The Thelemic Magician

by IAO131

This article is an excerpt from the book Fresh Fever From the Skies: Collected Works of IAO131, a tome of over 700 pages on Thelemic philosophy and magick.

What is a Magician?

It is written, “Thou hast no right but to do thy will. Do that, and no other shall say nay.”[1] This True Will is obviously important.

Magick is a spiritual science which has the potential to help us in learning to know our True Wills, and to cause Change effectively in accordance with that True Will.

The knowledge and practice of Magick makes us into a Magician – an Adept, an Initiate – one who has mastered the Elements of Existence and who can move among them and interact with them so as to manifest, effect, enact, or accomplish her True Will.

Magick is the pursuit of the same thing as the old spiritual pursuit to “Know Thyself,” written over the temple at Delphi.

Also, as Buddha said, “It is better to conquer oneself than to conquer 10,000 armies.”[2] Magick is therefore also the pursuit to Conquer oneself

Further: A Magician is one who has taken the “raw materials” of the self and, through the process of working on them, comes to Perfect these materials. Magick is therefore the pursuit to Perfect oneself as well.

With Magick, we have the tools – the theory and the practice – to come to know ourselves deeper, to perfect ourselves into instruments of our True Wills, and to conquer the four Elements, to conquer the Universe, which is to say: to conquer our Selves.

A Magician is someone who has made a conscious, deliberate choice to perform the Great Work of coming to Know, Perfect, and Conquer the self with great discipline to obtain true Freedom.

To say the same thing another way, we can look at the old adage “As above, so below.”[3] The One, the All, the Tao, Horus, or whatever we choose to call it works in accordance with its Divine Law. This Law is reflected into the Macrocosm in the perfect Order of the Heavens, and it is reflected into each one of us in the Microcosm in the Order of Earth. The Great Work of the Magician is to align one’s own Nature with the Divine Nature, the personal Will with the Universal Will… and one finds that they are not two laws but simply an expression of the One Law in Heaven and on Earth.

This means that Magick isn’t about glamor or “cool stuff” (although it may be your Will to indulge in those things to some extent). Magick is the ultimate existential pursuit, the attainment of one’s True Motion, one’s True Purpose. It is the ultimate spiritual pursuit, the attainment of the Truth of one’s being, one’s Divine Nature. This necessarily requires sincerity, and sincerity is the mark of a true Magician; not necessarily seriousness, but always sincerity. This is a real earnestness or genuineness to learn, grow, and expand in accordance with our Wills. I hope to impress upon you that Magick is realistic and important, and not simply a hobby. I am interested in true Magicians, individuals who truly cause Change in themselves and the world around them in conformity with Will… Not magicians who simply read books or collect ritual implements or even do rituals but never actually change themselves or the world.

To the Magician, a god will not indwell a temple poorly prepared. The Magician believes their task to properly prepare their Temple so that their Godhead “may indwell”; this is why it’s said the Body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit. We probably shouldn’t soil it too badly then! This is why there is a distinct placement of the “furniture” and objects in a Temple: it reflects that properly prepared Self which enables the higher principles – represented by the individuals in the ritual – the proper space to work their Magick.

In order to fashion this Temple of the Self to be the most complete expression of the God of its True Nature, the Magician seeks to discover, purify, strengthen, and devote the nature and powers of her own Being to the accomplishment of her Will.

Magick, on one level, offers a host of tools that will enable to discover “hidden” or latent aspects of being’s nature and powers. To the true Magician, Magick is not simply a set of tools, it is a way of life.

Magick is driven by a guiding principle, not a set of techniques. This principle is the constant pursuit to Know, to Perfect, and to Conquer the Self so as to Do one’s Will with the utmost of one’s free will, full awareness, balance, and wholeness. When we do our Will’s, we are in harmony with the Divine Law, and we work with the momentum of the Universe.

References

[1] Liber AL, I:42-43.

[2] The Dhammapada.

[3] The Emerald Tablet of Hermes.

This article is an excerpt from the book Fresh Fever From the Skies: Collected Works of IAO131, a tome of over 700 pages on Thelemic philosophy and magick.