There is not only folly, but fraud in confusing the planes, and representing that which was experienced subjectively as having actually happened in the world of matter.
-Dion Fortune Ceremonial Magic Unveiled

I have resisted for some time saying anything about the intersection between magick and political ideology. Not because I am wary of controversy (people seem to place me in their camp whatever I say) but because the topic makes my brain bleed. No matter how hard I tried, I could not find an esoteric justification for one ideological position or another that wasn’t directly contradicted by some consideration that I hadn’t thought of.

This was a difficult place to be in, for someone who had matured as a very political animal. Everything seemed turned around or simply empty. Which was of course the point.

The Western Mystery Tradition gives us a framework: that of the Tree of Life. This is further divided into Four Worlds in a manner based on the Lurianic system of Qabalah. While this is a conceptual metaphor, it does refer to concrete system functions. Atziluth really is a different kind of perspective than Assiah, or the other two worlds in between. Even Yetzirah, which holds the patterns of manifestation, requires a different approach that what we experience in Malkuth. It’s more fluid, more like our dream life than that of our waking existence.

Now, what happens to a lot of people is that they start to “get off” during their magickal practices. They experience all sorts of lovely visions and synchronicities and insights into the workings of the Universe. This can lead to a tendency to confuse one mode of perception with another, or assume that the “higher” level supersedes or somehow “cancels out” the realities of the “lower.”

This is true in a sense. The more “in tune” with the more refined or abstract modalities one becomes, their relationship with the relatively concrete will see greater openness and fluidity. But (and this is a gigantic, elephantine “but”) the “lower” must be honored for what it is. Becoming in tune with, more comfortable in, more concerned with, the day to day, mundane aspects of existence is a prerequisite for any true assimilation of the more refined.

Those who neglect to do this, or to refine their awareness of the very real distinction between “map and territory” often come out of the “getting off” phase thinking they know the One True Path to a Utopia ruled by either Ascended Masters or Thelemic Suprefolk who are all free and doing their “True Will” bothering no one else other than those “out of their orbit.” It happens quite a great deal in the Thelemic community because Crowley did a lot of amateur social theorizing (sorry) and because Thelema appeals to the same kids who spent their lunch hours hiding form people in the library, reading Ayn Rand or Nietzsche.

In order to understand why this doesn’t work, we need to familiarize ourselves with one model of how the Four Worlds play out in Assiah, the Eight Circuit Model of consciousness. This, too, is a metaphor, but one which is fairly intuitive. It also has a passing resemblance to the Chakra system and their functional concerns. The important part to think about here is that the territorial circuit (2) can be said to interface with the semantic circuit (3) and create a political ideology. As in Qabalah, the “spiritual development” angle doesn’t kick in until the relative “center point” of the system has been imprinted (circuit 5 in the model, Tipharet on the Tree). Addressing political concerns to this area of the brain is what could be called an “address error.” It’s beyond all that shit throwing and monkey howling.

The “higher” circuits also build on the “lower,” so if the functions “below” are imprinted in an predatory fashion, or in a more victim oriented way, when the 5th through 8th circuits “wake up” they will tend to be hindered by bad programming “in the cellar.” Unless one has actually done the actual work of purification and consecration, that is.

So where does this leave us, politically speaking? What I think it means is that, while esoteric studies cannot tell us what ideology to adhere to, and would probably discourage us from holding to any too enthusiastically, it can teach us how to choose, and how to go about promoting that choice. We learn about balance, about mercy and severity, and about compassion. The world would be far better off if individuals approached their particular concerns in this way, rather than bemoaning the fact that not everyone agrees with them. An awareness of wholes, rather than of clashing “opposites” (mostly phantom horns on ghost dilemmas) can help us in greater measure than the constant attempt to “win” something we know to be beneath our efforts and unduly complicated when achieved. (Rule the world? Are you fucking serious??!! Do you know what a pain in the ass… never mind.)

I’ve written before about “objective interests,” particularly of Pagans. Nothing I’ve said here should be seen to contradict that. There are things which a person who practices magick will be required to concern themselves with. Likewise with Pagans in general: if you say you worship the Earth as a Goddess then that entails a basic set of political problems to address. It does not mean you are required to be a democrat. But, if Republican, I would hope you’d
work to make the environment a real concern for that Party, rather than simply towing the line.

The main point, whether for esotericists or religionists, magi or priests, is to let the light of awareness shine through whatever you do. We will not change the world with manifestos, party platforms, or revolutions. We will change it by making an effort to let just a little more mindfulness, a little more compassion, shine into the dank, dying world we have inherited.

Religion is weird. It involves doctrines and sets of ideas that, when looked at from outside, just sound bizarre. If you have any doubts about this, just reflect on the fact that the majority of the people in the United States, people who are able to do things like bathe themselves without going batters and cracking their skulls open on purpose, people who can drive and fuck and generally function in a normal way, believe that developing a personal relationship with a corpse on a stick will expiate the bad mojo created by a primeval fruit eating incident. And that’s just the mainstream varieties of Christianity, totally forgetting the large numbers of people who think that they eat said corpses flesh and drink its blood. Sure, it’s all metaphorical (for most), but still, it’s just damned odd.

I would wager that the “weirdness” is what makes religion work. Were I the kind of guy who likes to spew academic jargon at you, I’d throw in some terminology from William James, Jung, or people like that. But I’ll just say that the cognitive dissonance produced by ritual activities helps us jump the “gap” between ourselves and whatever we conceive the Divine to be.

Now, for about two thousand years, the cognitive dissonance was dealt with in a way that doesn’t really help it function. “Faith” was supposed to make the untenable tenable. Folks like Augustine and Aquinas spent a great deal of time trying to justify the mythos rather than simply treating it as the Greeks did, as something to mull over and ponder philosophically. So “religion” came to mean believing whole heartedly in something that one knows, deep down, not to be literally true.

This, I think, causes a divorce between one part of a person’s life and the rest. People who seriously try to follow the literal interpretation of the Bible and its moral injunctions simply don’t live. They remain biologically alive, but the constant tension between the intuitively felt absurdity at the core of their system and reality cannot help but make a person neurotic.

I lived from the time I was eleven until about the age of twenty-two on the Navajo Reservation. It was there that I was introduced to the idea of religion and spirituality not as something you put in a box or that makes you into a prig, but as a way of living and being in the world. In the general view that white people can get introduced to, the rocks and bushes, and every living thing are guides to help you. Messages from the Great Mother Earth. This, I felt, was something I could get with, if not in the indigenous form I was initially exposed to. (I thought this would be disrespectful and more than a little tacky.) Which is how I became Pagan, or rather the short version of that change.

Most people in our society don’t get exposed to this notion of religion as a way of life, or if they do it’s presented by people whose life a sane person wouldn’t want to emulate. So, they hear “religion” and think of an activity that is at best done as a sideline to one’s regular activities.

This is one of our biggest problems, I think. It allows us to foul our own nest, engage in idiocy like the arms race and the War on Some Terrorists, and torture our fellow human beings. We’re disconnected, alienated. Spiritually dead.

The Fundamentalists play on this like Tartini. So any mention of “spiritual death” probably brings up associations with their insidious dogmas. Which is what they want. Anything to keep people from figuring out who pulled the trigger on their soul.

The latest crypto-facist circle jerk, er… discussion between John Crow and Keith 418 centered around the controversy over whether or not Thelema “is” a religion. This question became a popular topic after Sabazius’s latest offering. As usual, Keith’s answer had little to do with the substance of the question. Basically, since Crowley said in Magick Without Tears “Call it a new religion, then, if it so please your Gracious Majesty; but I confess that I fail to see what you will have gained by so doing, and I feel bound to add that you might easily cause a great deal of misunderstanding, and work a rather stupid kind of mischief,” that means it’s not a religion. The people who are promoting the idea of Thelema as a religion are doing so because they want to be fat, middle class weekend magicians.

(As a side note: what prejudice is more acceptable to the middle class these days than hatred and disgust of fat people? But I digress…)

Thelema, he pronounced, is more of an ideology, which is “more threatening.” Sweet. So instead of irrationally believing in the Holy trinity I can irrationally believe in the protocols of the Party. There’s never been any “stupid kind of mischief” arising from ideology, has there?

But read the whole chapter the above quote comes from. Specifically the beginning. Here Crowley paraphrases his couplet:

We place no reliance
On virgin or pigeon;
Our Method is Science,
Our Aim is Religion.

He then goes on to detail what this means. That the “aim” is to “attain knowledge and Power in Spiritual matters.” Then he makes it quite clear that he is addressing the common conception of religion when he says, “But this is certainly not the sense of the word in your question.”

So, what was his notion religion, and was it valid? The arguments both for and againstboth make reference to Crowley’s views on the subject, but never attack the main question: is Crowley a reliable authority on the topic of religion to begin with?

The sources linked above, as well as the chapter from MWOT both make it clear that by religion, Crowley means “Christianity.” This is the only religion he appears to be familiar with, and his main source, Frazier, came from the period in the academic study of religion when every other faith was either a “superstition” or some pale reflection of the One True Faith.

And “faith” is the key element that people harp when they argue that Thelema is not a religion. The only religion in the world which requires “faith” as such is Christianity. Islam is submission to Allah as God and Mohammad as His Prophet. Buddhism certainly doesn’t require faith. People coming from a Christian-based culture look at other belief systems, other religions, and see their conviction as a variation on the belief in the unprovable that the religion they are most familiar with demands. It’s not the same animal. In most, the existence of God is taken for granted, and in Buddhism the fact of Enlightenment is concretely present.

But, if Thelema is not a religion, what is it? Other than Keith’s assertion, which we will table as idiosyncratic, the other possibility is the one that Buddhism gets saddled with: Philosophy. Okay, what’s philosophy, then? Oh, wait, another long discussion that revolves around a thousand definitions trying to gain the upper hand.

Really, the answer is no further away that the root of the word, “religion.” At heart, it means “re-linking.” In religion, we return and connect to the Source of our own being. Which, brings to mind the refrain from Eight Lessons in Yoga “Yoga is Union.” Religion, taken from this perspective, is a way of connecting with the Spiritual Source, of orientating oneself in terms of that. As far as I’m concerned, this is the most valid definition, since it can cover all cases.

So, if by “religion” one means “something like Christianity,” then no, Thelema is not that. But if religion is conceived as a way of connecting with a Spiritual Source, Thelema doesn’t make any sense without such a quest. It may be an esoteric religion, but a religion Thelema remains.

(As a final aside: there would be very good reasons for the O.T.O in particular to promote the idea of Thelema as a religion, even were the above not the case. It’s a legally incorporated body whose main activity consists of a bunch of people getting together in funny robes to chant at a naked woman. Think that’ll fly if it’s not called a religious activity?)

William Butler Yeats, the celebrated Irish poet, was a little cuckoo and a lot genius. His mystical beliefs about life and the soul seem strange to some, but his poems and ideas have influenced many contemporary thinkers. Yeats himself might have suggested that there was a connection between the cuckoo and the genius—that perhaps you have to be some kind of strange bird to uncover immense, visionary worlds of prophecy, torment, and delight.

From Wild Hunt:

McCain doesn’t know we’re a secular nation. Of course neither does Hilary.

A big theme this election season seems to be who can out Jesus who. Which is ironic, or troubling, when you consider that some Dominionist big-wigs are talking Third Party and at least one groups is suggesting that the gawd-nazis should leave politics altogether, abandoning America to “God’s wrath” a-la a term by Hilary Clinton.

So, the Fundification of the country may go on without the Dominionists in the driver’s seat, simply by default. Mainly because, deep down, most people in the United States really do believe that this nation was founded as a Christian one…

Which brings me to my point. Bluntly, we as Pagans need to face up to a basic reality: this is not currently a free country in any meaningful sense unless one is White, Middle Class, and Christian. The weight put on the different requirements varies regionally, but that pretty much covers it. Even in Northern California, that island of openness, we’re really only accepted because we’re seen as “harmless,” and because we make up a huge part of the information economy.

We’re being shut out of meaningful political power. By “meaningful” I’m talking about the ability to direct public policy. The Pagan community seems more interested in senseless denotive issues (”Is Wicca Witchcraft”) than it is in the fact that the freedoms they enjoy in theis country are being eaten away by theocrats, the planet they purport to hold sacred is being devastated, and a war is being fought for no reason, and we have to fight tooth and nail to even get acknowledged when we die for these bastards.

We need to figure out where our objective interests rest, and vote for the people who will represent them. We also need to stop debating over who is or is not a “real” Pagan and start acting in solidarity.

What does solidarity mean? It means that you stick up for your own when they’re being harassed, whether or not you think they’re in the right. You do this because politics is formalized warfare, and a mass of people can change the course of battle.

We’re in the middle of a slow, insidious civil war here, folks. The time to worry about who is “too fluffy” is over.

A confession: I was a teenage Witch. My early guides on the path of magick were mainstream, Neopagan authors like (gasp, horrors) Scott Cunningham.

Now that all the “hardcore” folks out there have lost all respect for me (and I am deeply wounded by this) I’d like to address my fellow “fluffies” or “recovering fluffies” as it were. One of the things that I always took for granted, even as a New Age Commie Secular Humanist reprobate, was that magick was something you did. Books were just…suggestions really. It was only when I moved to an area where the Pagan community consisted of more than just myself that I discovered people who thought that reading about Witchcraft made you a Witch. This I found odd, something like the notion that a person who never stepped into a lab, conducted experiments, or looked into a microscope could call themselves a “scientist” by virtue of having read a lot of science books. Or calling themselves a “musician” when they’ve never picked up an instrument. You get the idea.

I’ve said it before, but I think it bares repeating: 90% of magick is bullshit. Specifically, the 90% you’ll get by reading books on the subject. Out of the context of regular and directed practice, the metaphysical speculation and ontological frameworks upon which occult practice relies are utter gibberish. This is so in exactly the same way that a musical score means little or nothing to non-musicians. One could teach themselves to read the notes, but they wouldn’t have the notes and the motions needed to produce them ground into their nervous system. They wouldn’t feel it.

As has been pointed out in numerous posts as of late, much of current “occulture” is really just a bunch of people talking about magickal theory. To be frank, it seems that the most frequent contributors to the discussion have little to say that isn’t either posturing on their part, or a regurgitation of RAW or Peter Carrol. Maybe some Anton LeVey thrown in for spice and true outsider chic.

This was, in part, simply inevitable. Since we can’t be burnt at the stake for being interested in these things at the moment, and due to the rapid circulation of data, we were bound to see people who latched onto “occultism” as a fashion statement. In another sense, though, the current situation has more less remained the same since the 16th Century. During the development of Western Hermeticism (the part we can actually verify) there were also thousands of phony alchemists for every John Dee or Bruno. Fakery comes with the territory, it seems.

Now, what set Bruno and others apart. Read Frances Yates. The difference was an impatience with “pedantry” and a willingness to actually do the Work. Not just talk about it, not just read about it, do it.

I would argue that it’s more important to do something than it is to do a particular thing. This will spur on development and might even cause something resembling…Enlightenment?