When I was a PI (Perfect Initiate/Prince of Jerusalem), I volunteered to give a class on Thelemic Magick for my lodge. I had mostly avoided giving classes up until that point, as I had joined OTO primarily to do dramatic ritual. But I could see that the community benefitted from members of the lodge taking the time to give classes, and so I considered it an act of service.
I wrote a first, nearly complete draft of a talk. I don’t remember all that was in it, but I recall drawing on my considerable erudition and knowledge of the history of thought in western culture as well as Buddhism. I remember saying things about stellar parallax and Galileo while there was a slide of a starry sky and a quote from the Book of the Law. There were clever things like that in there.
That week Antti Balk’s book The Law of Thelema: Aleister Crowley’s Philosophy of True Will came in the mail. While ordering it, I thought, half-jokingly, “I hope this doesn’t radically change my mind about anything. I don’t want to rewrite this talk!”
When the book came, I read this passage in its preface:
“What you won’t find [in this book] is pop psychology, LARP fantasies, ridiculous anecdotes, or personal interpretations passed off as received truth.”
I immediately felt ashamed. This is exactly the sort of thing I was doing in the first draft of my talk. I was doing this for a few reasons, but they mostly boiled down to arrogance and laziness. I was a knowledgeable person in general and a good speaker, but I was using these talents to mask my lack of real knowledge about Crowley or Thelema.
So I kept reading.
He called the first chapter “First Principles”. These were certain passages from the Book of the Law followed by Crowley’s various commentaries on them with very little additional commentary by Balk. After immersing myself in these commentaries, I felt like I finally had a strong grasp on what Thelemic magick was and how it fit into Crowley’s idea of Thelema in general. (I found this chapter so valuable that I created an online version of it on my website.)
Then I completely rewrote my lecture from scratch. I added my own interpretation, but I grounded everything in The Book of the Law and Crowley’s commentaries this time, laying bare for everyone, in easy-to-understand terms, exactly what was entailed by the idea of Thelemic magick. (The audio is not very good, but you can listen to the talk here.)
I learned an extremely valuable lesson writing that talk, a lesson which, unfortunately, I see very few Thelemites learn, and that’s not to assume you know everything already.
Instead it’s more common to see a very arrogant attitude, especially among people who have been in contact with Thelema for more than a few years or who are senior members in the Order. Long ago, bolstered by secondary literature and talks they’ve heard, they distilled the entire thing down to a few catch phrases or clichés, and now when someone tries to show them that things are more complicated than that, they become defensive and respond with more clichés, deflections, condescension, and dime store philosophy. It always turns out that what Thelema “really means” is that it’s not necessary to take the time, care, and hard work to learn something, and so it conveniently justifies a lazy attitude and a giant ego.
I understand how that can happen. I was on that path as well. But my humility saved me.
I try to instill that attitude now in people who are new to Thelema. Don’t assume you know anything let alone everything.
Don’t assume you know what the Holy Guardian Angel is or that you are in conversation with one.
Don’t assume you know what the IX° secret is.
Don’t assume you know what true will is or that you know your own or are doing it.
Don’t assume you know what Thelemic magick is or that all it comes down to is knowing a few rituals and assuming you’re a Wizard CEO or Girlboss while doing them.
Don’t assume our initiation rituals are to “charge” you like a talisman
Don’t assume the purpose of the Gnostic Mass is to “use” it to “manifest” a car or a set of steak knives or some other tawdry material result.
A lot of this stuff is nuanced, and if you pass over those subtleties in favor of the dime store self-help versions, you will actually miss out on the real transformative power of any of this.
Instead, you should be like the Priest in the Gnostic Mass.
The Priestess commands him to Arise so that he may administer the virtues to the Brethren. If the Priest were like a lot of Thelemites I’ve dealt with, he would immediately set to work masturbating over a sigil to “manifest” a Cadillac—or he’d start chewing the ears off the congregants, letting them know Thelema is really just the “Tao” or some other random thing close to his heart.
What does he do instead?
He gives the three regular steps and penal signs, indicating he is a mere Man of Earth, subject to birth, life, aging, sickness, and death just like any other animal crawling irritably upon the surface of the Earth.
He hands over his lance—symbolic of his natural will and his natural desires to “manifest” things like a hot girlfriend or a hamburger—as if to indicate they are no longer his own.
And then he kneels and worships the lance while penitential music plays.
“I am a man among men. How should I be worthy to administer the virtues to the Brethren?”
And then the Priestess builds him up into something he had only ever dreamt of. She purifies him, i.e., grants him singularity of purpose. She grants him ardor and fervor. She establishes his contact with the Sun, our macrocosmic Lord. She establishes his contact with the the Secret Lord, the Holy Spirit within. And she consecrates his natural will so that now it will only ever desire and love the divine, embodied in her and her Graal. She grants him the chastity and holiness which will actually make him capable of administering the virtues to the brethren.
So even after the Priestess commands him to Arise and administer the virtues, he is still skeptical of his own ability to carry out that task. He doesn’t assume he’s adequate. He assumes the opposite. And because he does, he now has the opportunity to experience something which a more arrogant person could only ever dream darkly about.
He has the chance to really know God within and without himself—and to know a love so profound and so thoroughly transformative that it has the power practically to turn him inside-out.
I know people both in and out of OTO, people who are Thelemites or who are on other spiritual paths. They claim to have this, that, or the other attainment. They brag about how many partners or steak knives they’ve manifested or how many sigils they’ve nutted over. And then inevitably I ask them a few questions, and I find out really quickly: they know everything.
They suppose I should feel honored.
It’s a bias of mine, but it’s a bias instilled in me through a lot of spiritual experience and through a lot of encounters with these sorts of people: without humility and self-control, you’re probably not experiencing anything divine. You’re probably just experiencing yourself and your imagination. And because such people are mostly confined to their own egoic impressions and projections, they assume everyone else is, as well, which is why the dime store relativism is so appealing. It reassures them they’re not really missing out on anything, so they can continue along relying on their arrogant and lazy ways.
So if you’re new to Thelema—or you’re just tired of yourself and your ways—my suggestion to you is to watch the Priest at the beginning of the Gnostic Mass. Observe and emulate his humility.
As a congregant, fast as he does (by not eating for several hours beforehand); aspire continually as he does (with a burning heart for the Holy Spirit within and without); and most of all, make yourself chaste just as the Priestess chastens him.
And apart from the Gnostic Mass, relate yourself to the body of Thelemic teachings and disciplines the same way he relates himself to the Priestess. Allow yourself to become purified by them; allow them to rid you of your preconceptions. Allow them to enkindle the fire within you so that your aspiration will naturally rise like smoke to the Most High. And don’t assume that you know everything, that you’re already “awake”. You’re not.