So in Thelema we see a hybridization of monism and pluralism. Thelema is pluralistic and polytheistic in the sense that there are ultimately many gods, not just one god. Furthermore, there is no reason in Crowley’s theology to assume there is some context more fundamental than the stars themselves. Apart from the manifold of individual stars, there is, literally, nothing. Reality is individuals all the way down.
But then Crowley must explain why a universe composed only of individual gods appears to us composed instead of finite subjects in bondage to finite conditions. If each of us is really a god and the center of a cosmos, why do we experience ourselves as mere limitations of a larger whole? This is where the Christian language of incarnation plays a role. But instead of a spirit floating down from on high into a physical body, each individual, transcendent god externalizes some portion of the infinite reality implicit within itself by means of space, time, and causality. [It’s like a Leibnizian or Kantian version of the incarnation story.]
This has existential and practical implications. It answers the questions of who we are, why we are here, and what we are here to do.
We are mere images or projections into space-time of gods. We exist as means for these gods to enjoy a reality which consists of nothing but gods. And we are here to work with appearances (by means of the Magick of Baphomet) so as to realize this underlying truth about ourselves and the world—for our own benefit, for the benefit of the god whose partial projection we are, and ultimately for the benefit of all the other slumbering gods.