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.¹Aleister Crowley, personal communication to C. S. Jones, August 28, 1936.

The world is in a state of collapse. Or perhaps more accurately, it is a state of entropy and dissolution. It’s not a dramatic crash of social, political, and cultural edifices—though the last decade has certainly accelerated that downward spiral quite a bit—but a grinding, relentless erosion of meaning, value, and coherence. It is a world half-tumbled, as Crowley put it, half broken and half listless, adrift in its own unraveling.

The liberalism of the old world, with its grand declarations of inevitable progress, is dying. Its institutions are stale, its culture decadent, and faith in “rational humanity” has long evaporated into cynicism. Conservatism, in turn, has deteriorated into a state of bitter nostalgia and fragile authoritarian reflex, clinging to the remnants of a world that no longer exists and can never be restored. Progressivism, which was once the torchbearer of revolutionary spirit, now consumes itself in sanctimonious bullshit, collapsing under the burden of its own contradictions and formenting social coercion as moral purity.

And beneath all of this—violence, despair, isolation; epidemics of mental illness; cynical politics reduced to a social media spectacle; corporations metastasizing into engines of control; the sacred reduced to consumer choice (or algorithmic clicks). There is no guiding vision. There is no shared telos.

It is in this context that Crowley’s words come to the surface when he comments about “the Law of Thelema as a spiritual, social, and political movement.”²Aleister Crowley, personal communication to W. T. Smith, June 6, 1928. Thelema, if it is to be meaningful in this world, cannot be merely private mysticism; it cannot be some kind of magical masturbation. It must become a way to engage with this world—a way to rebuild. This is our world, after all, and we need to leave the “drifting occultists”³Aleister Crowley, personal correspondence to W. T. Smith, April 1, 1943. by the wayside and move on to engaging the real world in real change.

The Seven Mountains

The so-called “Seven Mountains Mandate” is not well known in most circles, but it should be. It is, in essence, a strategic underlying framework developed among certain currents of Christian Dominionism, particularly the New Apostolic Reformation—and it’s the underlying mandate for the Heritage Foundation’s takeover of the United States. The idea is brutally simple: to “take dominion” over seven major spheres of cultural influence—Religion, Family, Education, Government, Media, Arts & Entertainment, and Business.

I briefly explained these points at the end of last year and provided the barest of scriptural evidence from the Book of the Law for most of these areas by which we can find our own way through them as well.

These spheres—called “mountains”—are viewed as the heights from which cultural influence flows. If you can place enough of your people in positions of power on these mountains, you can reshape society itself. Not merely persuade, not merely witness, but govern: redefine norms, set laws, mold minds.

One need not agree with the religious values behind this framework (and I surely do not) to recognize its practical brilliance. It is a clear-sighted vision of how cultural power operates. It recognizes that cultural views shape political structures, and that political transformation requires the reshaping of the collective imagination as well as the institutions that structure daily life.

And it works. The past few decades of right-wing Christian cultural gains in America are no accident. They were built through long-term infiltration of school boards, media outlets, civic groups, legislatures, and corporate structures. For example, I’ve mentioned elsewhere how the Heritage Foundation has significantly influenced our government, particularly the judicial branch, through the Supreme Court takeover, in a mere fifty years.

If the so-called “left” or “liberal” world has been caught flat-footed, endlessly reactive, the dominionist visionaries have been busy at work. They have a narrative. They have a plan. They have patience. And they are winning ground every year.

I commented about this most directly in several articles: Of Dog Catchers, School Boards, and Presidents and Pit Called Because.

The question for us—Thelemites, and those of like spirit—is not whether we oppose this. We do. The question is whether we are prepared to think at that scale, and act with such resolve, in service of a vision grounded not in dominion, but in liberty.

Most Thelemites—and pagans—are not prepared or even capable of this level of commitment, much less planning and resolve.

Storming the Seven Mountains

Let me be clear: Thelema has no interest in imitation. We are not called to simply mimic the strategies of dominionists by substituting one form of tyranny for another. Our Law is not one of coercion, but of liberty. It requires not mere reaction, but the creation of something new.

Yet the world is what it is. These structures of society and these vast spheres of influence serve as the scaffolding upon which human life is shaped. The air we breathe, the myths we inherit, and the stories we tell ourselves all shape our reality. We do not float above these elements, pure and untouched. We exist within them, and they shape us as much as we strive to shape them.⁴These white-bread knuckle-draggers who keep writing about “undoing yourself” and dropping out of the scaffolding of life are flailing about in their immaturity. They’re pretending they exist at a stage of consciousness that is far beyond skinhead fantasies.

This is about responsibility, not utopianism. Thelema must actively influence the world. It must face this era of entropy and transform it into a place where liberty thrives.

It is here that the metaphor of storming emerges—not storming to dominate, but storming to liberate and transform. We aim to reclaim these spheres from the forces of fear, repression, and control.

Our Constellation of Social Forces

It would be a mistake to imagine our response to the Seven Mountains as simply staking out rival peaks to plant new flags. Dominionism views power as a vertical conquest, hill by hill, until all the high places are taken. Thelema, on the other hand, must consider wider dimensions: a constellation, not a hierarchy.

Stars do not rule each other; they influence each other through their movement, their light, their gravitation. The same applies to the forces that shape a culture. We do not need to own or control every institution. But we must learn to navigate these forces, to influence them, to illuminate new orbits of possibility.

Thelema is not an escape from the world, but engagement with it. Our map is not a ladder to God, but a sky that represents the totality of God already.

I’ve put these in alphabetical order for no other reason than because I felt like it. There is no suggestion of any hierarchy of importance by such an arrangement.

1. Arts & Culture

Art is the visible form of spirit. It bypasses dogma and speaks directly to the soul. In an age of mass-produced culture and soulless entertainment, Thelema must champion art that enlivens—works that evoke awe, wonder, eroticism, and the terrible beauty of life itself. Our role is not didactic; it is generative. We create not to preach, but to awaken. The more we seed the world with works of true aesthetic power—whether in music, painting, performance, or craft—the more we loosen the grip of deadening norms. Thelema calls us to be makers, not merely critics: to birth beauty fierce enough to change the world.

Here’s the thing: we can pander to the “all is beautiful” crowd—and certainly we can find beauty in many things—but while I will maintain that everything exists on a spectrum, beauty will always be juxtaposed with the grotesque. That’s not to suggest that some people—myself included—aren’t fond of the latter and can find a kind of beauty in it. But there is a distinct difference between The Pietà and Cité de Dieu fol. This isn’t about technical ability or quality. It’s about beauty as part of a spectrum that exists. It can be as subjective as you like, yet there it is nonetheless. And we can absolutely tell the character—and the soul—of the artist through the art.

But this isn’t about debating the subjectivity or objectivity of art and beauty. It’s about advancing art and beauty—and thereby culture—that advances Thelema, not as a model of standards but as an awakening of archetypes, as the bedrock and expression of cultural myths, and as the expansion of Thelemic beauty in the world. The Book of the Law is full of language that admonishes us to fill our lives and the world around us with “joy & beauty” [AL 2.35], “beauty and strength” [AL 2.20], and “for beauty’s sake and love’s!” [AL 3.56].

The conundrum for Thelema is that with very few exceptions—and Mitchell Nolte is one of those notable (and amazing) exceptions—Thelemic artists tend to be both unprofessional and suck, and their art has little to do with celebrating or promoting the iconography of Thelema.⁵This is also not to suggest that the only art that Thelemites should produce is “religious” art or “Thelemic iconography.” Far from it. I’m merely bemoaning the lack of it at all, beyond a small handful in which most of it is horrendous. For reasons that I can only guess—but I’ll keep to myself for now—so many Thelemic artists work to present the ugliest aspects of their darkness to the world. Such is a tragedy coming from a religion that proclaims itself the voice of Light, Life, Love, and Liberty.⁶This is not to suggest there is no room for the grotesque. See Mitchell Nolte’s work for examples of the grotesque that are brilliantly executed. My point is that even if we want to fall back into the whole “but we want to show balance” (and that makes me want to vomit every time I hear it), it still requires that we show beauty at least some of the time. Thelemites love their shit and nipples over the “lambent flame of blue, all-touching, all penetrant, her lovely hands upon the black earth, and her lithe body arched for love, and her soft feet not hurting the little flowers” [AL 1.26f–k].

Finally, we do not have to be cookie-cutter lookalikes to have a singular culture. And those who think this is a call to conformity with homogenized cultural norms need to have their heads examined—and take a good college-level world culture course.

2. Civic Life & Justice

Liberty is not license; it is the state in which individuals (and society) can thrive. Civic life—the sphere of governance and justice—must, therefore, be engaged, not neglected. Here, we must be very clear: Thelema is not anarchy. It represents freedom under the law of one’s own nature, with mutual respect for the sovereignty of others. Thus, we must strive for forms of governance grounded in consent, transparency, and the protection of rights—not only for ourselves but for all. In this age of rising authoritarianism, Thelemites must be defenders of civic liberty: participating where needed, resisting when necessary, and always advocating for a polity where stars may move freely according to their needs and preferences.

I’m going to skip over much pontificating on this one because it’s the focus of the upcoming How Shall We Now Live series: that is, our civil and political movement in the world. We’ll talk in more depth then.

But, that said, I don’t have another fifty years in me. Even if I started tomorrow with the right people and the right funding, there is no world in which we reshape the face of a country in the next fifty years the way the Heritage Foundation restructured the United States over the last fifty years. It’s enticing, but it’s not probable. And if we’re going to be frank about it here: the United States since 2016 has proved liberty is just not enough of a carrot for people to rally behind for political change.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t still make a difference where we are today, and that we can’t build smaller solutions that work for the progress, protection, and proliferation of our own kind. Sound tribal? Sure. Of course it is. It’s just that Thelema does not delineate individuals through ethnicity, national origin, color, sex (or other genetic information), sexual orientation, age, or disability.⁷I’m not particularly fond of lists like this. It always feels like someone gets their feelings hurt because they didn’t see their favorite “thing” listed. The point here isn’t to list every single checkbox. It’s to provide an “attitude of inclusiveness” in the statement. If you don’t see your “thing” here, just assume that it would be, and let’s move on. It allows for—and in fact insists on—chosen (willful) delineation of association (constructed or affiliative kinship).

3. Communication & Media

Culture runs on story. He who controls the story shapes the world. Dominionists recognize this. Do we? Too often, the forces of liberty cede this ground for fear of unduly influencing someone “against their Will.” Thelema must not make this mistake. Whether through writing, film, art, or conversation, we must become tellers of new myths, narratives that resonate with the soul of the Aeon. We must learn to communicate in symbols that awaken rather than lull. We must craft tales that empower, not domesticate, the individual. Our task is to seed the culture with stories of courage, of freedom, so that the collective imagination might remember how to dream beyond the old cages.

If this means creating new symbols, new icons, new myths, new stories, so be it. Let’s get to it! The idea that we will ever have a propaganda-free society is absurd. The question is, who controls the propaganda? Who controls the message? Is the message about liberation or conformity?

I get that social media is still the big deal right now. But I think (a) it’s dying and (b) it’s all a manufactured reality. The latter isn’t some revelation. We already know this. I’m not sure the former is all that shocking either—though I don’t mean that online communities are dying. I think they’ve been dead for a while and are just now becoming a viable option again, albeit in a slightly different form.

4. Education

It’s no accident that authoritarian movements target education early on in their march to take over. Once shaped in youth, the mind is difficult to unbend. In this respect, we must be neither naïve nor complacent. Education is not merely instruction; it is the formation of Will. Thelema must advocate for an education that liberates: one that teaches critical thought, fosters curiosity, and cultivates the unique genius of each learner. This means resisting the indoctrination⁸As a professional educator, I really hate the word “indoctrination” when it comes to education, yet I can’t really avoid it either because of its use in so many conversations—both Left and Right—about how education manipulates students in the classroom toward some political ends rather than providing them with the environment and the tools for intellectual stimulation, critical and creative thought, and mastery of conceptual discovery. I reject the idea that this (indoctrination, I mean) is the norm, but I can’t deny that it happens at all. and the commodification of knowledge.

Wherever possible, Thelemites should build or support spaces of liberatory learning—schools, circles, online communities—where young minds can grow wild and wise in equal measure. While I am not a fan of the homeschooling movement in general, and especially not in the United States under the Christian dominionist influence (I have very direct and personal experience with it), I find that many of their resources in the last decade have greatly improved and in a way that supplements “public school education” and, in many ways, improves upon many of the weaknesses of that public education.

I think it behooves us, as a larger community, to ensure our children are well-rounded in an educational enterprise that entirely removes the radical religious indoctrination and horrific scientific illiteracy of many (not all, to be fair) modern educational curricula—even if that means we have to create it ourselves.

5. Enterprise & Economy

Commerce is not evil. Money is not a sin. But the current economy is largely enslaved to forces of control, exploitation, and alienation. Here too, Thelema must act. Our vision is for enterprise aligned with volition and choice: trade and labor pursued with dignity, creativity, and freedom. This means supporting economic models that honor autonomy, cooperation, and sovereignty, which involves creating businesses, ventures, and networks that provide alternatives to soulless corporate empires. The economy will not reform itself. We must be among those who shape it anew—stars engaging in commerce as an act of freedom, not servitude.

I fully admit this isn’t my sphere of expertise. I look forward to someone with economic experience and education to provide a more engaging model of what an equitable and free economic system would look like.

6. Kinship & Community

In a world still shaped by brittle moralism and coercive notions of family, Thelema must represent a new vision of kinship: one that is voluntary, fluid, and chosen. The true bonds of love are not decreed by church or state, nor fixed by outdated roles. They arise from love under will and flourish in consent.

To engage this sphere means modeling new ways of relating—partnerships that transcend traditional gender roles, families of affinity as well as blood, and networks of care rooted in the freedom of association. Thelemites should be builders of such affiliative kinship structures at the micro-scale, and not merely the macro-scale in the civic spheres of life.

7. Religion

Thelema offers the only truly universal creed. That is its strength. While dominionism demands uniformity of doctrine and control, Thelema thrives on pluralism of spirit and exercise under a single epistemological banner—Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Yet this does not absolve us from engaging with the sphere of religion. It is here that the soul of a culture is forged: its deepest myths, its sacred symbols, its stories of meaning. Therefore, Thelemites must become mythmakers, initiators, and founders of new avenues of expression. Not proselytizing, but offering: creating living paths of spirit where the worn-out dogmas of the past have failed. Our work is to forge sacred forms that invite freedom—rites, communities, and liturgies that awaken the star within each seeker.

Thanks to Gerald, I remain convinced that sectarianism is the only way forward. I think there is an underlying, coherent, and consistent body of work that unites us all. However, I still believe there is ample room for diversity of thought without disengagement or disharmony of fellowship among those who disagree on matters of moderate importance (second-order doctrines) or minor importance (third-order issues).

That said, I have never in my life seen a religion that worked so hard to undermine itself as Thelemites do with Thelema. I’m going to hit this up another time with a separate essay.

The Nature of Our Engagement

It must be said plainly: the Thelemic approach to culture is neither reactionary nor revolutionary in the old, tired senses of those words. We are not seeking to dismantle everything for the sake of rubble, nor to preserve what is decayed merely out of nostalgia. We seek the liberty of the individual to be expressive within their nature, and for that, we require the requisite forms of a structured society—forms that are living, not static; structures that serve life, not suffocate it. That may require a revolution, but revolutions tend to come with body counts—and not the fun kind. When Crowley declared the Book of the Law announced “revolutions in philosophy, religion, ethics [and] the whole nature of Man,”⁹Crowley, Aleister, Mary Desti, and Leila Waddell. 1997. Magick: Liber ABA. Edited by Hymenaeus Beta. Weiser Books, 429 (emphasis mine). he’s referring to ideological underpinnings in the way we approach these subjects, not taking professors and priests out into the streets to shoot them.

Our engagement with these social forces is not conquest, but constellation. We do not “seize power” in the dominionist mold, nor can we retreat into pure esotericism under the stupid guise of the “few and secret,” content to ignore the world’s condition. We step forward as sovereign stars, navigating these forces, influencing where we can, creating where we must. But, however we do it, we must take the world by “beauty and strength, leaping laughter and delicious languor, force and fire”! [AL 2.20]

And let me be clear: government itself is not the enemy. Tyranny is. Coercion is. We can not mistake liberty for lawlessness. Rather, we must understand liberty as the space in which all stars may pursue their courses without interference, so long as they do not disrupt the orbits of others.

This is the heart of our ethos: to engage without enslaving, to shape without coercing, to create without dominating. In this, we differ from both the authoritarians and the nihilists.

How Shall We Now … Begin

It is one thing to speak of ideals; another to ground them in action. If we are to meet this moment, we cannot remain in abstraction or wallow in personal ritual alone. We must learn to walk in the world as Thelemites rather than “drifting occultists.” We must learn to create in the light, instead of hiding in darkened rooms filled with suffocating incense. We need to move beyond The Occult™ and the lingering performative teenage angst that sticks to many so-called “adult” Thelemites like stale body odor.

Let’s start with some basics:

1. Build networks. Not dominator hierarchies, but alliances of like-minded individuals and groups who share the vision of liberty. No star shines alone. Collaboration, mutual aid, and shared purpose are our starting points. This is where I would like to begin exploring the ideas of network unions (and adjacent concepts) with the upcoming political newsletter, How Shall We Now Live.
2. Create enclaves of culture. These may be as humble as a local study group or as ambitious as a school, an online or even print journal, or an art collective. Spaces where our values live and breathe—where freedom, beauty, and expressions of individual Will are cultivated. While I’ve nothing against Crowley Bookclubs, I think we’ve run out of time with this one. I think it’s time to create the Thelemic version of the Young Politicians Soup Kitchen and Gun Club¹⁰The admitted problem with this is that someone already attempted something like this—though I don’t know how successful they were—and ran off the rails into the Far-Right. Thelemites have to give up this obscene obsession with the current American left/right political field and start over with something new. and spread like termites into the woodwork of the current structure of society.
3. Engage existing institutions—not with naïve optimism, but with strategic clarity. Where there is ground to be gained, we take it. Where the old structures can be bent toward liberty, we bend them. And where they cannot, we build something new. This is precisely what I was saying about starting to get elected as the Dog Catcher (not that you can really do that!) and then working your way into the school boards, mayor elections, and more beyond that. Get involved.
4. Cultivate courage and endurance. The reshaping of culture is not the work of a season. It is the labor of decades, perhaps centuries. We must raise up those willing to labor in the long arc—artists, teachers, activists, builders—who understand that the true victory lies in vision, vocation, and vigilance. This is the Long Game.

At the heart of this vision stands Crowley’s charge: “Our sole business should be to use the Law to reconstruct the world from the chaos into which it is already half tumbled.” This is not a metaphor. It is a mandate.

Too often, Thelemites have been content to dwell in the inner chambers, polishing rites and debating minutiae, while the world slides into entropy. That time is past. The world needs the so-called “93 Current” (as we used to so fondly call it)—a current of liberty, courage, and creativity. We just need to wield it.

We are not here to dominate, but to liberate. Not to tear down blindly, but to build anew. And we must do this now. The forces of repression and fear are on the move—and more so now than ever before in my lifetime, for sure! The dominionists, the authoritarians, the old priest-kings, and new technocrats all sense the growing void and rush to fill it. If we do not offer an alternative, others will. And their vision is not freedom.

Chaos is the canvas. Will is the brush. This is our work—not some secondary thing, not some private indulgence, but our sole business in this world of chaos.

If these words strike something in you—if you find yourself weary of small visions, tired of ornamental occultism, restless for a path that meets the world where it is—then perhaps it is time to begin this work together. No one will give us permission. No institution will lead us. But the stars have always been self-governing. And the work is waiting.

Our sole business is clear. Let’s get at it!

Love is the law, love under will.

Note: I should add that since writing this, I’ve developed an alternative outline of ideas I like to call the XII Horsemen. It’s a bit more robust. But, I admit, it also has a bit more Illuminati: The Game of Conspiracy feel to it. I won’t be rolling that out to you here—at least not anytime soon. I want you to think that I’m really just a stable, normal Thelemite, not a whack job that comes up with ideas based on Steve Jackson games from the 1980s.