Oh boy. I suppose the time has come to start introducing you to the Ordo Templi Orientis (“Order of the Temple of the East”). You’ll often see them refer to themselves as the O.T.O., and that’s because their abbreviation has…certain…symbolism.
Founded by German theosophists (because of course it was), the O.T.O. was an attempted revival of Adam Weishaupt’s Bavarian Order of the Illuminati. (Yes, it really existed… I may speak more about Weishaupt some other time–he’s one of the deepest rabbit holes out there.)
But the O.T.O. ended up being an order created for more Germans to experience high-degree Freemason rites.
I think you’re ready to know the double-meaning of the abbreviation, now. Well, as ready as you’ll ever be->
(Their fraternity ring is also phallic in nature.)
But, for now, that’s enough about the O.T.O.–Let’s shift back over to Crowley.
With the O.T.O. already well-established firmly between the buttox of human history, Edward Alexander Crowley was a poet and writer at Cambridge, and was quite well-off financially. So much so he was able to afford to travel the world, go mountain climbing, and write. In one account, he was on a mountain climbing expedition (I believe to K-2 itself), when the team didn’t take his advice and took a bad path. Four of the team members fell and died, and Crowley recalls leaving them there despite their screams and pleas for help. (Not the kind of guy you’d want on your climbing team.) It was during these college years that he changed his name to the Gaelic form of Alexander, perhaps as a pen name… or perhaps for more pretentious reasons.
He became a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1898, which is an offshoot of Rosicrucianism, which are both derived from the Jewish Kabbalah. Just to be chaotic, he published detailed accounts of all the Golden Dawn’s secret rites in a college journal (a fact which I will come back to later, but it once again speaks to how untrustworthy this guy was).
In 1899, he studied yoga in Mexico, then travelled to Seylon and India to study Buddhism, Hinduism, and Indian Tantra. He concluded that yoga and magick are kind of two opposite extremes, in that yoga is the slowing down or stopping of the mind, whereas magick is a sort of “science” that speeds it up beyond normal human capabilities. In fact, he differentiates magic and magick in that magick is more of a “provable science” with “measurable results”.
By 1904, an entity that claimed to be his guardian angel, “Aiwass”, allegedly appeared to him to dictate Liber AL, The Book of the Law. This was done in Egypt by (allegedly) attuning himself and his wife with the “A.A.”, the “Son behind the Sun”, the “Silver Star”, the “Dog Star”, also known as Sirius, through a summoning ritual.
In the mystery school religions, Sirius is extremely important, as it stands for the “spirit of wisdom”. (And we know they think “wisdom” is basically what amounts to “mind-ejaculation”.) And oh boy do they take Sirius seriously. There are important religious temples in the largest cities whose private inner sanctums have the symbol for the dog star directly above the “sacred place” you’re supposed to kneel, within some of the most unholy, creepy sanctums you could ever imagine, be they decorated in human bones or hieroglyphics, or are dedicated to Baphomet.
The higher ranked members fully believe they can communicate with higher-form beings and can have thoughts beamed back to their head from this distant binary star system (there is both a Sirius A and Sirius B), and that this binary star system hosts our origin planet (basically, where they believe the “ancient aliens” who once traveled to Earth originated from and still live to this day). They also believe the Egyptian pyramids have a connection to this style of communication or even transportation, an idea you can clearly see in movies like Stargate.
This idea of “attenuation” and “raising your frequency” is one way that demons consort with humans, often posing as angels. For example, the hippy-dippy Scientology-fueled “Galactic Federation” movement (wish I was making that up) is centered around this same idea, except that they focus on 26 different stars (one of which is Sirius) which they believe became a Star Trek-like “alliance for peace” (because of course it is) that Earth isn’t worthy of yet (because of course it isn’t).
If someone ever starts talking about being a “Sirian and Pleidian starseed”, understand that they are under the influence of demons and run far, far away.
Being that Sirius is the brightest star in the sky, cultists often equate it to the light of Lucifer. Enlightenment. Just as they do with the planet Venus. (The teachings are inconsistent.) They believe that if one were to stay in a meditative trance long enough, he would go on an astral journey that would eventually allow projecting himself all the way to Sirius. And, the scary thing is, a lot of druggies who know nothing about this stuff corroborate with the cultists in that they describe eerily similar experiences during their “trips”.
My theory as to why? These people may be catching glimpses of Hell itself, be it drug-induced or meditation-induced. By “raising their kundalini“, they are attuning themselves with demons and Hell itself.
The O.T.O. have their own stand-in for the Catholic trinity: The Sun (the “Father), Horus (the “Son”), and Sirius (the “Holy Spirit”). And the Thelemites refer to the “patriarchal god” of the second aeon (God), as the “Dying God“. This is also a term athiest philosophers like to throw around, trying to get a rise out of believers.
The O.T.O. have darkly mirrored the Catholic mass in several other ways as well, including bastardizing the sacraments, the prayers, the creeds, and even the Eucharist.
Point is they believe in God. They fear Him. They believe in Him so much that they built their entire religion around corrupting and mocking Him, and misusing and abusing the miracle of procreation in hopes of outsmarting and outmaneuvering God before they die (by successfully attaining eternal life).
And, as I said, they believe “everyone is a star“. But they mean this star, which is how the Thelemites cast their Will:
Let’s take a look at a few quotes from Crowley to see if it corroborates what I’ve been saying…
Part of the public horror of sexual irregularity so-called is due to the fact that everyone knows himself essentially guilty.
It’s very sad to see Crowley was projecting his sins onto the masses, unable to bear the thought that perhaps some people aren’t as wicked as he.
The Devil is, historically, the God of any people that one personally dislikes… This serpent, SATAN, is not the enemy of Man, but He who made Gods of our race, knowing Good and Evil; He bade ‘Know Thyself!’ and taught Initiation.
One of the oldest occult tricks in the book is to reverse the roles of God and Satan, because Satan gave us the light of knowledge through the Apple of Forbidden Knowledge, he must be a good guy, whereas God didn’t trust us with that knowledge. Classic Luciferian reversal.
Bonus points to the fact that the tempter is literally doing the same thing the serpent did, trying to tempt us away from God with the promise of secret knowledge, leveraging the most common and most deadly of sins: Pride.
Every intentional act is a magical act.
To Crowley, Will is equal to magick. True Will can be leveraged toward that Will.
Having to talk destroys the symphony of silence.
All magi know the power of silence. All occultists know the power of keeping a secret.
There are no “standards of Right”. Ethics is balderdash. Each Star must go on its own orbit. To hell with “moral principle”; there is no such thing.
Crowley wanted his followers to “YOLO”, and he knew that meant throwing away morality and virtue, letting each “star” choose their own morals.
Thelemites love Freedom just as much as Libertarians and the MAGA crowd, believe it or not, which one can easily observe if one were to read the r/Thelema subreddit (not recommended). The main problem being they take freedom way too far, making it freedom for freedom’s sake without any guiding ethics, a very dangerous concept.
What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over.
Lie by omission. It’s okay. Journalists and politicians love this quote, I’m sure.
Magick is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with Will.
Crowley and the Thelemites believed they had the art of manipulating the rubes down to a science.
Intolerance is evidence of impotence.
Crowley setting the early stages for “Acceptance, no matter what”, so he could get away with the sick stuff you’ll hear about in the next post.
If one were to take the bible seriously one would go mad. But to take the bible seriously, one must be already mad.
Said the mad occultist who consulted with demons. Note that Bible is lowercase.
To me, every dirty act was simply a sacrament of sin, a passionately religious protest against Christianity, which was for me the symbol of all vileness, meanness, treachery, falsehood and oppression.
Crowley hated Christianity and spent most of his life lashing out against it. To understand where he’s coming from here, we have to understand his childhood. He was born in 1875, near the end of the Victorian era (which he saw as the end of the second aeon). His father was a member of the “highly puritanical” Plymouth Brethren sect and led a strict Christian home.
As he grew up, Crowley embraced the opinion of critics of the Victorian era and vocal anti-Christians alike. In fact, LIBER AL is based on the ideas found in a work called Gargantua which talked about how the spiritual could “transcend the hypocritical corruption of Christian monasteries”.
He also went on a drug-infused, hedonistic binger during the roaring twenties, heavy on cocaine, as he went “exploring every possible sensual pleasure and moral vice”. You can read about it in his book Diary of a Drug Fiend (also not recommended).
(I once had the displeasure of dev editing a similar book of this style (another cocaine road-trip coming-of-age story, though obviously modern) and it whittled down my soul, even as I tried to dilute the message and give the book a more positive, Christian-aligned message in its place.)
The Quest of the Holy Grail, the Search for the Stone of the Philosophers – by whatever name we choose to call the Great Work – is therefore endless. Success only opens up new avenues of brilliant possibility. Yea, verily, and Amen! the task is tireless and its joys without bounds; for the whole Universe, and all that in it is, what is it but the infinite playground of the Crowned and Conquering Child, of the insatiable, the innocent, the ever-rejoicing Heir of Space and Eternity, whose name is MAN?
Basically, Crowley’s saying here that you PROBABLY won’t attain eternal life by the time you die, but hey, it’s still totally worth it, man.
Paganism is wholesome because it faces the facts of life.
The art of the Magus is to lie.
Every man and every woman is a star.
We already discussed what kind of star. Crowley wanted every member of his order to “carve his or her own path”, believing that True Will would make them into his puppets, thereby doing Crowley’s Will.
Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people.
Once again discounting the morality of God, denying the existence of the Prime Mover.
I was not content to just believe in Satan. I wanted to be his chief of staff.
Occultists, especially cult leaders, tend to be extremely selfish, ambitious, and power-hungry. Saul Alinsky was another who often spoke like this.
Practically, Science is true; and Faith is foolish.
An early attempt to bring forth Science Positivism.
I’m a poet, and I like my lies the way my mother used to make them.
Crowley grew up hating his mother, his father, Christianity, and the Catholic faith.
Love is the law, love under will.
A more archaic form of the insipid saying, “Love is love”, despite the fact that there are four loves.
Similar to how “Live, Laugh, Love” is arguably a modern version of “Do as thou wilt“.
I think you get the picture.
Crowley, being a somewhat prolific writer and poet, was a quote factory. You can even find his opinions on cocaine and many other subjects with a simple internet search.
For someone who valued silence so highly, Crowley couldn’t seem to shut up. In fact, he was such an untrustworthy blathermouth, he published all the secret rites of the Golden Dawn in his college’s journal (as I mentioned earlier) which got himself embroiled in litigation.
He was often doing the opposite of what he said, saying the opposite of what he did, and meaning the opposite of what he meant.
Pure Luciferian chaos.
Nick Enlowe 
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