Entrance of an Eclipse

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Apr. 7th, 2009

09:38 am - The Necessities of Political Thelema

A while ago I had dinner with a number OTO brethren. One of them insisted that he was not interested in order politics, but was concerned with "the work". I've found this to be a common attitude among OTO members, who are uncomfortable with the political process and political thought in general. Politics requires that we make divisions, and set up hierarchies. Does Osama bin Laden get to vote on US border policy? I don't think so. What brethren like this are really reacting to, I suspect, is the process of division and hierarchy itself. They often quote passages like "Every man and every woman is a star", from Liber AL, in support of their positions. Through such selective quotation they are attempting to de-couple Crowley the political philosopher, who said things like "I want a Patriarchal-Feudal system run by initiated Kings" (Tunisia, 1923), from Crowley the prophet of Thelema, but is such a division tenable?

About 90 % of Thelema, at a guess, is nothing but self-discipline.
-MWT: Chapter 70

Self discipline impels division and hierarchy. There must be "the part which disciplines" and "the part which is disciplined", and one must be set over the other. If we accept the hermetic maxim, "As below, so above", we are forced to recognize that this internal hierarchy mandates a corresponding external one. The question is never politics or no politics, rather, "Which kind of politics and why?"

Often those who make political decisions we dislike are accused of nepotism: using power to promote their friends and punish their enemies. This ignores the greater question of why certain individuals are friends and others enemies to begin with, or why some friends receive political favors and others do not. When we examine these external realities, we are also examining the internal value systems that give rise to them. Even if we exclude such "superstitions" as causing change in the material world through ceremonial magic, and relegate occultism to the psychological realm, we cannot escape the fact that our value hierarchies and divisions always manifest themselves in some kind of political process.

Every time we give money to someone, communicate with them, live with them, or lust after them we are making some kind of decision based on an internal hierarchy of values. How these decisions get made is a political process, and not a democratic one. Each of our drives does not get "a vote". Would we want to hang out with a person who operated like this? I don't think so. Why then do we assume that a similar level of confusion in our external political process is desirable? Conversely, do we allow one drive to tyrannize all the others? This would be misery. Why then, should blindly following an external authority produce better results? This means we can never abandon the political process. We are, internally, political creatures. Of necessity, we must also be external ones.

Current Mood: contemplative

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Jan. 13th, 2009

11:37 am - Local Body Closures - Mergers *ahem* " Adjustments"

"He has the morphino-maniac’s feeling of bien-étre [well-being], the delusions of the general paralytic. He loses the power of looking any fact in the face; he feeds himself on his own imagination; he persuades himself of his own attainment."

-Aleister Crowley: On the Dangers of Mysticism

Has anyone noticed that when an unpleasant event occurs, within the OTO, it is immediately recast as a cause for celebration? No matter what happens, no matter how badly it reflects on local or national leadership, immediately members come seething out of the cracks and fissures to cocoon the issue with positive platitudes. This is, of course, when they deign to discuss it AT ALL. Let's remove any higher concerns about whether or not we can get to Valhalla with this kind of attitude. On a much lower level, how are we going to grow and prosper as an organization if we can't honestly examine our problems?

Without the power of looking facts in the face, how will we be able to buy and hold property? How will we attract quality members? How will we keep the books in print, or perform the rituals "with joy and beauty", or practice the difficult and dangerous "theurgy and thaumaturgy" of the higher degrees? If we want this incarnation of the OTO to do anything of value in the world, we NEED to start calling a spade a spade.

No matter how we choose to spin it, the fact that the EC had to close the oldest continually operating local body in the WORLD is NOT a good thing. Perhaps it was moribund. Perhaps it was brain dead. Perhaps it was the best, most humane thing to do under the circumstances, but how did we end up with this set of circumstances? In any other functional, adult, organization this would be a serious wake-up call. In the OTO, it's just more of the same:

Current Mood: apathetic

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Aug. 14th, 2007