Abbey of Thelema

The Abbey of Thelema

The Abbey of Thelema refers to a small house which was used as a temple and spiritual centre founded by Aleister Crowley and Leah Hirsig in Cefalù, Sicily on 1 April 1920.

The name was borrowed from François Rabelais's satire Gargantua and Pantagruel, where an Abbey of Thélème is described as a sort of anti-monastery where the lives of the inhabitants were "spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure." This idealistic utopia was to be the model of Crowley's commune, while also being a type of magical school, giving it the designation "Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum", The College of the Holy Spirit. The general programme was in line with the A∴A∴ course of training, and included daily adorations to the sun, a study of Crowley's writings, regular yogic and ritual practices (which were to be recorded), as well as general domestic labor. The object was for students to devote themselves to the Great Work of discovering and manifesting their True Will.

Crowley had planned to transform the small house into a global center of magical devotion and perhaps to gain tuition fees paid by acolytes seeking training in the Magical Arts; these fees would further assist him in his efforts to promulgate Thelema and publish his manuscripts.

See the ARTWORK done by Crowley on the walls and other surfaces of the Abbey.

Cefalu

by Aleister Crowley

Few visitors to Sicily ever visit the town of Cefalu. Palermo, Tairmina, and Mount Etna, with few carriage excursions, represent Sicily to the average traveler. Yet this town, dating from the remotest antiquity, filled with treasures corresponding to each period of Sicily at its greatest, and within two hours journey of Palermo, is one of the most interesting and attractive places in the whole island.

It is a mediaeval town dominated by a huge rock, on which stand the broken walls of the Temples of Jupiter and Diana, of Saracen and Norman fortresses, and Roman houses. It commands a view across the Mediterranean to the Lipari Islands. Inland are mountains that separate the coast from the plains of Enna, where Persephone was carried away by Pluto under the Earth.

The glory of the town is its Norman Cathedral, decorated by Byzantine mosaics, which are comparable with those of Ravenna.

For the rest, it is an old Italian town of enormously high houses and narrow streets. Some of the alleys are not more than three feet wide. Every street leads to the sea from which one can watch the fishing fleet stand out with lateen sails like white birds.

Lately another attraction of a different kind has been added to the place; a College of the Holy Ghost has been established there by an English Mystic and his disciples. This College (there are others in various parts of the world) has been established so that those Aspirants to the knowledge of the Gnosis who desire to devote all their time and attention to Attainment may here find the proper seclusion and environment, and the personal touch of the Master who has given to the World the Law of Thelema: the Law of Life, Love, Liberty and Light — "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law", "Love is the law, love under will."

The essence of this Law is to give a meaning to life. It is not a matter of license, or a denial of Responsibility; on the contrary, it is the most austere formula ever promulgated. The idea is that each person should discover for himself the purpose for which he has taken up residence on this planet—in orthodox Christian terms, the Will of God in creating him—and devote himself exclusively to its fulfillment.

One of the rooms of the College has been decorated by the Lord Abbot, who is celebrated, not only as a Magician, but as a big-game hunter, poet, explorer, and painter, to carry out Spiritual Training. The principal features are three large walls painted in fresco, representing Earth, Hell, and Heaven, in a riot of colour and sensuous imagery. The purpose of these pictures is to enable people, by contemplation, to purify their minds; but even for those who are not interested in the psychology of the Chambre des Cauchemars, it is worth a visit for bold and brilliant distinctions of sublime idealism, sexual passion, and insane obsession.

Here, cheek by jowl with poetic raptures, stand the most grotesque, terrible, and revolting phantasmagoria; the visions which tormented St. Anthony are fixed in a medley of tempestuous images, where insanity and obscenity seem to wrestle against each other for the mastery of the beholder's mind. Despite the natural repugnance which the fear of Reality has created in the average mind, fascination of these cartoons is irresistible.

The purpose of this room is to pass students of the Sacred Wisdom through the ordeal of contemplating every possible phantom which can assail the soul. Candidates for this initiation are prepared by a certain secret process of excitement before spending the night in the room; the effect is that the figures on the walls seem actually to become alive, to bewilder and obsess the spirit that has dared to confront their malignity. Those who have come successfully through the trial say that they have become immunized from all possible infection by those ideas of evil which interfere between the soul and its divine Self. Having been forced to fathom the Abysses of Horror, to confront the most ghastly possibilities of Hell, they have attained permanent mastery of their minds.

The process is similar to that of Psycho-analysis; it releases the subject from fear of Reality and the phantoms and neuroses thereby caused, by externalizing and thus disarming the spectres that lie in ambush for the Soul of Man.

The room is open to the inspection of visitors on certain conditions. The Abbey offers hospitality to all who, in the opinion of the Virgin Guardian of the Sangraal, stand in need of it.

There is an excellent train service to and from Palermo and Messina. The Rome-Palermo expresses all stop at Cefalu.

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