From sentto-1949225-7828-987146207-nagasiva=luckymojo.com@returns.onelist.com Fri Apr 13 00:17:10 2001 Return-Path: sentto-1949225-7828-987146207-nagasiva=luckymojo.com@returns.onelist.com Received: from hk.egroups.com (hk.egroups.com [208.50.99.220]) by prop.sonic.net (8.11.2/8.8.5) with SMTP id f3D7HAW05082 for ; Fri, 13 Apr 2001 00:17:10 -0700 X-envelope-info: X-eGroups-Return: sentto-1949225-7828-987146207-nagasiva=luckymojo.com@returns.onelist.com Received: from [10.1.4.53] by hk.egroups.com with NNFMP; 13 Apr 2001 07:16:48 -0000 X-Sender: rikb@horusset.com X-Apparently-To: thelema93-l@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_1_2); 13 Apr 2001 07:16:47 -0000 Received: (qmail 46573 invoked from network); 13 Apr 2001 07:16:46 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l7.egroups.com with QMQP; 13 Apr 2001 07:16:46 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ns1.akroncanton.com) (205.158.182.2) by mta1 with SMTP; 13 Apr 2001 07:16:46 -0000 Received: from pavilion (a1-1c205.neo.rr.com [24.93.162.205]) by ns1.akroncanton.com (8.9.0/8.9.0) with SMTP id DAA25433 for ; Fri, 13 Apr 2001 03:31:31 -0400 (EDT) To: Message-ID: X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) In-Reply-To: <9b60df+938s@eGroups.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 Importance: Normal From: "Rikb" MIME-Version: 1.0 Mailing-List: list thelema93-l@yahoogroups.com; contact thelema93-l-owner@yahoogroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list thelema93-l@yahoogroups.com Precedence: bulk List-Unsubscribe: Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 03:01:45 -0400 Reply-To: thelema93-l@yahoogroups.com Subject: RE: [t93] Re: Reflections on the word "Thelemite" Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Status: RO 93! > This is an important point. If there are other forms of the same > Greek word going around in pre-Christian times, it would be > curious to postulate that although the other forms existed before > the Gospels, this particular declension didn't occur anywhere > until it appeared in the Lord's Prayer. It would be like saying the > word "hero" didn't exist until its first recorded use, even though > we have earlier usages of derivatives like "heroic." > > That is not to say that the use in the Lord's Prayer is insignificant. > Crowley commented several times on the contrast between the > Law of Thelema and the Christian formulation of "thy will be > done," which is an English translation of the relevant line of the > Lord's Prayer, for instance. It's just that this does not appear to > be the origin of the word, only the earliest extant occurrence of > this declension. Well, the LXX (the Septuagint or Greek Old Testament, translated circa 250 bce) examples are pre-gospel at any rate, though are used in the sense of "pleasure" rather than "will" per se. I'm not sure there's really anything of much value in this line of speculation, though, since there are actually tens of hundreds of Koine Greek words found in the New Testament that don't appear in any other extant writings (called 'hapax legomena' -- last I checked there were something like 1500 of them). For example, another word that is found in the 'Lord's Prayer' and nowhere else in the entire corpus of Greek literature is 'epiousios,' meaning 'daily.' Of course the number of hapax legomena decreases as new Koine texts are discovered by Greek lexicographers. The problem isn't so much that these were unique words at the time the texts in question were written, but that the number of works in Koine Greek are relatively small, and the New Testament sources constitute a relatively large proportion of them (the idea that the NT is written in some kind of "special holy Greek" is long outdated). Koine was the 'common language' that one did not actually see in literary works very often, and later in Byzantine times was actively suppressed by the intelligentsia. Things most likely to be written in Koine, like shopping lists, personal letters, and bills of sale just weren't preserved in libraries and monasteries. The verb from which 'thelema' is derived, 'ethelo' or later just 'thelo,' is used in very early Greek sources. Another word meaning 'will,' probably closely related to thelema, is lema, also attested in ancient sources. The appearance of a new inflected form in the Hellenistic period is entirely in keeping with the changes that were happening in the common language throughout the Greek world at the time, and doesn't necessarily lend any characteristically christian sense to the term. Of course, the idea of an individual will was largely developed by christian theologians, and Thelema is a direct outgrowth of that process, in a parallel sense to which the existential philosophies of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche can be seen as outgrowths of christian philosophy. 93 93/93 RIKB http://www.horusset.com/RIKB To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: thelema93-l-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ From sentto-1949225-7833-987323239-nagasiva=luckymojo.com@returns.onelist.com Sun Apr 15 01:27:21 2001 Return-Path: sentto-1949225-7833-987323239-nagasiva=luckymojo.com@returns.onelist.com Received: from mr.egroups.com (mr.egroups.com [208.50.144.80]) by prop.sonic.net (8.11.2/8.8.5) with SMTP id f3F8RL419520 for ; Sun, 15 Apr 2001 01:27:21 -0700 X-envelope-info: X-eGroups-Return: sentto-1949225-7833-987323239-nagasiva=luckymojo.com@returns.onelist.com Received: from [10.1.4.52] by mr.egroups.com with NNFMP; 15 Apr 2001 08:27:19 -0000 X-Sender: rikb@horusset.com X-Apparently-To: thelema93-l@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_1_2); 15 Apr 2001 08:27:18 -0000 Received: (qmail 64231 invoked from network); 15 Apr 2001 08:27:18 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m8.onelist.org with QMQP; 15 Apr 2001 08:27:18 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ns1.akroncanton.com) (205.158.182.2) by mta2 with SMTP; 15 Apr 2001 08:27:18 -0000 Received: from pavilion (a2-1f124.neo.rr.com [24.93.195.124]) by ns1.akroncanton.com (8.9.0/8.9.0) with SMTP id EAA19213 for ; Sun, 15 Apr 2001 04:42:16 -0400 (EDT) To: Message-ID: X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) In-Reply-To: <000b01c0c543$9abafbc0$b3796c18@ivideon.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 Importance: Normal From: "Rikb" MIME-Version: 1.0 Mailing-List: list thelema93-l@yahoogroups.com; contact thelema93-l-owner@yahoogroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list thelema93-l@yahoogroups.com Precedence: bulk List-Unsubscribe: Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 04:29:14 -0400 Reply-To: thelema93-l@yahoogroups.com Subject: RE: [t93] Re: Will Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Status: RO 93! > > Right, but I'm not sure if Ethêlô and Boulê completely reflect Aiwass' > meaning of Thelêma. Both Ethêlô and Boulê are verbs, but Thelêma seems to > be a noun, a thing-in-itself, something which exists. This is simply my > interpretation though, and I don't know enough Greek or enough > about grammer > to show it is fact. Pretty good. Ethelô (or just thelô, as the epsilon was apparently dropped in some dialects early on -- thelô appears in Homer only twice, according to Liddel & Scott, but appears early in other primary sources). Thelô is considered the uninflected form of the verb "to will." (It isn't the infinitive -- I won't go into that). Thelema is a noun derived from the verb thelô. Boulomai is a verb, of which boulêma is a noun form. It's really rather difficult to say what the distinction is -- as far as I can tell, they are close synonyms, but authors do use them with distinction. Homer tended to use boulomai for the wishes of gods and thelô for the wishes of humans, according to Liddell & Scott. In Latin, there is a similar situation with libet and volo (I'm pretty sure volo is derived from the same root as boulo- in Greek, but I don't see any obvious genetic connection between thelô and libet.) On the whole, I would guess that thelema is related more to emotional concerns -- "my pleasure," or "my inclination," while boulo- is more related to intellectual planfulness -- "my project," or even "my counsel" (Boulê is is uesd as a name of the Senate in Athens). This is just a relatively half-assed guess, of course, as I am not a Greek scholar of any merit. For almost every usage of "thelô," there is a parallel instance where "boulomai" is used to mean the same thing. The other thing about Thelêma is that we > don't know if > it refers to the individual will as Ethêlô and Boulê seem to do, or if it > refers to the universal will as the Lord's Prayer indicates. > I will readily admit that nearly every usage of thelema in the NT is in reference to the will of God, but this is not always the case. In Luke 22:42, the word used for God's will is "boulei," while Jesus says "mê to thelêma mou," "not my will." In John 7:17, we have "Ean tis thelê to thelêma autou poein," "If anyone wills to do His will," making clear that both God and Men have "thelema." In 1 Corinthians 16:12, thelema is used in discussing the will of one Brother Apollo, in a wholly mundane sense. In 2 Timothy 26, we are even warned against being ensnared by the thelema of the Devil! Finally, in 1 Peter 4:3, we have "For we have spent enough of our past lifetime doing the thelema of Gentiles -- when we walked in lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries." Clearly, then, thelema does not exclusively refer to God's will, nor does it always refer to behavior that is righteous or in accord with the divine will. In addition, boulomai is not used as often as thelêma in the NT, and when it is, it is almost always used in the sense of the intellectual activity of planning, decisionmaking, or consent rather than desiring, wanting, or willing something. I think the relative lack of "thelema" as applied to humans in the NT has more to do with the relative lack of concern for the will of humans in early christian writings. The emphasis is entirely on what God wills. What humans will is irrelevant, even though it's clear from the passages above that humans -- even shameful foreskin-bearing revelers -- can *have* a will. Incedentally, if I were to choose a Greek word for "thelemite," it would be thelêtês, "one who wills," which can also mean "a magician" -- curiously enough through confusion over the translation of a Hebrew word in the Septuagint. Although I realize it is a very popular view among thelemites, I have a problem with the idea that my "true" will is the will of a classically defined God or an "universal consciousness." My will is unambiguously MY will, grounded in my unique consciousness, not just a local expression of some "universal will" in which I happen to be caught up. My will may be an organ of an immanent yet universal consciousness (a possibility that I find so abstract that it is unexaminable -- true, perhaps, but leading to few if any pragmatic consequences), but this does not require that the particularity of my will be an illusion. The ego is a construct, but it is a real construct however dynamic and fluid it might be. My will is the force that maintains that construct, develops it, and gives it meaning (another sense of the verb thelô is "to mean," so thelêma might also be extended to mean "meaning" or "intention" as boulêma certainly does -- see in this connection Victor Frankl's "will to meaning" or Rollo May's chapters in "Love and Will" on intentionality). "There is no God but man." 93 93/93 RIKB http://www.horusset.com/RIKB To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: thelema93-l-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/