Dr Angela Puca: Hello, symposiasts! I’m Dr. Angela Puca, Religious Studies PhD and University lecturer, and this is your online resource for the academic study of magic, esotericism, paganism, shamanism, and all things occult. So, today, we will talk about a very interesting topic: Thelema, or Thelema, as people in the English-speaking world tend to say, about the Left-Hand Path from an academic and practitioner perspective. But before I introduce the special guest with whom I’m going to have this discussion, I want to remind you that a couple of spots are left in my online course that will launch next Saturday. Next Saturday is going to be the first lecture. There are a couple of spots left, so if you’re interested in joining my first and likely the only live online course I will have on the topic, you will find the link in the info box later in the pinned comment and in the bio—everywhere. So, thank you for considering. And now, let’s bring on our guest. Hello, Marco!
Marco Visconti: Hello, Angela. Good to see you again, and hello everyone. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Dr Angela Puca: Yes, so, do you want to introduce yourself so that people—in case they don’t know you, even though if they’re interested in Thelema, they probably know you already—but…
Marco Visconti: Yeah, unfortunately, I’m notorious, right? So, long story short, my name is Marco, and I’ve been a Thelemite most of my life. I discovered Crowley in the 1990s when I was a teenager, and then I sought out the initiation in the A∴A∴ as soon as possible. Then, I was a member of Ordo Templi Orientis for a good period, and then I left in 2018. Those are both, you know, orders, magical orders, that Aleister Crowley either started or used to promulgate the Law of Thelema. Thelema itself is, well, it’s complicated. Is it a religion? Is it a magical philosophy? It’s all these things together. Thelema has been my main practice; if not, I would say, my… yeah, let’s call it my main practice my entire life. In recent years, I’ve been organizing a series of courses and classes online. It all started with the pandemic because we were all locked inside and didn’t know what to do, so I was like, “Hey, let’s do it online; it’s gonna be fun,” and it was kind of fun. It’s been fun. From those courses, you know, my first book came out last year called “The Aleister Crowley Manual: Esoteric Magic for Modern Times,” which has been, I must say, both a critical and commercial success so far. Nice. And now it’s been translated into Italian. This came out like a month ago, actually a few weeks ago.
Dr Angela Puca: Yeah, I saw that. It’s good to have more things on Thelema in Italian.
Marco Visconti: Yeah, absolutely, like, you know…
Dr Angela Puca: We are both Italians, for those who didn’t know.
Marco Visconti: Yeah, we’re both Italian. So, I mean, to be fair, it’s getting better. As for all my criticism of the OTO (Ordo Templi Orientis), the people in the Italian OTO are doing quite a good job at finally translating and making Crowley’s Thelemic material available in Italian. Now, also my book is available there. There’s going to be a Polish edition coming up as well, so that’s… I’m quite stoked about that. And possibly more editions are coming up. And I’m writing a second book, which will be out, I guess, next year, so, well, 2025. Yeah, next year. Are you writing 2025? Oh my God.
Dr Angela Puca: Yes.
Marco Visconti: Yes, so I’m currently working on the second book, which will be a unique continuation of the first. If the first book was an introduction to Thelema and focused on Thelemic practices, the second book will delve deeper into the philosophy and mysticism of Thelema. It will be centered around the next step in Thelema, the knowledge and conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel, a significant initiation in Thelema. So, yeah, that’s who I am, and thank you for having me.
Dr Angela Puca: Thank you for being here. This conversation started because of a comment that Marco made. As I mentioned earlier, I was promoting my online course on social media, which is my first online course. I’m very nervous because I’ve never done this. Many people have run online courses, but this is my first. So, yeah, I was just promoting it, and part of the curriculum—if you look at it on my website, there are also lectures on Thelema. The entire course is on Left-Hand Path traditions, so Marco interjected in a comment saying that Thelema is not Left-Hand Path. So, I thought it…
Marco Visconti: I should be honest, right? I thought, like, should I leave this comment? Because unfortunately, Thelemites are known to be annoying online, and I know I’m very annoying. But then again, we’ve known each other forever now. It’s been like, what, over ten years now? So, I knew you would take it in good spirits, right? And you did. So that’s why we’re here today, right?
Dr Angela Puca: Yeah, no, I think that generally, I’m used to criticism, to be fair. But I knew that, you know, from you, it wouldn’t come from a place of just judging, but more because you had something to say about it. So I thought, oh, that’s interesting, because then I read your follow-up comment, and we can talk about that. And then it rang a bell, and I thought we should talk about this because you’re not the first person to say it. As part of my course on the Left-Hand Path, there’s also Chaos Magick, which academics classify as Left-Hand Path. But Chaos Magicians will say that it’s not Left-Hand Path. I had the same conversation with— even though it was not meant to be precisely on that—in a previous interview with Phil Hine. People can recuperate it on my channel. And he said, oh, but Chaos Magick is not Left-Hand Path. Then, people can look back at it.
I explained the characteristics according to the academic definition of Left-Hand Path, and then he said, well, yeah, it is Left-Hand Path. So, I think that’s why it’s interesting to clarify the difference between an academic perspective when we define things and traditions as opposed to a practitioner’s definition. That is something that in the anthropology of religion is called the emic versus etic perspective. I know that it’s a term that is mostly unfamiliar to the general public, but it’s a term that we in the anthropology of religion talk about a lot.
The emic perspective is the insider perspective, so the perspective that somebody from inside a tradition will have, how they depict their own practices.
The etic perspective is the perspective of the scholar who’s an outsider.
In some cases, it can be an insider-outsider, but still, when they are working from an etic perspective, they’re working as academics and as scholars and using the methodology that is relevant to that kind of definition. That would be the type of perspective that I provide on my channel and, of course, on my courses. So, I thought it would be interesting to explore these two perspectives on Thelema and the Left-Hand Path. Those who have followed me for a long time will know, but I think that I need to reiterate it because I always find comments from people who completely dismiss this from me. There are people who think that the academic perspective is what people should do, and this is absolutely not the case. Academia and academic research are descriptive, not prescriptive. So, our job is really to find the most accurate knowledge that we can find, and it’s not prescriptive in any way. This non-prescriptive nature of academic research should reassure you that there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to approach religious and magical practices.
If you, as a practitioner, find it useful to have the academic perspective on your tradition or traditions that are tangent to yours or others that you’re interested in, that’s fine. But what you do with that academic knowledge is completely up to you. Academia doesn’t rule over religious practices or magical practices. We just study and describe what’s happening either in history or in the contemporary world: how people make meaning and how people construct the concept of efficacy around a certain practice. That’s what we do. We don’t prescribe how people are supposed to do things. This is one of the differences, whereas, for a practitioner, practitioners have different aims in mind. They don’t have as a primary aim the accuracy of information. They are more concerned with the meaningfulness of the information—what kind of meaning it has. Also, they tend to care more about the usefulness of that information. I mean, what does that specific word conjure to the mind of people in a specific time and in a specific era as opposed to, is this term describing accurately what is going on cross-culturally or in a specific culture or in a specific time?
The concern of a practitioner tends to be more about what they want to convey, how they want to portray themselves, whether what they’re saying is effective, and there is a degree of prescriptiveness in what practitioners do, like saying, if I’m the leader of a tradition, I will want to tell you how to practice and what is the most effective way of practising. Whereas, as an academic, I’m not concerned with that. I’m just concerned with providing the most accurate information. I will give you—yeah, sorry, I will just leave you to speak in a second. I just wanted to give an example from my PhD research about how you can have a massive divide between how an academic would describe something and how a practitioner would describe something.
As part of my PhD research, I have studied witchcraft and shamanism in Italy, right? And also how people would construct the terms shaman and witch. There are Italian folk witches who would call themselves anything other than witch because, in Italy, the term “strega” has a negative connotation. Now, that doesn’t mean that they are not witches just because they refuse to use the term, and they don’t refuse to use the term because they are not witches. They refuse to use the term because they live in a society, in a time, and in a space where using it will have negative repercussions.
Also, the term has negative connotations for the community that they have around them. But from an etic and scholarly perspective, we don’t have any negative connotation associated with “witch.” We just understand what a witch is and what a witch does, and they completely fit that description. So they are, to all intents and purposes, witches from an academic point of view, but they would be very offended if you would use the term “witches” for them. So, how do you, as an anthropologist, resolve this contrast? One way that I do, and most of my colleagues do, is to acknowledge that, to say, these people, just like I’m doing now, these people will not use this term. However, as a scholar, looking at the definition of witch and witchcraft and what they are doing, this can be defined as witchcraft.
Marco Visconti: Absolutely.
Dr Angela Puca: So now, over to you. I don’t want to, I think…
Marco Visconti: I would like to start with a question. So, how do you define the Left-Hand Path? So, let’s start with this benchmark, right? Like, what is the Left-Hand Path for you?
Dr Angela Puca: Yeah, it’s not for me, but I would say…
Marco Visconti: For academia, like from an etic perspective, right?
Dr Angela Puca: Yeah, yeah. So, from the point of view of the scholars who have studied the Left-Hand Path—and there are a few, there are also some resources that I’ve put in the description, as I always do, of my videos on the Left-Hand Path—we have Granholm and Woodman and Sutcliffe that have talked about it. Still, there are other scholars, and even at conferences, we talk about this. So, the Left-Hand Path is used as an umbrella term to define a set of traditions and practices with certain common characteristics. These are the idea of individualism, the fact that they don’t follow a central dogma, and even when they have a structure, the primary guidance is still the person. I mean, you, as a practitioner, are still the centre of your practice. You may have some guidelines from a tradition that you’re in, but you are the centre. Individualism is the first one. Then we have the idea of self-deification, the idea that, in a certain way, you can become a god. This is conceptualized in different ways depending on the traditions that fall under the umbrella of the Left-Hand Path, but you find this across the traditions that are Left-Hand Path.
Then you have antinomianism, which is the rejection of social norms. Social norms are considered something that, for some of these traditions, they completely reject outright, and they say, you know, we just have to completely disregard social norms because they are just a chain. We must realize whether these social norms work for us individually. Then you have the idea of the appraisal of the here and now and, in a way, a form of hedonism—the idea that what matters is here and now, not an afterlife, not something beyond this world. There is a full being in the here and now. So, these are all forms of magic that are completely embedded in the material world, even though there is an element of mysticism with the idea of becoming a god. But there is also a strong appraisal of the here and now—not being somewhere else, not thinking about an afterlife, not thinking about another realm. And there is, of course, the idea of working with other realms, but still, what matters is the here and now.
The concept of the Left-Hand Path historically comes from Tantra, but Tantra is very different. In the Western esoteric world, it comes through Blavatsky, but Blavatsky had a very different idea of the Left-Hand Path because it was black magic for her. And that’s why I’m not surprised that Crowley would say that it’s not Left-Hand Path because his frame of reference for the Left-Hand Path was Blavatsky. Whereas the frame of reference we have now as scholars to analyze the Left-Hand Path goes way beyond Blavatsky. It just tries to understand the definition and the different traditions that can fall under this umbrella.
The reason academics at the moment—though there are always discussions about definitions in academia—find it a useful label, at least from an etic perspective, is because there is a cluster of traditions that have distinctively this set of elements. You might think that all the esoteric traditions now have these characteristics, but it’s not quite true. Other traditions don’t fit this pattern. But you have certain ones that, even though they are different from each other—because Chaos Magick is very different from Thelema, which is very different from forms of Satanism and so on, and, you know, Dragon Rouge—these are all very different traditions in their own right. Still, they do have those things in common to the point where having that kind of category feels useful. But still, categories need to be challenged. It’s something that we do continuously in academia.
Marco Visconti: In the sense that I would say that in Thelema, a lot of the individualism and hedonism are way less on the forefront than most people would think. Especially because Crowley was an individualist, was an antinomian, and was a big hedonist. There’s no denying that, but that was really like Crowley. Then, we look at what Thelema is supposed to be—studying the holy books of Thelema, studying the practice—we realise that those elements are there, but they are not as, you know, to the forefront. They’re not as, you know, shoved down your throat as you maybe would find in, I don’t know,
theistic Satanism or, you know, Order of the Nine Angles or maybe even Dragon Rouge. I mean, maybe Dragon Rouge, I don’t know, but let’s say more pop Left-Hand Path traditions that are out there. Right, they’re there, but they’re not as prominent. I also would like to point out that even when we speak about Thelema, it is not a single monolithic system as most people would think it is. Right, in the sense that the Thelema that Crowley left us, yes, it is single, monolithic, and very much an attempt at a syncretic religion that strongly emphasises the practical side of things, like doing magic. But also, it is focused on Crowley as the prophet of Thelema, and so, as the pretty much like the forefront, the figurehead, the mast of this ship, right, that is going somewhere at least. Most people will know This kind of Thelema if they join the most visible and easily reachable group, the Ordo Templi Orientis, or OTO, which is focused on establishing, promulgating and expanding Crowley’s Thelema.
Now, I’m saying this because then if you look at Crowley’s Thelema, so if you approach Thelema by, you know, joining the OTO and being exposed to Thelema as Crowley wanted it, then you will have to face the reality that Crowley, as you were saying, really did not see Thelema as Left-Hand Path. In Chapter 12 of “Magic Without Tears,” which is Crowley’s last book, right—it wasn’t a book; it was a series of letters that he was writing to Ananda Metteya, if I’m not mistaken, one of his last disciples—and I think it’s really interesting because if you want to have Crowley speaking of Thelema in his last days, so from my perspective, when he had the best understanding of Thelema, having lived it for 60 years, right, at that point, you read “Magic Without Tears.” Crowley is really fun in it. It’s very engaging and way less stuffy than a lot of his other stuff. But in general, you will find some important points that Crowley makes about the doctrine here. And again, in Chapter 12, “The Left-Hand Path and the Black Brothers,” he clearly states that Thelema is not that. Thelema wants to be the bastion against that. And he makes the point, for instance, by saying that when we think of—you, of course, I’m paraphrasing, it’s not verbatim—but it’s more like, “Well, dear sister, you’ve heard about the Black Magicians. The Black Brothers of the Brotherhood of the Left-Hand Path are way worse than the Black Magicians.” Because a Black Magician, a warlock, just does, I don’t know, magic to cause you harm.
The Black Brother of the Left-Hand Path is the adept that has obtained the knowledge and conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel and has achieved this quite advanced and very important initiation in the attainment system. Still, they made the conscious choice of limiting their further evolution. So, in many ways, not becoming in service of humanity, which in Thelema, that’s what the Master of the Temple, the Magister Templi, the adept fully realized, is supposed to do. It’s supposed to come back from his or their attainment, teach humanity, and serve humanity. Well, the Black Brother of the Left-Hand Path decided instead to renounce that, saying, “No, you know, I’m in this for myself.” And now, it’s way worse than the Black Magician or the warlock because they have a much deeper understanding of magic and mysticism and can do serious harm. In Crowley’s ideas, the warlock can just do little things, even if those little things are, I don’t know, causing you warts and failing your exams. Well, the Brother of the Left-Hand Path is the evil adept. Hitler would be a Brother of the Left-Hand Path, right? Like that level of evil, that level of nastiness. That’s the perspective in Crowley’s Thelema, right?
So many, as you were correctly saying, this stems directly from Theosophy. Blavatsky super inspires Thelema. Crowley considered Blavatsky to be a Magister Templi, so in many ways, he was considered to be one of these very advanced adepts who decided to go to the highest level of initiation and then come back to be a teacher, a beacon of enlightenment for the rest of humanity. Crowley considered Blavatsky to be one of those Magister Templi. Theosophy so inspires Thelema that it takes this idea of the dichotomy between Left-Hand Path and Right-Hand Path pretty much straight up from Theosophy, right? So, the Right-Hand Path is the good adepts, like in Theosophy, like the Ascended Master Kuthumi. And then the Left-Hand Path is Hitler, like Himmler, like the SS, like the evil magicians that are there to cause an insane amount of harm in the universe and the world.
As I was saying right, the truth is that Thelema has evolved beyond Crowley. And famously, one pivotal moment in this evolution, and of course, in Thelemic circles—so in the emic perspective—we’re still debating whether this was good or bad. I think it’s a good thing with some caveats here and there, but we generally have Kenneth Grant. Kenneth Grant was Crowley’s last magical disciple. He was his secretary for a while. Kenneth Grant is single-handedly why, for instance, I am a Thelemite much more than Crowley because, as you said at the beginning, we didn’t have much Crowley in Italian growing up, especially not in the 90s.
Dr Angela Puca: It was, but not sensible because everything changed.
Marco Visconti: It has changed in the last five years, maybe again, thanks to the efforts of Italian OTO. This is one of the rare cases where I’m speaking positively of the OTO, but they did a fantastic job translating things. For the longest time, you only had “Liber ABA: Magic and Theory and Practice,” the 76th edition from Astrolabium, a bad translation of the 72 edition by John Simons and Kenneth Grant. So, that’s all the Crowley we had for the longest time. Then we had “Moonchild,” but Kenneth Grant books, at least the first two. He wrote many books, famously the Typhonian Trilogies. I’m telling you this because Kenneth Grant tries to push the envelope for Thelema, right?
To this day, a lot of people love his work, and a lot of people hate his work in Thelema. If you speak with most people in OTO, those who are pushing Crowleyan Thelema, they will say that Kenneth Grant is the worst thing that ever happened to Thelema. Most of them, at least, would say so because he tried to innovate and bring in new ideas. He did that by trying to make sense of Thelema’s practical sides. A big part of Thelema is, of course, sex magic. I mean, everybody knows that. A lot of people are drawn to Thelema because they think they’re going to join, you know, orgies and whatnot. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t happen. Let’s not go there. It’s way less glamorous than a lot of people think it is. Even sex magic itself is way less glamorous than most people think it is. But Kenneth Grant tried to make sense of this sex magic thing because he was one of the few who knew Crowley directly and had direct instruction, so he had a good understanding of what Crowley wanted to do with this sex magic thing. But he also was very aware that Crowley didn’t have his sources all sorted out well because the idea of sex magic in Thelema comes from what Crowley understood of Tantra. Crowley didn’t understand Tantra very well because he didn’t have many sources, to be fair, famously.
Dr Angela Puca: Yeah, I was about to say it wasn’t his fault because nobody understood Tantra and its tradition properly.
Marco Visconti: Only in the last maybe 40 years have we started to better understand what Tantra is, right? I always suggest everybody read Christopher Wallis’s “Tantra Illuminated.” It was groundbreaking reading for me because I was like, okay, I did things wrong for many years, right? Even the understanding of Kundalini is not what most people think it is. Anyway, I digress. The point is that Crowley had some access to the sources. He did his best, and Crowley was trying again to create a new syncretic religion, a magical system, right? Which, by the way, is internally coherent. You can work with the Thelemic system, and you can get results. It works. But when you try to find out where these ideas come from, a lot of the traditional history that Crowley was proposing falls apart.
Kenneth Grant tried to bridge that gap because Kenneth Grant had better sources for Tantra—not as good as we have right now—but, for instance, he had connections with David Curwen. David Curwen was an interesting guy. Harry Balkan edits this book called “Brother Curwen, Brother Crowley”, which kind of explores the interaction between the two. Curwen was quite adept at real Tantra because he spent some time in India at the time we’re talking about, the 40s. It’s fantastic because Curwen chastises Crowley’s content, like, “You think you know what you’re talking about? You don’t.” It’s really funny.
Anyway, Grant had access to this guy, had access to other people, and basically what happened there is that he realized that he could present Thelema as a Left-Hand Path system by making the point that since Thelema is so based on sex magic and since sex magic has its roots in Tantra, well, in Tantra, you have this dichotomy between Dakshina-Marga and Vama-Marga, the Right-Hand Path and the Left-Hand Path. In the Left-Hand Path, which Grant understood then, the sex elements were more prominent. Nowadays, we know it’s not this simple; it’s not this clear-cut. But in the ’60s, when Grant started writing, and then in the 70s, when his books came out and were translated into multiple languages, including Italian, Spanish, French, and German, those books got a much better distribution than Crowley’s books were getting. That’s where we start getting the idea that Thelema is Left-Hand Path because pretty much Grant says so, right?
So, you see where I’m getting at this point. When we look back at your description, the way academics describe the Left-Hand Path practice nowadays, if you tell me that’s the benchmark, I would say yes, you find all those benchmarks in Thelema. Then you go to the source, and you will see Crowley will tell you no, absolutely not, because we’re trying to be the good guys. We’re trying to create adepts and then Masters that will serve humanity because we’re trying to reformulate the laws of humanity in a way that is more just and right for everybody.
Thelema is very inclusive. Despite a lot of Thelemites nowadays having very strange ideas, Thelema is very inclusive because possibly Crowley was, I don’t know, should we say that Crowley was a queer person? Possibly, that’s the right term to use. I would not call him a liberal because he was a high Tory and was very conservative in his views. But he was a queer person, and he was trying to make sure that the world, an ideal world under a Thelemic aeon, would not be as oppressive to queer people like him the way he felt about his skin. So, in many ways, Thelema hits all these bits for a Left-Hand Path tradition.
Marco Visconti: But Crowley would have never said so because he thought he was doing the right thing. He didn’t see himself as Hitler, right? That’s the point. That’s what I’m saying. And then, of course, things get muddled even more because when Kenneth Grant comes into the fold, we find that you will read Thelema is Left-Hand Path in his books. Like, we are the Left-Hand Path, we are the Left-Hand Path. And it’s like, how? Crowley spent quite some time telling you that those are the most evil magicians possible. So I guess that what’s interesting nowadays for me, from the emic perspective as a practitioner, is that nowadays we not only have to solve this conundrum—which I guess is easily solved; you just understand the perspective and try to understand that every time you use a description, you have to be aware of the context you’re using the description in.
I say that right nowadays, we have a further problem in that a lot of the Left-Hand Path nowadays—I’m going to be a bit judgmental—is what the late Jake Stratton-Kent called “dark fluff.” It’s a series of practices that have no meat to the bone. There’s nothing there. It’s very aesthetic, and it’s very empty. You can imagine something I noticed recently on social media, like being—I don’t want to say a prominent Thelemite—but having written a book, people follow me on social media, that’s what I’m going with. And many of these people, of course, are Left-Hand Path practitioners because, as we said, maybe they read Kenneth Grant and think that’s what it is. Then I read what they post and realise there’s not much there. It’s the same aesthetic—well, sorry, it’s the same message as, you know, the girl boss messaging: “Let’s do this, let’s believe in yourself,” but instead of having angels and angel numbers, you have Satan, or you have demons. So there’s not enough meat there, whereby Thelema supposedly should have a little more meat. So that’s where I’m standing.
Dr Angela Puca: Yeah, I think that makes sense. And I also know that the Left-Hand Path has also been associated with a certain political party, and that’s another reason why people are not keen on self-defining as Left-Hand Path practitioners. So, as I said, I’m not surprised, and as I said, academia is descriptive, not prescriptive. So it’s not like I would suggest to Thelemites that they identify as Left-Hand Path because that’s the description we have in academia. Practitioners can do what they find best, and academics define things based on the accuracy or the best accuracy we can get at a given time.
I think Kenneth Grant has a massive influence on the utilization of the Left-Hand Path and the association with Thelema. Of course, it’s not the whole story of at least how academics describe Thelema as part of Left-Hand Path traditions. But I think that these definitions are also… I never see definitions as monoliths because, as we have seen, even from an emic perspective, the way that Crowley intended the Left-Hand Path was very different from how Kenneth Grant intended the Left-Hand Path. The way both intended Tantra differed from each other, and they were inaccurate in that kind of description. So I think having a description is also not like a monolith, like it’s always going to be like that, because things change over time.
Marco Visconti: that’s how science should be, right? Academia is scientific, right? You always try to have something that eventually is falsifiable so that the ballpark can be pushed forward.
Dr Angela Puca: That’s what I like about being an academic. I think that not all practitioners often want to assert, “This is the truth; this is the way you have to do things.” And I like that in academia, we just say knowledge is a moving target. We will provide you with the most accurate knowledge we can gather at a given moment. But surely in 10, 20, 30 years, what we’re going to provide will be different because the methodologies at our disposal will probably give us more accuracy. Also, the world around us will have changed; some could even argue that everything around us changes. The result that you get, even using the same methodology, might vary.
Marco Visconti: Crowley wanted to push this idea of scientific illuminism, which in many ways is, you know, the scientific, the academic way, right? So, from my perspective, this is also why, for instance, I struggle with those Thelemites that, like you were saying, want to say, “No, no, we have the truth, this is Thelema, this is the doctrine, this is what Crowley said, and we need to stick with it all the time.” Because, you know, not only, for instance, do we know as a fact, as you correctly mentioned, that Crowley’s understanding of Tantra—which is how his entire system of sex magic derives from—is faulty.
It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work. I think that magic works in practice and not in theory. If I’m not mistaken, this is a Peter Carroll quote: magic works in practice and not in theory. I like it a lot because, in my experience right, in my book, I write about “mythical thinking,” and the idea is that in magic, you want to have an internally coherent system. You establish a myth, right, and you work inside the myth, right, knowing—at least you should know—that it’s not that the myth is the reality; it is the truth. Because, in many ways, the truth is something that you only find at the very end of your initiatory path and possibly, personally—that’s my understanding—you only have glimpses of it. At the same time, you’re incarnated while you’re alive. It’s something that will be yours once you transcend this incarnation and space and time itself.
But the point is that as you try to get there, it’s useful in many ways, it’s needed to create a set of myths from which you can derive some practices. But the truth is that, again, these myths should, in my understanding—at least that’s how I present Thelema, that’s how I teach Thelema—should not be monolithic. We should carry on. And again, if you speak with many other Thelemites, they would say, “No, that’s wrong because we have a doctrine. If you do what you’re doing, you’re doing consensus Thelema. At A∴A∴, you’re doing whatever you want, and that’s not it.” But at the same time, if you don’t try to push the boundaries or go further, you never apply that scientific illuminism that Crowley himself wanted to have, right? Like Crowley was trying to push as one of the tenets of Thelema.
You know, famously, he said that Thelemites were striving for the method of science and the aim of religion, which is exactly what we said here, right? Like, the method of science may be the etic perspective, and the aim of religion is the emic perspective, like, you know, trying to marry them together. So yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, I agree with you, right? From the perspective of using a very well-defined descriptor, Thelema is the Left-Hand Path. We’re individualists, we are antinomian, there’s an element of hedonism—I think many people are losing it, unfortunately—but there’s an element of that. And there’s the idea of self-deification, even if I would say in Thelema, the self-deification is not so much like “I am God, and you know, I do what I want.” That’s very different.
For instance, I should mention it because that was obvious to me, but of course, I should mention it out loud. The main aphorism in Thelema is “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the Law, love under will.” That “Do what thou wilt” is not “Do whatever you want,” which is, in fact, the way a lot of Left-Hand Paths interpret it. Like, a lot of Left-Hand Path—which is, I’m thinking about, you know, Acid Satanism, Order of the Nine Angles, those more extreme kind of Left-Hand Path—but then again, also the ones that ignite the interest of a lot of those who look from the outside, saying, “No, I’m joining this because, you know, [expletive] the police, I do what I want.” Thelema is the polar opposite. “Do what thou wilt” is an incredibly authoritarian, in fact, aphorism because it means that you need to find who you truly are. You need to find yourself—it’s not like your true self; the self is another very loaded term.
You know, you bring down psychological models versus spirit models of magic, but let’s say you try to find out that spark of divinity that’s hidden inside of you that’s both you and both outside of you. Because what you’re trying to understand is that true will, which should be called pure will, is the term found in the Book of the Law in Liber AL vel Legis. It is completely transpersonal. It’s not about what you, as Marco or Angela, want to do or what you think you can do. It’s not even what the best version of Angela and Marco can do. It’s about finding that specific path where you were always meant to be, and that will lead you where you’re meant to go because it’s about that divine spark you carry inside yourself.
So I would say maybe in this thing, the self-deification of Thelema is very different from what you would find in other Left-Hand Path traditions because it’s really not about “Do whatever you want.” It’s about, in many ways, like “Do only the right thing in every given moment.”
Dr Angela Puca: Quite a few Left-Hand Path traditions conceptualize self-deification or apotheosis in that kind of way. It’s not like, “Oh, I’m the god of everything, obey me,” you know.
Marco Visconti: I did know that because I don’t know if I ever told you I was a member of Dragon Rouge for a while.
Dr Angela Puca: I didn’t know that.
Marco Visconti: Yeah, I was a member of Dragon Rouge from ’99 to 2003, and I was basically… it was in my flat in Rome that we started doing the group, the, you know, the meetings that eventually would lead to a Lodge in Naples with Alberto Brandi being… yeah, I know it’s a small world, isn’t it? Right. And so it happened in my flat in Rome. So I was a member of that, and the reality is that eventually, no, Thelema was my path much more than Dragon Rouge. But if I say at the time, not so much the people that I knew in Italy, but a lot of the other people I was in contact with in Dragon Rouge, a lot of them did see that apotheosis as in, like, you know, maybe one day we’ll do the right thing, but right now I do what I want. But then again, it was like the late ’90s, old metal heads; it was a different time, simpler times.
Dr Angela Puca: Sounds like, you know, teenagers that just wanted to rebel.
Marco Visconti: Yeah. I was 22 at the time, and before, I was 21. I’m 46 next week, so imagine how many years have passed.
Dr Angela Puca: So you’re a Gemini?
Marco Visconti: Indeed, Gemini with Saturn in Gemini and Sagittarius rising. I’m just not saying anything else, right? It’s enough as it is. But yeah, I think we agree in the end, but it’s nice to have this conversation because you can make points that you just never make because maybe, I don’t know, you take it for granted. A lot of people never hear these conversations, right? Because a lot of people never… I would say that a lot of those who have an interest in the esoteric, especially in the last six or seven years, if they’re new to it, maybe they’ve been exposed to it mostly from TikTok and then eventually, thanks to you and Dr Justin Sledge and a few others, you know, to better information. But for the longest time, it has been like hot takes on TikTok, so it’s nice to try and have a little bit more of a deeper discussion about it.
Dr Angela Puca: Yeah, I think that’s why it was important to have this conversation, both to clarify the different perspectives and also, I think, another point that I’d like to make—and this is something that I’ve discussed with informants in my research as well on a very different topic, and that would be the topic of spiritual versus religion—because you find it very often in the people that practice esotericism and witchcraft tend to say, “I’m spiritual, I’m not religious,” and they describe what they do as a form of spirituality as opposed to a form of religion.
As an academic, I and also other colleagues don’t tell people what to do, but there’s part of me that would want people to challenge that, to challenge that dichotomy because religion is a social entity, you know, is a social agent. It is something that gets funding that gets research, whereas spirituality remains a subsection of religion. Even if you think about how it works in academia, when you have to, you know, get a research grant or research proposal or get to a department where you want to study, I don’t know, whether it’s Thelema or some other esoteric practice, you still have to go under religious studies.
So, in a way, I feel like the fact that people want to use the term spirituality is giving less power because they are submitting to the fact that the term religion belongs to the Judeo-Christian religions and not challenging the fact—which is something that scholars have been doing for a long time—but we don’t have the support of the community from the emic perspective because many say, “Oh, it’s spirituality, it’s not a religion,” whereas defining it as a religion would help redefine the term religion itself, which is much more of a political, a social agent, and even an economic agent. It would give relevance and importance and research to these kinds of traditions. But I’m digressing, so what was I saying? I was saying that…
Marco Visconti: If I can, you know, say something on this, right? So, I was one of those who, for the longest time, would say, “I’m spiritual, I’m not religious,” right? And this was like maybe 15 years going like this, right? Like going through the A∴A∴ training, Dragon Rouge, and other things I did. Then, when I joined the OTO, the OTO wanted to establish Thelema as a religion. Now, Crowley was very ambivalent about this because Crowley at first really wanted to establish Thelema as a religion. I mean, by all means, if you look at it, Thelema is a religion, right? There’s no doubt about it. If you look at all the various markers of a religion, Thelema hits them all. You have a central text, you have a prophet, and you have practices. It’s a religion; there’s no doubt about it.
Now, for the longest time, Crowley wanted to try and do that. He wrote a Gnostic Mass, so he wrote a central communal ritual so that people could come together and have an essential experience of the mysteries of Thelema without being initiated, but just receiving them in a passive way—the way the mass, the Catholic mass, or the Christian mass in general does the same thing, right? And then, through the OTO, most people will not know that the OTO is not strictly the magical order of Thelema. You don’t learn magic in the OTO.
It used to be a Masonic system, so again, something very different than magic. Magic and mysteries are two different things that eventually got, you know, taken over by Crowley, and Crowley Thelemized it. But it’s still very much like a fraternity that teaches via Masonic means, which, again, is kind of passive in the sense that it’s not like you do the magic. You go to various degrees where you receive the degree, and other people do the degree for you. It’s almost like you are the talisman and empowered in these degrees, right? But it’s still passive, right? Whereas the magic you do in the A∴A∴ is active, you do something.
Okay, back to “Magic Without Tears,” like the book I told you about. There’s another chapter, I don’t remember which it is right now—chapter 31, I remember now—where it says, “Is Thelema a religion?” Crowley goes on a rant at the end of his life to say, “Well, call it a religion if you need it. I don’t know what good it will do, but I don’t care.” Right, so you can read this two ways, right? You can read it in the sense that maybe, like an old man in his 70s, almost dying, right, is saying, “You know what, do whatever, I don’t care. I wrote so much, you decide for yourself.” Or—and this is maybe where I’m leaning myself—that maybe he realized that while, as you correctly stated, it’s undeniable that reappropriating the term religion would do us a great deal of good, there’s so much baggage involved and so much politics involved, and people get really, really sucked into the politics of hierarchical structures and whatnot, that maybe you lose too much by doing that.
This is my experience because I was the poster boy when I was a member of the OTO. I believed in it and thought that was the way to go. And then I realized all the hierarchy problems, all the nepotism, and issues. I was seeing something that I, as an Italian, as somebody who was born and raised in Rome, I was seeing the same stuff that was happening in the Vatican, right, on a much smaller scale, way less drama, way less horrible crimes—still some crimes—but way less. But at the same time, that kind of convinced me that, yes, it’s true, like reappropriating the term religion would do us a great deal of good. I don’t know if we can. I don’t know if humanity is mature enough yet. So if you’re interested in spiritual evolution, if you’re interested in initiation, maybe you have to do it right now, where we’re living right now in 2024.
You have to live outside the boundaries of religion because, in my experience, religion will always go back into a focus on community, and community breeds hierarchy, and hierarchy breeds nepotism. And then, when you get stuck in those cycles, the focus on initiation disappears because we’re all focused on running the group, climbing the ladder, getting to the next degree, and making the system work. Then again, I’m very tired because my experience in the OTO hasn’t been good. But circling back to your point, are you spiritual or religious if you ask me? I’m both. But I wish we could be, I don’t know, 100, 200 years from now and see if we could finally solve this issue because I think it’s an issue.
Dr Angela Puca: My question, perhaps provocatively, is: who says religion needs to be hierarchical? Who says that religion needs to be dogmatic? These are all preconceptions we have that shape religion after Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. It is a conversation that has been happening for quite some time in academia, including with my supervisor. She has worked a lot and published on redefining religion and how we can help define religion in a more encompassing way. My whole point with that conversation was not denying the importance of spirituality but saying that what people define as spirituality is perhaps religion. It’s not defined according to the three religions; it’s defined according to a much broader set of criteria.
Because if you have a belief system—I mean, let’s talk about Thelema or about, I don’t know, any other spiritual practice—given that it doesn’t have to have dogma. It doesn’t need an institution unless you want to define religion according to the three monotheisms we have just mentioned. If you have a worldview, a belief system, a set of practices, and any kind of idea of the divine that your practices are helping you interact with, whether it’s internal, external, animistic, or whatever, why would it not be a religion? You know, the only reason why it wouldn’t be a religion is if you define religion according to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.
Marco Visconti: But you know, at the same time, religion comes from the Latin “religare,” to bind again. Maybe religion needs that binding, needs that boundary, right?
Dr Angela Puca: Yeah, but it could also be like a similar root found in yoga in Sanskrit, “anuyogin,” which is uniting.
Marco Visconti: Yeah, or you could also say that “religio” is like binding again to the gods or the divine.
Dr Angela Puca: Exactly, so it really depends on how you interpret it.
Marco Visconti: Then again, you know, it’s all as we’re… I think the takeaway from today’s discussion is that you know, it’s important how you describe things because the way you describe things can make or break everything, right?
Dr Angela Puca: Yeah, academics are incredibly annoying with descriptions. For example, if you go to conferences, you could spend hours and hours just describing one term.
Marco Visconti: No, no, no, but it’s good. It’s good to have this kind of conversation. So, you know, back to your point, could we have a religion that… could we move away from the way Abrahamic religions have described themselves? Yes, I think we could, and I think we should. Do I think that we are ready for it? My experience tells me that even something like Thelema, which wants to be the next step, wants to be the next eonic law of attainment, but we haven’t solved that problem yet. Because when we look at our internal discussions, they’re eminently based on do we need a Vatican—the OTO—or do not need a Vatican. And the people inside the Vatican—the OTO—would say that that’s the best thing ever, to the point that they tend to be very aggressive and dismissive of everybody who’s outside and double so of everybody who was inside and then left, like me.
So I think it’s a problem of maturity. We, as human beings, are not mature enough; we’re not spiritually mature enough to finally solve this problem, right? And I guess that, as always, we need time. And possibly, even the fact that we have the opportunity to have this discussion in such a freeway right now, and then, you know, discussions like this can reach thousands of people, tens of thousands of people, that’s great, right? And so maybe, you know, the next generation will be a step beyond that and then etc., etc., etc. But I really think that if you ask me, like, are we going to solve it in our lifetimes? No, I don’t think so. I really don’t.
I think we’re still… let’s look at it from a mystical perspective, right? Let’s go from the way I see it as a Thelemite. Thelema brought a new aeon, a new law, and a magical, mystical attainment system 120 years ago. This is the 120th year since the reception of the Book of the Law. We’ve done very little steps ahead, right? And it’s so interesting because when you look back at the way people were writing about Thelema in the ’70s and ’80s—Robert Anton Wilson famously—they were saying, “Oh, you see, you can see Thelema everywhere because, you know, we had the Summer of Love, we had the free love movement, liberalism is everywhere. Thelema has done what it promised.” Looking at where we are today in 2024, we’ve taken many steps back, right? Haven’t we? So, the reality is that we may have to wait much longer to see the fruits of this new law to be fully installed. Then again, if you want to believe in Thelema, right?
But even if you don’t want to believe in Thelema, I do think that for humanity to move beyond the yoke of the Abrahamic religions and the way they worked for humanity for 2,000 and more than 2,000 years—I mean, Judaism for longer than 2,000 years—you can’t deny that they shaped our culture for history, right? So possibly, we would need a much longer period of time to detach and disentangle ourselves from those structures that are, in my understanding, in my opinion, very oppressive. They just do not breed good spiritual environments. But here we are right now, right? So, fingers crossed. Fingers crossed.
Dr Angela Puca: I’m not surprised that in the OTO and even the way Crowley designed Thelema, it resembles Christianity because that was the frame of reference. Nothing is born out of a vacuum, so there were cultural and religious references. So what do you do? I mean, when you’re trying to create a new religion, you will try and have certain ideas of what it is that you want to give with your religion. But then, when you have to create a structure out of it so that it goes out of your head and can be shared with others, the only thing you have at your disposal is whatever frame of reference you have. So, I think that even nowadays, people tend to have, especially in our—you know, in Italy and the UK, I think these are countries that are very Christian-dominated—even just culturally, even when people are not particularly religious as in Christians, but they are still very much culturally shaped by Christianity.
And that also defines how you would do a ritual, even the idea of having a mass. It could have been something completely different, but you can’t create something out of nothing. Thelema evolves slowly and progressively. So, when you progress in a religious practice that is completely different from the frame of reference, it usually takes a long time and several steps to achieve that complete severance. But in the beginning, it’s almost unavoidable. It’s the same thing as saying, “Oh, they didn’t understand Tantra correctly because they didn’t have the text.” Well, of course, they couldn’t. It’s the same with Nietzsche and Schopenhauer—they didn’t have a good understanding of Indian traditions but didn’t have proper translations and texts. So it’s understandable.
But I think that to the point of spirituality versus religion, I think that one of my points was that I am aware that the Left-Hand Path now if you look at the discourse online, there are a lot of edgy people that like to play with demons and people that are very right-wing. But I think there is a point where it might be worth asking: Is it worth it for these people to dominate the narrative of what the Left-Hand Path is?
Marco Visconti: Not. That’s my answer, right?
Dr Angela Puca: So that’s why it might be worth offering a perspective that doesn’t have any specific, you know, narrative or agenda in mind, like the academic one that offers a more neutral perspective and says, “Look, it’s not edgy teenagers.”
Marco Visconti: Right. The only thing I would say on that is, I would preface this by saying I agree with you 100%. The only thing I would add to this is that I think it’s also important—and you do it, but I’ve seen others not doing it—to always remind people that the academic perspective is descriptive and not prescriptive. Because, you know, what I’ve seen happening—again, you don’t do it—what I’ve seen happening is that since, as I was saying before, a lot of people that have been exposed to the occult in the last few years, you know, eventually they move away from TikTok and find better sources. Then maybe they hear the academic perspective from those who… I’m thinking about books here, not really about anybody who does it online. Everybody, all of you who do it on YouTube, do a fantastic job, to be fair. But I’m thinking about books that maybe are not completely clear on this. And then these people read the books and then come back and say, maybe to me, “Oh, by the way, you are this because I read it in this book, and you don’t have a PhD, so you’re wrong.” And I was like, “Well, let’s sit down and chat about that,” right?
Dr Angela Puca: No, I know who you’re referring to. If I understand who you’re referring to, I agree with you. And this is another thing I always tell people: just because somebody has a PhD doesn’t mean their writing is more accurate. You need to look at whether something is peer-reviewed, not whether the person has a PhD. If something is peer-reviewed, yes, but some people just get a PhD and then talk about what they think and fancy.
Just because—even myself—I mean, one day, I might want to write, I don’t know, a novel or something that is not academic. Just because I have a PhD is not going to make it more authoritative than somebody who doesn’t have a PhD. What makes it more authoritative is when I publish peer-reviewed work. And this is something that you can check. So, if something is published peer-reviewed, you know it has to follow a certain methodology. But when you look at these people with PhDs who never publish peer-reviewed work, it’s like, I wonder how that is the case. Why?
Dr Angela Puca: Why is that happening, right? Why? I wonder. Bizarre.
Marco Visconti: At the very same time, you know, the average person is not aware of these nuances, right? Like, this is something that you only—even the concept of peer-review, like, I don’t know, maybe everybody in the chat knows what it means, but maybe some in the chat now are like, “I don’t know what these two are talking about. What is peer review?” Right?
Dr Angela Puca: Yeah, I think the importance of peer-review marks the fact that I’m not the authority because the peer-review process is the process of scientific publication, which means that I have a research study, and I propose it to a publication, and then you will have one or two or multiple anonymous reviewers that are experts in the field who will evaluate whether your research has been well done, whether the methodology is correct, whether you have collected data properly, even from an ethical point of view. Ethics is very important, not just in terms of the correct methodology from a scientific point of view. When you do something academically, you must follow very strict ethics; otherwise, it will be completely invalidated. I was terrified that I would do something wrong with my ethics. You always have to state, “I am a researcher; I’m doing this for this, this, and this purpose,” otherwise, your data will be invalidated during the peer-review process. And then, they will evaluate all of your findings, the data collection, and data analysis, and if all of this is correct, they will always still say you need to improve this, this, and that. And after a long process, it will get published if your research is good.
I’ve heard people saying, “Oh, I didn’t get published peer-reviewed because academia hates magic and hates people who study magic.” And it’s like, no, they don’t. I had problems with Italian academia when I had to publish peer-reviewed work in Italy. So I did have pushback on that, and there was a very interesting story that I could tell you about. But unfortunately, Italian academics—well, there’s a reason I moved to the UK for my PhD, because you don’t have any of this in Italy.
I think they are starting to research this in Rome, La Sapienza in Rome, and the University of Turin. And I also went to teach in Catania, so there are a few centres here and there, but it’s still in its inception. And so when I tried to publish peer-reviewed work with the University of Padua, my research was sent to scholars in Italy who had no clue what I was talking about. And so there was one reviewer who rejected it on completely unscientific grounds. So what happens in this case? So that’s why when people say, “Oh, I didn’t get published because people didn’t like my work,” that’s not how it works. I mean, if the reasons that the reviewer gives you don’t follow academic standards, you can appeal to that. So I wrote to the editor a very angry email at 6 a.m., and I explained all the reasons as to why that reviewer and that review were unacceptable.
And I suggested I cannot tell you who to send my work to, but I would recommend somebody who has worked outside of Italy because Italy doesn’t have experts in this field and doesn’t quite understand this type of research. And sure enough, the editor, an ordinary professor at the University of Padua, agreed with me and sent it through a second round of peer review. Then, now it’s published. So when people tell me, “Oh, I don’t get published because they just don’t like esotericism and they don’t like my research,” it’s not true. I mean…
Marco Visconti: You just have to go through the system properly. That’s the real thing in that.
Dr Angela Puca: It might be a pain in the behind because it’s not easy, and if you have any self-esteem, the peer-reviewed process will damage it completely. The reviewers’ job is to smash your work to pieces and say you should have done this better and that other thing better, and you should mention this. I mean, even when they like it and approve it, it’s how it works. So you have to build a thick skin.
Marco Visconti: I’m not an academic, but after doing my first book with a proper editor and publisher, I always thought I could write decently. I don’t particularly like to write, but I know I could do it. Then, now I know that I got better after doing my first book because, you know, the editing was coming, the editor was piling in things. And I can say the book is 100% better because of those edit rounds, right? So yeah, I guess the point here is that if you want to present some information, you must have the information and be sure that your information is supported by the data and not just resting on dogma and nothing else.
But, you know, getting back to what we were saying before, I think it’s important—and of course, we’re getting there—that people who are not academics and even people who are not practitioners, people who are just interested in these topics, understand that it’s not just because somebody has a PhD that they know better than anybody else, of course.
And again, as I said, you, Dr Justin Sledge—I’m thinking about, you know, everybody—all of you YouTube academics, you’re doing a fantastic job because you’re honest. You’re constantly publishing great stuff, and we need more of that. At the end of the year, I posted one thing on Substack, saying that I was doing a preview and saying that, you know, the occult fad was disappearing, and only the academics on YouTube would remain. I think I’m right because we need that kind of structure.
Dr Angela Puca: I was about to say that maybe one reason why people like us academics on YouTube is that we are not pushing any agenda; we’re just really explaining things. Often, what you find with practitioners that have social media platforms is that they tend to push their own worldview and their own way of seeing things, whereas in our case, we’re just presenting what research says. It’s like, you know, that’s what research says about Kenneth Grant or Aleister Crowley. So, it tends to be more neutral. I think that in a world of social media where everything is incredibly polarized, having a neutral perspective is refreshing because it’s like, then, you can make of it what you want.
Marco Visconti: No, no, I agree with you 100%. Well, I think we’ve done it, we agreed.
Dr Angela Puca: Yeah, we have fought a terrible argument. I knew that, I mean, it wouldn’t be, you know, anything like that. But you can never know. But as I said, I also think that the perspective of practitioners is very important. So, I mean, as I do anthropology of religion, I really value what people think. I mean, and that’s one of the things that sometimes happens: practitioners think that academics should tell them things. Like when I was studying for my PhD in shamanism in Italy, and I was going through different initiation processes because I did participant observation, and I would ask people, “So what is shamanism?” and they would say, “Oh, but you are the researcher, you should tell me.”
Marco Visconti: That’s how research works, right?
Dr Angela Puca: Yeah, or they would feel self-conscious about, “Oh, what if I give the wrong answer and it’s not correct?” And it’s like, I don’t care about that. I want to know what it is for you. I want to understand how you define it. So that’s why I say it is important how people define it. It’s not like I’m saying the way academics define it is the best and the only thing that needs to exist—absolutely not. Even though there are more personal, emotional, practical, religiously related reasons and culturally related reasons as to why people would define a term in one way as opposed to another, that is still incredibly important. Even if you think about why Aleister Crowley rejected the Left-Hand Path, we get so much information about Aleister Crowley’s perception of the Left-Hand Path, his influence from Theosophy, and his idea of magic. I mean, even just by his definition of the Left-Hand Path, we get so much information about his view. So, that’s why I say both perspectives are incredibly important.
Marco Visconti: You know what? Maybe in a few years’ time, we can write a book together from the two perspectives. It could be interesting, right? I’ll send you an email about ideas.
Dr Angela Puca: Yeah, that would be interesting. Actually, in Italian or English?
Marco Visconti: Well, in English first and then we translate it into Italian because, as you know, there’s not enough market in Italy. But you know, things are changing, right? Because I can tell you my book has been selling well in Italian. I mean, that was surprising to me, right? I did not expect that. It was number one on Amazon Italy for a day only. I mean, of course, in the magic subcategory of the rankings, right? That means that people are buying it. I’m completely positively surprised.
Marco Visconti: Well, do we have questions? How do we go from here?
Dr Angela Puca: Yeah, I think we’ll probably wrap up soon. I was just about to say that I’m… speaking of publications, I’m working with scholars from the University of Turin. We’re going to publish the first academic book on paganism in Italian for Mondadori.
Marco Visconti: So that’s amazing. Okay, see? See? Possibly, finally, progress.
Dr Angela Puca: Yeah, exactly.
Marco Visconti: You know what we should do? We should return to Pagan Pride, Italy, in Rome at some point, right? So, for those of you who don’t know, I and Angela met at the Pagan Pride Day in Rome many years ago. The first time, we were much younger. You’re still young, but anyway, you know, there used to be little conferences on the grass. We can go back and do academic emic versus etic perspectives at Pagan Pride Day. You know what? That could be a good idea.
Dr Angela Puca: Yeah, that would be a great idea. I never shared this on my channel, but I am personally sharing—the first time that I went to a Pagan Pride, I was a teenager, and my parents forbade me from going there. I didn’t know any people in the community in my surrounding area, and I just… what’s the term… Scappando da casa… I can’t remember…
Marco Visconti: Well, you just ran away from home.
Dr Angela Puca: That’s it, yes. I ran away from home, and my mom said, “If you leave to go to that place, never come back again.” I said, “Okay, Mom,” and I just went to Rome. I met the first pagans and practitioners in Naples but in Rome because it’s crazy.
Marco Visconti: I always thought you guys were coming together from Naples. So that’s… you just met there. Okay, interesting, yeah.
Dr Angela Puca: But then, if anyone was worried, they did re-accept me back home, even though there was…
Marco Visconti: Italian moms tend to be very dramatic, but they love you anyway.
Dr Angela Puca: It’s true, yes. So, I don’t see many questions. Thank you, guys, for the super chats and for thanking us for the conversation. If you see any questions, just point them out to me because…
Marco Visconti: I’m not seeing any either. I see people had a lot of comments, which is great. Thank you all for listening to our rambles. It is always nice to have them, right?
Dr Angela Puca: Yeah, and sexual magic mainly comes from… yeah, I have a video on sex magic. It was introduced in Western Esotericism…
Marco Visconti: And I agree it comes from P.B. Randolph, but where does P.B. Randolph get it from? Where does the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor get it from, right? So anyway, what Crowley did is different from what Randolph did. There’s no animation of the statues, for instance, in Thelema, but there is the creation of the Moonchild. So, if we go into little details there… yeah, I don’t see any questions. I think they were just happy to… oh, somebody… there’s a question: have you ever read Simon’s Necronomicon? Have you ever read Simon Necronomicon?
Dr Angela Puca: Do I have to answer?
Marco Visconti: Well, I mean I’ve done a course with Peter Levenda, and I’m doing a retreat with Peter Levenda. Yes, I read it, and I know the person who knows Simon well, so they—and he—will be the first to say that it’s not the real Necronomicon. But it’s a system, not Sumerian, but it’s something that works. It’s maybe one of the most successful Chaos Magic grimoires ever put out there because it’s definitely… it’s what it tells you it is, but it works from a magic perspective.
Dr Angela Puca: I think that’s important because there’s nothing wrong with making up something new as long as you acknowledge it is new. I think that we can probably wrap it up here.
Marco Visconti: Yeah, I think so as well.
Dr Angela Puca: Before we wrap up, is there anything you want to tell people? Where can they find you? Yeah, I mean, get your book.
Marco Visconti: Yeah, I mean exactly. Suppose you’re curious about Thelema and you want to learn how to do magic. In that case, you can buy my book, “The Aleister Crowley Manual: Thelemic Magic for Modern Times” or “Il Manuale di Aleister Crowley” in Italian, and you can find it everywhere. Amazon is the simplest way to get it. My website is marcovisconti.org—my name.org—and over there, you will find information on all the things that I offer. I offer a series of courses. So yeah, if you’re curious about what I do, you can find me there and on social media. I’m trying to detox from social media as much as possible, but in general, if you look for Marco Visconti on Instagram, Twitter, and whatnot, you’ll find me. And if you have any questions, you can reach out.
Dr Angela Puca: Thank you, Marco. Thank you for joining me in this conversation.
Marco Visconti: Thank you, Angela. I really appreciate it. A great discussion. Thank you very much.
Dr Angela Puca: So, guys, I hope that you enjoyed this conversation. Obviously, I look forward to reading your comments, so please leave them. Don’t forget to smash the like button if you like this video and share it around so that the Symposium can grow and people can understand more about the difference between an academic and practitioner perspective. Also, if you’re interested in learning about the Left-Hand Path from an academic perspective, there are still a couple of spots left in my very first online course. Very nervous, very excited. You’ll find the link in the description box. And yeah, you’ll also find all the ways to support my work if you wish to do so. I would really appreciate it. And thank you all so much for being here. I hope that you all stay tuned for all the academic fun.
Bye for now.