From thelema93-l-owner@hollyfeld.org Sat Sep 7 13:07:30 1996 Received: from nova.unix.portal.com (nova.unix.portal.com [156.151.1.101]) by jobe.shell.portal.com (8.6.11/8.6.5) with ESMTP id NAA02097 for ; Sat, 7 Sep 1996 13:07:29 -0700 Received: from bitsy.hollyfeld.org (bitsy.hollyfeld.org [38.240.235.1]) by nova.unix.portal.com (8.6.11/8.6.5) with ESMTP id NAA18880 for ; Sat, 7 Sep 1996 13:07:18 -0700 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by bitsy.hollyfeld.org (8.7.4/8.7.3) id QAA08245 for thelema93-l-outgoing; Sat, 7 Sep 1996 16:01:10 -0400 X-Authentication-Warning: bitsy.hollyfeld.org: majordom set sender to owner-thelema93-l using -f Received: from mail-out2.apple.com (mail-out2.apple.com [17.254.0.51]) by bitsy.hollyfeld.org (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id QAA08239 for ; Sat, 7 Sep 1996 16:00:55 -0400 Received: from post-awful.apple.com (post-awful.apple.com [17.255.0.17]) by mail-out2.apple.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id NAA05412 for ; Sat, 7 Sep 1996 13:03:44 -0700 Received: from [17.219.103.144] ([17.219.103.144]) by post-awful.apple.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id NAA60276 for ; Sat, 7 Sep 1996 13:07:12 -0700 Message-Id: <199609072007.NAA60276@post-awful.apple.com> Subject: Re: Magick & Liber AL Date: Sat, 7 Sep 96 13:04:51 -0700 x-sender: maroney@mail.apple.com x-mailer: Claris Emailer 1.1 From: Tim Maroney To: "Ooo Mau Mau" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Sender: owner-thelema93-l@hollyfeld.org Precedence: bulk reply-to: thelema93-l@hollyfeld.org Status: RO J. B. Bell wrote: >And now a question: can one be a Thelemite without accepting parts of the >Book of the Law? Not merely creatively interpreting parts of it so that >they become effectively null, but simply saying "I think Crowley was >suffering a major brain fart when he wrote AL:III:67-90." (Note: verse >pulled out of hat; don't assume anything!) I must agree with Tim Maroney's >implication that torturous "interpretation" is simply not that >intellectually honest. But then if we unhook the idea of Thelema from >Liber AL, what is left? This is a conundrum that has vexed liberal >Christians for centuries now, and there's no clear resolution. I'm not sure this is a conundrum. I was raised a Catholic during the liberal Vatican II period, and there was never any suggestion that the Bible needed to be taken as an absolutely accurate document for it to have great spiritual value. A liberal Christian's relation to scripture remains well-defined and respectful despite the possibility that scripture contains errors or mistakes: the process of inspiration is seen as an interaction of the human and the divine rather than as a simple manifestation of the divine, but scripture is a record of the interaction of humans with the divine and as such is very useful for those forging their own relationship. In this liberal Christian viewpoint, the divine is still seen as inerrant, with which I could not agree without turning in my credentials as a card-carrying existentialist. The divine is only an aspect of the human and so even the original source of inspiration may be mistaken. Humans may have any number of different and contradictory inspirations; a poem may be transcendentally beautiful and yet be wrongheaded. I recognize the exhortations to trample down the weak in the Book of the Law as genuinely inspired -- that is, partaking of a communion with a deep source of unconscious motivation well beyond the everyday consciousness -- and yet I believe that these motivations would lead us astray if we were to follow them. As for the question of whether one can be a Thelemite without respecting the necessary truth of every word of the Book of the Law, it is useful to note that the word "Thelemite" has been with us for centuries longer than Crowley or his Book. In one of the many ironic sections of his books, Francois Rabelais inverted monastic virtues to create a kind of anti-morality and postulated a group of people who lived in accord with it: drawn to virtue rather than in flight from sin; playful rather than somber; self-loving rather than self-loathing; free rather than laden down with oaths; mixed in gender rather than segregated; and honest rather than hypocritical. There have always been people like this and I hope there always will be. As for the more recent meaning of "Thelemite", meaning a follower of Crowley's system, I submit that this is an inferior definition and we might be better off without such people. Tim Maroney