Can the A.'.A.'. system be traversed alone?

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

This is something that I've often thought about since beginning the work, given that Thelemites on the whole, aside from those who join a group largely for the social aspect, tend to be solitary types, wary of authority, and really not 'joiners'. Given this propensity for solitude there is an important question to ask: Can you do the work of the A.'.A.'. alone?

The short answer I think is, yes, sure, you can, and a lot of people have apparently done so. There's nobody to judge them except their own Holy Guardian Angel, and if what they get out of a purely solitary path is acceptable to them, then the Order has served it's purpose with respects to them. 

On the other hand, what people don't seem to realise, is that the A.'.A.'. work is solitary anyway, even if you sign up under a teacher and formally undergo the rituals of initiation and receive testing and training before having a third party sign off on your work, the vast bulk of your practice is alone, self motivated. What you do get, or should get, is guidance on thing you might otherwise have missed, comradeship of one who has been where you are in terms of grades and knows how to gauge your progress, and not least, that tenuous connection to a line of initiates going back at least 100 years at this point to Crowley, and arguably before that to the Golden Dawn, Rosicrucian and back to the medieval hermetic traditions and beyond. 

While the work can be conducted alone I would add some caveats. Firstly, quality control will be severely diminished. You simply don’t have the benefit of an observer keeping you focussed and stopping you dissapearing up your own arse. With nobody to dispel illusions there is the danger of thinking you’re doing better than you are. There is always the risk of claiming grades with no outside validation. I’ve seen firsthand the fallout of individuals trying to claim grades before they are ready, and it’s usually messy.

Secondly, advancement implies potentially taking in students. But if you haven’t been evaluated by a supervisor then pretty much anyone can set up as whatever grade and take in students. 

Thirdly, if you are fully independent then you don’t have lineal connection to Aleister Crowley’s A.’.A.’.. in my opinion, to use those initials and that claim without having actually been joined to the chain of initiation is misrepresentation. While in a certain sense, anyone who claimed A.’.A.’. is A.’.A.’., this refers to the sempiternal Order, and does not automatically give linkage to the Order founded by Jones and Crowley, and to imply otherwise is pure deception.

Love is the law, love under will.