Announcements from
Lodge Members and Officers

    The Thelema Lodge Gnostic Mass Seminar holds its first regular meeting Tuesday evening 4th January, beginning late at 8:30 in the lodge library. Organized by Bishop T Dionysus, this enterprise promises to be one of the lodge's most significant cooperative projects. The goal is to prepare a new and comprehensive performance edition of Liber XV, placing our liturgical canon in its spiritual and historical contexts, tracing its performance tradition, and offering commentary upon the text. The seminar includes a study group devoted to the Gnostic Saints, a collation project comparing all previous presentations of the mass text, an editorial group to prepare our preliminary working edition of Crowley's text, and numerous opportunities for specific research into gnostic and thelemic arcana. Participants may work independently, and anyone unable to attend meetings is especially urged to call the lodge and discuss individual contributions to this endeavor.

    Initiation into Ordo Templi Orientis is offered to all who are free and of full age, and of good report, at Thelema Lodge in Oakland just as it is throughout the world. Applications are available from the lodge officers, and may also be requested by post. Candidates are invited to work with the lodge in scheduling initiations, but it is necessary to plan well in advance, awaiting the mandatory forty-day period of review. Other officially chartered bodies of the Order also perform initiations into O.T.O. in our area, and Thelema Lodge recommends to all members the widest possible participation in these rituals. Sirius Oasis in Berkeley is an active initiating body, and Ra Hoor Camp plans to reach down from Petaluma for several initiations this winter, hosted by our greatly honored Past Master, Frater Achad Osher. These bodies should be contacted directly regarding dates, times, and grades to be worked.

    Thelema Lodge offers a variety of workshops, classes, and study groups to which members and friends are welcome. Except where the work of some particular degree of O.T.O. initiation is concerned, these events are free and open to the public. The lodge requests donations at most events, and it is only through the continuing support of its membership that Thelema Lodge is sustained. To offer or request other projects and pursuits for the lodge, members may address the lodge meeting, or speak with one of the officers. For calendar listing, notes for a brief description will be required.

    Who says Capricorns aren't sexy? Come to Grace's dynamic astrological discussion group, where the modus operandi of Capricorn will be examined, and light will be shed on Capricornian characteristics which will prove the case quite otherwise. This group has been organized with both beginning and experienced astrologers in mind, and will be held at Grace's home in Berkeley on Friday evening 7th January, beginning early at 7:00. All attending please be in touch beforehand; phone (510) 843-7828 for information and directions.

    "Enochian Structures", offered by Michael Sanborn, is a class in two parts. Part One on Tuesday evening 11th January will provide an orientation to Angelic Magic and an outline of the hierarchy of the Enochian Watchtowers. Part Two on Tuesday evening 25th January will focus on a variety of coordinate systems associated with the Watchtowers, including a discussion of the Thirty Aethyrs, the Golden Dawn system of the pyramids of the squares, the functions of the angels as known to John Dee, and more. Both meetings will be held at Thelema Lodge and will begin at 7:30; for information call (510) 601-9393.

    There will be a planning meeting to organize an Internet access point at Thelema Lodge on Thursday evening 13th January at 7:30. Ebony has agreed to consult with the lodge for this project if sufficient interest can be generated to sustain it. All netheads, cyberpunks, neuromantics, and other concerned parties are urged to attend, and claim the fast lane on the information superhighway. For information, or to be included if unable to attend, call (510) 652-3171.

    "Especially for Seconds" is a class devoted to issues relevant to the II° of O.T.O., particularly the construction of original rituals for the experienced Thelemic practitioner, with many examples taken from the work of the local community. Led by Michael Sanborn, this event is limited to O.T.O. initiates of II° and above, and meets at Thelema Lodge on Tuesday evening 18th January at 7:30. Call for information at (510) 601-9393.

    The fifth meeting of the Thelema Lodge Magick in Theory and Practice series with Bill Heidrick will be held in Marin on Wednesday evening 19th January at 7:30. Our focus this month will be chapters VIII and IX in Crowley's M.T.P., along with Liber A and Liber Samekh. The location is in San Anselmo, at 5 Suffield Avenue; first-time participants should call (415) 454- 5176 for directions.

    The Greater Pentagram Ritual Workshop, with Fran, returns this month by popular demand, meeting at Thelema Lodge on Thursday evening 20th January at 7:30. Participants will have an opportunity to expand the scope and power of the Lesser Pentagram Ritual as preparation for more advanced workings. For information call (510) 658-9393.

    Join us for an evening of Burmese Astrology with Kathy on Friday evening 21st January beginning at 7:00, hosted by Grace in Berkeley. Though little known in the West, this simple alternative system of plotting celestial influences offers an interesting new perspective to complement conventional astrological investigations. Please be in touch before attending; call Kathy at (415) 457-8076 or Grace at (510) 843-7827.

    The first in a series of Egyptian Magical Workshops with Ebony will meet at Thelema Lodge on Thursday evening 27th January at 7:30. An open discussion of the Stele of Revealing, with specific attention to the hieroglyphic text and the iconography of the god-forms, will be the principal focus this time, with discussion invited on all aspects of the former Boulak Museum exhibit number 666.

    Are Aquarians unpredictable? If that is so, who can tell what will happen at a workshop where the zodiacal sign of Aquarius is the focus of discussion. Theories concerning the dating of the beginning of the Age of Aquarius will also be presented. Grace leads this group, which meets in her Berkeley home on Friday evening 28th January, getting off this month to an early start at 7:00. Please phone ahead to attend --- (510) 843-7828.

    Everyone has at least one poem that expresses their soul's delight. Bring yours to the next meeting of the G. L. McMurtry Poetry Society and share it with the whole jovial crew. Readers and listeners are invited to join Frater P.I. at Thelema Lodge on Saturday evening 29th January at 7:30. We promise to laugh with you, not at you!

    Sirius Oasis continues its focus on Thelema and Witchcraft. On Wednesday evening 12th January at 7:30, a well-known local Gardnerian priest and researcher will be our guest to share his perspectives with the meeting. Phone the Oasis at (510) 527-2855 for information and directions. Sirius Oasis will continue to meet regularly in Berkeley on the second Wednesday of each month.

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

    My term of Office upon the Earth being come in the year of the foundation of the Theosophical Society, I took upon myself, in my turn, the sin of the whole World, that the Prophecies might be fulfilled, so that Mankind may take the Next Step from the Magical Formula of Osiris to that of Horus.
   
    And mine Hour being now upon me, I proclaim my Law.
   
    The word of the Law is

Given in the midst of the
    Mediterranean Sea
    An XX Sol in 3° Libra die Jovis
    by me DCLXVI
   

    All communications relative to this Message Should be addressed to Seniat El Kitou, La Marsa, Tunisia.

    Secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, in many religious contexts there are obvious social motives for people to maintain that particular religious metaphors are factual statements. If Jesus is an archetypal myth rather than a historical personage then how does one justify the enforcement of his worship to the exclusion of all others, especially when some of the other archetypes (e.g., Dionysus, Orpheus, Mithra, etc.) are so very similar? In societies where religious literalism acts as an important justification for the dominant position of particular individuals and classes it has almost invariably been a capital offense to question the mundane truth of received wisdom; although mystics may teach that the popular religious tradition has a metaphorical significance that may even outweigh the importance of its literal truth, they will do so at their own, often substantial, risk. Even in our so- called enlightened society, there are many Christian denominations wherein theologians who question the historical details of the gospels are liable to lose their jobs, and may even face ostracism and harassment.
    At its most extreme this "historicization" of myth even manages to entirely displace the original mystical metaphor. For example, the passage in Matthew's gospel where Jesus gives Peter the "keys of the kingdom" is redolent with spiritual meaning to practitioners of Kundalini yoga, but in the hands of the Roman Catholic authorities this story has been robbed of its inner veracity and reduced to a mere pretext for theocratic tyranny. At some later point, after the gospels were written, Peter was credited with being the first bishop of Rome by the early Christian community. As there is, to me, no discernible mystical metaphor involved in such an elaboration of the legend it must be either based upon actual fact (a highly dubious premise) or a fiction invented to add weight to the papal claims of universal sovereignty.
    Despite the social embarrassments, throughout the ages insightful mystics have understood and appreciated the crucial differences and interfaces between the metaphors of eternity and the actualities of space-time. In today's milieu, for instance, it is possible (though not, alas, ordinary) for a person to find great psychological value in "out-of-body" or "near-death" experiences, "past-life" or "precognitive" visions, and yet still not become a true believer in "astral planes", "the afterlife", "reincarnation", or "akashic records". However, it is usually far more common to find people (including the most hard-core of skeptics) being seduced by their desires and assumptions into mistaking the "three-dimensional" signs and symbols of their experiential map for the "four-dimensional" reality of the territory which they actually inhabit.
    Even the most authentically sacred revelations are necessarily viewed in the distorted mirror of individual (and hence, social) consciousness. Muhammed had no acquaintance with concepts like "archetypes of the collective unconscious"; for him, his visitations with the angel Gabriel could only have had an entirely exterior meaning. It is therefore only natural that most of his followers insist upon the literal truth of an eternal Quran. For Crowley on the other hand, in an era rich with psychological jargon, Aiwass was "almost the 'Unconscious' of Freud", and it is therefore unsurprising to find that some Thelemites consider "the fresh blood of a child" and the "dropping from the host of heaven" mentioned in the Book of the Law to be not literal prescriptions, but rather metaphorical references to semen and feces. Of course, the initiated "know" that these metaphors actually refer to a mixture of menstrual blood and semen, and to pure semen, respectively. In fact, sooner or later most Thelemites are forced to recognize that a literal interpretation of their scripture is repugnant to the very law of love which it proclaims.
    Yet despite living in relatively sophisticated technological cultures, the individuals who make up the modern Book of the Law --- based Thelemite movement (for let us not forget that a Thelemite way of life was also described by Rabelais in the 16th century) are hardly immune to experiencing the common confusions between spiritual and mundane reality. Crowley himself was very often leaping to untenable conclusions in his interpretation of Thelemic metaphor (of course, as an experienced mountaineer he usually did not stop to rest in these places, but quickly stepped onto firmer ground), and his writings are littered with unsupported assertions, and (it seems) deliberately ambiguous tropes which are sure to mislead his unwary followers into wishful thinking at best or knee-jerk fundamentalism at worst.
    One example of the kind of potentially dangerous chimera which AC often pursued in his quest to define Thelema was his recurring and enthusiastic belief in the inestimable value of the Book of the Law as an aid and guide to scientists, especially mathematicians, in the making of great discoveries and advances. Careful reading of The Confessions of Aleister Crowley suggests that the dedicated pursuit of such a chimera helped to contribute to the decline and fall of one mathematician, named Norman Mudd; and it appears that two other men, a science writer and mathematician named J. W. N. Sullivan and a mathematician named Edward Saayman, narrowly escaped a similar obsession. Needless to say, no one, from Crowley and his hundreds of students down to the several thousands of present-day enthusiasts, has yet publicly produced any discovery or advance in math or science as a direct result of some clue in the Book of the Law.
    In fact, to expect to find any new scientific knowledge in spiritual communications is naive at best, and more often than not it is seriously deluded. Of course, it cannot be categorically denied that such a discovery, involving a clue from the BOOK OF THE LAW, may possibly occur in the future (or even that it has already occurred and is being kept secret for one good reason or another), and in any event it would be tyrannical to attempt to refuse people their right to conduct and interpret their own "spiritually- inspired" researches. Still, I must also admit that the arguments of "creation scientists" might possibly be true (if God is indeed the cruel joker they make "Him" out to be!), and also it's true that I would never dream of trying to prevent creationists from speculating publicly on the subject. But nonetheless, I do not want creationists to control how my children's schools' science textbooks are written!
    By the same token, since I believe that Thelemites are almost certainly wasting their time when they try to discern new mathematical or scientific principles in the texts of Crowley's holy books, I would rather see AC's misplaced enthusiasm become an object lesson to his followers instead of an example. Indeed, it is true that scientists and mathematicians may derive real inspiration from religion or philosophy, perhaps even especially from Thelema, but measuring the Great Pyramid or counting the letters in the BOOK OF THE LAW is not the way to revolutionize scientific thought. The practice of numerology may involve arithmetic, but that fact does not make numerology a branch of the science called mathematics.
    Fortunately, in most of Crowley's published commentary on the BOOK OF THE LAW, he concerns himself primarily with the ethical and metaphorical significance of his revelation; however, too much of the time he is also trying to read in whatever literal significance he can (e.g., how many present-day Thelemites believe that the outbreaks of many 20th-century wars, including the two World Wars, were integrally linked with the publication dates of various editions of the Book of the Law? Crowley apparently did, and it seems that most of his devotees concur!). AC's almost schizoid approach to interpreting the text of Liber CCXX is particularly evident when he is commenting upon its repeated nihilist/dualist themes; his perusal led him to propose the equation 0=2 to graphically express one of the book's primary motifs (though of course he had devised this equation all by himself several years before he met Aiwass - one more illustration, like "Abrahadabra", that you'll never learn anything from a spirit unless you've already known it all along!).

from the Grady Project:

Published in McMurtry: Poems (London & Bergen: O.T.O., 1986 e.v.), and in The Grady Project #3 (March 1988 e.v.).

    The first document was dated March 22, 1946 e.v.

    The second document was dated April 11, 1946 e.v.

    A subsequent letter from Crowley to Germer removed the condition of prior approval. With the death of Frater Saturnus (Karl J. Germer) in 1962 e.v., these articles of authorization automatically went into effect.

JM of NE asked about the Church of Thelema:

    The Church of Thelema was incorporated by Wilford T. Smith, head of old Agape Lodge in Southern California in the 1940s. It was intended to be the legal entity for O.T.O. in the US, but Crowley got upset with details of the incorporation and with Smith. The upshot of the matter was that O.T.O. disowned the Church of Thelema and W.T.Smith was forced into retirement. The publication of Liber II: The Message of the Master Therion came out under the Church of Thelema name in the 30's, but it was actually a part of Agape Lodge at the time.

DK of LA needed to know if he had a rebound 1st edition of the Equinox.

    The easiest way to identify a 1st edition set of the Equinox would be to look in Number 7. There should be a gate-fold facsimile of the manuscript of Liber AL in that number, like that bound into the front of Regardie's 1975 e.v. edition of The Law is for All. The Equinox reprints out of Weiser replaced that glossy gate-fold with pages of enlarged text facsimiles of the individual pages of the MS, four to a page. Also look for complete illustrations in several different colors. Some of them appear to be half- tones at first glance, but are actually colotypes (no dots under a magnifying glass) and at least one multi-color lithograph (The Regimen of Seven). There are some half-tones, mostly black and white photos, in some of the numbers. Look at Number 3, around pages 1 through 3. There was a change made during the law suit by Mathers against Crowley in some copies of that issue. Sales was temporarily suspended because of an injunction by the courts. The issues to come out before the injunction are intact. After resumption of sales, there is a half-page tipped in and a change to the editorial. The Weiser reprints have the intact editorial, but many of the 1st editions extant have the half-page and a reference to the lawsuit in the editorial.

In Australia, in addition to the remnant of Motta's old S.O.T.O., there are other groups beside our's claiming to be O.T.O. One such group has argues that it is a "pre-Reuss", or at least pre-1900's O.T.O. This group published some correspondence between Reuss and Westcott from the beginning of the 20th century. Here's an edited excerpt from a letter on the issue:

    There is a book called Occult Theocrasy by "Lady Queenborough", aka. Edith Starr Miller. It was published in two volumes posthumously in 1933 e.v. as an attack on Masonry and similar institutions. Westcott-Reuss correspondence about Swedenborgian Freemasonry, the SRIA and plans to form a Masonic society under names "like O.T.O." are in that book. The October 16th 1902 e.v. letter from Westcott to Reuss published through Tillett is also found in Occult Theocrasy, in facsimile in the latter part of that book. Whatever the truth or lack of it in Tillett's version, we are not that critter and that critter is not the O.T.O. that emerged from Kellner, Reuss and Crowley. Tillett's thesis may be genuine, but it is unrelated to O.T.O. as we have it. Tillett's representations may also be a fabrication based on books and purchased documents not unlike that foisted off by Metzger on Germer in the 1950's. Frankly, I suspect that Tillett's material is a questionable use of published matter from Occult Theocrasy. Let him provide a letter that is not in the book --- even then, what does it prove about his connections? I have handled letters written by Crowley that did not come through O.T.O. All that proves is that you can get old papers from collections.
    Occult Theoracy was reprinted about five years ago.

    A new catalogue of Crowley and other texts available for IBM PC compatible computer will be out in February. The selections have been increased in number, and disks are now available in three formats: 5 1/3 inch 360K or 1.2 meg and 3 1/2 inch 1.44 meg. In addition, file compression can be requested using PKZIP 2.04G or LHARC 2.13 at 50% size reduction or better. For example, all of Equinox volume I, numbers 1-10 complete in ASCII will fit on two 3 1/2 1.44 meg diskettes in LHARC self-extracting compression and all of Confessions fits on one such diskette. O.T.O. Lodges, Oases and Camps will receive the updated list in March of 1994 e.v., and individuals will be able to receive a copy of the catalogue on request in February '94 e.v. by writing to: O.T.O. Diskette Catalogue, P.O.Box 403, Fairfax, CA 94978 USA. The previous arrangements apply: suggested donation is $1.50 per diskette OR send two diskettes and get one back with no further expense. Postage paid. Requests for catalogues received before mid February may be responded by mailing of the old catalogue.-- {Obsolete, now available by email attachment and via the Web. -- Note to TLC Web edition}

Events Calendar for January 1994 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

Phone: (510) 652-3171 (for events info and contact to Lodge)

Production and Circulation:
OTO-TLC
P.O.Box 430
Fairfax, CA 94978 USA

Internet: heidrick@well.com (Submissions and circulation only)