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SMITH'S WEEKLY Sydney, New South Wales, Australia 15 November 1924 (page 3)
A LOVE TEMPLE FOR SYDNEY.
Order of the Temple of the Orient to Teach Pernicious Doctrines.
Social Cancer that Already has a Footing.
ALEISTER CROWLEY
How many people in Australia are aware of the growth in their midst of a quasi-religious sect, whose watchword, like that of the monks of Theleme, is, “Do what thou wilt; it is the whole of the law.” And who interpret that rule of life as an injunction to make a trial of vice in all its forms that one may live life to the full.
The Order of the Temple of the Orient teaches this doctrine. It has its devotees in the cities of Australia in growing numbers. Their motto, “Love is the soul; love under will.” But they do not heed the warning of Nietzsche, “But first be sure that you can will.”
However, they are now active in a movement to provide every Australian capital with its own Love Temple.
They interpret love as the love feast, and their teaching encourages resort to dope and drugs to aid their exaltation in the saturnalia of lust.
In the healthy air of a young country one gets only now and then by accident a whiff of the noisome atmosphere of these unclean revels, but that they exist, particularly in Sydney, is beyond doubt.
These worshippers at the shrine of Priapus have a mystic literature of their own, which cloaks their inner meanings except to the initiates, and is, therefore subtly dangerous to the unsuspecting reader.
But in the United States the Order of the Temple of the Orient is well known. It had begun to make headway in Detroit, Michigan, two years ago, when a series of divorce cases revealed the whole of its ritual. With a world-wide following, the founders of the order had planned a love temple on Babylonian lines, and when the ritual was exposed in Court as outlined by Aleister Crowley in “The Equinox,” District Attorney Francis Murphy described the production as “the most lascivious and libidinous book that has ever been published in the United States.”
The Culminating Rite.
It would be impossible to describe the orgy upon its altar, which is the culminating rite of the O.T.O. ceremonial.
The Melbourne Public Library contains only one of the published works of Aleister Crowley. It is a collection of poems instinct with singular cadences and a sense of the beauty of words. The author explains in his foreword that they were selected by a committee, presumably for their safety. But among his other works are the subtly destructive “Winged Beetle,” the “Diary of a Drug Fiend,” and “The Psychology of Hashish,” which sufficiently indicate the depths of moral decadence that the write has plumbed. These books are obtainable in Sydney, some of them being advertised; others with deeper and costlier significance being obtainable by neophytes who have embarked on this perilous sea of adventure, and can be trusted not to call in the police.
A Case for the Police.
It is time indeed that the police looked into some of the philosophy that is being openly preached under the guises of newly-revealed religion, notably one doctrine that finds a sex basis for everything on or above the earth, and gives meanings to the truths of religion that could be ludicrously funny if there were not people who took them seriously.
The mystics of the O.T.O. do not proclaim their faith to strangers. A pamphlet issued some years ago by Vyvyan Deacon, who described himself as Frater Memnon of the Order, makes it clear that this body, whose avowed object is to strive towards its light, following the book of nature, works in secret, each member keeping silent in regard to all that concerns the secret.
“It is not necessary,” says the writer, that things which are elevated and sacred should be exposed to the gaze of the vulgar, and be bespattered by them with mud. This would impede the secrecy in its work.” But, as he further remarks, “the more became attached to its elements such as were not able to follow its principle, people who joined for the purpose of gratifying their own ambitions or for making the secret serve their own ends.” Which perhaps explains why Brother Memnon appears to have pulled out since he no longer admits membership of the O.T.O., though he keeps its mystic books under lock and key.
A student of philosophy encountered one day in a restaurant a stranger, who gave him a certain sign. Thereupon the philosopher asked him, “Which way have you travelled?” To his surprise, the stranger gave the wrong answer. He said, “Across the burning sands.” The philosopher had not at that time met one of the brotherhood of the Rosicrucian Order, so called, who claim to hold the key of lost mysteries. But later, when he became acquainted with these Templars and their professions, he reflected that this stranger was not far advanced in degree, for if he had been he would have answered, “Beyond the Abyss.” Significant words when one remembers that through these all lusts may be satisfied and all experiences are lawful.
Later, another seeker after mystic truths revealed to him and experience rather startling to anyone who might hold that if misguided young people chose to wrap themselves in a single garment, sit on the floor and listen to dirty suggestions uttered by a fanatic in priestly garb, it was their own affair. This story had a little too much of the flavor of the East to be tolerated even by his Oriental philosophy, experienced as he was in the Yogi exercise of breathing concentration, meditation, postures, and mind control which help the spirit to dominate matter.
Drugged With Hashish.
The neophyte related how, in search of experience, he became associated with a group of Oriental Templars, and one day, visiting the house of one of them, he was persuaded to try the effect of a dose of hashish or bhang, a decoction of Indian hemp, to see if it improved his clairvoyant powers. The effects of the drug are well understood by Afghans and devotees engaging in some desperate enterprise, and in this case the results were startling to the victim. He felt at first a sensation of his head swelling to bursting, and this was followed by a curious feeling of detachment of spirit, as though his body did not belong to him.
The idea of fear totally disappeared, and he made a rush for an open window, and would have jumped out to be dashed to death in the street, but that his experimenters held him back. He was given a sedative, and fell into a deep sleep.
On another occasion he was induced to take opium, but one dose was sufficient to cure him of the desire to be a practicing Oriental Templar. But others have not been so fortunate. A fairly well-known writer is said to have become a drug fiend through association with the Order.
Priapus or Pan?
Three or four years ago, Crowley when in the United States, announced himself as Baphomet XI, the head of the O.T.O.; but in his books he figures as Brother Perdurabo. He professed black magic, and has studied deeply the effect of incantations in hypnotising the wills of audiences in the mass and of individuals.
In this book, “The Equinox,” which contains the directions for the ritual of the Order, he opens with a Hymn to Pan:
Thrill with lissome lust of the light, O Man, my Man, Come careening out of the night To me, to me, Come with Apollo in bridal dress.” etc.
The Invocation to Pan is throughout a sort of barbaric chant, out of which weak-brained devotees attempt to invoke spirits in the midnight hour.
Crowley has travelled far and wide, at one time secluded in an [illegible] in Sicily, getting material for a brochure on bhang, and yet again, like a true Rosicrucian traversing the burning sands of Morocco. All that would not matter very much but for the fact that his free-love doctrines are being insidiously spread in Australia, and that he threatens to visit this country shortly and produce another installment of “The Equinox.”
The authorities should be on the watch for him. We can get along very well with faith with fanaticism and doctrines without drugs. |
