A Thelemic Resource Page
SearchRSS Feed |
Thelema
In a sense the following three quotes say all there is to say about this idea: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law"[AL I:40], "Love is the law, love under will"[AL I:57] and "There is no Law beyond Do what thou wilt"[AL III:60]. They key here is that it's not a statement to do whatever you feel like! The tricky part is the concept of every human having a "true will". Finding and becoming aware of this true will is pretty much the holy grail. Getting there is what Thelemites would refer to as the "Great Work". Respecting the will of others is an essential part of the concept as much as the refusal of foul compromises. For more basic information on Thelema, please check out the basic articles on Wikipedia, Religion Wiki, Thelemapedia or the first few sites below. There is probably little to say about this. Thelemapedia is the "wikipedia-like" encyclopedia of Thelema and Magick focusing on the works and philosophy of Aleister Crowley. Yet another excellent project of the Scarlet Woman Lodge. Hundreds of articles to get you started. Right now I'm aware of two forks (some content has been copied and/or modified under license from the aforementioned site) of Thelemapedia of some significance: The Free Encyclopedia of Thelema and LAShTAL.com's version, the Encyclopedia Thelemica.
This site by Vere Chappell offers a great introduction into Thelema and covers all the basics a newcomer would want to know on Crowley, Liber Al, the Stele of Revealing, Magick, thelemic calendar and some of the main organisations in order to get a rough idea on what it's all about. It launched in the very early hours of the WWW and was back then as popular as it still is, I hope. LAShTAL.COM is home of The Aleister Crowley Society. It is a site devoted to the legacy of Aleister Crowley and to the impact of Crowley and Thelema on media, news and culture that was launched Paul Feazey and quickly became probably THE leading thelemic website, certainly in terms of the most active thelemic forum based community. It hosts the Encyclopedia Thelemica, a Thelemapedia fork, the Bibliographia Thelemica, a collaborative bibliography with information on many, if not most the books out there. There is an amazing gallery of pictures personalities and places of the past and present, host the thelemic time-server, some downloads, articles, links and did I mention the forum ? ;-) Any forum brings with it some undesirable post of not so high quality, but generally the variety and quality of the content, and the news section make this in probably not only my humble opinion the leading website out there. It the highly unlikely event that you have not visited it yet, please do. You won't regret it.
Articles written by Marco Visconti on Medium, which are his attempt at "teaching the essence of Thelema to a wider public outside the bonds of oaths and secrets."
According to IAO131 the "first academic, non-partisan journal dedicated to Thelema, the psycho-spiritual religious tradition of Aleister Crowley". At the time of this entry there have been three editions so far, but already an impressive list of authors and the website also hosts a small forum and a news sections as well as the Thelema Talk, basically virtual interviews with some Thelemites that got some attention on YouTube. 
|
External RSS FeedsBlogWho's onlineThere are currently 0 users and 1 guest online.
|
Thelema, or in Koine Greek θέλημα translates as "will" and is in this context used to refer to the philosophy or religion, depends on the point of view, around the basic statement "Do what thou wilt.", especially in the Crowleyan interpretation. The concept however can be traced back to the 16th century with François Rabelais equivalently stating "fay çe que vouldras", the basic rule in his fictional abbey of Thélème. Later in the 18th century it served as the motto of Sir Francis Dashwood's Hellfire Club. You might even say, that the idea goes back to St. Augustine of Hippo's "dilige, et quod vis fac (Love, and do what thou wilt)".