Aleister Crowley is the most notoriously transgressive figure in modern Western esotericism, and his best known precept is "Do what thou wilt". This article seeks to elucidate the place of Crowley's precept in the history of esotericism and transgression. More specifically, it seeks to make two points. First, it shows, through an investigation of its sources and influences, that the precept had highly transgressive overtones in the period when Crowley adopted and popularised it. These overtones extended to sexual excess, religious deviancy and fascist politics. Second, it argues that the precept was repurposed in a major way in the latter part of the twentieth century. The precept became domesticated, as the founders of the Wicca movement subsumed it into their own ethical maxim, the "Wiccan Rede". This development serves as an example of how some of the more transgressive and problematic elements of the Western esoteric tradition have come to be softened and obscured in contemporary mass-market, suburban forms of practice such as Wicca.
Like so many other individuals – particularly in his time –, the French Humanist G. Postel (1510-1581) felt convinced that he was invested with a prominent spiritual role to play. His 1546 chance-meeting in Venice with an elderly visionary woman, he interpreted as a providential confirmation of his mission, the more so as he rapidly came to identify her with the Christian messiah come again as a woman. Their common – and entirely self-appointed – task was to herald publicly the incoming Era of the "Restitution" of mankind, a last period of merciful leniency granted to mankind by the divine Providence before the end of time. For this announcement to be made credible, Postel developed some complex theories about the feminine messiah, and about himself as being her and Jesus' progeny, after having been submitted to a process of internal transmutation culminating in early 1552. Certain Kabbalistic speculations played an important part in shaping Postel's outlook, and constituted the pattern against which he modelled the new version of Christianity he felt compelled to advertise. The present article attempts to give an analysis of his disclosures and examines the degree of awareness and (dis?)ingenuity Postel eventually manifested when confronted with the theological and political scandals resulting from his "revelations".
The article is an attempt to reconstruct and present the illness narratives formulated by Agnieszka Pilchowa (1888-1945), a clairvoyant and healer from Wisła (Silesia). Although alternative medicine was widespread in Poland in the interwar period, especially in the esoteric milieu, concepts like the one created by Pilchowa did not appear often. Pilchowa presented a consistent, yet at the same time fully mythologized vision of the world, which would answer questions about the source of evil, suffering, and illness. The article describes the most important traits of Pilchowa's vision, focusing on those elements that create the picture of illness and show the process of its healing. The article is a pioneering one – Agnieszka Pilchowa and her ideas have not been the subjects of any research so far.
In The Singularity Is Near (2005), pioneering transhumanist Raymond Kurzweil described the end goal of a six-epoch evolutionary cosmogony, claiming that "once non-biological intelligence gets a foothold in the human brain ... the machine intelligence in our brains will grow exponentially ... Ultimately, the entire universe will become saturated with our intelligence. This is the destiny of the universe". A hundred years earlier, Helena Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society, rolled out her own evolutionary cosmogony in The Secret Doctrine (1888), in which the "spiritual nature" of human beings, along with the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, as well as the chemical elements, are all developed through a complex cyclic progression of seven planetary stages, linked together via "rounds" and "chains," culminating in the spiritualization of all matter in the universe. At a glance, it may seem these two conceptual models, separated by years of history, have little to do with one another. Yet as I argue in this paper, the contemporary ideas of transhumanists share the logics of turn-of-the-century theosophists and theosophically informed esoteric groups, albeit in a reductive, materialistic, and technologically deterministic mode. Both intellectual expressions are anchored in a historical context awash in new forms of technology and scientific advancement and therefore share in the utopic hopes and apocalyptic nightmares about the transformation of human bodies and human consciousness. To highlight these similarities, I use three case studies: the Temple of the People in Halcyon, California; the prognostications of Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophical Society; and G. I. Gurdjieff's notion of the "machine man". These case studies point to a link between the logics and use of metaphors in esotericism and transhumanism – the one religious, the other scientific – as well as the application of evolutionary principles to the developing stages of human consciousnesses and the cosmos.
In popular fiction, as well as in theoretical philosophy, often inspired by technological evolution, we often come across the entity of the so-called machine-god. Originating in creation myths, later adapted into the science-fiction and horror genres, the opposition between a synthetic, fabricated creation and its potentially devastating influence on its creator has been approached from multiple angles. With the rise of technological advancement, the idea of a machine capable of surpassing the human in his physical, as well as mental capabilities, becoming thus something greater than humanity itself, has slowly gained in importance. This paper aims to analyze the concept of a man-made machine-god, depicted in popular culture and contemporary scientific theories, and through the perspective of aesthetics and semiotics, compare it to its potential non-fictional parallels. Through analyzing the symbolism of modern depictions, historical discourse, and reasoning behind the subconscious reaction, it aims to analyze the possible interactions between humankind and a god that humankind itself would create.