Note to update: the addresses and phone numbers in these issues of the Thelema Lodge Calendars are obsolete since the closing of the Lodge. They are here for historic purposes only and should not be visited or called.
Thelema Lodge
Ordo Templi Orientis
P.O.Box 2303
Berkeley, CA 94702 USA
January 1992 e.v. at Thelema Lodge
Announcements from
Lodge Members and Officers
Thelema Lodge celebrates Gnostic Mass in Horus Temple on Sunday evenings,
usually beginning shortly after 7:30. This is an open ritual, with the public
welcome to take communion with us as members of the Gnostic Catholic Church.
Please call the lodge for information: (510) 654-3580. Our ritual follows
Crowley's Liber XV (except for the "experimental Enochian mass" announced for
Sunday 12 January).
Beginning this month, Temple and E.G.C. business will be conducted
separately from the general lodge meeting, at a monthly Sunday afternoon
convocation under the direction of our presiding Bishop T. Suleiman. The
first of these meetings will be held at the lodge on Sunday afternoon 19
January at 4:18. Mass teams (for March) are to be proposed and scheduled at
this time, and arrangements made for temple supplies and special ritual
events. The mass workshop, led by Bishop Sappho, will be held in conjunction
with this meeting, and inquiries for individual instruction are welcome
afterwards.
Nefertiti Sanctuary in San Francisco also celebrates Gnostic Mass for the
Thelemic community of the Bay Area, with the next date there set for Friday
evening 31 January. In addition, a regular seminar on the temple furnishings
and their use in the ritual is offered, on the Wednesday evening preceding
each mass. To attend either event, call Rick at (415) 566-0675.
The fourteenth annual cycle of Aleister Crowley's Rites of Eleusis at
Thelema Lodge culminates this month, with planetary rituals planned for every
fifth day through 25 January. The Rite of Sol will be held on Sunday afternoon
5 January at 2:22. The Rite of Venus begins at 8:00 on Friday evening 10
January. The Rite of Mercury occurs Wednesday evening 15 January at 8:00. Luna
will be held outdoors at the Marin Headlands on Monday evening 20 January,
with a nature walk and preliminary ritual at sunset, and the traditional Rite
of Luna getting underway that night at 9:00. Following Luna we have a group
campground reserved for Monday and Tuesday nights, with everyone invited to
stay over. The Rite of Earth, on Mt. Diablo, begins at 2:00 on Saturday
afternoon 25 January, and brings the entire cycle to a close. Call the lodge
for updated venue information, scheduling details, costumes and equipment to
bring, and transportation arrangements. Always bring libations to the Rites!
The lodge gathers to conduct initiations into Ordo Templi Orientis on
Saturday 18 January, starting in the afternoon. Members please call or
arrange ahead of time to attend; the times and degrees to be worked are
subject to change. To become a candidate for O.T.O. initiation, obtain an
application form at the lodge and contact the coordinator for your current
grade to review your progress and the requirements for advancement:
Minerval.....Lola-(510) ... ....
I°................Jerry-(510) ... ....
2°..........Marlene-(510) ... ....
3°.............Ebony-(510) ... ....
Applications are to be reviewed by the Lodgemaster, who will arrange for scheduling and discuss sponsorship with the candidate. Members who sponsor the candidate for initiation should then sign the completed form, using the name under which their own membership is enrolled in the official records of the order. (As it appears on your Magical Link address label may be included in addition to--but not instead of--the name on your membership account.) Additionally, it is important that the candidate and both sponsors include their telephone numbers on the application.
Members and friends of Thelema Lodge have an opportunity to share their
studies and interests, in a variety of classes, seminars, and reading groups
meeting throughout the month. These events are free and open to the public,
with donations requested to support the lodge premises.
The Cthulhu Culture Club emerges from the writhing ancient muck with a
belch, to gather on Saturday evening 4 January, beginning at 6:30. Call the
lodgemaster to attend this Lovecraftian mythos appreciation; we'll sing the
Dhol Chants, transcribe the Pnakotic Manuscript, review Liber Ivoris, decipher the
G'harne Fragments, and ponder the Revelations of Glaaki.
"Jerry's Logorrhea" is quiet in January, overwhelmed by the Rites of
Eleusis, but the lodgemaster`s monthly seminar will return on the third
Saturday in February with a new topic. Call for information. (The
"Videorhea" series, however, has apparently been swallowed up by the Elder
Gods. Yuck!)
"Book Four Astral Flight," a two-part class with Drax,offers presentation
of technique in concise, pragmatic, realistic yoga, designed to allow
conscious transition to the Dreamstate as a means of communion with higher
self and the "magick theater" of divine archetypes, commonly referred to as
the "Astral". The system being a verbal "tradition" composed by Allan Bennett
and the Master Therion, preceding through Thelema Lodge to the O.T.O.
Meetings are on Tuesday evenings 14 January and 23 January, beginning at 8:00
in Horus Temple.
All welcome to bring your copy of Magick in Theory and Practice to the lodge
on Thursday evenings 9 January and 23 January, for Marlene's MTP Study Circle,
beginning at 7:00 (a little earlier than previously). This group is
conducting a careful chapter-by-chapter exploration of Crowley's great
textbook of magical studies, with open discussion and explication of the text.
"Magik Without Aleister" meets in Horus Temple on Tuesday evening 28
January at 8:00. Our guest this month represents the Arica Institute, a
school established on Bolivian Sufi teachings. Frater Majnun (whom you should
seek out for details) is the coordinator of this series.
The Magick Theater's dramatic reading for January will be Adonis: An
Allegory, Liber CCCXXXV, one of Aleister Crowley's greatest plays in verse.
Gather at the lodge on Wednesday evening 29 January at 7:30 to read together;
copies will be supplied. (Note the Theater's change of evening to Wednesdays
beginning with 1992 e.v.) Adonis is a lyrical masque, set in the gardens of
ancient Babylon, and was written in Paris in August 1911 e.v. Crowley
described it as "mystic, sensuous and comic by turns; much of it written in
the elaborate and exquisite method of closely woven rimes which I myself
invented" (Confessions, p. 669).
The monthly meeting of Thelema Lodge will be held on Monday evening 6
January at 8:00. The schedule for Lodgemeetings has been advanced, assigning
them to the Monday evening following the first Sunday of each month. At these
meetings classes, feasts, rituals, and events are proposed and scheduled,
financial concerns resolved, and plans shared for the future. (Lodgemeeting
is open to active initiate members of O.T.O.)
Lodge Council and Lodge of Perfection have no formal meeting this month,
but members are urged to telephone the lodgemaster or drop by briefly in the
early afternoon on Saturday 4 January. Meetings are normally held on the
first Sunday afternoon in each month, which will be taken up this time by the
Rite of Sol.
Terri invites the Ladies to T-- at Thelema Lodge on Monday afternoon 13
January, beginning at 5:30. Secrets are involved.
Lodge Fun (and Fundraising) Night this month features Gnostic Wrestling
in Horus Temple on Friday evening 24 January at 8:00. All spectators and
participants please prepare ahead of time a triple batch of lime jello
(without sugar!) to bring to this event. Priestesses see Marlene to schedule
a match during the evening.
Lodge Clean-Up Day and the Aquarius birthday party will be held on Sunday
afternoon 26 January; come lend a hand with temple maintenance beginning at
1:11, and they'll be puffing at the candles around 4:18.
Love is the law, love under will.
Tenuous it wells and spreads far out across the sleeted sky, | |
A shapeless bulk against the suns which, immersed, within it lie | |
And glow a dull red angry hue, convulsed they wave with life aware | |
Arched tendrils of the galaxies; sentient, they curl and stare | |
Into the closely crowding gloom, taut filaments of pearl strung light | |
Stand stiff from where a bursting sun collapsed beneath the crushing might | |
Of this vast sprawling entity, spawn of the darkness, spherical | |
Or cubic relativity, a mindless thought, a miracle. | |
Into a finite consciousness there threads a thought of Being, | |
Intelligence is wrought to life within a mammal; seeing | |
With clumsy organs blind to all but one prismatic cord | |
Yet in that spectrum reveling to rob it of its hoard | |
Of orange, yellow, green, and gold, amethystine and blue, | |
Each sharp distinction revealed by some subtle shade or hue | |
In the glory of the morning, at the brazen gong of noon | |
Or the swirling dusk of evening lapping at a sated moon. | |
Some wonder why it clings to earth, to live and live again | |
To taste with the ephemeral their joy and hate and pain; | |
Why one who could destroy or build a universe should live | |
Within the confines of a man, what has a man to give? | |
That man has sight and taste and smell and touch to guide him by | |
And he can hear a thousand sounds some beautiful, some wry. | |
For though his senses may be fogged and though his mind be dim | |
Each process of perception forms a thought distinct, to him. | |
To one that broods within the void and is to all receptive; | |
A planet with encrusted life is but a pawn; perceptive, | |
Attuned to an infinity of graded radiation | |
Produces an intelligence that knows but one sensation | |
A color, it would be white to us, an unbearable glare | |
It has no shield, there is no help, it can only cringe and stare | |
Into the fire; or thrust itself into the mind of you or I | |
Escaping from the bitter cold, the blinding snow fields of the sky. | |
[previously published in Ecclesia Gnostica #4 (1985 e.v.)]
By Prometheus [Aleister Crowley]
"O like a rose-wing'd pelican
She hath bred blessèd babes to Pan!"
--The Wizard Way
In a story by Lord Dunsany Fame
says to the poet, "I will meet you
in the graveyard at the back of the
Workhouse in a hundred years." If
Shelley has been more fortunate--
though it hardly matters to him!--it
is not on account of his poetry,
which passed as readable even among
his contemporary detractors, but of
his prophetic gift and the moral
wizardry which made serious people
consider seriously that in him
Diabolus incarnatus est, et homo factus
est. ["the Devil is incarnated, and
mankind perfected"--trans. ED.]
It seems at first sight
astounding that Shelley was sent
down from Oxford for theological views which are accepted today by
the youngest average undergraduate
with scarce a mumbled protest from
the oldest average don; that he
should have been robbed of his
children on account of a moral
attitude which modern children
themselves find reactionary rather
then advanced; and that he should
have been practically exiled from
England because of political notions
which the most case-hardened Tory of
today would hardly dare to whisper
in the gloom of his club.
The truth is that the "Sun-
treader" (as Browning calls him in
Pauline) happened to be on the crest
of a true dawn. The world, save for
sporadic outbreaks of Bourbon folie
des grandeurs, ["foolishness of the
great"--trans. ED.] has rolled
steadily towards that slight, shrill
angel figure in the East. The power
of Shelley hardly matters, in a
sense, by comparison with his
ethical ideals. He was the voice of
the Zeitgeist; and it is relatively
unimportant that it should have
been, to English ears, so
matchlessly musical.
Many of the best judges of
poetry prefer Keats to Shelley; but
the verdict implies purism. A poet
is one who "makes" or "does" things,
and Keats was preoccupied with
eternal "Truth-Beauty"--to coin a
term like the "Space-Time" of
Einstein--of a far less potent and
intricate quality.
In Egyptian lore Tahuti, the
god of language, is also the god of
wisdom and of creative thought; the
word "gramareye" (dear to Sir Walter
Scott) is indeed, like the French
word grimoire, etymologically
equivalent to "grammar." Poets must
not be ranked by their lyrical
exaltation any more than by their
technical ability: wisdom is
justified of her children, and a
poet of his!
The children of Keats are
people like Rossetti, Walter Pater,
Oscar Wilde, whose eyes were fixed
sadly and languorously on the sunset
of things.
But the spilth of Shelley's
seed flooded foreign and innumerable
fields: James Thompson, Swinburne,
and other poets of revolution and passion are only a minor branch of
his great family. The reformers,
the humanitarians, the feminists,
the transcendentalists, from
Bradlaugh and Huxley to Nietzsche
and Anna Kingsford, were all suckled
on that pale gold wine of Dionysus
which issued from his martyred
veins. The young lady was within
her rights when she asked "What are
Keats?"; and if she was a wise child
she knew hew own father to be
Shelley.
Keats remains perfect and
imperishable like his own Greek
Vase; he is the chief treasure of
the Museum of Humanity; but Shelley
is the High Priest of the Temple of
Spiritual Progress, the Prophet of
the most High God of Freedom, and
the King of the Republic of
"gentleness, wisdom, virtue, and
endurance."
He is dynamic as Keats is
static; and the nature of the
Universe is Becoming rather than
Being. The nineteenth century
stripped the gilded rags of religion
from the mummy of existence, and
found a crumbling corpse, but the
twentieth sees that dust dissolved
into a glittering film of motion and
light.
Modern physical and
mathematical research are making it
clearer every day that the structure
of matter is indeed that subtle
spiritual vibration which Shelley
perceived it to be. By a parallel
argument, man himself is no longer
conceived as a fixed quantity
established in a world six thousand
years old, and subject to a single
law. He is an immutable Essence
indeed, perhaps, in some ultimate
spiritual sense, but his
manifestation is mutable; his
sensible form is a vehicle of Energy
surging in infinite variety against
the shores of experience. Shelley
speaks of an immanent Spirit of the
Universe, and is sufficiently a
Pantheist to have identified
himself, or any other existing
thing, with that Spirit, had he been
challenged directly on the point by,
let us say, Mr. Eddington or Mr.
Bertrand Russell. If Shelley is not
always explicitly in line with the
latest mathematico-mystical thinkers, it is because the world
was so far behind his intuitive
perception of truth that there was
no intellectual instrument capable
of registering his vibrations,
except possibly the ambiguous jargon
of the school of Fludd. But he
everywhere implies, more by the
sheer form and tone of his verses
than by their rational meaning, that
existence is an unconditioned Unity
(or Nihil), which has invented
infinite modes of phantasmal and
illusory duality for the purpose of
becoming conscious of itself. It is
not necessary for an animal to use
our arbitrary language to express
its feelings intelligibly; and, in
point of fact, poets who have made
the attempt to explain their
spiritual consciousness in terms of
philosophy have obscured their light
rather than made it manifest. Blake
is a notable example of this
circumstance. We learn more of the
essence of his soul-structure from
"Tiger, Tiger", "The Crystal
Cabinet", or "The Mental Traveler"
than we do from his professedly
"prophetic" books. The English
language, as understood by scholars
and developed by them, is an
instrument of doubtful value to the
poet. The soul of man lurks rather
in the lilt of a lyric than in the
most imposing lavallière that
glitters on the velvet of the shop-
window of literary effort.
Now Shelley was saturated with
the spirit of the planet in its
subtlest and strongest distillation:
and that spirit overflowed into
song. He possessed the utter
simplicity and self-confidence of an
immortal; if our ears are attuned to
his thought, we can catch the choral
rapture as is swings with the stars
through the centuries. But his
conscious efforts to express his
essential idea are relatively lame.
Identical phenomena occur in
every connection; and this is the
ultimate reason for the apparent
failure of the poet to maintain his
hold on our hearts as we reach an
age when our spirits are less
sensitive to subtle and subconscious
stress. Mr. Augustine Birrell
remarks that Browning in later life
lost his enthusiasm for this "strange and unaccountable being"
[A. Birrell, "On the Alleged
Obscurity of Mr. Browning's Poetry,"
in Collected Essays and Addresses, 1922--
ref. ED.] We are not all,
fortunately, so middle-class and
middle-aged as either of these
gentlemen; but, even so, it is hard
to read Shelley with enjoyment after
one has turned forty. The reason,
however, is this: one either has or
has not assimilated the Unconscious
of the poet in one's youth; in the
one case the verse seems a mere
husk, while in the other it screams
the doom of spiritual death. The
damned detest him, therefore, and
the redeemed can only find pleasure
in remembering the raptures which
wrought the white-hot steel of their
youth into the shapes of royalty and
righteousness.
It is in the nature of things
that even the greatest intellectual
attempts to grapple with any given
problem appear ill-adjusted in after
years; for the thought has been
frozen into crystalline beauty,
while the problem has changed with
the succession of suns. It is
always an error for an artist to
abdicate his throne in eternity in
order to enter the lists of temporal
things: ne sutor ultra crepidam ["the
shoemaker is no better than the
sandal"--trans. ED.]. Few people,
even among philosophers, seem to
understand that eternity differs in
quality from time. It is commonly
supposed to be a mere unlimited
extension thereof. Yet the
consideration that time is but one
of the conditions of dualistic
consciousness ought to make the true
aspect of the matter immediately
apparent. It is the prerogative of
men like Shelley to think in terms
of the absolute, which is out of all
relation with the measurable, and
not to be obtained therefrom by
removing the landmarks, any more
than one can make Beauty by effacing
the marks on a steelyard, or
prolonging the lever indefinitely.
When, therefore, Shelley says
"Next came Fraud, and he had on,
Like Eldon, an ermined gown"
he risks his intelligibility only in
a slightly less degree than Mr.
Frankau in One of Us, or the
ephemeral leader-writer of this Ile
des Diurnals. Eldon is already for
us merely a judge who happened to
annoy Shelley. One of Us is a very
valuable historical document, of its
kind, but the more it is history the
less it is literature. It has
already become difficult to identify
the mourners for Adonais, immortals
though they be. And Shelley was
preeminently the "Sun-treader":--he
should have remembered Phaeton.
Much, however, of this defect
of Shelley is inseparable from his
supreme quality as a technician. He
was the first to realize the
rhythmical power of the intonation
of the English language, to see in
it an armoury of striking and
stabbing weapons. Shakespeare, with
all his vigorous rhetoric, never
understood the possibilities of pure
form to play upon the passions; he
trusted to the rational meaning of
the words themselves. Milton made
but a slight advance in this
respect. Samuel Butler forged a
hammer of the rhythm of Hudibras; but
the stroke does not vary. Some of
Shelley's contemporaries made the
way plain for him by introducing
freedom of metre; but none of them,
not even Byron, was able to
consummate the marriage of poetry
and music. The result of the
alliance was to unite the
intellectual and emotional power of
words with the direct spiritual
action on the nerves which even the
West African drum or the Papuan
bull-roarer can exercise.
It is not too much to say,
therefore, that Shelley was to the
Revolutionary Epoch what Shakespeare
was to the Renaissance. He created,
in fact, a new heavens and a new
earth of language. The perfection
of Keats, the sublimity of Blake,
the simplicity of Wordsworth, the
mystery of Coleridge, the
independence of Byron: these are
feathers in the scale against the
sword of Shelley. For language is
the word which "was with God," and
"was God"; it is the most intimate
sheath of the soul, its first and
simplest expression. The creation of a new language is therefore a
stupendously significant event in
the history of a planet, as
important as the invention of the
wheel, or the discovery of a
fundamental principle in Nature.
The influence of Shakespeare and the
Bible is due not to their contents,
or even their style, but to their
having conferred upon the English
people a new intellectual
instrument. We are not yet at a
sufficient distance from Shelley to
estimate the real effect of his
work. We are apt to be misled: we
observe the triumph of many of his
ideas, and associate that phenomenon
with his success. The truth lies
much deeper. Such questions as
atheism are really of transitory
importance: the tides of human
opinion sway with the moon of
popular favour, and (to a less
degree) with the sun of the
enlightenment of the ruling classes.
But the advance in the development
of the larynx marks off definitely
man from monkey, and the perfecting
of the weapon of speech by Shelley
made the essential difference
between the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries in England.
The issue is masked for the moment
by the Press. The English language
is fallen into disrepute and
impotence. But the wood pulp period
of brain and paper will soon pass.
Unless England is destroyed
altogether by the vermin that are
gnawing at her entrails, unless the
speech of the greatest minds on
earth since the Fall of Rome is
rotted through by the cancer of
senseless slang, venal vulgarity,
alien abominations, the weapon of
Shelley will wing its way through
the centuries, and enable mind to
inform mind by virtue of subtle
cadences, harmonies, and hammer-
strokes.
That is, above all, the problem
of the day, now that the "hard
facts" of materialism are thawing
into a gossamer dew. It is becoming
impossible to write sober science in
prose: the subtleties of Nature
demand rhythm to respond to, and to
record, their own. By Wisdom, that
is, by the Word, He created the
worlds; and the Wonder-World of today has been created by the Word
of the Winged Serpent, whom the men
of his own day took to be Satan, him
whose centenary we celebrate under
his pseudonym of Percy Bysshe
Shelley.
Reviewed by Kathy Fleck.
In the first of a two volume
series, Aidan Kelly attempts to
reconstruct the history of Gardner's
Witchcraft movement. Mr. Kelly is
well equipped for the effort:
Teacher, writer, and founder of two
of the largest American Witchcraft
organizations, Mr. Kelly's
impressive credentials include a PhD
from the Graduate Theological Union,
Berkeley, California. Laying the
groundwork for his thesis, Kelly
asks what Gardner contributed, and
in so doing, attempts to separate
myth from history. The principle he
used to make the separation gave him
too much leeway and led to
imaginative speculation,
inaccuracies and obvious research
flaws. In his Introduction the
author concludes Gardner was
dyslexic. "He could not spell or
punctuate well enough to meet
minimal standards for being
published, his grasp of grammar was
shaky at best." Dyslexia is
generally defined as a reading
disorder marked by the reversal of
r, c, f, j and sometimes reversal of
entire words, e.g., "saw" for "was."
Gardner's typed material shows he
was not a proficient typist, but
there is no evidence of dyslexia.
In his first Chapter Kelly finds
a strong Masonic influence on the
Craft, but there are a number of
inaccuracies in his work:
Waite was not a member of
the Hermetic Order of the Golden
Dawn (HOGD) as Kelly states, but was
a member of Stella Matutina.
The break in HOGD was not
primarily from Mathers elevating
Crowley in the Order. It was the
result of Mathers declaring the
founding charter a forgery.
Mathers' credits are
inaccurate:1
-- The Greater Key of Solomon
was not a translation, but a
transcription from English language
MSS;
-- Mathers' Kabalistic
treatises were plagiarized, notably
his introduction to Kabbalah Unveiled
from Ginsberg's essay; and
-- Mathers' "major" book on
the Tarot was only 35 pages long.
Some of these inaccuracies, in all
fairness, would be discovered only
after years of research. But in
answering the question, "what did
Gardner contribute?" one has the
right to expect a broader base from
Kelly. On not finding a reference
to the scourge and cord in his
research of outside materials, the
author credited Gardner with their
introduction. The scourge and cord
can be traced. Aleister Crowley
shows a scourge and chain on the
plate that accompanies Chapter I,
Part II, in his 1911 edition of Book
Four; the same work gives details on
the use of the scourge in ritual and
how it is made. An Egyptian style
scourge was part of the regalia of
officers of HOGD; Crowley makes
occasional use of this in his
workings, remarking that he saw it
in visions. Crowley's Liber Aleph
refers to Babalon as applying Her
Scourge to him. The Equinox has
numerous references to the scourge
in metaphor, and in Vol. I, No. 1,
suppliment pg. 48: "I think the
Postulant should be actually
scourged..."; Crowley (pg. 60 sup.,
Equinox, Vol. I, No. 1) mentions in
the "John St. John" that he used the
scourge, dagger, chain and Holy
Anointing Oil in his own rituals;
(Vol. I, No. 10) "The Ship,"
Crowley's Mystery Play, has one
character use a scourge and rope in
an allegory of initiation (parts of
the Gnostic Mass were first printed
in this work, notably the Anthem.).
The scourge is also used in the
"Rites of Eleusis"; "Liber Stellae
Rubeae" uses the scourge on the
altar; "Liber Pyramidos" uses it in
a ritual of self initiation; Liber
777 lists the scourge with No. 5,
Geburah; etc., etc..
Kelly acknowledges Crowley's
influence on the Gardnerian rituals,
but his truncation of research is a
puzzlement, especially on the point
of Masonic influence. O.T.O.
rituals are much more heavily
influenced by Masonry than the HOGD rituals; and, under Crowley, Gardner
became a member of the O.T.O. In
1945 Gardner received his IVth and
P.I. O.T.O. initiations. O.T.O.
archives contain letters exchanged,
after Crowley's death, by Freda
Harris and Karl Germer in which FH
asks if Gardner will be taking over
headship. To be considered for such
a position, it is probable that his
initiations went higher than P.I.
Gardner's certificate was part of
the Ripley Museum Collection in the
1970s when Kelly researched their
material.2
For a large part of his book,
Kelly dissects two versions of
Gardner's Book of Shadows and
concludes Gardner was incapable of
its writing. Kelly also states that
witch practices are based directly
on Crowley's methods; but, because
of Gardner's drafts and revisions of
the original Book of Shadows, he
claims it could not have been
written by Crowley. There is
internal evidence that Crowley did
some of the writing. In his 1977
manuscript, "The Rebirth of
Witchcraft," part of his research on
the Gardnerian ritual material,
Kelly includes on page 202, "By the
Great and Holy Name V,V,V,V,V..."
This is Crowley's motto, and clear
evidence of his involvement in
Gardner's Book of Shadows.
Crowley's work on Magick is
monumental, both in depth and
breadth, yet in his bibliography,
Kelly lists only one of Crowley's
books, Magic in Theory and Practice, and
mentions skimming through "The
Equinox and several other of
Crowley's books." This is a major
flaw in Kelly's work. "Tyche" is an
example. Regarding the "Hail
Aradia" invocation, page 81 of
Crafting the Art of Magic, according to
Kelly: "The Farrars say that it is a
poem by Aleister Crowley, originally
addressed to Tyche. (...Crowley
mavens I know beg to differ, and I
have not been able to find it...)"
It took five minutes to locate "La
Fortuna" in The Works of Aleister
Crowley, from the index of first
lines in the back: "Hail Tyche!
From the Amalthean horn." When
Crowley wrote this sonnet on the
monumental sculpture of Balzac,
Auguste Rodin was so impressed that
he commissioned Crowley to write
other sonnets on his works.3 It
really is unfortunate that Kelly
abbreviated his study of Crowley.
Kelly mainly based his thesis
on the Weschcke documents, The
Ripley Museum Collection, and a few
"safe" authors. The subject was
timely and important, but because of
its narrow scope of evidence, the
treatment is inconclusive. Kelly
did shed light on an attempt to hide
Crowley's influence: "Gardner
himself borrowed wholesale from
Crowley; and Valiente rewrote the
material to disguise the borrowing."
Kelly's comments are sometimes
inaccurate and his conclusions
questionable. He calls Gardner's
nurse "Con" instead of "Com" and
declares Gardner and Valiente
creative geniuses, after challenging
their honesty.
Notes:
1. According to Bill Heidrick.
2. Allen H. Greenfield bought Gerald Gardner's O.T.O. Charter from the Ripley
Museum.
The Charter, circa 1945, refers to Gardner as "Prince of Jerusalem"
(P.I.) and charters
him to constitute a camp "in the degree of Minerval."
3. "La Fortuna", originally published in Crowley's poems written for Auguste
Rodin, called
Rodin in Rime and found in The Works of Aleister Crowley, Vol.3, pg. 120.
from PADMA SHEDRUP LING SANGHA NEWS
FULL MOON FISH LIBERATION
Saturday, December 21, at 1
p.m.
Sunday, January 19, at 3 p.m.
Tuesday, February 18, at 5 p.m.
Loch Lomond Bait Shop in San
Rafael. Call (415) 485-1356 for
directions.
Donations for the fish can be
mailed to the PSL P.O. Box, or call
in the amount at (415) 485-1356 at
least one day before liberation.
Onju Updegrave will coordinate this
event.
Address: Padma Shedrup Ling; P.O.Box 117, Fairfax, CA 94978. A nonprofit organization unconnected with O.T.O.
This appears to be Tibetan Buddhist. I hope somebody told them that the SF Bay is brackish! Fish not acclimated to it might die. Anyone desiring to contribute to the liberation of the captives in the bait shop should contact this group. Sorry, O.T.O. cannot accept donations on behalf of other charitable organizations.
January 2 | This is the birthday of the Sumerian Queen of Heaven and Earth, INANNA. She journeyed into the underworld only to find herself turned into corpse. The only way for her to leave was to provide a substitute. The substitute she provided was her husband! |
January 3, 1946 | Karl Maria Wiligut died on this date, the man responsible for the establishment of castle Wewelsburg as the Nazi SS college & 'ceremonial centre' in November of 1933, and who designed not only the often stated 'satanic SS rites', but the Totenkopfring, or 'Death's Head Ring' worn by its members. Actually he joined the SS under the alias 'Weisthor', some claim to hid the fact that he had been certified insane in the Salzburg mental asylum some six years earlier. Regardless, he became known as Heinrick Himmler's private 'Magus'. |
January 4, 1893 | Documents survive showing that Boullan and his followers (The Church of Carmel) engaged, or thought they engaged in copulation with angels, cherubim, seraphim and the spirits of famous people like Cleopatra and Alexander the Great. Abbe Boullan's death on this date, came at the climax of a "Battle of the Magicians" between the Church of Carmel and the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix. |
January 4, 1918 | To most people Roddie Minor's (Sister Achitha) visions would appear to be no more than hallucinations produced by 'The Lady of Our Dreams' (opium), lacking any real occult significance. Crowley was much impressed by them. Through Roddie Minor, Crowley contacts the Wizard Amalantrah on this date. |
January 4, 1946 | The 'Spear of Destiny' or the Spear of Longinus is rescued by the allied forces from the Nazis. |
January 4, 1946 | Jack Parsons begins the rites known as 'The Babalon Working'. The ritual took place over twelve consecutive nights to he strains of a Prokofiev violin concerto. Parsons made a series of eleven invocations. Parsons was to write to Crowley: "nothing seems to have happened. One night, there was a power failure, but nothing more eventful, until..." |
January 5, 1915 | In Aleister Crowley's "Rex de Arte Regia" (The King on the Royal Art), he writes on this date: "Women in America seem purely animal. They come like water and like wind they go. Not one of these operations in this country has ever had the flavor that one gets all the time in Europe." |
January 6, 1915 | "The best book I've read in years is about Aleister Crowley. He was said to be a satanist, a black magician, a sadist, a nut, a heroin addict and a sexual degenerate of monstrous proportions, and one wonders a bit if some of Aleister's infamous reputation was exaggerated..." Thus stated Alan Watts, who was born on this date. |
January 7, 1943 | A federal judge ruled him to be the inventor of the radio. He stated that a crystal is a living being. In a New York hotel room Nikola Tesla dies on this date. |
January 8, 1744 | The Divan Club is founded by Lord le Despencer or Sir Francis Dashwood, in London. |
January 18, 1824 | Joseph-Antoine Boullan, founder of The Church of Carmel, was born on this date. He seems to have been fascinated by the human excretory organs and their functions. He participated in rites that were scatological in nature. |
January 18, 1946 | Parsons performed rituals which led up to "an operation of symbolic birth", and settled down to wait. Then, on this date, at sunset, "while the scribe (Ron Hubbard) and I were on the Mojave desert, the feeling of tension suddenly snapped...I returned home, and found a young woman answering the requirements waiting for me." The woman was Marjorie C____, she went on to be Parsons' 'Scarlet Woman'. |
January 19, 1990 | In Poona, India, Bhagwan Rajneesh dies of a heart attack at the age of 58, without any Roles Royces. |
January 24, 1986 | Death in hiding of Lafayette Ron Hubbard, hack science fiction writer and pop psychologist, at Creston (near San Luis Obispo), CA. According to a devoted follower who knew him well, "He was a mixture of Adolph Hitler, Charlie Chaplin, and Baron Münchhausen. In short, he was a con man." |
Cornelius/Herndon.
1/1/92 | New Year's Day | |||
1/4/92 | Cthulhu Culture Club 6:30 PM w/Jerry | Thelema Ldg. | ||
1/4/92 | Lodge Council 1 PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
1/5/92 | Rite of Sol 2:22 PM | |||
1/5/92 | Gnostic Mass 7:30 PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
1/6/92 | Thelema Lodge Meeting 8PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
1/9/92 | Magick in Theory and Practice Study Circle with Marlene 8PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
1/10/92 | Rite of Venus 8:PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
1/12/92 | Gnostic Mass 7:30 PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
1/13/92 | Ladies' T 5:30PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
1/14/92 | Book 4, Astral Flight class with Drax 8 PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
1/15/92 | Rite of Mercury 8 PM | |||
1/18/92 | Initiations (call to attend) | Thelema Ldg. | ||
1/19/92 | E.G.C. Schedule & Business 4:18 PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
1/19/92 | Gnostic Mass 7:30 PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
1/20/92 | Rite of Luna 9 PM (prelim rit. sunset) | |||
1/21/92 | Book 4, Astral Flight class with Drax 8 PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
1/23/92 | Magick in Theory and Practice Study Circle with Marlene 8PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
1/24/92 | Gnostic Wrestling 8 PM (bring Sugarless Lime Jello) | Thelema Ldg. | ||
1/25/92 | Rite of Earth 2 PM | |||
1/26/91 | Lodge Clean up | Thelema Ldg. | ||
1/26/92 | Aquarian Birthday party 4:18 PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
1/26/91 | Gnostic Mass 7:30 PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
1/28/92 | "Magick without Aleister" with Fr. Majnun 8 PM | Thelema Ldg. | ||
1/29/92 | Magick Theater Reads Crowley's Drama Adonis (Liber CCCXXXV) 7:30 PM at Thelema Lodge | Magick Thea. | ||
1/31/92 | Gnostic Mass in SF 8 PM | independant |
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.
Note to update: the addresses and phone numbers in these issues of the Thelema Lodge Calendars are obsolete since the closing of the Lodge. They are here for historic purposes only and should not be visited or called.
Thelema Lodge
Ordo Templi Orientis
P.O. Box 2303
Berkeley, CA 94702 USA
Phone: (510) 652-3171 (for events info and contact to Lodge)
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