It has been a couple of years now since I formally bid farewell to Thelema. Since that time I haven’t thought much about it, my attention being largely given to my academic studies and my new-found interest in Religious Naturalism (not to mention my family). A few days ago, however, I did find myself pondering Thelema and noticed that my thinking was different now that I’m emotionally detached from it. Like breaking up with a lover, once the painful fire of separation cools, it is possible to look back and get a clearer picture of who that person really was and what the relationship was really like.

First I want to say that I don’t begrudge anyone being a Thelemite. Thelema provided an important developmental stepping stone in my own life and I am not qualified to judge another’s experiences or needs. This does not mean that I don’t have honest critiques of Thelema, I simply hope that they aren’t mistaken for scoldings of individual adherents or any claim that my views represent a single objective truth generalizable to everyone. These are simply my impressions as they currently stand, and people are welcome to consider or dismiss them as they will.

First, keep in mind that at one point I was a True Believer. It isn’t that I accepted anything that Aleister Crowley wrote without question, but I was happy to believe in the general outlines and the myths that Crowley wove. I bought all his books and practiced his rituals. I joined and was highly active for thirteen years in his quasi-masonic fraternal organization, Ordo Templi Orientis, rising in rank to Fifth Degree and taking orders as an ordained priest in the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica. I was really, really into it.

So what happened? In about a two-year time span I went from being a zealot to an apostate. This essay is not going to retell that tale, however, since my primary interest is in offering a critique rather than a biography. I will say that it primarily involved a project that required examining many of Crowley’s core documents with an analytical eye. Although I initially went into that project fully expecting the examination to support my Thelemic faith, it was eventually to dissolve it. I fought it tooth and nail until the very end, performing all kinds of theoretical contortions to justify holding on to Thelema, but it just wasn’t enough. I came out of that tunnel a non-believer.

The Problem with Will

I begin with the core doctrine of Thelema—the concept of Will. In terms of Thelemic doctrine, Will is not a well-defined structure. In fact, many theological debates within Thelema involve the proper definition of Will, what it means, how it works, and what it implies. At the bottom of Will, however, is the notion that every person has within them a central drive to action that is either externally derived—most often from a being called the Holy Guardian Angel—or internally provided by an unconscious “silent self". However, humans are generally blinded to this Will, in part due to egoism (a too-strong sense of “I") and in part due to cultural contamination. The main duty of a Thelemite, therefore, is to work through the veils of blindness so to achieve a clear understanding of their own unique Will. Moreover, he or she must develop certain skills (i.e. “magick") and personal traits that will allow that Will to be manifested via action.

In thinking about Thelema, it recently struck me how similar it is in certain ways to psychotherapy. One of those ways is structural—both have a general definition that most affiliates agree upon but contain within them orientations or schools that have more well-defined boundaries. Of course, there will always be those who think their orientation is the purest form of the category or even the whole of it, with all others being false or apocryphal. Nevertheless, let’s explore this analogy and see where it takes us.

It has been quite a while since I updated this journal. In part, this is because I’ve been dealing with some health issues which took a lot of my attention. Perhaps a larger reason is that I’ve stepped back from thinking about Thelema so that I might eventually come back at it with a fresh perspective. I am not ready to do that with the vigor I want to do it with, so I’ll simply jot down a few notes on where I stand now.

When I wrote my essay on Aleisterianism, I was motivated by the understanding that all spiritual systems are artificial (although they are meant to reflect the natural). They are constructed to help mediate the relationship between humans and reality, specifically in terms of meaning. There are of course many components to spiritual systems, including a desire for control, safety, love, power, and joy. But at the root, I believe, is the fundamental human need to be connected with something larger than or beyond the self, along with a sense of what such a connection means.

Psychography is the term applied to texts that have been written by disembodied spirits or beings. There are several forms of this, ranging from the spirit taking full motor control of the scribe to simply working from an intuitive influence. It is considered a form of automatic writing, but unique in that the scribe is generally aware of what is being written (as opposed to going into a trance state).

The values and principles by which we live emerge from one’s deepest, most genuine self—and the genuine self emerges dynamically out of our lived values and principles.