Announcements from
Lodge Members and Officers

Note:
1. Liber 860, Crowley's magical diary from 1908 e.v. Sammavayamo, or "right energy," is the fifth (iron) path, a Pali Buddhist term (cf. Liber 777, Table III, column 75, scale 27).

    I attended at the offices of the Equinox. I climbed the interminable stairs. I was received by a gentleman robed in white and carrying a drawn sword.
    The room was dark; only a dull-red light shone upon an altar. Various young men, picturesquely clad in robes of white, red, or black, stood at different points round the room. Some held swords. The incense made a haze, through which I saw a small white statue, illumined by a tiny lamp hung high on the cornice.
    A brother recited "the Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram" impressively and with due earnestness. Another brother was commanded to "purify the Temple with water." This was done. Then we witnessed the "Consecration of the Temple with Fire," whereupon Crowley, habited in black, and accompanied by the brethren, led "the Mystic Circumnambulation." They walked round the altar twice or thrice in a sort of religious procession. Gradually, one by one, those of the company who were mere onlookers were beckoned into the circle. The Master of Ceremonies then ordered a brother to "bear the Cup of Libation." The brother went round the room, offering each a large golden bowl full of some pleasant-smelling drink. We drank in turn. This over, a stalwart brother strode into the centre and proclaimed "The Twelvefold Certitude of God." Artemis was then invoked by the greater ritual of the Hexagram. More Libation. Aleister Crowley read us the "Song of Orpheus" from the Argonauts.
    Following upon this song we drank our third Libation, and then the brothers led into the room a draped figure, masked in that curious blue tint we mentally associate with Hecate. The lady, for it was a lady, was enthroned on a seat high above Crowley himself. By this time the ceremony had grown weird and impressive, and its influence was increased when the poet recited in solemn and reverent voice Swinburne's glorious first chorus from "Atalanta," that begins "When the hounds of spring." Again a Libation; again an invocation to Artemis. After further ceremonies, Frater Omnia Vincam was commanded to dance "the dance of Syrinx and Pan in honour of our lady Artemis." A young poet, whose verse is often read, astonished me by a graceful and beautiful dance, which he continued until he fell exhausted in the middle of the room, where, by the way, he lay until the end. Crowley then made supplication to the goddess in a beautiful and unpublished poem. A dead silence ensued. After a long pause, the figure enthroned took a violin and played -- played with passion and feeling, like a master. We were thrilled to our very bones. Once again the figure took the violin, and played an Abendlied so beautifully, so gracefully, and with such intense feeling that in very deed most of us experienced that Ecstasy which Crowley so earnestly seeks. Then came a prolonged and intense silence, after which the Master of Ceremonies dismissed us in these words -- "By the Power in me vested, I declare the Temple closed."

    At the office in Cortlandt Street they had told Sieglinda Von Eichen that they had no further use for her services. She had been "cheeky," it seemed, to Mr Grossmann. So she stood in Lower Broadway at eleven o'clock in the morning with exactly fifteen dollars in the world, and about as much prospect of a future as has the shell of a peanut. She was certainly not going to spend a nickel on the subway. It was not so very many miles to 108th Street, and the day was a glory of May.
    But when she reached Park Place she changed her mind. It would be no use returning to the tiny flat where she lived with her twin brother Siegmund; she would only disturb him, very likely at the critical moment of the last act of his great opera, the one that was really going to be accepted, and make them rich and famous.
    She believed absolutely in her brother's genius: the sympathy between them was immense, even for twins. But Siegmund was incapable of any kind of work but the one. He had tried, when the necessity arose. Their father had died in their infancy; their mother had been induced to speculate by a rascally cousin, and in the crash of 1907 she had lost every penny. Siegmund had had to come back from Heidelberg, and Sieglinda from the family in Paris who were "finishing" her; their mother's brother, in New York, had offered them a home. They crossed the ocean. But their ill luck pursued them; a month or two later the uncle died intestate, and his son, who had always hated the twins as likely to come between him and his inheritance, lost no time in driving them from the house with insult. Between them they had had a few hundred dollars, enough to keep from starvation while they found something to do. Sieglinda did not know a note of music technically; though she had a fine ear and finer enthusiasm, all capacity in that line was concentrated in her brother; so she learnt stenography, and gave German lessons in the evening when she could get pupils.
    Siegmund had enthusiastically decided to be a chauffeur; but his teacher had dissuaded him from proceeding. "I've a hunch," said he, "that there'll be trouble sooner or later; going off in them trances like a guy what's doped is hell when you're pushing a fast car -- no, sir!" The same amiable impediment pursued him in every employment; his first morning as a clerk in a German bank had been his last; for, having been entrusted with copying a list of figures into a ledger, he had broken off after about six lines, and filled five scrawled pages with the opening passages of a sonata which meant nothing to the bank.
    Sieglinda quickly recognized that it was useless to try to alter this disposition; besides, she rather admired it. She cheerfully shouldered the whole responsibility of the finance of the family, telling him that it was really the best policy in the long run. Why waste a genius, capable of earning millions, for the sake of ten dollars a week? So she slaved on in various offices, never getting a good position; wherever she had happened to be, her aristocratic manner was one drawback, and her unapproachability another. Her "cheeking" of Mr Grossmann had been, at bottom, a refusal to join him at supper.
    So, after all, she would not go home. She would take the elevated and spend the day in Bronx Park. She would economize the nickel at lunch; a delicatessen picnic in the park would certainly be better than the flesh-pots of Childs'; yes, she would actually save money.
    This calculation was, however, in error; her proposed squandering of the nickel was as fatal as Eve's first bite of the apple; and in the delicatessen store her lunch made a decidedly large hole in one of her dollars.
    In another half-hour or so she was in the park; she wandered for awhile among the animals, then sought a remote corner for her picnic. She found a patch of green by the bank of the stream, shaded by a great peepul-tree, the sacred fig of India; and, having been born and bred to politeness, she apologized to the tree before taking her seat in its shadow. "Uncle Tree," so she began her prattle, "I hope you won't think it rude of me to introduce myself. But I am really a relative; my mother always said my father was the Old Man of the great oak in the courtyard; indeed, he was a very great elf, one of Wotan's own children, or so he always boasted. So I hope you'll let me eat my lunch under your branches. I'll pay you rent, you know; I'll sing you the May-Song." Then she sang Heine's master-lyric:

    "In the marvellous month of May
             With all its buds in blossom,
    Love made his holiday
             Prankt out within my bosom.

    In the marvellous month of May
             With all its birds in choir,
    I caught her heart away
             With the song of my desire."
   

   This will be our final segment of the interview conducted as part of Glenn's oral history project with Grady twenty years ago. Many thanks to Sirius Encampment for the cassette tape from which this interview has been transcribed.

    Grady: -- So I went out looking. I looked for many years. One thing I found was something - oral history, right? Is this thing rolling? Okay, oral history. First thing I found was, a number of years later, something called Technocracy, of which I'm not particularly proud at the present time, but -
    Glenn: You found it then -
    Grady: - but I found it then. And at the time it was the solution, because at that time - this was the late nineteen-thirties; 'thirty-seven, 'thirty- eight, 'thirty-nine, approximately. I had graduated from high school in Kansas in 1937, so it had to be 'thirty-eight, 'thirty-nine. (It was in Valley Center, Kansas, I graduated from high school.) I found something called Technocracy. Now at the time I was a student of engineering and physics at Pasadena Junior College in Pasadena. My best friend was Paul Freehaber. Beautiful guy. Dead many years. Had a bad heart. He died at home, when I was in combat, in Normandy, and I couldn't believe it; "I'm supposed to be dead -"
    Glenn: Oh, no.
    Grady: - yes, yes.
    Glenn: That's karmic, in a weird way -
    Grady: Yeah, I couldn't believe it. I got at letter from his sister, in Pocatello, Idaho, telling me that Paul was dead, and I sat - I sat down in my muddy combat boots in this god-damned fucking, god-damned, you know - tent, in the field there in Normandy, and I said, "What? But I'm supposed to be dead; how come Paul is dead? Paul is a good guy." He was a beautiful person. And, so, anyway, this was in the days when - oral history, okay? - this was in the days when they were polishing the mirror for Mount Palomar. And -
    Glenn: This was in Pasadena, California?
    Grady: In Pasadena, right. Right, at Cal Tech, where I would meet Jack Parsons, which was the whole god-damned point, right?
    Glenn: Right.
    Grady: But we'll get back to that later.
    Glenn: You were at Cal Tech?
    Grady: No, I was a Pasadena Junior College.
    Glenn: Oh, I see; which is near by Cal Tech.
    Grady: Paul was at Cal Tech, and so was Jack Parsons. Now, oral history, right; check. Okay, fine. Well, it was like this, and I think this is interesting, for future history, because it helped to shape me in whatever way I am, or whatever. Anyway, I had a bicycle; I couldn't afford an automobile. The first time I got laid I did afford an automobile. Anyway, oral history -
    Glenn: {laughs} Yeah; cars are tied up that way, as a rite of passage, I think, for Americans.
    Grady: {laughs} The reason I got laid the first time was because {laughs} I had bought this old beat-up - I don't know what type of an automobile it was; I don't think they even make them any more - for about thirty bucks, which I couldn't afford. And one night I was driving this crew of kids from Pasadena over to Los Angeles, to do a trip. There was the first piece of freeway in Los Angeles, which was the freeway from Pasadena over to LA, right. We come up over the rise; I'm driving, right. My gal, who I'm trying to get laid, is sitting next to me, and there's a couple of other people in the back, right. And as we did so, here's Amiee Sample Macpherson's temple - you remember her? - probably a very wonderful lady in her own way. Anyway, there was this sign that said in black - I'm sorry, in red - neon, said "Jesus saves." And I looked at it, and I said "He must have quite a pile by now." And it wasn't till later I discovered - she said, "That's when I fell in love with you." You know, anybody who had a sense of humor like that - {laughs}
    Glenn: {laughs} That's great. So - but you had a bicycle first -
    Grady: Now, so, what happened was this. Like for example, I took my bicycle in the evenings. It was a high-speed bicycle. It wasn't a ten-gear, but it was high-speed. It was a British racing bike. And I would go spinning down to Cal Tech. And they were manufacturing the mirror that would become the great eye of Mount Palomar. The "prime" on the two-hundred-incher, right.
    Glenn: Oh, yes.
    Grady: Anyway, the way it worked was this. They had this viewing room; it's sort of like Star Trek, you know. Which meant that of course you couldn't breathe here, because they didn't want your breath up there, because they were polishing the mirror. Now, the way the mirror was polished was this. You put your - or, this great iron metal arm, right out of Star Trek, right. It went up like this. It had three divisions, and on the end of each division there was this pad, like of, you know, when you're washing dishes, you know, like this metal pad. And they had it programmed, according to mathematics, that as this thing went around like this, it would take off just enough glass that when it was through you would have a mirror that could see into infinity, actually. Fantastic. And over inside, there was this rocket laboratory, which was mostly a bunch of pipes. Well, I didn't meet Jack then; I met him later. The way I met him, the way I got into Thelema, was through science fiction, because Paul and I were headed into science fiction. Since I didn't have much money, about the only way I could see the Sunday comics was going by Paul's place on Sunday, because he has some family money and he could afford the Sunday comics. And on Friday night it was our habit to catch a big red car from Pasadena over to Los Angeles, to attend the Los Angeles Science Fiction Club meeting. Now this is on the fifth floor of the Clift Cafeteria, and it was called the Little Brown Room. And the reason we met there was because, as you know, in any big city they have multi-story cafeterias (like New York City, for example) and they obviously empty from the top down, and on Friday night everybody goes home, right. So obviously the upstairs is vacant, and available for rent - cheap. That's why we went there. And also, you could walk out into the dining rooms and get all the bug juice you wanted, right out the bug juice thing. And that's when I met Ray Bradbury. He was a student in LA High at the time. And {laughs} this - but - I could tell you stories like that all year. {laughs} Anyway -
    Glenn: So how did you get into science fiction? Did you read it, like, in high school, or -- ?
    Grady: Yes.
    Glenn: So you got into it then -
    Grady: I've been a science fiction buff since I was in my 'teens. I remember a day in Oklahoma - Grist, Oklahoma, of all places - walking to high school - walking to high school, or it must have been junior high - one morning, and, you know, the sun's just come up, and I'm walking to school, you know, and the drug store is just opened and the guy had put out the book rack, here in front. And I looked, and here is a copy of Astounding Science Fiction, and here is the picture of the "Red Perry." Now, I wonder whether you know what the "Red Perry" science fiction story is about. But there's a beautiful picture. And I remember so vividly, because years later it had become rather interesting to realize that I've been a science fiction buff since then. And that was - that must have been at least 'thirty-five.
    Glenn: And this is something you just - as a young person, you just happened to like books -
    Grady: Yes.
    Glenn: - and you saw this book; it caught your fancy -
    Grady: Yes -
    Glenn: - and then you ended up just buying one, because they looked neat? Or something? Or, getting one?
    Grady: And writing poetry. Now, what happened was this. So, like I said, I'm on this odyssey - this pilgrimage - whatever you want to call it, looking for - "Where are my people? Where are my people?" You know. And so Paul Freehaver and I are going over to Los Angeles for the science fiction convention. Oh, Ray Bradbury; this might be interesting; one night we were going - so, we had this big long table there, right, and there are all these original paintings by Bonestell, and whatever, of all those foreign planets and so forth. We were heavy into science fiction. There were only two women involved. One was named Mohno and the other was named Pogo. Now, Mohno was small, old, rather wizen, and nobody had any hots for her. Pogo was big, blond, buxom; everybody had the hots for her. {laughs} She finally wound up marrying some science fiction editor. It wasn't that we - like, for example, with Beverly, I've talked with this - with Beverly, I've said, "Look, we weren't trying to keep any women away; we wanted to have more, but where were you?" And she said, "Well, I'm just not social, that's all." And she -
    Glenn: Beverly who?
    Grady: Beverly Senseman, our Grand Secretary General.
    Glenn: Ah, right.
    Grady: She said, "I was reading science fiction in those days, but I just wasn't coming around because I'm not social." Well, that's the way it goes. So anyway, one night we're sitting there at the big long table, you know, and there's this asshole running up and down the other side of the room, you know, behind the table, with a horrendous rubber mask on, trying to scare the kids, especially the girls. And I'm wondering who or what that idiot is. And so he takes his mask off, and - shit - it's only Ray Bradbury.
    Glenn: {laughs}
    Grady: That dumb-dumb with a mask on. How did I know he was going to become one of the world's most famous science fiction [writers]?

   Grady, Galilee, and the Belgae:
    This time we have three of Grady McMurtry's letters to Crowley. The first is from March of '44 e.v. while the other two are from the latter part of that year, after Grady was shifted to station in Belgium. It's interesting to see the change in approach. In the March letter, Grady has more detail and argues directly. In the latter, some of the same themes are present, but the focus is more on practical matters. Attachments mentioned in the first letter can mostly be found in previous TLC's, but the critique of Crowley's Scientific Solution will be printed here in an issue yet to come, along with that Crowley text.
    To access Grady's letters to Crowley in chronological sequence, see the bottom portion of the Crowley text index on the website.

Thelema Lodge Events Calendar for September 2001 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
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Phone: (510) 652-3171 (for events info and contact to Lodge)

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