character has not.
But what does Crowley
mean when he talks about our
“overzealous friend?” Why is this
the worst enemy of all?
In the information age,
access to ideas becomes a
two-way street. The curious person capable of critical thinking
is able to expand their mind
and their intelligence, while the
bigot and xenophobe can
find a thousand other people
who share his ignorance and
are willing to confirm his previously held beliefs on all manner
of subjects. This is what makes
our enemy so dangerous.
We live in a world where
we can either embrace the totality of existing perspectives
on any subject, or limit our engagement with it to what we
want to hear. We can choose
to judge Christianity by the
outrageous actions of the
Westborough Baptist Church,
or the charity of the Quakers.
We can judge Islam by the
spiritual insights of Sufi mystics,
or the violence and oppression of the Taliban. We can
judge feminism by the social
criticism and insight of Camille
Paglia, or the ravings of an aggressively ignorant grad student passed off as academia.
We can judge western civilization by it’s attempts to create
a free society through the rule
of law, with rights maintained
through diligent political activism, or by it’s attempts to do
the same through economic
strangulation and military action. Equally, we expect to be
judged by others. Others can
judge Thelema by the writings
of Aleister Crowley, or by the
insipid, watered-down, “For
Dummies” beginner books that
have flooded our bookshelves,
written by people who seem
unaware that Thelema was
never meant “For Dummies.”
Thelema is, in this sense, the
odd man out. Our “overzealous
friend,” is most certainly overzealous, but not really about
Thelema. This friend is overzealous about the romantic notion
that if he throws pearls before
swine, the pigs will crown him
with gold, or at least he’ll get
his guineas. Thelemites are encouraged to live as kings, but
a king is only as good as his
subjects. “We have nothing to
do with the outcast and unfit!
Let them die in their misery,” Aiwass tells us. But the temptation
to be seen as an authority by
people who barely understand
Thelema, to present oneself as
a mediator between the student and the writings of Crowley, proves too much for some
people. These people do the
Thelemic community what Jerry
Falwell does for the Christians.
They dumb down lofty intellectual concepts and complex
28
magical practices to the level
of mindless memes parroting
half-understood slogans and
robotic rituals whose meaning
and purpose is never fully realized by those who perform
them with empty words and futile gestures.
If we are truly committed
to the Promulgation of the Law
as Crowley understood it, the
enemy from within is our greatest threat. velit et que ad eosanNum Why do I make the analque
dam ipsam the above venet
ogy, throughsimolore que quotation, toistionse autendi gnihit
quatati the Great War that
set in motionNectem videlesti vohicientem. a chain of events
that still defines military conflict
lores the world to this day?
all overeum volor sit officientur,
corepel was the defeat and
After all, it lumqui berum qui alifinal collapse of the Ottoman
bus, volorest, suntempe sequas
Empire which allowed the midsuntint.
dle-east to be carved up into
little chunks to be ruled by the
French and English, Chunks that
would later find themselves at
war with each other when one
Gendi in por renis quae nonse
nation was divided into many,
averum endandi gendant est,almove that was paralleled sum
most exactly by the break-up of
acil ipsus aceperum ne pore aliGreater India following World
ae II, with the same result. In the
Warmaxim quidebiscit latempo rerovit quid mos doluptatet just
political sphere of the west, maio.
like everydel ipiet quas quatemos
Volupti other example I have
givenet intia ea sus.
del above, the “overzealous
friend” shares one characteristic: he is ignorant of history, and
as such has raeribus of tracing
Pudantium no way nim velique
the sequence of cause faccat
volupta dolupid ma dolut and
effect that created the present
fugitin enis which displease
state of affairsque suntiis esera-
good titles
him so.
As Thelemites we have
a duty to study and learn from
our own history, not just during
Crowley’s time, but to also examine carefully what has transpired during our own lifetimes
as well. If we do not study what
has been tried and learn what
mistakes have been made, we
will continue to reinvent the
wheel without ever manufacturing a Dundant, santur,
For real
tessit, si tem.car. the past progress
to happen,
must be
coreperchil molupta nes eiusambuilt
learned, understood, and
upon. ut experchit ut odiea sa ipienisEvery great genius has
tati stood on the shoulders of the
ute pa quia seque volenim
giants that came before, and
aionsed evendipides. insight has
no revolutionary
ever been possible in a vacuum.
We have three great
weapons against this enemy
from within. Weapons that we
all, as individuals, must hone to
a razor point by our own methods. The first weapon is curiosity. With curiosity we will be
motivated to dig more deeply
into the available material.
We will have cause to wonder, develop questions, and
explore beyond our assigned
tasks and reading lists, seeking
out information for it’s own sa