There’s an empirical, experiential side to Crowley, and there’s a philosophical side to Crowley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The empirical, experiential side basically comes from his experiments doing magic and meditation. They’re his visions and the Class A texts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The philosophy consists in the conceptual framework he fits those mystical-magical insights into. That framework was established in his mind by 1901 and didn’t change much throughout his life. It’s a form of holistic monism informed by Lurianic Kabbalah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the component memes of Consensus Thelema is an emphasis on the empirical, experiential side over the theoretical, philosophical side. It’s an emphasis on individual experience and interpretation over and against the theoretical. What Crowley himself thought matters less than what the individual personally takes things to mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My comment is that Consensus Thelema has virtually nothing to do with mystical-magical experience. It comes straight out of the intellectual framework.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That doesn’t mean that Consensus Thelema is identical with Crowley’s philosophy. Crowley’s picture of reality was more complex and less reductionistic than Consensus Thelema. Rather, the nihilism at the heart of Consensus Thelema is (historically speaking) a frequent consequence of the metaphysics Crowley adhered to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There’s an empirical, experiential side to Crowley, and there’s a philosophical side to Crowley. The empirical, experiential side basically comes from his experiments doing magic and meditation. They’re his visions and the Class A texts. The philosophy consists in the conceptual framework he fits those mystical-magical insights into. That framework was established in his mind…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[388],"class_list":["post-1539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-consensus-thelema"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1539"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1541,"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539\/revisions\/1541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}