The Islam of To Mega Therion: Fourth Pillar
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.

There seems to be no evidence that Muhammad and the first Muslims ever fasted prior to the Hijrah--the emigration from Mecca to Medina. A single Meccan sura mentions sawm, but does so in a context that indicates abstinence from speech rather than the food and sexual contact usually referenced by sawm (19:26). In Medina, Muhammad instituted a fast on the day of Ashura (10 Muharram), which may have been taken over from local Jewish practice, possibly the Yom Kippur holiday. The Qur’anic basis of the Ramadan observance is found in 2:183-5, as follows:

O believers, fasting is enjoined on you as it was on those before you, so that you might become disciplined. Fast a fixed number of days, but if someone is ill or is travelling (he should complete) the number of days (he had missed); and those who find it hard to fast should expiate by feeding a poor person. But he who gives more of his free will, it is better for him. And it is better for you who fast, if only you knew. Ramadan is the month in which the Qur’an was revealed as guidance to man and clear proof of the guidance, and the criterion (of truth). So when you see the new moon, you should fast the whole month; but a person who is ill or travelling should fast on other days, as God wishes ease and not hardship for you, so that you complete the fixed number of fasts, and give glory to God for the guidance, and be grateful.

Ramadan comprehends the Laylat al-Qadr, the night commemorating the initial revelation of the Qur’an, and ends with Eid ul-Fitr, a communal fast-breaking celebration. In practice, Ramadan often becomes an affair of both fasting and feasting, as nighttime repasts make up for the restraint of the days. Those who are able to do so sometimes simply sleep during the day, and thus exchange the hours of activity and dormancy, making the observance one of sleep-discipline as much as food-control.

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.” (VI.2) In Liber Astarte, he observes:

Yet as in mortal love arises a distaste for food, or a pleasure in things naturally painful, this perversion should be endured and allowed to take its course. Yet not to the interference with natural bodily health, whereby the instrument of the soul might be impaired. (v. 34)

Crowley’s discussion “Of the Banishings, and of the Purifications” asserts that the “Ancient Magicians” engaged in rigorous fasting “so that the body itself might destroy anything extraneous to the bare necessity of its existence.” But he claims that modern sophistication permits the neglect of such an “external” regimen, in favor of the most scrupulous “internal purification”: “We may eat meat, provided that in doing so we affirm that we eat it in order to strengthen us for the special purpose of our proposed invocation.” (Magick, pp. 211-12) (On the dietary constraints of the Ancient Magicians, compare also Anna Kingsford’s Clothed with the Sun, No. XVIII.)

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*

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