Paul Joseph Rovelli

Thelemic communities have been attempted many times before our present opus. Unfortunately there are no magickal records extant for us to study and exploit. And creating a community is an enormous task to dream about. Actually implementing those designs broadens your perspective and generates pure excitement. It's quite fantastic to watch the organic chaos start to take shape. With so much to consider, there's lifestyle, economics, spiritual focus, interpersonal communication (politics), and the plain hard work in doing things like this magazine and other productive works.

So many that enter into the art of Magick are Gnostic at heart, self-reliant, and extremely individualistic. The distaste for organized religion and indeed, organization in general (which makes an attempt at community extremely difficult) is a theme that colors the choices they make. So here we are organizing a bunch of anarchists! These are (or should be) anarchists with a libertarian spirit that understands the need for some form of social conformity. The search is in finding something to collectively rally around.

Of course in our case, there is Liber Legis and the Thelemic ideals that we all collectively aspire to. But even then, whose Thelema? HOOR, the Caliphate or any of the other OTOs and fringe Thelemic organizations. And with one OTO working the legal system so that they can be the only dispenser of Thelemic materials, it all seems so difficult for the rest of us to promulgate these wonderful tenets that we admire. Can we at least all fall under the Thelemic banner and start to learn to respect each other for that and that alone? After all, there are so many whom are 'not of us'; so many who would rally against human freedom and dignity.

The real enemy is that Christist egregore and those self-righteous pomposites that seek to bring fear and hatred into our hearts. We are soldiers, at least that is the Thelemic leitmotive. And to unite against this very real enemy is our only true hope in defeating it. I am reminded of a friend in college whom had this theory that the reason why the sixties failed was delineated in a Buffalo Springfield song where every faction descried 'hooray for our [particular] side' as they jeered their common enemy. And so each individualist group today, while sharing their discontent with the status quo and their love for Liber AL, are also hoping they'd be the single group that would elevate the consciousness of humanity. It's still the same old 'my pop's bigger than your pop'.

Why not recognize ourselves as Gnostics seeking an inner path to certain individualistic truths. And if your rituals take a different shape than mine, there is beauty in that it shows the depth and breadth of the canon that we espouse. Let's share our differences that we might learn from each other. And let's build a community of active cooperation with each other that we may be strong in the face of our enemies. And let's ask -- How may we serve the greater good? And what of other Gnostic lineages that don't overtly acknowledge the Book of the Law? These may also be compatriots...let's open up a dialogue in a positive spirit as we strive to create a future that's beyond even our present imaginings.