Ideas

Thelema

thuh-LEE-muh
Crowley's religion of the True Will: Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law, received in Cairo in 1904.
Documented

The Book of the Law

April 8-10, 1904: Crowley recorded Liber AL vel Legis in Cairo, dictated, he said, by a voice called Aiwass. Its three chapters proclaim the new Aeon of Horus, the law of Thelema (will) balanced by agape (love), 'Love is the law, love under will.' The manuscript survives in the O.T.O. archives.

Assessment: Documented: the dictation dates and the manuscript; the voice is the claimant's own report.
Stories

The libertine's license

The popular misreading: Do what thou wilt as permission for appetite, the wickedest-man-in-the-world branding Crowley cultivated and tabloids amplified. The text itself ties will to discovery of one's true course, closer to vocation than indulgence, though the branding was partly his own work.

Assessment: Stories: the tabloid version is documented as media history; the scholarly version is documented as textual analysis.
Interesting claims

Rabelais in the bloodline

The older strata: Rabelais's Abbey of Theleme (1534) inscribed Fay ce que vouldras over its gate, satire of monastic vows. Crowley admitted the debt. Thelema is thus a joke that grew serious, which may be the most honest genealogy any new religion has.

Assessment: Interesting: the literary lineage is undisputed; whether it dignifies or deflates is the reader's call.
Sources and further reading
  1. Liber AL vel Legis, dictated April 8-10, 1904, manuscript in O.T.O. archives
  2. Rabelais, Gargantua (1534), the Abbey of Theleme
  3. Richard Kaczynski, Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley (2010)
Worth asking

Is Do what thou wilt a commandment to freedom or a mirror that reports back whatever you bring to it?

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GR8YFILES · competing origin stories, labeled by the strength of their evidence · readers 14+