Love under Will

“Love is the law, love under will” is a formula from The Book of the Law I:57. Crowley interprets love broadly as union, with will determining the course and purpose of that union. Erotic love, devotion and the relation between consciousness and its objects all enter this account. Liber II places the formula after the discovery and execution of will; De Lege Libellum develops it into an extended discussion of love, meditation and transformation.¹⁾

The phrase occurs in the first chapter, in the speech of Nuit. Its immediate setting is an invocation under the stars, followed by a warning that different kinds of love must be distinguished. The verse's dove and serpent give symbolic form to that demand for discrimination. The formula is therefore embedded in a religious address rather than presented as an isolated maxim about human relationships.

Earlier verses supply its cosmological setting. In I:29–30, division exists for the possibility of union, and the pain of separation is set beside the joy of dissolution. I:41 describes love as the bond capable of uniting what is divided; I:51 places the enjoyment of love within the continuing direction towards Nuit. Taken together, these passages relate individual experiences of love to the book's account of multiplicity and unity.²⁾

This setting helps explain the breadth of Crowley's later usage. Love includes an encounter between persons, but also provides a language for the relation between a perceiver and the universe. The different scales are connected through the idea of union without making every relationship or experience identical.

In Liber II, Crowley says that the nature of will is love, while insisting that love does not override or replace will. Where an apparent contradiction arises, will supplies the direction. The formula thus combines an account of what the movement is like with an account of what governs it.

The essay's order is significant. First comes the discovery of True Will; next comes its execution with one-pointedness, detachment and peace; then comes the explanation of love. Love does not excuse the work of discovering a coherent course. Its place is within that course.³⁾

Crowley's insistence that this love is not sentimentality introduces martial and provocative examples. He even includes fighting within its scope. The passage employs love as a broad formula of interaction and transformation, rather than simply as affection or kindness. Its rhetoric must nevertheless be read alongside his discussions of conduct, particularly the restriction on interference in Duty.

The opening of “Of Love” in De Lege Libellum associates the Greek words agape, love, and thelema, will, through their numerical equivalence. Under the Greek letter values used in this comparison, both total 93:

Crowley interprets this numerical correspondence as an expression of the relationship between universal will and love. It is a Qabalistic association within his exposition, rather than a claim that the two Greek words have identical meanings in every context. The wider use of the number is discussed in the 93 Current.⁴⁾

The preface to De Lege Libellum defines love through the relationship between diversity and unity:

And this Love is the force that uniteth things diverse, for the contemplation in Light of their Oneness.

— Aleister Crowley, De Lege Libellum.⁵⁾

The later section “Of Love” develops this into an account of two things becoming one through ecstatic union. Its examples range from physical interactions to human passion and the mind’s relation to an idea. Their common function is to represent a transformation in which the formerly separate terms no longer remain exactly as they were.

The essay moves from particular unions towards a comprehensive aspiration. The union of two stars is still a particular event; the larger work concerns the assimilation of ideas until consciousness can apprehend the universe as a whole. The language of lovers supplies an image for this philosophical and mystical movement.⁶⁾

Book 4, Part II gives a visual counterpart in its circle and Tau. In “The Circle,” Crowley relates their combination to the Rosy Cross and identifies its meaning with the union of subject and object, the Great Work. The diagram makes the relationship between distinct terms visible while setting their conjunction within a complete symbolic whole. It illustrates a related account of union; it is not presented in the source as a special emblem assigned exclusively to the phrase “love under will.”⁷⁾

The meditative discussion in De Lege Libellum begins with the capacity to hold attention upon an object and examine ideas without immediately being carried away by attraction or repulsion. It then describes directing the whole consciousness towards an idea that still appears as something opposed to the self. The language of love expresses the desired overcoming of that opposition.

This gives discrimination and concentration a place within devotion. The point is not simply to generate a pleasant emotion. The essay is interested in what happens to the division between the one who attends and the object attended to. Different temperaments and objects lead to different expressions of the process, which Crowley compares to the variety of human love.⁸⁾

The same section discusses “dryness,” a state in which the expected passion or satisfaction is absent. It recommends persistence in an ordered life and interprets the condition as part of the religious ordeal. This historical description belongs to the text's account of practice; it does not make every period of emotional emptiness evidence of spiritual progress.

Crowley's account of purity in love concerns the exclusion of an element foreign to the act's purpose. It does not simply reproduce a conventional opposition between bodily love and spiritual purity. “Of Love” argues that an act should be complete upon its own plane, while also reflecting the larger direction of will.

The practical consequence is an integration of activities rather than a blanket suppression of natural functions. Each part has its proper operation, and the neglect of one part can distort the whole. The essay closes by distinguishing mastering and yielding as two principles within love, whose relation is to be understood in the course of the work. These are features of Crowley's symbolic and practical exposition; they do not assign a permanent dominant or subordinate status to particular people.⁹⁾

Duty B begins with the formula of love under will and describes union with other forms of consciousness as an enlargement of one's standpoint. It then treats disagreement and contest as possible ways of bringing differences into view. Its third instruction sets a boundary: abstain from interference with other wills. The accompanying explanation likens the contest to sport, in which participants respect one another and do not extend the contest into unrestricted domination.¹⁰⁾

This qualification is essential when reading the combative imagery of Liber II. The sources contain both an expansive language of conquest and an explicit rejection of interference. An ethical reading needs to address that tension rather than deriving a rule for relationships from one provocative sentence.

In contemporary application, a person's declaration of spiritual purpose does not establish another person's agreement or consent. That distinction is an ethical clarification for present readers, not a claim that Crowley's historical formulations already supply a complete modern account of relationships. See Ethics and Conduct in Thelema for the broader discussion.

The same concern with union appears in Babalon and the Grail. In the Twelfth Aethyr of The Vision and the Voice, her reception of all life is associated with Understanding. In “The Cup,” Book 4 describes love as a unifying influence through which separate contents lose their isolated identity. These passages extend the theme from personal affection to the surrender of separateness in attainment.¹¹⁾

Love under will consequently links several areas of the system: the distinctive course of the individual, the transformation involved in an encounter, the discipline of meditation, and the imagery of the Great Work. The source and context determine which aspect a particular passage develops.

David Shoemaker discusses Thelema and relationships in this Living Thelema programme. It accompanies the section on relations with other people, providing a contemporary teaching perspective beside Crowley's formulations. Interpersonal relationships are one application of the subject: the article also follows the wider meanings of love as union, devotion and the relation between consciousness and its objects.

Living Thelema - Thelema and Relationships — Speech in the Silence Podcast; 23:08. Watch on YouTube.

• Liber AL vel Legis, chapter I.
• Liber II, The Equinox III:1 (1919), pp. 42–43.
• De Lege Libellum, “Of Love,” pp. 107–113.
• Book 4, Part II, “The Circle” (1913).
• Book 4, Part II, “The Cup” (1913), pp. 76–78.
• Duty, B.1–4.
• The Vision and the Voice, Twelfth Aethyr.