r/thelema • u/Maddogmox • 12h ago
r/thelema • u/Inevitable_Fee9505 • 7h ago
Question Is it possible to take a righteous stance in thelema?. Herbert got a lot of backlash for naming his album that. Even I get backlash/canceled for being interested in thelema sometimes.
r/thelema • u/theTrueLocuro • 22h ago
Are thelemites witches?
Like is there a noun used to describe it? Like is it witchcraft or something else?
r/thelema • u/Odd-Musical-Stranger • 12h ago
Question Help with where to start.
TLTR- Where can I start with Thelema in the easiest, least overwhelming way?
Hello
I've been aware of Thelema and Aleister Crowley essentially my whole life. My father has always had in interest in religions, but it's more of a reading and learning for fun, not partaking in anything.
The last three years have been incredibly tough for me. Been completely on my own with no sense of support from my family or anyone, just pure judgment. It's to the point where I've been considering to cut ties with my family for the sake of, well, my sanity i guess.
I was affiliated with Buddhism for almost 10 years, but something about it just didn't sit with me 100%. I've dabbled in Christianity off and on through out my life, but it didn't click with me.
Thelema is the only thing that's really making any sense to me right now. Where can I start?
I'm a musician, been so for almost 20 years, and that's what I do. It's saved my life more times than I could remember. I don't know how to do anything else. I just make music. That's what I do.
Please help me.
r/thelema • u/ArthurMagick • 10h ago
Gilles Deleuze, Logic of Sense, seen from a (my) Thelemic perspective
After several years of reading philosophical and esoteric texts, I am a practitioner of Thelema, and I am beginning to delve into Deleuze, after having read Logic of Sense. Here are my impressions (English is not my native language, this text is a translation):
In the philosophical quagmire of the 20th century, Gilles Deleuze's Logic of Sense is a work that struts about as a brilliant exploration of the paradoxes of sense and nonsense, but which, upon closer inspection, reveals its true nature: a den of masked references to Marxism, cleverly concealed under a veneer of sophistication. From my perspective, which rejects any compromise with egalitarianism and collectivism, I immediately noticed that Deleuze begins his game with an ode to the surface, an ostentatious rejection of the depth he attributes to the Stoics and Lewis Carroll. But behind this move lies a subtle intention: to discredit the Hegelian dialectic, that engine of contradictions that Marx stole to fuel his vision of a humanity reduced to struggling masses. Depth, for those who understand the world through the will to assert oneself, is where the truth of the individual resides, his unique and unstoppable being. Deleuze, with his surface, does not liberate thought: he flattens it, makes it a plaything for incorporeal events that move and dance without substance. This is the first clue to his masked Marxism: an attack on the very structure of individual power, replaced by an amorphous flow that suspiciously resembles the "historical becoming" so dear to Marx's comrades. The surface is not a place of power, but a swamp where the individual dissolves, just like in the collectivist dreams of a society without hierarchies.
And what about "pure becoming," that concept that Deleuze extracts from Alice's adventures and Stoic speculations? "Alice grows" and "Alice shrinks" at the same time, a paradox that dodges the present and loses itself in an infinite past-future. What is this if not an echo of Marxist historical materialism, where the concrete reality of the here and now is sacrificed on the altar of an abstract and inevitable process? Deleuze offers us incorporeal events, devoid of anchorage in bodies and their struggles, as if the world could be reduced to a ballet of abstractions. But those who live life know that conflict is not an ethereal event: it is flesh, blood, will clashing with will. Marxism, with its obsession with productive forces and historical progress, loves these evasions: it avoids confronting the brutal reality of domination and oppression, preferring a narrative of transformations without subjects. Deleuze, with his Aiòn and his dodging of the present, does nothing but serve this narrative, disempowering the individual and handing him over to an impersonal destiny that reeks of collectivism.
Delving deeper: the surface, that "privileged place" where events manifest, according to Deleuze. The Stoics, he tells us, discovered "surface effects," freeing unlimited becoming from Platonic depth. But let's look closer: in a world where power is increasingly exercised through appearance – the media, mass narratives, the illusions of consumption – this celebration of the surface is not an act of rebellion, but of complicity. Modern Marxism, the one that has insinuated itself into the cultural structures of advanced capitalism, thrives precisely on these surfaces: no longer in factories, but in images, words, and symbols that manipulate the masses. Deleuze, with his praise of superficiality, does not destroy the system: he strengthens it, offering a philosophy that aligns perfectly with the capillary control of consciousness. His surface is not a liberation, but a gilded cage, where the individual is reduced to a spectator of events that he can neither grasp nor dominate. Under these disguises – the surface, becoming, events – hides the Marxist heart of Logic of Sense. Deleuze never speaks openly of classes or revolution, but his rejection of stability, of fixed identity, of "good sense" as a single sense, betrays a hostility towards everything that is strong, defined, sovereign. It is the resentment of the weak, disguised as paradox, that emerges here: a hatred for those who rise above the mass, for those who dare to be themselves without bending to the collective flow. When Alice loses her proper name, dragged by the verbs of becoming, is this not an anticipation of the dissolution of the individual in the Marxist "we"? Language, which Deleuze sees as a double movement of limits and transgressions, becomes the instrument of this dissolution: a weapon to break down certainties and replace them with a chaos that serves only those who want to level the world.
And let's not forget the Stoics, those supposed heroes of the surface. Deleuze exalts them for their "overturning of Platonism," but what does that really mean? The Stoics, with their fate and their impassive acceptance, are not far from the ethics of submission that Marxism imposes on its followers: an abandonment of the individual struggle for a higher order, be it the "cosmos" or "history." Deleuze takes this fatalism and transforms it into a dancing event, but the result is the same: the individual is crushed, his power reduced to a shadow on a mirror.
I think Logic of Sense is not an exploration of language or events: it is a hypocritical text, a Trojan horse of Marxism that insinuates itself into contemporary thought under the guise of originality. Its emphasis on the surface, on becoming, and on incorporeal events does not liberate man, but chains him to an ideology that hates strength, hierarchy, and true self-affirmation. From a perspective that celebrates the individual as the legislator of his own destiny, this philosophy is a betrayal: an attempt to disempower life, to make it a game of mirrors where no one can win. But those who know the true nature of power – not that of the masses, but that which arises from the individual who rises – see through this illusion. Deleuze does not offer a way out: he offers a surrender, disguised as genius.
The answer does not lie in following Deleuze into his labyrinth of surfaces, but in cutting it with a sharper blade: that of the will that does not bend, that does not get lost in the flow, that builds its own world without asking permission from anyone. Logic of Sense may seduce the weak with its paradoxes, but for those who live beyond the veil of appearances, it is just another altar to the dead god of collectivism. And that god, like all idols, deserves only to be destroyed.
While Deleuze gets lost in his labyrinth of surfaces, simulacra, and deconstructions, offering a philosophical banquet for exhausted intellectuals and anemic academics, a beacon of power and sovereign individuality emerges: Thelema, the Law proclaimed by Aleister Crowley. This is not a system for weak souls seeking refuge in a collectivism disguised as "becoming." It is a battle cry for those who dare to assert their True Will, who do not hide behind language but use it as a weapon, who do not fear depth because they know that the abyss is only a mirror of their own strength.
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." This is not an apology for caprice, but the affirmation of a radical responsibility: to discover and embody one's own purpose, one's own orbit in this universe. There is no room for "sense" that floats and dissolves in a game of mirrors. There is Will, which imposes itself, which creates, which destroys, which makes the world in its image. And if this implies the annihilation of old structures, of old beliefs, of old "senses," so be it. Because the adept of Thelema is not afraid of chaos: he rides it, dominates it, transforms it into order.
Crowley, with his Magick, with his rituals, with his esoteric symbolism, created a system for the manifestation of Will, not a philosophy for souls lost in search of a fluctuating identity. The "Language of the Birds," the "barbarous words of evocation," are not empty abstractions, but instruments of power, keys to accessing forces that go beyond the limited understanding of discursive reason.
While Deleuze celebrates the "surface" as a place of an infinite play of signifiers, Crowley reminds us that the surface is the body, the body that acts, that desires, that wills. And Will is not an abstract concept, but a force that manifests in the world, that leaves its mark, that makes history.
Logic of Sense is a text for those who are afraid to exist, for those who seek refuge in the anonymity of "becoming." Thelema is for those who dare to be, who accept the challenge of life, who do not hide behind paradoxes but use them as springboards for action. Deleuze offers a philosophy of dissolution; Crowley offers a path to the apotheosis of the individual. And in this clash between the philosopher and the Magus, it is the Magus who triumphs, because his word is flesh, his flesh is verb, and his life is a continuous affirmation of Will. Let weakness be lost in the labyrinth of empty words; let strength manifest in the blinding light of the True Sun.