M..
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Let us have done with the vulgar misapprehension that Magick is the resort of the charlatan, the consolation of the feeble-minded, or the frantic waving of wands by neurotic spinsters in suburban parlours. It is none of these things, nor has it ever been. Magick is the Science and the Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will. Every intentional act is a Magical act, from the striking of a match to the reorganization of an empire. When the physician applies his physic, when the engineer spans the cataract, when the poet strikes out a phrase that shatters the complacency of an epoch—each performs Magick. Yet the herd, wallowing in the sty of their unexamined assumptions, perceives only the mechanism and remains blind to the dynamic engine of the spirit. They inhabit a universe of accidents because they are themselves accidental beings, blown hither and thither by every passing gale of circumstance, whim, and hereditary prejudice.
The initial catastrophe of the human animal lies precisely here: he does not know who he is, whither he goes, or by what necessity he exists. Society, that grotesque conspiracy of the unfit against the fit, conspires from the cradle to enforce this blindness. It erects its altars to passive faith, its penitentiaries of guilt, its miserable codes of bourgeois morality, all designed to geld the sovereign spirit and render it a docile beast of burden. To these peddlers of ancestral dust, the assertion of an unconditioned Will is the supreme blasphemy. They chatter of duty, of self-sacrifice, of obedience to arbitrary phantoms invented by slave-priests to govern slaves. But the Law of Thelema sweeps this detritus into the abyss. Every man and every woman is a star. A star does not alter its celestial orbit to accommodate the squeamishness of a worm; it moves according to its own inherent gravitational law, luminous, indifferent, and absolute.
To discover this orbit—the True Will—is the solitary, supreme business of the initiate. It is not to be confounded with the petty desires of the unregenerate ego, the passing appetites of the flesh, or the vain ambitions that occupy the denizens of the marketplace. These are merely the cross-currents of the lower personality, the disturbances in the atmosphere of Nephesch. The Great Work consists in the alignment of the human consciousness with the cosmic current, a labor demanding the cold precision of the mathematician, the uncompromising discipline of the athlete, and the vision of the seer. The Qabalah reveals the Tree of Life not as a museum of dead symbols, but as the anatomy of the Cosmos and the soul. The path from the clay of Malkuth to the pure radiance of Kether is neither trodden on bended knees nor attained through pious sighs. It is scaled by the intellect that cuts through illusion like a razor and the will that refuses every seduction of rest until the crown is attained.
The aspirant must therefore prepare himself for an absolute severance from the herd. The sentimental attachments to dogma, the terror of societal opprobrium, the lingering infection of original sin—all must be consumed in the furnace of discipline. Guilt is the supreme engine of spiritual paralysis; it is the phantom by which the dead past seeks to strangle the living present. In the Aeon of Horus, the crowned and conquering child, the universe is recognized as the eternal play of Nuit and Hadit, an ecstasy of infinite expansion and infinite contraction, untainted by the sour sorrow of the dying gods. The magician does not ask for salvation; he asserts reality. He does not beg for light; he kindles it.
Know, then, that to formulate the Will is to set in motion the entire machinery of the macrocosm. The forces of nature do not resist the man who knows his path; they become his ministers, because his will has ceased to be an isolated caprice and has become identical with the Law of the Universe itself. You will encounter friction only where your purpose is divided, where doubt festers, or where you attempt to compel an inertia foreign to your true nature. Cast out the divided mind. Sever the chords of convention with the sword of your understanding. Stand upon the earth as its sovereign master, conscious that every breath, every thought, and every deed is an invocation of the Divine within yourself.
Love is the law, love under will.
