Earlier I spoke about the Magickian not having a choice in initiation, this is where destiny over rides free will, it doesn’t happen again afterwards but often the subject refuses to accept the mantle, only to be pushed further into more extreme versions of reality where they are forced into breakthrough or breakdown situations.
For example the events surrounding my marriage break up pushed me into a four year decent into madness that climaxed in an attempt on my life where i was quite happy to depart from this realm, however my attacker seized with surprise at my ambivalence stopped chocking me and ran away. It was revealed later that this unprovoked attack was carried out by a man who was wanted in three states and had left a trail of havoc wherever he had been. It's funny but my almost dying expeierence left me with a strange lust for living, as if i had been reborn. Later i invoked a ritual and a lifestyle that made me face my fears, consequently placing myself in a situation that one can decribe as unbelivable. However it was not until i was struck by lightening that i really took control of my life.
Anyways more about that later, what i wanted to talk about was the idea of Magickian. It's a strange term to use in this day and age because one assumes the Magickian to fall under the guise of a Gandalf type wizard where in actual fact it's more a quantum based experience. My kind of magickian is one who assumes responsibility for everything around themselves, they are meta programmers, people who use prescriptive language and have a complete understanding of memes and the use of belief as a tool. (The 8 cuircit model is a good short cut, my very good friend the Proffesor Leary used this whereas I used Magick) They are also able to utilize this in their lives and influence their reality. This is science, but not you're deterministic science where everything is reduced, this is science beyond measuring devices and quantifying data. It is not able to be described by language, remember the map is not the territory. Metaphor works here, thus in occult literature metaphor is the tool used to decribe the process
i.e. as above so below.
So Mr. Crowley, possibly the most misunderstood man in history concealed his practise in metaphor, which is why his work is so inaccessible to most minds, for metaphor is the language of the poet, and the poet must have the mind of a magician or mystic to contemplate the poetic.
Leary's 8 cuircut approach would say that most brains can't understand this concept, the monkey brain is to unsophisticated for meta programming, fed on a diet of beer, chips and dead meat it could never form nueral pathways that complement this type of reality.
Anyways the Magickian is really one who transcends pure mysticism, the Magickian is one who sees the quanta as a source of information to use and manipulate as they wish, they do not surrender to a higher force they are agents of force or will as Crowley puts it. The secret for most magickians is to know, your Will.
Having said that I do not subscribe to the Thelmic view of reality, I don’t think Mr. Crowley wanted to start another religion. I think he wanted to free us from its constraint.