Hypocrisy and Hypercrisis — Ordo Templi Orientis

Gaps in the Screenplay of Esotericism
Hypocrisy and Hypercrisis –
Oscar Wilde: Ambition is the last resort of failure

Peter-Robert Koenig

Adolf Hemberger / Klingsor: Organisationsformen, Rituale, Lehren und magische Thematik der freimaurerischen und freimaurerartigen Bünde im Deutschen Sprachraum Mitteleuropas – Der mystisch–magische Orden Fraternitas Saturni, Frankfurt 1971

Esotericism generally flaunts itself in drab inners, home to dull lodgers – where there’s nothing really exciting to speak off. (Occult) Academics, equipped with a desiccated body of rules and insipid formulae, but usually out of touch, have begun to take interest in their very own Weltanschauung, which they ceaselessly reproduce in vitro, turning it into an endless series of marketable products for publication, which can also be conveniently bled dry at so-called international congresses. Once dead, the corpse of their Weltanschauung is disemboweled asexually and given a first-class burial. But no, it may not rest in peace – it is shaken and rattled again and again until people are sure that the sceleton has been brought back to life and re-invigorated. The master of ceremonies, often supported by an overstuffed book antiquarian with a fixed and ghastly smile, hurries around, trying to inject some life into the corpse of the evening. But to no avail.

In their script though, there are gaping holes spread between suspicion and alibi. The suspicion: these people are fully-fledged esoterics. Their alibi: a doctorate or professorship. The crime scene: academic reviews and publications, in which sterile science fetishists relegate the juices of life that are actually inherent to their worldview of the unconscious, just as if the human body was no more than a breeding ground for malfunctions. Every now and then one suspects having been exiled to a physician’s waiting room.

Harvey Bialy Henrik Bogdan PierLuigi Zoccatelli Christian Bouchet Manuela Kühne

ALEISTER CROWLEY’S SEXMAGICAL SYSTEM

Aleister Crowley maintained that the task of his sexmagical organisation Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) was "to restore Christianity to its real status as a solar–phallic religion." The structure of the O.T.O., like that of Freemasonry, is based on a staged series of initiations or degrees. The essence of the Order is in its higher degrees; strictly speaking only members of these degrees are considered to be members of the O.T.O. proper. VII°: adoration of the phallus, both within and without. In this contextual framework, Jacques Lacan's elucidation of the phallus comes to mind, wherein he defined it as a symbolic construct encompassing the implications of authority, power, castration, and symbolic arrangement within the sphere of psychoanalysis. The phallus transcends the boundaries of male genitalia (penis) and functions as an emblem of societal power dynamics, value systems, and paradigms of recognition. This conceptualization of the phallus operates not within the confines of physical anatomy, but rather within the domain of symbolic significance and socio-cultural structure. Ultimately, even language itself can be construed as bearing phallic attributes, particularly when perceived as a conduit of expression harmonizing with this overarching conceptual framework. VIII°: interaction outside the closed vessels of the vagina and the anus. Sexual fluids might be mixed with saliva and then rubbed into the absorbent tissues of the anus and perineum, as well as the external correspondences to the chakras (solar plexus, heart, throat, third eye, and crown). They also might be used to anoint the internal anus, then transferred as 'triune elixir' (semen, anal elixirs, and saliva) back to the mouth. The fluids may also be anointed on the eyelids and/or the entire cabbalistic middle pillar. IX°: interaction within the vagina involving either menstrual blood or the secretions of a woman when sexually aroused. X °: impregnation and fertilisation of an egg; also the act of creation or succession (for example, the election of the leader, the Outer Head of the Order.). XI°: two–fold — (i) isolation in the anus where there is no interaction at all — (ii) interaction with excrement and small amounts of blood (when small wounds occur through intercourse), mucus and, of course, the mucous membranes that lead directly to the blood supply. Crowley’s own preference was that "I am inclined to believe that the XIth degree is better than the IXth degree." Ultimately in the O.T.O’s sexual magick everything came down to semen — more recently likened to a computer hard–disk pre–formatted to be loaded with software and used at will. Crowley: "The industrial use of Semen will revolutionize human society." His instructional text 'Amrita' defines the use of semen as counteracting "Asthma, Bronchitis, Neurasthenia, Obesity, Stricture, Some cardiac distress, Greying hair, Loss of interest in sex." To avoid charges of quackery, the current American O.T.O. or 'Caliphate' denies the medicinal use of this 'Elixir of Life', and claims that it "does not practice medicine." For sacramental purposes, this O.T.O. uses hosts made with honey, meal, and wine–lees called 'Cakes of Light' (which may however contain small quantities of blood or semen: "ashes from burned cakes of light prepared according to Crowleys' Liber AL III;23[–25] would be acceptable as an additional ingredient"). (1963–1967 the Swiss O.T.O. used a total of 3,000 Hosts obtained by the Crowleyites from a genuine Catholic convent. The incense–grains had been opportunely supplied by the Chief Sacristan of St. Gallen Cathedral. And the wine for the Mass came directly from the Bishop.) — According to Crowley these Cakes should include menstrual fluids, but "In my Mass the Host is of excrement" — magically speaking, blood and excrement attracting spirits, sperm keeping them alive. He also noted in his diary on May 30, 1923 that "The Dalai Lama is right to have the faithful eat his excrement." There are many other elements of O.T.O. doctrines that can prove inimical to its public relations image: the requirement for the crucifixion of a frog in one O.T.O. initiation ritual, advice given to members that they can consider those without the pale of the Order as inferior beings, and blatantly anti–democratic elements in the various O.T.O. constitutions, antisemitic statements and texts that could be said to interfere with religious freedoms, just to mention a few. Theodor Reuss, German founder of these Oriental Templars in 1906, went further: within the O.T.O. community the use of money was to be forbidden. Every member over 18 was obliged to labour daily; those  refusing to work were to be punished by forced labour. In Reuss’s O.T.O. utopia, each child was brought up by the community, where doctor–priests under parental supervision would teach children from the earliest age on that the sex organs were holy (maybe Crowley’s idea that all children from infancy should be accustomed to witnessing every type of sexual act came from this.) Those who were not found capable of producing healthy children by a 'medical board' were not allowed to breed, while those who produced children despite this decree would be punished by forced labour. These extreme ideas have not survived in modern versions of the O.T.O., if indeed they were ever espoused beyond Reuss’s essay. While the O.T.O.’s initiatory system is a sort of bureaucratic club game, it has a religiously associated section under its obedience: The Gnostic Catholic Church. It intends "to restore Christianity to its real status as a solar–phallic religion." In 1906, Chevalier Le Clément de St.–Marcq had published a booklet about the Sacred Spermatophagy, called 'L'Eucharistie'. It described what Reuss called the ultimate secret of the religious aspect of the O.T.O.: the more sperm you eat, the more the manifestation of the Christ takes place within you: no women are necessary for that. The consumption of sexual secretions borders on anthropophagia, the assimilation of selected individuals who possess awe–inspiring powers, in order to neutralise or even to use them. The Gnostic aim is to release the human from his stifling entanglement with the physical universe, and to help the pure Spirit in its return to its Divine potential. One common characteristic of all the Spermo–Gnostics in the context of most of the many O.T.O.–versions is a reduction of the sexuality unto the male physiology. Orgasm for pure reasons of lust is avoided, unless ejaculation is refrained from, or the intention is directed to drift away from the immanent orgasm and concentrate itself upon wishes that under the circumstances appear worldly in the extreme. Sperm remains the point of focus. In the enthusiastic high of the genetic and gnostic superiority of the male, femaleness vegetates in a bizarre no–mansland of androgynous necessity and almost reprehensible superfluousness. The female Logos remains mute. In the O.T.O.’s Gnostic Mass a host called Cake of Light contains the Logos. Ingredients are sperm, blood and vaginal secrets. This cake of light is made outside the ritual of the Gnostic Mass. It is given its character in the making. It is consecrated, but not transsubstantiated. The deity in the cake of light is the 'Childe', properly an aspect of Horus (or a sort of homunculus) and not of either Osiris or the cognate Christ. Transmutation is change of form, in the instance of the pertinent passage in Crowley’s Mass, by chemical processes of digestion. Transsubstantiation, on the other hand, is change of essential quality without change of form. Transmutation is a physiological process. Transsubstantiation is a non–physical process. Thus, a cake of light is transmuted in the preparation, to afford a character appropriate to the "miracle of the Mass": it’s a sexmagical medium of the participant’s Will (the ritual itself can be interpreted as a mirror of the perpetual creation of the Universe). Similar passages can be found in the VIII° ritual of the O.T.O.: "and, forasmuch as meat and drink are transmuted in us daily into spiritual substance, I believe in the Miracle of the Mass. […] This is the Blood and the Body of the Logos." Consumation of the host is necessary, body contact. Some say, it is not the host that is changed but the consumer of the host. Through contact with saliva, chewing, stomach acid. This is the transformation, the unification of the host with the consumer. The thelemic host changes the consumer – contrary to the Roman Catholic host. A Roman Catholic host is said to be transsubstantiated during the RC Mass, a change of its invisible essence (for the entering of the real–presence of the Christ) without a change in the appearance and chemical qualities of the thing. If a thing such as that was both transmutated and transsubstantiated to the body and blood, it would become actual bleeding meat from the transmutation. — The technical term for the bishopric in the context of the O.T.O. Phenomenon is Wandering Bishop or Episcopi Vagantes. This status is not defined by character qualities, not by education or theological position. These bishops are not elected by a canonical church, are not proposed as an ordain by a suffragan and not bound to a historical episcopal see or consecrated by an official bishop according to the canonical procedure. A real bishop is not a successor of a sole apostle because only the synod/college of bishops in toto is heir to the college of the apostles. Therefore: no Wandering Bishop has a real apostolic succession. There is no Holy Ghost in Wandering–Bishop–consecrations. The instrumentum consecrationis is of no apostolic value. Nevertheless, Wandering Bishops are collectors of papers and diplomas. In this context, Reuss tried to make Crowley’s 'Gnostic Mass' the "official religion for Freemasons" in 1920. But nowhere in the constitution of the O.T.O. was the office of O.H.O. connected with leadership of any church. In his introduction to the 'Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae Canon Missae', (Zuerich 1955) on page 4 the Swiss Hermann Joseph Metzger claimed the 
"Antiochite–Jacobinic Succession, Syro–Malabarite Line of Mar Athanasius." Today, some new O.T.O.–groups (e.g. the 'Caliphate') try to copy this scheme, see https://www.parareligion.ch/2006/boast/boast.htm.
For the anti–democratic and misanthropic aspect of these occultists: read "The Templar's Reich — The Slaves Shall Serve" at https://www.parareligion.ch/2006/pro/pene.htm

"'Let's face it,' Bill [Breeze, chief of the American O.T.O.] proffered, after an embarassed silence, 'the future of Thelema belongs to academics. We're the past.'" [Allen Greenfield, 27.9.2006, http://tausirhasirim.livejournal.com/46617.html.]

There’s nothing more that esotericism aspires to than to be taken seriously. Seen as pure of body as well as pure of any somatophobic thought as exemplified by racism, anti-Semitism and antidemocratic resentment (e.g. as found in Thelema).

Only the Will not to create a wrong impression prevails, and therefore the irrational is mystified and exempt from reflection.

Because the academic esoteric’s artificiality leads them to outbid each other in conveying a proper and accepted attitude, they create a detrimental image of neglect, into which they retire when ever reflecting on themselves.

They want to emerge from the underground of the Occident and reach the shores of the conscious, while in truth employing mechanisms of suppressing it.

Their method: to deploy ideology, to fall back on obscurantism, irrationality, sophistry and excuses and to display general ineptness as a means for adapting to the corpse of esotericism. That now stumbles on a stage shrouded in aphorisms, momentous announcements and banalities disguised as wisdom, as if intent on carving the mot du jour or a summary of the proceedings in stone, into its tombstone.

The pseudo-scientific respect of esoteric academia expresses itself in relationships of a mutual dependency, which only allows for weak opponents. As soon as there is any indication of danger, namely, the exposure of the academics as adherents of the esoteric Weltanschauung, any previous exchange of niceties immediately stop and the Other is ignored.

Everything is subject to a one-sided codification of inferiority complexes, undecipherable safe for its foundation on its own internal logic. That which cannot be subjugated is regarded as insignificant and not worth analysis. To deal with such leftovers, or indeed a delegated self, would mean turning towards alternatives in contemplation.

Vere Chappell Marco Pasi Richard Kaczynski David Shoemaker Martin Starr

"Mockery is our greatest enemy." [Hermann Joseph Metzger, 'EOL-Mitteilungsblatt' No. 10, Zurich 1955, p. 4; and 'Oriflamme' No. 137, Zurich 1973, p. 1566. Text for Easter 1950. Likewise in a letter to Eugen Grosche of 21.5.1951.]

Too strong an effort. Too painful. Too shameful, because somewhere, sometime one has gotten involved with strange insignia, long ribbons and black frocks fluttering in solemn acts of initiation, while weird knocking sounds are heard, and assignments and missions are pronounced whose purpose remains secret ?

Creativity and original thought are eliminated, because they are 'inefficient' – or uncontrollable.

At the same time as New Age is spreading in academia, the internet grows into an integral part of the mainstream.

While academia remains bound to reactionary mechanisms relying on prestige and money, the internet breaks the monopolisation of knowledge and allows junk-postmodernism to flow into the living rooms.

This context seems to serve as an invitation to behaviour according to one of the principles of psychoanalysis i.e. instead of focussing one’s attention, one allows it to take in anything floating around in that new cloud, where the value of knowledge is subject to constant change.

Vanity Projects

Academia now brings forth a new cultural-technological gap. The valid is viewed in contrast to dubious contributions that are supposedly distinguishable, depending on which side of the gap they are situated. Work on paper is deemed valid, anything digital is ruled untrustworthy. Within this incestuous circle of the ever-same (occult) academics and self-imposed pressure, the esoteric world proceeds to produce more and more self-referential encyclopaedia. Contrary to their aim of reaching the mainstream, a lot of esoteric academic groups behave more and more like hermeneutic readers' circles where every single letter of the alphabet, ever used within their heroes' sphere of influence is either recycled endlessly or scientifically reduced to tatters, in order to lend it importance and meaning.

In academic slow motion, the simplest facts are turned upside down, rolled around by academic scarabs – in their leisure time maybe not averse to posing on Egyptian stage sets where turbans and pillars are part of the repertoire – reduced to rhetoric DNA, noted, re-noted, read and re-read until the last contemporary can easily parrot the entire lot. People having dealt with the occult only marginally, are retrieved from the depths of oblivion by way of biographies or studies, which come along like official funeral notifications or obituaries. Because personnel is scarce, those suddenly anointed are glorified beyond recognition, portrayed as persons of religious or academic greatness or by administration of the usual sterile recipes mummified as heroes of esotericism – published witnesses to its failure of being taken seriously. Distress signals from a dying concept.

Intellectual standstill, radical conservatism reign. The only sound is the rustling of mutual burials in footnotes, the Science Citation Index, the Impact-Factors. Where there should be questions and openness, there are templates, which after postmodernity there is nothing left but reconstruction according to the principles of rummage sales.

Thus its methods seem to be stuck at the point from where esotericism had taken off into the mainstream by means of early mass media (newspapers, radio, travelogues, novels, pulp): at the turn of the 20th century.

AMORC A.M.O.R.C. American English Pulp Magazine Science Fiction Fantastic Universe Amazin Stories The Rosicrucians Spencer Lewis Antiquus Mysticus Ordo Rosae Crucis or Ancient Mystical Order of the Rosy Cross

AMORC A.M.O.R.C. Deutsch German Pulp Magazin Silber Grusel-Krimi Dan Shocker Die Rosenkreuzer Spencer Lewis Antiquus Mysticus Ordo Rosae Crucis oder Ancient Mystical Order of the Rosy Cross

Henrik Bogdan Achim Otremba Syzygy Theosophical History

Aleister Crowley The Law is for all Moreover the Beast 666 adviseth that all children shall be accustomed from infancy to witness every type of sexual act Israel Regardie Arizona 1975, 114

"THE LAW IS FOR ALL.
An Extended Commentary on THE BOOK OF THE LAW
by Aleister Crowley"
Edited with an Introduction
By Israel Regardie

Arizona 1975.

"Moreover, the Beast 666 [Crowley] adviseth that all children shall
be accustomed from infancy to witness every type of sexual
act." [page 114]

Ordo Templi Orientis Picnic

William Blake O.T.O. sources: http://www.williamblakeoto.org

In alternative models, however, the texts esoteric academia pretend to think about, would not only be inter-connected by links to a particular author or by quick-freezing their meaning, but rather by breaking away from prejudice, while the person contemplating them release their relation to the texts.

In place of mere knowledge about the esoteric a new narrative of esotericism and its protagonists could be developed.

By enabling distancing and relating seemingly irreconcilable things to each other, ironic humour also opens our eyes to the fact that the quality of reflection could be measured not least by the quality of transgressions.
The ability to innovate and humor are related in that they create a progress in understanding through unusual associations and imagination.

New models of research would not isolate texts as self-referential knowledge, simmering away in a comfortable niche miles away from the mainstream and only accessible to one single discipline. New models could emphasise the importance of understanding one context also by looking into another, excluding the privileging of any of the texts. Finally, the production of knowledge could be taken to new shores.

The suitability of methods for thinking about occultism and esotericism is linked to results. So long as those insights stay discursive, innovative and useful, any method — however informal or offbeat — is not only appropriate but even required. Thus scientific analysis becomes a conversation between subject and researcher, and can only ever yield tentative results. Wayward ideas can and should be viewed from wayward perspectives.

Knowledge is unstable.

Reading Paul-Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze will not hurt you.

Johannes Goeggelmann, Saturnius, Fraternitas Saturni

Johannes Goeggelmann, Saturnius, Fraternitas Saturni

Vintage sources above: "Prana", Zentralorgan für praktischen Okkultismus, Schriftleitung Karl Brandler-Pracht, Dr. Hugo Vollrath Verlag, Leipzig 1909-13.

Psychosophische Gesellschaft

Above: from the Swiss O.T.O.'s magazines "Ex Oriente Lux" and "Oriflamme".

Ordo Templi Orientis O.T.O. Caliphate T-Shirt Lamen Emblem

Ordo Templi Orientis Swing 93gamesstudio Reality in a Game Keith Taylor Weapons

Source: Keith Taylor, http://www.93gamesstudio.com, 2004

Startling Stories 1948

"What Every Mason Wants"
'Startling Stories", January 1948.

A shorter German version of this essay appeared as "Lücken im Drehbuch der Esoterik",
in GNOSTIKA #50, Sinzheim 2012.

GNOSTIKA 50 2012, Lücken im Drehbuch der Esoterik, Gaps in the Screenplay of Esotericism. Hans Thomas Hakl, Wolfram Frietsch, Peter-Robert Koenig, Wouter J. Hanegraff, Joscelyn Godwin, Marco Pasi, Emil Stejnar, Ruediger Dahlke

GNOSTIKA 50 2012, Lücken im Drehbuch der Esoterik, Gaps in the Screenplay of Esotericism. Hans Thomas Hakl, Wolfram Frietsch, Peter-Robert Koenig, Wouter J. Hanegraff, Joscelyn Godwin, Marco Pasi, Emil Stejnar, Ruediger Dahlke

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Gaps in the Screenplay of Esotericism Hypocrisy and Hypercrisis –Oscar Wilde: Ambition is the last resort of failure

Peter-Robert Koenig

"'Let's face it,' Bill [Breeze, chief of the American O.T.O.] proffered, after an embarassed silence, 'the future of Thelema belongs to academics. We're the past.'" [Allen Greenfield, 27.9.2006, http://tausirhasirim.livejournal.com/46617.html.]

"Mockery is our greatest enemy." [Hermann Joseph Metzger, 'EOL-Mitteilungsblatt' No. 10, Zurich 1955, p. 4; and 'Oriflamme' No. 137, Zurich 1973, p. 1566. Text for Easter 1950. Likewise in a letter to Eugen Grosche of 21.5.1951.]

Vanity Projects

Gaps in the Screenplay of Esotericism
Hypocrisy and Hypercrisis –
Oscar Wilde: Ambition is the last resort of failure