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DUTY
by
ALEISTER CROWLEY
(a note on the chief rules of practical conduct to be observed
by those who accept the Law of Thelema.)
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."
"There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt."
"...thou hast no right but to do thy will. Do that
and no other shall say nay. For pure will, unassuaged
of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is
every way perfect."
"Love is the law, love under will."
"Every man and every woman is a star."
A. YOUR DUTY TO YOURSELF
1. Find yourself to be the centre of your own Universe
"I am the flame that burns in every heart of man, and
in the core of every star."
2. Explore the Nature and Powers of your own Being.
This includes everything which is, or can be for you:
and you must accept everything exactly as it is in
itself, as one of the factors which go to make up your
True Self. This True Self thus ultimately includes
all things soever: its discovery is Initiation (the
travelling inwards) and as its Nature is to move
continually, it must be understood not as static, but
as dynamic, not as a Noun but as a Verb.
3. Develop in due harmony and proportion every faculty which
you possess.
"Wisdom says: be strong!"
"But exceed! exceed!"
"Be strong, o man, lust, enjoy all things of sense and
rapture: fear not that any God shall deny thee for
this"
4. Contemplate your own Nature.
Consider every element thereof both separately and in
relation to all the rest as to judge accurately the
true purpose of the totality of your Being.
5. Find the formula of this purpose, or "True Will", in an
expression as simple as possible.
Leave to understand clearly how best to manipulate the
energies which you control to obtain the results most
favourable to it from its relations with the part of
the Universe which you do not yet control.
6. Extend the dominion of your consciousness, and its control
of all forces alien to it, to the utmost.
Do this by the ever stronger and more skilful
application of your faculties to the finer, clearer,
fuller, and more accurate perception, the better
understanding, and the more wisely ordered government,
of that external Universe.
7. Never permit the thought or will of any other Being to
interfere with your own.
Be constantly vigilant to resent, and on the alert to
resist, with unvanquishable ardour and vehemence of
passion unquenchable, every attempt of any other Being
to influence you otherwise than by contributing new
facts to your experience of the Universe, or by
assisting you to reach a higher synthesis of Truth by
the mode of passionate fusion.
8. Do not repress or restrict any true instinct of your
Nature; but devote all in perfection to the sole service of
your one True Will.
"Be goodly therefore"
"The Word of Sin is Restriction. O man! refuse not
thy wife if she will. O lover, if thou wilt, depart.
There is no bond that can unite the divided but love:
all else is a curse. Accursed! Accursed! be it to
the aeons. Hell. So with thy all: thou hast no right
but to do thy will. Do that and no other shall say
nay. For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered
from the lust of result, is every way perfect."
"Ye shall gather goods and store of women and Spices;
ye shall exceed the nations of the earth is Splendour
& pride; but always in the love of me, and so shall ye
come to my joy."
9. Rejoice!
"Remember all ye that existence is pure joy; that all
the sorrows are but shadows; they pass & are done; but
there is that which remains."
"But ye, o my people, rise up and awake! Let the
rituals be rightly performed with joy and beauty! ...
A feast for fire and a feast for water; a feast for
life and a greater feast for death! A feast every day
in your hearts in the joy of my rapture. A feast
every night unto Nuit, and the pleasure of uttermost
delight. Aye! feast! rejoice! there is no dread
hereafter. There is no dissolution and eternal
ecstacy in the kisses of Nu."
"Now rejoice! now come in our splendour and rapture!
Come in our passionate peace, & write sweet words for
the Kings!"
"Thrill with the joy of life & death! Ah! thy death
shall be lovely: whose seeth it shall be glad. Thy
death shall be the seal of the promise of our agelong
love. Come! lift up thy heart & rejoice!"
"Is God to live in a dog? No! but the highest are of
us. They shall rejoice: who sorroweth is not of use.
Beauty and strength, leaping laughter and delicious
langour, force and fire, are of us."
B. YOUR DUTY TO OTHER INDIVIDUAL MEN AND WOMEN
1. "Love is the law, love under will."
Unite yourself passionately with every other form of
consciousness, thus destroying the sense of
seperateness from the Whole, and creating a new
base-line in the Universe from which to measure it.
2. "As brothers fight ye."
"If he be a king thou canst not hurt him."
To bring out saliently the differences between two
points-of-view is useful to both in measuring the
position of each in the whole. Combat stimulates the
virile or creative energy; and, like love, of which it
is one form, excites the mind to an orgasm which
enables it to transcend its rational dullness.
3. Abstain from all interferences with other wills.
"Beware lest any force another, King against King!"
(The love and war in the previous injunctions are of
the nature of sport, where one respects, and learns
from the opponent, but never interferes with him,
outside the actual game.) To seek to dominate or
influence another is to seek to deform or destroy him;
and he is a necessary part of one's own Universe, that
is, of one's self.
4. Seek, if you so will, to enlighten another when need
arises.
This may be done, always with the strict respect for
the attitude of the good sportsman, when he is in
distress through failure to understand himself
clearly, especially when he specifically demands help;
for his darkness may hinder one's perception of his
perfection. (Yet also his darkness may serve as a
warning, or excite one's interest.) It is also lawful
when his ignorance has lead him to interfere with
one's will. All interference is in any case
dangerous, and demands the exercise of extreme skill
and good judgement, fortified by experience. To
influence another is to leave one's citadel unguarded;
and the attempt commonly ends in losing one's own
self-supremacy.
5. Worship all!
"Every man and every woman is a star."
"Mercy let be off: damn those who pity."
"We have nothing with the outcast and the unfit: let
them die in their misery: For they feel not.
Compassion is the vice of kings: stamp down the
wretched and the weak: this is the law of the strong:
this is our law and the joy of the world. Think not,
o king, upon that lie: That Thou Must Die: verily thou
shalt not die, but live! Now let it be understood if
the body of the King dissolve, he shall remain in pure
ecstacy for ever. Nuit Hadit Ra-Hoor-Khuit. The Sun,
Strength and Sight, Light these are for the servants
of the Star & the Snake."
Each being is, exactly as you are, the sole centre of
a Universe in no wise identical with, or even
assimilable to, your own. The impersonal Universe of
"Nature" is only an abstraction, approximately tru ,
of the factors which it is convenient to regard as
common to all. The Universe of another is therefore
necessarily unknown to, and unknowable by, you; but it
induces currents of energy in yours by determining in
part your reactions. Use men and women, therefore,
with the absolute respect due to inviolable standards
of measurement; verify your own observations by
comparison with similar judgements made by them; and,
studying the methods which determine their failure or
success, acquire for yourself the wit and skill
required to cope with your own problems.
C. YOUR DUTY TO MANKIND
1. Establish the Law of Thelema as the sole basis of conduct.
The general welfare of the race being necessary in
many respects to your own, that well-being, like your
own, principally a function of the intellegent and
wise observance of the Law of Thelema, it is of the
very first importance to you that every individual
should accept frankly that Law, and strictly govern
himself in full accordance therewith.
You may regard the establishment of the Law of Thelema
as an essential element of your True Will, since,
whatever the ultimate nature of that Will, the evident
condition of putting it into execution is freedom from
external interference.
Governments often exhibit the most deplorable
stupidity, however enlightened may be the men who
compose and constitute them, or the people whose
destinies they direct. It is therefore incumbent on
every man and woman to take the proper steps to cause
the revisions of all existing statutes on the basis of
the Law of Thelema. This Law being a Law of Liberty,
the aim of the legislation must be to secure the
amplest freedom for each individual in the state,
eschewing the presumptious assumption that any given
positive ideal is worthy to be obtained.
"The Word of Sin is Restriction."
The essence of crime is that it restricts the freedom
of the individual outraged. (Thus, murder restricts
his right to live; robbery, his right to enjoy the
fruits of his labour; coining, his right to the
guarantee of the State that he shall barter in
security; etc.) It is then the common duty to prevent
crime by segregating the criminal, and by the threat
of reprisals; also, to teach the criminal that his
acts, being analyzed, are contrary to his own True
Will. (This may often be accomplished by taking from
him the right which he has denied to others; as by
outlawing the thief, so that he feels constant anxiety
for the safety of his own possessions, removed from
the ward of the State.) The rule is quite simple. He
who violated any right declares magically that it does
not exist; therefore it no longer does so, for him.
Crime being a direct spiritual violation of the Law of
Thelema, it should not be tolerated in the community.
Those who possess the instinct should be segregated in
a settlement to build up a state of their own, so to
learn the necessity of themselves imposing and
maintaining rules of justice.
All artificial crimes should be abolished. When
fantastic restrictions disappear, the greater freedom
of the individual will itself teach him to avoid acts
which really restrict natural rights. Thus real crime
will diminish dramatically.
The administration of the Law should be simplified by
training men of uprightness and discretion whose will
is to fulfill this function in the community to decide
all complaints by the abstract principle of the Law of
Thelema, and to award judgement on the basis of the
actual restriction caused by the offense.
The ultimate aim is thus to reintegrate conscience, on
true scientific principles, as the warden of conduct,
the monitor of the people, and the guarantee of the
governors.
D. YOUR DUTY TO ALL OTHER BEINGS AND THINGS
1. Apply the Law of Thelema to all problems of fitness, use,
and development.
It is a violation of the Law of Thelema to abuse the
natural qualities of any animal or object by diverting
it from its proper function, as determined by
consideration of its history and structure. Thus, to
train children to perform mental operations, or to
practice tasks, for which they are unfitted, is a
crime against nature. Similarly, to build houses of
rotten material, to adulterate food, to destroy
forests, etc., etc., is to offend.
The Law of Thelema is to be applied unflinchingly to
decide every question of conduct. The inherent
fitness of any thing for any proposed use should be
the sole criterion.
Apparent, and sometimes even real, conflict between
interests will frequently arise. Such cases are to be
decided by the general value of the contending parties
in the scale of Nature. Thus, a tree has a right to
its life; but a man being more than a tree, he may cut
it down for fuel or shelter when need arises. Even
so, let him remember that the Law never fails to
avenge infractions: as when wanton deforestation has
ruined a climate or a soil, or as when the importation
of rabbits for a cheap supply of food has created a
plague.
Observe that the violation of the Law of Thelema
produces cumulative ills. The drain of the
agricultural population to big cities, due chiefly to
persuading them to abandon their natural ideals, has
not only made the country less tolerable to the
peasant, but debauched the town. And the error tends
to increase in geometrical progression, until a remedy
has become almost inconceivable and the whole
structure of society is threatened with ruin.
The wise application based on observation and
experience of the Law of Thelema is to work in
conscious harmony with Evolution. Experiments in
creation, involving variation from existing types, are
lawful and necessary. Their value is to be judged by
their fertility as bearing witness to their harmony
with the course of nature towards perfection.
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