First is an English translation of Marcel Mauss’ A General Theory of Magic, hardcover, Routledge & Kegan, 1972. Mauss was a French sociologist, nephew of Durkheim and wrote significant works studying the processes associated with gift giving. In this volume he examines the role of magic in societies, and those who practice it. The original French version was published circa 1902-03.

Next I picked up Antoine Faivre’s Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition: Studies in Western Esotericism, hardcover, 2000. The original, in French, was published in 1996. In this volume Faivre uses his definition of Western Esotericism to explore various currents of thought throughout history including the Rosicrucians Boehme, Paraculsus and others. Note, do not confuse the “Theosophy” in the title with the Theosophical Society. This is a different usage of the word Theosophy. (more…)

On Sunday I attended the celebration of 100 years of Buddhism in the U.K. The reason for this event was a combination of the U.K.’s national Buddhism day and a celebration of the mission of Ananda Metteyya’s (Allan Bennett’s) mission from Burma to the U.K. to establish a Buddhism presence in the country.

Earlier this year I was invited to contribute to a volume edited by Dr. Mahinda Deegalle in commemoration of the event. I wrote a small biography of Allan Bennett including much of my research up to that point. This biography was included in the book as chapter two. In August I was invited to speak at a roundtable at the conference. Thus, I made sure I attended and brought with me three books from the early twentieth-century of Ananda Metteyya first editions.

Before the event I met Dr. Elizabeth Harris for lunch. She is the only other person to do significant research on Allan Bennett and from it wrote a small biography—the only one published as a small book of its own. She is also the second reader/advisor on my MA thesis. We talked about Bennett and research and she is very encouraged by my work on Bennett and is looking forward to my thesis. (more…)

While her project’s undesirable goal is to advocate for some kind of utopian pluralism that discourages violence—a fool errand at best—her many observation are actually useful. Examples include the ideals behind one God becoming naturalized and manifest in other ways such as nationalism and xenophobia. Another aspect of naturalized monotheism is an antagonism to “the Other” while creating an identity of one’s solidified group in contrast to “the Other.” One’s own group must, within itself, be unified. It is only through the unity of the One that the group can withstand those outside the group. Any divergence within the group is treated as betrayal and met with violence. She gives the example of Moses returning from Mt. Sinai and finding the golden calf. He orders those who stand with him and God, the Levites,  to slaughter those who worshiped the calf.

Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the LORD’s side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him. And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour. And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men. (Exodus 32: 26-28, KJV)

I cannot help seeing the naturalized monotheism raise its heads when so-called Thelemites call for unity within Thelema. There are so many aspects contributing to this call including herd mentality, but  the deep seated ideology of monotheism is also in the mix. Look how these so-called Thelemites respond to disagreement and difference of opinion. Do they agree to disagree? Do they ever admit they could be wrong? No, they insist on the infallibility of their view and insist that one must agree with them. They truly cannot tolerate any kind of significant difference; it threatens their conception of unity—it is a betrayal to the group! There is also another significant factor, fear. They fear disagreement; they fear conflict; they fear because they are weak and scared. Only through the unity of the group can they feel secure. How Thelemic is this fear? (more…)

Sometime ago, I had the opportunity to speak with a person relatively new to occultism, and in particular Thelema, and we discussed their progress. The student had a mentor and he related that we he first met the mentor he had previously imagined all kinds of things the mentor might ask of him. Would the mentor ask the student to immediately sit in an asana for a period of time? Or maybe recite some portion of a Thelemic Holy Book? Or perhaps the mentor would demand exacting performance of some ritual on the spot, or quiz the student on some obscure point or maybe even thrust upon him some kind of quest. All of these ideas were imagined scenarios in the head of the student and he was eager to meet his mentor..

Yet, when they did meet, the mentor made no such demands of the student. Instead the mentor calmly discussed the student’s progress, the student’s current life circumstances, and at times, discussed some of the deeper points of Thelemic philosophy. At the end of the meeting, the two parted and the student and mentor returned to their respective work, both in a better position to continue in the learning process.

What I find interesting about this story is that the student failed to understand that the mentor was indeed testing him, but not in the ways he anticipated. Those new to occultism, and by new I mean even after a few years, still seem to think that the Great Work is generally dramatic and quick. Yet it is quite the opposite. The greatest tests in occultism, at least early on, are not the moments where one must balance a glass of water on one’s head or banish demons to save one’s life, but instead, when one must discipline oneself to simply enter one’s asana every day—glass or no glass. It is the small things that frequently confront us that are true tests of our progress. Eventually bigger tests and tasks will arise, but these trials are impossible to overcome if one lacks the ability to address the smaller, more frequent obstacles. (more…)

In discussing my view of the world with a friend, recently, I was confronted with the conundrum of describing my complex religious views in a manner nonconductive to their complexity. In order to continue the discussion, I used the label “pantheist” to describe my view of the world around me. At the moment it seemed the best choice from a list of terms, all unsatisfying. I continued describing that my use did not mean I saw everything as god per se, the general meaning of pantheism, but that this world, the profane world, can be and is sacred. I continued to explain that most religions seem to take people away from this world and promises them a utopia to come. In contrast, I am interested in this world. I think this world, this life, and our interaction in it at this time is much more compelling than pining for some panacea that will pour salve on all the wounds and abrasions this would has inflicted upon us.

This is one of the reasons I embrace Thelema. Thelema does not hold the hand of a follower and give reassurance that all will be fine. Instead, it challenges and demands and provokes and condemns. It is not a view for the weak; it is only for the strong. That, to me, is what makes Thelema so compelling; do I have what it takes to be a Thelemite? Many people wish to define Thelema in a way which allows them to be as they are, and call that low state of being “Thelema.” They simplify it; neuter it; reduce it to the most meaningless form by removing the challenges and demands. But, in doing so, they miss the greatest point of Thelema: it calls us to be greater than we are and to do it now and in this world.

Thelema literally means Will. When Will becomes the mediator of understanding the world, when Will is the lens through which we begin to see our interactions, subtle but substantial changes begin to arise. The first is the rejection of our unchallenged acceptance of our worldly condition. Seeing the world through Will gives us the needed distance to question why we do what we do, and how we arrived at our current position. Next the lens of Will empowers one to change the world in accordance with the Will. This may be as simple as changing ones eating habits or modifying one’s daily action to drastic changes such as where one lives, works, or how one interacts with all they meet. The lens of Will should push a person to see the world differently; to understand it as a continuous cycle of arising and that the Will is in a constant state of becoming and it is in these processes that life, in its fullest, is manifested and lived. (more…)

The three kilesas (mula kle?a) are ignorance (moha), love (lobha) and hate (dosa). Ignorance is the root cause, but the other two are similarly responsible for affliction according to basic Buddhist tenants. Now some will object to me translating lobha as love. It is usually translated as lust or attachment. But really, love is very much a part of the definition. When you love something, you crave it, you want it, you lust for it, and you might even need it. There is no difference between loving chocolate and loving someone else, both create desire and attachment. Bhikkhu Ajahn Dhammadharo describes this kilesa as follows:

There are three forms of craving, but they boil down to two sorts. We translate craving as “desire,” and desire has two types. One is desire mixed with lust, in the ordinary way of the world. The second has no lust. It’s simply a sense of inclination, affection, a liking for objects.

Thus someone in love with something creates attachments. This is why monks are not allowed to own pets. If a person loves a pet, they create strong attachments and this is a hindrance to the Buddhist monk. So many people think Buddhism is about love and it is not. Love is just as detrimental as hate, according to the Buddha. Anyone saying otherwise really does not know what they are talking about. Now some will conflate love and compassion. This too is wrong, but is too tangential for this post.

Moreover, there is an even more subtle problem that arises from love and this is part of the root kilesa, ignorance. When someone says they are in love with something, they imagine there is a self that can be in love. One could argue that people are just using the term “I” conventionally, but I doubt that is true for most people. The reality is most people think they have some kind of self, soul, or aspect that is permanent, immortal, etc. Thinking this, according to Buddhist doctrine, is wrong and people are ignorant when they say they love—there is no person to love, and there is no-thing to be loved. All is convention and illusion and thinking otherwise is the root klesia, ignorance. (more…)

The conference will consist of a number of events including an exhibition of material related to Ananda Metteyya and his proselytizing of Buddhism, a video about him, a workshop and roundtable discussion of his work. The evening will end with a number of lectures and singing by a Buddhist Choir.

I will be attending the celebration, and am tentatively participating in some capacity at the workshop; the extent of this is to be determined. I am sure all are welcome and once I know more about registration, etc. I’ll be posting it.
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Looking back at all my favorite movies from the 80s, I realize how influential they were on my ideas about life and the world. Being able to survey one’s core beliefs is useful because it reveal why one believes what one does. Movies and mass media in general, are significant influencers and the more I analyze my values from growing up, the more I can see how the silver screen had a significant influence.

One of the more obvious influences is the portrayal of computers, technology and so forth. When I saw War Games in 1983, it deeply affected my eleven your old mind. I said, “I want to do that!” I began a campaign to get a computer. My parents were reluctant because of the cost. But eventually they gave me a low-end Texas Instruments computer. This was soon replaces by a Tandy Color Computer II (CoCo2). This lasted a year and then finally I received a “real” computer when I was given a Macintosh 512K for Christmas in 1986. From there, my involvement with computers skyrocketed. Nevertheless, all during this time I saw movies that reinforced the value and importance of technology; movies such as Real Genius and Weird Science. Another influencer about computers was Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. If Matthew Broadwick can break into his school’s computer system, in War Games and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, why couldn’t I? For my whole high school term I tried—I never succeeded.
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Yesterday, while volunteering at the Theosophical Library, I was sorting the newsletters from the St. Michael’s Theosophical Center in Naarden, Holland. St. Michael’s is affiliated with the T.S. in Adyar, but is also a seat of the Liberal Catholic Church. The L.C.C. has long had ties to Theosophy and its origins start in the Netherlands. The Center started publishing its newsletter in August 1932. The volumes continue up until volume VIII, number 8, May 1940. The reason it stopped was the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The newsletter reemerges in October 1945, at first it was designated vol. VIII, No. 8, but with the publishing of the September 1945 issues, the first was recast as Vol. IX, No 1. The beginning of the October issue has a small essay about the previous five years under NAzi occupation and a poem written by Edna St. Vincent Millay. I think these little bits of history are fascinating and reminders of aspects of the war we seldom hear about.

St. Michael’s News
The Official Organ of St. Michael’s Centre, Naarden, Holland
Vol. VIII No. 8 Vol. IX No. 1 October 1945
After Five Years of Oppression

Here we are again! With St. Michael’s News!

Deeply grateful to be able to live our lives in freedom of thought and action after being surrounded, evein in our home lives, by Evil Forces eagerly seeking our destruction! And shut off from the world. The workers here have been constant and faithful!

A Requiem Mass for the fallen warriors was said daily in our chapel. Our work was reduced to Churchwork and Meditations preceding Mass.

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One of the central shifts in European thought [during the seventeenth century] was the transition from an Aristotelian view of the natural world as governed by sympathies and correspondences towards the notion of nature as a regular, differentiated system. Through the course of the seventeenth century, scientists and natural philosophers offered a range of competing views as to the specific natural forces that were to be the proper subject of scientific inquiry and the precise nature of the emerging mechanical philosophy, and the results of these disputes were to have significance for emerging modern views of magic (44).

What I find so interesting is that underlying the transition from the view of nature’s relationships as sympathies and correspondences to a mechanical one is a shift in ontological origination. How objects interact is dependent on their state of being. If there are correspondences between certain objects, say the planet Mars, the zodiacal sign of Aries and the Oak or Nettle, there has to be something inherent in their constitution that joins them. When the shift to the mechanized world view takes place, these correspondences and sympathies evaporate and this leaves us with the view that the correspondences are “all in our head.” The ontology of the planets rearranges and no longer is there a direct connection, ontologically, between the Oak and Mars.  This shift in the view of nature sets the stage for the psychologization of magic that found its nascence in Crowley and full adoption with Regardie and many prominent magicians today. However, in the process I wonder if those pushing the psychological view of magic have thought of the implications.

There can be no doubt that at the beginning of the twentieth century, Crowley was completely comfortable claiming that spirit interaction was all in the head. In his brief introduction to his version of the Goetia, he states such a belief. In 1904, while travelling on a ship, Crowley spoke with Henry Maudsley, an eminent English psychiatrist. As Crowley relates in his Confessions, they discussed yoga and the various states, especially Samadhi. Crowley’s view was that the experience was produced from physical and mental conditions. “We can produce fantastic dreams by hashish, hallucinations of colour by anhalonium Lewinii [peyote]; we can even make him ‘see stars’ by the use of a sandbag. Why then should we not be able to devise some pharmaceutical, electrical or surgical method of inducing Samadhi; create genius as simply as we do other kinds of specific excitement?” (386) He then concludes that to, “Admit that Samadhi is sui generis and back comes the whole discarded humbug of the supernatural (386).

It would seem that, early on, Crowley accepted the mechanistic view of the world and rendered magic as a psycho-physical phenomenon. This included the reality of spiritual beings, angels, demon, phantoms and so forth. They became a product of the mind; an aspect of the conscious or unconscious mind anthropomorphized into a separate being. This renders a spirit ontologically null. There is no being of consequence to the imagined entity science and philosophy tells us. Unless it is objective, it does not exist. At best it is a label put upon other process that are measurable; certain bodily responses, respiration, mental activity, increased blood flow, and the like taking place while one imagines the spirit. We can measure the body but not consciousness and thus sciences reduces being to the body and dismisses consciousness as irrelevant or the byproduct of the body’s biological mechanisms. But does Crowley keep this reductionist view his whole life? Does his views from 1904 change? Yes, in fact they do.

In his footnote to Chapter 30 of Magick Without Tears, Crowley writes,

My observation of the Universe convinces me that there are beings of intelligence and power of a far higher quality than anything we can conceive of as human; that they are not necessarily based on the cerebral and nervous structures that we know; and that the one and only chance for mankind to advance as a whole is for individuals to make contact with such Beings.

This is a significant shift. If these beings exist and they are not of “the cerebral and nervous structures that we know” then Crowley is asserting a different kind of ontology for these beings. The standard mechanistic reductionism of psychologization begins to fail. In essence, Crowley is asserting a real ontological basis for these being and that they are not simply projections of the mind, i.e. based on cerebral and nervous structures. But if this is the case, what would be the basis of this ontological assertion?

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