Announcements from
Lodge Members and Officers

    Those interested in the mass are also invited to our monthly discussion group, organized by Bishop T Dionysus, which meets to study the ritual and traditions of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica. The Liber XV Study Group is next scheduled for Wednesday evening 27th September at 8:00 in the lodge library. Questions and observations concerning mass performance are invited, and the group is also conducting research into the gnostic saints, the language and structure of the mass, and the roles of the officers.

    After a summer recess, the Enochiana group will resume meeting this month on Monday evening 11th September at 8:00 in the Thelema Lodge library. Dedicated to the exploration of new realms in theurgy and priestcraft, this group has now been expanded to include all aspects of Enochian practice and culture. Work has continued privately on our Enochian liturgical project as outlined in the meetings last spring, which will now be only one among the interests of the group. New topics and new participants will be especially welcome at this reunion meeting.

    Join us in Horus Temple at Thelema Lodge for "The Portal of the Sky God," an Egyptian ritual to be presented by Brother Drax on Saturday evening 9th September at 9:00.
    "Strike accord with Truth of Will and effect; forget not the Juggler exacteth the balance to proceed. Trifold are the paths foresworn; two have reality, one hath nonexistence and is equated by the flux and reflux of the two; there is the Oath of the cube, or the circle squared, and the Oath of the Ankth.
    O thou Earth dwellers, the God's Portal beckens! Be thou reborn upon my turbulent Empyrean Winds, be thou concieved of the Spell of the Sky . . . Explore the firmament with the Falcon's Eye.
    Heru commandeth the planetary advent, he openeth the Watcher's Towers, the aethyrs crystallize and are precipitated, resounding and objectified under might of The Force. Therefore, mark ye will my law, Universal Law. When Love maketh adjustment of thy Will, Right Action becometh the Law of the Strong. Victorious illumined Earth is the whole of My Law! I am the Woman who bereth the Silver Sword, Goddess of Truth's heroic endeavor!"

    Lovers of verse are invited to our reading circle, the Grady L. McMurtry Poetry Society, which meets in the library at Thelema Lodge on Saturday evening 30th September at 7:30. Frater P.I. has organized this group to cultivate the enjoyment of poetry and the love of language which have been part of our lodge tradition since the days of our founder, after whom the group is named. All are welcome to read and listen; bring along your favorite poems, or some of your own writings, or simply trust the lodge librarian to suggest material from our collections to suit your voice and your interests.

    Extensive reference and study facilities are available to members and guests in our library, which can be utilized by appointment, or on our scheduled Library Nights, to be held this month on Wednesday 6th and Monday 25th September, beginning at 8:00. Shelving and catalog work is available for volunteers, but these evenings are intended primarily for individual research and study. Please contact the lodgemaster a day or two ahead regarding scheduled or unscheduled library use; these dates are sometimes changed to accommodate requests from members.

    Thelema Lodge business and planning is conducted at our monthly luncheon meeting, which will be held on Sunday afternoon 10th September from 12:30 to 2:30. Lodge officers serve lunch to the attending membership, with open discussion before, during, and afterwards. Please call ahead when attending, so that we can make efficient plans for the meal. Descriptive notes for scheduled events are requested from members who organize calendared activities, and these are due on the date of the luncheon. Those who facilitate regular monthly events but cannot be present at our meeting should call in with their descriptive notices each month and read them onto the lodgemaster's answering machine at (510) 652-3171. Members may also consult individually with the lodgemaster regarding our calendar of events.

    Our monthly Magick in Theory and Practice Series with Bill Heidrick will meet on Wednesday evening 20th September, beginning at 8:00 in Bill's home in San Anselmo. Discussion will continue through Appendix VII, with specific attention to Liber Yod, Liber Thisharb vel Memoriae, and Liber B vel Magi. Contact Bill at (415) 454-5176 for directions and additional information.

    Adventure into the fourth dimension with the Thelema Lodge Section Two Reading Group, which meets to discuss the Scientific Romances of Charles H. Hinton on Monday evening 18th September at 8:00. Caitlin is our host for this series, which is held at Oz House in Oakland. Hinton was an English academic mathematician who lived from 1853 to 1907 e.v., devoting much of his energy to the popularization of fourth-dimensional concepts, especially for use in memory and modeling systems. He coined the term "tesseract" for the hypercube, and published a series of essays to explain its use in 1884-1886, which were afterwards collected as the Scientific Romances. Hinton saw his mission as the education of the imagination, working with a system of colored wooden blocks (which he designed and marketed) to illustrate concepts of "double-rotation" between dimensions. "Start with the idea of your entire life as being a fixed object in 4-D spacetime, then imagine that while some second time lapses, your entire life gradually evolves into a different one."

    Sirius Oasis meets on Wednesday evening 13th September in Berkeley at 8:00.
    Contact the Oasis Master at (510) 527-2855 for directions and information. Several new activities are in the works for Sirius now that planning for the Rites of Eleusis is well underway. "Seriously Sci-Fi" will be a series of presentations on science fiction and fantasy themes, beginning next month at Sirius Oasis, probably on Saturday evenings. Also, the "Theater of the Mind", where we plan to sit assembled in the dark to listen to radio plays (contemporary and historical). Tune in at the September meeting for the first installment!

THE FIRST date I ever learnt, and almost the only one that I have never forgotten, is "William the Conqueror, 1066." But most people seem to have omitted this item from their curriculum.
    It is customary to think of England as Anglo-Saxon. It is this mistake which leads to all misunderstanding about the kinship of the English with the American. The British government has always been Celtic and not Teutonic. The five Celtic nations, at one time or another, in one way or another, have always come to the front. The Scandinavian and Saxon elements have been made hewers of wood and drawers of water. The paradox is sufficiently curious, since it is the Celts themselves who have been oppressed. But until the time of William III when the kingly power passed to the aristocracy, once and for all, no monarch of other than Norman or Celtic blood sat upon the throne. The Celtic chiefs allied themselves, too, with the Norman nobility.
    Now the principal characteristics of the Celt is that he is a mystic; and whenever mysticism condescends to take hold of the common things of life and becomes aggressive, it is the most dangerous of qualities. In the first place, it confers the most extraordinary subtlety; in the second, it puts its possessor right with his conscience. It makes him prince of diplomatists; for he is never so sincere as when he is telling his most elaborate lie. It is quite impossible for the Anglo-American to understand this temperament. All the strength and virtue of the American people lie in that section of the population which is of German origin. The Anglo-Saxon elements were mostly the scouring of the Puritan latrine. The only other good element in America, and it is not so numerous, consists of the Irish. Most of them seem to have come over actuated by a positive spirit, seeking for freedom. The others had little choice in the matter. It is for this reason that the Irish and Germans have gone ahead so rapidly, and now control most of the government and most of the big business. The purely Anglo-Saxon name is nowhere prominent. Wilson is Lowland Scots. Roosevelt Dutch, Morgan Welch. The deeper one looks into the ancestries of prominent men either here or in England, the more one is struck by the complete absence of the English. Run through the British cabinet today: I think it will puzzle anyone to find a genuinely English name in the whole crowd.
    Now, the conception of the most elementary principles of things is radically different in the case of the Celt to what it is in the case of the Saxon. The Saxon idea of law is based on justice. In the Celtic conception it is a device for getting what you want with an appearance of justice. In England in the last twenty years the judges have again and again deliberately misinterpreted the plain intentions of the law, and stultified the House of Commons completely. This does not imply a conflict between the legislative and the judiciary. It is a kind of practical joke, carefully prearranged, in order to fool the people. Take a single, concrete example: Home Rule. The House of Commons passes this bill again and again And it is always thrown out by the Lords, as Gladstone and all who fathered the bill intended that it should be. The device becomes a little threadbare; so a great agitation is started to destroy the power of the Lords. With infinite pains an act is passed, making the veto of the Peers only temporary. In ninety cases out of a hundred it would never happen that this law came into action at all. The framers of the bill hoped that the majority in the House of Commons would always break up long before the act became operative. By a series of accidents, however, the Irish remained masters of the situation for the necessary period, and the Home Rule Bill became law over the head of the House of Lords. Nobody minded. A civil war was quietly arranged with the connivance of the military authorities and therefore of the King, and the situation would have been calmed down by the usual massacres, if the British working man had not seen whither these things tended. His political education had been carried too far. He had become capable of reasoning that the same methods to defy the will of the people would be just as applicable when it came to some of his own pet measures. And one of the Labor men got up in the House of Commons and made a speech which thoroughly frightened the government.
    The reader will doubtless remember that in the first part of 1914 Ulster was, save for an "if" inserted by the legal mind of Sir Edward Carson, actually in rebellion. It had established a provisional government; it was drilling and arming an army; munitions were being run into the country under the very nose of the British navy. To these facts the Labor member in question called attention. He accused his own government of acquiescing in armed revolt against its own authority, and he intimated that the people would not stand it. The situation now appeared very serious to the ruling classes. They did not mind civil war in Ireland -- on the contrary, every little helps -- but civil war in England was a very different thing. All sorts of abortive conferences were held, with the idea of persuading the people that something was being done to settle the difficulty. As a fact, it was being discussed: though not at ridiculous conferences, but at the proper places, dinner parties, smoking rooms, and golf clubs. Everybody who was anybody argued that much the best way out of the trouble was a European War. There was nothing in the political situation to make this undesirable. The weak spot in the intellectual grasp of the situation was that nobody recognized the rottenness of Russia. This was because Russia had been the bogey for so long. So the war was hastily decided upon, and the results lie before us.
    The whole of this incident is extraordinarily characteristic of the dominant, aggressive, unscrupulous, super-subtle, mystic minds of the Norman and the Celt. They will find a needle in a haystack, if they have to burn down the haystack to do it.
    It is because of this strange temperament that the methods of the English have always been so inscrutable. They have a caste secret, as incommunicable as the divine Tetragram, and as powerful. It has been carefully explained to the world by Rudyard Kipling: but only those who already knew it have been able to understand what he meant. A very illuminating incident is given in one of the early chapters of Stalky & Co., where the headmaster thrashes three boys who have proved their innocence to the hilt. It is one of the essential features of the mind of the Celt that he refuses to take the least notice of facts. He refuses to be bullied by his own reason. It is for this reason that Britain has been so extraordinarily successful in dealing with Orientals. A Hindoo will come along with a wonderful and beautiful story carefully prepared in many months with the utmost subtlety; and then his case will be judged by a boy of twenty-five on some totally different ground. It will be judged justly, too, and the Hindoo will appreciate and respect the moral superiority implied.
    When George V was in India he only made one hit, and that was by accident. A particularly important Rajah had come a particularly long distance with a particularly large retinue, to bow before the heir of the great King-Emperor . . . and the latter was too lazy or too hot to notice him. So the Rajah crawled out of the presence, and remarked afterwards, confidentially, that that was something like an emperor! He felt that all his pains had been well repaid by the contempt with which he had been treated; it flattered him that he should have been in the presence of a person who could practically fail to notice him.
    It is this habitual insolence which galls all those who are not prepared to cringe before it. Unless a man has absolute assurance of some equal kind, it is bound to annoy him. And it is so strongly rooted, that death itself seems to bear its impress. It is part of the general scheme, the incomparable code of manners in vogue in England, the idea that a gentleman must never show his feelings. This is of the utmost importance; and of course the corollary is, that one who does show his feelings is no gentleman, except in the case where the feelings in question are assumed. Had the English been really indignant about Belgium, there would never have been a word about it in the newspapers. The indignation with regard to the Lusitania and Edith Cavell was just as factitious. Both incidents pleased enormously, because their effect upon the ingenuous American could not but be admirable.
    But this mask is so much part of the face, that the man himself cannot see it even in the looking-glass. At the time when he is showing the feelings, he is apologizing to himself for showing them; he is explaining to himself that unless the circumstances were so hideous and so unprecedented, he would not bat an eyelid. This is not actual hypocrisy. He has taught himself to simulate a mood so well, that he really feels it at the time. It is only when the opportunity arises to do something, that he walks away from the mood, just as a man who has been sitting over the fire all morning suddenly notices that the rain has stopped and the sun is shining, and he instantly goes out for a walk. So one sees in private life the most apparently hypocritical actions, which are really only temperament. A man loses his wife, and calls heaven and earth to witness to the greatness of his grief, refuses to do his work, is completely upset, visibly, before the eyes of all men . . . when without so much as twenty-four houres' warning he marries someone else. Incidentally he has had from two to six mistresses in full blase all the time. Conduct of this kind staggers all other nations. Moreover, it makes them rather afraid. They never know where they are. Hence the term "Perfide Albion." To this day in France it is the Normans and, to a much less extent, the Gascons who have this reputation, or something rather like it. A Norman horsedealer will unblushingly rob an American of his last maravedi.
    I do not think that there is anything in the world so subtle and so strong as this peculiar caste feeling which obtains in the ruling classes of England. You can recognize a public school boy (in the event of this article being read by savages, it will be perhaps best to explain, that in England "public school" does not mean a place of free, elementary education, but a highly privileged and exclusive institution, very expensive, where nothing whatever is allowed to be taught except the Secret of Government) forty years afterwards, when drink has brought him to sell matches in the gutter. He never altogether loses a peculiar power which is apparently only conferred by the application of various instruments of flagellation by that caste within a caste, the head-masters. It is absolutely impossible to convey to the American mind what one means by a head-master. He is utterly different in kind, not only in degree, from all other masters. It is almost unheard-of for a house-master to become Head in the same school. He is often quite a young man. But he is certainly not of the same flesh and blood as other men.
    The same idea is carried out in the universities. The vice-chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge are the most absolute monarchs in Europe, and the strongest testimonial that one can bring to the quality of the spirit which makes the English what they are is that the authority of the vice-chancellor is never brought in question. Professors are often unpopular: the master of a college is sometimes the subject of attacks: but the vice-chancellor could expel the whole university and hardly arouse comment. If the vice-chancellor were abolished, the masters of colleges would begin to acquire some of his immunities.
    Now, in this extraordinary respect and obedience, there is no idea of subservience. It is part of the game to suffer at the hands of the proper person, if it is only one's house prefect. The individual realizes himself as part of the governing machine, really very much more strongly than has now been done with Germany, where the humblest official has been taught to regard himself as an essential cog in the clock of state. But the Englishman's is not an honest pride that he is helping on the good work. There is a very devilish quality, a sardonic joy, in his position. He feels himself an honored member of the great conspiracy against the world. This attitude accounts for the superior smile of recognition with which members of this truly secret society greet each other. Observe a couple of Englishmen, strangers to each other, perhaps even disliking each other at first sight, at a party in New York. There is an immediate understanding, an unspeakable contempt for all the Americans present, which they do not even try to hide, and which, being the grossest possible form of rudeness, naturally annoys. They may have every kind of antagonism for each other, these two men; but they could and would act in perfect harmony, without word spoken, against the rest of the world, if the emergency arose.

    Yesod is the place of visions and half awareness. To view the Tree of Life from Yesod, one must employ stories, fantasies and dreams. The series of classes which provides the basis of this introduction included a section of this sort. That has already appeared in the Thelema Lodge Calendar, in the "Qabalah: The path of Initiation" column running from the November 1993 e.v. issue through January of 1994 e.v. This material will also be found in my 32 Emanations Revised (only available in computer and printout form as the file EMAN-32.ASC, carried by 93 Net and other on-line services). Further readings will be found in Crowley's Konx Om Pax, "The Wake World, A Tale for Babes and Sucklings" and in many works of mystical fiction. Crowley's Liber 418, The Vision and the Voice has areas which touch on the Sephirot, but it is mainly oriented towards a working of the Enochian Calls. A good practice for this point of view on Qabalah is astral travel and dream analysis. Crowley gives many examples of technical method for this in his various works, both published and to be published. In particular, Confessions, Book 4, "The Temple of Solomon the King" (in the Equinox, Vol. I) and in the records of his Amalantrah and other workings. All these are available in computer readable text and many can be downloaded from 93Net BBS's, ... and America on Line (...Writings of Aleister Crowley Download Library).
    To cut the dryness a bit for this column, here's an example of such a dream, taken from my Road to the Sun, another text available in Computer ASCII format:

    A dream experienced 6/1/72 e.v., with comment: I was a part of a crew or camp on Earth's Moon. We had little contact with the home planet and were engaged in exploration. On one of the treks, we discovered a shallow cave. The front of this we covered, and we flooded the inside with air to render our work easier. In the rear of this cave we found a stone figure of an elephant. The figure was about six or seven feet high and set to the front shoulders in the cave wall, near the back of the cave. This interested us much. Nonetheless, our time to return was nearing and we had little to spare on such a remarkable, but isolated, find.
    Toward the end of our projected stay, I and a girl of the crew returned to the cave. She pulled on the elephant's head; and, to our surprise, the stone came away. Beneath was a smaller elephant, carved of gold. My female companion returned to the camp while I remained behind. I chanced to grasp the trunk of the golden elephant and pulled the entire head clockwise with the trunk going from about six to eight or nine o'clock. A door opened in the rear of the cave. People of the Moon came out. Soon the party from my camp arrived. We entered with the lunar people into their air-filled cavern. They were not fully willing to tolerate us and, in time, told us to leave and not return. The others left.
    I returned to the cave with the girl, and we stood outside the veil of the passage leading into the cavern of the moon-people. This position did not infringe upon their privacy. The moon-people were in attendance at a religious ceremony much like the Roman Catholic Mass. I felt devout and bowed my head over clasped hands in prayer. The priest of the moon-people gave them communion behind the veil. He saw me and my companion and carried the holy cup out to me from behind the veil. I held it and did as I should with it. It was as a small wedding chalice of silvery metal, encrusted with round knobs. Inside was a wine of purple shade. I returned the sacred cup, and the priest reentered the cavern behind the veil.
    After the service had ended, I sued for entry into the cavern, saying that I was not a human of Earth. To prove this claim, I floated off the cavern floor (I had been permitted entry to state my case.). After floating about at various heights before and on a level with the heads of the moon-people, I was allowed to stay and to roam at will. There were some who didn't wholly approve of my floating, but I was accepted (This points to the need, at some future date, to improve myself in the things proper to Yesod. I have them in adequate measure to function within that Sephira and to govern it; but I do not function there perfectly or govern absolutely.). I saw how the air was produced by small red and white "mollusks" in square water tanks. They were like a sort of crayfish. Water came from crab-like creatures in other tanks. I wandered to the edges of the cavern where the dome came down to the floor and seemed of concrete, shaped like the underside of a freeway overpass where it descends to high banked earth. In a small cranny near the junction of the wall and floor lurked a wild specimen of the air-creatures. This I gently summoned with my mind. The small "mollusk" began to follow me ...
    A commentary on this dream: ... This dream is set on the 32nd path of , near Yesod. This is shown by the earth-people visiting the Moon. The path into the Moon () can be entered only for the sake of the higher things () -- shown by the golden figure. One may stay for a visit, but the place itself will expel the dull and morbid thoughts of Earth. The mind must go forth with them or suffer them to depart from the mind. The episode of the veil and ritual was a holy rite of entry, a cleansing before passage. ... I entered into the Sephira, passed a silver veil, and demonstrated that I was airy (Floating. Air is a correspondence to Yesod.). The objections seem to refer to the floating as an act of will (Hod consciousness?) rather than freely (Yesod). The air-mollusk-arthropod-crayfish fits the Sephira and also the 29th path to Netzach. Thus it would seem that the events of the day allowed me to rise on the 32nd, pass into the 9th and to touch the 29th path of the Tree of Life. ..."

THE CORNERSTONE

7. "While it is undoubtedly true that many of the pyramids were used as tombs, it is quite certain that the Great Pyramid of Gizeh was never intended as a sepulchral vault.
    In substantiation of our beliefs that the Great Pyramid was the Sacred House of the Mysteries, we quote from that eminent authority on Masonic symbolism, Albert Churchward: 'We contend that the Great Pyramid of Gizah was built in Egypt as a monument and lasting memorial of this early religion, on true scientific laws, by divine inspiration and knowledge of the laws of the universe. Indeed we may look on the Great Pyramid as the first true Masonic temple in the world, surpassing all others that have ever been built.'
    This thought opens up a great field of speculation. Was the Great Pyramid the true house of SOL-OM-ON?¹ Was the architect of that House the immortal Hiram Abiff, whose name means 'Our Father Hiram,' or the creative fire?"
    SOLOMON: Word cipher:
    Sol: Latin; Sun
    Om: Egyptian; Amoun-Ra, solar deity, also Aum, Aumgn, and Amen.
    On: Egyptian; Known figuratively as 'Helopolis', City of the Sun; physically as the Egyptian City Annu, and the noncorporeal realm of Heaven wherein reside the Divine chiefs, 'City of the Pyramids', also a mystic or secret name of Ra.
    -- Manly P. Hall, 33° Degree, A.A. Scottish Rite, The Phoenix, (Los Angeles: Philosophical Research Society, 1931), p. 163-4.²

8. "French Freemasons were quick to welcome Caliostro³, inviting him to join the Lodge of the Nine Sisters, that 'most mystical university of world political philosophy,' grand-mastered by Benjamin Franklin, then the main link between secret societies in Europe and America. Among other distinguished members of the Nine Sisters were Voltaire, Helvetius, and Thomas Jefferson. Another brother was Franz Anton Mesmer, and one of Mesmer's patients, who attested to having been cured by him, was a former Grand Master, Antoine de Gebelin, France's leading orientalist, first to identify the pack of Tarot cards as a reservoir of ancient Egyptian wisdom, the secret teachings of the Egyptian priests, who, he asserted, had thus disguised their arcane knowledge, their symbolic depictions of the stricture of the universe, received by Hermes Trismegistus that it might survive through the ordeal of Christianity after the collapse of the pagan world."
    -- Peter Tompkins, The Magic of Obelisks (New York: Harper & Row, 1981), p. 123-4.

9. "Socrates said, in the Phaedo of Plato, 'It well appears that those who established the Mysteries or secret assemblies of the initiated, were no contemptible personages, but men of great genius, who in the early ages strove to teach us, under enigmas, that he who shall go to the invisible regions without being purified, will be precipitated into the abyss; while he who arrives there, purged of the stains of the world, and accomplished in virtue, will be admitted to the dwelling place of the Deity . . . . The initiated are certain to attend the company of the Gods.
    Initiation was considered to be a mystical death; a descent into the infernal regions, where every pollution and the stains and imperfections of a corrupt and evil life were purged away by fire and water; and the (adept) was then said to be regenerated, new-born, restored to a renovated existence of life, light, and purity; and placed under Divine Protection.
    A new language was adapted to these celebrations, and also a language of hieroglyphics, unknown to any but those of the highest Degree. And to them ultimately were confined the learning, the morality, and the political power of every people among which the Mysteries were practiced . . . . It was contended, in latter times, that the sacred hieroglyphics and language were the same idea that were used by the Celestial Planners.
    -- General Albert Pike, Grand Commander, A.A. Scottish Rite, 33°, Southern Jurisdiction, U.S.A., Morals and Dogma (n.p.: new and revised edition, 1950), p. 373-374.

Notes:
1. The Temple of Solomon is a Masonic symbolic representation of the Universe, whose
    architectural mathematics made Qabalistic reference to the Deity and the framework
    of physics, these relations are regarded as sacred; direct expression of universal constants.
2. Written before he joined Masonry -- Ed.
3. Cagliostro, founder of Egyptian Rite Freemasonry.

from the Grady Project:

Originally published in Kaaba 4 (Syracuse, NY: Kaaba Clerk House, O.T.O., April 1979), then in The Grady Project 1 (Berkeley: Thelema Lodge, O.T.O., October 1987).

Is government regulation contrary to Thelema.

    Some government regulations for some things are always necessary. The details vary with conditions, demographics and the philosophy of the government of the day. People keep getting born. People get out of the norms of their own self control. People don't know enough to cover some situations. There is always going to be a need to coordinate things, protect against abuses of the environment and defend the freedoms of minorities and individuals.

Should we retain the present form of government?

    Government grows like a weed. It is never the same from one year to the next.

Crowley's political & social opinions; how seriously to take them?

    Politics and sociology were not functional areas of his genius, in my opinion. He could complain about abuses, as can we all. Some of his ideas in these areas are quite useful, but most are too personal or too abstract for simple application.

Potential problems from Crowley's views in Scientific Solution:

    Many of the ideas in Scientific Solution... date from the days of the Abbey of Thelema. In that period, Crowley considered that he could determine the nature of the will of another person by observation and experience. In my personal opinion, that would only lead to the worst kind of Fascism.

Doesn't "do what thou wilt" make further legislation redundant?

    The opposite is the case. Legislation is necessary to correct faults arising from incorrect assertion of will. No one can determine the will of another. No one can be accurate at all times about the specifications of his or her own will. The State must continue to have legislative and enforcement powers to prevent destruction of resources and abuse of individuals. That is not a matter of once and done. It's a living and continually adapting thing. The form of government is utterly irrelevant. The manner of application of the government is all that matters.

What about Crowley's scientific standards for government?

    Crowley was a believer, with his contemporaries, in codifiable Natural Law. Some things can be determined, with reasonable accuracy. That social assumption of the times believed without question that everything in nature and human psychology was on the verge of being discovered and written down. It was a form of fundamentalism, only different from Christian fundamentalism in that it was based on faith in the literal pronouncements of science instead of the literal interpretation of the Bible.

What about equal opportunity?

    That's impossible anyway. All that can be done is to improve opportunities. Crowley's idea of suiting opportunities to the evident interests of individuals is sound, if not taken to excess. Crowley contended that individuals should be forced through depravation to follow the will that another person determined to be theirs. I think he went too far at that point.

When people act in accord with their will, isn't that the state of Nature?

    That doesn't work, for the simple reason that very few people consciously and accurately act under their true will. A perfect state of nature is always present. Without considerable human effort, that perfect state of nature has no particular tendency to favor human beings over any other creature.

    Human institutions partake of their creators. As we are, so are the spirits we incarnate in the form of our institutions. Except for fragments intended to do simple things, elementals, all human institutions are as complex and characterized by unique will as any individual human.

What of the interference in people's lives when the State commands resources?

    The state has no purpose but destruction if it cannot command resources and impose some order on its people. The excesses make the faults. Thelema seeks to minimize the interference, but it is impossible to eliminate the ambiance.

What of decadence in government and the management of charitable funds?

    For a time, all is efficiency. For the remainder, all is administrative salaries. I think a change in the form of government is unnecessary, but a change in the concept of remuneration for government employment may be necessary. Systems arise within government, like that system of Victorian England that Dickens rolled forth in melancholy in his writings. Those systems are cancers in the body politic. Sometimes dramatic events will excise them. More often the government decays and fails, with a time of misery for the populace. After that, a new government may come to be, likewise to have a cancer in it's dotage. Perhaps something will emerge in this day that will change that, but few Thelemites show interest in such things.

Events Calendar for September 1995 e.v.

    The viewpoints and opinions expressed herein are the responsibility of the contributing authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of OTO or its officers.

   Note to update: the addresses and phone numbers in these issues of the Thelema Lodge Calendars are obsolete since the closing of the Lodge. They are here for historic purposes only and should not be visited or called.