From thelema93-l-owner@bitsy.hollyfeld.org Sat Jan 20 18:40:19 1996 Received: from nova.unix.portal.com (nova.unix.portal.com [156.151.1.101]) by jobe.shell.portal.com (8.6.11/8.6.5) with ESMTP id SAA12005 for ; Sat, 20 Jan 1996 18:40:19 -0800 Received: from bitsy.hollyfeld.org ([198.70.189.30]) by nova.unix.portal.com (8.6.11/8.6.5) with ESMTP id SAA20087 for ; Sat, 20 Jan 1996 18:40:14 -0800 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by bitsy.hollyfeld.org (8.6.12/8.6.9) id NAA31308 for thelema93-l-outgoing; Wed, 17 Jan 1996 13:54:27 -0500 Received: from well.com (heidrick@well.com [206.15.64.10]) by bitsy.hollyfeld.org (8.6.12/8.6.9) with ESMTP id NAA31304 for ; Wed, 17 Jan 1996 13:54:17 -0500 Received: (from heidrick@localhost) by well.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id KAA18366; Wed, 17 Jan 1996 10:56:20 -0800 Date: Wed, 17 Jan 1996 10:56:19 -0800 (PST) From: Bill Heidrick Subject: Re: Thelema Groups To: thelema93-l@bitsy.hollyfeld.org In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-thelema93-l@hollyfeld.org Precedence: bulk reply-to: thelema93-l@bitsy.hollyfeld.org Status: RO 93, > OTB Knights of Baphomet This was conceived on car trip from Salt Lake City to Berkeley in the late 1970's by R.S. as an honor guard for OTO Caliph Hymenaeus Alpha. Fr. H.A. started it off in my temple/library in San Anselmo by knighting a couple of OTO members with my sword, on R.S.'s suggestion. Some others joined, notably Rusty Sporor who pretty much ran the thing after R.S went back to Edmonton. For a while it did ok; but Rusty took a sabbatical and J.Harris, former ToS member and OTO member, took over most of the correspondence. Janice was murdered by an unknown assailant in LA, when she went out to her car to go to work in the morning -- apparently a random act, since no information has surfaced about the perpetrator. OTB pretty much faded out in the early 1980's. Rusty came back from his sabbatical in 1984 e.v. and resumed direction of OTB. In part due to Rusty's and other OTB members' travels to do OTO initiations around the world, OTB became wide-spread in the USA and Europe, including Eastern Europe. He contributed a regular column to the _Magical Link_, extolling knightly virtue and the OTB. In time, I began noticing reports of OTB membership appearing in OTO initiation report booklets, necessitating an occasional letter back to advise the people making the report that OTB was not a matter of record for OTO Grand Lodge. Later, instances of OTB members in Europe demanding precidence at OTO occasions started to come in, culminating in an instance of one OTB member in former Yugoslavia making personal demands of obedience on other OTO members, including sexual and financal favors. He was also known for excessive claims related to A.'.A.'. and rank in OTO, so that problem wasn't exclusively OTB in nature. OTO cut away OTB formal relations in consequence of these problems, and I have heard little of it since Rusty's greater feast in 1993 e.v. Although Rusty and Janice as well as others in OTB had done a very fine job for OTO and separately with OTB, the severing of relations between OTO and OTB effectively eliminated the original purpose of the latter. It is still functioning on some level, but I know nothing else about the present day OTB, assuming it is doing anything beyond conferring the occasional additional set of initials to stick after an OTO degree. I don't know if non OTO members were or are admitted to OTB. 93 93/93 Bill Heidrick, TG OTO