Mystical Ethics

Gabriel
Gabriel
Sep 5, 2018 · 3 min read

For over two years now, I’ve been searching for some kind of moral code that was based in the western mystic tradition.

Most people I asked pointed me either to Christianity or virtue ethics. The problem with these is that latter isn’t supported by the premises of mysticism and the former by its results.

For instance, that are many successful mystics who are also LGBT, which is against Christian law. Also, it is said that initiation through the degrees causes virtuousness, especially the elemental ones, not the other way around. Therefore, acting with virtue in this case wouldn’t be a matter of ethics as much as beating your heart isn’t moral or immoral, since it is involuntary.

What is interesting is that I’d just left Thelema when I began that research and I’ve just realized that it potentially had the answer all along, or, at least, pointed to it.

It is a verifiable fact that, despite what the media says, the world is getting increasingly better. There are now more people than ever before that have access to medical treatment, to electricity, that can read, etc. Many diseases that killed in the past now are treatable and even curable. Liberty is ever more present and the relative amount of behavior that goes against human dignity in the world is decreasing rapidly, which is not to say that it will vanish or cease from being a problem in the near future.

A central theme in the Western Mystical Tradition is the reformation not only of the practitioner’s soul, but also of the entire world. In this sense, it is divorced from religions as Christianity and Hinduism that interpret the future as ever more ignorant and infernal.

If we are to base a moral code in the premises of the Western Mystical Tradition and we can observe that the reformation of the world is indeed happening, than it is moral to be “future-affirming” and optimistic about the changes that are occurring everyday.

Moreover, it is also safe to assume that, since the world is being reformed, then most of what we encounter in the world must be more benign now than it was (or would be) in the past, which is not to say that it isn’t still harmful. For instance, premarital sex used to be restricted in the past because of venereal diseases and pregnancy, but now there are protections against those, so, be it a sin or not, nowadays it is less harmful than before.

The problem with celebrating life and the future is that this behavior is prone to hedonism. That is where Thelema becomes useful. In its holy book, Liber L, it proposes that the correct way of being life-affirming is through the sanctification of daily life. Food, clothing, sex and everything else must be done “unto the gods”. The world must be regarded as a divine present, and the practitioner must act and regard others with nobility and majesty.

Although many thelemites don’t usually follow this law properly, and are more correctly understood as “crowleyites” than thelemites proper, being prone to the same excesses that he was, it is a great principle still, and, I believe, in accordance with the Western Mystical Tradition.

I need to divine this and study more before I can be sure about it. But I think it is at least partially correct.

Mysticism and Magic

A blog about the Western Esoteric Tradition

    Written by

    Gabriel

    A blog about the Western Esoteric Tradition

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