There was recently a fight on Twitter (I know, right?) about whether or not people should publicly debate the meaning of The Book of the Law.
My position on this question is somewhat orthogonal to the way most people deal with it. I’m coming out at with a different set of questions, namely, how we can frame or interpret Thelema in such a way that it can effectively address nihilism and avoid simply being a pseudo-religious ideology.
In my opinion the best article that’s ever been written on The Comment is this one. Yeah, I wrote it. I’m putting it out there because, no matter how strongly you believe in The Comment, I think I’ve made the case for The Comment better and more compelling than anyone else. Maybe that sounds arrogant, but I’m saying it because I think it’s true.
But I wrote that article with my spiritual practitioner’s hat on. Here’s something with my philosopher’s hat on.
A meaningful framing of Thelema must include a nomological structure. Nomological comes from nomos, Greek law. It refers to how reality is structured. A spiritual path or way in life that doesn’t take into account how that life or world is governed—like what natural laws it follows—isn’t going to be successful. It’s also going to be superstitious. It’s something that could be meaningful to you personally in moments of fantasy, but it’s not going to have any applicability outside of that.
Crowley maintained that the Book of the Law was the source of that account of reality. It described the elements of the universe—Nuit and Hadit—and how they combine to create experience. From the nature of the two elements and their interactions, he thought certain spiritual and ethical implications followed. Those implications constitute Thelema.
Yes, Thelema is “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,” but the Law in that statement is hyperlinked with the nomological structure of Thelema. It’s not a standalone ethical claim; it’s founded in a particular picture of reality.
So I would argue that, if you want to create a meaningful framing of Thelema, you need to study and discuss the meaning behind The Book of the Law, because you need to study and discuss the nomological structure of reality to make any spiritual path meaningful.
As it turns out, Crowley elaborated that structure in his commentaries. You could study those without—perhaps, strictly speaking—violating The Comment.
Some people dismiss the commentaries because Crowley later dismissed them. There are two problems with that argument.
- It’s an argument from authority or assertion. “Crowley said X, therefore X.” That doesn’t tell us whether Crowley was justified saying X.
- What he says in the commentaries is consistent with his philosophical perspective in earlier and later texts such as “Berashith,” The Book of Lies, Magick, and Magick Without Tears.
As far as I’m concerned, the real problem arises if we try to critically evaluate the cosmology and metaphysics of Thelema. Crowley interprets the Book of the Law to fit a particular philosophical outlook which had already crystalized in his mind prior to 1904. I’ve referred to that outlook—which comes from Lurianic Kabbalah—as holistic monism.
But holistic monism is not without its problems. Especially in its modern framings, it tends toward pseudo-religious ideologies. In other words it’s not really a spiritual or religious approach to life so much as an interpretion of religious experience in secular, philosophical, rationalist terms. That implicitly leads to a situation in which secular, philosophical, rationalist positions are lent a kind of inevitable, religious authority to them.
I think the modern version of this is Consensus Thelema. I think it’s dangerous. It’s certainly very annoying.
But then the question becomes: Are there aspects of The Book of the Law that resist the holistic monist framing? Does it hint at structures of reality that don’t reduce so simply to that philosophical framework?
I think the answer is yes. But to make that case explicit would require a direct, critical engagement with The Book of the Law, interpreted against Crowley’s own interpretation.
That would unambiguously contravene The Comment.
But then that also implies that there are dangers in simply obeying The Comment. It means we’re stuck with a framing of the Thelemic cosmology which tends toward pseudo-religious ideology. We can critique the symptoms of that ideology, as I have in my criticisms of Consensus Thelema. We can even offer a diagnosis of it by pointing to Crowley’s own philosophical assumptions, showing how they gave rise to the popular, exoteric version of Thelema. But we cannot offer a critique that goes toward an alternative.