: Love is the law, love under will.
: Do you have the entire quote?
Certainly. It's in "The Book of the Law."
: I was told that the entire quote fully explains what he is
: about.
: Is this the entire quote?
: Do what thou wilt Is the whole of the Law.
: Love is the Law, Love under Will.
: Love and compassion must be the Foundation of Will.
No. "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Love is the law, love under will."
: Further explanation follows: Without love, compassion,
: and reverence for all life,
: A powerful soul can damage,
: Or even destroy another soul.
: Love must be the foundation of all higher learning.
: Without Love...
"Compassion is the vice of kings." says the Book.
: Evil,
: Beyond description, Will be the Law.
I agree. I'm somewhat hamstrung, tho, in this discussion. Crowley's first comment on Liber Al vel Legis (The Book of the Law) includes this: "Those who discuss the contents of this Book are to be shunned by all, as centres of pestilence."
Liber Al also includes several admonitions not to change its wording--indeed "not so much as the style of a letter". Plus, the Book instructs that all future copies of it include Crowley's handwritten version of it as it was dictated to him.
The first publication of Liber Al was about nine months before the outbreak of WW I, the next about nine months before the outbreak of WW II. At my Initiation I met an Argentine woman who was translating Liber Al into Spanish. Her translation was published some months before the Falklands war. More recently, Liber Al was translated into Slavic. Shortly thereafter the Balkans erupted.
The Book is powerful. Crowley hid the original manuscript in his attic at Boleskine on Loch Ness (now owned by rocker Jimmy Paige) for decades, partly because large portions of if were repugnant to him.
I suppose all the adjurations against changing the wording of Liber Al and against discussing its contents were meant by Crowley to discourage creation of a Thelemic priesthood who would act as interpreters between individuals and the Universe.
Crowley detested any form of organized religion. So does oliverhaddo.
Coincidentally, Aladdin recently mentioned here that there is a similar injunction in the Koran forbidding a priesthood.
Well, that didn't work, did it?
To finish weaving this skein of gossamer, the end of it all is when the individual human lays down his ego & his persona as calmly as he lays down his disk (Earth), his wand (Fire), his cup (Water) and his dagger (Air) & propels himself unaided and unencumbered across the Abyss to unite with the Universe. That successful journey is to me the end of all religion, and the obscuring of it, Rosalinda, is the reason I have asserted that all mass religions are frauds. You may point to all the architectural beauty of mosques, temples, synagogues, churches and cathedrals, but to me all these are but expressions of the need for homo sapiens to connect with something higher. I'm one of them.
Architecture doth not piety make. Architecture might inspire a soul or two to wonder, and speed another on his or her way to the Light.
But the Light does not live in the building. The Light lives someplace closer.
oliverhaddo
