On the Nature of Masters A Polemic
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Have you ever looked around at the leaders of various groups, listened to their various claims of attainment, looked at the chaos of their lives, the turmoil and pain of their mortal coils, and wondered how they ever...
Integral Thelema
Integral Thelema is a regularly released newsletter promoting the growth, education, and application of integral Thelemic philosophy and theology with a focus on application to real-world concerns in pursuit of wholeness in all four primary experiential domains, and to the complex issues in the world, through a framework of applied Thelema in 360°of life.
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Catechism of Eden An Excerpt of a Tale
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Special Dispatches are one-off releases, without a set schedule, on topics based on observation of something in the community or just personal reflection. They may be polemical or apologetic, or they just may be a...
Texture of Sound A Longing for the Imperfect Life
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Before I drop into this, I want to stress that I’m not asserting any kind of authority here when it comes to musical taste. It’s merely my anecdotal way of getting from Thought A to Point B. Music from childhood has a...
Waiting for Godot The Inversion of Thelema
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot opens in negation: “Nothing to be done.” Those four words—uttered by Estragon as he struggles with his boot—set the metaphysical tone of the play. The act of waiting begins not with a...
Reclaiming the Mind The Anti-Intellectualism of Modern Thelema
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,...
Nostrum Futurum In Stellis Politics of the Stars
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. No matter where you sit on the political spectrum, the apocryphal Chinese curse is upon us, and we are certainly living in “interesting times.” I live in the United States, so I cannot help but see politics tainted from...
Tree Meet Forest Tending a Garden of Thelemites
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. It is nifty to say that every man and every woman is a star—self-ruling, radiant, burning in their course. But all stars belong to a universe larger than themselves. Our light is not diminished by this context. It is...
Feast Every Day Examining the Sabbath in the New Aeon
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Last year, I re-read The Ancient Practice Series and finished with Dan Allender’s contribution to the series, Sabbath. In the foreword, series editor Phyllis Tickle writes, “Interestingly enough, the discipline of...
Puer Aeternus Tenebrarum The Dark Side of Peter Pan
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. For an account that hides itself safely behind a nom-de-plume, I often lack a filter when it comes to self-disclosure on many levels. So here’s another piece of personal information for you: I was born deaf. Aside from...
Storming the Seven Mountains Our Sole Business in a World of Chaos, Part 1
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Our sole business should be to use the Law to reconstruct the world from the chaos into which it is already half tumbled. The world is...
Ethics
Between the Beast and the Bitch A Brief Assessment of Aleister Crowley and Ayn Rand
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. I understand that I may lose a few people to this topic, as I usually do, but here we go. Introduction I am generally loathe to tell stories about my adolescence, though in this case, it seems like a good way to...
Eyes Wide Shut Personal Lesson in Ideological Bubbles
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. I grew up in a sheltered childhood. I was raised within a Southern Baptist evangelical environment, but it was a paradoxical mix of standard 1970s end-of-the-world messaging and 1980s Satanic Panic paranoia with a load...
Broken Swords & Fallow Fields Will Thelemites Ever Tire of Being Terrible?
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. For as long as I can remember, Thelemites have had one of the worst reputations in all of occulture even before occulture was coined in the 1990s as a term that is still as vague today as it was back then. There was an...
Raise herself in pride! Thoughts on the Scarlet Woman
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. The subject of the Scarlet Woman comes up enough to warrant its own discussion to get at the heart of the matter from a theological perspective. Much rubbish has...
Politics
Swift as a trodden serpent In Response to Fascism
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. I’ve written about my thoughts on fascism and Thelema in the past. It should be no shock to anyone that I fall squarely against any form of authoritarianism in our communities at all. A New Manifesto No one is neutral...
Dreaming of an Impossible Future Idealized Thelemic Community Planning
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. This post came up in my personal Facebook memories from 19 March 2022. Yeah. Three years ago! I had been working overnight in a residential youth shelter and was mulling over some ideas of what I thought would make a...
Choose ye an island! Rethinking the Future of Thelema in an Unstable World
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. I may have fallen off a cliff. Again. I’m not sure yet if I’ve jumped into dangerous waters or...
Pit Called Because An Introduction to Wicked Problems
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Let’s get something out of the way first: I have no idea what I’m talking about here. Well, that’s only partially true. I have some idea. But this isn’t my area of expertise. However, I have enough understanding (as a...
Eyes Wide Shut Personal Lesson in Ideological Bubbles
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. I grew up in a sheltered childhood. I was raised within a Southern Baptist evangelical environment, but it was a paradoxical mix of standard 1970s end-of-the-world messaging and 1980s Satanic Panic paranoia with a load...
Of Dog Catchers, School Boards, and Presidents Voting Thelema into Office
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Grab a seat. Trust me. I fully admit my ADHD may have hit a ceiling with this one. I am really all over the place. And, for once, I’m not going to apologize for the semi-brain-dump feel of this offering. We’re just...
Psychology
A Way of Spiritual Formation Maturity in the Aeon of the Child
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. If there is one thing that continues to plague my thinking about modern Thelema, it is something a mentor of mine once said—and I’m paraphrasing here—that just because Crowley was a magician doesn’t mean that everyone...
Alethiology, Part 1 Toward a Thelemic Therapeutic Orientation
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Personal Introduction If I said that psychology is a hobby of mine, that’s probably a bit dishonest. To provide a little context, as a research psychologist my focus started out in the study of the empirical divide...
Thelemic Cartography A New Approach to Personal Discovery
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. For decades, the assumption in Thelemic communities has been that everything can be mapped to the Tree of Life. And that may be true. Frankly, Miss. Scarlet W., I don’t give a damn. I think the Tree of Life is the most...
5 Habits for the New Year New Year’s Clickbait. Duh!
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. It’s the new year! Welcome to 2025! I feel like it’s going to be a wild year no matter how it all shakes out. A lot of change happening around here. A lot is staying the same too. We’re two months in on the new puppy,...
True Will Some Ill-Advised Thoughts on the Matter
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. The concept of the so-called True Will can be a tricky little beast. It’s thrown around by...
Theology
Liturgy of the Sun A Celebration of the Company of Heaven
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. I’ve always felt a deep pull toward the beauty and gravity of Eastern Orthodox liturgy, just as I’m moved by the raw simplicity of Quaker unprogrammed worship. And I’ve always loved the way food becomes sacred in...
Thelema and Authority A Tripartite Approach of Equilibrium
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Let’s talk about a-a-a-authority. I know. I know. It’s a dirty word in Thelemaville. The moment you drag out the word authority people start to think you’re about to slap on the chains and drag them off to the salt...
Mere Thelema Street Theology—A Plain and Simple Thelema
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. I’ve offered three weeks of technical theology—doctrine, hermeneutics, and exegesis—which are, granted, a bit simplified for general consumption. But now I want to turn it around and go in the other direction. I want to...
Thelemic Exegesis A Critical Evaluation of the Study of Thelemic Scripture, Part II
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Exegesis in Thelema is not a passive act of textual analysis or mere number crunching but a transformative engagement with its sacred writings. Interpretation, in this sense, is not about imposing external authority...
Thelemic Hermeneutics A Critical Evaluation of the Study of Thelemic Scripture, Part I
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Hermeneutics broadly refers to the study of interpretation, especially of texts, language, and meaning. It is relevant in multiple domains—including philosophy, law, and literary criticism—but is most notably linked to...
Thelema: A Religion? Who’s Still Afraid of Crowley's Big Bad Wolf?
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Religion, as such, has become one of the largest boogiemen of Thelema since Crowley proclaimed calling Thelema a religion “a rather stupid kind of mischief.”Crowley, Aleister. 1994. “Religion–Is Thelema a ‘New...
Special Dispatch
Liturgy of the Sun A Celebration of the Company of Heaven
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. I’ve always felt a deep pull toward the beauty and gravity of Eastern Orthodox liturgy, just as I’m moved by the raw simplicity of Quaker unprogrammed worship. And I’ve always loved the way food becomes sacred in...
Dreaming of an Impossible Future Idealized Thelemic Community Planning
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. This post came up in my personal Facebook memories from 19 March 2022. Yeah. Three years ago! I had been working overnight in a residential youth shelter and was mulling over some ideas of what I thought would make a...
Thelema: A Religion? Who’s Still Afraid of Crowley's Big Bad Wolf?
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Religion, as such, has become one of the largest boogiemen of Thelema since Crowley proclaimed calling Thelema a religion “a rather stupid kind of mischief.”Crowley, Aleister. 1994. “Religion–Is Thelema a ‘New...
Choose ye an island! Rethinking the Future of Thelema in an Unstable World
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. I may have fallen off a cliff. Again. I’m not sure yet if I’ve jumped into dangerous waters or...
Reading Plans for 2025 Diving Deeper into the Spiritual Mind
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. After mentioning my choice to start reading through the Orthodox Daily Office again this year, and having a private query over it, it hadn’t really dawned on me that it might be of interest to others to find various...
Learning and Unlearning A Personal Introspective Manifesto
Originally written in 2001. Updated in 2007. Minor textual corrections and footnote commentary in 2024.Now seemed like a good time to bring this back out. Maybe I needed a reminder.Thelema is more than just empowerment. It’s embodiment. It is the embodiment of...