Transcription
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Welcome back to my channel and to the New Aeon Agora series. Today I want to begin with a confession. For years I mistook belonging for becoming. I joined groups. I stacked books. I learned the names of hundred spirits and I still woke up with the same restless mind. If I could start again, I would do seven things differently. And this is what this video is about very briefly just in case you're new here. And so that you know who is talking um I write and teach magick and Thelema. I'm the author of the Aleister Crowley Manual and of Aleister Crowley's Mysticism: A Practical Guide. You can find all the links to get your copies in the description below. I have guided hundreds of students into daily practice thanks to my online courses. And I also learned that most of my lesson the slow way, which is a polite way that since I wasted a lot of time, I'm going to try to make it so that you don't do the same errors.
The first thing that I wish I knew is that doing beats collecting. 10 minutes of actual practice beats a shelf of grimoars you never open. The mind will try to bargain. It will tell you that the perfect incense or that rare translation will make the next ritual more authentic. None of that matters if you cannot keep a daily practice at least at the beginning. And so light a candle, steal the breath, make one clear sign, and then write at least three lines in your diary. Real magic is not in the props. The magic is in showing up because repetition builds charge, and charge accumulates quietly until the day that it becomes undeniable.
The second thing is that your nervous system is the first and possibly most important temple. When you're rugged from poor sleep, scattered from screens or dehydrated and under sound, your results will be noisy, if there will be any at all. The classic literature speak of purity and preparation. And in practice, this means that very human things you can do today, that is drink water, walk in sunlight, breathe without strain for a few minutes, sit in a simple posture that you can hold without drama. The point is not to look spiritual. The point is to give your body a chance to downshift because a regulated body is a doorway to a receptive mind. Then keep a diary and you will see the pattern in black and white on days you care for the instrument and thus the music and that is the work is clearer.
The third thing is that through wheel is lived not theorized. Themma is not a posture for social media. It is a way of arranging your life so that your choice line up with the current that is already yours. I wish that someone had told me early on to guard my mornings. But alas, I spend a lot of time living the night life and and that's so give the first hour to your practice. Even if it's just small, do it before commentary, before news, before all the delicious arguments of the day. And then measure your alignment in very plain ways. Are you more honest? Are you less reactive? Do you keep the promises that you make to yourself? That is how you know that the current is flowing, not by how obscure and magical sounding your footnotes are.
Fourth, start smaller than you think. The egg loves complexity while the spirit responds to sincerity. If I were beginning today, I would set up a 90-day container and keep it very modest. A few minutes of relaxed breathing, a pause for stillness, one ritual done with attention to presence rather than theatrics. A short adoration, even a single stanza spoken well, and then three lines in the record about what you did and how it felt. That's all. Do not add eight new invocations in week two. Do not rewrite the entire sequence because you watched, I don't know, some clever commentary maybe here on YouTube. Stay with it. The point of this 90 days is to show your whole being that you can finish what you start. And once you have that proof, then you can scale.
Fifth, and this one is tender because it it involves memories and friendship may be long gone. Most so-called orders are nothing but boot clubs with costumes. They may perform a social function and that is not nothing. Humans need company especially when their interests are unusual and their families do not understand. I am not mocking that need. I have felt it. I have written about it at length on Substack and as usual you will find the links below if you're interested. The lesson here is simply that membership and titles rarely equal initiation. Almost never. In fact, true initiation is a ch change that persist when you are completely alone. It is the slow reconfiguration of how you think, feel, and act. It shows up as courage in a difficult moment of your life, as clarity in the middle of a storm, as kindness when it would be cheaper would be clever. Community can support that work, but it cannot do that work for you. If you join a group, do it so with open eyes. Seek honest mentorship. Offer service without gambling your integrity. And that's something very important. Since the last surge of interest around 2016, what many call a culture has largely become a marketplace. It borrowed the most superficial moves from the live coaching world and somehow made them even worse. It's all about painoint funnels, hustle gloss, and all sold under the banner of building community and finding the others. Let's be clear here. This is not a complaint about being paid. I write, I mentor, and sometimes I even do magic for hire. The problem is a race to the bottom that rewards the lowest common denominator and confuses audience growth with initiation. If an offering cannot survive the question, what changes gives the students after 90 days, then it is marketing, not mystery.
The sixth thing I wish I knew is that banishing is not the whole story. It is important surely we clear, we center, we protect, but a real practice cycles through more than just pushing things away. You will need to consecrate. You will need to invoke. You will need to make offerings. And not because spirits are vending machines, but because gratitude charges the quality of the room. You will need contemplation and silence which are not absence but presence without words. You will need to learn how to raise power directed with that intention and then ground it through action that benefits more than just your own curiosity. People who only banish become sterile. People who only invoke becomes ad very unbalanced. So the craft here is in building and harmony.
And now for the seventh thing I wish I knew and that is to put art, scholarship and discernment in conversation with one another. Read the primary sources and credible commentary. But let your curiosity roam. Then test what you read in the field of your own practice. This is where the diary is again your ally. It cuts through fantasy. It keeps you honest about cause and effect. It will also nudge you to create, to write an article, to compose a small hymn, to paint a simple icon. Make something that did not exist before you begin your practice. Creation is a mirror. It shows you what you have actually integrated and it repays the depth of all that you have received.
Since people always ask for a starter sequence, here is what I would do if I were beginning tomorrow. And I would keep it for three months before adding anything elaborate. So I will wake up, I drink water and face the east. I will sit with a you know stable posture with a spin erect if you can breathe gently and let the shoulders fall down. This will mean that you will enter a simple posture that you can hold while remaining kind to your body. I will then perform a middle pillar ritual, something that you have committed to memory with attention to the feeling of the space shifting rather than how you appear. And then I will write three lines about what just happened. not poetry, not performance, just a quick presence um to measure your mood, any anomaly, no matter how small. And then we'll close the book and move on with your day. And in the evening, glance back and note if anything stood out. That is enough. You will be shocked by how many changes occur when you try to stop to trying to move the mountain and instead you concentrate on moving the small stone every day.
A word now about results and fireworks. The internet has trained us to expect spectacle but in reality in magic spect spectacle often arrives when discernment is weakest. You should measure progress in clarity, in steadiness, and in the courage to act in alignment with what you know to be right. If your practice make you kinder to the people closest to you, if it helps to you to keep your word, if it helps you to respond to the word with a little more wonder and a little less panic, well, that is a very good sign. And so if I could go back and send a message to my younger self, it would be this. Choose one mentor and one system and stick it for it for a season and do not cheat on them for at least 90 days. Protect your mornings like a dragon. Publish fewer hot takes and write a lot more field notes. maybe never get entangled in social media at all. When loneliness bites, remember that community is a human need and deserves to be honored. Yet, it is not the same as spiritual evolution. Keep friends by all means. Share meals, sing songs, laugh loudly, and then return to the work with a renewed heart.
If everything we discussed so far spoke to you, you can find a lot more in my books. Also, if you want a guided path with peers who practice rather than posture, you can join me on Magick Without Tears. And so, may your practice be consistent, your discernment sharp, and your joy unmistakable.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the law. Love and the will.