So I'm Evil. Whoop-de-fucking-do

I got expelled from another pagan forum.

Seems they don't much want to defend beliefs that are different from theirs, and animism is too anarchic.

The issue at hand: a small piece of verbiage spewed out of the vile, drug-addicted, incredibly brilliant mystical comedian named Aelister Crowley. You wont hear him described this way by anybody else who knows about him, I am distinctly alone in my belief that he acted as a comedian all his mystical life (mystical slapstick combined with literary brilliance, acerbic wit and an ability to produce bullshit on demand and in quantity that dwarfs anybody in history with the posible exception of L. Ron Hubbard. I refer anybody with questions to The Book Of Thoth, the most incomprehensible mystical guidebook ever written)

The verbiage: "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole of the Law, love is the law, love under will"

Many Wiccans and many other pagans have adopted a creed which truncates Crowley's statement and ads a perfectly rediculous caveat "An it harm none, do what thou wilt" and in the course of modifying it, made it into vacuous bullshit.

"An it harm none?" So, like, you can't hurt anybody. Hurting people is against the rules. Right? So people who adhere to this credo are pacifists, that would, under no circumstances, harm another? Well, no, not really. The VAST majority of the pagan community who pay homage to the drivel will tell you that harming is fine in self-defense and in due defense of another. So "An it harm none" is conditional. And kinda vague. Can I harm animals? Is that against the rules? Simply to ask the question is offensive to some. "NO!" they say, usually in leather shoes. Some talk about how it is ok to kill animals to survive, in a hunter-prey sense, and some of the animist traditions revere this (Not mine, I am an anti-hunting wuss)

With so many exceptions, I cannot swear by the damn thing, and that seems to mean much to some people, who seem to be as willing to make their own exceptions as often as they like. There is just this overwhelming fear in some circles (the more dangerous ones, the more fringe ones where I hang out and chat about mysticism and hallucinogens, ritual sex in mysticism) that unless this one principle is genuflected at, the fringe will lose the suppo0rt of the orthdox wierdos (my special term for the people who follow paganism in a much more subdued, conformist way than does the fringe)

I can't say that harming another is against my rules if it isn't. If there is a judgement call to be made, it is subjective, and thus not really subject to oaths like that. If the oath allows the oathtaker to bend the rules, IT ISN'T A VALID OATH, as nothing is actually being promised.

I am almost always then offered an out by whatever group is desiring this autodafe, "But this is a technical objection, right? You don't object to the principle"

Yes, I do. I object to you telling me what to do, and I object to bastardizing one of the most significant (in my opinion) moral statement about people who choose a path of their own design, people he called Magickians (looks aweful, no? He was attempting a designation that would differentiate between stage magic and what he was attempting to do) in order to do it.

Crowley's words are brilliant in choice and composition, and they are ion a kind of code that he used. I do not have the time here to go into the specifics, but this is MY take on the Law of Thelema:

" 'Do what thou wilt' shall be the whole of the law" -Crowley
This is his fundamental state of being. If you choose to walk a path of your own design, YOU ARE COMPLETELY RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYTHING YOU DO. You can't claim society made you do it, you can't blame it on a god you probably don't believe in, nor can you blame it on your upbringing (all of which said NOT to tread your own path), all you can say if things don't work out right is "oops, my bad" and deal with the consequences. It is the ultimate statement of libertarianism, in large part because it is a philosophy that is completely devoid of inherent good and evil, and the lies of other men, it is a simple statement about the practitioner and nothing more. I imagine asking Crowley if I 'should' do something. the questions would, I imagine, go a bit like this:

AC - Do you wanna?
Lizard- well, yeah
AC - will you sleep well after you do this?
Lizard - Sure
AC - Go for it.

But AC would have had the same conversation with somebody talking about involuntarily sodomizing (raping) a student of theirs during a magical ritual. He was only talking to me about trying to get laid doing Tarot readings.

The idea that a philosophy could embrace such darkness with equal ease as my more mundane moral question disgusts some. But AC wasnt talking about wether something was right or wrong, he was making a statement: "The Choice Is Yours", and stands behind the philosophy whatever that choice is.

I am not a fan of interpersonal violence, I am much better with words than I am with my jump-spinning round kick. But it is my choice, and will always be, and I am comfortable with Crowley's statement as a statement of how the world works. It says nothing about morals, nor does it try, and the spin put on those words by the pagan community in general and wiccans in particular is offensive and ill-considered.

When I say these things, I get expelled, or asked ot be less aggressive in discussions, or told that discussions like this are really outside the yadda-yadda-yadda. And some tell me I am evil, dark, sick or insane. Which I kinda like.

Fuck 'em.