Cribbing from Crowley

On the topic of divine misdemeanors, Aleister Crowley got a few things very right, the first of which is that there needs to be the inner freedom to do as you will, which is the freedom to more fully experience action and consequence.

I talked to someone about this a few weeks ago. We tend to live with little policemen in our heads—the voice of authority figures, the voices we perceive of society and the people who we are deferential to in it, much of it really just the voice of our fears.

“If people don’t like you, your career is over.”

“If you don’t behave yourself, you’re going to fail and no one will like you.”

“You can’t disappoint your loved ones! What if they stop loving you?”

If I could, I’d proscribe a little misdemeanor to everyone. A little wildness, a little defiance, a minor crime: take yourself in your own hands and do something you think you shouldn’t. The experience of doing what you will teaches you how small that policeman is in your head. It sounds a lot larger than it is, and fear greatly exaggerates consequence.

The (paraphrased) quote from Crowley is this: do what thou wilt is the law and the whole of the law. Compliance and obedience can be what someone wishes to do, but not if they’ve never done anything else. They simply don’t know any better.

A spine of wet cardboard does not make for a good demonstration of will. You can’t even impress yourself that way.

One of the other mambos leaned into my ear, sitting at the bar on the day I came out of my taboo period after making priest, and whispered “even our misdemeanors are divine,” and in it I heard the echo of the spirits.

I danced and danced and we closed the bar down on a random Thursday night, bodies gliding against mine, no one else dancing but the vodou people, alight with joy and committing our divine misdemeanors together.