Schwartz discusses these aspects - especially in terms of land. She discusses it under the heading of “scarcity.” Her solution is to imagine plentitude. While nice in her utopian world, imagining there is more, say oil in the world, isn’t going to make it appear. She is, at times, living in a fantasy world.

1) She discusses monolarity but it is not a central theme to her. This is a clue to her selective agenda - she picks and chooses the things in the Torah that support her position and greatly avoid things that directly contradict instead of addressing them head-on.

2) Christianity is not a subject she addresses. Nor is there much about Judaism post the Babylonian Diaspora. Again, problems with selectivity. This is also when God becomes the supreme good and Satan as the supreme evil. She does not dwell on these points.

3) I think you are correct about polytheism promoting nationalism, but it is a different dynamic than the one she discusses in her book.

4) Perhaps you should write something about the differences in the calls for unity.

If there is an institution involved, I think there is a balancing act between adequate freedom of opinion (plurality) for flexibility and adequate similarity of opinion (unity) for cohesion. In the case of OTO, Sabazius’ call for theological unity was strange and unnecessary (even if one happens to agree with his stance), since the Order at that time was not under threat of dissolving due to an excessive range of opinions (how some people were behaving is debatable, but Sb did not address behavior as a problem). As an organization, the Order thrived (in social and organizational terms…one can debate if it did so in ideological or theological terms) when attention was paid to general principles and practical goals rather than religious beliefs. SWL in the 1990s is a good example of this. Anyway, food for thought.

Although I no longer apply the title “Thelemite” to myself, I remain curious about why some Thelemites promote singularity of thought and practice. It does seem to be fundamentally contradictory.

If conflict breeds strength, unity divides strength! Its funny to hear certain people echo democratic secular leaders, who always want to present a united front and pretend that the vastly disperate parts of their very large nations should all have the same ideas and not come into conflict with each other. I think the really ironic part is that when you have genuine unity and everyone is moving toward the same end, people end up in competition for the same resources and wind up in conflict for a whole bunch of different and less interesting reasons.

One thing we should keep in mind, as regards unity, is what we mean by “unity,” and whether or not it is different from homogeneity. Crowley criticizes all attempts at homogeneity (as they revert to nullity), but I can’t think of a direct attack on unity. I think Crowley’s own idea of unity is very different from Sabazius’ own idea of it. We need to remember this before discarding the notion of unity entirely.