by John Carter
The Gnostic Mass was Crowley's replacement for the “corrupted” mass celebrated by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. The text of the Mass, referred to as Liber XV, was written in Moscow in 1913. Partly inspired by the Russian Orthodox Mass, it is surprisingly Christian in its symbology, and there is nothing obscene about it despite what certain detractors may say. In fact, it is reminiscent of Wagner's Parsifal with its repeated references to “lance” and “Grail,” which are its most suggestive elements. As in the Christian Mass, the Holy Spirit is invoked often. The most openly erotic element in the mass occurs when the priestess disrobes for part of the ceremony.
The Gnostic Mass is too long to reproduce here but may be found in its entirety in Crowley's book, Magick. It is also reprinted in section IV of Gems from the Equinox, edited by Israel Regardie, and The Equinox vol. III, no. 10, as well as various locations on the internet. It would have been interesting to see what Crowley and the OTO would have done with the Gnostic Library discovered at Nag Hammadi by Egyptian Bedouins in 1945, two years before Crowley's death. However, the library was not published until 1978; thus, the Mass was not influenced by any of its previously unknown texts.
Originally intended by Crowley as the central ceremony of the OTO, both public and private, the Gnostic Mass is a rite conducted today by the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica (“ECG”—the Gnostic Catholic Church) and celebrated regularly in major cities around the world. Evidently, visitors are usually welcome, provided they are willing to partake of the gnostic eucharist. The EGC is a religious body whose history and structure overlap that of the OTO.
Parsons became involved with the OTO when an unknown scientific colleague took the rocketeer to a meeting at Smith's house in Hollywood, after which Parsons and his wife, Helen, began attending the various meetings of the lodge, as well as the weekly performance of the Gnostic Mass. The “Church of Thelema,” which Smith had incorporated for this purpose, used the Gnostic Mass as a recruiting ground for the OTO.
In the OTO Parsons had found a new outlet for his romantic notions. By day he was a student of the physical sciences; by night, of the occult sciences. In Analysis By A Master of the Temple he wrote of his first impressions of Smith: “The alternate repulsion and attraction you felt the first year after meeting [Smith] were caused by a subconscious resistance against the ordeals ahead. Had you had these experiences before, without such resistance, you would have become hopelessly unbalanced.” The 25-year-old Parsons eventually discovered in Smith what Malina had found in von Kármán: a father figure who could act as mentor to his hungry intellect, something Parsons had been searching for since the death of his grandfather eight years earlier—indeed, since he was old enough to hear the tales of how wicked his real father had been.
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A Short History of the OTO
The Sign of Horus: SILENCE.
The Ordo Templi Orientis (Order of the Temple of the East) is a quasi-Masonic initiating body founded in Germany just after the turn of the century. Its German name is Orientalischer Templer-Orden (Oriental Order of Templars), and there is purportedly a secret meaning to the letters “OTO” as well. The occultic order's highest grades are said to involve working with “tantric” exercises, usually referred to as sex magic.
Publicly the Ordo Templi Orientis claims descent from some of the great heretical movements such as the Bavarian Illuminati, the Rosicrucians, the Albigensians and Cathars, the Knights Templar, and various early gnostic sects. These claims are very helpful, for they aid in placing the OTO within a proper historical context, as we can guess much about it from its spiritual forebears. However, it is also desirable to learn about the secular origins of the OTO as well.
The Order traces its modern origins to two men: Carl Kellner and Theodor Reuss (pronounced “Royce”). Kellner, born September 1, 1851, was a wealthy Austrian industrialist who had made a good bit of money as a paper chemist. Reuss was born June 28, 1855 in Augsburg, Germany, about 15 miles northwest of Munich. Both men were born not long after the German Revolution of 1848, and thus lived in a world of Prussian military expansion. Borders changed often during their lifetimes. At various points throughout the men's lives, Austria and Germany were intermittently a part of Prussia, then a major western power.
Reuss became a Mason in 1876, and was also a singer, journalist and possible spy for the Prussian police. It is alleged that he infiltrated the Socialist League founded by Karl Marx's daughter and her husband. It is interesting to note how many famous occultists are said to have had connections with intelligence organizations, the military, and the police, such as Reuss, Crowley, Parsons, John Dee, Grady McMurtry, Anton LaVey, Michael Aquino, to name a few.
Reuss was also working on a revival of the Bavarian Illuminati, dispersed nearly 100 years earlier, and was at the same time the Grand Master of the Swedenborgian Rite in Germany, as well as a Magus of the Societas Rosicruciana (“Rosicrucian Society”).
Kellner was an initiate of the influential Hermetic Brotherhood of Light (HBL), founded by P.B. Randolph around 1870. The history of the HBL is not germane to our story, but its rites included sacred applications of sexual energy, and Crowley names the HBL in writing as the source of the OTO's “secret,” which is sexual in nature. The reader desiring more information on the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light is directed to Allen Greenfield's published history of the order, listed in the bibliography herein.
Kellner was also a high-ranking Freemason and a student of the Eastern mysteries. In the 1890s, Kellner claimed to have met three adepts from the East. One was a Sufi, Soliman ben Aifa, and the other two were Hindu tantrikas, Bhima Sena Pratapa of Lahore, and Sri Mahatma Agamya Paramahamsa. After their meeting, Kellner alleged he had found a “Key” (German: Schlüssel) to “the Mysteries,” the heart of esoteric rites.
The word KEY turns up so many times in the telling of this tale that it reminds one of the pulp publisher Ray Palmer, who always said he had a FACT which proved the validity of Richard Shaver's wild Dero tales. It's as if the word itself has a hidden meaning. Kellner's Key, of course, was sex magic; perhaps the implication was key-in-lock sexual symbolism.
In 1895, Kellner proposed to Reuss that they disseminate this newfound Key through an organized masonic rite. Kellner planned a reformation of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light in Germany, a series of three degrees that would be open only to the highest-ranking masons. Reuss used his masonic connections to acquire the 90th and 96th degrees of the Ancient and Primitive Rite of Memphis and Mizraim, and the 33rd degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, from John Yarker, a masonic historian in England. Despite its initial association, the OTO eventually retreated from Masonry, beginning with Crowley, who abandoned any claim to “make” Masons.
One of the Kellner-Reuss Order's platforms was the Swedenborgian Rite, named for the Swedish mystic Immanuel Swedenborg, which was used for the first three “Craft” degrees of Freemasonry (Entered Apprentice, Fellowcraft, and Master Mason), with the other, higher degrees serving as a vehicle for dissemination of the Key. Things seem to have been finalized somewhat within the Order in 1902, at which time the Memphis-Mizraim degrees were acquired. Initiations began, but students who advanced were often shocked at the revelation of the Key; others reportedly found it absurd, and many left the as-yet unnamed order. Occultist Franz Hartmann (1838–1912) was one early member who left, around the time the order began calling itself “OTO.”
On June 7, 1905, Kellner, now known as Frater Renatus, died. Reuss, who had already taken the lead role, was fully in charge now, and it was apparently he who chose the name Ordo Templi Orientis, since the appellation evidently did not exist before 1905. As to the significance of the name, the east (Orientis), of course, is where the sun rises, and is also where Kellner found his Key.
Within this body of adepts, Reuss was known variously as “Merlin” and “Peregrinus,” and it was he who set up the 10-degree structure of the OTO that remains in place today. He also wrote various rituals
for each degree, but most of these are no longer in use, having been replaced by those of Crowley.
Several famous occultists were chartered by Reuss to operate OTO lodges, including Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925), founder of Anthroposophy, who was chartered for a German lodge in 1906, although some of his spiritual descendants prefer to ignore this fact today. Dr. Gerard Encausse (1865–1916), better known as Papus, was chartered in France in 1908. The absorption of the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica formed another link between the Papus lineage and the modern OTO.
A Dr. Arnold Krumm-Heller (1879–1949), also known by the Aztec name Huiracocha, was chartered for all of Latin America, but he never took the Order any further there and it seems to have died out. The use of Aztec names is still a practice among well-to-do Mexicans today.
Aleister Crowley joined the OTO in 1910, thinking it was just one of many other Eastern masonic lodges. He seems to have collected degrees from initiating bodies like some people collect postage stamps, and had been initiated all the way to the 33rd degree of the Scottish Rite in Mexico some 10 years earlier. He had also been initiated into the 90th and 95th degrees of the Memphis-Mizraim Rite by the same John Yarker who had given the 90th and 96th degrees of that rite to Reuss. The OTO was just another order like any other—or so Crowley thought.
The famous story concerning Crowley's initiation into the higher mysteries of the order goes like this: Crowley's Book of Lies was published in 1912, at which time he was an honorary VII° member of the OTO (and rather disappointed about it at that). After reading the book, Reuss approached Crowley angrily, accusing the latter of having revealed the secret of the highest degree of the Order, i.e., the IX°. Reuss stated that Crowley would be compelled to be initiated into that degree immediately, and thus sworn to secrecy.3
Crowley denied the allegation, so Reuss pointed out the offending passage to him. Crowley would say that he instantaneously knew the answer to all the mysteries, the mysteries of the OTO and of many other spiritual traditions as well: He had the Key.
It is unclear what chapter of Crowley's book contained the passage that had riled Reuss. Robert Anton Wilson, popular author and writer of our introduction, says in Cosmic Trigger that it was chapter 69, but the most likely candidate appears to be chapter 36, the Star Sapphire, which is named in Crowley's De Arte Magica as containing the secret of the OTO. In reading some of the other chapters (15, e.g.) in The Book of Lies, it is difficult to believe that Crowley did not at least suspect the Key before his meeting with Reuss.
Regardless, Crowley was given the IX° in 1912, and the entire written corpus of the Order was at his disposal. He would soon rewrite almost everything within it to bring it into line with his own magical discoveries. On April 21, 1912, Crowley was given the X° and authority over the entire British Isles. His own magical record says he learned the Key in June of that year, in actuality a reference to when he translated the documents from German into English. In 1916, Crowley appointed Charles Stansfeld Jones, whom we have already met as Frater Achad, to be his Viceroy to North America. Jones’ X° name was Parzival. On May 10, 1921, Reuss chartered Jones as Head of the OTO for North America, but Crowley overturned this action after succeeding Reuss.
Too many other charters and degrees were granted by the OTO to relate here. One of interest, although not part of our story, was to H. Spencer Lewis, founder of the Ancient and Mystical Order of the Rosy Cross (A.M.O.R.C.), i.e., “the Rosicrucians.” Lewis was given a document referred to as a “Gage of Amity” in 1921, and his mail-order mystery school San Jose, California, still thrives today, evidently without possessing the Key.
In 1917, Crowley rewrote the OTO degrees again, especially the lower ones, removing most of the masonic material and replacing it with thelema (explained below). Reuss was in agreement, but other lodges would not be. In 1920, Reuss translated Crowley's Gnostic Mass into German and began to translate Liber AL as well, until he had a stroke in the spring of that year. Crowley then assumed an acting role as head of the OTO until November 27, 1921, at which time he proclaimed himself “Outer Head of the Order.” Jones and another X° initiate, Heinrich Tranker of the German Pansophia group, confirmed his position. Reuss died on October 28, 1923.
There were other orders that, although not a part of the OTO, were officially associated with it, many of which were not prepared to accept thelema when it was finally revealed to them by Crowley at a German conference in 1925. Readers interested in the histories of the various orders and breakaway groups are referred to The Equinox, vol. III, no. 10, and the various online histories of the Order.
As noted, in 1914 the Agape Lodge had been founded in Vancouver by Jones, AKA Achad/Parzival, under Crowley's authority. Crowley visited the lodge in 1915, at which time he met Wilfred Smith, who had been a charter member of the Agape Lodge. The two got along well at that point.
Fifteen years later, in 1930, Crowley sent Smith to Los Angeles with the express intent of opening another lodge, also to be called Agape Lodge. The lodge was incorporated April 4, 1934, and its first meeting was held on September 21, 1935 in Hollywood. Smith was appointed as “Head” for the United States, for which office he bore the X° name “Ramaka.”
In 1941, Grady McMurtry (October 18, 1918–July 12, 1985) was first initiated into the OTO by Wilfred Smith at Agape Lodge No. 2. In 1943, Crowley granted McMurtry the IX° and the magical motto of “Hymenaeus Alpha,” in England, where the latter was stationed during the war. McMurtry worked with Army Ordnance during World War II, served in Korea and retired a major. Today he is better remembered as the second Caliph of the OTO, while Karl Germer was the first Caliph, though he never used that term. The third Caliph, Hymenaeus Beta, has been Outer Head of the Order since McMurtry's death in 1985.
The grades of the Ordo Templi Orientis have rather involved names and echo the grades of various masonic rites, as well as those of the Bavarian Illuminati. They are:
0. Minerval
I. Man & Brother
II. Magician
III. Master Magician
IV. Companion of the Royal Arch of Enoch
V. Sovereign Prince of Rose Croix, Knight of the Pelican & Eagle
VI. Illustrious Knight Templar of the Order of Kadosh & Supreme Companion of the Holy Grail
VII. Very Illustrious Sovereign Grand Inspector General
VIII. Perfect Pontiff of the Illuminati, Epopt of the Illuminati
IX. Initiate of the Sanctuary of the Gnosis
X. Rex Summus Sanctissimus, Supreme & Most Holy King
The first three grades are open to all who request them and correspond roughly to the “nursery” grades of the Illuminati. The five lower grades correspond to the “chakras,” i.e., yogic/tantric energy centers, as well as to the “naked-eye” planets. Higher degrees are by invitation only. Most people are surprised to learn the VII° requires a vow of chastity. There is also an XI° that is not part of the formal structure but was developed by Crowley.
As noted, Crowley rewrote the OTO degrees, replacing the masonic material with what he called “thelema.” Thelema is the Greek for “will,” a word important in the work of Aleister Crowley for several reasons. In 1904, Crowley “received” The Book of the Law, technically called Liber AL vel Legis, through the mediumship of his first wife, Rose Kelly, while the couple was in Cairo celebrating their honeymoon. The book was allegedly dictated by a discarnate entity calling himself Aiwass, also spelled Aiwaz before Crowley changed it for numerological reasons.
One of the precepts contained in The Book of the Law (abbreviated “AL”) is, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” (see AL III:13). Its oft-cited complement is, “Love is the law, love under will.” These two precepts are standard salutations for members of the OTO even today. The words for “will” and “love” in Greek—thelema (θελημα) and agape (αγαπη), respectively—each have numerical values of 93, a number important in Crowley's system of magick.
These phrases carry with them a great duty to liv
e deliberately, to find one's True Will and then do it and nothing else. Outsiders often interpret them as invitations to “free love,” but that definition is not necessarily so. However, the word agape is a reference not only to “charitable love” but also to the “love feasts” of the second-century Christians, especially as interpreted by the Christian Gnostics, which did include a sexual meaning. The Agape Lodge was not called “Agape” for nothing.
A Rosicrucian order, the Golden Dawn—used as the basis for Crowley's “Astrum × Argenteum” magickal grading system—was modeled more after the mystery schools of the ancients, with the purpose of taking the candidate for initiation through a series of mystical exercises and ritual ceremonies.
Around 1887, a manuscript in cipher was found in a bookstore by a Dr. Woodman and/or Woodford. Woodman was a colleague of Dr. William Wynn Westcott, who in turn was acquainted with Theodor Reuss. Woodman and Westcott called on Samuel “MacGregor” Mathers to help them decipher it.
The manuscript consisted of rituals and analyses of the Tarot cards, as well as the address of a Fräulein Sprengel in Nuremberg, Germany. Upon being contacted by them, Anna Sprengel, as “Sapiens Dominabitur Astris” [Wise Mistress of the Stars?], sent the three men a charter for a new lodge in England: the Isis-Urania Lodge of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which opened on March 20, 1888. All three were chartered at the 7° = 4▫ degree, “Adeptus Exemptus,” and soon opened other lodges around the British Isles. The Golden Dawn seems to have had a surprisingly large network.
According to the foundation myth, Sprengel died soon after, and her remaining German colleagues allegedly withdrew all support from the English lodge; however, as it turns out, they never really existed. The English were on their own for now, but they felt assured that they had already received sufficient information to place them in contact with the mysterious “Secret Chiefs” of the Order.
