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666, Sex and the O.T.O.
by
In 1912 Theodor Reuss, Outer Head of the Ordo Templi Orientis, read the Book of Lies. To his dismay he found that Chapter Thirty-Six revealed the secret of the Ninth Degree of the O.T.O. Crowley with his aptitude for sex, his knowledge of magical tradition and technique, and his acquaintance with the East had worked out for himself the theory of sexual magic. Believing that the secret had died out in the West he was proud of having rediscovered it. In 1914 he used it in "the Paris Working"—the most successful series of invocations of which his personal record survives.
Reuss was afraid that the main secret of his Order would be given openly to the world by a man who was at the time publishing in The Equinox the cipher rituals of the Golden Dawn. He came from Germany to London to come to terms and succeeded beyond his hopes. He explained to Crowley the theory behind that school of Alchemy which uses sexual fluids and the elixir of life. He enlarged on the Baphomet tradition of the Knights Templar and traced its alleged survival through the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light. He than showed the connection with those Tantrics who follow the left hand path and the Hathayogins who practice sexual mudras. What, however, was more to the point, he offered Crowley leadership in the O.T.O., an organisation founded in 1902 with a view of synthesising and controlling the various Masonic, Hermetic and Rosicrucian Orders of the day, and of spreading its peculiar morality through "Profess Houses" and colleges founded for that purpose.
By this time Crowley had been convinced by The Book of the Law. He had redefined his "True Will" and "The Great Work" as establishing the Law of Thelema. He regarded himself as the founder of a new religion and a new ethics, which would enable him and his disciples to rule the world for the next two thousand years. Hitherto the only organisation at his disposal had been the A∴A∴ (the Order of the Silver Star) which he had organised with a small nucleus who followed his leadership when he broke with MacGregor Mathers and the Golden Dawn. He was using this Order to train people to discover their "True Wills" and so to become "Kingly Men" under his personal and autocratic rule as "The Beast 666, the Priest of the Princes." Since he had less than a score of followers, he welcomes Reuss' offer to make him national head of the O.T.O. for "Ireland, Iona and all the Britains," and he asked that the three members of the A∴A∴ be made heads respectively for Australia, South Africa and the North American Continent exclusive of Mexico, where a lodge was already established. Reuss agreed and Crowley thereby ensured his election as the international head of the Order on Reuss' death.
The O.T.O. had been founded in Germany in 1902. It had the usual degrees, signs and passwords, a constitution and a magazine called the Oriflamme, but its rituals were still in skeleton form. Crowley offered to write them up, and produced with his customary speed, rituals for five and lections for the next four degrees, the tenth and last signifying that its owner was a national head. He took the title of Baphomet and designed his personal seal as such. He then wrote the "Gnostic Mass" as a service in which he enshrined the secret of the Ninth Degree. He kept the grades, signs, passwords and general traditions of the Order, but with Reuss' approval in incorporated the phraseology and morality of The Book of the Law. Some years later he added a new Degree, the Eleventh, suited only for male working and to which women were not admitted. Reuss soon got into trouble with his colleagues, as most of them objected to The Book of the Law and the open way in which their main secret was treated in the Gnostic Mass. As a result he began to lose confidence in Crowley and when he issued a charter for Denmark, he sent with it the original skeleton rituals.
Hitherto in his researches and teachings Crowley had used his own synthesis of various yogic and magical practices. The former were taken from a Shaivite system which he had learned in Ceylon from Allan Bennett, who before turning Buddhist had studied this type of yoga under a qualified teacher. He took his magic from the Golden Dawn, which worked the Enochian system devised by the Elizabethans Dee and Kelly, and he based his talismanic work on that of Abramelin the Mage. He used the great Abramelin operation to attain the "Knowledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel," but he never completed it and so could not boast of familiars to serve him. His magical weapons—sword, wand, cup, bell and burin—were consecrated in the Goetic tradition of the Golden Dawn, and he used their Pentagram ritual for banishing. He checked the truth of visions by the traditional correspondences of the Tree of Life, and the integrity of intelligences and the like by the numerical Qabalah. In divination he preferred the Tarot with Geomancy as an occasional alternative. But The Book of the Law condemned all this as the dead rituals of a bygone age. For some time he had been searching for a synthesis based on that Book and suited to the modern world.
Reuss came to him before he had decided to follow exclusively the Thelemic system of Liber Legis, which is Tantric in emphasis. For the rest of his life he used and taught a sexual and Tantric technique, though on request he would still demonstrate other methods to his followers. He never again used sex idly or just for pleasure—in his own words, he never again abused it. Sex for him became and remained a sacred act, the key to inspiration and worship, and the source of health, wealth and power. He still used yoga and magic, but only as accessories.
Although told in The Book of the Law to "sacrifice cattle little and big," he could never bring himself to do so, and the only blood sacrifices of which any record survives are a few sparrows, two pigeons, a few cocks, a goat, a cat and a toad. The blood of the cock was used to make "cakes of light" which were kept in the altar at Cefalù. The cat and the goat were slain at the request of different disciples who wished to see whether the use of blood was as efficacious as tradition has always asserted. Finally about 1912 he began to use the Yi King for divination, supplementing it on important occasions by opening one of his "Holy Books" at random and choosing the sentence or word on which his ring happened to fall.
Crowley now had at his disposal an International Order through which to spread his doctrine. Initiation in the A∴A∴, was restricted to those who were prepared to pass tests in elementary yoga and ritual magic, consequently its members remained few, secret and chosen. He hoped to reach a far wider public through the O.T.O. with its Masonic and Rosicrucian affiliations. By the time he sailed for the United States in the winter of 1914 he had two lodges operating in England, and one each in America, South Africa, and Australia. Membership was still small, but a start had been made. Nothing came of it. The English Lodges were closed by the authorities as a result of his German propaganda during the First World War, the continental lodges disowned him, and those founded by his disciples never rose from the obscurity in which they had started. As an organisation the O.T.O. was for him a broken reed.
What are the traditions and techniques of the sexual practices which Crowley followed and taught for most of his life? Religions whether living or dead, and provided that they are incomprehensible to savages, can be divided into two categories: the cathartic and the hedonistic. The dividing line is clear, but the divisions on each side of that line are as numerous as the sects. A cathartic teacher holds that the world is a bad place. He inhibits the senses as a means of escape and to win the spiritual world of his imagination. He thinks in terms of sin, sorrow and restriction. The religious hedonist on the other hand seeks the spiritual through the senses and uses sex as a means. He thinks in terms of light, life and love. Catholicism is cathartic, but hedonism creeps in with the colour, scent and music of the ritual. The Bhairavi Diksha is hedonistic, but cathartic when it insists on strict continence in thought and deed during the seven year period of probation before a candidate is admitted to the Kaula Circle in which the Suvacini dances naked.
The religious hedonist regards everything in the world as an aspect of God and therefore as a possible means of attainment. Everything is sacred. Since God embraces all he must himself experience all before he is qualified for the Unitive Vision. In practice however there is nearly always something which he cannot bring himself to do. With most of us the exceptions are many, and we are the "slaves" who "serve" in The Book of the Law. The few secret chosen ones, who in Thelemic theory will rule the earth, are those who can worship with drugs and sex without becoming slaves to their senses or their technique.
Crowley was a complete hedonist in that he used wine, drugs and sex in all forms. But he mainly did so in privacy. There is no recorded instance of more than two others being present when he worked and worshipped in this way. When he celebrated the Gnostic Mass in company he always used a stage property lance and both the Priestess and her two child acolytes were decorously clad.
In the more spiritual religions the supreme ritual is the Sacrament. In the West is was restricted to initiates in the Mystery cults until Christianity made it available to all in a revised and refined form. Originally it was a fertility rite to celebrate the death and rebirth of the god concerned. In the myth the god was slain and reborn. In the rite a substitute is killed and regeneration takes place when the sacrifice is consumed. Efficacy depends on the skill of the priest in identifying the victim with the god and in the faith of the participant. You cannot become a god or consciously partake of his essence without belief.
As man develops he refines his religious technique. Instead of identifying some animal with the god and slaying it, a talisman is substituted, and the essence of the god is invoked in the talisman which is then consumed. The sexual variant of this still survives in the West and is known as the Mass of the One Element, which is the Prima Materia of the Alchemist. It has nothing to do with the Black Mass with which it is commonly confused. In its Tantric form it is known as the Mass of the five Ms, the last M being maithuna—the sexual act.
In all phallic religions the Sun represents the creative aspect of God in the Macrocosm that is the Universe, the Phallus in the Microcosm that is man. Instead of sacrificing the sun in symbol, his viceregent on earth is sacrificed in fact and the sacrifice is consumed to accomplish regeneration.
In India God with a capital "G" is regarded as the cause of all, the First Principle, and is without attributes, being neither male nor female but the origin of both. The creator of the universe on the other hand is either a male god with a small "g," or among the shakti communities a goddess, each achieving creation by union with their partner. Humans like their creator are either male or female. They cannot partake of the essence of God with a capital "G" until they have become whole, though this alone is not enough. This wholeness is achieved momentarily during union with the opposite sex. In theory this can be made a permanent state by the absorption over a period of years of the vital fluid of the opposite sex. Mere consumption is not of course sufficient, but it provides an essential physical basis upon which the whole operation is built.
Yet another theory needs explanation before the pattern is complete. Hitherto we have been discussing a technique of spiritual regeneration. It is a private interior working which affects the participant alone and is in the realm of religion rather than of magic. Magic in its widest definition is the art of causing change to occur in accordance with will—at least that is how Crowley defined it. This change need not be restricted to the magician.
The sexual act is creative in more than a physical sense—not only is a human body conceived, but to those who believe in such things a soul incarnates. That is to say change takes place on a plane other than the physical. In Gnostic and Hermetic tradition a human being enjoys three bodies, each functioning on a different plane—body, soul and spirit. In the Qabalah there are four worlds or planes on which a human being lives simultaneously in bodies suited to each, in some of the Hindu systems there are seven—and so on. Now the number of concrete and visible births as a result of the sexual act are comparatively few compared with the number of acts performed. In the theory which lies behind this magic the sexual act cannot be completed without creation on planes other than the physical. The astral plane—or planes as the case may be—lies between the physical and the spiritual. Only the astral plane is affected if there is no physical child. Succubi for instance are said to inhabit this plane and to live off the nocturnal emissions of men, incubi on the sexual dreams of women, but they only became harmful in cases of masturbation—a neat but unprovable theory to account for the ill effects of that habit. It is unprovable because, although succubi have been evoked to visible appearance, that is no proof of their independent existence outside the imagination.
Creation in the above manner—the "solve" form of the alchemical formula is unavoidable. The technique of creating the particular "astral being" or "thought-form" that you require is reasonably simple, since it merely involves a development of concentration and willpower within the scope of the normal man. The difficulty begins with the second half of the operation—"coagula." The "astral being," "thought form," "bud-will" or whatever you chose to call what you have created needs nourishment and direction. It cannot affect another person or thing if it dies or if you have not perfected the "magical link" between it and the object of your will. This technique still is and should remain a secret. If you cannot work it out for yourself you are not entitled to be entrusted with it.
One can spend years pleasantly enough tracing this thread of sex through hundreds of books on magic and religion. One can travel perilously in the East to find gurus who apparently do all this, only to discover that they will not teach it to you until you have given up all to follow them, and even then not until you have passed certain tests to prove your qualification for the secret. Is it then merely the stuff of which dreams are made? Crowley knew both the theory and the practice and never tired of saying that it works. He recorded every operation in his diaries in the firm belief that this would establish once and for all the how and the why.
Crowley did not begin to experiment with sexual magic until after meeting Reuss in 1912. He had already experienced the Knowledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel, a "praeter-human" intelligence called Aiwass, which—or so he claimed dictated to him The Book of the Law in Cairo in 1904. He had received the message and Word which was to satisfy the human race for the next two thousand years—but he did not yet understand it. Being only a Master of the Temple, he had to become a Magus and then Ipsissimus before he could do so. He devoted innumerable workings to this end and claimed success in 1921. Understanding does not however imply the means of expression. Before he could preach his Law he had to comment on it. He began his second commentary in 1922 as a result of the Cephaloedium Working, but this did not satisfy him. He wrote the Commentary called D during a special "Grand Magical Retirement" at the oasis of Nefta in 1923, and he dashed off the first published Comment at Tunis in 1925. His account of how he wrote the Commentary called D illustrates his method of working. He set himself the task of writing ceremonially under the direct inspiration of Aiwass one chapter at a time, each to be begun at the exact moment when Herschel occulted the Moon in September, October and November. Each chapter was to be written in one continuous burst of inspiration without pause for thought and without corrections in the script. To acquire the necessary inspiration he relied on taking the Mass of the One Element a few hours before, and cocaine at the moment of, writing.
When the time came to write the first chapter he was in despair. Alostrael [Leah Hirsig] was too ill to assist him and his own health was too bad to permit him to have recourse to his Arab boy Belgacem. He had to reverse roles with the latter. This method of working was always distasteful to him and he had great difficulty in holding his concentration. But he succeeded, and, to his surprise, when a few hours later he sat down at the table in his bedroom. he wrote without pause or erasure until the commentary on the first chapter was completed. He claimed that the writing was inspired.
Most of his sexual working was done to spread the Law of Thelema. Success was to be his proof, but he did nor succeed, though he failed not of an heir. The operations failed, but that is not proof of their futility. If the world is not ready for a new morality—Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law—and for a new theory on number—Thelematics,—no single human being can alter that fact. Nor can he prevail if the message is nonsense.
With the Elixir of Life at his disposal and no inhibitions about taking it, Crowley should have lived in good health to a ripe old age. Yet two years after learning the secret he began to suffer from asthma complicated from 1922 to 1925 by drug addiction. To this must be added acute nervous depression caused by money troubles, the apparent failure of the Great Work, and the peculiar atmosphere created by what he and his disciples called "the demon Crowley." He did achieve mastery over drugs, because though using heroin with a doctor's prescription almost continuously for the last fifteen years of his life, the taking of it no longer filled his diaries with the ravings of an addict. His asthma and associated troubled he never cured and they killed him in the end. There are however many instances recorded by him and remembered by his friends when the transition from a state of asthma and depression to one of power and enthusiasm was so sudden as to appear miraculous.
If Crowley's health was bad, his finances were chaotic. The Book of the Law promised that this would be set right by a "rich man from the West." Many operations were devoted to speeding up the arrival of this millionaire, but he never materialised. One of the Abramelin talismans is for "the finding of a Great Treasure." Crowley copied it in Enochian script and always carried it in his pocket book. It bears traces of countless consecrations. In this too he failed, because until the last few years of his life he never achieved financial stability, and then only because he was content to live in surroundings little short of squalid. Nevertheless to those who knew him well, the way in which money appeared out of the blue in just sufficient quantities to avert collapse, but never enough to remove anxiety, was a continual source of wonder.
Considering the number of operations recorded by Crowley in his diaries, it ought to be possible to prove whether the system works.
Instead we are left where we began with a demon hunchback—a question mark. The individual cases in which success seems clear are balanced by as many failures. Writings for which inspiration was sought are not noticeably better than others done before the technique was acquired—particularly the poetry. In many instances they are noticeably worse, though this may be due in part to the use of drugs. A martyr to asthma, he reached the Biblical span of threescore years and ten and left a formidable volume of unpublished work at his death. Never certain of his rent after 1914, nor often of his next meal, he published his works at his own expense, and always had a bottle of old brandy and a good cigar in the cupboard for a friend. The skeptic scoffs. Magic and particularly sexual magic is—like religion—unprovable. To those who experience it, it is a fact, to others a figment of the imagination. Energised enthusiasm is key both to worship and to creative work. If however you try to extend the operation to the material world the result appears so uncertain as to invalidate the theory. So it will always be. Magic cannot be measured by science as science is known today—but that is a criticism of the measuring rod, it is not proof that magic exists only in the imagination.
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