Your output isn’t the measure of your value

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

Something I’ve seen a few times recently is the idea that ‘top tier’ Thelemites are out there writing and publishing books, making podcasts, creating something that can be appreciated by others and fitting into the occult ‘marketplace’ and those who are not doing to are by definition lower in the pecking order. This attitude leads only to an artificial stratification based not on the mutually supportive spiritual ideal of the Hermit, Lover, Man of Earth, but on creative and economic measures which have nothing to do with Thelemic practice.

To me this is a clear sign of the internalization of the consumerist mentality fostered by capitalism. The idea being that your value is directly linked by the extent to which other people consume what you are producing, as if you were a good worker bee that exists only to feed the hive.

Liber Al says a few things about human worth, the first that springs to mind is Liber Al 1:3 “every man and every woman is a star”.  That is to say, in my understanding, our worth is intrinsic, and not dependent on how useful we are.

I would exercise extreme caution in assigning value of one person over another based on economic, productivity, even intellect and social metrics. The sole mark of a Thelemite is the effort to understand and do one’s True Will, whatever that may be, and there are certainly no tiers of Thelemites by which to stroke the egos of the handful who choose to write, paint, teach, and sell, and get to distinguish themselves from the ‘hoi polloi’ by their exertions.

“Let there be no difference made among you between any one thing & any other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt”. Liber Al. 1:22

Not to denigrate creativity, far from it, and certainly not to say that everyone should pretend we are the same either and try to pull down those who seek to create while others do not; there is star and star, system and system. But if we start grouping people into tiers based on their perceived productivity/creativity then all we do is introduce a cliquishness and elitism in a subculture that already has much too much of that sort of thing.

Love is the law, love under will.