Thelema Lodge Calendar for August 1994 e.v.

Thelema Lodge Calendar

for August 1994 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

August 1994 e.v. at Thelema Lodge

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

Announcements from
Lodge Members and Officers

Lammastide Greetings

Members of the lodge and other local Thelemic groups will observe the feast of Lammas on Sunday morning 7th August, as Sol attains 15° Leo, marking the zodiacal point of mid-summer. Assemble at Oz House by 10:00 in the morning for transportation up the hill to our near-by wilderness picnic site. Pack food and drinks to be carried a moderate distance, and avoid violating the park's prohibition against overt alcohol. Contact Caitlin at (510) 654-3580 or Thelema Lodge at (510) 652-3171 for further information.

Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica

Gnostic Mass is celebrated on a weekly basis by Thelema Lodge in Horus Temple at 5977 Keith Avenue, in the Rockridge district of north-eastern Oakland. This open communion ritual welcomes all who wish to participate, and begins at night-fall each Sunday evening. Newcomers will do well to call the lodge ahead at (510) 652-3171, for directions and information. All communicants please arrive by 8:00 to await the Deacon's cry of "Procul!" Local gnostic priestesses and priests within the O.T.O. are invited to keep in touch with the lodgemaster regarding our mass schedule.

The monthly Gnostic Mass Study Group meets under the direction of Bishop T Dionysus on Wednesday evening 31st August at 8:00. As our new edition of Liber XV undergoes further typographic refinement, the group is already making good progress in the explication of the liturgy. Our line-by-line discussion of the "Credo" at a recent meeting established some of the procedures for group work with the text, and also illustrated some of the structural challenges we face in editing our explanatory contributions. The group invites specific interpretations, comments, and source-notes from all who know the mass. Is there, for instance, a source for the phrase "mystery of mystery," which upon investigation turns out not to be biblical?

Rites of Eleusis

Our annual planetary cycle of Aleister Crowley's Rites of Eleusis continues through the present month and well into the next, with the Rite of Mars being celebrated on Tuesday evening 2nd August at 8:00. The Rite of Sol follows, on Sunday afternoon 14th August at 2:00, and then the Rite of Venus at 8:00 on Friday evening 26th August. Each of these events will be held at Sirius Oasis in Berkeley; call the Oasis at (510) 527-2855, or Thelema Lodge at (510) 652- 3171, for information and directions. All attending are requested to wear clothing and colors appropriate to the planetary gods involved, and also to bring corresponding food and drink as contributions to the feasting. Next month the Rite of Mercury will be held on Wednesday 7th September, and the Rite of Luna on Monday 19th September; call for locations.

Classes and Events

Most Thelema Lodge events are free and open to the public. To attend, call the lodge at (510) 652-3171 for confirmation, directions, and instructions regarding specific preparation for some events. When events have been scheduled away from the main Thelema Lodge temple and library facility in Rockridge, telephone numbers have been provided for advance contact, and it is particularly important that all who have not made previous arrangements to attend please let our hosts know whom to expect. Donations are requested at many events to help cover lodge rent costs, and our generous members and friends who enable the lodge to continue are much appreciated.

Join the Section Two Reading Group at Oz House on Monday evening 22nd August at 8:00, hosted by Caitlin, for a literary discussion of The Golden Ass. For directions and information call Oz at (510) 654-3580 or Thelema Lodge at (510) 652-3171. The pagan philosopher and magician Apuleius was a Roman African, educated at Carthage and Athens, writing in the second half of the second century of the past aeon. A number of his works have been influential: De Deo Socratis [Concerning the Daemon of Socrates] is the most comprehensive classical account of the "genius" spirit or Holy Guardian Angel; the Apology outlines his successful defense against legal persecution for magical practices. The Golden Ass (an informal name for the prose narrative originally entitled The Metamorphosis) retells an older tale of the tribulations of a Greek named Lucius, whose magical curiosity gets him transformed into a donkey. To this Apuleius adds a detailed account of pagan redemption in the cult of Isis, and a series of interpolated stories, most notably the classic account of the romance of Eros and Psyche. Several translations of the Ass are easily available, though few are accurate with regard to the details of technical magick it contains, nor concerning the erotic descriptions.

Previous Section Two Next Section Two

An evening of discussion devoted to the original Rosicrucian pamphlets will be offered at 8:00 in the lodge library on Monday evening 15th August, led by Frater Hrafnkel. Copies of our new Thelema Lodge edition of these texts will be available by donation. Over the second decade of the past aeon's seventeenth century, great interest was stimulated throughout northern Europe by the announcement of a secret fraternity pursuing both ancient Hermetic wisdom and also the latest developments in chemistry, biology, alchemy, and medicine. The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross had been fictionalized in two anonymous recruiting pamphlets and some related writings; despite the frantic efforts of some of Europe's outstanding minds --- Rene Descartes, for example, was later much teased over his attempts to contact them --- no actual Rosicrucians ever presented themselves. But in another sense the Rosicrucians did gradually realize their fellowship, as their symbols and ideals were appropriated by later groups, including O.T.O.

The Thelema Lodge Magick in Theory and Practice Series with Bill Heidrick meets on Wednesday evening 17th August at 7:30 in Marin. Brother Bill will be our host as well as leading the discussion, which will cover chapters 19 and 20. The address is 5 Suffield Avenue in San Anselmo, and those attending for the first time should call ahead for directions at (415) 454-5176.

The Grady McMurtry Poetry Society meets on Saturday evening 27th August at 8:00 in the lodge library. Bring your favorite verse to read to the group, which is organized by Frater P.I. to promote the appreciation of all sorts of poetry (and we generally do get all sorts).

Thelema Lodge Butterfly Net computer club meets Monday evening 29th August at 8:00. Membership is now available on a monthly basis, and the Net is open for use. Members please attend to hear of possible system changes coming up, and to keep current with dues so we can keep the Net working.

Sirius Oasis holds its regular meeting on Wednesday evening 10th August in Berkeley at 8:00. Please call ahead to confirm (and for directions) at (510) 527-2855. One topic will be the possibility of a Rite of Earth, to ground out the Eleusis cycle, likely to be scheduled for Saturday afternoon 1 October.

Thelema Lodge Meeting will be Monday evening 8th August at 8:00. Scheduling and organization will be our concern, and requests or offers for classes and events are best presented at lodgemeeting, or discussed early in the month with the lodge master. Notes for events descriptions for the calendar are due by mid-month.

The Sustaining Members Luncheon Meeting will be held on Saturday this month, due to other Sunday events early in August. Meet at 1:00 on Saturday 6th August. Remember, Thelema Lodge needs your help! When will we have a new mass altar for Hours Temple? When can we extend our library facilities? If you are interested in helping the Lodge to grow and flourish, please consider joining the Sustaining Members Circle. As Brother David Nicholls says, "I feel a dollar a day is a small price to pay for all the fellowship, love, and other benefits too many to mention. So I say to my fellow Thelemites, become a Sustaining Member for $30 a month (just a dollar a day). Where else can you get such a bargain?"

Thelema Lodge Library Nights are scheduled for Thursday evenings 11th and 25th August, from 8:00 to 10:00. Please call ahead to confirm, as these events are rescheduled occasionally to meet the needs of members who volunteer to help maintain our expanding library facilities, or those requesting to make use of the library for reading and research. Contact the lodgemaster or officers regarding all library scheduling.

As part of the Thelema Lodge Aleph Group lives on as an informal pursuit among a number of lodge members, last month we held a day-long workshop on Saturday 16th July. The group started off the event at 11:00 AM with asana practice and a dizzying series of pranayama exercises. After a light lunch, they resumed with mantra-yoga, i.e. seventeen mesmerizing choruses of IAO, followed by personal instruction in overtone chanting. The workshop continued along the yoga theme: practice in vipassana, or "no-thought" meditation, concentrating upon a candleflame, and balancing between breathing and listening. This was crowned by the practice of the "Kundalini" (SSS) chapter of Liber HHH. After a final break, the group improvised a collective version of the Mass of the Phoenix, including a rousing jam session. They even managed to pack it all in by 7:00 pm.

Crowley Classics

This essay was originally published in The English Review 15 (London: November 1913), 578-595. It will be serialized in three installments, of which this is the first.

Art in America

by Aleister Crowley

"Nay, start not at the word! America!"
--- Shelley

HISTORY offers no parallel with the situation of Art in America. In the very flower-tide of English literature out go the Pilgrim Fathers with the Bible, Shakespeare, Milton, and John Bunyan, into a country whose natural beauties and whose natural rigours seem as if they would force art from out the veriest savages. The history of American development, one might hastily assert, offers every inducement to art in every form.

And yet the result is relative sterility. If we except Poe and Whitman in literature, Whistler and Sargent in painting, these remarks on Art in America seem likely to be as few as those on Snakes in Ireland.

Do we find anything that even aspires to be of the first rank? Poe is not in any sense a local bard; he is, of course, universal; yet he seems almost anti-local; most of his stories are drawn from the Old World, or might just as well have happened there. Whistler and Sargent never worked in America at all. The astounding inspiration of much of American scenery, ranging from the cliffs of Yosemite and Niagara to the plains of Texas and the Mississippi, fails to inspire the native. I have at my tongue's tip a dozen superb nature- pictures of their country --- God's country! no empty boasting that! --- and every one of them was written by an Irishman or a Scot.

Why could not Whistler have painted in the Yellowstone? The nearest he ever got to it was Valparaiso.

I think the truth of the matter lies in this, that where life is so abundant only the eldest souls can even begin to turn themselves to that quintessentialising of it which is the secret of art, and that such souls, overwhelmed by its immensity, or lacking in the youth of genius, have failed.

Even of those whom we may claim as at least candidates for election to the Elysian fields, we must remark that their output is infinitesimal. In prose, it is true, Poe managed to sustain himself in aether well enough, and The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (too little known here) is a greater achievement than any of the shorter stories. But you can pack away his poetry into a hat-box, "The Raven" is, to my mind, a much over-rated piece; "The Bells" is as bad as Southey's "How the water comes down at Lodore." What remains? "Ulalume," "Anabel Lee," "For Annie," "Al Aaraaf" (more or less), "Israfel," and three of four pieces which are barely more than stanzas.

All very exquisite, all lacking body, and all monotones in a single key.

I say this, although I consider Poe to have been one of the greatest men of his century. The thought in "Eureka," "Monos and Una," and one or two other essays, is profound and lofty. But there is little breadth in the depths. His philosophy is based not on a study of all human thought, but on odd books which drifted his way. He tried to make bricks without straw, and it was bad for his pyramid.

His book-learning, too, slight as it was, was too much valued. He is always hinting at his own scholarship. He was "cultured," though with enough real genius to laugh at the "frog-pond" of cultured Boston.

Of American culture, I have one perfect sample. Travelling from Nagasaki to Hong Kong, two mature maidens from Massachusetts discovered that I sometimes wrote, and "took me up." "And who," I asked, "is your favourite poet?"

A warm flush overspread each sallow cheek as the two thin mouths exclaimed "Rossetti!" "And which" (I tactlessly pursued) "which of his poems do you like the best?"

This remark closed the conversation. They had put the name Rossetti down in a note-book; and right there "culture" ended.

This I found characteristic of many American women. I have seen American girls in Italy laboriously writing down the names of more painters than I shall ever know, without any further comment than the dates at which they painted. To ask a single question on the broadest lines was to court silence; in fact, it became the most useful method in my daily life and conversation.

The national American game is Poker; and as "calling," in artistic Jack- pots, costs nothing, it is a safe rule never to lay down your hand.

It is the same even with children. I once talked with a boy of thirteen years old, as bright and intelligent as I ever met. He knew no Latin or any modern language; he did not know where Berlin was; he knew the names of only eight of the States in his own country, although he was getting "a quarter" for every one he could name; he knew no arithmetic beyond the first four rules, and those he knew badly; his history was confined to George Washington and James G. Blaine, to the exclusion of such insignificant characters as Napoleon; and his other mental bunkers were equally empty of coal. He had excellent machinery; nothing for it to work with.

Now, one might expect a boy of this type --- a type almost universal in America --- to develop into an artist. He lived in Salt Lake City, but spent most of his year in California and Honolulu. Having nothing else to feed on, one would expect him to feed on his surroundings; and I cannot conceive of anything much more sublime. The Mormon adventure is one of the most romantic in the world's history; the ghastly grandeur of Utah is an epitome of death as Oahu and the Golden Gate are of life. The finest island in the world; the third finest harbour in the world; the most wonderful valley in the world; and the most admirable climate in the world; one of the most intoxicatingly varied populations in the world --- what comes of it?

What do we know of the whole splendour of the people and the place? Just exactly what Robert Louis Stevenson has to tell us: "only that and nothing more!"¹

This brings me back with a jerk to Edgar Allan Poe. He lives in a land whose every breath is lyric exaltation, and the only nature-poetry he gives us concerns Venice (in the "Assignation") and "the dark lake of Auber in the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir," which is no more American than Battersea Bridge. The only other picture that rises to my mind is "The House of Usher," which sounds more like Germany or Norfolk.

Whitman is almost equally unconvincing as far as scenery goes. The secret of all Nature-poetry is the interpretation of every phenomenon as a direct dealing of God with the soul, and Whitman rarely reaches to be more than a recorder or reflector of Nature. It stirs him at times to big thoughts, but hardly ever in that intimate manner, that sense of necessity, which we see in Keats, Coleridge, and even Wordsworth.

And yet he does something better than all this. He gets, as none other ever got it, the sense of vast open space and the vigorous autochthon rejoicing in his strength --- man made one with the biggest kind of Nature.

Most of Poe's best scenery is pure imagination; for example, the matter of ice-lands in Arthur Gordon Pym; of the realists Mark Twain is the only one worth a moment's consideration. The Mississippi really seems to have impressed him; but it is only in rare moods, and these poetic moods are by no means his best. I find it difficult to refrain from shouting for joy at the immensity of those swirling waters. I understand Beethoven rearing at the sunrise. But Mark Twain at his best is a profaner of these sublimities; the shallow criticism is usually uppermost in his mind. Indeed, one wonders whether his deeper passages were not written just to show us that he could do it. With the obvious result that he shows us that he couldn't.

In fact, if we are to take the loftiness of the habitual plane of thought to be the first qualification of a great artist, Poe and Whitman stand alone.

Of these Poe, philosophy and all, is little more than "Thoughts on Death," a limitation as bad as that of Degas or Gustave Moreau. There is more deep and more varied thought in a single sonnet of Baudelaire. Poe lives principally by the vividness of his imagery and the excellence of his style. But Europe, in the same century, can name in literature alone fifty artists with superior vision and equal execution.

As to Whitman, I confess that I praise him with an exceeding bad grace. I am cursed with a public school and university education, though luckily I was born with enough native sense to shirk the soulless ritual of it so far as might be, and its bad influence has been corrected by years of wandering in the wilds. How the "scholar" can pretend to admire Whitman one can only explain by theories highly discreditable to the scholar. But, however we may despise the scholar, there are yet natural laws of rhythm. I do not argue that we know them all; on the contrary, I expect every new artist to declare new laws. But I deny that Whitman did so.

As an artist, he appears to me incomparably deficient. There is not one line whose music is retained by memory; I simply fail to understand the people who talk of his "subtle rhythm." I am deaf to it. And though his thought is so finely pantheistic, now and again, what point is there in the quotations from the catalogue of the Army and Navy Stores which make up three-quarters of his work? A great mind, perhaps; it seems to me as if that mind had been overwhelmed by the immensity of its material. He obtained such mystic rapture from every object that he could do nothing but scribble down its name!

He has been most praised, too, and has probably achieved most fame, by the perfectly gratuitous coarseness of his phrase whenever that phrase becomes articulate.

It is rather like Satan rebuking sin; but I think that the passage in A Woman Waits for Me ending with the words "accumulated within me" is revolting and beastly.

Quite right, someone will say, that pure beastliness should find expression; the point of view is as well worth recording as any other. Whitman has no doubt expressed the gross animal instinct which growls in man, and I think no man before Whitman ever consciously expressed it to himself. But is it art? Is there any merit in this expression? Is there melody, or fitness of any kind, in it? Why is this more poetic than the remarks expressed in even simpler (and therefore better) language on the walls of our "Vespasiennes"?

What said Blake? "Everything that lives is holy"; "the lust of the goat is the Glory of God"; --- true as truth itself.

But "truth is beauty," too; and the truth of life is not beautiful like the truth of Art, because Art selects the essential truth, the truth that is common to all, the "thing-in-itself," and declares that truth in fitting language. Whitman's language is occasionally not fitting; it is filthy; it has no link with eternal truth such as is given by beauty of expression, by style, which manifests the internal harmony of the universe.

We should not tolerate such language even in a newspaper, even in a modern 'drawing-room whose conversation is confined to enlightened comment upon the works of Professor Von Krafft-Ebing; but we must praise it, must we, "because Whitman saw the great vision of the Universal Unity"? Every artist sees this vision; every truly religious person sees this vision; many of them have deemed it most fitting to express this vision by symbolising it as Sex; but not one has made the indecent gesture. In India many millions worship the Shivalingam; it is represented over and over again in every temple in every material and every size; but there is never anything to shock or to disgust. It is not a question of morality --- Whitman's morals are in all respects admirably clean --- but of decency; and Whitman's indecencies --- I have not quoted the worst --- seem to me as pointless and inane as those of a crew of drunken sailors in a Limehouse bar. Even in the cleaner poems, the "Song of Myself," the "Song of the Open Road," one gets this conviction of the domination of mind by matter which is to me the supreme horror. That and the monstrous egoism of the man, the bombast and crudity alike of thought and utterance, leave me with the feeling that I did well indeed to close my Whitman after a conscientious perusal, never to open it again, at least with the idea of obtaining anything of worth.

I think that the real ground of his reputation lies in the very uncouthness of his form, and in the fact that one said: "Here is an American voice in tune with the most advanced voices of Europe." Max Nordau, too, in classing him with the great men whom his spite prompted him to spit upon from an altitude about a million miles beneath their boots, gave him an altogether false importance.

Note:
1. Lloyd Osbourne, however, is responsible for much of the best of my favourite novel The Wrecker.

Previous Crowley Classics To be continued

from the Grady Project:

Spirit of Earth

I am a Soldier----

I kill!

I am the essence of hatred

And bred in the red alembic of war;

I hate with a feral pride

Both brilliant and terrible.

Once I was Peace

And in my heart there glowed the futile hope

That for all time the bestial law of night

Had sheathed its sanguine talons.

Now I know

That this was false, for in its stead there rose

The tyranny and arrogance of race,

To sweep the world with flaming war and leave

The rancid blood of rapine to immerse

And clot the soil of freedom.

Here my hopes

And thin illusions for a better world

Were crushed and torn between the titan claws

Of brutal force barbarian.

I saw

The planned hypocrisy succeed its goal

And cultured nations reel before the lash

Of monster war mechanical unleashed,

And in my soul

Was gendered from this cataclysmic reft

A hatred more insatiate

Than lust of fame or gain or ought but that I find

This beast of Tyranny, and then with care

Enfold him sure and slowly that he feel

And know with terror numbed tongue the dread

Dark bitter taste of death, as kraken limbed

I crush his life with bonds unloosed and shorn

From peoples never conquered.

Thus I work

And plan that day of justice when all men

May live the peace of progress, and their will

Of life and love be not denied.

For this----I am a Soldier

For this----I kill!

-- Grady L. McMurtry

7/3/1942 e.v.

Published in Ecclesia Gnostica I:4 (San Francisco: O.T.O., 1985 e.v.).

Previous Grady Project Next Grady Project

An Abramelin Ramble,

with visits to roadside attractions along the way
and sundry personal advice.

PART VI -- Pedigrees & Egg Suckers. Onward..

Derived from a lecture on 7/22/87 e.v. by Bill Heidrick
Copyright © Bill Heidrick

WHAT HAS IT DONE FOR/TO YOU LATELY?

If you keep getting the same thing over again and over again, you haven't got the Holy Guardian Angel. You may have something useful, or you may not. One mark of the Holy Guardian Angel is that it leads to life. It enhances; it adds variety; you get high. If you feel lousy, including hangover after too much fun, it's not the right thing. You have heard of war? All the miseries in the world are some such thing as this. As far as finding money is concerned, if you can catch one that really can be convinced that's the only way you will feed it, then it'll go out and find money. Most of them, dumb as they are, aren't that dumb. Most of them realize that if you think that you have money or you think that you can get money, then you'll feed them. They don't need to do more, and they won't. It's very simple to think of these other things as parasites. As long as you provide attention, they will feed. There are certain types that take pieces out of you when they eat, but that's not because anything that they devour of your attention is lost. You don't really give anything when you feed these spirits. What you lose is what they do to you to get you into a feeding trough, what they have to do to you to make you give them attention. The Holy Guardian Angel is somewhat like this in a superficial way; but it will listen to your complaints and try something else. These destructive spirits don't have that capability. The way it was put to me by my own father, if you find a dog that sucks eggs, you better shoot it. There's no way you are going to stop that dog from breaking into your hen house and sucking eggs. It's the same thing with a sheep killing dog. Once they start that, they will never quit. If you got a dog that damn near kills you, get rid of it. If you got a dog that makes the neighbors so pissed that they want to shoot you after they shoot the dog, you better do something about that dog. If you depend on those eggs in that chicken house for your breakfast, which is more important, the breakfast or the dog?

NOTHING NOXIOUS WASTED, CHAKRA UP:

Actually, there are two useful things about depression, one rather less useful than the other. You can get on SSI if you are sufficiently depressed. The other use for depression is part of the Kundalini process. It's a way you can develop power in the Muladhara Chakra. Instead of just letting it spin around in there forever, once it builds up an enormous amount of power, realize that you are not really depressed. You have simply turned in on yourself over and over again. That's why this state of mind is associated with Saturn and melancholy. Crowley includes such methods under the formula of NOX. It can be a pretty dangerous business. Don't mess with that until you have a good general grip on your emotions.

ABRAMELIN SCENIC VIEW:

As to the rest of the Abramelin procedure or process, start by finding a subject, religious or something similar, realizing that religion doesn't have to be the narrow thing that it is defined to be in our culture. Next, achieve solitude. That is best if it's solitude with support, so that you don't have to worry about anything. Failing that, you can have a room in a house. Failing that, you can have a hanging on a wall or something similar. You can even have a floor cloth or small carpet that you spread and sit on. Anything of that kind will do. If worse comes to worse, you can invent a symbol for yourself, something simple that you can draw on a piece of paper. Such a symbol can be a place, but not everyone can accomplish the work with only a symbol as an astral temple. Doing it with a symbol alone is a little like trying to live off one peanut a day.

A LOOK AT THE ROAD AHEAD:

Proceed with a three-stage process. The first stage is: "I don't know what I'm doing, and gradually I will learn." That's where rigid but simple discipline is most important. At that stage I recommend two performances, either one at dawn and one at sunset or at 6AM and 6PM. Unless you go outside a lot or live in a place exposed to the natural course of the day, you're not going to think in terms of sunrise and sunset as much as time on a clock. Separate your meditations by a good piece of the day, not just a few hours. Twelve hours will do nicely. Be very strict. Do not miss one meditation. If it's to be at 6AM and 6PM, no matter what else goes on, do your meditation at those times. This takes planning, since the practice should be kept up without significant failure for about three months, certainly not under three weeks. Do it for three months, and chances are it will take. Once you've gone through that, you will find that your meditation has grown more elaborate. You will get ideas as you are sitting and staring at a Tarot card, picturing a flower or looking into a mirror, whatever your meditation is. You will spontaneously come up with ways to enhance your meditation. About the middle of this period, start using some of these things. After testing such innovations, make a selection and use the best of them consistently. Develop a system. The middle part uses this system. The end part comes when you reach the point of listening to the inner voice.

GET YOUR MAP STRAIGHT:

If you try all this without preparation, you will get lemures or depression inducing things. That comes of being a mental bunch of pieces with no regular pattern. You can't attract the one big piece that fits everything until you are more unified in yourself. Such a regular practice acts like bio-feedback. With bio-feedback, the machine "beeps" wrong if you are wasting mental time. Once you have gotten regular practice well established, it will carry on without special effort. You may find that after the first three weeks, you are getting more and more done each time. Don't expect such results after only three weeks. Three months of meditations twice a day is more likely to produce such things. Write down your experiences immediately after each meditation so that you are able to figure out what's happened to you. Review your journal or diary for guidance. Whatever this experience may be, you are going to have to figure it out for yourself. If somebody else gives it to you, it's not going to be as good. You would be constantly thinking: "I'm not getting this right." Develop the method yourself, and you will get it right. It's yours. It comes from you. No outer standards are needed. You're the standard. You are making it better as you go. Trust no external measurement, take no concern with somebody else's idea of what needs to be accomplished. That's very important.

PLAN FOR REST BREAKS:

Eventually you will get to the point where you don't have to meditate at regular intervals. Maybe you can skip a day and get right back into it. After a while you may be able to skip a week. You may skip a little bit more time. Instead of doing three meditations to resume where you left off, it may only take a second meditation. Maybe instead of six, it takes three. These things vary. Numbers don't matter. Change and proportion matter. After a while you may be able to put years between these meditations and take no more to get back into them than in the first year you were doing them. A week's break can then be a year's break. What's happening is this: First of all there is the superficial matter of conditioning. You learn how to do it like riding a bicycle. It takes practice. It takes time. Eventually you can re- learn it very easily. It's not like languages. Some ways of learning languages can be transitory, readily forgotten. You will reach a level that transcends mere habituation. Whatever your meditation, if it has pattern to it, a strange thing will begin to happen. Have you ever noticed that when somebody you haven't seen in years meets you or calls you on the telephone, a lot of times it's as though no time had gone by at all? You might continue a conversation you had with that person five years ago and broke off suddenly. We live at many different rates of time. We live conceptually, not by the ticking of a clock. Some things seem to have stopped. Some things seem to be going on. Then an event will occur and one of those things that seemed to stop a long time ago will continue where it left off. It never did stop. Some things happen in their own time. What may have been literally three years by the calendar amounted to no time at all in another part of you. That's where you have to get with these meditations before you can be cut free from the time problem.

STICK TO THE ROUTE YOU PICKED:

You must to be very disciplined to get to that place. Discipline requires regularity; twice a day, 6AM and 6PM. Discipline also requires definite things to do, with no short-cuts allowed. There should be a pattern, a system to your meditations, so that you are, in way of speaking, living the next one after you have done the last one. For example, if the meditation is to pick up individual stones from one container and put them in another, the next stage of that meditation is to pick up the next stone. It doesn't matter when you do it. As you do it, you will have one event immediately connected to the next, foreshadowed, foreknown and no questions.

Next month, Squaresville.

Previous Abramelin Ramble, Part V Next Abramelin Ramble

Primary Sources

Grady McMurtry, Caliph
Grady declared the activation of the Caliphate to two witnesses from old custom, R.I.Regardie and Gerald Yorke. Here is a letter to Yorke detailing progress in getting O.T.O. back in shape and offering credentials. The Kaaba days were productive in some senses, but the effort was fraught with desertions and disasters. Later in the decade, 1977 e.v., a new attempt was made in Berkeley, and the O.T.O. as we know it today emerged from eclipse into LVX.

A slightly abridged version of this letter appears in the printed edition of the "TLC". The full text is included in this electronic edition.

-oOo-

{O.T.O. Letterhead}

Gerald Yorke
Forthampton Court
Gloucester, England

O.T.O. Kaaba Clerkhouse
4411 Balboa Street
San Francisco, Calif 94121
March 8, 1970

Dear Gerald

Thank you for your patience in not writing. I would not have imposed.

Your letter of 27 Nov first etc. The only things I asked from Heflin of the material he brought back from his visit with you was one copy each of the two xeroxed Comments on Liber AL by A.C., one begins "Nu conceals Hadit..."; the other is the one "copied from a holograph notebook...Dr. Kowal". Jerry Kay has a girl friend who has access to a xerox, and she simply xeroxed everything in sight so I actually got them from Jerry. I have your annotated DRUG FIEND because it was being bandied about. When Bob split taking the publication fund we had at that time (after I had written that letter for him on O.T.O. letterhead) things became terribly confused for awhile so I traded Chuck my copy of DRUG FIEND for yours on a temporary basis so he would have something to work with and your book would be safe. If you advise me to forward your copy to Heflin by return mail, or to you, I will certainly do so, even though, as you can see on the enclosed O.T.O. Publications schedule, it is listed as number 2 on our First Priority List as soon as we have our press operating. The cards will be done commercially. I do not myself for one moment believe his story about wanting it for a movie. Copies of DRUG FIEND are available if that is all he wants. The situation seems to be that Heflin is making me the scapegoat for his own emotional hangups (which I believe to be sufficiently explained in the enclsoed sheaf of correspondence LEE-CHUCK-GRADY) and you know what they say about Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, etc. He sees me as keeping Chuck from him. Although all I have ever said to Chuck on the subject was they he should do his own Will, and only he knows what That is. I even spent a day running around with my car helping Chuck to get to Los Angeles to see Heflin that once for all the good it did so far as Heflin's feelings toward me are concerned. In any case, thinking as he does, Heflin may do anything to embarrass me. One thing is to raise this fuss over DRUG FIEND. Another is publishing 666, SEX AND THE O.T.O. That can only be a personal insult to me since he refuses to remain in the O.T.O. under my jurisdiction. My only concern in the whole sorry mess is that through an inadvertence on my part, i.e. unknowingly coming into the situation between Chuck and Lee, that he may cause you embarrassment by publishing the 7th, 8th and 9th degree O.T.O. materials he brought back from your place just to "get back" at me. I know you would not have intended that, as you have been much too careful in the past not to give it to unauthorized persons, and Lee was only a Minerval. So far as I am concerned it is karmic, like the loss of the library at West Point. I do not know why that had to be, but it may be that that is a part of the Old Aeon debris that has to be shucked off so that the New Aeon can start clean. If you did not receive the material from 93 Jermyn Street, as you say in re: the graffiti hangings on the walls there and books with covers with paintings like that of the dust jacket on Symonds MAGIC OF ALEISTER CROWLEY, then I am certain there is material in that library that can do positive harm to whoever has it. A.C. had some Enochian tablets matted in book form at 93 Jermyn Street that he told me not to touch one evening because "you have no idea what forces you could have set in motion," and something certainly seems to be driving the people of the outlaw "Solar" lodge in Los Angeles, who I believe stole the West Point library, out of their minds. In any case, I only wish Lee Heflin the accomplishment of his True Will. If that is his True Will, then so mote it be.

In addition to your copy of DRUG FIEND, I also have Achad's CHALICE OF ECSTASY. Why Heflin thought so little of it he just left it laying around I do not know, but when Bob split and Chuck had to give up the Precita apartments in San Francisco, I was the only one well enough situated to store their library, so I still have it. It is an interesting document and I would like to see it published at some future time, but we have no particular intention of publishing it at the present time. So if you wish it returned to you or Heflin for him to publish I only await word from you.

As for the O.H.O. As you have seen from the dust jacket to the CONFESSIONS, Grant now rivals Metzger in claiming the title. Were I feeling facetious I would write him and welcome him to the club, except that I do not claim to be the O.H.O. I claim nothing, but by right of A.C.'s express desire that I should occupy the office of succession after Karl's death. I have assumed the Caliphate, which I doubt A.C. ever had occasion to discuss with either of them. I base this on the following documents:

A.C.'s letter to me of Nov 19, 1943, as 777 (you have a copy)

A.C.'s documents to me of March 22, 1946 and April 11, 1946, re my authority from him in the U.S.A. and California (you have copies of both)

A.C. letter to me of Sept 28, 1944 (copy enclosed) in which he speaks of "my plan for your career as my Fides Achates, alter ero, Caliph, & so on."

A.C.'s letter to me of 22 Aug 1944 (copy enclosed) in which he states "You are the only man from the U.S.A. of the younger generation who has been properly blooded, and you know me personally with a remarkable degree of intimacy considering the shortness of our association. You are also quite the most serious and intelligent of the younger lot. This singles you out as the proper man to take charge of affairs when the time is ripe."

A.C.'s official letter to me of Nov 21 '44 (copy enclosed) in which he says "The Caliphate" ... One of the (strikingly few) commands given to me was: "Trust not a stranger; fail not of an heir." ... Frater Saturnus is of course the natural Caliph ... he can only be a stopgap, because of his age; I have to look for his successor. ... Your actual life, or "blooding", is the first essential for a Caliph. For -- say 20 years hence the Outer Head of the Order must, among other things, have had the experience of war as it is in actual fact to-day."

A.C.'s official invitation to reside with him dated Feb 8 '46 (copy enclosed).

A.C.'s letter to me on April 7, 1947 (copy enclosed) in which he says ".. in case of things happening ((he had just been discussing the accident of Mar 8 in which he had almost died)) you will become a man of very great importance and responsibility."

A.C.'s letter to me of 17 June 1947 (copy enclosed) in which he says "In the event of my death, Frater Saturnus is of course my successor, but after his death the terrible burden of responsibility might very easily fall upon your shoulders..."
And it has. Not only has he stated quite explicitly that I am the only man in the Order who has been properly blooded to succeed Saturnus after his death, but that I have been singled out to take charge of affairs when the time is ripe. Saturn is dead. The time is ripe. The position was empty. I have assumed it at A.C.'s express, documented wish that I should do so "as the proper man to take charge of affairs." I am the Caliph. The succession will pass through me. What Grant, Metzger, etc., claim about the O.H.O. is not my concern. Who establishes the Caliphate establishes the continuity of the Order. The position of O.H.O. will be decided at the proper time and in the proper manner. I would prefer that you did not discuss this with others at the present time, just as A.C. told me in strict confidence (letter of 17 June '47). (Metzger and Grant would just say "oh yes, we claim that too" with or without documentation) but of course I leave that to your own good judgment.

Now, for the current situation. In obedience to the command by Horus, III 41, to

"Establish at thy Kabba a clerk-house" we have rented a store in San Francisco for a printing press, to handle books both retail and wholesale, and to have a place where we can meet people, have classes etc. The address is

O.T.O. Kaaba Clerk-House
4411 Balboa St.
San Francisco, Calif 94121

The phone number is (area code 415) 751-7317.{Note to Web edition -- this address and phone number is obsolete, included for historic reasons only.} The store has an apartment in back and Chuck and his brother Ray are living there at the present time. There will be an office for me to handle business affairs as soon as we can get it furnished. A copy of our first priority printing list is enclosed. Two different people have promised us the money for a printing press. We hope to be in operation printing A.C. material within a month, which is why they are being done commercially. We have a firm commitment for the money, and we hope to have them out by the solstice. Heflin advertising that his set of transparencies are available, regardless of what he may have said to you about taking his set off the market, has caused confusion in the minds of our potential backers, but there is nothing we can do except ignore it, so we are continuing on our own way and allowing him to go his. The second Chico edition of 777 REVISED has been promised to us by the Equinox, and I presume it will be delivered. This one will be bound and we are planning a dust jacket for it. By the way, did you get the saddle stitched Chico 777 REVISED that Mildred sent you? You may have told her, but I have not heard.

A.C. seems to be becoming quite a fad on this side of the Atlantic. We are told that Weiser is coming out with a 777, DIARY OF A DRUG FIEND, MOON CHILD, and BOOK OF LETTERS all within the next 6 to 7 weeks. Also that Jerry Kay has published a new Liber AL and has estimates for a TEMPLE OF SOLOMON THE KING, etc. Interesting if true, TUESDAY'S CHILD, a New Youth-Radical Left tabloid in Los Angeles, published the entire 777 REVISED serially and many other things, e.g. from MAGICK IN THEORY AND PRACTICE, etc. I have a subscription and all back issues, but whether they would send them overseas or not I do not know. We have reason to believe that one staff member may know something of the missing libraries, and we think we know how to contact him privately. It will have to be done cautiously, or I will have the FBI on my neck re the chase after the Braytons, and I am not interested in prosecuting them, only in recovering the missing material. The address is

TUESDAY'S CHILD
1616 North Argyle Ave.
Holywood, Calif 90028

A year's subscription is $6 on this side of the Atlantic. There are others and I am attempting to keep track of them as time allows. p. 114 of the Mar 1970 issue of ESQUIRE features a clipping from the Blythe case. p. 133 of the Mar 1970 issue of McCALL'S mentions A.C. in re a black magic cult in San Francisco, etc.

Would it be possible for you to obtain a copy of the Margaret Bruce catalogue and their other advertising leaflets for us? The address is

Maragret Bruce,
Holmington Old Inn,
Hunwick, Crook Co.,
Duram, England

We are told that they have some of the oils and incense A.C. liked to use, but also that they refuse to supply people in the states.

As ever,

Hymenaeus Alpha
IX° Ordo Templi Orientis
Caliph

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Poetry

	Breath of Stars and rushing Wind
	Between the Pillars I stand Within,
	Through the Dust and Sea
	The whirling Suns of Destiny.
	Angelic Vision Seeds of Light
	In my heart dwells thy flight,
	Thou art the Tree
	Of wind and Thee . . .
	Thy wings enfold the Mystery.
	7/2/94 e.v.
	-- Firebird, 397

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From the Outbasket

This column is intended to reflect a slice of what passes across my desk. Not all that comes is welcome news and speculation. This month I have the duty to announce a Greater Feast.

Sister Tatjana Legradic, beloved wife of Brother Oliver Legradic, has been received into the embrace of Nuit. At 6:10 AM on July 18th, 1994 e.v., Brother Oliver, Master of Abrahadabra Lodge in Ljubljana Slovenia called with this message for All: "My lovely wife and bride of the Rosy Cross and EGC, Priestess and Initiator of O.T.O. left this planet, and she died." O.T.O. Camps, Oases and Lodges are invited to offer Gnostic Mass in her memory and in support of Brother Oliver in this time of parting. Many are met along the Path to the Highest, but few indeed are they who Labor as One with the Traveler to the City of the Pyramids. May Peace and Fulfillment flow from the steps of our Sister on that journey, to enrich and bless those yet upon the dusty path of twilight.

-- TSG (Bill Heidrick)

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Events Calendar for August 1994 e.v.

8/2/94	Rite of Mars 8:00 PM	Sirius Oasis
8/6/94	Sustaining Members Luncheon 1:00PM	Thelema Ldg.
8/7/94	Lammas picnic in the hillswith Caitlin, meet 10AM at Oz House
8/7/94	Gnostic Mass 8:00PM Horus Temple	Thelema Ldg.
8/8/94	Thelema Lodge Meeting 8:00PM	Thelema Ldg.
8/10/94	Sirius Oasis Meeting 8PM Berkeley	Sirius Oasis
8/11/94	Library Night 8PM Call to attend	Thelema Ldg.
8/14/94	Rite of Sol 2:00 PM	Sirius Oasis
8/14/94	Gnostic Mass 8:00PM Horus Temple	Thelema Ldg.
8/15/94	Origins of Rosicrucian Mythology with Fr. Hrafnkel 8:00 PM	Thelema Ldg.
8/17/94	Magick in Theory and Practice class with Bill in San Anselmo 7:30PM	Thelema Ldg.
8/20/94	Full Moon at 11/47 PM
8/21/94	Gnostic Mass 8:00PM Horus Temple	Thelema Ldg.
8/22/94	Section Two Reading Group at OZ House with Caitlin 8:00PM Golden Ass of Apuleius	Thelema Ldg.
8/25/94	Library Night 8PM Call to attend	Thelema Ldg.
8/26/94	Rite of Venus 8:00 PM	Sirius Oasis
8/27/94	777 Poetry Society 8:00PM w.Fr.P.I.	Thelema Ldg.
8/28/94	Gnostic Mass 8:00PM Horus Temple	Thelema Ldg.
8/29/94	Butterfly Net Computer Group 8:00PM	Thelema Ldg.
8/31/94	Liber XV Study Group w. Bp. T Dionysys 8:00PM	Thelema Ldg.