I don't see "Do What Thou Wilt" as having anything to do with ethics or self-justication for a course of action at all. I see it as looking for or discovering a deeper sense of purpose in one's life and then acting from this position. That thing that you feel like you were born to do - or, if you weren't born with an imperative like this, the trajectory that your life history seems to be leading you towards. Wonderland's activity around her farming project seems to have just sprung to mind. 

"Do what keeps thou from wilting." Ivan Stang of the Church of the SubGenius.

There's something in Crowley's gigantic corpus (I totally don't have all the names of the Libri memorized) where he distinguishes "Do as thou wilt" from "Do what you want" -- stressing that wilt refers to a conformity with one's True Will.

The Libri are more interesting to read when you interpret all iterations of will and wilt in that light, or at least think about whether he might mean them that way.

To me, this implies that what you want to do -- or what you think you want to do -- and what you are will-ing to do might be two different things. Pure will is pure because it refers to the flowing, almost effortless, natural course of somebody's ... destiny? -- as separated from (the snags of) lust of result. People can and do move contrary to the flow of their True Wills even when they are doing things they feel fulfill certain desires.

I don't happen to find the True Will idea to be useful in my own practice, but I'm pretty sure that's the gist of it from a Thelemic point of view.

The Wiccan version of it has never seemed to carry the True Will connotation though. Actually, in the wiccan/neopagan circles I used to run in, the emphasis always seemed to be more on the "An it harm none" bit - meaning that you had to think through every possible implication of every possible action and avoid anything that might influence anyone's life in a way that might be construed as negative. The "do as you will" part was sort of an afterthought. "As long as it won't hurt anyone, do whatever you like."

There do seem to be a lot of traditions where being insufficiently precise/not thinking hard enough about your magic's implications is seen as dangerous. (Enclosing what's evoked in Triangles of Art; the Sorcerer's Apprentice story; lots of genie/wishes stories.) I never thought Wicca was one of them -- I guess because, as far as I knew, Wiccan magic typically doesn't involve consultations of possibly malicious entities? Or is it only an ethics thing -- that it's seen as immoral to work magic that affects other people, if they haven't consented to it?

Ah karma lawyering. I think it's an offshoot of RPGs where "rules lawyers" meet neo-paganism.

Quill's got the basics of the Thelemic view. There are other levels, referring to the "Love is the Law, Love under Will" and "Every Man and Woman is a Star" lines. Basically, follow your Will, in all other things, act from Love. And, if every person (correctly) followed their Will, there would be no conflict, as everyone's Will is (in theory) naturally in harmony with everyone else's Will.

Sekhmet, I think the Wiccans you were hanging with were over-thinking it. The Wiccan Rede isn't an iron rule to be applied to all situations, it's more a flowery, faux-archaic way of saying, "Don't be a dick." Only the most literal-minded would take it to mean that all possible negative outcomes must be anticipated and accounted for with every decision.

Doreen Valiente wrote the couplet, "Eight words the Wiccan Rede fulfill, An it harm none do what ye will," after Gardner told her that his vision of Wiccan ethics was the same as that of the fictional King Pausol. This was a reference to a novel, The Adventures of King Pausole, in which the king says "Do what you like, as long as you harm no one."

Valiente's couplet predates the long Rede, which is a poem of 22 rhyming couplets. Each couplet is a snippet of advice on how to be a witch, most of them having to do with when and how to work in a circle. Only the last five are general ethical advice, and the Valiente couplet is the last of these, changing it's meaning slightly to "And if none of the above applies, don't be a dick."

I suppose I should volunteer my own understanding at this point.

St. Augustine was talking about mysticism - if I Love God, if I have, as a mystic, worked to unite myself with God as much as is humanly possible, then my will must match God's Will. God's Will is perfect, and loving God is how I unite with Him, so if I Love God and then follow my Will as it is united with God's Will, then I'm set. (Step 1: Love God. Step 2: ??? Step 3: Prophet!)

It IS about knowing what to do, but not per se in an ethical sense - at least not the way we think of ethics today. Augustine wrestled with his sexuality a lot, though, and his sense of purity or total lack thereof. IIRC Augustine is where we get the concept of "Original Sin".

My understanding of Crowley largely comes from talking to people like UncleDark, so I have nothing to add there that he didn't already say. It seems to amount to "Know Thyself and then get to work."

My understanding of the Wiccan Rede is more like "If it harms nothing, then it's definitely fine. If it harms something, look for the consequences in every aspect of life, and take some fuckin' responsibility for it. If you fail to take responsibility for your results, it'll bite you in the ass on many levels, physically, emotionally, reputationally, etc. So PAY ATTENTION."

-E-

Crowley's understanding is pretty much Augustine's, except that Crowley's concept of God is very different and not external.

It's a pretty big difference!

-E-

Well, yes, and a central point of Thelemic theology. First was the age of the Mother Goddess, then the age of the Father God, and the reception of Liber AL vel Legis marked the begining of the age of the Crowned and Conquering Child. Or, the childhood of humanity, raised by the nurturing Earth; the stormy adolescence of humanity, disciplined by the Stern Father; and the maturity of humanity under its own direction.

Or the transition from the Age of Aries to the Age of Pieces to the Age of Aquarius. Funny how each religion's New Age is the one where humanity, or at least those who embrace the new faith, comes into its maturity and power. Nobody is ever the prophet and herald of the Spotty and Awkward Age of Humanity.

UncleDark said: Nobody is ever the prophet and herald of the Spotty and Awkward Age of Humanity.

*laugh*

What, that's not Discordianism?

-E-

I sit corrected.

Augustine ("Love God, and do as you please") probably was riffing on Matthew 22:36-38:

"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”  Jesus replied: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment."

Which in turn is a riff on Deuteronomy 6:4-5:

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your might.

From Augustine to Crowley, it also got channelled through Rabelais and his utopian novel Gargantua and Pantagruel, in which he wrote of an Abbey of Thélème where:

All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their beds when they thought good; they did eat, drink, labour, sleep, when they had a mind to it and were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor to do any other thing; for so had Gargantua established it. In all their rule and strictest tie of their order there was but this one clause to be observed,

Do What Thou Wilt;

because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after things forbidden and to desire what is denied us.

And, as people above have noted, Crowley often used the phrase to essentially mean "fulfill your destiny."  (Or, to get modern and jargony, "Achieve self-actualization.") 

And everyone else should do the same: "Every man and woman is a star."

Might as well mention what I think was another influence on Crowley and "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" -- Sir Richard Francis Burton's long fake-Sufi poem, The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi.

Which had the following lines:

Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws.

I think it was a major (conscious or unconscious) inspiration for The Book of the Law.  But I don't think I've ever seen a Crowley biographer or scholar discuss it.

(And this is why I adore Evan.)

Yes, I'm sure Augustine was at least starting from the scriptures you cite, but it seems to me that the Most Important Commandment doesn't get into the idea that from loving God, you then do as you see fit because loving God == becoming one with God == God's will merging with your own == you doing what is right automatically without instruction.

At least not overtly. That can be construed, theologically, as the point behind saying that, as the MOST important of the laws, it renders the other laws insignificant not only in scale, but in purpose. That is, you don't even need those other laws within the situations where they apply, because loving God renders them redundant to your existing wisdom.

-E-

I think, once you've accepted any of the above variations on "Do... wilt..." you're accepting, too, the autonomous freewill of others (and perhaps how little, or how greatly, that matters), so if you're making the commandment, or passing it along, how do you get to - and any point - go, "You've got it wrong"? Reminds me of James Joyce insisting over and over again that Finnegans Wake was such a magic that it was impossible not to glean information from, that it had to be understood by every reader in their way, and then, eventually, finds at least one man expounding on it that he felt was so bassackwards in approach he, Joyce, had to declare his understanding incorrect. Outside of hypocrisy, once you've pulled on "as thou wilt" you've got to let those thous do their own wilting, and willing, and wanting. "Every man and woman is a star," as Evan quoted.

T Hedge Coke said: Come to think, "if it harms nothing," as mentioned above, doesn't really work at any length or breadth of action, does it?

That's why I tend to go with "Minimize Harm" instead, personally. There are similarly impossible standards in Buddhism, where I'm told the point is not to achieve them, but to realize that because they are impossible ideals, you are simultaneously never to rest on your laurels in asserting that you HAVE achieved them, but also you must not beat yourself, or anyone else up over not having achieved them yet.

Personally, I tend not to even try to accomplish the impossible, so that doesn't work for me, but it does have a certain grace to it, I admit.

-E-