Religion

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Professor William James, in his "Varieties of Religious Experience," has well classified religion as the "once-born" and the "twice-born"; but the religion now proclaimed in Liber Legis harmonizes these by transcending them. --Aleister Crowley, Magick p. 159

In Magick Without Tears, Crowley wrote, "To sum up, our system is a religion just so far as a religion means an enthusiastic putting-together of a series of doctrines, no one of which must in any way clash with Science or Magick." (p. 219) He specifically described Ordo Templi Orientis as "the first of the great religious Societies to accept the Law," strongly implying that the Law of Thelema was a suitable basis for religious activity. O.T.O. Grand Master Sabazius has articulated an advocacy of "scientific religion" under the rubric of Thelema, a phrase that originally occurred in the "Constitution of the Order of Thelemites" approved by Crowley. Crowley also considered Freemasonry to be essentially religious in character, a position detailed in Chapter 49 of his Confessions.

Within O.T.O., the existence of a "Church" with forms and officers that bear a superficial similarity to Christianity has sometimes led people to assert that the Gnostic Catholic Church is "the Thelemic religion" to the exclusion of the remainder of O.T.O. (which is in fact religious in both origin and current instantiation), and other Thelemic groups. In fact, Thelema depends on a syncretization of many earlier religious forms, and the vast majority of its expressions can be fairly characterized as religious.

Table of contents

1 Churches

2 Ecclesiastical Ceremonies

3 Religious concepts and practices

4 References

Churches

Listed are current Thelemic churches and their gnostic predecessors

Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica

Ecclesiastical Ceremonies

Religious concepts and practices

References

Sabazius. "Scientific Religion." 5/1/2002. http://www.hermetic.com/sabazius/FGMV4N1.htm Retrieved 1/16/2005.
Heidrick, Bill. "From the Outbasket" in Thelema Lodge Calendar, November , 1992. http://www.billheidrick.com/tlc1992/tlc1192.htm Retrieved 1/16/2005.

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