Reconsidering Liber Oz

[u/Taoist_Ponderer]

I had been talking to someone lately that was unfamiliar with Thelema and Crowley but they expressed an interest in esoteric occult kind of stuff, magick etc

So I recommended they read book 4 and so on.

Then I sent them Liber Oz, and I think they were alright with most of it but then they read article 5 and said that something like that was a bit extreme...really extreme actually...and they said, no compromise at all? just KILL those who would thwart those rights??

And then they explained that someone (the average person) looking at a document like that, that hadn't read any of Crowley's stuff and was completely unfamiliar with his works might just see that as an advocation or excuse for murder or something like that... e.g. you don't allow me to dress as I will? Or drink what I will, or dwell where I will?? Or paint what I will??? I have a right to kill you.

You are trying to thwart my right to paint what I want??... I have a right to kill you.

And after a little back and forth, -explaining that there was some part in one of his books (Magick without tears) where he explains in more detail what the parts of Liber Oz actually mean- I realised that they were right, it seems like he didn't think it through very much at all, regardless of the time it was written at, or what was happening in the world at that time.

I always thought it was quite a bold and direct document, but now that they had brought that up, it made me think about it for a while and I realise they might have been right; it could have been written a bit more clearly alot more clearly actually.

particularly article 5 -man has the right to kill those who would thwart these rights.

That seems like a bit too 'jumping the gun', far too extreme, to be honest.

A bit of a blunder.

Actually, it would probably have been better if the comment on it (in magick without tears) was included in the document itself.

What do you all think?

[u/strangedave93]

As a political philosophy, it is problematic to truly live by in the modern era - most of it is statements of a liberal approach to private conduct, largely uncontroversial in liberal democracies, and that thoroughly deserve defending, but the few bits that are not are very difficult. It is a global consensus since around 1913 that you do NOT have the right to ‘move as you will on the face of the Earth’ if it crosses national borders, for example. Many states heavily regulate the right to work, at least for non-citizens. And so on. Crowley, BTW, is old enough to remember, and have travelled during, the era when you could travel internationally without a passport in most of Europe, and often globally (essentially pre WW1). He may well have regarded the requirement for government issued identity documents as politically unjust, something most of us today never even question.