THE MYTH OF RELENTLESS POSITIVITY

Reconciling Light and Shadow Through the Lens of Thelema

We are the architects of our own mirages, building temples to a relentless sun while our shadows grow longer and darker behind us. In recent years, I have watched this fevered pursuit of perpetual positivity take root, its mantra of "good vibes only" masking a quiet despair.

Beneath the radiant surface lies a battle against depression and the fragile, quivering truth of human insecurity. I have seen it up close, in the glimmering eyes of those I held dear—each glint a shard of an unspoken sadness.

One such friend, once a fellow traveller through the opiate haze of youth, retreated into the teachings of Jordan Peterson like a supplicant to a new faith. What began as a quest for meaning unfurled into a tapestry of extremes, the pendulum swinging violently from hedonism to the rigid dogmas of self-reliance. We had wandered together in a bacchanalia of music, laughter, and substances—those fleeting prayers offered to gods who asked nothing of us but our temporary joy. Yet, when the music ceased, and the echoes of our revelry faded, what lingered was an emptiness that neither the bottle nor the pulpit could fill.

Aleister Crowley wrote, “Balance against each thought its exact opposite. For the marriage of these is the annihilation of illusion.”

His words haunt me, whispering that no truth lies in the extremes we seek to inhabit. Like a spinning coin, shimmering between heads and tails, we too are suspended between contradictions. My friend could not see this; his pursuit of positivity was not a light but a mask, its edges fraying as his inner darkness gnawed at the seams.

Elsewhere, I met another wanderer of this strange terrain: a life coach turned "witchfluencer," wrapped in the shimmering gauze of her own mythology. She preached the gospel of "fake it till you make it," conjuring visions of a breakthrough forever on the horizon. . She assured anyone who would listen that her music career was on the verge of exploding—five years and counting—but the only thing that truly soared was her audacity. Recently, she made a dramatic purge of “negative thinkers” she claimed were clipping her wings. I couldn't help but laugh when, with much fanfare, she let me know I didn’t make the cut.

Yet her doctrine of relentless positivity, much like my friend's newfound faith, seemed less a path to enlightenment and more a fortress against the tide of doubt and fear. Beneath her carefully curated spellwork was the unmistakable scent of old wounds, their edges still raw.

Thelema, again, offers us guidance: “The joy of life consists in the exercise of one's energies, continual growth, constant change, the enjoyment of every new experience.”

Growth is the alchemical fire, dissolving pretense and coagulating wisdom from the ashes. Yet so many refuse to kneel at this hearth, fearing the revelations it might bring. They spin their webs of optimism, not as a testament to their strength but as a bulwark against their fragility.

I have come to understand that these fervent prophets of positivity are, in truth, lost pilgrims. Their insistence that success is forged solely by willpower and a sunny disposition is a denial of the capricious forces of luck, circumstance, and birth. Their doctrines reject the chaotic dance of life in favour of a single monotonous note, a note that cannot hold the harmony of the whole.

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law," Nuit declares, inviting us not to reckless abandon but to the sacred act of discovering our pure will. To know oneself—this is the Great Work. It demands that we confront not only our light but our darkness, for the alchemist’s task is to reconcile these opposites, to find balance amidst dissolution. Solve et coagula, dissolve and reform.

In this work lies the antidote to the illusion of positivity. The spinning coin is neither heads nor tails but the motion itself, embodying the wisdom of impermanence and the futility of our binaries.

So, too, must we embrace the totality of our being: joy and despair, triumph and failure, radiance and shadow. Only then can we step into the equilibrium Crowley described as “the mirror of the universe.”

Let us not be prisoners of false certainties. Instead, let us embrace the sacred chaos of existence, finding in its swirling depths not despair but freedom.

For in that freedom, we are neither hedonists nor ascetics, neither victors nor victims, but something greater—whole.