A Scripture Its Founder Said He Received

This entry records that Thelema, the religious and philosophical system founded by Aleister Crowley following his account of receiving Liber AL vel Legis, The Book of the Law, in Cairo in 1904, centers ritual invocation and prayer around this text and a considerable body of subsequent ritual material Crowley composed for the ceremonial magical practice central to Thelemic religious life, without reproducing that specific liturgical content here.

Liber AL vel Legis and much of Crowley's associated written corpus remain under active copyright administration by Ordo Templi Orientis, the fraternal organization Crowley led and that continues today as the primary institutional custodian of Thelemic religious practice and its associated intellectual property, meaning specific Thelemic liturgical texts cannot be reproduced here without the same kind of permission required for any other actively copyrighted religious text. Crowley's central ethical maxim, do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law, is widely known even outside Thelemic practice, but its proper theological interpretation within Thelema itself, as a disciplined pursuit of one's true spiritual will rather than unrestrained personal license, differs considerably from how the phrase is sometimes popularly misunderstood.