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Aleister Crowley

The Scientific Solution
of the
Problem of Government

by Comte de Fénix

First published circa 1937 EV in London.

(It is referred to in the introduction to the 1938 EV edition of The Book of the Law.)
Crowley's pseudonym here, "Comte de Fénix" is a play on "Phoenix," his secret name as head of O.T.O.

[ Published in The Revival of Magick, edited by Hymenaeus Beta & R. Kaczynski (1998 ev.) ]

Theorem.

The scientific solution of the problem of Government is given in AL (Liber Legis). This Law supersedes all the empirical theories hitherto current.

Quotation.

Chapter I.

3. Every man and every woman is a star.

10. Let my servants be few & secret: they shall rule the many & the known.

40. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

41. The word of Sin is Restriction.

42. thou hast no right but to do thy will.

43. Do that, and no other shall say nay.

44. For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.

57. Love is the law, love under will.

Chapter II.

19. Is a God to live in a dog? No! but the highest are of us. They shall rejoice, our chosen: who sorroweth is not of us.

20. Beauty and strength, leaping laughter and delicious languor, force and fire are of us.

58. Yea! deem not of change: ye shall be as ye are, & not other. Therefore the kings of the earth shall be Kings for ever: the slaves shall serve.

Chapter III.

4. Choose ye an island!

5. Fortify it!

6. Dung it about with enginery of war!

7. I will give you a war-engine.

8. With it ye shall smite the peoples; and none shall stand before you.

58. But the keen and the proud, the royal and the lofty; ye are brothers!

59. As brothers fight ye!

60. There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.

Demonstration.

1. The average voter is a moron. He believes what he reads in newspapers, feeds his imagination and lulls his repressions on the cinema, and hopes to break away from his slavery by football pools, cross-word prizes, or spotting the winner of the 3:30.

   He is ignorant as no illiterate peasant is ignorant: he has no power of independent thought. He is the prey of panic.

   But he has the vote.

2. The men in power can only govern by stampeding him into wars, playing on his fears and prejudices until he acquiesces in repressive legislation against his obvious interests, playing on his vanity until he is totally blind to his own misery and serfdom.

   The alternative method is undisguised dragooning. In brief, we govern by a mixture of lying and bullying.

3. This desperate resort to archaic weapons is the heritage of hypocrisy. The theories of Divine Right, aristocratic superiority, the moral order of Nature, are all today exploded bluffs. Even those of us who believe in supernatural sanctions for our privileges to browbeat and rob the people no longer delude ourselves with the thought that our victims share our superstitions.
4. Even dictators understand this. Mussolini has tried to induce the ghost of Ancient Rome to strut the stage in the image of Julius Caesar; Hitler has invented a farrago of nonsense about Nordics and Aryans; nobody even pretends to believe either, except through the "will-to-believe."

   And the pretence is visibly breaking down everywhere. They cannot even be galvanized with spasms of pseudo-activity, as still occasionally happens with the dead toads of superstition.

5. There is only one hope of uniting the people under intelligent leadership; because there is only one thing in which everyone really believes. That is, believes in such a way that he automatically bases every action of his daily life on its principles.

   (This is true of practically all men, whatever their race, caste, or creed.) This universally accepted basis of conduct is Science.

6. Science has attained this position because it makes no assertion that it is not prepared to demonstrate to all comers. (This part is so well understood that all the "false prophets"—Spiritualism, Christian Science, ethnological cranks, Great Pyramid puzzle-mongers, and the rest of the humbugs—all pretend to appeal to evidence, not to authority, as did the Kings and the Churches.)

   The problem of Government is therefore to find a scientific formula with an ethical implication. This formula must be rigidly applicable to all sane men soever without reference to the individual qualities of any one of them.

7. The formula is given by the Law of Thelema. "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."^[1]

   This injunction, in one sense infinitely elastic, since it does not specify any particular goal of will as desirable, is yet infinitely rigid, in that it binds every man to follow out exactly the purpose for which he is fitted by heredity, environment, experience, and self-development.

   The formula is thus also biologically indefeasible, as well as adequate, ethically to every individual, and politically to the State.

8. Let this formula be accepted by every government. Experts will immediately be appointed to work out, when need arises, the details of the True Will of every individual, and even that of every corporate body whether social or commercial, while a judiciary will arise to determine the equity in the case of apparently conflicting claims. (Such cases will become progressively more rare as adjustment is attained.) All appeal to precedent and authority, the deadwood of the Tree of Life^[2], will be abolished, and strictly scientific standards will be the sole measure by which the executive power shall order the people. The absolute rule of the state shall be a function of the absolute liberty of each individual will.

Proof read and edited by Frater D.M.T. © Thelemagick.

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