Path: shell.portal.com!svc.portal.com!uunet!in1.uu.net!tandem!pacbell.com!well!heidrick From: heidrick@well.sf.ca.us (Bill Heidrick) Newsgroups: alt.magick Subject: Re: Thelema Date: 26 Apr 1996 15:49:38 GMT Organization: The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA Lines: 43 Message-ID: <4lqrai$4i3@nkosi.well.com> References: <830142080_OASIS_@mbha.demon.co.uk> <-2204960655390001@iynx.esnet.com> <317C47BD.3E2E@one.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: well.com X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 #1 (NOV) Will writes: >Whipping out my copy of Rabelais' work, I see that a) you are right, and >b) my translation establishes the law as "DO WHAT THOU WILT." >What say the Thelemites in our defense? I don't doubt that >Crowley read Rabelais' muses on an Abbey of Theleme. Wouldn't >it be humourous if Crowley's greatest joke was the movement that >his writings inspired. Nothing to defend. Crowley recommends reading Rabelais in MTP. No cover up. If Thelema was emergent out of nothing, with no precursors, that would be very odd. You can go back to Augustine and, some say, Christ for many elements in Thelema. The Torah contains stories found in Babalonian tablets. The 1,001 Nights contains stories found in ancient Egypt. The New Testament contains material from the Old and some say from Buddhism. It doesn't matter where statements in Liber AL can also be found, prior to Liber AL. Revelation has to be passed through the mind of a prophet, using almost exclusively using the words and ideas already there. Very few utter novelties ever emerge in such things. If it were otherwise, revelatory texts would be filled with "what's that?", "could you repeat that?", "how's it spelled?", and similar such. For instances with Crowley, consider the cryptic verse in Liber AL and any of A.C.'s longer workings. >> And 'Do What Thou Wilt' is not the same as 'Do what thou wilt'. This is >> another fundamental misunderstanding by people who claim to know. >Know what? That capital letters express more power? Whatever. I've >yet to see a discourse on the benefits of capitalizing all words in a >sentence...seems trivial to me. Use of case of letters is significant, more so in Crowley's day for English than now. It does add emphasis and allows a potential twist for those investigating a possible new English Gematria -- which could well have different values for capital letters than lowercase, just as Hebrew does for selected finals. At least the space marks can vary. The Mormons read their book with the punctuation aloud. 93 93/93 Bill Heidrick