Caroline,

I personally do not think categorizing Thelema as a religion is unreasonable. You are not alone in this classification and as you indicate, there are numerous reasons why one could plausibly define Thelema as a religion. While at Amsterdam, I wrote a paper arguing that the way Thelemic organizations have been organized by NRM studies is flawed and that instead of seeing groups like the various OTOs, AAs, and other Thelemic organizations as individual religions, like NRM many books list them as, instead Thelema was the religion they all shared and that they should all be considered "churches"  or instances of Thelema just as the various Protestant denominations are all considered instances of Christianity. I gave a copy of this paper to Gordon Melton and he thought the argument compelling. So I am not unilaterally opposed to the idea of Thelema categorized as a religion. Please don't interpret my previous reply as such.

I was replying more to your original question regarding Hutton and him not listing Thelema as a religion Britain gave the world. Just as there are many compelling reasons to categorize Thelema as a religion, there are just as many compelling reasons to do otherwise.  One being Crowley's statement. This issue is also complicated by geographical references. Crowley claims to have received Liber AL in Cairo, but did not develop the system of the AA until back in the UK. Does this make it an Egyptian system or British? Or what about the other influential places on Crowley's understanding of Thelema - Cefalu, Tunisia, Paris? Does Crowley being British make it an ipso-facto British tradition? Blavatsky developed Theosophy while in a variety of locations including the US, Britain, and India. As such Theosophy is associated, by many, with those locations. But she was Russian (Ukrainian by today's geo-political designations). Does this make Theosophy also a Russian/Ukrainian tradition? Some might say yes, others no. I am not trying defend Hutton or contest him. Just pointing out the way these categories and statements based on them are highly contingent of certain assumptions and definitions. The increased mobility of people beginning in the 18th century and the shifting geo-political lines of the eighteenth and nineteenth century really call for us to be clear in our statements and careful about our assumptions of geographic origin. 

The arguments, pro and con, categorizing Thelema as a religion have not been written about much within academic literature. Perhaps this is a good opportunity for someone to address it?

John

John L. Crow
Doctoral Graduate Student
American Religious History
Department of Religious Studies
Florida State University
http://religion.fsu.edu/

Personal Website:
http://www.johnlcrow.com/
 
“Heresy is what the minority believe; it is the name given by the powerful to the doctrine of the weak.”
- Robert G. Ingersoll
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Date:    Sun, 28 Aug 2011 10:18:56 +1000
From:    Caroline Tully <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Thelema a British religion?

You're right John, we certainly should pay attention to Crowley's opinion on the subject. Yes, the definition of 'religion' is also important and I admit that I didn't define it in my first post (and still haven’t). I guess I perceive Thelema as a religion because the Thelema I know involves rites of passage that are marked in a ritual manner (yes, ritual doesn't mean religion, but belief in supernatural beings/anthropomorphized aspects of nature and the universe are involved), seasonal festivals that are also framed in a 'holy calendar', obedience to a holy text (yes, I'll go as far as to say obedience while ignoring puzzling or offensive aspects of the text and therefore obedience to those parts), belief in 'aeons' that are characterised by ancient Egyptian deities - albeit very imprecisely and when it comes to the Aeon of Isis, well, don’t get me started on the 'matriarchy' thing, - that Aeon could only date back to 2000 - 2400 BCE and hello, where's the matriarchal society? If you're going to say it's a philosophy, or 'way of life' the Thelema I know is still situated in what I see as religious rituals and [foggy] belief in supernatural beings.

~Caroline.