What is Thelema?
Thelema is a spiritual philosophy developed by the English poet Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) during the first half of the Twentieth Century. Its central text is The Book of the Law, also called Liber AL vel Legis, which Crowley claimed to have “received” in 1904 in Cairo via audible dictation from “Aiwass”, a being whose nature he could never satisfactorily explain. He stated that “whether Aiwass is a spiritual being, or a man known to [Crowley], is a matter of the merest conjecture,” but said that Aiwass was “an Intelligence possessed of power and knowledge absolutely beyond human experience; and therefore… a Being worthy, as the current use of the word allows, of the title of a God.”
The idea of a book being dicated by a “God” strains the credulity of most reasonable people. However, Thelema is unique amongst “religions” in that whilst it has a central text that is held to contain truth, that truth is independent of its origins. Thelemites consider that The Book of the Law contains statements which can be shown to be true; they do not consider a statement to be true just because it says so in The Book of the Law. If it were to be demonstrated that a statement in The Book of the Law was incorrect, Thelemites would accept the fallibility of the book. Ultimately, the ideas underlying the philosophy of Thelema can and do exist separately from its central text.
