thelema.page

“The Great White Brotherhood known as the A∴ A∴” So, Fraternitas Alba Alta, right? Simple enough, clear as day, couldn’t be more obvious. Not so fast, little grasshopper. Apparently, everyone and their mother is under the assumption that A∴ A∴ is actually the acronym of “Silver Star” in either Latin or Greek, but can’t agree on the spelling or the numerical value (Qabalists are funny that way).

But wait, the “Brotherhood of the Silver Star”? Here I thought the third order was called Ordo A∴ A∴, the “Order of the Silver Star.” Yet the seal clearly says Sigillum Sanctum Fraternitatis A∴ A∴, as opposed to Sigillum Sanctum Ordinis A∴ A∴. What is more, the Silver Star is hardly the only Ordo A∴ A∴, Aurea Aurora, the “Golden Dawn,” the first order of the A∴ A∴, being its most obvious namesake. The odd man out is naturally the second order, Ordo Rosae Crucis, perhaps in keeping with the Hermetic maxim, “As above, so below” (or should we say “A∴ A∴, so below”?).

Of course, the letters A∴ A∴ have always been associated with the Rosicrucian Order, from the Ancient & Accepted Rite (also know as “Rose-Croix”) of Freemasonry to the Hermetic Arcanum Arcanorum, the “Secret of Secrets,” S. S. for short—like the elusive Silver Star or the more common Spiritus Sanctus, the third person of the Trinity. The most ironic suggestion by far is, however, “Angel & Abyss”—those being the two tasks the Order expressly cannot help the aspirant with.

What is more, if Aiwass was Aleister Crowley’s personal Guardian Angel, then the revelation he got from him cannot be of universal importance. Liber 418 ostensibly solved this issue by having Aiwass declare that he is above the Abyss, on the path between Binah and Chokmah, but this would mean “Knowledge and Conversation” does not take place in Tiphareth, invalidating the entire system of the A∴ A∴. Hence it is not considered a “Holy Book” by certain A∴ A∴ claimant groups, or is only considered “Class A” in parts. To be clear, they are not “The Holy Books of Thelema”—that is the title of the 1983 Weiser re-publication edited by the future Hymenæus Beta.

They were originally privately published in three volumes from 1909 to 1910 for the use of the members of the A∴ A∴ as ΘΕΛΗΜΑ and subtitled simply as The Holy Books. These libri constitute the “A∴ A∴ Publications in Class A” and, besides Liber AL, the only one of them to even mention Θέλημα is the aforementioned Liber 418, which was first published, heavily edited, in The Equinox, Vol. I, No. V, in 1911. All of these books, however, make specific references to particular grades of the A∴ A∴—with the exception, again, of The Book of the Law itself. When Crowley rewrote the rituals of the O.T.O. around 1917 to conform with the Law of Thelema, he replaced the Masonic V.S.L. not with the “Holy Books,” but just with Liber AL.

The Sacred Seal of the A∴ A∴ does not actually make its first appearance until Book 4, Part I (1912), by which point both Fuller and Jones had already parted their ways with Crowley, leaving him the sole person in charge. The earliest reference to the Third Order as “S. S.” or Silver Star is in “One Star in Sight,” first published in Magick in Theory and Practice (1929), but apparently written at/for Crowley’s Sicilian Abbey of Thelema commune in 1921. The A∴ A∴ inherited its quasi-Masonic, pseudo-Rosicrucian degree structure from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, but also adopted the customary teacher-student chain of the entirely different Yogic tradition, resulting in what is easily one of the dumbest organizational charts in the history of spiritual movements.

Surely only a blind cultist would accept a larger anonymous system where their advancement depends on not only their immediate superior’s capacity to advance (and survive) to the next level, but on the similar capacity of their immediate inferior as well—especially when you get to have only one of each randomly assigned to you. “This rule has been relaxed, and a ‘Grand Neophyte’ appointed to superintend all Members of the Order of the G. D.” Yes, but it then just seems like a failed attempt to adapt organizational or teacher-student (read: authoritarian) structure to tasks that were personal and individual endeavors to begin with, while the First Order could have just as well had retained the traditional lodge structure—so what we get is the worst of both worlds instead.

Once Crowley had revised the Masonic rituals to conform with the Law of Thelema, he had another perfectly serviceable Outer Order in the O.T.O. In fact, the “Official Instructions of the A∴ A∴” first published in the Blue Equinox of 1919, got gradually added all the higher degree (technically secret) papers of the O.T.O., while the only new A∴ A∴ specific instruction was the Abbey of Thelema era Liber Samekh—itself a treatise on a novel method of attaining the Knowledge and Conversation especially tailored for the use of Frank Bennett, who just happened to be Crowley’s X° O.T.O. Viceroy in Australasia.

Of the three separate, independent, and conflicting methods/accounts of attaining the Knowledge and Conversation, this and Liber VIII (8th Æthyr from “Class A-B” Liber 418) fall in “Class D,” while Liber LXV is “Class A.” The “Class D” Liber Yod (formerly Vesta) further gives “three methods of reducing the manifest consciousness to the Unity … to facilitate the task of … the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.” The “Abra-Melin Operation” gets mentioned a lot, but The Sacred Magic is just one of the many books “a Student of the Mysteries … must possess,” not an official instruction of any grade. There is no record of any of Crowley’s disciples actually attaining the Knowledge and Conversation through the “Class D” methods, with his chosen successor Karl Germer (another O.T.O. X°) famously declaring to have attained it by “reading the Holy Books backwards and forwards” while imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp.

Crowley’s own encounter with his Angel, of course, led to the reception of those books, or at least of Liber AL, depending on the account. On 20 March 1904, Crowley writes: “The invocation [of Horus] was a startling success. I was told that ‘The Equinox of the Gods had come’; that is, that a new epoch had begun. I was to formulate a link between the solar-spiritual force and mankind. Various considerations showed me that the Secret Chiefs of the Third Order (that is, of the A∴ A∴ whose First and Second Orders were known as G∴ D∴ and R. R. et A. C. respectively) had sent a messenger to confer upon me the position which Mathers had forfeited. I made it a condition that I should attain Samadhi; that is, that I should receive a degree of illumination, in default of which it would be presumptuous to put myself forward.”

Even four decades later Crowley still insists: “I have never wanted anything but spiritual enlightenment; and, if power, then only the power to confer a similar enlightenment on mankind at large.” (Letter to Gerald Yorke, 7 November 1945.) But God might appear in a Burning Bush or speak through Balaam’s Ass, and that does not make the said flora or fauna illuminated. “It is true that I had been used as a Magus in the Cairo working; that is, I had been chosen to utter the Word of a New Aeon. But I did not regard this as being my Word. I felt myself ridiculously unworthy of the position assigned to me in The Book of the Law itself. When therefore I proposed to devote myself to my own initiations, I meant no more than this: that I would try to perfect myself in the understanding and powers proper to a Master of the Temple. At the end of 1913, I found myself in Paris with a Zelator of the Order, Frater L.T. I had been working on the theory of the magical method of the O.T.O.; and we decided to test my conclusions by a series of invocations.”

“The Magus is thus, of course, not a person in any ordinary sense; he represents a certain nature or idea. To put it otherwise, we may say, the Magus is a word. He is the Logos of the Aeon which he brings to pass.” Ironically, while Crowley quite correctly points out that the “legend of ‘Christ’ is only a corruption and perversion of other legends [e]specially of Dionysus,” the same is true to a larger or smaller extent of all the Magistri Templi listed in Liber 333. Lao-tzû may count “as nought, owing to the nature of his doctrine,” he also counts as naught since his name just means an “Old Master” and he’s really just a version of the legend of Siddartha. I say legend, because the historicity of the Gautama Buddha is equally as suspect as that of Krishna, Tahuti, Mosheh, and Mahmud. And Crowley, of course, penned a whopping six-volume “Autohagiography” on the saintly exploits of Perdurabo.

“No grown man can be another man’s disciple.” Even if they could, the guru-shishya line is severed when the parameshti guru dies—a problem the Tibetans solved by having their various lamas, or tülkus, reincarnate. Crowley seemed partial to the Mahayana bodhisattva ideal over Theravada Buddhism’s arhatship, and one could easily see The Great Beast as an office passed down through series of rebirths. Yet perhaps the most generous interpretation of the unshakable fear of death experienced by the Logos Aionos following his Ipsissimus initiation would be that Crowley knew that he had brought his essence fully into existence and was thus on his last incarnation.

The fact is that the A∴ A∴ could not have “died with Crowley” as some claim, since it had ceased to exist as an organization decades earlier—if it had ever really been one in the first place. For the short period of time that the A∴ A∴ actually had a governing triad, it was made of Crowley, then claiming the grade of Magister Templi, George Cecil Jones, recognized as an Adeptus Exemptus, and J.F.C. Fuller, a mere Probationer. After Fuller and G.C. Jones left, the triad was never complete again: C.S. Jones took the position of Cancellarius in 1919, but the Blue Equinox still lists G.C. Jones as the Praemonstrator although he had fully withdrawn from the Order eight years earlier.

At Crowley’s death, and for most of its existence, the A∴ A∴ was just Crowley and his personal students. It certainly never existed as the type of an organization one could claim lineage from. It derived all its authority from Crowley and Crowley alone, so once he was gone, there was no-one to trace your line to. Even if by some miracle you really were a Magus to Crowley’s Ipsissimus while he was alive, that would mean diddly-squat once he was dead and the teacher-student chain broken. No Crowley, no A∴ A∴, simple as that. So anyone claiming to represent “the A∴ A∴” today is clearly either stupid, deluded, or a fraud—or all three, as you often find.

Any Tom, Dick, or Harry can, of course, take the Oath of Abyss, and provided they cross, claim the grade of Magister Templi—but that does not make them A∴ A∴ or give them any authority in the A∴ A∴. They could form their own Inner Order, but that would then rely solely on their authority, just as the A∴ A∴ relied on Crowley’s. The next highest “initiate” after Crowley at his death was Karl Germer and he was that entirely on Crowley’s say-so. By his own admission, he never did “any astral work,” never worked the grades, never did anything besides publish German translations of Crowley’s writings. Yet it was Germer whom Crowley handpicked as his successor in both of his Orders.

As an unincorporated association, the O.T.O. could not receive bequests any more than the A∴ A∴ could, just like as an undischarged bankrupt, Crowley was unable to make any. Germer clearly knew this, since he registered the copyrights of the two of his Master’s works he edited and published after their death not in O.T.O.’s name, or Crowley’s, but his own. Crowley also almost certainly knew this himself, since he had vehemently opposed incorporating the O.T.O. whenever the subject was brought up by his disciples, and since his Will refers specifically to “Karl Johannes Germer of 260 West 72nd Street New York City” not merely the “Grand Treasurer General of the Ordo Templi Orientis (Order of the Temple of the East).”

The O.T.O. likes to pretend that the copyrights have always lawfully belonged to it, even though it did not even exist as a legal entity until as late as 1979. Unlike the various A∴ A∴ claimant groups, it was incorporated by the senior ranking members of Crowley’s Order, so its legitimacy as a continuation of his legacy was never really in question. However, most of the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s republication of Crowley’s corpus took place before the incorporation, and even much of the post-incorporation publication was carried out before the Order finally purchased the long lost rights from the Official Receiver in 1991.

It is true that a 9th Circuit judge in San Francisco “awarded” the bequeathed rights to the California corporation as early as 1985, but that ruling can only be applied to copyrights that were Crowley’s to assign, i.e. works written or published after his personal bankruptcy in 1935. These works include the myriad of items that were left in a limbo when Hymenæus Beta, on 10 April 2013, announced the planned (but never carried out) publication of several out-of-print works all intended to include Crowley’s previously unpublished notes and revisions. As of writing, none have even been “released via print on demand and ebook at a price point that will be affordable to students” as promised.