by K. R. Bolton
“Do what thou wilt” is the foundation of Thelema.85 It does not mean a nihilistic “do what you want,” but “do your will” that is, your “true will,” which must be discovered by rigorous processes. Crowley states that the dictum “must not be regarded as individualism run wild.”86 Reflecting the individual “true will,” Thelemic doctrine describes “every man and every woman [as] a star.”87 That is, each individual is a part of the cosmos but with his or her own orbit,88 or what one might call an individual life-course.
The Book of the Law states, “the slaves shall serve.”89 Again this is Nietzschean in the sense that many individuals, probably the vast majority, do not have the will to discover and fulfill their “true will.” While everyone is a “star,” some shine brighter than others. In The Star Sponge Vision,90 an astral revelation, Crowley explained this inequality as reflecting the “highly organized structure of the universe” which includes stars that are of “greater magnitude and brilliance than the rest.”91 The mass of humanity whose natures are servile and incapable of what Nietzsche called “self-overcoming”92 will remain as they are, their true wills being to serve the followers of a “master morality.”93 The Book of the Law describes these latter as “Kings of the Earth,” those whose starry wills are those of rulers.94 (If some of the prose supposedly dictated to Crowley by Aiwass sounds remarkably similar to Eliphas Lévi, it might be because Crowley claimed to be reincarnated from, among many sages from ancient to recent times, Lévi himself!95)
Such a doctrine, while individualistic, is not anarchic, nihilistic, or even liberal. It is, in fact, a revival of castes. More is implied here than mere classes, which are an economic and materialistic debasement. Castes reflect a metaphysical order in which each individual fulfils his function according to his true will—or duty, dharma—as manifestation of the cosmic order. To followers of the Perennial Tradition, caste is a manifestation of the divine order and not merely an economic division of labor for crass exploitation.96
Crowley (or Aiwass) explains the fundamental anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian doctrine of Thelema in the following terms, again reminiscent of Nietzsche:
We are not for the poor and sad: the lords of the earth are our kinsfolk. Beauty and strength, leaping laughter, and delicious languor, force and fire are of us . . . we have nothing to do with the outcast and unfit. For they feel not. Compassion is the vice of kings; stamp down the wretched and the weak: this is the law of the strong; this is our law and the joy of the world.97
This hierarchical social order, while in accord with the perennial Tradition, postulates a new aristocracy, the old having become debased and beholden to commerce. (Crowley himself was of bourgeois origins, so he ennobled himself with the title of “Sir Aleister Crowley.”98) Under the “Aeon of Horus”99 the new aristocracy would consist of Nietzschean self-overcomers. Crowley specifically refers to the influence of Nietzsche in explaining the Thelemic concept: “The highest are those who have mastered and transcended accidental environment. . . . There is a good deal of the Nietzschean standpoint in this verse.”100
However, in contrast to Nietzsche as well as Guénon and Evola, Crowley also draws on Darwinism. After referring to the “Nietzschean standpoint” Crowley states in Darwinian terms:
It is the evolutionary and natural view . . . Nature’s way is to weed out the weak. This is the most merciful way too. At present all the strong are being damaged, and their progress being hindered by the dead weight of the weak limbs and the missing limbs, the diseased limbs and the atrophied limbs. The Christians to the lions.101
Crowley saw an era of turmoil preceding the New Aeon during which the masses and the elite, or the new aristocracy, would be in conflict. Crowley wrote of this revolutionary prelude to the New Aeon: “And when the trouble begins, we aristocrats of freedom, from the castle to the cottage, the tower or the tenement, shall have the slave mob against us.”102
Crowley describes “the people” as “that canting, whining, servile breed of whipped dogs which refuses to admit its deity . . .”103 The undisciplined mob at the whim of its emotions, devoid of Will, is described as “the natural enemy of good government.” The new aristocracy of governing elite will be those who have discovered and pursued their “true will,” who have mastered themselves through self-overcoming, to use Nietzsche’s term. This governing caste would pursue a “consistent policy” without being subjected to the democratic whims of the masses.104
THE THELEMIC STATE
The form of Thelemic government is vaguely outlined in The Book of the Law, suggesting a type of corporatism: “Let it be the state of manyhood bound and loathing: thou hast no right but to do what thou will.”105 Contrary to the anarchic or nihilist interpretation often given Thelema’s “do what thou wilt,” Crowley defined the Thelemic state as a free association for the common good. The individual will is accomplished through social co-operation. Individual will and social duty should be in accord, the individual “absolutely disciplined to serve his own, and the common purpose, without friction.”106
Crowley clarified his meaning so as not to be confused with anarchism or liberalism. Although his Liber Oz (stating the “rights of man”)107 seems to be a formula for total individual sovereignty devoid of social restraint, Crowley wrote that it must not be interpreted as advocating unfettered individualism.108
In what might appear to be his own effort at a “papal encyclical” on good government, Crowley explains:
I have set limits to individual freedom. For each man in this state which I propose is fulfilling his own True Will by his eager Acquiescence in the Order necessary to the Welfare of all, and therefore of himself also.109
Crowley’s rejection of democracy and all that might be termed “slave morality”110 necessitated a new view of the state. Like others of his time, including fellow mystics such as Evola and Yeats,111 Crowley was concerned with the future of culture under the reign of mercantilism, materialism, and industrialism. He feared that an epoch of mass uniformity was emerging. He saw equality as the harbinger of uniformity, again appealing to biology:
There is no creature on earth the same. All the members, let them be different in their qualities, and let there be no creature equal with another. Here also is the voice of true science, crying aloud: “Variety is the key of evolution.” Know then, O my son, that all laws, all systems, all customs, all ideals and standards which tend to produce uniformity, being in direct opposition to nature’s will to change and develop through variety, are accursed. Do thou with all thy might of manhood strive against these forces, for they resist change which is life, and they are of death.112
This biological rather than metaphysical approach was supported by reference to human differences caused by “race, climate and other such conditions. And this standard shall be based upon a large interpretation of Facts Biological.”113
Referring to the passage in The Book of the Law that states “Ye are against the people, O my chosen!”114 Crowley explained:
The cant of democracy condemned. It is useless to pretend that men are equal: facts are against it. And we are not going to stay dull and contented as oxen, in the ruck of humanity.115
The democratic state as a reflection of equality and thus of uniformity was to be replaced by what is often termed the “organic state” or the “corporative state.” This conception may be viewed both biologically, as in the organism of the body (hence “corporatist”) with the separate organs (individuals, families, crafts, etc.) functioning according to their own nature while contributing to the health of the whole organism (society). The state assumes the authority of the “brain” as the co-coordinating organ of the separate parts. In England, corporatism was called “guild socialism,” among the Continental Left “syndicalism.”
Corporatism also had a metaphysical aspect, as the basis of social organization in Traditional societies, including the guilds of Medieval Europe and the corporations of ancient Rome. In Traditional societies, guild or corporatist socia
l organization was, like all else, seen as a terrestrial manifestation of the cosmic order, the divine organism, and castes were primarily spiritual, ethical, and cultural organs, as distinct from the economic “classes” of debased secular societies. Hence, Evola advocated corporatism as the Traditionalist answer to class society.116
Crowley’s conception of an organic state is described in De Ordine Rerum:
In the body every cell is subordinated to the general physiological Control, and we who will that Control do not ask whether each individual Unit of that Structure be consciously happy. But we do care that each shall fulfill its Function, with Contentment, respecting his own task as necessary and holy, not envious of another’s. For only mayst thou build up a Free State, whose directing will shall be to the Welfare of all.117
Hence Crowley, far from being a misanthrope, was concerned with freeing individuals from being part of a nebulous mass, and with providing sustenance for their material and cultural well-being as far as their natures allowed. The deliberate cultivation of his image as “evil” must be viewed primarily as a perverse quirk, and in particular a result of his twisted sense of humor, his narcissistic personality, and his strict upbringing among the Plymouth Brethren. He was delighted to have a mother who called him the Anti-Christ, which seems to have had a lasting effect on his thoughts and deeds throughout his life.
Crowley addressed himself to a major problem for unorthodox economic and social theorists, that of the reduction of working hours when a new economic system had secured physical abundance for all, and freed humanity from the economic treadmill. Once the obligations to the social order had been met, there should be “a surplus of leisure and energy” that can be spent in pursuit of individual satisfaction.118 A sufficient amount of leisure time free from strictly material pursuits is the basis of culture, and the flowering of culture in the Medieval era, for example, was a product of this, coupled with a spiritual basis for society.
Crowley, like the Social Creditors and certain non-Marxian socialists or social reformers, wished to change the economic system in order to reduce working hours. His comments about the role of money are astute. Like the Social Creditors, Crowley believed that a change in the role of money is necessary for transforming the social and economic system. He was certainly aware of A. R. Orage’s New Age magazine, where the minds of Social Creditors, guild socialists, and literati met. (Crowley referred to the journal in another context in his autobiography.119) He rather perceptively set out his economic and financial policy as follows:
What IS money? A means of exchange devised to facilitate the transaction of business. Oil in the engine. Very good then: if instead of letting it flow as smoothly and freely as possible, you baulk its very nature; you prevent it from doing its True Will. So every “restriction” on the exchange of wealth is a direct violation of the Law of Thelema.120
Once the material welfare of the citizen is secured, then the energy expended on economic necessities can be turned to the pursuit of culture. Under the Thelemic state the citizen would be directed by the ruling caste to pursue the higher aspects of life leading to the flowering of culture: “And because the people are oft-time unlearned, not understanding pleasure, let them be instructed on the Art of Life.”121 From this regime would follow a high culture in which each citizen would have the capacity to participate or at least appreciate: “These things [economic welfare] being first secured, thou mayst afterward lead them to the Heavens of Poesy and Tale, of Music, Painting and Sculpture, and into the love of the mind itself, with its insatiable Joy of all Knowledge.”122
Under the Thelemic state every individual would be given the opportunity to fulfill his true will. Crowley maintained, however, that most true wills or “stars” would be content with a satisfying material existence, having no ambition beyond “ease and animal happiness,” and would thus be content to stay where they are in the hierarchy. Those whose true will was to pursue higher aims would be given opportunities to do so, to “establish a class of morally and intellectually superior men and women.” In this state, while the people “lack for nothing,” their abilities according to their natures would be utilized by the ruling caste in the pursuance of a higher policy and a higher culture.123
Crowley also addressed the problem of industrialization and the role of the machine in the process of dehumanization, or what might also be termed by Traditionalists desacralisation,124 a problem that continues to confront the post-industrial world with greater challenges than ever:
Machines have already nearly completed the destruction of craftsmanship. A man is no longer a worker, but a machine-feeder. The product is standardized; the result, mediocrity. . . . Instead of every man and every women being a star, we have an amorphous population of vermin.125
Consistent with his advocacy of an organic state and with the re-sacralization of work as craft, Crowley expounded the guild as the basis of a Thelemic social organization. The guild was the fundamental unit of his own esoteric order, Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO):
Before the face of the Areopagus stands an independent Parliament of the Guilds. Within the Order, irrespective of Grade, the members of each craft, trade, science, or profession form themselves into a Guild, making their own laws, and prosecute their own good, in all matters pertaining to their labor and means of livelihood. Each Guild chooses the man most eminent in it to represent it before the Areopagus of the Eighth Degree; and all disputes between the various Guild are argued before that Body, which will decide according to the grand principles of the Order. Its decisions pass for ratification to the Sanctuary of the Gnosis, and thence to the Throne.126
This guild organization for the OTO thus represents society as a microcosm as the ideal social order that Crowley would have established under a Thelemic regime: “For, in True Things, all are but images one of another; man is but a map of the universe, and Society is but the same on a larger scale.”127
Crowley’s description is in every respect a succinct blueprint for the corporatist state, hierarchically ascending from each self-governing profession to a “parliament of guilds.” It was the type of system much discussed and making ground as an alternative to capitalism and Marxism, advocated from sundry quarters from Evola and D’Annunzio, to syndicalists, to Catholic traditionalists, and embryonically inaugurated under Mussolini. Ironically from a Crowleyan perspective, Dollfuss’s Austria and Salazar’s Portugal embraced corporatism as an application of Catholic social doctrine.
Crowley calls the mass of people under his system of governance “the Men of the Earth” who have not yet reached a stage of development to participate in government, and would be represented before the kingly head of state by those who are committed to service.128 The governing caste comprises a Senate drawn from an Electoral College,129 those individuals committed to service through personal “renunciation,” including the renunciation of property and wealth, having taken a “vow of poverty.”130 Of course the universal franchise has no place in the selection of Thelemic government:
The principle of popular election is a fatal folly; its results are visible in every so-called democracy. The elected man is always the mediocrity; he is the safe man, the sound man, the man who displeases the majority less than any other; and therefore never the genius, the man of progress and illumination.131
The Electoral College is selected by the king from volunteers who must show acumen in athletics and learning, a “profound general knowledge” of history and the art of government and a knowledge of philosophy.132
This corporatist and monarchical system was designed to “gather up all the threads of human passion and interest, and weave them into a harmonious tapestry . . .” reflecting the order of the cosmos.133
The Italian poet and war veteran D’Annunzio might have come closest to the Thelemite ideal with his short-lived Free City of Fiume, a regime governed by the arts that attracted numerous rebels, from anarchists and syndicalists to nationalists.134 Crowley does not mention D’Annunzio in his aut
obiography, even though Crowley was in Italy in 1920, and D’Annunzio’s enterprise ended in December of that year.135
As for the Italian Fascists, Crowley wrote: “For some time I had interested myself in Fascismo which I regarded with entire sympathy even excluding its illegitimacy on the ground that constitutional authority had become to all intents and purposes a dead letter.”136 Crowley saw the Fascisti in a characteristically poetic way, describing the blackshirts patrolling the railway as “delightful.” “They had all the picturesqueness of opera brigands.” As for the “March on Rome,” Crowley stated that he thought the behavior of the Fascisiti “admirable.”
Crowley quickly became disillusioned, however, and came to regard Mussolini as a typical politico who compromised his principles for popular support. The mass nature of Fascism caused suspicion among many of the literati who had originally supported it, such as Wyndham Lewis and W. B. Yeats. Crowley observed developments in Rome for three days, and was disappointed with Mussolini’s compromises with the Catholic Church, which Crowley regarded as Mussolini’s “most dangerous foe.”137 Of course such criticisms are common among observers of events rather than participants. Critics from afar can afford the luxury of theorizing without having to test their theories, and themselves, in the practicalities of office.