This is a difficult question to answer without creating dogma in the process, especially since the answer must vary to some extent with every individual psychosoma. The authors have no wish to add to the growing body of theological literature on the subject, preferring instead to concentrate on the theurgic writings of Aleister Crowley. Indeed, it may accurately be stated that the majority of Crowley’s writings were on this very matter. We can only therefore adumbrate certain key aspects, within our own limited understanding. Our main point here is that there are some hard truths about Initiation, and an understanding of those issues is vital to full comprehension of the present situation and the material that has already been presented.
Let us first focus on the concept of Initiation as understood in the context of the A.’.A.’.. As Mr. Motta stated so succinctly in his testimony, the purpose of the A.’.A.’. is the spiritual evolution of the human species. (The reader is referred to “One Star in Sight” for a full account of the programme of the A.’.A.’..) The terms “enlightenment,” “illumination,” and “initiation” are sometimes used interchangeably. But here we want to confine the discussion to the expansion of consciousness that occurs in the human being as a result of Initiatic training. When an individual experiences a legitimate Initiatic event, a definite alteration in the consciousness of that individual takes place. In the A.’.A.’. system, there is a distinct state of being that is associated with the individual Grades, and this has been attested to by Crowley and other historical Initiates.
The reader is again referred to “One Star in Sight” for a description of the “states of being” associated with each Grade of the A.’. A.’. The Web-Site Editors.)
The point here is that Initiation is a real and genuine process. A true Adeptus Minor of the A.’.A.’., for instance, is a different sort of human being from a Neophyte of the A.’.A.’., for that individual has obtained, through a willed series of practices, a tremendous shift in consciousness. As Mr. Motta once remarked, the brain of an Initiate can remember Trance whereas the brain of a non-initiate is unable to retain such a memory. True Initiation, therefore, is much more than the “flashes,” “revelations” or “insights” that are commonly mistaken for Initiatic experience. It is rather a change in the levels of functionality of that individual’s consciousness. (The subject, we repeat, is enormously complex, and the reader should strive to bear in mind the deficiency of language when applied to the subject of Initiation. Also, as noted in“One Star in Sight”, the Grades are seldom executed fully or in strict consecution.)
Mr. Motta once described Initiation as “waking up onto new levels of awareness.” He gave some testimony in the Maine trial on the intensity of his Initiatic experience into the Grade of Master of the Temple. {The context of what follows is that Weiser’s lawyer had introduced a letter written by Mr. Motta to Wasserman, wherein he mentions having been “crazy” at one time. This was an obvious and lame attempt at character assassination on the part of Weiser. On redirect testimony, Mr. Motta’s lawyer elicited this response.}
Mittel: …first of all, when were you crazy?
Motta: In my initiation or, if you prefer the word mystical experience or religious experience, you pass through a period of mental imbalance which may be brief or long and varies in length and quality according to the psychosoma of the individual who is undergoing it. This has been described in the experience of many different religious disciplines, but what I was referring to – so it can happen at any time to anybody.
Mittel: And when did it happen to you? Maybe I should ask you first, did it happen to you?
Motta: It has happened to me every time I have passed through an initiation, but in that particular instance, I was speaking about the Master of the Temple initiation in which this mental imbalance and mental disturbance is much more prolonged and much deeper than any other initiation, at least in my experience, and in the experience of others as well.
Mittel: When you say that particular instance, you are referring to this letter that you wrote to Mr. Wasserman?
Motta: Yes. It is ironic because when people thought I was crazy, I was not crazy. When I thought I was crazy, I was not crazy, but when I thought I was not crazy, I was crazy. It’s a very difficult thing to explain. It is not necessarily clinical insanity but it could very well become clinical insanity, and we always run this risk during that experience.
Mittel: When did you pass through this particular initiation to which you are referring?
Motta: It took several years. It started around 1961 after I reached Zelator and it went on until 1965, I think.
Mittel: Were you hospitalized?
Motta: No, no.
Mittel: Did you have any – seek any kind of medical treatment?
Motta: Only for my nerves.
[39A, 198-200]
{This last bit, “Only for my nerves,” is truly funny, from one perspective, IF one has the slightest experience of Initiation, that is.} Now, as the schoolyard taunt goes, “It takes one to know one.” This is an absolutely key point. The consciousness of an Initiate is much more ample than that of the ordinary person. A true Initiate is aware of levels of reality that remain foreign to the uninitiated brain, including an awareness of the limitations of uninitiated individuals. A non-initiate can perceive an Initiate only up to the level of the consciousness reached by the non-initiate. The Initiate, on the other hand, is aware of those levels of consciousness on which the non-initiate operates, PLUS additional levels much more broad in scope.
This is the straightforward axiom that lies behind the principle of the Instructor-Pupil relationship in A.’.A.’. work. If the Instructor were unable to “see” beyond the levels upon which the Pupil were operating, the Instructor would be unable to perceive the limitations of that Pupil, and would therefore be ill-qualified to Instruct that Pupil. Contact with a true Instructor provides a great advantage to the Pupil, for he or she then has the benefit of the guidance of a more advanced member of the species. The Instructor also gains in the relationship, although after another manner. It is a two-way relationship. But while a true Instructor will “deny himself utterly” on behalf of his or her Pupil, the obedience runs entirely in one direction. It is an autocratic relationship. The Instructor proceeds to Instruct, and the Pupil either obeys, or leaves the circle of the Instructor.
If a Pupil chooses to disobey his or her Instructions, whether through insincerity, or through failure in one of the many pitfalls and Ordeals, such disobedience is fatal from a spiritual perspective. Marcelo Motta always said that the Instructor in this position has but one course of action – to sever all relations with that Pupil and to cut contact with their diseased influence. For one must understand that a Pupil enters the circle of the Instructor. This creates a certain vulnerability; it opens the Instructor to the unhealthy manifestations of qliphotic influence from his or her Pupils. Marcelo Motta was a stern Task-Master indeed, and he cut contact with any number of individuals, one-time Pupils who had refused to obey his Instructions. (We do not mean to infer that Initiation is so “black-and-white” as we describe it here. There are indeed many shades of grey. For instance, Mr. Motta sometimes “quarantined” individuals that had become temporarily unhinged by their Initiatic Ordeals, until they recovered their reference coordinates. This pertains to the periods of Initiatic “craziness” to which he referred in the above testimony. But this is altogether different from what we mean by “cutting contact.” Once Mr. Motta had truly cut contact with a Pupil, that severance was permanent. Taking an analogy from medicine, it is the difference between allowing diseased tissue to heal of its own accord or surgically excising it. If the diseased tissue is robust enough to respond to treatment, it may be saved; if not, it must be removed before it spreads to the rest of the organism.)
The reason that so many of his ex-Pupils found Mr. Motta’s demeanor to be “difficult” is that he refused to allow his students to deceive themselves, and they often simply failed to measure up to his yardstick, or they insisted on deceiving themselves anyway. He himself had achieved an extremely exalted level of Initiatic attainment, that of Magister Templi in the A.’.A.’.. (It would be presumptuous of us to attempt any description of that level of consciousness, and the reader is referred to Liber VII for the birth words of a Master of the Temple; also cf. Liber 418, 10th Aethyr for an account of the Crossing of the Abyss.) Mr. Motta, in other words, was a very high Initiate, and to put it bluntly, he KNEW whether his Pupils had achieved the genuine Initiation for their Grade or whether they were simply deceiving themselves. If he cut contact with an individual, it was because that individual had FAILED SOME KEY INITIATIC ORDEAL, and had become unworthy and incapable of further Instruction.
To recapitulate, for the limited purposes of our present discussion: (a) Initiation in the context of the A.’.A.’. is the process of willed expansion of the human consciousness onto new levels of awareness. (b) The purpose of this process is apparently the spiritual evolution of the human species. (c) An Initiate can Instruct a Pupil because the Initiate can perceive the limitations of the Pupil “from above,” as it were. (d) It is entirely possible that a Pupil will fail in one or more key Ordeals. (e) A Pupil who has thus failed must be isolated from the circle of the genuine Instructor.
What then, is Initiation in the context of the O.T.O.? There must be no confusion between the O.T.O. and the A.’.A.’.. One individual might be an Adept of the A.’.A.’. and not be a member of the O.T.O. at all. Conversely, an individual might hold the IX° of the O.T.O. and have no association with the A.’.A.’. whatsoever. The primary connection between these two Orders is that both are Thelemic. Both Orders accept “Liber AL vel Legis as their primary document. The A.’.A.’. reaches unto the highest levels of Initiation. The O.T.O., on the other hand, remains wholly below the Abyss that separates the Supernal triad from the lower Sephiroth on the Tree of Life. The O.T.O., therefore, is subject to dispersion and is affected by material events. Now, as Mr. Motta stated in court, the purpose of the O.T.O. is also the improvement of the human species. The difference from the A.’.A.’. is that the O.T.O. is a sociological or group effort. In the Outer, the purpose of the O.T.O. is to work toward the reformulation of society along Thelemic lines, that is, the reformulation of the social morality in accordance with the principles espoused in Liber OZ. [3] (Relative to the purposes of the O.T.O. in the Inner and Secret Circles, we are here silent, although the alert reader will have doubtless discerned some hints on this subject from the testimony offered during the trials. The researcher seriously interested in obtaining the correct perspective on the matter of O.T.O. Initiation is referred to The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, Chapter 72 – with the caveat that Symonds and Grant “abridged” that monumental work and did not maintain textual fidelity in the process.)
For the purpose of our discussion, let us define Initiation in the Outer Circle of the O.T.O. as the psychosocial development of the individual within the group context. One cannot proceed through an O.T.O. Initiation alone, as it were, because by definition, this work is not about personal attainment. It is about the commitment to an ideal of fraternal and sororal society, with the aim of producing a Whole that is greater than the sum of its Parts. The Ordeals of each Degree are a psychodrama that serve the purpose of testing the Candidate in that particular Degree. If an individual has evolved sufficiently within the system of O.T.O. training, he or she will be able to pass the test. An individual may pass such a test after some years of training, whereas they would have failed in the absence of that training. So here again, Initiation in the O.T.O. also is a real and definite shift in the psychosoma of the individual. These are stages in a process of integration and development, within a social context and group dynamic (at least in the Outer), resulting in the O.T.O. Initiate becoming a more Thelemic human being than the one who started the process.
In the O.T.O., the Order only accepts Candidates who exhibit certain qualities. It is not enough that the individual be avidly interested in Aleister Crowley and Thelema. It is not enough that the person says the right things and pays his or her dues on time. The primary qualification is character, as Mr. Motta noted in his testimony on this subject. While this term is very broad, a simple example will serve to illustrate: An individual who intentionally opens and reads someone else’s private mail is probably lacking in the required strength of character. Such behavior exhibits a fundamental lack of respect for basic human dignity, and runs counter to the Spirit of Liber OZ. In a social organization, an individual who disrespects the basic human right of privacy will usually cause more trouble than he or she is worth. That is not to say that one instance of misbehavior automatically makes such a person unfit for O.T.O. Membership, which is why we applied the word “probably” to our scenario. But certainly a pattern of such behavior over a period of testing will reveal the true colors of the individual. In the O.T.O. training, the individual must match up words with deeds over a long period of testing, frequently through stressful periods. If the person displays the necessary character to accomplish that demonstration of words through deeds, then they can successfully pass through the Ordeals associated with their relative Degree in the Order. Failure in the O.T.O. system occurs when there is a moral breakdown on some level or other. In other words, such individuals fail to pass some test or other. They fail to manifest the moral force necessary to survive the Ordeal. In such cases, the former Member or Candidate either voluntarily withdraws from association with the O.T.O. or they are expelled. This is unfortunate, but if the programme is to improve the human species by modulating the very culture and environment (especially at this stage when the knotted-up currents of the Dead Aeon still have some inertia) then the standards must be set relatively high.
The Great Work is not a “tea party,” as Aleister Crowley once noted. The Work of the O.T.O. is inimical to many of the established bastions of Christism and other decaying institutions whose purpose is the restriction of humanity. To really do O.T.O. Work demands the highest moral character and personal integrity on the part of every Member of the Lodge. If these qualities are lacking, the result will not be a Lodge capable of working magickal changes upon society, but rather a group of individuals playing at the game of “Secret Society,” and operating on the level of a “New Age” Tarot class at the local bookshop. There is nothing inherently wrong in such associations. But there is no point in deluding oneself that such activities constitute O.T.O. Work of the sort that Aleister Crowley, Karl Germer or Marcelo Motta had in mind! One of the major qualities required of O.T.O. Candidates is the ability (that is, spiritual development) to discern the difference between the Letter and Spirit of the system of Degrees. People who understand only the Letter of the O.T.O. system may think that because they have made it through a particular ceremony or received a certain certificate of initiation, this automatically means they have truly achieved the level of insight that goes with the ceremony and the piece of paper. Those who understand the Spirit of the system know better. They fully recognize that the “stripes” must be earned through actual attainment.
The difference between the Letter and the Spirit is clearly demonstrated in the attitudes held by Grady McMurtry and Marcelo Motta with respect to the IX° Initiation of the O.T.O. McMurtry clung desperately to the Letter of his Initiation in that Degree by Aleister Crowley. Mr. Motta, in contrast, fully understood the Spirit of the Degree. One need merely listen to McMurtry boast of being a “fully paid-up member of the IX°” to understand the completeness of his failure to grasp the Spirit of that Initiation. (We assure the reader that even Initiation into the I° of the true O.T.O. brings a perspective that clearly enables one to see the incredible folly of McMurtry’s boasting. He was, apparently, never even a member in the Outer Circle of the O.T.O. – a member in the Initiatic sense, that is. We should note in passing that Mr. Motta thought this phrase was truly funny, which means that the “joke” probably works on at least three levels, only one of which is discussed here.) He clung to his precious receipt from Aleister Crowley, believed that merely because he had that scrap of paper and the knowledge written down in the secret document that this automatically meant that he WAS an Initiate of the IX°. This is all that McMurtry was capable of understanding his O.T.O. Initiation to be. He paid £50, (or rather loaned it), obtained a receipt, obtained the papers of the Degree, and that was that.
In order to appreciate the depth of the point we are attempting to address here, we will append some extracts from Letter 61 in Magick Without Tears, by Aleister Crowley. The letter is titled, “Power and Authority,” and explains in A.C.’s masterful style exactly what we are struggling to convey.
“Imagine, if you can, what I have been through in the last quarter of a century or more. My subordinates are always asking me for advancement in the Order; they think that if they were only members of the 266th degree everything in the garden would be lovely. They think that if they only possessed the secrets of the 148th degree they would be able to perform all those miracles which at present escape them.
“These poor fish! They do not understand the difference between Power and Authority. They do not understand that there are two kinds of degrees, altogether different.
“For instance, in the theory of the Church of Rome a bishop is a person on whom has been conferred the magical power to ordain priests. He may choose a totally unworthy person for such ordination, it makes no difference; and the priest, however unworthy he may be, has only to go through the correct formulae which perform the miracle of the Mass, for that miracle to be performed. This is because in that Church we are dealing with a religious as opposed to a magical or scientific qualification. If the Royal Society elected a cobbler, as it could, it would not empower the New Fellow to perform a boiling-point determination, or read a Vernier.
“In our own case, though Our authority is at least as absolute as that of the Pope and the Church of Rome, it does not confer upon me any power transferable to others by any act of Our will. Our own authority came to Us because it was earned, and when We confer grades upon other people Our gift is entirely nugatory unless the beneficiary has won his spurs.
“To put it in a slightly different form of words: Any given degree is, as it were, a seal upon a precise attainment; and although it may please Us to explain the secret or secrets of any given degree or degrees to any particular person or persons, it is not of the slightest effect unless he or she prove in his or her own person the ability to perform those functions which all We have done is to give him or her the right to perform and the knowledge how to perform.
“The further you advance in the Order the more you will find yourself pestered by people who have simply failed to understand this point of Magical theory…”
“There is another side to this matter which is really approximating to the criminal. There are any number of teachers and masters and bishops and goodness knows what else running around doing what is little better than peddling grades and degrees and secrets. Such practices are of course no better than common fraud.
“Please fix it firmly in your mind that with Us any degree, any position of authority, any kind of rank, is utterly worthless except when it is merely a seal upon the actual attainment or achievement…”
“I know that it must seem harder to the weaker of the brethren of the Order that we should make so little appearance of success in the Great Work to which we are all pledged. It is so universal a convention that success should be measured by members. People like to feel that they have hundreds of Lodges from whom they can obtain assistance in moments of discouragement.
“But a far truer and deeper satisfaction is found when the student has contentedly gone on with his or her work all by his or her own efforts. Surely you have had sufficient example in these letters, where in moments of despair one suddenly awakes to the fact that despite all appearances one has been watched and guarded from a higher plane. I might say, in fact, that one such experience of the secret guardianship of the Chiefs of the Order is worth a thousand apparently sufficient witnesses to the facts.” [4]
The consequence of the enormous difficulty of attaining true Initiation is that the statistical probability of failure is quite high. Consider that when Aleister Crowley died in 1947 e.v., after decades of dedicated work as an Instructor, he had but one Pupil whom he trusted. That was Karl Johannes Germer. Virtually all of the others who had come and gone over the years were FAILED Pupils. After a lifetime of work and so many promising starters, only one had truly attained to Initiation as it was understood by The Master Therion himself. These are sobering odds indeed. It is imperative that the reader understand, in the context of true Initiation and the possibility of failure in the attempt, that the following individuals were all excluded from the circle of The Master Therion as FAILURES: J.F.C. Fuller, Victor Neuberg, Charles Stansfeld Jones (Frater Achad), Israel Regardie, Wilfred T. Smith and Jack Parsons, among many others. The following individuals were cut contact with by Karl Johannes Germer: Kenneth Grant, Joseph Metzger, Grady McMurtry, and Louis Culling, among others. From the perspective of true Initiation, any works conducted by the above-named individuals after they were ejected from the circle of the Instructor are DISEASED in one respect or another. By “diseased,” we mean that the works are highly suspect, whether because they manifest qliphotic influences, confuse Power for Authority, distort the Holy Books, or incorporate some modification that reflects a movement away from the pure flowing Thelemic Current toward a dogmatic and confused parody of the original doctrine.
Failure in the Initiatic Ordeals can take many forms. In virtually every example listed above, the prime culprit was probably the Ego of the individuals involved. The faculty that Qabalistic literature calls “Ruach” is part of that recent apparition of cognitive ability in human evolution that we mentioned above. (The reader is cautioned that we are intentionally oversimplifying the matter here for convenience of expression. Once again, we strongly recommend that the serious student research the matter fully in Liber LXV Commented, The Equinox, Volume V, No. 2, as well as every other book written by Aleister Crowley and Marcelo Motta.) True Initiation involves the voluntary dissolution and reintegration of the Ruach, a process not dissimilar to death. (Cf. Liber LXV, Chapter 5, verse 52, “…for every step is a death and a birth.”) The awakening onto a new level of consciousness cannot occur without this shift in the Ego. So long as the Ruach remains dynamic and adjusts to the new parameters, then the genuine Initiatic experience may result. But if the would-be Initiate’s Ego is unwilling or unable to undergo voluntary dissolution, then it will freeze or become static in some respects. This is the typical mechanism of Initiatic failure. The Ego, in opposition to the process of dissolution, will defend itself at all costs. It will stop at no trick, attempt all conceivable deceptions, and seduce the unwary at every point where vigilance is relaxed. The Ego simply does not want to submit to any process that will break up its current state of coalescence. As a result, the student may move along happily in the Work for months or years without achieving a true Initiation, and the Ego all the while may continue to manufacture false “Visions,” exalted experiences, illuminations, or whatever. We repeat: a true Instructor is indispensable in assisting the Pupil to work through these difficulties, but the danger of obsession is still very great. These kinds of experiences, even the approximations thereto, are so out of the normal plane of human existence, they threaten to overwhelm the insufficiently trained mind.
Any number of possible outcomes exist with respect to the Initiatic process. One may instance the Works of Aleister Crowley, Karl Germer and Marcelo Motta as exemplifying success in Initiation. With regard to the failures, the symptoms of the disease are legion. If there is a “least worst” outcome of failure, it would be the case of the Pupil who merely recognizes his or her failure and goes back to the normal routine of mundane life. Such individuals may still be better persons for the experience, but they are simply not Initiates. These sensible types, unfortunately, are few and far between. The majority of failed students become insane on some level of their psychosoma, that is, they confuse the planes of reality. They may crazily believe themselves to be the “next Beast,” or the reincarnation of 666 Himself. Or they may make claims to exalted grades, such as Magister Templi, Magus or even Ipsissimus, all the while their actual works display the worst sort of qliphotic nonsense and drivel. Other failures may retain full functionality on the intellectual planes but become morally insane, that is, unable to distinguish right from wrong in the commonsense, everyday manner. And still others may go on to distort the teaching and establish a parody of the original system.
Let us attempt to enumerate some “danger signals” with respect to Initiatic failures, and provide examples for comparative purposes:
i. Exalted claims unsupported by actual works. Example: Charles Stansfeld Jones, once a Neophyte under Crowley in the A.’.A.’., attempted to pass directly to the Grade of Magister Templi. It became apparent that he had failed to survive the Crossing of the Abyss. All meaningful Initiatic work by him ceased at that point, and he became nothing more than an irritant to his Superior. Jones started publishing works that exhibited symptoms of qliphotic obsession, and it became gradually more obvious that his Ego had swelled to the bursting point. At one stage, he went so far as to claim that he had passed A.C. on the Tree of Life and had become an Ipsissimus! Such a result was possible in theory, of course, but his works demonstrated that his grip on reality had been seriously compromised by his Initiatic failure. Jones simply went insane on several levels.
ii. Distortion of the Holy Books. Example: Joseph Metzger, once a student under Mr. Germer, claimed to be “The Child,” and proceeded to deliberately alter the German translations of Liber AL, Liber LXV and other Thelemic Holy Books. Such distortion can take many forms, from outright adulteration of the core texts, to slipshod editing (such as that perpetrated by Israel Regardie), to misuse of Thelemic salutations. Some individuals unintentionally misspell the Greetings; others make the changes consciously. Note that all individuals who alter the Class A material willfully, do so in the belief that they are somehow improving on the text. This is utter foolishness, and indicative of total confusion of the planes – which is the same as to say, FAILURE. Such deliberate alterations are due entirely to the Ego of the individual presuming to alter the text in its own favor. This is yet another example of the tricks that the Ego will play. All such “modifications” are intended to make it easier for the Ego to avoid the painful process of Initiation.
iii. Allegiance to other failures. Example: Grady McMurtry. This individual was incapable of understanding that Mr. Germer’s disapproval of his efforts to “unite the fragments” of Agape Lodge had nothing to do with any “refusal to Initiate,” but rather everything to do with isolating FAILURES from the Circle of the Master. McMurtry wanted to get together with W. T. Smith, for example, an individual who was “chucked out of the Order for good” by Crowley in 1943 e.v. McMurtry also wanted to make contact with several other people in California, all of whom were held at a distance by Mr. Germer because they all failed to prove their worth to the Chief. It is very characteristic that McMurtry’s “successor” published a work in 1986 e.v. that was rife with Initiatic Failures. [82] Consider that the spurious edition contained material by W.T. Smith, C.S. Jones and J.W. Parsons, all three of whom were FAILURES, cut contact with by either Crowley or Germer. This happens because individuals who have failed at the Great Work usually also fail to acknowledge their failure. Misery loves company, as the saying goes. And once the sense of morality has been compromised, it is a small matter to accept all kinds of qliphotic associations.
iv. Confusion of Power and Authority. The prime example is once again Grady Louis McMurtry, as discussed above. He spent the period from 1947 e.v. through 1962 e.v. clinging to the memory of dead Aleister Crowley, while failing to support the man chosen as Successor by his dead Master. McMurtry blindly failed to realize that his little pieces of paper from Aleister Crowley meant nothing except in the grossest legalistic sense, in the absence of the precise attainment that went with those titles and Degrees. McMurtry became like a Christist bishop, believing that £50 and a wax seal in the name of the Accepted Authority would suffice to guarantee his stature as an Initiate. He never once grasped the true meaning of Initiation; or if he once did, he had fallen so far from that glimmer of understanding by the time of the Maine trial, that one can no longer recognize anything in him but an egotistical and pompous foolishness.[42]
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