Thelema
Thelema (/θəˈliːmə/) is an esoteric and occult social or spiritual philosophy and religious movement developed in the early 1900s by Aleister Crowley, an English writer, mystic, and ceremonial magician. The word Thelema is the English transliteration of the Koine Greek noun θέλημα (pronounced [θéleema]), "will", from the verb θέλω (thélō): "to will, wish, want or purpose".
Crowley asserted or believed himself to be the prophet of a new age, the Æon of Horus, based upon a spiritual experience that he and his wife, Rose Edith, had in Egypt in 1904. By his account, a possibly non-corporeal or "preterhuman" being that called itself Aiwass contacted him (through Rose) and subsequently dictated a text known as The Book of the Law or Liber AL vel Legis, which outlined the principles of Thelema.
The Thelemic pantheon—a collection of gods and goddesses who either literally exist or serve as symbolic archetypes or metaphors—includes a number of deities, primarily a trio adapted from ancient Egyptian religion, who are the three speakers of The Book of the Law: Nuit, Hadit and Ra-Hoor-Khuit. In at least one instance, Crowley described these deities as a "literary convenience".
Three statements, in particular, distill the practice and ethics of Thelema:
- "Do what thou wilt" shall be the whole of the Law, meaning that adherents of Thelema should seek out and follow their true path, i.e. find or determine their True Will.
- Love is the law, love under will, i.e. the nature of the Law of Thelema is love, but love itself is subsidiary to finding and manifesting one's authentic purpose or "mission".
- Every man and every woman is a star, which is to say that in the 20th-century era Vulgaris cosmology, it is implied by the metaphor that persons doing their Wills are like stars in the universe: occupying a time and position in space, yet distinctly individual and having an independent nature largely without undue conflict with other stars.
Among the corpus of ideas, Thelema describes what is termed "the Æon of Horus" (the "Crowned and Conquering Child")—as distinguished from an earlier "Æon of Isis" (mother-goddess idea) and "Æon of Osiris" (typified by bronze-age redeemer-based, divine-intermediary, or slain/flayed-god archetype religions such as Christianity, Mithraism, Zoroastrianism, Mandaeism, Odin, Osiris, Attis, Adonis, etc.). Many adherents (also known as "Thelemites") emphasize the practice of Magick (glossed generally as the "Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will").
Crowley's later writings included related commentary and hermeneutics but also additional "inspired" writings that he collectively termed The Holy Books of Thelema. He also associated Thelemic spiritual practice with concepts rooted in occultism, yoga, and Eastern and Western mysticism, especially the Qabalah.
Aspects of Thelema and Crowley's thought, in general, inspired the development of Wicca and, to a certain degree, the rise of Modern Paganism as a whole, as well as chaos magick and some variations of Satanism. Some scholars, such as Hugh Urban, also believe Thelema to have been an influence on the development of Scientology, but others, such as J. Gordon Melton, deny any such connection.
Historical precedents
The word θέλημα (thelema) is rare in Classical Greek, where it "signifies the appetitive will: desire, sometimes even sexual", but it is frequent in the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament). Early Christian writings occasionally use the word to refer to the human will, and even the will of God's created faith tester and inquisitor, the Devil, but it usually refers to the will of God.
One theme of the Gospel is the importance of doing not one's own will, but the will of God. One well-known example is in the "Lord's Prayer", "Thy kingdom come. Thy will (θέλημα) be done, On earth as it is in heaven." It is used later in the same gospel, "He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, "My Father, if this cup of sorrow cannot pass away unless I drink it, Thy will be done." And perhaps most clear in the book of John, "For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me."
In his 5th-century Sermon, Augustine of Hippo gave a similar instruction: "Love, and what thou wilt, do." (Dilige et quod vis fac). [Source 1] The context is that one's actions should spring forth from love, as Augustine continues, "... whether thou hold thy peace, through love hold thy peace; whether thou cry out, through love cry out; whether thou correct, through love correct; whether thou spare, through love do thou spare: let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good." Satanic thelemites have cropped his line to "what thou wilt, do," and rearranged to "do what thou wilt," thereby removing the context of love and implying 'thou' refers entirely to oneself rather than under God's guidance.
In the Renaissance, a character named "Thelemia" represents will or desire in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of the Dominican friar Francesco Colonna. The protagonist Poliphilo has two allegorical guides, Logistica (reason) and Thelemia (will or desire). When forced to choose, he chooses fulfillment of his sexual will over logic. Colonna's work was a great influence on the Franciscan friar François Rabelais, who in the 16th century, used Thélème, the French form of the word, as the name of a fictional abbey in his novels, Gargantua and Pantagruel. The only rule of this Abbey was "fay çe que vouldras" ("Fais ce que tu veux", or, "Do what thou wilt").
In the mid-18th century, Sir Francis Dashwood inscribed the adage on a doorway of his abbey at Medmenham, where it served as the motto of The Hellfire Club. Rabelais's Abbey of Thelema has been referred to by later writers Sir Walter Besant and James Rice, in their novel "The Monks of Thelema" (1878), and C. R. Ashbee in his utopian romance "The Building of Thelema" (1910).
- More information is available at [ Wikipedia:Thelema ]
Sources
 • Allen H. Greenfield • Lady Frieda Harris • Leah Hirsig • Christopher Hyatt • William Breeze (Hymenaeus Beta) • Augustus Sol Invictus • Charles Stansfeld Jones • George Cecil Jones • Richard Kaczynski • Carl Kellner (mystic) • Rose Edith Kelly • James Lees (English magician) (James Lees) • Grady Louis McMurtry • Marcelo Ramos Motta • Nema Andahadna • Victor Benjamin Neuburg • Jack Parsons • Israel Regardie • Theodor Reuss • C.F. Russell • Wilfred Talbot Smith • Leila Waddell (Leila Waddel (Laylah) • James Wasserman • Sam Webster (writer) (Sam Webster) • Jane Wolfe • Gerald Yorke
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