A polemic written 10-7-25. Written, as always, without authority.
I find that as the threats to the world and the people in it—including my spouse and myself—become more and more existential that I am losing my patience for transcendental bullshit.
Like, yeah yeah, we’re all one, cosmic love and light, Thou Art God, there’s no difference between inside and outside…I’ve met you. I’ve had that vision. It changed my life forever, too. It’s got a good beat and I have spent my life dancing to it. I get it, and I understand the impact it had on you. I grok the fullness. Keter is in Malkuth as Malkuth is in Keter. I can dig it.
Groovy.
And I need healthcare. And the world is on fire. And the economy is falling apart. And the US is falling into fascism and civil war. And Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians. And the Chinese are committing genocide against the Uyghurs. And Russia is doing their best to conquer Ukraine, even if it means killing every damned Ukrainian first. And…and…and…
…and this aching world just keeps breaking my fucking heart and I just can’t bring myself to care very much about that mystical bullshit anymore.
I’ve worked for 29 years in a magickal and mystical tradition (Thelema) that has no answer to people like Bill Breeze, much less people like Donald Trump. That has no answer to what to do when it is actually time for the war-engine and smiting the peoples instead of doing another Instagram post. Instead they are focused on finding yet another excuse for yet another Gnostic Mass followed by yet another boring boomer party where everyone drinks too much and makes bad decisions we all never discuss afterwards and the social tension builds up more and more so our numbers keep dropping and BLARRRGG.
One whole order to train magi that mostly don’t proclaim their own aeonic words for fear of making Crowley look bad and another order to protect a very sooper-seekrit secret of sex magick that anyone with the internet can learn (and without paying dues!). And neither order has an answer for whether it’s “fill” or “kill” (don’t worry if you don’t get it, it’s a Thelemite thing), much less for what to do when you get sick and your spine starts eating itself. For what to do when you’re trans and your closest people are non-binary and you have to figure out how to navigate gender and sexuality in a metaphysical system and magickal culture that is really attached to gender binaries and dualism. For what to do when your government decides that people like you are the new public enemy number 1 and the people that are supposed to be your “community” just keep on flogging their grifts and being pointedly silent. “Buy my book! Take my class! Listen to my podcast! And don’t forget to like and subscribe!”.
Sigh.
And the solution to all of this can’t just be to focus on my breathing and do another fucking LBRP/Star Ruby. I’ve been doing LBRPs since I was 12 and fascism and capitalism still harm me (maybe it’s my technique…how much should I be wiggling my butt?). And it can’t be more la-la land, navel-gazing, pie-in-the sky-when-you-die mystical bullshit. Those aren’t real answers. You all know those aren’t real answers. Those aren’t real answers for the Christians and they sure as hell aren’t real answers for us. This world matters. What happens here matters. It may not matter on some level of reality where we are all really the Divine and the Divine is really us and all are one and 0=2 and blah-blah-blah, but it matters down here where I have to buy groceries while trying to avoid being the latest target of the most recent stochastic terrorist to be embraced by the sitting president of my country.
Some of you are supposedly my siblings. My magickal family. But I am in danger and most of you won’t do a thing to stop it with all your vaunted magickal power because you have been convinced by 2500 years of shit metaphysics that none of it really matters. That it’s all gonna work out in the wash on the Day Of Be-With-Us and none of this really counts.
And don’t play coy and mysterious and say “Who says we aren’t doing anything to stop it?”. We need visible support from our communities. Queer people, BIPOC people, the sick and disabled, the poor and homeless…we need you to be visibly and consistently standing with us, not lurking in the wings giving us a thumbs up and a smile while we suffer out on the main stage. We need you to be rallying around us. We need you to make it perfectly clear to the people who want to kill us that we are not alone and that we are protected.
And I don’t see that. I see an occult community I have been a part of since I was a child, a community that my Father served most of his life, that my teacher served for most of his life, that my spouse serves, that I serve, desperately hawking their wares and trying not to make too many waves for fear of attracting attention.
And what’s worse, what hurts the most, what absolutely fucking kills me and breaks my heart the most, is the idea that since I worked the damned system for most of my adult life and learned some skills and had some Big Important Visions that I shouldn’t care about what happens. That I should be above it all. That I should sit cool and serene up on my cloud of enlightenment.
Well. Ahem. Pardon me, let me clear my throat so I can make sure the cheap seats hear me: FUCK THAT. Fuck bliss while everyone else burns. I will take fear and rage and pain over numbness masquerading as enlightenment any day.
I am here to do the mission, and the mission isn’t to let the world burn while I meditate serenely. Maybe your version of enlightenment is the stoic notion of being able to sit full lotus in Hell, serene and happy even in the midst of total suffering, but I am here to throw open the gates, free the prisoners, and make friends with the demons. I am here to share in the suffering and make sure the hungry are fed.
Some people in this community chase mystical apotheosis like a junkie chases a fix…to soothe pain and relieve craving, not because it is good for you or the world around you. And that is the very epitome of spiritual bypassing.
The Buddha died of dysentery…how is that for this level of reality asserting that it matters and has consequences, no matter how much you meditate and concentrate on your breathing? No matter how much you follow the Eightfold Path? How is that for this level of reality saying that no amount of detachment will save you (or others) from suffering? Do you think the Buddha was serene and detached as he was shitting himself to death? Does it matter?
Maybe it is just the 90s punk in me, but I am sick to death of all the hippie bullshit. I’m sick of being told that being spiritual means not caring. That mysticism means trying to quit the game. That a smiling detachment and contemplative distance equals enlightenment. Fuck that.
We make our magickal ancestors, the Mighty Dead and Blessed Saints of so many traditions, weep every day. We have so much and we are always so busy we never have time for anyone (especially ourselves), but we do so very little.
Give me something real. Something powerful. Sound your barbaric yawp. Be pushy and demanding. Proclaim something. Tell a joke. Curse someone. Start a religion. Start a revolution. Start a fight (a real fight, not words on a screen). Just fucking do something besides hawking your wares and chase clout.
You’re mages! Have some godsdamned pride in yourselves and your calling!
I know so many of you personally. Some of you I’ve known since I was a kid. I know for a fact that you are better than this. That you have heroes within you. More than heroes…stars. Are those stars content within you? Don’t they want more? Don’t they deserve better?
Magick is meant for more than selling things on Etsy and having parties. There are real villains out there and most of you are just starting another newsletter, writing another book, teaching another class, appearing on another podcast.
The world is on fire. War without end is coming. They want to kill me. They want to kill us all. And no amount of transcendental bullshit is going to help stop any of that.
We have to actually fight. We have to actually stand together. We have to actually use what we know to protect ourselves and each other. Because there is no one else coming to save us but us.
I am working on something. A new sort of magickal organization. Something for those of us who are ready for something real. Watch this space.
Until then…be well, dear ones. Live like it counts, because it does.
Art: Odilon Redon, “Buddha Walking Among The Flowers”, (1905)
Well said Alice. I woke up at 5am (again) and was thinking along these lines myself. i.e. Shouldn’t there be a lot more ‘do’ in ‘do what thou wilt’? Because I’m damned sure I didn’t incarnate into this world to sleep.
A lot of people do though.
Or they forget the mission they were set upon before hurling themselves into incarnation once more.
People talk about ‘woke’, but how many are really woke these days? What is so wrong fricken wrong with people that they have to demonize a word to acknowledge that we all have a soul and equal rights as beings with souls?
Nothing at all, but what they’re really afraid of is being called out as part of the sleepy herd who follows the leader and is part of the pack and expects that if they just join up with the right people and if they just wear the right badges and say the right slogans they’ll be the special snowflakes who get protected when the leopards come around to eat their face.
It makes me want to scream right in their faces! Yes, you dumb fucks! You ARE the problem. You were the problem in 1933 Germany. You are the passer by. The bystander. The person who switches their light off and pretends not to hear when your neighbor is being raped and murdered right outside your door (remember Kitty Genovese?) – you’re one who doesn’t care or says its SEP (somebody else’s problem), and you are OWNED by THEM by your own cowardliness because you made a deal with the devil for an easy life.
The anger is real.
I’m displaying all the signs of heart failure probably due to the Covid I caught way before there were vaccines.
But we can keep talking at the very least. Keep exercising our rights to free speech while we have them and ignoring people who suggest we don’t have those rights anymore (because fuck those people).
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. It will always be true. But what does God want us to do? What does the Universe want from us? What does our Spirit call us to do in service? What do the angels cheer us on about? What was the last thing they said to each of us before we entered into this life once more?
We all have stuff to do and a duty to get it done.
93 93/93.
Wow! Thank you for your fiery words, Bethsheba!
I have an idea for doing more than just talking. We are mages. We can do better than that. We just need to get organized. 1. An astral temple we can all project to and do magick when we need to that has a huge storehouse of magickal energy (and quickly available energy, not slow energy like a river or the tides or something) 2. An organizational structure that operationalizes us as mages doing what we do best…magick and 3. Partnership with spirits.
You interested? I will be posting the pitch in the next few weeks and I would love to recruit people I know and trust.
Sign me up! 🙂
Awesome, I will be in touch.
Wow! So much more to do.
Miles to go before we sleep, unfortunately.
I enjoyed your polemic very much and agree with a lot of what you’re saying. I’m very encouraged to see someone else speaking up. I’ve been working on a book for several months that explores Thelema in the broadest terms. The final section deals with Thelema and the challenges we face in the 21st century. While it is still very much under construction, one portion of it is beginning to take shape as follows:
5. Earth Will: Thelema and the Ecological Crisis
If every individual is a star, then this planet is our constellation—the living field in which our wills unfold. And it is dying.
Climate change, mass extinction, ecosystem collapse—these are not abstractions. They are daily facts, mounting catastrophes. Thelema cannot remain aloof. It must evolve into a planetary ethic.
Thelema teaches that each one must do their will—but a will that desecrates the Earth is not True Will—it is folly disguised as freedom.
Thelema must become eco-Thelema. Its rituals and practices must honor the planet. Its vision of sovereignty must extend to future generations. Its understanding of Will must be not individualistic, but ecological: interconnected, mutual, cosmic.
To do your Will is to serve not only yourself—but the system of which you are a living cell.
This is not a new doctrine. It is simply the next phase of the Law of Liberty: liberty that does not destroy its own stage.
6. Thelema Against the Machine
We live in an age of increasing dehumanization. Not by tyranny alone, but by code. Surveillance, algorithms, predictive profiling—all whisper the same lie: you are just a collection of data points.
Thelema rejects this.
In a time when identities are flattened, choices are pre-selected, and voices are shadow-banned by design, the declaration of the individual as a star—luminous, unique, sovereign—is an act of revolution.
Digital resistance is about rejecting such diminishment and assimilation. It is about maintaining the integrity of thought and the mystery of will in the face of total mapping.
Any way, I just want to let you know you’re not alone in your concerns.
Alamantra
I am putting something together. Not an order…a new kind of magickal organization. Organized magick—primarily thaumaturgy and goetia—towards social, political, and economic ends. Something to help protect those who need it and to fight for those who cannot fight for themselves.
Are you interested?
“To do your Will is to serve not only yourself—but the system of which you are a living cell.”
This is precisely what Crowley said too. Not that many listen.
Yup. But the radical individualists conveniently never read those parts.
There have been people trying to change and organize the order (OTO) into beening more proactive about real physical issues. It was always met with “NO”. Eventually, we got tired of hitting that wall over and over again. So we went another direction with another Order who purpose was to work in the world. And we did. But it has gone dark for now. There are people still here for that work. We are just not talking about it. You have allies and people you can trust.
I am putting something together. Not an order…a new kind of magickal organization. Organized magick—primarily thaumaturgy and goetia—towards social, political, and economic ends. Something to help protect those who need it and to fight for those who cannot fight for themselves.
Are you interested?
Can you tell me more about it?
May I PM you?
Yes
I’m interested and curious about this
Awesome! I will be posting the main pitch on the New Moon. If you’re still interested after you know what it is and how it works, let me know and I will be in contact.
Excellent 🌹
I’m new to the occult….but this lit a fire in me, a Spiritual practice that understands that the hand that helps is more blessed than the lips that pray…..I need to know more
Back in the old days of the oto, I’m talking about the late ’80s, when there was a country called Yugoslavia and people were being killed, before Grand Lodge became an authoritarian Ivory Tower of sorts, it had the good sense to ask local bodies to raise money to get Thelemites out of that country. That money was used to bribe officials, secure passports and the like. I had never been prouder to belong to any organization than I was during those times to be a member of the oto. It seemed, at least to me, that they were walking the talk. That they were seizing the moment to manifest the mandate that is given to all Thalamites to fight for freedom and the absolute emancipation of every star. Back in those days, the oto was a little Bohemian. Less concerned with appearances. Very careful, mind you, about the law of the land, but operating under our own laws. Wheels within Wheels.
The order’s evolution took a drastic turn when it decided it would be a better organization if we quieted the soldiers, the magicians, the hippies, the musicians, the artists, etc and focused on trying to become desirable to lawyers and doctors and the like. Defending the non-profit status became the main priority. Appearances became more important than the work.
At after 20 years in the oto, I realized that we would never be that organization that I was so proud of before. And that’s when I establish the Order of Thelemic Knights. The idea was that if oto just wanted to play being a group of aristocratic turn of the century magicians that had great parties, that otk could be a home for those of us that wanted to make a change in the world. Unfortunately, when most people leave the oto, they leave Thelema all together, because the oto works really hard to cast the impression that oto and Thelema are inseparable. But I digress. We have created an underground railroad of sorts. It’s not big, there’s not a lot of people involved because some people can’t handle the danger for whatever reason, we use fake names and remain anonymous. And that’s all I’m willing to say about that on a public forum.
Today, right now. This very instant is Our Time. This is what we have been training for. This is what we have been preparing for, at least some of us. Our time has come and whether or not we succeed or fail to accomplish the mission laid out by the Prophet depends on us.
I am not very hopeful.
I am putting something together. Not an order…a new kind of magickal organization. Organized magick—primarily thaumaturgy and goetia—towards social, political, and economic ends. Something to help protect those who need it and to fight for those who cannot fight for themselves.
Are you interested?
Yep, this is why the Open Source Order refocused the work around theurgy and what that develops into. Gentle success producing adepts, harmonious lodges, solid gender balance and racial inclusion. Crowley had a lot of good material, but got a lot wrong. We can do better, and generally do.
I am putting something together. Not an order…a new kind of magickal organization. Organized magick—primarily thaumaturgy and goetia—towards social, political, and economic ends. Something to help protect those who need it and to fight for those who cannot fight for themselves.
Are you interested?
No. I tried that approach. Humans are too weak alone. When we work with Gods, we align with the greater forces and act for intergenerational benefit. My current project is producing good results. Thanks for the invite
)O+
Fill me in before I agree. 🙂 DM me.
93 Alice,
You can count us in as well. Our order too aims at producing tangible results that yield a better world for everyone, which right now is operating on a smaller level under the auspices of “The Sanctuary”—i.e., engaging wholeheartedly in the experiment of living in a Thelemic community while also avoiding the pitfalls that resulted in the failures of Crowley at Cefalu.
In any case, I appreciate your carefully worded petition. Feel free to DM me anytime.
93 93/93,
Christopher
93, care Frater,
Thank you, Christopher. We will need as many adepts and higher as possible. I will be in touch. Can I use you as a contact point for Erica as well, or should I speak with her separately?
Either way is fine. Whatever she receives, she forwards and vice-versa, so it’s merely a matter of preference (as a matter of transparency, she’s more adept at engaging with others than I am 😊).
Okay, good to know. Alex is the “face” in our marriage, too. But this is my enterprise. Alex is supportive, of course, but she has her own trip and is far more involved in Reclaiming (which is having its own issues). I hope to recruit at least a couple of Reclaiming folks, too, of course, but a lot of Reclaiming folks are true pacifists who won’t be part of the martial side of things.
I’d go as far as to drop transcendentalism and “enlightenment” all together as unnecessary to the teleology of magic. Otherwise it all becomes rather navel gazey, disconnected from the World and gives people an excuse to separate themselves from the very real material problems we face in the modern day.
Absolutely. I think the only reason my work in the A.’.A.’. bore good fruit was because of the idiosyncrasies of my teacher/superior and because I was taught by my grandfather to think in concrete terms of how something actually serves me. Mysticism for me has been about establishing relationships with deities and expanding my understanding of specific metaphysical principles so that I could better myself and my life. Concrete goals and concrete methods. All the rest of the navel-gazing seems more likely to neutralize mages than help them.
War without end sounds like hell to me
I was 3rd degree. I prefer Spare. Fighting never changes anything.
“We are going to have to find ways of organizing ourselves cooperatively, sanely, scientifically, harmonically and in regenerative spontaneity with the rest of humanity around the Earth …
We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common.”-Fuller
I completely disagree. I’ve had to punch a few bullies in the nose in my time to make sure they stopped torturing me and my friends. Certainly changed our lives for the better. And the bullies learned an important lesson about misjudging threats. Everyone came out better off.
The lesson being that fighting changes quite a bit, both for good and ill. Rome wasn’t built on a bake sale.
Lots of bravdo .Mucho ado about nothing
Rome eventually fell
Your opinion is ill founded.
Israel, United States are the biggest bullies on the world stage. You should definitely get rid of Israel for sure and probably America second.
Personally I love a good knife fight .Gun fight are for cowards 🤣
Folks that piss me off in person, regret it one way or another
Why are people attacking you? Vigilantism in the States is illegal.Go to the cops first.
On the world stage you are 100% wrong
.Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind”–John F. Kennedy.
👍
Gorgeous delightful delicious and wonderful.
That’s an interesting reaction, considering that a lot of what I said was deliberately provocative. But I’m glad it spoke to you.
I’m not Thelemic, but I am here for fucking off with the extreme navel gazing while the world is on fire, and fascists seek to put us to the sword or under their thumb. It is a consistent question that needs to be asked: what good will this do my Ginnreginn (Gods, Ancestors, and vættir), the world, my communities, my family, and/or I? Not that everything must absolutely be bent to improvement or political action, because we still have to do other things alongside all this needed work.
keep me in the loop
I’ll be posting the big pitch on the New Moon.
I sometimes regret that I never had the chance to join an Order; I think it would have appealed to me in my youth and might have taught me some discipline and rigour. However, on the other hand I’m very glad I never did when I see what these Old Order groups have become. I am a member of OBOD, which I do believe does some good in the world, but it’s not about fighting back the way we need to, as you are saying. Here where I live in France, I have never found a group to be a part of. I’ve tried to start one a couple of times, but the people I gathered were interested but inexperienced, and I would have had to put myself into a teacher role I did not want to take. I still hold out hope that I can organise, magically, in the Here-and-Now World for just such goals as you speak of, but for the moment I can only try to show by example what I believe in fighting for, and plant seeds of Knowing around me, send signals, let people in a little, and hope that we who need to shall, inevitably, find each other…
I will be posting my proposal for a new type of magickal organization on the New Moon (Tuesday PST). If you are interested after you know what I am proposing, let me know.
I will certainly look out for your announcement with interest, and whether I think that this particular action suits my current possibilities and predilections, I will, I am sure, draw upon your wisdom to help inform my own actions….
Totally understand you. And I wonder what can we really do about it.
Watch out for my New Moon post on Tuesday PST. It will be my proposal for something to do about it.
What’s the actionable solution?
Read my latest post.
You are in the wrong hyperstition. It’s the chaos kids. They’re messing with your dreamscape through tech.
You are Sutter Kane, and so am I. Write the reality that you want to see 😉
🤫
If I wanted all that pie in the sky stuff I would’ve become a Gnostic or some afterlife obsessed sect. It sounds rather cult like to me. These Western Mystery type things were founded by a bunch of British aristocrats far removed from the earthy concerns of the masses & it shows. And the self-help)wellness movements have similar problems they are very intertwined with the corporate world.
There are answers to thiproblem that are basically transcendentalist though not the kind you’re objecting. The extent to which they yield results is more or less that to which they are neutralised typically via redirection of energy toward charity work amounting in larger schema to endless plastering of problems perpetuated by host culture within which unrestricted growth of transcendental potency is non-negotiable hence also the kind you’re calling out being not only permitted but actively marketed for easy sales in a culture conditioned to comfort and orientation toward self-service. Those with other ideas get to do their bit assisting it’s casualties or cultivating spiritual knowledge and realization within respectable bounds for the future of increasingly disney-like kettle-ashrams with restaurant attachments and odd freak critical sparks curiously fated to drop like flies. At that, it’s not the worst model – much good is done, and many very genuine, decent, realised people to be found within though culturally captive and as realists far from expectation of much beyond.
Distant from Thelema in essential ways I know, and probably of little constructive help but thinking it offers a vivid, concrete, large scale backdrop for considering this kind of ambition. One thing they get very well is relation between transcendental orientation and empowerment at the cultural level though sadly the ‘cultural’ level also gets it, all too well.
I agree that transcendentalist systems can produce very nice people and that they can limit the suffering of individuals.
The problem is that right now is not the time for nice people. I have been being nice. For decades. I have been doing the Great Work actively for 29 years and been nice and focused on the Divine and theosis for roughly 2/3 of that. I’ve spent *so* much time meditating, praying, and being nice. All Democrats do is be nice and sell out.
Now is not the time for nice. Now is the time for fucking some shit up. And I need warriors now, not monks (though I will take all the warrior-monks I can get). The world needs to be protected, not transcended. The goal of the game can’t be to quit the game.
“I’m here to open the gates, free the prisoners and make friends with the demons”…..I’m in love, I’ve been tormented by angst lately at the declining state of my own country, being a child of merely 17, I’m discouraged at not being taken seriously, at the lack of fire, the apathy embodied by my peers and elders in regards to real, radical, communal action and resistance….