Essay About Crowleys Own Account And Great Moral Principles

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What is Freemasonry?
An Excerpt on the
Reconstituted O.T.O.
from his Confessions
What follows is Crowleys own account of his motivations and methods
in reconstructing the O.T.O. and its rituals. It is excerpted from The
Confessions of Aleister Crowley, pp. 700-n-704. In this excerpt
Crowley discusses his revision of the “Oasis initiation rituals of
OДÑ-n-IIIДÑ. His explanatory introduction to these revised rituals, as
presented to then-Frater Superior Merlin Peregrinus XÐ”Ñ when the
reforms were proposed, appears elsewhere in this issue.–H.B.
“WHAT IS FREEMASONRY? I collated the rituals and their secrets,
much as I had done the religions of the world, with their magical and
mystical bases. As in that case, I decided to neglect what it too
often actually was. It would be absurd to judge Protestantism by the
political acts of Henry VIII. In the same was, I could not judge
masonry by the fact that it had denounced the Concordat. I proposed to
define freemasonry as a system of communicating truth–religious,
philosophical, magical and mystical; and indicating the proper means
of developing human faculty by means of a peculiar language whose
alphabet is the symbolism of ritual. Universal brotherhood and the
great moral principles, independent of personal, racial, climatic and
other prejudices, naturally formed a background which would assure
individual security and social stability for each and all.
The question then arose, “What truths should be communicated and by
what means promulgated? My first object was to eliminate from the
hundreds of rituals at my disposal all exoteric elements. Many degrees
contain statements (usually inaccurate) of matters well known to
modern schoolboys, through they may have been important when the
rituals were written. I may mention one degree in which the candidate
is portentiously informed that there are other religions in the world
besides Christianity and that there is some truth in all of them.
Their tenets are explained in many cases with egregious error. The
description of Buddha as a god is typical. I saw no point in
overloading the system with superfluous information.
Another essential point was to reduce the unwieldly mass of material
to a compact and coherent system. I thought that everything worth
preserving could and should be presented in not more than a dozen
ceremonies, and that it should be brought well within the capacity of
any officer to learn by heart his part during the leisure time at his
disposal, in a month at most.
The eighteenth-century Rosicrucians, so-called in Austria, had already
endeavoured to unite the various branches of Continental freemasonry
and its superstructures; in the nineteenth century, principally owing
to the energy and ability of a wealthy iron master named Karl Kellner,
a reconstruction and consolidation of traditional truth had been
attempted. A body was formed under the name O.T.O. (Ordo Templi
Orientis) which purported to achieve this result. It is purported to
communicate the secrets, not only of freemasonry (with its Rites of
3ДÑ, 7ДÑ, 33ДÑ, 90ДÑ, 97ДÑ, etc.,) but of the Gnostic Catholic Church, the
Martinists, the Sat Bhai, the Rosicrucians, the Knights of the Holy
Ghost and so on, in nine degrees, with a tenth of an honorary
character to distinguish the “Supreme and Holy Kingof the Order in
each country where it was established. Chief of these kings is the
O.H.O. (Outer Head of the Order, or Frater Superior), who is an
absolute autocrat. This position was at this time occupied by Theodor
Reuss, the Supreme and Holy King of Germany, who resigned the office
in 1922 in my favour.
The O.H.O. put the rituals of this Order at my disposal. I found them
of the utmost value as to the central secret, but otherwise very
inferior. They were dramatically worthless, but the prose was unequal,
they lacked philosophical unity, their information was incomplete and
unsystematic. Their general idea was, however, of the right kind; and
I was able to take them as a model.
The main objects of the instruction were two. It was firstly necessary
to explain the universe and the relations of human life therewith.
Secondly, to instruct every man how best to adapt his life to the
cosmos and to develop