From: September Virgin <mouse@network.ucsd.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: Crowley ...... OTO ..... Scientology .
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 18:47:37 -0600
Message-ID: <6epprd$8u2$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: 140.247.159.249
Crowley was a member of a fraternal society begot by a Freemason named Kelner; Crowley also initiated an exclusive and secret Rosicrucian organization known as the Argentum Astrum, and before either event was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which was a fraternal society begot by two Freemasons, one named Woodruff and the other named Wescott. Both the OTO and the Golden Dawn differed from normative Freemasonry in that they allowed women as members and the focused on magical practise and mystical study. The Golden Dawn was an English organization whose members included William Butler Yeats and Arthur Machen. The OTO was a group that acknowledged sexual symbolism within their magic. The OTO were persecuted by the Nazis but managed to survive outside Germany, although some of their leaders were imprisoned and killed during the eradication of undesirables that occurred during the Holocaust.

When Crowley had heard that Hubbard was working with Parsons, he studied their correspondence and found their rituals to be contemptible and a bit outside normative OTO practise. Crowley mentioned to several friends that Parsons had fallen in with a conniving buffoon, but at no point moved to stop him. When Hubbard stole OTO documents and made away with some of Parsons's money, Crowley was by no means sympathetic. Crowley was not a nice man -- but neither was he a satanist. Crowley was a racist, a sexist, and an Anglo Supremecist; he however believed strongly in human freedom and the constitutions of the groups he developed or influenced have always concentrated on individual rights and the abolition of absolute power, be it hierarchial or discursive. More, he would not be fettered by an anthromorphic dualism such as Christianity nor worship their declared imaginary enemy.

Now, Scientology is wont to use some of the out-of-body texts stolen from Parsons, and use both concepts and terms they lifted directly from the OTO, changing Teitan to Thetan, stealing Crowley's ideas of combining Will and Magick and Scientific Method in order to discover magical processes. Crowley wrote some interesting items on therapeutizing the soul, but did not believe it seems that anyone should guide the individual more than that individual and would have balked strongly before allowing case managers to dominate a person's spiritual progression.

Let it be noted that while we dislike Hubbard, we must not assume that it was Crowley's influence on him that made him exercise bad magic. It was probable that Hubbard really wanted to be Crowley when he grew up, for the trashy science fiction author LRH is forever sounding like a bad imitation of the magician AC: both were travellers, though Crowley was better at it, and both were leaders of organizations, and Crowley was less tyrannical and less a liar, although the gentle Beast lied about lying more often than not. Crowley was not satanist. Hubbard was just an idiot and his ideas were stolen unattributed from other sources, be they Korzybski, Timothy Leary, or Aleister Crowley.

love

september

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