Liturgy and Love A Devotional Calendar

I read a comment elsewhere on social media in which a respected teacher in Thelema told someone (and I’m paraphrasing) to move away from devotional work, specifically Bhakti Yoga, in their spiritual life as quickly as possible.

I was stunned.

Devotional work is one of the most organizationally-independent praxes of Thelema and, in fact, prescribed within the Book of the Law more often than any other work of the individual. One might even go so far as to suggest that Bhakti Yoga is merely another perspective of Nuit’s call for union through love. She says, “For I am divided for love’s sake, for the chance of union” [AL 1.29]. Sri Swami Sivananda called Bhakti Yoga, “love for love’s sake.”¹Sri Swami Sivananda, Essence of Yoga. (Divine Life Society, 1998), 15. One could easily rephrase this as “union for love’s sake” without any misunderstanding.

Over and over again throughout the Book of the Law, there is a call for all rituals of life to be directed toward Nuit. “To me! To me!” [AL 1.53h–i, 1.62b–c, 1.65], she says. This movement of devotional energy is, paradoxically, both inward and outward (or, in another sense, interior and exterior, which is not the same thing but let’s not split hairs quite this early in the morning).

And we can’t forget Crowley’s whole-ass instructions on devotion in Astarte vel Liber Berylli sub figurâ CLXXV for his Philosophus grade in the A∴A∴.

If anything, in my opinion, we lack enough focus on devotion in modern Thelema. We have tainted it with the idea of either some kind of religious trauma from a church youth group or Hare Krishnas sitting around chanting for higher consciousness. Of course, what focus there is on devotion in modern Thelema trends toward complicated, individualistic, deity-style worship works us right back to this Krishna-kumbaya-circle-jerk level of devotion that does little for anyone at all in a larger sense.

The Thelemic Calendar

One of the things that’s always struck me about the Book of the Law is the calendar in Chapter 2. Crowley skims right through it and next to no one touches on it with any depth beyond, ‘Yeah, it exists.’ It’s so obviously a yearly liturgical calendar that it escapes me how it could be avoided as such.

On the surface, the second chapter gives us a fairly simple calendar.

^36.There are rituals of the elements and feasts of the times. ^37.A feast for the first night of the Prophet and his Bride! ^38.A feast for the three days of the writing of the Book of the Law. ^39.A feast for Tahuti and the child of the Prophet—secret, O Prophet! ^40.A feast for the Supreme Ritual, and a feast for the Equinox of the Gods. ^41.A feast for fire and a feast for water; a feast for life and a greater feast for death! ^42.A feast every day in your hearts in the joy of my rapture! ^43.A feast every night unto Nu, and the pleasure of uttermost delight!

I want to provide Crowley’s take on all this before suggesting a more robust character for a liturgical calendar.

We can ignore verse 39. Crowley says, “This particular feast is of a character suited only to initiates.”²Aleister Crowley, The Law Is for All: An Extended Commentary on The Book of the Law. Edited by Israel Regardie. (New Falcon Publications, 1983), 209. We’ll let organizations that deal with those initiates handle that feast. But the rest are open for all of us and span the standard calendar.

Crowley couldn’t have been more confused about the rituals of the elements and feasts of the times, but what little he does give us indicates that the “feasts of the times” are the equinoxes and solstices. The “rituals of the elements” could be what is traditionally known as the “crossquarters” in modern pagan nomenclature.³Unlike the crazy titles mind-vomited by a bishop of the EGC, the crossquarters of Lammas, Samhain, Imbolc, and Beltanemap out beautifully as the Feasts of Love, Liberty, Light, and Life, respectively.

The rest are clear: the feast for the first night of the Prophet and his Bride is August 12th, the feast for the three days of the writing of the Book of the Law is April 8th through 10th, the feast for the Supreme Ritual is March 20th, and the feast for the Equinox of the Gods is Vernal or Spring Equinox itself.⁴For the purposes of this liturgical calendar, the autumn equinox has been titled the Equinox of Humanity in favor of the reaping season on the other side of the calendar (and opposite the spring equinox as the Equinox of the Gods). The Solstices remain as they as Midsummer and Yuletide. We don’t have to reinvent every wheel.

Liturgical Calendars

To mark standard time, we use a civil calendar—one that generally starts on January 1st for most people year-round—and to mark religious time, we use a religious calendar—for Thelemites, this starts on the Vernal Equinox each year. But a liturgical calendar may be (and usually is) different from either of these. For Christians, the liturgical season starts with Advent at the end of November or the beginning of December (always starting the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day). For Thelemites, I suggest the liturgical calendar starts with the feast of the first night of the Prophet and his Bride (or thereabouts, but the details of the “thereabouts” will have to wait for another time).

The point of a liturgical calendar isn’t to mark the progression of time but to enter into and celebrate a cyclic mystery. It’s about devotion to that mystery from beginning to end, then to start all over again.

Love, Will, and Devotion

Whether used individually or communally, the liturgical calendar offers a yearly cycle of meditation and devotion that plays into a two-fold (at least) mythic story.

Without being overly detailed here,⁵I have a full liturgical calendar scaled out that would include seasons and times (dates) functionally equivalent to any other liturgical calendar. However, for the sake of space, I will only be looking at the broad strokes here. the liturgical year starts with the feast of the first night of the Prophet and his Bride in August, or Epithalamium (lit., “upon the bridal chamber”), and is the season of Anticipation. This starts the mythic cycle of the year as this is the beginning of the mystery of the revelation itself. Without the bridal chamber, there is no birth of the Law that comes later.

From there, we have twenty-four or twenty-five weeks, depending on the year, of Ordinary Time (Nox), the months that offer us seasons of Reflection, Thanksgiving, and Darkness. This is a time of interior gestation, devotion, and meditation. I don’t like to call it a “dark time,” but some people like to resonate with that idea. So we can call it that. And to some extent, it is a dark time. It’s the past. It’s the faded time from which we’ve come. It’s memory. It’s reflection. It’s a time of consideration.

We come through this time and out into the Lucis Adeventum Vigilia, the Vigil of the Coming of the Light, a progressive illumination of ‘the sanctuary of the world’ through time.⁶You may hear hints of the “Mass of the World” in this. I was inspired by it to think larger than just “here,” but to think how “we” got “here” through the larger view of Time. In these six to seven weeks of the Vigil,⁷If there are only six weeks for this time of the year, the final two Magi are wrapped into a single week. Combining Dionysus and Mohammad, while not ideal, is not entirely incongruent. we take time to recognize the Magi that illuminated the way to the current Law:⁸Unlike the past revelations, our eschatological outlook understands there are future aeons coming. We are not the last, the final aeon. That sets us apart from our genetic spiritual ancestors. Our Law is merely one more illumination, one more aeonic vigil, to the next Law, to the next spiritual advancement of humanity. At least we know this. Tahuti. Mohesh, Lao-tze, Siddartha, Krishna, Dionysus (under diverse names), and Mohammad. This is the season of Preparation as we—mythically, metaphorically, symbolically, and liturgically—move from the darkness of the previous aeons, toward the revelation of the Law, and into the light of the present aeon.

Most are familiar with the now common “high holy season” started by the College of Thelema and the readings over twenty-two days that start the evening before the feast for the Supreme Ritual and end on the last day of the feast for the three days of the writing of the Book of the Law. For purposes of this calendar, all twenty-two days of this season of Revelation have been named Viginti Duo, and the feast of the writing of the three days of the Book of the Law is subtitled Triduum.

From the end of those feast days, the liturgical season wraps itself to the ending and the beginning again with seasons of Unity and Meditation in Ordinary Time (Lux), the months that offer a sense of comfort and reflection to start the liturgical year all over again.⁹My ultimate goal is to eventually write (or, even better, assemble a team that writes) a Year A, Year B, and Year C breakdown that would provide a detailed cycle for meditation and devotional work to provide more depth to the Thelemic worldview utilizing the full scope of Class A materials and then even more beyond those materials. I have no problem with turning Crowley’s life into a myth or even celebrating events in his life, quite frankly. I have a huge problem with turning him into a savior/demigod-like figure. And that’s what I’d like to sidestep that I don’t think was avoided in the last attempt to create a ritual cycle with his life.
Though, I admit, it’s ironic that this article is being released on the same day as the anniversary of Crowley’s death. In The Habibi (the formal lectionary document I keep in a spreadsheet I’ve been haphazardly working on for over a decade now), 01 December is a Solemnity, that is, “the highest ranking Feast day. It commemorates an event in the life of Crowley or celebrates an event for the greater Thelemic community as a whole or for the local community as prescribed in the Book of the Law. If a Solemnity falls on a Sunday, it is celebrated in place of the Sunday.”

Granted, the first thing one can see about the above breakdown is that it is very much oriented toward the Northern Hemisphere. It is an unfortunate consequence of living in the Northern Hemisphere as I do. The only major flip is the Ordinary Times (Nox/Lux), though they would have little consequence to the overall schema of the liturgical year. There are other more intricate issues, actually, that are problematic to resolve than just a hemispheric flip—to be worked out another day.

But the goal. You ask what’s the goal. Good question.

Love.

The point, if you recall, of liturgy is to enter into the mystery. The mystery here is the revelation of the Law. The application of it in daily life, keeping the Law foremost in our minds in daily life. That devotion, that love for love’s sake, that “to me” of Nuit—all wrapped up into the liturgy of the year focused on the cycle of the year surrounding the birth (revelation) of the Law itself.

For those who are so uppity about the Holy Guardian Angel as the sole goal of magick, Crowley tells us

Far better, let him assume this Law [of Thelema] to be the Universal Key to every problem of Life, and then apply it to one particular case after another. As he comes by degrees to understand it, he will be astounded at the simplification of the most obscure questions which it furnishes. Thus he will assimilate the Law, and make it the norm of his conscious being; this by itself will suffice to initiate him, to dissolve his complexes, to unveil himself to himself; and so shall he attain the Knowledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel.¹⁰Aleister Crowley, The Law Is for All: The Authorized Popular Commentary to Liber AL vel Legis sub figura CCXX, the Book of the Law. (New Falcon Publications, 1996), 184. (emphasis mine)

The Book of the Law, the tangible artifact of revelation that anchors Thelema in this world, offers us the Law that is sufficient in application for this whole endeavor. That’s it. Nothing else. Nothing more. There are many ways we can do that. For those so inclined, whether individually or communally, the liturgy of the year offers just another avenue of keeping this Law as “the norm of our conscious being,” reminding us to “apply it to one particular case after another.”

Love is the law, love under will.