I suspect that whatever you or I think Thelema is is what you or I think Thelema is, not what Thelema is. For you and I, Thelema is what Thelema is for you or I when we do it. I also suspect that Thelema is not for you or I what Thelema is for others nor what Thelema is is.
Thelema is, I suspect, what it is because of what Thelemites and non-Thelemites, as a
poetic merism not a binary dualism, do, not what they believe or think.
Sometimes it seems like people think all they have to do is set an intention and do a ritual, but fail to bring what they’ve done into the world by adding concrete action to the formula. When you complete your ritual, do something in the world aligned with the intention.
But, don’t forget that the fifth power of the sphinx is “
To Go”. Don’t forget to build on the foundation of elements, and actually do something.
You might go farther in and on your way the more aligned your vector is to the sum of all vectors, but maybe that isn’t for you, and how dare anyone tell you otherwise, and how dare you think your or another’s vector is ever, or should be, the same as the sum of all vectors.
Sometimes it seems like the biggest problem with Thelema is Thelema. Call your will will, not hide it behind the facade of Thelema. Obfuscating your will behind the word Thelema allows you to imagine that your will is bigger than you. Like evangelicals hiding what they do behind the term “christianity” instead of calling it “tax shelter for a racist death cult”.
Maybe your will is complex, Talmudic, Byzantine even. Or maybe it is simple, tidy and minimalistic. You do you. And
mind your own business.
Another one of the biggest problems in Thelema is Thelemites minding other peoples business instead of their own. Be an ally to others doing their business, but mind your own. Any time you think your will is to tell other people what their will is or isn’t, get over yourself.
Sit down, shut up, and get out. What you say about someone else’s will says more about you than it does about them.
I’d suggest that Universal Will isn’t something like an ideal Platonic object in which all Wills imperfectly partake, some uniform static ominous black space monolith, or an ever moving toward homogeneity Borg, but a sum of all vectors of all the people all doing their Will, whether that’s Crowley’s star sponge, Indra’s net, or Leibniz’s modal metaphysics. One might see the nature of that reality as the undulating relational sum of all that is happening together at once and through time.
Πάντα ῥεῖ.
Eppur si muove.
Imma go now, and get back to minding my own business.