Play Game Version of an O.T.O.-Fata Morgana
P.R. Koenig
| According to academic research done by Claudia Kowalchyk, who
in 1994 scientifically observed the New York Caliphate lodge of the
O.T.O., the majority of the members are Caucasian, are brought up as Catholics,[1] often come from broken
homes,[2] have a drug past, often have
a college education, deceive themselves about being politically independent
although tending to be democratic, and are on the average 36 years old. They remain
for an average of 6.5 years in the Order[3] who lacks female members
occupying the rôle of the priestess of the Gnostic Mass. There is a bohemian
atmosphere of self-styled artists reading a lot. Regarding Crowley's antidemocratic, racist and mysanthropic writings, followers point out: "The reason [...] aspects of Thelema are omitted indicates the actual problem with presenting Thelema as a religion and attempting to get Thelema sanctioned by the government or approved by the public: Thelema is ultimately in contrast to and transgressive of normative society. Thelema rejects the morals and values of normative society and acts to transgress and violate these norms. From the inclusion of intoxicants in ritual, to the positive view of sexuality, which frequently is seen as promoting promiscuity, to the pro–authoritarian and Nietzschian aspects of Thelema, normative society has much to reject in Thelema and conversely, Thelema encourages its adherents to reject most aspects of normative society.", "Journal of Thelemic Studies", 1;2, 2008. See The Templar's Reich. |
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Statistics, AIDS, Suicide Rate
| The membership of the various O.T.O. groups is limited in number, and even if so, only conflicting data is available. After all, what is a member? Theodor "Reuss states of the degrees VII°-X° that 'these are the real active members of O.T.O., also called the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light, or Illuminati.' The title of the IX° is Illuminatus Perfectus."[4] In April 2004 the Statutes unveil on page 15: "The Acting O.H.O. for O.T.O. […] is the Caliph. The Caliph succeeded to the office of Caliph by election by the membership of the Sovereign Sanctuary of the Gnosis of the IX°." | 
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How to get into that Sovereign Sanctuary of the Gnosis?
"I understand that by taking the First Degree I will forge a link with the Ordo Templi Orientis that will endure so long as I shall live."[5] "It is not unusual that 50-60% don't hold up to the I°."[6] The very talented, therefore, jump directly into higher levels.[7] For example: Sharon Morton was made a provisional IX° during William Heidrick's I° initiation on 18th April 1978: Grady McMurtry was so drunk that he kept falling over. Heidrick was standing naked in the well. Morton asked McMurtry to make her a IX°, so that the ceremony could go on. He did the laying on of hands, and passed out cold. Five months later Heidrick took the Provisional IX° on 25th September 1978, II° on 30th April 1979, III° on 29th May 1979, IV° on 31st July 1980, V° on 3rd September 1983 and then directly jumped to Full IX° on 12th July 1985.
An anonymous source "tells me [Dave Evans] that he believes the OTO to be 'cooking the books' and the figure includes all members who have achieved progress into a higher grade in the organisation; thus a member who progresses through five successive grades over a period of time would be counted 5 times, thus distorting the figures."[8]
Andrea Bacuzzi was put into the statistics as VIII° only for the reason that such a degree actually can be included in the statistics, as she personally told me in April 1988.[9] She is also a IX°, indicating that the actual member figures are lower, since the figures are bolstered with at least one IX° as a lower level. As Ms Bacuzzi admits that in the Caliphate, often the high degrees came first, and the lower levels, if any, were granted in retrospect,[10] Breeze's statement that he was the world's first man to have gone through all initiations from 0°-X°, is met with mixed feelings[11] considering that most of these rituals have only become accessible by way of a book sold publicy.[12] The missing grades (KEW, KRE,[13] VII°- XI°) were written by the Upper Management of the Caliphate.[14] This appears to be legally required according to the formula 'Where there is no ritual, there is no degree, there are no membership dues and fees.'
What do we know about the entire membership? James Graeb, on the occasion of William Breeze's election to Caliph, held in 1985, said that McMurtry "left a seven hundred member Ordo Templi Orientis with us folk, the IX°, having the voting rights in this organization."[15] The worldwide number on 29th February 1988: "Associates 170, Minerval 397, I° 238, II° 154, III° 97, IV° 35, V° 40, VI° 1, VII° 0, VIII° 1, IX° 13."[16] According to oral testimony of one of the English directors of the Caliphate, Clive Harper, in March 1993 there were 800 members worldwide.[17] For the same year, William Heidrick lists 2'288 members (statistics of February 1993).[18]
In 2000, Heidrick about AIDS- and suicide rates: "Recent member mortality: One known AID's [sic!] related death in February of this year. Six deaths in 1999: one believed suicide and one probably suicide. Rest illness or not detailed (usually illness or accident in those cases). - Nine deaths in 1998: two suicide, one believed OD and the rest illness. - Seven deaths in 1997: three gunshot by others (one probably self defense), one AIDS and the rest illness. - Three deaths in 1996: One OD, remainder illness. - Three deaths in 1995: One prison murder (ADV associate), one suicide, one illness. - Four deaths in 1994: Two suicide, one accident, one illness. - Five deaths in 1993: Two AIDS, one probable suicide, remainder illness. - The suicides tend to be romantic frustration more often than economic or dementia on mystical lines simply. Earlier, more often economic. - AIDS deaths diminished for a while but resumed in the 90's. Most deaths have been from cancer or heart problems. Violent deaths seem to be more common than they were before the 90's."
Heidrick continues: "There have been relatively few murders over the years since I started recording in the late 1970's. Suicides peaked just in Regan's [sic] presidency, when wellfaire and medical assistance was cut back."
Heidrick recorded in his annual statistics for 2001: 3'895 members, of which 2'960 are initiated. ADVs[19] 200, Associates 735, Minervals 946, Ist Degrees 734, IInd Degrees 468, IIIrd Degrees 369, IVth Degrees 238, Vth Degrees 124, Higher Degrees 81. For 2003: 3'274 members in alleged 47 countries. More details are deduced from internal reports: In 2002 there were 89 high degree members. High degree = VI° and higher. Voting members of the Areopagus (IX° who also have the VIII°) in 1999: 26.
Since 2003, these figures have not been published in detail, as Heidrick, who had previously compiled them, is now completely committed to archival work. Until 2003, he was the only one responsible for transparency in statistic matters.
Renovation of the Statistics 2002-2008
Maybe it was John L. Crow, a friend of Allen H. Greenfield's (more about him below), who created in 2005 a new statistic which unfortunately does not contain a breakdown by country anymore but reveals percentage ratios.[20]
Meanwhile new offices have been introduced. There is an Ombudsman, a Public Information Officer, a Volunteer Coordinator. New guilds are built, for example Carpenters, there is the Translator's Guild, the Psychologist's Guild, the Prison Ministry, an Education Committee (for teachers only), and a Legal Professionals Guild (for lawyers).
Allen H. Greenfield, VII °, does not agree with the development and interpretation of the official figures. He blames William Breeze.[21]
"At the time I write this memorandum [April 2006], the world population is 6,477,451,000. OTO membership is, perhaps, 3000. The population of the United States, where OTO has enjoyed its greatest success to date is at least 298,444,062. […] OTO membership is, possibly, 2000 and not growing appreciably—at the highest levels, essentially not growing at all. There is an argument that goes that this is as it should be, that the membership needs to be 'few and secret' that it may 'rule' (ill-defined) 'the many and the known' - but in a world of 300 billions, an organization not appreciably larger than, say, the Socialist Workers Party and much smaller than, say, the followers of Rastafarianism is not just small, but hardly around at all. The world membership of OTO is only slightly larger than that of, say, The New York Society for Ethical Culture (http://www.adherents.com/Na/Na_470.html) of which it is tellingly said, 'The New York Society for Ethical Culture grew steadily until it reached its present membership of 1150 persons.' The notion that thirty five years after McMurtry initiated the revivification of OTO that this is becoming the 'chief organization for world reform' is an embarrassing absurdity. Add to this the likely fact (OTO upper management seems highly resistant to any comprehensive demographic research) that most OTO members seem to be marginalized, essentially powerless individuals, and the absurdity becomes a farrago of nonsense. In the post 9/11 world, it may even be said to be a dangerous nonsense."
Greenfield compares the O.T.O. with terrorism. "Islamist fanatics have had far more influence on world events than the OTO has had in all of its history since McMurtry's activation of his emergency powers. It is not competitive in either the world of ideas or the world of practical activities. It has become not so much an evil as an irrelevancy under its present upper management."
He speaks as an insider. "I had already served the OTO, the Ordo Templi Orientis in its current incarnation for nearly twenty years at the time of the attack, first as a private individual invited by the local body master to organize the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica in the Southern United States, virtually from scratch, then as a Lodge Secretary, sole consecrated resident bishop for many hundreds of miles around, then as Lodge Master, and eventually, for the past decade, as Sovereign Grand Inspector General and Most Wise Sovereign of one of a handful of Chapters of Rose Croix in the world. When the individual elevated to the office of U.S. Grand Master General, Sabazius, chose to make his first VII Degree full tripartite member, I was the member he chose. I was for some time on good - even intimate - social terms with the Acting Outer Head of the Order, known as Hymenaeus Beta [Breeze]. I have been a guest in the homes of both of these men, as they have been guests in mine. It is thus not without hesitation that I have come to view their efforts at doing the particular Work uniquely charged to the OTO in its founding and most basic documents, as being a dismal, ill-conceived and ill-executed effort that has brought, under their leadership, the sort of near total failure that has characterized many marginalized societies with pretensions to occult knowledge. The decision to transform an eccentric and radical form of Freemasonic School in the very heart of the authentic esoteric tradition into a rather conventional religious society with an extremely narrow base and zero societal impact was a gradual one, and has had its critics at each level of its deviation from the core program of the society.
Greenfield lists the errors, which in his view have been committed in the Upper Management of the Caliphate.
(1) INCORPORATION - The move towards incorporation was something I always viewed as in conflict with the radical postulates of the essential program of OTO. Incorporation, it is true, does offer certain tax-related benefits and, more questionably, legal protections, but it makes the organization a part of the very social paradigm its program seeks to supplant. By placing itself within the System, a body tends to become absorbed into the system.[22] The OTO program, its central gnosis and conceptual framework are not amenable to social conformity. It might - it might - be able to be a 'legal entity' without gradually compromising itself into being a part of the very paradigm it postulates as that of an antequated 'Aeon' but this would require extraordinary and clear-headed management. It has not had that, and seems to consist largely of socially marginalized members attracted to the essential program which has been gradually gutted into a hollow shell of its intended realization.
(2) LITIGIOUSNESS - Without discussing the legal merits or tactical usefulness of any individual legal cases the OTO has involved itself in, by so involving itself repeatedly the upper management appears to have blurred the line between the essential purposes of the Order as described in the basic documents and its legalistic objectives. No efforts to control the flow of information, confidential or otherwise, has resulted in any true control—the Internet has more or less made a mockery of any such efforts, even supposing that the restriction of the flow of information is advantageous to the purposes of the Order, itself a debatable proposition. Further, the upper management has seemingly in the process of conducting itself as what appears to some—myself included—a litigious corporate entity, fallen into an excessively self-conscious body, unduly worried about potential legal actions against it, including concerns that are, in my view, inconsistent with the Order's history and any legal precedent. This, in turn, has weighed down the operative local bodies of the Order with a mass of bureaucratic rules, a mountain of paperwork, and even a presumptuous gutting of both the initiation rituals and the Order's primary public interface, The Gnostic Mass. As one rather ranking member observed to me, 'The OTO is now run by its lawyers.' This is utterly unacceptable in that it is completely incompatible with the numinous and progressive goals and methodology described in the basic documents.
[…]
(5) INITIATION - Most damning is the failure to initiate by the present upper management. A study of the statistical breakdown of degrees shows nearly flat growth, if it can be so called at all, in recent years, and virtually no growth at all in the highest degrees. If, as Crowley indicated, the evident purpose of the Order is to prepare individuals for initiation, the present management is a failure and should step down. Aleister Crowley stated that '…the really vital matter is the gradual progress towards disclosure of the Secret of the Ninth Degree'. If one discounts those acting ninths conferred by Major McMurtry prior to the mid 1980s, of the several thousand members who are or have been in OTO under the present Acting Frater Superior, only a tiny fraction of 1% have been so elevated on his watch. It is statistically nearly impossible to become a Ninth Degree in the OTO, and the grounds for conferring it are, at best, subject to close questioning and scrutiny."[23]
Allen Greenfield's graph:
Censorship 2007
After the publication of his interpretation of the statistics Greenfield (shortly before having been involved in the expulsion of James Graeb)[24] is now also expelled[25] by an anonymous Inquisition committee without being consulted or having been given the challenge to defend[26] himself. It was regarded as a particular outrage that he had published his data, graphs and conclusions on the Internet "where Peter Koenig and everyone else could see it.[27]Greenfield's friend and also a member, John Crow, suffers the same fate in March 2007.[28] So did the site members.cox.net/heru-ra-ha/, which was closed down in February.[29] And the prominent member Geraldo de Campo leaves the Order as well.
In November 2006, the headquarter issues new directives to its members: "The O.T.O. is a hierarchical religious Order that has a strong emphasis on military-style discipline in the upper degrees. Openly complaining about the Order instead of individually addressing whatever issues you have via the Path of Mediation may result in consequences you won't like."[30]
Strict censorship freezes the members of the Caliphate into a single-edged presentation mode: "Concerned about the ongoing criticism of USGL Officers and the precipitous increase in questions regarding the legitimacy of and justice coming out of the Order and its Grand Tribunal in the blogosphere, US Grand Lodge, O.T.O., has created a new blog post review committee. This committee has been given the job to approve O.T.O. member's posts to their blogs. A Grand Tribunal member, who asked to remain anonymous, described the new initiative as 'a way in which we can preempt any unfraternal or false information about the Order and its officers from entering the blogosphere and causing harm to the Order and its members.' When asked what standard the committee would use to filter the posts, the anonymous officer replied, 'anything that makes the Order or its leaders look bad or hurts anyone's feelings.'
The newly created committee is has been working with the IT Guild to create a system by which the O.T.O. members enter their blog account information and then uploads the post. The post goes into a queue to be reviewed by the members of the committee. Once approved, the post will then be automatically added to the Order member's blog. The system also allows committee members to retroactively delete and modify posts if something that was deemed harmless previously is later to be found unfraternal or false. The estimated timeframe for the post approval process is 30 to 45 days. When one IT Guild member was asked why the long time to review the posts he replied, 'look the committee members have lives; they are volunteers doing the best they can.'
The system is expected to be live by the next solstice and will be a voluntary for the USGL members until reviewed and approved by the Areopagus. This is expected to happen in April 2008. Then members will have 60 days to comply with the mandatory blog post submission requirement or face charges by the Grand Tribunal. When asked if this system was a violation of the Order member's free speech or Liber OZ rights, the anonymous Grand Tribunal member reminded everyone, 'the Order isn't a democracy you know.'"[31]
"… officers of U.S. Grand Lodge and their political allies, try to shut down discussions of various uncomfortable subjects. For example, USGL used to have a private mailing list known as 'Bodymasters' for the discussion of local body management issues, but this list was summarily closed, with the unconvincing explanation that it was 'no longer useful,' in the midst of an active discussion that USGL didn't want people to be having. Discussions on other mailing lists, as well as Web-based forums such as LiveJournal, have been curtailed in less drastic ways, such as USGL officers simply discouraging their continuation with vague but ostensibly noble claims that the discussion was 'inappropriate' in some way. This is pretty much all they can do, since, unlike the Chinese government, the O.T.O. does not control anyone's Internet connection."[32]
Greenfield's statistics showing a decline of the membership figures since 2000, lead to heated debate in the upper ranks of the Caliphate. Richard Kaczynski[33] produces a new calculation and interpretation on his blog. Since the Caliphate has put itself into the vicinity of academics and Freemasons, his analysis on 20 July 2008 reads as follows:
"Since being revived by Grady McMurtry, O.T.O. has initiated 13,000 individuals worldwide. Think about it. We're talking roughly a 35-year timeframe, the same amount of time between Crowley becoming Grand Master of the UK (1912) and the time he died (1947). I don't have a list of every O.T.O. member in Crowley's lifetime (it would be interesting to compile), but I'd be surprised if it topped 200. So, in Crowley's 35 years in O.T.O., around a couple hundred people were initiated. In the last 35 years, O.T.O. has initiated thirteen thousand. […]
[… ] the US Grand Treasurer General explained that USGL had tightened its criteria for counting 'current' members. Anyone who is more than 1 year in arrears nationally may be considered dues-lapsed (6 months for Minervals). [It had previoulsy been two years.] This new criterion leaves O.T.O.'s worldwide, active membership at 3,407 [source: O.T.O. IHQ GTG]. Combining the total number of individuals initiated and current membership (3407/13000), we arrive at 26% membership retention."
Kaczynski compares the Caliphate's figures to those of the Masons, using their recruitment guide "75 Ways to Attract and Retain New Members: A Handbook for the Leaders of Masonic Organizations".[34] He begins by quoting their data:
