Do what thou wilt shall be the whole
of the Law.
Agape True Love
We are Thelemites. We take that title
from the name of our spiritual path
called Thelema. Thelema means Will;
more accurately, True Will. It would
seem to be an appropriate name for
the path, considering the focus of our
work is to place oneself in harmony
with our True Will.
For those familiar with
Isopsephy we can see that the
word Thelema equates to 93. Every
Thelemite must understand this or else
make it very hard for themselves to
function in the Thelemic community
since we use the number frequently
as a greeting in substitution of the
Law. There is another word that also
equates to 93 that all Thelemites are
aware of but we seem to place very
little focus on in discussion with one
another.
This article attempts to bring
to light the importance of this word
to Thelemites in the hopes that it will
not be pushed aside in the course
of an individual’s study of the work.
This word is Agape. Just as Thelema
means True Will, Agape means True
Love. What we will be investigating in
this article is the meaning of this and
how we Thelemites can use this idea
to help ourselves and our tradition
grow.
The best place to start is the
meaning of the word Agape and
its origins. Agape is a Greek word,
it is one of many words for love. The
others are eros, philia, and storge.
This is an amazing concept for those
that speak English, because we have
only one word which is Love. This
word encompasses many ideas and
concepts. This is very confusing for
15
people in our culture because there
are in fact many forms of what we call
love and as a result everyone has
a different definition of what love is.
Surely all have witnessed this in their
own lives. The ancient and modern
Greeks understand that there are
many forms of love as well as you or I.
Therefore, they have many words for
love which are as follows:
Eros - This is seen by North American
culture as sexual love. However, this is
not its proper use. Eros really refers to
attraction. It can refer to a love in the
sense of dating relationships as well
as marriage of course. Plato’s idea of
eros was that of attraction but also
appreciation. He felt that though
eros is initially felt for a single person,
with contemplation it becomes an
appreciation for the beauty within
that person. It can even become an
appreciation for all beauty itself.
Philia - This word really refers to the
love between family and/or friends.
It is more appropriately used for
the interaction between lovers than
eros. Hence why today why we use
it in reference to sexual desires such
as necrophilia, pedophilia, etc.
However Aristotle referred to it as
a dispassionate virtuous love. This
definition makes it more appropriate
in reference to friendships and
those who enjoy similar activities
together. So it has a better place