Gems from the Forums: Three Kinds of Restriction on Love

Since one of the key slogans of Thelema is “Love is the law, love under will,” we can conclude that the concept of love is vital to understanding this philosophy. But this conclusion immediately raises the question of what exactly this phrase means. Looking through various “Thelemic discussions” online, one can see that there’s no shortage of self-proclaimed Thelemites willing to blather on about their mushy feelings and pretend it has something to do with the writings of Aleister Crowley.                                                                                                                            One gets the impression that a lot of these jokers think that love in Thelema has something to do with “love” in the sense of mystical Christianity – love of God, or selfless love for all of mankind. Others seem to think that this “love” refers primarily – or even only –  to the kind of “free love” that came into popularity in the 1960s. Still others seem to think that the teary eyes they get when watching Marley and Me has something to do with Thelema.                                                                                                          
                                                                                                                          The “under will” part presents even more problems. The most common misreading of this line of Liber AL is to treat “love” as “underlying” the True Will, as if the True Will springs from the emotions that commonly get called “love” in our colloquial speech. The theory, it would seem, is that as long as you’re experiencing some kind of emotion that you can label “love” in some way, then hey, all you have to do is act and viola! You’re doing your will.                              
                                                                                                                          Worse, there are even those alleged “Thelemites” committed to using their misunderstanding of the concept of “Restriction” in Thelema as an excuse for obnoxious or vile behavior. “The word of Sin is restriction,” reads the Book. So, naturally, it should come as no surprise that dumbasses read this verse as implying that any woman with enough standards and self-respect to reject their socially inept advances is “restricting” them. Others accuse anyone who expresses a dissenting opinion – particularly anyone who dares express a dissenting opinion with conviction (and particularly anyone who can support this dissenting opinion with compelling evidence) – of “restricting” them (presumably on the grounds that they “love” being idiotically wrong).         
                                                                                                                         But what is love in Thelema? How can love be “restricted”?
                                                                                                                           The answers to those questions were the subject of a forum post I wrote several years ago and will reproduce below.
                                                                                                                           Read on for more.

Gems from the Forums V: The Astral Plane

Not too long ago, an inane discussion about astral projection on lashtal.com inspired me to consult Crowley’s classic "Notes for an Astral Atlas" from Magick in Theory and Practice, a text I haven’t read in many a year. Upon revisiting it, I was pleasantly surprised to see the amount of practical wisdom about discovering the True Will that was concealed in the language of “astral research.”

I wrote the following post in order to illustrate how Crowley’s writings on the astral reveal a method of practicing Thelema hidden beneath the “symbolic technicalities” of ritual magick, as Crowley plainly states in the introduction.

Read on for more.

Gems from the Forums IV: A Crystal Clear Understanding

This is the last one of these “Gems” that will be posted for a little while. New content will be up on the blog in another day or two.

This entry consists of two posts made very recently in this thread in which a “Typhonian” named Chris asked the forumites for help in interpreting a nonsense word he received as a “communication” (that is, daydream).

When he posted later on in the thread with an additional “communication,” he correctly apologized for his posts not being “the most AC related thing.” Taking the opportunity to question him gently about how he thinks these “communications” are related to the True Will – or even whether he thought they were related – I quickly discovered that Chris was incapable of offering a coherent explanation of how his practice was supposed to work to reveal the True Will, why anyone would think that it would reveal the True Will, and what criteria he would use to judge that his practice actually was revealing the True Will.

This discovery prompted the following two posts from me about the necessity of interrogating one’s methods of practice.

Gems from the Forums III: Kicking the Habit

From the same private message exchange as the last post. My correspondent writes:

I really LOVE doing [certain actions], however I "know" ( or I think I know) that they are not good for me or my true self in excess: that´s why my question was: Can these things/habits which I really enjoy doing really be my actual true self? or not??? (because I actually enjoy them so much). [...] So in a way restraining yourself is helpful or not for the true self??

My response appears after the jump.

Gems from the Forums II: Leggo My Ego

This gem comes from a series of private messages I exchanged with someone on the forums who was new to Thelema. During the course of our exchange, my correspondent asked me:

While reading some stuff I always come across the term "ego" (from a magickal perspective obviously) and I guess the ego represents those "layers of crap of the mind" you mentioned? )the percieved separate "me" by the rest of the people. Is the ego that actual element which we have to "get rid of" in order to reach or discover our will? I am a bit confused overall with the "true self" as opposed to the "ego" (and ofcourse that choronzon-that represents that most harsh parts of it?

My response follows:

Gems from the Forums: Thelemic Vice

Announcing (yet another) feature on this blog: "Gems from the Forums," also known as a silly title to give to reposts of some of the posts I've made to the Lashtal.com forums over the years.

Looking back over my post history on that site, I've concluded that I've written a number of very informative and interesting posts there that deserve to see the light of day on my blog, where they might actually be useful or entertaining to some people. Our first entry comes this thread in which a poster asked:

When Hadit says "the vices are my service", what he is saying?

Yes, I know that vice in thelema has no relationshio with vice in drugs and oter stuffs.

Vice in thelema has another meaning. What is this meaning?

My reply appears below: