Also his definition of magick itself is incredibly dumb, I think.

I don’t think you can separate the two concepts. The idea that “magick” in the traditional occult sence is scientific is indeed nonsense. To get away from such nonsense, you have to expand the definition of magick to a sufficiently broad degree that it can encompass science within its boundaries.

Naturally, to some people this raises the question “why continue to insist on calling it ‘magick’, then?” The problem is that “science”, insofar as it refers to the institution, is not (currently) broad enough to address the problem space that this expanded definition of magick is purported to address, either, so “science” isn’t any better of a term for it.

The idea that there is much merit in recording details such as the phase of the moon, humidity, prevailing weather conditions, and so on, and then collating the results to reveal some conclusions about “mystical success” or some such is an idea that most people would accept to be ridiculous, but applying the lessons of science to magick does not have to take this rather silly form. Without applying these lessons, magick very quickly deteriorates into utter puerile silliness.

Crowley’s definition of magick I don’t think is too broad, but it’s applicability is not well specified. We could define target pistol shooting as the art and science of causing holes to occur as close as possible to a paper bullseye, but by doing so we wouldn’t preclude causing those holes with a rifle, or a slingshot, or one’s little finger, for that matter. The definition would perhaps be better expanded as “the art and science of causing change to occur in conformity with will by increasing knowledge of that will and removing the restrictions to its manifestation”, and we have a much more reasonable and practical definition without having to worry about the fact that we’d have to include things like potato growing and banking in our definition if we wanted it to cover every possible contributing factor to “causing change to occur in conformity with will”.

With such a definition, we can quite happily and sensibly apply many aspects of the scientific method, not accepting hypotheses until they have been rigorously tested being a good example. One might begin by saying “it is my will to worship Nuit”, but by “being more scientific” one would force oneself to actually acquire some reasonable basis before believing in the truth of such a statement. Similarly, if in the course of studying magick one should happen to acquire some theories about spirits or cosmic consciousnesses which don’t appear to stack up very well with what we know about the universe, then a healthy dose of skepticism with regards to those theories would be in order.

The idea that “the method of science” must inevitably involve recording in tortuous details some inane skrying sessions and whatnot is a pretty shallow one, at the end of the day. The most important part of “the method of science” can essentially be boiled down to “don’t believe things that you have no strong grounds for accepting”, whether those “things” are metaphysical theories about the universe or whether they are schoolboy fantasies about one’s own powers, values or “morals”. This principle continues to be of great applicability regardless of the fact that much of what we’re dealing with in magick is not particularly amenable to measurement, because while collecting and measuring observations is an important part of the scientific method, it is just a part of it, and not the whole of it. Scientific “knowledge” does not arise from measuring things, but from analysing those measurements, and this latter part is perfectly well suited for being applied to magick. Whatever the measurement difficulties, analysing phenomena you haven’t measured and ensuring your conclusions are well founded is still far superior to not analysing those phenomena and assuming that the first thing that pops into your head about them must represent the “truth”, which is what most occultists seem to do.

Let me illustrate it by a simple example.

Well, no, inherent in the definition is that “causing change in conformity with will” needs to be done by the individual whose will it is. Neither of the acts you mention would be “magical acts” from Fred’s perspective, since he’s not actually doing anything, although both could be “magical acts” from the perspective of the person changing the clothes regardless of whether or not Fred wanted it. It should really be “in conformity with one’s own will” in the definition. You could always argue that any individual will is just a “reflection of the universal will” and so the distinction is academic, but this would render the definition meaningless in terms of practical action.

The problem here is that this definition makes almost anything into magick

Yes, that was exactly the intention. “Every intentional act is a magical act.”

and if anything is magick nothing is.

Hence the point I made about “applicability” earlier.

The problem is that if one wants to “accomplish one’s will” then then there is absolutely no point in excluding any way whatsoever of doing that, and if one wants a word for such an endeavour then the definition of that word does indeed need to be large enough to encompass everything. But, the usefulness of the definition does vary in roughly inverse proportion to its broadness, as you say, hence why people have to keep distinguishing between “magick in the broader sense” and “magick in the traditional sense”. However, if you want magick to be about the will then you don’t have a lot of choice, and to say “both aren’t magick in my opinion” is really just saying “I don’t like the fact that you used the word ‘magick’ to describe this stuff because I mean something else by ‘magick’,” which is all well and good, but Crowley did use that word in that way.

Personally, if it was up to me, we wouldn’t be using the word “magick” at all. “Doing one’s will” and “attempting to discover one’s will”, for example, seem perfectly good terms in themselves, to me, and I don’t see much utility in confusing matters by using words with spurious occult connotations to describe things in ways which really don’t describe much, no matter how much one might want to “rehabilitate” them.

Your point is clear, and actually i think you should stop using the word magick since its a silly term to describe doing ones will.

Well, I generally don’t use it very often, except in discussions like this and when discussing things Crowley said which do include the word. If the term disappeared altogether, I wouldn’t be sorry.

That’s why i favor the word ‘intent’.

Well, I think that’s a separate but interesting issue. In multiple places Crowley stresses that “Do what thou wilt” does not mean “Do what you want”, and that there is therefore a very significant distinction between “will” and “intent”. Yet, in other places, including the introduction to Magick in Theory and Practice where this definition appears, he does indeed appear to use “will” to signify “intent”. This is not one of his better inconsistencies. As I wrote somewhere else around here (yes, it was here) the real focus of the “causing change in conformity with will” idea is not on the “causing change” part at all, as many people think, but in figuring out exactly what is “in accordance with will” in the first place. Once that’s known, causing the relevant changes becomes relatively easy.

And if ‘Will’ isn’t Kether, then what is it? I don’t think any other attribution makes sense.

It’s not sensible to attribute will to Kether, and then argue about it based on Kether’s purported attributes, or lack of them in this case. To do so is to mistake the map for the territory. Will is something, and what that something is is not affected by where one chooses to place it on the Tree of Life.

I think my take on will is pretty well documented on this blog: it’s essentially the tendency to action that the self exhibits when the mind doesn’t talk it into doing something else by superimposing morals, values, or superfluous ideas about the nature of the universe onto it.

In The Small Cards of the Tarot I attribute it to Tiphareth in particular, and to all three sephiroth of the actual triad in general. In that framework, three distinct definitions of will can exist. The first belongs to the supernals, the “everything is will” sense that you describe. The second belong to the actual triad, as previously described. The third belongs to the individual triad, a debased form of will which comes closest to “intent”, but is really the best conscious representation of the actual will that the individual is currently able to construct. All three of these definitions have their uses, but it’s the second one I’m referring to when I don’t qualify the term in any other way.

‘For pure will every way is perfect’ – in other words, there is no such thing as ‘doing ones will’ versus ‘not doing ones will’

I don’t think so. Whilst pure will might be every way perfect, it doesn’t say that impure will is, so if will is not pure, one is “not doing one’s will”, but if it is pure, one is. How could it be impure? When all those morals, values and superfluous ideas about the nature of the universe start polluting it. After all, in that very verse it says that will must be “unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result” in order to be pure, and therefore perfect, so it obviously isn’t perfect all the time, at least according to The Book of the Law.

Either way, I don’t think the will moves its always pure, its the consciousness, the attention, that moves around…

I agree with you completely. It’s best to think of “pure will” in this way. Muddy water is not really “impure water”; it’s pure water with bits of mud floating around in it. It’s a mixture of mud and water, and within that mixture, the water itself is pure, and the mud is pure (if purity is a quality we can ascribe to mud). Yet, for all that, we call it “impure water” to denote the fact that there’s mud mixed up in there.

In the same way, the will itself is always “pure” in that sense, but it has to manifest through the individual, and when it does it usually gets mixed in with a lot of morals, values, and an assortment of other restrictions, so that what comes out the other end is a mixture of will and other stuff. So “pure will” doesn’t imply that will can somehow be impure in and of itself, it just implies that other things can get mixed up with it. If you take these other things away, then you’re left with “pure will” – i.e. “pure” in the sense of “will and nothing else other than will” – but the nature of the will itself is exactly the same as it was when those other things were there.

So, in the sense that you want to understand “pure”, the will is indeed “always pure”, but in the sense that it gets mixed up with other stuff (“consciousness…spoils the game”, as you put it) it’s not always pure. We can say that in the normal human state, action is determined by will, emotions, morals, values, thoughts, and all the rest. The significance of the term “pure” doesn’t mean that the will is somehow different, it just means that all the other crap isn’t contributing to action.

Two points:

* I changed my mind I do think Kether/Hadit is the moving point. It’s the attention itself, which is why ‘she shall be known & I never’. The attention can’t ‘know’ the attention. This is why it says ‘If will stops’ somewhere else. This suggest the will can move. It’s harmonious with the castanedian system of magick where everything is about shifting the point of attention.

* The problem I have with Crowley is that he was quite a failure in some areas of his life and clearly delusional about things. One of the core characteristics of delusion is that a person lacks the proper instrumentaria to judge his own efforts. As he was clearly delusional in some areas (‘greatest poet in the world’) that would greatly induce the chance he’s also delusional in area’s far harder to measure (‘magick’) – this is why I usually do not take him very serious.