Thelema Lodge Calendar for June 1987 e.v.

Thelema Lodge Calendar

for June 1987 e.v.

The viewpoints and opinions expressed herein are the responsibility of the contributing authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of OTO or its officers.

Note to update: the addresses and phone numbers in these issues of the Thelema Lodge Calendars are obsolete since the closing of the Lodge. They are here for historic purposes only and should not be visited or called.

Thelema Lodge
Ordo Templi Orientis
P.O.Box 2303
Berkeley, CA 94702 USA

June 1987 e.v. at Thelema Lodge

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Announcements from
Lodge Members and Officers

Something unusual:

Hang on to this copy of the Thelema Lodge Calendar, it might be a religious relic! Last month the Bay Area Rose-Croix had the pleasure of conducting Vth Degree initiations at the home of the GTG with the able guidance of the Master of Heru Ra Ha Lodge. Brother L. shattered tradition by devouring a pepperoni stick, first meat munch since the ArchBishoprical hot dog of many years ago. More things were set right than an amino acid balance. Old friendships were rekindled that only hard times and misunderstandings had dampened. This very piece of paper you are holding was sanctified by proximity to that moment. But wait, there's more! We had to construct a short flight of steps for the Vth Degree ritual we had in mind. This very piece of paper was part of that construction as reams of the stuff were piled up to make the dais. The paper you are reading has experienced more than half a dozen Vth degree initiations, the reconciliation of two IXth Degrees and the presence of two more in full ritual flight. Three Grand Secretary Generals emeritus have stomped, stumbled, tried out or said encouraging words at this piece of paper and its colleagues. One of the longest running Grand Treasurer Generals to get stuck with the job in the Order's history has written all over it. All it needs for full and total consecration is for your local priestess to sit on it during Gnostic Mass! Where else would you get something like that for free?

This Month at Thelema Lodge

Initiations This Month:

Initiations this month include Minerval through Third Degrees. Check calendar for probable dates and call David or Lotte at the Lodge (415) 655-4942 to reserve a place. Applications for advancement are available at the lodge and must be submitted 30 days prior to proposed date of initiation. Those interested in Fourth, P.I., or K.E.W. degrees should also contact the lodge. Also, Hriliu Oasis in Cotati will be giving Minerval and First Degree initiations this month. Transportation may be available from Thelema Lodge. Call for ride info.

Certs are in from New York:

If you were initiated in the Minerval through Third Degrees at Thelema Lodge in the last three or four months, chances are your certificate is finally here! See Lotte.

Gnostic Masses this month:

Masses this month will begin PRECISELY at sundown! Check each week's box on the calendar page for exact local and GMT times and plan to arrive around 6PM for Mass classes and general socializing. Also, Thelema Lodge is auditioning for Priests, Priestesses and Deacons for the Mass. Interested? -- talk to David.

Classes and Study Groups this month:

Tarot: June 10th and 17th, with Bill Heidrick. These are the last of the present series of classes on Tarot. The 78-card over-kill pyramid layout will be featured in the latter portion of each of the two classes. The Class on the 10th will open with an in-depth slide lecture on the Tower Atu, while the Class on the 17th will be on a card requested by those attending the 10th.

Enochiana: June 16th, 7PM: The Enochian Chess club will meet for discussion with the game beginning at 8PM.
June 23rd, 8PM: David will continue discussion and use of the Sigillum Dei Aemeth in relation to the Sephirotic Archangels. Discussion will include instruction in calculating governors of hours.
June 30th, 8PM: David will conduct another Watchtower workshop.

Erotology Study Group: June 11th, 9PM: This month's discussion is on sexiological chemistry including hormones, pheromones and erotic botany. Oil demonstration.

Egyptiana: June 24th, 9PM: Ebony continues in the ever-popular Egyptiana series.

Summer Solstice: June 21st Afternoon til eve: Come celebrate Summer Solstice with us! Party starts mid afternoon; ritual at 6:11PM; mass at sundown.

Papal Visitation Committee: June 26th, 9:30PM: The PVC will plan for an upcoming Missae Negrum. Actors, musicians, scholars and interested others call for location. Alternative theater for alternative folks.

Children's Celebration: Tentatively scheduled for June 27th, call Lola at (415) 465-9389 for details.

Field Trip on Mt. Tam with Bill Heidrick is tentatively planned for a mutually convenient weekend in June. Call (415) 655-4942 for details, probably will take place on a Saturday or Sunday about the middle of the Month.

Rites of Eleusis --- see the back pages for advance information.

Early July -- Events which may happen before the July Calendar is mailed:
    Bookbinding with Bill Heidrick is tentative for July 1st.
    Robemaking Class with Lotte Lieb July 2nd.
    ------call (415) 655-4942 later in June for details regarding these two events.

Grand Lodge News:

    The New Bylaws that were voted in March are nearing final errata correction stages. After a mail vote by the IXths, the Bylaws will be made available generally. Plans to publish them in the Magical Link may be complicated by the large size of the text, some 18,000 characters. Something will be done to make them available, but it might take the form of photocopies to the official bodies as a first stage.
    The Electoral College will meet about June 13th at a location yet to be fixed, but near the SF Bay Area. Attendance at the meeting is limited to members of the College and invited parties. About half of the College will be new faces, and topics include a fresh look at some areas of concern.
    The GTG is futtering a new computer again. This time it's an IBMPC XT. That might not mean much to most folk, but if you have a PC or clone, this means that you are disc-compatible with the GTG in 5 1/4 format. Commodore C64 compatibility has existed for some time. Official Bodies which have either of these machines can receive data concerning their locally affiliated members on disks their machines can read. C64 programs specifically designed to access, sort and print address databases of up to 2,000 records are available. C64 Speedscript users can probably find value in some OTO utility programs. The previous difficulties in getting ahold of the GTG via modem are being examined, and a new modem for the PC will probably improve the situation in a few months. Correspondence with the GTG will generally improve, owing the greater flexibility of the PC. PC users may find convenience in some programs written for OTO use, including one which generates a Thelemic letter date from the machine system date for use in correspondence. At last! No need to figure out obscure Roman numerals and sun/moon signs for spiffy correspondence. This program can do it for you automatically when you start up. Can be set for different Time Zones. C64 version may be made if interest materializes. For Official purposes only and some printers, the dot-matrix letter-head is available.
    Of more general interest, text entry to disk format has increased. One half of the 1,000,000 characters that compose the trial transcript of the OTO vs. SOTO trial are already keyed in, and the rest should be available by the end of June. Print outs of this and other material of historic interest will become available. The diaries of Hymenaeus Alpha and Crowley's letters are among the materials projected for electronic media. Naturally some of these things will have private portions, but most of the material will be available in increasingly larger amounts.
    Many letters to the GTG will be answered within 72 hours of his getting them, starting in mid June. Most of the remainder will be answered in a week or less, and acknowledgements of record will resume. (Odd, my mouth tastes like an old sock!)

    There is a new Grand Lodge Address: To reach the Grand Treasurer General, please address your mail to:
    Ordo Templi Orientis
    P.O. Box 430
    Fairfax, CA 94978 USA
(The Berkeley P.O.Box will be maintained indefinitely, but this address will cut a week from time to access the GTG.)

    Initiators please note: The proper address for mailing initiation reports is now that of the Initiation Secretary and Grand Secretary General:
    Ordo Templi Orientis
    JAF Box 7666
    New York, NY 10116 USA

Initiation dues and red books of initiation report go to NY. After the GSG enters his portion of the data, the materials, including payments, are forwarded to the GTG at the Fairfax address. For faster service, sent duplicate records to the GTG; but the primary report goes to New York first. If you do sent duplicate records to the GTG, be sure to note on them that New York has the primary record and the funds. This will save the GTG from wandering all over his house and digging through the trash to find non-existent checks!
Dues renewal payments should be sent directly to the Fairfax address to insure that prompt credit is made. May will see demit and inactivation of a number of members, while late June or early July will have another dues billing in the mail, at least for USA. International billing is still hit or miss, but should be steady by the end of the year. It may be possible to give advance notice of pending due dates before year's end as well.

    A privacy index is in the planning stages. Watch the Magical Link for a coupon in the coming months. Members of OTO who don't want their status codes to appear on their mailing labels can request suppression of that now. Just send a post card to the GTG at the Fairfax address giving your name and the request to "blank the status field". Eventually mailing of the Magical Link will be from New York, but you can add this element of privacy now if you like. Many OTO members prefer to have their status information on the mailing labels so that they can produce a recent copy of the Magical Link as an evidence of current membership while traveling. If you don't want that there, a little card will do you.
    Further privacy levels will be available on who gets to see your OTO account and membership info. At present, only Grand Lodge officers, local bodies (for local accounts only), initiators and the individuals themselves can get this information. If you are an Initiate or Associate and you want to exclude local bodies from access to your information, you will soon be able to request that level of privacy. Because OTO is a 501(c)3 exempt Religious entity, the government is NOT entitled to have access to our membership records. This option will give you further privacy within OTO if you want it.
    One concern was voiced in an inquiry not long ago. We do have a standing policy of support for those who desire their membership in OTO to be known. We also have to be able to deal with false claims to be in or out of OTO. A privacy level will soon be available to indicate how readily this confirm or deny response will be given. It will be possible to be so secret that you may have a hard time getting your next initiation, if you go for "the works". It will also be possible to tell us in a way we can remember if you want to "run an open house." At present, phone numbers and addresses of officers are not made available unless you see them printed in the Magical Link. Officers of Camps, Oases and Lodges must maintain some sort of public access, and their names are not private because they have to function with the public. This means that going for full privacy will limit some of the things you can do in OTO. Still, there is a lot of prejudice out there, and many people may want this option. It's just around the corner. If you have put off joining the OTO because the neighbors might find out, you might want to think again!

A word to the wise.

OTO officers are human beings. They make mistakes and may be injurious to your health. Our initiations teach us that the only person to absolutely trust is inside you. This does not mean that you shouldn't love your Brothers and Sisters, and respect your Seniors. On the whole, OTO officers are worthy of your trust. Because they are human, some will be found that have a tragic flaw or a down-right disastrous fault. One of the things that makes OTO different from the other organizations is our recognition of this. Nobody can tell you what your Will is. That's for you to discover in your own Great Work. You do not benefit the OTO or yourself by placing too much responsibility for your own affairs in the hands of others. Trust is necessary to a society or an organization. Caution is not a violation of trust. Checks can bounce, cash can disappear, and far more serious injuries can happen anywhere. In OTO, always demand a receipt or keep your canceled checks, always be ready to poke with a stick under the leaf litter of an untrodden path and always take responsibility for yourself and those who depend on you. Thelemites we are, and those who betray the trust of their Brothers and Sisters are not welcome among us. You are as safe with OTO as you are with your own family, but that isn't the same as absolutely secure. Some groups expect unthinking trust and abuse that trust. If an OTO officer does that, something is wrong. Recently, such a situation was found in a quarter we did not expect. The matter was very serious indeed; and you won't get the details here, for the sake of the innocent. Suffice it to say that OTO is better than most organizations in this. If there is a problem, and it's ours, we will not cozen people to believe it isn't there. Pre-Televalgelical Christians had a term: "Whitened Sepulcher" for something that's beautiful on the outside and foul within. In OTO the Whitened Sepulcher count is down as of last month

Speaking of WS's and exercising questionable taste:

Kitty-Quote of the month:

Felix on North at the Iran-Contra Hearings: "They want me, but they can't get me. The Old Man, He Love My Ass!" -- Why Ronnie, I'd never a'thunk it! Does Ed know? Do you know Jim Baker? If you don't watch American TV, this may pass you by, but that's the nature of Kitties. They definitely say something, but only another Cat knows what.

Reminder:

Remember the Ancient Ways Festival June 12-14th at Harbin Hot Springs. There is still time to call (415) 639-0783 (between 5pm and 10 PM) for information. This is a popular pan pagan annual gathering in Northern California. It's not by OTO, but highly recommended. Pre-registration fees are no longer in effect, but it is still a very good deal.

Events Calendar for June 1987 e.v.

6/2/87	Class on the Star Ruby 8PM	Thelema Ldg &
6/5/87	Minerval & Ist workshop	Abrahadrabra
6/6/87	Initiations Ist through IIIrd	Thelema Ldg
6/7/87	Gnostic Mass Class 6PM Ritual 8:15 PM	Thelema Ldg
6/10/87	Tarot Divination with Bill.	Thelema Ldg
	Tower Trump & 78-card reading 8PM
6/11/87	Erotology study group 9PM	Thelema Lodge
6/11/87	Full Moon Ritual	Thelema Ldg
6/12/87	Ancient Ways Festival Starts and runs	Ancient Ways
	the weekend.
6/13/87	Initiations to Degrees	Thelema Ldg
6/13/87	Electoral College meeting, private	Grand Lodge
6/14/87	Gnostic Mass Class 6:30PM Ritual 8:15PM	Thelema Ldg
6/16/87	Enochain Chess Club meets 7PM	Thelema Ldg
6/17/87	Tarot Divination with Bill. Lecture on	Thelema Ldg
	Atu chosen on 10th. 78 card reading 8PM
6/19/87	Selene Camp meets most Fridays	Selene Camp
6/20/87	Recycling 10AM	Thelema Ldg
6/20/87	IVth & PI	Thelema Ldg
6/20/87	Tam Field Trip?	Thelema Ldg
6/21/87	Solstice Rites 6:11 PM Mass 8:15 PM	Thelema Ldg
	Party starts mid afternoon
6/23/87	Enochiana on Sigillium & Arch 8PM	Thelema Ldg
6/24/87	Egyptiana Class with Ebony 9PM	Thelema ldg
6/25/87	Thelemic Rhetoric and Oratory with Jeff
6/26/87	PVC committee 9:30 MP
6/26/87	Abrahadabra Camp workshop IInd Deg.	Abrahadabra C.
6/27/87	Children's Celebration: Elenor of
	Aquitane, Morn & aft. Noon.
6/28/87	Gnostic Mass Class 6:30PM Ritual 8:15PM	Thelema Ldg
6/30/87	Enochian Watch Towers Workshop	Thelema Ldg