One of the salient differences between Thelema and the Buddhism of the Pali suttas is that in Buddhism incarnation is seen as something to be overcome and abandoned, in Thelema it serves the purpose of the self-realization of a higher, divine consciousness.
Thelema has that Buddhistic idea of seeing through the illusion of a separate self. When everything you consider to be “you”—what in Buddhism are called the aggregates or heaps—is seen to rightfully belong to Nuit, then the way is clear for the true self (Hadit) to unite with Nuit. This is what I’ve called the path of erotic liberation or surrender to the divine feminine.
But that’s only one half of the story. If we leave it there, we get a Buddhistic version of Thelema, but then you’re left wondering why Hadit would have created the sense of separation from Nuit in the first place. It’s what I referred to as hiding your car keys on yourself in my talk Light of the Shadow.
The idea in Thelema is that what you conventionally call “you” is not simply an obstacle to be overcome but instead serves a divine purpose. In the Noble Eightfold Path, you see permanently through the illusion of self, you permanently relinquish attachment, and it’s like pulling the eject lever on the cockpit. You’re off the ride. That’s not the Thelemic story.
In Thelema “you” (conventionally so-called) serve an intermediary function between the divine and itself. Once the true nature of sensation is understood, you become a daimon or a magician or a navi (a forth-speaker on behalf of the divine). But you can only serve that function once the delusion of separation from the divine has been destroyed.
As I said in “Light of the Shadow,” we sometimes operate under the delusion that the senses separate our consciousness from reality or cut us off from the truth. This is actually a common sense notion. But if the senses are themselves divine, then the problem is not that we have senses; the problem is that we don’t know how to use our senses properly—with the result that they end up using us instead. And so the path of liberation requires a kind of “aesthetic education” (after the Greek word for sense perception, aisthēsis).
I wanted to elaborate a little bit on something I mentioned quickly in my recent video, Love, Will, and the Angel.
In that video I suggested a more-or-less traditional means of interacting with the Holy Guardian Angel, namely, prayer.
When I was a child, I prayed frequently to God, usually asking for some favor or another but also just for the purposes of ordinary conversation. After many decades, I have returned to prayer of this sort but with an important difference.
I never ask anything for myself when I pray.
I don’t ask to win the lottery. I don’t ask for a job interview to go well. I don’t ask for someone’s illness to be cured. I don’t ask for Bernie to win Michigan. (This last one might be reverse psychology.)
All I ever really ask for is to be a better servant of the divine in this world.
I ask for assistance to have my ignorance lifted. I don’t want to be ignorant about my nature. I don’t want to be ignorant about how the world works. I pray for the light of divinity to work through me in an uninterrupted fashion, unoccluded by false notions about who I am or what I should be doing.
Or as I suggested in the video, if I find myself in a difficult situation, I ask for help seeing how it is that I got myself into that mess and how to find my way out.
I understand that this is not how many occultists think about the Holy Guardian Angel. They think of conversation with the Angel more along these lines. And that’s fine. I wish people acted that way all the time, honestly. At the same time, I think my view on the Angel is consistent with Thelema as a doctrine.
The Angel is not here to rapture you, as the art on the Judgment card of the Coleman-Waite deck would suggest. Insofar as the concepts of salvation or redemption make any sense in a Thelemic context, they seem to entail something more like a change in perspective rather than a miracle.
Crowley’s two favorite metaphors for this seem to be inversion and unveiling.
You can find evidence of inversion or reversal of perspective all over the place. This is largely what the transition from Man of Earth to Hermit is about. It is captured in the imagery of the Beast 666. It’s in the idea of the Lion-Serpent as that which “destroys the destroyer” (i.e., inverts the inversion). It’s ritualized in Liber V vel Reguli. Basically the idea here is that we have an upside-down view on things. We need to be set on our own two feet for the first time, oriented toward the real foundation of things. From an outside perspective this will appear “demonic,” but it is in fact an orientation toward the transcendent and most high.
And then unveiling is the idea of the Khu as a “magical garment” that occludes the divine light within.
Our minds and bodies are veils of the Light within.
New Comment on AL I.8
The idea of the Khu and the “solution of complexes” has always seemed somewhat obscure to me, but the way I’ve come to think of it is that the Khu is like the khandhas or “clinging aggregates” of Buddhism. The Khu is the manifest universe you appear in, or at least the part of it that you consider to be you. There is nothing inherently wrong with manifest existence. There is no “fallen” state to be “redeemed” in other words.
But problems arise when we look at manifest existence as something which we can control or own or call “my,” “me,” or “mine”. To understand the nature of manifest existence means understanding that it changes constantly according to conditions that are beyond our control. This gives rise to detachment and a more balanced, equanimous perspective on reality—and ultimately a happiness that lasts apart from external circumstances.
The Khu remains, but now it no longer occludes the divine light within. This light is not “me” in the ordinary sense but is rather Hadit or Harpocrates. Everything else that I previously called “me” is now seen and correctly understood as an instrument for the expression of that divine light.
But this is essentially what I pray for—to understand nature in precisely this way and thereby to become a more perfect instrument for this divine light.
This is a way in which Thelema is far more like Buddhism than Christianity in my opinion. Buddhism begins from the notion that the main problem is not so much the nature of things themselves but rather avijjā or ignorance. This means that the solution to life’s difficulties is to develop sammā-diṭṭhi or right view, not to be “saved” by the gods or anyone else. I see Thelema has approaching the problem in a similar fashion.
Of course it should be pointed out that neither in Thelema nor in Buddhism can anyone or anything else alleviate your ignorance. It is up to you to do that through your own applied effort. But this mode of prayer can be thought of as practice for surrender of the ego or illusory self to the universal life.
So in short I would say that it does work to pray to the Angel—if the purpose of your prayer is to dispel illusion and to become a more effective instrument of the divine. But I am not of the opinion that the Angel can perform miracles for you like curing disease or putting someone in the White House like Christians think.
Now, this is joy. It is a preeminent reality. Coming into being is joyful. Enduring is joyful. Passing out of being is joyful.
This is the origination of joy. It is a preeminent reality. It is this love of Nuit that leads to further being, accompanied by passion and delight, seeking pleasure here and there. It is, namely, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for being, and craving for non-being. Every day is the seventh day of creation.
This is the invigoration of joy. It is a preeminent reality. It is the complete dissolution and cessation of precisely that desire that things be other than as they are, for each moment is, in truth, joy.
This is the way leading to the cessation of desire that things are other than as they are. It is a preeminent reality. It is the preeminent course, namely, the knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel and the crossing of the abyss.
