The purpose of any O.T.O. local body is to assist individuals to find their respective true wills and to promulgate Thelema. Differences in local culture notwithstanding, that’s what each lodge, oasis, or camp has a duty to do. There are many ways individuals can interact with us. There are the obvious ones like attend Gnostic…
Author: Entelecheia
A Path with Heart
“To open the heart requires the capacity of courage, because courage is the capacity to carry fear.” This past weekend, I had the pleasure of presenting on behalf of Horizon at Concentric Circles, an annual interfaith pagan conference. The talk I delivered was on the subject of Thelema as a heart-centered path. Rather than approach…
Slow down! Preparing for communion.
Aleister Crowley mentions three ways in which a person should prepare to receive the sacrament of the Eucharist: chastity, fasting, and continual aspiration. With regard to the preparations for such Sacraments, the Catholic Church has maintained well enough the traditions of the true Gnostic Church in whose keeping the secrets are. Chastity is a condition;…
Another reason to practice Liber Resh
In the Platonic tradition, the Sun is a symbol of unity. It is the visible and sensible analog of the One Itself which gives unity in the purely intelligible realm. This One Itself transcends being and non-being. In fact it transcends all opposition whatsoever and is the sole cause of anything being whatever it is….
The Power Behind the Mass
My talk on Eucharistic magick is online now. It includes an in depth analysis of Sections VI-VIII of Liber XV: The Gnostic Mass. The claim I make about the Mass—if I were to state it as succinctly as possible—is that the Mass was intended, in part, to bring into physical manifestation the spiritual power which…
Two Essential Patterns in Crowley’s Spirituality
Two of the most important patterns in Crowley’s spirituality are the relationship between speech and silence and the relationship between the word and life and death. You see the speech-silence pattern crop up everywhere. The Book of the Law itself is delivered by Aiwass, who announces himself as the minister of Hoor-Paar-Kraat, the god of…
The Food of the Gods
Ever since I had the insight that led me to write the short post on Harpocrates, the implications of it have spread like an invasive weed throughout all the rest of my thinking and perception. It made its way into my post on the upward and downward paths in the Mass. It showed up in…
The Upward and Downward Paths in the Gnostic Mass
The way up and the way down is one and the same. — Heraclitus, Fragment 60 One way to understand Thelema is as an account of the interplay between the upward path and the downward path. The path up is variously described as waking up, the union of the individual with God, Knowledge and Conversation…
AHIH and Liber V vel Reguli
When I was creating my Kether diagram, I was thinking about possible elemental attributions for AHIH, similar to how they’re attributed to ADNI and YHVH. A and I seem obvious; they could just be the same as they are in ADNI and ALHIM. A – AirH – ?I – EarthH – ? That order—air, _________,…
The Concept of “God” in Thelema
Now the multiplying of the infinitely great by the infinitely small results in SOME UNKNOWN FINITE NUMBER EXTENDED IN AN UNKNOWN NUMBER OF CATEGORIES. It happened, when this our Great inversion took place, from the essence of all nothingness to finity extended in innumerable categories, that an incalculably vast system was produced. Merely by chance,…