Magickal will
Do what thou Wilt shall be the whole of the Law Love is the law. Law under will. Every man and woman is a star.
- Crowley
What is the Magickal will? It does not mean do what ever you want nor is it hedonism. Knowing what your true magical will is involves first having a conversation with your Holy Guardian Angel. It involves your deepest spiritual insights in concert with your will.
According to Lon Milo Duquette, a Thelemite is anyone who bases their actions on striving to discover and accomplish their true will when a person does their True Will, it is like an orbit, their niche in the universal order, and the universe assists them. In order for the individual to be able to follow their True Will, the everyday self's socially-instilled inhibitions may have to be overcome via deconditioning. Crowley believed that in order to discover the True Will, one had to free the desires of the subconscious mind from the control of the conscious mind, especially the restrictions placed on sexual expression, which he associated with the power of divine creation. He identified the True Will of each individual with the Holy Guardian Angel, a daimon unique to each individual. The spiritual quest to find what you are meant to do and do it is also known in Thelema as the Great Work.
There exists in nature a force which is immeasurably more powerful than steam,
and by means of which a single man, who knows how to adapt and direct
it, might upset and alter the face of the world. This force was known to
the ancients; it consists in a universal agent having equilibrium for
its supreme law, while its direction is concerned immediately with the
great arcanum of transcendental magic…This agent…is precisely that which
the adepts of the middle ages denominated the first matter of the Great Work. The Gnostics
represented it as the fiery body of the Holy Spirit; it was the object
of adoration in the secret rites of the Sabbath and the Temple, under
the hieroglyphic figure of Baphomet or the Androgyne of Mendes. - Eliphas Levi
The Great Work is, before all things, the creation of man by himself, that is to say, the full and entire conquest of his faculties and his future; it is especially the perfect emancipation of his will. - Eliphas Levi
Within Thelema, the Great Work is generally defined as those spiritual practices leading to the mystical union of the Self and the All. Its founder, author and occultist Aleister Crowley, said of it in his book Magick Without Tears:
The Great Work is the uniting of opposites. It may mean the uniting of the soul with God, of the microcosm with the macrocosm, of the female with the male, of the ego with the non-ego.
For each individual this Great Work may take different forms, the early Rosicrucians knew this and like the Rosicrucians many prominent Occultists/Mage were/are healers including: Paschal Beverly Randolph [MD], Anna Bonus Kingsford [MD], Dr. William Robert Woodman[ MD], Dr. William Wynn Westcott [MD], Dion Fortune [Psychologist, Intuitive], Israel Regardie [Psychologist, Chiropractor], W. G. Gray [Physiotherapist, Podiatrist], Richard Bartlett [Chiropractor, Master Matrix Energetics, Teacher, Practitioner]
The Quest of the Holy Grail, the Search for the Stone of the Philosophers—by whatever name we choose to call the Great Work—is therefore endless. - Aleister Crowley
The LORD bring you to the accomplishment of your true Wills, the Great Work, the Summum Bonum, True Wisdom and Perfect Happiness - Bendiction Gnostic Mass - Aleister Crowley
SHIFT HAPPENS.....
Have you played with the universe today? - Dan McClure
You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation." — Plato
References & Links
Thelema - Wikipedia
Aleister Crowley: The Biography: Spiritual Revolutionary, Romantic Explorer, Occult Master and Spy
The most evenhanded biography of Crowley that I have yet read.
The History of Magic
Transcendental Magic
Eliphas Levi and the French Occult Revival (SUNY Series in Western Esoteric Traditions)
