One of the main barriers to understanding sacred mysteries—Thelemic or otherwise—is to regard them as problems to be solved. The mystery is translated into an intellectual problem: if I figure out which bodily fluid Crowley really means by salt, I’ll have understood the mystery. But it can also take the form of a technical problem: what do I have to visualize while rubbing said bodily fluid on my head to make my hair grow back?
But as Gabriel Marcel said:
A problem is something which I meet, which I find completely before me, but which I can therefore lay siege to and reduce. But a mystery is something in which I am myself involved, and it can therefore only be thought of as a sphere where the distinction between what is in me and what is before me loses its meaning and initial validity.
Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having
If I am involved in something, then I must undergo a process of change to arrive at rapprochement with it. Only once I am properly fitted to the matter are gates to deep understanding and participation possible.
With regard to the mysteries of OTO in particular, the Duquettes have said:
Many of you, if not all of you, probably think you already know the Supreme Secret. That’s not surprising. A summary of the technique can be communicated in a few well-chosen words, and there are plenty of knowledgeable individuals who are not bound by any oaths who will be only too happy to tell you the nuts and bolts of the situation. Some of the biggest idiots I know have figured out the Secret. It still doesn’t mean they understand it or are capable of executing it. Figuring out the Secret [does not make] one a ninth degree…
Constance and Lon Duquette, The Miracle of the Mass
The Duquettes draw a distinction between understanding and knowing. By understanding, I think they mean grasping the significance of what you know. In merely intellectual knowing, you grasp significance by grasping some of the relevant implications of your propositions. You grasp the significance of a procedure or technique when you realize the domains to which it can be transferred and applied. But neither of these constitutes understanding in the sense of understanding a mystery.
The profoundest understanding you can get comes about through the proper alignment and mutually affording relationship of intellectual understanding, technical know-how, first-person experience, and embodied fittedness, all with one another.
This is the kind of understanding you have with a person with whom you have developed a deep, long-lasting love relationship. You don’t simply know who they are in an intellectual way. You are fitted with them in such a way as to form a whole which is larger than the sum of its parts. A healthy couple benefits the individuals participating in the relationship—and probably even the people around them—more than they could benefit themselves individually. That deep fittedness and attunement which gives rise to an overflowing benefit for all involved is the basis of trust.
If you leave out any of the forms of knowledge, the other ones on their own can develop into powerful forms of self-deception. This can take many forms in the context of a love relationship. We can confuse trust with control. We can threaten the relationship out of fear. We can choose to serve ourselves or the other person at the expense of the relationship.
Trusting ourselves is not very different in kind from trusting another person. It’s more than mere propositional knowledge of who we are, and it involves more than simply getting ourselves to do the things we want ourselves to do. It requires a deep acquaintance with our own nature. The development of a certain quality of consciousness and presence with ourselves—especially in cases of difficulty and danger—is a prerequisite to a deep understanding of the significance of our own divinity.
Our divinity is like a seed we brought here from another world. Crowley describes it as something we have borne within ourselves from eternity. You can’t make a seed germinate or a plant grow, bloom, or bear fruit, nor do you have to. All you have to do is provide the proper conditions for it, and like a miracle, it will unfold all by itself.
Similarly, the divine consciousness within ourselves is a nature in its own right, different from but related to the nature of our own bodies. The food of the divine within us is our attention or our consciousness. To the extent that we take an interest in our souls, so will they develop. All the spiritual teachings and techniques we encounter out there in the world are there to support that growth, but the growth itself doesn’t come from outside. It is the unfolding of a nature intrinsic to the divine itself.
The most important factor is that we remain undivided within ourselves. This is like providing a proper container for a plant to grow in. You can’t hop around between traditions and practices. You need to develop unity within yourself. You need to develop the consistency between your thought, speech, and deeds that gives rise to a healthy sense of self. Once you have that, then you can begin to develop unity of subtler layers and dimensions of yourself. In Buddhism this is called right mindfulness, the fruition of which is right concentration or samadhi. In the western esoteric tradition, it is called the astral light. These are metaphors or symbols through which profound transformations of consciousness can be attained.
One of the principal metaphors in Thelema is making the mind like the night sky. You need an infinitely large container for the divine seed to germinate into an unlimited being. This is not the same thing as letting the mind go. It requires a high level of discipline and self-control to do this.
Another important metaphor is making one’s soul like a womb. In order to unite with a god, you must first birth it. You must first become the mother of that god. To become one with Jesus Christ, you must first become the Virgin Mary. To become filled with the Savior, you must first become impregnated by the Holy Spirit. This can all be expressed using equal and opposite metaphors: instead of becoming the Virgin Mary, you must become the Whore, Babalon; instead of becoming pregnant by the Holy Spirit, you must be raped by the Beast. Instead of giving birth to Jesus Christ, Satan or Baphomet is the child.
The symbols themselves do not matter, only the relationship between them—a relationship which points not only to something beyond themselves but beyond any outer form. To truly understand mystery means going beyond a mere intellectual understanding of how these symbols relate to one another. It means finding oneself in them—and ultimately finding their significance within you. That’s the mutual participation Marcel describes as the essence of mystery versus problem-solving. It is the resolution of the first three powers of the sphinx by their absorption into the silence of the body and soul. It is also the mutual interdependence characteristic of love.
The flower of love is trust; the fruit it bears is the benefit it provides both to the lovers and the community around them.
The flower of mystery is the deep understanding of one’s identity with God. To eat its fruit is to savor immortality.