Path: shell.portal.com!svc.portal.com!sdd.hp.com!usc!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!nntp-ucb.barrnet.net!well!heidrick From: heidrick@well.sf.ca.us (Bill Heidrick) Newsgroups: alt.magick,alt.discordia Subject: Re: FINALLY! The TRUE R+C ORDER! Date: 25 Sep 1995 15:49:05 GMT Organization: The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA Lines: 41 Distribution: inet Message-ID: <446j1h$pfl@nkosi.well.com> References: <43i8nd$9be@newsbf02.news.aol.com> <442pon$s7q@puzzle.palace.net> <4447si$30t@sake.wwa.com> <445a8n$bsi@crl7.crl.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: well.com X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 #1 (NOV) Xref: shell.portal.com alt.magick:52317 alt.discordia:26983 haileris@crl.com (Cynthia Sheldon) writes: >A guy named H. Spencer Lewis, advertising man in >NY, in the 1900s got into the OTO and Crowlyite >Thelemic magick. He learned about the RC stuff, got interested. He tried >to ger a charter from the OTO, failed, and broke from them. Went to FL, >had a radio program for a while. In 1923, Lewis and some friends went to >Gaza, Egypt, and did an initiation ceremony at a temple there. They came >back, bought a house in San Jose, and moved. Thust was born AMORC. Lewis >sold mystical literature by mail order with their correspondance course in the mysteries for lots of money>. Just to the OTO issue: Lewis had started AMORC well before any contact with OTO, although there is some reason to suspect that his inadequately described encounter with R+C earlier on had something to do with our people under Papus in France. His charter from OTO was a gage of amity with permission to operate initiations up to a certain point, signed by Th. Reuss in 1921 e.v., before Crowley became Reuss' successor as head of OTO. The issue of rights and propriety of issuance by Reuss is too complicated for this response, but the charter was conditional and Crowley revoked it after some years. Any residual rights were canceled later, by a separate notice in the 1980's e.v. after US Federal Court recognition of the continuation of O.T.O. Apparently, Lewis sought the OTO charter for Memphis and Mizraim rights and to add a more substantial claim to being connected to at least one meaning of "Rose(i)crucian". Under Crowley, Lewis realized the OTO charter was doomed for the M&M claim -- accordingly he sought alternate M&M charter through a descendent of our source in France for the Martinist component of OTO, not perhapse realizing that he was mearly going through a by-pass to the same source. Our South American OTO representative, Dr. Krumm-Heller, provided Lewis with one (perhaps the only one) of AMORC's Rosecrucian charters to operate Fraternitas Rosicruciana Antiqua; but that was withdrawn and R. Swinburne Clymer was supported instead on grounds that Lewis was using the charter in a business instead of for charitable purposes (this latter detail is from the recollections of Parsival Krumm-Heller, Dr. Arnold Krumm-Heller's son). 93 93/93 Bill Heidrick, TG OTO