On Pestilence

The Center of Pestilence website project has existed in visionary form for the last two years, the domain having been registered in May of 2020 in the midst of a real-life pestilence. The original intent was to provide a forum where participants could freely discuss parallels and contrasts between Thelema, as both a religion and a philosophy, and other popular systems of thought and belief. Such discussions would inevitably center around passages from The Book of the Law and other Holy Books, as well as the background from which Crowley may have developed his ideas and practices.

Given the admonition against any discussion of The Book of the Law, as expressed in the Class A comment on the book, one may be forgiven for wondering why anyone would participate in a forum such as this or, even worse, to start such a forum with the express intent of enticing participants to flaunt the common tradition.

There are a number of reasons for this apparent folly:

• Presumably most of us got involved with Thelema because we wanted to be able to think for ourselves. Verbal tradition within most Thelemic organizations is that everyone should interpret the meaning of The Book of the Law for themselves but few realize that the tradition should extend to the Class A comment as well. It is possible to discuss ways in which passages from The Book of the Law relate to teachings from other traditions without following that up with a “…therefore you should think such-and-such…” non-sequitur.

• In Liber Tzaddi, Crowley writes: “My adepts stand upright; their head above the heavens, their feet below the hells.” The most common interpretation of this verse is that a practitioner of Thelemic Magick must be willing to experience anything from the most sublime to the most vile.

• Traditions that pursue some form of non-dual awareness as a practice hold that both virtues and vices are empty of any essential “Truth” and that our attraction and aversion to specific manifestations is entirely the result of our conditioning and not a characteristic of the manifestation itself. That makes the whole idea of “pestilence” a mere descriptive term with no implication as to whether the experience should be embraced or avoided.

• Just like muscles which we fail to exercise regularly soon become weak and flabby, so parts of our minds that we fail to exercise regularly soon become dull and unfocussed. The best way to exercise our minds is to engage with ideas that oppose our current opinions. As Charlie Munger has said: “I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don’t know the other side’s argument better than they do.” Limiting our discussions to those who hold all the same beliefs as ourselves is how conceptual silos develop. Engaging in thoughtful debate with those who disagree with us is a reliable way to ferret out our own fixed ideas and to expand our conceptual horizons.

Finally, being part of a Center of Pestilence is simply a funny concept. An old friend of mine once coined the phrase: “If it isn’t funny, it isn’t true.” People who have a firm grasp on a subject are also those who are in the best position to see the humor underlying the subject. And there’s always humor underlying every subject — it’s good to be sincere in your beliefs and practices but, in the big picture, beliefs and practices are really just methods we use to try to come to terms with things we can’t possibly ever know for sure. The Universe is a big place and there is always room for one more opinion, one more belief, or one more practice. As always, success is your proof.