In the heart of Thelema burns a flame: True Will. Crowley named it the Solar Phallus, a symbol of divine motion and focused power.1 But what happens when the bearer of that symbol is not a man or not any binary gender at all?
Thelema claims that every star has its orbit, every Will its path. Yet the imagery we inherit is often gendered and rigid. Crowley’s Solar Phallus was more than anatomy; it meant the wand, the forward surge of Will, the fire of creation. But it was still framed in masculine terms. And that framing matters.2
Symbols shape the unconscious. When Will is imagined exclusively as a phallic force, we risk making non-male or nonbinary practitioners invisible within their tradition. We reduce cosmic fire to a body part.
The solution isn’t erasure, but expansion.
True Will is not bound by anatomy. It moves in priest and priestess, in queer magician, in genderfluid adept. The Solar Phallus may remain one symbol among many, but not the only one. The flame, the spiral, the star, the pulse, these are all glyphs of directed, divine motion, free from the constraints of gendered tradition.
Crowley gave us tools, not cages. 3 Thelema evolves by questioning its symbols while honoring their essence. If the Aeon of Horus is truly one of individual sovereignty, then its symbols must reflect the full spectrum of becoming. Your Will does not require a phallus. Only fire.
Traditional occultism has long structured itself around dualities. Sun and moon, male and female, active and receptive. Thelema inherited these dualities and transfigured them into cosmic poetry: Nuit, the goddess of infinite space, and Hadit, the infinitely contracted point of awareness. Their union births Ra-Hoor-Khuit, the solar child. Thelema calls us to transcend limits, but the limits of gendered symbolism still run deep.4
As the 21st century unfolds, more and more practitioners are approaching magick from outside binary gender identities. Trans, nonbinary, genderqueer, genderfluid, and many now walk the magickal path not as “men” or “women,” but as something else entirely. For these magicians, queering the ritual body is not a distraction from the Work; it is part of the Work.5
Binary Archetypes and Thelemic Legacy
In Crowley’s writing, the phallus holds immense spiritual significance. Not just as a sexual organ, but as a symbol of the focused, radiant Will, life-giving, explosive, divine. Nuit receives; Hadit penetrates. The sexual polarity is cosmic, eternal.6
But these metaphors, powerful as they are, also come with baggage. The ritual roles Crowley laid out often depended on assigning power and passivity, fire and water, to specific gendered bodies. Thelemic ceremonies, especially in the A∴A∴ and O.T.O., typically divided roles between “priest” and “priestess,” with assumed biological alignment.
And yet, even in Crowley’s own work, cracks in the binary show. The divine is both and neither. Nuit is all possibility. Hadit declares: “I am not extended, and Khabs is the name of my House.”7 The central mystery of Thelema is not gendered hierarchy, but the union of opposites and their transcendence.
What It Means to Queer a Symbol
To queer a symbol is not to destroy it, but to reimagine it. It is to peel back layers of inherited meaning and ask: what else could this mean?
A genderfluid practitioner might see the Solar Phallus not as a biological organ but as a spiritual current. A transwoman magician may invoke Hadit without contradiction. A nonbinary practitioner might embody Babalon and Chaos simultaneously, ecstatic, undefinable.8
In this way, queering Thelema is not rebellion, it is revelation. The Law is for every man and every woman, and perhaps also for every being between, beyond, and outside those categories. “There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.” That’s not just permission, it’s an invitation.
In this way, queering Thelema is not rebellion, it is revelation. The Law is for every man and every woman, and perhaps also for every being between, beyond, and outside those categories. “There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.”9 That’s not just permission, it’s an invitation.
The Solar Phallus Reimagined
The Solar Phallus, in Crowley’s writing, is a radiant explosion, the driving force of Will itself. But too often, practitioners collapse this symbol into biological masculinity, limiting its power and reach.10
Let’s reclaim it. Let the phallus become what it was always meant to be: a solar spark, a vector of transformation. It is a symbol anyone can use, regardless of gender, sex, or embodiment. This is no emblem of gendered power, but of illumination. The ecstatic force of Thelema is not about being a man or a woman. It’s about being a star, burning, luminous, unique.
The Ritual Body Is Mutable
In Thelema, the body is not an obstacle. It is a temple. But temples can be renovated.
Trans and gender-nonconforming practitioners often experience the body itself as an alchemical work-in-progress, a site of transformation. This is deeply Thelemic. To willfully shape the self, to align the flesh with the inner star, that is magick.11
Ritual roles, once fixed in gender, are now fluid. A High Priestess can have a beard. A Hierophant can wear a skirt. Energy, not anatomy, determines force and form. Some Thelemites are even creating new rites, reconfiguring polarities, crafting gender-neutral invocations, or experimenting with queer erotic gnosis.
Where once magickal orders told you what role you must play, today’s Thelemite asks: What energy do I need to express? What am I becoming?
Challenges and Liberation
Not everyone welcomes this shift. Some traditionalists argue that gender polarity is essential to magickal efficacy. Others fear that abandoning binary roles weakens ritual power. But Thelema was never about dogma. Thelema is about Will.
Crowley challenged every convention of his time. He wrote and practiced transgressively. He shattered old forms, stop embalming his work like a corpse. Question everything. Create relentlessly.12
By queering Thelema, we don’t weaken it. We deepen it. We bring the Law to new stars, new expressions of sovereignty, beauty, and force.
Stars Beyond Gender
Thelema after Crowley is not fixed; it is alive. And like all living things, it changes. To queer the magickal body is not to reject Thelema, but to fulfill it. The Law of Thelema calls every individual to the highest expression of their truth. That truth may not fit old forms. It may not wear the robes it once did. It may be shapeshifting, radiant, or strange. And it is holy.
Every star shines in its own orbit. Some stars are gendered. Some are not. Some blaze with new color, new language, new ritual. But all are free, and that is the point.
Love is the law, love under will. And Will has no gender.
Footnotes
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Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law (Weiser Books, 1976), I:22.
Crowley introduces the Solar Phallus as a symbol of divine motion and creative Will, not literal anatomy, but a cosmic function.↩ -
James Lees, “Gender and Symbolism in Thelemic Ritual,” Journal of Esoteric Studies, vol. 12, no. 3 (2018), 45–67.
A clear critique of rigid binary symbolism in Crowley’s work, with attention to how it marginalizes queer and nonbinary practitioners.↩ -
Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears (New Falcon Publications, 1991), Letter 32.
Crowley insists that symbols are tools, not prisons. They evolve with the magician. A foundational point for reimagining Thelemic ritual.↩ -
Ibid.
Continuing from Letter 32, Crowley warns against mistaking symbol for truth. Magicians who do so fall into spiritual stagnation.↩ -
M. J. Peschel, “Queering Thelemic Magick: Beyond Binary Ritual Roles,” Occult Quarterly, Issue 22 (2020), 34–49.
A useful overview of contemporary queer Thelemic currents, showing how ritual roles can function as energetic, not gendered, expressions.↩ -
Aleister Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice (Weiser Books, 1997), Chapter 3.
Crowley expands on Nuit and Hadit as metaphysical complements, grounded in sexual polarity, but open to symbolic reinterpretation.↩ -
Peschel, “Queering Thelemic Magick.”
Peschel points out how Nuit’s formlessness and Hadit’s unextended point challenge binary form. The cracks were always there.↩ -
Ibid.
Queering symbols isn’t vandalism, it’s visionary gnosis. Participation in divine myth doesn’t require gender conformity.↩ -
Aleister Crowley, “Liber AL vel Legis,” in The Equinox, vol. 1, no. 1 (1909), 7.
“There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.” This line invites radical freedom, not just from morality, but from structure itself.↩ -
Crowley, The Book of the Law, I:22.
Repeated for emphasis, the Solar Phallus is divine fire, not flesh. This is where symbolism begins to exceed its limits.↩ -
Phyllis Seckler, “The Role of the Ritual Body in Thelemic Practice,” in Thelema and Contemporary Magick, ed. J. Michael Greer (Llewellyn, 2003), 123–138.
Seckler argues that the ritual body is a vehicle for transformation. Gender nonconformity isn’t deviation, it’s initiation.↩ -
Kenneth Grant, The Magical Revival (Samuel Weiser, 1972), 78–79.
Grant’s work affirms that mutation and transgression are hallmarks of the Aeon. Tradition isn’t sacred, the current is.↩
