"Whenever that spiritual society manifested itself on the outward plane, it consisted at its beginning of a few able and enlightened people, forming a nuclaeu around which others were attracted. But invariably, the more such a society grew in numbers, the more became attracted to its elements, such as were not able to understand or follow its principles; people who joined it for the purpose of gratifying their own ambition or for making the society serve their own ends obtained the majority over those who were pure.
Thereupon the healthy portion of it retired from the field and continued their benevolent work in secrecy, while the remaining portion became diseased and disrupted, and sooner or later died disgraced and profaned. For the Spirit had departed from them."
I'm quoting the blurb that crowley used at the front of the equinox to attract people to the OTO.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
contains the seeds of it's own destruction indeed...
Love is the law, love under will
Here is another interesting quote, which relates to whether the OTO can be reformed and unifiied, or whether it is better to start from scratch with a fresh body formed by those people committed to Thelema from within the existing organizations:
www.geocities.com/cranesco/...intro.html
"
When a man becomes a magician he looks about him for a magical weapon; and, being probably endowed with that human frailty called laziness, he hopes to find a weapon ready made. Thus we find the Christian Magus who imposed his power upon the world taking the existing worships and making a single system combining all their merits. There is no single feature in Christianity which has not been taken bodily from the worship of Isis, or of Mithras, or of Bacchus, or of Adonis, or of Osiris. In modern times again we find Frater Iehi Aour trying to handle Buddhism. Others again have attempted to use Freemasonry. There have been even exceptionally foolish magicians who have tried to use a sword long since rusted.
Wagner illustrates this point very clearly in "Siegfried." The Great Sword Nothung has been broken, and it is the only weapon that can destroy the gods. The dwarf Mime tries uselessly to mend it. When Siegfried comes he makes no such error. He melts its fragments and forges a new sword. In spite of the intense labour which this costs, it is the best plan to adopt."
-AC
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
i don't think it's quite the time as yet to give up on the idea of OTO, but then again i Would say that, wouldn't i?
nice to see y'all, by the way - i've had no net access for the past month and a half or so.
anyway, while i do think that the american version of the caliphate is unsalvagable at this point, i don't think that necessarily means that the concept of OTO, the structure and/or the teachings and work need to be abandoned. that said, i don't think there's anything wrong with starting from scratch if it's your will to do so. having seen the secret documents with my own eyes i can say with total confidence that while they are Very valuable, the concepts and applications of same are scattered around throughout the public literature and the literature of classical alchemy and if you're invoking with a reasonably pure heart and doing it often you'll be just fine.
the sole advantage that an existing version of any legitimate initatory order is that the people who are already there when you get there are going to have some skill in initiating - at least in theory. the most valuable thing that i'm getting from SOTO are the perspectives on magick, thelema and so on from people that have been doing this since the seventies, eighties, nineties... it's the Bomb. stuff i Never even thought about.
a great example of a group that was structured along OTO lines is the holy order of ra-hoor-kuit. i forget the founders name - he was a student of motta's who decided to build his own thing after motta died instead of carrying the OTO torch. from everything i've seen of theirs and from all reports i've gotten from my brothers and sisters they're the effing Bomb Diggedy. the best compliment on them i heard from the lips of my very own lodgemaster - "oh yeah, they're just like us!"
so, it Can be done, and apparently it can be done well.
Love is the law, love under will
sororally,
LIHF
