“Remember all ye that existence is pure joy that all the sorrows are but as shadows they pass & are done but there is that which remains”. We’ll have none of that everything is sorrow guff. Thelemites find pure joy in everything. Any sorrow will pass away at the Unity. That which remains is the star-essence itself — or the soul, if you must.

        “Behold! these be grave mysteries; for there are also of my friends who be hermits.” A hermit is the traditional holy man, cut off from civilization, isolated in his cave or ivory tower; but, as we shall see, the hermits of Thelema are different. They do not have to be physically cut-off from humanity:

        “Now think not to find them in the forest or on the mountain but in beds of purple, caressed by magnificent beasts of women with large limbs and fire and light in their eyes and masses of flaming hair about them; there shall ye find them. Ye shall see them at rule, at victorious armies, at all the joy; and there shall be in them a joy a million times greater than this.” The hermits of Thelema, those who have achieved their wills, are certainly a different kind of hermit. They live life to the fullest, they are consumed with joy, they are surrounded my magnificent beasts of lovers.<1> They also are the leaders of armies and of countries.


<1> I have no problem in using a gender-neutral phrase in this instance.


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