#modernthelema

I have rejected Thelema a few times throughout my magical career, it was ultimately what lead to me resigning from the A∴A ∴ in the end. I have always changed my mind later on due to the current truly resonating with me on a deep level. It is only recently that I have realised what I was rejecting was not Thelema as a magical system, but what Thelema has become in the modern day due to a small group of people that hold power within O.T.O. and affiliated lines of A∴A∴. They call the shots, they influence what beginners approaching Thelema learn and subsequently believe, and it often does not reflect what Crowley wrote, and certainly not what Crowley wrote in later life. Which is surely more important than what a younger Crowley wrote!

Furthermore, I no longer believe in the Thelemic orders out there today. They are failed experiments, sometimes with good intentions, but a lot of the time with hidden intentions too. Thelema has become an ‘old man's club’ and it is clear to me from conversing with such individuals online and in person that whilst they present themselves as liberals, feminists, and allies of LGBTQIA people that they are far from it. Not all of them, I am not making a sweeping statement, but there is enough of a problem for me to call a problem. I have had to tell Thelemites to not be racist, to not be homophobic, to not be transphobic and usually I get the response “Man has the right to say what he Will”. This is a gross misinterpretation of Will and Liber Oz.

As a gay person I can honestly say I feel isolated within Thelema. I can imagine women may feel the same, I know some do. I also know some people of colour feel the same, again I have been told they do. These are issues, the law is for all, but just like in regular society, minority groups are under-represented, often silenced, and typically degraded and silenced. This is certainly not the message of Thelema I have received, and despite Crowley’s shortcomings in his personality, it is not his vision of Thelema either. In official magical contexts he was clear, the Law is for all, and every man and every woman is a star.

Initiation can be useful, but joining a magical order and operating under the Will of someone else is not what Thelema is about. Thelema is quite simple. Thelema is about doing the work and attaining knowledge and conversation (which means union with, not mere communication with) the Holy Guardian Angel (See my post about what I believe the HGA is) which subsequently leads to knowledge of the True Will. Which is not “whatever I want to do, I can do because daddy Crowley says so”, it is your life’s purpose, living in tune to the current of the surrounding universe. That is all, and you can accomplish it on your own. The materials are all publicly available, there are few secrets left, and what are left can easily be uncovered with a little work and a little thinking.

So I have rejected Thelema multiple times because I have felt underrepresented, degraded, and unimpressed by the work of so-called experts and members of magical orders (my own ex A∴A∴ lineage are excluded from this statement). I have also rejected it because the majority of Thelemites love to quote 18 year old atheist Crowley and Regardie and have made magick into nothing more than a mere psychological exercise. It is so much more, and if you don’t believe in subtle energy, or spirits, or anything metaphysical, it is my humble opinion you are not doing magick at all.

I also hate that people only read Crowley, as though he is the only source out there. Crowley did a good job at collating information he had access to at the time to make a coherent and workable system. But we have so much more information available now. We don’t have to use Crowley’s system to the letter anymore. It is like using a bicycle to cycle from Manchester to London when you have a car on your drive. You will get there, it will be harder work, and you may get there quicker if you use the updated tech available.

Speaking of Crowley, another reason I have rejected Thelema is because modern Thelema has taken on a form of Crowleyanity. He is revered, he is loved, he is praised, and not even due to his magical career, but because of his shocking statements and character flaws. Crowley didn’t even want Crowleyanity to happen, he expressly warned against it. But it has happened anyway, he has celebrity status in the occult world and people seem to idolise him. He was a piece of shit. There is no getting around that. He was not a nice person. A good magician, a good author, a brilliant writer in general. But a pleasant person he was not. Complicated, mentally ill, abused as a child- yes. But a person you want to be around and revere as a saint? No.

What drove me back to Thelema was the core message set out in Liber Legis and the other Holy Books and the system of A∴A∴. It works, it does what it says on the tin, albeit with a bit of updating. I have found the system works for me, and has been a true calling for me. A great tool to use in my spiritual/initiatory work. I have also found some people who are true Thelemites doing the work and exploring areas that have not yet been explored. True magicians attempting to discover their Will and live in accordance to it. When Thelemites work on their own, share a common bond, and just get on with it Thelema really works well as a magical framework.

I don’t much consider myself a Thelemite by the standard that has been set out by O.T.O. and others associated with them. But I am a Thelemite by Liber Legis standards and my own. I always will be. I usually just say I am a magician with Thelemic tendencies these days. And it is true, but what is also telling is people’s reaction to that statement. They automatically believe I want to have sex with every woman around, I’m racist, homophobic, addicted to drugs, and I have an obsession with semen. It is telling that these knee-jerk reactions exist. It is not a ‘they are discriminating against Thelemites’ situation. It is because these types of Thelemites exist, and I believe are the majority. Let’s call them the ‘Thelema bros’. I am not of them, I spit on their crapulous creeds.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

The title to this essay may seem a little misleading, how can something be dead yet also alive? The fact is the AA is defined differently for different people and whilst the AA may be dead on one plane, it does not mean that the AA is dead on all the planes. It is my opinion and experience that the mundane outer orders known as AA are all defunct, lineage is questionable, and none have enforced the rules of the original order. Not even Crowley himself. Therefore every lineage of the AA is false on the mundane plane of existence. Luckily for the individual magician the true AA, the true order of the silver star, is beyond this plane and can still guide and inform the work of the magician.

The terrestrial face of the AA was formed by Crowley out of the debris of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn alongside one of his former mentors in that order, George Cecil Jones. Crowley stripped back the Golden Dawn system massively and added some raja yoga techniques. He also got away with the majority of initiation rituals and rewrote the two initiation rituals which he believed where the most important- The Neophyte ritual and the Adeptus Minor ritual which introduces an aspirant to the inner order.

The orders intention was to remove the social aspect which plagued the Golden Dawn and ensure that an aspirant only knew her superior in the order. This prevented gossiping and unnecessary chit chat and allowed for the individuals involved to simply get on with the work. As a rule the majority of Crowley’s students were failures. The AA did not work and it is my opinion the reason for this is that the majority of people are not designed or perhaps dedicated enough to put in the work to court the Angel. Of course the new aeon’s main purpose is to elevate the spiritual consciousness of all humanity so they are in fact in tune with the call of the Angel and therefore are aware of its Will which is simultaneously their True Will.

The AA proper is a spiritual current of consciousness. It is the forces which exist outside of space and time which guide the spiritual evolution of the whole of humanity. As this consciousness is transmitted down the planes it can take varying forms, or rather is given various masks. This is why multiple outer orders can in fact be connected to the AA, this is why multiple lineages of the terrestrial AA may be connected to the actual AA. The AA isn’t exclusive, it is inclusive. No one person or group may claim ownership to it, and if they do they are missing the point entirely. To pin the AA down to the mundane plane is to limit it’s scope. I would argue any person performing the work of contacting the HGA and subsequently crossing the abyss is interacting with the AA consciousness. Fancy lineages and signed documents mean nothing in comparison to the work being undertaken.

A lot of Thelemites seem to crave a lineage which goes back to Crowley, a pedigree line which can be traced to a recognised ‘master of the temple’ the issue is there have not been many of these and as mentioned earlier most of Crowleys students did not seem to attain all that much. I think it is fair to say there are three major lines which are often considered the most pedigree; Crowley, Achad, and Germer. All these men were master of the temple according to Crowley and had thus passed on to the third order where the AA proper resides. It is my intention to display why none of this matters in this day and age and highlight how every one of these failed to meet the standards of the original terrestrial outer order as set out by Crowley and George Cecil Jones.

Let’s start with Crowley. Crowley was a great magician, his contribution to 20th century occultism whilst often overstated cannot be overlooked. His works on magick and mysticism are masterpieces and worth the serious study of every occultist regardless of your judgement on the man’s troublesome personality. He did the work, he contacted his Angel and he crossed the abyss. He did make a connection with the third order. He was also a poor teacher- something he even admitted to himself. He was also of the opinion that initiation and advancement should be open to all, which is why he published all of the ritual texts for the AA.

But how did he not meet the mark? He did not produce an original Adeptus Exemptus thesis. He simply translated “The Key of the Mysteries” by Eliphas Levi into English and claimed it as his own since he believed he was Levi in a past life. This is a basic requirement of the AA prior to crossing the abyss. Now you may think that such a thing does not matter so long as the goal is met, and you may be right, however, it is stated clearly in the AA foundational documents that no aspect of any grade can be skipped and the next grade claimed. It is also my opinion that he failed to truly appoint an heir worthy of taking control of the order.

Another aspect of Crowley’s initiation which is murky is his claim of the grade of Magus. He did not produce a word upon initiation into the Magus grade, instead he claimed Thelema was his word and he had uttered it years earlier. Whilst this could be the case, I still feel it warrants some suspect. Finally another rule of the AA Crowley broke was that he charged money to certain students. This is grounds for expulsion according to the foundational documents he wrote up.

At Crowley’s death he had few students left, and the amount who he had recognised as attaining Knowledge and Conversation you could count on the fingers of one hand. His heir to both OTO and AA was Karl Germer. Crowley believed Germer had attained knowledge and conversation with sheer devotion during his imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp. He then gave Germer the IX degree papers at a time when Crowley was handing them out left right and centre for survival. He also subsequently recognised Germer as a Master of the Temple.

So where is the issue? Germer had not followed the system of AA. He had not done the work taught by the order, he was in no position to teach since he had not gone through the tasks himself. In fact in one letter written after his recognition of Master of the Temple and after Crowley’s death he claimed he didn’t know how to do a banishing ritual and had never done one. Germer therefore had never even performed a Lesser ritual of the pentagram, a basic technique even worked by probationers, yet he now headed the AA and was apparently in a position to recognise advancement in that order. The majority of modern lineages of AA claim some form of descent or interaction with Germer. Surely we should suspect Germer’s authority in judging advancement via working the AA system when he himself had never done so? Like Crowley, Germer also never wrote an Adeptus Exemptus Thesis.

Finally we come to Frater Achad. A Thelemite who did work the system, who produced some of the most original thinking in Thelema, and someone who dared to disagree with Crowley. Achad was Crowley’s magical son, probably his intended heir. He was recognised as a master of the temple by Crowley and was pivotal in Crowley’s ascension to the grade of Magus. Achad was the person Crowley believed had discovered the qabalistic key of the Book of the Law and even later in his life he never refuted Achad’s work with the Book of the Law, he simply refuted his deviation from the book. Achad and Crowley suffered a falling out and Crowley believed his works on qabalah to be nonsensical and all his subsequent works were tarred with the same brush.

Late in life Crowley expelled Achad from AA and OTO. Achad had already found an alternative path and belonged to the Universal Brotherhood before taking a leadership role in that order. Achad claimed the Aeon of Horus was over and the Aeon of Maat had been inaugerated early. Unlike Crowley, Achad also produced a word for his initiation into the grade of Magus, “MANIO”. It could also be argued that his works on Qabalah could be accepted as his thesis. The issue most people have is that Crowley expelled him, that he stopped working within the terrestrial AA, and that he was believed to have become Christian again later in life which appears to be nonsense, or at the very least not as simple as that.

I would say Achad is perhaps the most ideal candidate for succession, however, the only two students of worth which I can think of are CF Russell and Frank Bennet (who was subsequently taught by Crowley). Russell was also expelled and Bennet was officially recognised as an adept by Crowley and had also undertaken the work under his tutelage at the Abbey of Thelema. There are lineages which claim descent through Russell and Bennet and subsequently to both Achad and Crowley.

But does it matter? Does any of this matter? The terrestrial AA may expel you, but if you have done the work and attained no mere mortal can cut you off from the consciousness of AA. The work is all that matters and if your tutors have not done it, or the founders of the lineage have not done it, then what position are they in to teach you or recognise your advancement? Only one who has done the work can guide another through the same process. We can clearly see Crowley made the rules flexible for himself and others, sometimes for monetary gain. Therefore every lineage is suspect and every lineage is invalid on this plane of existence.

There has never been a lineage which does not descend from people who have skipped grades, not completed tasks, have not seated initiates under the grade they claim e.g. a magus must have a master of the temple beneath him in the lineage, and every lineage must have a living member who is at least an adept. Something which the majority of lineages after Crowley’s death did not have.

So what of the work of modern Thelemites? If their lineage is invalid is their work also invalid? No! What about Thelemites who do not belong to a terrestrial lineage, is their work invalid? No! The argument that a lineage is invalid is equally absurd as the argument that solitary work is invalid. All lineages are invalid by the foundational documents written by Crowley and Jones. The only thing that matters is individual work, and it is clear that many Thelemites in lineages and outside of lineages are doing the work. This exclusivity and warring between groups must stop- the AA is not terrestrial, terrestrial rules do not apply, and in most cases the terrestrial rules have not been met.

What all these people need to understand is that the Law is for all. Spiritual evolution is for all. Modern Thelema must stop with exclusivity and elitism and embrace all serious aspirants with open arms- both within groups and outside of them. Modern Thelema must rid itself of mystery and stop pretending there are secret documents and techniques stemming from Crowley- there are not. Pretty much everything is published or can be found with a simple google search. Mystery is the enemy of truth. Elitism is the enemy of promulgation. Thelema is for all, the law is for all, the AA is for all, and nobody can limit or inhibit the AA. No one has ownership. Any group which claims such ownership should be avoided like the plague.

Love is the law, love under will.

Frater ShLM, 1=10 (No longer affiliated with any lineage).