Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

 

Should one chance upon a Buddhist or other Eastern guru speaking on the authenticity of lineages in the East, contrasted with all the broken lineages of the West, one of inexperience might seek to abandon the West for the sake of something that seems more whole and complete.  But be advised that what seems obvious is not necessarily so.  Though Eastern lineages do for the most part, remain unabated and uninterrupted, they are bogged down by the weight of a tradition that can only look back to the past; the present and the future dwelling in their blind spot.

Sir Aleister Crowley, like Mathers before him and Bardon before him (as well as Levi and Blavatsky) earned his own right to contact with the Secret Chiefs.  And as these others before him, he renewed the Western current on uniquely innovative lines that touch both the past and the antediluvian origins of the Western Mystery Tradition as it also moves into the present; presenting the only whole mythos for our post-industrial culture and the possible futures that come with it.

Yet some teachers would rather adopt the Eastern model that in our culture is perverted to include a magalomaniacal guru who seeks more the praise of his or her chelas while claiming some mysterious military-style right to command, control and dominate the behavior and activities of his or her students.  In other words, though the ideals of Thelemic philosophy are taught, they are deemed not necessarily applicable in the Student-Teacher relationship.  This absurd contradiction is entirely counter-productive and threatens the credulity of the Thelemic system.

In the present moment of my career with the A.'.A.'., I look back on the teachers I've had and those I've sought out.  Though I feel I've learned much of value from each of them, each ultimately dropped the ball to their own vanity; each exposing their Eastern-styled claim to the privilege of the Master of Lodge (or ashram).  This means though they had something of value that they could relate, they truly were not the master they fashioned themselves to be.  Their need to make 'demands' of their students betrays their inability to command.  And as such, there's no shakti-pat of lineal descent but rather a shutting up of the energies they house that they would house for themselves and not allow to flow through them.

The problem of bootstrapping this lineage, though I had several role models who have done the same (HPB, Crowley, Aurobindo, et al) left me to deal with my own insecurities and the fear of the pomposity that might actually be more manifest when making such a similar claim as our wonderfully holy forbears listed above.  I asked myself, what right do I, not even an Adept have to put myself in such company?

Indeed, I have only the right to follow the path that my Will lays before me.  This path becomes more apprehensible as I note that often in my career with the A.'.A.'. my choice of motto has come back to bring insight into not only the nature of my Initiation, but into the hidden psychic forces that inhabit my soul. The taking on of the motto 'Apollonius' was no exception.

Unknown to me at the time of my initiation into my present Grade, an ideal called Apollonion in Western culture means: the urge to perfect self-sufficiency and to all that distinguishes, makes strong, clear and unambiguous with the required condition of freedom under the law.  Well the law is a natural law that is for all…and it should bring freedom…really, liberty and for that matter, light, life, love and liberty.  I did not know it at the time, as I was consciously seeking spiritual authority outside myself; deeming myself unworthy as I brought a well-trained lineage to the master I sought.

Now I know that it is myself that must take on this mantle to complete the establishment of lineage; to connect with the Secret Chiefs.  The feeling of unworthiness was a restriction caused by my own ignorance.  And really, there can only be but one proof: the development and publication of new Gnosis that brings that primordial fever from the skies to renew once again, that Western current that it might 'become.' Recall what was said unto thee in the Ritual of the Paths of the Portal of the Vault of the Adepti.

Therefore, by the straight and narrow path of Samekh, let the Philosophus advance like the arrow from the Bow of Qesheth. Now Qesheth the Bow is the Rainbow of Promise stretched above the earth, whose name is formed from the letters of the Paths leading from Malkuth. If then it be by the Path of Samekh that the Philosophus should advance to the knowledge of the Adept, turning aside neither unto the right hand nor unto the left, whereon are the evil and threatening symbols of Death and the Devil, he must have a perfect and absolute knowledge of the Bow, ere he can follow the Path of the Arrow. But the Bow is of brilliant and perfect colour, whose analysis and synthesis yield others of the same scale, and hence is this book entitled “The Book of the Path of the Chameleon” – that Path, namely which ascendeth alone through the force of Qesheth, the Bow.

Love is the law, love under will.