Soul of the Beast, sanctify me.
Body of the Beast, nourish me.
Blood of the Beast, inebriate me.
Thou shalt purge me with hyssop, O Therion, and I shall be clean;
Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Inflame in us, Therion, the fire of your love and the flame of eternal devotion.
To Mega Therion, hear me:
Turn thine heads towards me;
On thine horns exalt me;
Grant the death forbidden unto me,
And bid me shine forever.
Blessing and worship to the prophet of the lovely star.

With respect to H.R. 5843, regarding the Grass of Chokmah.

If they did not make a procession for Dionysus and sing a paean to the phallus, they would act most shamelessly; and Hades is the same as Dionysus for whom they celebrate their rites.

--Heraclitus (frg.15)

What role will the children of today's Thelemites play in the future of our movement?

The debate between science and religion rages on in books, magazines, and television. How does Thelema address this age-old battle of ideas?

I maintain that Thelema is first and foremost
the formula of spiritual development
most suited to our cultural and historical circumstances.
It includes a philosophy informed by supra-rational experiences;
it provides a basis for sacred observance
that syncretizes the best elements of so-called “world religions.”
As I see it, Thelema is more Christian than Christianity,
and more Satanic than Satanism.

Aleister Crowley’s prophetic status is an integral feature of Thelema,
and I have no interest in “rescuing” the Thelemic movement
from its founding figure, or in getting “beyond” his influence.
“Blessing and worship to the Prophet of the lovely star!”
At the same time,
the Prophet's virtues include the obviousness of his shortcomings:
he was a god the way any man might be.
Thelema also has key literary and philosophical antecedents
in the work of such figures as Augustine of Hippo,
Francesco Colonna, Francois Rabelais, Sir Francis Dashwood,
Friedrich Nietzsche and Anna Kingsford;
and Thelemites can benefit from consideration of those earlier strata.

Since Thelema involves the initiatory progress of individuals
through tasks of spiritual attainment,
there are necessary differences
between the exoteric interpretations
of non-adherents and beginning aspirants on the one hand,
and the esoteric perspectives
informed by initiatory experience on the other.
However, I am willing to throw out a short laundry list
of teachings that I consider indispensable to Thelema,
and which serve to make it distinctive
as a religio-philosophical matrix. ( Read more... )

There has been an update to Vigorous Food & Divine Madness, with new rituals and music!

Special thanks to scorpionis and xephyr for work that went into the musical scores now available on the site; and to cadmus for putting up with my marginal competence in the revisions, as well as pointing out where I'd gone wrong.

May there be granted unto Howard Phillips Lovecraft, from whose eyes the Veil of Life fell seventy-one years ago this day, the accomplishment of his True Will, whatever eldritch, rugose, noisome, or squamous manifestations might bar the way. May he attain to the worlds of space and apprehend his relation to infinity.

Cthulhu fhtagn.

(Thanks to lammassu for the reminder.)

Click through for the stunning degradation of our material culture. Stay for the customer reviews.

This story lends some further credibility to Crowley's claim to have worked for British intelligence during WWII.

The fourth act of worship enjoined upon obedient Muslims in the Hadith of Gabriel is sawm: the fast of Ramadan. Actually, the term sawm applies to other religious fasting in Islam, but only the Ramadan observance is included as one of the five obligatory deeds.

( Read more... )

One might compare Ramadan to the twenty-two-day period of High Holy Days observed by some Thelemites, ranging from the Feast for the Supreme Ritual on March 20, through the Three Days of the Writing of the Book of the Law on April 8-10. Ramadan is the ninth month of the purely lunar Islamic calendar, and thus it gradually cycles throughout the solar seasons, and opinions differ regarding which season of the pre-Islamic lunisolar calendar Ramadan would have denoted. Nevertheless, the Thelemic High Holy Days correspond roughly to the foremost fasting season of Christian tradition, the forty days of Lent prior to Easter. Orthodox Easter fell on April 10, 1904 e.v., and the Islamic fast day of Ashura was on March 28 that year.

Fasting regardless of season is highly prized in the Sufi traditions of Islam, where it is often associated with sleeplessness as a chief instrument of personal virtue, subduing the lower self. “Little food, little sleep, little talk,” says an immemorial maxim. Al-Hujwiri writes that “Fasting is really abstinence, and this includes the whole method of Sufism.” An innovative fasting technique characteristic of Sufi practice is the sawm da’udi, alternating single days of total fasting with single days of ordinary eating, in order to maintain physical consciousness of hunger. Some Sufis have starved themselves to death; others noted for the rigor of their fasting have lived many years beyond common life expectancies. (There may indeed be aging-related medical benefits to fasting.) Although fasting is a conspicuous and important part of Sufi practice, many Sufi teachers have warned against “idolatry of the stomach” by which this effort would eclipse its goal of intimacy with God, and they have recommended moderation in fasting. The Bengali Sufi saint Sharafuddin Maneri emphasized the value of fasting during Ramadan as a means to the avoidance of drowsiness (Letter 72).

Among various other mystical techniques and mechanisms, Crowley does not fail to discuss fasting. As a rule, he counsels moderation. In Liber E he advises aspirants that “the presence of food in the stomach, even in minute quantities, makes the practices [of pranayama] very difficult,” (IV.6) but he also instructs them to “ascertain how many hours you can subsist without food or drink before your working capacity is seriously interfered with.” ( Read more... )

Crowley does mandate fasting for one particular operation: eucharistic magick, for which he requires “fasting for some hours previous.” This stipulation actually inclines Thelemic praxis in the direction of the perpetual fasts of Sufism, since “A Eucharist of some sort should most assuredly be consummated daily by every Magician, and he should regard it as the main sustenance of his magical life.” (Magick, p. 269. See also Liber Aleph, 16.) The only eucharistic ritual that Crowley published for general daily use by individual Thelemites is the Mass of the Phoenix (Liber XLIV), which takes place at sunset. Thus the magician celebrating that Mass would break his fast at sunset each day, just like the Ramadan fast: “Eat and drink until the white thread of dawn appears clear from the dark line, then fast until the night falls.” (Qur’an 2:187) In Muslim communities it is traditional to signal nightfall during Ramadan with the shot of a cannon.

I entered in with woe; with mirth
I now go forth, and with thanksgiving,
To do my pleasure on the earth
Among the legions of the living.

*BOOM*

In Moses the Egyptian, Egyptologist Jan Assman provides a "mnemohistory" that eventuates in the account of Freud's Moses and Monotheism, before turning to the latest understandings of the ancient Egyptian Atenist cult. Assman foregrounds a concern to expose and complicate the "Mosaic distinction," i.e. the opposition of characteristically Jewish monotheism to characteristically Egyptian idolatry.

Another book which takes Moses and Monotheism as its point of departure is Howard Eilberg-Schwartz's thoughtful and provocative God's Phallus, and Other Problems for Men and Monotheism. Eilberg-Schwartz considers the ways in which divine maleness creates dilemmas for human masculinity, in the context of hetero-normative monotheism. He discusses the peculiarities of ancient Hebrew theophanies, as well as the aniconic dimensions of the tradition. He musters a persuasive case that it was the maleness of God that was problematic for Hebrews at the time of the composition of the Torah, rather than mere corporeality or even anthropomorphism. In an especially fascinating series of arguments, he links the disgrace of uncovering the nakedness of the father (as with Noah and his sons) to the Mosaic prohibition on images, citing especially Deuteronomy 27:15-16. This latter passage, like Acts 17:24-30, is aggressively and succinctly contradicted by "The Blind Webster." Here is the resulting textus:

MOSES: Cursed be the man that maketh any graven or molten image, an abomination unto the LORD, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and putteth it in a secret place. (And all the people shall answer and say, Amen.)

PERDURABO: The god may be of clay: adore him; he becomes GOD. Let us create nothing but GOD!

MOSES: Cursed be he that setteth light by his father or his mother. (And all the people shall say, Amen.)

PERDURABO: We ignore what created us; we adore what we create. That which causes us to create is our true father and mother; we create in our own image, which is theirs.

PERDURABO: Let us create therefore without fear; for we can create nothing that is not GOD.

Lady of Knowledge, who art the mother of Mind at the heart of the coils of the serpent, and the sister of Love in the savor of the milk of the stars, distinguishing life and joy in human congress, thou celebrated by us in beds of purple, and fields of war, on thrones of the mighty, and in the festival riot, in the oratory of the magician, and the laboratory of the alchemist, as in the speech of our mouths and the works of our hands, we worthily commemorate them worthy that did of old keep thy secrets and communicate them duly: among whom are Isis, Enoch, and Tahuti; Semiramis, Ankh-f-n-khonsu, Solomon, and Balkis; Iacchus, Ariadne, Cybele, and Pasiphae, with Orpheus, Rhea Silvia, Sappho, and Pythagoras; and also Helena of Tyre, Simon Magus, Lucius Apuleius, and Hypatia of Alexandria; Velleda, Hassan-i-Sabah, Marguerite Porete, Jacques deMolay, and Jeanne d’Arc; with these also, Frater Francesco Colonna, Giordano Bruno the Nolan, Cagliostro, Sir Francis Dashwood, Paschal Beverly Randolph, Anna Kingsford, Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Emma Hardinge Britten, Ida Craddock, and Aleister Crowley. May their words inspire us, and their acts encourage us, in the perfection of our feasts.

Peter Damian, in the 11th century, discourages women from marrying priests:

"Repel these crafty liars as if they were poisonous serpents, and be quick to free yourselves, as you would from the cruel jaws of a lion."

I've given a lot of thought to my ideals for my mortal remains as a Thelemite, and I don't want my corpse to be lost, but neither do I want it to "rest." Put it to work. Use my skin for bookbindings and drum heads; my bones for trumpets and bowls; my other organs for "them that have need thereof, yet no desire toward" them. The leftovers can be cremated and kept in an urn among the effects of my family, to continue to share their dangers and troubles.

To make this plan feasible, I still have work to do on the legal front, and in identifying the technical resources to carry it off.


EDIT: I am not entertaining requests from individuals to receive my selected pieces, however funny that may have been at first.

           ORACLE
     We're all here to do what we're 
     all here to do. 

[ = Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.]

She twirls the candy free of its cellophane.

           ORACLE (CONT'D)
     I'm interested in one thing, Neo:
     the future. And believe me, I
     know, the only way to get there is
     together.

[ = Love is the law, love under will.]

She pops the candy into her mouth.

( The songs of me are the soft sighs... )

Quid voles illud fac.
- Legem idcirco servus sum, ut liber sim.
- Ignorantia legem neminem excusat.

Initium sapientiae amor Domini.
- Adoremus quem creamus.

Homo est deus.
- Absurdum est ut credam, sed credo quia absurdus sum.

( posting background )

Here is my draft of a comprehensive roll of women to whom Aleister Crowley assigned the "office" of Scarlet Woman, including "doubtful" ones. It is not an attempt at a mere catalog of all the women that Crowley romanced or bedded after 1904 e.v.; it is instead restricted to acknowledged magical initiators or partner/collaborators. Feedback and corrections are welcome.


1) OUARDA the Seer (Rose Edith Crowley)-->Aiwass
-) The Sphinx (Ada Leverson)-->Apep
-) LAYLAH the Mother of Heaven (Leila Waddell)
2) VIRAKAM (Mary Desti)-->Abuldiz
3) HILARION the Cat [Neptune] (Jeanne Robert Foster)
4) The Serpent [Uranus] (Helen Westley)
5) The Drunkard (Myriam Deroxe)
6) The Harlot (Rita ?)
7) The Monkey [Mars] (Alice Ethel "Ratan Devi" Coomarasawmy)
8) The Owl [Luna] (Gerda Maria von Kothek)
9) The Dog of Anubis [Saturn] (Anna Catherine Miller)
10) AHITHA the Camel (Roddie Minor)-->Amalantrah
11) OLUN the Dragon (Marie Lavroff Rohling)
-) ALMEIRA (Bertha Almira Prykryl)
-) ALOSTRAEL the Ape of Thoth [Mercury] (Leah Hirsig)
-) ASTRID (Dorothy Olsen)
-) The woman from Samaria (Kasimira Bass)
-) The High Priestess of Voodoo (Marie Teresa de Miramar)
-) The Monster (Hanni Lerissa Jaeger)
-) (Bertha "Billie" Busch)
-) (Pearl Evelyn Brooksmith)


( rationales and explications )

While there's still a few minutes left, warm greeting to all on the Feast of the First Night of the Beast and His Bride. For those who caught (or missed) our one-day-early ceremony at NOTOCON, the ritual can be found here.