It’s been a couple weeks now since I published, “What is Consensus Thelema?” and I thought I’d share some of the reactions I got to it.
The Negative Responses
Unsurprisingly, a lot of the negative responses were from people who I quoted (anonymously) in the article. The person who wrote the long, smug Reddit comment beginning “Stop!” that I referred to as a complete and total horror show wrote a long, smug, very hurt sounding reply. Unfortunately he deleted it (one can only hope, for their sake, out of profound shame) before I could screencap it, but his main defense was that his comment was a paraphrase of the 11th collect from the Gnostic Mass. If I had known that, all I would have done was express dismay that someone had taken something as beautiful as the 11th collect and weaponized it for self-serving mediocrity. IAO131 replied to this person’s comment before they deleted it. I’ll include it here because it gives a sense of what the comment was like
Another person who felt hurt that I quoted them:
Homeboy doesn’t seem to know what a straw man is. Kind of a recurring theme in some of the reactions I saw. Also kinda funny to know I’m a “Serious Thelemite” now. Whatever. I’ll take it.
This comment is impressive for both its brevity and how many points in the original article it exemplifies:
I mean, whatever.
There were probably more negative replies, but those are the ones that I saw that were worth screencapping.
The Positive Responses
The “horror show” “Stop!” example was a reply to someone asking about Thelemic views on the after life. That’s probably what this comment is referring to.
A lot of Thelemites I’ve met are actually really good people who do have strong moral principles. Some of them even have pretty good spiritual discipline. But the words that come out of their mouths are fucking nonsense, and they get insecure really easily when challenged.
So person one is being dismissive, and person two claps back that they’re using thought-terminating clichés, just like my article describes. Person one claps back again with their usual nonsense, and person two hits them again. This one made me really happy.
Having the right set of conceptual tools can be really empowering. Helps you spot and call out people’s nonsense.
Hey, we all make mistakes. Like I said in the article, I’ve been guilty of some of these behaviors, too. It’s not about the person doing it but the set of memes. It’s not about beating anyone up but about removing obstacles to the appreciation of nuance and mystery. Glad to see people wanting to look at themselves more.
Lol I know why it’s controversial.
My Reaction
Like I said in the article, I began collecting examples of this phenomenon years ago. Believe it or not, I actually had a lot more examples than what I included in the article.
People I quoted or referenced in the article included four IX°s of O.T.O. (three of them published, popular writers), and a few people who have or have had authority in O.T.O. So while I did quote a bunch of internet randos, half of what I quoted is from people who are influencing other people with these ideas. That probably goes a long way explaining why the ideas are so widespread. It’s not because “that’s just what Thelema is, dude,” it’s because people listen to other people with influence.
I was pleased and surprised by the positive responses. In retrospect it made some sense. Every time I’ve given a talk in front of a roomful of people and have addressed things from a non-consensus perspective, it’s usually quiet enough that you could hear a pin drop. People are hungry for something besides the empty calories they’ve been fed. I think a lot of people are looking for something that’s not just an echo of the same story they’ve heard all their lives. I don’t think that’s most people, but it’s cool to find out that group is larger than I expected.
And look, conceptual frames are powerful. Frame life one way, and you can point someone out and away from themselves toward a mystery lying at the heart of being itself. You can get them to wonder if there’s more to life than what they see. You can lead them to greater appreciation of subtlety and toward a feeling of gratitude for the life they’ve been given that transforms them and their relationships with other people.
Or you can frame it another way and point people back into the same stupid self-obsessive shit they’ve been mired in their whole lives. That is pretty much all I see in the “it’s true if it works for me” attitude of Consensus Thelema. It’s just the spiritualization of a particular lifestyle indexed to a particular income bracket at a particularly ugly, self-destructive stage of modern society. I participate in that same lifestyle. I affirm it probably in 100 ways every day. I just don’t think I’m God for doing it.
So maybe this is a sign of better things to come. Let’s hope.