Agnosia

(Gnosticism) The state of not having insight or Gnosis. This is the root for the word “agnostic,” also meaning a person who does not have Gnosis.

Barbelos

(Gnosticism) A very confusing concept due to plethora of ways it has been used. It is masculine gender, but is used to stand for Sophia as a woman who is “the first male virgin.” Sophia has hermaphroditic associations. It is the highest or lowest form of Sophia depending on the myth, with Zoe being its countercharge.

Ceration

(Alchemy) The alchemical Fermentation process in which a waxy substance (the ferment) flows from the putrefied matter. This substance is forerunner of the Stone.

Mysticism

(Religion, magick) Immediate consciousness of the transcendent or ultimate reality or God. A mental exercise designed to still the mind so that it is able to experience the highest and most abstract conception of Godhead. Traditional forms of mysticism can be found in the The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola and the The Spiritual Guide of Miguel Molinos, as well as in many of the writings of Sufism, Yoga, Buddhism, Zen, and Taoism. Unorthodox forms can be found in Gnosticism and the Hermetic Qabalah, etc.

Personal Unconscious

(Psychology) Opposite of Collective Unconscious. It includes forgotten dreams and memories, shocking and unbearable ideas (purposely oppressed), and perceptions not yet accessible for consciousness.

Prana

(Yoga) The breath is seen as one of the primary source of life-giving energies or forces of the universe. Similar to the Chinese concept of Chi.

Self

(Psychology) The archetype of personal totality and the governing nucleus of the psyche, and that influence that surpasses the ego.

Trituration

(Alchemy) To grind or pulverize a solid into a powder with a mortar and pestle.

Wine

(Alchemy, Ecclesiastic) A symbol to allude to the process of Fermentation and the spiritualization of matter. In Eucharistic religious ceremonies, wine is symbolic of the Blood of God by virtue of Transubstantiation. See Transubstantiation.

Yechidah

(Qabalah) Hebrew The level of the soul that connects the individual to God. The most ephemeral level of the soul, corresponding to Kether.

Gerald del Campo is the author of A Heretic’s Guide to Thelema, New Aeon Magick: Thelema Without Tears, and New Aeon English Qabalah Revealed, among other works. You can visit his blog at http://solis93.livejournal.com and his website at http://thelemicknights.org. Gerald serves as Senior Managing Editor of Rending the Veil.

©2009 Gerald del Campo
Edited by Sheta Kaey

Gerald del Campo is the author of A Heretic’s Guide to Thelema, New Aeon Magick: Thelema Without Tears, and New Aeon English Qabalah Revealed, among other works. You can visit his blog at http://solis93.livejournal.com and his website at http://thelemicknights.org. Gerald serves as Senior Managing Editor of Rending the Veil.

Air

(Alchemy) One of the Four Elements of alchemy believed to carry the archetypal properties of spirit into the visible world. It is linked to the process of Separation and corresponds to the metal Iron.

Cassock

(Ecclesiastic) A full-length gown with sleeves and collar worn priests, bishops and helpers.

Nephesh

(Qabalah) Hebrew The animal soul that corresponds to animal/ vegetable levels of consciousness. It is said to reside at the level of Yesod and Malkuth. It is mostly corresponds with the automatic bodily functions and ego. Also known as the automatic consciousness. This body does not survive death, as does the Ruach and Neshama. This really upsets people who practice Astral Travel as a way to cheat death, since the Astral Body is a projection of the Nephesh.

Neschama

(Qabalah) Hebrew Corresponds to the purest aspirations of the soul and the Soul itself and corresponds to Binah on the Tree of Life. It is where the individual Soul merges with the Oneness or God. From this plane we may approach the collective unconscious. The Neschama is composed of three parts: Yechidah, Chiah, and Neschama.

Omnipotence

(General religious, Philosophy) Omnipotence is all-powerfulness. Many religions view God as omnipotent. Descartes (and most Gnostics) postulated the possibility of an omnipotent demon who could manipulate our thoughts and deceive us.

Path of Zadek

(Qabalah) Hebrew A reference to the path illustrated by the Temperance tarot card between Yesod and Tiphareth. This path traverses the path of normal consciousness between Netzach and Hod. It is the border line between the ego and the true Self. It is called “the path of the honest man” because it is only accessible to those rare individuals who have liberated themselves of self-deception and psychological slothfulness.

Qlipha

pl. Qliphoth (Qabalah) Hebrew Literally, “shells” or “excrement.” A reference to the remnants of the previous, failed universes. The pieces of these shattered vessels are said to have fallen into Assiah, where Malkuth is now engrossed in them. In their present state, they serve to test and prove worthiness. The Qliphoth project the illusion of duality, making it so that we perceive one another as separate and isolated individuals. Largely due to superstition and a lack of understanding of the purpose of duality, the Qliphoth have been unfairly labeled as evil.

Ruach

(Qabalah) Hebrew Literally “breath.” It is one of the three parts of the human soul corresponding to personal self-awareness or false self, the emotional self, intellect and ego. It resides within Sephiroth 4 through 9, between Meschamah and Nephesh. The Neschamah seeps into the Ruach, but it is rarely noticed by the ego, which is a shame since the effects of the Neschamah can only observed by the Ruach.

Samadhi Yoga

(Yoga) Gives mastery over the self, and leads to the control of the powers of ecstasy.

Zodiac

(Astrology) An area of the sky (sometimes called a “belt”) divided into twelve parts through which most of the planets appear to move. Each part has a name and symbol, and is connected with an exact time of year. According to Hermes Trismigestus, “As Above, So Below” indicates that the direction of the stars correspond and allude to the course of human evolution.

©2009 Gerald del Campo
Edited by Sheta Kaey

Gerald del Campo is the author of A Heretic’s Guide to Thelema, New Aeon Magick: Thelema Without Tears, and New Aeon English Qabalah Revealed, among other works. You can visit his blog at http://solis93.livejournal.com and his website at http://thelemicknights.org. Gerald serves as Senior Managing Editor of Rending the Veil.

Introduction

A plethora of works exist on the subject of the Tarot; some well informed, some less so. At the outset of the formulation of this essay, permit me to state that there are two key maxims derived from the teachings of the Golden Dawn and of Aleister Crowley to which I adhere as well as I am able:

1. As above, so below
2. The goals of religion, the methods of science

This philosophical framework compels and requires that observations and analysis concerning the Tarot should be harbored within the contexts of broader occult and scientific philosophy, without which its symbols would have little or no meaning. For the Tarot is most assuredly not in any sense an entity with absolute properties and values as its dominant trait, but rather comprises a complex set of mirrors and microscopes through which an attuned mind may view the universe that lies beyond the confines of four-dimensional space and time. Thus, if we wish to examine the properties of complex molecules with a view to discovering more of their intrinsic physical properties, we may use an electron microscope as our tool, whereas exploration of the universe’s more subjective and spiritual phenomena and properties is aided by the instrument of the Tarot.

But before we can use any instrument, we must first understand and become intimately familiar with that instrument. In the case of the electron microscope, this requires a fairly deep understanding of physics, of the the dual wave/particle nature of electrons and their interaction with other particles of various classes. To achieve this understanding we rely on a prerequisite understanding of mathematics, and of course of engineering which is the discipline through which our scientific mastery is both expressed and expanded.

Although the Tarot is predicated on an understanding of metaphysics rather than the physics of Einstein and Penrose, et al. And yet, there are overlaps that provide tantalizing glimpses of how we might yet arrive at a “Theory of Everything,” or TOE, by eventually combining the teachings of both schools. Such an achievement lies many decades into the future though, as the criteria of measurement adopted by each of these schools are divided by differing views on the nature of consciousness and its role in perception. Let us proceed then to the framework within which the Tarot exists, and the natural world which it both reflects and focuses within the mind of the practitioner. We will not be discussing the history of the Tarot here, as we are concerned with its properties rather than its provenance, much as a physicist is generally concerned with the nature of matter rather than the history of science. The suits are those of Aleister Crowley’s Thoth deck: Wands, Swords, Cups and Disks.

Metaphysical Context

Whilst the introduction to this essay may be regarded as generally true for all students and practitioners of the occult sciences in general, this section is focused on three specific areas of practice and study of particular importance to this author:

1. Qabalah
2. Alchemy
3. Astrology

The Tarot deck we shall be considering is the Thoth deck designed by Aleister Crowley and painted by Lady Frieda Harris. You may then deduce that our essay has a somewhat Thelemic bias. However, given the universal scope of the Qabalah, I venture to say that its chief metaphysical construct, the Tree of Life, encompasses all belief systems whatsoever and that by using its remarkable properties we are able to continue the Great Work of synthesis to which so many adepts from all schools have contributed for millennia. In other words, if you are a Pagan, a Witch, a Christian, A Buddhist, a Thelemite, or any other type of spiritual or occult practitioner, there’s room for you and your beliefs on the Tree. However, some may find the context in which their belief systems are set somewhat difficult to accept. Let us then make our first definitive statements on The Tarot:

1. The Tarot is an active Mirror of the Universe comprised of agents and forces through which an adept may view the trajectory of events and forces that underpin events in the real world, and thereby achieve knowledge of “real world” events.
2. The Tarot reflects four levels of existence, as do the Qabalah and Alchemy.
3. The Tarot incorporates the forces of astrology.

We will illustrate the validity of these statements as we examine each of the four suits in turn. We begin with the Suit of Wands.

The Suit of Wands

Image ©2009 by Hettie Rowley

As is well known, alchemy claims four elements as the foundation of the universe: Fire, Air, Earth and Water. We will not here attempt a separate exegesis on this matter, but rather weave the essential nature of each element to its attributed suit.

The Suit of Wands represents the alchemical element Fire, which we consider to be a limitless force of passion that finds expression in great outbursts of energy. As much as we find the passion of Fire concealed within the nature of combustible materials, so do we also in the hearts of men. Not for nothing are the Celts known as a fiery, warlike people.

We see then that the Suit of Wands is associated with Archetypal Ideas, a concept that we will shortly reinforce. We should consider Alchemical Fire as a metaphor for its mundane namesake, and thus readily intuit the passionate yet short-lived nature of the phenomenon by which its nature is expressed: the fury of the raging bull, the battle lust of the inflamed warrior. But equally, we see the inspiration of the thinker and prophet, the sudden thought underlying the inspirational speech of the orator, and the potential for combustion lying within the atomic structure of potassium and the molecular structure of petroleum.

Moving on to Qabalistic schema, we find that this suit represents the most ethereal of the four levels of creation, Atziluth, which is the domain of archetypes, of the potential of all things in the most tenuous sense. Although we may regard the world of Atziluth as eternal, it is important to be aware that in its realization in our material existence, it takes the form of fleeting inspiration, of sudden realization and compulsion to action. We need also to understand that the element of Fire is but the vehicle that conveys the one aspect of the impulse of a higher source and state of being. So when we find a card from this suit in our spread, we immediately note these elementary aspects.

But of course, Fire is modified by its environment. For instance, in the Two of Wands we find the astrological attribution of Mars in Aries, wherein the fury of the rage of war is ascendant and a great release of energy must ensue. In a Thelemic sense, this may represent “Pure Will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result… (Liber Al I:44).” And so we see the neat interlocking of the astrological and alchemical schema with those of the Qabalah and Thelema, thus affirming our conviction that the Tarot is indeed a map of the universe.

The Suit of Swords

Image ©2009 by Hettie Rowley

The Suit of Swords is assigned to Air. Alchemical Air is considered to be the issue of Fire and Water. As such, it is a more complex idea than those underpinning other elements. The first and foremost power we attribute to Air is that of intellect, of cold, dispassionate analysis. The act of analysis, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, is to break something into its constituent parts. And so it seems that nature itself has an inbuilt capacity for introspection.

In humans, this capacity, this expression of Air, is usually tempered with the illusions of Water, the reality of Earth and the passion of Fire. When this is not the case, we observe a sad and sorry creature, a human mind denuded of an appreciation for beauty, incapable of feeling; a calculating machine that knows logic alone.

In the Qabalistic scheme, Air corresponds to the domain of Beriah, the realm wherein the inspiration and passion of Atziluth is reduced to working schema and plans. This is the realm of the engineer as much as it is of the artist. So when viewing cards of this suit we should always be aware of the detachment implicit in the agency of Air. I have written elsewhere that we should always consider Air as the seed of the potential for division. This links most appositely with Thelemic scripture, wherein it is stated that, “For I am divided for Love’s sake, for the chance of union… (Liber Al 1:29).”

For as the redoubtable Mr. Crowley once told us, there are only two operations in all of nature: division and synthesis. To illustrate the astrological influences on this suit, we will use the example of the Two of Swords, which is assigned to the Moon in Libra. The Moon we regard as indicative of illusion, of distortion through the lens of Water and Libra, an Air sign as balanced force. Combining these things, we deduce that this card indicates a strongly driven intellectual force that is balanced and yet potentially misleading and illusory.

The Suit of Cups

Image ©2009 by Hettie Rowley

This suit is allocated to Alchemical Water. Immediately, a range of relationships and attributions spring to mind here: the Moon, Scorpio, illusion, the Sephira Binah, Cancer, Pisces and much else. An analogy with the mundane element is instructive when we consider the long term erosive effect of water; its power to confuse through reflection and distortion of reality exists together with the correlative power to most perfectly reflect an image of reality without ever being reality in itself.

Water is the fluidity of all things, nature’s capacity to dissolve the universe. Equally, Water is the element of rebirth after death, the incubator of time and life, the source of love. Which aspect is represented on any card depends as always on its position on the Tree, whether as a court card or a numbered card from one through to ten, each number representing a specific aspect of reality as existence unfolds from the nothingness of eternity into the fourfold realm of the Qabalah. Let us examine the Three of Cups as an example whereby we may illustrate the synthesis of meanings.

The Three of Cups is assigned to Mercury in Cancer. This means that the torrent of Water, or unrestrained love, symbolized by Cancer is quickened by the Word of the Logos, which provides us with the archetype of fertility, of an act of impregnation giving rise to the birth of the realization of an idea, of a concept. One of the children of water is of course Air, as described for the Suit of Swords, above. The problem for the reader and the querent is that Water is always the dominant influence in this suit, and so discerning reality from illusion may be difficult.

Further reinforcing this viewpoint is the attribution of the Suit of Cups to the Qabalistic domain Yetzirah, which is the realm of formation, of the fluidity of merged and swirling concepts that are about to differentiate and solidify in the “lowest” of the worlds, Assiyah. We readily observe that the properties of Yetzirah are fully consonant with the alchemical and astrological symbols we have so far attributed to this suit.

Further insight to The Suit of Cups is provided by the above image of Our Lady, the Holy Whore, Babalon. Here we see the Cup of the Blood of the Saints contained in Babalon’s Grail. On her forehead is the alchemical symbol of water, complemented by the Hebrew letter Mem lower down, symbol of the Great Sea of Binah, the Great Mother from whom all life and consciousness arise. Babalon accepts all, but first, every drop of blood must be surrendered to her Cup. Notice also the Moon representing the reflective powers of Water, its mystery and periodic brilliance.

To summarize then, in The Suit of Cups, we have the expression of alchemical Water, representing the womb of those things that will rise from death. And yet, Water also represents the decay of death, the final phases of corruption. We end this brief and inadequate section by repeating our assertion that Water is both truth and illusion, and remains so even under the influence of Mars or Jupiter, but most assuredly when refracting the light of Venus or the Moon.

The Suit of Disks

Image ©2009 by Hettie Rowley

We arrive now at the Suit of Disks, corresponding to the Qabalistic domain of Assiyah, the material world (in some respects, at least). Here we expect outcomes in measurable and identifiable morphology and dimension. Disks are assigned to the alchemical element Earth and, as such, represent the properties of the universe as we commonly perceive it. Whilst the origin of time for instance is with Binah, third of the emanations (Sephiroth) on the Tree of Life, in the domain of Earth, we are familiar with the fruits of time as aging, decay, sorrow and renewal.

There is solidity to this suit that dampens the lighter expressions of the planetary influences. There is an implied sluggishness, a lack of fluidity and fire. All of these things are well known, commonplace truths. But! The alchemists who devised these attributions were creatures of their own time, and worked to the boundaries of the knowledge available in their age. We now live in a radically different time, a transformed age within which our knowledge of the universe has grown immeasurably. Consider the following concerning the known composition of our physical universe:

• Stars and Galaxies:   0.4%
• Intergalactic Gas:      3.6%
• Dark Matter:              22.0%
• Dark Energy:             74.0%

The dark matter and energy are postulated by scientists as necessary factors to explain the expansion rate of the universe. However, they are termed dark because science as yet has no clue as to the true nature of either of these things. That last statement is most assuredly not a criticism of science, but given the gulf that still exists between the scientific and occult understanding of the universe, it seems possible that here lies at least a portion of the answer to the hiatus in our understanding.

Always we look to the gaps in our understanding for enlightenment, for the potential of synthesizing disparate facts into a greater and more cohesive whole. For this reason, I have dubbed Earth The Treasure-House of Limitless Secrets. For far from being the most understood of the elements, Earth may actually be the least, and our current understanding informs us that we must always look deeper than the surface in all earthly affairs if we are to have any chance of reaching the truth.

When we examine the Three of Disks as an example of this suit, we find the assignment of Mars in Capricorn, which denotes the fiery energy of Mars elevated in the domain of earthy Capricorn. This reminds us of the tale of Prometheus, bringer of Fire to humankind, exalted in the eyes of humanity yet brought low indeed in the eyes of the other gods.

The Qabalistic attribution of this card, assigned to Binah on the Tree of life, further damps the energy of fire with the dullness of time, and yet promises the birth of a new entity from the womb of the great mother. And so do we see the element of Earth, modified by its condition on each branch of the Tree of Life, as the dominant trait of the Suit of Disks.

The artwork of the figure just above illustrates the Sun and Moon forming the phallus of To Mega Therion, which is the counterpart of Babalon in her aspect as the fertile Earth and represented here by her seven pointed star. Their act of creation animates creation, penetrating and permeating the universe. Through the exchange of energies between these entities is the power of the Aeon of Horus unleashed. But this is no empty, unconscious outpouring of power, for the power of Horus permeates all even as he gazes over time’s latest landscape, ordering all in accordance with the precepts of Liber Al.

As Crowley states in The Book of Thoth, the newborn emerald green of Isis permeates the world, indicating the rebirth of Osiris as Horus. Again taking our cue from Crowley, the whirling spheres of nature indicate the vitality and power of Earth, of the final creation of Assiyah, and six wings support the composite globe of creation. Scattered in the darkness are the symbols of time and Earth: Saturn, the bringer of sorrow; the Earth signs of Taurus, Capricorn, and Virgo. And yet around the peripheries lies darkness, reflecting the current state of humanity’s ignorance. Surmounting the image is the Hebrew attribution to Malkhut, lowest of the Sephiroth, emphasizing the material level of the Suit of Disks. Finally, the number of the Master Therion, Aleister Crowley, Prophet of Aiwass and deliverer of The Book of the Law, is placed at the heart of the scheme.

Conclusion

We believe that this brief essay illustrates that the Tarot is a map of the universe synthesized from the knowledge of many mystical schools, but chiefly from Qabalah, Astrology and Alchemy. We have not attempted a complete exegesis here, but merely a brief distillation of a broader work in progress at this time.

Thanks

Sincere thanks to Sheta Kaey, Editor in chief of Rending the Veil, for the opportunity to submit this article to such a wonderful, high quality publication. Hettie and I are deeply honored and grateful.

The Authors

The artwork embedded in this piece is by Hettie Rowley of the Thelema Trust. The written work is by Keith Rowley, who co-owns the Thelema Trust with Hettie. This piece is derived from an ongoing analysis of the Thoth Tarot that is being developed on the Thelema web site. A blog with RSS feeds and subscription capabilities is available for contributions and comments.

©2009 Keith Rowley
Illustrated by Hettie Rowley
Edited by Sheta Kaey

“Angel” is a word that carries even more baggage than “soulmate” — baggage that goes back thousands of years to the beginnings of Judeo-Christian theology. While the most common definition of the word tends to be “messenger of God,” that raises the further question of “what is God?” and that’s a question I’m not going to touch with your ten-foot pole. It’s clear, however, that the Judeo-Christian majority in the Western world assumes that God and angels are known quantities, and that no one else should have any claim to them.

A long time acquaintance of mine has a relationship with a being many believe to be an archangel. His name is Azrael. My friend once told me, “Azrael says that angels are simply those who came before.” Meridjet appreciates the broad scope of that definition, and goes on to say that there is no explicit spiritual hierarchy as is often believed. There are no “higher” or “lower” beings, only less evolved and more evolved — further, if you like, but not higher. While the classification of higher and lower worlds and beings is useful, particularly in study of the Tree of Life, it’s important to remember that the map is not the territory. We should not fall into the trap of taking any symbol as literal truth, including the illusions of separation or hierarchy.

Most humans in the West, regardless of religion, tend to label worlds, planes, and beings of a subtler nature as “higher,” and worlds, planes, and beings of a less subtle, denser nature as “lower.” This labeling, while indeed useful for comprehension and aspiration, unfortunately grew into a judgment call. In time, any denser being was assumed to be evil, while any subtler being was assumed to be fundamentally good. While the hierarchical label itself isn’t a problem, the assumptions it invites are problematic because the nature of any being is not reliant upon its vibrational level any more than a television station on the “higher” digital band is essentially more divine than a television station on the “lower” analog band.

Angels, when reduced to the bare bones of the concept, are mediators between the divine and humankind, providing guidance, instruction, and service for the betterment of individuals and the whole of the species. This does not mean, however, that they are the light to a demon’s darkness in some cosmic polarity dividing the universe into “good” and “evil.” All beings have light and darkness within them, and all beings are capable of comforting as well as brutalizing us, if given sufficient cause. In the name of growth, most actions are acceptable. This is a very frightening thought.

In Thelema, my favored philosophy, there is the concept of the Holy Guardian Angel. This is not the usual “guardian angel” that hopeful individuals invoke in difficult or stressful situations, but something more akin to Socrates’ higher genius, what he called his daemon. Yet it is more than that. The function of the Holy Guardian Angel (HGA) is part higher self and part autonomous spirit guide, with a healthy dollop of animus (or anima, as the case may be), all wrapped up in mysterious, powerful attraction. It’s never firmly defined in any text, including this one, as it’s a concept that cannot be grasped without the experience to provide the Eureka!, the epiphany of understanding that accompanies all great truths.

The purpose of the HGA is generally described as “revealing your True Will,” “revealing your Great Work,” or “leading you to your life’s purpose.” These concepts, then, are often assumed to be synonymous. But as with the concept of hierarchy, these should not be taken merely at face value. I’ll attempt to explain them, and then circle back to illustrate my point. The “life’s purpose” is, of course, the reason you are here. It’s what you are meant to do. But how do you know what that purpose is? How do you discover it? Everyone judges the raison d´êtres of those who’ve passed on: When I was younger, people said that John Lennon had lived to promote peace and was killed when he’d learned all he needed to. Mother Teresa lived a life of sacrifice and love, caring for the poor; she was meant to set an example for the rest of us. Princess Diana’s life was meant to renew the inspiration of British royalty, while eschewing the status quo and traveling the world, revealing horrible conditions that even today we still seek to assuage. And so on. We speculate endlessly about the life purposes of now dead public figures because we find them easier to pigeonhole, to define according to our limited views of what’s important. Our own purposes elude us, and even as we seek them out, we may suffer doubt or fear that we’ve missed the signposts and are careening out of control, toward a death that will bring no easy epitaph.

Thelemites and magicians like to believe that they’ve got the inside scoop on what they’re meant to do with their lives. They talk about their HGAs and their True Wills, how “Love is the Law” and “compassion is the vice of Kings” as if they were members of a secret club giving out magic decoder rings to the worthy. Magical fraternities and orders perpetuate this belief by keeping certain teachings for the inner orders, available only by petition and initiation. “Would you like to learn why you’re here? Step right up and we’ll show you your life’s purpose!” This “life’s purpose” is the blind, or false information that sets the ignorant upon a pointless path, often found in magical texts and especially in the writings of Aleister Crowley. Or, if you’d rather, not really false information, in this case, so much as divergent information.

The Great Work is the term used by Thelemites to refer to the life’s purpose, which is revealed to the individual who receives Knowledge and Conversation with his or her Holy Guardian Angel (KCHGA). The blind exists in the novice’s assumption that one’s Great Work is mundane: to become something within the span of this lifetime that gains recognition, contributes something to the world, or in some way leads to the usual definition of “success.” When a magician claims to have KCHGA and in the next sentence refers to his Great Work as a mundane, finite goal, he reveals himself to be a fraud.

In actuality, the Great Work refers to the true (and infinite) goal of everyone, everywhere, regardless of race, creed, intelligence, or any other factor. This goal is simple: to evolve. To become something better today than we were yesterday. To grow as individuals. To put it in New Age terms, it’s the raising of the consciousness of humanity, ushering us into that New Age, or New Aeon, when restriction falls away and freedom equals harmony. It’s a pipe dream, when applied to the world as a whole; there is never going to be a recognizable dawning of a New Aeon, and certainly not in some great cosmic shift as so many like to believe. Dawn is incremental; by its very nature it is impossible to gauge except in retrospect: By the time the light of humanity (or day) shines brightly enough to be recognized, the dawn will have passed.

Furthermore, a single day’s worth of encounters with random humanity is enough to illustrate the vast number of people who have no interest in evolving unless it serves their most immediate needs. If they can’t see the payoff, they’re not going to bother. Case in point: Who believes that the wife-beater down the street who spends his entire welfare check on beer and weed has any desire to become more? But when you consider the individuals who do have an interest in that becoming, it’s at the very least food for thought. The world is made up of individuals, and someday maybe the majority will make that choice — to become more — one at a time, and will tip the scales in favor of that New Aeon. (In my opinion, this mundane universe is a compressed, self-contained learning system — a classroom — and eventually, everyone will move on to those “higher” vibrations and pass to a more enlightened universe. Whether this one ever really dawns into something more hopeful is very nearly immaterial.) And this brings us to the True Will.

The True Will is completely the property of the HGA. People, magicians, Thelemites can harp all day about making conscious choices and about how acting like a buffoon during an important meeting is their “true will,” but that won’t make it so. The True Will transcends conscious awareness, and it manipulates us in spite of ourselves. Make that choice, decide just one time that you’re going to seriously, truly dedicate yourself to your personal growth, and your True Will steps up to the plate and takes over. You may have never heard of the concept, but (unlike missionaries converting the savages to the love of Christ) it’s not necessary to know of it, because your conscious involvement is of little concern. The True Will is set into gear by your dedication, your choice, taking over like a spiritual autopilot, bringing you into line time and again. You may not get there — to “more” — via the most direct route, and you may not get there painlessly (in fact, the odds are against it), but you will get there, because once you’ve made the commitment, the Universe responds to every move you make with either momentum (supporting your conscious choices) or a slap upside the head. Have you ever felt battered by circumstances, asking yourself what you did to deserve this? Try looking around — what are you being shown? What is the Universe, and your HGA (KCHGA or not), trying to show you? Stop playing the victim, and take responsibility for the lesson. If you don’t, those slaps will just keep getting harder.

As the governor of True Will, your HGA will lead you in whatever way is necessary to accomplish your evolution. You’re now on the fast track, and look out, because (as a friend once said to me), your HGA will rip your arm off and smack you with it if he thinks that’s what will get the point across. I strongly advise listening before things get to the arm-ripping point.

Not your mother’s guardian angel, is it?

This article is excerpted from the upcoming book, Infinite Possibility.

Sheta Kaey is Editor in Chief of Rending the Veil and is working on her first book, Infinite Possibility. You can read her blog here.

©2009 by Sheta Kaey
Edited by Sarenth

0) Introduction

A New Aeon was proclaimed and begun in April of 1904 with the reception of The Book of the Law: Liber Al Vel Legis. A New Aeon implies a new paradigm or a new point of view with which to view the world. According to Liber Causae, “In all systems of religion is to be found a system of Initiation, which may be defined as the process by which a man comes to learn that unknown Crown.” If Initiation is common to “all systems of religion,” then how is Initiation to be understood in this Aeon of the Crowned and Conquering Child? What are the paradigm shifts which characterize the point of view from this New Aeon?

I intend to outline the basic views of New Aeon Initiation in this essay. There will be as little recourse to esoteric jargon as possible; ideally, an individual who has never encountered Thelema should be able to grasp many of the ideas explained here. It should be noted that the various ideas and formulae which are still valid in this New Aeon, i.e. those ideas that are “superseded” and not “abrogated,” will not be mentioned (as nothing has changed in these cases from the Old Aeons).

The basic ideas surrounding New Aeon Initiation are: death/ attainment as non-cataclysmic; the True Self contains both good and evil; an embracing of the world; the self as redeemer; and no perfection of the soul. All of these points will be treated in turn, and each will be exemplified by a central quotation from the corpus of Thelema.

1) Death / Attainment as Non-Cataclysmic

The basic idea associated with the last, Old Aeon is an obsession with death. The symbolic proponents of the Old Aeon paradigms — Osiris, Dionysus, Jesus, Adonis, etc. — are all bound by the central motif of a (painful) death. Death is seen as catastrophic, and a ritual act must be performed for the dead to be resurrected (or avenged). The cosmological parallel with this initiatory viewpoint is the idea that the Sun dies each night and the priesthood must perform a ritual for the Sun to rise again in the morning. Crowley often writes of the switch from the Old Aeon to the New Aeon view as paralleling the switch from a geocentric to a heliocentric view of our Solar System. Now we know that the Sun does not “die” each night, nor does any priest need to perform any kind of ritual for the Sun to rise in the morning. We know the Sun is constantly shining and it is only the turning of the earth which creates the succession of day and night: the apparent sight of the Sun “dying” each night and being “reborn” each morning has changed to the understanding that the Sun is never born nor dies. Frater Achad, or Charles Stansfeld Jones, encapsulated this idea in his essay, “Stepping Out of the Old Aeon Into the New”:

“You know how deeply we have always been impressed with the ideas of Sun-rise and Sun-set, and how our ancient brethren, seeing the Sun disappear at night and rise again in the morning, based all their religious ideas in this one conception of a Dying and Re-arisen God. This is the central idea of the religion of the Old Aeon but we have left it behind us because although it seemed to be based on Nature (and Nature’s symbols are always true), yet we have outgrown this idea which is only apparently true in Nature. Since this great Ritual of Sacrifice and Death was conceived and perpetuated, we, through the observation of our men of science, have come to know that it is not the Sun which rises and sets, but the earth on which we live which revolves so that its shadow cuts us off from the sunlight during what we call night. The Sun does not die, as the ancients thought; It is always shining, always radiating Light and Life.”

Crowley reiterates this view and explains the spiritual significance in The Heart of the Master where he writes,

“…When the time was ripe, appeared the Brethren of the Formula of Osiris, whose word is I A O; so that men worshipped Man, thinking him subject to Death, and his victory dependent upon Resurrection. Even so conceived they of the Sun as slain and reborn with every day, and every year. Now, this great Formula being fulfilled, and turned into abomination, this Lion came forth to proclaim the Aeon of Horus, the crowned and conquering child, who dieth not, nor is reborn, but goeth radiant ever upon His Way. Even so goeth the Sun: for as it is now known that night is but the shadow of the Earth, so Death is but the shadow of the Body, that veileth his Light from its bearer.”

Assimilating this idea of the Sun, in reality, never setting goes a long way to help the aspirant understand the spiritual truth of Thelema that this mirrors. In short, death (both of the ego and of the body) is no longer seen as cataclysmic in the New Aeon. This is because of two connected ideas: Death is complementary with Life, and Death is actually Change (“life to come”).

Let’s start with the first idea, that Death is complementary with Life. “Death is the apex of one curve of the snake Life: behold all opposites as necessary complements, and rejoice (Crowley, The Heart of the Master).” Life and death are the two complements that constitute existence, and all things are formed from the interplay of Life and Death. All things in the universe, including the mind and body of the aspirant, are subject to Life and Death. One might visualize existence as an undulating serpent, where the crest of a wave is Life and the trough is Death (which is the image Crowley uses above in The Heart of the Master).

This leads into the idea of Death as Change. We often think of Life as constituting change and Death as constituting stagnation: death implies a stop or an end. The New Aeon views Death not as an end but as the possibility for new Life. Just as the Winter brings “death” to plant life, it also gives nutrients to the soil to allow for the inevitable new Spring. (As a note, “Death” refers to the death of the physical body, but more importantly to the “death” or “dissolution” of the ego which can and does occur during an individual’s life.) Chapter 18, “Dewdrops,” of The Book of Lies explains this idea that Death is Change very succinctly:

“Verily, love is death, and death is life to come.
Man returneth not again; the stream floweth not uphill; the old life is no more; there is a new life that is not his.
Yet that life is of his very essence; it is more He than all that he calls He.”

The succinct idea that “death is life to come” is expounded here along with the idea that in the life that arises from death, we become “more ourselves.” The Life which arises from Death “is more He than all that he calls He.” This is because “all that he calls He” is his ego and in the death of the ego, we come to identify with the True Self which contains both Life and Death (and is therefore Eternal and Infinite). This death is not cataclysmic, but even equated with “love.” In the Tarot, which symbolically mirrors the initiatory paradigm of its age, traditionally has Atu XIII (or the 13th Trump) as “Death.” In the New Aeon, we may understand this card not as “Death” but “Transformation” or “Change.” In The Heart of the Master, Crowley writes short, poetic stanzas to describe each Tarot card. For “Atu XIII: Death” he writes, “The Universe is Change; every Change is the effect of an Act of Love; all Acts of Love contain Pure Joy. Die daily. Death is the apex of one curve of the snake Life: behold all opposites as necessary complements, and rejoice.” This is the fundamental paradigm shift of the New Aeon: not only is Death actually Change (and “life to come”), but it is a form of Love, and “all Acts of Love contain Pure Joy.” There is no trace of cataclysm, sorrow, or suffering in this conception of Death in the New Aeon.

Symbolically, this means Initiation (the myth-drama of each individual’s Path) is no longer portrayed as “The Man performing Self-Sacrifice” but as “The Child Growing to Maturity.” On this Crowley writes, “What then is the formula of the initiation of Horus? It will no longer be that of the Man, through Death. It will be the natural growth of the Child. His experiences will no more be regarded as catastrophic. Their hieroglyph is the Fool: the innocent and impotent Harpocrates Babe becomes the Horus Adult by obtaining the Wand (Crowley, Liber Samekh).” The idea is one of coming to maturity, specifically of “obtaining the Wand,” which represents the creative, generative power: this experience constitutes “spiritual puberty” for the individual, one might say. The process is not a cataclysm that needs rectifying (although puberty often seems cataclysmic!) but a natural process of growth and fulfillment of human potential.

Each person must destroy his or her ego self and come to identify with the True Self. Every man and woman must “break down the fortress of thine Individual Self, that thy Truth may spring free from the ruins (Crowley, The Heart of the Master). This necessarily involves the death or dissolution of the ego (“thine Individual Self”) to which many people are strongly attached. This is why death is seen as catastrophic: people view losses as catastrophic and the greatest lost to people is the loss of their ego. In both the Old and New Aeons, the ego must experience death in process of Initiation. The difference is the view of this phenomenon: the Old Aeon views death as a cataclysmic event whereas the New Aeon views it as a necessary step in the progress of Growth. As Crowley explains, “The Ego fears to lose control of the course of the mind… The Ego is justly apprehensive, for this ecstasy will lead to a situation when its annihilation will be decreed… Remember that the Ego is not really the centre and crown of the individual; indeed the whole trouble arises from its false claim to be so (Crowley, Commentary to Liber LXV I:60).”

Before the individual personally experiences the dissolution of his own ego, he must assimilate this New Aeon idea that “there is that which remains” after this death. Each person then must come to directly experience and even embody this truth — that is, each individual must come to know this truth through his or her own experience. “Faith must be slain by certainty,” as Crowley wrote (The Book of Thoth). We might even say that each person is psychologically stuck in the Old Aeon paradigm until he has this experience of the death of the ego. Only then can he be “freed of the obsession of the doom of the Ego in Death (Crowley, Little Essays Toward Truth, “Mastery”).” Only then can the individual identify with “that which remains,” which transcends but contains both Life and Death. In the New Aeon, each person “Let[s] the Illusion of the World pass over thee, unheeded, as thou goest from Midnight to the Morning. (Crowley, The Heart of the Master).”

The New Aeon is the Aeon of the Crowned and Conquering Child: Horus, Heru-Ra-Ha, Ra-Hoor-Khuit, and many other names. Horus is a symbol of the True Self that transcends Life and Death just as the Sun is a symbol of that which constantly shines even though day (Life) and night (Death) pass on earth, and just as the Child is a symbol of that which contains but transcends both mother (Life) and father (Death). In the “1st Aethyr” of The Vision and the Voice, Horus himself says of his nature:

“I am light, and I am night, and I am that which is beyond them.
I am speech, and I am silence, and I am that which is beyond them.
I am life, and I am death, and I am that which is beyond them.
I am war, and I am peace, and I am that which is beyond them.
I am weakness, and I am strength, and I am that which is beyond them.
…And it shall be unto them a grace and a sacrament, and ye shall all sit down together at the supernal banquet, and ye shall feast upon the honey of the gods, and be drunk upon the dew of immortality — FOR I AM HORUS, THE CROWNED AND CONQUERING CHILD, WHOM THOU KNEWEST NOT!”

As mentioned in later sections, in the New Aeon we view each individual as God Him/Herself. Therefore the work of each person is the release of identification with the ego and the consequent identification with Horus: That which transcends Life and Death (and all dualities). This is expressed symbolically by Frater Achad (and Crowley) in the idea of switching one’s perspective from Earth (the geocentric viewpoint where we experience day/ life and night/ death; the perspective of the ego) to the perspective from the Sun (the heliocentric viewpoint where experience perpetual shining through day and night; the perspective of the True Self).

This paradigmatic change from Old Aeon to New, in the sense of no longer seeing Death as cataclysmic, is captured symbolically in Crowley’s changes to old “formulae” to conform with the New Aeon point of view. Specifically, the change from IAO to VIAOV and the change from AUM to AUMGN that Crowley speaks about in Magick in Theory and Practice (Chapters 5 and 7, respectively) exemplify the paradigm shift from Old Aeon to New Aeon.

On the formula of IAO, Crowley writes, “This formula is the principal and most characteristic formula of Osiris, of the Redemption of Mankind. ‘I’ is Isis, Nature, ruined by ‘A’, Apophis the Destroyer, and restored to life by the Redeemer Osiris (Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice, Chapter 5 which should be consulted for a more full examination of VIAOV).” The basic idea is that I = Life which is ruined by A = Death/ Chaos which must then be redeemed by O. Existence is therefore a process of endless cataclysms which require redemption from this point of view.

How is this view changed from the point of view of New Aeon Initiation? Crowley writes, “THE MASTER THERION, in the Seventeenth year of the Aeon, has reconstructed the Word I A O to satisfy the new conditions of Magick imposed by progress.” Now, no one would deny that all things change, that “all things must pass,” but from the point of view of physics, energy is never created nor destroyed. It is simply transformed into different forms. If we identify with any of these partial phenomena which inevitably must be transformed, we are subject to death. If we “die daily” to our ego-self, to our sense of division or separateness from the world, then we come to identify with the Whole Process. “The many change and pass; the one remains (Liber Porta Lucis, line 20).”

The All contains all opposites within itself, it is the symbol of the Serpent itself whose undulations are Life and Death, and therefore is eternal. This True Self, the All which knows no division, is Horus and “that which remains.” It is with these ideas in mind we can understand why, in the New Aeon, IAO has become VIAOV. Basically, IAO has been surrounded by two Vs (these refer to the Hebrew letter “Vav” or the Greek letter “Digamma” for various reasons which can be investigated in Chapter 5 of Magick in Theory and Practice). What does this mean?

Essentially, the V represents “that which remains.” There may be processes of creation, destruction, and reconstruction (IAO) but there is always “that which remains.” The V remains unchanged through the various “IAO processes,” one might say. Even though the phallus of the father must “die” in ejaculation, it is a necessary step for new Life — the Child — to emerge… And the Semen, the Quintessence, remains unchanged (“that which remains”) throughout the entire process. This symbolic process exemplifies the ideas of the New Aeon, especially because the “death” in this case is ecstatic: the death is literally orgasmic. Further, Crowley writes in The Book of Lies, “the snake is the hieroglyphic representation of semen” and so the semen, which is “that which remains,” is identified with the snake or serpent which, as explained above, represents That which contains the complements of Life and Death (being the crest and trough of His undulations).

There is another interesting idea which this symbolic formula, VIAOV, conceals: One might consider the original V as ignorant man, i.e. man as ignorant of his True Self/ his identity with All Things, and the final V as man conscious of his own Divinity. It is through the process of IAO, or death of the ego, that each individual becomes consciously aware of him or herself as Horus, “that which remains,” for since all things are contained in the All-Self, it cannot be created or destroyed. Also, the V or the True Self was always there, except the individual was simply ignorant of this fact: “The series of transformations has not affected his identity; but it has explained him to himself (Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice, Chapter 5).” Crowley explains, “…the ‘Stone’ or ‘Elixir’ which results from our labours will be the pure and perfect Individual originally inherent in the substance chosen, and nothing else… the effective element of the Product is of the essence of its own nature, and inherent therein; the Work [then] consists in isolating it from its accretions (Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice, Chapter 20).” As Crowley writes in Liber LXV, “Thou wast with me from the beginning.”

Moving onto AUM becoming AUMGN, Crowley writes,

“The word AUM is the sacred Hindu mantra which was the supreme hieroglyph of Truth, a compendium of the Sacred Knowledge… Firstly, it represents the complete course of sound… Symbolically, this announces the course of Nature as proceeding from free and formless creation through controlled and formed preservation to the silence of destruction… We see accordingly how AUM is, on either system, the expression of a dogma which implies catastrophe in nature. It is cognate with the formula of the Slain God (Magick in Theory and Practice, Chapter 7, which should be consulted for a more complete examination of AUMGN).”

The formula of AUM therefore suffers from the same attitude problem as the formula of IAO: nature is catastrophic. Moving beyond this idea of existence as catastrophic is, as explained above, one facet of New Aeon Initiation. Crowley explains,

“The cardinal revelation of the Great Aeon of Horus is that this formula AUM does not represent the facts of nature. The point of view is based upon misapprehension of the character of existence. It soon became obvious to The Master Therion that AUM was an inadequate and misleading hieroglyph. It stated only part of the truth, and it implied a fundamental falsehood. He consequently determined to modify the word in such a manner as to fit it to represent the Arcana unveiled by the Aeon of which He had attained to be the Logos. The essential task was to emphasize the fact that nature is not catastrophic, but proceeds by means of undulations.”

The essential idea appears in the final sentence. As we have discussed above, the New Aeon point of view conceives existence as a Serpent whose undulations are Life and Death. The word AUM ends in M which symbolizes the fact that, “the formation of the individual from the absolute is closed by his death (Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice, Chapter 7).” Again the idea is one of Death as a stop or an end instead of “life to come” or one instance of Change. Now, how would GN added to the end of AUM “fix” the word? Crowley writes, “The undulatory formula of putrefaction is represented in the Qabalah by the letter N, which refers to Scorpio.” Both of these (the letter N and Scorpio) are traditionally attributed to “Atu XIII: Death” in the Tarot which was spoken of above (when it was suggested it might be more accurately titled “Change” or “Transformation”). Basically, “N” represents the idea that, “Death is life to come;” that is, Death is not an end but one apex of the curve of endless undulations. Crowley continues, “Now it so happens that the root GN signifies both knowledge [gnosis] and generation combined in a single idea, in an absolute form independent of personality.” The idea is basically that AUM does not accurately describe the course of nature because existence does not end in cataclysm. Therefore, by adding “GN” to AUM to form “AUMGN,” we assert that the process of nature is not cataclysmic. In fact, it does not end at all but instead “proceeds by means of undulations”: Death is not the end but simply one trough of the endless winding of the Serpent of the All-Self.

Essentially, “all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass & are done; but there is that which remains (Crowley/ Aiwass, Liber Al Vel Legis II:9).” It is the work of each individual to dissolve and de-identify with the ego-self and identify with “that which remains,” the True Self which transcends all division (especially between Life and Death) in that it contains All. The death of the ego is not cataclysmic because we know the Sun of the True, All-Self which “is more He than all that he calls He (Crowley, Book of Lies, Chapter 18)” is always shining regardless of our ignorance (our “darkness”). In short, in the New Aeon we give the advice, “If you are “walking in darkness”, do not try to make the sun rise by self-sacrifice, but wait in confidence for the dawn, and enjoy the pleasures of the night meanwhile (Crowley, The Law Is For All).”

“With courage conquering fear shall ye approach me: ye shall lay down your heads upon mine altar, expecting the sweep of the sword. But the first kiss of love shall be radiant on your lips; and all my darkness and terror shall turn to light and joy. Only those who fear shall fail.”
— Liber Tzaddi, lines 16-18

Editor’s Note: While many titles of the libers of Thelema are typically presented in quotation marks rather than italics, we have used italics to make the references in this article easier to find while scanning quickly.

See part two of this series here, and part three here.
©2009 IAO131
Edited by Sheta Kaey

He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
— Albert Einstein

Initially, the ethics of government and business were to be examined under separate sections. I found it impossible, however, to speak of one without mentioning the other, and for good reason: government and business, at least in the USA, are one and the same. It would not be unreasonable to think of U.S. government as a Corporate Democracy.

I wish I could have come up with another country to serve as a better example of capitalism gone awry. It saddens me to no end to see the country I love, a country founded with such lofty ideals by such great minds, and whose government has been the object of poetry as an example for all other governments and freedom loving individuals, hijacked by corporate giants and special interest groups.

In the last few years alone, we have witnessed American intervention in El Salvador, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Columbia, Panama, and South Africa. In Iran, our government overthrew a democratic government and replaced it with a dictatorship. The United States government funded Saddam Hussein for years, even before he came to power, and even stood by as he used chemical weapons against the Kurds, killing men, women and children alike. Panama did not exist as an independent country until the U.S. decided it wanted to build a canal there. Then there is the matter of Manuel Noriega’s ties to the CIA and the “Company’s” involvement in cocaine trafficking. In Chile, our government overthrew another popularly elected government, although it took two tries. And this doesn’t even touch on American economic policies.

Even though most American citizens would rather not know these things, they are not secrets. No form of self-imposed ignorance, such as blind patriotism or sentimentalism, will change the fact that the horrible events, and the senseless disaster that occurred on 9/11 are (at least in part) in some way the result of American foreign policy. Our leaders know this. Those poor people did not deserve what happened to them on that fateful day, and the individuals that caused it should be hunted down like the animals that they are. Instead, government leaders have seized upon this opportunity to launch huge military campaigns for corporate interest groups. This is precisely why we must learn and use critical thinking skills and ethics, choosing freedom to deliberate rather than swallowing propaganda, logical thinking rather than sentimentalism, and individual pride in doing the right thing instead of blind patriotism if we are going to prevent this from ever happening again.

For many people¹, the United States is a failed experiment. Americans are deeply divided; even the propaganda fails to cast a believable illusion of unity, and there appears to be little hope for reconciliation in the near future. The very government that pretends to be a champion of freedom has used the fear generated by the attacks of that fateful September day to convince its subjects to voluntarily surrender what is left of their freedoms. What little culture there is appears to be quickly fading under the military boots of America’s so-called “Religious Right.”² The liberals distrust the highest political practices and this will eventually erode whatever civility is holding this country together. Dialogue is useless because most people surrender like sheep to every lie fed to them by their religious leaders, such as the myth that America’s Forefathers were champions of a Christian government. It is similarly useless to recommend that they read the works penned by the architects of this country, because they prefer a lie of their own making to the truth.

Men that loved freedom and were willing to die for it built up this country: ethical men. Their voices can be heard while reading the founding documents, personal memoirs, and the letters they wrote to their family and compatriots. The United States has not seen its greatest day, and that day is only delayed by greed, lack of critical thinking and ethics, blind patriotism and sentimentality. We must be capable of thinking beyond our own needs to observe the impact that these lies are having on our families and friends, government, and ultimately the relationship and responsibility that you share with every other human on this planet. In corporate democracies, people vote with their money. Every dollar is a vote. Think of money as a talisman, and learn to use the power it affords you wisely.

So why apply ethics to business? The Libertarian will tell you that corporations are, by definition, designed solely to make money for their stockholders. In other words, a corporation’s “True Will” is to make money, and as such, it should not be subject to the same penalties or restrictions as regular people. The stockholders, lacking ethics, lobby to make a world where their corporations rule supreme. In such a world, they can do business without any mandatory compliance to environmental restrictions, workers’ rights or unions, without paying corporate taxes, and without shame for exploiting people at home and abroad. Consider the benefits afforded to HMOs, oil companies, energy brokers, and the like. The Food and Drug Administration, which was instituted to protect consumers from harm caused by snake oil salesmen, takes donations from the very pharmaceutical companies that manufacture the drugs it is supposed to regulate. This is a conflict of interest at best, and accepting bribes at worst. Is this ethical?

Was it ethical for the Fox Network to persuade the court that they were not obligated to report the truth in their news broadcasts? Fox thereby avoided paying damages in a lawsuit awarded to a former reporter wrongfully terminated for trying to report the truth. Where were the ethics of this company? Where were the ethics of the judge that ruled in their favor? Knowing this, what can be said of people that still tune in to get their news there?

Is a company that was fined for polluting in one country ethical when it relocates its plants to other countries too poor to demand environmental compliance? What of a rancher that introduces a cow displaying symptoms of mad cow disease into the food chain rather than lose a few bucks? Is the sole purpose of business to make money, without concerning itself with ethics? Can a business justify its disregard for public or ecological responsibility because their primary objective is to make money for their stockholders? If a business creates an environmental disaster affecting people everywhere, should that company be responsible for cleaning up its own messes, or should the taxpayers foot the bill? Is it ethical when government forces the taxpayer to pay for the logging roads that will be utilized exclusively by logging companies in harvesting our forests?³

Consider capitalism⁴ and how governments embracing this paradigm conduct their affairs as businesses. Capitalism, in its present form, is concerned with the accumulation of wealth to no particular end. When the few benefiting from the money-grab have milked their own country dry, capitalism must, by necessity, spread its domain to other cultures in order to continue feeding their addiction. This is why countries go to war. It isn’t for freedom or liberty. It isn’t for a love of justice, but a love for more and more things.

Reflect on the present conundrum in the Middle East. In recent memory, we can trace this problem to an Iranian “bad guy” that wouldn’t play ball with the U.S. government. The U.S. government replaced this leader with someone they could exploit. This led to the American hostage crisis, where the radical Iranians kidnapped American citizens. Back then, Saddam was a “good guy,”⁵ and Reagan armed him to fight against the Ayatollah, who was a “bad guy.” When Saddam wouldn’t play ball with the U.S., President Bush Sr. dubbed him a “bad guy” and carpet-bombed his country. Later, when now Vice President Cheney wanted to do business with him, he was once again a “good guy” — until, of course President Bush Jr. needed a diversion for not being able to find Bin Laden — who in turn was a “good guy” when we armed him to fight the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in the ’70s and ’80s, but a “bad guy” for having the U.S. bombed in 2001. In short, people who do what we want are “good guys” — but they are “bad guys” when they resist exploitation. Government can get away with these things time and time again when citizens suffer from historical amnesia and intellectual laziness.

The simplest way to make this point is to compare capitalist or corporate governments to ancient Rome. Much like today, Roman soldiers were deployed to other countries in order to feed some emperor’s hunger for gold and other luxuries. There is an obvious difference between Rome and our present world: Roman citizens benefited from Rome’s conquests, and the Roman government only catered to the greed of the emperor rather than business interests. Like those of yesteryear, today’s emperors remind us to be “patriotic” and “support our troops” while they send our boys and girls to fight — not to liberate some country from an intolerable despot, but to capitalize the country and exploit its resources. It is surprising that more people don’t protest these maneuvers, but it is even more astounding that they can find people to fight these wars in the first place.

At the same time, well-meaning soldiers that enlisted for a love of their country, or because joining the military provides them the only opportunity to have an education,⁶ spill their blood and the blood of the occupied people so that the friends of the commander-in-chief can enlarge their coffers. Presently, concurrent with the call for patriotism and support, senators plot the end of military medical benefits for those very same soldiers they sent to the desert, in order to pass those savings on to the hungry corporations (HMOs and other medical insurance corporations). That’s some support.

It is typical to blame human nature for our own individual failures or our inability to exchange the things we want to do for the things we should do. Killing others over resources is often justified as human nature. It is romanticized by religion, portrayed as some lofty spiritual goal. We force ourselves into the social acceptance of war when we accept it as a form of “patriotism.” To posit that true human nature is driven by a desire for universal brotherhood is to invoke the wrath of individuals who find it easier to watch the atrocities of war than to stand against it. To categorize war as human nature without a second thought is to deny the possibility that we may one day evolve beyond our own self-destructive behavior. It denies the existence of the True Will, making all of us slaves unable to choose our own course.

It is a good scam, if you think about it. Taxpayers foot the bill for a military occupation to benefit their business interests. Soldiers are exploited and are stripped of their benefits so that they will either have to pay to for the emotional and physical injuries that they incurred while fighting for the same companies that are now discarding them like broken tools, or else join the thousands of mentally and physically handicapped vets — a large majority of whom are homeless.

Elsewhere, genocide and ethnic cleansing occurs on our little blue planet, but since there is no economic benefit to corporate interests there, “the powers that be” turn a blind eye to the slaughter. To prove this point, we must simply consider how the U.S. has imposed trade embargoes on Cuba and Vietnam because they are communist⁷ while China, which is also communist and is a country with a horrible record and long history of human rights violations, can be awarded “most favored trade status.” The answer is quite simple. Capitalism has spread to China, and its emperor is willing to play the capitalist game to cash in on its resources of slave labor so that huge corporate interests in the U.S. can benefit by the cheap manufacturing that slave labor provides. American government turns a blind eye to the fact that the Chinese government regularly harvests the organs of living prisoners against their will for profit, even when the overwhelming majority of Chinese prisoners have been imprisoned solely for having spoken against an oppressive government.

Again, this form of capitalism has to spread abroad, once all resources in the homeland are exhausted. The relationship between the U.S. and China is tenuous at best and dangerous at worst, since once each of these countries have exploited one another they will once again have to compete with one another for resources, and today is a much more dangerous world that it was during the Cold War. And all the while, people in Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba die every day from hunger and lack of medical supplies because they refuse to cave in to capitalist pressure. This is what we can expect to see from ethically bankrupt governments (and businesses).

Footnotes

1. Many of them Native Americans.
2. Must we wonder why religion is so repulsive to so many people?
3. The same forest taxpayers pay to protect.
4. Capitalism is not unethical in and of itself. There are ethical ways of doing business. It is what is been passed off as “capitalism” today which is without ethics.
5. Even though he was using chemical agents to genocide the Kurds.
6. How fortunate for the military.
7. The “red threat” is still an effective boogieman for fear-based societies.

©2007 Gerald del Campo
Edited by Naya and Sheta Kaey.

“A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.” — Albert Einstein

The source of ethics is the subject of much controversy and debate, and I hope that it will always remain that way. The religionists say that ethics are divinely inspired, while the atheists insist that ethics come from being human, the ability to empathize, and a mindful recognition of the connection between himself and his fellow man. In other words, they claim being ethical is a human trait. While considering this, one might see this as a paradox: ethics as a uniquely human trait illustrate the divine nature of man on the one hand, and on the other we must question how human a quality can be when so very few humans seem to possess it. Perhaps this is what is meant by “let my servants be few and secret¹.” The Western Mystery Tradition has always been preoccupied with being more than human. If we look around, we can see why this is necessary.

The atheist blames religion for the world’s woes because he generally feels that people should do the right thing out of humanity or principle, rather than fear, and yet this is a terribly unfair assessment. Not all religion is fear-based, nor are all religious people acting out of fear when they do the right thing. One must learn to take the bad with the good. Despite the many instances when evil men have used religion to justify killing and torture, a lot of good has been done and continues to be done in its name. The notable movie personality Martin Sheen once said, “We shouldn’t be critical of Christianity, because it hasn’t been tried².” If Christianity hasn’t been tried, then how much less can we say of Thelema? Even more disturbing is the idea that 2,000 years can come and go with so very few people ever adhering to their chosen paradigm.

Adherents of Christianity have, for the most part, only given lip service to the teachings of Jesus. It is true that people are healed, fed, and taken care of in dire times, but at the cost of their soul — the motivation for this aid has always been to convert. This made me think of the hypocrisy inherent in so many religious zealots who insist on representing their sect because doing so gives them a feeling of superiority. They appear to be better than others, but their actions do their chosen paradigm a great disservice. In other words, it isn’t the religious paradigm that has failed, but the adherents (if, after all this, we can still call them that) for not being sufficiently sincere to subject themselves to the inconveniences imposed by their chosen beliefs. They are only adherents when it serves them to reach their desired goals.

The religionists blame atheism for the world’s problems, insinuating that a belief in God is necessary for ethical behavior. Again, this is misplaced blame. They believe that people are incapable of acting rightly or honorable unless they are motivated by fear. Atheists can have conviction. Neither Buddhism nor Taoism requires belief in a “god,” and yet right action is a great preoccupation for adherents of both of these religious paradigms.

The ethical atheist may be more genuine than his religionist counterpart since the atheist is generally motivated by compassion, love, and/or enlightened self-interest, while the other (at least if he subscribes to the concepts of hell and eternal damnation) is largely motivated by fear and selfish self-interest. Perhaps the best way to explain the problem with religion-based ethics is to reference the 2004 US elections, where many people voted for the person that supposedly exemplified “Christian values” such as homophobia and a hatred for anything they saw as “liberal.”³ Crowley was clearly right about the shortcomings of so-called democracy⁴.

While it is true that religion can advocate high ethical standards, we would err greatly if we were to identify ethics exclusively with religious conviction. If ethics were confined to religion, then we would only see them in the actions of religious people. If this were true, then how do we explain the ethics of the atheist? Ethics are not synonymous with religion.

So what are ethics? I define ethics as a standard of right and wrong that dictates what humans should do in terms of rights, duty, and commitment to society, justice, or specific virtues, such as the Eleven Virtues of Thelemic Knighthood⁵.

Most importantly, however, are ethics as the development of one’s personal standards. That is what an ethical person does. Feelings, laws, and social norms often stray from what is ethical, so we must constantly test our own standards to make sure that they are rational and well-founded. The study of ethics is the noble endeavor of scrutinizing our own beliefs and conduct, and the work of ensuring that the institutions we shape achieve the standards worthy of those chosen beliefs. This is an application of ethics that doesn’t seem to be getting much attention today. To say it a different way, the study of ethics is important because it will guide us away from decision making based on peer pressure and the desire for external validation, and help guide our lives in accordance with our own personal internal compass. It doesn’t get any more Thelemic than that.

Nietzsche and many of his contemporaries went to great lengths to show that there was no such thing as because all that we do, no matter how well intentioned, benefits us in one way or another. In other words, there are no selfless acts. But we already know that. Perhaps the English journalist Gilbert Chesterton said it best when he wrote:

“The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues[…] virtues gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians care only for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful⁶.”

Nietzsche explains that any altruistic act creates weakness because compassion and charity are insults to the individual to whom they are directed,⁷ and that those actions, as well intentioned as they may be, cause a sort of dependence rather than empowering the individual to rise up or fail on their own strength. Many Thelemites sincerely believe that this is what will cleanse the human race of all weakness of body and mind and create the ideal man, and that this sort of disregard to the suffering of one’s fellows is to be credited for the greatness that humanity has already attained.

Crowley seemed to subscribe to this idea as well, and if one reads through his comments on Liber Al
, this is how he has chosen to interpret some difficult passages of The Book of the Law
. It is somewhat ironic that very few people seem to follow Nietzsche’s or Crowley’s advice of questioning all things.

• Crowley was rather jaded toward the end of his life. His later comments reflect an attitude contradictory to what he wrote of the text when he was young and idealistic.
• His views were, unfortunately, very biased against every idea associated with Christianity. Given his parents’ strict, conservative household one can hardly blame him for this, but the reader should keep in mind that he obviously had trouble with this and it may have colored his interpretation of the message he was receiving.
• Neither Crowley nor Nietzsche have considered that compassion might be a human trait⁸ or that there may be a very good reason why people feel good when they do things for others. Nor have they considered how compassion, reverence, and empathy have contributed to human evolution. Humans help one another. As painful as it is for some to acknowledge, no man is an island, nor would we have developed communities, societies, or anything of lasting value without cooperating with others. Strength also comes in numbers.
• It is illogical to demonize compassion, reverence, and empathy simply because of the selfish nature of altruism, since compassion, reverence and empathy can come from other places. And as far as the “weak” are concerned — without people like Einstein, who had trouble spelling his name until he was eight⁹, or without Stephen Hawking we may not have dared to venture beyond already known ideas about the nature of time and the universe. John Merrick¹⁰ exemplified courage and inner strength. It is difficult to imagine never having heard a melody made by Chopin, or the teachings of Crowley himself, had they been allowed to die simply because of their debilitating illnesses. Strength comes in many forms, and often it only becomes apparent later in life. “Every man and every woman is a star¹¹.” This is not to say that everyone has something worthwhile to contribute to human evolution, but in an ideal world, everyone would have the opportunity.
• Christianity seems to dictate that altruism implies that a person’s primary ethical responsibility is to others first, while egoism holds that one’s primary obligation is to oneself, and toward advancing one’s own self-interest. Nietzsche, Crowley and others have categorized altruism as a “slave morality” without any redeeming qualities. I also concur. Both Nietzsche and Crowley have noted that what appears to be an altruistic act on the surface actually furthers one’s self-interest, and they say it like it is a bad thing. A person’s self-interest must come first, and there are many ways to further one’s self-interest. For example, the Order of Thelemic Knights does not engage in charitable campaigns because its members are trying to learn to be altruistic; we do so because it furthers our own personal growth. That others benefit from our work began as a wonderful coincidence we’d like to keep.

Different Ethical Paradigms, or Why Kant We Just Get Along?

The five examples listed below represent the most popular forms of ethics used today in everyday life. It will become apparent that each has its strength and weakness. There are numerous more which could not be included here due to the limited scope of this dissertation. There are approaches within approaches. To make matters more confusing, every method described below could be used to justify unethical behavior.

In the Utilitarian approach, for example, there is the Ethical Egoist, who concerns himself exclusively with his own benefit, while a Consequentialist Utilitarian works toward the good of all who are affected by an action or deliberation¹². Both look for a positive outcome or opportunity, but they differ on who should benefit.

Frequently, Utilitarianism will require that one do what is best for the greatest number of people, rather than what is good for oneself — but that isn’t to say that it cannot be used to justify something considered unethical by every other standard. For example, a Utilitarian could make the case that prisoners with life sentences should be used for medical experiments, arguing that discoveries could be made which would benefit millions of people of much higher character. This treatment of prisoners would not hurt the majority, and one could justify it by making the claim that the prisoners deserve to pay for their crimes in a way that would benefit society. If a prisoner should die in the experiments, then the scientists and doctors could endorse their experiments with the statement that, had they lived, they would be a burden to society since taxpayers have to pay to house, feed, and clothe them for life.

The bottom line is that whether we understand ethics or not, we still have the choice of doing the wrong thing or the right thing. Ultimately, we have to rely on our own self-knowledge, sense of self-worth, pride, integrity, and sincere effort to get us through tough decisions. You should also keep in mind, as you read this, that no one uses one method exclusively, but that they borrow what seems most comfortable to make their own ethical decisions.

The Utilitarian Approach

Utilitarianism was conceived by the English philosopher and political radical Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). Jeremy Bentham spent most of his life critiquing law and strongly advocating legal reform, and came up with the system to assist lawmakers in deciding which laws were the most ethical. In a nutshell, the Utilitarian approach dictates that the most ethical decisions are the ones that result in the least evil¹³.

United States politicians and lawmakers tend to be Utilitarian or Consequentialist¹⁴ in their problem solving. The most important consideration is what effect the policy will have on the average citizen.

When using Utilitarianism to look for an ethical course of action, we might approach the issue by first asking ourselves a few questions. It might go something like this:

What are the options available to us?

Who will be affected by our decisions?

What benefit or harm will each course of action lead us to?

After those questions have been answered, we chose an option that will cause the least amount of harm and benefit the greatest number of people. In Utilitarianism, the most appropriate action provides the most benefit to the greatest number.

One of the clear shortcomings of the Utilitarian approach is that there is a tendency to ignore justice. Apartheid in South Africa comes as a good example in recent history, when South African whites decided that all South Africans, black and white, would be better served under white leadership. Those arguing in favor of this view claimed that social conditions declined in African nations that exchanged exclusively white governments for black or mixed governance. The proponents of apartheid predicted civil war, financial decline, food shortages, and social instability following the establishment of a black majority government. These predictions did not occur when apartheid ended. If it had, then the white government of South Africa would have been ethically justified by utilitarianism, in spite of its discrimination.

The Rights Approach

The Rights Approach¹⁵ is rooted in the philosophical works of Kant, whose focus was on the right to choose for oneself. This philosophy supposes that humans have a moral right to choose freely, and that this freedom of choice is what gives humans their dignity and separates us from objects that can or should be manipulated. In other words, every human should be respected and given the choice to live their life in accordance with that choice. To say it another way, it is unethical to demand that a person act in a fashion that they have not personally chosen.

“Every action is right which in itself, or in the maxim on which it proceeds, is such that it can coexist along with the freedom of the will of each and all in action, according to a universal law¹⁶.”

Some of the rights listed below might remind you of Liber OZ. In fact, Liber OZ is so close to the human rights this ethical approach dictates that it is entirely possible it might have come to Crowley as a result of Kant’s writings. See for yourself:

The right to truthful information. The right to be told the truth about matters that may affect our lives.

The right of privacy. The right to do, believe, and say whatever we choose, provided that we do not violate the rights of others.

The right not to be injured. The right not to be harmed unless we knowingly do something that warrants retribution, or we choose to risk such injury of our own free will.

The right to what is agreed. We are entitled to hold a reasonable expectation of what is promised to us by people with whom we have freely entered into a pact or covenant.

When using the Rights Approach to explore an ethical course of action, we only need ask ourselves one question: does our decision/action respect the rights of everyone?

We only need to look at the deceptively titled “Patriot Act“¹⁷ to see how our rights are violated in the USA. With the implementation of this act, Americans lost the following freedoms and rights:

Freedom of association. Government may now spy on religious and political institutions even if they are not suspected of criminal activity, discouraging individuals from pursuing their right to freedom of association. Specific groups have been branded “terrorist organizations,” making membership in them illegal.

Freedom of information. Government has closed immigration hearings and has held hundreds of people without charging them with criminal offense, and has applied pressure to public and civil servants to withhold once freely available information from the public.¹⁸

Freedom of speech. Government may subpoena information from public librarians (such as individual patron records, listing books that were checked out), and may punish them if they alert individuals.¹⁹

The right to legal representation. Government officials may monitor once protected attorney-client conversations in prisons, as well as denying legal assistance to Americans accused of crimes.

Freedom from unreasonable searches. Government may search and seize property and papers without probable cause.

The right to a speedy and public trial. Americans may be declared “enemy combatants” and imprisoned indefinitely without a trial.

Right to confront accusers. Not only can Americans be jailed without being charged of a crime, but also they do not have the right to confront their accusers.

In short, under the Rights Approach, it is clear that the provisions in the Patriot Act, which circumscribe citizens rights as described by Kant and enumerated in the U.S. Constitution, are unethical. Furthermore, the Patriot Act opens the door to future legislation further limiting or completely eliminating these and other rights. Government agencies are protected against accountability by way of increased secrecy and lack of judicial oversight, checks and balances.

The Fairness or Justice Approach

This method is very similar to the Rights Approach, but has its origins in the teachings of Aristotle, who states that favoritism and discrimination are unethical and unjust, because giving benefit to someone without a justifiable reason is unfair to those denied those benefits. He teaches that discrimination is unreasonable because it burdens people who are no different than those spared from the same burdens. The fundamental moral questions for using this method are:

How fair is an act?
Does it deal with everyone in a similar fashion?
Does it demonstrate preferential treatment or bias?

Consider ballot measure 36 in Oregon’s Spring 2005 elections. This measure amended Oregon’s constitution to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. It is a reaction to Oregon’s gay community in general (which rightly feels discriminated against), and specifically against Multnomah County’s ruling that denying marriage licenses to homosexual couples was a discriminatory practice that denied homosexual couples the same benefits available to married heterosexual couples.²⁰ These people pay taxes, and should receive the same treatment and benefits as other socially responsible taxpayers, regardless of sexual orientation. If a true separation existed between Church and State, this wouldn’t be an issue at all.

This political issue is a good example of a violation of The Fairness or Justice Approach and the Rights Approach described above as well as the rights declared in Liber OZ²¹.

Rules, such as the Equal Opportunity Act, the Fair Housing Act and the like will always exist, no matter how well we evolve, so long as someone is denied the same opportunities as others. I realize that these laws are rather arbitrary, and oftentimes when misused they can be a source of reverse discrimination.²² As a result, many shortsighted individuals have rallied to put an end to these protections, but if they succeed, we will never see the true geniuses rise up above the rest because they will not have an equal field on which to begin to prove themselves.

Consider this for a moment. On the one hand, we have the head of a corporation who had the best education money could buy, who never had to struggle with paying rent or putting food on the table, who inherited his father’s fortune and who took over as the figurehead of the organization. On the other hand, we have a foreigner (or single mother) who comes to this country with little more than a dream, who lives in one of the many shanty towns, ghettos or ‘projects,’ who attends the overcrowded and underfunded public school systems and grows up to have his or her own tailor shop. Who is the superior being? Is the accumulation of wealth the sole genetic trait for strength, or are there others?

The Common Good Approach

This approach to ethical problems began some 2,000 years ago with the writings of Plato, Aristotle and Cicero. It suggests that a person’s own good is inextricably connected to the good of the community. In other words, members of a community are duty-bound to the pursuit of common values and goals. In recent times, John Rawls has defined “common good” as “certain general conditions that are…equally to everyone’s advantage²³.”

This methodology approaches social problems by making certain that the policies, systems, institutions, and environments we so often take for granted are beneficial to all. Affordable health care, public safety, world peace, justice, and environmental issues are all subject to consideration.

Furthering the common good compels us to view ourselves as members of the same community and questions regarding of the kind of society, order, fraternity or neighborhood we want to develop and how we are to achieve it are the dominant considerations. This does not mean that the Common Good Approach disregards the rights of individuals, but rather, it provides us with the opportunity to look for the things we have in common instead of the things that make us different.

For example, if you feel that the children and loved ones of politicians who start wars should not be exempt from fighting those wars, or that politicians should send their kids to public schools, or that politicians should live in the neighborhoods where they work while earning the same salaries of the average citizen living in the area, then you might be using the Common Good Approach.

The Virtue Approach

The presumption made by the Virtue Approach is that some ideals that will accelerate our own personal and universal evolution, because when one of us rises up above the norm, the whole of humanity benefits from the evolutionary leap. They make us better people by helping us to develop. We begin to develop a sense of the required virtues by reflecting on our own potential.

Virtues empower us to behave and act in a manner that leads us to our highest personal potential. Virtues, once embraced, become a characteristic trait. Additionally, an individual who has accepted virtues will be predisposed to act in a manner consistent with his or her ethical principles because virtue relates to ethics. A virtuous person is an ethical person, and those few that truly and sincerely embrace The Eleven Virtues of Thelemic Knighthood can inspire amazing changes in character.

Most of the questions one might consider while using the Virtue Approach deal with the compromises one is making to their character. For example:

What sort of person will this action make me?
Will I be compromising my character or betraying my beliefs or myself?
Will this action reflect badly on my chosen philosophical/religious paradigm?
Will this choice of action promote, or interfere with, my development?
Is this behavior befitting of the sort of person I am trying to become?
Is this behavior and its consequences in line with my True Will?

The Virtue Approach concerns itself with self-worth. It holds that one’s integrity and honor are reflections of the individual’s true nature; therefore, there is an emphasis on action and works. This approach to ethics is a very popular substitute for rule-based (deontological) and results-based (consequentialist) ethics. In fact, the Virtue Approach to ethics was created out of frustration with ethical concepts of duty and obligation. It was a reactionary response to the use of convenient, but unbending and ineffective, moral rules and principles that are often used as standards to all moral situations²⁴.

How the Virtue Approach varies, from, say, the Utilitarian and Consequentialist Approach, becomes apparent when using the following classical ethical dilemma: A man’s wife becomes very sick, and he spends an astonishing amount of money to attempt to save her life. In fact, with the amount of money he spent trying to save one woman, he could have saved ten women he didn’t know. The utilitarian would say that the man should have used his money to save the greater number of people. A virtue ethicist would argue that placing the welfare of loved ones above the welfare of strangers is essentially good because it isn’t natural for humans to make life-and-death decisions based on some mathematical moral calculation. They would also argue that few people would want to live in a world where we forsake our own spouses to save strangers.

Applied Ethics, or Ethical Problem Solving

Unfortunately, no templates or guaranteed methods provide nice, squeaky-clean solutions to ethical dilemmas. Wouldn’t that be nice? Ultimately, we are all going to have to get our hands dirty, but maybe we can arm ourselves by looking at the facts, understanding ethics and choosing to be ethical so that we can minimize damage. First and foremost, cause no harm.

At the very least, ask yourself the following questions:

Do I have all the facts?
What are my options?
What option will lead to the most balanced end?
What benefits will my decision provide, and who will benefit?
Will my course of action violate anyone else’s rights?
Will my action show unwarranted favoritism or discrimination?
Which decision increases the common good most?
Is my chosen course of action harmonious with my own ethics?

Footnotes:

1. Liber Al Vel Legis — The Book of the Law I:10
2. It is a little absolutist to claim, “it hasn’t been tried,” without simultaneously discounting the work of some remarkable individuals, such as Mother Teresa, for example. But it is easy to agree since very few adherents of Christianity are actually doing the work of Christ.
3. Such as affordable healthcare, education, and scientifically-based research.
4. “The principle of popular election is a fatal folly; its results are visible in every so-called democracy. The elected man is always the mediocrity; he is the safe man, the sound man, the man who displeases the majority less than any other; and therefore never the genius, the man of progress and illumination.” —Liber 194 — An Intimation with Reference to the Constitution of the Order
5. Valor, Nobility, Discernment, Pride, Compassion, Fidelity, Passion, Strength, Discipline, Self-Reliance, and Hospitality.
6. Gilbert Chesterton, Orthodoxy, (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1959), page 30.
7. The Anti-Christ. Section 7. He uses the word “pity.” Many wrongly (and conveniently) lump pity with compassion.
8. Either as a natural occurring phenomena, something evolutionarily useful, or both. Current research may be on the verge of providing scientific data to support this view.
9. According to his mother, didn’t speak until he was three. Little Albert was terribly dyslexic.
10. The “Elephant Man.”
11. Liber Al Vel Legis — The Book of the Law — I:III
12. Always look for a way to benefit everyone… including oneself.
13. “Evil” is an emotionally loaded term, and this is why I have chosen to use it.
14. Consequentialism is a branch of Utilitarianism that dictates that we should do whatever increases the chances for good consequences. What one does to achieve these good consequences is irrelevant. What matters is that the good results are maximized. It’s a counterpart of deontological ethics.
15. I have refrained from criticizing The Rights Approach by referencing Liber OZ to make this point because I felt it would be redundant. Most anyone that reads this will already have first-hand experience of the tremendous potential for abuse in that document.
16. The Science of Right by Immanuel Kant, 1790.
17. The Patriot Act was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001. The name was carefully chosen in order to alienate those that disapprove of the gross restrictions and violations of constitutional rights proposed by the act.
18. The Freedom of Information Act.
19. Librarians have rebelled against this act by changing the way they keep records.
20. These benefits include, but are not limited to, medical benefits for their lovers, better opportunities for low interest home loans, the right to visit an ill partner in the hospital, the right to make end of life care decisions for partners, the right to inherit in cases of intestacy, the ability to adopt children, joint filing on income tax returns and other social benefits afforded to heterosexual couples.
21. But the most important philosophical issue in this debate is whether or not the State can determine who can and cannot marry in a country where the separation of Church and State is guaranteed. If that separation truly existed, then the argument would be between the heads of the churches, and not a matter for government.
22. Reverse discrimination takes place any time that well-qualified native applicants are overlooked for employment in favor of people of color or a certain sex just to meet some arbitrary criteria.
23. A Theory of Justice by John Rawls. Belknap Press; Revised edition (September 1, 1999)
24. Marriage, as it is today, would be considered unethical in this approach.

©2007 Gerald del Campo
Edited by Sheta Kaey.

Gerald del Campo is the author of A Heretic’s Guide to Thelema, New Aeon Magick: Thelema Without Tears, and New Aeon English Qabalah Revealed, among other works. You can visit his blog at http://solis93.livejournal.com and his website at http://thelemicknights.org. Gerald serves as Senior Managing Editor of Rending the Veil. He also writes music and plays in bands.

An aethyr is one of a succession of worlds in the Enochian Astral planes, and the fifth element, or spirit, in Wicca and Ceremonial magick. Also, depending on tradition, a formless and invisible substance that pervades the universe¹.

Greetings, and welcome to the first issue of Rending the Veil and the start of this column. I intend an eclectic mishmash of different things here that would not necessarily flow well as articles. For example, I will have the occasional column on tarot reading, as I’ve read tarot for over 30 years. I also intend to share channeled information from my spirit companion, Meridjet.

Meridjet

Meridjet has been with me since 1994, and has seen me through a lot of doubts, fear for my sanity, and so forth in that time. I’d never heard of the phenomenon of a spirit companion, though spirit guides were familiar to me. Meridjet is much more proactive and instrumental in the application of lessons for my growth, and he’s also a great deal more stubborn than any spirit guide I have ever heard of. Some people consider him my HGA, or Holy Guardian Angel, the Thelemic version of Plato’s daemon or personal genius. The function of the HGA is to reveal one’s True Will and guide one (sometimes rather painfully) to the fruition of that will. Meridjet certainly fulfills that function, but at times he also shares information that is of general interest. I will share that information here.

The Holy Guardian Angel

Donald Tyson once told me that the HGA is simply a familiar spirit, an independent being who also serves the purpose of leading us to our potential. Ed Richardson wrote, “Theories on what the HGA is generally fall into three categories: psychological processes/concepts; external entities that have an interest in the magician’s life; and entities that are somehow part of the magician in the way that shamanic totems might be. I would suggest that it is foolish to fall into one camp; using as many concepts as possible will give a more useful point of reference. If you limit yourself too much here only a certain degree of success will be possible… Whatever the HGA actually is, it does seem to be ever watchful, knowing our interests and being able to offer insights as an ‘outsider’ might².” This description fits Meridjet well, as he both seems to have information I am not privy to (such as events to come or events in another person’s past), as well as having what appears to be full access to my conscious and unconscious minds.

Another interesting remark that Richardson makes is, “Psychological models are also useful, but over reliance [sic] on them can kill any relevant experience with the angel by a sort of ‘death by reductionism².’” For this, among other reasons, I endeavor to see Meridjet as external. Aleister Crowley once wrote, “It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them³.” This alone is reason enough for me to entertain the idea of external vs internal reality. I’ve ever been a rebel, and it’s my honest opinion that Crowley enjoyed leading the blind about by the nose while giggling behind his hand (figuratively speaking), and that far too many magicians just take Crowley’s word for things (or his initial subtext). Whether or not spirits exist independently of the perceiver may be immaterial (nice pun, that), but the fact is that most ceremonialists take it as a given that the spirits they encounter are nothing more than manifestations of their own psyche, there to play a role in their overall understanding of themselves — thereby falling into Richardson’s trap of “death by reductionism.”

Whether or not Meridjet’s more general messages are philosophically valid or are simply my unconscious mind jerking off on this page is up to you, the reader, to determine. I believe the information he conveys is largely outside the scope of my personal knowledge. Nevertheless, I still have many issues with a part of my mind assuming Meridjet exists deep within me somewhere and that when he is asked a question, I must somehow supply an answer. Typically this creates a slight feeling of panic in me, which then evaporates as I approach the question with nothing to say, and he comes in and practically gives a lecture on the topic. I don’t feel as if I am enlightened enough to wax profound at the drop of a hat despite feeling completely incapable up to the very second the message comes through. Tune in to future entries in this column to read some of his messages, and you’ll see what I mean.

’cause I’m looking at you through the glass
Don’t know how much time has passed
All I know is that it feels like forever
But no one ever tells you that forever feels like home,
sitting all alone inside your head⁴.

Footnotes

1. http://altreligion.about.com/library/glossary/bldefaethyr.htm
2. http://philhine.org.uk/writings/ess_hga.html
3. Aleister Crowley Liber O vel Manus et Sagittae Sub Figura VI
4. Lyrics from “Through Glass” by Stone Sour, ©2006

©2006 Sheta Kaey
Edited by Trinity

Sheta Kaey is a lifelong occultist and longtime spirit worker, as well as Editor in Chief of Rending the Veil. She counsels others with regard to spirit contact and astral work. She can be reached via her blog.

The task of the excellent teacher is to stimulate “apparently ordinary” people to unusual effort. The tough problem is not in identifying winners: it is in making winners out of ordinary people.¹ — K. Patricia Cross

It was hard to do this work. I haven’t been compelled to sit on the sidelines to castigate others for their views on Thelema since I was a teen, and I decided I wouldn’t do it now. Instead, I would simply show an opposing point of view collected from various writings which first appeared in The Templar Cross. [The official communiqué for members of The Order of Thelemic Knights.] This alternative point of view is, in my opinion, every bit as valid as the so-called accepted wisdom. I have always made my opinions known, regardless of how unpopular they might be within my own peer group, always keeping in mind that for Thelema to become a living tradition it must be lived like it matters to me. Eventually, one is going to have to put those beautiful leather-bound, first edition tomes down and get up from that comfy armchair and apply what they have learned in the real world. Test all things; hold fast to that which is good.

Many of today’s magicians appear to have forgotten that they can use magick to change the world in which they live. This takes a lot of physical work, and so they many have learned to hide behind a lot of theory, philosophical argument, and critique of those very few magicians that have the vision and gumption to see the world they can have as opposed to settling for the world they have today.

Crowley may have unintentionally done the art of magick a great disservice by painting it with such a wide brush. In many ways the word “magick” has lost all meaning, it has been reduced to make people happy about the tedious mundane activities they feel imprisoned by as they live out a miserably boring lives. It makes cowards feel at home in their self-made prisons, when magick should be the very thing that liberates people from their going-nowhere existences.

One could make an equally valid argument that magick, as Crowley defined it, is actually really a good thing because it makes people feel good about doing some very unwholesome things, but this isn’t how I see it, and it isn’t why I have dedicated my entire life to its study. I do agree with Crowley’s basic premise, however: “Magick is the Art and Science of causing change to occur in conformity with Will.²” What I disagree with is the idea that any “willed act” can be a magical act. If this were true, then any trivial predetermined action (such as blowing ones nose) is classifiable as “magical act.” One hardly needs to study magick, qabalah, and much less Crowley to do those things.

My pseudo-intellectual critics say my writings are “simple,” or that I have “ghettoized Thelema” for having the audacity of writing in a plain English, but they think nothing of Crowley’s painting magick with such a wide brush that the sheer act of wiping ones bottom after a bowel movement can be an act just as magical as Knowledge and Conversation with one’s Holy Guardian Angel. While this might have helped him increase the market for the sales of his books, it also helped to devalue the Art of Magick by perpetuating the idea that it requires anything less than a lifetime of study.

My choice to write in plain English is a source of great pride for me for many reasons, one of which is the fact that English is for me a second language. When I decided to write about Thelema, I wanted to do so in a way that I could reach the largest number of people — not to sell books, but because of the potential Thelema possesses to change the course of humanity. If one loves something, they share it with others. Evidently, my books don’t serve to keep Thelema confined to a few delusional individuals that actually believe they are the only worthy recipients of this paradigm. In response, I just have to restate Crowley’s sentiments: “The Law is for ALL!³”

Even Crowley wasn’t able to make money selling his books to such a limited audience. He had to die before his material became valuable, not because his message is any more important today than it was during his own time, but because of the book collectors who believe that the magick is in the text itself. It is as if they believe that owning a first edition signed copy exempts them from doing the recommended work. What a sad commentary of Thelemic culture.

Furthermore, many of the folks that criticize my work appear to lack the courage to publish their own ideas, putting their own necks to the block for the unkind scrutiny that has become so popular with many Thelemites. I was surprised to find that much of the criticism has come from people who have not even read my books. They simply adopt the various assumptions made by someone else who thinks the message is more meaningful if one needs an encyclopedia and an eight-year college degree to understand it. And yet these superior minds often question my sincerity. I have been asked if “that little red book” will be at my side on my dying bed. This seems a rather strange question coming from a group of people that want Thelema to only be understood by a class of their own making. Wouldn’t you expect a person to actually have some understanding of Thelema in order for The Book of the Law to be so meaningful to them that they’d want it with them when they died? I am more interested in living as a Thelemite. The dying part will take care of itself. But for what it is worth, that book has been my constant companion for more than half of my life. I sincerely hope it will be well within reach when I come to the end.

It is necessary to make some things perfectly clear from the very beginning. I will begin by making my standard disclaimer: The thoughts penned for this paper (yes, a pen and a paper were used) are my opinions. I am a Thelemite, and therefore my opinions will be colored by my understanding of Thelema. Just like anyone else, this understanding comes from my personal interpretation of various Thelemic holy books, comparative religion, and mythology, and from trying to live my life accordingly. Are these ideas biased in any way? Yes, of course they are. And for this reason, what you read here should not be misconstrued as an attempt to force my opinion on the masses. This should only serve as an example.

I have been very critical about many popular ideas. It is inevitable that my writing will once again be subject to much speculation and assumption, and therefore some clarification becomes a necessity. Generally speaking, in the pop-Thelemic culture there are three simplified categories of Thelemites: conservative, liberal (sounds like Liber Al!), and fundamental.

I find myself to be conservative with regard to policy. To me, accountability equals credibility, and I like it when people walk the talk. I wasn’t always this way, but serving on various boards of Thelemic bodies has shaped my feelings about responsibility, devotion, and personal sacrifice.

When it comes to people’s lives outside of their organizational duties and responsibilities I tend to be very liberal. “Do what thou wilt,” and “Man has the right to live by his own law.”

How I feel about fundamentalism will become apparent as you read this series. But suffice it to say that I believe fundamentalism has no place in enlightened societies.

So there you have it: organizationally conservative, individually liberal, with a violent distaste for any form of fundamentalism. This doesn’t mean that I will not approach some subject with unwavering determination and conviction. It is hard to get result without that discipline. I believe that one should approach organizational duties professionally, and conduct business within the organization like a soldier. Oaths, regardless of where they are made, are important because how one maintains them speaks volumes of that person’s integrity. But more important than the oath one makes to an organization is the integrity with which the organization requires those oaths from its members. If the leaders of an organization do not appear to take their roles and responsibilities seriously, then how can they expect their members to stick to their oaths? Remember this, because it is important.

These are my observations, and they are offered here as an example of my struggle to live my life as a Thelemite in the world. This is what Indian philosophy refers to as Karma Yoga. Karma implies movement and action. I abhor people who call themselves Thelemites but shrug the awesome responsibility that is implied by that statement. In my opinion, there are entirely too many soldiers that play and won’t fight, and many of them have infiltrated organizations devoted to the Liberty of Man. To make matters worse, the people that run these organizations don’t seem to mind since a toy soldier and a real one each pays the same dues.

When it comes to my criticism of democracy, patriotism, and capitalism, you might feel compelled to think of me a communist, socialist, or anti-American. American politics is something I am most familiar with, because, well… I live here. I am aware of many, many other countries whose governments lack any form of ethical conduct at all, torturing and killing their own people because no one strong enough will stand against them. So, yes… I am aware of the atrocities committed in other countries, but I do not have first hand experience of being a citizen there, and for this, I am eternally grateful. I am an American by choice. I don’t have to stay here, and yet I do. I believe that should speak volumes about my feelings for this country.

I have been called a lot of unkind things for holding these views. My motives are always questioned, and I have heard my share of “love it or leave it.” As easy as that would be, I won’t. I can’t. If I complain about something, it is because I love it. Why try to change something you don’t care about? I am neither a coward nor a blind man. If you’d like to believe that Thelema has nothing to do with politics, you probably won’t care for many of the things in this series.

Having said all of this, it might surprise you to learn that I do not believe that all men are created equal. But I believe that all men, not just the privileged, should start with the same opportunities to exceed, for that is the only way that true valor, intelligence, virtue, and greatness can ever manifest on a national level. The people of this country have a lot to offer. They just need the opportunity to show what they are made of. As it is, only the privileged can afford health care and a good education. This from a government claiming to be the “richest country in the world.” It may be naïve to think that these issues can be addressed today when capitalism has become the modern god. But I feel compelled to try, because in my heart I believe ethical people must speak out against injustice everywhere. If ever there was a need for ethical conduct, it is today.

These are dangerous times for lovers of freedom and liberty, and anyone that speaks against oppression and tyranny does so at great personal risk. I imagine the Gnostics must have felt very much like lovers of freedom do today, and I reckon that if the oppression does not stop, then organizations dedicated to the preservation of democracy and freedom will be compelled to operate in secrecy, just as they have historically.

The basic premise of ethics is universal. It is the method — the art of distinguishing, the differences between noble and dishonorable, good and bad, commendable and appalling, just and unfair. We can see the application of ethics everywhere.

Ethics are important because they can provide a method to discovering a higher road, a path of honor and justice without having to resort to religious or superstitious justification. They are important because they help us learn to recognize why we do the things we do and how we justify them. After all, right action must by necessity begin with right thought. So let us shed the stinking thinking, the false pretenses, excuses, and justifications that serve us so well to pull us further and further away from our own Truth. Let us instead turn our attention to those things we already know to be in accordance with our own True Will and act accordingly to become agents of the Divine, and since we are destined to be remembered by our actions, then let us be remembered for being ethical soldiers in the battle against illusion. Since we are destined to make our mark, then let us collectively make that mark a testament of devotion to the Beloved whom we adore and serve. Let’s begin setting the bar for those that will come after us.

Aleister Crowley briefly touches on the subject of ethics in Duty, and in his letters to students. While I am afraid that this series of writings fall short for the reason that it is limited to one person’s experience, it is my sincerest hope that it will cause you, the reader, to examine your own thoughts in light of the material contained in all metaphysical, philosophical, and religious material, whether they be explicitly Thelemic or not. It is my wish that others will be inspired to write about how Thelemic Gnosticism has influenced their own ethics and then share this information with others. This might in turn lead to a greater understanding of Thelema as a personal human experience rather than something that happened exclusively to Crowley… which will hopefully help to put Thelema into the lives of those people that The Prophet wanted to reach, as opposed to keeping it confined to the bookshelves of those individuals that wish to control the tremendous industry that Crowley’s work has become.

If you are the sort of Thelemite who considers “going with the program” the proper course when the waters become choppy, or prefers to believe the lies we are told by our leaders, then you might want to reconsider going any further, as what you read may do little more than insult you. I hope that you will keep reading, and if perchance the words you read here inspire you to take a different philosophical look at what Thelema might be, or makes you question your own beliefs and motives, then making these thoughts available to you has been worth it.

Once upon a time, all of us thought of Truth as indisputable. Our society and parents, seeking security, used those truths to justify the oppression of rules and regulations. When those rules restricted our passion, or attempted to extinguish our curiosity, we made the same mistake that humans have made since time immemorial — we rebelled against the Truth which appeared to be the source of restriction. In our youth we lacked the experience and skill to realize that rules and Truth are not one in the same thing, and so we veiled the source of our oppression instead of approaching the problem with the rules. By way of peer pressure we learned about the dangers of uncensored truth, and so we created socially acceptable loopholes to insulate ourselves against our own helplessness or the shortcomings of our loved ones, such as Oscar Wilde’s concept of the “casual lie” (the so-called “white lie” of politeness and tact). The “noble lie” in Plato’s Republic — a way of keeping people in their place by making them believe that their true nature has been crafted by some god or gods.

Convenience and financial advantage make it easy for us to adopt the idea that ethics were situational or subject to economics, or that truth might depend on status, social position, income, or degree; or that some are beyond secular law while others less fortunate are subject to it. Once upon the time, the Law was for ALL. The following thoughts are little more than my attempt to return to that time, and come to terms with my own hypocrisy.

The greatest human shame is that we hold the keys to greatness, the means to manifest our destiny and change the world, but instead choose a path less honorable for the sake of the same distractions that keep us from manifesting our own true purpose.

Footnotes:

1. Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers (Jossey Bass Higher and Adult Education Series), 2nd Edition — February 1993, Jossey-Bass Inc Pub.
2. Magick: Book 4, Liber Aba, 2nd Rev edition — January 1998, Weiser Books.
3. The Book of the Law: Liber Al Vel Legis I:34

Gerald del Campo is the author of A Heretic’s Guide to Thelema, New Aeon Magick: Thelema Without Tears, and New Aeon English Qabalah Revealed, among other works. You can visit his blog at http://solis93.livejournal.com and his website at http://thelemicknights.org. Gerald serves as Senior Managing Editor of Rending the Veil. He also writes music and plays in bands.

©2007 Gerald del Campo
Edited by Sheta Kaey