“Ordo Templi Orientis is not only the first of the great orders of the Old Aeon to accept the book of the Law but has in the course of its development over the past century become the primary public face of Thelema, responsible not only for the preservation of our mysteries but for the promulgation of the Law of Thelema. But what is it to promulgate a Law which is, by its very nature, universal? If the New Aeon is upon us, what is the work of those who carry the Law in our midst, bringing it to the People so that they may accept it or not, as they will?In “Stepping out of the Old Aeon into the New” Frater Achad asks us to ponder this in relation to the evolution of our understanding of the sun’s movement through the sky. In our infancy, both as individuals and as a species, we understand the course of the sun through the sky to be a rising and falling of the solar force, and see in such rhythms a spiritual truth of sacrifice and rebirth that became the template for spiritual attainment, not only in the traditions of the West, but also, in those of the great Asian civilizations of that Aeon. Crowley held that Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism, and the Great Schools of Vedic and Yogic thought all embraced this formula. But we now know as fact that the sun does not rise and fall with each day but rather that it burns eternal as the planets engage in their cosmic dance in its light. To quote from the same essay: “The Sun does not die, as the ancients thought; It is always shining, always radiating Light and Life.” As he suggests, it is not a shift in the facts of reality that signals our stepping “out of the Old Aeon in the New,” but rather our recognition and understanding of this fact and all its implications.

And so in promulgating the Law of Thelema, the work of Ordo Templi Orientis is not so much to teach the world of our spiritual liberation but rather to give each of us the tools to know what to do with that liberation. You are, already, completely and unapologetically, free. Your freedom does not come from any creed or formula, any institution or tradition, but from the very facts of your existence. You cannot escape your freedom. The question is: What are you going to do with it? Jean­-Paul Sartre, the 20th century existentialist philosopher, would say in his morose way, echoing the temperament of slave religion even as he in his own way promulgated a Law of Liberty, we are “condemned” to our Freedom. For us, though, this liberation is an occasion for joy, love, beauty, strength, courage ­­ for action and celebration guided by the virtues we gain through our study and embrace of the Law.”