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Aleister Crowley wrote Liber Oz in 1941 for Louis Wilkinson (AKA Louis Marlow). His original name for it was "The Book of the Goat," and he considered it as a sort of manifesto for O.T.O.  Those of us who accept this remarkably simple and poetic statement of the natural rights of Humankind (written entirely in words of one syllable) should contemplate it deeply and frequently, for it is both our strength and our refuge; and, if our prayers are fervent, and our luck holds out, it might not knock us on our butts.
....From OBSERVATIONS ON LIBER OZ   by Frater Sabazius, (aka David Scriven, CEO of the American OTO Corp.)  See: thestargoddess.net/ozgloss.html
 

3/19/2001

Liber OZ was brought to mind (again) these past few days by having come upon a new-to-me music group/composer going by the name of COPH NIA (see cophnia.com) and hearing one of his compositions called "OPUS 77".  In it the composer dramatically recites Liber OZ over a very fine 'dark ambient' musical score.  What struck me about hearing Liber OZ thus given, was how true the excerpts from LIBER AL sounded, and how bogus the rest of the text of OZ seemed, to my 'mind' anyway.  Quite some time ago, I had come to the conclusion that no incarnate being of any stripe enjoys or is guaranteed 'rights' of any kind; except the one 'right' referred to in LIBER AL which is, surprisingly enough, given in the introduction to the text of OZ:

"thou hast no right but to do thy will. Do that, and no other shall say nay." --AL. I. 42-3

Rights of all kinds loom large in human discourse these days.  Of course, so-called 'human rights' loom the largest.  But we are also concerned, to varying degrees, with women's rights, children's rights, civil rights, gay rights, prisoner rights, animal rights, environmental rights, constitutional rights, and on and on.  A very common expression in our (at least American) discourse is, 'And just who (or what) gave you the right to......(fill in the blank)'.  Many people, again at least in the USA, frequently invoke what they are wont to call 'their god given rights' or 'their constitutional rights' to do.........(fill in the blank).  In the above given quote from Mr. Scriven, he refers to the 'rights' enumerated in the text of OZ as being the "natural rights of Humankind".  Quite sometime ago, my investigations into the nature of WILL led me to question the very concept of 'rights' of any kind, 'human' or otherwise.

After much consideration I came to conclude that, for the concept of 'rights' to have any validity at all, rights would have to be absolute and inviolable; in a sense, 'god given' if you will believe in the notion of god.  Nothing in nature could or would challenge them.  And, if that were the case, then these 'rights' would be such an ordinary, 'natural' part of our day to day, moment to moment lives that they would be unquestioned let alone unquestionable; that we would take them so for granted that we would be unaware of them as such.  We would just exercise these 'rights' in the same way that we breathe: without premeditated thought or intention.  We would never have to fight for such rights.  They would never be in question.  As such, these 'rights' would never give rise to conflict between us with each other or between us and the rest of nature.

When we ask: 'Who or what gives you the right to........'  we are, I suggest, asking a very cogent question.  If one discounts the existence of a god as I do, then the question of 'god given rights' disappears along with god.  This then leaves us with the question of 'what' gives us rights, to the extent that we do indeed have any.  In the above quote Mr. Scriven refers to the list of rights found in Liber OZ as natural rights.  To the extent that we do indeed have any rights, I too consider them to be given by nature, by 'fiat' as it were.  They would come as part of the territory, as part of the equipment, or as a consequence of the afore mentioned.  They would be part and parcel with 'human nature'.  Which brings to mind yet another expression we use regarding 'rights': they would be part of our birth rights.  What then can we find in human nature that might be considered as a 'right' within the descriptive frame work I have given here?  I think that one of the introductory fragments from LIBER AL which AC incorporated into the test of OZ is the key to answering this question:

"thou hast no right but to do thy will. Do that, and no other shall say nay." --AL. I. 42-3

As it turns out, this is the only place in LIBER AL where the question of 'rights' is considered at all.  And given what is said here, this should not be surprising.  For this statement quite unequivocally says that the one and only right we have is "to do thy well".  In other words, we have the natural right to act on our Will/intentions.  In other words, we have the right to endeavor or strive to fulfill our Will/intentions.  But this natural right to act on our Will/intentions does not at the same time guarantee us the right to fulfill/achieve the object of our Will/intentions.   This distinction is of critical importance in understanding both the nature of Will itself and the nature of the right to do our Will.  And I think it is critical in understanding the passage from LIBER AL quoted at the beginning of this paragraph.  No other can interfere with ourright to endeavor to fulfill our Will/intentions.  At the same time any and all others are free to endeavor to thwart the fulfillment of our Will/intentions if that should be their Will/intention.  And if that should be someone's Will/intention, then according to LIBER AL, that person has no right but to do his or her will in that regard.  But in that regard that person will be no more guaranteed success in thwarting the fulfillment of our Will/intentions than we are guaranteed that fulfillment.  It is, as it were, the proverbial case of may the strongest Will prevail.

My objection to AC's declaration of THE RIGHTS OF MAN is that, at least as I interpret what I read there, he is declaring that human beings have the right to the fulfillment of these various intentions.  I find it hard to interpret his declaration any other way.  Even the most cursory look at 'real life' makes it abundantly clear that not many human beings actually achieve the fulfillment of these 'rights'.  How is this so if these so-called 'rights' are indeed rights?  Humanity, in the course of its checkered history, has made many attempts to establish for itself 'rights' which nature itself has not in fact given.  In virtually every case humanity found it necessary to establish civil 'laws' in order to try and enforce these 'rights' in experience, usually with only the most limited success.  I suggest that AC's RIGHTS OF MAN are, in the main, of this man-made type.

In the course of pondering these questions, I have looked for so-called 'rights' that would  fit my criteria for genuine human rights.  The resulting list is quite small and interestingly enough contains 2 items very similar to ones in AC's list.  In looking for these, it occurred to me these rights would have to be quite fundamental to human experience and would have to be such that their 'thwarting' would be neigh on to impossible.  The first I came up with was the right to die, though not in any manner we might will to die by.  While the manner in which we might want to die is obviously 'thwartable', that we will die is not.  The next so-called 'right' that I saw we have is the right to personally satisfy our own sexual needs/urges.  In other words we have the right to masturbate.  While it is true that many say nay to this right, their nay saying more often than not falls on 'deaf ears' and we are able to fulfill our Will/intention in this regard without interference from the nay sayers.  The next so-called 'right' that occurred to me is our right to emotionally respond to the 'world' and to our experience of the world according to our nature.  This 'right' was first expressed in terms of 'falling in love' with who and what we will.  But then I realized that this implied that we would then have the equal 'right' to 'hate' what we will as well.  This then led to the generalization that we have the right to express the full range of emotional responses humanly possible with regards to the world and our experience of the world.  I take AC's statement that "Man has the right to love as he will..." to express much the same idea as my original 'right to love' and to be a specific case of the more general principle I finally came to conclude to be the case.  At the same time I find the rest of AC's declaration on the rights to love to be untenable for the simple reason that they are so 'thwartable'.

The next 'right' that I concluded we have is the right to compete with all others for: (a)energy of all sorts including food, (b) territory including shelter etc., (c) sexual gratification with others.  As a corollary to that, we would also have the right to defend ourselves against the aggressive competitive actions of all others.  In other words, we have the right to act on our primate nature.  In other words we have the right to express the 'animal nature' we have.  It seems to me that AC's declaration that"Man has the right to kill those who would thwart these rights" fits neatly into this more fundamental category.

The one so-called 'right' that AC set forth in LIBER OZ  which I agree is indeed a right and which I did not come up with on my own is "Man has the right to think what he will".  Obviously short of egregiously damaging the brain, another could not interfere with our right to think what we will.  On the other hand it would be quite easy to prevent us from speaking or writing what we will.  I think this points up the fallacy in AC's thinking here.  He fails to distinguish between the general and the particular in the question of rights.  He fails to understand that, while the right to strive to fulfill our Will may be guaranteed by 'nature', the right to fulfill our Will is not.  This, it seems to me, is firmly in line with the concept of Darwinian natural selection.  It seems to me that humanity all too often forgets, or refuses to accept the fact that, like it or not, as a species we are as bound up in the fabric of Darwinian evolution and its processes of natural selection as any other species is.

In the final analysis there are only two rights that are truly inevitable and unavoidable: the right to die and the right to do thy will.   Any and every thing else is questionable to say the very least.  Genuine 'rights' can only be facts of nature, far removed from the contrivance of covenants humanity might try to make with itself.