It’s not clear to me that it does.
What does Thelemic theory and practice aim for? What’s it’s highest good? The Gnostic Mass offers a useful reference point. In her speech before the veil, the Priestess, quoting AL I.61, says, “But to love me is better than all things”.
To love Nuit is to love the mysterious source of illimitable possibility. What does that mean? It seems rather abstract. Perhaps anticipating this difficulty, the Priest says:
…soul of infinite space, before whom Time is Ashamed, the mind bewildered, and the understanding dark, not unto Thee may we attain, unless Thine image be Love. Therefore by seed and root and stem and bud and leaf and flower and fruit do we invoke Thee.
Nuit is sublime. Crowley describes Her and Hadit as “incommensurables and absolutes,” concluding there is no religious devotion toward them in the normal sense possible. (For more mystical senses, see Liber Nu and Liber Had.) But we’re asked to think of union with Nuit on analogy with growth and generativity.
A plant germinates from a seed. It expresses what is latent within that seed—which may be entirely unknown at first—into a living being which produces offspring in the form of a fruit. The seed within that fruit returns to the soil and starts the whole process over.
But we learned from Darwin and later from evolutionary biology that the circle is not perfect. There are small changes each time so that the offspring do not have the exact same phenotypes as the parents. Over time, this leads to a multiplicity of species. The result is that life has likely filled every niche on the planet that can support it.
But at the same time, those niches are also constantly changing as a result of geological, biological, or industrial processes, which in time places additional selective pressures on random variation. Because of these ongoing processes of variation and selection, we cannot point to any particular organism and say that it represents the ideal of its species. There is no finished form of a frog, an owl, a human being, or a bacterium.
In other words, life has no ultimate purpose.
If we carry the analogy all the way through, loving Nuit does not bring us to any final state, either. In fact every experience that takes place is the result of union with Her. The experience you are having right now, right this second, is no less Her than any other experience. It is no less divine, no less perfect, no less complete.
These experiences are generated from the union of Hadit with Nuit, a union which is as destructive as it is productive. In other words, no sooner does one experience arise then it self-destructs and is replaced with another one—and another and another and another, similar to how individuals are lost in the long-term generation and evolution of species.
The view from the peak of the mountain the Thelemite mystic climbs—a peak described by the supernal triad of the Tree of Life and the upper grades of A∴A∴—is a view of vastness. It is a view in which limits are ever falling away, and one’s finite life is seen as merely a moment in an infinite process.
The life of man is but one segment of a serpentine curve which reaches out to infinity, and its zeros but mark the changes from the plus to minus, and minus to plus, coefficients of its equation. It is for this cause, among many others, that wise men in old time chose the Serpent as the Hieroglyph of Life.
Liber CL, part 3
While the first parts of the Thelemic mystical path involve discovering and becoming who you truly are, the latter parts involve becoming who you are Not. It is to find the infinite will within the finite will.
The infinite will and the finite will are not two different wills. The finite will is the infinite will in the context of a particular incarnation. When we talk about a person doing or not doing their will—i.e., expressing and discovering the powers and nature latent within their own being—we are talking about the finite will.
The finite will appears to have its origin and to emerge from a being or from a presence. It is apparently anchored in a particular foundation, and thus to do one’s will requires taking control over that foundation. (See the Oath of a Zelator in Liber 185.)
But to take up the perspective of the infinite will is to reverse the order of priority between the will and being. From the perspective of the infinite will, the will is not the way of going of a particular being. It does not emerge from and express a presence. Rather beings are constantly created and destroyed through the ceaseless activity or generativity of the will.
This activity does not aim at the production of any particular being or form. It is not attempting to externalize or express an image latent within it. There is no image latent within it. Its activity is the simple enjoyment of creative-destruction itself: the joy, wonder, or ecstasy at the heart of existence Crowley calls O! in The Book of Lies.
While there is no image latent within this going, only joy, if we wanted to form an image of it for our finite minds, we can turn to nature, particularly life that sexually reproduces. Just as there is no overarching purpose to life other than to expand into ever-changing environmental niches, there is no overarching purpose to existence other than the realization of ever-changing beings.
For us, the sexual instinct is one of the most important motors driving the generation of forms. Its analog in the macrocosm is Ra-Hoor-Khuit. Another way to understand the purpose of Thelema is that we are intended to become Ra-Hoor-Khuit. Ra-Hoor-Khuit is the ideal we are intended to achieve. But Ra-Hoor-Khuit is the ideal union of Hadit with Nuit. But the ideal union of Hadit with Nuit is not a particular form or being. Rather it is form or individuality which is perfectly adapting to ceaseless change. To become Ra-Hoor-Khuit means to become the sort of individual who is an expression in outer form of the joy or wonder lying at the heart of things. It means to become a living symbol of Truth.
To begin to put an idea like this into practice, you need to discover your will. You need to work with duality as though it is something solid that you can count upon. So one instruction I like to give to people if they are trying to discover their will is to go systematically through their life and write down all the things they deeply, profoundly dislike and which get under their skin the most—and then write down all the opposites of these things and look for the points of overlap. That points in the direction of your finite true will.
But it is a mistake to think that there is a self that the will is anchored in, that the will is emerging from and expressing. This is why the ultimate purpose of Thelema cannot be discovering your will. Rather it is to identify what is apparently your will with the will of God. (See Liber II.) But to identify your will with the will of God is not to anchor will in yet another (this time more vast, more powerful) being. Rather, it is to surrender being to the will. It is to surrender form to becoming. It is to surrender life and death to joy.
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!