>On Tue, 8 Apr 1997, Mark Grant wrote:
>
>> > Do you know of a modern, scientific, rational form of mysticism?
>>
>> Crowley's Thelema is the closest that I know of, though the Chaos
>> Magickians might qualify. Of course Crowley never did get the hang of
>> ego-loss himself, much to his chagrin.
>
>Crowly had some good ideas:
>
>We place no reliance
>on virgin nor pidegon:
>our method is science,
>our aim is religion.
>
>(almost *our* goal) but in the end Thelema (and much of chaos magick)
>unfortunately turned into occultism instead of science. There are still a
>lot of interesting stuff to work on where they left off (if I ever get the
>time, I plan to study more psychology and write a thesis on my model of
>how ceremonial magick works psychologically).
>
Well spotted Anders! I think there are indeed many points of contact
between Thelema and Extropianism.
BTW, there are many people who claim to represent Thelema nowadays. For
anybody who is interested, IMO the authentic lineage which sticks to the
authentic 'method of science, aim of religion', is:-
Crowley
- Karl Germer
- Marcelo Motta
- William R Barden
This lineage has a website for anybody who would like to make contact
with Thelema.
http://www.ozemail.com.au./~realoto/seals.html
Guru George