Jul 16, 2008

Thelemic thoughts

All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but
according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their
beds when they thought good; they did eat, drink, labour, sleep, when
they had a mind to it and were disposed for it. None did awake them,
none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor to do any other
thing; for so had Gargantua established it. In all their rule and
strictest tie of their order there was but this one clause to be
observed,

Do What Thou Wilt;

because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in
honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth
them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is
called honour. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint
they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble
disposition by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake
off and break that bond of servitude wherein they are so tyrannously
enslaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after
things forbidden and to desire what is denied us


Rabelais, François. Gargantua and Pantagruel

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