Book of Law Study Group 1.57

Always Wondering

Wonderful discourse. I am happy that these pages will be here so I can study them a long while. And please continue, it is not my intention to change the subject. Much. :grin:

But I have read much this week on this verse and I am none the wiser.

When my childeren were small and I needed them to do something I gave them a choice. They could do it this way, or they could do it that way, to help them feel empowered, sure, but also to distract them from that fact that they were being told to do something.

I find it odd and maybe a bit suspicious that in the midst of all this talk about true will, lack of restriction and sexual magick (in Crowley's new comment) we now must choose between love and love.

Are we not love?
We have read that it is as natural and wonderful that we have sexual desire as it is to desire attainment. Wouldn't True Will be the Art of uniting, or at least attempting to unite love and love?
So why are we being asked to choose? Or what are we being distracted into doing?

AW

Grigori

Always Wondering said:
When my childeren were small and I needed them to do something I gave them a choice. They could do it this way, or they could do it that way, to help them feel empowered, sure, but also to distract them from that fact that they were being told to do something.

Ooh you are devious!

AlwaysWondering said:
I find it odd and maybe a bit suspicious that in the midst of all this talk about true will, lack of restriction and sexual magick (in Crowley's new comment) we now must choose between love and love.

You've lead me to think of verse 29 AW.

For I am divided for love’s sake, for the chance of union.

We are created for the sake of love, and so our only option is love. We just get to pick which version suits us best (ooh devious, you are right). Perhaps its intended that one type of love leads to union, and the other leads to procreation (i.e. ongoing division and multiplication) which perpetuates opportunities for union.

Your right, I see it clearly now. We're all sheep!

Blindly shagging our way to divinity. meh... I'm OK with that :laugh:

thorhammer

The thing is . . . I don't see anything in the verse that suggests one, final, all-or-nothing choice. It suggests to me that one has recourse to two different courses of action, much as AW gave her children

, in any given situation. We have two different ways of applying the law of Love under Will.

I did karate for a long time. The style I studied was called GoJu, meaning hard-soft. In any situation, we had a split second to decide to employ a soft technique or a hard, so all our training was geared not only toward learning those techniques and their absolute mastery, but which to employ in what set of circumstances.

Why only one?? I simply do not see why only one, when both are as valid . . . but only one might be effective in a particular situation.

\m/ Kat

Aeon418

Choose ye well implies that you are in a position to make a choice. Love may be the Law, but it has to be under Will.

If you cast your mind back to when we were all small children, I'm sure you can remember what it was like to given chocolate and sweets. Our parents advised us not to eat too much. But we couldn't resist the temptation, and gorged ourselves until we were sick.

As we grow to maturity most of us gain a measure of control over this impulse, and are able to choose whether to indulge our sweet tooth, or not.
But on our way to adulthood the universe gives us the ultimate candy in the form of a sex drive. Most so called Adults are still children when it comes to their sex drive. (For various reasons this is probably more true of men than women, but it still applies to both sexes.) They aren't in a position choose because their sex drive is making that choice for them. (The slaves shall serve.

) In the same way that it does with all other animals. But human beings are different from animals. Unlike them we can develop the ability to control and direct our sexual energies. It's only at this point that we have a choice.

Thelema is not about denying our animal nature. The Osirian religions already did that with their idolisation of abstinence, asceticism, virginity, and celibacy. But neither is it a total indulgence of the natural, animal side (Isis). It's only in the balance between the two opposites that we can have choice.

Many people who get into Thelema seem to think that it is a license to have as much sex as they want. But what they fail to see is that there is no freedom in being a slave to a compulsion.

thorhammer

Ugh, sex again. There is more to life - and love - than sex!

I'm trying to say that "love", as a way of relating to the world, as a foundation from which to formulate one's direction and actions, can take one of two forms (as stipulated by this verse). There is the love of the Serpent, the Fortress as RLG has postulated, and I'd equate that with the "hard" techniques of karate in my example above; then there is the love of the dove, the "soft" techniques.

I agree that "Choose ye well" does imply a choice - but where within the verse does it suggest that it is one, irrevocable, irreversible decision that will dictate the actions and path of the rest of our lives?

I come into contact with many people every day; most of them I think are idiots. I used to treat them as such, but nowadays I try hard not to do that. Instead, I try to treat them with "love", after a fashion. But if someone says or does something idiotic to or around me, I have a choice in how I react within that framework of "love" - I can be harsh but fair, or I can be PA and take a more roundabout tack. I can bring the energy of the situation to a head (rising energy, serpent love) and thus a conclusion, or I can lower the energy by calming someone (descending energy, dove love).

I don't see that I have to say, right now or ever, "That's it - it's Serpent love for me, forever!"

\m/ Kat

Aeon418

thorhammer said:
Ugh, sex again. There is more to life - and love - than sex!

Agreed. But it is the "root impulse" that drives us to look beyond our own self, and desire union with the "other". This can be other people or the HGA, depending on the level it is expressed and made manifest. And even then there are different degrees of union.

thorhammer said:
I agree that "Choose ye well" does imply a choice - but where within the verse does it suggest that it is one, irrevocable, irreversible decision that will dictate the actions and path of the rest of our lives?

I don't know. As far as I'm aware I never even suggested that.
At certain times one choice may be in accordance with Will, and at other times it won't. But this is a choice that is present throughout life. It's not a rubicon that is suddenly passed and can never be changed again. Situations and context are forever changing, and so do our choices.

Aeon418

Libido = True Self = True Will = Sun = Light = Holy Guardian Angel.

When you have proved that God is merely another name for the sex instinct, it appears to me not far to the perception that the sex instinct is God. ~ Aleister Crowley

Owners of the Golden Dawn Magical Tarot will instantly see which path sexual energy takes when it is "discharged" to earth by looking at the Empress/Dove card. (Shin)
This same energy, if it's not earthed, can be directed up the path of Nun/Death-Serpent, to Tiphareth. The path that connects these two is Peh - The House of God/The Tower.

Put them all together and you get the Hebrew word, NPhSh - Nephesh, the animal soul. The part of the human soul where first contact with the HGA is made via sexual energy.

It's also interesting to note the sexual alchemists furnace of on the 30th and 28th paths, immediately below the 27th/Tower. (How apt that Aries should remain with the Emperor/alchemical Sulphur.

)

The following quote is from Sexual Energy and Yoga by Elisabeth Haich. (It's a horribly moralising book in places, but it's very good for understanding the true nature of the sexual energy.)

People who have attained complete consciousness in their total Self - in God, who have attained universal consciousness, were, and still are, very rare on earth. Nevertheless, the sole aim of all our lives, of our reincarnations, is to attain this complete consciousness, and to become one in a monistic state of being with the Creator who rests in the profound depths of our souls, as I AM !

But how can unconscious animal man become aware and attain this goal if he is ignorant of it? Born the first time as a human being on the lowest rung of the great Jacob's Ladder of consciousness, how can he ascend step by step from this state, elevate himself to divine self-awareness, to the perfect fulfilment and resurrection, if he is unaware of the existence of the goal and of his own ability to attain it? What helps him, what impels him suddenly to direct his outward-looking consciousness inwards for the first time, to become 'converted', and rise from the the first awakening, from the first faint glimmer of self-awareness to universal consciousness, to the divine and radiant celestial being which is inherent within him, and to attain release, liberation and resurrection?

What urges him to do this, and to raise himself, is none other than his own sexual energy!

This gigantic energy is latent in every living creature. It first helps a human being through his parents to be born into matter, into a body, and when he has reached physical maturity it gives him the ability to endow further beings with a body. The unconscious man, however, still does not realize that this very energy not only enables him to beget children, but also that it is the only force, the impulse which helps, indeed compels him to raise his consciousness stage by stage to the divine state of self-awareness. Sexual energy forces human consciousness in an upward direction and drives it ever higher. It goes without saying that, until he reaches the highest stage of self-awareness and self-realization, a human being cannot know that as such he can become familiar only with this energy, and this alone, in it's true being. But he can, and indeed will, make this energy conscious in himself, for it is his true being, it is himself.

Sexual energy helps man to rise above sexual energy! Has this not been decreed with infinite wisdom?

If we ever experience this truth ourselves, then we can understand why the initiated used the scorpion as the symbol of sexual energy. The scorpion is the agent of it's own destruction, and in the same way sexual power destroys itself because it compels the unconscious man and aids the conscious man to transform sexual energy into higher energies and to come to self-awareness in this energy - to be this very energy! But it is then no longer sexual energy; it has destroyed itself as such.

Always Wondering

similia said:
Your right, I see it clearly now. We're all sheep! Blindly shagging our way to divinity. meh... I'm OK with that

Yep, life's a b^%ch.

thorhammer said:
I agree that "Choose ye well" does imply a choice - but where within the verse does it suggest that it is one, irrevocable, irreversible decision that will dictate the actions and path of the rest of our lives?

I agree with your idea of soft love and hard love as a finer nuance of this verse. I have also read some Thelimites liken it to "tough love", as in being firm with someones ego. This all makes sense to me.
But the verse says "Crowley has chosen", and that makes me wonder if there isn't something more permanent to decide.

Aeon418 said:
Choose ye well implies that you are in a position to make a choice.

Now here is something I didn't consider.

Aeon418 said:
They aren't in a position choose because their sex drive is making that choice for them.

It can be overwhelming and confusing. I think when we are taught denial and shame that root impulse can sneak up and blind side. It can feel like an outer force. That's part of my confusion. Some suggest it is an outer force, or is best to be treated as an outer force.
Maybe I am over thinking again. :laugh:

But sure, it makes perfect sense to choose to not let it control me. I can do that. For now. :laugh:

AW

Aeon418

Always Wondering said:
But sure, it makes perfect sense to choose to not let it control me. I can do that. For now.

Did the quote I just posted help or confuse?

Always Wondering

Aeon418 said:
Did the quote I just posted help or confuse?

Ha, you beat me to it.

Yep this is the kind of stuff I was looking for.

I am at work.

But will read it tonight.

AW

Book of Law Study Group 1.57

Always Wondering

Grigori

thorhammer

Aeon418

thorhammer

Aeon418

Aeon418

Always Wondering

Aeon418

Always Wondering