A polemic written 5-30-25. Written, as always, without authority.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Dearly Beloved,
It feels strange to put the traditional Thelemic heading and footer on this polemic. I haven’t done so in many years. As anyone who knows me personally is aware, I have had a complex and troubled relationship with Thelema as a tradition and with other Thelemites as people. A lot of this friction has resulted from contradictions I see between the actual philosophical, theological, mystical, and magickal content of Thelema (by which I mean the actual “holy texts”) and the way that Thelema has manifested as human organizations and activities. So in this polemic I wish to address these contradictions, the problems I see in the modern manifestations of Thelema, and the future of Thelema as a tradition.
Thelema was my first real tradition of magick and mysticism. Yes, my Dad was a Feri witch and my Mom bought me my first magick book at 12 (“Modern Magick” by Donald Michael Kraig), but my first real connection with magick beyond my own fumbling and childish efforts were when I started working the A.’.A.’. system in 1996 at the tender age of 19. When I started I was full of all of the idealism and wonder appropriate to that age. The A.’.A.’. is not a social order, so after my teacher got me through my probation I mostly continued doing my Work on my own. I ran into very few other Thelemites over those first few years in Santa Cruz, which left me plenty of time and energy for actually doing the Great Work.
Then, about fifteen years ago, I started hanging out with OTO people and going to Mass weekly. No, I won’t say where and with whom because it’s irrelevant and because I mostly still like and care about those people. Most of them are wonderful people and I don’t want to speak ill of them. The point is that for a while I spent a lot of time with the OTO, and what I experienced deeply troubled me. I won’t go into the details, as the story will be familiar from so many stories of the OTO, but what I found led to me distancing myself from all of those people. I went back to being a solitary practitioner, working out my own will with fear and trembling, and counted myself lucky for getting away so easily. Several people l know and care about were not so lucky.
Years later, nothing has changed for the better. I see the same things going on and, frankly, I am tired of watching people—every one of them stars in the company of stars—get sucked into these broken cultures. I’m tired of watching people get exploited until they burn out or become disillusioned and give up the Work entirely. I think it’s time for us to go in a new direction.
I think it’s time for Thelema to grow up.
All of this 19th century “secret society” nonsense is holding us back. I think that we need to get away from that style of behavior entirely. And that’s what all of that 19th century wannabe Golden Dawn and pseudo-Masonic stuff is…a style. A fashion. An outmoded, generally sexist, homophobic, and transphobic fashion created by privileged rich white men for privileged rich white men. A fashion based on bad scholarship (especially bad Egyptology), colonialism (particularly that of India by England), cultural appropriation (particularly the appropriation of the Kabbalah by a bunch of clueless gentiles like me), and ideas harvested from mostly obsolete scholarly studies like “The Golden Bough”.
In addition to this, the “fraternal order” organizational structure is generally built on an unsustainable “burn out” model of extracting labor from core members until they either get sick and die or get tired of it and quit. There are seldom any succession plans for leadership. Leaders tend to stay in power until they die or there is yet another schism and they are either ousted, retain power over a smaller group, or the group collapses entirely. None of these “august and holy orders” have survived with membership and practices intact for more than a handful of years at a time before falling into schism or being abandoned and then being “restored” by later practitioners desperate to steal some of the legitimacy that they imagine existed for Crowley and Mathers, et al. In short, they are a joke. The only reason the A.’.A.’. has any legitimacy or usefulness (yes, I’m shitting where I sleep, but this is important) is because our system works (“…Success is thy proof: argue not; convert not; talk not overmuch!…”-Liber AL 3:42) and we aren’t supposed to socialize. Thankfully, except for a few blighted lineages (you know who I’m talking about), we generally don’t. We do our Work and leave each other alone. I knew my teacher and I know my own current student…that is all I need to know. Otherwise I mostly know of other A.’.A.’. initiates, and while I consider them my siblings, I don’t even know their grades, much less the content of their Works. And that is as it should be: “…Thus ye have star & star, system & system; let not one know well the other!” -Liber AL 1:50
Thelema must become a way of living out the Great Work in our lives and the world rather than an organization, no matter how lofty the language we use to describe that organization or its system of initiation. Fancy seals and prestigious Latinate titles mean nothing (again, I know that I use one of those Latinate titles, but this is important, and definitely more important than my ego). Ornate initiatory formulae will not hide our shame. We must abandon the pseudo-fraternal systems of the old aeon (and that includes masonry, it includes the Rosicrucians, it includes the Golden Dawn) that are all predicated on hierarchy and the sublimation of the individual to the organization (or more often and far more likely, the leadership of that organization). All such organizations are by their very nature anti-Thelemic. The “power over” model of organization and attainment is no longer legitimate. Period. Full stop. Leave that sort of thing to the Christians and the other remnants of the prior aeon. It is not for us.
And that means we need to abandon our toxic mythology. There are no “secret chiefs” to tell us us what to do (and take responsibility for our ambitions and mistakes). There is no “Great White Brotherhood” running human affairs who will save us from ourselves. There’s just us. And that means we have to take responsibility for ourselves and our own desires. That’s what Thelema is really about…the freedom to be adults. The freedom to be ourselves and bear the responsibility of living with the consequences. We can’t pass the responsibility for all of this off to someone else. There is no savior to save us, no prophet upon whom to blame our excesses, and no one but ourselves to direct us.
We have to take up the burden of our own wills.
We must stop romanticizing the past and stop trying to imitate broken cultures and bygone eras. We must turn like vipers and strike at any who would use the Law as a way to control others, automatically and naturally exterminating all authoritarian elements among us as a healthy immune system automatically and naturally exterminates hostile microbes. We must live up to the commission given to us all those years ago in Cairo.
I call upon all of you who would call yourselves Thelemites. All of you who have accepted the Law and wish to go forward into the world and do your wills. I call upon you to liberate yourselves from the bizarre authoritarian elements in the OTO and the EGC. I call upon you to live up to the calling you felt the first time you read the Book Of The Law. I call upon you to step forward into the bold future promised to us 121 years ago.
I call upon you to be free. Beautifully, terrifyingly free.
In love,
Soror Alice aka Soror הנני
Love is the law, love under will.