Rosanne said:
Thank you Grigori- I could not find those passages in the Book of Thoth.
So the Book of Thoth is a starting point and then to appreciate the deck fully one must immerse in further reading of those other books you mentioned.
Sounds like a full course in Occult studies.
~Rosanne
Well depends I guess, on if you want to appreciate the deck as a tool of attainment, as it was for the GD's adepts. In that case the Book of Thoth alone is insufficient, but it tells you specifically where else to look. This is only my personal opinion/experience, maybe there are others that don't even need the BoT to understand the deck to real depth. And of course there are many for whom the deck even is a waste of time. If you don't want the deck as part of a system of attainment, then I think extra/any reading is fairly optional. This doesn't change that attainment is its intent, but that is fine also.
Kenshin Gordon said:
Ok, taking everything religious aside.
God can't be subjective, and he can't be entirely realized since he is omniscient and omnipresent, unaffected by time and space.
Well this is a religious interpretation. Not all religions would agree on this, not even all Christians agree on that.
Kenshin Gordon said:
Don't try to logically deduce God's existence. You can't, because he transcends logic. Hence why all religious books are in the Fiction section of any bookstore or library.
True, I'm not sure what this point is supposed to rebut, as it agrees very much with Thelemic thought. You can't logically understand the divine, its not possible. You can however converse with divinity by using skills other than logic, and some people may transcend their own ego and the limitation of intellect and appreciate divinity by recognizing their unity with god (i.e. cross the abyss), in which case they understand the divine when they become it. You may prefer to think of this as "union with the divine" which to me is no different than "I am the divine". Tomato, tomatoe.
Kenshin Gordon said:
The concepts of Omnisience and Omnipresence to enlighten this:
Omnipresence is a characteristic made to justify the connection between all the Abrahamic religions. Because God transcends corporeality, the laws of reality do not affect him -thus he can exist in one or more places at the same time. Just because he can though, doesn't mean he does.
Omniscience, being the absolute knoledge of EVERYTHING, past present and future is the trait that challenges the concept of free-will, because if all choices of a given scenario have already been perceived, then all conclusions are already perceived. If all conclusions are already perceived, we cannot make a choice without God having already foreseen its respective conclusion. Thus no man can become "god" or something, because he can't behold these traits which God possesses.
Sorry for the Philosophical stuff and I hope it wasn't too complicated.
It's not complicated at all, but its only the perspective of Christians, and not that of many other religions past and present. Though Thelema is not about "free will" in the manner you are referring to, its about "true will" which is rather different and lot more restrictive. What these sorts of arguments do, is try to disprove Thelemic thought, by saying its not Christian, which is an argument about as valid as saying Christianity is false because it doesn't see the world the way Buddha did.
Man becomes god, when he recognizes his continuity within the body of god. We transcend our own finite ego and identifies ourselves as the something larger. i.e. becomes a Christ, if you will.
In Thelema the god that is "all" is Nuit, the totality of existence and also non-existence. It's in fact not possible for there to be anywhere where she is not (hehe little thelemic pun there). The divine is not seen as some separate thing that can choose to interact with creation if it wants to, creation is just another part of god, the separation in an illusion of our limited human intellect (seems a good reason to try and transcend that eh?).
Nuit said:
For I am divided for love's sake, for the chance of union
"Omnipotent" I think is just a lesser version of "immanence", that implies a false separation.