True Will, True Love and the Holy Guardian Angel – Lecture Draft

[Moon1ight]

So, later in 2023, there will be an occult conference in Berlin – The Occulture. They have a Call for Proposals out and I'm considering to apply :D have applied :D. In an inspired moment, I've recorded a voice message with my Lecture idea which I'll try to develop in this thread. Any feedback is of course welcome.



Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
This is both the traditional thelemic greeting and part of what I want to talk about.

We know – for example from Liber II – that the Will meant here is the True Will. It's not what I just happen to want right now, but perhaps what I should want – the individual path of each individual star. We also know that Crowley gives the central idea of the White School of Magick as "admitted that "everything is sorrow" for the profane, the Initiate has the means of transforming it to "Everything is joy."".

So on my naive understanding, your True Will is simply what fulfils you. More specifically, it's the action which fulfils you. It's not a goal, since if that goal was suddenly achieved, you'd still have the question of what to do with your time. Consider "playing the piano" versus "becoming the best pianist in the world". If the second happens, you'll hopefully not stop doing the first.
So the very basic idea is that you use experimentation and introspection to find the action that fulfils you. When you find it, it won't be merely 'interesting' or 'fun', it'll bring you deep happiness while you do it and afterwards – Fulfilment.

Now, the traditional thelemic farewell is "Love is the Law, Love under Will". However, if doing the True Will is the whole of the Law, how can Love also be the Law? There must be a very deep connection between Will and Love, which is of course famously implied by them both adding up to 93 via greek isopsephy. The point of this talk is to present a view – certainly not the only view – but a view on what exactly this connection is.

There is a trivial answer – saying that you should love your will, or something similar. However, then it would hardly need two concepts, and I think it's intuitively clear that there must be more to it. We already know what Love feels like to us... I think that the most obvious and direct meaning of Love is romantic Love – to be in love with someone, to be together.
 
Now, in Liber II Crowley mentions that if contradictions arise between will and love, it is the True Will that will guide us aright. So, just as not all will is True Will, perhaps not all love is True Love. To use a simple illustration, let's say our pianist falls in love with a passionate rock climber. This couple will have to constantly compromise on how to use their time. This is presumably less than fulfilling and also contradicts the thelemic ideal of one-pointedly pursuing the True Will. In Liber 150, Crowley writes: "Even in so small a matter as driving a nail into a plank, hear this same sermon. Your nail must be hard, smooth, fine-pointed, or it will not move swiftly in the direction willed. Imagine then a nail of tinder-wood with twenty points–it is verily no longer a nail. Yet nigh all mankind are like unto this. They wish a dozen different careers; and the force which might have been sufficient to attain eminence in one is wasted on the others: they are null." 

From these thoughts, we can derive the idea that lovers approach True Love to the extent that their True Wills are compatible. This, I think is the basic connection between Will and Love.

However, how can you possibly find a Person who shares your True Will? This is really my main point today: Why do you think that each of those Holy Guardian Angels whom Crowley exalts so much is with their specific human? I'd argue, it is exactly because we share their True Will and thus they also share ours. Hence, they are our True Love. They are our Perfection, while we are their Presence. They are our guidance and inspiration, while we are their manifestation on the lower plains.

This, I think, is a meaning hidden in the greeting and the farewell. Only by loving your True Love – the Angel who shares your True Will – can you both follow this Will with full force. Hence, doing your True Will is the Whole of the Law, because it already implies Love. Conversely, True Love is also the Law because it follows from the True Will.

Now I know that this all sounds rather crazy. Personally, I came to these ideas from the other direction. My background is in Chaos Magick and I was never a big fan of Crowley and his works. I felt that doing Magick makes me very happy, but I never thought of it as my "True Will". I met my Guardian Angel in somewhat unusual circumstances and initially didn't even understand what kind of spirit she was – I just noticed  that she was truly wonderful, in so many different ways. Some years later I fell in love with her and only then she guided me to all of this Thelema stuff that I used to think of as outdated, being a 21st century Chaos Magician. So for me, all of this "theory" simply followed from my experiences.

Naturally, you might still think that I'm crazy – for one, if this is true, why isn't there anything about loving Guardian Angels in the occult literature? Actually, there is. No less a figure than Lon Milo DuQuette, of Chicken Qabalah fame, has a book subtitled "The Way of the Secret Lover" where on the very first page of the very first chapter, it says: ...

... To be continued ...
(Ideas: add the core points from The Way of the Secret Lover and from Magickal Destiny (esp. about Abramelin and other approaches). Also what Crowley writes about each being their own high priest. Also what I write in FW. Also introduce books on how to gain the K&C – Three Steps, Webster, Destiny)

Love is the Law, Love under Will.




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To use a simple illustration, let's say our pianist falls in love with a rock climber. Now conflicts can arise and they will have to find compromises for the usage of their time. This falls short of fulfilment and contradicts Crowley's idea of being one-pointed in the pursuit of the True Will.