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Grady McMurtry Diary Entry Sunday, 5 January 1941
Took Claire [Claire Palmer] and Foxie [Marjorie Fox] over to Smith's [Wilfred T. Smith] to see the mass of the Gnostic Catholic Thelemites. They were nearly scared to death. We talked over there for some time about it and related subjects.
[writing about this evening McMurtry describes Regina Kahl, who performed the part of Priestess in the Gnostic Mass, as] "a big, square gal from Texas, built sort of like a rock."
[He later recalled that on this evening] "I discovered I was a Thelemite. It was sort of funny. It came down like this: we were standing there, and we were upstairs . . . Regina [Kahl] had to welcome us. She was a teacher of 'court voice' at UCLA campus in the evening. And so, anyway, she welcomed us with the sweetest smile . . . I understand from people who lived at the house that she could be a real virago when she wanted to be. And some guy was playing Debussey's Sunken Cathedral on the piano."
"I'm sitting here in this booth with my two girlfriends sitting across from me. One of them if Foxie and one of them is Tommie [Claire Palmer]. Foxie is a big, buxom, blonde chick . . . and Tommie is a small, short chick and she also has that beautiful skin that's going to wrinkle at a very early age but in the meantime is very beautiful and really sexy, you know. I think this should go in a movie scenario. It was like this: see they were roommates. And they had these red jumpers over white blouses. If you can get the picture. And they were sitting there like dolls, one big and one small."
"The temple was big enough so that you could have people on both sides of the altar. We come down to the Collects. To the point where 'sap of the world ash, wonder tree' where all say it together. And I looked around to people sitting on my right and on my left, and I realized 'These are the people I came down to meet. There are the people I came down to find.' And that's how I became a Thelemite."
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