Renunciation

vel Sacramentum Primum

[This essay was originally published in 2015 on the website of Pelican Camp, a short-lived OTO body in Baton Rouge, and was subsequently censored by US Grand Lodge along with I its author censured. Grand Lodge refuses to give this ritual any legitimacy and insists it not be performed adjacent to any other ceremony or as a condition for affiliation. This seems to go against Aleister Crowley’s edict that it be administered before any sacrament or initiation, more specifically “everyone who has anything to do with us at all.” It’s yet another example of OTO working against its father and prophet. The essay is here preserved in its original form with the addition of footnotes and the retrospective that follows the ritual.]

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Renuncio

Crowley's three Orders – EGC, OTO and A∴A∴ – all initiate. Like the Christian-Catholic Church of Rome, EGC (Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica) has a sacramental system, and OTO and A∴A∴ have their own peculiar initiatory paths. When approaching Thelema and Magick, the noob often wonders where to begin. People are generally advised to do whatever they want, but aside from such a redundant sentiment there is a more specific recommendation from the person who designed all these systems with a pattern and synergy in mind, Aleister Crowley. Quoting from a lecture given at Sekhet Maat Lodge in Portland, Oregon in 2010 by T Omphalos entitled, A Sword in my Hand:¹

[Crowley] keeps on being fairly critical of what he comes to know as “occultists." He declares to W.T. Smith: “We do not want any more drifting occultists. By that he means people who came to Crowley to mine his knowledge of occultism but had little interest or use for Thelema. So he writes to W.B. Crow, “Your riposte about The Equinox and Book of Thoth does not touch me, because these are technical works for the learned. What I put out as doctrine is a simple slogan." 

And with this we see how Crowley at the end of his life - this was written in 1945, that is after he wrote Magick Without Tears - that Crowley envisions a kind of community where people basically start out as adherents, like he would write to Germer, that the basic public association with people would be the Gnostic Mass. That would be our first introduction to the Law of Thelema. And then we would probably be baptized and confirmed, and learn about Thelema. And then those who are called to the law as a way of life would then join the OTO to learn Thelema as a way of life, for those who are suited to that. And those who are called for attainment in a strict sense, in an A∴A∴ sense, can join A∴A∴. There's more than enough room for all of us. 

Crowley saw Thelema as a sweeping cultural movement, informed by A∴A∴, coordinated by OTO, and promoted by EGC via the Gnostic Mass, a rallying ritual that would call together sympathetic souls in a resounding affirmation of life and celebration of the gradual transmutation both within and without. Individuals would be drawn into orbit by the Gnostic Mass and be ceremonially received into our community with Baptism (and Confirmation). If they then sought a more active role in the movement, they might initiate into OTO, going through the first of three series of degrees, the Man of Earth triad, which Crowley designed to make one suitable for further initiation, either into the government of the Order, which begins (and, he writes, for most people ends) at the V°, and/or into A∴A∴. Crowley believed the Man of Earth series would serve as “a boot camp for A∴A∴," and as the Man of Earth initiate ends in the III°, Death, and its appendices, Perfection and Annihilation (IV° and P.I.), so does the Path of A∴A∴ begin in Death, the degree of Neophyte. 

I strongly recommend this path to people approaching Thelema. It is a structured initiatory progression that begins with a community of spirit - Ecclesia - informed by a life-affirming understanding of our heliocentric nature - Gnostica - that does not define itself on vulgar prejudicial categories of race or politik - Catholica. This is the basic need of those who approach us. Upon this real need for community and religion might be built an ideological promulgatory arm – OTO. And having achieved this basic initiatory magico-ethical experience, one is better informed and equipped to engage the august aspiration of A∴A∴, should that be their Will. This path is pyramidal in culmination, beginning with the basic but always mindful of the summit - the product resembling the peak.

There is another ceremony that I wish to address in this essay more directly, one that is often deliberately ignored despite Crowley's insistence that it precede any sort of affiliation, which I like to refer to as Renunciation. 

The more that Crowley accepted his role as prophet of Thelema and less as some unparalleled expert on all things occult, the more he became frustrated with those whose only interest in his organizations was the latter. Dilettantes abound, and they tend to toy with old sweetnesses in harboring sentimentality for the foregone religious traditions, the “Slave Religions" of the “Old Aeon." The plague of puerile pretenders persists to this day – many come to OTO and initiate, sometimes well into our degree structure, only to part ways because of some ethical conflict or mopish prejudice. Crowley was especially irked by his once-chosen protégé, Charles Stansfeld Jones or Frater Achad, who went mad in his attempt to cross the Abyss and then converted to Catholicism. Crowley describes the failing of this ultimate initiation as falling into the Abyss and states that in the attempt to divest oneself of everything, the one sentiment which is kept hidden is the anchor that sinks one into the abyss forever, the weight in one's heart that tips the scales of Ma'at. For C.S. Jones, Christianity was that cinderblock. Ten years previous to Jones' abandonment of Thelema and reversion to Christianity, Crowley had written to him: 

I am inclined to propose that you should prepare a formula, to be presented at your lectures, by which any person can publicly renounce the errors of Christianity and so on, and accept the Law. Such a person should at that time burn a copy of his old ‘sacred book’, Bible, Mrs. Eddy, or what not, and be marked by you with The Mark of The Beast, to wit, the Acid on the Pulse of the Left Wrist. 

AC to CS Jones, April 1, 1919 

There is no record that Jones ever put this into practice. Fifteen years following Jones' failure, Crowley wrote his ultimate successor, Karl Johannes Germer and, undoubtedly reflecting on Jones, Crowley's suggestion has become a very edict and a condition for Germer's succession. Crowley writes: 

I shall appoint you my successor as O.H.O. but on special terms. It is quite clear to me that a complete change in the structure of the Order, and in its methods, is necessary. The Secret is the basis, and you must select the proper people. You can take outsiders; but everyone who has anything to do with us at all must make a formal renunciation of ideas denounced in AL 49-56. Cap III. Then comes the New Social Order, on the lines laid down in the books LII, CI, CLXI and CXCIV (See Equinox III.1. pp 195-246) and same in Eqx III.2.—this volume is not under my hand at the moment. The broad base of public association is the Gnostic Mass. 

AC to Karl Germer, March 14, 1942 

In US Grand Lodge's semi-regular publication, Agape, Vol. 9 Num 3/4, the Grand Master Sabazius interprets the latter letter as stating that Crowley would allow Germer to communicate “the Secret" to non-initiates of OTO, so long as they made “a formal renunciation of [slave religion]." I beg to differ, arguing that Crowley, in this paragraph, jumps from point to point in each sentence, and that taking outsiders referred not to wanton communication of the Secret of the IX°, but rather to the general engagement of the public. 

T Polyphilus, a Chicago-based Bishop of EGC, says that laity of EGC and initiates of OTO are mistaken in thinking that the rituals of either suffice in severing ties from old religion. Crowley's edict recalls other traditions which expected likewise of their aspirants. In the Catholic baptism, which most baptids would not recall as they were doused in Papist bilge as infants, one precedes a Confessio with a Renuncio. The Priest asks, “Do you renounce Satan? And all his works? And all his empty promises?" To each query, the hapless idiot replies, “I do." 

Thelemic Renunciation recalls this – the renouncing of empty promises made by deceivers and hucksters – and also the Catholic sacrament of Confession. But in this Thelemic version of Confession, one does not whisper guilt in pained pitiful pants to some private priest. Rather, one declares to the Ecclesia one approaches that they reject the phony grace and transcendental suicide of old religions, and that they have naught to confess but, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." 

Despite this beautiful occasion and warm welcoming, most OTO communities today do not practice Renunciation, much less require it for membership. In fact, unbelievably, many modern members of OTO disdain the formality, calling it prejudicial to those hyphenated Thelemites who somehow reconcile faith in the Abrahamic slave-God and his insidious pundits with the Law of Thelema, which Crowley read as asserting that “There is no god but man." Crowley elsewhere marks that the Theist is necessarily a slave in having asserted God as being external. This displaced locus of volition is the beginning and the end of freedom. Faith in salvation through vicarious atonement or the sickly virtues and scornful morals of Christianity is the asshole of human consciousness from which only shit might emerge. 

Crowley's hate for Christendom is apparent to any literate student of Thelema, but one piece of ritual comes to mind. In Liber 70, The Cross of a Frog, Crowley writes: 

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. 

Lo, Jesus of Nazareth, how thou art taken in my snare. All my life long thou hast plagued me and affronted me. In thy name - with all other free souls in Christendom - I have been tortured in my boyhood; all delights have been forbidden unto me; all that I had has been taken from me, and that which is owed to me they pay not - in thy name. Now, at last, I have thee; the Slave-God is in the power of the Lord of Freedom. Thine hour is come; as I blot thee out from this earth, so surely shall the eclipse pass; and the Light, Life, Love and Liberty be once more the Law of Earth. Give thou place to me, O, Jesus; thine aeon is passed; the Age of Horus is arisen by the Magick of the Master the Beast that is Man; and his number is six hundred and three score and six. 

Love is the law, love under will. 

Current OTO culture and practice does not encourage sponsorship requirements at all. Frequently people cite Crowley in Liber 52, “Every man and woman that is of full age, free, and of good report, has an indefeasible right to the III°." They therefore believe that the sole responsibility of a sponsor is to make sure that the candidate is old enough, not incarcerated and not on “bad report." I argue instead that the line refers to the III°, Death, and “every man and woman" refers to the I°, the Man and Brother or Woman and Sister, the Birth degree, all this recalling a dated OTO practice of one's sponsorship for the I° being sponsorship into I° and through to the III°. 

All this discussion of rights, privilege and what one deserves aside, it is important to recall that current OTO policy does not require Renunciation for any other sort of membership, and it is not likely to in the near future. However, it is fine for an initiate to require it of an applicant who requests their sponsorship. I hope that understanding the importance of this formal requirement will become the norm over time, to where policy would be redundant, and OTO would not take seriously those who do not take Thelema seriously.²

For those who want to begin practicing this, there are some who have already written rituals to satisfy Crowley's outline, including T Polyphilus, IAO 131, and myself:

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Renunciation Ritual

To be celebrated prior to any occasion of a public Gnostic Mass in whatever antechamber the People await admittance into the Temple. 

Those wishing to Renounce would have ideally provided whatever abrogate tome with which some shill first defined them (the bible etc), this for burning. There should be a place prepared for pyre. 

A Deacon, thus adorned, announces, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. The People reply, Love is the law, love under will. 

The Deacon should then proceed with a reading, either of Liber AL, Ch. III: 49-56, or of Liber Tzaddi, or of One Star in Sight. 

The Deacon then asks, Who wishes to Renounce may now step forward, each in turn, that they might publicly impugn the superstitious religions, disavow old sweetnesses and rebuke the patronizing laws of the slave gods.

One by one, the Deacon asks the following series of questions: 

Are you prepared to alienate yourself from the herd, declare yourself a Sovereign Star and receive the Mark of the Beast? 

(They reply I am, obviously) 

Do you renounce Christianity, the cowardly doctrine of vicarious atonement, and the sickness of pity?

(I renounce it!) 

Do you renounce Hinduism and Buddhism and their doctrine of transcendentalism, their denial of the flesh for pursuit of eternal rest and inconsequentiality? 

(I renounce it!) 

Do you renounce Confucianism and Judaism, with their overbearing paternalism and sinister servility?

(I renounce it!) 

Stand in the Sign of Apophis and Typhon and say with me: Curse them! Curse them! Curse them! Done 

Say with me: There is no grace, there is no guilt, this is the law: Do what thou wilt. Done 

Now spit on the book you brought to sacrifice and say, "Bahlasti!"³ 

Done 

Now set it on fire and say, "Ompehda!"⁴

Done 

Now offer your left wrist and receive the Mark of the Beast. By this we shall know that thou art free. Done 

All are brought to this point, individually. 

This being done, the Deacon lifts up The Book of the Law and declares, There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt. 

He then admits the People for Mass. 

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Some Reflections, 2023

Crowley’s call for this ritual began making the rounds about 15 years ago. Several other OTO members in good standing also wrote rituals that followed Crowley’s instructions. They were all fairly minimalist, some more exuberant than others, and some were performed as novelty rituals at OTO bodies. As I recall the one element they definitely didn’t like was the book burning, which I agree is cringe, but their objection was it reminded them of the scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. You’d think the left wing OTO would rally behind a ritual like this since the anti-colonialism movement considers Christianity the driving factor of oppressive liberal global capitalism, aka Globalism. But even more frightening to them is the specter of fascism, showing once more that the leadership is just feckless liberals with no faith in Thelema as a unique response to the very real social problems of the New Aeon.

When Sabazius X° issued his above referenced phony explanation that it would only apply to someone in the highest grades of OTO - as if we’re to believe that he and his have done it - the issue was settled (administratively quashed) until people discovered that I’d been doing it at Subtlety or Force Encampment, where I was Master, and also in Beijing. I hadn’t done it since my return to Baton Rouge from China, but a wee man named Rodney Orpheus decided to make a stink about it in an unhinged tirade against "serious Thelemites,” namely me, which he was later compelled to take off OTO-ie.org despite being the OHO’s attaché for the OTO in Ireland. He complained that we serious ones strive for a more diligent practice of Thelema and that we are deferential to the Prophet despite difficulty in appealing to his writings to answer some important questions. He’s knocking on an open door! I pursued Thelema because of the writings of Aleister Crowley and certainly not those of the powerfully boring personalities like Duquette, Shoemaker, Rodney or any other contemporary apologist, and I care not a lick as to whether or not they’ve brushed paper with ink. Rodney later rage quit OTO despite being a IX° as he could not stand to be in the same club as people who did not share his hysterical views. I suspect he was only invited to the IX° to begin with because they wanted his pot of gold.

Incidentally, a week after his screed I was at Scarlet Woman Lodge in Austin for their grueling TOTOCON (Texas OTO Convention) where a Brother GP, a scholar and professor of esoteric religious studies, did a presentation on this ritual. It distinguished itself from the other talks primarily because the subject was discernable. He reviewed much of the above and then concluded by saying that it was ambiguous as to whether Crowley wanted Renunciation to be done, which is a disingenuous position at best. Therefore he concocted a masterplan; to wit, he would do the ritual and then analyze the results, which sounds like something a scientist would do! Ingenious! Therewith he, like many a Thelemite that practices ceremonial magick, went into his dark room, closed the door behind him, took a minute to catch his breath as he had a flashback of being locked in the janitor’s closet in high school. He lit a candle and vibrated his renunciation proclamation into the sheetrock. He half opened one corner of one eye and looked around to make sure the devil hadn’t snuck up behind him while he was openly courting eternal hellfire. He checked his brow for sweat, but there was only glitter from the night before. He heard an echo in his skull, “There is no catharsis. My punishment continues to elude me and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself. This confession has meant nothing.”

GP said that at least for him the ritual was bunk because he didn’t feel anything. GP’s conclusion is a normal one, as many people weigh their options in life in terms of pain and pleasure, like a rodent questioning the safety of a conspicuous piece of cheese. I told him, “you missed the point. The ritual isn’t for you. It’s to reassure the community that you seek to join that you are sincere in your intentions and aspirations.” GP stormed off, never to be seen or heard from again.

In May of 2015 I received this email from the Grand Souse General, Scott Coffin, of the OTO Braintrust:

93,
By order of the O.H.O., you are to immediately cease using the ceremony you refer to as the "renuncio," or any similar ceremony, in any O.T.O. or E.G.C. context, and discontinue using any O.T.O. or E.G.C. resources or communications to perform, implement, or promote this or similar ceremonies.
Please note that this is the second time you have been forbidden from using this ceremony in an O.T.O./E.G.C. context.  You were so directed by FSR NN in Beijing.  Your current promotion of this ceremony in an O.T.O./E.G.C. context at Pelican Camp constitutes a violation of that directive.
In addition, you are directed, by order of the O.H.O., to immediately remove all discussion of and references to this ceremony or similar ceremonies that occur on the Pelican Camp website.
Please respond to acknowledge receipt of this message.
93, 93/93
S

As always with these people, they were wrong about me having been told to not implement it, they were ridiculous to imply that an FSR in the eastern hemisphere had jurisdiction within US Grand Lodge, and they were wrong in thinking that I had offered it in Baton Rouge. My punishment was that I was told that my version could not be performed anywhere, nor could I perform anyone’s version in any OTO setting. The only real difference between my version and the handful of other versions was that all theirs were written by dutiful liberals. Sabazius made a point to say in email that Bishop Dionysus’ version was fine to do at a local body with the one condition that the person doing it isn’t me, implying either that I was being targeted or a Bishop’s version of a non-EGC ritual is halal whereas mine is not - mixed signals. My EGC supervisor, Dionysus, then updated his version to include a disclaimer so people wouldn’t be confused by him writing originally that “The present ceremony is a remedial sacrament … It might be appended to a lecture, a ritual presentation, or another event at which the Law of Thelema has been espoused or expounded.”

The degree to which the modern OTO tells people what not to do infinitely more than what they tell people to do is so baffling that the only sane read, albeit the darkest one, is that they’re committed to retarding the central mission of OTO, the promulgation of Thelema. The Chilling Effect is felt by everyone, and so no boldness or innovation takes place and nobody is willing to actually invest real money or assets into the timid shell of Crowley’s vision. But their insistence on permissive access to OTO has led to the organization being overrun by those with no investment of will into the Order, and without Will there is no Love. The most modest expectations of Aleister Crowley for admission was around $1000 in today’s money to access the first series of initiations, the Renunciation of traditions we decry as “superstition, tyranny and oppression,” and to accept that Aleister Crowley was the scribe but not the author of The Book of the Law and that its praeterhuman origin is of such import that one would not make any changes thereunto. Not much to ask! But for the free wheelin computer fatbodies and the maroon lipstick wine aunts of the OTO the only kind of person they’re willing to filter out are those sonofabitch “serious” Thelemites.

All that being said I do believe that the Formula for Renouncing Slave Religion follows the sacramental model of a source tradition, being our version of Confession or Renunciation of Satan, and should be incorporated as the First Sacrament, however executed. Frankly, Crowley calls for it and discusses it more than he does Baptism, for which he only left some numbered notes, some of which are illegible and were never even revisited. By contrast there’s decades between his first and second demand that Renunciation be implemented and the wording was very clear and consistent, possibly showing he’d been working the ritual in the meantime. The only criticism I have of the ritual is that the predominant herd morality of today is derived from secular humanism, and while it is a product of protestant Christianity it no longer defers to some volume of sacred law as much as it does to the State Department by way of the ochlocracy of social media.

If OTO doesn’t have standards for itself then it cannot expect its garden to bear fruit, or even to be recognizable as a garden. They preach an “indefeasible right” to initiation, sometimes weeping over the idea of USGL even charging fees⁵. The fees they do charge are 1/10th of what Crowley expected, though Crowley expected members to be among the influent and affluent, targeting people with socio-political purchase so as to actually affect the course of history rather than merely grouse about it. He clearly wanted applicants to be Thelemites, thence demanding they renounce slave religion and that they recognize The Book of the Law as being a received text. For advancement into the next triad Crowley demanded certain virtues such as harmony and athleticism, but today’s Lover’s Triad is populated by people who are harmonious in the 共产党 sense of the term and who are athletic in the sense that they learned some katas despite being morbidly obese. And then for entry into the highest grades Crowley marks in “Concerning the Law of Thelema” that "Tolerance also is taught in the higher grades; so that no man can be even an Inspector of the Order unless he be equally well disposed to all classes of opinion." But we see Sabazius appoint the most slobberingly sycophantic of people to the role of Revolutionary to say nothing of the other few score of uninspired USGL officers, and we see all of these people resort to pedantry and slander when confronted to any class of opinion that deviates from the one they’ve eagerly uploaded from NPR, irrespective of Thelema.

Crowley’s liberal idea of “Tolerance” explicitly refers to a good disposition towards a diversity of opinion, but the leftist voices in Thelema prefer to see it in terms more familiar to them, that of the communist Karl Popper and his le redditeur Paradox of Tolerance. IAO131 paraphrased, “a tolerant society will eventually be subverted by its intolerant/hateful elements if they are not kept in check,” and noted that Crowley stated the basic premise decades before, that “We are infinitely tolerant, save of intolerance.”⁶ However, in the same breath Crowley stated, “We are to do what we will, and leave others to do what they will,” implying that the borders between people and peoples are to be respected, and that we should expect others to respect the conditions for membership in OTO.

IAO131 explained that “for a tolerant society to propagate, one must be intolerant of intolerance,” which is to say that a generous society that respects freedom is vulnerable to illiberal elements usurping its means of authority and instituting intolerant mechanisms. Popper may be getting his ideas from Carl Schmitt, who was a generation before him, and who warned against liberalism altogether on this point, alleging that liberal democracy has failed to fulfill the bargain of the Enlightenment, which was that representative government would be more judicious and temperate than the authoritarian aristocracies that hitherto defined the entire course of human history. Either Popper did not agree with Schmitt’s indictment of western liberalism or he saw Schmitt’s warning as an opportunity for his own brand of progressive idealism to take root. Popper’s “Open Society and its Enemies” was credited by George Soros as the inspiration for his “Open Society Foundations,” which champions itself as a human rights group that facilitates mass migration into the wealthier democratic countries. They believe a hodgepodge democracy is less likely to produce an authoritarian and more likely to usher in a socialist utopia, but critics state that this is merely a subversion of nation states that will make them impotent, uninspired, and beholden to the interests of multinationals owned by oligarchs, aka Globalists, who view mankind as a labor force and the ultimate goods to be wealth and stability rather than traditional concerns (family, religion) or some higher aesthetic. This reduction of the individual to a unit of labor is hardly the New Aeon that Crowley had in mind.

There is a sort of globalist plot of Aleister Crowley, that of his OTO. Mentioned earlier, the “socialist smash” that he warned about was to be resisted by any means by the OTO, and the purpose of the OTO was to protect the aristocrats of the world. Crowley was a royalist and believed the failings of the aristocracies was due to them no longer fulfilling their royal obligation as representatives of the higher. In this sense he’s more on the side of Evola, who believed the natural hierarchy was for the Brahmin/priestly Caste to answer to the Arya/warrior-king Cast, than he is on the side of Guenon or Dugin. Where Liberalism promised that disputes between governments could be resolved through some Masonic IGO, Crowley’s resolution from The Book of the Law was brother against brother without the lodge, but Pax Templi within.

Beware lest any force another, King against King! Love one another with burning hearts; on the low men trample in the fierce lust of your pride, in the day of your wrath.

220.2.24

OTO does have a type of international judicial council, the Areopagus, which is composed of members of the VIII°, “a Philosophical Body,” those “higher members” Crowley spoke of in Concerning the Law of Thelema who must be disposed to all classes of opinion. They address “cases of difficulty involve deep philosophical principles; and the Areopagus of the Eighth Degree is charged with the duty of resolving them in accordance with the great principles of the Order.” (Liber 194) The Areopagus is the “Hill of Mars” spoken of in his fantastic “Empty Headed Athenians” with reference to the Athenian court’s latter years, those of St. Paul, who addressed its purported intellectuals and accused them of idolatry:

As I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship — and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.

They’d become “Empty Headed” sophists whose reliance on rhetoric and reason resulted in a self-important narcissism that prevented them from being judicious. Paul counselled them to turn their attention upwards and reflect on higher principles, such as Crowley demanded, lest they become entangled in their own rhetorical snares. This trap of reason is denounced in The Book of the Law in step with Nietzsche’s criticism of reason over instinct, but in the world of so-called liberal intellectuals like Karl Popper the ochlocracy of the mind, ie hive-mind, is the highest good.

I charge that OTO’s leaders are themselves individually lost in the funhouse mirror-maze of western rationalism and this reflects in their wanton illiberal imprudence. Crowley marked in his Supreme Ritual that he had blasphemed against Horus by reducing him to a simpler formula. He echoes this in Liber CCC with reference to Jason:

Let us only remember not to repeat the error of Jason, and defy Ares, who is Horus in his warrior mood, that guardeth it, lest He strike us also with madness. Nay! but to the glory of Ra-Hoor-Khuit and the establishment of His perfect kingdom let all be done!

Were the OTO more concerned with “the means to be taken to extend the Dominion of the Law of Thelema throughout the whole world” then it would be set aright. But instead their stock is random and know not for what captain and what war they fight, and “mutual madness strikes the warriors witless, and fierce wrath invades their hearts of fury, and with arms engaged, They fell upon each other silently, And slew, and slew.” (Liber CCC)

1. Presently, T Omphalos’ wonderful essay is removed from the recording podcast’s website and also from youtube. I was informed that this was per his request. It happened after I’d referenced it in several places to draw people’s attention to how Crowley wanted OTO to operate like Mussolini’s Black Shirts so as to “stop the smash” of socialist uprising. The Bishop didn’t appreciate his joking comparison to be taken as an endorsement.

2. Having “sponsorship requirements” is a normal and usually informal thing within OTO and may be something as small as reading a couple books or writing a little essay. In 2015 I was threatened with expulsion for having sponsorship requirements even though it fell within the perimeters of what Sabazius describes in his essay on the subject. They’d heard that I had unreasonable sponsorship requirements, referring specifically to asking a brother to go to therapy. In fact it was someone else who suggested he seek therapy as he’d confided that he was considering suicide-by-cop, which seems like a reasonable and fraternal suggestion. On inquiry as to whether sponsorship requirements or even suggestions were in any way allowable I asked three different VI°’s to ask Sabazius for clarification. I, a lowly Knight of the East and West, was not permitted to talk to Sabazius. From those three VI°’s I got three different answers spanning from it’s okay to have some requirements to it’s not okay to even suggest material beyond what’s in the OTO’s lame study packets. As with all things OTO, you can do as you please if they like you but you’re flogged to death if they don’t.

3. That being the sound of the trumpets heralding the coming of the Beast. 

4. That being the sound of the sky making ready the coming of the Dragon. 

5. Though they maintain a black list to exclude people with the wrong political opinions.

6. AC’s “New Comment” on Liber AL, Chapter II, verse 57, which reads, “He that is righteous shall be righteous still; he that is filthy shall be filthy still.”