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Correspondence from Wilfred Talbot Smith to Floyd M. Spann
[EXTRACT]
[11 January 1936]
No stress on any Rosicrucian authority has been made by us at any time: the O.T.O. sails purely under its own banner. Nor will it ever be made, if for no other reason than that the Rosicrucian order is entirely defunct in respect to that which alone gives any vitality, namely, the knowledge of the secret of the Gnosis, which at this date reposes in the sanctuary of the O.T.O. and none other.
Mr. Lewis's [H. Spencer Lewis] Honorary 7° certificate is in no sense of the word a charter or authority for operating the O.T.O. degrees, which however he does not claim to be doing.
I feel that I should make my personal stand clear to you on the matter of authority. . . . I have never seen the documentary evidence in Mr. Crowley's possession. Nor do I feel it necessary that I should. My long dealings with him, and close study of his writings, have revealed certain matters non-existent in any other modern literature, and only darkly hinted at in some of the old classical writings.
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