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77-424: A wand is a thin, straight, hand-held stick of wood, ivory, or metal. Wand or magic wand may also refer to: Wand In modern times, wands are usually associated with stage magic or supernatural magic , but there have been other uses, all stemming from the original meaning as a synonym of rod and virge . A stick that is used for reaching, pointing, drawing in the dirt, and directing other people,

154-436: A wand of office that represents their power . Compare in this context the function of the ceremonial mace , the scepter , and the staff of office . Its age may be even greater, as Stone Age cave paintings show figures holding sticks, which may be symbolic representations of their power. The association with power may be its use for corporal punishment. In the 18th-century ballads " Allison Gross " and " The Laily Worm and

231-574: A " point-event " and all individual point-events within the body of Nuit. Hadit is said, in The Book of the Law , to be "perfect, being Not." Additionally, it is written of Nuit in Liber AL bel Legis that "men speak not of Thee [Nuit] as One but as None." The third deity of Thelemic theology is Ra-Hoor-Khuit , a manifestation of the ancient Egyptian deity Horus . He is symbolized as a throned man with

308-591: A 'k' to distinguish it from stage magic. He recommended magick as a means for discovering the True Will . Generally, magical practices in Thelema are designed to assist in finding and manifesting the True Will, although some include celebratory aspects as well. Crowley believed that after discovering the True Will, the magician must also remove any elements of himself that stand in the way of its success. Crowley

385-492: A Thelemite is anyone who bases their actions on striving to discover and accomplish their true will, when a person does their True Will, it is like an orbit, their niche in the universal order, and the universe assists them: But the Magician knows that the pure Will of every man and every woman is already in perfect harmony with the divine Will; in fact, they are one and the same. For the individual to follow their True Will,

462-645: A genuine Catholic Mass, even if he saw it himself and even if the underground version followed its public model precisely. Aleister Crowley's system of Thelema begins with The Book of the Law , which bears the official name Liber AL vel Legis . It was written in Cairo, Egypt , during his honeymoon with his new wife Rose Crowley ( née  Kelly ). A small book, Liber AL vel Legis , contains just three chapters, each of which Crowley said he had written in exactly one hour—beginning at noon on April 8, April 9, and April 10, 1904, respectively. Crowley also maintained that

539-656: A magic wand to maliciously transform her victims. In the mid-20th century, the MGM and Disney media companies popularized magic wands via four films in which wands were wielded by benevolent female fairy characters. Those films were The Wizard of Oz (1939; MGM; a wand-staff was wielded by Glinda the Good Witch of the North ), Pinocchio (1940; Disney; a wand was wielded by the Blue Fairy ), Cinderella (1950; Disney;

616-480: A practice Crowley also applied in his informal written correspondences. The two primary terms in these statements are 'will' and 'love', respectively. Using the Greek technique of isopsephy , which applies a numerical value to each letter, the letters of words thelema ('will') and agape ('love') each sum to 93: In this way, the first phrase is abbreviated to "93" while the second is abbreviated to "93 93/93", with

693-552: A ritual for the invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel ; eucharistic rituals such as The Gnostic Mass and The Mass of the Phoenix ; and Liber Resh , consisting of four daily adorations to the sun. He also discussed sex magick and sexual gnosis in various forms involving masturbation and sexual intercourse between heterosexual and homosexual partners; practices which are among his suggestions for those in

770-648: A similar instruction: "Love, and what you will, do." ( Dilige et quod vis fac ). In the Renaissance , a character named "Thelemia" represents will or desire in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of the Dominican friar and writer Francesco Colonna . The protagonist Poliphilo has two allegorical guides, Logistica (reason) and Thelemia (will or desire). When forced to choose, he chooses fulfillment of his sexual will over logic. Colonna's work

847-401: A third statement: "Every man and every woman is a star." These three statements have specific meanings: Thelema places its principal gods and goddesses—three altogether—from Ancient Egyptian religion as the speakers presented in Liber AL vel Legis . The highest deity in the theology of Thelema is the goddess Nuit (also spelled Nuith ). She is envisioned as the night sky arching over

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924-528: A wand was wielded by a fairy godmother ), and Sleeping Beauty (1959; Disney; a wand was wielded by each of three fairies). In The Wizard of Oz and Pinocchio , the fairies' wands are embellished with a star-shaped ornament on the end, whereas in Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty , the fairies have wands with traditional plain tips. Magic wands commonly feature in works of fantasy fiction as spell -casting tools . Few other common denominators exist, so

1001-620: A wide range of interpretation of Thelema. Modern Thelema is a syncretic philosophy and religion, and many Thelemites try to avoid strongly dogmatic thinking. Crowley emphasized that each individual should follow their own inherent " True Will ", rather than blindly following his teachings, saying he did not wish to found a flock of sheep. Thus, contemporary Thelemites may practice more than one religion, including Wicca , Gnosticism , Satanism , Setianism and Luciferianism . Many adherents of Thelema recognize correlations between Thelemic and other systems of spiritual thought; most borrow freely from

1078-442: A will of its own, or behave magically in its own right. A classic magic trick makes a bouquet of flowers shoot out of the wand's tip. Thelema Thelema ( / θ ə ˈ l iː m ə / ) is a Western esoteric and occult social or spiritual philosophy and a new religious movement founded in the early 1900s by Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), an English writer, mystic, occultist, and ceremonial magician. Central to Thelema

1155-482: Is Nuit , the night sky symbolized as a naked woman covered in stars, representing the ultimate source of possibilities. Hadit , the infinitely small point, symbolizes manifestation and motion. Ra-Hoor-Khuit , a form of Horus , represents the Sun and active energies of Thelemic magick. Crowley believed that discovering and following one's True Will is the path to self-realization and personal fulfillment, often referred to as

1232-575: Is a rarely used word in Classical Greek. There are very few documents, the earliest being Antiphon the Sophist (5th century BCE). In antiquity it was beside the divine will which a man performs, just as much for the will of sexual desire. The intention of the individual was less understood as an overall, generalized, ontological place wherever it was arranged. The verb thelo appears very early ( Homer , early Attic inscriptions) and has

1309-534: Is described as "A note on the chief rules of practical conduct to be observed by those who accept the Law of Thelema." It is not a numbered " Liber " as the other documents Crowley intended for A∴A∴ ; instead, it is listed as a document explicitly intended for Ordo Templi Orientis . There are four sections: In Liber II: The Message of the Master Therion , the Law of Thelema is summarized briefly as "Do what thou wilt—then do nothing else." Crowley describes

1386-598: Is little direct evidence of what Dashwood's Hellfire Club practiced or believed. The one direct testimonial comes from John Wilkes, a member who never got into the chapter-room of the inner circle. Sir Nathaniel Wraxall in his Historical Memoires (1815) accused the Monks of performing Satanic rituals, but these reports have been dismissed as hearsay. Daniel Willens argued that the group likely practiced Freemasonry , but also suggests Dashwood may have held secret Roman Catholic sacraments. He asks if Wilkes would have recognized

1463-574: Is one of the earliest and simplest of tools. It is possible that wands were used by pre-historic peoples. It is mentioned that 'rods' (as well as rings) were found with Red Lady of Paviland in Britain. It is mentioned in Gower – A Guide to Ancient and Historic Monuments on the Gower Peninsula that these might have been wands and are depicted as such in a reconstruction drawing of the burial of

1540-745: Is similar to the Mass of the Eastern Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church , communicating the principles of Thelema. It is the central rite of Ordo Templi Orientis and its ecclesiastical arm, Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica . The Book of the Law gives several holy days to be observed by Thelemites. There are no established or dogmatic ways to celebrate these days, so as a result Thelemites will often take to their own devices or celebrate in groups, especially within Ordo Templi Orientis . These holy days are usually observed on

1617-540: Is the concept of discovering and following one's True Will , a unique purpose that transcends ordinary desires. Crowley's system begins with The Book of the Law , a text he maintained was dictated to him by a non-corporeal entity named Aiwass . This work outlines key principles, including the axiom "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law," emphasizing personal freedom and the pursuit of one's true path, guided by love . The Thelemic cosmology features deities inspired by ancient Egyptian religion . The highest deity

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1694-436: Is used to command, whereas a wand is seen as more gentle, and is used to invite or encourage. Wands are traditionally made of wood—practitioners usually prune a branch from an oak , hazel , or other tree, or may even buy wood from a hardware store , and then carve it and add decorations to personalize it, though one can also purchase ready-made wands. In Wicca , the wand can represent the element air , or fire (following

1771-636: The Book of Honorius , along with various other ideas from that grimoire, were later incorporated into the 16th-century grimoire The Key of Solomon . The Key of Solomon became popular among occultists for hundreds of years. In 1888, there was the publication of an English translation of the Key of Solomon by Samuel Mathers (one of the co-founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn ), which made

1848-735: The English Qaballa , and Nema Andahadna developed Maat Magick . The word θέλημα ( thelema ) is rare in Classical Greek , where it "signifies the appetitive will: desire, sometimes even sexual", but it is frequent in the Septuagint . Early Christian writings occasionally use the word to refer to the human will, and even the will of the Devil , but it usually refers to the will of God . In his 5th-century sermon, Catholic philosopher and theologian Augustine of Hippo gave

1925-821: The Equinoxes and the Feast of the Three Days of the Writing of the Book of the Law, commemorating the writing of Thelema's foundational text. Post-Crowley figures like Jack Parsons , Kenneth Grant , James Lees , and Nema Andahadna have further developed Thelema, introducing new ideas, practices, and interpretations. Parsons conducted the Babalon Working to invoke the goddess Babalon , while Grant synthesized various traditions into his Typhonian Order . Lees created

2002-543: The Great Work . Magick is a central practice in Thelema, involving various physical, mental, and spiritual exercises aimed at uncovering one's True Will and enacting change in alignment with it. Practices such as rituals, yoga , and meditation are used to explore consciousness and achieve self-mastery. The Gnostic Mass , a central ritual in Thelema, mirrors traditional religious services but conveys Thelemic principles. Thelemites also observe specific holy days, such as

2079-541: The Holy Guardian Angel , a daimon unique to each individual. The spiritual quest to find what you are meant to do and do it is also known in Thelema as the Great Work . Liber AL vel Legis makes some standards of individual conduct clear. The primary of these is "Do what thou wilt", which is presented as the sum of the law and a right. Some interpreters of Thelema believe that this right includes an obligation to allow others to do their own wills without interference, but Liber AL vel Legis makes no clear statement on

2156-641: The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament of 1938 ("Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven"). In the same way the term is used in Paul the Apostle and Ignatius of Antioch . For Tolli it follows that the genuine idea of Thelema does not contradict the teachings of Jesus. François Rabelais was a Franciscan and later a Benedictine monk of the 16th century. Eventually he left

2233-606: The Vulgate text, the terms are translated into the Latin voluntas ("will"). Thus, the different meaning of both concepts was lost. In the original Greek version of the New Testament the word thelema is used 62 or 64 times, twice in the plural ( thelemata ). Here, God's will is always and exclusively designated by the word thelema (θέλημα, mostly in the singular), as the theologian Federico Tolli points out by means of

2310-501: The suit of coins from earlier, non-occult decks, with the suit of pentacles . The Rider–Waite–Smith tarot deck was designed by two members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Arthur Edward Waite and Pamela Colman Smith . Waite provided the general guidelines for the deck (including the names of the four suits, and thus the suit of wands), and detailed guidelines for the designs of the Major Arcana , and he hired Smith to do

2387-487: The 'Red Lady'. During the Middle Kingdom of Egypt , apotropaic wands began to be used during birth ceremonies. These wands were made out of hippopotamus tusks which were split down the middle lengthwise, producing two wands, each with one flat side and one curved side. Due to the curved nature of a hippopotamus tusk, these wands were curved, with one pointed end (the point of the tusk) and one blunt end (where

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2464-536: The 1st century AD, the wand was a common symbol of magic in Roman cults, especially Mithraism . In the 3rd and 4th centuries, there are frequent depictions on sarcophagi of Jesus Christ according to one opinion using a magic wand to perform miracles, such as the raising of Lazarus and feeding the multitude . Others scholars disagree with that, claiming that these objects are staffs since images of Christ with it "appear alongside images of Moses performing miracles with

2541-453: The Barsom is not a wand itself, it was also used for divination purposes, and may be a form of prototypical wand from which later magical wands descend. The concept of magic wands was used by the ancient Greek writer Homer , in his epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey . In all cases, Homer used the word rhabdos (ῥάβδος), which means 'rod', and implies something that is thicker than

2618-589: The Earth, represented as a nude woman and typically depicted with stars covering her body. Nuit is conceived as the " Great Mother " and the ultimate source of all things, the collection of all possibilities, "Infinite Space, and the Infinite Stars thereof", and the circumference of an infinite circle or sphere. Nuit is derived from the Egyptian sky goddess Nut and is referred to poetically as "Our Lady of

2695-675: The French author's beliefs with the Thelema of Aleister Crowley . In the previously mentioned story of Thélème, which critics analyze as referring in part to the suffering of loyal Christian reformists or "evangelicals" within the French Church, the reference to the Greek word θέλημα "declares that the will of God rules in this abbey". Sutin writes that Rabelais was no precursor of Thelema, with his beliefs containing elements of Stoicism and Christian kindness. In his first book (ch. 52–57), Rabelais writes of this Abbey of Thélème, built by

2772-411: The Golden Dawn uses several different types of wands for different purposes, the most prominent of which are the fire wand and the lotus wand. In Wicca , wands are traditionally used to summon and control angels and genies, but have later come to also be used for general spell-casting. Wands serve a similar purpose to athames (ritual daggers), though the two objects have their distinct uses: an athame

2849-526: The Golden Hawk , a play by Florence Farr . Evans says this may have resulted from the fact that "both Farr and Crowley were thoroughly steeped in Golden Dawn imagery and teachings", and that Crowley probably knew the same materials that inspired some of Farr's motifs. Sutin also found similarities between Thelema and the work of W. B. Yeats , attributing this to "shared insight" and perhaps to

2926-469: The Law and the writings of Aleister Crowley. Aleister Crowley wrote in The Antecedents of Thelema (1926), an incomplete work not published in his day, that Rabelais not only set forth the law of Thelema in a way similar to how Crowley understood it, but predicted and described in code Crowley's life and the holy text that he received, The Book of the Law . Crowley said the work he had received

3003-404: The Law distill the practice and ethics of Thelema. Of these statements, one in particular, known as the "Law of Thelema", forms the central doctrine of Thelema."Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law". The first statement is then supplemented by a second, follow-up statement: "Love is the law, love under will." These two statements are generally believed to be better understood in light of

3080-783: The Machrel of the Sea ", the villainesses use silver wands to transform their victims into animals, in emulation of the Odyssey that preceded them. In C. S. Lewis 's 1950 novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe , the White Witch 's most feared weapon is her wand, whose magic is capable of turning people into stone. This, again, employs the Odysseyan motif of an evil female witch who uses

3157-559: The Stars" and, in The Book of the Law , as "Queen of Space" and "Queen of Heaven". The second principal deity of Thelema is the god Hadit , conceived as the infinitely small point , and the complement and consort of Nuit. Hadit symbolizes manifestation, motion, and time. He is also described in Liber AL vel Legis as "the flame that burns in every heart of man, and in the core of every star." Hadit has sometimes been said to represent

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3234-477: The Thelemite. Rabelais has been variously credited with the creation of the philosophy of Thelema, as one of the earliest people to refer to it. The current National Grand Master General of the U.S. Ordo Templi Orientis Grand Lodge has opined that: Saint Rabelais never intended his satirical, fictional device to serve as a practical blueprint for a real human society ... Our Thelema is that of The Book of

3311-514: The adage on a doorway of his abbey at Medmenham , where it served as the motto of the Hellfire Club . Rabelais's Abbey of Thelema has been referred to by later writers Sir Walter Besant and James Rice , in their novel The Monks of Thelema (1878), and C. R. Ashbee in his utopian romance The Building of Thelema (1910). In Classical Greek there are two words for will : thelema ( θέλημα ) and boule ( βουλή ). ' Thelema '

3388-468: The book was dictated to him by a non-corporeal entity named Aiwass , whom he later identified as his Holy Guardian Angel . Crowley stated that "no forger could have prepared so complex a set of numerical and literal puzzles" and that study of the text would dispel all doubts about the method of how the book was obtained. Besides the reference to Rabelais made in the book, an analysis by Dave Evans found similarities to The Beloved of Hathor and Shrine of

3465-532: The capabilities of wands vary wildly. In J. K. Rowling 's Harry Potter series, the first book of which was published in 1997, personal wands are common as necessary tools to channel and project each character's magic, they are used as weapons in magical duels, and it is the wand that chooses its owner. A wand is also present in the Children of the Red King series in the possession of Charlie Bone as well as

3542-504: The covetous driving force in man." In the Septuagint the term is used for the will of God himself, the pious desire of the God-fearing, and the royal will of a secular ruler. It is thus used only for the representation of high ethical willingness in the faith, the exercise of authority by the authorities, or the non-human will, but not for more profane striving. In the Septuagint, the terms boule and thelema appear, whereas in

3619-469: The cup) in his writings because they are in the Key of Solomon , whereas he got the cup from the tarot suit of cups . In Levi's 1862 book Philosophie Occulte , he wrote a fake excerpt of a Hebrew version of the Key of Solomon , and that fake excerpt was part of the inspiration for the Golden Dawn's ritual objects, and especially their lotus wand. The ceremonial magic of the Hermetic Order of

3696-696: The effectiveness of magick in producing certain subjective experiences that do not ordinarily result from taking hashish , enjoying oneself in Paris, or walking through the Sahara desert. It is not strictly necessary to practice ritual techniques to be a Thelemite, as due to the focus of Thelemic magick on the True Will, Crowley stated "every intentional act is a magickal act." Crowley wrote 'The Gnostic Mass' — technically called Liber XV or " Book 15 " — in 1913 while travelling in Moscow, Russia . The structure

3773-517: The ego. If the aspirant is unprepared, he will cling to the ego instead, becoming a Black Brother. According to Crowley, the Black Brother slowly disintegrates, while preying on others for his own self-aggrandisement. Crowley taught skeptical examination of all results obtained through meditation or magick, at least for the student. He tied this to the necessity of keeping a magical record or diary, that attempts to list all conditions of

3850-402: The event. Remarking on the similarity of statements made by spiritually advanced people of their experiences, he said that fifty years from his time they would have a scientific name based on "an understanding of the phenomenon" to replace such terms as "spiritual" or "supernatural". Crowley stated that his work and that of his followers used "the method of science; the aim of religion", and that

3927-405: The everyday self's socially instilled inhibitions may have to be overcome via deconditioning. Crowley believed that to discover the True Will, one had to free the desires of the subconscious mind from the control of the conscious mind, especially the restrictions placed on sexual expression, which he associated with the power of divine creation. He identified the True Will of each individual with

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4004-541: The flat side, such as "Cut off the head of the enemy when he enters the chamber of the children whom the lady... has borne". The latest apotropaic wand found belongs to the Second Intermediate Period king Senebkay . It seems that the use of these objects in Egypt declines after this point. The Barsom used by Zoroastrian Magi is a bundle of twigs that was used during religious ceremonies. While

4081-469: The following dates: The number 93 is of great significance in Thelema. The central philosophy of Thelema is in two phrases from Liber AL: "do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" and "love is the law, love under will". Crowley urged their use in everyday communications, and himself used them to greet people. Today, rather than using the full phrases, Thelemites often use numerological abbreviations to shorten these greeting in informal contexts,

4158-480: The genuine powers of the magician could in some way be objectively tested. This idea has been taken on by later practitioners of Thelema. They may consider that they are testing hypotheses with each magical experiment. The difficulty lies in the broadness of their definition of success, in which they may see as evidence of success things which a non-magician would not define as such, leading to confirmation bias . Crowley believed he could demonstrate, by his own example,

4235-494: The giant Gargantua. It is a classical utopia presented in order to critique and assess the state of the society of Rabelais's day, as opposed to a modern utopian text that seeks to create the scenario in practice. It is a utopia where people's desires are more fulfilled. Satirical, it also epitomises the ideals considered in Rabelais's fiction. The inhabitants of the abbey were governed only by their own free will and pleasure,

4312-529: The head of a hawk who carries a wand. He is associated with the Sun and the active energies of Thelemic magick . Other deities within the pantheon of Thelema are Hoor-paar-kraat (or Harpocrates ), the god of silence and inner strength and the twin of Ra-Hoor-Khuit, as well as Babalon , the goddess of all pleasure known as the Virgin Whore, and Therion , the beast upon which Babalon rides who represents

4389-541: The higher degrees of Ordo Templi Orientis . One goal in the study of Thelema within the magical Order of the A∴A∴ is for the magician to obtain the knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel: conscious communication with their own personal daimon , thus gaining knowledge of their True Will. The chief task for one who has achieved this goes by the name of "crossing the abyss "; completely relinquishing

4466-560: The ideas of Rabelais and invoked the same rule in French, when he founded a group called the Monks of Medmenham (better known as the Hellfire Club ). An abbey was established at Medmenham, in a property which incorporated the ruins of a Cistercian abbey founded in 1201. The group was known as the Franciscans, not after Saint Francis of Assisi , but after its founder, Francis Dashwood, 11th Baron le Despencer . John Wilkes , George Dodington and other politicians were members. There

4543-533: The individual's rights implied by the overarching right, "Do what thou wilt". For every individual, these include the right to "live by one's own law"; "live in the way that one wills to do"; "work, play, and rest as one will"; "die when and how one will"; "eat and drink what one will"; "live where one will"; "move about the earth as one will"; "think, speak, write, draw, paint, carve, etch, mould, build, and dress as one will"; "love when, where and with whom one will"; and "kill those who would thwart these rights". Duty

4620-421: The matter. Crowley himself wrote that there was no need to detail the ethics of Thelema for everything springs from "Do what thou Wilt". Crowley wrote several additional documents presenting his personal beliefs regarding individual conduct in light of the Law of Thelema, some of which indeed address the topic interference with the will of others: Liber OZ , Duty , and Liber II . Liber OZ enumerates some of

4697-494: The meanings of "ready", "decide" and "desire" (Homer, 3, 272, also in the sexual sense). " Aristotle says in the book On Plants that the goal of the human will is perception - unlike the plants that do not have ' epithymia ' (translation of the author). " Thelema ", says the Aristoteles, "has changed here, ' epithymia '", and ' thelema ', and that ' thelema ' is to be neutral, not somehow morally determined,

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4774-890: The methods and practices of other traditions, including alchemy , astrology , qabalah , tantra , tarot divination and yoga . For example, Nu and Had are thought to correspond with the Tao and Teh of Taoism , Shakti and Shiva of the Hindu Tantras , Shunyata and Bodhicitta of Buddhism , Ain Soph and Kether in the Hermetic Qabalah . Thelemic magick is a system of physical, mental, and spiritual exercises which practitioners believe are of benefit. Crowley defined magick as "the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will", and spelled it with

4851-446: The modern conception of wands. In those books, Homer wrote that magic wands were used by three different gods, namely Hermes , Athena , and Circe . In The Iliad , Homer wrote that Hermes generally used his magic wand Caduceus to make people sleep and wake up. In The Odyssey , Homer wrote that Athena used her magic wand to make Odysseus old, and then young again, and that Circe used her magic wand to turn Odysseus's men into pigs. By

4928-466: The monastery to study medicine, and moved to the French city of Lyon in 1532. There he wrote Gargantua and Pantagruel , a connected series of books. They tell the story of two giants—a father (Gargantua) and his son (Pantagruel) and their adventures—written in an amusing, extravagant, and satirical vein. Most critics today agree that Rabelais wrote from a Christian humanist perspective. The Crowley biographer Lawrence Sutin notes this when contrasting

5005-405: The older man's knowledge of Crowley's work. Crowley wrote several commentaries on The Book of the Law , the last of which he wrote in 1925. The latter commentary, dubbed " The Comment ", warns against discussing the book's contents, states that all "questions of the Law are to be decided only by appeal to my writings", and is signed by Ankh-ef-en-Khonsu i . Three statements from The Book of

5082-404: The only rule being "Do What Thou Wilt". Rabelais believed that men who are free, well born and bred have honour, which intrinsically leads to virtuous actions. When constrained, their noble natures turn instead to remove their servitude, because men desire what they are denied. Some modern Thelemites consider Crowley's work to build upon Rabelais's summary of the instinctively honourable nature of

5159-499: The painting, and to make original artwork for the Minor Arcana . Waite instructed Smith to not paint actual wands in the wand cards, but rather to paint large tree trunk staffs with some foliage growing on them, so as to make an association between wands and Eliphas Levi 's phrase "the flowering rod of Aaron " from Levi's fake fragment of The Key of Solomon . In British formal government ceremony , special officials may carry

5236-482: The popular MMORPG World of Warcraft where caster classes such as the mage and warlock use wands offensively. Magic wands and staves are often used in the magical girl genre of anime and manga (or other media) as well. Based on their magical symbolism, stage magicians often use "magic wands" as part of their misdirection . These wands are traditionally short and black, with white tips. A magic wand may be transformed into other items, grow, vanish, move, display

5313-490: The pursuit of True Will as not merely detaching from possible results but also involving tireless energy. It is Nirvana but in a dynamic rather than static form. The True Will is described as the individual's orbit, and if one seeks to do anything else, one will encounter obstacles, as doing anything other than the Will is a hindrance to it. The core of Thelemic thought is "Do what thou wilt". However, beyond this, there exists

5390-530: The staff". Italian fairy tales put wands into the hands of the powerful fairies by the Late Middle Ages . Wands are used in the Enochian magic of John Dee , the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn , Thelema , and Wicca , and by independent practitioners of magic. Wands were introduced into the occult via the 13th-century Latin grimoire The Oathbound Book of Honorius . The wand idea from

5467-503: The text of the Key of Solomon available to the anglophone world. That 1888 English version inspired Gerald Gardner , the creator of Wicca , to incorporate the wand and various other ritual objects into Wicca. The creators of the Golden Dawn got their idea to use a wand, as well as their other main ritual objects (dagger, sword, hexagrammic pentacle , and cup), from the writings of the mid-19th-century occult writer Eliphas Levi . Levi himself mentioned most of those objects (all except for

5544-522: The tusk was removed from the hippopotamus). Hippopotamus tusks may have been used to invoke Taweret the hippopotamus goddess of childbirth. The earliest apotropaic wands used in Egypt were undecorated, but "from around 1850 BC, they were usually provided with decorations of apotropaic figures directly related to the sun religion, or particular aspects of it, inscribed on the convex upper side... most of whom carry knives to ward off evil forces". These apotropaic wands were also inscribed with protective text on

5621-539: The wiccan author Raymond Buckland , who got his element associations from the Golden Dawn), although contemporary wand-makers also create wands for the elements of earth and water . The suit of wands is one of the four suits in the 1909 Rider–Waite–Smith occult tarot deck , and other, later tarot decks that are based upon that deck. The suit of wands replaced the suit of batons from earlier, non-occult tarot decks. The Rider–Waite–Smith tarot deck also replaced

5698-457: The wild animal within humankind and the force of nature. According to Crowley, every individual has a True Will , which is to be distinguished from the ordinary wants and desires of the ego. The True Will is essentially one's "calling" or "purpose" in life. "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" for Crowley refers not to hedonism , fulfilling everyday desires, but to acting in response to that calling. According to Lon Milo DuQuette ,

5775-462: Was a great influence on the Franciscan friar and writer François Rabelais , who in the 16th century used Thélème , the French form of the word, as the name of a fictional abbey in his novels, Gargantua and Pantagruel . The only rule of this Abbey was " fay çe que vouldras " (" Fais ce que tu veux ", or, "Do what you will"). In the mid-18th century, Sir Francis Dashwood inscribed

5852-404: Was a prolific writer, integrating Eastern practices with Western magical practices from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn . He recommended a number of these practices to his followers, including: basic yoga ( asana and pranayama ); rituals of his own devising or based on those of the Golden Dawn, such as the lesser ritual of the pentagram , for banishing and invocation; Liber Samekh ,

5929-466: Was deeper, showing in more detail the technique people should practice, and revealing scientific mysteries. He said that Rabelais confines himself to portraying an ideal, rather than addressing questions of political economy and similar subjects, which must be solved in order to realize the Law. Rabelais is included among the Saints of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica . Sir Francis Dashwood adopted some of

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