Granny Wolf

11:22 pm: Job- The Petal Threatened to Engulf Their Continent
Crowley describes the divine force that manifests itself through the human race as one that is seeking to know itself. Crowley tells us that “God” seeks self-knowledge through His creation by experiencing each human life, through a wide variety of essential natures and existential conditions, “just as one would seek to understand the idea of ‘poetry’ by studying all available poems.”

I thought about this while reading Jung’s “Answer to Job.” Although Jung starts off strong, the fact that he is incapable of regarding God as “Beyond Good and Evil” is somewhat trying. He thinks that God needs to live by his own rules, imposing the democratic value of mutuality on the concept of divine hierarchy, which is not a fit. What God did to Job could be likened to my walking through a spider web, or the ‘infinite wail’ from the continent of the ‘little ones’ Crowley writes about in Liber LXV. Jung asserts that, because he was the subject of this divine assault, Job was ‘morally superior’ to God (!!!) and “the tormented though guiltless Job had secretly been lifted up to a superior knowledge of God which God himself did not possess.” (p.15) Because God broke his own commandments, in other words, Job came to know God better than God knew himself.

Although Jung’s assumptions are grounded in unconsciously Christian herd morality, he does make a valid point. According to Crowley, this kind of divine self-discovery is in a very important sense the POINT of creation. For this reason I think it is only logical to, as Jung does, deny the idea of divine omniscience. The final Revelation is the attainment of divine omniscience. Until then, God is struggling, through creation, to achieve self-knowledge.

I had never really thought about these ideas as a denial of divine omniscience before. I suppose, being free of space and time God is omniscient, but his participation in creation necessarily limits the divine force by IHVH, set in opposition to the image (of an image) of the ALHIM in the line of Adam.

Kinda makes you think…

Tags: aleister crowley, ethics

01:42 pm: Propaganda: Cacogenesis
Fear creates evil in response to a perceived threat. By “evil,” in this case, we mean a deformity, restriction, or misdirection of the individual Will. The frustration and self-loathing caused by this condition of Being, which inevitably leads to the pursuit of false desires and the repression of true desires, spills out of a person at those around them, so we identify fear as the first cause of all hostile acts and thoughts.

Just as a happy and fulfilled individual is pleasant and refreshing to be around, a repressed and self-loathing individual is tiring and irritating to be around. From the smallest acts of petty insult to criminal acts of violence, the ill will that arises between human beings comes from this frustration. I say, “ill will,” not “conflict,” because happy people will still come into conflict because of competing desires, they will still fight with each other over different values, and they will still seek to strike each other down at times. These conflicts can be taken in a sporting sense if one diminishes the sense of “threat.”

The faculty of identity determines “threat.” In the physical sense we are, understandably, accustomed to identify with our bodies. In the symbolic sense we also identify with numerous ideas, images, and representations, and react to attacks on those things in the same way we would to personal attacks on ourselves. When extended only toward certain ideas on a limited basis, we psychologically participate in all of the basic conflicts that the ideas we identify with are engaged in.

The mystical solution to this problem is to identify with No Thing (whether Atman or Allah) and therefore participate in No Conflict, a state often confused with Peace. This state allows an individual to objectively assess questions of value, and takes the personal sting out of the experience of suffering. The magical solution to this problem is to identify with Every Thing and participate equally in All Conflicts, a state that encourages a spirit of healthy camaraderie with one’s fellow man. This allows an individual to objectively assess questions of value, and takes the personal sting out of the experience of conflict.

Tags: ethics, propaganda

08:36 pm: The Astral Light and the Magical Link
In his Doctrine and Ritual of Transcendental Magic, Eliphas Levi describes the phenomena of the astral light. This idea is crucial to any practical understanding of ceremonial magick. Its laws are the laws that govern our effort as magicians, because it is the force that we employ to create change in conformity with our Will. The astral light is, in a sense, the gravity of causality. Magical acts, words, and rituals set this force in motion, and when it comes into contact with the material plane by means of the Magical Link, it makes an impression that can only be filled by the Willed result. The astral light is the medium of cause and effect in the same sense that gravity is the medium of matter and energy.

I submit that the astral light is beyond Good and Evil…

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Tags: aleister crowley, ethics, ngbmii

01:29 am: How or Why? Existential Psychology and Thelema
In my critical studies of the sexual/political philosophy of Wilhelm Reich, I have constantly been seeking other writers and thinkers to balance him with. Part of this is so that I can gain deeper insight into Reich’s ideas by looking at people like Aleister Crowley, Umberto Eco and even Sammy Gravano in light of what they have to say about the same topics. Another part of that is so that I can enjoy the act of reading without wanting to tear my eyes out with insane rage (Reich helps me write, but I find him trying). I’m working on the second part. At any rate, I’ve recently rediscovered Victor Frankl, who played a huge role in my studies of ethics at University, but who I never really re-read since then. I have a lot to say about Frankl’s ideas as they pertain to Thelema, but this particular section, a quotation from Nietzsche that drives much of his philosophy, really grabbed my attention…

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Tags: aleister crowley, ethics

12:07 pm: The Invisible War- Totalitarianism VS Fascism
In his “Ur-Fascism” essay found in “Five Moral Pieces,” Umberto Eco makes an observation about Italian fascism that, in light of my recent reading of Wilhelm Reich on the subject, I found to be quite stunning. As previously observed, (and more here) Reich posited mysticism as the determining factor of fascist psychology. In Italian Fascism, however, Eco describes a “fuzzy” totalitarianism with no solid ideological core. Of Mussolini, he says that Il Duce, had “no philosophy, all he had was rhetoric,” which lead to a system that was “not wholly totalitarian-not for its moderation as for the philosophical weakness of is ideology.” (p.72) This is an interesting distinction to make, as I have compared Reich’s ideas to the modern liberal secular humanist movement in their nihilistic approach to the questions of mysticism and religion. Is it possible to have fascism without totalitarianism? What are the essential characteristics of each that would allow us to make such a judgment?

The racialist and neo-Pagan elements of Nazism were the “mystical” factor that allowed the Germans to be, not just fascist, but totalitarian as well. The same could be said, according to Eco, for the materialist, atheist factors at work in Stalinist Communism, or the Christian Falangist character of Franco’s fascism in Spain. This lack of higher aspirations and ideals that Eco observes in Mussolini’s fascism distinguishes it significantly from these other contemporary examples. Reich notes that fascism is inherently hypocritical in the sense that it presents a false face to the public, but that isn’t the same thing as lacking an ideological core. The Nazi elites, for example, may have said one thing and done another, but they were very clear what they were trying to accomplish.

In his effort to define fascism as a phenomenon separate from (although often in league with) totalitarianism, Eco looks at numerous salient characteristics of what he calls “Ur-Fascism,” the ubiquitous qualities of fascism. This post examines these, point by point, asking the questions, “do we see these points in Thelema?” and, “do we see these points in the Thelemic Community?” To address the latter issue, I will try to illustrate some of the totalitarian aspects of modern western nihilism as they pertain to Eco’s treatment of the subject.


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Tags: aleister crowley, ethics, invisible war, politics, the invisible war

03:50 am: Propaganda: The Simpsons and Herd Mentality
The Simpsons was a creation of Matt Groening, who also wrote a comic strip called “Life in Hell,” staring Bongo, the one-eared cartoon rabbit. When Groening created the Simpsons, he touched off an unparalleled television phenomenon. The comic strip “Life in Hell” was a poignant satire of American anti-intellectualism. The television show “The Simpsons” could have, at times, been seen as the same. But the show effectively touched off the biggest mass-media validation of anti-intellectualism in human history, on a level that has been accepted in virtually every class of western culture. I can’t help but think of the scene (I so often think of) of Zarathustra’s followers worshipping the ass at the end of Thus Spake Zarathustra. “Question authority,” has become “D’oh,” and a culture that used to speak in allusions to great literature now uses quotes from cartoons to communicate. There is a strange isomorphism between this phenomenon and the corruption of the Bible by herd mentality.

Like “Life in Hell,” the Bible had a set of values that were practically inverted by its popular manifestation. In Thelema, we are “against the people,” because the people ALWAYS fuck up the truth. Every time the herd accepts a good idea, it essentially becomes the flag for herd values and herd mentality. The values never change, “love thy neighbor,” “we are all essentially equal,” “evil is too powerful to fight,” “we don’t investigate truth, we repeat what we’re told.” These values have existed from the beginning of time, but they have flown a million flags in a thousand nations. The truth isn’t meant for the people. That was the flaw in Protestant thought. A pseudo-Satanic hierarchy of pain, tyranny, and debauchery may have corrupted the Catholic Church, but at least they didn’t unleash the Bible on the common man. This rash act is equivalent to a street person providing a precocious child with a pint of vodka and a pack of matches. They are bound to do bad things with it. This is also why Dave Chapelle went to Africa, if you know what I’m saying.

Satire should require a license. You should have to prove that you are competent to comprehend satire to a registered official before you’re allowed to consume it. This might be my Canadian “big government” idea, but I think that society would be improved to the point that we could legalize several exciting and enjoyable drugs if we put this law into effect.

Tags: ethics, propaganda

11:01 pm: Hate Virus:
“The Germans killed the Jews, the Jews killed the Arabs, the Arabs killed the hostages, and that is the news.”

-Roger Waters

I sometimes despair for love.

Whether you look at the contrast between “too cool to feel” culture, and bullshit “emo” pretensions, the world-wide tyrannical hegemony of corporate exploitation, or the general tendency of people, when hurt or betrayed stop trusting in and caring about the people around them, it seems like we live in hard times for love. This Aeon began with a viral infection of racial hatred that, growing and propagating itself through expansion by inversion, continues to this day. An institution of racial hatred created by Adolph Hitler provided the political capital to support the creation of an institution of racial hatred created by David Ben-Gurion, which provided the political capital to support an institution of racial hatred created by Sayeed Qtub and those who used his ideas and the ideas of similar thinkers to form “groups” like Al Qaeda, Hamas, and the Taliban, which provided the political capital for the global expansion of American tyranny founded on racial hatred disguised as humanitarianism. The course of this infection is not complex, nuanced, or difficult to comprehend. It is as simple as water flowing downhill.

The same reaction that individuals have in their personal relationships happens in political relationships between groups, ideologies, and nations. When you trust someone, you risk being hurt. When you love someone, you risk being hurt. When you get hurt, you can, if you're weak, hurt someone else. Misery loves company. Whether we're talking about an institution or an individual, it's an easy choice to make.

Hate starts by giving up on love. By saying, “never again will I take this chance with someone.” Maybe you say, “never again will I trust someone this color/ this ideology/ this religion/ who I have these feelings for,” but this is the first step on a slippery slope. I don’t get it really, because I don’t have that problem. Sure, when I get lied to, betrayed, or have my heart broken, it hurts. But I’d rather take the chance again, and get hurt again, than live life with my heart closed. I was like that for a while, so I know how both ways feel, and you know what? The loneliness of one closed heart is worse than the pain of a thousand heatbreaks. The loneliness of a life without trust is worse than the pain of a thousand betrayals. And the prejudice that comes with tarring every member of one group with the same brush? That’s herd mentality at its lowest.

One thing I’ve learned in my wide travels is that if you treat people with respect and dignity, they usually respond in kind. If they don’t, it’s their problem, and it’s on them. That stuff doesn’t weigh you down if you realize that you don’t have to carry it.

So when I do despair for love, I remember that something that lives and grows in a harsh climate becomes strong. In these hard times for love, the love that we have is even more powerful.

Tags: aleister crowley, ethics

01:37 am: The Sin of Onan
The sin of Onan was not, as the vulgar have interpreted it, in the act of masturbation. Onan did not actually masturbate, he pulled out. He had a responsibility to impregnate his brother’s wife, but knowing that the child would come before his own son in the line of inheritance, he elected to spill his seed on the ground instead of conceiving. Onan’s duties came from the code of his tribe, and by disobeying them he betrayed, not just his people, but also the IDEA or SPIRIT of his people.

But what’s the difference between this kind of loyalty and herd mentality?

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Tags: aleister crowley, ethics

01:59 am: Propaganda: Will and Consciousness
One point that we cannot overlook is that Crowley considered the True Will to be fundamentally unconscious. The Great Work is less focused on becoming conscious of True Will than it is on removing complexes that impede or obstruct the motion of True Will. Part of that process involves becoming conscious of True Will to an extent, but only to the extent that enables us to recognize what elements of it are dis-eased. As Crowley frequently points out, one is only conscious of a natural function such as True Will (or the breathing, the digestion, the vision, the hearing, etc.) when it is in some way afflicted. Although True Will provides direction there is, as the adept said to the boy on the back of the swan called AUM, “no whence, no wither.” Its motion, although perfectly concentrated in its path, is aimless. It does not have a DESTINATION, but rather, a DIRECTION.  To be “in every way perfect,” True Will must be “unassuaged of purpose, delivered from lust for result.”

This is also why the longing for death is so important to the Thelemite. Will is perpetual, but all things move toward their ends. The end of our individual incarnation is the death of our physical bodies. Even this, however, is not a destination as such. Birth, death, and rebirth are simply, as Crowley says, “incidents in the career of the adept,” as unremarkable and natural as the acts of going to bed at night and rising to face the day in the morning.

The ideal of a final destination of our lives is essentially a trap. In his Letter on Humanism, the philosopher Martin Heidegger makes the argument that the ideology of “Humanism” is essentially a straightjacket (devoutly longed for by the Fuk-U-amas of the world who seek an escape from freedom) because to declare oneself a “humanist” is to set theoretical limits on the human condition and prevent further development. If we know absolutely what “human” means, any development beyond those already understood limits would represent a challenge to this idea of “good.” No meaningful development, progress, or evolution is possible within the framework of this ideology, which sees anything “more than human” as necessarily “evil,” in that it would require a redefinition of “human,” and therefore represent a challenge to the humanist’s ideology. This is much like the idiot wannabe Thelemite who declares that it is his True Will to paint a particular picture, and upon completion hangs himself, leaving a note that says “my work is done, why wait?” 

We might long for death… but death is forbidden…

Tags: ethics, propaganda

09:57 am: The Invisible War: Pakistan and Bangladesh
Pakistan is an interesting case study in Imperial strategic organization. When western corporate forces removed their immediate presence from South Asia and divided up the massive territory that was then called India, the largely Punjabi pro-West Muslim leaders who made up the group that would go on to be the main power in Pakistan was rewarded for their loyalty to the British through two World Wars. When they created Pakistan, the new state was divided into two regions, East and West.

This post attempts to examine the nature of the schism created by political Islam among different cultural and ethnic groups in Pakistan by comparison to the unity created among different cultural and ethnic groups by early Islam.

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Tags: ethics, invisible war, islam, politics, the a is in the p

02:09 am: The Flesh of the Mongols
“The Mongol concept of a universal empire differed from that of the Chinese. The latter regarded the adoption of Chinese culture by the defeated nations as an essential part of the concept, whereas only economic interests were important to the nomads.”

-Paul Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan, His Life and Legacy

The Mongols were important enough to be included along with the Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists in the rather striking passage in Liber AL III:53, but they seem to be the odd ones out. The creeds and the empires of the other peoples mentioned span centuries. The dominance of the Mongol empire, though it was geographically the largest contiguous empire in human history, lasted less than two hundred years. The creed of Genghis Khan, and the vital essence the first nomadic warriors used to realize this massive achievement, did not endure.

I believe that there is an analogy that can be drawn between the more or less irreligious character of the Mongol empire and our own modern imperialism which can help us understand out own culture’s relationship to religious nationalism, particularly as it occurs in Islam. There is a demonstrable isomorphism between the rise of Muhammed and the rise of Genghis Khan. Both men united previously conflicting nomadic tribes under a single ideology. Both men were struggling against larger empires, the Romans and Persians, and the Chin dynasty respectively, both empires expanded along established trade routes with the help of the merchant class, and there are other distinct characteristics that both Islam and the Mongol creed have in common. The religious character of Islamic imperialism, however, creates some interesting differences that are relevant to our understanding of modern Liberal Secular Humanism’s imperial efforts.

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Tags: aleister crowley, ethics, genghis khan, politics

11:25 pm: Quote of the Day: What is good for philosophers? For Gnostics?
*in response to the question, 'How big is this sphere, which is the four-dimensional self?'*

"This is really a philosophical question, and to answer it requires a great deal of theory of cognition. The world is our picture. Only childish people imagine that the world is what we think it is. The image of the world is a projection of the world of the self, as the latter is an introjection of the world. But only the special mind of the philosopher will step beyond the ordinary picture of the world in which there are static and isolated things. If you stepped beyond that picture you would cause an earthquake in the ordinary mind, the whole cosmos would be shaken, the most sacred convictions and hopes would be upset, and I do not see why one would wish to disquiet things. It is not good for patients, or for doctors. It is perhaps good for philosophers."

-C.G. Jung, Analytical Psychology in Theory and Practice

A beautiful illustration of why the therepy/ self-help model is totally incompatible with Gnosticism, magick, real yoga, or Thelema.

Tags: ethics

09:32 pm: Jung's Flaw
My beef with Jungian psychology is something that I’ve had a hard time articulating. When I was reviewing his Analytical Psychology in Theory and Practice today, I finally figured it out.

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Tags: aleister crowley, ethics

12:20 pm: Do I talk too much about myself? About my magick?
People shouldn’t interfere with or influence each other! New people, being exposed to dangerous ideas, can sometimes take them, run with them, and come to stupid conclusions! So don’t talk too much!

Pfft.

If you ask Orthodox Jews and Muslims why they don’t allow men and women to pray together, they will tell you that the women, particularly, will distract the men with sexual thoughts. Aleister Crowley, our Most Holy Prophet, thought that was weakness. He thought that the men who would be so distracted were not fit to accomplish the communion intended, and this attempt to artificially level the playing field of concentration would create infirmity. Everyone doesn’t deserve attainment. If someone ends up reading magical books like pornography, and never practicing magick, fine! They’re losers who were never meant to practice in the first place. If someone is meant to do this, no force on earth can stop them. If someone is not meant to do this, no force on earth can make them. If a sincere Muslim is at prayer, it doesn’t matter whose ass is in the air in front of him, his mind is on Allah. If the man is not sincere, it doesn’t matter if he’s alone at the dome of the rock, Allah will not hear him.

‘ya feel me?

Tags: ethics

02:34 pm: Nietzsche on Initiation
"The intellectual haughtiness and loathing of every man who has suffered deeply—it almost determines the order of rank HOW deeply men can suffer—the chilling certainty, with which he is thoroughly imbued and coloured, that by virtue of his suffering he KNOWS MORE than the shrewdest and wisest can ever know, that he has been familiar with, and ‘at home’ in, many distant, dreadful worlds of which ‘YOU know nothing’!—this silent intellectual haughtiness of the sufferer, this pride of the elect of knowledge, of the ‘initiated,’ of the almost sacrificed, finds all forms of disguise necessary to protect itself from contact with officious and sympathizing hands, and in general from all that is not its equal in suffering. Profound suffering makes noble: it separates."

-Beyond Good and Evil, 270

Tags: ethics

10:44 am: Demonology
“Now, metempsychosis, which has been misinterpreted frequently, has a perfectly true side; for animal forms communicate their sympathetic impressions to the astral body of man, which reacts speedily on his lineaments according to the force of his habits. A man of intelligent and passive mildness assumes the inert physiognomy and ways of a sheep, but in somnambulism it is a sheep that is seen, and not a man with a sheepish countenance, as the ecstatic and learned Swedenborg experienced a thousand times. In the kabalistic book of Daniel the seer, this mystery is represented by the legend of Nebuchadnezzar changed into a beast, which, after the common fate of magical allegories, has been mistaken for an actual history. In this way, we can really transform men into animals and animals into men; we can metamorphose plants and alter their virtue; we can endow minerals with ideal properties: it is all a question of willing.”

-Eliphas Levi, Doctrine and Ritual of Transcendental Magic part II p. 77

I thought about this passage a lot when I read Malachi Martin’s introduction to Hostage to the Devil. Martin is in the difficult position of confronting a real problem with occult forces. If you talk about the way these things REALLY manifest, it is hard to get people excited about it. Occult forces manifest their intentions through unconscious spontaneous human action. There is no massive satanic conspiracy in the literal sense of the word. But the same eyes that might see a sheepish man as a sheep, when turned to our culture, might see just that…

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Tags: aleister crowley, doe, ethics

01:31 pm: Sexual Revolution- Patriarchy and Seduction
There are numerous ways to obtain power. None of them are easy, and all of them require Will and brains. A select few are merely born into their station. Others are elevated through a hierarchical system for reasons other than their being fit for the positions they hold, which would be a sign of a diseased hierarchy. We need not concern ourselves with either category for the purposes of this discussion.

Most of the upward movement in any power structure, but particularly in a Patriarchal power structure, happens because of seduction. If we grew up in a family unit, a parental paradigm forms the psychological backdrop for our understanding of authority. This paves the way for two forms of seduction: father/son seduction, and daddy/daughter seduction.

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Tags: ethics, sexual revolutionii

05:02 pm: Sexual Revolution: Rites of Passage
What causes childhood to disappear?

For the purposes of this discussion, let us consider childhood as a state in which one does not possess autonomy.
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Tags: ethics, media, sexual revolution, sexual revolutionii

04:23 am: Sexual Revolution: Crowley and Women
Lately, people have been talking about Crowley’s ideas about women. This is something that I think about a great deal. For someone who described himself as “the fiercest of feminists,” he doesn’t really have a matching reputation. This post looks broadly at the treatment of women in Crowley’s material, focusing on a few things that will make people happy, and a few things that will make people sad.

So we’ll look at Liber Aleph, some stuff from the Confessions, and the Commentaries. Won’t this be fun? I consider myself a Thelemite and a feminist, so there are all kinds of issues on the table. I don’t really think those things are irreconcilable. Please let me know if I’m wrong…

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Tags: aleister crowley, ethics, sexual revolution ii

01:51 pm: Serious Question....
Individuals, by which I mean, self-determined human beings, have a way of distinguishing themselves from any possible category. They are classifications unto themselves. Idiots, of whatever identity-group, have a way of eagerly lumping themselves into broad categories and manifesting whatever general assumption of prejudice might be leveled against such a group. This isomorphism clearly indicates a true “lower” class that transcends group-identity, and yet must be understood as a manifestation of group-identity as such. This is the herd, as the prophets have described it. What is infinitely frustrating is that many individuals hate that quality in themselves, and seek annihilation in the herd. I would LOVE to say that people who do this should be absolutely abandoned (as is my inclination) but unfortunately, there are still ways of leading without interfering, so long as one does not attempt to answer questions that have not been asked.

North American (i.e. democratic) society has attempted to eliminate this lower class by denying its existence. There is no herd. We are all individuals, worthy of respect and consideration. If we think we see herd behavior, we are the ones with the problem.

Serious question: what is the most obvious consequence of the denial of the herd?

Tags: ethics