Path: typhoon.sonic.net!not-for-mail Message-ID: <39690315.4841@luckymojo.com> From: catherine yronwode Organization: Lucky Mojo Curio Company X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01-C-MACOS8 (Macintosh; I; 68K) MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.magick,alt.magick.tyagi Subject: Re: OTO and Thelema References: <3968E44F.47F8@luckymojo.com> <8kaql1$dck$1@nnrp1.deja.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 107 Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2000 22:50:48 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.204.136.5 X-Complaints-To: abuse@sonic.net X-Trace: typhoon.sonic.net 963183048 209.204.136.5 (Sun, 09 Jul 2000 15:50:48 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2000 15:50:48 PDT Xref: typhoon.sonic.net alt.magick:201773 alt.magick.tyagi:24151 aikeena@my-deja.com wrote: > catherine yronwode wrote: > > hooramentii wrote: > > > [someone wrote] > > > > > > is it [the O.T.O.] very similar to the Golden Dawn? > > > > > > Vaguely. > > > > The Golden Dawn teaches a *Complete Integrated System of Hermetic > > Rip-Offs and Finger-Painting!* from *Several Well-Known Exotic > > Cultures!* and *All Past Eras!* with *Extra!* *Added!* *Spicy > > Jewish Bits!* It predated the O.T.O. by a number of years. Crowley > > was a member, but a young and not-too-influential one who was booted > > out during an internal power struggle when he sided with the losing > > faction. The group itself disbanded, but its papers existed, which > > led to thecurrent situation in which a number of self-made nouveau > > G.D. groups co-exist with more or less cordiality. > > > > The O.T.O., on the other hand, is basically a poor, pale imitation > > of Templaristic Freemasonry with *Extra!* *Added!* *Egyptian!* > > *Titty- Show Bits!* It was founded by a Swiss man named Theodor > > Reuss; Crowley joined and rewrote some of the rituals for him. Like > > the G.D., the O.T.O. lapsed into non-functionality at one point, > > which paved the way for its reorganization under a number of > > different and competing leaders,some of whom are currently fighting > > legal battles over ownership of copyrights to Crowley's material. > > While it's refreshing to hear a different viewpoint, [and] I owe the > GD and Crowley nothing in particular myself except a headache or two, > don't you think you're being just a little hard in your assessment? I was being flippant, but the intention was not entirely mean-spirited. I personally enjoyed learning the G.D. material (and the similar B.O.T.A. material) many years ago, and i still fall back on the G.D. system of correspondences when i want to access something cross-cultural without treating it in depth or with respect to primary sources. The G.D. system is, to me, a sort of "Cliff Notes" to the world of magic. The O.T.O., on the other hand, has never been my cup of tea. Like Theosophy, it just leaves me cold. In both cases, it has been my dislike for the *personal activities* of key founding and supporting members (Blavatsky and Leadbeater in Theosophy and Reuss and Crowley in the OTO) that has led me to choose other paths for myself. My husband is a member of the O.T.O., by the way, and two of my daughter's ex-boyfriends were members at one time as well, so i am not a stranger to it and i do not speak from prejudice, rather from considered negative opinion. > I mean people *do* apparently find the GD and OTO useful, and some of > these people are demonstrably reasonably sane and successful magicians > by anyone's reckoning. Of course there are the *freaks* but it's not > like Thelema, the GD, or OTO has a monopoly on them. I appreciate that. I also appreciate your subtle distinction between Thelema and the O.T.O. -- a distinction that has been much on my mind of late, as i watch from the sidelines the legal and personal disputes that are tearing the Caliphate OTO wide open all over the internet. I think that for the serious student of "the Western Esoteric Tradition," a familiarity with the G.D. material is a must, although i also hope that modern-day teachers of this material will deal frankly with its limitations within the context of the colonialist British Victorian era in which it arose. It is important, in my opinion, to defuse the intensity of the G.D.'s system and its hold upon young minds by explaining a priori that for each tradition and era from which the G.D. writers appropriated a fragment of magical knowledge, there is an entire CULTURE's magical tradition that deserves deeper notice and study. The same colonialist-mentality limitations hold true for Crowley's Edwardian-era materials, but i find his writings so fraught with factual errors, bigotry, misanthropy, misogyny, and racial prejudice that i would caution anyone against studying his books *as a system of magic.* They read, to me, more like a case-study in mental illness and drug addiction. Negativity is not my major interest here, however, so, confining my comments only to the writers of the Victorian and Edwardian eras who were members of the G.D. and/or the O.T.O., i will risk public amusement one more time by stating that as the years go by, my respect for Arthur Edward Waite only increases. No, Waite was not a splashy personality (far from it) and he was not given to amusing his readers with scurrilously funny put-downs of his colleagues, but as far as i can tell, he was a practicing magician in addition to being a scholar, he did his research well, and he told the truth insofar he knew it. If i can fault the man at all, it is for his reliance upon and popullarization of the work of Eliphas Levi, which he should have discarded for the strangely alluring rubbish that it is. But Waite, a staid classicist at heart, spawned no nouveau-religion to bark after him like a stray puppy, and his texts are dense enough that one may need a high school education to read them, hence he is gradually becoming the Forgooten Man of Magic, while the Crowleyan fife-and-drum corps marches on, a source of amusement or alarm to onlookers, depending on one's mood and whether one thinks children may be harmed by its robotic Gnostic jigs and its second-hand Thelemic dervish-whirls. cat (more's the pity) yronwode Hoodoo in Theory and Practice -- http://www.luckymojo.com/hoodoo.html No personal e-mail, please; just catch me in usenet; i read it daily. 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