Entelecheia - Light in Extension

The Unity of the Three Lords

As I showed yesterday, there are three Lords mentioned in Liber XV: the one secret and ineffable Lord of the Creed (aka the Lord secret and most holy of the 2nd Collect), the Sun (the one Star in the Company of Stars of the Creed aka the Lord visible and sensible of the 1st Collect), and CHAOS (the sole viceregent of the Sun upon the Earth of the Creed and the Lord of Life and Joy who we adore in the 5th Collect). But these aren’t three completely separate individuals. They’re actually one Lord with three aspects or faces.

I am Heaven, and there is no other God than me, and my lord Hadit.
Liber AL vel Legis, I.21

The first Lord—the one secret and ineffable Lord mentioned in the Creed and the 2nd Collect—is Hadit. Hadit is the point of view or subjectivity of each individual. It is Hadit’s union with Nuit—space and matter—which gives rise to the manifest universe, the observable universe, the experiential universe, etc. This is covered in Crowley’s Introduction to the Book of the Law.

In any experience you may have, Hadit is always that to which the experienced event occurs, never the thing experienced itself. From this, two truths immediately follow. (1) Hadit has no nature of his own (since nature is always something experienced (see Djeridensis Comment on AL II.2)); and (2) one cannot even experience let alone worship Hadit. (See New Comment to AL II.8.)

From this we may infer that (3) the first 14 lines of the Anthem are directed at Hadit (ill, presumably, because Hadit is the one delivering the lines).

From the Anthem we also learn that Hadit is the “centre and secret of the Sun”. The Sun is the second Lord (the one star of the Creed and the Lord visible and sensible of the first Collect). We also learn from the Priest’s veil speech that the Sun is “our Lord in the Universe,” i.e., the macrocosmic deity. In the context of the Mass, the Sun represents both what people have in mind when they casually think of God (i.e., the Lord of the Universe) and also the literal Sun which impacts the Earth with electromagnetic energy.

What we’re being told in the Mass is that the essence of the Sun—basically the essence of God—is identical with the essence of ourselves. That elusive subjective viewpoint within yourself which you can never quite grasp or get to the bottom of—which always manages to slip away when you turn to look at it—is actually the essence of divinity.

Now the Sun also serves other purposes in the Mass. It is also a principle of unification, a principle of sacrifice, and a principle of resurrection. But all of these are tied together in the single magical act toward which the Mass aims. That magical act is apparently one of self-sacrifice. The Priest offers his life/body and joy/blood to the Sun. What he is in essence proclaiming, performing, and realizing is that these things are not Hadit. They belong to Nuit. By giving up all that he is, was, or could be to the Lord of the Universe, he is in a certain sense annihilating himself. But at the same time, he is becoming Hadit. (See AL II.6.) He is undergoing spiritual death (within this incarnation) in order to realize who he truly is. So his act of self-sacrifice is a unification (seeing everything as part of one unified whole in Nuit) which is also a spiritual resurrection (thus fulfilling the formula of IAO, which is just another name of the Sun).

This is complex, but if you grasp this, you grasp Thelema.

Now how does our third Lord, Chaos, come in to this?

The simplest way to understand this in the context of the Mass is that Chaos is the drive within each of us toward union with Nuit. It is the Hadit within us but manifested as a drive toward completion, wholeness, and annihilation through self-sacrifice.

Chaos is the drive toward erotic liberation. It’s the unity of sex and death.

This is why when the Priest offers up his body/life and blood/joy to the Sun, he says, “Let this offering be borne upon the waves of Æthyr to our Lord and Father the Sun that travelleth over the Heavens in his name ON.”

ON is ענ. Ayin and Nun are two of the paths going up the Tree of Life into Tiphareth, the House of the Sun. Ayin is the Devil, the goat, the phallus, the perfected will. It’s life and joy on Earth, in this incarnation. Nun is Death. Both paths terminate in the Sun, the principle of unification and resurrection. Ayin (70) plus Nun (50) is 120, a number associated with resurrection in the Golden Dawn Adeptus Minor ritual. But let’s translate this out of occult-ese into something real.

What we think of as God (call it the Sun or Jehovah or Allah or whatever you want) is really something within each of us which we in some sense project on to reality or on to a transcendent author of the universe. If God in the exoteric sense really exists, His essence is Hadit, the same as our own essence, which is our subjective point of view. So God is really within us.

The reason we don’t realize we are God is because we are confused about ourselves. We identify with our bodies, our minds, our emotions, our thoughts, our plans, our wishes, our desires, our personalities, our tendencies, etc. All these things we think are us, are ours, are I/me/mine are nothing of the sort. They are actually all Nuit. (Technically, they’re the Khu.) One of the most important ways in which we can realize our own divinity is by giving all those things back to her: by sacrificing all that we think we are to Nuit. (See AL I.65 and also The Wake World.)

This sounds like we’re creating a duality or an opposition between self and other. It sounds like we’re rejecting all these things we think of as self. But that’s only apparent. Just stop and think about it for second. What does it take for you to give your body back to Nuit? Isn’t your body already in space? Aren’t your thoughts already occurring in an awareness which is space-like? Can you possibly notice your body without also noticing space? Can you possibly notice your thoughts and feelings without also noticing awareness?

Now look at it from the other side. Hadit doesn’t have any nature or any being, so there is nothing to oppose to Nuit. Hadit is just (unreflective, “foolish”) going. In an experience of something seen, there is the thing seen (Nuit), and there is the act of seeing (Hadit). In an experience of something thought, there is the thing thought (Nuit), and there is the thinking (Hadit). The confusion comes with thinking that the thing seen or thought is us. We confuse ourselves with our thoughts.

There’s a Zen saying to the effect of, “In the seeing only the seen, in the hearing only the heard,” etc. That’s very apropos here.

The idea of erotic liberation is that, deep down, the Hadit in us wants nothing more than union with Nuit. It doesn’t want union with this or that part of her. It wants union with her, with everything. It doesn’t care about the particulars. Anything that arises for it is as good as anything else. (AL I.22) It wants to fuck the universe.

That innate drive to fuck the universe manifests itself as the sex principle in a religious or spiritual context. It’s the original nature worship. Those who realize this belong to the “true church of old time”. They understand that apotheosis or liberation depends upon self-transcendence. It requires self-abandonment. It requires an act of love so powerful, an ecstacy so intense, that it completely and permanently obliterates the sense of separateness from life and joy.

The Saints are those who “got it”. They destroyed themselves through erotic destruction and as a result got to really, truly live.

Let’s hit it from another angle: the phallus (Chaos) is the natural being or natural will perfected. By “natural will” I just mean your desire: what you want.

Thelemites are fond of saying “I will this” and “I will that”. That might be your natural will, but it’s not your true will. It can’t be, because it’s confused with some particular outcome, some particular aspect of Nuit. It’s not your pure or perfected will. It’s not Hadit. What’s the perfected or pure will? The Book of the Law tells us.

For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.
AL I.44

At the same time, the perfected will and the natural will are not separate! It’s not like you have two wills. You can think you have two wills, but that’s where suffering comes from. You have one will, but it has to be perfected through a training, through a process. That process culminates in the destruction of the separateness of that will.

Will itself must be ready to culminate in the surrender of that Will; the aspiration’s arrow that is shot against the Holy Dove must transmute itself into the Wondering Virgin that receives in her womb the quickening fire of that same Spirit of God.
Magick in Theory and Practice, Chapter VIII

Notice in this passage that the will (which is masculine), upon becoming perfect, is on a trajectory which ends with it becoming female. It’s becoming “virgin” and chaste. We’ll come back to this.

This is what’s involved in the formula of ON. The O or Ayin is the perfected will. It is the will that aims at its one, true object, and therefore it wills death (N or Nun) on to itself. It is the destruction of the sense of separateness (the sense that I am imposing my will on reality from some position that transcends the universe). True will is not free will in the sense of me getting to choose this or that path. It’s the opposite. This destruction occurs through an act of erotic union with Nuit. The person who has accomplished this becomes God. They are a deified individual, the symbol of which is—again—the Sun.

Again, pretty complex, but if you get this, you get how the Mass works.

But as I said, everything depends upon the training, the process, which is really a process of learning how to aim properly.

So was it—ever the same! I have aimed at the peeled wand of my God, and I have hit; yea, I have hit.
Liber 65, I.65

The natural will becomes perfected (becomes Chaos or God in the Flesh) when it is oriented and devoted exclusively to the proper object. This is what in Thelema is called chastity. (See Little Essays Toward Truth, “Chastity,” Energized Enthusiasm (sec VI), and Magick in Theory and Practice, chapter XX, and of course AL I.52. The doctrine of chastity—which comes from the Book of the Law—is the foundation of Crowley’s sexual mysticism.)

The Priest becoming chaste is dramatized in the Ceremony of the Introit. In that ceremony, the Priestess (who, with the Children, represents the three feminine principles which balance the three Lords spoken of here) adorns the Priest with two mantles and consecrates a third.

First she robes the Priest with the robe of scarlet and gold. This robe signifies him as the Priest of the Sun, the second Lord. It means that his work in this ritual, among other things, is one of unifying, of becoming One, of “doing the Lord’s work” so to speak.

Then she places the cap of maintenance and the Uraeus crown on his head. This represents the first Lord, the Lord secret and most holy, etc., Hadit.

Finally she kneels, runs her hands gently up and down the lance eleven times, and says “Be the LORD present among us!”

That’s the third Lord, the Lord adored upon heaths and in woods, etc., Chaos. That’s the natural will of the individual which is now perfected through devotion to Nuit. We know it’s the natural will, because the Priest comes out of the tomb with it! Unlike the robe and crown, it’s on his person. It’s a natural birthright, not something bestowed upon him.

It becomes “perfected” by being devoted solely to Nuit, which is symbolized by it being stroked 11 times. (See AL I.60.) As soon as this is accomplished, the Priestess says, “Be the LORD present among us!” All give the Hailing Sign which symbolizes marriage. Why? Because the Priest is now a committed man. That devotion of his sexual energy exclusively to the All is what makes him chaste, and it is what identifies his will or his sexual potency with Chaos, the Lord Adored. And if you had any doubt about this, the Priest is nice enough to let you know what just happened:

Thee therefore whom we adore we also invoke. By the power of the lifted Lance!

Now he’s going to take that lance—representative of his perfected will—and he’s going to put it in the only place it can ever possibly go ever again: the grail. That lance (O or Ayin) is now on a one-way trip to death (N or Nun). The Priest’s will must come to an end through an act of love which unbinds (nibbana) his sense of separateness from nature. He must inevitably undergo erotic destruction.

There’s a lot here, but that’s how the three Lords fit together, and how that doctrine fits into the Mass and into Thelema generally. The Ceremony of the Introit in particular is very important for establishing the relationship of the three Lords in the person of the Priest and setting him on his trajectory. There are also three feminine principles at play here. If you have three masculine principles, you must have three feminine principles as well.

If you do anything in the North, you must put something equal and opposite to it in the South […] It is not safe to use any thought in Magick, unless that thought has been thus equilibrated and destroyed.
Magick in Theory and Practice, chapter VIII

Maybe I can go into that in a subsequent post if anyone is interested.

The Lord of the 5th Collect

The Lord of the 5th collect of the Mass is neither the Lord of the first collect (the Sun) nor the Lord of the second collect (the Lord secret and most holy).

He can’t be the secret and most holy Lord, because he is manifested. He is “the might of man” and is adored in places in nature, in temples and houses, and in our bodies.

He can’t be the Sun, either, because while the Sun is manifested (visible and sensible), the Sun is “our Lord in the Universe,” i.e., the god of the macrocosm or the demiurge. The Lord of the fifth collect, by contrast, is clearly associated with “the surface of the Earth” or the microcosm.

So what god or principle is manifested like the Sun but instead of being in the heavens is on the surface of the Earth?

“I believe … in one Father of Life, Mystery of Mystery, in His name CHAOS, the sole viceregent of the Sun upon the Earth…”

The Lord of the fifth collect must be CHAOS, the viceregent or representative of the rulership of the Sun upon the Earth.

The Sun is “represented” on Earth as light, as electromagnetic radiation. It is the energy of the Sun that allows plants to make food. It’s the energy that drives the weather and the transportation of water and many other natural processes necessary to life. Because of the light of the sun, the death of the individual is not the death of life itself. Life is renewed, and therefore death is no cause for sorrow. Hence the Sun is “light [and] life,” and the Lord of the 5th collect, Chaos, is “lord of Life and Joy”.

So then who are the saints? They are described as those who “adore” or who make “manifest [the] glory” of the Lord of the 5th collect. They are men who one way or another acknowledged the divinity of manifest, microcosmic existence, right here on Earth.

The saints are of the “true church of old time,” and their knowledge is passed down “generation unto generation.” In other words, their form of worship is not one which is necessarily taught any more than their churches are standing buildings. It’s more like a phylogenic memory of nature worship that’s passed down through the blood—or at the very least is self-evident to any with eyes to see or ears to hear. Christianity has buried this memory under heaps of superstition, but it can be reactivated whenever we engage external nature spontaneously and joyously through singing, dancing, and making love in a religious context.

“Religion must represent Truth, and celebrate it. This truth is of two orders: one, concerning Nature external to Man; two, concerning Nature internal to Man. Existing religions, especially Christianity, are based on primitive ignorance of the facts, particularly of external Nature. Celebrations must conform to the custom and nature of the people. Christianity has destroyed the joyful celebrations, characterized by music, dancing, feasting, and making love; and has kept only the melancholy.”
(Equinox III:1)

“Human nature demands (in the case of most people) the satisfaction of the religious instinct, and, to very many, this may best be done by ceremonial means. I wished therefore to construct a ritual [The Mass] through which people might enter into ecstasy as they have always done under the influence of appropriate ritual … I resolved that my Ritual should celebrate the sublimity of the operation of universal forces without introducing disputable metaphysical theories. I would neither make nor imply any statement about nature which would not be endorsed by the most materialistic man of science. On the surface this may sound difficult; but in practice I found it perfectly simple to combine the most rigidly rational conceptions of phenomena with the most exalted and enthusiastic celebration of their sublimity”
Aleister Crowley, Confessions

Such worship will awaken the innate, “essentially present” memory of the original worship. The “light” of the Sun will “crystallize in our blood”. It will come out of its dissolved, latent state and become an explicit awareness of the divinity of everything we see around us. We will come to a correct understanding of resurrection and no longer fear death. With its dramatization of the reproductive process and its celebration of all aspects of nature and life through the collects, Liber XV is such a ritual.

So the idea that the Lord of the 5th collect is CHAOS not only helps make sense of exactly who the saints are and why their church is the “true church”; it also explains exactly how the Mass fulfilled Crowley’s intention of creating a public religious ceremony that allowed people to enter into ecstasy—thus compensating for Christianity’s error—while also remaining on a purely naturalistic footing.

Toward Erotic Liberation in the Mass

Thelema can be looked at as a path of return to nature (Nuit, Babalon, or Isis), from out of death (Osiris), by means of the spirit of erotic destruction (Apophis or the HGA). It’s the IAO formula in reverse.

The spirit of erotic destruction takes the form of Baphomet in Liber XV. Baphomet is the Lion-Serpent (HGA) that destroys the destroyer (death or limitation) by means of love. Paradoxically we invoke annihilation upon ourselves so we may live for the first time.

This mystery is presented as a cultic rite in Liber XV.

Erotic destruction and IAO

One of the most interesting parts of Magick in Theory and Practice is chapter 20, “Of The Eucharist and the Art of Alchemy.” This chapter—particularly what Crowley says here about art production—was the subject of a talk I gave last summer for Horizon Lodge in Seattle.

In chapter 20 Crowley says that alchemy, initiation, talisman creation, art production (specifically painting, but the claim could be extended to other media), and eucharistic magick all share the same structure. There aren’t actually so many other types of magick besides those, so he’s presenting something like a unified theory of magick in general.

But even if that doesn’t cover every magical art, it still covers two areas that were of essential concern to Crowley: initiation and the production of the eucharist (which is a type of alchemy). The first is the primary subject matter of A∴A∴; the second is connected with the secret contained within the Sanctuary of the Gnosis of O.T.O.

My assumption was that if Crowley was talking about a structure essential to the essential work of both A∴A∴ and of O.T.O., he was describing something lying at the core of his spiritual project generally. What I claimed in my talk was that the magical formula which describes both of these processes is IAO.

IAO is the Golden Dawn formula of resurrection: Isis (Nature) is ruined by Apophis (the Destroyer) which is then redeemed by/as Osiris.

What I said in my talk, however, is that there is a shift in emphasis in Crowley’s version, because Apophis is no longer the ruiner of anything other than the false, initial appearance of nature. Through its destructive power, it frees or liberates what was latent, concealed, or in a sense trapped in the initial matter. It allows the “true self” latent within the first matter to transcend itself—to transcend its initial appearance—and to become part of a larger, vitalizing whole.

It doesn’t do this by discarding the matter necessarily but rather by turning it from resistance to persistence. Thus fire becomes the power of willing, water the power of daring, air the power of knowing, and earth the power of keeping silence. When they are in balance, thus arises the fifth power, going, attributed to Hadit.

In the process, change becomes expressive of will, thereby satisfying the postulate of magick. At the same time, because will is fully expressed in change—because matter no longer stands opposed to will but is its vehicle or “artistic medium”— it no longer has an existence independent of the universe. Hadit has become mystically enraptured with Nuit.

Thus there is a link between the work of Apophis in the IAO formula with love under will. Apophis represents destruction of separateness by love: the power of rebirth by voluntarily submitting to transformation.

Apophis is the spirit of erotic transcendence.

On Being Hadit

There are many ethical injunctions of a revolutionary character in the Book [of the Law], but they are all particular cases of the general precept to realize one’s own absolute God-head and to act with the nobility which springs from that knowledge. Practically all vices springs from failure to do this.
Aleister Crowley, Confessions

But remember, o chosen one, to be me…
Liber AL vel Legis, II.76

Chapter One

Every man and every woman is a star. I.3
Be thou Hadit, my secret centre, my heart & my tongue! I.6
The Khabs is in the Khu, not the Khu in the Khabs. Worship then the Khabs, and behold my light shed over you! I.8-9
Come forth, o children, under the stars, & take your fill of love! I.12
Bind nothing! Let there be no difference made among you between any one thing & any other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt. I.22
Obey my prophet! follow out the ordeals of my knowledge! seek me only! Then the joys of my love will redeem ye from all pain. This is so: I swear it by the vault of my body; by my sacred heart and tongue; by all I can give, by all I desire of ye all. I.32
Who calls us Thelemites will do no wrong, if he look but close into the word. For there are therein Three Grades, the Hermit, and the Lover, and the man of Earth. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. I.40
The word of Sin is Restriction. O man! refuse not thy wife, if she will! O lover, if thou wilt, depart! There is no bond that can unite the divided but love: all else is a curse. Accurséd! Accurséd be it to the aeons! Hell. I.41
Let it be that state of manyhood bound and loathing. So with thy all; thou hast no right but to do thy will. Do that, and no other shall say nay. I.42-43
For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect. I.44
Be goodly therefore: dress ye all in fine apparel; eat rich foods and drink sweet wines and wines that foam! Also, take your fill and will of love as ye will, when, where and with whom ye will! But always unto me. If this be not aright; if ye confound the space-marks, saying: They are one; or saying, They are many; if the ritual be not ever unto me: then expect the direful judgments of Ra Hoor Khuit! This shall regenerate the world, the little world my sister, my heart & my tongue, unto whom I send this kiss. I.51-53
Invoke me under my stars! Love is the law, love under will. I.57
But to love me is better than all things: if under the night-stars in the desert thou presently burnest mine incense before me, invoking me with a pure heart, and the Serpent flame therein, thou shalt come a little to lie in my bosom. For one kiss wilt thou then be willing to give all; but whoso gives one particle of dust shall lose all in that hour. Ye shall gather goods and store of women and spices; ye shall wear rich jewels; ye shall exceed the nations of the earth in splendour & pride; but always in the love of me, and so shall ye come to my joy. I charge you earnestly to come before me in a single robe, and covered with a rich headdress. I love you! I yearn to you! Pale or purple, veiled or voluptuous, I who am all pleasure and purple, and drunkenness of the innermost sense, desire you. Put on the wings, and arouse the coiled splendour within you: come unto me! I.61
Sing the rapturous love-song unto me! Burn to me perfumes! Wear to me jewels! Drink to me, for I love you! I love you! I.63
To me! To me! I.65

Chapter Two

Remember all ye that existence is pure joy; that all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass & are done; but there is that which remains. II.9
Hear me, ye people of sighing! The sorrows of pain and regret Are left to the dead and the dying, The folk that not know me as yet. II.17
These are dead, these fellows; they feel not. We are not for the poor and sad: the lords of the earth are our kinsfolk. II.18
Beauty and strength, leaping laughter and delicious languor, force and fire, are of us. II.20
We have nothing with the outcast and the unfit: let them die in their misery. For they feel not. Compassion is the vice of kings: stamp down the wretched & the weak: this is the law of the strong: this is our law and the joy of the world. II.21
Be strong, o man! lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture: fear not that any God shall deny thee for this. II.22
If Will stops and cries Why, invoking Because, then Will stops & does nought. If Power asks why, then is Power weakness. II.30-31
But ye, o my people, rise up & awake! Let the rituals be rightly performed with joy & beauty! II.34-35
Aye! feast! rejoice! there is no dread hereafter. There is the dissolution, and eternal ecstasy in the kisses of Nu. II.44
Dost thou fail? Art thou sorry? Is fear in thine heart? Where I am these are not. II.46-47
Pity not the fallen! I never knew them. I am not for them. I console not: I hate the consoled & the consoler. II.48
There is a veil: that veil is black. It is the veil of the modest woman; it is the veil of sorrow, & the pall of death: this is none of me. Tear down that lying spectre of the centuries: veil not your vices in virtuous words: these vices are my service; ye do well, & I will reward you here and hereafter. II.52
Yea! deem not of change: ye shall be as ye are, & not other. Therefore the kings of the earth shall be Kings for ever: the slaves shall serve. There is none that shall be cast down or lifted up: all is ever as it was. Yet there are masked ones my servants: it may be that yonder beggar is a King. A King may choose his garment as he will: there is no certain test: but a beggar cannot hide his poverty. II.58
Beware therefore! Love all, lest perchance is a King concealed! Say you so? Fool! If he be a King, thou canst not hurt him. Therefore strike hard & low, and to hell with them, master! II.59-60
There is help & hope in other spells. Wisdom says: be strong! Then canst thou bear more joy. Be not animal; refine thy rapture! If thou drink, drink by the eight and ninety rules of art: if thou love, exceed by delicacy; and if thou do aught joyous, let there be subtlety therein! II.70
But exceed! exceed! Strive ever to more! and if thou art truly mine—and doubt it not, an if thou art ever joyous!—death is the crown of all. II.71-72
But remember, o chosen one, to be me; to follow the love of Nu in the star-lit heaven; to look forth upon men, to tell them this glad word. II.76
O be thou proud and mighty among men! Lift up thyself! for there is none like unto thee among men or among Gods! Lift up thyself, o my prophet, thy stature shall surpass the stars. They shall worship thy name, foursquare, mystic, wonderful, the number of the man; and the name of thy house 418. II.77-78

Chapter Three

Fear not at all; fear neither men nor Fates, nor gods, nor anything. Money fear not, nor laughter of the folk folly, nor any other power in heaven or upon the earth or under the earth. Nu is your refuge as Hadit your light; and I am the strength, force, vigour, of your arms. III.17
Mercy let be off: damn them who pity! Kill and torture; spare not; be upon them! III.18
Despise also all cowards; professional soldiers who dare not fight, but play; all fools despise! But the keen and the proud, the royal and the lofty; ye are brothers! As brothers fight ye! III.57-59
There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt. III.60

The Gnostic Mass as a Religious Rite

When interpreting the Mass, it’s important to keep in mind that it’s a religious rite, and so it’s not possible to capture the main idea behind it simply with categories that apply to magic(k), mysticism, or the mysteries of OTO.

This is a slide from my Minerval lecture summarizing Stephen Skinner’s treatment of these categories in Introduction to Techniques of Graeco-Egyptian Magic. I use this to show what is distinctive about initiation into a mystery school (such as M∴M∴M∴) versus attending Mass or doing private ritual at home. But it’s also useful for seeing what is distinctive about the Mass as a religious rite.

One of the main objectives of the Mass is implied by the Priest right at the start of the ritual: it’s to administer the virtues to the breathren. I think the simplest, most direct interpretation of that statement is that the ritual imparts the spirit of Thelema or the New Aeon to the public, both through its liturgy and through the eucharist itself.

To put a finer point on it, I disagree with an interpretation of the Mass according to which the Priest is exemplifying communing with his Holy Guardian Angel or Crossing the Abyss. That would be a mystical or magical interpretation. I think that renders the actions of the clergy excessively personal and private and tends to obscure the public cultic dimension. I think it also leads to the conclusion that the Priest is feeding his Holy Guardian Angel to the congregants (eww).

I have a long, detailed argument about what exactly is embodied in the eucharist. The short, simple answer is that it embodies the spirit that gave rise to the Book of the Law. So in yet another sense, the Book of the Law becomes your sustenance and comfort when you consume the bread and wine.

Now the spirit that gave rise to the Book of the Law is also the Holy Guardian Angel. (Crowley calls it Aleph, Harpocrates, and a bunch of other names.) So it’s easy to see why one would think that the Mass involves the Priest communing with his HGA. It’s actually not a stupid interpretation. And I could even accept an interpretation which said that the Priest communed with his HGA somewhere along the way in the ritual—or even that the congregants are there to do something similar. It’s not going to detract from it.

I just don’t think it’s the main objective of the ritual. It’s clear from the liturgy, from the presence of a congregation, from the ritualists taking up ecclesiastical roles, and just from things that Crowley said about the ritual when he was alive that the ritual is not meant to be simply mystical or magical, it’s meant to impart a particular kind of spirit (for lack of a better word) to the public. It’s meant to serve and help structure the self-understanding of a community.

Thelema’s highest good

But to love me is better than all things.

Like everything else in Thelema, its highest aim is 2-in-1.

It’s doing your will—without lust of result.

It should now be perfectly simple for everybody to understand the Message of the Master Therion.

Thou must (1) Find out what is thy Will. (2) Do that Will with (a) one-pointedness, (b) detachment, (c) peace.

Then, and then only, art thou in harmony with the Movement of Things, thy will part of, and therefore equal to, the Will of God. And since the will is but the dynamic aspect of the self, and since two different selves could not possess identical wills; then, if thy will be God’s will, Thou art That.
Liber II, The Message of the Master Therion

There is doing or going, then there’s unadulterated openness and acceptance of whatever comes from that without a shred of resentment.

The two are in perfect balance and identity at the point of the triangle.

Another way of looking at it is that each of us is individual and has their own, individual will, thus their own particular course or path through eternity.

Equally and at the same time, though, there is only one aim that the Hadit in us has, and that’s union with Nuit. But Nuit is not a thing, and therefore Hadit’s hunger for Her can never be satisfied. He is never united with Her but is constantly uniting with Her, realizing one latent possibility within Her after another after another after another.

In other words the going is not toward a particular aim; it is toward All.

And the going is not of a particular entity; rather, substance passes over completely and without remainder into change or love, never stopping for even a moment just to be.

The path leading to this realization—where the individual is reconciled with the universe, where freedom is reconciled with necessity—is the spiritual system of Thelema, which can be described as magick or love under will.

Each action or motion is an act of love, the uniting with one or another part of “Nuit”; each such act must be “under will,” chosen so as to fulfil and not to thwart the true nature of the being concerned.

The technical methods of achieving this are to be studied in Magick, or acquired by personal instruction from the Master Therion and his appointed assistants.
“Introduction” to the Book of the Law

The method of Magick in this—and in all—Work is: “love under will.”
Djeridensis Comment on AL I.55-56

Technically, any practice or belief leading to this outcome could be considered “Thelemic,” whether Crowley thought of it or not.

Here is one such exercise. Right now, right at this moment, does it seem to you as though things could be other than exactly as they are? How do you know that? Can you prove that to yourself? Try, and take note of what happens.

But any exercise that is not leading toward that end—pure doing + pure indifference—is a desire for the conditioned. It’s the subordination of will to love or what Crowley called black magick.

It doesn’t mean it’s “evil”. From a conventional point of view, it’s usually considered quite good, actually (i.e., harmless). It just leads where all desire for conditioned things leads: dissatisfaction and resentment toward existence.

Diagram summarizing the four noble truths from Buddha's and Crowley's perspectives.

More on Thelema vs. Theravada Buddhism

The first noble truth is often glossed as “all is suffering,” but that’s not what the Buddha said.

Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.
Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta

He’s explicit in the summary that it’s the five clinging aggregates that are sources of suffering, not existence itself. This is drawn out in the second noble truth.

Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of the origin of suffering: it is this craving which leads to re-becoming, accompanied by delight and lust, seeking delight here and there; that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for becoming, craving for disbecoming.
Ibid.

In other words it’s the craving for the things, not the things themselves, that generates the suffering. If this weren’t true, if it were existence itself rather than the clinging or the craving that were causing the suffering, then there would be no way to achieve liberation in this life time. Becoming an Arahant would be meaningless, since one would still be embodied and experience aging and death. One would presumably have to wait until death to experience liberation. Instead it’s clear from the doctrine that while full liberation occurs at death (paranibbana) there is a kind of relative liberation that occurs in this life time. That’s the third noble truth.

Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering: it is the remainderless fading away and cessation of that same craving, the giving up and relinquishing of it, freedom from it, non-reliance on it.
Ibid.

It’s interesting to compare this with Thelema, since there’s a lot of overlap in assumptions.

Following AL II.9, Crowley rejects the idea that existence is suffering. It is ultimately pure joy. But the Buddha also rejects the idea that existence in and of itself is suffering. In other words they both view suffering as based in conditions arising in the subject which can be overcome.

Like the Buddha, Crowley—folllowing AL I.44—views the resolution of suffering as depending upon the cessation of craving or lust. But how is that suffering to cease? For the Buddha, it depends upon understanding the true nature of the things lusted after—that they are impermanent and cannot provide lasting satisfaction—and thereby becoming disillusioned with them and ultimately dispassionate toward them.

Seeing thus, the well-instructed disciple of the noble ones grows disenchanted with form, disenchanted with feeling, disenchanted with perception, disenchanted with fabrications, disenchanted with consciousness. Disenchanted, he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion, he is fully released. With full release, there is the knowledge, ‘Fully released.’ He discerns that ‘Birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world.’
Pañcavaggi Sutta

Crowley accepts the Buddha’s reasoning with regard to the fundamental impermanence of all conditioned phenomena, but he goes in the exact opposite direction from them that the Buddha goes. Instead of unconditionally retreating from all conditioned phenomena in favor of a purely transcendent unconditioned, the Thelemic path is an unconditional move toward impermanent, conditioned phenomena.

For see now how all things, being in sorrow caused by dividuality, must of necessity will Oneness as their medicine.
Liber CL, Part II

What Crowley is doing is clever. He’s not disagreeing with the Buddha when it comes to the fundamental nature of reality. The Buddha sees two possible attitudes of relating to this reality: one can either be lost in it, subject to craving, hatred, and ignorance, or one can dispassionately relinquish it. Crowley sees a third option: one can unconditionally unite with it.

Every operation of Love is the satisfaction of a bitter hunger, but the appetite only grows fiercer by satisfaction; so that we can say with the Preacher: ‘He that increaseth knowledge increaseth Sorrow.’ The root of all this sorrow is in the sense of insufficiency; the need to unite, to lose oneself in the beloved object, is the manifest proof of this fact, and it is clear also that the satisfaction produces only a temporary relief, because the process expands indefinitely. The thirst increases with drinking. The only complete satisfaction conceivable would be the Yoga of the atom with the entire universe. This fact is easily perceived, and has been constantly expressed in the mystical philosophies of the West; the only goal is ‘Union with God’.
Eight Lectures on Yoga, “Yoga for Yahoos: First Lecture”

This “Yoga of the atom [the individual consciousness] with the entire universe” is achieved upon crossing the Abyss and becoming a Master of the Temple, who “understand[s] the Universe perfectly [and is] utterly indifferent to its pressure.” (New Comment on AL II.9) For this reason Crowley is justified in regarding the Master of the Temple as the “Master of Sorrow” and equivalent to the Arahant. (See Liber B vel Magi and “One Star in Sight”.)

However, the methods are different. The fourth noble truth—the path to the cessation of suffering—is the noble eightfold path, which is a renunciate path. Craving is overcome by training oneself to see the downside of the things that one craves, starting with “gross” or sensual pleasures and moving toward more refined pleasures such as the craving for any change whatsoever.

By contrast, the path Crowley establishes to the cessation of suffering is not a renunciate path. One remains fully engaged with both gross and fine sources of pleasure or change; however, the training consists in not lusting after any particular change. Rather, one is to embrace every change, every event, equally, understanding it to be an expression of Self or “pure will”. Crowley refers to this spiritual path as “magick.”

These two paths—the renunciate path of Theravada Buddhism and the worldly path of Crowley’s Thelema—go in opposite directions from one another, but they end at similar places where one does not crave for any particular outcome. The Buddhist path ends in nibbana, and the Thelemic path ends in pure will, delivered from the lust of result (i.e., love under will).

But the phrase may also be interpreted as if it read ‘with purpose unassuaged’—i.e., with tireless energy. The conception is, therefore, of an eternal motion, infinite and unalterable. It is Nirvana, only dynamic instead of static—and this comes to the same thing in the end.
Liber II

They both involve the cultivation of dispassion. But while the Buddhist path can be thought of as an unconditional withdrawal from involvement in All, the Thelemic path can be thought of as unconditional embrace or acceptance of All.

This is important to understand. Thelema is not the assertion that existence is pure joy in the face of Buddhism or common sense. Crowley accepts at least some of the Buddha’s assumptions about the fundamental nature of reality. He just recognizes a way of dealing with that reality which the Buddha either wasn’t aware of or didn’t consider viable. It is the exploitation of this additional possibility—a path which Crowley eventually calls magick—that leads one to the realization that existence is pure joy. In other words, it’s not just an assertion or a little shift in attitude. It’s a training which is just as rigorous and demanding as the Noble Eightfold Path.

Thelema vs. Gnosticism

Gnosticism is the view that the creator God is blind or evil, and that the world we inhabit is therefore a prison we must escape. It’s not just the material world which is bad. The angels or “archons” are jailers attempting to keep us there. The only way out is by making contact with the Supreme Being who is the source or parent of the Demiurge, and this happens through the process of gnosis or direct knowledge.

Aside from the rejection of traditional religion in favor of direct knowing, Crowley rejected all of that. The universe does not need to be escaped. It is not bad or evil or a prison. Some spirits are good and will help you if properly contacted and vetted.

There is a Demiurge in Thelema. It’s Tetragrammaton, the formula of the elements and the formula of the redemption of Malkuth. In other words it’s a personification both of manifest existence and the redemption of that existence. It is “blind” in the sense that the universe we inhabit obeys impersonal mathematical laws of cause and effect. And in a certain sense the human in its natural condition is also blind, pushed this way and that by forces beyond its control, deluded into thinking it’s making free choices when all the while it’s just a puppet of fate.

There is an alternative to this, but it does not require escaping this universe. Rather it requires us to identify with the universe, and in effect to take up the position of the Demiurge. This is exactly how Crowley conceives of the Sphinx or the pyramid (or pentagram), which are described by the formula of Tetragrammaton, which is also the formula of the Demiurge.

As recounted in Ithell Colquhoun’s biography of Mathers, Crowley learned from Mathers the secret that the God worshipped in Judaism and Christianity—Jehovah—was in fact Samael, the Blind God. Samael is androgynous when combined with his female counterpart, Lilith. Together they form CHIVA, Chioa. That’s more or less how Crowley came to understand the Sphinx, as the combination of Babalon and the Beast. They are joined—and the pyramid is completed—by means of the formula of the Rose Cross.

This is a step along the way to the redemption of—not escape from—the manifest universe, Malkuth. This redemption does not occur through self-sacrifice or suffering but rather through love under will or Thelemic magick. The apotheosis of this path is to witness ALL change—every event—as an expression of cosmic love, the product of the intercourse between Hadit and Nuit. This perfect love of Nuit is identical with pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result. Thus is suffering overcome, not by escaping existence, but by being able to experience it as pure joy.

Image of a pine tree upside down through a crystal ball

Perception, aesthetics, and initiation

There’s a type of knowledge that takes place just at the level of perception. When you accidentally touch a hot surface, your nervous system computes, cognizes the danger, and makes the decision to recoil your hand before the signal even reaches your brain let alone your higher cognitive centers.

Something analogous occurs at the level of perceptual awareness. Unlike in the case of a completely unconscious reflex response, perceptual awareness is the combination of the sensation with consciousness to produce a mental state. This is where orientation, context, the general feel of a place, of direction, and I would argue even the conditions of meaning are established—all before our reflective, analytical capacities are able to kick in.

Since perception is the point or relation where our minds make contact with the outside world, all true learning has to take place at this level of perceptual awareness if it is to be learning in the deepest sense rather than merely unpacking a meaning latent in something we already know.

I’m reminded of the critical philosophy of the great Prussian philosopher, Immanuel Kant. Kant first argued that concepts without sense perceptions to go along with them were empty (i.e., mere fantasies), but sense perceptions without concepts were blind. In other words, without bringing some interpretative framework to bear on our experience, our experience can never mean anything to us. The architecture of the mind has an enormous, ineluctable impact on what we are even able to call knowledge.

On the other hand, he realized that if sense perception is completely formless or meaningless in the absence of an interpretive framework, then learning in the deep sense is impossible. All we’re ever do is elaborating our own minds. The rubber never hits the road.

And so he classified an entire set of experiences that do not consist merely in categorizing sensations or analytically unpacking things we’ve already learned but instead consist in the generation of new concepts, new ways of meaning-making. Among the sorts of experiences capable of generating meaning, aesthetic experiences in particular were important. Kant thought they were the most pure.

An aesthetic experience—by which Kant meant the appreciation of art or natural beauty for the sake of its form and its form alone—has the capacity to initiate an entire new form of meaning-making and relating to the world, and aesthetic experience alone has this capacity. This is because the experience decenters us. It carries us out of ourselves, away from what we already know or think we already know, out into the world of the senses, where entirely new meanings are birthed from the chaotic cauldron of sensation.

And then in light of this new information, this new meaning, the conscious mind reconfigures itself. It adjusts its paradigms to accommodate the new meaning. It does this to itself, uncoerced. And therefore the aesthetic or initiatory experience is also the original context of freedom.