How does one escape from a flight of fantasy?

Our society is generally escapist. Drugs, alcohol, pop culture, science fiction, etc are all geared towards providing an escape from reality. Even our Reality shows are anything but. This tendency within our culture must be present within its component members. I admit that I love Sci-Fi. I also read Epic Fantasy when I want to unwind with brain candy. I have even played a RPG or two. However, the fun of these escapist pursuits lies (for me) more in the contrast with reality and what I feel to be the originating impulse of myth-making.

“where does imagination end and reality begin? what is this twilight? this half world of the mind that you profess to know so much about? how do we differentiate between the powers of darkness and the powers of light?”

The challenge in the modern age is not to be creative or to dream, but to recognize what is real. The challenge is to see reality and to take things seriously. Modern man is afraid to take things seriously. He recognizes that he is caught in a world of fantasy and is thus cannot afford to take anything seriously. He is afraid to let things matter to him on an visceral level lest they be exposed as delusions. Real social change, rather than the shuffling of blocks which passes for change in today’s world, depends upon taking something seriously.

Most radicals are in there 20’s (or younger). As you get older, one mellows out -- not out of a specific yearning for stability, but because one has had so many things that one cared about exposed as frauds, that is they are counter to the underlying reality. A common coping mechanism is the existentialist quagmire of refusing to acknowledge anything as real, and the lesser form of nihilism which prevents one from taking anything too seriously lest it turn out to be a mirage.

Thelema deals with metaphysical concepts. The nature of reality, the soul, spirits, boojums & magick. Given our societies escapist tendencies, we are typically quite familiar with these things through their escapist counterparts. This makes it difficult (if not impossible for some) to take Thelema seriously. When doing the LBRP we remember how Katherine Kurtz rendered it in her Deryni Chronicles. Fans of David Eddings may find themselves adding “& word” every time they hear the word “will.” I am also sure that the butchery of Latin, while a problem before, has been exacerbated by the Harry Potter series. “where does imagination end and reality begin?” indeed.

This all brings me to the inspiration for today’s entry. I admit to enjoying Role Playing Games (both Pen & Paper, and the other), and I am glad that they picked up Twilight 2000 (now Twilight 2013), but I winced when I saw another of their games, The Swing.

The Swing, is based on the Thelemic principles of WILL and Love. One of the central groups is in fact the OTO. The Magick system is based off of Aleister Crowley’s vision of Magick (Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will). The Swing deals with Thelemic principles, as well as, other pagan cultures and as such the Magick system incorporates ideas and principles from other “real world” Magickal systems (such as Wicca, Voodoo, Alchemy and more).

So, how does one escape from a flight of fantasy?

Knowing Your Work

The great work is not some social club inhabited by people too timid to present their opinions, to expound on what they know and to challenge those things which, by their understanding, they have determined to be incorrect. Some would have us to willingly deny what we know to be true. "Accept all" is the pass-phrase of those to whom truth is a foreign concept.

What is the first step on the path of the Magus? TO KNOW

If we have certainty rather than faith (I:58) then we can KNOW the Truth.

“Nevertheless have the greatest self-respect, and to that end sin not against thyself. The sin which is unpardonable is knowingly and wilfully to reject truth, to fear knowledge lest that knowledge pander not to thy prejudices.” (Librae 15)

There is a fundamental difference between the life giving harmony of the dynamic tension known as Tiphareth & the muted qliphotic shell resounding of the silence of the grave.

Music: Cawatana - In Your Father's Eyes

Finding an Adept.

Many people will use the argument that because one has not achieved Knowledge & Conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel (K&C), or even crossed the Abyss, one cannot determine if another person is an adept.

I must disagree. We know the following automatically. Thelema is something different. Looking over Crowley’s notes (e.g. Magic Without Tears, Ch XLVIII) we find that Thelema is to some extent in conflict with Modern Society. Given repeated verses in Liber AL (e.g., II:25) we can also assume that this conflict is fairly severe.

Given this line of reasoning, which I encourage any & all to continue, it is easy to determine that if something is not in some form of conflict with mainstream, modern society (as was the prophet himself), we can infer that it is not Thelema. The only caveat to this method is from applying a logical fallacy (Affirming the Consequent) to infer that just because something is transgressive of modern society that it must be Thelemic.