Thelema Lodge
Ordo Templi Orientis
P.O.Box 2303
Berkeley, CA 94702 USA
October 1997 e.v. at Thelema Lodge
Announcements from
Lodge Members and Officers
"Let all Thelemites know that I, Hymenaeus Alpha, 777, IX° O.T.O., 9=2, Caliph of the Ordo Templi Orientis of Aleister Crowley, Baphomet, 666 -- do hereby Charter Thelema Lodge as Grand Lodge of O.T.O., the officers of this Lodge to be appointed, to serve, and to withdraw from service at my direction or at the direction of my duly designated successor. Witness my hand & seal given at Berkeley, California in the United States of America on October 12th An. LXXIII E.N. or 1977 E.V."
(sealed and signed) Hymenaeus Alpha, Caliph.
In addition to Crowley's Lesser Feast on our "foundation day," we observe
this month the birthday anniversaries of the two individuals who first
discussed plans over fifty years ago for an O.T.O. lodge with the name
"Thelema" in northern California, and a temple here for the gnostic mass.
Jack Parsons was then serving as master of Agape Lodge, which met in his
family mansion at 1003 Orange Grove Boulevard in Pasadena. Grady McMurtry
wrote to Crowley in January 1945 e.v. about their hopes to incorporate the
O.T.O. here: "Under this plan O.T.O., Inc. would be the central organization
in California with power to grant charters to chapters throughout the state.
Thus Jack would have Agape Lodge in Pasadena, [and] I could have Thelema Lodge
in San Francisco." In fact, Parsons would soon become estranged from Agape
Lodge and from the Order, while Grady did not succeed in getting his lodge
going for 32 more years. Both men, however, were essential to the
establishment of Thelema in California, and both -- like Crowley himself -- were
born under the sign of the scales. We will celebrate the Lesser Feast of Jack
Parsons on Thursday evening 2nd October with a reading of the Book of Babalon
in Nu Temple at Oz House at 8:00, and that of Grady McMurtry on Saturday
evening 18th October at Sirius Oasis in Berkeley at 7:00. Although Thelema
Lodge ceased to be the Grand Lodge of OTO in 1986 e.v., in favor of Agape
Grand Lodge, Thelema continues the tradition begun by Grady.
There will be a gathering in fond memory of our brother Cris Piss on the
first anniversary of his greater feast, at 2:00 Sunday afternoon 26th October
at Oz House. James will share some recordings of Cris making on-air phone
calls to religious talk-show radio stations in the South, and wiping up their
vulgar foolishness chapter and verse. There will also be stories and pictures
and readings from Onus and his other publications. Contact Oz at (510) 654-3580 for details.
Saturday 25th October marks the 35th anniversary of the greater feast of
Karl Germer, Frater Saturnus, who led the Order into decline following
Crowley's death, and through the 1950s e.v. Germer once wrote that he never
wanted to rise above the office of Grand Treasurer General, in which he had
for many years faithfully served under Crowley's leadership. Some of the
significant publications of the Beast's last years were enabled by Germer's
financial management, and he continued many of these projects long after Crowley's death, with some success. Germer's earlier heroism and the severe
persecution he suffered as Crowley's German publisher in the 1930s command a
degree of respect that his later unwilling leadership, hounded by the F.B.I.
in America as he had earlier been by the Nazis, too easily obscures from our
estimation.
"The Method of Science -- The Aim of Religion", trumpets the title page of
Aleister Crowley's occult periodical The Equinox (1909-1913), and throughout
the rest of his career Crowley continued to repeat these sentiments with
elucidations and advice on proper scientific principles of research. In the
1940s he wrote, "There is only one method to adopt in such circumstances as
those of the Aspirant to Magick and Yoga: the method of Science. Trial and
error. You must observe. That implies, first of all, that you must learn to
observe. And you must record your observations." From this we can see that
Crowley considered the diary or journal as the foremost tool for the
scientific investigation of magick. What are the basic assumptions necessary
to use this tool effectively? How do we record our experiences as accurately
as possible while still realizing that writing down our delusions does not
make them true? For a candid discussion of these and other issues in the
quest for a science of the divine, come to Thelema Lodge's library for this
month's first meeting of the College of Hard N.O.X. on October 1st at 8
o'clock in the evening. This uninhibited forum for Thelemic conversation is
held on the first and last Wednesdays of each month. A potential topic for
October 29th has yet to be determined.
Bill Heidrick's long-running series on the Tarot will conclude this month
with its eighteenth session on Wednesday evening 22nd October. It will be
held at Bill's home in San Anselmo, and begin at 7:30; call ahead at (415)
454-5176, or direct inquiries via e-mail to heidrick@well.com for directions
and further information. For this final session our topic will be the Thoth
Tarot deck, created by Aleister Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris. Slides of the
Major Trump paintings from the Thoth deck will be shown, for discussion.
The lodge's Section Two reading group will be spending an evening with
William Shakespeare's Scottish tragedy of Macbeth, beginning at 8:00 on Monday
20th October. Caitlin will direct us in a complete reading through the play
together, so bring your own copy of the text if possible, though we will try
to have a few extras available.
Written apparently in the summer of 1606 and originally performed outdoors
in daylight at the Globe Theatre (quite a feat, considering that well over
half of the action takes place in darkness), this is the tragedy of an
assassination and high-level coup d'état which led indirectly to the
consolidation of government in eleventh-century Scotland. Although the
significance of the historical warrior and chieftain whom Macbeth was based
upon is minor, he assumed an artificial importance three centuries later when
the Stuart dynasty came to the throne of Scotland and traced its genealogical
lineage back to the seventeen-year reign of "king" Macbeth.
For Crowley this was one of Shakespeare's three notably magical dramas --
along with the Dream and the Tempest -- recommended to probationers as
"interesting for traditions treated." Among Shakespeare's plays it is one of
the shortest, and most notable for its stage treatment of visions, illusions, and hallucinations. Due to its concern with secret guilt and the
disintegration of personality, its language is full of equivocation and
ambiguity, as untrustworthy characters struggle to report incomprehensible
events. The unseen dagger, the invisible blood, the ghosts of the murder
victims, and the perfectly real Weïrd Sisters on stage allow the audience to
draw no specific line between history and the imagination in the drama. The
scene where the goddess Hecate and her feline familiar Graymalkin appear (not
present in the earliest productions, and probably interpolated into the play
for a revival about 1610) is one of the best known expressions of traditional
witchcraft in literature:
. . . at the pit of Acheron Meet me i'th' morning . . . I am for th' air: this night I'll spend Unto a dismal, and a fatal end; Great business must be wrought ere noon. Upon the corner of the moon There hangs a vap'rous drop, profound, I'll catch it ere it comes to ground; And that distilled by magic sleights Shall raise such artificial sprites, As by the strength of their illusion Shall draw [Macbeth] to his confusion. . . . I come, I come, I come, I come, With all the speed I may . . . I will but 'noint and then I mount . . . Now I am furnished for the flight, Now I go and now I fly, Malkin my sweet spirit and I. |
In the days of the military clan, men were more or less free and equal. An
ordeal was necessary for the attainment of manhood; a regular ceremony which
was far from a joke. Only the strong and clever could hope to attain the
privileges of manhood. There was no specialization of labor. A man had to be
able to hunt and fight; a woman to cook and to do the work of agriculture.
There was hardly room for anyone but what might be called the normal human
being. One particularly lazy fellow, well skilled in flattery, might get a
job as tribal bard; but otherwise he would have to work like the rest. As a
man got old, beyond the period when skill and experience failed to compensate
for lack of strength, he might become an elder by virtue of his wisdom; and,
of course, the best all-round man had a good chance of becoming King. But
there really was something like equality of opportunity.
Today all this is absolutely changed. Every important branch of work is so
specialized that a man must give his whole life to his particular job for 40
years or more before he is capable of holding his own in it. Such a man must
obviously be chosen from the start on the ground of inclination and capacity.
He must be allowed ample leisure. He must be secured freedom from all worries
and anxiety, or he will never arrive at competence. A university education is
not nearly enough. It is only a general ground-work. When a man leaves a
university he wants at least 10 years uninterrupted work in his particular
line before he even begins to succeed in it. In other words, the complexity
of civilization demands an elaborate caste system. For one thing, the habit of authority is absolutely necessary to any one who is to fill a position of
responsibility. Put a man who has done mental work all his life into an
important position. He inevitably becomes a "Jack in office," harsh,
overbearing, and tyrannical. On the other hand, if you take a boy and give
him well trained servants, he will, when he becomes a man, get things done
with perfect suavity and good feeling and absence of fiction.1 This is why
you can take a boy from Eton or Winchester and send him out to rule a province
in India. The "Competition-wallah," the boy of no birth or breeding who
obtains a position in the Indian Civil Service by intellectual merit, is a
disastrous failure.
There must, however, be an end to all this talk of equality of opportunity.
It will always be necessary to have a great majority of the population engaged
in mechanical tasks. It is evidently quite impossible to give every man and
woman even a university education. Most people have to earn their living by
the time they are sixteen. Even if this experiment were possible, it would be
absurd, because the university education would unfit the average individual
for the necessary work of life. It is no good to teach a man political
economy and Greek, and then set him to make rivets in a boiler factory for the
rest of his life.
How then are we to make an intelligent selection? The answer is perfectly
obvious. Men are not by any means born equal in the matter of intellectual
capacity. Take the extreme case of the Hottentot. No amount of teaching will
get him to count beyond the number five, owing to the limitations imposed upon
him by nature in the matter of fingers. The same holds true to a limited
extent even with Caucasians. It is quite true that occasionally nature, in
her merry mood, produces a genius from very unlikely material. It may
sometimes happen, for example, that a stock which has never exhibited any
intellectual distinction at all may get tangled up matrimonially with a
lunatic, and by some lucky combination produce a genius.
But we do not know enough about genius to take any particular steps along
these lines. We are bound to deal with averages; and there is nothing more
certain than this, that ordinary talent, as opposed to genius, is to a very
large extent inherited. The main objection to the hereditary principle is
that families, after a long series of generations of distinguished men, take
to producing degenerates and imbeciles. It is the ordinary biological curve.
Now undoubtedly much mischief is wrought by having a caste which is hereditary
and nothing more, because the said degenerates and imbeciles interfere with
the working of the social machine. Our business is to get the right man in
the right place; and the hard and fast rule of primogeniture has in many cases
worked badly. One may concede that ultimately it is bound to work badly is
all cases.
It seems to me that it would be easy enough to guard against this
difficulty. We must have a leisured class, we must have a privileged class,
or we can never get good men at all. The most likely candidates are those
whose fathers and mothers have achieved distinction. This principle has been
recognized in England by the practice of raising distinguished men to the
peerage. The idea has been greatly abused by confirming nobility upon the
mere plutocrat. Yet when particularly undesirable people have bought these
titles, care has [been] taken to make the seat in the House of Lords end with
the life of the ennobled bag of money.
But how are we to prevent degenerates and imbeciles from sitting in the
highest councils of the nation? By the simple process of clearing them out.
It would be easy to arrange for a test of manhood, a public test subject to
public criticism, so that no man could assume hereditary privileges without
proving by ordeal his right to it. These tests could and should be both
physical and mental. These ideas are not opposed to democracy in its true
sense. We want the normal man to govern, and the normal man means a man very
far above the average, almost the ideal man, just as normal eyesight is the
kind of eyesight that only a very few lucky people possess.
The socialistic idea that every man is as good as every other man is comic.
A great deal of rubbish has been written lately about "secret diplomacy." How
can the ordinary man expect to give a sound opinion on the affairs of foreign
countries, when the very best men, specially trained for all their lives, are
constantly making the most stupid mistakes? "Popular control!" is out of the
question, even in the smallest business house. How then can we apply it with
any common sense to the affairs of a great nation? If the people were free to
vote, what would they vote for? Free lodging, free movies, and free beer. I
myself would vote for free beer. Could you expect the lower East Side to vote
money for the encouragement of art or even of science? Of any of the higher
branches of human activity? Yet the whole structure of society depends upon
the cultivation of these higher branches. Go and ask the ordinary working man
whether he would rather apply the national income to the reduction of rent or
to the study of histology! We should never have a cent for anything
pertaining to the most fundamental and necessary activities, if the choice
were left to the people.
What then is the ideal form of government? The greatest of all the
political lessons of history is that society is founded on the family, and the
family on the land. A strong agrarian class is the best defense against
invasion, physical or moral. "A bold peasantry, its country's pride, when
once destroyed, can never be supplied." There is something in the contact
with earth and air and water and sun which makes men vigorous. All strong and
stable states have had Cincinnatus for a unit. The power of England has
always lain in the landed nobility and gentry. Each great estate has been the
nucleus of a peasantry with "soul" -- with a peculiar pride in itself. The
lords of the land, great or little, were also the fathers of the people. Each
took a particular and individual interest in each of his tenants.
When this system began to break up, owing to the growth of industrialism
and of the power of money, the virility of England broke with it. Fifty years
ago the smallest squire had more social consideration than the most wealthy
merchant; rightly so, for he was actually a part of the land itself. A rich
man could not become a squire by buying land; he became a joke.
But your plutocrat has no anchor in the soil; he calculates coldly that it
is cheaper to work a man to death than to look after him. He does not know or
care what becomes of those dependent upon him. The idea of solidity of
structure is gone from the social system. America dwells in tents like the Arabs, and may as silently fade away. Who in this colony feels in his bones
an attachment to ancestral Topeka? We go where the economic tide drifts us;
and we do not go back because there is no "back" to go to. Socialism (as most
people seem to conceive it) would make matters a thousand times worse -- if
there's that amount of room for further bedevilment -- for Socialism ignores
all but the economic factor. Economics appeal only to the shell of men, never
to his soul. And it is the soul which determines the action of a true man. A
nation swayed wholly by economic considerations is a nation lost alike to God
and to man. "Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, When wealth
accumulates and men decay."
The first business of government is to guard the hardihood of the race. So
we must see to it that every child is healthy and well-fed, inured to sport,
to hardship within certain bounds. The spirit must be free, the passions
strong and well regulated, the intellect unhampered by old wives' fables. We
must assure to every one the first necessaries of life, shelter, food, warmth,
and the easy exercise of the power of reproduction, without shame or
sentimentality.
We must make a firm, almost a paternal bond, between the "lord" and his
dependents. If an employer were soundly whipped whenever one of his men or
women had a preventable sickness, it would change things considerably! The
happiest, the most healthy, the most prosperous class in recent history were
the slaves in the South before the Civil War, wherever the owner was a decent
Southern Gentleman, and not a Yankee nigger-driver with no interest in the
slaves beyond dollars. If America is to survive, nay, to become a nation, it
must be by the development of an enlightened feudalism.
Let us not be frightened by a name! Reginald Front-de-Boeuf was not the
only type of Norman Baron. And the world is a very different place today. We
have a wretched habit of being scared by words like "royalty," [or]
"Socialism," so that we do not trouble to ask what such terms really mean.
This is because we mix up our rational thoughts with our sentimental emotions.
There was never a moment in the world's history when it was more vitally
important to think and to feel as if with two separate organs. "God gave the
land to the people," as the little hymn says; but He did not give them brains,
or moral courage, or the power of self-analysis. There is not one man in ten
thousand who knows whether his consciousness is colored by reason or by
passion.
I personally have found this power extremely awkward. Just at present, for
example, my heart clings to the great court of Trinity closer than its
immemorial ivy. All my imagination is with the England of Harry the Fifth,
and with the France of Joan of Arc, and with the Russia of wild and mystic
orgies. But my intellect refuses to give assent to some of the propositions
made by the Allies. I am ready, with Drake, to singe the King of Spain's
beard; or to tear the Kaiser from his gory throne, in a moment of patriotic
passion. But I am not prepared to sit down and argue calmly that such actions
are ethically right. All hail to the vehemence and fury of war and of love!
But not in these trousers. I must first gird my loins with the saffron
philabeg of a dhuine-wassail! As a lover, it gives me extreme satisfaction to
riot amid the wine-stained and blood-bedabbled tresses of a Messalina or a
Catherine; but, as a philosopher, I seem to myself to have acted with brutish
unreason. I maintain, briefly, that Philip drunk is as good as Philip sober;
but I cannot fall into line with the man who asserts that Philip drunk is
Philip sober. And alas! that man is everywhere. You rightly enough drop nine
hundred and sixty-eight million tons of trinitrotoluene upon the head of a
Saxon peasant whose only idea of you, till then, has been vague and ill-
etched. Perhaps he thought of you as one of the people among whom his Uncle
Fritz went to live in 1849. You are right to drop that trinitrotoluene; it is
a splendid gesture. But -- the morning after? Even Antient Pistol proved
amenable. "I'll fer him, and firk him, and ferret him; discourse the same in
French unto him!" is followed by the mild acceptance of a modest ransom.
Now this war is not to be settled by appeals to passion and to sentiment.
We have got to reconstruct the world on such lines as may be best for all. We
must use one quality only -- common sense. We have got to be friends with
Germany before we sheathe the sword against her. The campaign of hate on both
sides is utter wickedness or complete insanity -- you pay your money and you
take your choice. We are not going to listen to the drunken journalist who
sneered the other day at the Friends of Irish Freedom as "bartenders and
servant girls." His anaimus was evident, for he attributed the ruin of his
mind to the one, and that of his body to the other, class. But, on the other
hand, we must shut our ears to the sentimental wails of the Irish
irreconcilables about "Saxon tyrants." This historic injustice business is
plain vendetta, and as out-of-date as furbelows, whatever they were.
We must attend to the genuine needs of each nation, and heed not their
cries of hysteria. Then, if there by indeed incompatible needs -- (though, in
the name of God who made earth so wide and fair, how can there be?) -- if there
be no way of reconciling England's need of a navy with Germany's need of a
place in the sun, then we can go on and fight it out some more. But we shall
never begin to talk peace till we begin to think peace; and we shall never
begin to think peace till we have got ourselves into thinking, instead of
feeling. And we shall never do that until we realize that the two things are
different.
Ah, dear one, your fair face alight | |
With such joy is a blessed sight | |
As we embrace among the crypts | |
Through which the sluggish water drips; | |
Slowly it finds saturation | |
From bodies merged with hydration. | |
Lie reposed upon this lid, dear, | |
It is so long since you were near. | |
My stiff fingers would undress you, | |
My worm-eaten arms caress you | |
And in this dark my ghastly lips | |
Mash down upon the flesh-pink tips | |
Of your firm yet soft yielding breast | |
That surges like an ocean crest. | |
Our love is stronger than the grave | |
For to my corpse a life it gave | |
To drag it back from out the slime | |
And now I live beyond my time; | |
Live? Undead is the better word; | |
My blood is whey, my brain a curd | |
And still the melting flesh flows down | |
From out the mattered hairline crown | |
As off my softened bones now slips | |
The feral flesh. The grave worm sips | |
And wriggles in this charnel slush | |
Of a corruption that is mush. | |
My rot-filled hair will yet grow out, | |
Each mud scaled string a grisly sprout | |
And from my dripping nostrils run | |
A filth that drives mad anyone. | |
But you, my love, have no such doom; | |
You were mad e'er you burst my tomb! | |
This month's poem from the "Grady Project" marks our tenth anniversary of this feature, since the beginning of our monthly presentation of Grady's poetical works in the Thelema Lodge Calendar in October 1987 e.v. We have now worked our way through nearly the entire collection of his surviving poems, with perhaps a year's worth still remaining. These will be mainly the unknown and often fragmentary "left-overs" from the project, many of them dating either from his army training camp days in World War Two, or from his last sustained attempts to produce new verse in the early 1960s e.v.
Derived from a lecture series in 1977 e.v. by Bill Heidrick
Copyright © Bill Heidrick
There is a way of looking at the structure of the paths as dominant, rather
than the structure of the Sephirot on the Tree of Life. This method is
natural enough with one, simple Tree diagram. These two approaches seem to be
incompatible, but that's only a first impression. Working with the paths
between the Sephirot is like walking. Everything is close at hand, the
transition is smooth and the occasional landmarks (the Sephirot themselves)
naturally fall into sequence. The paths give a way of feeling out details of
transitions and change but do not give a clear impression of the whole Tree.
Using the vertical columns on the Tree is like driving in a car. There is a
sense of passage, but less detail along the way. In that method, the Sephirot
of a particular pillar or column seem to unite with their connecting paths as
a unit. A similar effect can be seen by any simple passage linking five
Sephirot. Working with the Sephirot alone is like reading a map -- you obtain
an excellent notion of where the main features are in relation to one another,
but you cannot detect the subtilties. We use maps to plan, cars to reach a
destination and our own legs to get about once we are there. In the same
manner, study a situation by the Sephirot of a single Tree first. Make a few
checks of the effects of the right, left and middle pillars to see if an
insight may be obtained. If necessary, use Trees within Trees, composed only
of Sephirot, to refine the ideas. Finally, take that last, innermost Tree and
deck it out with paths. Wander about it, with the Sephirot characterized by
the notions you have taken on their significance in relation to your topic.
Treat that particular Tree like a park, a sort of Garden of Eden, with all the
Sephirot as sights and the connecting paths as nature trails.
In using nested Trees within Sephirot within Trees through several levels,
the paths can be treated in a similar general manner to the ten Sephirot of a
basic Tree of Life diagram. The only difficulty is one of number, since it is
harder to keep track of thirty-two categories than just the ten of the
Sephirot alone. When this is attempted, it is best to use the connecting
paths briefly, to analyze the influence of one Sephira on another for a
moment. The insights obtained can be associated with the Sephirot themselves.
To analyze a particular path connecting two Sephirot, one can do a thing
analogous to making Trees within Sephirot. Treat the Sephira at one end of
the path as a Keter and the Sephira at the other end as a Malkut. Between
those two, form a temporary Tree of that particular path. Although this
method can be extended to multiple levels, even hybridized so that some nested
Trees are constructed within Sephirot and some between Sephirot, the nature of
the paths as changing states makes this a very difficult exercise. It is
nonetheless worth trying, but only after considerable practice with simpler
patterns.
These compound and nesting Tree methods use a very strange property of the
human mind. Superficially, such methods look like simple division. An idea
is examined in its parts. One of those parts is examined in its own parts.
One of the sub-parts is itself examined in the same manner. With the Tree of
Life structure, going inward is not the only option. Because the structure is
complete at each level, it is possible to turn it inside out and still make
perfect sense. If you spend enough time viewing a Tree within a Tree within a
Tree, the innermost will take life and gradually become a dominant view. This
is space inversion in action. It seems like a hand reaching into some complex
body from the fourth dimension, seizing an inner organ, giving a shake and
changing that formerly inner organ to the outer skin! Although we humans are
not designed to graphically visualize such an event, it is extremely common in
human experience. Whenever you get side-tracked in a conversation, your mind fills with a different point of view. All circumstances change. Important
things from a moment before seem trivial. Things that were trivial can become
the center of interest. This is the same thing that we see when one of the
nested Trees within Trees everts, the inside Tree becoming the outermost and
largest. We will visit this topic again in later installments of this series.
For now, ponder it a little and realize that the methods presented here for
the Tree diagram are an approach to dynamically structuring the mind and
understanding its amazing gymnastics.
There other things that can be done with the Tree simply. It is possible
to change the connecting paths from their traditional positions. When 22
paths are retained, with symmetrical rearrangement, the resulting diagram
shows a changed balance. If some paths are deleted or added, defects in human
personality can be studied. Non-symmetrical path arrangements on the Tree
diagram tend to represent stereotypical human extremes. Changes in
traditional correspondences to the usual paths result in systematic insights
of one type or another, as though each arrangement was another chapter in a
book.
If you work with this long enough, all the paths on the Tree become ways of
stitching the Sephirot together, ways of interrelating them. A major goal in
working with the Tree diagram is to acquire a pure, clear concept of each
Sephirot. In such a conception, there is no need to think of correspondences
and explanations. The Sephirot become tools in themselves, simple ideas that
fit an unlimited number of mental situations. This provides a non-verbal mode
of thought which can become verbal at any moment in any context. Thinking in
words is precise, but slow. Thinking in the complexly inter-relating concepts
of the Sephirot can be lightning fast. One side of the brain uses the speech
center to formulate ideas in words. The other side uses a more homogeneous
way of thinking. A pure knowledge of what each Sephira means, without having
to use words, is very much on that other side of the brain from the speech
center. The ability to instantly put that holistic pattern into speech is
part of the art of working with the Tree. A pure knowledge of the paths is
also such a thing. These skills grow with time.
Songs of Armageddon and Other Poems July 1916. Review by A.C. | p.209 | |
Frank Harris reveals Oscar Wilde Aug. 1916 | p.241 | |
A Noisy Noise Annoys an Oyster Dec. 1916 | p.361 | |
Percy Mackaye Feb. 1917 | p.47 | |
Sir Rabinadranath Tagore May 1917 | p.149 | |
A Death Bed Repentance July 1917 | p.201 | |
The New School of Literature | p.210 | |
Felo de Se Aug. 1917 | p.241 | |
The Revival of Magick The Master Therion 1917 | p.247 | |
Listen to the Bird Man! Gate of Knowledge A Quiller Jr. An Open Letter to General White "Briton" Balzac | p.238 p.248 p.249 p.249 | |
The Scrutinies of Simon Iff No.1 Big Game Sept. 1917 | p.259 | |
Purple Mandarin | p.268 | |
1066 | p.272 | |
Brain-Waves During the Heat-Wave | p.278 | |
The Revival of Magick (Therion) | p.280 | |
Sinn Fain (Sheamus O'Brien) | p.282 | |
Open Letter to the Leader of the National Suffirage Movement (Cerebellum) | p.283 | |
The Gate of Knowledge | p.284 | |
Cocaine A.C. Oct. 1917 | p.291 | |
In the Red Room of Rose-Croix | p.294 | |
The Scrutinies of Simon Iff No. 2 The Artistic Temperament (Kelly) | p.295 | |
A Perfect Pianissimo A.C. | p.301 | |
The Revival of Magick (Therion) | p.302 | |
The Discovery of Gneugh- Loughrck | p.305 | |
Absinthe Jeanne la Goulue | p.306 | |
Groans from the Padded Cell | p.307 | |
Love is One | p.309 | |
The Argument that Took the Wrong Turning | p.309 | |
The Burning of Melcarth Mark Wells | p.310 | |
The Spoils (To) the Strong | p.215 | |
The Ouija Board The Master Therion | p.319 | |
War Poetry Enid Parsons | p.319 | |
The Gate of Knowledge Reviews | p.318 | |
To the Editor" Letter by C.Stansfield Jones and A.C.'s reply (concerns Lazenby) | p.320 |
NOVEMBER 1917
Humanity First A.C. | p.322 | |
The Scrutinies of Simon Iff No. 3 Outside the Bay's Routine Edward Kelly | p.322 | |
Sekhet Adam d'As | p.331 | |
The Revival of Magick Therion | p.332 | |
Hymn Charles Baudelaire | p.333 | |
The Hearth Mark Wells | p.334 | |
The Rake's Progress | p.339 | |
How Horoscopes are Faked Cor Scorpionis | p.345 | |
The Professor and the Plutocrat S.J. Mill | p.348 | |
The Gate of Knowledge | p.350 |
DECEMBER 1917
We Stand Above | p.354 | |
The Scrutinies of Simon Iff No. 4 The Conduct of John Briggs Edward Kelly | p.355 | |
Concerning Death Baphomet | p.365 | |
Pax Hominibus Bonae Voluntatis A.C. | p.366 | |
A Septennial A.C. | p.376 | |
Art and Clairvoyance J. Turner | p.379 | |
Barnard's Lincoln Unvisited | p.379 | |
A Riddle | p.379 | |
Auguste Rodin | p.381 | |
The Gate of Knowledge | p.383 | |
The International Forum | p.383 | |
War Poetry | p.384 |
JANUARY 1918
England Speaks A.C. | p.2 | |
The Scrutinies of Simon Iff No. 5 Not Good Enough Edward Kelly | p.3 | |
Dawn | p.9 | |
A Poetry Society in Madgascar | p.9 | |
The Heart of Holy Russia A.C. | p.10 | |
Love Lies Bleeding | p.14 | |
The Conversion of Austin Harrison -- Editorial | p.17 | |
The God of Ibreez Mark Wells | p.19 | |
The Message of the Master Therion | p.26 | |
The Law of Liberty | p.27 | |
Geomancy Therion | p.29 | |
Troth Heinrich Heine | p.29 | |
The Gate of Knowledge | p.32 |
FEBRUARY 1918
Wanted -- Modern{sic} Men A.C. | p.34 | |
Tbe Scrutinies of Simon Iff No. 6 Ineligible Kelly | p.35 | |
De Thaumaturgia. Concerning the Working of Wonders, 666 | p.41 | |
The Mass of Saint Secaire. Transl. by Mark Wells. Barbey de Rochechouart | p.42 | |
Poem | p.46 | |
Ansinthe. the Green Goddess A.C. | p.47 | |
At the Feet of Our Lady of Darkness. Izeh Kranil. Translated by A.C. | p.51 | |
The Priestess of the Graal | p.52 | |
The Third Liberty Loan | p.53 | |
Love and Laughter | p.55 | |
Four Poems A.C. | p.62 | |
Book Reviews | p.64 |
MARCH 1918
A Hymn for the American People | p.66 | |
Good Hunting (An Essay on the Nature of Comedy & Tragedy) | p.67 | |
Ecclesia Gnosticae Canon Missae Therion | p.70 | |
The Saviour, a Dream A.C. | p.75 | |
Elder Eeel, a sketch Lord Boleskine | p.83 | |
Knight-Errant, a dramatic miniature A.C. | p.85 | |
The Gods, a mystery from the Coptic of Iao Sabao | p.86 | |
Love and Time, a lyric John Roberts | p.87 | |
The Bonds of Marriage, a romantic farce | p.88 |
APRIL 1918
The King of the Wood Mark Wells | p.101 | |
Robbing Miss Horniman A.C. | p.103 | |
Le Sacrament Jeanne la Goulue | p.102 | |
The Old Man of the Peepul-Tree James Grahame | p.105 | |
The Ideal Idol Cyril Custance | p.110 | |
Visions poem by A.C. | p.117 | |
Drama Be Damned | p.127 | |
The Scarabee | p.125 | |
The Drama by Eve Tanquay and Aleister Crowley | p.127 |
After most of a decade at the same amounts, the dues and initiation fees
schedule for OTO is going to change. As of 1st January 1998 e.v., the
following dues and fees will apply to initiations and dues anniversaries on or
after that date. Associate membership dues continue at US$10.00 per year.
Continuing balances, either credit or debit, in member's accounts will be
under the old dues rate schedule if dated before the first day of 1998 e.v.
All amounts are in US$'s
Degree: | Dues: | Fees: |
---|---|---|
0 | 36.00 | 36.00 |
I | 36.00 | 36.00 |
II | 72.00 | 36.00 |
III | 108.00 | 72.00 |
IV | 144.00 | 100.00 |
PI | " | 31.00 |
KEW | " | 20.00 |
V | 180.00 | 120.00 |
KRE | " | 60.00 |
VI | 216.00 | 120.00 |
GIC | " | 60.00 |
PRS | " | 60.00 |
VII | 252.00 | 60.00/subdegree |
VIII | 288.00 | 210.00 |
IX | 324.00 | 300.00 |
Dues for most partial degrees carry continuing renewal and anniversary
dates from the most recent Roman numeral full degree initiation. E.g., no
additional dues for PI or KEW, just continuation of IVth degree dues.
The dues have been raised to $3 times the degree number, per month. The
fees have been adjusted more dynamically in an effort to cover the actual
costs of the initiations. Although an initiating body can waive or decrease
the fees, the dues are constant unless varied by direct resolution of the OTO
International Supreme Council. Initiating OTO bodies may also add a
surcharge, but such a surcharge should be optional for out of town candidates
unless travel expenses for an initiator must be met. These new initiation fee
amounts are intended to include additions to regalia for the candidate. Local
initiations will be expected to provide such things as aprons and "jewels" to
candidates out of these fees, when the ritual calls for investing the
candidate with such regalia. Robes and swords are not necessarily included.
OTO members will note that most of the degree annual dues have gone up
considerably. Although the numerical base amounts for the highest degrees
have apparently gone down, in practical terms they have not for most members
of those degrees. The old practice was to limit dues over $150 annually to no
more than $150 or 1.5% of taxable income, whichever was higher, up to the base
amount for the degree. This meant that a very few members from VIIth through
IXth paid substantially more than these new annual dues. However, owing to
income adjustments, most members in those degrees paid between $150 and $200
per year. The 1.5% rule will cease when these new dues go into effect 1/1/98
e.v.
Countries under the 50% dues concession are expected to collect these dues
without exception. Countries still under the special $10 per initiation/year
concession will have varying rates in some cases. Contact the Treasurer
General if unsure, via the email address provided below or by regular post.
Why these increases? Inflation since 1919 e.v., when Minerval dues were
US$5 per year, is such that these new dues amounts are still only a fraction
of what they were in Crowley's day. Membership dues in other organizations
frequently are three times as expensive in the 1990's as they were in the
1970's e.v. Expenses for OTO publications, postage, phone, legal services and
other central operations have been going up.
Questions about individual member dues balances and from initiators or
local OTO groups on dues or fees should be emailed to the Treasurer General
at:
The next Magical Link is expected out in October; and a new periodical,
named Agape, will be distributed to all US local official bodies. Camp, Oasis
and Lodge masters are requested to photocopy and distribute Agape to
individual members, and a PDF file version of this US OTO publication will be
available for download on the US Grand Lodge Web site. Another Oriflamme is
scheduled to go to world-wide membership in the first quarter of 1998 e.v.,
free to dues current members and to members Ist degree or higher owing less
than a full year's back dues. Details in the next Magical Link.
10/1/97 | College of Hard NOX 8 PM with Mordecai | Thelema Ldg. | ||
10/2/97 | Lesser Feast of Jack Parsons, Reading from the "Book of Babalon" 8PM at OZ House, with Caitlin | |||
10/5/97 | Gnostic Mass 8:00PM Horus Temple | Thelema Ldg. | ||
10/8/97 | Thelema Lodge Library night 8PM (call to attend) | Thelema Ldg. | ||
10/12/97 | 20th Anniversary of Thelema Lodge Gnostic Mass 8PM Horus Temple "Crowleymas" | Thelema Ldg. | ||
10/18/97 | Lesser Feast of Grady McMurtry in Berkeley, 7PM | Sirius Oasis | ||
10/19/97 | Lodge Luncheon Meeting 12:30 | Thelema Ldg. | ||
10/19/97 | Gnostic Mass 8:00PM Horus Temple | Thelema Ldg. | ||
10/20/97 | Section II reading group with Caitlin: Shakespere: Macbeth at Oz house, 8 PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
10/22/97 | Tarot with Bill Heidrick, 7:30 PM in San Anselmo at 5 Suffield Ave. | Thelema Ldg. | ||
10/26/97 | Cris Piss Greater Feast at OZ. 2PM | |||
10/26/97 | Gnostic Mass 8:00PM Horus Temple | Thelema Ldg. | ||
10/27/97 | Sirius Oasis meeting 8:00 PM in Berkeley | Sirius Oasis | ||
10/29/97 | College of Hard NOX 8 PM with Mordecai in Library | Thelema Ldg. | ||
10/31/97 | Eve of All (Christian) Hallows | 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.
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)