by Gaius Florius Aetius » Fri Jul 07, 2017 10:46 pm
Ok let me try a totally different approach.
As you know I am a Thelemite, and it remains through all the decades the system of ideas that makes the most sense to me. First, let me expound a bit on how this puts the various philosophies and views into perspective.
For Thelemites, there are so called "Prophets", and these are not meant in the sense of "seers", but as conduits of a divine idea, a perspective. A Prophets "reveals" or "creates" a New Truth. Now whether he reveals it as a given to him, or creates it is in this case irrelevant, as from the thelemitic view creating and getting are the same. It is a complex idea, not easy to explain without explaining the whole system. Crowley argued, every person is a true image of God, and as such we can only create what is in our image and as such in the image of the Divine. EVEN the horrors we create. There would be Prophets larger and smaller. The larger would be people like Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, Confucius asf, who shape entire cultures for centuries to come with a New View or "New Truth" created and revealed. Then there would be lesser Prophets, who often are Artists, Poets, Writers. As the Gods are many and each have a different character, so every Prophet would focus, highlight and reveal certain aspects of reality, truth from a certain point of view, and their uttering of the idea would be attuned with one divine energy and as such move people to follow this idea.
As such, all these perspectives are truths - from a certain point of view. None of them are by and in itself more true, they are merely different angles, like Hermes sees the world different than Mars or Apollon. The problem comes, that from the Divine to the Man, the "message" or "idea" becomes corrupted. First, because the Prophet, being a mortal man, is of course prone to flaws in his character, so while he gets the True Message, he may distort it due to his flaws and the flaws of his era. And then of course his followers, who are not attuned with the Energy, distort it further, as for examples St.Paul already greatly began to alter the message of Jesus. So I see the various spiritualities and philosophies as such: different Truths, created and manifested by different "Prophets", that moved people. There is, as I see it, in part a plan, and in part these different Truths are "fighting it out", in a Darwinistic sense, so that over a very long stretch of time, the better ideas win. And there is the element of the New Eons, the Great Prophets which bring a great new view.
And that is the Second Point I am quite certain about: there was an Eon of Osiris, as it is called in Thelema, the Eon of the Sacrificed God. The view was based on the spiritual idea that the Sun dies at the end of the day, and end of the year, and thus the ruling spiritual concept became that of Sacrifice and Rebirth, as the myth of Jesus exemplifies. This became the New Truth, and was 1904 replaced by the "Eon of Horus", where again a New Truth is revealed, and that is: the sun never dies. Death and suffering are "illusions". They are real only in the relative sense of where you are: on the shadow side of the Earth, but it is the Earth that casts the shadow, the sun does not need death and rebith, and as such the Divine within us is always there, we do not need Salvation. The Law now is, that Every Man and Every Woman has a True Will, and if he or she follows his True Will, the Cosmos is in balance, and conflict only arises, when one or more do not know or follow their True Will. In this, "Every Man and every Woman is a Star", as star are suns, and each being has the Right and Privilege to his True Will, undisputed. I very firmly believe in this, and the importance of this.
Good is there: find and follow your True Will. Evil is: ignore your True Will and hinder that of another. Interfere with another. Spiritual Messages, new laws of the eons, as ever you want to call it, are stepping stones on humanity developing. These never go without conflict, and that this is so is no disprove, but necessity. I can not write the entire Thelemitic view in one article here, but I have always fallen back to the view, that each being has his True Will, his pathway, and only to find and manifest this, is what we ought to do. The worth of every other system, philosophically, spiritually, political, cultural has its worth insofar as it helps people to find and manifest their True Will, come closer to it, and has no value or is hindrance insofar it leads people away from their True Will and makes people interfere in the Will of another. That is what over 30 years has made the most sense to me. I use other Philosophies, but only insofar as they are a crutch, a help between the chaos of not knowing your Will and knowing it, for one does not easily step from here to there, of course. But that is where I stand. I am a Thelemite. I profoundly and deeply believe in the truth and value of the philosophy, as I see it as apex and solution to every previous mess in philosophies and spiritual systems, where all the Gordian Knots fall apart.
Advice is judged by results, not by intentions.
- Cicero