New Wine in Old Skins The Conundrum of Tradition and Innovation

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Part of the challenge with writing about Applied Thelema is the occult is rife with escapism. Even Thelema. Occultists want magical cosplay, spooks under the bed, shoulder goblins, and expensive shelf displays in faux worn-leather. To discuss real-world applications; to get beyond rote memorization, stale incense, and pretend aristocracy of esoteric titles and degrees; to move past the bad doctrines of radical individualism and manufactured isolationist policies of secret orders; all of this takes courage to reach beyond the beginner books and biographies. And sometimes that’s hard to do when so much of our community’s social currency is built on who knows the most about obscure Victorian nostalgia and worthless number systems.

Now, let’s be honest here: I am not opposed to many of the practices and ideas I tend to ridicule. I do so because I find they are limiting and hold us back from innovation, not because they are useless—though, in some cases, they are entirely worthless and just hanging around because people won’t move past their crutches. While I don’t believe it’s needed for promulgation of the Law, sometimes the number crunching is one more layer of proof toward an otherwise clear exposition of the Law. And just how many biographies do you think Crowley needs? Crowley in Paris. Crowley in Berlin. Crowley in India. Crowley in Cairo. Crowley in London. Crowley in America. Crowley in the Last House on the Left. The profiteering off the cult of personality is alive and well today at the expense of Thelema dying a little more in obscurity at every drop of ink in Crowley’s name.

Near the last decade of his life, Crowley wrote to C.S. Jones:

One thing I will say: that I do not expect anything to come of qabalistic speculations. I think that they may even be extremely mischievous in times like the present. Our sole business should be to use the Law to reconstruct the world from the chaos into which it is already half tumbled. That formula is a simple one, and requires no specialised training. The work requires the cooperation of tens of thousands of people who have never heard of the Qabalah, and they have to be addressed in language which they can understand.¹Aleister Crowley, personal communication to C. S. Jones, August 28, 1936. (emphasis mine)

Most writers in Thelemic space are producing soundbites and quick feel-good articles. Or they are wandering around regurgitating the same qabalistic ramblings, prooftexting blatherings, and absurd approaches to what they call “philosophy”—what I used to call ‘Crowleyan mumblerap’—that has been said thousands of times since the death of Crowley. They want you to walk away with a fist pump and a ‘damn straight’ in the air. But they’re not actually sharing anything that pushes Thelema forward. Or they’re wandering around talking about how magick is some kind of spook system of “mysterious energy of the spheres” they can’t explain but they “just feel and know it’s there.” [Rare exceptions exist, of course. I have a couple of them (those I can find on Substack) in the Recommendations list on the front page.]

None of them talk about how Thelema applies to the world-at-large by any stretch of the imagination.

I have to admit I am of two minds when it comes to such things.

One side of me remembers being young and loving all the number crunching we used to do sitting on the front steps of my apartment long into the night hours. We took “Invoke me under my stars!” [AL 1.57] very seriously. I know what it’s like to spend weekends—all weekend long—in ritual, in initiations, in deep conversations between rituals. I remember riding to work with my best friend and every morning and every evening the conversation was magick, Thelema, qabalah, chaos, ritual, degree work, and idealistically talking about community planning. The intensity of it all is still as clear for me today as the day I lived it.

We talked, debated, argued, agreed, disagreed, all over minutiae as well as important doctrines that plagued how we viewed the world. It was a time just before the advent of the internet. We didn’t have Google or webpages or Substack. We just had each other. We had a community. I didn’t know it at the time—I was too immature in my understanding of theology, philosophy, and psychology—but it was exactly the time we spent together that laid the foundations of a primitive understanding of spiritual formation.

Philosophy ought always to follow practice, but often does not.
That is why so many philosophies are out of touch with reality—
spun out of the philosopher’s own substance, as a spider spins its own web.²Quote from Paul Foster Case—but, to be honest, I can’t remember where I got this quote. I messed up in not recording this citation. I’ll update this when I relocate it.

I feel there was a time—though I admit my personal bias here with this feeling—when Thelemites understood the difference between Thelema and magick, between Thelema and Thelemic organizations, and even between Thelema and Crowley. There was a time when the Book of the Law was the sword and shield of every conversation.

Times change. A certain amount of cynicism has taken root.

The other side of me just wants to toss it all away as relics of a bygone era, to follow Crowley down the ‘reconstructing the world’ rabbit hole.

The Book of the Law is simple, concise, direct (even if a little mysterious in places), and significant to our clear and present existence. It provides the infrastructure of a balanced, stable, and individual life harmonized by a community spirit that binds together those that would adhere to the principles of the Law in practice and not merely in theory, in deed, and not merely in word. It provides both spiritual inspiration and practical motivation. It resolves matters from terrorism to vandalism, from abandonment to low self-esteem, from business law to domestic law, from individual challenges to governmental concerns. The Book of the Law is the final word on the ability of any human being to live in a manner that is conscious, awake and focused both on their own individual needs and on the larger global concerns that affect them either on a daily basis or only once in a blue moon.

At what time are we going to take Thelema seriously, and stop pouring new wine into old wineskins that distract from that “sole business”? At what point will we speak the language of the world around us to present the argument that Thelema holds the solutions to real-world concerns? At what point will we stop slinging Victorian occultism (and its outdated language) and start laying the foundation of Thelema in a modern age?

We are bogged down in faux tradition. Every street corner charlatan is hacking a bastardized qabalah, selling ideas of “ladders to God” via the hierarchal degrees of a secret society, and throwing around “magick” as a core part of Thelema³Magick, as defined by Crowley, affects everyone (cf. Magick: Liber ABA, “Introduction”). Magick, as defined by nearly every podcaster and YouTube nonsense, is precisely the reason Crowley re-spelled ‘magic’ in the first place: all sleight of hand and sleight of mind rather than dedicated Work in the science and the art of life itself. all in the name of “tradition.” They’re all hung up on “the way we were” with little concern for the way things are or even for where we are going.

Though, to be clear, we cannot jettison the concept of tradition entirely—nor should we want to anyway—as it defines the actions that are transmitted (communication) through multiple points in time (continuity) for the intentional purpose of connecting individuals (community). However, we need a new language for the modern age, a theological (or philosophical, if your hangups are too deep) language that understands the human condition, and speaks to both individual and universal concerns.

At the same time, we cannot solely rely on innovation. If every idea is novel, then we have no connective tissue to any sense of identity.⁴Thelemic identity is a complex subject confounding most people who even try to discuss it. 93% of those get caught up in some kind of strange crisis of self-antagonism that betrays a lack of understanding of the identity/identification divide itself. The short end of a long discussion is identity corresponds with (relates to) the metaphysical concepts of resistance and participation and cannot be anachronic but must be temporally diachronic—which is what makes a Thelemic identity exist in continuity from Crowley’s era to the present and beyond. This requires certain elements to be identical at some points of convergence but not all points of convergence. There are very few elements that meet this requirement at all. The longer discussion will have to wait for another time and essay. Innovation for the sake of novelty is bereft of connection to the source of and surety in the ground of our spiritual origin. This type of ideology leads back to radical individualism⁵Crowley idolized a “rugged individualism” of an America that was never a reality at any point in time in its history. This has turned into a radicalization of individualism from several early O.T.O. leaders who skirted—at the least, if not outright flaunted—a sense of fascism within the ranks. There is no basis for a disconnected, radical individualism within Thelemic doctrine. The Book of the Law speaks of no such concept. This is not an apology for group dynamics of secret orders and fraternities, but the community is the second doctrinal revelation of the Book of the Law prior to the revelation of the metaphysical construction of the individual; and there is no denying the insistence of the first chapter mandating the prophet and his bride to bring all people into the fold. One may suggest that Thelemites are wolves, like some out there claim; but the reality is all Thelemites are human. While Thelema may be stretched to address the needs of wolves, we know absolutely that it addresses the existential concerns of humanity. which is, quite frankly, dismissed by the Book of the Law early in the text and by Crowley later in his own Commentaries.

Those who dismiss Crowley wholesale are naive. It’s not about how much someone can quote Crowley, but how Crowley’s work is approached critically. Not every jot and tittle of Crowley’s work is relevant to Thelema and yet we may just learn something about Thelema from a nuanced perspective he provides that offers insight for reflection. One has to keep in mind even three years before he died, Crowley wrote to W. B. Crow and said he was “for all practical purposes, totally ignorant” [of] “the dynamics of the formula of Horus.”⁶Aleister Crowley, personal communication to W. B. Crow, July 03, 1944. [Full quote: “Of course, as you point out, many people, most perhaps, have not yet mastered the Osiran formula, and, of course, it still works and has in fact been used for nearly everything by most people. But what we need is a genius to work out the dynamics of the formula of Horus. Of this I am, for all practical purposes, totally ignorant.”] It is these “practical purposes” that I find myself most interested in pursuing here in the real world around us, the application of Thelema to real-world concerns.

Ultimately, the final arbiter of how we approach Thelema is ourselves. However, let me tell you this: if you are way out on a limb by yourself, you’re probably wrong. So many have little concept of Authority within Thelema, assuming either Crowley to be the sole authority via his role as a prophet or the total lack of any authority aside from one’s own assumptions. Individually, detached from community⁷“The higher our attainment, the more closely will our points of view coalesce, just as a great English and a great French historian will have more ideas in common about Napoleon Bonaparte than a Devonshire and a Provençal peasant.” [Aleister Crowley. The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography. (Penguin, 1989), 213.] and tradition, we alone do not hold the right relationships to be an authority on Thelema.

A Thelemic theology and philosophy is only heretical if it relies solely on innovation or syncretism. It is dead if it relies solely on tradition. It is, however, unworthy of the title at all if it is only the dry bones of regurgitated Crowley and part of an echo chamber existing for nothing more than to create a caste of incestuous authors and publishers with no vested interest in either tradition or innovation yet claiming both, speaking to no world problem, and seeking no solution to ultimate concerns of individuals.

Many Thelemites insist experience is the arbiter of Truth while denying experience has any ability to relate across domains to anything or anyone but themselves. The philosophical armchairs are too comfortable. The intellectual trenches are too full of the mental equivalent of jihadists in the marketplace, exploding at the slightest provocation that doesn’t meet their narrow standard of some fetid and worn-out notion. Yesterday’s proving grounds, those once august and sacred Fraternities, are now little more than today’s replacement for modern initiates longing for their childhood Sunday School class sans Peter, Paul, and Mary. And Jesus, of course. Yet we witness the yattering philosophies from such initiates that lack the depth of both experience and character necessary to provide much more than the necessary gloss of social currency in an already inflated market of posturing ego.

It’s time to reclaim the mind in Thelema. It’s time to reclaim the field from wand-waving and impractical Crowleyan mumblerap. It’s time to stop putting the new wine of Thelema in the old wineskins of Victorian occultism.

It’s time to put Thelema squarely into the realm of applications for life.

Integral Thelema focuses primarily⁸In addition, because of personal interest, I will engage with psychology not so much to “prove” magick is all in our head but more from the perspective of how Thelema informs psychological theory of personality, consciousness, and mental health—though this may be viewed as a novel approach to blending integral psychology, psychosynthesis, and internal family systems all flavored by Thelema more than the other way around. This is important as it directly relates to the Great Work via Crowley’s insistence, “Let him, before beginning his Work, endeavour to map out his own being …” [Aleister Crowley, Magick: Liber ABA (Weiser Books, 1997), 145.] on two things: theology and philosophy. And, of course, the various subjects that branch from those two areas.⁹“The eight sections [of this] theology are theology proper [study of the divine], hierology [study of the Thelemic canon], cosmology [study of the universe], anthropology [study of nature of humanity], soteriology [study of sin and salvation], ecclesiology [study of community], teleology [study of the Thelemic life], and eschatology [study of last things, including aeonic theory].” ¹⁰“[A complete worldview] must be able to satisfactorily answer four questions: that of origin, meaning of life, morality, and destiny. The first three of these [philosophical] questions encompass metaphysics (ontology), epistemology, ethics, and, as an extension of ethics, politics. (Destiny is covered via eschatology under theology rather than philosophy.)” In looking for where the rubber meets the road, one cannot escape from philosophy by dismissing it as too cerebral or too theoretical or too impractical. The only alternative is whether philosophy guides us by choice or by chance. Those who believe philosophy has no sway in practical life are usually those who most helplessly absorb it from the chaos of society around them. From here, exploring applications in the real world is the goal without being encumbered by antiquated tradition or losing our way in pursuit of misguided innovation.

Love is the law, love under will.