Ordo Templi Orientis Phenomenon
The Inquisition
transcript
DR: The loo is at the top of the stairs as you have now discovered, and
the rest of the house is our private space.
BF: Fine
BF: Well, I mean, you're already aware, we're all aware of the context
in which I'm here, it's been appointed by Clive, acting Grand
Inquisitor Commander, in this capacity I'll be reporting to Clive,
as lodge master of albion lodge and as the "Caliph"'s representative
in this country.
DR: You mean you are reporting to Clive as the "Caliph"'s representative?
BF: Yes Clive's the "Caliph"'s representative.
DR: Just to have that clear.
BF: This is to give you an opportunity to have your say and to have
that clearly communicated back to the powers that be..and also an
opportunity for them to find out what's going on.
DR: (to IFR) May I speak on our behalves for the sake of efficiency,
so that we don't keep repeating ourselves.?
IFR: You may speak for both of us.
DR: Now before we come to various accusations, statements and
what-have-you, it's true to say and I have no hesitation of saying
it on the record, that Br Ben and ourselves have not always been
the best of friends.
BF: We've had conflicts.
DR: We've had conflicts and what I want to do, already at the beginning
of this meeting is to try to get some kind of comprehension in the
minds of those others present as to exactly why we have a certain,
let us say for the sake of politeness, a certain degree of
scepticism towards the way in which things in this connection have
been conducted so far and also to clarify certain points in that
connection. When Br. Clive Harper first mooted this inquiry, as he
himself can confirm, we welcomed it, that was our exact expression,
we welcome it. Let's have it all up front. We even at that time,
were prepared to accept that Br. Ben was the person to carry out
this investigation; what we expected at that time was a degree of
professionalism in that carrying out that would show the intention
to give an objective picture, we haven't seen it! We are aware from
Br. Harper and otherwise, that prior to his being commissioned to
undertake this investigation, Br. Fernee had on his own initiative
and in correspondence with the secretary general already mooted an
opinion, which I assume, since he bothered to write it at all he
had the hope would be acted upon that we i.e. Sister Irene and
myself, should be excluded from the Order. Now whilst we would
defend to the death, we would defend to the death Br. Ben's right
to hold whatever damned opinions he likes it hardly inspires to
confidence that when given the task of investigating our
activities, he would approach this with any degree of objectivity
soever. We had hoped that we would be wrong. We are aware that no
person currently associated with us and to be supposed positively
inclined towards us has been approached at all, to express their
opinion concerning our activities, none soever, during the what is
it, 8 to 10 weeks of this investigation?
BF: I'm not sure off he top of my head.
DR: Well it's somewhere between 8 and 10 weeks since this was mooted.
As a second example to things which have undermined our confidence
in this investigation, we cite Br. Fernee's approach to Mr. Louis
Malloy, tattooist of Middleton. For the record Louis Malloy was Sr.
Irene's original teacher in the arts of tattooing, the history
between them was not fortunate. She having been systematically
misled and lied to by Malloy with regard to his intents and finally
pushed to the point of abandoning her apprenticeship with him and
setting up her own business. Since which time Louis Malloy has made
it a very large part of his activities by rumour, innuendo and
possibly by more direct means to sabotage the trade of Sr Irene's
business, Tattooed Lady Body Art. As an example, probably not
included in the evidence taken by Br. Ben, the rumour spread
through mutual customers: "Oh, she's probably off somewhere fucking
cats and dogs and casting spells on people".
IFR: The reason that I lost the apprenticeship was that I was a member
of Ordo Templi Orientis.
DR: Yes. The final, as Sr Irene has remarked, the final element in
Malloy forcing her into breaking with him was his paranoia
concerning her membership of Ordo Templi Orientis, the which had
been brought to his notice by third parties, most likely the
proprietor of a shop called Isis on the Corn Exchange. Now, to get
to the point here, nobody is questioning Br Ben's right to approach
Mr Malloy in the course of his investigations, but the manner in
which that approach was carried out, has enabled Mr Malloy, to
reinforce his already rich circulating nexus of rumour with the
rumour that we and Sr Irene in particular are so perverse and so
wicked, so disgusting, that even the black magickal order to which
we belong is now in the process of throwing us out for being too
extreme! There's no point in anybody ringing Malloy up and
complaining about this, he'll lie his head off, he always does. The
point here is that there are two interpretations on this
unfortunate circumstance. The one is that when Br Ben approached Mr
Malloy, (which we know about by the way through Mr Christopher
Kelly, in the first instance), when Br Ben approached Mr Malloy, he
must have expressed himself in a way that allowed Malloy to use
that approach as he has, question is, was that maladroitness on Br
Ben's part, in his handling of that situation, or was it ingenuous
malice?
Another example, Br Ben's taking contact with my good friend Ralph
Tegtmeier, on the basis of some information that Tegtmeier and
ourselves had become unfriends and that we had been excluded from
some organisational context in which Tegtmeier had some authority
over us. All of which is arrant nonsense. From conversations with
Tegtmeier subsequently, it seems very clear that in conversation
with him Br Ben managed to convey the impression, which we will
allow, could perhaps be erroneous, but the impression was none the
less conveyed, that had it not been for the fact that there was
reason to suppose that Tegtmeier would have something negative to
say about us he would not have been contacted at all. Now we have
given our promise to Br Clive that we will keep this meeting
civilised and we have every intention to do so. However, from what
I have said, and before we come to any accusations concerning
ourselves, from what I have said it should be obvious why we have
doubts as to the objectivity of the process to which we are being
subjected. As I understood it from Br Clive Harper, Br Ben's role
as Inquisitor should be to provide the Order, in this case
represented by the person of Br Harper, with an objective basis to
determine our activities, in so far as they concern the Order. What
we feel has happened is that an inquiry has through omission or
commision turned into a prosecution and I would like to make it
very plain, here and now, that subject to evidence to the contrary,
we are considering making a complaint to the said Br Harper
concerning the manner in which Br Fernee has discharged his
commision, which we experience as being tantamount to a Witchhunt.
We are however open to be convinced to the contratry. End of
statement.
BF: One thing is, I feel, clear. In the first instance, I'm not here to
enter into argument. I'm here to act as an agent of the "Caliph" and
the "Caliph"'s representative. I think it might be an idea that after
I've asked some questions that you have the opportunity again if
you wish, to say anything that can then be communicated back to the
powers that be. So you have the full opportunity to have your say.
I think now if we could maybe press on with some questions.
DR: In other words, you are assuming that your acting under orders as
it were, relieves you of any responsibility to convince us of your
integrity in the discharge of your commision that would actually
make us feel inclined to talk to you about these matters at all.
BF: No, I take full responsibility for that which I do. It's a question
of priorities. In the first instance I'm here to present questions
on behalf of the powers that be. If we get through that we can then
move to other matters.
IFR: Have you not heard what Br David has said?
BF: Very carefully.
IFR: Have you comprehended it?
BF: I have comprehended it and you will have the opportunity to say
again and to comment on what else proceeds at this meeting, and
that will be communicated directly back to Clive and the "Caliph".
IFR: So convince...
DR: And the "Caliph" via Clive or from you.
BF: Both together I would say.
IFR: So convince us about your objectivity.
BF: Aahm, I'm not here to argue my position, I'm not here to argue full
stop. I'm not here to justify what I'm doing, I don't need to do
that.
DR: Because you are backed by authority?
BF: Yah. Because this is why I'm here to ask questions, to ask
questions. Aahm, I mean.
IFR: May I ask a question? Why did you not come and ask these questions
10 weeks ago.
BF: In the first instance I wanted to get an idea of the complaints
that had been made. Now Clive actually suggested to me, passing on
a suggestion from you, that it would be good if I talked to people
who did support you. Now when Clive mentioned this it seemed to me,
and the exact phrase I used, "Well it seems a bit half arsed to
talk to other people, wouldn't it be better if I went and spoke
directly to David and Irene?", it just seemed to be the obvious
thing to do at this stage. Here I am.
IFR: After 10 weeks
BF: Well, yeah ahh, I have a business and things to do as well. So I
mean, can we move on now?
DR: Not quite. When we spoke on the phone recently, this is Br Ben and
myself. You seemed surprised that we would require to have present
other people, live people not just the tape to minute this meeting
and in response to the presence of Sr Susanne and Br Adrian who are
keeping record of this meeting, both written and taped, you have
chosen to bring with you a second person Br Bruce here, in exactly
what capacity has not been clarified yet, but I assume as a record
keeper.
BF: Yeah, working the machine.
DR: You are aware I take it Br Ben, since you are of sufficient
academic standing to take part in international sociological
conferences and various, that to use a phrase from R. D. Laing "All
data is captor". What we say to you is mediated by you to a third
party, through your perceptions, and I repeat, it is not a delaying
tactic on our part here, it is not irrelevant to establish whether
or not there is an intent on your part to objectivity or whether in
your mind, in your heart, we are already guilty as charged and that
the collection of evidence has been slanted by that.
BF: Well, I can say this, and I don't want to get distracted to
argument, but I can say this, I'm not really here to make
statements, it's partly the beauty of the tape that your words are
communicated directly to the "Caliph" and Clive without me commenting
upon them, not through me as a filter. I mean, I am open minded
about one of the crucial allegations. When I first heard it I
didn't believe it. And I communicated to you under my Bonds of
Third Degree.
DR: This is the accusation from Malloy that Sr Irene had had our 9 year
old daughter entertaining customers in the studio by masturbating.
BF: That's right, and I did't believe it, and I communicated that
allegation to you under the Bonds of my Third Degree.
IFR: Only after having been asked to do so.
BF: No that's not true. That's untrue. I did that on my own before
anyone had suggested to me. That's just not the case.
DR: Well, we hear the words.
BF: That is not the case. I told Clive that I'd heard it and when I
told Clive that I'd heard it I also said I've already, and I had
done, posted a letter to you. You know, I mean, I talked about it
to Clive after I'd communicated a letter to you, that's just not
true that anyone suggested to me that I aught to do this. My first
response was " I do not believe this", and I acted accordingly. So
you know that was my first response when I heard this.
DR: Well we reserve what we have said concerning the integrity of this
investigation. Let that be recorded.
BF: That's recorded and I'm very anxious that at the end of when I've
asked some questions, that you again have the opportunity to say
anything that you want to be heard in this context. Very anxious
about that. Right, can I ask some questions?
DR: Ask away.
BF: I mean, one thing I wanted to start is to get an idea about how the
recruitment into what you call the AA, how this works in the
context of OTO and EGC.
DR: First part of an answer there, we see if it remains the whole of
the answer is : What authority have you or the authorities from
whom your authority as acting inquisitor derives, to ask that
question at all?
BF: I think you'll find that where OTO people are being recruited into
another magickal order in an OTO context, I think you'll find that
the powers that be do consider that their business. And I think
also if the activities of that other magickal order should bring
the OTO into disrepute they will especially consider it a matter of
their interest. I would also point out that these rights are
embodied in the degrees, in the undertakings of the degrees,
especially in the undertakings of 5th degree. The written
undertaking before you take the degree recognises that the OTO has
an interest in this.
AB: May I make a comment?
DR: If you so wish, from our side...
AB: It's written in Crowley's own writing that any person soever who
takes the Oath of a Master of the Temple has the full right to
claim that Grade. It is also written that any person possesing that
grade has the right to establish whatever school of teaching they
so wish to communicate those particular mysteries after their own
will and fashion. It therefore follows that anybody who has
undergone those two simple and straightforward steps has every
right consecrated as it is by the writings of the Prophet to
establish whatever school of AA they desire, and that the OTO can
therefore firstly have no jurisdiction in those areas, and secondly
can hardly recognise or unrecognise as unlawful a constituted
structure of AA the formula for the formation of which is outlined
clearly enough in One Star in Sight in Magick In Theory and
Practice. That would be an absolute contradiction in terms.
DR: Let it be noted for the record that that is Br Adrian's comment and
not ours.
AB: Yes
DR: May I enquire, what you are referring to Br Ben is the obligation
of a 5th not to enter into any kind of Magickal interaction, for
the sake of shortness, with any person or organisations not
approved by the Grand Master, is that what you are referring to?
BF: Yes
DR: I see. Right. Let it be said, for the record, that my Work, me here
being Br David, as far as it concerns AA Work, and following
Brother Ben's usage. We'll use that term for a designation.
BF: We all know what we mean here.
DR: We all know what we mean here. Derives, although without paper to
prove it, from certain matters which passed between myself and the
late Grady McMurtry. Not in his Hymaneus Alpha "Caliph" hat, but
during the time that I spent together with Grady during his first
European tour, well his only European tour in fact. Let it be
stated for the record, that I had never claimed, nor as one
initially taught by me, has Sr Irene ever claimed any formal
authority, in an AA context. In that context I teach to the best of
my ability and according to the scope of my Attainment in
fulfillment of a promise given by me to the late Grady McMurtry,
under circumstances personal to himself and myself which I do not
consider it proper to discuss in this context. No claim of
authority in the formal sense to my knowledge has ever been in
respect of her own work in teaching by the Sister Irene.
The degree of authority in inverted commas, or not, the formal
possession of a transmission or not, has always been quite clearly
and explicitly stated by either or both of us at the beginnings of
any persons pupilage in the context of what we call our AA Work.
Now we are going to get into the realm of unprovables. My discharge of
my promise to Grady McMurtry, I add that that promise was not given
to him in that name but I do not feel it correct to go into deeper
circumstances there, for the moment Grady McMurtry is a sufficient
identifying label. Yes?
BF: Fine
DR: My discharge of that promise and obligaton has been built around my
own personal Work which has centred upon, the operations of
Enochian Magick and in particular, the working of the Thirty Aires.
Whether what I am about to say is accepted and acceptable or not,
will to an extent rest on the acceptance or not of the objectivity
of the Spirits, Powers, whatever label one wants to give them,
encountered and worked with jointly or seperatly, usually
seperatly, by myself and/or Sr Irene and/or any person in pupilage
with us. So to come now to the specific answer to the specific
question posed by Br Ben, throughout all the time since I gave the
promise I gave to the late Br McMurtry, and in particular since the
working of the 30 Aires and its association with my taking the 8=3
Oath of AA in October 1985, no person has been approached either
within OTO and/or EGC or without those organisations, for we have,
both of us, pupils external to those organisations, no person has
been approached without there having been clear and prior
indication from the Spirits, who we normally refer to as The Powers
but this could be confusing in this present conversation.
BF: Yeah, yeah, because I've used it in another way.
DR: Without prior indication from the Spirits. Indeed there have been
persons who for one reason or another I personally would love to
have had the opportunity of teaching, and I have been specifically
denied that by the said Spirits, in as much as that person's Path
leads them in a direction differing from and incompatible with my
own in that context. In other words, whom we have approached, I
have approached, Sr Irene has approached, or indeed some of our
more senior personal pupils have approached in these matters, has
not been, we contend, an arbitrary process. But the acceptence of
the contention that it is not an arbitrary process, really depends
on whether there is an acceptence of the objective status of what I
call the Powers and am here designating the Spirits to avoid
confusion. If one takes the philospohically fully defensible
position that these entities are no more than some form of
extention of my or Sr Irene's personal psyche, then clearly one
will interpret the choice to offer a particular person NN a
personal pupilage as being something that in the final instance is
our choice, therefore subject to our whims our desires, likes,
dislikes. If one accepts the alternative and equally legitimate
philosophical position, that the Spirits are objective, and
including one's own Holy Guardian Angel, although the HGA has a
different quality from any other class of Spirit. If one accepts
the objectivity of these, and I would suggest, at least as far as
the mature Crowley is concerned, his position was to accept their
objectivity, I refer here to the Crowley of 'Magick without Tears'
rather than the Crowley of the preface to the Goetia who seemed to
be some kind of central state materialist. If one accepts the
objectivity of the Spirits, then a different colouration, if you
like, is put on our recruiting or not of any given individual into
this work.
If it not only us that is on trial here, it is a whole approach to
quite fundamental questions underlying the practice of Magick, and
I will go a little bit further here if I may.
BF: Go ahead
DR: This question pertains not only to recruitment but to the exact
manner in which I or Sr Irene, although we do not use those names
in that context but for the sake of clarity, blah blah, the manner
in which either of us at any given time teaches a particular person
beyond the fundamental core which is the syllabus. The published
syllabus, and no pupil of ours gets away without having 'do the
syllabus work' drummed into their ears until they're sick of it.
The manner of teaching, the manner of interaction, what happens
between us and them at any given time, the changes in what happens
between us and them at any given time is a matter of quite a
complex assessment between our evaluations, and again information
deriving from sources whose objectivity is open to ontological
question. This has been the case for as long as I've been involved
in this, which is getting on now for slightly in excess of a decade
in terms of interacting with pupils and slightly in excess of two
decades in terms of my own personal work which was in process
before I ever met McMurtry. And what is germaine here is that those
people who have entered into pupilage, who have loyally and
diligently stuck to the syllabus, who have done the work, who have
interacted with us in any way soever in the basis of the
information given by us or obtained by them from these subtle
forces. Those who stayed with it are not the ones who raised the
complaints. Those who stayed with it and who are also within the
OTO are, and for obvious reasons I am not willing to name names at
this stage, because their private work is their private
prerogative, are however amongst those who most loyally and
dillegently have carried out and do carry out the work of OTO and
of EGC within the context of the area where we have any kind of
contact with people at all. Those who in spite of our admonitions
have thought themselves better than the need to do the syllabus
work, those, who in spite of our admonitions have chosen to
experiment in a variety of ways with techniques not deriving from
any Thelemic source, and in particular, those who have gone
dabbling with various forms of Chaos magic, where there's as little
grasp of Chaos magick as they seem to have of Thelema, they are the
ones who in spite of every effort of ours have failed to continue
in the Work, and without exception, when somebody drops out of the
Work, they look for some means of justifying themselves to
themselves for doing it. Who are you gonna blame? And it is
distressing to see the total lack of imagination...
IFR: YES
DR: with which that blame is constructed..
IFR: It becomes boring.
DR: The same goddamned silly stories that have been circulating about
one or other person since Betty May first wrote silly stories about
Crowley in the yellow press. They turn up again and again. The same
willful misrepresentation of various interactions of one sort or
another. We are aware, we are painfully aware, and have been for as
long as we have been involved in this, of the risk that we take in
taking on anybody, knowing that there's a more than even chance,
given the demands of the Work, that they will reach a stage where
they are not willing to take responsibility for their own action,
where they are not willing to take on the burden of paying the
price of the lunch. whatever that may be. and it varies from person
to person; and knowing full well that when that happens, we are
going to get blamed, we are going to get slagged off in public, we
are going to be misrepresented, and we still go on and do it.
BF: Right
DR: And we still go on and do it for the simple reason that we feel
that we are under an obligation so to do. But I can give you my
deepest and most sincere assurance, which I am sure the sister will
echo, that we would much rather not have anything to do with it at
all, because it is a total pain in the arse. End of second
statement.
BF: So when AA activities that are aside from the published syllabus of
the AA take place, that is a result of information from
disincarnate entities...
DR: If you want to put it like that...
BF: Spirits...
DR: Those of our pupils, there's an additional point here, who in dint
of natural ability and or hard work and attainment have their own
direct channel to such information are always required not to rely
on us as a source of information, they are always required to
either get independant confirmation through their own workings, or
in some cases to get the information themselves without our
invovlement at all. It has happened, and does happen. What is
interesting here is, and again I think you can confirm this, as
long as people are actually doing the work, as long as they are
doing the syllabus work as well as anything else, as long as they
are actually sticking to what they've sworn themselves to in the
first place, and I'll come back to that in a second, there never
seems to be any confusion in their minds between the various
contexts. It's only after they've fallen off one or other aspect of
the work that they begin to mix the contexts together into the
Magickal equivalent of mushy peas, in their own minds and in their
own self justification. We've seen it time and time again. It's
always equally distressing but it seems to be a general case.
IFR: We always stress very very clearly if they shall make the
confusion, make the distinction between the contexts...
[DR: (to SW) Light out!
DR: We actually have a tape, we can actually copy, see what the quality
of that is like, copy straight across.]
DR: This really what I'm saying now is a background to our answers to
any question.
IFR: As long as they are our pupils...it is always expressed very very
clearly again and again the distinction between the contexts. This,
this, this has nothing to do with the OTO, it is not in an OTO
context. It is as Br. David said first after this confusion seems
to occur in their own minds.
DR: I would contend actually that more have succeeded than have failed.
That's again reliant on evidence that I'm not prepared to give
without the specific permission of the people concerned. For
obvious reasons. I will point out that during the stay in Wales
when I took my 5th degree, I did actually discuss my AA work with
the "Caliph" at some length, the result of which was him at that
point communicating to me the Equinoctial Word which he had
received from his then teacher, now deceased. The teacher, not the
"Caliph"! So, I mean there are more questions at stake here than our
behaviour. There are two things I would like to add here; one is
the manner in which anybody starts this particular aspect of the
work under our auspices, is having had it rammed down their throats
that there's no formal authority here that you can get bits of
paper off, they are asked to make an act of self-dedication so that
the contract if you like is not between them and us, it's between
them and themselves, and them and the Powers of the Universe if you
like, which means, in a sense, that their work is completely
independant of us, or can become so at any time soever. The other
thing here, which colours a little bit our reactions when things
like this investigation occur, is the peculiar way in which in
particular my work in the AA context has been viewed in certain
quarters and the lengths people will go to. One has heard now by
various and dubious routes, it may be a Chinese whisper, it may
not, that the real reason that my OTO Charters were pulled was
because Bill Heidrick was convinced that I having taken the 8=3
Oath of AA, had failed, and that my failure was responsible pretty
much from all the problems the Order was facing in Europe. A
misunderstanding concerning the retaining of certain monies in
Manchester between myself and Br. Clive was then totally,
illegitimately blown up and misrepresented as "financial
irregularity" on my part, and used as a vicarious excuse for
pulling Charters, by the way another reason for us not having too
much trust towards yourself Br. Ben was the way that the pulling of
my Charter was used by you in a meeting in Rochdale.
BF: Say your piece.
DR: It was referred to in a meeting where quite honestly it was not
relevant by you in a "Oh dear, I've let cat cat out of the bag!"
manner.
BF: Well, I'm not here to argue.
DR: Yeah, but again it's not the sort of thing that makes people trust
people. Now, I would make one last point concerning our AA work.
There are people who we teach towards whom I have absolutely no
personal liking whatsoever.
BF: Fine.
DR: But that isn't the point. Do you see what I mean here, we're on to
somewhat difficult territory here because there are underlying
ontological questions here...
BF: Yes, I do, I do, and ...they're important.
DR: They are.
BF: They're important.
DR: They are indeed because the whole question of the legitimacy of
what we do, in the final instance hinges on how you interpret the
statement I've just made really.
BF: Absolutely. I'm interested as well... I feel this is partly where
the problems be, is in some of the non-published AA activities,
non-published syllabus AA activities, so I mean, have there been
instances where the Spirits, being the word we are using here, have
given information that people should engage in a series of Magickal
Operations during which one or some of the participants have felt
uncomfortable with those Magickal Operations? Or the act involved
in those magickal operations, has this been the situation?
DR: I've never felt comfortable with a Magickal Operation in my life.
IFR: Neither have I.
DR: I'd rather not do anything than most of the things I have done.
IFR: But how can one teach if the only concern in one's own learning
and in teaching is one's comfort?
BF: Yes, but let's not get hung up about the word comfort. What I'm
thinking really of is where...
DR: Has anybody ever been forced into any sort of sexual activity is
what you're thinking of.
BF: That's, that's the area...
DR: So why don't you say that.
BF: Yes, that's the area, where sex acts have been part of the Magickal
Operations, you know, have there been situations where people have
been informed that the Spirits have said a series of sexual acts in
a Magickal context should take place?
DR: Such situation occur, yes, and I' ve already covered that point in
one sense by saying that nothing is ever done without there being
some kind of confirmatory work. Even if it's "Do a divination
yourself". There has never been any question of force, never, ever.
IFR: And always "If this is your Will so to do, you can say yes or you
can say no."
DR: And people have said no, and that has always been respected.
IFR: Always respected.
BF: Right.
DR: Let me just go on here. I suggest we continue until half past and
then we take a break for a further coffee.
BF: OK, yeah.
DR: My brain requires caffeine, I don't know about yours.
BF: Ah, yeah, it was an early start.
DR: Right, OK. What I would add there is that there have also been
occasions more I would hasten in the connection with Sr Irene than
in connection with myself because she's a damn sight prettier than
I am, that was a facetious comment but not only, there have also
been occasions when the clear sexual desire towards her on the part
of one or other pupil male or female, has deliberatly been
explicitly pointed out and then thwarted.
BF: Right, right, yeah.
DR: It's not unknown under such circumstances, for an ex-pupil whose
desire to get into her knickers has never been allowed, to have
created a whole mythology about all the things they are supposed to
have done together as well. Particularly those who would have loved
to have taken part in some of the work that she engages in on the
fetish and leather scene, associated with her business.
BF: Right, right.
DR: and have never had the opportunity...
BF: Right, yeah.
DR: Now, there's also...
IFR: I think it's important to state that when a pupil is first engaged
in pupilage, it is a contract, you can't...."Let everything be done
well, and with business way". You can not teach without a contract.
It is a contract between teacher and pupil which the pupil can
accept or not accept. If you say "Yes, I want to be taught", then
you have accepted the contract.
DR: Let me give an example without naming names here. The hindrance to
development for most people is the ability by one means or another
to overcome their own, what shall we call them, "hang-ups".
BF: Yeah.
DR: Sometimes, in order, as it were for the central syllabus based work
to progress, some kind of a hang-up has to be exploded.
BF: Right.
DR: Now. There's another point here, as well, which distinguishes
something like the one- to-one kind of work that an AA thing has
from what are essentially collective Orders like the OTO, and that
is that in something like the OTO the very structure of the Order
does not allow for what the psycho-analysts call the "problem of
transference".
BF: Umm. Hmm.
DR: But when you're teaching on a one-to-one basis in any context, and
particularly in a Magickal context, then the problem of
transference is sitting there.
BF: This being feelings by the pupil for the teacher that are
inappropriate.
DR: Yeah, and the transfer of feelings towards themselves onto the
teacher.
BF: Right.
DR: As teacher, one is just as much demon as angel. And at varying
stages of any kind of pupil/teacher interaction. How far I am the
Great White Whatsit, or how far I am the Demon David, is gonna vary
quite dramatically, from time to time. Those who come through the
Demon David phase tend to feel terribly embarrassed about it
afterwards, but I mean.. And those who don't, add to the mythology.
BF: Right, right.
DR: We have also, or at least I have also experienced on occasions,
though not for many years, problems with the misrepresentation of
my Work here, by people who for one reason or another have become
aware of it, who desperately wanted to be a part of it, and who've
been told "Sorry, I can't take you on".
BF: Umm. Hmm.
DR: A lot of the problems that I had with Gerald [Suster], to a certain
extent were that he having decided that I was the most accomplished
Magician he'd met after Regardie, this was after Regardie died, he
was sort of in one sense or another angling for my approval and
recognition. he didn't get it, and turned singularly nasty, and
this is germaine here because one of the effects of that was Gerald
having by diverse and peculiar means of his own, certainly not
deriving from any information by me, having decided that I'd taken
the 8=3 Oath, presenting a very warped representation of what that
was in all sorts of contexts and sundries. It was an attempt by me
to limit the damage being done by that action of his that resulted
in my re-affirming that oath, in a meeting, which having been an
OTO meeting, had none the less been closed at that point of time,
but which then got misrepresented back again as me taking the 8=3
Oath in an OTO meeting, and then feeding it to Heidrick's paranoia.
So there's a whole sort of domino sequence here that goes back a
good few years.
BF: Right, Right.
DR: But, Gerald's spreading weird versions of what it was I was
supposed to have sworn myself to, in a variety of more or less
public contexts, including "The Society" in London, and a few other
bits and pieces, and this was quite simply down to the fact that he
wanted to be taught. He wanted a new guru after Regardie died, and
I wouldn't play. Because it had been made very explicit to me by
the Sources that I work with and that I respect that I was not to
take him on. And I told him that, but he wouldn't accept that. Only
his Spirits were objective. Everybody else's were to do with their
psychology and therefore because I'm a nasty warped person I
wouldn't play with him. And I mean we've had other examples of this
as well. And again, anybody who's a "wanna-be" and has been
rejected seems to contribute to the mythology as well.
BF: Umm. Hmm.
DR: ...in one way or another.
BF: Shall we stop for a coffee break now.
DR: Yes.
BF: And then come back to a point which has been made.
IFR: Yep.
DR: OK.
BF: Yeah, cause I want to return, cause I think this is an area of
sensitivity.
DR: Ah hah.
BF: Where we have Spirits communicating information for non-standard
syllabus, non- published syllabus AA activities. Umm, now you
mentioned um the contract that people enter into when they become
pupils. If perhaps you want to talk a bit more about the nature of
that contract.
IFR: It is, goes like, that I offer the pupilage, take it or leave it,
yes or no, if it's yes, it's a contract.
BF: It's a contract.
IFR: As in any teaching institution, university or whatever, it is a
teaching contract between the teaching institution and the pupil,
even some college and universities...
DR: Not a written contract.
IFR: You have no written contract. There's no written contract here,
it's not a written contract.
BF: Not a written one, it's. it's. it's.
IFR: No.
BF: It's a verbal contract. So what does the pupil contract to do,
undertake?
IFR: To be taught.
BF: To be taught.
IFR: Yes.
BF: What does the pupil undertake to do in relation to Magickal
Operations?
DR: Nothing specific.
IFR: Nothing specific.
BF: But that is understood to be part of the contract?
DR: Whatever is necessary to learn what needs to be learned.
IFR: Yes.
BF: And an element of this may be loosing inhibitions?
DR: The element of it may be all sorts of things, whatever they're most
frightened of, in a way, yeah?
BF: Well.
DR: I was going to give an example of one former pupil of mine,
unbeknownst to me because one is reliant on people providing
information, we don't go putting them on the rack to get it, unless
that might be what they might enjoy, and then it's a different
context and they would have to pay for it. That's a JOKE! For
anybody who may not realise it. Right, one former pupil of mine had
unbeknownst to me great trouble with the fact that he in fact is a
transvestite, and has never ever come to terms with that. This
leading to a number of problems between himself and his lady
friend, the which problems were then exploited by other persons,
not us, leading to various troubles. If he'd told me I could have
helped him to deal with it. He didn't, as it was, it all ended in
tears one way and another, in spite of the fact that the one day
for months when we didn't actually give up our time, for one or
another person's neccessities, which is also a point here.
IFR: We had said "This one day ...
DR: New Year's Eve.
IFR: ... is for us ..."
DR: We ended up mediating between him and his ladyfriend after he'd
spent half an hour on the phone to me in a phone box in tears. All
of which subsequently got edited out of the story. Whether or not
I'll put a name on that particular story depends on whether or not
he's listed among the complainants.
BF: Don't think so.
DR: You don't know. It's also the case that the gentleman in question
had used vast amounts of notes kept by himself from discussions
he'd had with me, notes more or less verbatim of my words, to
create first his BA thesis, and then his MA thesis.
BF: Umm. Hmm.
DR: Which although, I in the one case and we in the other case got a
small acknowledgment at the beginning, the degree of assistance
has never ever been revealed. But it just ruddy well might be if
I'm pushed far enough. But it has to do with people's integrity. I
don't mind being slagged off Ben but I do object to being ripped
off. Slagged off I can eventually cope with, ripped off, I will
wait years. Old Klingon Proverb "Revenge is a dish best eaten
cold". So.
BF: So, eh the contract, uhm.
DR: The contract is one of mutual trust.
IFR: Yeah, and confidentiality.
DR: And confidentiality within the teaching relationship, the which
confidentiality is always kept as long as people are on track and
doing the syllabus work and thereby having the basis to comprehend
what is otherwise happening to them, and which goes straight out
the window as soon as they don't do that. I mean, the key here to
who stays and who goes is not whether they indulge in bizarre
sexual acts with us, either or both, or donkeys or whatever, is not
whether we set them vicious and horrible tasks to do, they key
element in whether or not they stay in this or not, has been, is,
always will be, whether they listen to what we say to them and
buckle down and do the syllabus work. Because if they do the
syllabus work: 1) they inevitably acquire the ability to get their
own information, by one means and another, be it scrying,
divinations or whatever, and eventually by contact with their HGA;
2) they acquire a certain fundamental personal stability, which
they don't otherwise acquire, the which feeds back into their OTO
by in a certain sense counteracting the destabilising effect of
those chakra-based intiations; 3) they in any case broaden their
education and are therefore in a better position to judge the exact
nature... the gentleman I mentioned who liked to dress up in his
girlfriends frocks, wrote his thesis on Tantra. When confronted by
us with a full Tantric meal, he nearly freaked. When asked to go
and sit in a graveyard for 10 minutes, he couldn't do it, due to
residual superstitions from his own cultural background.
BF: Right. Right.
DR: The discovery that the person who'd been his teacher for nearly 18
months, and his teacher's partner, might just be the exact kind of
people he'd spent the last two years writing about shook him to his
little roots. These kind of things only work if people take the
unwritten contract seriously, the contract is to do the Work, the
Work here defined as being the syllabus and the contract being to
learn through those experiences which are constructed for them to
have.
BF: Right, right. And part of that construction...
DR: Could be anything.
BF: Could be anything.
DR: It could be a night of wild pleasure with one of us, or it could be
spending 10 hours lying on a bed of nettles in freezing cold and
rain on the Yorkshire Moors. It depends what that person
particularly needs to overcome in order to be able to draw out...
BF: Liberate themselves.
DR: Yeah but also to be able to, there's a sort of ...cycle here
between the learning in the syllabus and having something to apply
that learning to, so they can interpret and then feed that
interpretation back to enrich the learning.
BF: Right. Right.
DR: We teach through experiential method. Because unfortunatley that
happens to be the only way that we can teach.
BF: Right. Right.
DR: Other people teach differently. And it's horses for courses. I
mentioned earlier the fact that I have had people I would have
loved to have taught and I've been told "Hands Off!"
BF: Right, so you've done that.
DR: And I've done that. But the point was that particular person did
eventually find a person they needed to teach what they needed to
learn, and it couldn't have been me for the simple reason, that
what they needed to learn required a totally different method of
teaching than the experiential one.
BF: Right. Right.
DR: You know, my method of teaching, her method of teaching, we're
essentially Situationalists if you like.
BF: Right. Right. So.
DR: I mean, and you have to make a judgement.
BF: Umm. Hmm.
DR: In what you're doing. in the situation you create...
IFR: And always weigh the risks.
DR: To take an example from another context.
BF: OK.
DR: Right. The late lamented side pocket of the OTO, the Knights of
Baphomet, in the days when I was still making Knights, which I
don't do any longer obviously, since that thing has gone into
obeyance, yeah?
BF: Umm. Hmm.
DR: You will remember the clobbering I gave you when I gave you your
first buffet, I nearly dislocated your jaw, I seem to remember.
Other people, I would give a very light tap, you make a judgement
as to what is the best thing to do in the circumstances, now when
you make a judgement, sorry am I going too fast...
SW: Ehh, slightly. AB: Just a tad.
DR: When you make a judgement you always accept as part of the contract
between you and the universe that your judgement might be wrong.
BF: Right.
DR: And, even if one had Understanding, even if one had Wisdom, even if
one were beyond even that and I certainly wouldn't claim any of
these things, in any sense which is complete. You here now in the
piece of meat you live in, are still gonna have to take that risk
every time you make a judgement.
BF: Right. Yes. Yeah.
DR: Yeah?
BF: Umm. Hmm.
DR: I have criticised, on record, your way of conducting this
investigation up to now, but that has been based on your decisions
as to how to do something. I happen to think that you've done it in
a way which is not particularly useful, but you're the one who is
gonna have to stand for that. You have made decisions and you will
have to take the consequences of them being right or wrong.
BF: Yeah. Yeah.
DR: Sometimes you end up with a medal, sometimes you end up with egg on
your face, sometimes you end up with a damn sight worse. It's the
same here.
BF: Umm. Hmm. Umm. Hmm. Right. Right.
DR: Now, let's not get hung up in a particular act or sequence of acts,
it's the same damn thing, regardless of what is done, you make a
judgement on the basis of the fullest and best information,
particularly the fullest information you can get. I do it, you do
it, everybody does it, every day.
BF: Umm. Hmm.
DR: We, and I think I can speak for both of us here, have no regret
soever, about anything which we have done.
IFR: Confirmed.
DR: In this context that we are discussing. Totally unrepentant, sorry.
BF: Fine.
DR: We do have regrets about the way, when people in one way or another
have fallen off the lorry, they have then chosen to act
subsequently, but that's the risk we take. It's the risk we have
always taken in doing this at all, and it's the main reason why
quite frankly I would rather not do it. I don't feel I have the
choice not to do it.
BF: Right.
DR: And, for my own part here, and you can speak for yourself here, one
of the reasons, saving your grace, that I get so furious when this
whole situation occurs.
BF: Umm. Hmm.
DR: Is I do not want to see the situation arise where I have to make
the choice between two sorts of authority, both of whom I respect
and both of whom I have dedicated considerable periods of my life
to the service of. But in the final analysis, if you take an
objectivist view of the subtle members of the congregation of the
universe, if I have to make a choice between Bill Breeze's
authority, and the authority of my Holy Guardian Angel and the
Powers, here designated the Spirits, a choice I simply do not want
to have to make.
BF: Right.
DR: I would have to make that choice on the basis of who I personally
feel my prime loyalty must be to, now I'm not saying which way that
would jump, but I'm gonna lose anyway, if the choice is forced on
me in one sense or another, we are both now in a no- win situation.
BF: Well.
DR: If the choice is forced.
BF: Umm. Hmm. Well, that's not for me...
DR: That's not for you, but I'm saying, here, now on record, if the
choice is forced, in one sense or another we will lose, each of us
and both of us a very considerable part of what we have dedicated
our lives to. Because we do not make any seperation between any
part of our lives and our Magickal Work.
BF: Right. Absolutely.
DR: Yeah? Irene's business is a Magickal Operation, and suffers for it.
Up until now, my involvement in Magick has cost me a marriage, the
love of two children, it has cost me a job, it has cost me a
business. Now, I'm sort of putting up the "Poor me I'm a great
martyr" thing, but what I'm saying is, I have a little tattoo on my
arm of a Vulture... He is above a scroll on which is inscribed the
word " Tanstaafl ". Those of you who have read Heinlein's "The moon
is a harsh mistress", will recognise that as the motto in Lunar
Colony. "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch". well I've paid
my dues, right the way down the line and I find it very, very very
hurtful that the will to take the risk is not being respected, not
being respected by those who don't dare any longer or never did and
who therefore feel themselves entitled in one way or another to
denigrate that which they once most desired to be a part of by
willful, gross malicious misrepresentation. End of statement.
DR: Do you want to add or do you want to confirm what I've just said,
you're your own voice, not mine.
IFR: I agree with every word you have said.
BF: Because I do want to kind of clarify the process which is
operating. We are touching upon the sensitive stuff now, we are
starting to enter into this. Correct me if I'm wrong, please
correct me if I'm wrong. You're operating the AA syllabus, as
published, with the adjunct of creating experiences that work out,
reinforce, and help in that. Now those operations that are the
adjunct, the complement of the published syllabus, now the
information for what these are comes from the Spirits and come from
your judgement of what the person requires, what would be the
best...
DR: On the basis of the total information available at that time. Can I
just add something. I'm trying to formulate this so that it is in
some sense comprehensible. The syllabus as it is published, and
this really pertains more to the sister's work than it does to
mine, so perhaps she should say it rather than me but I'll
formulate it and if she doesn't like what I'm saying, she can
disagree or add. The syllabus as it is published is not a Class A
document, it is the product of a late Victorian male mind. There
are whole areas of Magickal experience which are excluded from the
syllabus because it is the product of a late Victorian male mind,
however Illuminated. It has its own historicity. Up to a certain
point, clearly, the same things are central, in the tuition of both
a male or a female pupil, I hasten to add, I do not have any female
pupils, the only female pupil I've actually ever had is sitting
beside me here and I share most of my life with her, yeah? Namely
Irene. There are whole areas pertaining to female Magick, women's
mysteries or whatever, which, and particularly the dark side of
that, in its, not in the sanitised, the sort of fashion for Dark
Goddessy things at the moment...
BF: I know, yeah.
DR: We'll ignore that, I'm talking about.
BF: The sort of books I used to sell in the old shop, I know.
DR: I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about the real thing. And
to an extent then, I as a male teaching males primarily, have the
luxury of having it all set up for me. To properly teach a female
as female as an adjunct to the necessary common ground if you like,
which is what the syllabus is, she has to go off into territories
that neither you or I or any sensible male would dare to enter and
take her pupil with her. Now, that in itself means that to a
certain extent they operate in much scarier territory than any man
would ever dare go into. And therefore with a greater risk of
failure through loss of nerve in a way. Also, because so much of
that tradition is neither verbal nor verbally communicable. It
operates through totally other means. Through dance, through,
through whatever, but not the verbal conceptual intellectual
claptrap that we men tend to indulge in.
AB: May I make a quotation at this stage if I may be permitted to do
so?
DR: Yeah.
AB: A propos the published syllabus and sorry to quote Crowley again as
if he was scripture but the point is germaine. He makes the point
that it is spiritual experience alone which counts, the rest is but
method. The notion being that you cannot publish a recipe of
Magickal Practice which is going to work the same way for
everybody. It is a skeleton, it is not intended to be taken as
gospel. But merely as groundwork to begin with and not the be-all
and end-all of the whole thing, and at some point if that system
were to be practiced you would have to depart from what is
published, that is only the bare framework for what can be common
to all.
DR: It is also the stabilising factor. Now again, both male and female,
there are certain stages in that work which are extremely
frightening. Particularly, the, what I would call the ante-chambers
to those stages, the last step. As can be seen from various
published writings, as can be seen from Liber Samekh, below
Tiphareth in the inner, the HGA is the Opponent.
BF: Right. Yes.
DR: Jacob met Satan and wrestled with him 'til dawn, whereupon he found
him to be the Angel of the Presence of the Lord. Yeah?
BF: Umm. Hmm.
DR: Now one of the places... I'm not saying this is the case for all
those who having departed from that aspect of the work are
concerned to bring us down... but one of the saddest cases of all
that I have seen, there was a particular ex-pupil of mine, not the
same one I referred to before, again I will mention the name if and
only if he is listed by name amongst our accusers, who from his own
record was within what I would call spitting distance of the first
true extensive contact with that being who is his Holy Guardian
Angel, whatever that might be, I again hold an objectivist
viewpoint of that on the basis of my own experience. Other people
would prefer to treat as if it was esoteric psychology. Whatever it
is, he was on the verge of really meeting it, in its true form for
the first time, and he bottled. He was not prepared to take the
responsibility for the changes in his life that passing from my
tutelage to the direct tutelage of his Angel would involve. So he
went out of his way to create situations where everything in his
life would fall to bits. His marriage, his studies, whatever, his
commitment to Thelema, which he would then exchange left, right and
centre for "Let's try and get into the IOT; let's try and be a
Discordian; what day of the week is it? Oh I'll be Golden Dawn
today." Yeah? And has become one of the worst sources of continual
misrepresentation concerning ourselves. Judging from certain
correspondance we've had from him since, its part of a deliberate,
supposedly in his mind Discordian process. Well that's as may be. I
call it making a cheap excuse and finding someone else to blame for
your own failures. But the fact of the matter is that there was
never any bone of contention between him and ourselves before he
had that experience and lost his bottle. And he was on his\own when
he had it, doing workings of his own devising, because the for one,
the syllabus has this peculiar feature. It has two major steps to
which there are no recipes. That is attaining to the Knowledge and
Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, and Crossing The Abyss.
The rest of it is, what's the English word for it, scaffolding, its
there to prop up the edifice. but he devised his own workings, he
carried them out over months, he nearly got his result and he
bottled, and after that we've had nothing but trouble from that
source.
BF: Cause one area that I think there is concern about, is where people
have entered into the contract to be taught, to endeavour with
expeience, with the experiences required, that during that process,
during a series of Workings they have felt "This isn't right". Now
what happens if that arises, what happens if somebody feels, "These
sexual acts are not right for me"?
DR: That depends on whether they open their mouths and say so or not,
doesn't it.
IFR: Yes.
BF: What if they say so?
DR: Then it stops.
IFR: And it is respected.
DR: Always, without exception.
BF: Right. Right.
IFR: Or they might not take place in the first place.
DR: Or they might not take place in the first place.
DR: We may find other ways.
BF: Would it be pointed out to them that the Spirits have communicated
that this series should go ahead or that this is the series of acts
that have been, that the Spirits have uuh, have communicated should
be done.
DR: We are not religious. We are Magicians. We do not take in that
sense orders from the Spirits. They counsel. Now it is my contention
that we if you like, we humans, we are the generalists. We are if
you like central to the whole process because we can do a bit of
everything reasonably. The other persons who fill this universe,
they are the specialists, about their own area, their own field,
they know infinately more than any of us ever can, regardless of
achievement.
BF: But they're exclusive.
DR: But they are narrow.
BF: Yeah. Yeah.
DR: Their whole existence is within one Sphere of the Tree if you like,
whereas we are everything, at least potentially. Therefore, from
them, as Magicians, we receive counsel, we can act on that
information and if we don't they can and do say "We told you so".
Or words to that effect, but in the same way, and allowing for the
fact that people don't listen to what you say to them, if we are
communicating to a pupil that such and such has been counselled by
the powers, we make a point of explaining what that means and what
it doesn't mean. there is never a "You Must", there is never a
"Thus saith the lord and therefore you must." There is "It has been
stated that such and such and such, is it your Will to accept this
counsel and act on it or not?"
IFR: What they might find frightening from time to time might be to
take the responsibility for saying either yes or no, because both
has consequences.
BF: Sorry, what... that the pupil might find.
IFR: What the pupil might find frightening is to take the
responsibility for the choices.
DR: It doesn't matter whether they say yes or no.
IFR: Both has consequences.
BF: Right, right, and they hesitate...
IFR: To take the responsibility.
BF: They hesitate from taking that responsibility.
DR: Now, if, if we can in the situation there, then clearly see that
they are hesitating or that they are provaricating, or that they
haven't understood what the hell we're talking about, nothing
proceeds.
BF: And you would confirm that?
IFR: Yes, I would confirm that.
DR: But that's there then, not back after. Did you get the distinction
I'm making there?
BF: Yeah, yeah, I realise that.
DR: Because what we are dealing with here with a lot of the accusations
with which we are confronted is retroactive reinterpretation, but I
will here and now, and you can confirm this seperately for your own
part after, say, quite categorically, that if there is the
slightest doubt that in the situation at that moment it is
anybody's will to go ahead or not go ahead with a particular thing,
because it's just as bad to not say no when you mean no as it is to
say yes when you don't mean it, if we have the slightest doubt that
in a situation of saying yes or no the said person in front of us
is not actually going to take the responsibility for that yes or
that no, then we don't go any further before that point is
clarified, and sometimes that may take months or years, or we may
never get any further. But that's there then, and that is the
difficulty here.
BF: Right. Yes.
DR: This reminds me a little bit of a lecturer in Statistics I had at
Aston University, he used to write with both hands and he'd walk
across the board writing with both hands and then he'd rub it out
going the other way, and he'd mumble to the blackboard. He was
absolutely brilliant but I didn't discover that until two years
later when I bought his book. I learned absolutely nothing in his
lectures.
IFR: There have been situations where I have chosen not to engage a
pupil and have to carry the burden and the consequences and the
responsibility for that. Again, weighing the risk against the risk
between somebody engaging in something ...
DR: that they're not wholeheartedly with...
IFR: Yeah, that they're not wholeheartedly with; then I'd rather not.
BF: Right, you've avoided that situation.
IFR: Yes. Yeah.
DR: Always, but again, it's there then, and it changes in retrospect.
BF: And these Magickal Operations that are complementing the published
syllabus of AA, these may involve tattoos...
IFR: That's a bit of an odd question, can you specify actually what you
mean?
BF: That the Magickal Operations that are complementing the published
syllabus of the AA, the experiential, do these maybe involve
receiving a tattoo? Is that something that's happened?
DR: This is the "Us forcing people into having tattoos and piercings
for our own profit".
BF: I have to ask.
DR: Yeah. Yeah.
BF: To clear the air.
IFR: Most of the tattoos and piercings which I have done on pupils,
have been required by them and asked for by them, and sometimes if
the tattoo or piercing is not necessary or essential for the Work
they have paid for it by commercial prices. If it has been
essential for the Work I have not charged for it.
DR: Even if it's been uncertain as to its being essential, but if its
arisen out of the context of the Work you haven't charged for it.
If NN comes along and says "I want such and such" because I happen
to like the idea, then OK they are a customer.
IFR: Yeah.
DR: They pay for it at 45 pounds per hour same as any bastard else.
BF: Right.
DR: If however in the process of so and so in their own Work getting
some inspiration, information, or whatever, that they need a
particular image as a part of that stage of what they are doing,
and if that person is her pupil, because if they're someone else's
pupil then it's a different game, yeah?
BF: Right. Right.
DR: If they're someone else's pupil, as far as she is concerned,
clearly it's still a commercial proposition, because they come to
her then not as teacher but as tattooist. And this is a distinction
that needs to be kept as well, yes?
BF: Right. Right.
DR: But if, for example, somebody who is her pupil needs a particular
image, in their judgement, then it is done, and I would estimate
that over the last three years or so, you have probably done
something in the region of 10 to 12 thousand pounds worth of free
work on various people...
BF: Because that's been part of...
DR: In terms of tattooing, piercing, in one instance, scarification,
which in view of the still undecided "Spanner" business is quite a
risky undertaking to do in the studio, she's one of the few people
who will actually take the risk to do it.
IFR: I couldn't say an amount sort of off the top of my head.
DR: Well, I'm working on the amount of hours, the amount of square
inches, what you would normally have taken for work.
IFR: To say it like that. I gladly do a tattoo and do not have the, I
mean it costs me money because I pay the material and my time.
DR: Excuse me a minute, its actually more than that because there's a
strange consistent experience that say for example somebody is
coming in to the studio on a particular day for a clearly Magickal
piece of tattooing...
BF: Somebody else comes in... wanting to have a bit of commercial
stuff...
DR: Well, they don't get it for one thing, but also the somebody else
doesn't come in.
BF: Oh right, oh right.
DR: If you want to kill a day stone dead as far as trade is
concerned...
BF: Do a Magickal one...
DR: Do a Magickal one at the start of the day. Nothing else happens all
day. And this is absolutetly consitant over months.
BF: Right, right.
IFR: I don't do it at the beginning of a day.
DR: Do it at the end of a day. Or a Sunday which is appointment only.
BF: So...
IFR: But I have never ever forced any pupil to have any tattoo,
piercing or any kind of body decoration ...
DR: Or even henna decoration or body paint.
IFR: No never, ever.
DR: Not so much as a haircut.
BF: Right.
IFR: I only have the hard work and no money for it.
BF: Right, so just thinking about the free ones. Because they are part
of people's Work who are pupils of yours. Where does, is this, are
they responding to communication from the Spirits that it's
suggested to be their Work, you know, a step on their Path?
DR: Do you mean communication through us? Sometimes. Sometimes direct
to themselves, sometimes they just get an idea.
IFR: I can not remember that any of my ex-pupils have had anything done
to their bodies, that they haven't asked ME for, something they
wanted, and then I have said ...
DR: We'll check it, we'll check it.
IFR: We'll check it. They have come to me. I think maybe once I have
said "I think that might be a good idea, have a think about it"
and... no, actually that was a commercial one, the one I'm thinking
about particularly, no she actually came to me and said "I want a
tattoo." I have never, ever ...
DR: And I have actually once stopped a pupil of mine from having
something done, which they had convinced themselves was absolutely
essential.
IFR: I have also done wedding tattoos, as a gift.
BF: What tattoos, sorry?
IFR: Wedding tatoos, as a gift, as a wedding present. It was offered...
DR: Twice you've done that...
IFR: Twice I've done that. It was offered as a wedding gift, they said
yes to the wedding gift, and I did it. No charge.
DR: In the one case the wedding lasted and they are still happy with
their tattoos, in the other case it didn't.
IFR: One did come and said "I would like a cover up job".
DR: Sorry, dejargonising, a cover is where...
BF: I know...
DR: Yeah for those who may get this who have no idea, a cover is
putting a new tattoo over an old one, which for one reason or
another one wishes to get rid of.
IFR: And I offered to do it for free. That tattoo never got finished.
DR: It probably wouldn't have gone with the frocks he wore.
IFR: All the others have been commercial tattoos, they have come and
asked for, and I have treated them as customers. If somebody comes
to my studio, and even before I had the studio, if they come and
ask for a tattoo or a piercing they are treated as any other
customer, paying for it or not. They are treated as a customer.
BF: So, people, I mean AA pupils, present AA pupils, and past AA pupils
of yours, have the Spirits suggested that they should have a tattoo
done?
IFR: No, not through us.
DR: Not through us.
BF: Not through you, not through you?
IFR: All those has come to me because they wanted it. I don't think it
was from any Spirit what soever, they felt this would be right for
me to have, I want suddenly to have 10 rings in my ears, or I want
my labia pierced, or I want these Spare tattoos. they have come to
me as a professioanl tattooist and body piercer, saying "I would
like this work."
DR: Now there have been, there have been some of our more advanced and
still current pupils, who have their own communications with the
Spirits, or dare I say it, with their own HGA's, who have come and
said "In my work, so and so". be it their HGA or a particular
Spirit "has counselled that I should have such and such" but this
is their information obtained by them through their own Work, not
being channelled through us.
IFR: And it is on my discretion when I come, if it my own pupils I do
not charge, and if it's somebody else's pupils its on my own
discretion if I charge or not.
DR: Or if she charges a cost or if she charges a commercial rate.
BF: So.
DR: And for a while after a particular occasion, when the story that
she was overcharging people for magically forced tattoos was being
spread, you actually kept a book, did you not where anybody having
work, even in the OTO context as for example a couple of 5th Degree
tattoos that she did, had to sign the book to say that I'm doing
this of my own free will, this is my choice nobody's forcing me and
I'm being charged either at cost, or free or whatever...
IFR: Actually, all those people...
DR: Sorry...
IFR: All those ex-pupils I think, have actually signed that book
because that happened after accusation. To protect my own back, I
had this book, they had to sign it, that ...
DR: Where it is, is another question...
IFR: I can find it in a few minutes, yeah, I know where it is.
BF: And, and have you advised either out of your own judgement or on
the basis of information from the Spirits that the people are to
have tattoos as part of their Magickal work?
DR: No, I have on some occasions confirmed their own...
AB: Enquiry, was that specifically adressed...
DR: To me, to Br. David, yes...
DR: I have confirmed inspirations or information of their own on
occasions. I have as I said, dissuaded someone on one occaision,
because the information was clearly coming from other areas than
what one might call reliable or legitimate, to whit his own whims
then disguised as...
BF: Yeah, as whatever...
DR: Divine revelation or whatever. The gentleman subsequently took up
heroin instead, so. But I have never, ever said to anybody "You are
told or counselled by Spirits through me that you should have a
tattoo, or you should have a piercing, or you should have a
scarification".
BF: OK.
IFR: Neither have I, never, ever.
DR: And there is a distinction between confirming something that
somebody themselves has brought to you. Sometimes I won't even talk
to the Spirits, sometimes I will pull out some suitable oracle.
BF: Do it by divination.
DR: Do it by divination. In fact most commonly I will do it by
divination, and I always put up two alternatives. if this person
does such and such what then, if they don't what then? There's your
two alternatives, make your own sodding mind up.
IFR: I would like to go back to where the accusation, the first
accusation about tattooing arrives.
DR: Br. Fitton.
IFR: Br. Fitton, he wanted me to add something to a tattoo he had
already...and...
DR: Done by another tattooist.
IFR: And he had to wait a few months because I didn't, until I had
finished my apprenticeship and felt I could do the job to a
professional standard. I gave him a price, which was the price I
was taught by my, the tattooist who taught me, to charge. He
thought that was too much because the tattooist he used to go to in
Birmingham charged about half of the market price for tattooing in
Manchester. They vary from city to city. Manchester has got little
competition, in Birmingham we are talking about competition between
maybe 18 tattooists.
DR: 18, one eight, whereas in Manchester you've got what, 5,6.
BF: Right, right.
DR: And obviously markets determine prices.
IFR: I quoted him a price which would be relevant for Manchester. He
said "I think that is too expensive, can I sell you a fridge
instead?" And I said, "No I am not interested in a fridge, that is
what the tatoo will cost", end of statement, and as far as I'm
concerned end of that story.
DR: But I mean, nobody at any time said "You have to have it done here,
you can't go back to Brimingham to do it."
IFR: If he wanted it cheap he could have gone back to Birmingham. But
he particularly wnated me to do it and I had to let him wait three
or four months before I said "Yes, I'm willing to do it."
DR: I mean what we are talking about here is adding a statement in
Arabic script to an already existing tattoo, a tattoo that was done
by one of the best in the country, and ie therefore anything added
to it would necessarily need to be of a quality where it didn't
jar. Yeah?
BF: Yeah, yeah.
DR: And this is a script, not the script normally written by the
tattooist, a script in itself noted for its usage in decorative
form. I mean we are talking about a caligraphic culture here. And
where clearly one would need to be absolutely certain that what
went on said what it was supposed to.
IFR: Research.
DR: That is the reason I would never have a Chinese ideogram tattooed
on me unless I was certain what it said. Because I have this fear
of walking through China town and all the Chinese falling over
laughing.
IFR: Can we please stop, I'm off to the loo.
DR: Just then to add to the record a comment I made while the tape
wasn't running. In one sense here we are answering the specific
accusations by the more general argument that we're presenting
here, because any particular accusation that is brought really, all
we would say to it is what we're saying here, in the specific
instance.
IFR: Yeah. Yeah.
BF: Umm. Hmm.
DR: Perhaps by doing it this way we keep it within the range of
discourse within an investigation rather than accusation and
counter-accusation in a more adversarial prosecution form.
BF: I think we are covering more ground.
DR: We are covering more ground in a much shorter period of time and
really, if we can continue in this vein for a little longer I think
that we will have said what we have to say. And it will then be
down to Br. Ben to judge each particular complaint that he has
collected in the light of this general answer.
BF: The whole thing is passed on.
DR: Yeah. And if then it is requested that we should respond to any
particular given accusation...
BF: Then that can be...
DR: Then that can be submitted to us in written form and replied to in
written form, is that agreeable?
BF: Yeah, that's fine.
SW: Woah, Woah, One sec, just let me get this last bit of agreement
down here...
DR: If specifics are required to be answered that can be done in
writing against a written copy of what's been said, exactly what's
been said.
BF: Umm. Hmm.
DR: Whether that would prove fruitful or not...
BF: Umm. Hmm.
DR: I am very wary of this strange phenomenon of retroactive
reconstruction.
IFR: If they had complained at the time...
DR: It is strange the way people react, it is strange what they don't
tell you. One ex-pupil who subsequently proved troublesome had this
idea, that as a priest of EGC he HAD to be promiscuous, it was his
obligation, well, I mean, what's your excuse. And this partly took
the form of him saying that the lady to whom he was married was his
wife but he needed a mistress to represent the higher and darker
forms of his worship of the feminine. And it became fairly clear
that the woman he particularly chose to do that, he did because he
thought and I quote: "For me she is very much like what it would
be like to be with Irene."
BF: Umm. Hmm.
DR: Since I think in the case in question, Irene wouldn't have touched
him with a three inch thick condom on a large spoon, unless
specifically so instructed by her HGA as an Ordeal, it was quite an
interesting observation on the person's state of mind, but it was
only right at the very end of his time as my pupil that he actually
put that into his Diary and told me about it. Because I don't go
reading every detail in people's Magickal Diary, I haven't got the
time to do it, haven't got the stomach for it quite honestly. What
I do is when a pupil comes they bring their Diary and I say "Is
there anything in your Diary that you want me to look at or want to
tell me about?" I leave it up to them. This is usually a mistake,
but it's the only practical way of doing it. If, if things had
been otherwise, if, instead of the nebulous promise which started
my formal activity in this context, I'd had a piece of paper from
somebody or other and say, could issue people with a silly little
chitty, saying that "I the great Kathumpit recognise you as 5=6"
or whatever, which would be totally meaningless but some people
like collecting pieces of paper, then obviously I would have had to
have gone through the sheer horror of reading people's Diaries in
great detail, page by page. But it's one of the few luxuries in
working the way we do, that I don't actually have to do that. That
I can leave it to them, to their integrity, to select what they
want to tell me.
IFR: Apart from in the, for a new pupil...
DR: Until they get into the habit of keeping a Diary properly...
IFR: I would choose to read the Diary, and often ask to do so, for the
one purpose and the one purpose only that to guide them how to keep
the Magickal Diary, to use the Method of Science. They're very
uncertain and insecure what should go into the Magickal Diary and
give them some advice on that. That is the information which is
useful for you, the Magickal Diary, for you and for you alone,
because you forget things over the years so you can go back and
look in your Magickal Diary and look what has changed in your
Magickal Work, the Diary is for you, it is not for me.
DR: Also, because one of the points that we always make to people until
they're sick of hearing it is not can you do it, but can you do it
again.
BF: Umm. Hmm.
DR: I.e., that they have to be able to keep a record from which they
can not only determine what was done at a particular moment but the
conditions under which it was done, the intent with which it was
done...
IFR: Yeah.
DR: So if subsequently, they repeat such an Operation and get a totally
different result or no result at all, they are able to analyse from
the changes in conditions etc., why possibly things operated
differently, and thus build up a coterie of experience, a corpus,
sorry, of experience on which they can judge their own work. Also
because sooner or later, if you learn you have to teach. One of the
few rewards of teaching in such a context, is like being a
grandparent, is when the bastard takes on his own pupils and really
starts to suffer... Everything you've been through with them, they
go through as well. And you can sort of smile, you know, and say
"Yes, isn't it?"
BF: Now there is a matter: We'd better press ahead, because there is
one element that we have to talk about. Now have your children been
involved in any AA Magickal Working?
DR: NO!
IFR: NO !
AB: Can we pause there and get that explicit?
DR: Absolutely, categorically... The only Magickal Workings in which
they participate are the public and generally accepted ones such as
the Gnostic Mass and other things to which they would normally have
access.
BF: Right.
DR: In spite of their age. Both of them being EGC members I hasten to
add, of their own choice, but they have never been involved in any
Working sexual or otherwise in the context to which we are now
referring, they have never ever been involved in any sexual Working
in any context.
SW: Woah.
AB: Yes, please.
IFR: And I repeat, never ever has that taken place.
BF: Any sexual Magickal Working.
IFR: Never, ever.
DR: Nor have they, have either of them ever been by us in any way used
sexually for the entertainment of customers, bretheren, or anything
like that. And I want it on record...
BF: Ah, well this is your opportunity.
DR: I want it on record that I am quite prepared to do physical damage
to any person, irrespective of whatever Magickal Oaths and promises
I might be bound by who would dare to my face to suggest otherwise.
BF: Umm. Hmm.
DR: Any person, I do not care who they are, what office they hold, or
what obligations I may have towards them in any context, I will
personally tear limb from limb anybody who suggests, that we in any
context whatsoever are guilty of any form of abuse of our children.
AB: A pause please, its important.
DR: But I hasten to add... sorry are you caught up yet?
SW: Not quite.
DR: I hasten to add that nobody, and that includes Louis Malloy, and it
includes Christopher Kelly in his new Discordian persona, who has
either made such an accusation or mediated such an accusation,
allegedly made by somebody else, not one of these persons has ever
had the guts or the decency to confront us directly. They've
trogged off and they've spoken to you or to other people but they
have never ever had the decency or the guts to confront us
directly, and when asked...
IFR: To make a statement.
DR: To make a statement, Mr Kelly wrote us a very silly letter in which
he avoided the issue entirely, and sort of under the motto "All
Hail Discordia!".
IFR: On such a serious accusation, a silly letter.
DR: No.
BF: How do you think this rumour might have arisen?
IFR: Out of somebody's sick mind or willful malice...
DR: Or both.
IFR: Or both. I don't have a mind who could create something like that,
myself.
DR: Look, as far as for example, Molloy is concerned, I mean, not only
here but also the chicken fucking accusation...
BF: Oh I know, that...
IFR: Cats and dogs...
DR: Cats and dogs and chickens, "She is off somewhere" the quote was,
to somebody who's... I gave it earlier. I don't think....
IFR: I want to say something...
DR: Let me just finish please....that you as a bookseller, have the
experience of a branch of commerce which is as brutal and as
vicious as the tattooing world or the piercing world. You've got to
remember that tattooing grew out of a world occupied by sailors and
bikers. The old method was, if somebody opened a tattoo studio
nearer to your studio than you liked, you broke their hands with a
lump hammer and smashed their studio up. Well this is no longer the
practice but the attitude is still there. As far as the piercing
world is concerned it did, however much it has now gone mainstream,
initially grow out of the "modern primitive" movement, who took it
over from the old S&M milieu, which let's face it, is full of
vicious queens, not to out too fine a point on it. Some of them are
good friends of ours but they are still vicious queens. And, the
problem here is, that in that world people will not hesitate to go
to extreme lengths to blacken each other's names or even to
physically attack each other's studios. Irene's studio was burgled
not last Sunday but the Sunday before. From the manner of what was
damaged and what wasn't, what was taken and what wasn't, it is very
easy to deduce that this is also a message, and although we are not
in possession of evidence that would stand up in a court of law, we
are in possesion of evidence which indicates a chain of events,
that tattooist Malloy calls in a favour from tattooist Rambo of
Manchester, who's on the rough end of the scale, who pays a couple
of lads 23 quid each and whatever they can get for what they take,
provided they do it in a certain way, to break into the studio, as
a piece of intimidation. well it didn't bloody work. We moved
heaven and earth and replaced the grand's worth of equipment that
was taken, mopped up where they pissed on the floor and pissed in
the filing cabinet, got rid of the bag of bush they'd left behind,
etc, etc... And the only things that are damaged are in the actual
studio workspace itself, where the hygiene matters, they're all
about the ability to communicate, like the phone and fax. All to do
with the atmosphere of the studio. I mean, I don't think that you
or anybody outside that world could really comprehend how vicious a
world the tattooing and piercing circuit is.
IFR: And I'm a...
DR: And she's a woman, one of very few, in a very tough, primarily,
maccho, male world. Malloy has never forgiven her for walking out
on him, even if he spent a year mucking about. And we know that he
will go to great lengths to cause her damage.
IFR: What is essential here is that he knows that I am the only real
commercial competition he has...
DR: In Manchester.
IFR: In this city. He knows that he can't touch me professionally in my
skills as a tattooist and a body piercer. The only weapon he thinks
he has is that it had been put to his attention that I was a member
of a Magickal Order. And to spread rumours and all the superstition
that goes with that and in that way commercially destroy me.
BF: I mean, right, just to be...
DR: So that's ONE source. Then as we have been speaking of, there are
all those who one way or another at one point or another have been
connected with certain sides of our Work who for one reason or
another have fallen away from that, and in self-justification or in
justification to each other, cause some of them exist in nice
little, ethnically determined knots, will tell stories. Then you
have those, and I will name names here, like Chris Kelly, who seem
to have taken upon themselves the role of "I am a Discordian now,
so now I'm going to cause as much trouble as possible, and I will
lead by the nose, whoever I can lead by the nose." But I'll tell
you straight up Ben. He'll laugh behind your back just as much.
BF: Right.
DR: I will say this now, and I will say on the record : Remember the
Tyburn Blessing.
BF: You'll have to remind me.
DR: It was traditional, when people were about to be hung, in public,
on Tyburn Tree in London, that they would turn to the crowd, and
they would say: "Bless you me boys, me today, you tomorrow".
BF: I mean here, I'm just, just, just putting forward something that
may be in other people's minds. Just the kind of Devil's advocate.
Giving you the opportunity, I mean, cause, cause, people might
think: Well Louis Malloy, he started teaching you, knowing that you
were going to practice in Manchester.
IFR: No, he did not know, that is one of the things he holds against
me, that he mean that I should have informed him when I started as
an apprentice, that I was a member of a Magickal Order. The
relationship between Louis Malloy and myself has always been
professional, and commercial over my side, his lying and...
DR: But what you have to remember here, is that initially, Louis took
her on as an apprentice because he intended to move to the US, and
he wanted to train up someone who could continue his studio in
Manchester with the same quality. He then got himself a new lady,
didn't go to the States, and was stuck with training up someone who
he really otherwise probably would never have dreamed of taking on
as an apprentice at all.
IFR: Yeah.
BF: Right. Right.
IFR: And his lady friend didn't like him having a female apprentice...
DR: Cause she's pathologically jealous. But what it comes down to, is
that there was never any original intent for Irene to be Louis'
commercial rival in Manchester. The original intent from both sides
was that she would become "The successor of Louis Malloy at
Middleton Tattoo Studio". whilst he opened up a new pratice in
California, or wherever he thought he was going to.
IFR: Not California, somewhere else.
DR: Well, somewhere in the States. Yeah, over there somewhere.
BF: Right. Right.
DR: Yeah? So that when it became clear that...
IFR: And it did take him three months before he actually told me that
he was not going to the States.
BF: Right, right.
DR: I mean, the man's whole way of dealing with that matter was so
radically dishonest, in many respects, even to the point that he
had a second apprentice on the dally.
IFR: All the time, he still has.
BF: A second apprentice.
DR: Well, sort of, being held in the background on strings, that "If it
doesn't work out with her, you can have a go, chummy."
BF: Right, right.
DR: Now that second apprentice, was at that time good friends with a
number of the people who were then living in the Rochdale area. And
who are OTO people. He has also himself occasionally sort of
dabbled a bit in, you know, drawing Trees of Life and things, yeah?
BF: Right.
DR: And he was obviously one source of information for Louis.
IFR: In fact he used him...
DR: Now there's another way, older way, going back a bit. And this goes
back to the reasons why, at one time certain monies were retained
in Manchester with all the misunderstandings around that. All this
has been detailed in a letter that was sent to the OTO, handed to
the Grand Secretary when you lot were in Aachen.
IFR: By hand.
DR: And to which I've never to this day's date had a reply, but I think
you'll remember a friend of ours called Pete Service who was
involved in blowing the whistle on a lot of sort of paedophile
circles and what have you.
BF: I remember what you're talking about.
DR: We haven't seen him for a great number of months now and we believe
that the cancer finally caught up with him. But, at that time, one
of the people who became associated with us was a lady called Lyn
Weir. Long chain of events but Lyn, essentially, was blackmailed by
certain other parties, in Manchester, who'd themselves been
involved in spreading all sorts of rumours about me when I ran
Scorpion's Nest, which resulted in a number of things including the
closure of that business, in the end. Cause I lost custom,
important custom, because of rumour mongering. I mean I've been
down this route as well. But, Weir was blackmailed by threats made
against the children of her lesbian partner, into acting on certain
people's behalf. She stole certain documentation from this house
whilst a guest in this house, which she was because she was
basically in considerable physical danger from certain people at
that time and we gave her shelter. And subsequently, used, under
pressure from the people who were threatening her lover's children,
misrepresented bits of information, which she spread round all the
bloody tarot lines in Manchester concerning us.Going round the same
circuit and making a few things clear, Pete Service and I managed
to knock that on the head. But certain parts of that remained as it
were, in certain people's knowledge. One of whom was a gentleman
called Mike who ran a shop and still runs a shop, and who intended
to branch into tattooing...
IFR: and piercing.
DR: And piercing, which he never did. Some of this eighteen month old,
two year old distorted information, through him, is fed back to
Louis Malloy, along with a load of stuff about sort of...
IFR: To put me out of business.
DR: Sort of "News of the Worldy" stuff about what the OTO... all the,
what's his names, the Grand Satanist, the guy who had a hundred
thousand members, and Enoch Powell was one of the bosses.
BF: Oh, not, Ray Boggard.
DR: No, no, he was a con man.
BF: Oh, I know who you mean.
DR: Yeah right, right. All sort of bits of press cuttings from that
time again, all comes to Louis Malloy. Woman runs, there's another
woman runs Manchester Piercing Studios, name of Anna Kai. Who was
at one point supposed to become Irene's business partner, stiched
her up something shocking, has been one of her main rivals on the
piercing front since, and again has been responsible for spreading
odd rumours. Some of which derived from a gay friend of Anna's who
has contacts in the fetish world, spreading bits and pieces about
some of Irene's activities vis-a-vis that world, which are a
natural adjunct of her business.
IFR: And public.
DR: And quite public.
BF: Right.
DR: These then get mangled up, chewed up, splat out, re-processed, and
spread around by Anna's associates. At the same time, Anna is
getting assistance, all of a sudden, from Louis Malloy. Then,
there's Pam and Jonathan. These are some people who were originally
resident in the Orkneys, and to whom we gave a great deal of
friendship and assistance at one time when they needed it.
Unfortunately, she is mentally unstable, I mean she's got papers to
prove it and everything, you know, lithium and the whole shebang.
But she's also an exotic dancer, whatever that means, and was at
one point of time supposed to be getting extensive tattooing from
Irene. In fact she went to Luois, and during the course of her time
as Louis' client, fed him all sorts of weird mythology about us.
About me being a sorcerer and how she'd witnessed all kinds of sort
of physical manifestations that made me sound like bloody Sai
Barber.
IFR: ...flying around the room.
DR: Plates manifesting out of thin air etc. etc.
BF: Oh God.
IFR: That's the level it is at.
DR: What you gotta remember about Malloy, he would never admit to it
because he's now so sort of upmarket in his own view. Malloy's
father is an Irish tinker. Now's there's nothing wrong with that
but in the background of Malloy's reactions is a whole culture of
superstition.
IFR: And is he superstitious.
DR: And is he superstitious. Yes he is, something shocking. Now
obviously, you out this all together and there'a all sorts of bits
flying round yeah?
BF: Right, right.
DR: Which is a very nice standing raw material for any person of ill
will to conjure out of nowhere, as it were, and put together as a
new variation on the same story.
IFR: Also I mean, they would deliberatly and by malice aforethought do
create rumours only to damage, with the only purpose to destroy me
comercially. That is what it is about, it's a commercial war. And
that is the weapon he think he has.
DR: I mean, I don't think, I would like to think, that even those who
are lodging complaints against us in reference to things we are
supposed to have done to, with or at them, of earstwhile bretheren
and ex-bretheren, that none of them have stooped so low as to
involve the question of the children, with the exception of Chris
Kelly.
BF: Ah, I mean again...
DR: Who is doing it second hand.
IFR: We don't know that do we?
BF: I mean again, one thing that I do have a bit of knowledge about...
SW: Could you just...hang on one sec...
DR: Arms are falling off here.
SW: Arms are falling off.
AB: Going a bit rapidly.
SW: Be with you in a second...
IFR: Not to say what it costs parents to go through such things.
BF: Yeah. Oh yes.
DR: And with all respect, unless you are one, you really can't
believe...
BF: No I realise that.
DR: I mean, may I just say here, we are not the only people to have
suffered that. Evan and Becki have got both their children on the
"At Risk" list.
BF: Why's that?
DR: Because somebody maliciously informed the social that they were
keeping their children in unhygienic conditions and they were into
Magick. And that somebody, I can't prove but I believe was most
likely Br Fitton after he fell out with them, and if I could prove
it, he would not be walking now. But the timing was so exact, it's
a pity, I say this, but I do say it. He is one of the two most
likely people to have maliciously have informed on them and
produced a situation where their eldest son, our Godson, is on the
"At Risk" list and the babe was put on the "At Risk" list at birth.
BF: Right.
IFR: So much for brethren.
BF: Well, now...
DR: I mean...
BF: If I can just say... OK.
DR: What I'm saying is that we're not the only people...if you are a
parent, you are extremely vulnerable.
BF: Right. I realise that.
DR: That's another risk that we take for the sake of what we consider
to be our Obligations to the Work.
BF: Now, I would just say two things.
DR: Yeah.
BF: Now this is not really why I'm here...
DR: Yeah.
BF: Not really why I'm here but I just feel it would be useful for me
to just say two things. One thing, you know, cause I obviously
explained what I'm doing here, and it's not really part of it...
but one thing is with Chris, his reaction when he heard that
particular allegation about Tanith, was Louis Malloy about going to
the press, or, yeah the press, or the police, Chris actually
counselled him to do neither, and then spoke to people who he
trusted in the OTO.
IFR: Do you have any information what so ever where that rumour could
have started?
BF: I don't know. I do not know. My...
DR: So why couldn't Chris have the decency to say that to us.
BF: Well, thats....
DR: Instead of writing us a stupid letter.
BF: ...not for me. That's for Chris. I'm just passing that bit of
information on. That he actually, he said to Louis Malloy "Don't...
DR: Have you had that confirmed?
BF: Uhhmm, it does fit in, I've had conversations with Louis Malloy...
DR: So what was Chris doing at Louis', having his tattoo removed or
altered I assume.
BF: I don't know. No idea. Uhhmm.
IFR: Could I ask for information please?
BF: You can certainly ask.
IFR: ...Of the content of your conversation with Louis Malloy.
BF: They were quite long conversatiosn, quite long conversations. You
know. Basically, I mean these allegations were made and that's, you
know, that was the source...
IFR: That one in particular about Tanith.
BF: Yes.
IFR: Anything else?
BF: That was basically what I spoke to Louis Malloy about. That was the
pressing thing with Louis Malloy. The other thing I would, was just
the other thing I wanted to say, now at that time I was very much
in contact with Barry.
DR: Yeah, yeah.
BF: The thing you talked about with Ev and... I don't know exactly when
it was, I don't remember exactly when it was. But I was very much
inn contact with Barry.
DR: It was shortly...
BF: And I mean I don't think he did that. I really, my judgement...
IFR: That's your judgement.
BF: Yeah, it's my judgement, that I mean I'm saying this without any
masks.
IFR: Yeah, sure.
DR: Yeah.
IFR: I believe you.
BF: I really don't think he did that.
DR: We believe it's his judgement.
IFR: Yes.
DR: Let's be clear on that.
IFR: I believe it is your judgement, yes.
BF: But let's press on, I mean that's not really why I'm here. The, I
mean there is something that we have touched upon, Peter Service,
that I think we could take this opportunity to clarify because it
looks like OTO operations, the Strict Observance Oasis, the
activities of that were closed down because somebody else was being
prosecuted for the possession of paedophiliac material.
DR: No, this is not the case.
BF: Please clarify.
AB: Could we go slowly here please.
BF: Yeah. This is the opportunity to clarify.
IFR: Never heard anyhting like it.
SW: So "Looks like OTO operations and to whit Strict Observance was
closed down...
BF: Because.
AB: Somebody else was being prosecuted...
BF: Prosecuted because of possession of paedophiliac material.
IFR: May I say something here?
BF: Please.
DR: That is a gross misrepresentation.
IFR: A year before Strict Observance Oasis was closed, the then master
of the Oasis Fr. Azrael.
DR: Me.
IFR: Otherwise, Br David, said " In one year I will close this Oasis".
BF: Right.
IFR: You've got one year.
DR: To build a foundation.
AB: Witnessed.
IFR: To build a foundation. And a year and a day after that statement.
DR: We stopped work.
IFR: That Oasis was closed.
DR: Now in the meantime there was an hiatus in the work.
BF: That's what I mean, the hiatus, carry on.
DR: Right, now that ties in with what was going on, with the business
with Weir and this nonsense that we mentioned.
BF: Ahhh.
DR: I mean, people having battery acid thrown at them, it was getting
physically dangerous.
IFR: And she came here.
DR: And that was why I requested from Clive that we should retain
certain monies in Manchester as basically an emergency fund if we
needed to get anybody or their kids out of the city quickly, and he
agree to that but in a certain... one way or another there was a
certain misunderstading between him and me about the official
status of that retention. As soon as that was clear what was the
case, the monies were dispatched to the States, they were in a
closed account, in Manchester, the whole bloody time, their never
was any "financial irregularity".
BF: This is your opportunity to say.
DR: Well I've said it. I've said this in a very long letter. The letter
I referred to, where the whole business of the situation in
Manchester around the question of the closure of Strict Observance
Oasis and the pause in its work.
BF: Yeah, the pause in it's work, that was mainly...
DR: All that is specified in a very long letter I wrote, six pages
typed up, twelve pages hand-written, which I sent specifically to
the Order, and not trusting the mails, it was entrusted to the
sister here who put it into the hands of Sr Helena.
IFR: Who had to sign for it.
DR: Who had to sign for it, that she'd received it. That receipt we
still have and that is the only reply I have ever received to that
letter. And anybody now saying the version you have been putting
forward...
BF: Well.
DR: Must be doing so in total ignorance of information which the Order
has been in possession of now, for what two years...?
IFR: Three years, almost...
DR: Three years. And that letter, a copy went to Clive, and I've got
the original letter in my handwriting and ...
IFR: Typed.
DR: A typed up transcipt of that, for those who can't decipher my
handwriting, which is ninety-nine point nine percent of the
population, available, on file.
BF: Cuz, just, cuz, cuz, cuz, to clarify, there was the hiatus, there
was the break that you told. you came over for third degrees in
York.
DR: Yeah, yeah.
BF: And you told me that you were closing down the operations, not
closing down the Oasis.
DR: We went quiet, because we were being targetted.
BF: Because you were being targetted.
DR: We were being targetted by the people who were threatened by the
work that Pete was doing and assumed, and there's a lot of the sort
of various clergy and diverse who've fallen since that, that I know
for a fact, that that's based on information he left behind him.
But it was assumed, because of the association that he had with me,
through the shop and otherwise, that he was being supported in this
by the OTO operation in Manchester. And people began to feel
nervous. I mean, the first step in conning Weir into what she did
was that somebody threw battery acid at her, which missed her by
about a foot. After which we got her out of Manchester for four
days, until she felt secure to come back again.
BF: Right, right.
DR: I mean, when people start threatening other people's lover's
children with physical harm, when people start slinging battery
acid around, and we're talking Hulme, Moss Side, here. I mean,
people don't fart arse around here, they don't play with pea
shooters, you're talking AK-47's, you know, this is not our
paranoia here. There were bits of Manchester that were twinned with
Beirut at the time. The only thing we could do that was secure, was
to go into silence for a few months and see where the land lay.
BF: And Peter Service, he was going through a court case at the time?
DR: No, he was at that time beginning the work of exposing the
information which he had spent ten years collecting, since his own
daughter was killed, whilst he was in prison.
BF: He was in prison.
DR: Yeah, the story about Pete is quite simply this. He was at one
time, one of the best cracksmen in England. He was, what the hell's
the term, well I'll say pardoned, but that's not quite the right
term, out of Wormwood Scrubs in the middle of a fifteen year
sentence and went to work for that which is now GCHQ as an
information acquirer.
BF: Because of the skill.
DR: Yeah, exactly. He was given a new identity, Peter Service, which is
not his name, Peter being a safe and Service because that's what he
was doing them, and he worked for them for about seven years
including acquiring some of the information about that boy's home
in Northern Ireland.
BF: Kincorror.
DR: Yeah, the Kincorror thing, and a few other bits and pieces. Now, he
made the mistake of getting itchy fingers and doing a bit of
private work on the side, and ended up in Strangeways. Whilst he
was in Strangeways, his daughter, who he was raising on his own at
the time, and who was then I think six, seven.
IFR: Six, Seven.
DR: Was abducted from her foster home, and was tortured to death by the
really bad end of the paedophile scene, possibly on film.
IFR: Thirty years.
DR: Yeah, this was thirty years prior to us closing the Oasis activity
down. Peter was eventually paroled out of Wormwood Scr...out of
Strangeways, and went back to work for his old bosses, until he
finally retired and took up as a sort of New Age Therapist and
other kind of charlaton and confidence kind of trickster on the
legitimate circuit for those kinds of persons.
BF: Made a living doing that.
DR: Making a living doing that. Yeah. But for the whole time after he
came out of Strangeways, his one real driving force was to find out
who was responsible for his daughter's death. And to basically take
out them and anybody like them, not by his old methods, of direct
GBH, but by the method of exposing the whole network and
organisation and all the rest of it. Over the period he insured his
own continued existance by making sure that all his information was
seperately deposited safely with a friend of his in Germany with
the instructions that one year and one day after his death by
anything other than natural causes that information was to be made
public. And it was also arranged that that information was gently
and quietly fed into certain offical sources who have subsequently
begun to deal with various politicians, eccesiastics, high-ranking
policemen and others along the road whose prosecutions, have
depended in part on information coming from that source.
BF: Right, right.
DR: But the assumed assistance that we were giving was enough to put us
under threat.
BF: So you closed down activities.
DR: We closed down activities.
BF: When that situation.
DR: Was, was up and running at its worst.
BF: And he wasn't being prosecuted.
DR: He was not being prosecuted, no.
SW: He was the prosecutor.
DR: He was in fact involved in providing evidence for a number of
prosecutions that were then in the offing. But he was not being
prosecuted.
BF: Right, right, right, that clears that up.
DR: And all that is very, very clear in the letter which the Order has
had in its possession for three years.
BF: Right, right.
DR: Which is one of the reasons I really do seriously resent this
constant implication of financial irregularity on my part.
BF: Right.
DR: Because there was a misunderstanding, I mean it was my fault in the
sense that I did not put it in writing the agreement I made with
Clive, and he didn't remember the verbal agreement we'd made. It
was as simple as that, so that when push came to shove, it opened
up for misrepresentation, which seems to have been used as a
vicarious motive for other things, huh?
BF: Right.
DR: According to information received, now again, allegedly, I'm not
saying that Bill Heidrick has taken that line but it has been said,
it has reached our ears that it has been said. Indirectly, with
yourself named as one, with Bruce named as one source for that
particular story, and Rodney named as another, but again we only
have it third hand so, I use the term allegedly in the manner that
"Private Eye" do. But there was never any question of Peter being
under the investigation. There was a very strange episode where
his... the house that he was living in in Wolverhampton was broken
into and raided by the notorious West Midlands Serious Crime Squad
who tried to do him for the possesion of a large amount of Royal
Arch Masonic Regalia and other bits which they said were stolen. In
fact he had them in trust from a friend of his who was a judge,
which he was able to prove and the whole thing got quietly dropped
and it was very embarrassing left, right and centre, but when the
West Midlands Serious Crime Squad was eventually, subjected to
dissolution, I think, a number of things in that context came round
as well. I mean, all sort of weird... I mean, my shop, Scorpion's
Nest, when I had it, was rumoured to be a front for the Manchester
crime syndicate called the "Quality Street Gang". That rumour
started because two very strange gentlemen called David and Martin,
with Sicilian surnames, turned up and asked me if I would front the
sale of a fourteen kilo white rhinocerous horn to certain Chinese
gentlemen in Manchester. that particular sale didn't come off,
which in some ways was a pity because I was on a ride for
twenty-five grand commission. And in some ways is a damn good thing
because I don't really think I wanted to be stuck between the Mafia
and the Tong. But a whole load of weird rumours began to circulate
after that.
AB: Could you hang on a second.
DR: To circulate that I was operating a front for the Quality Street
Gang and that my occult activities were a front for that. Which
actually was used against me when I tried to shift to another
locality because they wouldn't rent it to me.
BF: Right, right.
DR: It's interesting that John Stalker has also been accused of being a
front for the "Quality Street Gang".
BF: Just keeping an eye for the time.
DR: Yeah, I mean, what I'm saying is there's a whole load of stuff
going back a long way which is mine-able for weird David and Irene
stories. Maybe it doesn't happen in smaller cities or maybe it
doesn't happen in other cities but in Manchester it does.
BF: Now kind of going over me notes with an eye to the time, pressing
on. I am anxious, as I say to give you the opportunity to, when
we're finshed, make any comments that can be communicated as well.
Partly I have it in mind, just so that people away, away from
Manchester can have an understanding of what the situation is, if
you could maybe give an idea of the overlap of AA and OTO
membership, you know, membership, say of Fires of Orc, Rosa Rubeae,
and the other OTO bodies in this area, what overlap of the
membership?
DR: I'm not sure whether we can do that in a sense.
IFR: No, I don't think we can.
DR: I mean, if we take someone into pupilage, there is an implicit
confidentiality involved in that.
IFR: Which we would go and break.
DR: Both the bodies you have named are still pretty damned small in
terms of numbers, even if they're large by OTO standards. If we we
were to say "There's a 50% overlap" what does that result in,
guessing games.
BF: No, not necassarily. I don't think that's the intent at all, and it
wouldn't be the kind of, no one's going to come and do that really,
it's just so that people can get an idea what the situation is, you
know.
DR: The most pupils that we altogether have had at any given time is
about 20, that's including several persons who are not, never have
been, and most likely never will be members of OTO. The least
pupils active we have ever had at any one time is about half a
dozen. Ditto. Let us say that of our pupils then varying between
forty and eighty percent have some kind of an OTO connection, and
that they distribute themselves, by dint of geography, not only in
Manchester, cause it's not just Mancunians that are involved here,
over the various bodies of OTO which are scattered around in Great
Britain. Not only in Manchester, so the answer is, that's the best
answer we can give you at any particular point of time.
BF: Is there ever any, uuhh, again, either from your judgement or from
the Spirits, uuhm, influence upon OTO activities communicated to
members of the AA? Things relevant to the OTO operations...
DR: No.
BF: That are communicated.
DR: NO.
BF: I'm getting at, what is the relationship.
IFR: Can you... I didn't catch that, the question.
BF: Is there ever a situation whether by your judgement as teachers...
DR: Do we tell our AA pupils to do such, or to engineer such and such
to come about within the OTO context.
IFR: NO.
DR: That wasn't even the case when I was soley in charge of the whole
sodding OTO- EGC operation in Manchester, when it would have been a
damn sight easier for me to engineer it if I had wanted to, than it
is now, with another bunch of wayward assholes. Saving your grace,
running each their show on their own principles. We do not attend
and we are not members of Fires of Orc, we do not attend and we are
not members of Rosa Rubeae, we are not members of either of the
current EGC temples although we do occasionally attend as guests,
and we do not and we never have used any influence of ours to
affect the operations of OTO in this city.
BF: Or the OTO elsewhere.
DR: Or the OTO elsewhere. Never have done.
BF: Umm. Hmm. Right.
DR: And quite frankly, you know how fucking inefficient the OTO is...
BF: Oh yes, I know.
DR: The chance of influencing anything.
BF: The chance of the OTO influencing anything...
DR: Yes, right, so, fair enough. No, categorically, absolutely, hand on
the book, NO. From both of us. You've said no already.
IFR: I have said no.
DR: The only exception to that is on occasion, when people who have
been our pupils or who are our pupils are so absolutely,
completely, through and through, fed up, pissed off, cheesed off,
about the way the OTO is, the way it operates, the relationship
between the OTO in the States and the OTO in England, and all the
rest of it that they have wanted to leave, and we have dissuaded
them from doing so and said "Look, stay in there for the Work's
sake. It isn't what it is that matters, it's what it could be that
matters. Get in there and work for it." And that is the extent to
which we have tried to influence anyone. So if we've done anything
at all, it's probably to keep the show on the road behind the
scenes by stopping most of the membership from buggering off out of
sheer fatigue and disgust, and that can go on the record as well.
BF: Umm. Hmm... I mean, how do you feel about the OTO nationally?
DR: I can see a lot of things that would be run differently if I was
doing it but I'm not. And it's the karma of the people that's doing
it yeah? I'm a different school, I'm a different generation Ben.
You know, in one sense I belong to the wild frontier, I'm a hairy,
smelly person, and city folks has taken it over. In one sense,
perhaps I don't fit in any more, in where it is and where it wants
to go. I am not more in the way of it, Irene is not more in the way
of it, than the people that are now running it make us in the way
of it.
BF: How do you mean?
DR: Well, to a certain extent I feel that we've been given the role of
bogey men by the people in the top end of the OTO. To a certain
extent, that's been the case ever since Arild and I wrote the
famous letter to the Link that caused such a riot. It seems to me
that what the great fear is, is not that we're doing some peculiar
sorts of Work, the great fear is that we are using that, as your
question indicates, as a power base to subvert the OTO. Well, it
doesn't need subverting, it is quite capable of falling to bits on
its own. By most showings, and I've already said, if we do anything
at all, it's more likely to prop it up than to pull it down.
IFR: My answer to your question, Ben, is: I say nothing.
DR: Yeah, it is as it is and it will attract to itself the people who
naturally gravitate towards what is has become. Like everything
else, that's a historical phase. Today I'm the dinosaur, tomorrow,
you'll be the dinosaur and a whole new generation will be making
the same damned mistakes as we did, because nobody ever learns a
fucking thing from history. I have been loyal to that Order ever
since I first joined it. That was a pure contingency. Arild and I
wrote off to all the OTO claimants and Grady was the only bugger
who bothered to answer.
IFR: So have I.
BF: Sorry?
IFR: I say : So have I.
BF: You wrote off to all the...
DR: Loyal.
IFR: I have been loyal.
BF: Right, right.
DR: We have been loyal inspite of all that's been said to us, in spite
of all that's been done in a sense, even when my Charters were
pulled, I remained loyal. Other people wouldn't have done. On the
record now right. There is a peculiar side loop in transmissions
and the history thereof, going down through various people in the
thirties and again in the fifties, with odd inter-relations with
Paragranus and Gregorius, by which there's a sort of implicit
situation where an Eighteenth Degree of the Fraturnitas Saturnii,
of which there are very few at any given time, can form their own
OTO on the basis of the working of the Pentalpha Grade, or their
own branch of the OTO. And are therefore also free to pass that on
to whomsoever they please. Tegtmeier and I have been close friends
since we met when I was in Germany with Grady. We disagree on
virtually ever point of Magickal theory you can possibly imagine,
but we have managed in spite of that, being grown up, adult, and
sophisticated persons, to remain close friends. One of the results
of Ralph being sort of dragged into the current investigations of
us, and he's a funny bastard, you can say what you like about him,
but upset him about. if the thinks that one of his friends is being
subjected to an unjust process, he can get quite strange. And on
the basis of his experience, following your contact with him, and
also on the basis of some weird interchanges between him and
Heidrick over the Internet, and with Koenig in the background
stirring a few things up by all accounts, Ralph basically said
"Well alright, if they throw you out, I'll give you your own OTO"
and I said "No, I have committed myself to a particular claimant to
that name, I have been loyal to it, in spite of itself and in spite
of everything it is, and in spite of everything it has done to me
in the time I have been with it. So, I very much appreciate your
offer, but this is not, if I go out of it, or if I'm driven out of
it then I will have to decide where my future organisational
development, organisational commitment lies "but no, I'm not going
to accept my own and go off and take a large chunk of it with me."
BF: Very interesting, very interesting.
DR: I say that to you with Ralph's full agreement and permission, by
the way, because I'm under no obligation to tell you that. I tell
you that as an example of the fact that I am still, in spite of
everything, loyal to this organisation. Not because I think it's
perfect, because it isn't, not because I even like it very much,
because I like it less amd less, but because I think that a certain
organisational activity is necessary and because it probably has as
good as or least no worse than anybody else's claim to legitimacy
in terms of historical transmission.
BF: Right, right.
DR: And as far as I'm concerned the question of historical transmission
is important.
BF: Umm. Hmm... I agree.
DR: I mean, I've always taken the view that real magicians don't join
orders anyway, but given that at certain stages in one's career
some kind of organisational connection is necessary, then for me
personally, some kind of historical legitimacy is a requirement,
but the "Caliphate" doesn't have the only claim, it may have the best
claim to historical legitimacy. You ask me where I stand with
regard to it. I stand where I have always stood. Before you were in
it, and probably if I live longer than you do, after you've gone
from it. I will not leave, partly because I'm damned if I'd give
anybody that much satisfaction. If I go, it's because I've been
slung. Now if they want to engineer excuses for doing that, that is
their business and not mine.
IFR: And their karma.
DR: And their karma. Well, you can speak for yourself on that point.
IFR: I don't have very much more to add.
BF: Because I have an eye for the time, is there anything else,
anything that you want to take this opportunity to say.
DR: Well, as I said earlier, in the event that what we have said today
is not adequate to give you the basis to judge any specific
accusations that have been made, in your report. In the event that
you want us to answer any specific allegations, then providing that
you give us written, clear statements of what those allegations are
and from whence they come, we will answer them likewise, in written
form, to the fullest of our abilities, but it will only be a
specified variant of what we've said today, in one form or another.
BF: Well, I feel we've covered a lot of ground today.
DR: Yeah, in spite of my natural inclinations I haven't strangled you
either. I will say Ben, that part of the problem between you and me
has to do with your manner and mine.
BF: Well.
DR: You can come across as being incredibly supercilious and very
condescending.
BF: Say it. Say it.
DR: Well, I've said it, I've said it.
BF: Say it again.
DR: Whether you mean to or not.
BF: Yeah. Umm. Hmm.
DR: And you know, to me this is like a red rag to a bull. I'm sure a
lot of things I do irritate you.
BF: Well.
DR: But in spite of that we've manged to continue, we've managed to
carry out this meeting. Now we're obviously not going to get time
to duplicate the tapes.
BF: We'll duplicate and send you copies.
DR: You duplicate and send us copies of the tapes and we will send you
copies of the minute which has been kept here. And then we can all
compare so anything that's dissappeared on the one can be edited
in. You...
BF: Anything else.
DR: You have checked that that doesn't sound like Donald Duck as well
have you?
BF: Yeah.
DR: I mean you can call me a bull-buggering asshole from Manchester but
I will not sound like Donald Duck on somebody's tapes. I have my
pride.
BF: Right.
DR: Are we closing the meeting at...
BF: Is there anything else that anybody wants to say, any comments,
anything you feel has gone unsaid?
IFR: No thank you.
DR: Meeting closed at six minutes to two.
BF: Right we'll pack up.
Back to the other Introductions
More about all this in: Andreas Huettl and Peter-R. Koenig: Satan - Jünger, Jäger und Justiz
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