An Order of the Spirit

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Those starting out on the path often meet with confusion when they discover that contrary to their expectation of a singular Order known as the A.'.A.'., there are in fact dozens of A.'.A.'.'s. They then find themselves faced with the task of discernment: which is the 'real' one? Endless sleuthing then ensues, chasing paperwork chains, trying to verify claims and endless conflict in the lower planes. This conflict arises even among so-called initiates claiming their bit of the sand-box here in Malkuth. It really is endless and cyclic, and serves as a fantastic winnowing pan, but sooner or later we have to move on if we are to advance in the way of the Spirit.

You see, A.C. was quite clear when he stated that the A.'.A.'. has existed since time immemorial as an Order of the Spirit. My own experience and that of others that I have spoken to confirm this, we work not within mundane or even yetziratic spheres, but in fact much higher up the tree of life. While we that work within this or that lineage descended from A.C. must take care to preserve his outer rules and guidelines for consistencies sake, in reality it is not this or that person or group who will initiate an aspirant, but the Spirit of Wisdom itself. Sometimes a student will struggle under the confines of the formal system and its technical requirements and be held back. Or conflicting with the personalities of supervisors will withdraw altogether. If he is wise he will realise that these things are of the lower planes in the world of action, and that the Spirit of Wisdom continues in the background irrespective of these issues that occupy us so deeply.

Of what I have seen of aspirants over the years, including myself, those who take their oaths seriously and get 'hooked up' as it were, tend to continue in the work whether they plan to or not. Movement between lineages happens, those who formally leave continue alone because it is in their nature. Occasionally people re-join outer orders when they are more properly fitted or other wise get moved from place to place. My supervisor now isn't my original supervisor, since she withdrew formally about 5 years ago and I was obliged to seek another connection, in the outer at least, and I wasn't going to call it a day just because she had. We can never tell where we will be fitted to the chain. Since the world of action requires a special patience and maturity that often only develops away from others solitude is needed.

Once the hook is in, as it were, the aspirant is like a fish on the line; the spirit moves in him and he is drawn inexorably up the tree of life irrespective of conditions in the outer world, the spirit often has little regard for the letter. The signs are there if he knows how to look and whilst an A.'.A.'. aspirant has to pass various practical and written tests and complete technical work in order to be formally admitted to a grade, real initiation does not necessarily abide by these rules. One of the most difficult jobs in an outer order is attempting to marry up formal and actual initiation. Usually an aspirant will have actually obtained a grade quite some time before being formally admitted. On the other hand, once this actual admission is recognised by the aspirant it usually serves as a catalyst for them to complete the work, so I like to let them know when they are ready, it gives that extra impetus needed to reach the next summit!

While I hold with the opinion that if a person expects to teach A.C.'s system to others he should have learned it thoroughly himself. I also have to concur that the 'Real' A.'.A.'. is much broader and deeper than the syllabus set out in Crowley's writing, and in fact is a school with many colleges where students study many different topics and methodologies. This is not an Order of rules and regulations, of strict deadlines and exact copying of the work of dead men, this is an Order of the Spirit of Wisdom! Wisdom guides and teaches, not other men and women who are, when all is said and done, no more than fellow pilgrims on the road!

A promising aspirant may have difficulty in settling into a formal Order with its rules and syllabus of technical teachings. Not to say that these things are bad, they work for some and the Outer College curriculum is a fantastic primer to initiation in general, but each must come to the work in his own way, answering the call as he understands it. As we hear occasionally, there are many Brothers and Sisters of the A.'.A.'. who never hear of such an Order existing. I would only add, that there are also many members of formal orders who never enter the Order of the Spirit and instead fixate on mundane works, spending their lives in tribal groups and never really ascending beyond this burning ground of Malkuth. When a finger points to the moon, you don't look at the finger.

Our task then becomes one of making ourselves fit, learning to listen, wait watchfully for the movement of the Spirit of Wisdom within us and in those who we work with as aspirants. Not only watching, clipboard in hand to make sure they (and we) meet certain prescribed criteria so that we can put a tick in a box, which can lead to little more than a heightening of the judgmental attitude that I feel precludes real communion between people. Rather we watch for the movement of the spirit that signifies real progress, a movement that marks out aspirants as surely as the brand on the forehead which he receives when he is admitted to the order. Learning to recognise this requires real humility and discernment, since we must always be careful that we don't fall into a doctrinaire interpretation of things and thus exclude the Spirit entirely, for the simple reason that it is easier to understand written and formal rules and we lack the subtlety to discern the spirit. We do not try to bring the Holy Order down to our level; on the contrary it is our responsibility to rise up to meet it. 

Love is the law, love under will.

The Vision and the Voice

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

Having been working through the A.'.A.'. system for most of a decade now I've gotten pretty familiar with most, if not all of the writings of Aleister Crowley's writings. As I have gone on, I have more and more branched out and explored areas of mysticism that Crowley never wrote much about, or at least only touched on briefly. Other things he seems to have completely missed, or else ignored. These omissions have largely carried over into the writings of his predecessors, who unsurprisingly follow similar veins of thought and arrive at similar conclusions. It has become the thing to try to emulate Crowley, to obtain his visions, his 'heights of ecstasy', and to understand the path in the way that he did. Along with Thelema as a system; a Victorian era occultism, Jungian psychology, dream analysis and other visionary experiences are a big part of the A.'.A.'. system, so they are important as a basis for a spiritual education of this type. However there comes a time when the book needs to close on these things, some distance gained, as a way of getting perspective and developing as a person along lines derived from ones karma, if you like, rather than the forced growth of a vine trained to a frame for the convenience of the gardener.

The more my own practice deepens, the more I realise that this stuff really is only the preliminaries of the spiritual life. The Neophyte is encouraged to work with astral and etheric forces. By doing so she opens up the doorway to Yesod via the path of Tau, and from there becomes a denizen of the astral realm, that of the instincts followed by an incursion into realm of the mind, of concepts and images, and at a deeper strata the realm of emotions and socio/sexual programming, in short the things which for many of us make up our personalities, who we are, or who we think ourselves to be.

The best way to view a mountain isn't from the summit, but from a distance. In terms of practice, a lot of what I do these days is less about climbing to the summit of who I am, but of getting sufficient distance from it to be able to appreciate it, both in itself and in relation to the landscape in which it sits. Thelema is very individualistic, as is modern western culture. The 'individual' takes centre stage in his or her own drama. Given the inevitability of death and the disintegration of the body, and with it the individual, this is vain worship of a false idol. Modern society all but forces this worship, making it the default position. We worship vapidity and temporariness and spirituality of all stripes teaches us to hope implicitly for an afterlife of some sort, a continuation of the individual after the death of the body, either by resurrection or reincarnation, both speculative at best, driven more by hope than knowledge. We focus so much on our individuality that we lose sight of our person-hood, as members of humanity, and the fact that we are social creatures who only really derive meaning in life from our relationships with others, a fact that should be more apparent now in these days of mass self-isolation where the importance of our connections is brought to the fore. 

Even the wisdom of the ancients, from paganism to yoga and anything in between, are all drafted in to propagate the cult of the self. All point towards the improvement of the self, a becoming,...but becoming what? All change is a process, but a process is not necessarily an improvement. It strikes me that as individuals the only thing we are all undeniably becoming is rotten flesh in a casket, the very idea of becoming when married to the idea of the individual is doomed to failure, because it is founded on a delusion, it is to be married to a ghost.

Rather than becoming, and focusing on the individual, focusing on myself and MY path, perhaps it is better to simply observe the process of constant change. Increasingly my inclination is to just be, just exist with no special aim beyond the task before me. Birds sing, flowers open to the sun, the moon goes and returns in eternal cycles, this is True Will in action. As a biologist it is apparent to me that organic life is a constant cyclic dance, interacting with the minerals of the soil, the air around it, and all fueled ultimately by the sun or, in a very few cases, by the heat at the centre of the earth. In the Soto zen tradition the idea of becoming, linked to the idea of self, is seen as illusory, a fantasy that does nothing but compound our stuckness. The central practice of zen, meditation, is about sitting in quiet awareness as an expression of Buddha nature, not intent on becoming a Buddha, but simply existing. In Tai chi chuan the form in its intricate flowing movements is an expression of the Tao, Koichi Tohei taught that meditation is an expression of the universal mind, and the author of the Psalms writes: "Be still and see that I am God!"

This vision, that is no vision, since it reflects off of nothing, this voice that rings like the deepest silence. Light shines in darkness and the darkness does not comprehend, because the darkness is the 'individual', the ego and the mind which is opaque, not permeable to the light, and so does not comprehend it. The daily round of practice, meditation and mindfulness serve best now, like sinking into deep water, into sleep, like dying, "as an acid that eats steel, as a cancer that utterly corrupts the body, so am I unto the spirit of man!" Or, "And I said, Now have I begun: this is the change of the right hand of the most High". The rest is silence, and the eternal glimmer of distant stars.

Love is the law, love under will.