Michael James Whitty

Born: 1862.

Died: 27 December 1920 in Los Angeles, California.

After spending several years in Australia, Michael James Whitty moved to New York, where he founded the esoteric journal Azoth and soon became an important figure in the Theosophical Society. Michael Whitty was a demonstrator of the Toth-Hermes Lodge Alpha et Omega. Alpha et Omega was a successor order that emerged from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded by MacGregor Mathers, who had temples in England, France and the USA.

Michael Whitty met Paul Foster Case in 1918. He published Case's Tarot Key Assignments in Azoth Magazine. Michael Whitty founded the "School of Ageless Wisdom" with Paul Foster Case, which offered teaching units, from which came Builders of the Adytum (BOTA).

Aleister Crowley wrote of Whitty, "Michael Whitty, for example, is ambitious enough to think that he can succeed where Mathers failed, and blackmail me. So he writes terrible letters to my publishers, hinting at the awful disclosures he can make. I merely wrote, offering to print anything he might submit on the subject, without adulteration or comment; and there is a beautiful silence in the land." (Aleister Crowley to Theodore Schroeder, n.d., Theodore Schroeder Papers, Collection Number 17, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.)