Happy Third Day of the Writing, 2018

The Ondt, that true and perfect host, a spiter aspinne, was  

making the greatest spass a body could with his queens lace-

swinging for he was spizzing all over him like thingsumanything

in formicolation, boundlessly blissfilled in an allallahbath of

houris. He was ameising himself hugely at crabround and mary-

pose, chasing Floh out of charity and tickling Luse, I hope too, 

and tackling Bienie, faith, as well, and jucking Vespatilla jukely

by the chimiche. Never did Dorsan from Dunshanagan dance it 

with more devilry! The veripatetic imago of the impossible

Gracehoper on his odderkop in the myre, after his thrice ephe- 

meral journeeys, sans mantis ne shooshooe, featherweighed 

animule, actually and presumptuably sinctifying chronic's de-

spair, was sufficiently and probably coocoo much for his chorous

of gravitates. Let him be Artalone the Weeps with his parisites

peeling off him I'll be Highfee the Crackasider. Flunkey Footle

furloughed foul, writing off his phoney, but Conte Carme makes

the melody that mints the money. Ad majorem l.s.d.! Divi gloriam.

A darkener of the threshold. Haru? Orimis, capsizer of his ant-

boat, sekketh rede from Evil-it-is, lord of loaves in Amongded.

Be it! So be it! Thou-who-thou-art, the fleet-as-spindhrift,

impfang thee of mine wideheight. Haru!

--Finnegans Wake

Happy Second Day of the Writing, 2018

…who could see at one

blick a saumon taken with a lance, hunters pursuing a doe, a

swallowship in full sail, a whyterobe lifting a host; faced flappery

like old King Cnut and turned his back like Cincinnatus; is a

farfar and morefar and a hoar father Nakedbucker in villas old as

new; squats aquart and cracks aquaint when it's flaggin in town

and on haven; blows whiskery around his summit but stehts

stout upon his footles; stutters fore he falls and goes mad entirely 

when he's waked; is Timb to the pearly mom and Tomb to the

mourning night; and an he had the best bunbaked bricks in bould 

Babylon for his pitching plays he'd be lost for the want of his 

wan wubblin wall?

    Answer: Finn MacCool! 

--Finnegans Wake

Happy First Day of the Writing, 2018

    Poor Isa sits a glooming so gleaming in the gloaming; the tin- 

celles a touch tarnished wind no lovelinoise awound her swan's.

Hey, lass! Woefear gleam she so glooming, this pooripathete I

solde? Her beauman's gone of a cool. Be good enough to symper-

ise. If he's at anywhere she's therefor to join him. If it's to no-

where she's going to too. Buf if he'll go to be a son to France's

she'll stay daughter of Clare. Bring tansy, throw myrtle, strew

rue, rue, rue. She is fading out like Journee's clothes so you can't

see her now. Still we know how Day the Dyer works, in dims

and deeps and dusks and darks. And among the shades that Eve's

now wearing she'll meet anew fiancy, tryst and trow. Mammy

was, Mimmy is, Minuscoline's to be. In the Dee dips a dame and

the dame desires a demselle but the demselle dresses dolly and

the dolly does a dulcydamble. The same renew. For though

she's unmerried she'll after truss up and help that hussyband how

to hop. Hip it and trip it and chirrub and sing. Lord Chuffy's sky  

sheraph and Glugg's got to swing.

    So and so, toe by toe, to and fro they go round, for they are the   

ingelles, scattering nods as girls who may, for they are an angel's  

garland.

--Finnegans Wake

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.

That’s What He Said II: Distorting Influences of the Mind

The only way to discover the True Will is to observe it free from the distorting influences of the mind.

Some people object to such an absolute statement, protesting that there might be more than one “valid” way of discovering the True Will: yet none of these objectors are capable of explaining how some other method actually works. Many and varied are the egalitarian dimwits who think that discovering the True Will is simply a process of performing rote rituals conceived by Victorian-era freemasons or by medieval magicians. Take, for example, a recent post on the Temple of Thelema Forums, in which a newcomer asks, referring to the Abramelin operation and to the process of "Knoweldge and Conversation," a metaphor Crowley uses for discovering the True Will:

Has anyone developed a workable method to achieve K&C that doesn't involve a month of secluded free time?

The very notion that knowledge of one’s own nature is only available to people who perform an elaborate and complicated regimen of prayers is downright ridiculous: yet people new to Thelema consistently think that “discovering the True Will” is a matter of performing rituals. Their misunderstanding is due both to the individuals themselves failing to read and comprehend Crowley and to the sorry nature of Thelemic teachers in these matters. [Edit: To his credit, Jim Eshelman does tell the poster that there are other methods of attaining, but they all seem to revolve around a different regimen of prayers, organized differently so as to allow normal activity during the day]

Indeed, the only way to discover the True Will is to observe it free from the distorting influences of the mind. This fact necessitates that discovery of the True Will requires a thorough understanding of those distorting influences. As Erwin Hessle wisely says in his important Fundamentals of Thelemic Practice,

The mind must, in short, be trained to become aware of the particular ways in which it colours, influences and distorts perception. It is not sufficient to merely obtain a general knowledge of the ways in which the mind may do this; it must become able to identify the specific ways in which it does this itself, and ultimately able to detect when it is doing this in real time.

“Magick,” rituals, meditation, divination, and all the rest are – at best – actions that can aid an individual in preparing for the work of observing the distorting influences of the mind and observing the self free from them. [Note: this does not mean that the distorting influences go away, merely that the aspirant learns to see through them] Practices such as these train the mind in paying attention, in thinking about situations more broadly and free of mental preference so that it is the preferences of the True Self – in conjunction with an accurate perception of the environment – that dictate action.

This is all well and good, but what did Crowley have to say on these subjects? Is it the case that the “Thelema” explained above is actually some kind of materialist philosophy that has hijacked the word “Thelema”? Or is it that the method outlined above arises from a fair reading of Crowley’s words?

I think we all know the answer to this question. Crowley wrote frequently about the necessity of perceiving the True Will free from the distorting influence of the mind, and it is the purpose of this blog post to examine some of the more prominent quotes from Crowley on the subject.

Unlike some Thelemic commentators who simply post a wall of Crowley quotes without explanation (or very little explanation) – and unlike some dolts who think that serious discussion of Crowley should reduced to lists of quotations so that seekers can “find their own answers” – readers will observe that this post carefully examines and closely reads these quotations, placing them in the framework outlined above, outlined also in the post Skeptical of the True Will, and used to explicate the practices detailed in Erwin’s Fundamentals of Thelemic Practice.

Read on for very much more.

William Blake's Book of Thel

Poet, artist, and engraver William Blake (1757-1827) is often named as an antecedent of Thelema. As a proponent of willful “energy” and sexual liberation, in addition to being a truly unorthodox Christian who implicitly deemed himself a member of the “devil’s party” – in addition to being the author of deeply symbolic poems about the human condition that he claimed were “dictated” or inspired by spiritual beings – Blake makes an obvious choice as a literary figure who anticipated some of Crowley’s ideas. Based on an essay Crowley wrote about him, the modern EGC (a religion based around Thelema) added Blake to its list of “Gnostic Saints” in 1997 e.v. In addition, a Lodge of the OTO (an organization concerned with teaching and promulgating Thelema) adopted his name. So, at the very least, it’s fair to say that Blake is relevant to quite a number of Thelemites.

A reading of Blake’s poetry from a Thelemic perspective is enlightening and interesting, and it is the purpose of this blog post to briefly read one of his shorter poems from the early 1790s from this perspective. The post will connect the reading to the ideas expounded on this blog about skepticism and its necessity for an intelligent practice of Thelema.

Read on for more.