[Is Thelema Gnostic? Let's assume for the purposes of this post that Thelema is more than a) a personality cult for a bored overly-intellectual depraved Victorian aristocrat, or b) a religion distinct from the Hermetic Tradition of Gnosticism.] What is the A.'. A.'.? One of the things it stands for is the Latin initials for the
Order of the Silver Star , founded in 1907. It's an alchemical and magickal order - as in "sequence" here, rather than "command" – which in its origins had three major influences: it's a simplified version of the Golden Dawn material; it's a course of instruction in Buddhist meditation from the Order's mentor Allan Bennett; and perhaps its greatest early influence was a body of material written by Aleister Crowley in 1904 called "
The Book of the Law ", which he wrote as a kind of experiment in
automatic writing. The A.'. A.'. can be thought of as a series of things to think about and try, with a critical, even suspicious outlook, to help determine for the practitioner what works and what doesn't, creatively and spiritually.
Its biggest difference from the Golden Dawn is in the Buddhistic influence that moved the focus from mastery of external forces to mastery of internal elements, through individual meditation and ritual rather than group psychodrama. It sought to remove the social politics from the equation. It mirrored the OTO's efforts to elaborate on Eastern themes (yoga, tantra) in a Western context.
Most of its early teachings were published in a hardbound journal in the 1920s, called "
The Equinox". The entire curriculum is available online.
What is automatic writing? This was a very popular technique in the Victorian period among occult and theosophical circles. It basically puts the practitioner into a deep trance and they write directly from the subconscious. The reasoning is that the subconscious mind is "solving" problems in the background, and that information can be dredged up that may be of interest to the conscious mind.
The difficulty with this technique is that people often "divorce" this information from themselves, and, as in chanelling, attribute the writings to some extra-terrestrial intelligence.
What is "the Law of Thelema"? The Law of
Thelema,
[TEL ee muh] the Greek word for "will" or "conviction", is a fairly elaborate riff on
Rabelais' theme of "Do what thou wilt". Basically, the idea is that every individual has a path that is unique to them, similar to the orbit of a star. If the person sticks to their true orbit, their universe tends to tick along pretty smoothly – but when they interfere with their true purpose - or interfere with someone else's – conflict arises. It has also been classically expressed as "know thyself" and "to thine ownself be true".
This is a very different idea from doing whatever you want. It's a commitment to determining your individual purpose in life, and demands that you acknowledge and assume responsibility for own inner divinity, while respecting that of others. The culture of this philosophy is closely tied with the symbolic language of the Egyptian mystery religions, which was the prototype for many later traditions, including elements of modern Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
The core function of the A.'.A.'. is to give people tools to identify their true Will. In this sense it's a Gnostic process, encouraging its adherents to determine their own gnosis.
What about Crowley's personality cult? Certainly there's a tremendous amount of "Crowleyanity" out there. And it's regrettable, not only due to Crowley's own unique and mischievious sense of humor, but also due to the fact that he's such an easy target. He was undoubtedly a creature of his age, which accounts not only for his appalling racism and sexism, but also his extremism in an effort to distance himself from the social programming of the Victorian era. This led him to adopt a number of the symbols and ideas we associate with Satanism, but obviously he felt it necessary to "de-Christianize" himself, and did not necessarily advocate everyone else to do it.
He's possibly as misunderstood by his followers as by his detractors. The sheer scale of the man's ego – and humour – can in itself be an obstacle to a serious student of Magick. But I think that one can find some of his ideas valuable without subscribing to his personality or the entirety of his practices. Certainly I believe that one can be a "Thelemite" without accepting "The Master Therion" as anything other than one contributing author among many.
"Thelema, as a system, is something much larger and more significant than Crowley's personality."
– Sabazius X° Caliphate OTO
"This does not mean that in order to be a Thelemite on must have formally accepted AL [The Book of the Law]. A fully functioning Thelemite may not have heard of AL, or Aleister Crowley."
– Kenneth Grant X° Typhonian OTO
Is this really the Aeon of Horus? This is a very common misunderstanding among students of Magick. The whole idea of Aeons doesn't stand up to logical scrutiny. It only works on a metaphoric level. To assume that patriarchal "dying god" religions began with Christianity is obviously misleading, as is confining the era of "goddess religions" to the previous 2,000 years. History's just not that tidy. The whole thing really works as a metaphor. Crowley was dramatizing his own break from his rigid childhood and Victorian upbringing, as well as formally cutting ties with his investment in the
Golden Dawn. Certainly the Horus myth tied in well with the rapid changes of the first half of the last century, culminating in the "force and fire" of the age of Atomic War.
For the individual student, in the course of one's life, these Aeons are experienced personally. The safety of childhood and imagination, identfication with the father and authority, and then confrontation with that identity to establish one's own ethic and personality. That confrontation can very forceful.
In 1948 Charles Stansfeld Jones, or "Achad", proclaimed the Aeon of Ma'at, the Egyptian Goddess of Truth and Wisdom. This was a recognition of the way the world had changed since Crowley's day. It was a beautiful invocation of what the world needed, rather than what it was. Many in the A.'. A.'. today recognize and seek to work within this context, although as a poetic truth rather than a literal one.
What kind of person has success with this system? One of the great failings of the A.'. A.'. is that it's rarely worked for people with no background into Occult study and practice. Initially it took several years to progress through the early curriculum.
That being said, anyone with four or five years independent study or experience with another magickal system can go through the elemental grades fairly quickly, in under two years. It's not social, no one is going to confer upon you the mystic title or secret handshake. Those who need a great deal of feedback or support tend to lose interest pretty quickly. But if you naturally have a great deal of self-discipline, a good rational, analytical mind, you might find this process extremely rewarding.
The A.'. A.'. tends to attract very creative people who've found their creativity going nowhere in other systems of initiation, who have seen social politics dominate, but still wish to explore a formal approach to the Western mystery tradition. Those who have had these kinds of disappointments in the past possess both the gift of disillusionment and the magnifying glass of skepticism, both of which are critical for success in this system.
How is the A.'. A.'. structured? It's based on the ten spheres of the qabalistic Tree of Life and breaks these grades into three chunks; the elemental grades, adeptship, and magistry.
The early grades
[Ne, Z, Pr, and Ph] are alchemical in nature - your work involves reflection and awareness of individual elements (earth, air, fire and water) and how they manifest in your personality, as well as formally deconstructing various occult tools; tarot, qabala, yoga, and so forth.
Once you've got all your elements sorted out, you may realize that it's your Will to assume the Work of adeptship. This process can last a lifetime: identifying your True Will and disciplining your life to it. Adepts are the beating heart of the A.'. A.'.
Magistry, the very idea of it, should scare the hell out of you. It involves the destruction of the ego and replacing it with a wholly magickal creature. This is a tremendously dangerous idea psychologically, and more often than not leads to a psychotic break. It's only been seriously undertaken by a few hundred individuals in the last hundred years. Some Magisters, such as physicist Jack Parsons, founder of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, never fully recovered from the impact of this Work.
How does the Order work? It's a "chain system" - students find one person to assist them in their individual study, and as they progress, they in turn find one or two students to aid. The communication is entirely handled by correspondence. The language is fairly formal - while e-mail is used, what's actually sent are attached PDFs. This takes a little longer and seems more "permanent" than regular e-mail traffic. It requires more thought, more care.
There are no fees for instruction, and anyone can assume any grade at any time - although many would strongly caution against this. Until you understand the literalism and the capriciousness of the subconscious and magickal mind, it's unwise to underestimate its potential. There are no secrets - the entire system of the elemental grades has been openly published.
What is Qabala? It's from a very old word meaning "to receive" – it's a way of listening to the universe. This is an idea, or rather a set of ideas, that explore the nature of language and its relationship with the natural world. Ancient languages used the same symbols for sound as for number – roman numerals are a familiar example – so every word can also be seen as an equation.
After that basic assumption, it becomes a starting point for meditation. The words "Star", "Blood", and "Kiss" all have the same numeric value, 42.
[using a contemporary, English language methodology]. So there's an opportunity to reflect on the nature and the relationship between the ideas represented by these words. Now, twice 42 is 84, which is the number for "Chariot" and "Rituals". What does that mean? How does this relate? Like a Buddhist koan, it's the personal reflection on the riddle that's meaningful, rather than the answer or the riddle itself.
Eventually, these relationships can be tracked, and "filed" into a system of spheres of association. Jones wrote the definitive works on this system,
QBL, The Egyptian Revival, and
Anatomy of the Body of God, all of which are freely available.
What is the OTO? The OTO is a system of Magick which wraps Tantric Yoga and sexual alchemy in the symbolic language of 19th Century speculative Freemasonry. There were a number of related OTO groups operating throughout Europe shortly after the turn of the 20th Century, and Crowley became head of its English Section in 1913. Crowley reworked the OTO to propogate his particular spin, and eventually took over the whole organization. In 1921 Jones was appointed the X° or King of the Order in North America, headquartered in North Vancouver.
When Crowley died, he passed the mantle of the Order to Karl Germer, an A.'. A.'. Initiate who had no interest in the OTO. The Order stagnated under Germer and effectively came to an end upon his death in 1962 (except in Switzerland under Hermann Metzger X°).
Years later, a number of "spontaneous" (ie new and unauthorized) organizations attempted to reconstruct the OTO, many claiming authenticity and, on occasion, exclusivity. The best organized and most established of these is the "Caliphate" OTO, founded in 1977, which won a 1985 lawsuit against a rival organization for the trademark. Unfortunately the Caliphate has used this court victory to copyright materials never intended for use by
any OTO, but arguably it does a fairly good job in disseminating these works. But there are literally dozens of independent OTO lodges, either ignoring the Caliphate completely or working along the Order's original pre-Crowley lines.
What is the M.'. M.'. G.'.? An independent OTO (the Mysteria Mystica Gnostica) that focuses on the Grail Mysteries as explored by the Tantric rites of the higher grades (VII°, VIII°, and IX°). It is a society of Gnostic Neo-Templars that consists primarily of former members of the Caliphate, Typhonian, and Societas OTOs. The M.'. M.'. G.'. further distinguishes itself from these Orders by using the term "Western Templars" or Ordo Templi Occidentalis and makes no claim to "authoritative lineage", which, in my opinion, is impossible for anyone to do.
During the 30's, when Crowley was Outer Head of the OTO, he frequently mailed applicants the rituals and had them perform these astrally, considering these initiations to be equally valid. Possession of the documents of the higher grades conferred upon one de facto Initiation of those grades. Therefore it seemed logical to me that open discussion and experimentation with these techniques could occur outside the sanction of the various warring factions.
As a side note, while "doing away with" the lower OTO degrees and paring down the system to three grades of sexual alchemy may seem controversial, those familiar with the Witchcraft will recognize the validity of this approach.
How does the OTO relate to A.'. A.'.? It really doesn't. While both systems were influenced by Crowley and have the same number of grades, the similarities end there. The A.'. A.'. reflects the natural process of the training of the mind, the OTO has a fairly unweildly lower-grade structure that uses psychodrama to illustrate birth, life and death - and then presents totally unrelated materials on sexual alchemy to the higher grades. The OTO "initiatory" grade rituals have been widely published, and contain much of the title-conferring business of inauthentic Freemasonry. And the poetry is painful. In remarkable contrast, the Secrets of the higher grades, VII,° VIII°, and IX°, are startling in their clarity and efficacy.
All that being said, there are many A.'. A.'. students who also employ the OTO system of magick.
What is Ma'at? "The Scientific Illuminism of the A.'. A.'. must continue. The System of initiation came to an end with the Aeon of Horus, but must be revised and continue according to New Aeon lines ... "
- Charles Stansfeld Jones, 1948
The ancient Egyptian Goddess Ma'at (or Ma) can be seen as the illustration of a series of ideas: In one form She is the Void, the Zero of Infite potential. This relates to the Gnostic idea of Pleroma, the "empty fullness" . She is Order, and through extrapolation Justice and Law. The word "mathematics" is derived from Her name, as is "meter" and therfore "measure". In her Greek form she is Sophia, Goddess of Wisdom.
She's also the Feminine counterpart to Tehu, or Thoth, the mercurial, hermetic scribe-God. In The Book of the Dead, the deceased is lead by the fox-headed Yinepu to the scales of Justice. There, the subject's heart is weighed against the Ostrich feather, the glyph of Ma'at.
If your heart is as light as a feather, you proceed to the afterlife. If, however, worldly concerns have weighted the heart, your soul is fed to Amit, a ravenous crocodile-hippo demon beastie.
The central idea of this myth as that the choices you make concerning "attachment" have spiritual consequences - this is a fundamental tenet of Buddhism. So She's not only Justice, but Judgement, and more significantly Deliberation, the cornerstone of Will.
In this Deliberation, she is the complement to the Infinite – each deliberate choice is the extinction of myriad choices. In physics this is the Collapse of the State Vector. So she can be seen as an entire idea in Herself, the Infinite and the Finite. The One and the Zero.
What's the Magickal significance of Ma'at? Taken with Her consort, She is Tehu-Ma'at, or Tiamat, the cthonic, serpentine figure that relates both to the subconscious reptile brain and to the Kundalini of yoga. To invoke Her is to recognize our psychic origins and our spiritual future, so She's very much about time, and our relationship with time.
On April 2, 1948 Jones declared the Aeon of Ma'at [ NB: both "Aeon" and "Ma'at" enumerate to 47 ], and founded the Fellowship of Ma-Ion. This was on the heels of three significant events; the Atomic War of 1945 which was the manifestation of the Aeon of Horus; the death of Crowley, the Magus of that Aeon, in 1947; and the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library in 1945. This latter unearthing of Gnostic wisdom seems to have appeared as an antidote to the preceeding half century.
Certainly, the legacy of the Second World War was the information age, the rise of global media (the domain of Thoth-Hermes) and the Internet. But Information, as a process in and of itself, is valueless without understanding. It is here where we invoke Ma'at in her guise as Holy Wisdom, which interprets this stream of data and forges meaning through Judgement.
As an aspect of the Divine Feminine, when taken with Nu She is Nu-Ma [ = 53 = Angel ], or Pneuma, the Greek word for Spirit. Those familiar with the workings of th VII° of OTO will note the absence of the role of the Kteis. Magickal invocation of the Divine Feminine corrects this obvious oversight and balances the work.
