When I was talking yesterday about the importance of understanding Thelemic theology, I did not mention the specific theological doctrines I thought were important. When I wrote my response to Polyphilus’s Agape article, I underlined the importance of understanding 0=2 and Kabbalah. Those are important theological doctrines for understanding Crowley’s spirituality, but those are not…
Author: Entelecheia
Why Thelemites should develop competence in theology
A little while back, I wrote an article on why I thought it was important to understand Thelemic theology. (You can read it on page 10.) It was a response to an EGC Bishop who claimed that theology should “be rightly spurned and discarded by individual Thelemites, and more importantly by our Church” and that…
Why the outrage on the part of those in authority seems disingenuous
Here’s one sociological/psychological observation about the controversy in my church over gender and clergy. Eight years ago, Michael Effertz sat down and made a thorough, what I would describe as almost preternaturally patient argument for queer mass (i.e., no gender restrictions on who can serve in what role). He makes the argument several different ways:…
Biological reductionism and counterculture
Crowley’s reduction of the religious instinct to the sex drive was part of a broader countercultural movement in the early 20th century inspired by Nietzsche and earlier phallicists like Richard Payne Knight. Thelema is not the only or even the more famous representative of this movement. That place of pride probably goes to Carl Jung….
Crowley on liberation, sexual freedom, and eucharist
A voluptuous statement on what liberation looks like from a Thelemic perspective, as it relates to sexual freedom and a eucharistic rite: The supreme and absolute injunction, the crux of your knightly oath, is that you lay your lance in rest to the glory of your Lady, the Queen of the Stars, Nuit. Your knighthood…
Questioning EGC policy or Thelemic theology is not “drama”
As far as I can tell, the issue of gender queer clergy is not “drama,” nor is it merely a social justice issue. It has to do with what the Gnostic Mass is fundamentally about and how it relates to core Thelemic spiritual principles. I would hope that anyone in OTO would be curious about…
Questioning EGC policy on gender
My position on the gender requirements for Gnostic Mass in EGC is that I don’t understand them. The only explanation that has ever been offered to me by someone who affected the policy (not talking about some random OTO member offering a rationalization) doesn’t make sense to me. To the best of my knowledge, these…
Anthrophagy
Aye! feast! rejoice! there is no dread hereafter. There is the dissolution, and eternal ecstasy in the kisses of Nu. I say, “Cultivate the divine gift within you.” A gift implies an external relationship. I cannot give a gift to myself, at least not without implying opposition within myself. It therefore implies that the thing…
No, you do not “need to get your Malkuth in order” to do magick
I often encounter this meme that “you need to get your Malkuth in order” before pursuing magick. Here’s a recent example I heard of it: In order to work on more subtle planes than Malkuth, you really need to have your Malkuth together. You need to be able to manifest yourself well and appropriately in…
Children shouldn’t play with dead things
It used to be that few people bothered with the underworld. They recognized its existence, but they feared it, revered it, respectfully steered clear of it. Nowadays it’s different. We haven’t simply neglected the existence of the underworld. We recognize it but treat it like we do any other dimension of human experience. We “make…