OTO

OTO: Ordo Templi Orientis

He became initiated into the secret order of the Golden Dawn in 1898. After nearly destroying the order, he started his own, and was shortly therafter recruited into OTO, on the pretext he had published their sex magic secrets.

Crowley married his obsessions with debauch, drugs and sex with the occult. Crowley went on to become the world head of the Ordo Templi Orientis, or Order of the Eastern Temple.  He further defined his own gnostic religion, Thelema, including eclectic ideas from occultism, Yoga, and both Eastern and Western mysticism (especially the Hermetic Qabalah).

Thelema is from the ancient Greek noun θÝλημα: "will", from the verb θÝλω: to will, wish, purpose.  Today’s equivalent buzzword is Intentionality.  In the broadest sense, magick is any act designed to cause intentional change.  Crowley’s Holy Guardian Angel embodied much the same archetype as Jung’s Self, and the Higher Self of Theosophy.

Crowley wrote that the Law is not a license to indulge in casual whim or to mindlessly accept cultural mores, but is rather a mandate to discover and manifest one's True Will, which he described as one's inner divine nature, spiritual destiny, or proper course in life. This is a nonlinear transformative path.

In 1307, the Knights Templar were accused of worshipping the heretical figure of Baphomet, considered by the uninitiated as a symbol of Satan. In reality, this symbol comes from a level deeper than and prior to such dichotomization as good/evil where the opposites are still fused.  It is actually a symbol of fertility, the erotic element being symbolic rather than literal.

The name itself is a puzzle, perhaps the corruption of Mahomet, brought back to Europe during the Crusades.  He figured preeminently in the Cathar heresies, and provided the basis for accusations of heresy and witchcraft.  However, it may come from combining two Greek words—baphe and metis—and means “absorption into wisdom.”

Dr. Hugh Schonfield, a Dead Sea Scrolls scholar knows the Atbash cipher, the Hebrew kabbalistic code which substitutes the first letter of the alphabet for the last and the second letter for the second last and so on. His simple explanation is the encrypted word Baphomet actually spells the name of the gnostic goddess: BPVMTh, Baphomet, transposed becomes ShVPYA, Sophia.

The OTO does not merely hint of occultism, but plunges headlong into the very subjects the high degree Masons are told are reserved to the core of initiation. And at the core of these secrets is the embrace of contradiction, of the “elixir of life, “ and of the power of blood.  It is the grad-school of masonic groups…a crash course, which might make you mad before it enlightens you.

The OTO was founded between 1895 and 1900 by a pair of powerful Freemasons, Karl Kellner and Theodor Reuss. Politically, the order was right-wing in the extreme, proposing the creation of a pan-German world based on pagan spiritual beliefs. Kellner died in 1905, and Reuss, a former spy for the Prussian Secret Service, assumed the office of high caliph. While living in London, Reuss spied on German socialist expatriates. In 1912 he made the acquaintance of Aleister Crowley [pictured], and appointed him head of the OTO's British chapter. But The Beast's political loyalties have always been an open question.

Theoretically, the original O.T.O. could be called a proto-fascist group, with its various elements, such as its role as a Thelemic revolutionary movement, its élitism, its personality cult of the leader, in symbols and rituals, and its romantically irrational ethos. Totalitarian aspects may be found in the desire for transcendence in Thelemic religion. 

While living in the States, Crowley wrote pro-German diatribes for two fascist publications, The Fatherland and The Internationalist. After WW II, there were calls for his head. Later, Crowley called them satirical and claimed his pro-German stance was a ruse of MI6, the military intelligence division in the UK. In 1912 he had informed the secret service of his correspondence with Reuss, the German spy. Throughout the '20s and '30s, Crowley gathered intelligence on European Communists, the Nazi movement and Germany's occult lodges. Crowley died in 1944 (Constantine)

Was OTO coopted for CIA mind control in the 1970’s.  That’s the allegation of Marcello Motta, who claims CIA paid for Grady McMurty’s lawyers to hijack the Caliphate from him.  Germer died during the period the CIA had chosen to move mind control experimentation from academic and military labs into the community.  Though choosing a successor was left to his widow, a scramble of would-be leaders ensued.

CIA cult activity and programming of assassins has since been revealed. An inner circle of Heironymous scientists experimented on cult devotees, and sometimes collaborated in mass murder to silence the subjects (Jonestown, SLA, Solar Temple). It was a sweet arrangement. Occult societies are secretive and often highly irrational. They follow a leader. They exist on the edge of a society that ignores them because weird religious rhetoric is obnoxious.

A number of intelligence agents with occult interests already had their hooks into the OTO. One of them was Gerald Yorke, a veteran British intelligence agent working, an advocate of Matta argues, "with American intelligence in an attempt to absorb the OTO into the ideological warfare network of the political right."

Before the horns of Thelemite succession were bestowed upon Grady McMurty, Yorke the prelate spy "misinterpreted" Germer's will and named Joseph Metzger, a ranking Thelemite (and the son of a former Swiss intelligence chief), to the office of high caliph.

Agent 666

British Intelligence couldn't have groomed a better double-agent to infiltrate the German propaganda machine than Aleister Crowley! . While it is still not clear whether he was primarily spying for Britain, Germany, or a rogue regime, we do know from his writings that he was looking for a distinct type of doppelganger or "Magic Child."

Since Crowley had studied for the Foreign Service, he learned various languages including Russian and modern Persian Farsi.

Did Crowley conduct a WWII magical defense of Britain?  Were his public German sympathies and propaganda writing merely misdirection to preserve his cover and enable him to collect intelligence where others could not?  Was he perhaps deployed by Britain to engineer a sociopathic assassin at the end of WWI to insure “Act II” would be even more fearsome?

Crowley, a true Magician and Trickster, would have taken no sides in any battle, but deliberately and consciously played both sides against one another, in good Machiavellian fashion.  It’s tough to imagine him as an etheric freedom fighter. Both sides are bound together in the one Great War for the conquest of men’s souls and minds. 

Yet, we are still caught under that spell of magick, both historical and political, and the Nazi legacy is inescapable, for good or evil.  It haunts us.  In Wagnerian myth, the price of evil becomes apparent; we reap what we sow.

Was OTO coopted for CIA mind control in the 1970’s.  That’s the allegation of Marcello Motta, who claims CIA paid for Grady McMurty’s lawyers to hijack the Caliphate from him.  Germer died during the period the CIA had chosen to move mind control experimentation from academic and military labs into the community.  Though choosing a successor was left to his widow, a scramble of would-be leaders ensued.

CIA cult activity and programming of assassins has since been revealed. An inner circle of Heironymous scientists experimented on cult devotees, and sometimes collaborated in mass murder to silence the subjects (Jonestown, SLA, Solar Temple). It was a sweet arrangement. Occult societies are secretive and often highly irrational. They follow a leader. They exist on the edge of a society that ignores them because weird religious rhetoric is obnoxious.

A number of intelligence agents with occult interests already had their hooks into the OTO. One of them was Gerald Yorke, a veteran British intelligence agent working, an advocate of Matta argues, "with American intelligence in an attempt to absorb the OTO into the ideological warfare network of the political right."

Before the horns of Thelemite succession were bestowed upon Grady McMurty, Yorke the prelate spy "misinterpreted" Germer's will and named Joseph Metzger, a ranking Thelemite (and the son of a former Swiss intelligence chief), to the office of high caliph.

Agent 666

British Intelligence couldn't have groomed a better double-agent to infiltrate the German propaganda machine than Aleister Crowley! . While it is still not clear whether he was primarily spying for Britain, Germany, or a rogue regime, we do know from his writings that he was looking for a distinct type of doppelganger or "Magic Child."

Since Crowley had studied for the Foreign Service, he learned various languages including Russian and modern Persian Farsi.

Did Crowley conduct a WWII magical defense of Britain?  Were his public German sympathies and propaganda writing merely misdirection to preserve his cover and enable him to collect intelligence where others could not?  Was he perhaps deployed by Britain to engineer a sociopathic assassin at the end of WWI to insure “Act II” would be even more fearsome?

Crowley, a true Magician and Trickster, would have taken no sides in any battle, but deliberately and consciously played both sides against one another, in good Machiavellian fashion.  It’s tough to imagine him as an etheric freedom fighter. Both sides are bound together in the one Great War for the conquest of men’s souls and minds. 

Yet, we are still caught under that spell of magick, both historical and political, and the Nazi legacy is inescapable, for good or evil.  It haunts us.  In Wagnerian myth, the price of evil becomes apparent; we reap what we sow.