Grady McMurtry's Personal Remembrances of Crowley

from

Various O.T.O. Newsletters from the 1970s

— The Prophet and His Caliph —

From the O.T.O. Newsletter of March 1978

One of the mysteries of Thelema is why Aleister Crowley should choose me to be his Caliph. Perhaps it is because I am a poet. As the greatest poet of the English language, Aleister Crowley would appreciate that. It was indeed my privilege to submit my poetry to Aleister Crowley for his critique. How many times in an incarnation would you have a chance to do that? It was not an unmixed blessing. Sometimes his judgements could be severe. Getting a stinging letter from Aleister Crowley, especially when he had rejected your favorite poem and praised one you had thought was just off-hand, could be a sobering experience.

Or it could have been karma. The great men of the time in the Thelemic government were otherwise occupied. Jack Parsons was too great a genius; to this day, the only member of the O.T.O. to have a crater on the Moon named for him. Wilfred Smith was too old for the armed forces, and, besides, as Lodge Master of Agape Lodge, in much too responsible a position to go gallivanting around. Somehow, that left only me. There is a saving grace in being Parcival, the stupid soldier. War may be bad for your health, but you damn sure see a lot of sunrises and sunsets.

Anyway, I offloaded the troopship at Grenock, Scotland, on my birthday, Oct. 18, 1943. (It is a curious fact that three of the heaviest people in Thelema . . . Crowley, Jack Parsons and myself . . . are all Librans) . . . went thru the interminable processing . . . spent time in Liverpool . . . came barreling down the road from Bath to London in a jeep over Salisbury heath . . . stopped at Stonehenge under a leaden sky racing East at about 30 miles an hour about thirty feet off the ground . . . there was absolutely no one there . . . it was the most prehistoric thing you can imagine . . . and found 93 Jermyn Street (which is spelled "Jermyn" but, British style, is pronounced "GERman") which is just off Picadilly Circus in London. I walked up to the door and pounded on it. The gentleman who opened it you can see on the other side of this page. His name was Aleister Crowley, and this is what he looked like at the time. In fact, he gave me the original of this photograph.

Aleister Crowley, as he appeared when

Grady (Hymenaeus Alpha) met him.

He said; "Yes?" and I said, "I am Lieutenant McMurtry." "Well, come in dear chap!" was the response. Naturally I was in uniform. You can see here what I looked like at the time. Don't tell me that you do not believe it. Looking at these photographs, I do not believe it either. As Shirine, my Lady has said, "How could a Company Commander in the Invasion of Normandy have also been an associate of Aleister Crowley in London in the '40's?" My answer was that of the little Japanese prostitutes who had just been balled by this American GI, and they are sitting there smoking a cigarette. He says to her, "How did a nice girl like this get mixed up in a lousy racket like this?" She came back with, "Oh, just lucky I guess!" I think you have to have done time in the Orient to appreciate that. . . . but this is an Oriental Order. It says so right in the title.

London, late '43

People have asked me what it was like to know Aleister Crowley. The answer is; "It depends." The Aleister Crowley I knew, i.e. the gentleman who opened the door at 93 Jermyn St. in London in Oct. of 1943 was a person capable of meeting you at any level you could meet him. He was at the height of his powers. I mean physically and mentally. Of course he wasn't climbing mountains any more. Unfortunately I was a dumb kid from Oklahoma and completely incapable of taking advantage of my situation. On top of that, I was heavily involved in the War. I was a Company Commander of a unit destined for the invasion of the Continent. We did not know it would be Normandy. Fortunately, neither did Hitler. He thought we were coming into Calais. That is why he withheld the armored units from Rommel until it was too late. By the time we were established on the beach-head there was no way he could stop us. Some time I must tell you about good old Ernie . . . but, anyway . . .

I wasn't so dumb that I couldn't think. I was stationed up at Bury St. Edmunds at the time. That is up in East Anglia, the "Land of the Angels."—because they had blond hair and blue eyes. They were the Vikings who would come up the water ways ravaging and raping as they came. We were surrounded by B-17 bases. It was fantastic. In the early morning dawn you would hear the thunder as they were revving up. Then you would see them start taking off. A B-17 loaded with bombs is as heavy as a pregnant goose. They would come swinging around, with their bottoms painted light grey and their tops dark green. The rising sun would glint off their undersides. Once in a while you would hear this fantastic explosion. Wartime explosive ordnance was not all that good, and sometimes the vibrations from the propellers would set off a bomb load. The funny thing was, that the next bomber would take off right thru the flailing debris. Then they would swing higher and higher, forming up by section and echelon and division until finally they formed up into a vast aerial armada. Whoever was in command would give the word, and they would all take off into the East, trailing contrails (England is very damp). It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. I was writing the poem Pangenetor at the time. The part that wasn't beautiful came when they would return home at night. The B-17's came back thundering in low. You could see empty spaces where the Messerschmits and the Folkwolfs and the flack had gotten to them. That one was gone, and that one was gone. One would show two red very pistol shots out of the left waist gun position, meaning "wounded aboard!" One thing was for sure. They never broke formation. This is something that the American soldier learned in the Civil War, "Never break your discipline!" It is the one thing that will get you thru when all else fails.

Luxemburg, Late '44 or early '45—1st Lt. McMurtry

Once in a while I could turn the Company over to my 2nd in Command and grab the Company jeep to go barreling into London. That was like driving onto a battlefield. I mean a real battlefield. It was the time of the second "Baby Blitz" on London.

I would sit down with Crowley at 93 Jermyn Street, playing chess with him, drinking brandy and smoking perique. The black-out blinds would be on the windows. We could hear the German bombers upstairs with their motors revving up and down. The British anti-aircraft over in Trafalgar Square would be blasting away, making sheet lightning in the night.

One night we were sitting there, and after a while he excused himself to disappear into the kitchen. He went to make tea. We sometime forget, but Crowley was a Britisher. He drank tea, not coffee. Immediately after he left the room . . . there I was, big eyes all over the place. How many times in an incarnation would you have a chance to check out Aleister Crowley's personal library? Down at my right was a sort of turntable full of books. I took a look and flashed on one of them. The covers were obviously artificial. They were Crowley's paintings. That was unusual. So I picked it up and sat down to look. There were two paintings. One was of a light visaged Oriental sage obviously doing a guru trip in the Himalayas. The other was a dark image showing a small temple in what seemed to be an Oriental setting. I didn't get it. It was too dark. Unfortunately, at that point Crowley came in with the tea tray, saw me looking at it, and asked me what I thought. Stupid me, I told him "Not much!" Whereupon he stood over me and gave me a finger wagging lecture. The substance of which was that I was an ignoramus who wouldn't appreciate a good painting if I saw one! It was one of the only two times he ever got really pissed with me. Unfortunately he was right, but at the time I really didn't appreciate it all that much. There is a sequel.

When we finally brought down the Superior Court Order in the State of California saying that Crowley's library by law belonged to me as the representative of O.T.O., I found the volume. This time I opened it. It is absolutely priceless. It is the original Legge edition of the I Ching, with Crowley's notes, and comments on Legge's mentality, all over it in Crowley's own handwriting. In other words, being around Aleister Crowley was like being around a very hot fire. You were lucky if you didn't come off scorched.

On the other hand, he could be a very beautiful human being. As I have said, how many times in an incarnation would you have a chance to ask Aleister Crowley questions? So I thought about it. Yes, I was young. Yes, I was stupid. But I could think. One thing I thought was; "You know, on occasion this guy has really blown it." So one night we were sitting at 93 Jermyn Street. Maybe two games of chess have been played. My uniform blouse was unbuttoned—"Big John the First Lieutenant: relaxing. I had a brandy snifter in my left hand (Crowley was civilizing this "American Barbarian."). My perique pipe was in my right hand. I took all my courage in both hands. I knew that he was my friend, but I never forgot (Old Oriental Maxim) that this was the Great Wild Beast of the Aeon sitting across from me. I said, "Well, you know, there have been times when you have done things that didn't turn out the way you expected." He looked up at me with a twinkle in his eye. He knew exactly what I was thinking, that he could very easily kick my ass out into the street and tell me to never come back. Instead, what he said was, "Well, you have to do what seems right at the time!", and made his next move on the chess board. I heaved a big sigh of relief, and we went on with the evening. I think that that is also one reason why he designated me to be his Caliph to come. He admired courage. He didn't want any weak sisters around. If a guy had the guts to stand up and "beard the Lion in his den,"—and I had done just that—then there was some hope that that guy might make it.

From the O.T.O. Newsletter of June 1978

In 1969 e.v. Putnam published a paperback by Justine Glass titled They Foresaw the Future. I have the old graduate student habit of checking the table of contents and the index—sure enough, on page 182 there is a story about a collection of the Magus' formulas that had been bought by the wrong person, who immediately developed an obscure disease and had to get rid of them to save his life. Suddenly I flashed. Of course. It was something I had forgotten for 30 years. You will remember how on page 18 of Vol. I, No. 4 of this NEWSLETTER, I said that Crowley's finger wagging lecture was "one of the only two times he ever got really pissed with me." This was the second time. It happened in much the same way. We had been playing chess and rapping. He disappears into the kitchen to brew up some tea. Again, there I am, big eyes all over the place. The black-out sheets were on the window over on the left—light security against the German bombers patrolling upstairs. His main library consisted of two rows of books under the window. I went over to take a look. One book pulled my attention (The old "Poison apple" trip: "Take me!")—which was strange because it had no title on the spine. It was black, oblong and rather thick. So I picked it up and went back to sit down and look. I opened it. But what kind of book was this? There was no printing. Rather there were, as best memory serves, 4 squares across and 6 squares down. The squares were matted. Each square had a very large, single Enochian letter in it. There was something funny about it. They were very black, and very perfect; but they looked much too big to have been printed. This was a curiosity. I wondered, so I started to reach out with my right forefinger to feel one of them to see if maybe they had been painted-on—when Crowley came out of the kitchen with the tea tray, saw what I was about to do, and yelled at me—and I do mean yelled at the top of his voice; "DON'T TOUCH THAT!" I looked up in considerable surprise, closed the book rather gently and handed it back to him. He said, quietly, "You have no idea what forces you could have set in motion!" It was the only explanation he ever offered, and the incident was never mentioned again.

Now we come to They Foresaw the Future. When I read this, and remembered the incident, I wrote to Frater V.I. [Gerald Yorke], probably the most knowledgeable person in the world on the subject, and asked him about it. In a letter dated 14 March 1970, in the Archives of the Caliph, he wrote back as follows: "The books at 93 Jermyn Street were not left behind when A.C. gave up tenancy. I myself after his death sent to Karl Germer what you call Enochian tablets, but which were in fact charged Abramelin squares written in Enochian. If the Solar Lodge crowd did in fact beat up Sascha Germer and steal the archives, which they seem to have done, they will in time regret it. They are not to be trifled with." Addenda: it will be remembered that the so-called Solar Lodge group was busted on felony child abuse charges for the famous "boy in the box" case at Blythe, California. In a letter dated 28 July 1960, Frater V.I. further stated: "The incident mentioned in print by Justine Glass . . . is correct. Fitzgerald, after A.C.'s death, appropriated A.C.'s volume of Abramelin talismans and the consequences related appeared to follow."

Finally, in a letter dated 18 Aug. 1970, Fr. V.I. stated: "A.C. kept the Book of Talismans wrapped in a piece of silk when I last saw it with him. In other words he treated them as sacred or as if they were sacred and not to be handled lightly." Now perhaps you will understand why I am so sympathetic to Karl Germer. He was carrying an impossible burden. If he made mistakes of judgement concerning initiating people into the Order, perhaps it was because his mind was affected by forces beyond his control. As for the Solar Lodge group, so-called, obviously they had their fingers all over every one of those charged squares. I would really rather not think of the consequences.

Speaking of consequences, as I have said, Karl Germer refused to follow his Prophet's instructions and call a convocation of the IXth° members so he could be elected de jura O.H.O. The consequences were tragic beyond belief. When Francis King published The Secret Rituals of the O.T.O., I was so offended that at first I refused to have a copy. Later I would obtain one for research purposes. In this instance, it serves a purpose. When you take an Initiatory degree, you take oaths not to reveal certain information that has been passed on to you. Ordinarily I could not discuss this. However I can quote from a book that has been published, and on page 44 of F. King's Secret Rituals of the O.T.O. he quotes from the Minerval ceremony: " . . . my carcass; may I be mutilated and no more a man!" (italics mine). Karl Germer (Frater Saturnus) died in 1962 e.v. in West Point, California. He had developed cancer of the prostate. There is a gentleman in South America [Marcelo Motta] who claims that Germer declared him, Motta, to be his successor on his, Germer's death bed. This is impossible. Karl Germer could not have declared anyone to be his successor on his death bed because Karl Germer died screaming. After Sascha Germer's death and after we were able to bring down the Court Order saying that Crowley's library by law belonged to me, we inventoried what was left of it. We found, in Sascha Germer's own handwriting, what had happened. The surgeons had made the incision (at the level of the lower Penal Sign known to our Order), found that the cancer was inoperable, sewed him up, and sent him home to die. Naturally, Sascha was completely incapable of changing the bandages, the wound became infected, he was taken back to the hospital, and it was while the nurses were trying to clean him up that he died screaming. We have this in Sascha's own hand writing. The document is vaulted in the Archives of the Caliph. It was the exact penalty prescribed in the Minerval ritual reported by King for one who had betrayed the bread and salt. Karl Germer paid a terrible price for having disobeyed the instructions of his Prophet by assuming the burden of Outer Head of the Order without calling the convocation specified by Crowley. Thelema is not something to be played with. Thelema is real. And—if you take an oath, you better be damn sure you intend to keep it.

From the O.T.O. Newsletter of May 1979

It has occurred to me that I am one of the few people left alive who knew Aleister Crowley at the last three places he lives: 93 Jermyn Street; The Bell Inn, Aston Clinton, Bucks, north of London; and Netherwood, The Ridge, Hastings. So, let's meet Aleister Crowley.

As I said in a previous rap, 93 Jermyn Street is just off Picadilly Circus in London. As best memory serves, it is the bottom flat of a several story apartment house facing North.

This is what the interior looked like.

A is the door leading in off the street.

B was a large window that lighted the place very well during the day, but at night had a black "back-out" shade on it so that no light could be seen by the German bombers we could hear patrolling overhead.

C was the chess table.

D and F were two comfortable chairs facing the table. I always sat in D and Crowley always sat in F.

G was the round turn-table full of books down at my right—where I picked up the I Ching book with the Crowley paintings for covers.

H was the two tiered open book case on the North wall over under the window. The letter H itself is about where I found the volume of Abramelin squares. It was on the top shelf.

I signifies four framed line drawings in typical Crowley style that I can only describe as being "mildly erotic." They were certainly not obscene. Unfortunately the only one I remember with any clarity was the one on the left. It featured a young lady looking down with great delight at what looked like an overgrown bush, with Crowley in Oriental garb looking over her right shoulder; and the caption read something to the effect about how wonderful it was to know this young woman, because "she has the world's largest cunt!" Unfortunately these line drawings did not survive to be shipped to Germer after Crowley's death. I can only presume that they were ripped off.

I met Lady Frieda [Frieda Harris] here and also Dr. Louis Wilkinson. It is my impression that he was a medical doctor, but as a British author he wrote under the name of Louis Marlow. I can't tell you what the kitchen or bedroom looked like, as I was never in either of them; but the bedroom looked pleasant and sunny enough from the living room. It is the place where a German bomb blew in the back windows one night; and, as Crowley said, if he had been home at the time, he would have been killed.

Crowley had an idea that he could divine a person's character rather quickly by the way he played chess. A right side opening (usually King's Pawn) meant a fast, slashing, rather reckless attack. A left side opening (usually Queen's Pawn, unless one is going in for Hyper-Modern theory where anything is possible) meant a slow, leisurely, intellectual game—and person. I tend to the right side myself. Apparently Crowley liked that. Anyway, after about the third meeting he said, "You are obviously IXth Degree material," and handed me the papers. It was here that he told me about "my chess game," as he put it—a story that he loved to tell. It was a "blind-fold" game (one in which the player does not see the board). Anyway, he went to bed with the lady of his choice at the time, while his chess opponent sat at the board within easy talking distance, but where Crowley couldn't see it. The idea was to see if Crowley could achieve climax and call "Mate!" at the same time. As he said with great delight, "I did it!"

It was also here that I asked for help with my Motto, and that the incident of the British school-boys happened. I am so used to reading freak-out accounts about how Crowley was supposedly such a bad-ass, that I was a little taken aback recently to read an article in which some one was trying to make him out a kindly old gentleman. Well, he could certainly be kind enough, if it struck him that way, but so far as I could tell he remained irascible to the end. Anyway, it is a habit in England for school-boys to go around in small groups at Xmas time and sing carols at your front door; and, as has been said, "they will not go away until they are paid!" Well, they did that time. Go away, that is, without being paid. We were sitting there at 93 Jermyn Street playing chess and rapping one wintry afternoon just before Xmas of '43 e.v. when we heard this raucous noise at the door. Crowley said, "I wonder what that is," in some annoyance and went and opened the door. Here were four English school-boys bawling away. Crowley flew into a temper, slammed the door, and came storming back into the room raging, "TO THE LIONS WITH THEM! TO THE LIONS WITH THEM!" Of course if they had been singing "Oh little house of Boleskine," as someone was at a recent Crowleymas party, he might have felt differently.

Of course, it was here at Jermyn Street that Crowley gave me his (typically Crowley) view of the people of the Mediterranean. "All those people can think of is fucking!" is the way he put it—his own succinct way.

It was also from here that we took off one day for lunch at some posh London restaurant. I had gotten into town in the morning, amazingly enough, or maybe I had spent the night (being a red-blooded American boy) with one of the whores from Piccadilly Circus (wars are fought on the unexpended virility of young men. Personally I never found any shortage of young women to help them get rid of their problem), and he decided to celebrate by treating me to a fine lunch. It was in a hotel, the Savoy, as I recall, but don't hold me to it; and I remember that the doorman wore his British Army combat ribbons on his doorman's uniform. With the barrage balloons flying and all that, Wartime London could be a rather exciting place. Sometime I must tell you about the Red Berets of Ord Wingate's Burma Drop, and the British Officer Club circuit. But anyway . . . I got the idea that winning the Victoria Cross was a high recommendation for retiring as a doorman at a Posh London Hotel, but then it was wartime England. Crowley was wearing the nickered tweed suit he had had specially ordered and tailored and was so proud of . . . he loved to show you how efficient it was . . . all those little pockets and things. It came complete with gravy stains, which can still be seen in photos as late as '45 e.v. from Hastings. Very important in shortage plagued wartime England, but it was unusual looking. Anyway, as we were walking into the lobby, I was walking on the right, a rather beefy looking Englishman coming out of the restaurant took one look at him and burst into laughter. I flushed and half turned to my left with something in mind about doing something about it ("You can't laugh at my prophet that way!"), but then I noticed that Crowley was laughing and talking and paying it no never-mind, and I suddenly flashed that it would make a rather silly headline the next day—

"BERSERK AMERICAN OFFICER ASSAULTS PEACEFUL BRITISH CITIZEN IN POSH HOTEL!"

—so I simmered down and we walked on into the dining room.

The reason this incident sticks in my mind is because of something that happened on the way. We had taken one of those big red double-decker busses and were sitting on the bottom level on the left about half way. We were sitting there talking, when suddenly Crowley glanced up to the left, said, "Pardon me a moment," closed his eyes, made some mystic passes with the fingers of his right hand, and mumbled something unintelligible. Unintelligible to me, anyway. It wasn't until later that I figured out that he had been doing the noon Liber Resh. The thing that is so striking is that he was so quiet about it. To hear some people talk you would think that he would have rushed up to the top deck and shouted it "from the housetops" to all of Greater London. There may have been time when he did, but he didn't so it that day.

From the O.T.O. Newsletter of August 1979

As I mentioned in my last rap, 93 Jermyn Street is just off Piccadilly Circus in London. A "circus" is a "rund'aboot" (round-about) i.e. a circle where traffic flows in and out. Piccadilly Circus has traditionally had a statue of Eros (Cupid) on the island in the center. Taken down during the war, of course. They couldn't take down Nelson's monument in Trafalgar Square, so they sand-bagged it. Anyway, and for whatever reason, it was the habit at that time ('43-44 e.v.) for all of the young ladies of London who wanted to fuck for fun and profit to come down and blanket the walls while the various clientele (mostly American soldiers) considered the prospects. The comments one heard while passing by could be rather startling. I remember being jolted out of my satory one evening by some broad yelling "Get your ' and off my cunt!" during a particular point when they were negotiating as to who was to sleep with whom and where and how much for the night. We had a saying in the American army, "If you put a roof over Piccadilly Circus, you would have the biggest whorehouse in the world," Whether Crowley ever made use of the local availability I have no idea, but it did set a certain tone.

Speaking of sex, the question has arisen as to whether Crowley ever made any homosexual advances to me. The answer is no. (For a confirmatory opinion, see The Eye in the Triangle, by Dr. Israel Regardie, Lewellyn Publications, St. Paul, MN 55101, p. 15) The Aleister Crowley I knew had the greatest respect for the right of an individual to manifest their Will without interference. The only time the subject ever came up was by accident and a joke. One day he was telling me about how he had been at a party the previous evening; from his description I got the idea that the people who attended were mostly of the artist/bohemian persuasion, but elderly, because, as he said, despite their age they were all jumping about "As spry as crickets." Whereupon I made some inane comment to the effect that I would have liked to have been there. His reply was rather devastating. He said, and I quote, "Oh, you would just have gotten yourself buggered." Considering my physical strength at the time, that does seem unlikely, but anyway . . .

It was here at 93 Jermyn Street that a German bomb landed in his back yard, blowing glass from the window all over his bed, and, as he said to me at the time; "If I had been home, I would have been killed." This shook his nerve a bit. He, along with Lady Frieda and many another Britisher, were determined that the German bombing would not drive them out of London. The old British "bulldog" spirit. As to whether any of this on Crowley's part had to do with any remorse over his pro-German activities in the U.S. during War I, I cannot say. So far as I am concerned, he was just being the typical Britisher he had always been. Crowley was in the tradition of the radical-conservative. On the one hand there is nothing more radical than Thelema. On the other hand, he was a monarchist. He could never forgive Edward VIII for having abdicated the throne to marry a commoner. After all, the office of Royal Consort had been approved in European royalty for centuries.

Speaking as an old combat trooper, I can report with great authenticity that being next to a bomb going off will do something to you. What it does mostly is make your nerves a lot more frangible. So it sometimes my hand shakes a little and maybe I drink more than is good for me, believe me, I have reasons. When the Chinese hit the Kumwha Ridges with a human wave that went on for a solid week in October of '52 e.v., and I was Ammo Supply on the Central Front, Korea . . . but that is another Grady story . . .

Back to Crowley. As a result of the German bombing, he decided he needed "more quiet." Can't say I blame him. I thought it was dumb enough to stay in London to begin with; but I didn't tell him that.

So he looked around and decided to move to the Bell Inn at Aston Clinton. Bucks County (I think that means "Buckingham." There is a whole history of England written in the county names. "The painted counties." Yes, I saw it once when I was running East on a highway over in the West country. Those perfect patches of agriculture each in it's own color. Essex means "the East Saxons." Wessex means "the West Saxons." Sussex means "the South Saxons." Northumberland means the pits. (That is Robin Hood country.) about 30 miles North of London. Of course London goes on forever.

The Bell Inn is an authentic country inn. It still has the courtyard where the stagecoaches stopped to load and unload. I was still up in East Anglia at Bury St. Edmunds at the time. Now England is built very much like Italy or Korea when it comes to roads. "All roads lead to" . . . London, Rome, Seoul, as the case may be. To cut across country is a problem. Add to that fact that the British had taken down all road signs in case of a German invasion, which was not at all unlikely. But I had a very beautiful, red Morocco bound quarto sized map book, so I never really had any problems negotiating the terrain (from a recent film, "The Eagle Has Landed," it is quite obvious that the Germans had just as good road maps, so why did the British take down the road signs? Well, you are at war—you have to do something—even if only to keep up your morale). I fogged my way across country . . . wondering at the convoys of British army trucks that did not have front wheel drive . . . sure enough, they bogged down in the mud of Italy while those American GMC duce-and-a-halfs went plowing sturdily through . . . bugged the hell out of the British newspaper correspondent at the time . . . and those colorful "Royal Corps of Signals" on their messengers motorcycles with their funny helmets and fantastic yellow gloves with the long gauntlets to cover their wrists.

I did not really have all that much trouble in finding Aston Clinton. Not at all like that time in Korea when I wanted to drive from Chunchon over to the Western Front without bothering to drive all the way into Seoul. Found myself on a washed out road on a mountain pass, up to the fan belt in a flooding stream without a bridge; and when a squad of Koreans burst out of the cane in full camouflaged combat regalia I damn near shit my pants while grabbing for my carbine in the back of the jeep. Turned out they were just ROK troops on maneuvers, but for a horrible second I didn't know that. Well, anyway; back to Crowley, like I said.

Naturally I was in uniform. Not only was there a war on, but I had taken the morning off from my duties as Company Commander to grab the company jeep and go over and see Crowley. I walked in to the desk (on the right. the dining room is on the left as you walk in) and asked the clerk how I could find Mr. Crowley. He said, "Oh, right up those stairs there (on the right), down the corridor to the left, and it's room number so and so . . . (which I have forgotten.)" So I go pounding up the stairs "with me combat boots on," found the door (on the right), and pounded on it. I heard some unintelligible sound, so I pounded again. This time I heard a voice saying very distinctly, "Who is it?" Since I was talking to a piece of wood, I said very loudly, "LIEUTENANT McMURTRY." The door opened and there was Crowley. He took one look at me and said, "Oh, there you are, old chap. Come right on in." Then he paused, looked puzzled for a second, and said, "That's strange. When I was taking the I Ching this morning it said that I would be meeting a military man." I walked in, and, as best memory serves, this is what the pad looked like.

A is the door.

B the row of windows over on what seemed to me to be the North wall; with

C the bed under them.

D was a round table piled high with proof sheets which must have been from Magick Without Tears.

He sat down in E and I sat down in F (there may have been other furniture in the room, but I do not remember).

He said, "Pardon me a minute." He was in the process of taking an oracle from the I Ching. It was the one time I saw him using his I Ching sticks (which I was able to recover from the library after the court order decreeing that his library belonged to the O.T.O. under my conservatorship). They looked like this:

The blank side is the male (Yang, energy) side. The divided side (looks like red nail polish to me) id the female (Yin, receptive) side. By my ruler they are less than an 8th of an inch in thickness, but slightly more than a 16th thick. They either were mahogany or teak or stained dark to look so. Each stick has a Yang side and a Yin side. The way Crowley used them was to shuffle them (with his eyes closed) then take them one at a time and, holding each one upright with his right forefinger (eyes still closed), get a signal and lay it down either right or left. First stick down is the bottom line. You can also get moving lines this way. If one of the sticks wants to move when you lay it down, just shove it right or left as indicated. Personally I like this method of taking The Oracle. It gives you a chance for your Angel to communicate directly through your fingertip. Of course, one must always be wary of lying and malicious spirits.

I forget exactly what we talked about, but I do remember that it was a happy reunion and a heart warming experience. Crowley could be a wonderful person when he wanted to be. As for the irascible side of his nature, I personally do not think he could have brought down the Book of the Law, unless he had been authentically The Great Wild Beast of the Aeon.

I met him here once more. Xmas of 1944 e.v. But more of that next time . . . and Hastings.

From the O.T.O. Newsletter of Spring 1980

As I said in my last rap. I would see Crowley one more time at Bell Inn at Aston Clinton. At the time it seemed all very accidental. Looking back, it seems all very karmic. But anyway . . .

What happened was that, having survived the Invasion of Normandy and the Battle of Northern France, we were up in Belgium preparing for the assault on the Rhine. This was where the incident of the 80 500 pounders occurred. One day I read in The Stars and Stripes, our Army newspaper, that they were offering a course in Explosive Ordnance in England to any Ammunition Supply Officer who didn't know his ass from his elbow. Since I had gone to Quartermaster O.C.S. (Officer Candidate School) and had never even seen Aberdeen Proving Ground, two things hit me at once: (1) It would be interesting to find out something about what I was doing and (2) Crowley was in England. It was a long chance, but there was always just that possibility. So I find myself piling into a British plane up in Brussels airport so antique that it had two pilots, but only room for four passengers. We start taking off down the runway under the usual cloud cover, as I thought at the time . . . it is always raining in Northern France and Belgium . . . stupid me, how was I to know that this was the fog blanket into which Glenn Miller would disappear flying East to France at the same time . . . and under which von runstedt would launch the Ardennes Offensive (the Battle of the Bulge to you history buffs) . . . things like that I would find out later. At the time, what I noticed was that neither pilot was looking down the runway in front of us, as pilots normally do on a take off; but that the one on the left was looking to the left; and the one on the right was looking to the right. This did seem unusual, so I did the same. That was when I grabbed my seat and hung on for dear life. This twin engined crate was so ancient that the tachometers were on the engine nacelles, and what the two pilots were trying to do was to keep the two engines turning at the same speed so we wouldn't ground-loop and windup a fiery pile of junk. But we finally lifted off, cleared the cloud cover, and started pocketing along toward England at about 60 miles an hour, maybe 6000 feet off the ground, under a brilliant sun and looking down on a pure unbroken carpet of white that went on . . . and on . . . and me twisting my head around to see if some stray line of ME-109's would come rolling in for a little target practice like that day in Normandy . . . but then I had been on the ground and could duck . . . a little hard to duck at 6000 feet . . . and on . . . at 60 miles an hour it takes a while to fly from Brussells to London. Finally there was the blue of the English Channel . . . and the White Cliffs . . . and we landed at Croyden and by truck and bus and trolley and train up to Leicester (which we pronounce lei-CES-ter and the British pronounce LES-ter.)

First they introduced us to the ka-VET (which seemed to be the British way of pronouncing the French word for cavity). A kavet was where a bomb had exploded underground but had not broken the surface, leaving a thin layer of soil that would not support you if you stepped on it. Which meant you would be dead by the time you scrambled out due to the toxic gasses left by the explosion. Kavets were definitely to be avoided. Check. Then we met Herman. Good old Herman. Herman was about the size and shape of the great white shark, had a funny ring welded to his nose to retard his depth of perception on impact, was painted a sort of off-Navy gray-blue, and weighed 1000 pounds. Herman was what the British called a "block-buster." Also Herman was a man of mystery. Yes, Herman had many mysteries. The mystery was in the fuze. Herman could think. Now we Americans are a very straight-forward kind of people. A little mindless, maybe, but certainly straight-forward, and our technology reflects. Our bombs were fuzed mechanically fore and aft. As she went in, if the firing pin in the nose fuze didn't function, it didn't matter because this neat little metal rod in the tail fuze would come slamming forward and she would blow anyway. But suppose she lands on her side, says Uncle Heinie? So they devised a whole new technology of electrically fuzed bombs. By flipping a complicated set of toggles the German pilot could give Herman any number of options. He could explode on impact. He could be set to go off as a time bomb hours later (very important in war torn London. A UXB [UneXploded Bomb] found near a subway or power-station could shut down a goodly part of London.) Or he could just lie there and think about it indefinitely while these curious little electrical charges went percolating through these rheostats and other circuit devices waiting for the vibration of the jack-hammers from the EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) Squad (there is an awful lot of concrete in London) to break that final circuit and set him off. Obviously the British had a problem. They had to get him out of there, but how? Solution No. 1: Defuse him on the spot. The fuze was at about the center of the bomb on one side, and secured by these funny looking little locking rings. Unlock the rings, lift out the fuze, and away with old Herman. Unfortunately Uncle Fritzi had thought of that too, and had all these happy little anti-withdrawal devices so that as you lifted the fuze out he would blow anyway. Scratch Solution No. 1. Also the guy who was working on the fuze with the telephone around his neck. "I am now moving ring number two to the left . . . and then this god-awful explosion. Finally the British had lost so many EOD experts that they resorted to the only really practical solution, and that was to haul old Herman out with a crane, put him on a sandbagged truck (for all the good that would do), and take him out with sirens screaming to some god-forsaken place and blow him up on the spot. Yes, Herman was definitely bad news.

So war Betty, "Bouncing Betty," they called her. The Germans had this empty casing about the size of Herman (painted yellow) that would crack open about half way down and spew the countryside with grenades retarded in their descent by these cute little beanies . . . a sort of fourbladed parachute. Once Betty had bounced, she would lie there with this timing device about the size and shape of a quarter, and ridged on the edge like a regular coin, waiting for any vibration to make that little gear move that one more notch and then all of a sudden there you are looking like a funny kind of shish-kabob. This was all very interesting, and fun in its own kind of way, but terribly academic until the world exploded. I came down to breakfast one morning to find a copy of The Stars and Stripes on my table, headlines all over the place, and a may full of spear-heads supposedly depicting German armored divisions all pointing directly at where I had left my Ordnance Supply and Maintenance Company at Brugelette, about 30 miles south of Brussels. What to do? Well, school's over, back to London, back to the Continent, back to the War. Only to have the desk sergeant tell me. "Lieutenant, we can't even drop paratroopers into Bastogne. How in the Hell are we going to fly you back to the Continent?" So. My hunch had paid off. But first things first. Grab one of those funny square London taxis with the open front end that can turn on a dime and score a bottle of black market Scotch for an exorbitant price. Then scrounge up a couple of cigars from some place and off to the Bell Inn at Aston Clinton. That may have been when I met Kenneth Grant, because I definitely remember meeting him at the Bell Inn. We rapped about many things, but the only thing he said that really stuck in my mind was his last sentence, which was, "You really must come back for Xmas. It is going to be the traditional English Xmas dinner complete with flaming plum pudding!" After all, the Bell Inn is a traditional English country Inn. And so back to London and check in with Air Transport and "No, Lieutenant, all flights are cancelled for today, but be sure to be here at 8 o'clock in the morning."

It was about this time I met those Canadian girls and got introduced to the British Officer Club circuit (which is quite different from the regular street pub) and a few days of living it up goes by . . . and then it is Xmas, and time to go visit Crowley up at Aston Clinton. But hold! Enter the villain. The British railway drivers (we call the guys who man the throttles on railroad engines "engineers") had had it up to the ears, and decided to pull a one day strike. They were not being unpatriotic, but you must understand that they had been fighting the war since Hitler had invaded Poland and the British were a tired people. So the railway employees just told the government flat, "For one bloody night, Gov, in all the years of this bloody war, we are going to have Xmas dinner with our families at home." Personally I approved, but it damn sure left me up a bloody creek because how was I to get back to London by 8 o'clock the next morning? On the other hand, who could miss having Xmas dinner with Aleister Crowley? So I said, "To hell with it, I'm going." After all, I had been risking my life on a daily basis ever since Normandy. Why should I worry about a reprimand? So by taxi up to Paddington Station, that great, gloomy, sooty cathedral to Victorian bad taste where you take the trains going North, and off at Aston Clinton station. Everything looked normal. Gates open. Lights on. Looked cheerful enough. Even serving that awful slop they called "tea" in British railway stations in wartime England. That's why they filled the glass half full with watered milk so you could gag down the stuff. At least it was hot and warmed your tummy on a cold night. Maybe everything would be all right. So off cheerfully to the Bell Inn and Crowley and we toasted the Yuletide with brandy and it was time to go down to dinner and all those suet things that only a Saxon stomach can take, and sure enough the flaming plum pudding. Then back upstairs for more talk and brandy and the cigars and a wonderful time and around midnight it is time to say goodby and I walk back down to the station in the fog that had come up. It looked like a tomb. Lights out. Gates locked. And not a person in sight. What in the hell am I going to do? Ah. Brilliant inspiration! What is the one place in town that is going to be open all night? The police station, of course. Not hard to find. It was the only house in town that had its lights on. So I walked in and explained my problem to the Desk Sergeant. He was sympathetic, but said, "Not a chance. With the heavy ground fog, not even the lorries are running." (English country winters are subject to what we would call a tule fog, and a lorrie is what they call a truck). Then he brightened and said, "But there's a bobby on a wheel (motor cycle) coming through in a few minutes going down to the next town toward London. Maybe you can hop a ride with him!" So I find myself on the back end of a motor bike blasting along through the fog freezing my end off down to the next station. And again to the next station. What happened after that is a blur. All I remember for sure is waking up standing in the open back end of a milk truck running into the outskirts of London in a cloudy dawn trying to find some place where I can catch a tram. I made it to the Air Transport Office at just exactly 8 o'clock only to be told, "Sorry Lieutenant, all flights are cancelled for today. But be sure to be here at 8 o'clock tomorrow morning!" It is really remarkable what some people would go through to have lunch with Aleister Crowley, but personally I wouldn't have missed it for anything.

Next, Hastings.

— On What Happened to Aleister Crowley's Ashes —

From the O.T.O. Newsletter of September 1977

We know from Crowley's Last Will and Testament that he instructed his executors to preserve his ashes and give them to Karl Germer (Frater Saturnus), Grand Treasurer General of the Order. Fr. Saturnus was to preserve them for posterity (and certain operations suggested in Crowley's comment to his poem, NADIR). A.C. also placed considerable emphasis in his Will upon the fact that his Seal Ring should be preserved. His Seal Ring was preserved—though under most unlikely of circumstances—it was found by the Coroner of Calaveras County in Sascha Germer's purse. Apparently it never occurred to the "Solar Lodge" outlaw gang while they were gutting Crowley's library at West Point and walking all over her in the process, to ask about the only thing of real value in the library—namely Crowley's Seal Ring. Probably they didn't even know that it existed . . . Anyway, we know from several sources that Crowley's body was cremated in Brighton, England, in 1947. So what happened to the ashes? Why have they not also survived? The answer is rather simple and completely stupid.

In 1951 I was called back to active duty as a Captain in the American Army during the Korean "crises" . . . we did not call it a war in those days, although it obviously was . . . at least those of us who got to Korea quickly discovered that it was a real live shooting war. My particular piece of the action was that of Ammunition Supply Officer for the Central Front—that would be from Chunchon north to Whacon, Kumwa and the Iron Triangle—the Main Line of Resistance being held by 9 Corps American on the left, 2nd ROK in the center, and 10 Corps American on the right, which we damn near lost when the Chinese hit the Khumwa Ridges with a human wave offensive that went on for a solid week in October of 1953 . . . we never thought about the North Koreans when I was there . . . so far as we were concerned we were fighting the Chinese . . . but more of that another time.

Anyway, in 1951 I was assigned as Training Officer for a bunch of Reserve Units in Baltimore, Maryland, which is not far from Hampton, New Jersey. So I found occasion to visit Karl at his Hampton address. Now, as I have said in my rap about "Continuity in the Order," Karl's place was a house with grounds. That means that it was a good sized residence, not a mansion, but still a good sized house, sitting on several acres of grounds. Anyhow I remember on one of the visits, Karl and I taking a walk down the driveway and into the front yard. I remember it had rained—one of those sudden New Jersey thunder squalls that are heralded by hot, muggy winds and high white cumulus, and followed by heavy downpour. I was walking on the right. Naturally I was in uniform. It seemed like I always was in those days. While we were walking along—as usual I had lighted my pipe—Karl suddenly pointed to a scroungy tree and said; "And that is the Aleister Crowley tree!" Being a little slow on the uptake, I said; "What?," and he repeated with somewhat more emphasis; "That is the Aleister Crowley tree!" I still didn't get it and said something like; "What do you mean," and he said (obviously I'm paraphrasing as I have no tape recording of the conversation); "Well one day Sascha and I were discussing what to do with Crowley's ashes (which completely blew my mind, because what was there to do with them other than to comply with his Last Will and Testament and keep them) and suddenly she took the urn in which they were kept and dashed them at the foot of this tree and said, "This is the Aleister Crowley tree!" So I looked at the stupid tree and I looked at the muddy ground at the base of it. Obviously there was no sign of the ashes and obviously there was no way they could be recovered, and I was sick to my stomach. But what the hell could I do about it? Nothing was possible but to remember the incident. Years later I would write to Gerald Yorke, and he would write back saying that I must be mistaken, because Karl had written to him saying that the reason Crowley's ashes could not be recovered when he left the Hampton address was that he had buried them in a wooden box at the base of a pine tree—when he went to dig them up the box had disintegrated and the ashes unrecoverable. Personally I consider this story to be a crock of horse-shit. Apparently it had occurred to Karl some time after he had told me the true story that letting Sascha strew Aleister Crowley's ashes in the mud at the base of any tree was not the brightest of all possible things to do; so he invented a story to cover his actions. In any case, to the best of my knowledge, that is the true story of what happened to Aleister Crowley's ashes; and why they have not been preserved today as it was specified in his last Will and Testament they should be.

— On Karl Germer —

From the O.T.O. Newsletter of September 1977

It just so happens that I am the only person who knows the exact story on this. Aleister Crowley's Number Two Man in the O.T.O. in the 40's - 50's was Karl Johannes Germer, otherwise known as Frater Saturnus. Karl was a Prussian and a veteran of 5 years service in the German army in World War I. He was the typical Dutch Uncle and nobody, except Crowley, could ever tell Uncle Karl anything. His position in the Order was that of Grand Treasurer General, as I said, the number two position to A.C. as Outer Head of the Order. There is no doubt to his sincerity as a Thelemite. In fact, he was a hero, perhaps a martyr of Thelema in a way, because as a Thelemite and associate of the notorious Aleister Crowley, he was thrown into a concentration camp by the Nazis. (Many of us have forgotten that before Hitler started liquidating the Jews and others, the Nazis had to first eliminate their native German opposition.) Indeed Karl had the sublime experience of the "Knowledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel" while in that Nazi concentration camp. The fact that due to his "anality" (a fact confirmed by F. R. [Israel Regardie] who, as Crowley's secretary in Paris in the 20's, had of necessity to read Germer's diaries as they were mailed in.) his "Angel" turned out to be somewhat of a faggot (his advice to myself and others as a result of this experience was, and I quote, "One must allow one'self to be the boy to one's Angel!" . . . surely a specious application on a universal level to a special situation.). But anyway . . .

His primary claim to fame, so far as Aleister Crowley and the O.T.O. are concerned, is that for many years while living in New York in the 40's and 50's (where I met him once on my way overseas to England in 1943 and once on my way back in 1945) he was able to transmit—this was known as the monthly transfer—$200 a month every month for several years to Aleister Crowley who by then was living in England. This money was not, strictly speaking, considered to be for A.C.'s living expenses. In fact, there is a rather poignant record that when Aleister Crowley was dying in Hastings in 1947, in abject penury so far as earthly goods were concerned, that he had to be reminded that he had several hundred English Pounds in a box under his bed. This was the Aleister Crowley Publication Fund. (To relieve your anxiety, yes, he did use some of it out of necessity for medical expenses at or near the end.) The way it came into being was this: There had been a number of O.T.O. Lodges under Crowley's jurisdiction in various English speaking countries in the 20's and 30's—in Canada, the United States, Australia etc.; but these had somehow disappeared—I remember seeing a file of letters from those days and one of the curious things that struck me at the time was their way of addressing each other; "From the valley of Vancouver to the valley of Los Angeles"—anyhow by the late 30's these had all died out and the only operative Lodge under Crowley's control was Agape Lodge in Hollywood-Pasadena. I myself was initiated into Agape Lodge when it was still on Winona Blvd. in Hollywood in the late 30's—but that's another story. I must sometime tell you about Ray Bradbury and the Los Angeles Science Fiction Club. Also about Wilfred Smith and Liber 132 . . . Anyway . . . The way the Aleister Crowley Publication Fund came into being was that a small number of dedicated Thelemites . . . Jane Wolfe, Wilfred Smith, Regina Kahl, Ray and Mildred Burlingame, Roy Leffingwell . . . we really must get the list together some day . . . were mostly living in the Los Angeles area at the time. Jane Wolfe had been a feature player. Wilfred was an accountant until his association with Crowley became known, whereupon he was demoted to bookkeeper. Roy was a bartender. Mildred was a waitress. Lew was a sometime but player in Hollywood. Regina taught Drama at U.C.L.A.—These people literally went without (passed up "that better house" or that "better car") during the Depression to contribute a few dollars a month. This money was given to Wilfred Smith as the head of Agape Lodge. He would transmit it to Germer, who would put it together with whatever other money he could to see to it that Crowley got $200 every month. As I said, this went on for years. Obviously Karl Germer was a dedicated man. Crowley died in 1947 e.v.

According to the constitution of the O.T.O. (See the Blue Equinox); the O.T.O. is an international body and the O.H.O. (Outer Head of the Order) is elected by a convocation of National Heads, i.e. Xth Degree members. However, as there was only one operative Lodge at the time, the one here in the United States, special provision had to be made. This was done by Crowley himself who instructed Karl that "a year and a day" following his, i.e. Crowley's death, Karl as Grand Treasurer General of the Order, was to call a convocation of the IXth Degree members of O.T.O.—of which I would certainly have been included—having been elevated to the IXth Degree of O.T.O. by Aleister Crowley himself in London in the 1940's—and this convocation of IXth Degree members would choose a new Outer Head of the Order. I still have my copy of the notice.

Now there is no doubt that Karl Germer would have been elected O.H.O. There was simply no one of stature to oppose him. I was living in San Francisco, using my War II GI Bill at the University of California across the Bay in Berkeley, and certainly had no such ambitions. I was much too involved with my own affairs to worry about it. Wilfred Smith had been removed from consideration by the strictures of Liber 132. Jack Parsons was out of it due to the investigation—of which I had been a part—into his Babalon Operation. Roy Leffingwell? Ray Burlingame? Wonderful people and dedicated Thelemites; but no one thought of them in terms of Outer Head of the Order. Lou Culling [Louis Culling]. A joke. That left only Germer. So we went on doing our trip and waited for Karl to call the convocation. You can imagine how surprised we were one day to receive a letter from Karl saying that he was now Outer Head of the Order! What to do? Obviously there was nothing we could do. Karl Germer was the highest ranking member of the Order, short of revolt (no one could imagine that) there was no recourse. I remember that we wrote and talked to each other and wondered why Karl would disobey Crowley's instructions, but it was his karma—we had to let it go at that. True, it was unfortunate that Karl was only de facto O.H.O. instead of de jura O.H.O. as Crowley had meant him to be; but it was no matter. Karl was obviously O.H.O. either way.

Some time in here, '47 or '48, Karl got Crowley's library from England and decided he need larger quarters; so he bought a substantial house with grounds outside Hampton, N.J. Whether he used any of the money from the Aleister Crowley Publication Fund for this no one could ever prove. Anyway, I visited him there several times in '51. Later he and his wife Sascha [Sascha Germer] would come to California, and ultimately he bought a two story farm house outside West Point, which is up in Calaveras County in the gold rush country. By then I was back from the Korean War, living in Berkeley, and doing the graduate student trip in political theory at U.C. Later I moved to Sacramento.

Anyway, about this time—the mid '50's—I came to realize that the Order was dying because Germer wasn't initiating people. So I brought this up in one of my periodic visits up to West Point to see him. His reply, which I have in writing, was that, and I quote, "I consider all that to be the lower magick." Well, lower or not, and human mortality being what it is, you still have to have a supply of new members if an Order is to survive. Besides, to deny true Thelemites the opportunity in their incarnation to become a part of Aleister Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis is in my opinion a crime. (See the description of grades of the O.T.O. on page 246 of the Blue Equinox where the indefensible right of initiation up to and including IVth Degree is emphatically stated.). So I decided to do something about it. I was just another IXth Degree Indian running around the old O.T.O. reservation; but there was the old problem—I had no money. I had used up my War II GI Bill taking my B.A. in Philosophy, and the only thing I got out of the Korean GI Bill was that they would pay my tuition and buy my books. Stated simply I was flat broke. Something had to be done. Now at that time, there were still enough survivors of old Agape Lodge living in S. California that, I thought, it was just possible we could get together and say to Uncle Karl; "Look Karl, we love you, we just don't understand you!" At least that is what I had in mind. So, by hook or crook I was able to make four trips to S. California—Once to Barstow to see Jean Sihvonen (widow of Max Schneider)—Twice to see Helen Parsons-Smith, who was living in Malibu at the time—and finally I got them all together in the Burlingame's place in Lakewood one night. Brother Montenegro [Gabriel Montenegro] came in and I pulled a chair out into the middle of the room and said something to the effect; "Well, now that we are all here, let's get started." Whereupon Brother Monty completely blew my mind by grabbing another chair, planting it in front of me and saying; "Grady, you must stop what you are doing and promise never to do anything like it again!" Since what I was trying to do was get the O.T.O. back together again, my agreement was unlikely. Even more unlikely was that nobody said anything. So I looked around to see what was happening. Jean Sihvonen and Aleister Ataturk MacAlpin and Rhea Leffingwell—the Barstow contingent—were standing behind me over against the wall looking as if they had been frozen in time. On my left, Ray Burlingame was sitting there smoking a cigarette—he would die from emphysema a few years later—with Mildred sitting next to him and their daughter Layla standing behind them. Were it not for Ray's cigarette smoke, you would have thought they were sculptured in wax! What I was looking for was some recognition that they understood what had just been said. For what Monty had just said to me was that he knew better that I did what my Will was, and no Thelemite can say that to another Thelemite. At that point I had a choice . . . I could wake them up, point out the impossibility of what Monty had said, and demand backing in my attempt to get Germer to reconsider his policy of 'no initiation,' or I could recognize that some things have to die before they can be reborn. I chose the latter. I turned to Monty and said, "Not under any circumstances!" The group broke up in a smattering of small conviviality, and that was the end of that. In later years I would think that perhaps I had made a mistake; that maybe I should have argued it out with them and gotten their backing against Karl. But to what odds? It would have been like winning a battle only to lose the war. I also have correspondence from Germer at the same time telling me about how he knows about my visits to the South and how he knows about the 'conspiracies' against him. If I had gotten the S. California people together, Karl would have expelled me from the Order as the head of a conspiracy—just as he expelled Kenneth Grant at about the same time. True, he was not de jura Outer Head of the Order; but, like it or not, he was functioning as Outer Head of the Order. So I took a job in Washington, D.C. in 1961 and disappeared for about 10 years.

Karl Johannes Germer died in 1962 e.v. without having made provision for a successor as O.H.O. In his Will he left Aleister Crowley's library in the hands of his wife, Sascha, who was not and had never been a member of the O.T.O. A few years after, the house at West Point was raided by an outlaw gang from Los Angeles calling itself the 'Solar Lodge of O.T.O.' and much of Aleister Crowley's library was gutted and dispersed. Karl Germer's policy of not initiating new members into the O.T.O. had yielded a bitter harvest. That's why there has been a seeming discontinuity in the Order—why people haven't been able to find viable Lodges of the O.T.O. Karl Germer willed that it be so.

With the publication of the Thoth Deck, however, I came to realize the necessity of activating the documents of authorization Crowley had given me, and of acceding to his plan. Laid out in his letters to me, Crowley indicated that I should act as his Caliph following the death of Karl Germer. Thus, like the Phoenix the O.T.O. rises again. This time the Order is under the aegis of the Caliphate. The criterion of legitimacy is continuity, and this is supplied by the Caliphate letters, and my documents of authorization from Aleister Crowley. Despite silence and suppression, Aleister Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis remains alive and well and initiating in Berkeley.

— Karl's Karma —

From the O.T.O. Newsletter of June 1978

Those of you who have read my rap on "Continuity in the Order" in Vol. I No. 2 of the O.T.O. NEWSLETTER (in which I spoke of my disagreement with Karl Germer, Frater Saturnus, then de facto Outer Head of the Order, over his policy of non-initiation, and of what I tried to do about it) may have gotten the impression that I thought that Karl Germer was a bad ass. This would be a very great mistake. It is true that I thought that his policies were mistaken, and it is true that I did everything in my power to try to get him to change his ways of thinking—short of getting myself kicked out of the Order—, but this was a disagreement over policy. As a person, it was my opinion then, as now, that Karl Germer was a very great man. I have never known a more dedicated Thelemite. Therefore, if he made mistakes and let the Order die in the outer, we must look elsewhere for the explanations. It is possible that I am the only person who knows what really went down on that.

Let us begin with his motto: Saturnus. Time. Aleister Crowley told me that he had once said to Karl; "You must have come straight down!" What was his karma? To bring an end to the time of the Aeon of Osiris so that the Aeon of Horus might begin? It is a thought, but then the same could be said of Jack Parsons manifesting the Anti-Christ. If there is a Christ, then there must be an Anti-Christ to put an end to it. A matter of polarity. I discussed this with Mike Ripple when I was in Syracuse. Mike makes a goodly part of the family bread as a professional in the field of psychiatry. His comment, which I value, was; "Yes, but Saturn devoured his children!" I consider this to be extremely cogent. By refusing to initiate, Germer excluded any possibility of rivalry to his position. Had he followed the instructions in the private codicil to Crowley's Last Will and Testament, and called the convocation of the IXth°'s, he would have been de jura Outer Head of the Order and beyond challenge. Since he did not follow the instructions of his Prophet, and was only de facto O.H.O., he could always be challenged. Paranoia set in. Or did it? I believe that it goes much deeper than that.

Aleister Crowley died in 1947 e.v. Sometime in 1948 or '49 e.v. Germer received three enormous packing crates from England. It was the Crowley library. Germer was living in an apartment in New York City at the time and decided he needed larger quarters to house the library. That is when he moved to Hampton, N.J. It is also when he started to go crazy. He and his wife, Sascha, were absolutely convinced that their house was bugged by the FBI, and used to "talk" to each other by passing notes back and forth so that their conversations could not be recorded. Now Karl Germer was a very bright guy. Hearing him give an extemporaneous lecture on the influence of Napoleon on European nationalism could be a very enlightening experience. But I didn't find out how bright he was until I was serving in the Korean War. The saying there was that the secret of long life for a 2nd Lt. of Infantry was to survive the patrol long enough to inherit the Heavy Weapons section. Once you are behind the mortars and machine guns it is a hell of a lot harder to get to you, and Karl Germer rose from the ranks in the Kaiser's Imperial Army of War I to be a Major of Machine Gunners on the Eastern Front. So how to account for his craziness? Aleister Crowley was the greatest magician who has walked this earth since the time of the Pyramids. He would leave a legacy. There were things in that library that would drive anyone crazy.