What do you think of books written by Eliphas Levi or Papus? i've been refered to these authors for study of demonology.

"Actually a couple of years before Crowley died he was handing out "your the next head of the OTO" papers to anyone he could. "

Thats the impression that I have; one to Germer, and others to Gardner, and -possibly - to Grant and McMurtry, although in the absence of published info the contrary, I would assume the latter to be verbally implied. Hey - he needed money for his drug habit :)

So how does that copyright thing work? You get a few more years every time you publish it? Or the extra copyright is not for the original text, but for the edited new text? Frankly, I'm not so much worried about the copyrights for the published texts, as these can be, in the main, downloaded for free. The real issue is that the OTO are preventing the publication - even the reselling of previously published versions of - material that the OTO wants to control. Such as the rituals, and "secrets" and suchlike. What I would like to see is full access to all of Crowleys writing, so that we dont need to go through the corporation to get it. Its like Bill Gates purchasing the Mona Lisa rights, and eliminating the right to view it. Its one thing to hold documents that Breeze wrote as secret (I dont give a toss), its another to hold Crowleys works ransom from interested parties.

Fortunately, I have most of what I need at present, but I rather suspect there is a lot more out there squirreled away. Diaries and suchlike. The sooner these are published, the better; the first actions of religion makers is to control the message by destroying counter-documents.

I find Ken Grants writing indigestible in the main, as he has "inherited" Spare's desire for intentional obfuscation. Think: "reification". In Spare, it has charm; in Grant, I find it irritating and derivative (maybe thats just me). Maybe someday I'll do the same myself. But that leads to my next problem - his dwelling in the mud. All this lovecraftian, qlippoth stuff with the "old ones" and extraterrestrials? Eh. I dunno. I suppose it would be OK in itself, but combined with the writing, it all gets a bit like reading the Gormenghast trilogy. Again, thats not really an indictment of Grant, it just is a little less to my personal taste, is all.

I think most of the fun in Grant would be in the joining of his group. And I suspect the same is true of Bertiaeoux and his folk.

The beauty of the Beast is that he was able to syncretize stuff while, in the main, keeping clean lines, if you know what I mean. Whereas Grant and Berty snowball into a slushy mass of loosely-related ideas that they find fun, AC was able to do the same, but then pull a newborn out of the afterbirth. Thelema has a sort of purity, an identity, that the others lack.

I'm afraid I dont know enough about Maat and Nema; I was put off early on by something I saw, probably I need to give it a better go.

Frankly, at this stage, I think someone needs to develop something new. There are just too many accumulated problems with the old Aeon (anything before 1980). These mainly have to do with the structure - which tends towards authoritarianism and limpidity (in the sense that limpets live and feed in their own excrement). I wish that there were a Spare today; unfortunately, even if there were, he didnt really want followers.

I'm trying to develop a new current myself, based on a "back to the drawing board" approach using modern knowledge and techniques; but its difficult because its difficult to get away from existing systems. I have an understanding of how to develop the power structures better, but its incredibly difficult to find people who arent too deeply immersed in a previous system. Even I, who have avoided joining a group in favor of working things out for myself, find it difficult to avoid falling back into the old patterns. How much harder for an initiate of one of the existing systems.