Path: Supernews69!kudonet.com!not-for-mail From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nagasiva) Newsgroups: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.magick,alt.magick.order,alt.thelema Subject: TMaroney: Thelemic Contributions To Culture. Date: 9 Jul 1997 16:22:47 -0700 Organization: KudoNet On-Line Services Lines: 39 Sender: tyagi@bjt.net Message-ID: <5q16g7$7k2@kudo20.kudonet.com> Reply-To: maroney@apple.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 165.227.52.9 X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 (NOV) Xref: Supernews69 alt.magick.tyagi:13515 alt.magick:106954 alt.magick.order:769 [from thelema93-l@hollyfeld.org: Tim Maroney ] >Given that the concept of Thelema explicitly proposes a radical >transformation of the self, I am curious as to why Thelemic contributions >to Culture haven't been more significant? Because for the most part, Thelemic culture is lost in a soup of reprinting. The original Equinox was a literary journal with magical instructions, commenting freely and wittily on the events of the day. Today's Equinox volumes are Crowley reprints, with the occasional derivative "original" work tossed in to disguise the stagnation. Original contributions are often actively disparaged by the Crowley fan club mentality; creating an original work in the tradition is criticized as if one were claiming to have Crowley's spiritual degrees. This is not always the case, but I have heard this kind of criticism -- that originality equals egomania -- directed often enough towards others' contributions as well as my own that I have come to identify it as a persistent problem in the tradition. Now, if one leaves the Thelemic enclave, one notes that Crowley has been an influence on a number of counterculture figures and on most of Western non-Thelemic occultism, even though in these cases he is only one of several influences on any particular figure or tradition. (When these influences are noted, the usual response from within the fan club is to insist that the matter is not one of influence but of plagiarism -- the idea that Neo-Paganism is nothing but a watered-down Thelema is very common even though any examination of source materials shows that the Crowley influence is no ore prominent than that of others such as Leland and Murray.) -- Tim Maroney tim@maroney.org http://www.maroney.org -- (emailed replies may be posted) ------- join the AMT syncretism!!! see http://www.abyss.com/tokus ---------- call: 408/2-666-SLUG!! "sa avidya ya vimuktaye" -- "that which liberates is ignorance"