Why they became member of the O.T.O. 25 Thank the gods. I'm not alone
From: XXX
To: koenig @ cyberlink.ch
Subject: Greetings!
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 1998
Dear Peter-Robert Koenig,
Thank the gods. I'm not alone. I was shocked to see how similar our
thoughts are.
I'm a FORMER thelemite with previous connections to Motta's A.·. A.·.
and mostly to the caliphate O.T.O. After some years of fooling around,
I came to what appear to be the identical realizations and criticisms
of the O.T.O. I probably have a few to add to yours and you to mine. I
have been a serious student of Crowley since 1978. I began working with
the OTO in 1987. I took my Second degree in 1992 at which event I
purposely refused a demand they made upon me in order to protest
several issues I had with the ritual and the OTO (I had read the ritual
before hand, and carefully planned my protest). I have been a gadfly
and tormentor of OTOists here in M*** ever since. At this point, I am
relatively inactive in group magick, though I ran my own ultra-secret,
para-thelemic, anti-hierachical, non-sexual, art-based occult group
that consisted of no more than 8 working members at a time. We
functioned as a secret inner order to a local OTO branch from 1989 to
1994. From 1994 to 1996 we functioned completely independent of the
OTO. In 1997 the group disbanded because one of our members became a
fanatic OTOist, and strove to undermine our group. I got sick of
dealing with the hassles, though I have not lost my desire to promote
ideas very like yours.
...
From: XXX
To: "Peter Koenig"
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 1998
Thank you for the incredibly prompt response.
I spent another hour reading your documents last night. I like very
much what I see. Probably the largest difference we might have is that
I am unconvinced of the value of any organization based on Liber AL. I
am not willing to accept it any more. I still consider myself basically
thelemic in a very broad sense, but I am an anarchist, or better yet,
panarchist. The whole debate over who is the legitimate grand poobah is
simply banging one's head against a wall until it bleeds. I am also
thoroughly unconvinced of the reality and functionality of the Ninth
Degree. Do you have any thoughts on these themes? I didn't have time to
see anything specific on it, though I get the sense that you are
supporting K. Grant. Incidentally, my impression of Grant's writings is
that he was deeply misogynist inasmuch as female priestesses frequently
fall prey to those ridiculous cthuloid demons, and other occult
misfortunes. I understand that his proposed reversal of the Ninth
Degree (female fluids) implies something less oppressive to women, but
I find his dubious narratives of past rituals to be profoundly
influenced by the standard Hollywood horror movie misogyny. (the girl
turns while running away from the monster, falls and gets eaten up.)
Grant has been a wonderful supporter of female magicians. I respect
that, and what I perceive as a desire to create a more chaotic and
informal OTO. I just want to make it clear that I'm not interested in
joining anybody's Thelemic Cult.
I have a contact in Ecuador and another in Spain. Neither of them knew
anything of the OTO. There is a strong presence of Satanism in the
Spanish-speaking world (logical among catholics, no?) They seem to have
a few interesting and intellectual types, but no Thelema. Nowhere. In
fact, I found you by going from a Spanish occult site to a Canadian
occult site. Where are you located? Is cz in your server
Czechoslovakia? Anyway, in spite of the efforts you describe, they seem
to be making little progress there.
So, I suppose you get a lot of hate mail from Califarts. I struck up a
conversation with Bill Breeze's secretary/friend/germ-sharer (M***). I
had a lot of fun tormenting him. He is very bright, and articulate, but
he didn't like to hear my critiques. I have gotten myself in a lot of
trouble in here in my town too. Members from my group try to get me to
do it all over again, but I'm just not interested. Rather than trying
to "save" Minnesotans, I'd rather try to help the Spanish speakers.
My anarchist nature was spawned around 1989 after working with Motta's
A.·. A.·. through *** David Bersson. (Do you know ****? He makes Motta
seem kind hearted and even-tempered.) Anyway, I have access to
newsgroups, but I am not aware of what ones might be best. I'm unsure
that much of the debate will interest me. Do you think it will? Is it
helpful, or is it just banging one's head against the wall? I mean, why
argue with Califarts? I am hoping to provide a forum for them to
question their own practices, but I will not support arguments over
which OTO is the true OTO. Boring. Please send me any useful news
groups or useful resource URL's. Thank you again.
From: XXX
To: "Peter Koenig"
Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998
the Ninth Degree. Do you have any thoughts on these themes?
> No.
Good answer. What exactly is motivating you to do all this tormenting
and research? I mean, what is your reward? I know what mine is... I
think that I would like to see a profound transformation or elimination
of OTOism. More importantly, I want to warn people who aren't in it
about its faults before they ever get involved. My reward received
consists primarily of something I can only describe as very personal.
It wouldn't be appropriate to say much about this, except that the OTO
fanatic that caused problems in my magical group was conquered by my
"magick" of Wu Wei. My history with the OTO has a very personal and
emotional aspect. Things got pretty deep and crazy. I can tell you a
bit about who was involved.
The former campmaster of the L*** of the Caliphate OTO in M*** and his
wife, who is currently divorcing him over these issues. She is one of
our closest friends.
This jerk had a former roommate and best friend (M***) who moved to
Austin TX and became the personal secretary of Bill Breeze. I
understand he has moved up in the ranks to the Lovers Triad, probably
to Fifth Degree.
One of the *** of Bill Breeze, who also happens to maintain a tacky
**** website, became the lover of the jerk mentioned above. This was an
important part leading to his divorce. She was *** with the jerk, the
secretary and the grand poobah. The jerk's wife was being neglected. We
took good care of her, and helped her to see the light. It's a typical
story, you've probably heard before. The behavior of all these
individuals, with the possible exception of the secretary, is in my
mind absurd.
To make a long story short, we were instrumental in running the jerk
out of town, and convincing his wife to divorce him. As can be
expected, the power vacuum was filled by a pair of new weirdos who have
even more ridiculous ideas of self aggrandizement. I have some good
stories about them too. The L*** Camp is the last OTO body in which I
participated, until Feb. 1996. I was one of the founding members of the
I***Camp, which is now defunct.
camps are the standard unit of Caliphate OTOist enclaves. They are
local bodies, usually not holding charters to initiate. An Oasis is
larger, and contains 3 officers capable of initiating to the Third
Deg., at least one of whom has sufficient experience to qualify him to
function as the main initiator. Generally, this is a person with about
4 yrs experience at a number of initiations. A Lodge is a larger and
more important unit. They represent the highest authority in the public
M.M.M. Chapter houses and other such units are secret even from members
up to the Fourth Degree. I could have details incorrect, but this
should be enough to clarify what I am talking about. The I** camp was
unusual in that it did have a charter to initiate, although only one
member was Third Degree. He too lost interest in participation because
of the jerk. I assume that the two leaders of the L.L. camp are finally
holding an initiation charter of their own.
...
M***s remarks revolved primarily around responding to some critiques of
OTOist hierarchism, and the ironic persistence of old aeon paradigms
within an order claiming to be new aeon. We discussed a number of
polemic theoretical issues, and his responses were well-argued, and
very well-written, but parochial. He is an interesting fellow. There
wasn't much in his writings that would fill in any aporia in your
knowledge of OTOism, though he was considerably more articulate,
coherent and intelligent than Heidrick, whose gift for obfuscation and
confusion is prodigious. Further, some of the content of those letters
involves personal issues with the jerk (they were friends), and I
really don't want such personal issues to be spread publicly. The jerk
is a dangerous person, and I don't want to invoke any problems with
him, especially until the divorce is final. He has plenty of bad karma
swirling around him now, I can just sit back and wait for his world to
crash around him. Also, I have a soft spot in my heart for M***.
Although we will probably never communicate again on good terms, I want
to leave him in peace. I'll dig around for the letters, and see if
there is anything you might enjoy or find useful.
David Bersson:
He used to make veiled threats on my wife's safety (because she was
interfering in my Probationer's work). He also sent me an unsolicited
charter that would make me "Supreme Hierophant in the World of the
Secret Cult of the Yacht of Ra." I responded by immediately resigning
and cutting off all communication with him. I have a real collection of
juicy letters from that quasi-literate ****. I imagine he has a
computer with spell check by now, so you probably don't see the sorts
of things I saw. According to what he wrote on the sealed envelope, he
undoubtedly assumes that I have gone insane. I don't mind that he
thinks that, since it means I don't have to deal with him. What a
freak! I did learn a great deal about the A.·. A.·. from him. It was an
interesting experience, and I played along pretty seriously for six
months. That's all it took for him to make me Supreme Hierophant in the
World. In six months, I received about 60 letters by mail, often sent
air mail.
From: XXX
To: "Peter Koenig"
Subject: a Borgesian letter about letters...
Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998
There is a lot of unpleasant debate on the history of the OTO. I got a
bit bored. The history of the OTO is not of much interest to me. I
understand and appreciate your interest. The history of the Roman
Catholic Church is much more interesting to me (even though I've never
been Catholic) Any more specific directions as to where in that
enormous set of documents one might gain a glimpse of what motivates
you to do this, beyond simply unmasking fraud and silliness, and
humilliating silly people. I can tell you a little more about my
interest. I became totally drawn into the idea of a truly secret
society of practicing magician/artists with a radical deemphasis on
metaphysical doctrine and debate, replaced by a commitment to
collaborative RITUAL ACTION in which participants are encouraged to
explore their own abilities, problems, psychic/spiritual issues, and
the group exists to provide assistance, feedback, and audience. In
other words, a strong family-like bond provides a comfort zone for the
production of what outsiders would probably describe as improvisational
art (we employed ritual, music, dance, visual arts, "channelling", and
a plethora of card games based on the Tarot.) The emphasis, as you can
see, was on creativity and sharing. I was moving farther and farther
away from everything that the OTO represented. I led the group in
devising an initiatory system in which the ceremonies involved
dialectic interaction with the candidate, and customization for each
specific candidate so that no two initiations were the same. This
required the recording of each initiation for posterity. I as the
leader took the role of guitar player at most rituals, though I was
forced to play central roles in initiations simply because the others
tended to be lazier than me. In other words, I did a lot of the writing
and theorizing, but I played a completely passive role when it came
down to regular ritual activities--I let them choose what they wanted
to do, and I supported and accepted whatever they contributed. My wife,
the jerk's wife and I provided trance music to support the ritual
creations of each member. Typically, everyone (including the musicians)
contributed some sort of ritual or productive or receptive role during
each night's working. We met every Saturday night with few exceptions
from 1989 to 1996. I think that you can probably imagine why this
formula was so successful. You can probably imagine why the jerk found
it so distasteful. He became more and more resistant, until at the peak
of the crisis, I involved his friend M*** in order to encourage him to
quit. It's a complex story with a lot of psychological, emotional and
power issues. Suffice it to say, the jerk is a very power-hungry and
selfish person who had little talent for the sort of magick we were
performing. He wanted to be an OTO campmaster. He wanted to be chief,
and since he had no creative skills of his own, the +++ was a
humiliating experience for him. Once he left, and his OTO camp began to
progress, we all lost interest in magick, except for one other member.
Currently, the +++ is inactive, and only one former +++ member (besides
the jerk) is active in OTO. Everybody from the +++ has expressed
dislike for the jerk.
...
It is my feeling that XIth degree does not so much imply superiority as
it does emulation of Crowley's perversity. Recall that Crowley states
that the XI is outside of the other Ten degrees. I'm sure you know more
about all this than I do. There is a cute story about A*** becoming
petulantly jealous because B*** had taken a new lover. The jerk told
his wife about it, because he enjoyed telling her about his lover, and
she said, "that's not very Thelemic, is it?" The jerk got mad and
defended A****. I have a sense that the recent installation of D*** has
something to do with what I would describe as an unverbalized,
generalized loss of power and respect for Bill Breeze in the order. My
connections all seem to behave with a sense of relief for Scriven's new
role. I may be imagining things, because one of my points of contention
had to do with extreme irresponsibility on the part of Breeze in
regards to me, but I have heard many carefully worded remarks that
imply to me that the rank and file were not terribly happy with
Breeze's leadership. All of this is based upon reading between the
lines of the words and actions of the members I know. Nothing explicit
has come to my attention, however, there seems to be a new surge of
optimism among the black-robed army of Thelemic "jesuits." I still
maintain a few local "spies" in the OTO, but I am losing interest in
maintaining even that connection, simply because it is all so
predicatable and dull. One other thing I know, the OTO is increasing
its efforts toward McOcculture. They want to "normalize" the OTO. My
feeling at first was one of horror, being that I value the role of
SECRET societies, but then I realized that there would be no better way
to destroy the OTO.
Long ago, a new OTO member decided that he hated me. He was a scurvy
misogynist punk rocker who took Kenneth Grant and Bertiaux seriously.
He began a slander campaign aimed at undermining the +++, which
wouldn't accept him unless he learned and performed some basic rituals
and qabalistic knowledge. He found sympathetic ears in R** and R***, an
anorexic couple of parathelemites who fancied themselves to be part of
some mysterious great white brotherhood known as the SSF, Servants of
the Secret Flame as I recall. They are very pompous and ridiculous.
They decided, without ever knowing me, that I was evil. They sent one
of their neophytes to the +++ as a spy. As it turned out, their spy
decided to defect. They were upset, so R*** called me and demanded a
meeting. I invited him over to talk. Another +++ member was present as
a witness. R*** proceeded to say that he had been sent by a secret
group of magicians to check on me and the +++. They had heard via the
astral plane that I was doing bad things. I knew the true source of the
slander, so I said, "What has B** been telling you?" He was
flabbergasted, and denied the source. He proceded to list my alleged
offenses. Not a single one of them was true, and it was apparent that
his spy had already informed him of that. All of the charges revolved
around the notion that I was manipulative and reckless. In fact, I was
straightforward, anti-authoritarian, and at worst, demanding of
independent and creative thought and action of the +++ members. He was
double checking. My friend and witness was becoming very angry at these
charges, but I was patient and polite. We eventually explained to him
our approach and activities. He seemed really confused, but relieved.
It turned out that his partner, R***, had been instrumental in sending
him. He is a spineless dweeb and she is a manipulative alcoholic
lunatic with even greater delusions of grandeur than his. They were, at
that moment, having relationship troubles, so it would seem that what
was occurring was that R** was actually trying to make friends with me,
in a clumsy way. We did become friends, and had some interesting
discussions on what it means to run a magical group. THEN, he and R**
got back together again. Suddenly, their former spy was called over to
their house and informed: "We do not want to work with you anymore. D**
is dangerous because he teaches the Qabalah, and we don't want to have
to clean up the mess. You should be dropping acid instead. It's much
safer." (this is second hand quoting) Consequently, their "spy" the
witness, and I informed a number of people in town about this
ridiculous event. In spite of this, and probably due to R**'s expertise
with the internet, they eventually came to be the leaders of the L***
camp after the jerk left town. In their defense, the LL camp is growing
and functioning better than it did under the manipulative and
malevolent guidance of the jerk. Yet, the irony is that everyone who
was connected to these events actually hates them, and participates
only because they want to play OTO. R*** is seriously deranged, and has
never held a job in her life. R*** supports her and her drinking. They
have one of those disgustingly open marriages--they molest anyone and
everyone when they go to their drunken OTO parties. I went to one
around Christmas and watched the whole pitiful thing. I watched R***
attempt to seduce three men, and R*** actually began to hump a floor
lamp. The former spy and +++ member made numerous nasty remarks to me
about them. So did the witness, who was also an +++ member. Yet, now
they are both relatively active in the L*** camp. This hypocrisy
disturbed me greatly, hence, I have been moved to distance myself even
further from all of them. It just isn't worth the trouble to be around
these types. Don't you agree?
From: XXX
To: "Peter Koenig"
Subject: RE: a Borgesian letter about letters...
Date: Sun, 26 Apr 1998
I still am puzzled as to why you would want to collect that kind of
information except for building a gossip column. One thing I can tell
you is that I have yet to meet an individual in the OTO who wasn't
somehow dysfunctional. I have seen very few OTOists who do not consume
various chemicals, alcohol, etc. Members tend to fall into a few
categories:
1) itinerant oddball parasites.
2) sex-starved sci-fi geeks
3) chemically dependent/codependent/religion-dependent
4) power-mad club leaders.
5) lazy tag-alongs who like to see what strange things happen this
week.
6) ignorant people who had no idea what they were coming to.
7) sexually aggressive perverts
8) gossips, hypocrites and backstabbers (and those who like to read
gossip) I think that every single person I have met has been one of
these (or more.) You can publish that on your website! I think we have
all fallen into one or more of these, but it really seems that magick
has a way of bringing these out of people. The correlation between
OTOism and these traits made me step back and reexamine what I was
doing. I realized that by and large I felt ashamed of the OTO, and in
particular, of its members. I realized that I did not want to bring any
of my non-OTO friends to the meetings.
The +++ solved that problem, but for most activities, we were very
closed and private. We did perform a few semi-public events, mostly for
artistic/musical value. We actually performed a wedding with a large
crowd of non-pagans. Nobody had any idea of who we were, or what was
happening, but we freaked them out, especially since we weren't dressed
like wizards should be.
My shame and deep dissatisfaction with a number of things about the OTO
led me to decide to abort my Second Degree initiation. I had read it in
King's "Secret Rituals..." I decided to pay the fee, drive a total of
16 hours alone, prepare a feast for my initiators, and take the
initiation, but when asked to sign Liber OZ with my real name and
address, and post them in places that represent civic and religious
authority, I would refuse saying: " I will use my magical name and our
camp PO box #, just as the head of our order does." They stopped right
then and there. In a letter to Heidrick, I explained that I was
disillusioned with the OTO, felt I had been unfairly neglected (as were
all of us in Minnesota). I had sent a 300 pp. manuscript to Beta
(because Heidrick told me to) which contained a book written by myself
which contained a systematic explanation of Crowley's Initiatory
system, Qabalah and philosophy in a sequential series of essays and
quotes drawn from all of Crowley's Qabalistically organized works. Beta
never responded with even a post card saying "I got your book. Go to
hell." I'll be the first to admit that my pride was at work, but I
wasn't out of line, I don't think. In my letter to Heidrick, I
explained my philosophical refusal to perform the OZ postings:
1) It is ironic and silly. If I am the superman that the text
proclaims, why do I HAVE TO do anything?
2) Why should I risk even a hang nail for the OTO? I had a long series
of gripes, including the stupidity of pretending their rituals were
secret when I obtained them via interlibrary loan from the University
of Wisconsin. Many of these gripes hinged upon hierarchical issues and
other sorts of critiques that I have seen on your site.
3) OZ is too ambiguously written. It would more than likely be
interpreted to be the work of a reactionary anti-government terrorist,
which I am not at all. In short, I think that there are passages in OZ
which may have a positive interpretation, but will undoubtedly create
dangerous misunderstandings. I prefer to write my own. By mail I took
care of sending my own proclamation of freedom and enmity to an
evangelistic religious cult and to the OTO. I sent my note of defiance
to the OTO, via Bill Heidrick. I also enclosed the letter I sent to the
evangelical Christians. It is a very bombastic piece. It contains all
my anger at fundamentalist Christians, the OTO and homophobia. Their
letter to me was profoundly homophobic and fascist (not even
protofascistoid).
From: XXX
To: "Peter Koenig"
Subject: RE: IIIrd answer
Date: Sun, 26 Apr 1998
You're probably right. I just lost interest in writing because Heidrick
and B*** were the only ones who were responding to me. The former we
all know about, the latter was an odd case. Somebody connected us up
because we were both in academia (he's a *** at B***) He wrote that
worthless book on Liber 671 Pyramidos published by the OTO in the early
1990s. He was kind of a father figure for me in the OTO via mail and
telephone. I liked him until I met him. There were a number of things
that turned me off about him, none of which were terribly important,
except that he spent a lot of time telling gossip to a throng of us
novices. He was annoying, and he drove a woman to tears for reasons I
never quite figured out. I saw a lot of unpleasant politics going on
below the surface that gave me my first warning sign that something was
wrong with the OTO (this was August 1989). Eventually, I came to the
conclusion that OTOists were either longwinded technocrats harboring
silly secrets or they were unlikely to pay any attention to me,
especially in Minnesota. We ventured out on our own--the three core
members of the I** camp formed the +++. I stopped writing letters,
except for a couple more to Heidrick, and a series of debates with
M***s. I looked at my letters. They would not be as useful as my formal
writing. I also have his letters, which might be of interest in a few
parts. My lack of letters is equally due to my dismissal of the OTO.
