The Good News Of Christianity: You will be saved from death, but to do so you must die as an individual and be reborn as a uniform part of the collective Body of Christ.
The Good News Of Thelema: You will be saved (that is chosen) for life, but to do so you must die as a Representation of a false collective and be reborn as an individual star whose mission is to contribute to the collective light of the cosmos.
What’s the difference?
Christians live in fear of death, and wanting desperately, more than anything else, to escape it. They will give up everything, including ironically their lives, to achieve this. Their morality is decidedly Old Aeon, since it is communitarian, self-sacrificing, and quite literally inhuman—it demands the rejection of basic human drives (for love and power) and the surrender of the will to a greater one whose only purpose is the assimilation of zombie souls unto its Body.
Thelemites live in fear of failure—that they will fail to live according to their true will, that they will fail to live as fully and completely as their composition of star-stuff enables them. That failure is a living death, and far worse than the natural kind, which should come as a kind and loving reward for a job well done. Of course that is the ideal. Thelemites do not wish for death, nor worship death, but neither are they afraid of it, because they Understand it to be merely the corporeal manifestation of the basic process of change in the Universe. Through this same Death comes also the ability to change towards a desired object, or to turn oneself to Love, or to raise oneself up from the ashes of a defeat to seek again the victory of one’s life.
So, there are these two fears, the Christian fear tends to diminish the will for life, in hopes of some eternal living which is actually an eternal death. Thelemic fear often tends to open one’s living up in a kind of Experimental fashion, mainly because the determination of one’s true will (and how to do it) is not so obvious to most people. Thus, they are led to try a lot of ideas and methods; even Thelema itself might be seen as one of these, which interestingly believers may abandon in the course of living Thelemically.
Once a Thelemite has determined his true will, and forged himself or burnt himself into the appropriate Wand for the mission he has determined (which he has perceived is appropriate for his space and time and body-weapon), his experimenting towards a true will diminishes, but another kind may develop as he determines then the best way to achieve the mission or destiny of his life.
Note that much of the living then of a Thelemite is a search for a purpose and a way of realizing himself. In a sense, he loses himself in this search to find himself. And once found, this true self becomes a director and guide to map out the way to a successful life. At death, there is a release back to the Cosmos—thus the Christian form of salvation is going to be achieved anyway, so no need to abandon one’s life during the living of it in hopes of getting a reward already naturally due to you.
Of course a Christian may object this is not how it is, and that he expects to walk in a glorious city of gold, and play harps all day long in brilliant and ecstatic choruses blathering about the greatness of God. I would just say a Thelemite would rather shoot himself, or be damned to an eternity in Hell (amongst the sinful individuals), than to achieve such a horribly tortuous punishment as the Christian heaven.
A question then, what is the Thelemic ethic? If it extols the individual, and the individual path of seeking Light and purpose, then what communitarian standards does it care about? Any? Is basic human decency, which seems as natural as basic human greed and hostility, allowed in Thelema? Or encouraged? Can you feel a good and loving thought about another person in Thelema without being thought a weak and deluded creature, or worse some version of a Christian?
Well, who are individual Thelemites after all to claim to know the vectors of destiny for all other stars? Maybe a Thelemite is properly placed even living or dying as a Christian. All the rules for life have to be examined and evaluated and appreciated in their contexts. This is the way of magic.
So, you do not have to toss out “thou shalt not kill”, because generally that rule is a pretty good one to follow, no matter whether you are religious or not. Of course, to a Thelemite “kill” has many meanings including “transmute”, which can simply mean to change an enemy’s course a bit so he is no threat. The skill of a magician is always measured according to the elegance of his spells, which is to say according to the amount of achievement he obtains for the least effort and expenditure of cosmic treasure.
The actual taking of a life, while common to many self-professed Christians, is a barbarism that denotes a low order of culture and intelligence. One should be able to adaptively glide through the environment, harming as little as possible. Of course “as possible” can include cataclysmic interventions, when required to move mountains and herds of people. Even there though, it may just be an idea which does the moving. The Sword does not need to draw blood, but merely effectively symbolize the power to do so.
More soon on the violent ethics of Thelema.
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