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
December 1992 e.v. at Thelema Lodge
Announcements from
Lodge Members and Officers
The understanding of Eastern customs is imperative, if the life of Jesus is
to be truly imagined and realized. A few years travel in India and North
Africa familiarizes one with the atmosphere, and it is to smile when people
talk of the `wonderful life' of Jesus. By every roadside in India you may
find a holy man today - you might have found me in 1901! - who is living
exactly the life recorded of Jesus. He begs his food, or else `women minister
to him of their substance' (Luke VIII, 3.) just as happens to the idle and vicious rascals who come out of India to America and England to pose as
`yogis' at the expense of lazy and good-for-nothing society women in search of
a new fad. Only, in India, the support of yogis is decent and honourable.
The men are really saints, and demand nothing but a little rice and curry.
You can support one for a year on the price of a lunch at the Claridge.
Most yogis in India are solitaries. Very likely they have a vow of
silence. But in some few the itch of teaching works, and they wander from
place to place picking up disciples. Now and then they go mad under the
strain of the life, or the use of drugs, or the abuse of religious ecstasies,
become ferocious run `amok' perhaps do murder, perhaps attack the temple of a
rival sect on some pretext, or try to reform their own temples in some such
violent way as Jesus took with the money-changers. Sometimes they get
politically drunk, and start a campaign against the powers that be. Every
Indian official will tell you what a plague such men often become; half the
raids on the frontier are due to some such `exalte'. England at large (even)
has heard of the Madhi, and the Mad Mullah, and the Senussi, and perhaps even
in older days of the Druses and the Old Man of the Mountain, with his Hashish-
maddened disciples, from whom we have our word `assassin'. The good people of
England may be shocked to hear that there is not a penny to choose between
such men and their idolized Jesus. But it is the fact.
All these men have their disciples, and their following of women - usually
loose women, hermits and holy men having a great reputation everywhere for
sexual prowess. They have their sayings, they make up their parables and
fables to amuse their followers by the camp-fire at nightfall, they do their
miracles, and fulfil the ancient prophecies in exactly the same way as Jesus
did. The complaints of the Pharisees against Jesus are the stock complaints
of the Orthodox in India to-day against the Yogis. They omit ceremonial
washings; they eat filthy food; they take no heed of religious festivals or of
the prescriptions of the Rishis and other great teachers. They care nothing
for caste; they are shiftless, idle, and vagabond; they pray instead of
working; and so on. Similarly, nine-tenths of the injunctions of Jesus are
aimed at the most cherished rules or fads of the Pharisees; and so are most of
the Wise sayings of the `holy man' of India and all Islam to-day.
The little dialogues in which Jesus refutes the Scribes and Pharisees are
extremely characteristic. The Oriental loves to have his `darwesh' outwit the
heckler. Every Eastern story-teller has (a) hundred such in his repertoire.
Here is a sample. A certain king asks a darwesh: "How is it possible that
Iblis (Satan), who is made of fire, should be tormented by fire?" The holy
man picks up a clod of earth and throws it at the king, who howls. "What!
impossible!" exclaims the darwesh, "you who are made of earth cannot be hurt
by earth." Here the saint has the right end both of the argument and of the
brick. The type of story is as common as the desert sand itself.
What Mr. Shaw calls the `comic miraculous overdraught of fishes' is also an
absolutely universal story. The greedy man tries to exploit the powers of the
thaumaturgist, and has his prayer granted to his own confusion. There is
hardly a book of Fairy Tales in the world that has not some such story. One
need only mention Ingoldsby's tale of Laybrother Peter and the beer. It is
of the very root of the tree of primitive comicality; greed or pride or some
such quality o'erleaping itself and falling on the other, the engineer hoist
with his own petard. It is better than a true story; it is a story of All
Truth, to use the admirable distinguish of Hermes Trismegistus.
The roar of space winds pouring o'er | |
The star hung cataracts of night | |
Has thundered on the sapphire shore | |
Of Orion. And in the light | |
Of clustered suns the men of Earth | |
Have heard this song celestial | |
Have stopped their labors, and their mirth, | |
Looking back to where, terrestrial, | |
Our mother planet swings in peace | |
Around her parent sun of old | |
And in those gyres that never cease | |
The story of our life is told. | |
From here the race of Man has sprung | |
To conquer space and claim the stars, | |
With fire atomic as the rung | |
He leaped the chasmed isobars | |
Between the worlds! From Him there came | |
The Cosmic Engineers who spanned | |
The stellar deep with ships of flame | |
Who saw galactic empires planned | |
For all of time. And so they dreamed | |
To throw the outposts of the Race | |
Beyond the farthest stars that gleamed | |
Upon the outer rim of space. | |
Hull down the ranging cruisers ride | |
The star wind o'er the Pleiades, | |
The space tanned mariners may stride | |
Their quarter-decks, or stand at ease | |
Along the bridge. While on patrol | |
Space borne torpedoes of the deep | |
Trans-stellar spaces gently roll | |
And feel the space tides as they leap | |
The curving parsects. Through the roar | |
Of stellar seas their orbits run | |
And close hauled clippers drive before | |
The blast of an exploding sun | |
That ripples space. And in the holds | |
Of merchant argosies are gems | |
From Centaurus; strange fungoid molds, | |
Monstrosities with many limbs | |
From Aldebaran; by the tons | |
Uranium and all its ores; | |
The priceless commerce of the suns | |
Consigned to Earth from foreign shores! | |
The cold, dry wind of outer space | |
That sweeps a way between the stars | |
Has fanned Capella's flaming face | |
And stirred the sanguine sands of Mars | |
And I would ride that dark simoon | |
With the Corsair avatars of old | |
In racing shells that plunge the flume | |
Of interstellar space. Behold | |
The orange flame of Foamlhaut's | |
From far below the Median Deep, | |
And stand the watch with astronauts | |
Who time the light years as they sweep | |
Across the universe. Who know | |
How wheeling galaxies will strain | |
The spatial curve. What storm may grow | |
A million years before they gain | |
The strength of cosmic hurricanes. | |
Such cyclone vortices as these, | |
Light years across, have fanned the vanes | |
Of stations anchored in the seas | |
That wash Polaris. And the spawn | |
Of this space warping typhoon wind | |
Are fiery molecules whole drawn | |
From some sub-ether. So they send | |
Another nebula to swirl | |
Across the strained and troubled void. | |
A cloud of new born stars to whirl | |
And lure the questing anthropoid. | |
The power of atomic might | |
Stripped from the ore uranium, | |
Where neucleons are whipped in white | |
Heat from bedrock neutronium, | |
Has fueled the navies of high space, | |
And out in that sidereal sleet | |
A mighty dreadnought seeks to trace | |
The orbit of a spindrift fleet | |
Lost on the deep. Whose men marooned | |
On racing meteorites have gazed | |
With fevered eyes, their thoughts attuned | |
To dusky phantoms on the glazed | |
Backdrop of suns. In dream they see | |
The sleeting comets crash and burn | |
And gaunt ribbed worlds flap hopelessly | |
About a gutted sun whose urn | |
Of ashes cold spills in the gloom. | |
Such drifting clouds of dust set free | |
May sail the dead, high seas of doom | |
Forever, yet may never see | |
Nor spume in breakers on the shore | |
Of worlds that spin in hyperspace: | |
Beyond the ken of terrene lore | |
Are planets out of time and space. | |
Beyond the islands of a sun | |
In Andromeda's stellar swarms | |
These cosmic pioneeres have won | |
A beach-head. And against the storms | |
Of toxic gases they have wrought | |
Weird cities' domes with crystal shell, | |
And to these alien worlds have brought | |
Some touch of Earth. Here they may dwell | |
Until once more the call of space | |
Has echoed in their hearts, and then | |
The snub-nosed mining fleets will pace | |
The comet trails, and treading men | |
Seek merchandise among the strange | |
Inhabitants of Narccrokelts, | |
With jewel dyes and sweet orange | |
To barter for their shaggy pelts | |
Symbiotic. Such men have seen | |
The massive glyptodons make war | |
On monsters trapped in the marine | |
Of worlds ruled by the dinosaur | |
Near Procyon. While from the locks | |
Of guardian keeps on Mercury | |
To where the slag of cinder rocks | |
Speed out beyond the star-lit sea . . . . | |
Previously published in Kaaba I:4 (April 1979 e.v.) and in The Grady Project #3 (March 1988 e.v.). Grady sent this poem to Aleister Crowley with a letter from San Francisco dated 12 May 1946 e.v. which mentions the piece: "Here is a copy of `Space Tides', my latest effort in the line of poetry. Had hoped to make it longer but I had to cut it short as I wanted to enter it in a poetry contest over at the University. Then I found a copy of the poem that won last year's prize and decided that I didn't have a chance. `How beautiful the sun is on the sea for over the hill there is a flag-pole and a young lady sits under the pear tree' kind of stuff."
--- ---
Golden Legend. |
ST. DUNSTAN stood in his ivied Tower, | |
Alembic, crucible, all were there; | |
When in came Nick to play him a trick, | |
In guise of a damsel passing fair. | |
Every one knows | |
How the story goes: | |
He took up the tongs and caught hold of his nose. | |
But I beg that you won't for a moment suppose | |
That I mean to go through, in detail, to you | |
A story at least as trite as it's true; | |
Nor do I intend | |
An instant to spend | |
On the tale, how he treated his monarch and friend, | |
When, bolting away to a chamber remote, | |
Inconceivably bored by his Witen-gemote, | |
Edwy left them all joking, | |
And drinking, and smoking, | |
So tipsily grand, they'd stand nonsense from no King, | |
But sent the Archbishop | |
Their Sovereign to fish up, | |
With a hint that perchance on his crown he might feel taps, | |
Unless he came back straight and took off his heel-taps. | |
You must not be plagued with the same story twice, | |
And perhaps have seen this one, by W. DYCE, | |
At the Royal Academy, very well done, | |
And mark'd in the catalogue Four, seven, one. | |
You might there view the Saint, who in sable array'd is, | |
Coercing the Monarch away from the Ladies; | |
His right hand has hold of his Majesty's jerkin, | |
His left shows the door, and he seems to say, "Sir King, | |
Your most faithful Commons won't hear of your shirking! | |
Quit your tea, and return to your Barclai and Perkyn. | |
Or, by Jingo,1 ere morning, no longer alive, a | |
Sad victim you'll lie to your love for Elgiva!" | |
No farther to treat | |
Of this ungallant feat, | |
What I mean to do now is succinctly to paint | |
One particular fact in the life of the Saint, | |
Which somehow, for want of due care, I presume, | |
Has escaped the researches of Rapin and Hume, | |
In recounting a miracle, both of them men, who a | |
Great deal fall short of Jaques Bishop of Genoa, | |
An Historian who likes deeds like these to record --- | |
See his Aurea Legenda, by ![]() | |
St. Dunstan stood again in his tower, | |
Alembic, crucible, all complete; | |
He had been standing a good half hour, | |
And now he utter'd the words of power, | |
And call'd to his Broomstick to bring him a seat. | |
The words of power! --- and what be they | |
To which e'en Broomsticks bow and obey? --- | |
Why, --- 'twere uncommonly hard to say, | |
As the prelate I named has recorded none of them, | |
What they may be, | |
But I know there are three, | |
And ABRACADABRA, I take it, is one of them: | |
For I'm told that most Cabalists use that identical | |
Word, written thus, in what they call "a Pentacle." | |
![]() | |
However that be, | |
You'll doubtless agree | |
It signifies little to you or to me, | |
As not being dabblers in Grammarye; | |
Still, it must be confess'd, for a Saint to repeat | |
Such language aloud is scarcely discreet; | |
For, as Solomon hints to folks given to chatter, | |
"A bird of the air may carry the matter;" | |
And in sooth, | |
From my youth | |
I remember a truth | |
Insisted on much in my earlier years, | |
To wit, "Little Pitchers have very long ears!" | |
Now, just such a "Pitcher" as those I allude to | |
Was outside the door, which his "ears" appeared glued to. | |
Peter, the Lay-brother, meagre and thin, | |
Five feet one in his sandal-shoon, | |
While the saint thought him sleeping, | |
Was listening and peeping, | |
And watching his master the whole afternoon. | |
This Peter the Saint had pick'd out from his fellows, | |
To look to his fire, and blow with the bellows, | |
To put on the Walls's-Ends and Lambtons whenever he | |
Choose to indulge in a little orfevrerie; | |
- Of course you have read, | |
That St. Dunstan was bred | |
A Goldsmith, and never quite gave up the trade! | |
The Company - richest in London, 'tis said - | |
Acknowledge him still as their Patron and Head; | |
Nor is it so long | |
Since a capital song | |
In his praise - now recorded their archives among - | |
Delighted the noble and dignified throng | |
Of their guests, who, the newspapers told the whole town, | |
With cheers "pledged the wine-cup to Dunstan's renown," | |
When Lord Lyndhurst, THE DUKE, and Sir Robert, were dining | |
At the Hall some time since with the Prime Warden Twining. - | |
- I am sadly digressing - a fault which sometimes | |
One can hardly avoid in these gossiping rhymes - | |
A slight deviation's forgiven! but then this is | |
Too long, I fear, for a decent parenthesis, | |
So I'll rein up my Pegasus sharp, and retreat, or | |
You'll think I've forgotten the Lay-brother Peter, | |
Whom the Saint, as I said, | |
Kept to turn down his bed, | |
Dress his palfreys and cobs, | |
And do other odd jobs, - | |
As reducing to writing | |
Whatever he might, in | |
The course of the day or the night, be inditing, | |
And cleaning the plate of his mitre with whiting; | |
Performing, in short, all those duties and offices | |
Abbots exact from Lay-brothers and Novices. | |
It occurs to me here | |
You'll perhaps think it queer | |
That St. Dunstan should have such a personage near, | |
When he'd only to say | |
Those words, - be what they may, - | |
And his Broomstick at once his commands would obey. - | |
That's true - but the fact is | |
'Twas rarely his practice | |
Such aid to resort to, or such means apply, | |
Unless he'd some "dignified knot" to untie, | |
Adopting, though sometimes, as now, he'd reverse it, | |
Old Horace's maxim "nec Broomstick intersit." - | |
- Peter, the Lay-brother, meagre and thin, | |
Heard all the Saint was saying within; | |
Peter, the Lay-brother, sallow and spare, | |
Peep'd though the key-hole, and - what saw he there? - | |
Why, - A BROOMSTICK BRINGING A RUSH-BOTTOM'D CHAIR. | |
What Shakespeare observes, in his play of King John, | |
Is undoubtedly right, | |
That "oftimes the sight | |
Of means to do ill deeds will make ill deeds done." | |
Here's Peter, the Lay-brother, pale-faced and meagre, | |
A good sort of man, only rather too eager | |
To listen to what other people are saying, | |
When he ought to be minding his business or praying, | |
Gets into a scrape, - and an awkward one too, - | |
As you'll find, if you've patience enough to go through | |
The whole of the story | |
I'm laying before ye, - | |
Entirely from having "the means" in his view | |
Of doing a thing which he ought not to do! | |
Still rings in his ear, | |
Distinct and clear, | |
Abracadabra! that word of fear! | |
And the two which I never yet happen'd to hear. | |
Still doth he spy, | |
With Fancy's eye, | |
The Broomstick at work, and the Saint standing by; | |
And he chuckles, and says to himself with glee, | |
"Aha! that Broomstick shall work for me!" | |
Hark! - that swell | |
O'er flood and o'er fell, | |
Mountain, and dingle, and moss-cover'd dell! | |
List! - 'tis the sound of the Compline bell, | |
And St. Dunstan is quitting his ivied cell; | |
Peter, I wot, | |
Is off like a shot, | |
Or a little dog scalded by something that's hot, | |
For he hears his Master approaching the spot | |
Where he'd listened so long, though he knew he ought not: | |
Peter remember'd his Master's frown - | |
He trembled - he'd not have been caught for a crown; | |
Howe'er you may laugh | |
He had rather, by half, | |
Have run up to the top of the tower and jump'd down. | |
* * * * * | |
The Compline hour is past and gone, | |
Evening service is over and done; | |
The monks repair | |
To their frugal fare, | |
A snug little supper of something light | |
And digestible, ere they retire for the night. | |
For, in Saxon time, in respect to their cheer, | |
St. Austin's Rule was by no means severe, | |
But allowed, from the Beverley Roll 'twould appear, | |
Bread and cheese, and spring onions, and sound table-beer, | |
And even green peas, when they were not too dear; | |
Not like the rule of La Trappe, whose chief merit is | |
Said to consist in its greater austerities; | |
And whose monks, if I rightly remember their laws, | |
Ne'er are suffer'd to speak, | |
Think only in Greek, | |
And subsist, as the Bears do, by sucking their paws. | |
Astonish'd I am | |
The gay Baron Geramb, | |
With his head sav'ring more of the Lion than Lamb, | |
Could e'er be persuaded to join such a set - I | |
Extend the remark to Signor Ambrogetti. - | |
For a monk of La Trappe is as thin as a rat, | |
While an Austin Friar was jolly and fat; | |
Though, of course, the fare to which I allude, | |
With as good table-beer as ever was brew'd, | |
Was all "caviare to the multitude," | |
Extending alone to the clergy, together in | |
Hall assembled, - and not to Lay-brethren. | |
St. Dunstan himself sits there at his post, | |
On what they say is | |
Called a Dais, | |
O'erlooking the whole of his clerical host, | |
And eating poach'd eggs with spinach and toast; | |
Five Lay-brothers stand behind his chair, | |
But where is the sixth? - Where's Peter! - Ay, WHERE? | |
'Tis an evening in June, | |
And a little half moon, | |
A brighter no fond lover ever set eyes on | |
Gleaming and beaming, | |
And dancing the stream in, | |
Has made her appearance above the horizon; | |
Just such a half moon as you see, in a play, | |
On the turban of Mustapha Muley Bey, | |
Or the fair Turk who weds with the "Noble Lord Bateman;" | |
- Vide plate in George Cruickshank's memoirs of that great man. | |
She shines on a turret remote and lone, | |
A turret with ivy and moss overgrown, | |
And lichens that thrive on the cold dank stone; | |
Such a tower as a poet of no mean calibre | |
I once knew and loved, poor, dear Reginald Heber, | |
Assigns to oblivion2 - a den for a She bear; | |
Within it are found, | |
Strew'd above and around, | |
On the hearth, on the table, the shelves, and the ground, | |
All sorts of instruments, all sorts of tools, | |
To name which, and their uses, would puzzle the Schools, | |
And make very wise people look very like fools; | |
Pincers and hooks, | |
And black-letter books, | |
All sorts of pokers, and all sorts of tongs, | |
And all sorts of hammers, and all that belongs | |
to Goldsmith's work, chemistry, alchymy, - all, | |
In short that a Sage, | |
In that erudite age, | |
Could require, was at hand, or at least within call. | |
In the midst of the room lies a Broomstick! - and there | |
A Lay-brother sits in a rush-bottom'd chair! | |
Abracadabra, that fearful word, | |
And the two which, I said, I have never yet heard, | |
Are utter'd. - 'Tis done! | |
Peter, full of his fun, | |
Cries, "Broomstick! you lubbery son of a gun! | |
Bring ale! - bring a flagon - a hogshead - a tun! | |
'Tis the same thing to you; | |
I have nothing to do; | |
And, 'fore George, I'll sit here, and I'll drink till all's blue!" | |
No doubt you've remark'd how uncommonly quick | |
A Newfoundland puppy runs after a stick, | |
Brings it back to his master, and gives it him - Well, | |
So potent the spell, | |
The Broomstick perceived it was vain to rebel, | |
So ran off like that puppy; - some cellar was near, | |
For in less than ten seconds 'twas back with the beer! | |
Peter seizes the flagon; but ere he can suck | |
Its contents, or enjoy what he thinks his good luck, | |
The Broomstick comes in with a tub in a truck; | |
Continues to run | |
At the rate it begun, | |
And, au pied de lettre, next brings in a tun! | |
A fresh one succeeds, then a third, then another, | |
Discomfiting much the astounded Lay-brother; | |
Who, had he possess'd fifty pitchers or stoups, | |
They all had been too few; for, arranging in groups | |
The barrels, the Boomstick next started the hoops; | |
The ale deluged the floor, | |
But, still, through the door, | |
Said Broomstick kept bolting, and bringing in more. | |
E'en Macbeth to Macduff | |
Would have cried "Hold! enough!" | |
If half as well drench'd with such "perilous stuff," | |
And, Peter, who did not expect such a rough visit, | |
Cried lustily, "Stop! - That will do, Broomstick! - Sufficit!" | |
But ah, well-a-day! | |
The Devil, they say, | |
'Tis easier at all times to raise than to lay. | |
Again and again | |
Peter roar'd out in vain | |
His Abracadabra, and t'other words twain: - | |
As well might one try | |
A pack in full cry | |
To check, and call off from their headlong career, | |
By bawling out, "Yoicks!" with one's hand at one's ear. | |
The longer he roar'd, and the louder and quicker, | |
The faster the Broomstick was bringing in liquor. | |
The poor Lay-brother knew | |
Not on earth what to do - | |
He caught hold of the Broomstick and snapt it in two. - | |
Worse and worse! - like a dart | |
Each part made a start, | |
And he found he'd been adding more fuel to fire, | |
For both now came loaded with Meux's entire; | |
Combe's, Delafield's, Hanbury's, Truman's - no stopping - | |
Goding's, Charenton's, Whitbread's continued to drop in, | |
With Hodson's pale ale, from the Sun Brewhouse, Wapping. | |
The firms differ'd then, but I can't put a tax on | |
My memory to say what their names were in Saxon. | |
To be sure the best beer | |
Of all did not appear; | |
For I've said 'twas in June, and so late in the year | |
The "Trinity Audit Ale" is not come-at-able, | |
- As I've found to my great grief when dining at that table. | |
Now extremely alarm'd, Peter scream'd without ceasing, | |
For a flood of brown-stout he was up to his knees in, | |
Which, thanks to the Broomstick, continued increasing; | |
He fear'd he'd be drown'd, | |
And he yell'd till the sound | |
Of his voice, wing'd by terror, at least reach'd the ear | |
Of St. Dunstan himself, who had finish'd his beer, | |
And had put off his mitre, dalmatic, and shoes, | |
And was just stepping into his bed for a snooze. | |
His Holiness paused when he heard such a clatter; | |
He could not conceive what on earth was the matter. | |
Slipping on a few things, for the sake of decorum, | |
He issued forthwith from his Sanctum sanctorum, | |
And calling a few of the Lay-brothers near him, | |
Who were not yet in bed, and who happen'd to hear him, | |
At once led the way, | |
Without farther delay, | |
To the tower where he'd been in the course of the day. | |
Poor Peter! - alas! though St. Dunstan was quick, | |
There were two there before him --- Grim Death, and Old Nick! | |
---------- | |
When they open'd the door out the malt-liquor flow'd, | |
Just as when the great Vat burst in Tot'n'am Court Road; | |
The Lay-brothers nearest were up to their necks | |
In an instant, and swimming in strong double X; | |
While Peter, who, spite of himself now had drank hard, | |
After floating awhile, like a toast in a tankard, | |
To the bottom had sunk, | |
And was spied by a monk, | |
Stone-dead, like poor Clarence, half drown'd and half drunk. | |
In vain did St. Dunstan exclaim, "Vade retro | |
Strongbeerum! - discede a Lay-fratre Petro!" - | |
Queer Latin, you'll say, | |
That praefix of "Lay," | |
And Strongbeerum! - I won they'd have call'd me a blockhead if | |
At school I had ventured to use such a Vocative; | |
'Tis a barbarous word, and to me it's a query | |
If you'll find it in Patrick, Morell, or Moreri; | |
But, the fact is, the Saint was uncommonly flurried, | |
And apt to be loose in his Latin when hurried; | |
The Brown-stout, however, obeys to the letter, | |
Quite as well as if talk'd to, in Latin much better, | |
By a grave Cambridge Johnian, | |
Or graver Oxonian, | |
Whose language, we all know, is quite Ciceronian. | |
It retires from the corpse, which is left high and dry; | |
But, in vain do they snuff and hot towels apply, | |
And other means used by the faculty try. | |
When once a man's dead | |
There's no more to be said; | |
Peter's "Beer with and e" was his "Bier with an i!!" | |
![]() | |
By way of a moral, permit me to pop in | |
The following maxims: - Beware of eaves-dropping! - | |
Don't make use of language that isn't well scann'd! - | |
Don't meddle with matters you don't understand! - | |
Above all, what I'd wish to impress on both sexes | |
Is, - Keep clear of Broomsticks, Old Nick, and three XXXs. | |
![]() | |
In Goldsmith's Hall there's a handsome glass-case, | |
And in it a stone figure, found on the place, | |
When, thinking the old Hall no longer a pleasant one, | |
They pull'd it all down, and erected the present one. | |
If you look, you'll perceive that this stone figure twists | |
A thing like a broomstick in one of its fists. | |
It's so injured by time, you can't make out a feature; | |
But it is not St. Dunstan, - so doubtless it's Peter. |
Notes:
1. St. Jingo, or Gengo (Gengulphus), sometimes styled "The Living Jingo,"
from the great tenaciousness of vitality exhibited by his severed
members. See his Legend, ...
2. And cold oblivion, midst the ruin laid,
Folds her dank wing beneath the ivy shade.
PALESTINE.
An. 19{?} ![]() ![]() | Aleister Crowley c/o Dennes{?} & Co. 22 Chancery Lane London W.C.2 | |
Very Illustrious Very Illuminated and Very dear Bro![]() Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Some one has sent me a pamphlet in Blue wrapper 128 pp "Not under the Rosy Cross" by Swinburn Clymer, an ignorant swindler who came to me in N.Y. in 1914-15 e.v. for support. I kicked him out. As I assume that you know him, practically every statement he makes about me is false. (And why is the old Grand Hierophants' Cross called the Crowley Cross? And the R.C. with all the colours of the Rainbow the Black Cross?). But what can we expect of a creature who quotes seriously the obscene sayings of that very ancient and fish-like prostitute and black mailer Marian Dockerill? I am writing, not only in sympathy, but because the time has come for me to turn the tables upon these rascals. Will you cable me - address "Chaucellor {?} London" - the name and address of your London Representative, or otherwise facilitate rapid & sure communication between us? I feel sure that co- operation at this moment will be most valuable for the Great Work. Love is the law, love under will Yours in the Bonds of the Order {11-fold cross} Baphomet X° 33° 90° 97° O.T.O. |
Clymer's pamphlet was revised to include events from the 1930's and reprinted in The Rosicrucian Fraternity in America, by Dr. R. Swinburne Clymer, The Rosicrucian Foundation, Beverly Hall, Quakertown, Pa., 1935. This work is well worth having for its many reproductions of early documents of O.T.O. and O.T.O. precursors. The opinions in it are by-and-large garbage, but they do show that O.T.O. and Crowley have been subjected to lying charges of "Deviltry" for quite some time in the USA. The cover blurb is a notable example:
Here's the passage alluded to in Crowley's letter:
"In this connection, we recall that Aleister Crowley had been a member of
an authentic English Rosicrucian organization, in which he was probably
instructed in the Mystery of the Cross; that he denounced his vows, broke his
solemn obligations and turned Black, and that thereafter, a short time prior to
1909, he fabricated and launched the A A
in London. As and for the grand
symbol of his A
A
, its ramifications, subordinate orders and their Black
Magic activities, he adopted a specially designed cross - not the Rosy Cross
that is and long has been the symbol of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood, but the
Crowley Cross. Crowley made publication of his specially designed cross in
March, 1910, facing page 210, Volume I, No. 3, of THE EQUINOX, which we
reproduce herein, 'being facsimile Reproduction No. 23.' Will the reader
kindly make special note of CROWLEY'S CROSS - the grand symbol of his various
Black Magic activities? It is of special interest. We shall presently show
that Mr. Lewis uses this same 'Crowley Cross' in his work and recently made an
unsuccessful attempt to register it as an emblem of A.M.O.R.C. in the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania."
Disappointed by Lewis's lack of support, Crowley later demanded control of A.M.O.R.C., threatening legal action in the process.
There is every reason to think that he was serious in this plan, but a measure of his lack of practical judgment can be found from
Crowley's request to Lewis in the matter. Crowley actually asked Lewis for the gift of $5,000 to underwrite a suit by Crowley and
O.T.O. against Lewis and A.M.O.R.C.! Bit of a long shot, eh? - Ed.
{Note to Web edition: It was a longer shot than that -- a closer reading indicates that this was a mistaken impression. Crowley didn't actually ask Lewis to finance a suit against the latter}
{Note to Web Edition: The above map is included for historic purposes only. Thelema Lodge is not now at that location}
Thelema Lodge Events Calendar for December 1992 e.v.
12/1/92 | Crowley's Greater Feast, 6:30 PM | Thelema Ldg | ||
12/3/92 | Planatary Magick a la Agrippa with Mark. Saturn Class, 7:00 PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
12/5/92 | Planatary Magick a la Agrippa with Mark. Saturn Rite, 12:30 PM at: 566 63rd St. (not 588) | Thelema Ldg. | ||
12/6/92 | Lodge Council & LOP 2:00 PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
12/6/92 | Gnostic Mass 4:18 PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
12/7/92 | Thelema Lodge meeting 8 PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
12/12/92 | OTO Raid Workshop #4 7:30 PM Members only, Call to attend. | Thelema Ldg. | ||
12/18/92 | O.T.O. Workshop 7:30 PM. Call to attend. Initiates only. | Thelema Ldg. | ||
12/19/92 | Initiations. Call to attend. | Thelema Ldg. | ||
12/20/92 | Gnostic Mass 4:18 PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
12/21/92 | Winter Solstice | |||
12/23/92 | IIIrd Degree Initiation. Call to attend. | Thelema Ldg. | ||
12/26/92 | 3rd Annual Lesser Feast of Henry Miller. 8:00 PM at 566 63rd St. (not 588). | Independant |
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.