Strange

Bedfellows:
Judith Butler, Aleister Crowley and an Ethicks of Will






By
Thomas Koen



Catholic Sexual Ethics
&
Rise of American Spirituality




Why are you smiling?
Don’t be too sure. . . .

from “N( ) Exit”
by Katherine Kurtz



00. Preliminary Preface

In what follows, I attempt to follow in the footsteps of both the fields (and courses)

which gave rise to this project in the first place. Thus, this essay is equally a child of sexual

ethics and American spirituality, and yet it is also a newcomer to each. I admit that I do not,

with any sureness, possess the knowledge or the praxis of the ethicist or the studied scholar of

spirituality, though I have done my best to immerse myself equally in their respective realms.

On the best of days, I am much more the mediator, drawing lines between existent positions

and smoothing over the bumps and bruises that can arise from such joinings . . . and on the

remaining 364 days I fall into the role of the manipulator, jostling and prodding systems and

ideals till they fit together in a nice—if not altogether natural—formation. As such, ethics seems

to me nothing more (or less) than the art of tricking (or perhaps ‘convincing’) people into being

better than they might otherwise be; likewise, studious spirituality seems quite like the science

of shaping a worldview within which the game of life is played. No doubt each ‘seeming’ is a

gross simplification of the complex weavings that are wrought in each of these respective, and

respected, fields. Nevertheless, these seemings are part of the warp and the weft of my own,

and perhaps overly personable, approach in what follows, and as such are worth pointing out

and acknowledging.

"Confusion worse confounded?" I dare say it is; it's the best I can do with such a difficult
question. Aleister Crowley1

1
Aleister Crowley, “Thelemic Morality,” Magick Without Tears, ed. Israel Regardie, (Las Vegas:
Falcon Press, 1989): 308-313, here 312.


0. A Word of Warning

The phrase ‘strange bedfellows’ is a common one, but rarely is it so aptly applied as I

intend to herein apply it. Anyone familiar with gender theorist Judith Butler would, upon

reading the subtitle to this essay, likely have at best ‘questions’ and at worst dismissive laughter

. . . presuming that they have even an ephemeral awareness of the connotations summoned

forth by the second name mentioned therein. And while those whose familiarity lies with

Crowley might not be surprised by the combination, this is more on account of the genre-

defying nature of Crowley’s corpus than some fundamental open-mindedness on their part.

And to be fair to my readers with questions—or chuckles—this is a very strange

juxtaposition, and any combination of Butler (“the queer theorist par excellence”)2 and

Crowley, (the “wickedest man in the world” according to the newspapers of his day)3 is kidding

itself if it does not acknowledge this from the start. Yet for all of the strangeness inherent in

setting these two giants of their fields in (constructive) conversation with one another, there is

in fact good reason for doing it! So, my dear (and likely credulous) reader, feel free to quirk an

eyebrow . . . or two . . . and chuckle as you must, but bear with me for a moment, hold off on

penning your conclusions—just for a bit—because you might just find your questions answered

and your laughter stilled by the time you finish your encounter with these, the strangest of

bedfellows.

2
Sara Salih, Judith Butler, (New York: Routledge, 2012), 7.
3
Richard Kaczynski, Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley, Revised and Expanded Edition,
(Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2010), 394. Though this opinion has recently begun to shift in
his home country of England, as can be gleaned from his inclusion in the BBC’s 100 Greatest
Britons that was broadcast in 2002. He came in 73rd.


1. Introductions

To begin with, in order to first understand and then benefit from a Butler/Crowley

crossover, introductions must be made, if for no other reason than those who are conversant

on the subject of one author are rather unlikely to be as familiar with the work of the other. As

such, a brief meet-and-greet with each will be provided before we turn to the larger project at

hand.

§1A. Judith Butler:

Best known for her work in gender studies, feminist and queer theory, Judith Butler is a

contemporary philosopher with interests ranging from gender performativity and the formation

of the subject to psychoanalysis, ethics and social transformation. Coupling such broad and

interdisciplinary interests with a career spanning from the 1980’s to the present, Butler

presents us with far more than can be covered in this, the written equivalent of an elevator-

ride-length blurb.4 She has become such a fixture of the queer theory scene that her work has

even attained the high honor of being featured in a recent (and fantastically poignant) video

released by The Onion.5

For our purposes, we need only concern ourselves at this point with a glance through

some of the main themes of her work as it has developed over time.6 What began as an

4
For those interested in a more thorough intro to Butler’s oeuvre, I would suggest Sara Salih’s
Judith Butler and Vicki Kirby’s Judith Butler: Live Theory (New York: Continuum, 2007).
5
The video, titled “Trump Voter Feels Betrayed By President After Reading 800 Pages Of Queer
Feminist Theory” was Tweeted on May 6. I highly recommend watching it, if for no reason other
than the kicks (and the giggles). <goo.gl/qKLsqZ>
6
And here I am shamelessly guided by the introduction of Salih’s text and the chapters of
Kirby’s book on Butler, which both offer far more concise overviews than I could ever hope to
achieve!


investigation into hemispheric dimensions of Hegelian thought soon coupled with Foucault, the

psychoanalytic symphony (Freud, Lacan and company), feminist thought (de Beauvoir, Wittig

and Rubin) and various denizen of philosophy and language (such as Derrida and J.L. Austin).7

This confluence of influences led to the potent blend of insight and intrigue which has since

driven her numerous publications. In those varied works, she has in turn interrogated and

improved notions such as identity and body, subject and desire, gender and sexuality,

performativity and language, identity and power, violence and vulnerability.8 Through her

unique mix of problematization and query-based investigation, she teases out the tangled

threads of the web which is the coagulation of assumptions and conventions underpinning

much of how society—in whole and at the individual level—has conceived itself.

Though her unique style can be challenging to read as she is, at times, intentionally “less

than intelligible”—albeit for good reasons9—Butler consistently strives to expose the

underlying complexities, even contradictions, buried within prevailing social norms and

conventions. Of particular interest in our present project is the way in which she raises

questions surrounding the foundations we choose to build ethics upon, but we’ll get to that in

just a bit; first we need to finish these preliminary introductions.

§1B. Aleister Crowley:

While perhaps not as widely known amid the present-day inhabitants of the Ivory

Tower, Aleister Crowley is in many ways as famous—if not more so, given the time he’s had to

accrue a reputation—as Judith Butler, granted that this is for very different reasons and

7
Salih, Judith Butler, 7.
8
Cf., Kirby, Judith Butler: Live Theory, v.
9
Judith Butler, Undoing Gender, (New York: Routledge, 2004), 3.


(largely) amid a very different sort of crowd . . . though perhaps I should have said infamous.

Born in 1875 (and living till 1947), Crowley was many things—including expert mountaineer,

poet of no small regard, prolific author, amateur scientist (and artist), philosopher, political

advisor, and much, much more10—besides being the most notorious practitioner of Magick in

the Western (and perhaps the whole) world. If Butler can rightly be described as having a

substantial body of published work, Crowley can easily be said to have left . . . at the most

conservative estimations . . . a veritable cornucopia of writings. Like the introduction to Butler

above, there’s no point in even attempting to summarily present Crowley’s massive corpus,

though some substantial themes are worth noting here at the start.

To begin with, Aleister Crowley was a practitioner of Magick . . . and yes, that ‘k’ is

significant. Not only was he a practitioner, he was considered to be a prophet of a whole

system of belief and magic that has all the marks of being a religion all to its own11 with

revealed sacred texts, rituals and a hierarchy (of sorts).12 Central to this system is what

10
For a remarkably well researched and balanced account of Crowley’s truly amazing life (a
conclusion I was only of late convinced of) I highly recommend (with even more sincerity than
my recommendation of the Butler-inspired video by The Onion) reading the revised and
expanded edition of Kaczynski’s biography of Crowley, Perdurabo.
11
There is, apparently, some internal debate among the Thelemic community—Thelema being
the name of this system/group/religion—about whether it is a religion or not, but I believe it
has all the earmarks of a faith and, aside from being my own perspective, this view is shared by
Rodney Orpheus. Orpheus is a highly respected member of the OTO (the acronym for the main
body of Thelemites) who, in his book on Thelema remarks that “Thelema is a religion of a sort;
however, it is much less a traditional religion than most any other belief system.” Abrahadabra:
Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thelemic Magic, (Boston: Weiser Books, 2005), 63.
12
Readers with further interest in the nitty-gritty details of Thelema would do well to turn to
the numerous writings of Lon Milo DuQuette, one of the leading experts of Crowley’s system of
Magick, Thelema and the OTO. Specifically, I’d suggest The Magick of Aleister Crowley: A
Handbook of Rituals of Thelema, (San Francisco: Weiser Books, 2003), though I’ll admit that I’ve
yet to be disappointed by any of DuQuette’s works that I’ve read.


adherents call the Law of Thelema, which goes like this: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole

of the Law.” Hand in hand with this central tenet—taken from the principle holy text of

Thelema—is the further “There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.” While we will definitely be

unpacking these below, there’s one more phrase I’d like to add to the collection (taken from

the same source): “Every man and woman is a star.”13 (Don’t worry, we’ll explain what these

mean in detail below!)

Essentially, what Crowley ended up giving birth to was a whole worldview and

imbedded ethical system—even if that system functions differently than traditional ethics. If

you were forced to boil it down well past good scholarly sense (for, say, an elevator-ride length

blurb) you might say that Crowley proposed an interconnected worldview wherein people who

properly follow their True Will14 are able to “do what thou wilt” while not disrupting the paths

of their peers. There’s a sense of what some would call ‘destiny’ operating within this system,

but Crowley has his own unique take on this . . . a take that I believe has a useful, if surprising

degree of continuity with, or at least connectivity to, Butler’s own work.

Lastly, before moving on past this brief introduction, a word of caution is perhaps

merited. As Kaczynsky stated in the disclaimer found at the start of The Weiser Concise Guide to

Aleister Crowley, “when a person begins to study Aleister Crowley, he or she enters a universe

rather than a ‘field of study.’”15 Much of Crowley’s language will not at first glance make much

13
All of these passages are taken from Liber Al ves Legis, or The Book of the Law, a text that
Crowley penned—if not precisely authored, in the traditional sense, (it’s a complicated, but
interesting, story; cf., Kaczynski, Perdurabo, 126-130 and most of chapter 9) in 1904.
14
Again, we’ll get to this in a bit.
15
Richard Kaczynski, “Disclaimer,” The Weiser Concise Guide to Aleister Crowley, (San Francisco:
Weiser, 2009). eBook.


sense, and though I will do what I can to explain it as we go, be patient—its not as easy or as

straightforward as it looks . . . and it looks about as straightforward as a hedge maze.

2. The Situation (Or, ‘What Are You Thinking?!?’)

What is most important is to cease legislating for all lives what is livable only for some, and
similarly, to refrain from proscribing for all lives what is unlivable for some. Judith Butler16

Our ethics themselves will naturally depend on our theory of the universe. Aleister Crowley17

Now that we’ve gotten the first introductions out of the way, it is probably time to

explain why you’re reading an oversized paper striving to combine the work of two people

whose separate scholarly posterities might each otherwise have lived out their days in blissful

ignorance of the very existence of the other. And while I am sorely tempted to stretch out the

tragicomedy which led to the bourgeoning idea that has since become this paper, time is of the

essence and we’ve got quite a few miles to go—especially if we’re just now getting to the why-

bother—before we can quit. First, just to mix things up, I’ll try for brevity, then beef it up from

there. Essentially, the impetus for this project comes in three basic steps:

1. Judith Butler points out a rather significant problem underlying a traditional

approach to ethics.
2. Aleister Crowley seems to offer a way towards solving this problem given Butler’s
position.
3. Contemporary communities which live out an ethical system inspired (in whole or
part) by Crowley’s insights can be considered as a case study to be examined.

These three steps are followed by a further fourth step that I have come to think of as ‘the

cautiously-hesitant-applicative-move step,’ but we’re a long way off from getting there, and to

16
Judith Butler, Undoing Gender, 8.
17
Aleister Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice, Electronic PDF Edition, (Yorkshire: Celephaïs
Press, 2004), 85.


spend much time talking about it here would be in classical cart-before-camel fashion.18 Let’s

take the first three steps one at a time and add some conceptual meat to their thus-far far-too

bare bones.

§2A. Step One:

The reasons that I chose Butler as our dialogue partner from the side of sexual ethics—

as well as ethics more broadly understood—are twofold. To begin with, Butler does a

marvelous job exposing the inner workings of the societal conventions and presuppositions

which operate at the extreme depths of how society (at least our society)19 approaches the

fundamental aspects of ethics, both in general and in sexual specificity. In Undoing Gender,

Butler from the very start stresses the fact that “the ‘I’ that I am finds itself at once constituted

by norms and dependent on them but also endeavors to live in ways that maintain a critical and

transformative relation to them.”20 In other words, the selves that we choose to live out in our

world are both shaped by and built upon existing norms, and at the same time there is always a

degree of tension between our realization (or reification) of those societal norms and their

individual expression grounded in our own, unique selves.

18
Despite the preference for horses in the utilization of this phrase, I stand firm in my
conviction that camels too can cart carts about.
19
This most definitely includes the Catholic Church insofar as individuals whom claim
membership in the Church are by no means thereby exempt from being (experientially)
interwoven into the cultural/societal fabric within which they participate. Also, just to lay card
to table, in this essay I do not attempt to speak from a position of knowledge—of any level—
concerning any culture outside of my own place within the context of America. . . and even
then I can only lay claim to a portion of the perspectival pie, given that I have no direct means
of access to how that context is experienced by members of the countless minorities that
constitute what, collectively, would likely be the majority of America.
20
Butler, Undoing Gender, 3.


On top of this complex relation to the norms that permeate our culture, there is also a

radical sense of interconnectedness and vulnerability at play in Butler’s view of the self; the

determination of “‘one’s own’” gender, to use her example, can only be done insofar “that

social norms exist which support and enable that act.” In this way, for Butler, “one is dependent

on this ‘outside’ to lay claim to what is one’s own.”21 Here we can see just how dangerous it can

be for selves which find themselves poorly positioned in relation to society’s norms.

This in turn brings us to the second reason why Butler has been brought to bear in this

project. Along with her investigation into the interrelationships that exist between self and

society (and its norms), Butler is relentless in her insistence that the question of the human

being—what it constitutes, and what constitutes it—is essential for any proper pursuit of a

potential sexual ethics. A reoccurring critique that she brings to bear time and time again is the

problem of the excluded other. Put differently, we could say that Butler is particularly

concerned with any system of ethics and/or norms which exclude some group from what we

mean when we say ‘human being’. Realizing that “the history of the category [of the human] is

not over, and the ‘human’ is not captured once and for all,” Butler tells us that “its

rearticulation will begin precisely at the point where the excluded speak to and from such a

category.”22

Taken together, these two connected dimensions of Butler’s work serve as remarkably

useful tools in trying to uncover problematic dimensions of our ethical systems. As we will see

below, Butler’s critical method problematizes systems based on notions which inadvertently

21
Butler, Undoing Gender, 7. She goes on to say that the self “must, in this way, be
dispossessed in sociality in order to take possession of itself.”
22
Butler, Undoing Gender, 13.


pave the way for excluding certain people from the category of the human, and in this way

Butler helps us raise up—or, for soccer fans, throw down—the red flag that marks the need for

further consideration.

§2B. Step Two:

The reasoning behind inviting a voice as unexpected—and as likely to invite pushback—

as Aleister Crowley’s is also twofold, insofar as what he proffers to us is both an alternative to

the sort of ethical foundation which leads all too easily into an excluded other as well as a

worldview within which that alternative foundation can be best realized. Crowley’s Law of

Thelema has already been introduced, but the notion of True Will that undergirds it was only

mentioned by name. This is the beating heart of what constitutes Crowley’s ethic, and it is the

key to developing an alternative foundation which is less prone to problematic exclusion. In

brief, “True Will” as Crowley means it “is your destiny, the Way through life which leads to the

fulfillment of your Great Work.”23

Further, Crowley is at pains to clarify what he does not mean by True Will in a passage

that is worth quoting at length:

“Do what thou wilt” does not mean “do what you please”; though this degree of
emancipation is implied, that we can no longer say a priori that any given course of
action is “wrong”. Every man and every woman has an absolute right to do his or her
True Will. At the same time, to quote The Book of the Law, “…thou hast no right but to
do thy will”. So then, the new Law really announces a stricter bondage than any
previous law and this in accordance with biological teaching. An organism progresses by
self-imposed inhibitions.24

23
Rodney Orpheus, Abrahadabra, 64. In letter nine of Crowley’s Magick Without Tears [91],
Crowley remarks that (at least for members of the community he founded) “one is sworn to
identify one’s own Great Work with that of raising mankind to higher levels, spiritually, and in
every other way.”
24
Aleister Crowley, The Heart of the Master and Other Papers, (Tempe, AZ: New Falcon
Publications, 1997).


If you can look beyond the somewhat antiquated phrasing that crops up at the end of this

statement,25 it should be clear that the notion Crowley is trying to get at is far from a simplistic

sort of anything-goes non-ethic. In truth, and in almost polar-opposition to the popular

perception of him, the Aleister Crowley that comes to the front in any balanced and patient

reading of his writings is someone thoroughly invested in establishing an ethical system that

would be of true benefit to the world.26

If his Law of Thelema consists of the first reason for turning to him herein, the second

reason is the worldview in which that Law is imbedded. The same sacred text which contains

the Law of Thelema also states that “Every man and woman is a star.” Far from being a

vacuous, vaguely positive statement that is so often smattered throughout esoteric writings,

this passage is the tip of a well-developed and extremely interconnected view of the world

wherein the true path of every man and every woman (embodied by their True Will) is arrayed

in such a way that, so long as they follow their True Will, “conflict in the Universe” is not

necessary.27

25
Though it is definitely worth pointing out that in including the phrase “and every woman”
Crowley evidences a praiseworthy sensibility that is rather remarkable given the time period in
which he was writing. While it is evident that he is not operating with a Butlerian understanding
of gender/sexuality, I actually believe that he is far closer to Butler in spirit than I would have
expected of someone writing in the early 1900s. Unfortunately, we do not herein have the
luxury of chasing down and fleshing out just how close he comes to prefiguring some of Butler’s
claims, but it would certainly be an interesting (and fruitful) future project.
26
Not to even mention the evidence that can be gleaned from his personal life which makes the
case for Crowley being a person—a thoroughly flawed and imperfect one to be sure, but such is
true to an extent for everyone—who at least tried to live what I believe really could be called a
good life. For example, he wed his first wife not because of affection or love (that came later)
but instead to rescue her from an unwanted marriage; cf., Kaczynski, Perdurabo, 119-120.
27
In the original edition of Heart of the Master, it is said that “to deny the Law of Thelema is a
restriction in oneself, affirming conflict in the Universe as necessary. It is blasphemy agains [sic]


The significance of this perspective will be explored more fully in a following section, but

for now it will do to stress the way in which this, for Crowley, is not an idea to strive and realize

in the world . . . for Crowley, this is how the world already/always works. As we shall soon see,

Butler suggests a version of interpersonal interconnectivity as well, but the difference between

the perspective she posits and that found in Crowley’s work is that for Crowley there is no room

for reading this interconnectedness or radical relationality as a system imposed upon (or

merely limited to) the interpersonal dimension of society; in the Thelemic system this relational

connectivity is imbedded within the very ontology of reality itself.

§2C. Step Three:

The third step involves turning to another source that might seem a bit odd given the

ostensibly Christian ambitions of this project, namely Wiccan communities. And, like any good

pattern, the reason for this is also twofold. On the one hand, Wicca is a much more formally

organized faith-practice than Thelema, which is quite decentralized. Given the larger scale and

various centralized guiding organizational bodies, much more has been produced by and about

Wiccans on ethics.28 Particularly worthwhile for our current endeavors is that Wiccan

communities have had the time, inclination and resources needed to reflect upon the process

the Self, assuming that its Will is not a necessary (and therefore a noble) part of the Whole. In a
word, he who accepts not the Law of Thelema is divided against himself: that is, he is insane.”
Aleister Crowley, The Heart of the Master, Electronic PDF Edition, (London: Celephaïs Press,
2003), 38. Of course, as was mentioned above, there is something like what we might call
‘destiny’ at work in this worldview, but it is no more a conflict with the notion of true free will
than the Catholic view of the doctrines of predestination and providence.
28
I do not mean to imply that Thelema is in any way lesser than Wicca—indeed, Thelema has
been around longer than present-day Wicca. I just mean that, by its very nature, Thelema does
not lend itself to the organizational patterning that Wicca does on the whole, with the
exception (perhaps) of solitary Wiccan practitioners.


of living out their ethical worldview within their own communities—themselves embedded

within the larger society.

But these things would be of little, if any, use to us where it not for the other, more

essential reason why I’ve chosen to engage with Wicca as well as with Crowley’s own Thelemic

context: the central ethical principles of Wicca,29 namely the Wiccan Rede and the law of three,

were formulated (in part) out of dialogue with Crowley’s system. While there is some debate

over the origins of the Rede—“If it harms none, do what you will”30—it is widely agreed upon

by Wiccan commentators that the Rede draws upon Crowley’s Law of Thelema at least in part,

if not in whole.31 This is hugely useful in that it gives us a chance to observe a substantially

sized, albeit still minority, community that has attempted to live out this strange-seeming

principle in real life.

Beyond the correlation between the Law of Thelema and the Wiccan Rede, the other

common loadstone of Wiccan ethics also has a high degree of correlation with Crowley’s wider

worldview. The law of three (or the law of return), which essentially posits that “anything we do

comes back to us in the end, often to a greater degree (such as three-fold).”32 Here, in what is

29
Insofar as one can ascribe central tenets to a faith that, while more centralized than Thelema,
is by no means as structurally rigid or top-down as the vast majority of Christian denominations.
30
Cf., John J. Coughlin, “The Wiccan Rede: A Historical Journey,” Ethics and the Craft: The
History, Evolution, and Practice of Wiccan Ethics, (Cold Springs, NY: Waning Moon, 2015).
eBook.
31
Cf., Coughlin, “A Discourse on Ethics in the Craft,” Ethics and the Craft, eBook. For a more
thorough investigation of the connection between Crowley and Wicca, I suggest Ronald
Hutton’s chapter in Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism, edited by Bogdan and Starr,
“Crowley and Wicca,” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012): 285-306.
32
Coughlin, “The Three-Fold Law,” Ethics and the Craft, eBook. Unlike the Rede, there is less of
a consensus about the centrality of the law of three, but Coughlin still considers the basic
essence of the concept to be a “core belief” of Wicca.


ostensibly “a recasting of the Golden Rule or, at least a karmic version of the Golden Rule,” the

result is the belief that “what one sends out will return three times or three times a strong.”33

The connection between the law of three and the interconnected worldview of Thelema

should be starting to manifest, but it is worth stressing the developmental relationship between

the Wiccan articulation of it and what we find in Crowley’s own work. Aside from the benefit of

being able to see how Wiccan ethicists have engaged with the law of three, there is a degree to

which the Wiccan articulation of ontological interconnectivity is more embedded and

articulated with ethical applicability in mind. Crowley’s system clearly maintains a radically

relational understanding of the universe, but the law of three gives a clearer sense of this

relationality’s impact on ethical actors embedded within a larger context.

3. The Issue

If I am struggling for autonomy, do I not need to be struggling for something else as well, a
conception of myself as invariably in community, impressed upon by others, impressing them
as well, and in ways that are not always clearly delineable, in forms that are not fully
predictable? Judith Butler34

Sex is the sacred song of the soul […] But it is this sacredness which makes some people think
that their personal peculiarities are universal truths. Aleister Crowley35

The next question to address is precisely what the problem Butler brings to light actually

looks like on the ground. In order to answer this, it is perhaps best to choose a specific example

of an ethical foundation which is vulnerable to Butler's critique.

33
Coughlin, “A Discourse on Ethics in the Craft,” Ethics and the Craft, eBook.
34
Butler, Undoing Gender, 21-22.
35
Aleister Crowley, “On Sexual Freedom.” http://www.oto-
hu.org/documents/essay/english/Sexual_Freedom.html


§3A. Case Study: Human Dignity

One such example is the concept of human dignity. A popular choice among Christians

for obvious reasons, the notion of intrinsic human dignity would seem to offer much to any

ethic. However, Butler would point out, any system that is based on an affirmation of human

dignity in fact draws upon two different ideas: the dignified and the undignified.

Here, the problem is not so much that the intent is always to utilize the latter notion to

exclude any given group of people so much as it is that a dignity-based ethic cannot avoid

positing both the positive and the negative category. In other words, dignity is a foundation

that necessarily opens the door to an excluded other. Though you might say that the underlying

impetus present in such attempts can be maintained so long as the capacity to cut both ways

can be avoided.

The situation is not entirely unlike what often happens when a new board game is first

introduced to players; more often than not there are subtle flaws in either the rules or the

instructions which make problematic and unintended loopholes open up as the players put the

game through its paces. In pointing out the issues, the players aren't saying that the game

needs to be scrapped, just that the rules and instructions need to be fixed so that the loopholes

cannot occur.

If we take for granted that ethicists who center their ethical systems around human

dignity are in fact trying to set it up so that everyone's inclusion in the category 'human being' is

safeguarded, then the issue is not that they've located the criterion for admission into the

category within the individual; instead, the shortcoming lies in the nature of that criterion. For

all that we would like to think that everyone’s ‘dignity’ is self-evident, the fact that many people


in our society truly believe that homosexuality is intrinsically undignified is a testament to the

unreality of that optimistic hope. The fact of the matter is, in any system which inherently

opens the door to both a positive and negative application of the foundational criterion there

will be those who will—whether intentionally or unintentionally—apply the negative side of

things to whatever group they disapprove of from the start.36

Central to the issue with ‘dignity’ is that it both possesses a positive and negative

connotation and is clearly determined more so by societal conventions than by any particular

individual under consideration. Sticking with the example of homosexuality, the Catholic

Magisterium—which has put a massive amount of emphasis on the centrality of human

dignity—seems to have no trouble excluding the LGBTQ+ community from the category of fully

realized ‘dignified’ human beings.37 And, what’s more, according to the Magisterium’s

understanding of human dignity, this is permissible; the notion of dignity they use contains

within it something radically external to the people to which it is applied.

Butler makes clear the implication of this sort of externality when she recognizes that

“there are norms of recognition by which the ‘human’ is constituted, and these norms encode

36
It is important to stress that the issue here is preemptive exclusion from the sphere of
acceptable qualification for ‘human being’. Given that a useable ethics does include the ability
to push back against certain actions or behaviors—i.e. rape and (unsolicited) enslavement—the
ability to critique a person or group is necessary. However, when someone excludes a person or
group by applying a negative evaluation a priori, what they are doing is not so much criticizing a
given behavior/quality within the ethical system so much as they are precluding any possible
conversation or engagement with the individuals in question. In essence, such a preemptive
judgment does not even give space to ask whether or not there is reason to oppose a given
group.
37
Cf., the section on Magisterial teaching on homosexual acts and relationships in Todd A.
Salzman and Michael G. Lawler’s The Sexual Person: Toward a Renewed Catholic Anthropology,
(Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2008): 226-230.


operations of power,” and the further fact that “the contest over the future of the ‘human’ will

be a contest over the power that works in and through such norms.”38 Of course, as previously

mentioned, there will always be a side of ethics which is meant to be able to critique certain

practices and behaviors; this is the power Butler speaks of. The question we have to confront

when considering systems such as those embraced by the Magisterium is whether or not there

is an imbalance between the proper capacity for the ethical system to critique and the

tendency to preemptively impose censures on what might in fact qualify as fully ‘human’ in the

first place.

§3B. Beginnings of a Solution: True Will

As was mentioned before, the reason why Crowley was selected as a dialogue partner

was in part because of the unique nature of his Law of Thelema. It is now time to draw out

more of what is meant by this Law and the True Will that underlies it. We have already seen

that Crowley does not wish to say ‘do whatever you want’, and the way that True Will operates

on an individual level and on what might be called a cosmic scale has been hinted at. Given that

every single man and woman is linked directly into the grand scheme of things by way of their

True Will—all souls are “identical in essence, individual in expression”39—while still maintaining

a significant degree of inherent wholeness within themselves, Crowley’s system seems . . . at

least to me . . . to evidence a balance that was found lacking in our example of a dignity-

centered perspective. This balance is noted upon in Crowley’s Magick in Theory and Practice,

38
Butler, Undoing Gender, 13.
39
Aleister Crowley, “On Sexual Freedom.” The shared identity in essence here refers to the fact
that everyone is united within the order of the Universe; the individual dimension affirmed
here is meant to point toward the irreducible uniqueness and unrepeatability of every man and
woman.


when he remarks that while it is true that “every individual is essentially sufficient to himself,” it

is also the case that “he is unsatisfactory to himself until he has established himself in his right

relations with the Universe.”40

He goes on to say that “I trust that they will assert themselves as individually

absolute.”41 Crowley insists that every man and woman has the “right to assert themselves”

insofar as “their nature fits them,”42 even going so far as to say that everyone “has a right to

fulfil his own will without being afraid that it may interfere with that of others; for if he is in his

proper place, it is the fault of others if they interfere with him.”43 Yet at the same time, this is

the duty of every single person “not only to themselves but to others, a duty founded upon

universal necessity.”44 This effectively holds tight the tension of individual autonomy and

collective unity. In this way, Crowley articulates an understanding of ‘Do what thou wilt’ that

falls somewhere between Augustine’s ‘love God and do what you will’ and Nietzsche’s

indomitable Will to Power.

Picking up the example of homosexuality touched upon in the above section might help

illuminate the way in which this tension was put to productive use in Crowley’s system. In a

40
Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice, xix. I retain his gendered pronouns in this quote only
due to the fact that this merely represents the stylistic choices that guided writers working in
his era. Clearly, as can be seen from the passage already cited from The Book of the Law,
Crowley is in truth including women in his considerations. (Cf., fn26 above) Further evidence of
this can be found in the introduction to Magick in Theory and Practice, where the first
statement is “This book is for ALL: for every man, woman, and child.” (xi, formatting in original.)
41
Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice, xxi.
42
Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice, xxi. And here I must caution against reading the use
of ‘nature’ in this statement in the rather limiting top-down way that the term is often used in
contemporary discussions of ethics. For Crowley, there is no necessary limit to an individual’s
uniqueness in regards to their ‘nature’.
43
Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice, xx.
44
Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice, xxi. Emphasis mine.


short piece titled “On Sexual Freedom,” Crowley variously referred to sex and individual

sexuality as “the sacred song of the soul,” the “sanctuary of the Self” and even the “supreme

sacrament.”45 This sacrament “is every man's, inalienably, uniquely his; let no man dare

approach another's altar!” Harsh condemnation is heaped upon anyone who would dare to

judge the practices of another: “Who criticizes sex, condoning this, condemning that, not only

usurps for himself the Universe, and proclaims his prejudices omnivalent, but abdicates his own

autonomy;” further, anyone attempting to “censure or constrain” the sexual character of

another “sets himself up against inexorable Necessity, denying the Order of Existence, and

resisting the rights of Reality.”46

This language of the ‘rights of Reality’ points toward the idea that everyone’s True Will

“is necessary” and thus part of “Destiny.” But of course this does not mean that a rapist is free

to pursue a path of abuse! Recall, for Crowley anyone who interferes with someone’s proper

living-out of their True Will is fundamentally at fault and guilty of having failed to grasp and

follow their True Will; therefor any one attempting (or succeeding) to force themselves sexually

upon another person is necessarily in the wrong. Even though every person is “absolute and

independent,” every single soul is still “implicitly involved in its consubstantial co-existence”

with all other souls. Which is why Crowley can end his essay on sexual freedom saying that “the

underlying principle in all is to establish understanding of the nature of sex [and sexuality], to

make all its forms familiar, and all equally proper to the person who prefers them.”47

45
Crowley “was certainly no stranger to the notion of homosexuality,” and had a number of
sexual relationships with men throughout the course of his life. Cf., Kaczynski, Perdurabo, 40-1.
46
Again, the gendered pronouns as found in the original text are herein kept, though we must
remember that this was equally applicable and applied to women.
47
Crowley, “On Sexual Freedom.”


§3C. Further Steps Towards a Solution: Radical Relationality

This tension between extreme individuality and radical relationality—with a subtle

emphasis on the latter—is not something that only appears in Crowley’s oeuvre; Butler is quite

explicit in her desire for something very similar. In a discussion on grief Butler remarks that,

while many see grief as privatizing, she believes “it exposes the constitutive sociality of the self,

a basis for thinking a political community of a complex order.”48 More explicit still, she goes on

to observe that

grief displays the way in which we are in the thrall of our relations with others that we
cannot always recount or explain, that often interrupts the self-conscious account of
ourselves we might try to provide in ways that challenge the very notion of ourselves as
autonomous and in control.49

This relational dimension of experience that grief so blatantly lays bare makes it easy to see

how our lives exist within an inescapable web of interdependence, relationality and

vulnerability. If grief holds within it “the possibility of apprehending the fundamental sociality

of embodied life,” then violence is “a way in which the human vulnerability to other humans is

exposed in its most terrifying way.”50

The positive implication of this relationality is that, since “our lives are dependent on

others,” we have a grounding upon which to base claims which strive for non-violent solutions

to conflicts when they arise.51 However, there is a danger involved with this radical relationality

as well. In a different essay, Butler examines the processes involved with claims of non-violence

and therein admits that “precariousness [of life] is not the effect of a certain strategy, but the

48
Butler, Undoing Gender, 19.
49
Butler, Undoing Gender, 19.
50
Butler, Undoing Gender, 22.
51
Butler, Undoing Gender, 22.


generalized condition for any strategy whatsoever.”52 The “social conditions of my existence

are never fully willed by me,” and furthermore “there is no agency apart from such conditions

and their unwilled effects.”53 This means that while a thorough sense of social relationality

would allow for claims of non-violence to be made—at one point Butler remarks that any

“desire to commit violence is thus always attended by the anxiety of having violence returned,

since all the potential actors in the scene are equally vulnerable”54—it also makes it much more

difficult to be sure that you aren’t doing damage. Butler brings up some of the questions that

have to be dealt with in an interconnected world:

am I responsible only to myself? Are there others for whom I am responsible? And how
do I, in general, determine the scope of my responsibility? Am I responsible for all
others, or only to some, and on what basis would I draw that line?55

Of course to some extent these questions need to be dealt with in any ethical system, but they

become much more acute when constructing a system that takes radical relationality—even in

the limited sense Butler implies—as a given.

On account of the fact that every “‘I’ needs the other in order to survive, that the ‘I’ is

invariably relational, that it comes into being not only through a sustaining, but through the

formation of a capacity to sustain an address to another,”56 there is in Butler’s work the basis

for the sort of relationality that we found in Crowley’s own articulation of his ethical system.

Even if she does not ground the connectivity as deeply (or ontologically) as Crowley does, she

52
Judith Butler, “The Claim of Non-Violence,” Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?, (New
York: Verso, 2009), 165-184, here 181.
53
Butler, “The Claim of Non-Violence,” 171.
54
Butler, “The Claim of Non-Violence,” 181.
55
Judith Butler, “Survivability, Vulnerability, Affect,” Frames of War, 35.
56
Butler, “The Claim of Non-Violence,” 176.


clearly recognizes how important it is to “accept the insight that our very survival depends […]

on recognizing how we are bound up with others.”57 Focused as she is upon the body, her

emphasis is on how “survival depends less on the established boundary to the self than on the

constitutive sociality of the body,” since “the body, considered as social in both its surface and

depth, is the condition of survival.”58 Fundamentally, Butler is grappling with the consequences

of holding to a worldview in which no absolute division lines can be drawn between the self and

the other, between ‘I’ and ‘you’, between ‘us’ and ‘them’.

But for all that Butler was able to acknowledge the relational nature of the self as a

social being, she does not integrate the idea as thoroughly into the experience of reality as

Crowley—or Wicca—did. Admittedly, the perspective shift that Butler is arguing for is not

nearly as radical as that pursued by Crowley. In her own words, “what one is pressing for,

calling for, is not a sudden break with the entirety of a past in the name of a radically new

future,” but rather “a series of significant shifts.”59 And perhaps there’s something to be said

for taking it slowly; the reaction to Crowley’s work is in many ways a testimony to what can

happen when you press too far forward in trying to shift the way the world sees itself.60

And yet . . . despite the risk inherent in raising the stakes by pushing for an ontologically

grounded interconnected reality, I would suggest—with all the humility of a grad student who

probably has little to no clue what Butler is actually trying to say—that this is in fact where

Butler’s reasoning is headed. And if you’re thinking that it would perhaps take a dash of

57
Butler, “Survivability, Vulnerability, Affect,” 52.
58
Butler, “Survivability, Vulnerability, Affect,” 54.
59
Butler, “The Claim of Non-Violence,” 169.
60
It has only been in the past decade or so that Crowley has begun to be considered a serious
source for scholarly engagement.


Crowley and a springing of Wiccan ethics to make my case, then you’re in luck, because that’s

exactly where we’re headed to next!

4. The Next Step

The critical promise of fantasy, when and where it exists, is to challenge the contingent limits of
what will and will not be called reality. Fantasy is what allows us to imagine ourselves and
others otherwise; it establishes the possible in excess of the real; it points elsewhere, and when
it is embodied, it brings the elsewhere home. Judith Butler61

Magical Theory accepts the absolute reality of all things in the most objective sense. But all
perceptions are neither the observer nor the observed; they are representations of the relation
between them. Aleister Crowley62

The question that is no doubt on everyone’s mind at this point is Where is this going?

Well, let me tell you. I said way back when that I am more comfortable with ethics as a means

of basically bamboozling people into being somewhat better than they would otherwise be—

or, for those optimists in the audience, facilitating people’s inner goodness. With that being

said, and if we agree with Butler that there are significant benefits from seeing our world (and

our selves) as far more relational than we might otherwise think, then there are a whole host of

reasons for pursuing the sort of ethical project that Crowley, Thelemites and Wiccan

communities have attempted to live out. What’s more, I’m not even sure we need to prove that

said interconnectedness is in fact the ontological nature of reality as we know it. All we have to

do is give people a system in which they act as if it were true!

This is the genius of the Wiccan law of three, which is itself in practice identical in

sensibilities (if not in wording) to Crowley’s worldview. Despite the sincerity with which the

61
Butler, Undoing Gender, 29.
62
Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice, 101n1.


ideal is upheld by countless practitioners of the Craft, very few of the sources which I read

actually had an articulated ontology through which the how of the law of three was said to

occur. The one exception that I came across was a book by a practitioner who was articulating a

Wiccan ‘thealogy’ that made use of the process philosophy of Alfred Whitehead.63

Now, I won’t say that other Wiccan writers are not interested in producing or

articulating ontologies within which to ground their faith; rather, I simply mean to say that of all

the Wiccan ethics that I have turned up, very little time is taken explaining how the law of

return works. York equates it with a rearticulation of the Golden Rule with a karmic spin, and

Coughlin also points to the Golden Rule as explanation enough before shifting into what the law

of three means.64 The detailed articulation of a Wiccan value system in Ellen Friedman’s book—

which was intended as a system for a uniquely Wiccan ethic to be used by Wiccan clergy—

mentioned the dimension of Wiccan thought within which the law of return falls into (magic)

only insofar as to state that it was a “Wiccan belief.”65 Even the profusely prolific writings of

Crowley never exactly offer up a precise explanation of the mechanics underlying the

ontological interconnectivity implied by his theory of True Will.66

63
Constance Wise, Hidden Circles in the Web: Feminist Wicca, Occult Knowledge, and Process
Thought, (New York: AltaMira Press, 2008).
64
Michael York, Pagan Ethics: Paganism as a World Religion, (Amsterdam: Springer, 2016), 398;
Coughlin, “A Discourse on Ethics in the Craft,” Ethics and the Craft.
65
Ellen C. Friedman, As Above So Below: A System of Value-Based Ethics for Wiccan Clergy,
(Seattle: City University, 2001), eBook.
66
At least not in the way Whitehead could be said to have striven to proffer. Not, of course, to
say that he needed to do so! Just as Newton did not need to establish a quantum theory of
gravity to revolutionize our understanding of the stars in the sky, Crowley did not need to
cobble together the sort of catch-all system that Whitehead attempted to create in order to put
forth the dual instructions “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” and “Every man
and woman is a star”—which could really be seen as a Newtonian-level paradigm
shift/revolution in our understanding of both metaphysics and ethics.


My point is that for the most part the communities which have embodied the dual

combination of a self-determined, True Will-esk directive and an understanding of the universe

in which there are built-in safeguards against conflict are quite content to live with a bit of

fallibilism in the face of things beyond their ability to completely explain. And the reason that

this matters is that all we need in order to begin the process of disembedding this ethical

system and applying it to a larger (maybe even Christian!) context is the right kind of lure to

encourage people to start to see the world in an increasingly interconnected way.

5. An Ethicks of Will

To intervene in the name of transformation means precisely to disrupt what has become
settled knowledge and knowable reality, and to use, as it were, one’s unreality to make an
otherwise impossible or illegible claim. Judith Butler67

I cannot bear to do any unkind action, however wise, necessary, and all the rest of it. I do it, but
"it hurts me more than it hurts you" is actually true for me. Aleister Crowley68

There is no doubt in my mind that, were we to try and teach people “Do what thou wilt

shall be the whole of the Law,” things would go horribly, horribly wrong. (Look how wrong

things go already!) When I settled on the phrase “ethicks of will”, it was never—and will never

be—my intention to find a way to pass on that particular Thelemic principle to the broader

populace. At least, not at first. Because without the right worldview to imbed the Law of

Thelema, or the Wiccan Rede, it would quickly turn into a nightmare worthy of a Quentin

Tarantino film (but without all his restraint).

67
Butler, Undoing Gender, 27.
68
Crowley, “Thelemic Morality,” 310.


But what if we started with the worldview? What if we were able to encourage people

to see the world, society and their place within it as something more relational than material,

more unified than divided? We have seen what things can be thought and done by those to

whom such worldviews seem sensible. They are able to raise up the individual to heights only

dreamed of by the Magisterium and its ethicists, while staving off the stark brutality that is

risked by the Nietzschean march towards the Ubermensch.69

Aleister Crowley founded organizations and inspired generations of thinkers for whom

conflict—true, devastating conflict—is, if not wholly absent, at least taken to be inherently

nonsensical. Wiccans have crafted communities that have carried out acts of charity and

compassion on levels ranging from the local to the cosmic. Judith Butler has revolutionized how

we understand categories such as gender and sexuality, paving the way for many to a truly

livable life. What might we accomplish if we saw the world through their eyes?

What if I told you we’ve already begun to do just that? Because I believe we have.

We see evidence of this first in the people and groups I just listed. Aleister Crowley was,

for all of his prolific writing, just one person. But the US Grand Lodge of the OTO had 1,508

69
Katherine Kurtz, a Ph.D. candidate and friend of mine from the Philosophy Department, was
kind enough to try and clarify Nietzsche’s use of the Ubermensch for me. What I took away
from our discussion was this: the idea behind the Ubermensch was that they would rise to the
pinnacle of pinnacles through their will to power so as to reshape the world for the better. (Of
course, whether or not Katherine would put it this way is an entirely different matter!) Even
given this much more charitable understanding of the Ubermensch, there is still a risk
involved—at least in terms of an ethical system that is to keep in mind Butler’s worries.
Namely, such a process of societal transformation would be far too easily biased by the
necessarily limited perspective of the small number of those who function as/at the level of the
Ubermensch. Just consider the Catholic Church, within which the Pope might be said to be a
sort of Ubermensch (if we’re willing to stretch the meaning a bit) . . . clearly such a situation
does not always lead to an ethical system which avoids the problem of the excluded other (as, I
would suspect, is no doubt clear to the Catholic LGBTQ+ community).


members as of 2014—and it’s a secret society! According to the 2001 ARIS study, there are an

estimated 750,000 people who identify as Wiccan. Judith Butler has become a common (if not

always smiled upon) name in academics.70 This would not be possible were people not willing

to consider a radically relational worldview.

Stepping beyond the insular communities that we have thus far investigated, there are

still numerous indications that the essence of the worldview espoused by Butler, Crowley and

Wicca is beginning to catch on. There has been a marked growth of interest in what some

people have begun calling ‘deep ecology,’ wherein the interconnectedness of the

environment—and we, the people dwelling amidst it—is becoming more and more important.71

Philosophical systems which stress radical relationality have begun to seep down from the Ivory

Tower and into the culture at large. Process philosophy, begun by Whitehead back in 1929, has

been booming of late, as is most clearly evidenced by the online popularization platform run by

my old professor Dr. Jay McDaniel (www.jesusjazzbuddhism.com). Teilhard de Chardin’s

onetime shunned cosmologically updated conception of reality has not only been making a

comeback (i.e.: our own Sr. Ilia Delio) but has also been trickling into popular culture.72 And

these are just two of the more blatant examples.

On a more every-day level, we need look no further than social media to see how our

society has (at least in some ways) begun to familiarize itself with a social reality far more

70
Though, given the nature of the inhabitants of the Ivory Tower, I have to admit that this is not
as salient for the present point as the preceding two facts.
71
Cf., Graham Harvey, Listening People, Speaking Earth, (Kent Town, South Australia: Wakefield
Press, 1997); Bron Taylor, Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future,
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).
72
The TV show Touch, which ran for two seasons (2012-2013), is one such example wherein
Teilhard’s notions are explicitly enlisted in constructing the fundamental premises of the show.


interconnected than ever before with internet access making it easier than ever to feel for the

‘other’, even half a world away. And don’t even get me started on the leaps and bounds being

made in the field of cybermagic. And no, I am not kidding.73

All of these are, in my mind, evidence that the notions of radical relationality and

interconnectedness are becoming less and less foreign to our society. Furthermore, I fully

suspect that these subtle sorts of shifts towards that Butlerian/Crowleyian worldview are only

going to continue to crop up, growing in number, as time moves on. And who is to say that

academics such as ourselves cannot play some small role in speeding this along? Butler told us

already that when we “imagine ourselves and others otherwise; it establishes the possible in

excess of the real; it points elsewhere.”74 Perhaps we can help it point forward.

Of course, we are not at this particular ‘elsewhere’ just yet. “We continue to live in a

world in which one can risk serious disenfranchisement and physical violence for the pleasure

one seeks, the fantasy one embodies, the gender one performs.”75 And we might not find our

way into that better world any time soon. But I’d like to think that eventually we (or at least

those whom come after us) will . . . and when they do, they’ll be ready for something like the

Law of Thelema, or the Wiccan Rede. Here, Butler tells us what this might be like:

We are talking about a cultural life of fantasy that not only organizes the material
conditions of life, but which also produces sustaining bonds of community where
recognition becomes possible, and which works as well to ward off violence, racism,
homophobia, and transphobia.76


73
Cf., Lynne Hume and Nevill Drury, “Cybermagic,” The Varieties of Magical Experience:
Indigenous, Medieval, and Modern Magic, (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2013): 224-238; Margaret
Wertheim, The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace, (New York: Norton: 1999).
74
Butler, Undoing Gender, 29.
75
Butler, Undoing Gender, 214.
76
Butler, Undoing Gender, 216.


Don’t we owe it to them to hold onto tools such as those forged by Crowley, or Wiccan

communities, until the time has come where they will be useful for us all? Is it not our

responsibility as scholars and ethicists—even those of us none too well suited for the task—to

prepare the ethicks of tomorrow as well as produce the ethics for today?

I for one suspect so.



You may laugh,

You imagine it’s so simple as that.

from “N( ) Exit”
by Katherine Kurtz