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
August 1994 e.v. at Thelema Lodge
Announcements from
Lodge Members and Officers
The monthly Gnostic Mass Study Group meets under the direction of Bishop T
Dionysus on Wednesday evening 31st August at 8:00. As our new edition of
Liber XV undergoes further typographic refinement, the group is already making
good progress in the explication of the liturgy. Our line-by-line discussion
of the "Credo" at a recent meeting established some of the procedures for
group work with the text, and also illustrated some of the structural
challenges we face in editing our explanatory contributions. The group
invites specific interpretations, comments, and source-notes from all who know
the mass. Is there, for instance, a source for the phrase "mystery of
mystery," which upon investigation turns out not to be biblical?
Join the Section Two Reading Group at Oz House on Monday evening 22nd
August at 8:00, hosted by Caitlin, for a literary discussion of The Golden Ass. For directions and information call Oz at (510) 654-3580 or Thelema
Lodge at (510) 652-3171. The pagan philosopher and magician Apuleius was a
Roman African, educated at Carthage and Athens, writing in the second half of
the second century of the past aeon. A number of his works have been
influential: De Deo Socratis [Concerning the Daemon of Socrates] is the most
comprehensive classical account of the "genius" spirit or Holy Guardian Angel;
the Apology outlines his successful defense against legal persecution for
magical practices. The Golden Ass (an informal name for the prose narrative
originally entitled The Metamorphosis) retells an older tale of the
tribulations of a Greek named Lucius, whose magical curiosity gets him
transformed into a donkey. To this Apuleius adds a detailed account of pagan
redemption in the cult of Isis, and a series of interpolated stories, most
notably the classic account of the romance of Eros and Psyche. Several
translations of the Ass are easily available, though few are accurate with
regard to the details of technical magick it contains, nor concerning the
erotic descriptions.
An evening of discussion devoted to the original Rosicrucian pamphlets will be offered at 8:00 in the lodge library on Monday evening 15th August, led by
Frater Hrafnkel. Copies of our new Thelema Lodge edition of these texts will
be available by donation. Over the second decade of the past aeon's
seventeenth century, great interest was stimulated throughout northern Europe
by the announcement of a secret fraternity pursuing both ancient Hermetic
wisdom and also the latest developments in chemistry, biology, alchemy, and
medicine. The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross had been fictionalized in two
anonymous recruiting pamphlets and some related writings; despite the frantic
efforts of some of Europe's outstanding minds --- Rene Descartes, for example,
was later much teased over his attempts to contact them --- no actual
Rosicrucians ever presented themselves. But in another sense the Rosicrucians
did gradually realize their fellowship, as their symbols and ideals were
appropriated by later groups, including O.T.O.
The Thelema Lodge Magick in Theory and Practice Series with Bill Heidrick
meets on Wednesday evening 17th August at 7:30 in Marin. Brother Bill will be
our host as well as leading the discussion, which will cover chapters 19 and
20. The address is 5 Suffield Avenue in San Anselmo, and those attending for
the first time should call ahead for directions at (415) 454-5176.
The Grady McMurtry Poetry Society meets on Saturday evening 27th August at
8:00 in the lodge library. Bring your favorite verse to read to the group,
which is organized by Frater P.I. to promote the appreciation of all sorts of
poetry (and we generally do get all sorts).
Thelema Lodge Butterfly Net computer club meets Monday evening 29th August
at 8:00. Membership is now available on a monthly basis, and the Net is open
for use. Members please attend to hear of possible system changes coming up,
and to keep current with dues so we can keep the Net working.
Sirius Oasis holds its regular meeting on Wednesday evening 10th August in
Berkeley at 8:00. Please call ahead to confirm (and for directions) at (510)
527-2855. One topic will be the possibility of a Rite of Earth, to ground out
the Eleusis cycle, likely to be scheduled for Saturday afternoon 1 October.
Thelema Lodge Meeting will be Monday evening 8th August at 8:00.
Scheduling and organization will be our concern, and requests or offers for
classes and events are best presented at lodgemeeting, or discussed early in
the month with the lodge master. Notes for events descriptions for the
calendar are due by mid-month.
The Sustaining Members Luncheon Meeting will be held on Saturday this
month, due to other Sunday events early in August. Meet at 1:00 on Saturday
6th August. Remember, Thelema Lodge needs your help! When will we have a new
mass altar for Hours Temple? When can we extend our library facilities? If
you are interested in helping the Lodge to grow and flourish, please consider
joining the Sustaining Members Circle. As Brother David Nicholls says, "I
feel a dollar a day is a small price to pay for all the fellowship, love, and
other benefits too many to mention. So I say to my fellow Thelemites, become
a Sustaining Member for $30 a month (just a dollar a day). Where else can you
get such a bargain?"
Thelema Lodge Library Nights are scheduled for Thursday evenings 11th and
25th August, from 8:00 to 10:00. Please call ahead to confirm, as these
events are rescheduled occasionally to meet the needs of members who volunteer
to help maintain our expanding library facilities, or those requesting to make
use of the library for reading and research. Contact the lodgemaster or
officers regarding all library scheduling.
As part of the Thelema Lodge Aleph Group lives on as an informal pursuit
among a number of lodge members, last month we held a day-long workshop on
Saturday 16th July. The group started off the event at 11:00 AM with asana
practice and a dizzying series of pranayama exercises. After a light lunch,
they resumed with mantra-yoga, i.e. seventeen mesmerizing choruses of IAO,
followed by personal instruction in overtone chanting. The workshop continued
along the yoga theme: practice in vipassana, or "no-thought" meditation,
concentrating upon a candleflame, and balancing between breathing and
listening. This was crowned by the practice of the "Kundalini" (SSS) chapter
of Liber HHH. After a final break, the group improvised a collective version
of the Mass of the Phoenix, including a rousing jam session. They even
managed to pack it all in by 7:00 pm.
"Nay, start not at the word! America!" --- Shelley |
HISTORY offers no parallel with the situation of Art in America. In the very
flower-tide of English literature out go the Pilgrim Fathers with the Bible,
Shakespeare, Milton, and John Bunyan, into a country whose natural beauties
and whose natural rigours seem as if they would force art from out the veriest
savages. The history of American development, one might hastily assert,
offers every inducement to art in every form.
And yet the result is relative sterility. If we except Poe and Whitman in
literature, Whistler and Sargent in painting, these remarks on Art in America
seem likely to be as few as those on Snakes in Ireland.
Do we find anything that even aspires to be of the first rank? Poe is not
in any sense a local bard; he is, of course, universal; yet he seems almost
anti-local; most of his stories are drawn from the Old World, or might just as
well have happened there. Whistler and Sargent never worked in America at
all. The astounding inspiration of much of American scenery, ranging from the
cliffs of Yosemite and Niagara to the plains of Texas and the Mississippi,
fails to inspire the native. I have at my tongue's tip a dozen superb nature-
pictures of their country --- God's country! no empty boasting that! --- and
every one of them was written by an Irishman or a Scot.
Why could not Whistler have painted in the Yellowstone? The nearest he
ever got to it was Valparaiso.
I think the truth of the matter lies in this, that where life is so
abundant only the eldest souls can even begin to turn themselves to that
quintessentialising of it which is the secret of art, and that such souls,
overwhelmed by its immensity, or lacking in the youth of genius, have failed.
Even of those whom we may claim as at least candidates for election to the
Elysian fields, we must remark that their output is infinitesimal. In prose,
it is true, Poe managed to sustain himself in aether well enough, and The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (too little known here) is a greater
achievement than any of the shorter stories. But you can pack away his poetry
into a hat-box, "The Raven" is, to my mind, a much over-rated piece; "The Bells" is as bad as Southey's "How the water comes down at Lodore." What
remains? "Ulalume," "Anabel Lee," "For Annie," "Al Aaraaf" (more or less),
"Israfel," and three of four pieces which are barely more than stanzas.
All very exquisite, all lacking body, and all monotones in a single key.
I say this, although I consider Poe to have been one of the greatest men of
his century. The thought in "Eureka," "Monos and Una," and one or two other
essays, is profound and lofty. But there is little breadth in the depths.
His philosophy is based not on a study of all human thought, but on odd books
which drifted his way. He tried to make bricks without straw, and it was bad
for his pyramid.
His book-learning, too, slight as it was, was too much valued. He is
always hinting at his own scholarship. He was "cultured," though with enough
real genius to laugh at the "frog-pond" of cultured Boston.
Of American culture, I have one perfect sample. Travelling from Nagasaki
to Hong Kong, two mature maidens from Massachusetts discovered that I
sometimes wrote, and "took me up." "And who," I asked, "is your favourite
poet?"
A warm flush overspread each sallow cheek as the two thin mouths exclaimed
"Rossetti!" "And which" (I tactlessly pursued) "which of his poems do you
like the best?"
This remark closed the conversation. They had put the name Rossetti down
in a note-book; and right there "culture" ended.
This I found characteristic of many American women. I have seen American
girls in Italy laboriously writing down the names of more painters than I
shall ever know, without any further comment than the dates at which they
painted. To ask a single question on the broadest lines was to court silence;
in fact, it became the most useful method in my daily life and conversation.
The national American game is Poker; and as "calling," in artistic Jack-
pots, costs nothing, it is a safe rule never to lay down your hand.
It is the same even with children. I once talked with a boy of thirteen
years old, as bright and intelligent as I ever met. He knew no Latin or any
modern language; he did not know where Berlin was; he knew the names of only
eight of the States in his own country, although he was getting "a quarter"
for every one he could name; he knew no arithmetic beyond the first four
rules, and those he knew badly; his history was confined to George Washington
and James G. Blaine, to the exclusion of such insignificant characters as
Napoleon; and his other mental bunkers were equally empty of coal. He had
excellent machinery; nothing for it to work with.
Now, one might expect a boy of this type --- a type almost universal in
America --- to develop into an artist. He lived in Salt Lake City, but spent
most of his year in California and Honolulu. Having nothing else to feed on,
one would expect him to feed on his surroundings; and I cannot conceive of
anything much more sublime. The Mormon adventure is one of the most romantic
in the world's history; the ghastly grandeur of Utah is an epitome of death as
Oahu and the Golden Gate are of life. The finest island in the world; the
third finest harbour in the world; the most wonderful valley in the world; and
the most admirable climate in the world; one of the most intoxicatingly varied
populations in the world --- what comes of it?
What do we know of the whole splendour of the people and the place? Just
exactly what Robert Louis Stevenson has to tell us: "only that and nothing
more!"1
This brings me back with a jerk to Edgar Allan Poe. He lives in a land
whose every breath is lyric exaltation, and the only nature-poetry he gives us
concerns Venice (in the "Assignation") and "the dark lake of Auber in the
ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir," which is no more American than Battersea
Bridge. The only other picture that rises to my mind is "The House of Usher,"
which sounds more like Germany or Norfolk.
Whitman is almost equally unconvincing as far as scenery goes. The secret
of all Nature-poetry is the interpretation of every phenomenon as a direct dealing of God with the soul, and Whitman rarely reaches to be more than a recorder or reflector of Nature. It stirs him at times to big thoughts, but
hardly ever in that intimate manner, that sense of necessity, which we see in
Keats, Coleridge, and even Wordsworth.
And yet he does something better than all this. He gets, as none other
ever got it, the sense of vast open space and the vigorous autochthon
rejoicing in his strength --- man made one with the biggest kind of Nature.
Most of Poe's best scenery is pure imagination; for example, the matter of
ice-lands in Arthur Gordon Pym; of the realists Mark Twain is the only one
worth a moment's consideration. The Mississippi really seems to have
impressed him; but it is only in rare moods, and these poetic moods are by no
means his best. I find it difficult to refrain from shouting for joy at the
immensity of those swirling waters. I understand Beethoven rearing at the
sunrise. But Mark Twain at his best is a profaner of these sublimities; the
shallow criticism is usually uppermost in his mind. Indeed, one wonders
whether his deeper passages were not written just to show us that he could do
it. With the obvious result that he shows us that he couldn't.
In fact, if we are to take the loftiness of the habitual plane of thought
to be the first qualification of a great artist, Poe and Whitman stand alone.
Of these Poe, philosophy and all, is little more than "Thoughts on Death,"
a limitation as bad as that of Degas or Gustave Moreau. There is more deep
and more varied thought in a single sonnet of Baudelaire. Poe lives
principally by the vividness of his imagery and the excellence of his style.
But Europe, in the same century, can name in literature alone fifty artists
with superior vision and equal execution.
As to Whitman, I confess that I praise him with an exceeding bad grace. I
am cursed with a public school and university education, though luckily I was
born with enough native sense to shirk the soulless ritual of it so far as
might be, and its bad influence has been corrected by years of wandering in
the wilds. How the "scholar" can pretend to admire Whitman one can only
explain by theories highly discreditable to the scholar. But, however we may
despise the scholar, there are yet natural laws of rhythm. I do not argue
that we know them all; on the contrary, I expect every new artist to declare
new laws. But I deny that Whitman did so.
As an artist, he appears to me incomparably deficient. There is not one
line whose music is retained by memory; I simply fail to understand the people
who talk of his "subtle rhythm." I am deaf to it. And though his thought is
so finely pantheistic, now and again, what point is there in the quotations
from the catalogue of the Army and Navy Stores which make up three-quarters of
his work? A great mind, perhaps; it seems to me as if that mind had been
overwhelmed by the immensity of its material. He obtained such mystic rapture
from every object that he could do nothing but scribble down its name!
He has been most praised, too, and has probably achieved most fame, by the
perfectly gratuitous coarseness of his phrase whenever that phrase becomes
articulate.
It is rather like Satan rebuking sin; but I think that the passage in A Woman Waits for Me ending with the words "accumulated within me" is revolting
and beastly.
Quite right, someone will say, that pure beastliness should find
expression; the point of view is as well worth recording as any other.
Whitman has no doubt expressed the gross animal instinct which growls in man,
and I think no man before Whitman ever consciously expressed it to himself.
But is it art? Is there any merit in this expression? Is there melody, or
fitness of any kind, in it? Why is this more poetic than the remarks
expressed in even simpler (and therefore better) language on the walls of our
"Vespasiennes"?
What said Blake? "Everything that lives is holy"; "the lust of the goat is
the Glory of God"; --- true as truth itself.
But "truth is beauty," too; and the truth of life is not beautiful like the
truth of Art, because Art selects the essential truth, the truth that is
common to all, the "thing-in-itself," and declares that truth in fitting language. Whitman's language is occasionally not fitting; it is filthy; it
has no link with eternal truth such as is given by beauty of expression, by
style, which manifests the internal harmony of the universe.
We should not tolerate such language even in a newspaper, even in a modern
'drawing-room whose conversation is confined to enlightened comment upon the
works of Professor Von Krafft-Ebing; but we must praise it, must we, "because
Whitman saw the great vision of the Universal Unity"? Every artist sees this
vision; every truly religious person sees this vision; many of them have
deemed it most fitting to express this vision by symbolising it as Sex; but
not one has made the indecent gesture. In India many millions worship the
Shivalingam; it is represented over and over again in every temple in every
material and every size; but there is never anything to shock or to disgust.
It is not a question of morality --- Whitman's morals are in all respects
admirably clean --- but of decency; and Whitman's indecencies --- I have not
quoted the worst --- seem to me as pointless and inane as those of a crew of
drunken sailors in a Limehouse bar. Even in the cleaner poems, the "Song of
Myself," the "Song of the Open Road," one gets this conviction of the
domination of mind by matter which is to me the supreme horror. That and the
monstrous egoism of the man, the bombast and crudity alike of thought and
utterance, leave me with the feeling that I did well indeed to close my
Whitman after a conscientious perusal, never to open it again, at least with
the idea of obtaining anything of worth.
I think that the real ground of his reputation lies in the very uncouthness
of his form, and in the fact that one said: "Here is an American voice in tune
with the most advanced voices of Europe." Max Nordau, too, in classing him
with the great men whom his spite prompted him to spit upon from an altitude
about a million miles beneath their boots, gave him an altogether false
importance.
Note:
1. Lloyd Osbourne, however, is responsible for much of the best of my favourite novel The Wrecker.
I am a Soldier---- | |
I kill! | |
I am the essence of hatred | |
And bred in the red alembic of war; | |
I hate with a feral pride | |
Both brilliant and terrible. | |
Once I was Peace | |
And in my heart there glowed the futile hope | |
That for all time the bestial law of night | |
Had sheathed its sanguine talons. | |
Now I know | |
That this was false, for in its stead there rose | |
The tyranny and arrogance of race, | |
To sweep the world with flaming war and leave | |
The rancid blood of rapine to immerse | |
And clot the soil of freedom. | |
Here my hopes | |
And thin illusions for a better world | |
Were crushed and torn between the titan claws | |
Of brutal force barbarian. | |
I saw | |
The planned hypocrisy succeed its goal | |
And cultured nations reel before the lash | |
Of monster war mechanical unleashed, | |
And in my soul | |
Was gendered from this cataclysmic reft | |
A hatred more insatiate | |
Than lust of fame or gain or ought but that I find | |
This beast of Tyranny, and then with care | |
Enfold him sure and slowly that he feel | |
And know with terror numbed tongue the dread | |
Dark bitter taste of death, as kraken limbed | |
I crush his life with bonds unloosed and shorn | |
From peoples never conquered. | |
Thus I work | |
And plan that day of justice when all men | |
May live the peace of progress, and their will | |
Of life and love be not denied. | |
For this----I am a Soldier | |
For this----I kill! | |
Published in Ecclesia Gnostica I:4 (San Francisco: O.T.O., 1985 e.v.).
Derived from a lecture on 7/22/87 e.v. by Bill Heidrick
Copyright © Bill Heidrick
WHAT HAS IT DONE FOR/TO YOU LATELY?
If you keep getting the same thing over again and over again, you haven't
got the Holy Guardian Angel. You may have something useful, or you may not.
One mark of the Holy Guardian Angel is that it leads to life. It enhances; it
adds variety; you get high. If you feel lousy, including hangover after too
much fun, it's not the right thing. You have heard of war? All the miseries
in the world are some such thing as this. As far as finding money is
concerned, if you can catch one that really can be convinced that's the only
way you will feed it, then it'll go out and find money. Most of them, dumb as
they are, aren't that dumb. Most of them realize that if you think that you
have money or you think that you can get money, then you'll feed them. They
don't need to do more, and they won't. It's very simple to think of these
other things as parasites. As long as you provide attention, they will feed.
There are certain types that take pieces out of you when they eat, but that's
not because anything that they devour of your attention is lost. You don't
really give anything when you feed these spirits. What you lose is what they
do to you to get you into a feeding trough, what they have to do to you to
make you give them attention. The Holy Guardian Angel is somewhat like this
in a superficial way; but it will listen to your complaints and try something
else. These destructive spirits don't have that capability. The way it was
put to me by my own father, if you find a dog that sucks eggs, you better
shoot it. There's no way you are going to stop that dog from breaking into
your hen house and sucking eggs. It's the same thing with a sheep killing
dog. Once they start that, they will never quit. If you got a dog that damn
near kills you, get rid of it. If you got a dog that makes the neighbors so
pissed that they want to shoot you after they shoot the dog, you better do
something about that dog. If you depend on those eggs in that chicken house
for your breakfast, which is more important, the breakfast or the dog?
NOTHING NOXIOUS WASTED, CHAKRA UP:
Actually, there are two useful things about depression, one rather less
useful than the other. You can get on SSI if you are sufficiently depressed.
The other use for depression is part of the Kundalini process. It's a way you
can develop power in the Muladhara Chakra. Instead of just letting it spin
around in there forever, once it builds up an enormous amount of power,
realize that you are not really depressed. You have simply turned in on
yourself over and over again. That's why this state of mind is associated
with Saturn and melancholy. Crowley includes such methods under the formula
of NOX. It can be a pretty dangerous business. Don't mess with that until
you have a good general grip on your emotions.
ABRAMELIN SCENIC VIEW:
As to the rest of the Abramelin procedure or process, start by finding a
subject, religious or something similar, realizing that religion doesn't have
to be the narrow thing that it is defined to be in our culture. Next, achieve
solitude. That is best if it's solitude with support, so that you don't have
to worry about anything. Failing that, you can have a room in a house.
Failing that, you can have a hanging on a wall or something similar. You can
even have a floor cloth or small carpet that you spread and sit on. Anything of that kind will do. If worse comes to worse, you can invent a symbol for
yourself, something simple that you can draw on a piece of paper. Such a
symbol can be a place, but not everyone can accomplish the work with only a
symbol as an astral temple. Doing it with a symbol alone is a little like
trying to live off one peanut a day.
A LOOK AT THE ROAD AHEAD:
Proceed with a three-stage process. The first stage is: "I don't know what
I'm doing, and gradually I will learn." That's where rigid but simple
discipline is most important. At that stage I recommend two performances,
either one at dawn and one at sunset or at 6AM and 6PM. Unless you go outside
a lot or live in a place exposed to the natural course of the day, you're not
going to think in terms of sunrise and sunset as much as time on a clock.
Separate your meditations by a good piece of the day, not just a few hours.
Twelve hours will do nicely. Be very strict. Do not miss one meditation. If
it's to be at 6AM and 6PM, no matter what else goes on, do your meditation at
those times. This takes planning, since the practice should be kept up
without significant failure for about three months, certainly not under three
weeks. Do it for three months, and chances are it will take. Once you've
gone through that, you will find that your meditation has grown more
elaborate. You will get ideas as you are sitting and staring at a Tarot card,
picturing a flower or looking into a mirror, whatever your meditation is. You
will spontaneously come up with ways to enhance your meditation. About the
middle of this period, start using some of these things. After testing such
innovations, make a selection and use the best of them consistently. Develop
a system. The middle part uses this system. The end part comes when you
reach the point of listening to the inner voice.
GET YOUR MAP STRAIGHT:
If you try all this without preparation, you will get lemures or depression
inducing things. That comes of being a mental bunch of pieces with no regular
pattern. You can't attract the one big piece that fits everything until you
are more unified in yourself. Such a regular practice acts like bio-feedback.
With bio-feedback, the machine "beeps" wrong if you are wasting mental time.
Once you have gotten regular practice well established, it will carry on
without special effort. You may find that after the first three weeks, you
are getting more and more done each time. Don't expect such results after
only three weeks. Three months of meditations twice a day is more likely to
produce such things. Write down your experiences immediately after each
meditation so that you are able to figure out what's happened to you. Review
your journal or diary for guidance. Whatever this experience may be, you are
going to have to figure it out for yourself. If somebody else gives it to
you, it's not going to be as good. You would be constantly thinking: "I'm not
getting this right." Develop the method yourself, and you will get it right.
It's yours. It comes from you. No outer standards are needed. You're the
standard. You are making it better as you go. Trust no external measurement,
take no concern with somebody else's idea of what needs to be accomplished.
That's very important.
PLAN FOR REST BREAKS:
Eventually you will get to the point where you don't have to meditate at
regular intervals. Maybe you can skip a day and get right back into it.
After a while you may be able to skip a week. You may skip a little bit more
time. Instead of doing three meditations to resume where you left off, it may
only take a second meditation. Maybe instead of six, it takes three. These
things vary. Numbers don't matter. Change and proportion matter. After a
while you may be able to put years between these meditations and take no more to get back into them than in the first year you were doing them. A week's
break can then be a year's break. What's happening is this: First of all
there is the superficial matter of conditioning. You learn how to do it like
riding a bicycle. It takes practice. It takes time. Eventually you can re-
learn it very easily. It's not like languages. Some ways of learning
languages can be transitory, readily forgotten. You will reach a level that
transcends mere habituation. Whatever your meditation, if it has pattern to
it, a strange thing will begin to happen. Have you ever noticed that when
somebody you haven't seen in years meets you or calls you on the telephone, a
lot of times it's as though no time had gone by at all? You might continue a
conversation you had with that person five years ago and broke off suddenly.
We live at many different rates of time. We live conceptually, not by the
ticking of a clock. Some things seem to have stopped. Some things seem to be
going on. Then an event will occur and one of those things that seemed to
stop a long time ago will continue where it left off. It never did stop.
Some things happen in their own time. What may have been literally three
years by the calendar amounted to no time at all in another part of you.
That's where you have to get with these meditations before you can be cut free
from the time problem.
STICK TO THE ROUTE YOU PICKED:
You must to be very disciplined to get to that place. Discipline requires
regularity; twice a day, 6AM and 6PM. Discipline also requires definite
things to do, with no short-cuts allowed. There should be a pattern, a system
to your meditations, so that you are, in way of speaking, living the next one
after you have done the last one. For example, if the meditation is to pick
up individual stones from one container and put them in another, the next
stage of that meditation is to pick up the next stone. It doesn't matter when
you do it. As you do it, you will have one event immediately connected to the
next, foreshadowed, foreknown and no questions.
Next month, Squaresville.
Gerald Yorke | |||
O.T.O. Kaaba Clerkhouse 4411 Balboa Street San Francisco, Calif 94121 March 8, 1970 | |||
Dear Gerald Thank you for your patience in not writing. I would not have imposed.
Your letter of 27 Nov first etc. The only things I asked from Heflin of the
material he brought back from his visit with you was one copy each of the two
xeroxed Comments on Liber AL by A.C., one begins "Nu conceals Hadit..."; the
other is the one "copied from a holograph notebook...Dr. Kowal". Jerry Kay
has a girl friend who has access to a xerox, and she simply xeroxed everything
in sight so I actually got them from Jerry. I have your annotated DRUG FIEND
because it was being bandied about. When Bob split taking the publication
fund we had at that time (after I had written that letter for him on O.T.O.
letterhead) things became terribly confused for awhile so I traded Chuck my
copy of DRUG FIEND for yours on a temporary basis so he would have something
to work with and your book would be safe. If you advise me to forward your
copy to Heflin by return mail, or to you, I will certainly do so, even though,
as you can see on the enclosed O.T.O. Publications schedule, it is listed as
number 2 on our First Priority List as soon as we have our press operating.
The cards will be done commercially. I do not myself for one moment believe
his story about wanting it for a movie. Copies of DRUG FIEND are available if
that is all he wants. The situation seems to be that Heflin is making me the
scapegoat for his own emotional hangups (which I believe to be sufficiently
explained in the enclsoed sheaf of correspondence LEE-CHUCK-GRADY) and you
know what they say about Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, etc. He sees
me as keeping Chuck from him. Although all I have ever said to Chuck on the
subject was they he should do his own Will, and only he knows what That is. I
even spent a day running around with my car helping Chuck to get to Los
Angeles to see Heflin that once for all the good it did so far as Heflin's
feelings toward me are concerned. In any case, thinking as he does, Heflin
may do anything to embarrass me. One thing is to raise this fuss over DRUG
FIEND. Another is publishing 666, SEX AND THE O.T.O. That can only be a
personal insult to me since he refuses to remain in the O.T.O. under my
jurisdiction. My only concern in the whole sorry mess is that
through an inadvertence on my part, i.e. unknowingly coming into the situation between
Chuck and Lee, that he may cause you embarrassment by
publishing the 7th, 8th and 9th degree O.T.O. materials he brought back from
your place just to "get back" at me. I know you would not have intended that,
as you have been much too careful in the past not to give it to unauthorized
persons, and Lee was only a Minerval. So far as I am concerned it is karmic,
like the loss of the library at West Point. I do not know why that had to be,
but it may be that that is a part of the Old Aeon debris that has to be
shucked off so that the New Aeon can start clean. If you did not receive the
material from 93 Jermyn Street, as you say in re: the graffiti hangings on the
walls there and books with covers with paintings like that of the dust jacket
on Symonds MAGIC OF ALEISTER CROWLEY, then I am certain there is material in
that library that can do positive harm to whoever has it. A.C. had some
Enochian tablets matted in book form at 93 Jermyn Street that he told me not
to touch one evening because "you have no idea what forces you could have set
in motion," and something certainly seems to be driving the people of the
outlaw "Solar" lodge in Los Angeles, who I believe stole the West Point
library, out of their minds. In any case, I only wish Lee Heflin the
accomplishment of his True Will. If that is his True Will, then so mote it
be.
As for the O.H.O. As you have seen from the dust jacket to the CONFESSIONS,
Grant now rivals Metzger in claiming the title. Were I feeling facetious I
would write him and welcome him to the club, except that I do not claim to be
the O.H.O. I claim nothing, but by right of A.C.'s express desire that I
should occupy the office of succession after Karl's death. I have assumed the Caliphate, which I doubt A.C. ever had occasion to discuss with either of
them. I base this on the following documents:
Now, for the current situation. In obedience to the command by Horus, III 41,
to | |||
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The phone number is (area code 415) 751-7317.{Note to Web edition -- this address and phone number is obsolete, included for historic reasons only.} The store has an
apartment in back and Chuck and his brother Ray are living there at the
present time. There will be an office for me to handle business affairs as
soon as we can get it furnished. A copy of our first priority printing list
is enclosed. Two different people have promised us the money for a printing
press. We hope to be in operation printing A.C. material within a month,
which is why they are being done commercially. We have a firm commitment for
the money, and we hope to have them out by the solstice. Heflin advertising
that his set of transparencies are available, regardless of what he may have said to you about taking his set off the market, has caused confusion in the
minds of our potential backers, but there is nothing we can do except ignore
it, so we are continuing on our own way and allowing him to go his. The
second Chico edition of 777 REVISED has been promised to us by the Equinox,
and I presume it will be delivered. This one will be bound and we are
planning a dust jacket for it. By the way, did you get the saddle stitched
Chico 777 REVISED that Mildred sent you? You may have told her, but I have
not heard.
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A year's subscription is $6 on this side of the Atlantic. There are others and I am attempting to keep track of them as time allows. p.
114 of the Mar 1970 issue of ESQUIRE features a clipping from the Blythe case.
p. 133 of the Mar 1970 issue of McCALL'S mentions A.C. in re a black magic
cult in San Francisco, etc.
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We are told that they have some of the oils and incense A.C. liked to use, but also that they
refuse to supply people in the states.
|
Breath of Stars and rushing Wind | |
Between the Pillars I stand Within, | |
Through the Dust and Sea | |
The whirling Suns of Destiny. | |
Angelic Vision Seeds of Light | |
In my heart dwells thy flight, | |
Thou art the Tree | |
Of wind and Thee . . . | |
Thy wings enfold the Mystery. | |
Sister Tatjana Legradic, beloved wife of Brother Oliver Legradic, has been
received into the embrace of Nuit. At 6:10 AM on July 18th, 1994 e.v.,
Brother Oliver, Master of Abrahadabra Lodge in Ljubljana Slovenia called with
this message for All: "My lovely wife and bride of the Rosy Cross and EGC,
Priestess and Initiator of O.T.O. left this planet, and she died." O.T.O.
Camps, Oases and Lodges are invited to offer Gnostic Mass in her memory and in
support of Brother Oliver in this time of parting. Many are met along the
Path to the Highest, but few indeed are they who Labor as One with the
Traveler to the City of the Pyramids. May Peace and Fulfillment flow from the
steps of our Sister on that journey, to enrich and bless those yet upon the
dusty path of twilight.
8/2/94 | Rite of Mars 8:00 PM | Sirius Oasis | ||
8/6/94 | Sustaining Members Luncheon 1:00PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
8/7/94 | Lammas picnic in the hillswith Caitlin, meet 10AM at Oz House | |||
8/7/94 | Gnostic Mass 8:00PM Horus Temple | Thelema Ldg. | ||
8/8/94 | Thelema Lodge Meeting 8:00PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
8/10/94 | Sirius Oasis Meeting 8PM Berkeley | Sirius Oasis | ||
8/11/94 | Library Night 8PM Call to attend | Thelema Ldg. | ||
8/14/94 | Rite of Sol 2:00 PM | Sirius Oasis | ||
8/14/94 | Gnostic Mass 8:00PM Horus Temple | Thelema Ldg. | ||
8/15/94 | Origins of Rosicrucian Mythology with Fr. Hrafnkel 8:00 PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
8/17/94 | Magick in Theory and Practice class with Bill in San Anselmo 7:30PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
8/20/94 | Full Moon at 11/47 PM | |||
8/21/94 | Gnostic Mass 8:00PM Horus Temple | Thelema Ldg. | ||
8/22/94 | Section Two Reading Group at OZ House with Caitlin 8:00PM Golden Ass of Apuleius | Thelema Ldg. | ||
8/25/94 | Library Night 8PM Call to attend | Thelema Ldg. | ||
8/26/94 | Rite of Venus 8:00 PM | Sirius Oasis | ||
8/27/94 | 777 Poetry Society 8:00PM w.Fr.P.I. | Thelema Ldg. | ||
8/28/94 | Gnostic Mass 8:00PM Horus Temple | Thelema Ldg. | ||
8/29/94 | Butterfly Net Computer Group 8:00PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
8/31/94 | Liber XV Study Group w. Bp. T Dionysys 8:00PM | Thelema Ldg. |
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.