Bringing in the New Year Looking Forward to 2025

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

First, Happy New Year’s Eve! (or New Year!)—or proximity thereof, depending on where you are in the world—as we move into a new year. We are pretty low-key around our household. Of all our animals, the cats are ambivalent to the outside festivities, and only one of three four dogs,¹If you missed the news, we got a third Husky on Halloween afternoon (a rescue from the local pound) to add to our all-girl pack of two Huskies and a German Shepherd. Yes, we are just that fucking crazy! He turned 1 year old a week later, and the girls are at the right moment of the year now when they’re all 3 years old together. So he’s the baby of the pack. mine, is unaffected by them. The other two dogs curl up on the bed like velcro—and we’re about to find out how the new puppy reacts. But, frankly, we’re of an age where “partying” is long out of our blood.

Second, I want to thank you for continuing on this journey with me. It means a lot to me that you’re here. When I started this Substack, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to jump back into the world like this. The Thelemic community has a long reputation for being terrible, but I’d hoped we could find some harmony, even among those who disagree, to elevate the conversation about Thelema and promote intelligent diversity of thought. I’m grateful for the people I see around me today. That’s you. I’m grateful for you.

I remain convinced Thelema has decades to go before we are even close to a mature level of philosophy and theology—just like any other major movement—and we are magically still cosplaying in the Victorian era while socially and politically stuck in the 1980s and 1990s (while huffing the ass-end of the 2000s). But progress toward maturity has to start somewhere.

And it can’t be with these neo-Nietzschean dudes (they’re always dudes!) who keep fantasizing they’re setting up an Elite Thelema™ on the dried bones of Crowley or with those trying to multilevel market the hell out of Crowleyanity or those gushing on YouTube over Crowley’s “dating advice.”

Instead, it has to be organic through hard work, principled debate, back-and-forth challenges and changes. It has to be birthed, nurtured, and guided through both maturity and mistakes. It will take women and men with the courage to be uncomfortable with being right and comfortable with being wrong in areas that step on the toes of both traditionalists and innovators while, at the same time, working through the delicate balance of respecting tradition and not fearing innovation.

Quite frankly, we do not have any Pauls or Johns; Augustines or Luthers; Polycarps or Tertullians; Fell Foxs or Crosbys—people who changed the face of their religion in profound ways with the smallest of actions to the greatest of theologies to the broadest shifts of focus. We do not have any communities of Maccabees or Essenes or Zealots. We do not have the teachings and letters and extra-canonical writings of significant authors advancing the notions of Thelema in a very real world.

I’d like to see 2025 start to change all that. I want to see less Enochian and grimoire overblown junk and more applied Thelema in the areas of art and entertainment, business, education, community, government, and science and technology.²You won’t see much of anything from me about business. Government is out of my range save in the sketchiest of philosophical thoughts. I know where my limitations are. This is why I remain within my areas of theology, philosophy, and psychology (and associated fields) with some minor excursions into other areas, as my random readings will allow me to meander as an amateur—and I’m entirely honest about when I’m out of my area of expertise. Also, I don’t write much about magick, not because I “don’t believe,” but because there are far more articulate authors out there who do it better. I’d rather not compete when I can support their efforts while they support mine. Also, what little I do write on the subject are very specific theological or philosophical minutiae rather than general topics. This way, there is plenty of room at the table for us all. So many people have talents in these areas, and I want to read them. (You non-Thelemites and Thelema-adjacent peeps, just keep doing you—I’m still learning from you too!) Don’t let the perfect get in the way of throwing spaghetti sauce up against the wall to see what appears in the splatterblot.³Yeah, this is a Rorschach reference Or something like that.

Political Sidebar

On that note, I’m concerned about where my country is headed. I’m not going to lie about that. I think it’s headed to dangerous territory. I’d like to be wrong. Maybe I am. And, as always, I am more than willing to admit I am wrong if that turns out to be the case.

Either way, right or wrong, I can tell you that recent political events have shaped how my work in 2025 will proceed. It will still be heavily theological and philosophical (with a side of psychology where I can slip it in, of course), but the Sunday before Election Day, I passively threw down a gauntlet of stepping up to discuss politics and society from a Thelemic perspective and then do something about it

I’d like 2025 to start having more discussions about what community might look like from a political perspective and start defining what “do something about it” looks like. I fully admit this may be a fool’s errand of too little, too late, but it’s not about whether the country slides into chaos or not. I think it was already in chaos long before this election.

I’m going to add a third ‘special feature’ to Integral Thelema’s paid subscriber package later in 2025—to build on top of the offerings of Conversation, Coffee & Communion and the upcoming Map Making: The Journey of Discovery—with How Shall We Now Live. I’m still working out the details, but I contemplating at the moment, focusing it on more socio-political angles of Thelema with a reach toward the practical, a literal how shall we now live in this world approach.

I’ll talk more about what I think this looks like the closer I get to launching it. I have some ideas, but I don’t want to get too bogged down in them here. But the short version is I’d like to get away from the left-right divide and try to look at specific ideas through a Thelemic lens, see if we can’t put together an idea of what “fixing the chaos” might look like through that lens, and what a simple community (or simple socio-political discipline) under the aegis of the Law would practically constitute.

I admit I don’t have all the answers—and politics isn’t my forte, let’s be honest about that upfront—but I’d like to see if I can start asking the right questions. I want to see if we can find a new lens (a Thelemic lens, of course) through which to see and discuss this topic. My specialties are theology and psychology, so I may have to enlist some help on both the political and practical fronts. I’ll see what I can conjure up between now and launch time. But I will absolutely be relying on you to be part of that conversation.

Plans for 2025

In the December dispatch for Conversation, Coffee & Communion, I mentioned that January would bring:

• Reclaiming the Mind: The Anti-Intellectualism of Modern Thelema

• Thelemic Cartography: A New Approach to Personal Discovery

• Apocalyptic Theology: A Call to Radical Thelema

With the move of Conversation, Coffee & Communion to Saturdays mentioned below and a few changes in my reading and writing priorities over the last two months, a couple of these will have to wait a bit longer. So, January should now look like this (still subject to change based on my writing schedule):

• 5 Habits for the New Year: New Year’s Clickbait. Duh!

• Challenges of a Trans-Tunisian Foundation: The Tunis Comment Reexamined

• †Conversation, Coffee & Communion | 003

• Thelemic Cartography: A New Approach to Personal Discovery

• On the Nature of Death: A Contemplative Letter to a Friend

†Paid Subscriber Package Feature (starting January, see below)

Regular Features

But here is a short list of additional stacks* I’m working on for the rest of 2025 so you can get a feel for some of the topics I’m bringing to the table.

I write slowly (and a job change in the works that will probably shift my available time). Please bear with me. My goal is an article every week; however, my minimum commitment is two public articles a month (on the first and third Sundays) plus my commitments to the paid subscriber package (see below).

Of course, I’m writing all over the board. Step lightly now, and mind the gap!

• Affirming the Apocalypse: Basics of Thelemic Eschatology

• Alethiology, Part 1: Toward a Thelemic Therapeutic Orientation

• A Thelemic Liberation Theology: A New Reading of the Wretched & the Weak

• A Way of Spiritual Formation: Spiritual Maturity in the Aeon of the Child

• Between the Beast and the Bitch: A Brief Assessment of Aleister Crowley and Ayn Rand

• Cutting Through The Bullshit: A Jungle Polemic

• Doctrinal Triage: The Importance of Doctrine in a Time of Spiritual Infancy

• Mere Thelema: Street Theology—A Plain and Simple Thelema

• Nostrum Futurum In Stellis: Politics of the Stars

• Pit Called Because: An Introduction to Wicked Problems

• Reconsidering the Sphinx: A Different View of the Verbs of the Mage

• Storming the Seven Mountains: Our Sole Business in a World of Chaos

• Thelema and Authority: A Tripartite Approach of Equilibrium

• Thelemic Exegesis: A Critical Proposal for the Study of Thelemic Scripture, Part II

• Tree Meet Forest: Tending a Garden of Thelemites

• Unified Kingdom Theology: A Challenge to the Ideological Extremes of Thelema

• The Virtues of the Stars: Building a Monastic Code

• War and Peace: Conscientious Pacifism and the God of War and of Vengeance

I am still working to keep things mostly conversational rather than technical.⁴My personal goal isn’t so much to make topics simple as to make them conversational. Sometimes, that means reducing topics to an ‘easy reading’ level, and sometimes, that just means writing about a complex topic in a common language rather than technical language. (And I won’t lie: sometimes that’s hard for me.) I think the idea that everything will be simple can be overly reductive. Some topics are just tough and we have to wade through them as best we can. But that doesn’t mean we need to write like we have a thesaurus crammed up our ass or as if we’re trying to attend a Soho poetry slam like so many of these armchair philosophers and occultists do online. Except where I can’t. And when I can’t, I won’t be using WordHippo to write these things. Promise.

I am also working out how best to evolve with the times. I’m exploring how to mutate, mature, and grow with this platform. I’d like to see if there is a way for a less formal avenue of communication, like a blog—something more spontaneous and random—that could be added to the more formal ‘stacks’ and features. I’m just not quite sure how that would look yet. The Notes feature is “neat,” but I’m not sure it’s what I want to maintain either (yet). I’m still pondering ideas and I’m open to suggestions.

What’s Coming:

1. Conversation, Coffee & Communion will continue monthly but will move to the mornings of the second Saturday starting in January. I hope it will increase in frequency by mid-2025 as I hone my exquisite time management skills (a little sarcasm in there!) for more reading. But I make no promises!

2. This spring (March/April-ish), I plan to launch a new feature—Map Making: The Journey of Discovery—based on the upcoming Thelemic Cartography material I think will be useful. I’m currently aiming for the third Wednesday evening of each month to release these particular stacks(? newsletters? elements?—I still don’t know what we’re calling these things).

3. As mentioned above, I’m adding the socio-political contemplation for later this year, the tentatively named, How Shall We Now Live. We’ll see how this all shakes out as planning continues.

4. Finally, as I briefly reviewed earlier this month, I am working on a release for a weekly Liturgy for the Brethrenstarting this year with the opening of Epithalamium, which will begin on 20 July 2025. For the moment, it will only be for Sunday mornings. Should I find the time to expand to a formal Daily Office that is literally every day, sure. But at the moment, I don’t have that kind of time, nor do I see that in the near future. But I do hope you’ll join me each Sunday for these morning meditations.

That’s it. I may add to this ‘paid subscriber package’ in the future if new ideas come up that fit here better, but I also don’t want it to diminish the general offerings for the public. That is, after all, the main purpose of Integral Thelema.

Thank you

Once again, thank you for being here and along for the ride. Have an awesome time bringing in the New Year, however and with whomever you do that. And if you have pets, keep them safe!

The rest of this week is my vacation time, so I won’t be around much. We’re supposed to get snow. Again. I’ll believe it when I see it.

And, of course … I always get an entirely immature giggle out of saying this, but … see you next year!

Love is the law, love under will.

—Johnathon Victor Reese

*Always subject to change.