Thelema Quotes

“The sin which is unpardonable is knowingly and wilfully to reject truth, to fear knowledge lest that knowledge pander not to thy prejudices.”
― Aleister Crowley, Magick: Liber ABA: Book 4

“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law

“Once for all, then, a short precept is given thee: Love, and do what thou wilt: whether thou hold thy peace, through love hold thy peace; whether thou cry out, through love cry out; whether thou correct, through love correct; whether thou spare, through love do thou spare: let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good.”
― Augustine of Hippo, Homilies on the First Epistle of John

“Every man and every woman is a star.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law

“Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography

“The Way of Mastery is to break all the rules—but you have to know them perfectly before you can do this; otherwise you are not in a position to transcend them.”
― Aleister Crowley, Magical and Philosophical Commentaries on The Book of the Law

“Love is the law, love under will.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law

“It is the mark of the mind untrained to take its own processes as valid for all men, and its own judgments for absolute truth.”
― Aleister Crowley, Magical and Philosophical Commentaries on The Book of the Law

“For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law

“He shall fall down into a pit called Because, and there he shall perish with the dogs of reason.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law

“For I am divided for love's sake, for the chance of union.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law

“64. I am the blue-lidded daughter of Sunset; I am the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night-sky.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law

“One real danger in love relationships is that most people secretly believe that they must control the love object in order to feel safe in loving and being loved. The cause of this is simple—children are made to feel that they must "give themselves up" if they are to be loved. Thus, for most humans the act of surrender has meant the loss of autonomy or worse—loss of one's own mind.
Surrender is neither control nor morbid dependency and cannot be made contingent upon giving away one's "soul"; nonetheless, the person surrendering opens completely to the moment, and runs the risk of being deeply hurt. Sadly, in our society this is not uncommon and frequently serves to harden or embitter a person toward life in general. Or, on the other had being deeply hurt in the act of surrender can lead to angry and painful "cries for help." When this occurs there is an insatiable and wrathful desire to be cared for as a child is cared for and the horrid fear of loss of independence.”
― Christopher S. Hyatt, Sex Magic, Tantra & Tarot: The Way of the Secret Lover

“30. If Will stops and cries Why, invoking Because, then Will stops & does nought.
31. If Power asks why, then is Power weakness.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law

“This is my real bed-rock objection to the eastern systems. They decry all manly virtue as dangerous and wicked, and they look upon Nature as evil. True enough, everything is evil relatively to Adonai; for all stain is impurity. A bee's swarm is evil — inside one's clothes. "Dirt is matter in the wrong place." It is dirt to connect sex with statuary, morals with art.
Only Adonai, who is in a sense the True Meaning of everything, cannot defile any idea. This is a hard saying, though true, for nothing of course is dirtier than to try and use Adonai as a fig-leaf for one's shame.
To seduce women under the pretense of religion is unutterable foulness; though both adultery and religion are themselves clean. To mix jam and mustard is a messy mistake.”
― Aleister Crowley, Aleister Crowley and the Practice of the Magical Diary

“Look not so deeply into words and letters; for this Mystery hath been hidden by the Alchemists. Compose the sevenfold into a fourfold regimen; and when thou hast understood thou mayest make symbols; but by playing child's games with symbols thou shalt never understand.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Vision and the Voice: With Commentary and Other Papers

“On the Path of the Wise there is probably no danger more deadly, no poison more pernicious, no seduction more subtle than Spiritual Pride; it strikes, being solar, at the very heart of the Aspirant; more, it is an inflation and exacerbation of the Ego, so that its victim runs the peril of straying into a Black Lodge, and finding himself at home there.”
― Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears

“Don’t forget the biggest weapon is your heart;
don’t fall victim to fairytales”
― Snow Liber Dionysus

“The proper formation and consecration of the Eucharist requires careful attention. The Objects of the Working must be chosen systematically. My own Record has all the faults of pioneer work: it contains much to avoid. There must be proper tabulation of the Experiments, and strictly scientific observation. Sentimentality, sexual or spiritual, must be sternly suppressed. Compliance with these conventions should assure a success far greater than I have myself attained.”
― Aleister Crowley, Jane Wolfe: The Cefalu Diaries 1920-1923

“Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!”
― John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale

“Remember in any case, that not only the Adept, but anyone with the smallest capacity for Adeptship, is fundamentally an Artist; he will certainly not possess any of those bourgeois "virtues" which are just so many reactions to Blue Funk.”
― Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears

“Ecthelion must be similarly from Aegthelion. Latter element is a derivative of √stel 'remain firm'. The form with prefix 'sundóma', estel, was used in Q{uenya} and S{indarin} for 'hope' – sc. a temper of mind, steady, fixed in purpose, and difficult to dissuade and unlikely to fall into despair or abandon its purpose. The unprefixed stel- gave [? S verb] thel 'intend, mean, purpose, resolve, will'. So Q ? þelma 'a fixed idea,..., will.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The War of the Jewels

“When Celia cums, 'tis earthquake hour
The bed vibrates like kettledrums
It is a grand display of power
when Celia cums.

An up exhales a greasy stench
for which you curse the careless wench;
so things which must not be exprest,
when plumpt into the reeking chest,
send up an excremental smell
to taint the parts from whence they fell
the petticoats and gown perfume
which waft a stink around every room
thus finishing his grand survey
disgusted Strephon stole away
repeating his amorous fits

Oh! Celia, Celia, Celia shits!”
― Aleister Crowley

“My friend tells me that memory fails me in part because nature mercifully wishes to hide from us things which are painful. The spider-web of protective forgetfulness is woven over the mouth of the cave which conceals the raw head and bloody bones of our misfortunes.

"But the greatest men," says King Lamus, "are those that refuse to be treated like squalling children, who insist on facing reality in every form, and tear off ruthlessly the bandages from their own wounds.”
― Aleister Crowley, Diary of a Drug Fiend

“Cogitatur" depends on "Est;" and there's no avoiding it.”
― Crowley Aleister

“Thelema is a religion of joy and beauty. Humor is our armor and laughter our weapon. No longer do we look upon solemnity and selfeffacement as synonymous with spirituality. Thelema is a law of Liberty that holds the keys to unlock the innate potential of every individual, to release ourselves from the burden of sorrow and fear, and to allow ourselves to be ourselves and rejoice therein. As it says in The Book of the Law, “Remember all ye that existence is pure joy.” With this knowledge, we can consciously and willfully engage in that ultimate Sacrament we know as existence. I therefore say with Crowley, “Look, brother, we are free! Rejoice with me, sister, there is no law beyond Do what thou wilt!”
― IAO131, Fresh Fever From the Skies: The Collected Writings of IAO131

“Being in love we create love, being in hate we create hate, and, the image of the universe being in ourselves, the love or hate we create acts equally upon us. This is the great pragmatism of Magick.”
― Jack Whiteside Parsons, Freedom Is A Two Edged Sword

“I suggest that the Thelemic ideological position shares consanguinity with the general orientation of postmodernism in assigning the principal value to the relative (individual) experience of the world and point of view, and in assuming a plurality of truths about the nature of reality. Thelema also distances itself from monotheistic traditions in its syncretism, an attribute that is congenial to the worldview of esotericism and shares parallels with the postmodern notions of pastiche and intertextuality. Hermeneutically, Thelemic perspective is at home with the conjectures about the death of author and with the reader-response theories of literary criticism, for its central scripture, The Book of the Law, is denied an official commentary and the meaning of the text is left to be decided ‘each for himself.’ In addition, Thelema abounds in aporias to such an extent that the play of contradictions and reversals provides ‘the key’ to The Book of the Law. By claiming that “existence is pure joy” (AL II: 9) this ideology seems to incarnate what Nietzsche, a major influence on both Crowley and postmodernism, calls la gaya scienza; the other links to Nietzsche include notions such as will to power, glorification of individualism, martial rhetoric, and a critique of Christianity. My main argument is that Thelema may be conceptualized as a postmodern, post-monotheistic, esoteric religion.”
― Gordan Djurdjevic, Narodziny Nowego Eonu: Magija i Mistycyzm Thelemy z perspektywy ponowoczesnej a/teologii

“The Book of the Law, the central scripture of the New Aeon, to a certain degree deconstructs itself explicitly, while the play of contradictions, or the refusal to ascertain veracity to any truth claim, constitutes an important epistemological principle of Thelema and its associated form of spiritual practice, magick. The Book of the Law resists interpretation on several levels but its central aporia is that it proclaims the law, which generally refers to a restrictive force, the message of which is freedom, expressed through a precept “Do what thou wilt” (AL I:40), while “The word of Sin is Restriction” (AL I: 41). The ‘key’ to the book, similarly, consists of the interplay between concepts AL, meaning God, and LA, meaning Not: the one negates the other, while both simultaneously coexist in the sate of coincidentia oppositorum.”
― Gordan Djurdjevic, Narodziny Nowego Eonu: Magija i Mistycyzm Thelemy z perspektywy ponowoczesnej a/teologii

“Crowley knew Jnana and most of his followers perhaps did not correctly understand his Tantra. The idea of ​​θέλημα (Will) is not the will of the εγώ (Ego), but rather the "θέλημα του κόσμου" (will of the world). This is the potential key capable of evoking Shakti.”
― Shva Hárr