{"id":4144,"date":"2024-10-31T07:43:47","date_gmt":"2024-10-31T11:43:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4144"},"modified":"2024-10-31T07:44:37","modified_gmt":"2024-10-31T11:44:37","slug":"do-what-you-will","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/31\/do-what-you-will\/","title":{"rendered":"Do What You Will"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, <\/em>click here<\/a>

The British press once declared him to be \u201cthe wickedest man in the world.\u201d

After all, he crossed every line, broke every rule, violated every taboo, and urged others to do the same.

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) actually enjoyed calling himself something else. He preferred the Beast, one of the Bible\u2019s designations for the Antichrist.

With his shaved head and penetrating eyes, Crowley cultivated a sinister look to bolster his sinister reputation. He was an active participant in at least two secret societies and dabbled in Tarot, alchemy, and the occult. He spent his money recklessly, pursued Satanic rituals, engaged in numerous affairs with both men and women, and developed a debilitating addiction to heroin. 

That being said, he also had a respectable public resume.

Crowley was a Cambridge graduate, one of the world\u2019s most accomplished mountain climbers, and an ardent student of Eastern religions.

Several of his biographers also suggest Crowley was a lifelong spy, recruited by British intelligence while he was still a young man.

His interest in the \u201cdark side\u201d of spirituality seems to have begun on his honeymoon to Egypt. While there he claimed to have been chosen by the Egyptian god Horus to present to the world a manuscript called The Book of the Law<\/em>.

Soon thereafter he founded a new religious movement called Thelema (the Greek word for \u201cauthority\u201d), which guided its followers to \u201cbe free of all standard ways and codes of conduct.\u201d

Long after his death almost 80 years ago, the Beast remains a cult figure. In 2002, BBC voters declared him to be one of the 100 most important Britons of all time.

The Beatles admired him sufficiently to include him in the crowd of celebrity figures on the cover of their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band<\/em>. Guitarist Jimmy Page, the founder of Led Zeppelin, moved into Crowley\u2019s former home in Scotland, which is located on Loch Ness. Page claims the mansion is haunted by a severed human head \u2013 definitely more interesting than merely bobbing for apples at one\u2019s next Halloween party.  

Diehard Zeppelin fans will know that four words are inscribed into the label of the 1970 album Led Zeppelin III: <\/em>\u201cDo what thou wilt.\u201d

They come from this longer statement of Crowley\u2019s proposed creed for humanity: \u201cThere is no grace. There is no guilt. This is the Law: Do what thou wilt.\u201d 

It\u2019s not hard to see that such a slogan would be immensely popular during the heyday of classic rock. If there are no rules and no boundaries, anything goes.

What\u2019s interesting is that Crowley\u2019s credo is almost identical to a statement made by the 4th<\/sup> century Christian theologian Augustine of Hippo \u2013 all except for one word.

Augustine said, \u201cLove, and do what you will.\u201d 

Love makes all the difference.

Not just any love, either. \u201cLove\u201d is perhaps the most overworked word in the English language. People can love oysters and love Hallmark Christmas movies and love sunsets and love Jesus and love Barry Manilow and love \u201creal\u201d carved pumpkins with candles and love hip-hop and love their children \u2013 even though we would never for a moment consider all those loves to be on a level playing field.

The New Testament authors rehabilitated a comparatively obscure Greek word, agape<\/em>, transforming it into the richest and deepest love in the cosmos.

Agape<\/em>, on the pages of the Bible, is God\u2019s unconditional love for people who don\u2019t deserve unconditional love.

Followers of Jesus are then commanded to love each other, and people everywhere, with the same kind of relentless, grace-based agape<\/em> that they receive from God. When Augustine says, \u201cLove, and do what you will,\u201d he is not saying that there are no rules or boundaries and that anything goes.

Instead, he has in mind a specific vision for a specific set of behaviors and attitudes, as embodied by Paul\u2019s famous commands to the Corinthians (where agape<\/em> is the Greek word behind every English \u201clove\u201d). Here\u2019s the Philipps translation of I Corinthians 13:4-8:

This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience – it looks for a way of being constructive. It is not possessive: it is neither anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance. Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. It is not touchy. It does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good people when truth prevails. Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen.<\/em>

Augustine says that if that kind of love is our starting point and our guiding light, we can do anything we want and be confident we will be blessing God and each other.

Halloween can stoke our fixation on candy bars and severed human heads.

Or it can actually be the day we renew our commitment to give away God\u2019s gift of agape<\/em> as the ultimate treat.
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here The British press once declared him to be \u201cthe wickedest man in the world.\u201d After all, he crossed every line, broke every rule, violated every taboo, and urged others to do the same. Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) actually enjoyed calling himself something else. He preferred the Beast, one of the Bible\u2019s designations… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4145,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[520,650,104],"class_list":["post-4144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-evil","tag-halloween","tag-love"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4144"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4147,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4144\/revisions\/4147"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}