Reuss Steiner and Aleister Crowley
Under the leadership of Reuss the O.T.O. enjoyed a steady, although not spectacular, expansion. Charters were granted to various occultists outside Germany and independent national Orders, derivative of the O.T.O., were established; in France, for example Dr. Encausse, better known under his occult pseudonym of 'Papus', was appointed chief of both the O.T.O. and the French Rite of Memphis and Misraim.16 This close association of the O.T.O. with Memphis and Misraim seems to have been usually the case up to 1914; it is interesting to note that as late as 1927 the Danish section of the O.T.O., the Danish Rite of Memphis and Misraim, and the Danish section of AMORC (originally chartered by Reuss), all operated from the same address.
One of the most interesting recruits to Memphis and Misraim was Rudolf Steiner, to whom Reuss granted a charter in 1906. The Oriflamme reported this event in the following words:
'Brother Rudolf Steiner, 33°, 95°, of Berlin, and the Brothers and Sisters associated with him have been granted permission to form a Chapter and Grand Council under the title (Mysteria) Mystica Aeterna in Berlin. Dr. Steiner has been appointed Deputy Grand Master, with jurisdiction over members already received or to be received by him ... '
Mr. Ellic Howe has written17 that 'in the absence of documentary evidence it would be unwise to try to link Steiner with Reuss's Ordo Templi Orientis'; nevertheless, I remain confident that such a link almost certainly existed. It must be considered that:
(a) Mysteria Maxima normally formed a part of the names of O.T.O. national sections — the Swiss section, for example, was Mysteria Mystica Veritas, the British section, led by Aleister Crowley, was Mysteria Mystica Maxima.
(b) Women were admitted into the group led by Steiner; this would be normal in the O.T.O. but not in Memphis and Misraim.
(c) By the time he came to write his autobiography Steiner was clearly ashamed of his former ritualistic activities and devoted three pages to an attempt to explain them away. It is difficult to understand why he should have done this if he had been no more than an unorthodox freemason.
(d) Crowley, who as we shall see, was on friendly terms with Reuss, specifically stated that Steiner had been an O.T.O. initiate. It is worth adding that Crowley was usually accurate on matters of fact outside his own personal affairs.
(e) Dr. Felkin, the chief of the Stella Matutina (a magical fraternity derived from the Golden Dawn) and a disciple of Steiner was also a member of the British section of the O.T.O. This, of course, was led by Crowley — regarded by the Stella Matutina as a black magician. It is impossible to explain Felkin's membership of the O.T.O., and consequent association with Crowley, except on the assumption that either Steiner or one of his German lieutenants had suggested it to him.
(f Descriptions of Steiner's rituals published in the French press before 1914 are reminiscent of the ceremonies of the O.T.O.
(g) There is some evidence that Steiner referred to his group as 'Esoteric Rosicrucians'; this was the name given to initiates of the eighth degree of the O.T.O.
Whatever the truth about Steiner's possible membership of the O.T.O. there is no reason of course to believe that he ever practised sexual magic; indeed, the poem dedicated to Steiner by Crowley18 seems to imply that the former took the O.T.O.'s sexual magic as being no more than subtle allegory.
Crowley himself seems to have been admitted to the lower grades of the O.T.O. in 1911. At the time he regarded it as no more than a simple masonic fraternity, but, in the following year, after a visit from Reuss, who accused him of revealing the innermost secrets of the Order, he changed his mind.
Crowley responded to the accusation by pointing out that he was not in possession of these secrets and therefore hardly in a position to reveal them. Silently Reuss opened a copy of Crowley's Book of Lies and pointed to a passage beginning 'Let the Adept be armed with his Magic Rood and provided with his Mystic Rose'. In a flash Crowley understood the nature of the O.T.O. Magical system and in the conversation that followed it was agreed that he should head the British section of the O.T.O. — this, it will be remembered, was the Mysteria Mystica Maxima.
Subsequently Crowley visited Berlin where he received copies of the Order's instructional manuscripts and had the title of 'Supreme and Holy King of Ireland, Iona and all the Britains within the Sanctuary of the Gnosis' conferred upon him.19
While Crowley was impressed with the magical teachings he received from Reuss — he found the O.T.O.'s techniques far simpler than the long-winded ceremonial methods of the Golden Dawn — Reuss seems to have been equally impressed by Crowley and, indeed, to have been converted to 'Crowleyanity', the new religion of Thelema.
The nature of Thelemite religion and the story of how it came into existence are now too well known for it to be worth while recounting at length. Suffice to say that in 1904 Crowley received a 'direct voice' communication entitled, The Book of the Law, an intensely beautiful prose-poem in three short chapters purporting to give an initiated interpretation of the new Aeon of Horus, or, as it is now often called, the 'Age of Aquarius'.20
Under Crowley's influence the rituals of the O.T.O. were revised in order to conform to the Book of the Law, simultaneously Crowley produced the Gnostic Mass (for both the O.T.O. and Reuss's Gnostic Catholic Church) and, at Reuss's request, revised some of the O.T.O. instructional material pertaining to the ninth degree.21
Reuss resigned his chieftainship of the O.T.O. in 1922 — he had suffered a stroke some two years earlier — verbally nominating Crowley his successor. It was not until 1925, however, that a majority of the German O.T.O. accepted Crowley's leadership, and even then a substantial minority of its Lodges continued to reject both Crowley and the Book ofthe Law. In 1937 both groups of magicians were suppressed by the Nazis.
For the next ten years California was the main centre of O.T.O. activity and at the time of Crowley's death in 1947 there was no real organized O.T.O. activity outside the U.S.A.22
Average user rating: 5 stars out of 1 votes
Post a comment