Thelema Lodge
Ordo Templi Orientis
P.O.Box 2303
Berkeley, CA 94702 USA
May 1996 e.v. at Thelema Lodge
Announcements from
Lodge Members and Officers
Grace will be offering a special workshop this month on the Astrological
Foundations of the Rites of Eleusis, on Friday evening 31st May, beginning at
7:00. These performances are tightly constructed out of the imagery of
astrological relations, so that their dynamics can often be barely evident
without reference to the celestial cycles. Many of the dramatis personae of
The Rites are not even given names, being identified only by their
astrological data as types. Grace has agreed to interrupt her regular
workshop series to offer Thelema Lodge this comprehensive astrological
overview of The Rites, which will be held in her home in Berkeley. To attend
please call (510) 843-STAR or check with Grace ahead of time. Next month
Grace will be concluding her "Cycles" series with an evening devoted to the
cycles of the asteroid Charon.
Caitlin offers an evening of Black Magic at Oz House for the Section Two
reading group on Monday 20th May at 8:00. Crowley described Marjorie Bowen's
historical fantasy of the dark ages (originally published in 1909 e.v.) as "an
intensely interesting story of sorcery." Black Magic, however, is apt to
strike modern readers as a shallow and conventional narrative, written quickly
by a precocious nineteen-year-old, and relying for its interest on its
sensational themes: the reign of Anti-Christ within the Roman Catholic church,
the millennium, and the legendary Pope Joan. Call Oz for directions at (510)
654-3580, and approach the novel as an exercise in speed-reading. As an indication of the conflicting responses provoked by this book, we reprint here
the brief review of it which Crowley published the year after it appeared.
"Marjorie Bowen knows nothing of the real magic, but she has learnt the tales spread by fools about sorcerers, and fostered by them as the best possible concealments of their truth.
"Of these ingredients she has brewed a magnificent hell-broth. No chapter lacks its jeweled incident, and the web that she has woven of men's passions is a flame-red tapestry stained with dark patches of murder and charred here and there with fire of hell.
"Marjorie Bowen has immense skill; has she genius? How can a stranger say? So many nowadays are forced by sheer starvation into writing books that will sell -- and when they have taken the devil's money, find that it is in no figure that he has their souls in pawn.
"I am told that it is the ambition of W. S. Maugham to write a great play."
-- A. C., The Equinox I:4 (autumn 1910), p. 331.
The Enochian Liturgy project continues its course in crystal-gazing as a
means to the spirit-vision, meeting on Saturday evening 25th May at 8:00.
Previous visions will be reviewed, followed by actual scrying practice. As
before, participants are requested to wear comfortable clothes and to bring a
notebook or journal. For information contact Michael Sanborn at (510) 601-
9393.
On Sunday afternoon 12th May Thelema Lodge will present a three-hour
workshop called "Bodywork and Improvisation," beginning at 2:00 and led by
Deborah Warner. A bodyworker with experience in Watsu, massage, and
breathwork, Deborah will also be utilizing her skills in choral singing, music
theory, and group movement. The program will include chant, dance,
meditation, massage, and explorations of awareness through movement, including
paired synchronization, divination, and musical improvisation. Bring
comfortable clothes, musical instruments, and a small personal object.
Our lodge luncheon meeting this month will be Sunday 19th May at 12:30, and
is open to all members who call ahead and let us know they plan to join us for
lunch. Library nights are set for Monday evening 6th May and Tuesday evening
21th May, from 8:00 until 10:00, for which also please make advance
arrangements.
The John Dee reading group will not be meeting this month, and in June we
will be switching to Saturday evening meetings, as we begin with Clay's
nearly-completed transcription of John Dee's Liber Mysteriorum Tertius. Also,
Sirius Oasis will skip its May meeting, concentrating instead on the Rites of Eleusis and the Ancient Ways festival. Watch for Oasis meetings on the final
Friday evenings of each month, resuming in the summer.
by Aleister Crowley
Is there any man who still shuts his eyes to the plain fact that homo
sapiens is but a primate, cousin of the gorilla, with a brain over-developed
to think abominations, and a larynx evolved to aid their execution, a creature
whose prime pangs are hunger, lust, and hate, and his fundamental solaces
rape, robbery, and murder? I laughed with open throat at the "atrocity" Press
Campaigns in the Balkan War. "The half-civilized peoples of the Near East!"
Is the present war any less prolific of such stories when the compatriots of
Tolstoi, and Gorky, and Goethe, and Anatole France, and Shelley are at war?
And are the stories true? True of false in detail, I knew them true in
essence, and I knew also that the primmest old maid in Dorchester whose
palsied hands dropped her knitting as she read of them was horrified because,
although she did not know it, and could never be brought to know it, those
atrocities were in her blood from everlasting. "There, but for the Grace of
God, goes Charles Baxter" was the wisest remark that ever came from a fool's
lips. And it is because we have persuaded ourselves bitterly and obstinately,
against the deeper knowledge that is instinct in every organism, that these
things cannot happen, that we have lost the manhood that could have prevented
them. Some there are so priggishly purblind that fact itself, naked and
bleeding at their thresholds, battering on the gates of their ears with the
Ram of actuality, fails to force those waxed-up tympana. When the nations
were already at each other's throats, when men had seen their brothers blown
to atoms before their eyes, drilled through with nickel and lead, slashed and
gashed with steel, ridden down beneath the hoofs of the horses1, we heard that
President Wilson had offered to arbitrate! To arbitrate, when the diplomatic
and economic pressure of a decade, and the consciousness of ineradicable race-
hatred since time began, and clan tore clan with flint, had forced the Boar of
Germany to turn at last upon the Borzoi and the Bulldog, to lash out with tusk
and hoof at the invisible pack of hounds that closed upon him.
And we are still babbling of the Cause of Liberty, and the Banner of the
Democracies, and the Truth, and the Righteousness, and the Justice, and the
Equity, and the Humanity, and the Progress, when every man that is not
stultified beyond the surgery of war by his own hypocracies, knows well that
the battle is a battle of over-population, the haemorrage of a plethora, and
that its terms are merely "My life or yours!" -- "The hammer or the anvil?"
The Chinese (till Europe infected them) murdered all but a few selected
female infants, and consequently lived in peace and prosperity for two
thousand years. Civilization and the arts flourished; famine has been rare,
and floods and plague welcomed as a purge.2 Our squeamishness has forbidden
us to take this elementary precaution, this restraint imposed on prosperity by
wisdom; and where are our civilization, our prosperity, our liberty, our
Progress? In fifty years will there remain so many monuments of what we were
two months ago as Egypt has of its Pharaohs, Greece of its Republics, Rome of
its Caesars? We have used bricks and iron for stone and brass, pulp for
papyrus and palm-leaf, rhetoric for fact, pharisaism for publicansim, and our
era will perish ere our own bones rot!3
We have pretended4 that there was no such thing as sex, no such thing as venereal disease, that our publicists were True Believers in Christianity,
that our women were pure and our men brave; we have howled down every man who
dared to hint the truth: we have sowed the wind of pious phrases, and we must
reap the whirlwind of war.
It has been the same in every drawer of our cupboard -- and now the skeleton
is out. Swinburne's prophecy has come true; we must amend him to read:
"They are past, and their places are taken, The gods and the priests that are pure." |
And if I write for England, who will read? As if, when moons of Ramazan recede, Some fatuous angel-porter should deposit His perfect wine within the privy closet! "What do they know, who only England know?" Only what England paints its face to show. Love mummied and relabelled "chaste affection," And lust excused as "natural selection." . . . . . . . . |
|
|
|
"The forest of the spears of the Most High is called Night, and Hades, and
the Day of Wrath; but I am His captain, and I bear His cup.
"Fear me not with my spearmen! They shall slay the demons with their
petty prongs. Ye shall be free.
"Ah, slaves! ye will not -- ye know not how to will.
"Yet the music of my spears shall be a song of freedom."
"O my God, but the love in Me bursts over the bonds of Space and Time; my
love is split among them that love not love.
"My wine is poured out for them that never tasted wine.
"The fumes thereof shall intoxicate them, and the vigour of my love shall
breed mighty children from their maidens."
Is not Earth purged? Is not the Pillar established in the Void? ,
! Thou art arisen! Is there not an end of the anaemia of the
Humanitarian, and the hysteria of the Suffragist, and the stark sunning lunacy
of the Cubist-Futurist-Vorticist-Parallelipipedist-Feminist, and all the
onanism of the Knut and the Flapper?
Will not man arise again, and hunt and fight and master his mate, and will
not woman return to her cooking and her housewifery and the breeding of lusty
children to her man? And if Nietzsche be the dawn-star, shall there be no son
of man to be a Sun of men?
Had we no prophet? Had we no poet, O all ye weary criticasters of the
prostitute-prude Press?
Was there not one to put into the mouth of his king-priest-magus, baffled
by fate in the hour of the birth of Christianity, this prophecy of the
Antichrist --7
Listen! "I will away Into the mystic palaces of Pan; Hidden from day, Hidden from Man, Awaiting there the coming of the Sphinx Whose genius drinks The poison of this pestilence, and saves The world from all its lords and slaves. Ho! for his chariot-wheels that whirl afar! His hawk's eye flashing through the silver star! Upon the heights his standard shall he plant, Free, equal, passionate, pagan, dominant, Mystic, indomitable, self-controlled, The red rose glowing on the cross of gold . . . Yea! I will wait throughout the centuries Of the universal man-disease Until that morn of his Titanic birth . . . The Saviour of the Earth!"
|
It is nine years -- nearly ten -- since I wrote this essay -- a spasm of royal Rapture enkindled by the Sparks struck from the steel of the Sword by the Flint of Fate -- at the word War my soul leapt singing with the Sunlight. My life for England, and to win the World! So, die I did, not once but many and many a time in these strange years. No stranger years were ever written upon the scroll of Thoth! All values have changed and changed and changed again; dark and tempestuous have rolled the thunder clouds of Fact, the Föhn of abject Fear has blown out almost every lamp of Truth, and unless the blunder lies there ever unknown;{last phrase not clear in text} but the earth rolls Sunward, Light pierces, Night is daunted, and her ministers are understood to have been shadow-phantoms imagined by Ignorance and Superstition. "Do what thou wilt!" has been proclaimed to many a million; and myself, the Prophet of that Law, made manifest to men as being indeed the Great Wild Beast. Already they have learnt to hate, fear, shun, and drive me forth: the hour is even now at hand when "the keen and the proud, the royal and the lofty" begin to accept my Law as the touchstone of Kingship, to come to me, saying: We worship thy name, foursquare, mystic, wonderful, the number of the man" -- "blessing and worship to the Prophet of the lovely star." For I am Man himself, the avatar of his Solar and Royal essence: Light, Life, Love, Liberty being the functions of my true self, whose Word is . For this is "the end of the hiding of Hadit", the realization in consciousness of his boundless Sovereignty, that is
the opening of the Aeon of the Crowned and Conquering Child for every Man that
Will; and the manifest token of his lordship is his fearless frankness in adherence to my Law, his Oath of Fealty to me as "the priest of the princes", the Prophet in whose Word is his Energy and his Authority, the Beast of whose solar Substance he shall build the Temple of deathless and impregnable Beauty to the child his God and King. For his "light is in me and its red flame is as a sword in my hand to push His order: so that to me his Holy Chosen One", from whom all lordship is derived shall every Lord and King pay tribute to Truth, ranging himself beneath my Banner of Love under Will, as Warrior Lawgiver of the Hosts of Light.
Around, around, the circling Hound | |
Around, around He goes | |
A zero ground, the Hound has found | |
A land No Body knows | |
Around, around the Hound has clowned | |
Enquiring through his gnose. | |
Around, around, the troubadour | |
Walks on the precipice | |
The crocodile and tiger war | |
The dove and serpent kiss: | |
The troubadour will now explore | |
The precipice Abyss. | |
Around, around, the world of sense | |
The weary warrior led | |
Around, around: His recompense | |
A tall and thorny bed. | |
A Child of Perfect Innocence | |
The fiery Angels dread. | |
Originally published in Grady McMurtry, Poems (London, England & Bergen, Norway: O.T.O., 1986), then in The Grady Project 4 (Berkeley: O.T.O., December 1988).
Derived from a lecture series in 1977 e.v. by Bill Heidrick
Copyright © Bill Heidrick
Self initiation amounts to you learning your own nature. The practice is
not standardized and cannot be easily compared with the experience of others.
Even so, some things will be similar for most people who undertake this path;
and the advantage is that it's uniquely tailored to the individual. Self-
initiation on the Tree of Life amounts to becoming very aware of each of the
Sephirot and paths in your life. Everybody starts with Malkut.
If you do manage to turn on your own personal Tree of Life, what happens if
the environment changes? You may find that your situation doesn't work with
the narrower conception of the Tree of Life you used earlier. The self
initiation work isn't wasted, since it sets a basic pattern. If you have to
adapt to a new situation, the basic routine is still there and the changed
circumstances can be rapidly accommodated. Instead of taking years, a week or
a month may suffice, depending on the situation.
Self initiation usually begins with a part of your life, not everything
that happens to you all day. Get it working in some limited area in space,
time and focus: a set of meditations, a deliberate daily time in the park,
study time reading a book, anything of that sort. Develop a full Tree of Life
just from that reserved practice and state of mind. Using meditation on the
Tree is particularly popular, but all approaches require preparation. Study until the Tree settles clearly in your mind, so that you can recognize when
you have anchored yourself to a Sephirot.
It's a common practice to take a special name for yourself when you feel
you have identified with a new Sephira. Obviously the name for Malkut is the
name your parents gave you. That is your legal earthly name and there may be
no need to take a new one for Malkut. A Malkut name can be chosen to reflect
the system being used for self-initiation, perhaps the ideal goal formulated
for the whole practice. When you reach up into Yesod, a name from a dream
would be appropriate. For Hod, the name should symbolize your practical side.
The Netzach name may symbolize how you have endured emotional crisis. In
Tipharet the magical name should symbolize your whole view of life. In
Geburah the name should be a power that represents facing real trials of
effort, not passing crises. A Chesed name should represent the manner in
which your attainment will help all humanity. In Binah, in Chokmah and in
Keter, it's wise to take names that are not symbolic of your normal life. For
those highest Sephirot the names shouldn't reflect mundane and changing
things, since these are states which transcend the usual meaning of life in
the outer world.
The nature of the self or soul is an interesting subject. Obviously, your
body is a form of yourself in Malkut. Vague feelings about what you are and
what you are doing belong to the "lower self". Those feelings are the ones
that don't connect up to a coherent identity. They might be overly critical
or overly lazy in some small matters, the kind of feelings that would lead one
to work or sleep too much or otherwise not take care of oneself. Such
feelings constitute a sort of fragmented self in Yesod. The self that has its
"act" together, the "I know what to do" self is in Tipharet.
To try a simple self initiation, pick a quality and work with it. If you
choose a quality of imagination and try to learn what is happening with the
Tree of Life in your dream world, that's a type of self initiation into Yesod.
For Hod, consider some aspect of practical things, typically some project with
a final result, like building something or writing and publishing something.
With Netzach, the quality is emotions, particularly relations with individual
friends and family. Consider what you are doing in life and society for
Tipheret. That's about as far as it goes with any natural momentum. Geburah
is difficult, being a matter of personal morality and self-improvement
generally. If you catch yourself being too forceful or not forceful enough in
various situations, that's an indication of need for work in Geburah. The
mark of Chesed is a mixture of benevolence and intense mystical yearning, very
difficult to characterize but unmistakable once experienced. This approach to
self initiation in the lower seven Sephirot is successful when there is a
clear sense of what's going on in each of these categories and an
accomplishment in balancing the corresponding states of mind in living
circumstances -- not just as abstractions.
There are other indications of success with the Tree of Life. To take Hod
for an example, if you find that you automatically make plans or outlines with
ten divisions matching the Sephirot on the Tree of Life, that is a practical
application of the Tree on a working level. If you can both communicate your
ideas and interest people, that is a Netzach attainment.
Why work from the bottom up on the tree, instead of from the top down? If
you are engaged in self-initiation, you are working from the bottom up, from
the world where you find yourself in this life, to a higher or less mundane
awareness. That requires "raising the world" with you, taking the life you
live up to these levels as you advance in understanding and wisdom. Working
from the top down can provide insight and allows a sort of random seeking for
experience. Descent from Keter is a vitalizing but passive experience. It's
like sugar instead of a hearty meal and exercise. Such a process, after first
rising from Malkut to Keter, can be very useful in the world; but just going
down the Tree does not develop the kind of strength a person needs to be able
to call up at difficult times in life. This can be seen in other, more
localized ways. If you suddenly see something beautiful, that's a gift of Tipharet. If you suddenly feel a warm, kindly feeling for the world, that's a
gift down from Chesed. If you can produce that same warm kindly feeling along
with the things that go with it, and make it real by will, then you've
succeeded in attaining from the bottom up. That's the difference between
these two approaches.
The 22 paths on the Tree are part of the passage upward, a sort of
sequential clue to help one figure out the best way to do this. Those lesser
paths come popping out on the way down, but on the way up they can be used to
see how states of mind and feeling in individual Sephirot connect dynamically
to other individual Sephirot. Once that experience has been gained by a
simplified progress, it's time to start working with it again. Trees of Life
will seem to spring up from many different chance experiences. Some of these
will overlap others in complex ways, producing multi-directional living,
multi-dimensional thinking and feeling. A linear one dimensional thinker says
"this ... therefore that ... " etc. Two dimensional thinking is concerned
with freedom and the lack of it. Three dimensional thinking is concerned with
other influences. The more tracks you can lay across your mind, the more
Trees of Life you can have functioning, all gradually adding to and
diversifying the same pattern in your unconscious mind. Over the course of
time you will become more efficient and self possessed, with only one thing
increasing in difficulty. It will become harder to talk to a person who
simply thinks linearly. Suppose you have a stone. When you look at it from
one side you can only see so much, but the more angles of perception you
consider the more complete becomes your image of that stone. Multi-
dimensional thinking leaves you less susceptible to problems. Inability to
consider antinomies(pairs of opposites) with equal objectivity inevitably
leads to confusion. Such bewilderment can precipitate a whirling fall down
the Tree of Life and levels of consciousness. Moral perplexity produces a
fall from Geburah to Tipharet, thence to Netzach and finally to Hod. In Hod a
person can make the error of trying to be practical and moral at the same
time, a total insanity, since morality can only guide practical choice but
cannot dictate functional details. The delusions that result from that
impossible pressure come out in Yesod and eventually lead to inertia in
Malkut. This is an extreme case of falling down a Tree of Life. If you have
multiple Trees in your experience, you can swing from one to the other like a
mental "Tarzan". That's the way to avoid catastrophe in these practices.
June 10, 1923, 7:30 p.m.
" . . . There is no connection between truthfulness & ability to keep one's word. The former is a debatable metaphysical puzzle hardly worth consideration except at Christmas after a bad dinner in Minnesota (I was reading Main Street, a novel about this State); the latter is like any other ability. It is a good example of the way in which Christianity has confused moral questions. It has made them unrecognizable. It requires endless analysis to disentangle the elements of the problem. It has taken me I can not say how many hours, each second of which was packed with thought at the highest pressure, assisted by Ether & absence of Heroin, merely to ask the simplest question about right & wrong to be imagined. It sounds paradoxical to say that I have simplified the ethical problem by defining Truth as one's peculiar variety of Untruth. The parallel of Einstein, once again, is absolutely good. By introducing a slight complication into the formula for the straight line, he has in reality simplified the problem. Note also that each ray of light is responsible to itself for itself, according to the intensity of the gravitation fields in its course. It was, in fact, the cardinal heresy of Christianity to distinguish between different kinds of force & so deny unity to Nature. Incidentally, all religions have made a similar error except perhaps Buddhism."
Crowley spends considerable time wrestling with moral questions. He is
writing letters to everyone he knows, and most of the parents and relatives of
his friends, trying to make ends meet. Even though Mussolini had thrown him
out of Sicily there are still others living at the Abbey that depend on him.
He writes Leah's mother pleading that she is ill (which she was) and that
money is necessary to save her life. He tries to secure necessary funds by
any means possible; to interest publishers and promoters, to stall on paying
his bills. He even considers taking a straight job, but decides that -- no
matter what -- he must succeed by working for the establishment of the Aeon, or
not at all. He wants to address the slanders that are being published about
him, but has no money to do so.
There is a good deal of Greek Qabalah in the book, mostly in the form of
Gematria, that will be of interest to readers. Crowley worked hard to
decipher the formula of the Aeon, and to define his own place in it. This
Tunisian diary shows his human weaknesses and strengths in all their stark
reality. If you have placed him far up upon a pedestal this will knock him
down for you. He was a man, and represented man to the Gods, in all ways,
both good and bad.
Crowley's curses of Mussolini, and his attempt to figure out how to deal with Frater Achad, are also highly illuminating. Crowley tried throughout his
life to groom someone for succession after him, and to deal with the
troublesomely prejudiced, irrelevant, and hysterical reactions to his beliefs
on the part of various governments and institutions. In neither attempt did
he succeed very well.
July 24, 1923, 2:25 a.m.
"Frater Achad: how to deal with him -- a letter should be written in the
Occult Review & other rubbish heaps which he respects -- being a Copyright Hound (see From Crystal Gazing to Crystal Vision) - to challenge his position. Is he a member of the A A
he boasts about all the time, &c. Point out that he has not complied with the Regulations of 7
= 4
of R. R. et A. C. by publishing a complete statement of his Point-of-View, &c. True, 666 has accepted him: but that only means he has taken advantage of the rule that any man can be 8
= 3
if he dare to claim the Grade. As in fact he did. This leaves a slur on him, as ignorant of intermediate Grades . . ."
Appendix Three, by Stephen Skinner, the "Magical Mottoes" of Crowley's
contemporaries, is in itself worth the purchase price of the book; a who's who that would take quite a bit of research to put together on one's own.
A recommended read if you want to understand the nitty-gritty of our
prophet.
---- Frater 137
O, Holy Angel | |
Ignite the fires, | |
Of my aspiration. | |
What I see in passing | |
Is but a dream.... | |
I call to Thee | |
Through ordeals and trials | |
To guide me by Thy Holy light. | |
Crowley, 60 years ago this month:
Since we have a review of a Crowley diary this issue, here's another look at what A.C. was doing and thinking. This is from his Royal Court Diary for May of 1936 e.v., tough times 60 years ago this month. Copyright © OTO. From Gerald Yorke's transcription:
Sat. 1. Bus strike
Do you think the pub will trust us
For a cask of rum? (When broadcast by B.B.C. read 'case of ... Mumm).
F--- my shit-hole wetter, Hector,
F--- my piss-hole drier; f___ me like the f-----g rector
F---- the f-----g choir.
Thrushes pipe Hey nonny nonny
Linnets twitter sweet
Praise God for Joe, Hector, Johnny
Paul, Augustus, Pete.
Heaven & earth serenely blended
By our Lady's Grace ---
Now my f-----g song is ended
F--- my f------g face.
Natus est Filius 666
Newcastle.
Sun. 2. Lunch with Lawrence. Saw Kenrick in P.M. Crowds in utter chaos. Worked out plans for Crush Barrier. & horror for May 12. Worst planets I ever saw.
Mon. 3. Celebrated the Event of May 2.
Louis Fox Kenrick P.W.Sergeant & wife. Violet Hulton at C.R. after dinner.
Tues. 4. A day so absolutely blank that it made other blank days look
cheerful by contrast.
Lunch with Monty. Dinner with Pearl.
Met ... Kleine Newport.
Thur.6. A blank blank day. Spent night at Collin's. Met Cowan. Talked till 3.a.m.
Fri.7. Another blank.
Sat.8. Another blank: but my brain is gradually clearing. I played good
chess.
Sun.9. Spent night with Collings &c. The Abbe: his "toute petite epreuve" 1 plus 2 p 2 squared p 2 cubed plus ... plus 2 to the nth is composite when n plus 1 is composite. P.S. This is a well-known proposition: see any good text-book. Silly cheat!
Mon.10. All day as a "literary solutionist"!
Turker at night: down to 6d.
Wed.12. Coronation Day.
in 21°
in °
in 16°
Rx
in 10°
in 2°
Fall
in 27°
Fall P.
in 1°
Rx P
in 20°
Detriment
in 20°
Rx
P
Saw "Coronation" of dummies by very live people. Bed with Collins
Thur.13. Bullets with Collins. Lunch with Pam & Co. Kenrick at dinner. Louis Fox paid 10/- for book. (I gave him a "Clouds without Water" worth 35/- )
Fri.14. Met again Helen Buchannan Bell. Fox gave me dinner, invited me to Ashburnham for Whitsun, to start 8 1/2 a.m. Sat. telephoned delay & would I meet him at Cafe Royal Saturday P.M. When I 'phoned to confirm he had left for Sussex!!!
Sat.15. The usual struggle-day. Collins away too, though he told me he had "Home Circle" this night. Kenwick? Can I sell his shares?
Crowley and Conscience
"Conscience" is a loaded word, with very many deviations of definition in
different religions and approaches to psychology. At times the term is
limited to Super Ego and negative prompting involving guilt and prohibitions
exclusively. That's not the Roman Catholic definition, which includes both
that quality and the quality of positive prompting toward closer relations
with the deity. Crowley tended to abhor obsession with guilt, favoring
instead the positive intimations of communication with the HGA and similar
ideas. For Crowley, conscience amounted mainly to a sense of "what's right",
not "what's wrong". He is remembered as explaining mistakes by "You do what
seems right at the time".
A.C. had his problems with regrets and the like, but he favored a more
positive orientation. As to his sanity, he had food, shelter, friends and was
never arrested past the time it took to establish his identity (one instance
of mistaken identity in France for a few hours). That satisfies the legal and
clinical definition of functionally sane. His psychology was unusual, and he
had neuroses. His personality exhibited disorder at times, including touches
of hypochondria and social problems. That isn't uncommon and may be little
more than the result of a Victorian childhood plus being "born before his
time".
Note on Vibration
There are four traditional voices, falsetto through basso. The two middle
voices use the mouth and throat for a sounding box. Falsetto uses the sinus
cavities and basso the abdomen. The middle voices can damage your throat, but
either basso or falsetto can get you high without much risk. Some people try
for pitch, and BOTA has a set of notes for the Hebrew letters (based on the
division into Mothers, Doubles and Singles and the twelve black and white keys
in a piano octave). Experiment seems the best approach.
Note on Tarot and Path Workings
Pick a theory and run with it. There are a number of different
arrangements, the simplest being to start with the Fool, progress through the
Magus and treat each successive Trump as an increasingly material incarnation
of the Fool. The first seven (starting with the Magus) are abstract or
spiritual, the next are intermediate and the last seven are materially
oriented. Putting the Trumps on the paths of the Tree of Life is a different
method.
5/4/96 | Beltane Beach Bonfire, meet at OZ 4:18 PM for car pool | Independent | ||
5/5/96 | Gnostic Mass 8:00PM Horus Temple | Thelema Ldg. | ||
5/9/96 | Thelema Lodge Library night 8PM (call to attend) | Thelema Ldg. | ||
5/11/96 | OTO Initiations Call to attend. | Thelema Ldg. | ||
5/12/96 | "Bodywork" with Deburah 2 PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
5/12/96 | Gnostic Mass 8:00PM Horus Temple | Thelema Ldg. | ||
5/18/96 | The Rite of Saturn (in Hayward) | Rosslyn Cmp | ||
5/19/96 | Lodge Luncheon Meeting 12:30 | Thelema Ldg. | ||
5/19/96 | Gnostic Mass 8:00PM Horus Temple | Thelema Ldg. | ||
5/20/96 | Section 2 reading group w/Catlin Marjorie Bowen's Black Magick8PM at Oz house | Thelema Ldg. | ||
5/21/96 | Thelema Lodge Library night 8PM (call to attend) | Thelema Ldg. | ||
5/22/96 | Tarot with Bill Heidrick, 7:30 PM in San Anselmo at 5 Suffield Ave. | Thelema Ldg. | ||
5/25/96 | Enochian Liturgy Group 8 PM Scrying Workshop | Thelema Ldg. | ||
5/26/96 | Gnostic Mass 8:00PM Horus Temple | Thelema Ldg. | ||
5/30/96 | The Rite of Jupiter (Oz House) | Independent | ||
5/31/96 | Astrological of the Rites of Eleusis with Grace in Berkeley 7 PM | Thelema Ldg. |
The viewpoints and opinions expressed herein are the responsibility of the
contributing authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of OTO or its
officers.
Thelema Lodge
Ordo Templi Orientis
P.O. Box 2303
Berkeley, CA 94702 USA
Phone: (510) 652-3171 (for events info and contact to Lodge)
Production and Circulation:
OTO-TLC
P.O.Box 430
Fairfax, CA 94978 USA
Internet: heidrick@well.com (Submissions and circulation only)