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History of the Ordo Templis Orientis
How Aleister Crowley Came To Berkeley
___________________________________ by Philip Jameson
[Editorial note: The following article is reprinted from a news report from
the early 1970?s on the formation of the Thelema Lodge in California. It is
offered here to give a brief outline of how the Berkeley O.T.O. came into
existance. Although much of the material is now out-of-date and much
information has been ignored by the writer, the article is relatively truthful
and contains very few historical inaccuracies. Reprinted from "The Rising Aeon
Journal, the official publication of the Seattle Ordo Templi Orientis]
The recent occult fad of the Sixties and early Seventies was not the first to
sweep the western world. There were previous ones every 40 or 50 years in
the17th,18th and 19th centuries with dozens of alchemical, Masonic and
Rosicrucian orders starting up at the drop of a charter. One of the more famous
(or infamous) of these was the O.T.O. or Ordo Templi Orientis, (Order of the
Eastern Temple) which claimed to be descended from the original Knights
Templar. The Templars were an extremely wealthy and powerful religious order
of crusading knights which was broken up by the Roman Catholic Church and
Phillip IV of France in 1307 amid charges of satanism, sorcery, homosexuality
and not giving the Pope or the King a big enough cut of the profits. In 1913,
an out-of-place-and-time hippie named Aleister Crowley published his gem of
metaphysical paradoxes, The Book of Lies, in which he accidently revealed on
the major sex magick secrets of the O.T.O. (which he knew only to be a European
masonic group). The then ?Outer Head of the Order? (grand-high-mucky-muck) in
Germany, Theodore Reuss, contacted Crowley and insisted that he would have to
be initiated and sworn to secrecy. Swiftly the young genius rose through the
ranks to the ?ninth degree? and soon was given a charter by Reuss to start up a
British branch of the Order, which he pretty much ran as he damned well
pleased. As a magical lodge the O.T.O. as ran by Crowley nominated as an avatar
of Oriental sex and drug mysticism on a basis of standard Rosicrucian-Masonic
cerimonial magic. The goal was primarily a religious one: ?the Knowledge and
Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel? (communication with one?s higher self)
and the eventual attainment of enlightenment. If Crowley had stuck with this,
the other lodges of the O.T.O. probably would have remained friendlier. But
then he came up with the ?Law of Thelema? (a Greek word meaning ?will?). In
1904, Crowley went through an intense three-day psychic experience during which
he ?received? through automatic writing a document known as The Book of the
Law, supposedly dictated by various Egyptian deities. This extremely
compicated mystical work stated, amongst other things, ?Do what thou wilt shall
be the whole of the Law? (one of the most misunderstood phrases) and ?Love is
the law, love under will.? Gradually, Crowley adopted the entire structure of
his branch of the O.T.O. to his ?Thelemite? doctrines of absolute metaphysical
independence. The Book of the Law has a nmuber of harsh and complex passages
which unfortunately make it easy to twist in order to suit the purposes of
fascists, satanists and other powertrippers, although Crowley himself seems to
have been an Ayn Rand sort of anarchist. A number of the O.T.O. lodges split
over the thorny question of whether or not to ?accept the law of Thelema.?
Thus, even today, there are a handful of legitimate O.T.O. groups which will
have nothing to do with Crowley if they can help it. Crowley?s O.T.O. was
fairly successful as such groups go, absorbing many of the members (and a great
deal of written material) from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which
Crowley had previously joined just in time to be an active participant in its
political dismemberment. Eventually, Reuss resigned as Outer Head of the Order
(?OHO?) in favor of Crowley, who went to town, chartering branches in Canada,
the United States, Australia, South America and elsewhere. But as the fad
dwindled, so did the membership, and the German lodges were destoryed by the
Nazis (as part of their final solution to the uppity occultist problem). So by
the time Crowley died in 1947 hardly any of the O.T.O. lodges, original or
Thelemite, continued to exist. Karl Germer, a ninth degree initiate of the
Swiss O.T.O., then took over as OHO and did almost nothing for the rest of his
life, since he was going in other spiritual directions. Several years after
Germer?s death in 1962, another ninth degree initiate from the United States,
Grady L. McMurtry, decided to activate his ?emergency powers? as Caliph of the
O.T.O. The year before his death, Crowley had given McMurtry (who had been
with him through the war) papers appointing him as his Caliph (since Crowley
considered himself a ?prophet? naturally his successor would be a ?caliph?), in
order to investigate some problems with the collapsing lodges in America.
These made Grady second in command of the Order, under Germer. Since nobody
else in the late Sixties seemed to be doing anything, McMurtry decided to
declare himself OHO, and to take over what was left of the O.T.O. until such a
time as the Order again had sufficient lodges and members to hold a proper
international election for an OHO. After knocking around the Bay Area for a
few years, he finally decided to try some ?fairly heavy magick? last spring,
opening up the Order to an influx of psychic energy from the ancient Egyptian
Gods worshipped by the Order. KAPLOOIE!! The
hippie-commie-pervert-weirdo-heathen occultists of Berkeley descended upon him
en masse to check him out. They found a hard drinking, hard thinking crusty
old man with one of the world?s greatest collections of humorous Al Crowley
stories. Living with a priestess from the New Mexico desert, ?Grady? found the
living room of their house filled every week with increasing numbers of Crowley
fans, eager to join a serious (but not too serious) magical lodge based on his
theories. One by one, many of the best and most scholarly occultists in the
Bay Area began to show up to evaluate the ?new? group, and quite a few of them
seem to be sticking around to help with the organizational work. Friendly
links with the remnants of precious O.T.O. lodges in the United States and a
gradual unification seems to be shaping up. Something magical certainly seems
to be going on with the O.T.O. now that it?s centered in Berkeley. Since
April, over 80 new members have been initiated into the ?zero-ith? degree (for
novices) and a half a dozen or so people have been initiated into the first,
second and third degrees. (Thus, the heirarchy of the organizational structure
is slowly being filled up properly.) A newsletter with real occult meat to it
is being published quarterly, with subscribers and associate members from all
over the world gobbling up each issue. Regular classes in Cabala, Yoga,
Ceremonial Magic and Thelemic Metaphysics are being organized and the bi-weekly
open meetings are filled to over-flowing? enough so that the Order is having to
rent a hall. Perhaps the best sign of Divine Intervention is that the rampant
sexism of previous Crowley groups (a hangover from the 19th century) is
fighting a losing battle against the increasing number of strong women joining
the Order. Ceremonies are being edited and rules changed so as in almost full
and equal participation for all, regardless of race, gender or place of
plausible origin. On October 12th, the Feast of Crowleymas (Uncle Al?s
birthday) the ?Thelema Lodge? of the O.T.O. was officially chartered as the
grand lodge of the Order, just as the sun came out of its eclipse. Like a
ph?nix rising from the flames, Aleister Crowley?s Ordo Templi Orientis appears
to be reborn, thanks to Bay Area occult know-how and a little divine help.
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