OTO USA History 8225 ky Degrees of the O.T.O.
 
   In addition to the official O.T.O. instructions, many regional O.T.O.
Lodges,How Aleister Crowley Came To Berkeley

____________________________________________________________ by Philip Jameson

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[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  Although much of the material is now out-of-date and much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]
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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
the 17th,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
phoenix 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.                                                                                               