A Triune Mass for Thelemites – A Thelemic Mass

A Triune Mass for Thelemites – Sib. Z. Arrhenothelus, (2020)

Commissioned as one of several core rituals to make available, ready to run, to Clergy of the Ecclesia Gnostica Heterodoxa the intent was to produce a modernized and simplified Mass, specifically with an eye towards presentation to people who have no standing knowledge of, or affiliation with, Thelema, and accessibility to relative newcomers.

From the author:

“My manifest intent is to create a bridge to both make Thelema more accessible to Thelemites and to build a bridge between Thelema and the rest of Paganism – a bridge between Thelema and everyone else that participates in religion outside the mainstream. Perhaps, even beyond that, to mainstreamers who, through shows and media, have been prepared for a universe in which they are God.

Thelemites are pagans. We literally, not figuratively, call on Pan. We call by name on Pagan Egyptian deities. To say they don’t mean the same thing to us they did to the Egyptians is to say we are not Egyptian reconstructionists, which we’ve never claimed to be. Nor are we incompatible with Greek, or Egyptian, any other reconstruction. If we believe in some unifying principles, and personal deity, so do many pagans, Wiccans, and others today.

Thelema should be a vibrant core tying many alternative beliefs together by presenting a comprehensible set of core principles. Instead it languishes on the sidelines because figuring out what it is about takes years. You don’t have to go to more than one Wiccan Ritual to have a strong sense of who the Lord and Lady are and what they represent. I think I could could have sat through a dozen gnostic masses without ever understanding even the concept of Hadit.

Crowley made it clear that he, like the Theosophists (he admired Blavatsky), considered all the Deities of the world to be synonymous with and associated with his core principles, said this at various times in so many words. Why must we expose newcomers to an unfamiliar litany of names which kindle nothing at all in their hearts when we are talking about principles they already treasure?

Crowley’s mass may have served Thelema of 1930 very well. It does not serve us well. “