Thelema Lodge Calendar for October 1997 e.v.

Thelema Lodge Calendar

for October 1997 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.

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

October 1997 e.v. at Thelema Lodge

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

Announcements from
Lodge Members and Officers

October Anniversaries

Our celebration of the Gnostic Mass in Horus Temple on Sunday evening 12th October will mark the twentieth anniversary of Thelema Lodge, which was founded and chartered in Berkeley by Grady McMurtry on 12th October 1977 e.v. As Hymenaeus Alpha, Grady himself served as national grand master and acting Outer Head of the Order, in addition to being master of the original lodge of the Order's revival, an office which he held for exactly 93 months until his death on 12th July 1985 e.v. The document which certifies this event, and which was sealed that day with Crowley's ring by his Caliph, reads:

"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.

Rituals, Gatherings, and Classes

Members and friends of the lodge assemble each Sunday evening as the Gnostic Catholic Church for a celebration of Liber XV, Aleister Crowley's Gnostic Mass. Call Horus Temple at (510) 652-3171 for information and directions if you haven't attended before, or talk with one of the bishops and the lodgemaster if you have stood on the side-lines long enough and want to help form a team of officers to serve mass for the lodge.

"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.

Previous NOX Next NOX

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.

Previous Section Two Next Section Two

Crowley Classics

This article was originally published in The International (New York, October 1917), pp. 307-309, where it ran as a sort of editorial column, signed at the end with the initials "A.C." It was a time, eighty years ago this month, when the nature and extent of this country's European involvement in the Great War was still undetermined, and this article gives us a glimpse of Crowley's outlook that autumn. He was trying to run a monthly magazine by filling it up with his own writings, and like everyone else he was preoccupied with the uncertainties facing Europe, as well as with his own very uncertain career as an ostensibly pro-German journalist in New York. It was a position not conducive to any open-hearted profession of loyalty, and in this essay Crowley seems particularly to enjoy proposing outrageously unbalanced opinions in a kind of satiric frenzy, as if the integrity of his editorial voice were in no way subject to the readers' evaluation. Some of these statements may cause resentment even today, because Crowley -- after only a few years in a new country -- was able to select issues of abiding tension and trouble in the American condition, exploiting them here to camouflage his own precarious position. Despite a few insightful or characteristic pronouncements, this piece is also marred by signs of hasty composition, as well as some apparent typographical errors which have been emended in square brackets by the present editor.

Groans from the Padded Cell

(The Minority Report of the Editorial Rooms)
by Aleister Crowley

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.

Note:
1. Sic as published, but perhaps the author intended "friction" -- ed/TLC.

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from the Grady Project:

Dream of the Ghoul

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!

-- Grady L. McMurtry

9-14-40

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.

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An Introduction to Qabalah

Part XXXII - Through the Fourth Dimension

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.

Previous, Part XXXI Next: Trees in a Haunted Forest..

Primary Sources

The International:
Here is Karl Germer's inventory list of Crowley contributions to the International, a US pro-German periodical that Crowley used as a vehicle for his writings and cover for his pro British espionage until the entrance of the US into WWI. With the exception of works by other authors translated by Crowley, and one exchange with Achad, it appears that all of these were written by A.C. under various names. Although Crowley's work as a British agent may have been pretty trivial, many of these writings cast light on Thelema, Magick and the personal bias of the author. The Thelema Lodge Calendar has reprinted quite a number of them, including the Crowley Classics item for this issue.

INTERNATIONAL:

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

Previous Primary Sources Next Primary Sources

From the Outbasket

This announcement is not from Thelema Lodge but from the International Treasurer General on behalf of OTO International Headquarters and the U.S. Grand Lodge.

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:

heidrick@well.com

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.

-- Bill Heidrick, Treasurer General

OTO International

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Thelema Lodge Events Calendar for October 1997 e.v.

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.