Typhonian Ordo Templi Orientis
Kenneth Grant
LAM

Crowley's erstwhile secretary Kenneth Grant (who claims to have formed a link to his 'angel' Aossic, and so calls himself Aossic, Ossik, or A'ashik) has - together with his followers - developed a more or less comprehensible outline of a 'new' cosmos on this basis. Interested readers are referred to Grant's books, many of which remain in print. [7] In this article we shall be concentrating on Grant's resulting theoretical expansion of Crowley's demonology. The latter never seems to have regarded angels or demons as very definite beings; for him, they ruled the material world, and were useful for things like getting hold of money. Under Grant's influence they were elaborated into complex transcendental schemes of alternate dimensions outside the circles of space and time. "The terrestrial vehicle is an outcropping in three dimensions of the Angel: the Angel is the fountain of living waters which empowers the terrestrial vehicle." [8] Through contact with this fountain, the Holy Guardian Angel (HGA) opens the gate of remembrance of our supernatural reality, what Grant calls "the continuum often glyphed as the Goddess of which we are terrestrial facets." [9] Grant and his adherents 'remember' the origins of Be-ing [10] and have constructed a remarkably complicated collection of metaphors drawn from sources such as the Qabalah, H.P. Lovecraft, [11] Salvador Dalí, Michael P. Bertiaux, Austin Osman Spare, [12] Lemuria, Atlantis, extraterrestrial visitors from Sirius, the promotion of at least one new 'New Aeon', and a whole shoal of 'revelations'.
Grant placed great emphasis on the development of a IX° 'dream-control' technique, borrowed from Thomas Lake Harris, and introduced into the Crowleyan O.T.O. by Ida Nellidorf under the name of "eroto-comatose lucidity." Before going to sleep the sexual energies were first raised by constant sexual stimulation without orgasm, and then concentrated onto a talisman bearing a requisite symbol, so that in its dreams, the aroused libido would copulate with a dream-partner. The talisman would thus become magically charged, and would make a particular wish - be it for gold or Gnosis - come true.

But the greatest interest has been shown in the entity called Lam which Crowley 'beheld' in 1918. [13] In October 1979 Grant (under his alias of 'Aossic Aiwass 718') described Crowley's Amalantrah Working of 1918 as an "active reflex and extension of Lam" and released "An Official Statement of the O.T.O concerning the Cult of Lam, the Dikpala of the Way of Silence." Grant drew up a ritual meditation for making contact with Lam. The entity was imagined as an egg, and the practitioner would enter its eyes with the aid of the mantra "Lam", so that once united Tantrically with Lam, one would "see" the world from "yonder". [14] Grant judged the sex-magical versions of this meditation to be "extremely dangerous", and "most emphatically" rejected all homosexual variations of it [in some O.T.O.-groups: the XI°]. To gain the most objective results from all contacts with Lam, Grant enjoined that none of its practitioners should inform each other of their own results for several years. [15]

As one example of an actual current emanating from Kenneth Grant's immediate circle, his colleagues were also recruited from other occult groups. [16] By contrast it is notable that the doctrine of the 'enemy' held sway in the 'Caliphate', 'enemy' meaning other Thelemic groups like Grant's or Motta's O.T.O.s, not to mention all other A\A\ lines (apart from those of Motta), and critics like Koenig, Naylor, etc. Such contacts blocked advancement to degrees beyond the IV°, or even resulted in immediate expulsion. We shall be returning to this theme.

The Cult of Lam and Michael Staley, Grant's London amanuensis.

In the 1990's this cult (described as the "quintessence of the Typhonian O.T.O. tradition") was supposed to be a manifestation of the Hidden praeternatural/supernatural God or Holy Guardian Angel (HGA), who united the natural with the supernatural. Contact with this HGA was identical to an entry into the Aeon of Ma'at, or the extra-terrestrial continuum. [17] "In my view Lam is the mask of a dynamic state of [extra-terrestrial] [18] gnosis, rather than simply an entity." [19] Staley interested himself in Lam as a state of Gnosis, although he admitted that this state could sometimes also take the nature of an entity's mask; but he would break through these masks.

Crowley's (feminine?) Hoor-paar-kraat (Set) was again understood as the HGA; in the Tetragrammaton YHVH Ra-Hoor-Khuit (Horus) corresponded with the Vav, and Hoor-paar-kraat to the Heh final. "This identifies Hoor-paar-kraat with the Aeon of Ma'at." [20] Lam 'sits' in the Muladhara Chakra's Bija-Mantra, where the Fiery Serpent (or Kundalini) waits to uncoil. The 'optical' union with Lam took place in Lam's eyes, the region of the Ajna-Chakra (and also the seat of the will). [21] According to Crowley this corresponded to a sex-magical act in which one became conscious of the Ajna and Muladhara Chakras during orgasm. [22]

Contact with the HGA was defined as the stage of "reaching critical mass" after doing intensive Abramelin or Liber Samekh exercises. The HGA is the sum total of experience, gathered into this critical mass and then able to take on spontaneous form. [23]

This contact with the HGA - whether experienced in concrete exterior form, or as the aspirant's spiritual Higher Self - corresponded with the start of 'occult puberty'. [24] For an occultist, it meant that there was no longer any distinction between inner and outer. Evolution demanded that one cast off such old mental habits, [25] and that humanity should become non-human, as in Crowley's A\A\, where a kind of superman hatched from the Egg or Babe of the Abyss (that is, the concept of dissolution in occult Qabalah, the bridge between human and divine). Freed of Ego, only this new human creature can help human evolution, and perhaps even that of the universe. ['Babe of the Abyss'; the whole point being that the Kabbalistic Abyss is the ultimate womb from which the soul is born before progressing to the Supernal Triad of sefiroth (Kether, Chokmah, and Binah) on the Tree of Life. After being born from the Abyss, it first reaches Binah, the 'Magna Mater'.]

For Staley, magic is primarily a matter of communicating with non-human entities. However, such entities are not to be found outside human beings, as man and the universe are one - both are aspects of the universe. [26] Staley found better comprehension of this through the Sanskrit concept of Advaita or "not-divided", and in the Prajnaparamita-Buddhist "Sunyavada". At one stage Staley worked with a Lam-Serpent Sadhana, in which the Lam-Serpent was visualised as the Kundalini surmounted by Lam's head. [27] This Lam-Serpent uncoiled itself along the sushumna, while the chakras were visualised, and the Bija-Mantras were vibrated. According to Staley the 'secret' of sex-magic resided solely in the fact "that matter is malleable and can be influenced by sustained, intense visualisation; the potency of this visualisation can be increased by the directed sexual current." [28]

The HGA functioned as the mediator and boundary station between the terrestrial and the infinite. With the HGA projected as the Egregore outside the individuality, the HGA can be used to communicate with the 'Secret Chiefs'; using the occult technique of 'Assuming a God-Form' one becomes an angel/egregore among other angels/egregores.

A Little Typhonian Gnosis

The magazine included a history of the Order which attempted to present all the facts concerning the 'Caliphate' and Grant. [30] Although there are a number of factual errors in this account - such as the claim that Carl Kellner was involved in the founding of the O.T.O. (which he was not), or Crowley's succeeding Theodor Reuss - these are understandable, since otherwise the article should acknowledge the strict distinction between Thelema and the O.T.O.. [31] Importantly though, there was a renewed assertion that Theodor Reuss had appointed Charles Stansfeld Jones to the office of X° for the USA, and not Crowley. Consequently the latter's expulsion of Jones from the O.T.O. was invalid (as a Reussian X°, Jones had prior rights). [32] Hence Karl Germer was never entitled to be X° for the USA, and after he dissolved the Agape Lodge, Grady McMurtry was only acting as an individual. Germer, who was meant to have validated Crowley's 'Caliphate Letters' to McMurtry, certainly cast doubt on matters when he said in a letter of 3rd May 1952 that there were then no active O.T.O. Lodges in the USA, considering the US a "spiritual desert" and Grady Louis McMurtry a "Minus".

Grant and Staley also wondered to whom _McMurtry had paid his IX° fees.