EsotericElucidations

my commonplace notebook for esoteric musings

[esotericelucidations]

What is Thelema?

If you were to explain Thelema as a philosophy, you could say that Thelema is a rational philosophy of spiritual self-sufficiency.

If you were to explain Thelema as a religion, you could say that Thelema is a new and improved religion of sun worship—if you define the word “sun” as also meaning “yourself”.

If you were to explain Thelema as a magical system, you could say that once a person has comfortably awakened to the new level of self-awareness that characterizes the formula of the current Aeon, Thelema serves to enhance, energize, and hybridize WHATEVER philosophy, religion, magical system, or school of thought that you as a spiritual artist most perfectly resonate with.

Ultimately, Thelema is bigger than anything that can be named by any of the eight parts of speech. Thelema is bigger than the Book of the Law, Aleister Crowley, and anything in heaven and earth. Thelema is bigger than everything except YOU.

[Paraphrased from Lon Milo DuQuette's "Success is Thy Proof"]

[esotericelucidations]

"The Chicken Qabalah" Highlights pt. 1 Deconstructing and Reconstructing

"...It is perhaps inevitable that the format of this book will chafe the sensibilities of those who have forgotten that spiritual discovery can be a joyous experience and that great truths can be transmitted through the medium of laughter."

"Now, the first thing you need to learn is that everyone's Qabalah is uniquely their own. Your Qabalah is not my Qabalah or anyone else's. A personal Qabalah is placed in your hands the moment you take up the study. It's alive, and grows upon what you feed it. The more you learn, the more you use. No two students study or work the same."

Coming from evangelical Christianity, this was like a breath of fresh air for me. I've come to learn that most occultists are respectful of differing beliefs, and they're not particularly interested in converting others to follow their specific path.

Everyone is unique. Everyone's path will look different. No two people will agree 100% on matters of religion and spirituality. So long as their beliefs aren't harming anyone, why don't we try to get along?

"If the Bible leaves a bad taste in your mouth, welcome to the club. But before you throw old King James out the window, I'd like to point out that the Bible is holy—but so are the phonebook, Webster's Dictionary, Robert's Rules of Order and the menu at McDonalds."

"We are Qabalists not to prove the Bible is holy— we are Qabalists because everything is holy."

"...Everything is holy and anything is capable of being the vehicle of divine revelation."

When I first began deconstructing, I became very bitter at Christianity. These parts from this book helped me get over the bitterness I was feeling towards the religion I was raised in.

Just like occultism is the correct path for some, Christianity will be the correct path for others. As the Aeon of Horus marches on, it will inevitably become the correct path for less and less people. But seeing as this Aeon has only just begun, there are many people who will still greatly benefit from a Christian worldview.

Maybe they need an angry father figure threatening eternal damnation in order to keep their self control in check. Maybe they need the comfort of a promised paradise in order to accept the suffering of this world and move on from the grief they've experienced? These things are a net-positive for humanity.

Christianity itself isn't harmful, but it becomes harmful when Christians start to push their beliefs onto others. To that, I'd like to remind myself that their Aeon is coming to an end and they are lashing out as they feel the control they once had in the world slipping from their grasp.

[esotericelucidations]

"It's Time for People of the Book to Grow Up"

This video was recorded back in 2020, but the essay was written long before that. The reading begins at 2:00. Emphasis mine.

"It never fails to amaze me that stable, intelligent people—people with driver’s licenses and PhDs, people who teach calculus and can finish the NYT crossword puzzle, people who run huge corporations, people who otherwise display the most superior powers of intelligence and insight—can instantly turn off all their finely-tuned instruments of intelligence where religion is concerned.

Granted, the natural impulse for spiritual fulfillment and expression springs from a level of the psyche that finds it hard to explain itself to the rational mind. But does it follow that the rational mind must be completely disconnected in order to reach for the sacred infinite?

A person’s religious beliefs and convictions are and should always remain a matter of personal conscience. If you choose to believe things that I consider silly or absurd, that’s fine with me. After all, everyone’s a little crazy.

As long as we function safely in our society, it’s none of my business what you believe.

Unless, of course, by acting out your beliefs, you negatively affect my life, or cause me or others to become ill, or rob me and others of our human rights, or engender hatred, racism, genocide and war, or threaten to destroy all life on Earth.

Then, how your religion causes you to behave becomes my business. 

I do not care who you worship as God. I do not care if you worship. I don’t care who you pray to, or if you pray. I don’t care if you’re Muslim or Jew, Jain, Hindu, Christian or Buddhist, Santeria… You might believe in a scripture divine. You might believe in the Bible, or in words from the Quran… Or me!

But if your faith needs to conquer the world—if your God craves more converts… That’s not religion, that’s politics. And you’ve been had.

You’ve let them make you a moron, bamboozled to worship a devil, tricked into losing your soul.

You might believe that your God is the one and only God up in heaven. Believe what you want—go on, you’re free.

But if you’re told that you’ll never find peace until you’re dead, cold and buried… That’s not religion, that’s suicide. And you’ve been had.

You’ve let them make you a moron, bamboozled to worship a devil, tricked into losing your soul.

But if you’re told that there’ll never be peace as long as there are unbelievers, or you must die to be happy… You’re in a cult.

You’ve let them make you a moron, bamboozled to worship a devil, tricked into losing your soul.

If you were told that you’re evil from birth, and that your only salvation will come when you’re dead and buried… Then you’ve been had.

You’ve let them make you a moron, bamboozled to worship a devil, tricked into losing your soul. 

I’m sorry, my friends. I cannot see how blindly accepting the above doctrines—or any of 100 others just as ludicrous—how that could possibly be good for one’s mental health. As a matter of fact, it appears obvious to me that in order for a rational, intelligent person to subscribe to such silliness and still live a relatively normal life, he or she must set aside a small corner of the brain, devoted exclusively to religious mental illness, and visit that area as infrequently as possible.

It’s time for people of the book to grow up."

[esotericelucidations]

"The four elements of antiquity aren't meant to literally refer to those elements, rather, they represent the totality of all forces, energies, and qualities in the universe divided into four broad categories." "Modern Physics postulates four primal forces, which bear a resemblance to how the four elements were defined: The strong force, the weak force, the gravitational force, the electro-magnetic force."

—Lon Milo DuQuette, "Way of the Secret Lover"

[esotericelucidations]

“If you think you don't have a sacred duty in life, you are profoundly mistaken. No matter what your life circumstances are, there is a job that must be done, a need that must be filled, a role that must be played in the grand comedy/drama of existence that can be done/filled/acted out only by you and you alone.”

—Lon Milo DuQuette

[esotericelucidations]

“It might appear to the casual observer that my magick effects changes in the outside world. But ultimately, my outside world is one and the same as my inside world.

If my magick does indeed bring about some desired change, it merely proves to me that… I have succeeded in transforming myself into the kind of person to whom such things happen.”

—Lon Milo DuQuette, “Low Magick”

[esotericelucidations]

"He that is so foolish as not to follow his own Will, how shall he be so wise as to pursue that of another?"

—Aleister Crowley, “148. De Stultis Malignis, Liber Aleph”

[esotericelucidations]

“Tarot is a telescope through which we can gaze at the great macrocosmic world of deity; and it’s a microscope by which we can dissect the tiniest secrets of nature and our own souls.”

—Lon Milo DuQuette, “Low Magick”

[esotericelucidations]

“Magic is art, and imagination is the lifeblood of the artist. Every artist is a magician, and every magician is an artist. The painter's creation is a painting; the composer's creation is the score; but the magician's creation is the magician—nothing else. Ultimately, the only thing the magician can directly change with magic is the magician.”

—Lon Milo DuQuette, Foreword to “Stellas Daemonum”

[esotericelucidations]

“In practice, magic is performance art staged for an audience of one—a lavishly costumed and meticulously choreographed meditation projected externally upon the screen of the magician's own objective reality.”

“Magic can be generically described as . . . the dramatic and ceremonial awakening of symbols and mythological archetypes and metaphors performed with intent to trigger specific changes in the magician's consciousness.”

—Lon Milo DuQuette, Foreword to “Stellas Daemonum”

[esotericelucidations]

“The fundamental operating principle of evocation is to give outward substance to inner realities. The sooner you rid yourself of preconceived ideas of how all of this is going to manifest, the sooner you’ll be able to recognize it when it really does start to manifest.” “Just as no two people see and react to a play in the same exact way, so too no two magicians will have identical experiences in evocation.”

—Lon Milo DuQuette

[esotericelucidations]

"Look around. You are smack dab in the middle of a ribbon of repeating patterns stretching infinitely toward macrocosmic immensity in one direction, and infinitely toward microcosmic smallness in the other. As above, so below. If we study the tiny subject, we simultaneously study its giant counterpart and vice versa."

—Lon Milo DuQuette, "The Chicken Qabalah"

[esotericelucidations]

“Were the world understood. Ye would see it as good. A dance to a delicate measure.”

—Aleister Crowley

[esotericelucidations]

"Humble thyself before thy Self, yet fear neither man nor spirit. Fear is failure, and the forerunner of failure: and courage is the beginning of virtue."

—Aleister Crowley, Liber Libræ sub figura XXX

[esotericelucidations]

"The secrecy observed by the alchemists was made necessary by the power of persecuting Churches. Bitterly as bigots fought among themselves, they were all equally concerned to destroy the infant Science, which, as they instinctively recognized, would put an end to the ignorance and faith on which their power and wealth depended."

—Aleister Crowley, "Book of Thoth"

[s-n]

[esotericelucidations]

"Is Magick real, or is it all just in your head?"

It's all in your head.

"So if everyone knows it's just a placebo, why does it still work?"

Because it works.