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

For the past two decades, modern Thelema has been in the grip of an intellectual wasteland. Starting with the rise of Ben Sandler (before he was IAO131) as the brash puppetmaster of dozens of toy soldier accounts, endlessly attacking established authors and internet discussion boards, and Joseph Thebes as the original propagandist for O.T.O., things quickly went downhill. Thelema has been inundated with endless forms of postmodernist, “it means anything I want it to mean,”

The shallow memefication of Thelema, with hundreds of out-of-context quotes from Crowley’s corpus plastered across the internet, misleading people into crazy takes of doctrinally bereft nonsense, was just part of the problem. Sandler, specifically, set himself up as an authority on Thelemic doctrine without the benefit of experience, education, or even coherent elucidation on the finer points of Thelemic nuance. It was generally just copious amounts of quoting Crowley over and over with scattered opinions that lacked cohesion or competence. He remains a lauded writer by the shallow end of the pool, filled with those who lack critical thinking skills.

However, to give credit where credit is due, even a broken clock is right twice a day, and he occasionally offered insight to those satisfied with powdered milk products.

Amway Thelema

The current trend within Thelema is what I call Amway Thelema. It’s not quite as bad as multilevel marketing, but it might as well be. It’s the commercialization of Thelema in a marketplace that feeds on the gullibility and insecurities of individuals who have adapted to the commodification of damn near everything. And it just gets worse each passing year, with it becoming exponentially worse since the COVID lockdown years when everything from shopping to our social connections went online overnight.

The most recent exemplar of this method is Jim Luceno, ¹See Practical Thelema for an update on his social media demise. who came up with his “True Will Discovery” marketing plan for about $400. It appeared to be a grifting mashup of New Age pseudo-psychology and Scientology-like²Anyone who’s been around long enough knows that I don’t have a bone to pick with Scientology outside its space opera bullshit, the LRH-worship, and organizational strongarming. The technology underlying Scientology (or, rather, Dianetics) appears to be a more “secular” approach to Thelema and is fairly solid as far as that goes. Those who knock it never seem to be able to discuss it past the superficial and sensational (and alleged criminal behavior) elements—and I don’t disagree with them over those aspects of it. babble from an unqualified self-help guru. He certainly wasn’t the first and won’t be the last. He was just the latest in a long line of charlatans who misled and fleeced the seeking and gullible.

But this falls into my distrust of the commercialization crowd, the YouTube and Patreon and Substack crowd, and the rest. Don’t misunderstand me. I think people should be paid for their work. In fact, I think we need to start encouraging patience through the serialization of information. People used to wait months for the stories of Conan Doyle (The Hound of the Baskervilles), Dickens (The Pickwick Papers), Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov), Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo), Flaubert (Madame Bovary), Wolfe (The Bonfire of the Vanities), and others. Sometimes, it would take years for a story to wrap up and finally be completed (ex., Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, was serialized from 1875-1877). However, the rise of the internet and the instant gratification generation has decimated the deliberate and progressive modes of spiritual formation that exemplified religious forms over the past millennia.

The McDonaldization of Thelema is our bane.³I want to draw a very clear line between the simplification of a concept and the dilution of a concept. What Amway Thelema does is the latter and provides out of context soundbites and barely digestible videos of familiar concepts that have been repackaged with flashy images and no substance. It’s all regurgitated New Age starseed-consciousness nonsense masquerading as Thelema. (The problem is that they’re all stealing from each other and regurgitating their echo chamber without realizing the various ‘whos’ Ben Sandler was poorly stealing from in the first place. And it shows.) Attention span and fast-food soundbites have always been a problem with our community. Phyllis Seckler [Soror Meral] complained about this same problem in the 1970s.

As far as information is concerned, Thelema is still too young and immature as a larger movement to try to box ideas in with this level of commercialization. Many have resorted to limiting their focus to magick or Thelema-as-Self-Help without any further development of Thelema as a commentary on world problems and solutions. The Magisterial tradition and superstition of the Tunis Comment have been used to quash intelligent expansion of discussion, thought, and knowledge among the Brethren. We already have individuals who hang on to every word of some authors without critical thought.⁴The Guntherites are a perfect example of a whole group of people who don’t use critical thought with their founder’s material. That’s never going to change.

Having more commentaries on practical magick (though we already have plenty of these and we should focus on and encourage the ones that rise to the top of the pile), the Holy Books, or any other topic will not make a difference. However, it will encourage authors to take the depth of the content in those materials seriously.

While Amway Thelema will not do us any favors here, I do think that a return to some kind of “school of thought” format⁵See One Star in Sight. would benefit Thelema in the long run. I have to be careful to be clear here lest I be misunderstood. I think Marco’s School of Magick is a phenomenal idea. His focus is entirely on the application of magick and mysticism via a Thelemic worldview, and we need this in a way that makes sense in a modern world. I think just letting O.T.O. off the hook and continuing on its way is grand. While it’s no longer even attempting to be “a crucible for the development of the social models necessary to a Thelemic culture”⁶Hymenaeus Beta. 1990. “Introduction—Culture vs. Cult.” In The Equinox: The Review of Scientific Illuminism : The Official Organ of the O.T.O. The Equinox. Vol. III (10)., 9–12. Weiser Books, 10 (emphasis in original).—it’s failed in that regard—we can recognize it for the social fraternity that it’s become and move on. But what we’ve seen a lot of in the last decade or so, and especially since the COVID years, has been the rise of shallow dilettantes who rely on eyeliner or bed partners to bolster their lack of credentials while pushing sketchy social agendas rather than solid and supported doctrine.⁷I think you can make a serious and solid case for the Book of the Law carrying both Aleister and Rose Crowley’s names on the cover of any published copy. I think you’re out of your mind to call the Thoth tarot deck ‘Frieda Lady Harris’s Tarot Deck that was merely guided by Crowley.’ If you want to call it the Crowley-Harris Tarot Deck out of some political correctness, fine, but let’s not misrepresent whose theology and magical theory permeate that deck and make it what it is beyond just a set of nifty pictures. Loudly proclaiming that Thelema and Christianity have nothing to do with each other, getting called out, doubling down, and then two weeks later releasing a video of all the Christian iconography in the O.T.O. Gnostic Mass just reeks of immaturity.

Led Zeppelin Thelema

Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
There’s still time to change the road you’re on

Okay. I jest with the header here, and there are certainly more than two paths in the long run. More to the point, I think we’ve turned Thelema into a club. Not necessarily the personality club that O.T.O. has become, but the exclusive club for “those that ‘do the Work.’” I blame the late J. Daniel Gunther most of all. It isn’t just him, but those who reacted to him as well. As best I can tell, Gunther started the Cult of the Angel.⁸I’ve said a dozen times before: Gunther created a “Planet of the HGAs” approach while Cornelius posited a “Dueling Banjos HGA” approach. Both were wrong, though at least Cornelius had some kind of historical foundation to legitimize his error.
He did precisely what Crowley warned people not to do with the phrase, Holy Guardian Angel: “incur the grave danger of building a philosophical system upon it.”⁹Crowley, Aleister, Mary Desti, and Leila Waddell. 1997. Magick: Liber ABA. Edited by Hymenaeus Beta. Weiser Books, 151. And other A∴A∴ group heads turned around and, instead of pushing back on the Cult, doubled down.

Crowley stated clearly that this phrase, the “Holy Guardian Angel,” was merely an absurd phrase indicating the “next step for humanity”¹⁰Crowley, Aleister. 1993. “John St. John.” In The Equinox: The Official Organ of the A∴A∴, the Review of Scientific Illuminism, Vol. 1, No. 1., x–x. Samuel Weiser, 120. and that this was available to anyone and everyone. Crowley was “determined to instruct mankind”¹¹Crowley, Magick, 151. and, as we recall, he had written Magick: Liber ABA, for “the Banker, the Pugilist, the Biologist, the Poet, the Navvy, the Grocer, the Factory Girl, the Mathematician, the Stenographer, the Golfer, the Wife, the Consul,”¹²Crowley, Magick, 125. i.e., for the common person. We can still argue whether he succeeded with Magick—he didn’t—but the point remains the “HGA Experience” isn’t just for adepts of the A∴A∴. It’s for everyone. And playing gatekeeper by insisting that it will only go through specific absurdities is, well, absurd.

Let’s burst this bubble now. No one needs a magical Order. No one needs a YouTube guru. No one needs a 93-day retreat. Some people just want to be nominal Thelemites. What difference does it make to you? Let’em be! Stop ridiculing every person who doesn’t play hopscotch over every imaginary circle of the Tree of Life in the order demanded by yet another “beginner book” regurgitating outdated Victorian occultism because it’s the only thing they know because they aren’t educated in anything else and because they are too afraid of “religion” to realize that’s what they’re doing anyway while screaming that they’re running away from “religion.”

On the other hand, there are some amazing programs, Orders, groups, and people out there that have insights worth listening to what they have to offer.

There is no right way—even if there are plenty of wrong ways—to approach this whole experience. That’s why it’s personal. That’s why Crowley leaves it up to the individual to determine the best way for themselves.¹³This isn’t entirely true, but for my purposes here, I’m not willing to do a deep dive into the nuances.

But even then, this is merely one aspect of Thelema. Granted, everything we do points to this one thing.¹⁴“There is a single main definition of the object of all magical Ritual. It is the uniting of the Microcosm with the Macrocosm. The Supreme and Complete Ritual is therefore the Invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel; or, in the language of Mysticism, Union with God. All other magical Rituals are particular cases of this general principle[.]” [Crowley, Magick, 144.] But not everything needs pseudo-masonic occultism to do it. And it is outright hubris to suggest so.

I really hate the “paths up the mountain” metaphor, but, in this case, I think it fits. While I don’t feel there are multiple mountains, there are definitely multiple paths up this mountain. There are multiple ways in which to realize Thelema in both individual and communal expressions. And I think this is a good thing.

Reclaiming the Future

Despite the general neopagan ignorance of Christianity’s history, the first century of Christianity was more about breadth than depth. Not that depth didn’t happen, but just reading through the New Testament epistles shows that so much of the writing was handling problems that cropped up in the early church. Sure, much of it is viewed as doctrinal now, but at the time, it was all about how to address the changing times and meet the challenges of a mental and spiritual shift from a local and regional movement to a global (as they understood it) movement.

Thelema hasn’t even scratched the surface. Gunther’s nonsense about Thelemic doctrine was merely a rehash of Southern Baptist evangelicism scaled over with some poorly used egyptoid gloss to make it look “Thelemic.” Not that I would ever suggest Thelema doesn’t have a genetic connection back to Christianity, but Gunther’s claims weren’t it. Modern Thelema continues to play around in the mud of Victorian occultism and New Thought spiritualism, material that has been theologically abandoned decades ago by anyone with half a functioning brain cell. All that is tapped into the racism of theosophy, UFOlogy, and indigo starseed bullshit. Most are trying to skirt around the Book of the Law via a childish approach to the Tunis Comment rather than debate views like adults.

People like Frater Schadenfreude complain they are tired of “beginner books,” that people should “read Crowley’s original works” (which sounds an awful lot like “read the bible in the original languages” nonsense), and that we need more advanced materials. But I’m here to tell you they aren’t ready for more advanced materials. They just want Crowley and are stunted, both philosophically and magically, by being limited to Crowley’s materials. I mean, they’re so philosophically impoverished that they haven’t even made it past Nietzsche’s madness.

Crowley wasn’t right about everything, quite frankly, and it’s more than okay to say he was wrong. If we are to build any kind of intelligent approach to Thelema, one of the first things we have to understand is that, at best, anything done is part of a fallible discipline, and the results—no matter how enlightening, no matter how convincing, no matter how authenticating the evidence—will always require a margin of and for human error. The sooner we admit this fact, the sooner we can get beyond the trauma of the possibility of error and onward to an honest exploration of truth.

Reclaiming the Mind

Criticism is one thing—as we all know people like Frater Schadenfreude can do—but it’s just a lot of hot air and sour fruits if you’re not offering solutions. So what’s the plan? How do we get back to a sense of balance and creativity in Thelema today?

Part of this is about reclaiming the mind, a concept that I’ve “stolen” from an evangelical preacher who was an inspiration for me in seeing the impoverishment of theological rigor not merely in general Christianity but in Thelema as well. His idea wasn’t to define “right answers” but to encourage and teach “right process” to explore answers.

Don’t misunderstand me and think that I’m suggesting an intellectual-only approach to Thelema that ignores other approaches. I’ve mentioned before that I feel there are four primary avenues of exploration and expression when it comes to Thelema:

• Contemplative / Mystical
• Communitarian / Magical
• Charismatic / Gnostic
• Cognitive / Philosophical

This could be seen as expressions of the rays of the Law: life, love, light, and liberty, respectively. There is no implication that any one path is better than another, and certainly some individuals can utilize a mix of these in various ways.

But at some point, we need to reclaim common sense and critical (and creative) thinking skills, and go about applying Thelema to the problems of the world.

What does a program like that require? Here’s my view.

Thelema-Centered

• What Thelema is Not

I’d like to say this is self-evident, but a quick review of the field says it’s not. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to repeat this, but OTO ≠ Thelema and OTO Membership ≠ Thelemite. And yet I have seen it, even within the last nine months, someone posting on social media that the only way to be considered a Thelemite is to have gone through the Man of Earth degrees of O.T.O. This is nonsense.

Thelema is not an organization. Thelema is not a vicarious salvation through the work of an individual. Thelema is not an imaginary “ladder back to God” via some Victorian secret order degree plan.

However—and this is yet another “this should be self-evident, but here we are” moment—one of the most destructive elements in Thelema is this “we’re trying to avoid looking like Christianity” approach. If it works, what do you care who did it first?

Let’s be clear about something for those who are slow: Thelema has a genetic and dialectic heritage that extends directly from Christianity.¹⁵… “and Islam.” But this would take too much space at the moment to defend from the critics, and, in our political environment, such a defense would need to be clearly presented with the nuance needed to survive without political bullshit interfering. Thelema is no more doctrinally anti-Christian than Christianity is anti-Judaism. There is an apocalyptic fulfillment of certain elements—a review of which is too complex for this essay—that can, to some, appear like each of these is antagonistic to its predecessor, but only those who are superficially attached to teenaged antinomian ethics of 1990s Satanism would mistake those elements for a rejection of Christian iconography and updated doctrine found within Thelema or even the use of successful Christian technology (modified, obviously) within Thelemic spaces.

Just because Crowley had a shit-ton of religious trauma is no reason for anyone to burden Thelema with Crowley’s—or their own—religious trauma. It’s not baked in like some try to convince others it is. The “powers-that-be” took the time to protect the Book of the Law even from its own Prophet. Yeah, imagine that, right?

• Centering Thelema

Thelema is the philosophy [intellectual approach] and religion [emotional approach] of (a) individual authenticity [metaphysics], (b) self-discovery [epistemology], (c) personal accountability [ethics], and (d) social responsibility [politics] based on the path of enlightenment [condition of being informed spiritually] found within the Thelemic canon, specifically Liber AL vel Legis.¹⁶Taken from “Mere Thelema: Street Theology—A Plain and Simple Thelema.”

Centering Thelema shouldn’t be all that controversial. Apparently, it is. In just over a hundred years, we have taken the perspective of a man in his era rather than building the intellectual rigor of a discipline that takes our spiritual corpus seriously. We have generations of children, spiritually speaking, who think that “being alone” is the same as being “spiritually mature.” Aeon of the Crowned and Conquering Child, my ass. It’s obvious most of these people aren’t parents.¹⁷Even in Crowley’s social Darwinist pedagogical approach—as deficient as it is despite whatever strengths it might possess—children did not grow up without guidance. They were (allegedly) not conditioned out of curiosity, but there were always guidelines if you read carefully enough. [see Crowley, Aleister. 1998. “On the Education of Children.” In The Revival of Magick and Other Essays. 126-130. New Falcon Publications.]

We have failed to build institutions that center Thelema without centering personality. We don’t need more cults of personality—we’ve had enough of that to last a lifetime. What we need are systems that can sustain inquiry, devotion, practice, and scholarship without requiring that we mythologize a leader or canonize their trauma.

Centering Thelema means recognizing that the Law is central—not the lineage, not the lodge, and not the branding. Thelema as a current doesn’t require your allegiance to any specific organization; it requires your fidelity to the process of becoming.

When we center Thelema, we stop making it about Crowley’s biography and start making it about the Work. Not the “Great Work” as a vague motivational slogan, but the actual, rigorous labour of self-unfolding in a cosmos we dare to believe is conscious and reciprocal on both an individual and communal level.

Irenic Theology

So far as I’m aware, Crowley only ever called out three heresies in all his corpus.

1. the Pleroma (“a senseless and inexcusable folly”)¹⁸Crowley, Aleister. 1996. The Law Is for All: The Authorized Popular Commentary to Liber AL vel Legis sub figura CCXX, the Book of the Law. Edited by Louis Wilkinson and Hymenaeus Beta. New Falcon Publications, 33. // Granted, he doesn’t directly call this a heresy, but his polemic rhetoric here is identical to the emphatic nature of similar comments in Magick Without Tears. And given the resurgence of “spark of Godhood” nonsense that has arisen out of the influence of Guntherian Thelema, I think it is important to continually remind people in the strongest language possible that this is not a thing in Thelemic doctrine or in an ontological view of the individual via Thelema.
2. the HGA as the “Higher Self” (“a damnable heresy and a dangerous delusion”)¹⁹Crowley, Aleister. 1994. “The Holy Guardian Angel: An Objective Individual.” In Magick Without Tears. New Falcon Publications, 282.
3. Physical and Mental Pain as Self-Sacrifice (“the Heresy which maketh Pain, and Self-sacrifice as it were Bribes to corrupt God, to secure some future Pleasure in an imagined After-life. Nay, also of the other Part, fear not to destroy thy Complexes, thinking dreadfully thereby to lose the Power of creating Joy by their Distinction.”)²⁰Crowley, Aleister. 1991. Liber Aleph vel CXI: The Book of Wisdom or Folly. The Equinox III(6). Weiser, 24.

Beyond that, all else is ego strife between individuals attempting to commercialize their views. I almost said “argue their views,” but we’ve reached a peak grifting moment in which various perspectives no longer offer intellectual or spiritual value but compete for monetary worth.

I think there is a difference between calling out grifters and demeaning someone’s character. Yet, I think it all needs to end. Despite my lack of enthusiasm for Frater Schadenfreude’s shenanigans, I fully admit he has the intellectual rigor and stamina to support his criticisms of O.T.O. and other problems within the larger community. He’s just contributed nothing but criticisms in decades. And I think if he’d get off his ass and produce some real work, he might be a contender for something readable and engaging. But I’ll keep holding my breath for that.

People don’t pay attention to Crowley’s work carefully enough. He set up his A∴A∴ system to encourage diversity of thought, diversity of programs, and diversity of approaches. He knew that there was no “one size fits all” solution that would work for everyone. I always encourage people to read One Star in Sight very carefully, line by line, sentence by sentence, and pay attention to the details.²¹Crowley very much assumed his audience would be educated, something of which we see very little in his followers.

It is through the encouragement of diversity of thought that we will find Thelema spreading in a far more organic manner. An irenic theological approach will suit us better than this commercialized antagonism and huckster marketing that is going on now.

Balanced Scholarship

We don’t need a Thelemic seminary (though I personally think that would be cool), but we do need to start drawing a clear line between scholarship and spiritual masturbation.

Balanced scholarship in Thelema requires (at least) three things:

1. a familiarity with the actual texts of the tradition (not just your favourite memes from Facebook),
2. a working knowledge of both historical and contemporary scholarship on esotericism, and
3. the capacity to read sympathetically and critically, whether the author is your personal idol or your personal nemesis.

This isn’t about academic gatekeeping. This is about intellectual integrity. If you’re going to quote Crowley, you better know what else he said in the same breath. If you’re going to cite scripture—Thelemic or otherwise—you better know how scripture functions. And if you’re going to make sweeping claims about metaphysics or ethics or psychology, you better have more than vibes and a YouTube channel backing you up.

Balanced scholarship means not confusing education with indoctrination. It means we don’t just tolerate nuance, we demand it. It means knowing when to say, “I don’t know,” instead of spinning a half-assed syncretic answer that sounds good in a TradThelema Barbie podcast but falls apart under five minutes of scrutiny.

We need fewer internet apologists and more readers who know how to read. If you’re allergic to footnotes, fine—but don’t pretend you’re engaged in anything approaching scholarship. You’re doing performance art. That’s valid. Just don’t confuse the two.

Academic Training

Let’s be honest: most Thelemites have no idea how academic disciplines actually work. They conflate a spiritual experience with a research methodology and think that studying Qabalah for five years qualifies them to critique Hegel or Tillich. The spiritual path doesn’t replace formal training, but it definitely should sharpen it.

If Thelema is to survive in the 21st century with any intellectual dignity, it will need a generation of Thelemites who are not only well-read in their own tradition but also trained in adjacent fields: philosophy, religious studies, psychology, history, anthropology, political theory, and even data analysis and cultural studies. We need people who can differentiate between exegesis and eisegesis and explain why that matters.

Academic training doesn’t mean academic submission. Thelema is not beholden to the ivory tower. But it does mean understanding what a peer-reviewed article is, how to construct a coherent argument, how to cite your sources, and how to navigate disagreement without collapsing into meme-fueled rage.

You want to critique academia? Great. Learn its tools first. Build your case with competence, not conspiracy. Be dangerous because you’re educated, not because you’re winging it.

There is no shame in not having a degree. There is shame in pretending that your disdain for academia is anything other than insecurity. We have work to do. And it’s going to take more than vibes, incense, and half-remembered Golden Dawn rituals to do it.

Ecumenic Thelema

Ecumenic is not the same as syncretic. We’re not just blending everything into a glittery soup of feel-good symbols. Ecumenic Thelema recognizes that multiple lineages, orders, and interpretations of the Book of the Law can coexist without annihilating one another.

This doesn’t mean anything goes. It means everything is accountable.

Ecumenic Thelema invites dialogue between A∴A∴ lineages, independent practitioners, chaos magicians, left-hand path philosophers, O.T.O. loyalists, post-Crowleyan reformers, and everyone in between. Not to flatten differences—but to actually model the “Fellowship of the Stars” we like to put on t-shirts.

We should be able to attend a lecture on the ethics of the Will without asking for someone’s initiatory resume. We should be able to write essays that engage the work of other Thelemites without constantly positioning them as either allies or threats. We should be able to disagree—deeply, honestly, and even heatedly—without immediately invoking heresy or launching into self-righteous exile.

An ecumenical approach also means we understand that Thelema doesn’t end at our Western borders. Thelema in Lagos is not the same as Thelema in London. A Thelemite in Manila, Mumbai, or Mexico will see things you cannot. Listen to them. Stop mistaking your personal revelations for universal truths. That’s not gnosis, it’s narcissism.

Moving Out of the Basement

If Thelema is ever going to grow up, it needs to move out of the basement.

And I don’t mean just the literal basement—with its poorly lit lodges, musty incense, and cosplay rituals rehashed from Victorian fantasy fiction—I mean the psychological basement. The cultural basement. The theological basement. The intellectual basement. We have been squatting in the crawlspace of inherited traditions, half-borrowed memes, and unexamined trauma for far too long.

And I know you know this basement well. It’s the one where Thelema is still measured by your knowledge of which O.T.O. degree corresponds to what planetary sphere. The one where someone who read Magick Without Tears twice and watched a YouTube documentary now thinks they’re ready to write a ten-volume metaphysics of True Will (My younger self feels called out!). It’s the same basement where every criticism is treated as blasphemy and every disagreement as apostasy. The same basement where half the furniture is made of Crowley quotes with the context stripped like paint thinner.

We’ve built an entire subculture down here. We’ve got meme accounts, Etsy wands, “initiation” Zoom calls, and a whole market economy of mystical consumerism. But we haven’t built anything lasting. We haven’t built institutions of learning, models of leadership, or—let’s be brutally honest—a single public-facing system of Thelemic engagement that could hold its own in a room full of theologians, philosophers, political theorists, or educators. Not really. Not without bluffing. Not without blinking.

And yet we could.

We have the raw materials: a rich canon, a mythic framework of extraordinary power, and a theological ethos that is both evolutionary and apocalyptic in the best sense of both words. But we’ve been too busy chasing social media clout and pretending our emotionally stunted forums are temples of divine gnosis.

Moving out of the basement means developing spiritual literacy, not just spiritual language. It means replacing reactionary purity tests with substantive debate. It means honoring the wisdom of prior generations without freezing Thelema in amber. It means taking ourselves seriously without becoming self-important.

It also means calling bullshit when necessary. Moving out of the basement doesn’t mean we turn the basement into a shrine. It means we lock the door behind us and walk upstairs. It means sunlight. Furniture that wasn’t cobbled together from trauma and t-shirts. It means graduate-level conversations instead of middle-school food fights dressed up as magical wars.

You want Thelema to be relevant? Then you better make it capable of standing on the same stage as liberation theology, existentialist humanism, critical pedagogy, or spiritual ecology. You want Thelema to matter in the world of adults? Then you better stop pretending your 93 tattoo and your cosplay altar are enough to address the real conditions of the real world. This isn’t about elitism. It’s about responsibility.

If the Law is for All, then we must build forms that can hold All—without collapsing under the weight of our own unresolved projections and historical baggage. That takes work. And it starts by climbing out of the basement.

Because, frankly, the rest of the world is already upstairs.

Love is the law, love under will.