This week, a suggestion from Soror Ahaviel:

Please read Martin Heidegger‘s “What is Metaphysics?” (pp.89-110) and “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking.” (pp.427-449)

Also read Chapter 0 of Aleister Crowley’s The Book of Lies (pp.6-7).

OPTIONAL: Ahaviel’s own comment on Heidegger.

Soror Ahaviel’s comment:

This week I would like to consider whether Crowley was right in saying that he wrote the “most complete treatise on existence” (The Book of Lies). It is not exactly clear to me that Crowley breaks free of metaphysics, so I want to look at Heidegger to ask what he and his deconstruction of metaphysics might contribute to magic. More specifically, let us read his 1919 and 1964 essays “What Is Metaphysics?” and “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking,” alongside Chapter 0 of “The Book of Lies.” If Crowley was indeed still completely ensnared by metaphysics, and Heidegger managed to point to something more fundamental (what he called the “Lichtung”), then I don’t see how Crowley marked a fundamentally new aeon, if aeons are about fundamental ways of thinking. But maybe I’m totally confused about everything. I’m probably totally confused. At least thinking is more fun when you’re confused.

I also attach some fragments of what I’ve written on the Lichtung, because I think Heidegger is still pretty entrapped by the metaphysical masculinism of Kampf/polemos. It’s an early attempt, more or less before I encountered magic, to wrestle with themes that are still provoking me, even and especially as I develop magically.

For next week, January 29th:

A number of us will be working Mark Stavish’s The Liturgy of Hermes, at the suggestion of Frater Ex Nihilo. We thought it convenient to provide the text in advance.

May you flourish! May you EXCEED.