What's Crowley Got To Do With Thelema, Anyway?

Sam takes direct aim at a common conflation: treating Thelema, the philosophy centered on discovering and doing one's True Will, as if it were simply whatever Aleister Crowley personally believed or did in his own life.

He argues that a philosophy and its most famous messenger are not the same thing — Crowley articulated Thelema, but its ideas can be tested, practiced, and even critiqued independent of his biography, much as a scientific idea outlives the particular scientist who first stated it.

For a movement often reduced in the public mind to Crowley's reputation, the essay offered an early and still-relevant case for reading Thelema on its own philosophical terms.

Originally published at samwebstermage.com →