Thelemapedia - User contributions [en]

Mentu

2005-07-10T17:44:29Z

Frater DVV:

{{thelema}}

In [[Egyptian mythology]], '''Menthu''' was a hawk-god of war. [[Bakha]] the bull-god was his [[avatar]]. Menthu's name is technically transcribed from Egyptian hieroglyphs as ''mntw''. Because of the difficulty in transcribing Egyptian, it is often realised as ''Mentju'', ''Montju'', ''Menthu'', ''Ment'', ''Month'', ''Montu'' or ''Mont''. Montu’s name means "Nomad." A powerful royal god, he made pharaohs victorious in battle. Montu was the patron of all manner of martial arts and warfare, strength, and masculine virility. He was pictured as a falcon-headed or bull-headed man who wore the sun-disc, with two plumes on his head. Montu was also associated with a white bull with a black face, called Buchis. Egypt’s greatest general-kings called themselves "Mighty Bulls," the sons of Montu. Montu was thought to be the son of Amun and Mut.

==Menthu and Thelema==

The [[Stele of Revealing]] was prepared for (and possibly by) [[Ankh-f-n-khonsu]], a priest of Mentu. On the obverse of the Stele he is referred to as "The deceased, priest of Monthu, Lord of Thebes. . . ." On the reverse, he is again described as "the Osiris (i.e. the deceased), the priest of Monthu (Mentu), Lord of Thebes, the one who opens the doors of the sky in Karnak, the justified Ankh-f-n-Khonsu." These words were paraphrased by [[Aleister Crowley]] in [[The Book of the Law]] as:

I am the Lord of Thebes, and I
The inspired forth-speaker of Mentu. . .
I am thy Theban, O Mentu,
The prophet Ankh-af-na-khonsu!

and on the reverse:

Saith of Mentu the truth-telling brother
Who was master of Thebes from his birth . . . .

==References==

* Wikipedia. (2005). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menthu Menthu]. Retrieved March 2, 2005.

[[Category:Egyptian Godforms]]
[[Category:The Gnostic Saints]]

* Thelemapedia. (2005) [http://www.thelemapedia.org/index.php/Stele_of_Revealing]. Retrieved July 10, 2005.

*Crowley, Aleister. The Book of the Law (c)OTO.

Hebrew

2005-04-11T07:59:56Z

Frater DVV:

Hebrew (Hebrew: Ivrit) is a Semitic language whose ancestry goes back at least to 1700 BCE. There are principally two variants of Hebrew: Classical Hebrew, the language in which the Torah (the five books of Moses) was written, and Modern Hebrew, a somewhat artificial reconstruction and "modernization" of Classical Hebrew for use by Jews in Palestine after 1900 e.v.

==Roots of Hebrew==

As a Semitic language, Hebrew shares roots with Aramaic and Arabic. Indeed, many similarities between the languages still exist. E.g., Class Heb. achad, Mod. Heb. echat, Arabic wahad, "one;" Mod. Heb. shalom, Arabic salaam, "peace." It is also linguistically related to Caananite and Phoenician, two of the languages in use in Caanan at the time of the Exodus from Egypt to Palestine, having evolved from the same root language.

==Classical ("Biblical") Hebrew and the rise of Aramaic over Hebrew==

The first evidence of a distinct Hebrew language is the Gezer calendar, which dates to the 10th century BCE, believed to be about the time of King David and Solomon. This calendar was written in a Phoenician script (the ancestor of our moder Roman/English alphabet) but without vowels or indication of use of vowels, as Hebrew was written for centuries. There is no clear record of when the written Torah or the Tanakh (the complete "Old Testament") was first written; the eariest written texts come from the Dead Sea Scrolls and date to about 100 BCE.

In 586 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar I of Babylon captured Jerusalem and took the two tribes of Judah into captivity in Babylon as slaves. At that time, Aramaic was the language of Babylon; the Jews taken as captives quickly learned it as their lingua franca with their captors. (The "ten lost tribes of Israel" presumably were scattered and co-mingled with their Phoenician and other neighbors, unless one accepts the Mormon concept that they emigrated from Palestine to what is now modern-day New York State.)

Several decades after the capture of Jerusalem, Babylon was captured in turn by Darius of Persia. Darius had adopted Aramaic as his empire's language as well. Although Darius allowed the Jews to return to Palestine, by this time their everyday language had become Aramaic. Hebrew became a language of religion and scholarship, but even major religious works were written in Aramaic. Indeed, the Talmud, the second most important work in Judaism after the TNKH (Tanakh), is largely written in Aramaic.

==Hebrew as an academic and religious language==

After the Diaspora, when Jews were driven from Palestine after the destruction of the Second Temple in AD 70 e.v., Jews adopted the language of whatever country they lived in. But throughout that time, Hebrew remained the one language of scholarship and of the Torah (many of the books of the Prophets were written in Aramaic). Pronunciation of Hebrew differed widely among scholars, especially along the division between Asheknazy (Central European), Sephardic (Iberian and north African) rabbis, and rabbis from the Mesopotamian area. That division is still in evidence in modern Hebrew: speakers of Hebrew in Israel have been known to make fun of immigrants from central Europe for their "Ashkenazy" -- meaning "hick" -- accent.

Nevertheless, despite all differences in the pronounciation of the texts, the texts themselves remained a common bond for Jews. As noted above, Hebrew was originally written without vowels and little indication as to the vowels which might connect consonants. (This, of course, contributed to the confusion on pronunciation). About the eighth centure e.v., and thanks to the work of rabbis called masoretes, a system of indicating vowels and stress on syllables arose. The modern written Hebrew language comes directly from the Masorete script.

==The birth of modern Hebrew==

Hebrew as a spoken, living language was dormant from the time of the Babylonian Exile until the end of the 19th century e.v. As Zionism arose, so did interest in reviving Hebrew as a distinct language unique to Jews. Rabbi Eliezer ben Yehuda (1858-1922 e.v.) led the movement to modernize Hebrew and to use it among Jews moving into Palestine after 1900 e.v. Modern Hebrew is a living language whose foundations are in the Torah, on which have been grafted transplants from every nation in which Jews have lived. Ironically enough, as Hebrew was being brought into the 20th century, its scholars often chose Arabic root stock for new words over European language bases.

Modern Hebrew is now one of the two official languages of the State of Israel, along with Arabic. New immigrants to Israel spend several months in a special school (the Ulpan) where they learn fundamental modern Hebrew as well as the laws and customs of Israel.

==Hebrew for the Thelemite==

A knowledge of written Hebrew, or at least the pre-Masorete letters. This is indispensible for understanding the [[Qabalah]]. While familiarity with grammar and long sentence construction is not absolutely necessary, one must be able to recognize the letters and put them together for words in order to properly apply [[Gematria]]. The more familiar one is with Hebrew and its vocabulary, the more connections one will recognize between words, and the more efficiently one can apply Gematria.

The Thelemite studying Hebrew in-depth will almost certainly want to study classical ("biblical") Hebrew rather than modern Hebrew. The Hebrew words and concepts that have worked their way into Thelema, Qabalah, and hermetic magick in general come from classical Hebrew; their modern spelling and pronunciation may be confusing.

==Sources==

Wikipedia, Hebrew Language. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_language 
Low, Colin. A Depth of Beginning. Published online, http://www.digital-brilliance.com/kab/nok/index.htm

Magical Record

2005-03-14T20:14:05Z

Frater DVV:

{{stub}}
{{thelema}}
A journal or other source of documentation containing [[magick|magical]] events, experiences, ideas, and any other information that the Magician may see fit to add, to such an end that the data may propogate beyond the lifetime of the Mage. Benefits of this process vary, but usually include future analysis and further education by the individual and/or associates with whom the Magician feels comfortable in revealing such intrinsically private information.

With each entry the magical journal should include the Time, Date where the [[Sun]] [[Moon]] and any [[planet|planetary]] activity which may affect the [[magick|magical]] act. One's actions during ritual may be influenced by what happens during one's day, if there is any emotional turmoil or a very exciting instance occurs one should make note of it.

===Crowley's Magical Records===

Most teachers of Hermetic Magick, from [[Eliphas Levi]] to current practioners stress the importance of keeping an accurate and complete magickal record. [[Aleister Crowley]] emphasized this in [[Liber E]]<blockquote> 1. It is absolutely necessary that all experiments should be recorded in detail during, or immediately after, their performance. 
2. It is highly important to note the physical and mental condition of the experimenter or experimenters. 
3. The time and place of all experiments must be noted; also the state of the weather, and generally all conditions which might conceivably have any result upon the experiment either as adjuvants to or causes of the result, or as inhibiting it, or as sources of error. 
4. The A.·. A.·. will not take official notice of any experiments which are not thus properly recorded. 
5. It is not necessary at this stage for us to declare fully the ultimate end of our researches; nor indeed would it be understood by those who have not become proficient in these elementary courses. 
6. The experimenter is encouraged to use his own intelligence, and not to rely upon any other person or persons, however distinguished, even among ourselves. 
7. The written record should be intelligently (WEH NOTE: EQUINOX I, 1 has "intelligibly".) prepared so that others may benefit from its study. 
8. The Book John St. John [[Liber DCCLX]] published in the first number of the "Equinox" is an example of this kind of record by a very advanced student. It is not as simply written as we could wish, but will show the method. 
9. The more scientific the record is, the better. Yet the emotions should be noted, as being some of the conditions. 
Let then the record be written with sincerity and care; thus with practice it will be found more and more to approximate to the ideal.</blockquote>

Crowley often ends his instructions on magickal practice with the admonition to make a complete record of the activity. For example, in the instructions on [[Rising on the Planes]] [[Liber O]], V and VI: "[O]n coming to himself, let him write down soberly and accurately a record of all that hath occurred, yea a record of all that hath occurred."

For other examples of Thelemic magical records, see <a href="http://www.hermetic.com/crowley/libers/lib415.html">Liber 415</a>(The Paris Working), [[The Equinox of the Gods]] ch. 6 and 7, and [[Frater Achad]]'s A Master of the Temple.

Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram

2005-01-17T08:13:46Z

Frater DVV:

The Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram is a fundamental ritual of ceremonial and Thelemic magick. It was originally taught by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn as a banishing ritual. The text is as follows (from Liber O)

The Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram

(i) Touching the forehead say Ateh (Unto Thee).
(ii) Touching the breast say Malkuth (The Kingdom).
(iii) Touching the right shoulder, say ve-Geburah (and the Power).
(iv) Touching the left shoulder, say ve-Gedulah (and the Glory).
(v) Clasping the hands upon the breast, say le-Olahm, Amen (To the Ages, Amen).
(vi) Turning to the East make a pentagram (that of Earth) with the proper weapon (usually the Wand). Say ("i.e." vibrate) I H V H.
(vii) Turning to the South, the same, but say A D N I.
(viii) Turning to the West, the same, but say A H I H.
(ix) Turning to the North, the same, but say A G L A.

Pronounce: Ye-ho-wau, Adonai, Eheieh, Agla.

(x) Extending the arms in the form of a Cross say:
(xi) Before me Raphael;
(xii) Behind me Gabriel;
(xiii) On my right hand Michael.
(xiv) On my left hand Auriel;
(xv) For about me flames the Pentagram,
(xvi) And in the Column stands the six-rayed Star.
(xvii-xxi) Repeat (i) to (v), the Qabalistic Cross. {19}

In certain texts after the publication of Liber O, the word "Aiwass" and a touch to the breast or solar plexus is added to the Qabalistic Cross.

Crowley considered the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram to be fundamental to the student of Thelemic Magick:

"Neglect not the Performance of the Ritual of the Pentagram and of the Assumption of the Form of Hoor-pa-Kraat." -- Liber Aleph, De cultus

"Those who regard this ritual as a mere device to invoke or banish spirits, are unworthy to possess it. Properly understood, it is the Medicine of Metals and the Stone of the Wise. -- Crowley, "The Palace of the World."

==
Sources

Crowley, Aleister. Liber O. (c) OTO
Ibid, The Palace of the World from Collected Works of Aleister Crowley. (c)OTO
Frater Chanokh. The Stone of the Wise: A Study of the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram (PDF file, (c) Frater Chanokh)

Astral projection

2004-11-22T03:49:11Z

Frater DVV: /* References */

Astral projection is a generic term for an "out of body experience" (OOBE) common to many occult and spiritual disciplines whereby the "consciousness" of a person leaves the physical or corporeal body and apparently travels either within the physical world independent of the corporeal body or to other non-physical realms. Astral Projection as a generic term includes such specific phenomena as [[lucid dreaming]] and the Golden Dawn/Thelemic exercise [[Rising on the Planes]].

==Astral Projection as a phenomenon==

As a spiritual experience, astral projection may even be referenced in the Christian/Jewish Bible:
"Remember [your Creator] — before the silver cord is severed,
or the golden bowl is broken;
before the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
or the wheel broken at the well,
and the dust returns to the ground it came from,
and the spirit returns to God who gave it." -- Ecclesiastes 12:6.

The verse refers to an observation common to many manifestations of astral projection: that the "astral body" (the part of consciousness that leaves the corporeal body) is connected to the physical body by a silver or golden cord. Some disciplines teach that if this cord is severed, the soul will separate from the body and physical death or coma will result.

The process of astral projection is usually fairly simple: the practitioner enters a state of relaxation, usually through meditation, sometimes aided by music, chanting or, less frequently, by drugs; he or she envisions a double of his or her body next to the position he or she is in; he or she then transfers her senses and consciousness to the visualized double -- the astral body, or [[body of light]], as Crowley called it, and the astral body then travels wherever the practitioner wants it to go.

==Thelemic Astral Projection: The Body of Light==

Aleister Crowley strongly advocates traveling in the [[Body of Light]] as one of the fundamental tools of Thelema. Chapter XIII of Magick in Theory and Practice describes in detail with "The Body of Light, Its Power and Development" and contains practical instruction on forming the Body of Light: <blockquote>The first thing to do, therefore, is to get the body outside your own. To avoid muddling the two, you begin by imagining a shape resembling yourself standing in front of you. Do not say: "Oh, it's only imagination!" The time to test that is later on, when you have secured a fairly clear mental image of such a body. Try to imagine how your own body would look if you were standing in its place; try to transfer your consciousness to the Body of Light. Your own body has its eyes shut. Use the eyes of the Body of Light to describe the objects in the room behind you. Don't say. "It's only an effort of subconscious memory" ... the time to test that is later on.</blockquote>

Most rituals described by Crowley are to be done in the Body of Light, as are many other inititation rites. Indeed, Crowley admonishes Thelemites to "[t]ravel also much in the Empyrean in the Body of Light, seeking ever Abodes more fiery and lucid" in Liber Aleph. So the practicing Thelemite must master "astral projection" -- travel in the Body of Light -- as an essential method in discovery of his or her True Will, a method "easy, agreeable, not tedious, and in the end . . . certain. . . ." (Liber CL, De Lege Libellum)

==References==
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astral_projection Wikipedia, Astral Projection.
*http://www.astralpulse.com/guides/oobe/oobe.htm Treatise on Astral Projection. Bruce, Robert. (c) 1994-1999.
*Crowley, Aleister. Magick in Theory and Practice.. (c) 1994, OTO
*Crowley, Aleister. Liber CL. De Lege Libellum. (c) OTO.
*Crowley, Aleister. Liber Aleph. (c) OTO.

Astral projection

2004-11-20T09:56:49Z

Frater DVV:

Astral projection is a generic term for an "out of body experience" (OOBE) common to many occult and spiritual disciplines whereby the "consciousness" of a person leaves the physical or corporeal body and apparently travels either within the physical world independent of the corporeal body or to other non-physical realms. Astral Projection as a generic term includes such specific phenomena as [[lucid dreaming]] and the Golden Dawn/Thelemic exercise [[Rising on the Planes]].

==Astral Projection as a phenomenon==

As a spiritual experience, astral projection may even be referenced in the Christian/Jewish Bible:
"Remember [your Creator] — before the silver cord is severed,
or the golden bowl is broken;
before the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
or the wheel broken at the well,
and the dust returns to the ground it came from,
and the spirit returns to God who gave it." -- Ecclesiastes 12:6.

The verse refers to an observation common to many manifestations of astral projection: that the "astral body" (the part of consciousness that leaves the corporeal body) is connected to the physical body by a silver or golden cord. Some disciplines teach that if this cord is severed, the soul will separate from the body and physical death or coma will result.

The process of astral projection is usually fairly simple: the practitioner enters a state of relaxation, usually through meditation, sometimes aided by music, chanting or, less frequently, by drugs; he or she envisions a double of his or her body next to the position he or she is in; he or she then transfers her senses and consciousness to the visualized double -- the astral body, or [[body of light]], as Crowley called it, and the astral body then travels wherever the practitioner wants it to go.

==Thelemic Astral Projection: The Body of Light==

Aleister Crowley strongly advocates traveling in the [[Body of Light]] as one of the fundamental tools of Thelema. Chapter XIII of Magick in Theory and Practice describes in detail with "The Body of Light, Its Power and Development" and contains practical instruction on forming the Body of Light: <blockquote>The first thing to do, therefore, is to get the body outside your own. To avoid muddling the two, you begin by imagining a shape resembling yourself standing in front of you. Do not say: "Oh, it's only imagination!" The time to test that is later on, when you have secured a fairly clear mental image of such a body. Try to imagine how your own body would look if you were standing in its place; try to transfer your consciousness to the Body of Light. Your own body has its eyes shut. Use the eyes of the Body of Light to describe the objects in the room behind you. Don't say. "It's only an effort of subconscious memory" ... the time to test that is later on.</blockquote>

Most rituals described by Crowley are to be done in the Body of Light, as are many other inititation rites. Indeed, Crowley admonishes Thelemites to "[t]ravel also much in the Empyrean in the Body of Light, seeking ever Abodes more fiery and lucid" in Liber Aleph. So the practicing Thelemite must master "astral projection" -- travel in the Body of Light -- as an essential method in discovery of his or her True Will, a method "easy, agreeable, not tedious, and in the end . . . certain. . . ." (Liber CL, De Lege Libellum)

==References==
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astral_projection Wikipedia, Astral Projection.
http://www.astralpulse.com/guides/oobe/oobe.htm Treatise on Astral Projection. Bruce, Robert. (c) 1994-1999.
Crowley, Aleister. Magick in Theory and Practice.. (c) 1994, OTO
Crowley, Aleister. Liber CL. De Lege Libellum. (c) OTO.
Crowley, Aleister. Liber Aleph. (c) OTO.

Astral projection

2004-11-20T09:49:04Z

Frater DVV:

Astral projection is a generic term for an "out of body experience" (OOBE) common to many occult and spiritual disciplines whereby the "consciousness" of a person leaves the physical or corporeal body and apparently travels either within the physical world independent of the corporeal body or to other non-physical realms. Astral Projection as a generic term includes such specific phenomena as [[lucid dreaming]] and the Golden Dawn/Thelemic exercise [[Rising on the Planes]].

As a spiritual experience, astral projection may even be referenced in the Christian/Jewish Bible:
"Remember [your Creator] — before the silver cord is severed,
or the golden bowl is broken;
before the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
or the wheel broken at the well,
and the dust returns to the ground it came from,
and the spirit returns to God who gave it." -- Ecclesiastes 12:6.

The verse refers to an observation common to many manifestations of astral projection: that the "astral body" (the part of consciousness that leaves the corporeal body) is connected to the physical body by a silver or golden cord. Some disciplines teach that if this cord is severed, the soul will separate from the body and physical death or coma will result.

The process of astral projection is usually fairly simple: the practitioner enters a state of relaxation, usually through meditation, sometimes aided by music, chanting or, less frequently, by drugs; he or she envisions a double of his or her body next to the position he or she is in; he or she then transfers her senses and consciousness to the visualized double -- the astral body, or [[body of light]], as Crowley called it, and the astral body then travels wherever the practitioner wants it to go.

Crowley strongly advocates traveling in the Body of Light as one of the fundamental tools of Thelema. Chapter XIII of Magick in Theory and Practice describes in detail with "The Body of Light, Its Power and Development" and contains practical instruction on forming the Body of Light: <blockquote>The first thing to do, therefore, is to get the body outside your own. To avoid muddling the two, you begin by imagining a shape resembling yourself standing in front of you. Do not say: "Oh, it's only imagination!" The time to test that is later on, when you have secured a fairly clear mental image of such a body. Try to imagine how your own body would look if you were standing in its place; try to transfer your consciousness to the Body of Light. Your own body has its eyes shut. Use the eyes of the Body of Light to describe the objects in the room behind you. Don't say. "It's only an effort of subconscious memory" ... the time to test that is later on.</blockquote>

Most rituals described by Crowley are to be done in the Body of Light, as are many other inititation rites. Indeed, Crowley admonishes Thelemites to "[t]ravel also much in the Empyrean in the Body of Light, seeking ever Abodes more fiery and lucid" in Liber Aleph. So the practicing Thelemite must master "astral projection" -- travel in the Body of Light -- as an essential method in discovery of his or her True Will, a method "easy, agreeable, not tedious, and in the end . . . certain. . . ." (Liber CL, De Lege Libellum)

Mary Desti

2004-10-25T09:19:12Z

Frater DVV:

To be completed. DVV

Mary Desti

2004-10-25T09:15:39Z

Frater DVV:

Born Dora Angela Duncanon in San Francisco, California, she is considered the Mother of Modern Dance. Although never very popular in the United States, she entertained throughout Europe, and moved to Paris, France in 1900. There, she lived at the apartment hotel at no. 9, rue Delambre in Montparnasse in the midst of the growing artistic community gathered there. She told friends that in the summer she used to dance in the nearby Luxembourg Garden, the most popular park in Paris, when it opened at five in the morning.

Both in her professional and her private life, she flouted traditional mores and morality. One of her lovers was the theatre designer, Gordon Craig; another was Paris Singer, one of the many sons of Isaac Singer the sewing machine magnate; she bore a child by each of them. Her private life was subject to considerable scandal, especially following the tragic drowning of her children in an accident on the Seine River in 1913. In her last United States tour in 1922-23, she waved a red scarf and bared her breast on stage in Boston, proclaiming, "This red! So am I!".

Montparnasse's developing Bohemian environment did not suit her, and in 1909, she moved to two large apartments at 5 Rue Danton where she lived on the ground floor and used the first floor for her dance school. She danced ballet and gained a wide following that allowed her to set up a school to teach. She became so famous that she inspired artists and authors to create sculpture, jewelry, poetry, novels,photographs, watercolors, prints and paintings. When the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées was built in 1913, her face was carved in the bas-relief by sculptor Antoine Bourdelle and painted in the murals by Maurice Denis.

In 1922 she married the Russian poet, Sergei Yesenin who was 17 years her junior. Yesenin accompanied her on a tour of Europe but his frequent drunken rages, that resulted in the repeated destruction of furniture and the smashing of the doors and windows of their hotel rooms, brought a great deal of negative publicity. The following year he left Duncan and returned to Moscow where he soon suffered a mental breakdown and had to be institutionalized. Released from hospital, he immediately committed suicide on December 28, 1925.

She wore scarves which trailed behind her, and this caused her death in a freak accident in Nice, France. She was killed when her scarf caught in the wheel of her friend Ivan Falchetto's Bugatti automobile. As the driver sped off, the long cloth wrapped around the vehicle's axle. Ms. Duncan was yanked violently from the car and dragged for several yards before the driver realized what had happened. She died almost instantly from a broken neck.

She wrote an autobiography, Ma Vie, and her life story was made into a movie, Isadora, in 1968.

Isadora Duncan was cremated, and her ashes were placed in the columbarium of Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, France.

Aiwass

2004-10-10T08:58:18Z

Frater DVV:

"Behold! it is revealed by Aiwass the minister of Hoor-paar-kraat."
''~Liber AL vel LEGIS I:7''

The Book of the Law being the centraly holy book of Thelema, makes '''Aiwass''' a very important figure. It is he who dictated the work to Aleister Crowley on the three days of the writing of ''The Book of the Law'' in 1904. For those interested in how the work was recieved please see ''The Equinox of the Gods'' chapter 7.

It is impossible to discuss Aiwass without referring to ''The Book of the Law'' for it is through that work that we learn the nature of Aiwass. It is certain that ''Liber AL'' is written in a style wholey uncarachteristic of Crowley. Careful study of the work has revealed that it is filled with manny qabalistic keys and other mysteries, many of which are still unsolved today. These puzzles accompanied with the hurried pace of Crowley's pen make it almost certain that the work comes from some form of higher intelligence communicating the message of the new aeon through Crowley. That intelligence is Aiwass.

Aiwass claims to be the miniter of Hoor-paar-kraat, a god the ancient egyptians knew as Harpocrates. Harpocrates is a form of the god Horus depicted as an innocent child. His mother is Nut, or Nuit in ''Liber AL''. This atribution further emphasizes the role of Aiwass in delivering the word of the crowned and conquring child.

Aleister Crowley believed Aiwass to have been one of the [[Secret Chiefs]] of the A.'. A.'..

Secret Chiefs

2004-10-10T08:55:45Z

Frater DVV:

Secret Chiefs (sometimes "Secret Chiefs of the A.'.A.'.") Aleister Crowley's term for those praeternatural entities which direct the progress of humanity for ends that are usually beyond the ken of mortal men. The Secret Chiefs are of at least the grade of Magus and Magister Templi, may or may not be in human form depending on their own needs at the time, and are utterly unknown to the rest of humanity except in the very rare times when they find it part of their plan to reveal themselves to one person.

Crowley stated that he believes that [[Aiwass]], who dictated [[The Book of the Law]] to him, and [[Ab-ul-Diz]] and [[Amalantrah]], entities he contacted in other workings, were all Secret Chiefs. In Magick Without Tears he also stated he suspected that a man of his acquaintance (whom he did not name in that particular article) was also a Secret Chief.

The Secret Chiefs are possessed of immense powers, called the "Ophidian Vibrations" which allow them to "insinuate [themselves] into any desired set of circumstances." (MWT, 9:92) These powers allow the Secret Chiefs "to induce a girl to embroider a taperstry, or initiate a political movement to culminate in a world-war; all in pursuit of some plan wholly beyond the purview or the comprehension of the deepest and subtlest thinkers." (MWT, 9:92-93)

The primary discussion of the Secret Chiefs is in [[Magick Without Tears]], chapter 9, although the term appears in many of Crowley's writings.

==Source==
Crowley, Aleister. Magick Without Tears. Israel Regardie, ed. New Falcon Publications, 1991.

Secret Chiefs

2004-10-10T08:50:16Z

Frater DVV:

Secret Chiefs (sometimes "Secret Chiefs of the A.'.A.'.") Aleister Crowley's term for those praeternatural entities which direct the progress of humanity for ends that are usually beyond the ken of mortal men. The Secret Chiefs are of at least the grade of Magus and Magister Templi, may or may not be in human form depending on their own needs at the time, and are utterly unknown to the rest of humanity except in the very rare times when they find it part of their plan to reveal themselves to one person.

Crowley stated that he believes that [[Aiwass]], who dictated the [[Book of the Law]] to him, and [[Ab-ul-Diz]] and [[Amalantrah]], entities he contacted in other workings, were all Secret Chiefs. In Magick Without Tears he also stated he suspected that a man of his acquaintance (whom he did not name in that particular article) was also a Secret Chief.

The Secret Chiefs are possessed of immense powers, called the "Ophidian Vibrations" which allow them to "insinuate [themselves] into any desired set of circumstances." (MWT, 9:92) These powers allow the Secret Chiefs "to induce a girl to embroider a taperstry, or initiate a political movement to culminate in a world-war; all in pursuit of some plan wholly beyond the purview or the comprehension of the deepest and subtlest thinkers." (MWT, 9:92-93)

The primary discussion of the Secret Chiefs is in [[Magick Without Tears]], chapter 9, although the term appears in many of Crowley's writings.

==Source==
Crowley, Aleister. Magick Without Tears. Israel Regardie, ed. New Falcon Publications, 1991.

Theodor Reuss

2004-10-08T16:57:50Z

Frater DVV:

Theodor Reuss (1855 - 1923 e.v.) Theodor Reuss was an Anglo-German tantric occultist, utopian socialist, journalist, singer, and promoter of Women's Liberation; and the successor to [[Carl Kellner]] as head of [[O.T.O.]]

Reuss was born the son of an innkeeper at Augsburg on June 28, 1855 e.v. He was a professional singer in his youth, and was privileged to work under [[Richard Wagner]], whom he first met, along with Wagner's patron, King [[Ludovicus Rex Bavariae|Ludwig II]] of Bavaria, in 1873. He took part in the first performance of Wagner's Parsifal at Bayreuth in 1882. He later became a newspaper correspondent, and travelled frequently as such to England, where he became a Mason in 1876. He also spent some time there as a journalist and as a music-hall singer under the stage name "Charles Theodore."

In 1880, in Munich, he participated in an attempt to revive Adam Weishaupt's Bavarian Order of Illuminati. In 1885, in England, he joined the British Social League, which some say he joined to spy on Karl Marx's daughter for the German Secret Service. While in England, he became friends with [[William Wynn Wescott]], the Supreme Magus of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia and one of the founders of the [[Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn]]. Wescott provided Reuss with a charter dated July 26, 1901 for the Swedenborgian Rite of Masonry and a letter of authorization dated Feb. 24, 1902 to found a High Council in Germania of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia. Gérard Encausse provided him with a charter dated June 24, 1901 designating him Special Inspector for the Martinist Order in Germany. In 1888, in Berlin, he joined with Leopold Engel of Dresden, Max Rahn and August Weinholz in another effort to revive the Illuminati Order. In 1895, he began to discuss the formation of [[Ordo Templi Orientis]] with Carl Kellner.

The discussions between Reuss and Kellner did not lead to any positive results at the time, allegedly because Kellner disapproved with Reuss's connections with Engel. According to Reuss, upon his final separation with Engel in June of 1902, Kellner contacted him and the two agreed to proceed with the establishment of the Oriental Templar Order by seeking authorizations to work the various rites of high-grade Masonry. Wescott assisted Reuss to contact the English Masonic scholar, John Yarker (1833-1913). Along with his associates Franz Hartmann and Henry Klein, he activated the Masonic Rites of Memphis and Mizraim and a branch of the Scottish Rite in Germany with charters from Yarker. Reuss received letters-patent as a Sovereign Grand Inspector General 33° of the Cernau Scottish Rite from Yarker dated September 24, 1902. On the same date, Yarker appears to have issued a warrant to Reuss, Franz Hartmann and Henry Klein to operate a Sovereign Sanctuary 33°-95° of the Scottish, Memphis and Mizraim rites. The original document is not extant, but a transcript of this warrant was published in Reuss's newsletter, The Oriflamme in 1911, which commenced publication in 1902. Yarker issued a charter confirming Reuss's authority to operate said rites on July 1, 1904; and Reuss published a transcript of an additional confirming charter dated June 24, 1905. Reuss and Kellner together prepared a brief manifesto for their Order in 1903, which was published the next year in The Oriflamme.

When Carl Kellner died in 1905, the leadership of the Academia Masonica of O.T.O. fell upon Reuss's shoulders, and he incorporated all his other organizations under its banner, developing the three degrees of the Academia Masonica, available to Masons only, into a coherent, self-contained initiatory system, open to both men and women. He promulgated a constitution for this new, enlarged O.T.O. on June 21, 1906 in London (his place of residence since January 1906) and the next month proclaimed himself Outer Head of the Order (O.H.O.). That same year he published Lingham-Yoni, which was a German translation of Hargrave Jennings's work Phallism, and issued a warrant to Rudolph Steiner (1861-1925, who was at the time the Secretary General of the German branch of the [[Theosophical Society]]), making him Deputy Grand Master of a subordinate O.T.O./Memphis/Mizraim Chapter and Grand Council called "Mystica Aeterna" in Berlin. Steiner went on to found the Anthroposophical Society in 1912, and ended his association with Reuss in 1914.

On June 24, 1908, Reuss attended Encausse's "International Masonic and Spiritualist Conference" in Paris. At this conference, Reuss issued to Encausse a warrant to establish a "Supreme Grand Council General of the Unified Rites of Antient and Primitive Masonry for the Grand Orient of France and its Dependencies at Paris," and possibly received authority in Église Catholique Gnostique. He also appointed Dr. Arnold Krumm-Heller (Huiracocha, 1879-1949) as his official representative for Latin America.

While living in London, Reuss became acquainted with [[Aleister Crowley]]. In 1910, he made Crowley a VII° of O.T.O. (based on Crowley's previously held 33° in the Scottish Rite), and in 1912, he conferred upon him the IX° and appointed him National Grand Master General X° for the O.T.O. in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland by charter dated June 1, 1912. Crowley's appointment included authority over an English language rite of the lower (Masonic) degrees of O.T.O. which was given the name Mysteria Mystica Maxima, or M:.M:.M:. In 1913, Crowley issued a Constitution for the M:.M:.M:. and the Manifesto of the M:.M:.M:., which he subsequently redrafted and issued as Liber LII, the Manifesto of the O.T.O. In 1913, Crowley wrote [[Liber XV]], the Gnostic Mass for Reuss's Gnostic Catholic Church. Crowley also dedicated his Mystery Play The Ship (1913) and a collection of poetry, The Giant's Thumb (1915) to Reuss.

In 1914, at the outset of World War I, Reuss left England and returned to Germany. He worked briefly for the Red Cross in Berlin, then, in 1916, moved to Basle, Switzerland. While there, he established an "Anational Grand Lodge and Mystic Temple" of O.T.O. and the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light at Monte Verità, a utopian commune near Ascona founded in 1900 by Henri Oedenkoven and Ida Hofmann, which functioned as a center for the Progressive Underground. On January 22, 1917, Reuss published a manifesto for this Anational Grand Lodge, which was called "Verità Mystica." On the same date, he published a revised O.T.O. Constitution (based in a large part on Crowley's 1913 Constitution of the M:.M:.M:.), with a "Synopsis of Degrees" and an abridgment of The Message of the Master Therion appended. Reuss held an "Anational Congress for Organising the Reconstruction of Society on Practical Cooperative Lines" at Monte Verità from August 15-25, 1917. This Congress included readings of Crowley's poetry (on August 22) and a recitation of Crowley's Gnostic Mass (on August 24). On October 24, 1917, Reuss Chartered an O.T.O. Lodge, "Libertas et Fraternitas" in Zürich. This Lodge later placed itself under the Masonic jurisdiction of the Swiss Grand Lodge Alpina.

In 1918, Reuss published his German translation of Crowley's Gnostic Mass. In a note at the end of his translation of Liber XV, he referred to himself as, simultaneously, the Sovereign Patriarch and Primate of the Gnostic Catholic Church, and Gnostic Legate to Switzerland of the Église Gnostique Universelle, acknowledging Jean Bricaud (1881-1934 -- on left in photo) as Sovereign Patriarch of that church. The issuance of this document can be viewed as the birth of the Thelemic E.G.C. as an independent organization under the umbrella of O.T.O., with Reuss as its first Patriarch.

Reuss was clearly impressed with Thelema. Crowley's Gnostic Mass, which Reuss translated into German and had recited at his Anational Congress at Monte Verità, is an explicitly Thelemic ritual. In an undated letter to Crowley (received in 1917), Reuss reported exitedly that he had read The Message of the Master Therion to a gathering at Monte Verità, and that he was translating The Book of the Law into German. He added, "Let this new encourage you! We live in your Work!!!"

Reuss left Monte Verità some time before November 1918. On May 10, 1919, Reuss issued a "Gauge of Amity" document to Matthew McBlain Thomson, founder of the ill-fated "American Masonic Federation." On September 18, 1919, Reuss was reconsecrated by Bricaud, thus receiving the "Antioch Succession," and re-appointed as "Gnostic Legate" to Switzerland for Bricaud's Église Gnostique Universelle. In 1920, Oedenkoven and Hofmann abandoned Monte Verità in 1920 to establish a second colony in Brazil, and Reuss published a document titled The Program of Construction and the Guiding Principles of the Gnostic Neo-Christians: O.T.O.

On July 17, 1920, he attended the Congress of the "World Federation of Universal Freemasonry" in Zürich, which lasted several days. Reuss, with Bricaud's support, advocated the adoption of the religion of Crowley's Gnostic Mass as the "official religion for all members of the World Federation of Universal Freemasonry in possession of the 18° of the Scottish Rite." Reuss's efforts in this regard were a failure, and he left the Congress after the first day. On May 10, 1921, Reuss issued X° Charters to [[Charles Stansfeld Jones]] and [Heinrich Tränker] to serve as Grand Masters for the U.S.A. and Germany, respectively. On July 30, 1921, Reuss issued another "Gauge of Amity" document, this time to [[H. Spencer Lewis]], founder of A.M.O.R.C., the San Jose, California based Rosicrucian organization. Reuss returned to Germany in September of 1921, settling in Munich.

There is some reason to believe that Reuss suffered a stroke in the Spring of 1920, but this is not entirely certain. Crowley wrote to W.T. Smith in March of 1943: "the late O.H.O., after his first stroke of paralysis, got into a panic about the work being carried on... He hastily issued honorary diplomas of the Seventh Degree to various people, some of whom had no right to anything at all and some of whom were only cheap crooks." Shortly after appointing him his Viceroy for Australia, Crowley appears to have corresponded with his student Frank Bennett and discussed with him his doubts about Reuss's continuing ability to effectively govern the Order. It would appear that Reuss discovered the correspondence; he wrote Crowley an angry, defensive response on November 9, 1921, in which he appeared to distance himself and O.T.O. from Thelema, which, as shown above, he had previously embraced. Crowley replied to Reuss's letter on November 23, 1921, and stated in his letter, "It is my will to be O.H.O. and Frater Superior of the Order and avail myself of your abdication -- to proclaim myself as such." He signed the letter "Baphomet O.H.O." Reuss's response is not extant, but Crowley recounts in his Confessions that Reuss "resigned the office [of O.H.O.] in 1922 in my favour." However, it does not appear that Crowley waited for Reuss's response to assume his duties. In a diary entry for November 27, 1921, Crowley wrote: "I have proclaimed myself O.H.O. Frater Superior of the Order of Oriental Templars." Reuss died on October 28, 1923. In a letter to Heinrich Tränker dated February 14, 1925, Crowley stated the following: "Reuss was very uncertain in temper, and in many ways unreliable. In his last years he seems to have completely lost his grip, even accusing The Book of the Law of communistic tendencies, than which no statement could be more absurd. Yet it seems that he must have been to some extent correctly led, on account of his having made the appointments of yourself and Frater Achad, and designating me in his last letter as his successor." In a letter to Charles Stansfeld Jones dated Sun in Capricorn, Anno XX (Dec. 1924 - Jan. 1925), Crowley said, "in the O.H.O.'s last letter to me he invited me to become his successor as O.H.O. and Frater Superior." Reuss's letter designating Crowley his successor as O.H.O. has not been found, but no credible documentation has surfaced which would indicate that Reuss ever designated any alternative successor.

Reuss's writings include: The Matrimonial Question from an Anarchistic Point of View (1887); Die Mysterien der Illuminaten (1894); Geschichte des Illuminaten-Ordens (1896); Was muss man von der Freimauerei wissen? (1901); Was ist Okkultismus und wie erlangt man occulte Kräfte? (1903); Was muss man von Richard Wagner und seinen Ton-dramen wissen? (1903); Lingam-Yoni; oder die Mysterien des Geschlechts-Kultus (1906); Allgemeine Satzungen des Ordens der Orientalischem Templer O.T.O. (1906; Parsifal und das Enthüllte Grals-Geheimnis (1914); Constitution of the Ancient Order of Oriental Templars, O.T.O., Ordo Templi Orientis, with an Introduction and a Synopsis of the Degrees of the O.T.O. (1917); Die Gnostische Messe (1920); Das Aufbau-Programm und die Leitsätze der Gnostischen Neo-Christen (1920); and numerous articles published in his periodical Oriflamme (1902-1914).

==References==
*http://www.hermetic.com/sabazius/reuss.htm The Invisible Basilica of Sabazius: Theodor Reuss. (c) Sabazius X. Used with grateful acknowledgement and by kind permission.
*Howe, Ellic; "Theodor Reuss: Irregular Freemasonry in Germany, 1900-23" in Ars Quatuor Coronati, Feb. 1978
*König, Peter-Robert; Das OTO-Phänomenon, A.R.W., München 1994
*Merlin Peregrinus (Theodor Reuss); I.N.R.I., O.T.O., Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae, Canon Missae, Die Gnostische Messe [1918], privately published by the Oriflamme 1920, translated by Marcus M. Jungkurth
*Möller, Helmut and Ellic Howe; Merlin Peregrinus, vom Untergrund des Abendlandes, Königshausen & Neumann, Würtzburg 1986
*Reuss, Theodor; I.N.R.I. Constitution of the Ancient Order of Oriental Templars, O.T.O., Ordo Templi Orientis, with an Introduction and a Synopsis of the Degrees of the O.T.O., 1917
*Reuss, Theodor; Ordo Templi Orientis - Hermetic Brotherhood of Light. Anational Grand Lodge & Mystic Temple: "Verità Mystica", or Ascona. Manifesto., Ascona, Switzerland 1917
*Reuss, Theodor; I.N.R.I. The Programme of Construction and the Guiding Principles of the Gnostic Neo-Christians, O.T.O., 1920
*Reuss, Theodor; Introduction to Lingham-Yoni (Phallism, by Hargrave Jennings), Verlag Wilsson, Berlin 1906
*Shepard, Leslie (Ed.); Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, 2nd. Ed., Gale Research Co., Detroit MI 1984
*Symonds, John and Kenneth Grant, eds.; The Magical Record of the Beast 666, Duckworth, London 1972

Theodor Reuss

2004-10-08T16:56:34Z

Frater DVV:

Theodor Reuss (1855 - 1923 e.v.) Theodor Reuss was an Anglo-German tantric occultist, utopian socialist, journalist, singer, and promoter of Women's Liberation; and the successor to [[Carl Kellner]] as head of [[O.T.O.]]

Reuss was born the son of an innkeeper at Augsburg on June 28, 1855 e.v. He was a professional singer in his youth, and was privileged to work under [[Richard Wagner]], whom he first met, along with Wagner's patron, King [[Ludovico Rex Bavariae|Ludwig II]] of Bavaria, in 1873. He took part in the first performance of Wagner's Parsifal at Bayreuth in 1882. He later became a newspaper correspondent, and travelled frequently as such to England, where he became a Mason in 1876. He also spent some time there as a journalist and as a music-hall singer under the stage name "Charles Theodore."

In 1880, in Munich, he participated in an attempt to revive Adam Weishaupt's Bavarian Order of Illuminati. In 1885, in England, he joined the British Social League, which some say he joined to spy on Karl Marx's daughter for the German Secret Service. While in England, he became friends with [[William Wynn Wescott]], the Supreme Magus of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia and one of the founders of the [[Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn]]. Wescott provided Reuss with a charter dated July 26, 1901 for the Swedenborgian Rite of Masonry and a letter of authorization dated Feb. 24, 1902 to found a High Council in Germania of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia. Gérard Encausse provided him with a charter dated June 24, 1901 designating him Special Inspector for the Martinist Order in Germany. In 1888, in Berlin, he joined with Leopold Engel of Dresden, Max Rahn and August Weinholz in another effort to revive the Illuminati Order. In 1895, he began to discuss the formation of [[Ordo Templi Orientis]] with Carl Kellner.

The discussions between Reuss and Kellner did not lead to any positive results at the time, allegedly because Kellner disapproved with Reuss's connections with Engel. According to Reuss, upon his final separation with Engel in June of 1902, Kellner contacted him and the two agreed to proceed with the establishment of the Oriental Templar Order by seeking authorizations to work the various rites of high-grade Masonry. Wescott assisted Reuss to contact the English Masonic scholar, John Yarker (1833-1913). Along with his associates Franz Hartmann and Henry Klein, he activated the Masonic Rites of Memphis and Mizraim and a branch of the Scottish Rite in Germany with charters from Yarker. Reuss received letters-patent as a Sovereign Grand Inspector General 33° of the Cernau Scottish Rite from Yarker dated September 24, 1902. On the same date, Yarker appears to have issued a warrant to Reuss, Franz Hartmann and Henry Klein to operate a Sovereign Sanctuary 33°-95° of the Scottish, Memphis and Mizraim rites. The original document is not extant, but a transcript of this warrant was published in Reuss's newsletter, The Oriflamme in 1911, which commenced publication in 1902. Yarker issued a charter confirming Reuss's authority to operate said rites on July 1, 1904; and Reuss published a transcript of an additional confirming charter dated June 24, 1905. Reuss and Kellner together prepared a brief manifesto for their Order in 1903, which was published the next year in The Oriflamme.

When Carl Kellner died in 1905, the leadership of the Academia Masonica of O.T.O. fell upon Reuss's shoulders, and he incorporated all his other organizations under its banner, developing the three degrees of the Academia Masonica, available to Masons only, into a coherent, self-contained initiatory system, open to both men and women. He promulgated a constitution for this new, enlarged O.T.O. on June 21, 1906 in London (his place of residence since January 1906) and the next month proclaimed himself Outer Head of the Order (O.H.O.). That same year he published Lingham-Yoni, which was a German translation of Hargrave Jennings's work Phallism, and issued a warrant to Rudolph Steiner (1861-1925, who was at the time the Secretary General of the German branch of the [[Theosophical Society]]), making him Deputy Grand Master of a subordinate O.T.O./Memphis/Mizraim Chapter and Grand Council called "Mystica Aeterna" in Berlin. Steiner went on to found the Anthroposophical Society in 1912, and ended his association with Reuss in 1914.

On June 24, 1908, Reuss attended Encausse's "International Masonic and Spiritualist Conference" in Paris. At this conference, Reuss issued to Encausse a warrant to establish a "Supreme Grand Council General of the Unified Rites of Antient and Primitive Masonry for the Grand Orient of France and its Dependencies at Paris," and possibly received authority in Église Catholique Gnostique. He also appointed Dr. Arnold Krumm-Heller (Huiracocha, 1879-1949) as his official representative for Latin America.

While living in London, Reuss became acquainted with [[Aleister Crowley]]. In 1910, he made Crowley a VII° of O.T.O. (based on Crowley's previously held 33° in the Scottish Rite), and in 1912, he conferred upon him the IX° and appointed him National Grand Master General X° for the O.T.O. in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland by charter dated June 1, 1912. Crowley's appointment included authority over an English language rite of the lower (Masonic) degrees of O.T.O. which was given the name Mysteria Mystica Maxima, or M:.M:.M:. In 1913, Crowley issued a Constitution for the M:.M:.M:. and the Manifesto of the M:.M:.M:., which he subsequently redrafted and issued as Liber LII, the Manifesto of the O.T.O. In 1913, Crowley wrote [[Liber XV]], the Gnostic Mass for Reuss's Gnostic Catholic Church. Crowley also dedicated his Mystery Play The Ship (1913) and a collection of poetry, The Giant's Thumb (1915) to Reuss.

In 1914, at the outset of World War I, Reuss left England and returned to Germany. He worked briefly for the Red Cross in Berlin, then, in 1916, moved to Basle, Switzerland. While there, he established an "Anational Grand Lodge and Mystic Temple" of O.T.O. and the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light at Monte Verità, a utopian commune near Ascona founded in 1900 by Henri Oedenkoven and Ida Hofmann, which functioned as a center for the Progressive Underground. On January 22, 1917, Reuss published a manifesto for this Anational Grand Lodge, which was called "Verità Mystica." On the same date, he published a revised O.T.O. Constitution (based in a large part on Crowley's 1913 Constitution of the M:.M:.M:.), with a "Synopsis of Degrees" and an abridgment of The Message of the Master Therion appended. Reuss held an "Anational Congress for Organising the Reconstruction of Society on Practical Cooperative Lines" at Monte Verità from August 15-25, 1917. This Congress included readings of Crowley's poetry (on August 22) and a recitation of Crowley's Gnostic Mass (on August 24). On October 24, 1917, Reuss Chartered an O.T.O. Lodge, "Libertas et Fraternitas" in Zürich. This Lodge later placed itself under the Masonic jurisdiction of the Swiss Grand Lodge Alpina.

In 1918, Reuss published his German translation of Crowley's Gnostic Mass. In a note at the end of his translation of Liber XV, he referred to himself as, simultaneously, the Sovereign Patriarch and Primate of the Gnostic Catholic Church, and Gnostic Legate to Switzerland of the Église Gnostique Universelle, acknowledging Jean Bricaud (1881-1934 -- on left in photo) as Sovereign Patriarch of that church. The issuance of this document can be viewed as the birth of the Thelemic E.G.C. as an independent organization under the umbrella of O.T.O., with Reuss as its first Patriarch.

Reuss was clearly impressed with Thelema. Crowley's Gnostic Mass, which Reuss translated into German and had recited at his Anational Congress at Monte Verità, is an explicitly Thelemic ritual. In an undated letter to Crowley (received in 1917), Reuss reported exitedly that he had read The Message of the Master Therion to a gathering at Monte Verità, and that he was translating The Book of the Law into German. He added, "Let this new encourage you! We live in your Work!!!"

Reuss left Monte Verità some time before November 1918. On May 10, 1919, Reuss issued a "Gauge of Amity" document to Matthew McBlain Thomson, founder of the ill-fated "American Masonic Federation." On September 18, 1919, Reuss was reconsecrated by Bricaud, thus receiving the "Antioch Succession," and re-appointed as "Gnostic Legate" to Switzerland for Bricaud's Église Gnostique Universelle. In 1920, Oedenkoven and Hofmann abandoned Monte Verità in 1920 to establish a second colony in Brazil, and Reuss published a document titled The Program of Construction and the Guiding Principles of the Gnostic Neo-Christians: O.T.O.

On July 17, 1920, he attended the Congress of the "World Federation of Universal Freemasonry" in Zürich, which lasted several days. Reuss, with Bricaud's support, advocated the adoption of the religion of Crowley's Gnostic Mass as the "official religion for all members of the World Federation of Universal Freemasonry in possession of the 18° of the Scottish Rite." Reuss's efforts in this regard were a failure, and he left the Congress after the first day. On May 10, 1921, Reuss issued X° Charters to [[Charles Stansfeld Jones]] and [Heinrich Tränker] to serve as Grand Masters for the U.S.A. and Germany, respectively. On July 30, 1921, Reuss issued another "Gauge of Amity" document, this time to [[H. Spencer Lewis]], founder of A.M.O.R.C., the San Jose, California based Rosicrucian organization. Reuss returned to Germany in September of 1921, settling in Munich.

There is some reason to believe that Reuss suffered a stroke in the Spring of 1920, but this is not entirely certain. Crowley wrote to W.T. Smith in March of 1943: "the late O.H.O., after his first stroke of paralysis, got into a panic about the work being carried on... He hastily issued honorary diplomas of the Seventh Degree to various people, some of whom had no right to anything at all and some of whom were only cheap crooks." Shortly after appointing him his Viceroy for Australia, Crowley appears to have corresponded with his student Frank Bennett and discussed with him his doubts about Reuss's continuing ability to effectively govern the Order. It would appear that Reuss discovered the correspondence; he wrote Crowley an angry, defensive response on November 9, 1921, in which he appeared to distance himself and O.T.O. from Thelema, which, as shown above, he had previously embraced. Crowley replied to Reuss's letter on November 23, 1921, and stated in his letter, "It is my will to be O.H.O. and Frater Superior of the Order and avail myself of your abdication -- to proclaim myself as such." He signed the letter "Baphomet O.H.O." Reuss's response is not extant, but Crowley recounts in his Confessions that Reuss "resigned the office [of O.H.O.] in 1922 in my favour." However, it does not appear that Crowley waited for Reuss's response to assume his duties. In a diary entry for November 27, 1921, Crowley wrote: "I have proclaimed myself O.H.O. Frater Superior of the Order of Oriental Templars." Reuss died on October 28, 1923. In a letter to Heinrich Tränker dated February 14, 1925, Crowley stated the following: "Reuss was very uncertain in temper, and in many ways unreliable. In his last years he seems to have completely lost his grip, even accusing The Book of the Law of communistic tendencies, than which no statement could be more absurd. Yet it seems that he must have been to some extent correctly led, on account of his having made the appointments of yourself and Frater Achad, and designating me in his last letter as his successor." In a letter to Charles Stansfeld Jones dated Sun in Capricorn, Anno XX (Dec. 1924 - Jan. 1925), Crowley said, "in the O.H.O.'s last letter to me he invited me to become his successor as O.H.O. and Frater Superior." Reuss's letter designating Crowley his successor as O.H.O. has not been found, but no credible documentation has surfaced which would indicate that Reuss ever designated any alternative successor.

Reuss's writings include: The Matrimonial Question from an Anarchistic Point of View (1887); Die Mysterien der Illuminaten (1894); Geschichte des Illuminaten-Ordens (1896); Was muss man von der Freimauerei wissen? (1901); Was ist Okkultismus und wie erlangt man occulte Kräfte? (1903); Was muss man von Richard Wagner und seinen Ton-dramen wissen? (1903); Lingam-Yoni; oder die Mysterien des Geschlechts-Kultus (1906); Allgemeine Satzungen des Ordens der Orientalischem Templer O.T.O. (1906; Parsifal und das Enthüllte Grals-Geheimnis (1914); Constitution of the Ancient Order of Oriental Templars, O.T.O., Ordo Templi Orientis, with an Introduction and a Synopsis of the Degrees of the O.T.O. (1917); Die Gnostische Messe (1920); Das Aufbau-Programm und die Leitsätze der Gnostischen Neo-Christen (1920); and numerous articles published in his periodical Oriflamme (1902-1914).

==References==
*http://www.hermetic.com/sabazius/reuss.htm The Invisible Basilica of Sabazius: Theodor Reuss. (c) Sabazius X. Used with grateful acknowledgement and by kind permission.
*Howe, Ellic; "Theodor Reuss: Irregular Freemasonry in Germany, 1900-23" in Ars Quatuor Coronati, Feb. 1978
*König, Peter-Robert; Das OTO-Phänomenon, A.R.W., München 1994
*Merlin Peregrinus (Theodor Reuss); I.N.R.I., O.T.O., Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae, Canon Missae, Die Gnostische Messe [1918], privately published by the Oriflamme 1920, translated by Marcus M. Jungkurth
*Möller, Helmut and Ellic Howe; Merlin Peregrinus, vom Untergrund des Abendlandes, Königshausen & Neumann, Würtzburg 1986
*Reuss, Theodor; I.N.R.I. Constitution of the Ancient Order of Oriental Templars, O.T.O., Ordo Templi Orientis, with an Introduction and a Synopsis of the Degrees of the O.T.O., 1917
*Reuss, Theodor; Ordo Templi Orientis - Hermetic Brotherhood of Light. Anational Grand Lodge & Mystic Temple: "Verità Mystica", or Ascona. Manifesto., Ascona, Switzerland 1917
*Reuss, Theodor; I.N.R.I. The Programme of Construction and the Guiding Principles of the Gnostic Neo-Christians, O.T.O., 1920
*Reuss, Theodor; Introduction to Lingham-Yoni (Phallism, by Hargrave Jennings), Verlag Wilsson, Berlin 1906
*Shepard, Leslie (Ed.); Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, 2nd. Ed., Gale Research Co., Detroit MI 1984
*Symonds, John and Kenneth Grant, eds.; The Magical Record of the Beast 666, Duckworth, London 1972

Gerard Encausse

2004-10-07T14:56:44Z

Frater DVV:

Dr. Gerard Encausse (1865 - 1916 e.v.) Gérard Encausse, usually known by his pseudonym '''Papus''', was a Spanish-born French physician, hypnotist, and popularizer of [[occult]]ism. He is a [[The Gnostic Saints|Gnostic Saint]] of the [[Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica|E.G.C.]]. Encausse's pseudonym "Papus" was taken from Lévi's ''Nuctemeron of Apollonius of Tyana'' (supplement to ''Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie'') and means "physician." Papus is primarily remembered as an author of books on [[magick|magic]], [[Qabalah]] and the [[Tarot]], and as a prominent figure in the various occultist organizations and Parisian spiritualist and literary circles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries e.v.

==l'Ordre des Supérieurs Inconnus==

In 1891, Papus claimed to have come into the possession of the original papers of Martinez Paschalis, or de Pasqually (c.1700-1774 e.v.), and therewith founded a Masonic Order of Martinists called l'Ordre des Supérieurs Inconnus. He claimed to have been given authority in the Rite of Saint-Martin by his friend Henri Viscount Delaage, who claimed that his maternal grandfather had been initiated into the order by Saint-Martin himself, and who had attempted to revive the order in 1887. The Martinist Order was to become a primary focus for Papus, and continues today as one of his most enduring legacies.

==Bishop of l'Église Gnostique de France==

In 1893, Papus was consecrated a bishop of l'Église Gnostique de France by [[Jules Doinel]], who had founded this Church as an attempt to revive the Cathar religion in 1890. In 1895, Doinel abdicated as Primate of the French Gnostic Church leaving control of the Church to a synod of three of his former bishops, one of whom was Papus. In March of the same year, Papus joined the Ahathoor Temple of the Golden Dawn in Paris.

==Papus and Reuss==

Papus never became a regular (Grand Orient) [[Freemasonry|Freemason]]. Despite this, he organized what was announced as an "International Masonic Conference" in Paris on June 24, 1908, and at this conference he received a patent from [[Theodor Reuss]] to establish a "Supreme Grand Council General of the Unified Rites of Antient and Primitive Masonry for the Grand Orient of France and its Dependencies at Paris." It was probably on the same occasion that Reuss conferred upon Papus the X° of for France, and Papus in turn assisted Reuss in the formation of the O.T.O. [[Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica|Gnostic Catholic Church]] as a child of . When [[John Yarker]] died in 1913, Papus was elected as his successor to the office of Grand Hierophant (international head) of the Antient and Primitive Rites of Memphis and Mizraim.

Although Papus was never a regular Mason, he organized an "International Masonic Conference" at which he first met Theodor Reuss. The two exchanged patents; Reuss elevating Papus as X* of the [[Ordo Templi Orientis|O.T.O.]]'s Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica as well as giving him license to establish a "Supreme Grand Council General of the Unified Rites of Antient and Primitive Masonry for the Grand Orient of France and its Dependencies at Paris." For his part, Papus allowed that the E.G.C. was a "child" of l'Église Gnostique de France, thus binding the E.G.C. to French "neo-gnosticism."

==Life overview==

Encausse was born at La Coruña in Spain on July 13, 1865, of a Spanish mother and a French father, Louis Encausse, a chemist. His family moved to Paris when he was four years old, and he received his education there. As a young man, Encausse spent a great deal of time at the Bibliothèque Nationale studying the Qabalah, the Tarot, the sciences of magic and alchemy, and the writings of [[Eliphas Levi|Eliphas Lévi]]. He joined the French [[Theosophical Society]] shortly after it was founded by [[Madame Blavatsky]] in 1884-85, but he resigned shortly after joining because he disliked the Theosophical Society's emphasis on Eastern occultism. He was also a member of the [[Hermetic Brotherhood of Light|H.B. of L.]] In 1888, he and his friend Lucien Chamuel founded the Librarie du Merveilleux and its monthly revue L'Initiation, which remained in publication until 1914.

Although Papus claimed as his "spiritual master" the mysterious magician and healer known as "le Maitre Philippe" (Philippe Nizier), his first actual teacher in the intellectial aspects of occultism was the Marquis Joseph Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre (1842-1910 e.v.). Saint-Yves had inherited the papers of one of the great founders of French occultism, Antoine Fabre d'Olivet (1762-1825 e.v.), and it was probably Saint-Yves who introduced Papus to the Marquis Stanislas de Guaita (1860 1898 e.v.). In 1888, Papus, Saint-Yves and de Guaita joined with Joséphin Péladan and Oswald Wirth to found the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix.

Despite his heavy involvement in occultism and occultist groups, Encausse managed to find time to pursue more conventional academic studies at the University of Paris. He received his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1894 upon submital of a dissertation on Philosophical Anatomy. He opened a clinic in the Rue Rodin which was quite successful.

Papus visited Russia three times, in 1901, 1905 and 1906, serving Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra both as physician and occult consultant. In October 1905, he allegedly conjured up the spirit of Alexander III, the Tsar Nicholas's father, who prophesied that the Tsar would meet his downfall at the hands of revolutionaries. Papus allegedly informed the Tsar that he would be able to magically avert Alexander's prophesy so long as he was alive (his claim proved accurate, Nicholas kept his hold on the throne of Russia until 141 days after Papus's death). Although Papus seems to have served the Tsar and Tsarina in what was essentially a shamanic capacity, he was later curiously concerned about their heavy reliance on occultism to assist them in deciding questions of government. During their later correspondence, he warned them a number of times against the influence of Rasputin.

When World War I broke out, Papus joined the French army medical corps. While working in a military hospital, he contracted tuberculosis and died on October 25, 1916, at the age of 51.

==Works==

His works include
*Traité élementaire de science occulte (1888)
*Le tarot des bohémiens (1889)
*Traité méthodique de science occulte (1891)
*Le tarot divinatoire (1909)
*Traité méthodique de magie pratique (1932)
*Le science des nombres (1934) three of which were edited by his son, Dr. Philippe Encausse.

==Source==
* Sabazius X. (1996). ''[http://www.hermetic.com/sabazius/papus.htm Docteur Gérard (Anaclet Vincent) Encausse]''. (c) Sabazius X. Used with grateful acknowledgement and by kind permission. [[Category:The Gnostic Saints]]

Carl Kellner

2004-10-07T13:43:09Z

Frater DVV:

Carl Kellner (Renatus, Sept. 1, 1851 - June 7, 1905) The Spiritual Father of Ordo Templi Orientis was Carl Kellner, a wealthy Austrian paper chemist. Kellner was a student of Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism and Eastern mysticism, and traveled extensively in Europe, America and Asia Minor. During his travels, he claims to have come into contact with three Adepts (a Sufi, Soliman ben Aifa, and two Hindu Tantrics, Bhima Sena Pratapa of Lahore and Sri Mahatma Agamya Paramahamsa), and an organization called the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light.

In 1885, Kellner met the Theosophical and Rosicrucian scholar, Dr. Franz Hartmann (1838 - 1912). He and Hartmann later collaborated on the development of the "ligno-sulphite" inhalation therapy for tuberculosis, which formed the basis of treatment at Hartmann's sanitarium near Saltzburg. During the course of his studies, Kellner believed that he had discovered a "Key" which offered a clear explanation of all the complex symbolism of Freemasonry, and, Kellner believed, opened the mysteries of Nature. Kellner developed a desire to form an Academia Masonica which would enable all Freemasons to become familiar with all existing Masonic degrees and systems.

Academia Masonica

In 1895, Kellner began to discuss his idea for founding an Academia Masonica with his associate Theodor Reuss (Merlin or Peregrinus, June 28, 1855 - Oct. 28, 1923). During these discussions, Kellner decided that the Academia Masonica should be called the "Oriental Templar Order." The occult inner circle of this Order (O.T.O. proper) would be organized parallel to the highest degrees of the Memphis and Mizraim Rites of Masonry, and would teach the esoteric Rosicrucian doctrines of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light, and Kellner's "Key" to Masonic symbolism. Both men and women would be admitted at all levels to this Order, but possession of the various degrees of Craft and High-Grade Freemasonry would be a prerequisite for admission to the Inner Circle of O.T.O.

Unfortunately, due to the regulations of the established Grand Lodges which governed Regular Masonry, women could not be made Masons and would therefore be excluded by default from membership in the Oriental Templar Order. This may have been one of the reasons that Kellner and his associates resolved to obtain control over one of the many rites, or systems, of Masonry; to reform the system for the admission of women.

The discussions between Reuss and Kellner did not lead to any positive results at the time, because Reuss was very busy with a revival of the Order of Illuminati along with his associate Leopold Engel (1858-1931) of Dresden. Kellner did not approve of the revived Illuminati Order or of Engel. According to Reuss, upon his final separation with Engel in June of 1902, Kellner contacted him and the two agreed to proceed with the establishment of the Oriental Templar Order by seeking authorizations to work the various rites of high-grade Masonry. Reuss and Kellner together prepared a brief manifesto for their Order in 1903, which was published the next year in The Oriflamme. Kellner died on June 7, 1905.

==Sources==

http://www.oto-usa.org/history.html#kellner U.S. Grand Lodge, Ordo Templi Orientis, "Karl Kellner" (c) O.T.O.

Forlong dux

2004-10-07T13:37:08Z

Frater DVV:

Forlong dux, Major-General J.G.R. (James George Roche) Forlong. He was a Scottish military engineer in the Anglo-Indian Army, who received acclaim from the governments of England and India for his brilliant feats of road-building in the jungles of the Indian subcontinent during the Mahratta and Burmese wars.

Forlong's lifelong hobby was the comparative study of the religions of Man, a study which was facilitated by his knowledge of seven languages. He avidly pursued this avocation during his 33 extensive travels in India, as well as after retiring from the military in 1876. He is the author of two monumental works on the subject: Faiths of Man, a Cyclopaedia of Religions (1906) and Rivers of Life (1883). The latter is included in Section 1 of the A:. A:. reading list. Faiths of Man compares the various religions of mankind, demonstrating that many elements of the Christian mythos were borrowed from older religions. Rivers of Life traces the development of the great world religions back to their primitive origins in the worship of the sun and/or the phallus.

Dux (rhymes with "hooks") is Latin for "leader." In the late Roman Empire, a dux was a military chief commanding the troops in a frontier province, and is the origin of the title "Duke." The term "dux" is used in Scotland to denote a student who is academically first in his or her class.

==Sources==
* ''[http://www.hermetic.com/sabazius/forlong.htm Forlong Dux]'' The Invisible Basilica of Sabazius,(c) Sabazius X. Used with grateful acknowledgement and by kind permission.

[[Category:The Gnostic Saints]]

Michael Maier

2004-10-07T13:35:29Z

Frater DVV:

Michael Maier (1566-1622) Writer, diplomat, physician, poet, classical scholar, alchemist and Rosicrucian apologist, was born at Rendsburg (Prussia), educated at the University of Rostock, and later received his doctorate of medicine at Basel. He lived for some years in Prague as physician and confidant of the Emperor Rudolf II, an important patron of the arts, who had an especial interest in hermetic philosophy. Maier travelled extensively on diplomatic missions, and made many contacts with influential people sympathetic to his interests in hermetic philosophy. After the death of Rudolf in 1612, Maier spent some years in Britain, where he was friendly with Robert Fludd.
In a number of works, he defended the Rosicrucians against their critics. It seems unlikely that he
was actively involved in the early development of the Rosicrucian myth during the early years of the seventeenth century, but once it had become public through the publishing of the manifestos in 1614-1615, Maier and Fludd were among the mysterious movement’s staunchest defenders.

Maier's works include the Arcana arcanissima [‘the most secret secret’] of 1614, the Lusus serius [‘the serious past-time’] of 1616, Examen fucorum [‘the detection of the falsifications of pseudo-alchemists’] in 1617, the Jocus severus [‘the earnest jest’] and the Silentium post clamores [‘the silence after the clamour of the announcement of the Rosicrucians’] of 1617, his famous emblem book, the Atalanta fugiens [‘Atalanta fleeing’] of 1617, Themis aurea [‘golden Themis’] 1618, Tripus Aureus [‘the golden tripod’] 1618, Viatorium [‘the wayfarer’s guide’] 1618.

Maier saw his work as deeply religious, explaining the relationship of God to the cosmos. Like all other philosophical alchemists, he had a very high view of his calling and he was at pains in his writings to support the sublime truths of alchemy and hermetic philosophy against its detractors, and against the false alchemists and charlatans who gave the discipline such a bad reputation.

Maier's most celebrated work is Atalanta fugiens, hoc est, emblemata nova de secretis naturae chymica (Oppenheim, 1618), which contains 50 engravings of emblems. They each have a verse and an epigram associated with them, and a short prose discourse which elaborates a classical mythological interpretation of the symbolism in the emblem. The first emblem, for example, shows the North Wind as a bearded man carrying the fundamental principle of the alchemists, symbolised as a gestating child, in his belly.

''EMBLEM 1, Of the secrets of nature
The wind carried him in his belly
EPIGRAM 1
When the unborn child, which lies hidden in the womb of the NORTH WIND,
One day will rise to the light alive
He alone will be able to surpass all deeds of heroism
With his art, his hand, bodily strength and spirit,
Let him not be born for you like a Coeso, and not as a useless abortion,
Not as an Agrippa, but under a lucky star.''

The Atalanta fugiens attempts to merge music, poetry, visual art, and prose into an unified experience. It takes the form of an emblem book with fifty emblems, but with the added dimension of music. Maier uses the myth of the beautiful young woman Atalanta who, in order to avoid losing her own essence by being married to some unsuitable man, challenges each of her suitors to a race. She is an exceptionally fast runner and easily wins against all her pursuers, until the youth Hippomenes, following the advice of Venus, tricks her by dropping three golden apples which she cannot resist stopping to pick up, thus allowing Hippomenes to win the race.

Maier creates a ‘fugue’ to accompany each emblem, taking the form of a three-part canon, with a leading voice representing Atalanta, a pursuing voice Hippomenes and a simple base figure of three notes reflecting the golden apples. The music also is further elaborated by the fact that for certain emblems the music is a mirrored version, or inversion, (or sometimes places the notes in reverse order) of that found accompanying another emblem. Thus we have a complex musical interrelationship between emblems.

==Sources==

http://www.nd.edu/~dharley/witchcraft/Maier.html Ideas in Society, 1500 - 1700: Michael Maier.

Gerard Encausse

2004-10-07T13:33:53Z

Frater DVV:

Dr. Gerard Encausse (1865 - 1916 e.v.) Gérard Encausse, usually known by his pseudonym '''Papus''', was a Spanish-born French physician, hypnotist, and popularizer of [[occult]]ism. He is a [[The Gnostic Saints|Gnostic Saint]] of the [[Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica|E.G.C.]]. Encausse's pseudonym "Papus" was taken from Lévi's ''Nuctemeron of Apollonius of Tyana'' (supplement to ''Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie'') and means "physician." Papus is primarily remembered as an author of books on [[magick|magic]], [[Qabalah]] and the [[Tarot]], and as a prominent figure in the various occultist organizations and Parisian spiritualist and literary circles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries e.v.

==l'Ordre des Supérieurs Inconnus==

In 1891, Papus formed an organization called l'Ordre des Supérieurs Inconnus of three degrees, commonly known as the Order of the Martinists, which was based on two extinct Masonic Rites: the Rite of Elus-Cohens or Elected Priests of Martinez Paschalis, or de Pasqually (c.1700-1774 e.v.); and the Rectified Rite of Saint-Martin of Louis Claude de Saint-Martin (1743-1803 e.v.) a student of de Pasqually who wrote under the pseudonym "The Unknown Philosopher." Papus claimed to have come into the possession of the original papers of de Pasqually and to have been given authority in the Rite of Saint-Martin by his friend Henri Viscount Delaage, who claimed that his maternal grandfather had been initiated into the order by Saint-Martin himself, and who had attempted to revive the order in 1887. The Martinist Order was to become a primary focus for Papus, and continues today as one of his most enduring legacies.

==Bishop of l'Église Gnostique de France==

In 1893, Papus was consecrated a bishop of l'Église Gnostique de France by [[Jules Doinel]], who had founded this Church as an attempt to revive the Cathar religion in 1890. In 1895, Doinel abdicated as Primate of the French Gnostic Church leaving control of the Church to a synod of three of his former bishops, one of whom was Papus. In March of the same year, Papus joined the Ahathoor Temple of the Golden Dawn in Paris.

==Papus and Reuss==

Papus never became a regular (Grand Orient) [[Freemasonry|Freemason]]. He opposed Masonry as being atheistic, in contrast to the Esoteric Christianity of the [[Gnosticism|Gnostic Church]], the K.O.R.C. and the Martinist Order. Despite this, he organized what was announced as an "International Masonic Conference" in Paris on June 24, 1908, and at this conference he received a patent from [[Theodor Reuss]] to establish a "Supreme Grand Council General of the Unified Rites of Antient and Primitive Masonry for the Grand Orient of France and its Dependencies at Paris." It was probably on the same occasion that Reuss conferred upon Papus the X° of [[Ordo Templi Orientis|O.T.O.]] for France, and Papus in turn assisted Reuss in the formation of the O.T.O. [[Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica|Gnostic Catholic Church]] as a child of l'Église Gnostique de France. When [[John Yarker]] died in 1913, Papus was elected as his successor to the office of Grand Hierophant (international head) of the Antient and Primitive Rites of Memphis and Mizraim.

==Life overview==

Encausse was born at La Coruña in Spain on July 13, 1865, of a Spanish mother and a French father, Louis Encausse, a chemist. His family moved to Paris when he was four years old, and he received his education there. As a young man, Encausse spent a great deal of time at the Bibliothèque Nationale studying the Qabalah, the Tarot, the sciences of magic and alchemy, and the writings of [[Eliphas Levi|Eliphas Lévi]]. He joined the French [[Theosophical Society]] shortly after it was founded by [[Madame Blavatsky]] in 1884-85, but he resigned shortly after joining because he disliked the Theosophical Society's emphasis on Eastern occultism. He was also a member of the [[Hermetic Brotherhood of Light|H.B. of L.]] In 1888, he and his friend Lucien Chamuel founded the Librarie du Merveilleux and its monthly revue L'Initiation, which remained in publication until 1914.

Although Papus claimed as his "spiritual master" the mysterious magician and healer known as "le Maitre Philippe" (Philippe Nizier), his first actual teacher in the intellectial aspects of occultism was the Marquis Joseph Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre (1842-1910 e.v.). Saint-Yves had inherited the papers of one of the great founders of French occultism, Antoine Fabre d'Olivet (1762-1825 e.v.), and it was probably Saint-Yves who introduced Papus to the Marquis Stanislas de Guaita (1860 1898 e.v.). In 1888, Papus, Saint-Yves and de Guaita joined with Joséphin Péladan and Oswald Wirth to found the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix.

Despite his heavy involvement in occultism and occultist groups, Encausse managed to find time to pursue more conventional academic studies at the University of Paris. He received his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1894 upon submital of a dissertation on Philosophical Anatomy. He opened a clinic in the Rue Rodin which was quite successful.

Papus visited Russia three times, in 1901, 1905 and 1906, serving Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra both as physician and occult consultant. In October 1905, he allegedly conjured up the spirit of Alexander III, the Tsar Nicholas's father, who prophesied that the Tsar would meet his downfall at the hands of revolutionaries. Papus allegedly informed the Tsar that he would be able to magically avert Alexander's prophesy so long as he was alive (his claim proved accurate, Nicholas kept his hold on the throne of Russia until 141 days after Papus's death). Although Papus seems to have served the Tsar and Tsarina in what was essentially a shamanic capacity, he was later curiously concerned about their heavy reliance on occultism to assist them in deciding questions of government. During their later correspondence, he warned them a number of times against the influence of Rasputin.

When World War I broke out, Papus joined the French army medical corps. While working in a military hospital, he contracted tuberculosis and died on October 25, 1916, at the age of 51.

==Duels==

On May 12-15, 1891, Papus participated in the famous duels between de Guaita and Jules Bois, a writer who had attacked de Guaita in print. Bois had become involved in the "magical war" between de Guaita and his rival, the Abbé Boullan. Boullan was the head of a schismatic branch of the Oeuvre de la Miséricorde (Work of Mercy), the occultist church founded by Eugène Vintras in 1851. The "magical war" had included the publication of La Bas, a novel by Joris K. Huysmans, which was a sensationalized account of a group of satanic sorcerers intended to portray de Guaita and his associates. The first duel was between Bois and de Guaita, and involved pistols. Bois had expected sinister magical influences to be exerted on the outcome of the duel; and indeed, his horse suffered fit of unexplained terror on the way to the duelling ground. Neither de Guaita nor Bois were hurt during the duel, but later, it was discovered that one of the guns (it was never determined whose gun it was) had misfired, and its bullet had never left the chamber. The second duel was with sabres, and was between Bois and Papus. This time, Bois' carriage collapsed twice on the way to the duelling ground. Papus and Bois were both only slightly wounded in the duel and they later became friends. After the death of de Guaita in 1897 (from a drug overdose), Papus became the (last) chief of the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix.

==Works==

His works include
*Traité élementaire de science occulte (1888)
*Le tarot des bohémiens (1889)
*Traité méthodique de science occulte (1891)
*Le tarot divinatoire (1909)
*Traité méthodique de magie pratique (1932)
*Le science des nombres (1934) three of which were edited by his son, Dr. Philippe Encausse.

==Source==
* Sabazius X. (1996). ''[http://www.hermetic.com/sabazius/papus.htm Docteur Gérard (Anaclet Vincent) Encausse]''. (c) Sabazius X. Used with grateful acknowledgement and by kind permission. [[Category:The Gnostic Saints]]

Theodor Reuss

2004-10-07T13:32:18Z

Frater DVV:

Theodor Reuss (1855 - 1923 e.v.) Theodor Reuss was an Anglo-German tantric occultist, utopian socialist, journalist, singer, and promoter of Women's Liberation; and the successor to [Carl Kellner] as head of [O.T.O.]

Reuss was born the son of an innkeeper at Augsburg on June 28, 1855 e.v. He was a professional singer in his youth, and was privileged to work under [Richard Wagner], whom he first met, along with Wagner's patron, King [Ludwig II] of Bavaria, in 1873. He took part in the first performance of Wagner's Parsifal at Bayreuth in 1882. He later became a newspaper correspondent, and travelled frequently as such to England, where he became a Mason in 1876. He also spent some time there as a journalist and as a music-hall singer under the stage name "Charles Theodore."

In 1880, in Munich, he participated in an attempt to revive Adam Weishaupt's Bavarian Order of Illuminati. In 1885, in England, he joined the British Social League, which some say he joined to spy on Karl Marx's daughter for the German Secret Service. While in England, he became friends with [William Wynn Wescott], the Supreme Magus of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia and one of the founders of the [Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn]. Wescott provided Reuss with a charter dated July 26, 1901 for the Swedenborgian Rite of Masonry and a letter of authorization dated Feb. 24, 1902 to found a High Council in Germania of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia. Gérard Encausse provided him with a charter dated June 24, 1901 designating him Special Inspector for the Martinist Order in Germany. In 1888, in Berlin, he joined with Leopold Engel of Dresden, Max Rahn and August Weinholz in another effort to revive the Illuminati Order. In 1895, he began to discuss the formation of [Ordo Templi Orientis] with Carl Kellner.

The discussions between Reuss and Kellner did not lead to any positive results at the time, allegedly because Kellner disapproved with Reuss's connections with Engel. According to Reuss, upon his final separation with Engel in June of 1902, Kellner contacted him and the two agreed to proceed with the establishment of the Oriental Templar Order by seeking authorizations to work the various rites of high-grade Masonry. Wescott assisted Reuss to contact the English Masonic scholar, John Yarker (1833-1913). Along with his associates Franz Hartmann and Henry Klein, he activated the Masonic Rites of Memphis and Mizraim and a branch of the Scottish Rite in Germany with charters from Yarker. Reuss received letters-patent as a Sovereign Grand Inspector General 33° of the Cernau Scottish Rite from Yarker dated September 24, 1902. On the same date, Yarker appears to have issued a warrant to Reuss, Franz Hartmann and Henry Klein to operate a Sovereign Sanctuary 33°-95° of the Scottish, Memphis and Mizraim rites. The original document is not extant, but a transcript of this warrant was published in Reuss's newsletter, The Oriflamme in 1911, which commenced publication in 1902. Yarker issued a charter confirming Reuss's authority to operate said rites on July 1, 1904; and Reuss published a transcript of an additional confirming charter dated June 24, 1905. Reuss and Kellner together prepared a brief manifesto for their Order in 1903, which was published the next year in The Oriflamme.

When Carl Kellner died in 1905, the leadership of the Academia Masonica of O.T.O. fell upon Reuss's shoulders, and he incorporated all his other organizations under its banner, developing the three degrees of the Academia Masonica, available to Masons only, into a coherent, self-contained initiatory system, open to both men and women. He promulgated a constitution for this new, enlarged O.T.O. on June 21, 1906 in London (his place of residence since January 1906) and the next month proclaimed himself Outer Head of the Order (O.H.O.). That same year he published Lingham-Yoni, which was a German translation of Hargrave Jennings's work Phallism, and issued a warrant to Rudolph Steiner (1861-1925, who was at the time the Secretary General of the German branch of the [Theosophical Society]), making him Deputy Grand Master of a subordinate O.T.O./Memphis/Mizraim Chapter and Grand Council called "Mystica Aeterna" in Berlin. Steiner went on to found the Anthroposophical Society in 1912, and ended his association with Reuss in 1914.

On June 24, 1908, Reuss attended Encausse's "International Masonic and Spiritualist Conference" in Paris. At this conference, Reuss issued to Encausse a warrant to establish a "Supreme Grand Council General of the Unified Rites of Antient and Primitive Masonry for the Grand Orient of France and its Dependencies at Paris," and possibly received authority in Église Catholique Gnostique. He also appointed Dr. Arnold Krumm-Heller (Huiracocha, 1879-1949) as his official representative for Latin America.

While living in London, Reuss became acquainted with [Aleister Crowley]. In 1910, he made Crowley a VII° of O.T.O. (based on Crowley's previously held 33° in the Scottish Rite), and in 1912, he conferred upon him the IX° and appointed him National Grand Master General X° for the O.T.O. in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland by charter dated June 1, 1912. Crowley's appointment included authority over an English language rite of the lower (Masonic) degrees of O.T.O. which was given the name Mysteria Mystica Maxima, or M:.M:.M:. In 1913, Crowley issued a Constitution for the M:.M:.M:. and the Manifesto of the M:.M:.M:., which he subsequently redrafted and issued as Liber LII, the Manifesto of the O.T.O. In 1913, Crowley wrote [Liber XV], the Gnostic Mass for Reuss's Gnostic Catholic Church. Crowley also dedicated his Mystery Play The Ship (1913) and a collection of poetry, The Giant's Thumb (1915) to Reuss.

In 1914, at the outset of World War I, Reuss left England and returned to Germany. He worked briefly for the Red Cross in Berlin, then, in 1916, moved to Basle, Switzerland. While there, he established an "Anational Grand Lodge and Mystic Temple" of O.T.O. and the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light at Monte Verità, a utopian commune near Ascona founded in 1900 by Henri Oedenkoven and Ida Hofmann, which functioned as a center for the Progressive Underground. On January 22, 1917, Reuss published a manifesto for this Anational Grand Lodge, which was called "Verità Mystica." On the same date, he published a revised O.T.O. Constitution (based in a large part on Crowley's 1913 Constitution of the M:.M:.M:.), with a "Synopsis of Degrees" and an abridgment of The Message of the Master Therion appended. Reuss held an "Anational Congress for Organising the Reconstruction of Society on Practical Cooperative Lines" at Monte Verità from August 15-25, 1917. This Congress included readings of Crowley's poetry (on August 22) and a recitation of Crowley's Gnostic Mass (on August 24). On October 24, 1917, Reuss Chartered an O.T.O. Lodge, "Libertas et Fraternitas" in Zürich. This Lodge later placed itself under the Masonic jurisdiction of the Swiss Grand Lodge Alpina.

In 1918, Reuss published his German translation of Crowley's Gnostic Mass. In a note at the end of his translation of Liber XV, he referred to himself as, simultaneously, the Sovereign Patriarch and Primate of the Gnostic Catholic Church, and Gnostic Legate to Switzerland of the Église Gnostique Universelle, acknowledging Jean Bricaud (1881-1934 -- on left in photo) as Sovereign Patriarch of that church. The issuance of this document can be viewed as the birth of the Thelemic E.G.C. as an independent organization under the umbrella of O.T.O., with Reuss as its first Patriarch.

Reuss was clearly impressed with Thelema. Crowley's Gnostic Mass, which Reuss translated into German and had recited at his Anational Congress at Monte Verità, is an explicitly Thelemic ritual. In an undated letter to Crowley (received in 1917), Reuss reported exitedly that he had read The Message of the Master Therion to a gathering at Monte Verità, and that he was translating The Book of the Law into German. He added, "Let this new encourage you! We live in your Work!!!"

Reuss left Monte Verità some time before November 1918. On May 10, 1919, Reuss issued a "Gauge of Amity" document to Matthew McBlain Thomson, founder of the ill-fated "American Masonic Federation." On September 18, 1919, Reuss was reconsecrated by Bricaud, thus receiving the "Antioch Succession," and re-appointed as "Gnostic Legate" to Switzerland for Bricaud's Église Gnostique Universelle. In 1920, Oedenkoven and Hofmann abandoned Monte Verità in 1920 to establish a second colony in Brazil, and Reuss published a document titled The Program of Construction and the Guiding Principles of the Gnostic Neo-Christians: O.T.O.

On July 17, 1920, he attended the Congress of the "World Federation of Universal Freemasonry" in Zürich, which lasted several days. Reuss, with Bricaud's support, advocated the adoption of the religion of Crowley's Gnostic Mass as the "official religion for all members of the World Federation of Universal Freemasonry in possession of the 18° of the Scottish Rite." Reuss's efforts in this regard were a failure, and he left the Congress after the first day. On May 10, 1921, Reuss issued X° Charters to [Charles Stansfeld Jones] and [Heinrich Tränker] to serve as Grand Masters for the U.S.A. and Germany, respectively. On July 30, 1921, Reuss issued another "Gauge of Amity" document, this time to [H. Spencer Lewis], founder of A.M.O.R.C., the San Jose, California based Rosicrucian organization. Reuss returned to Germany in September of 1921, settling in Munich.

There is some reason to believe that Reuss suffered a stroke in the Spring of 1920, but this is not entirely certain. Crowley wrote to W.T. Smith in March of 1943: "the late O.H.O., after his first stroke of paralysis, got into a panic about the work being carried on... He hastily issued honorary diplomas of the Seventh Degree to various people, some of whom had no right to anything at all and some of whom were only cheap crooks." Shortly after appointing him his Viceroy for Australia, Crowley appears to have corresponded with his student Frank Bennett and discussed with him his doubts about Reuss's continuing ability to effectively govern the Order. It would appear that Reuss discovered the correspondence; he wrote Crowley an angry, defensive response on November 9, 1921, in which he appeared to distance himself and O.T.O. from Thelema, which, as shown above, he had previously embraced. Crowley replied to Reuss's letter on November 23, 1921, and stated in his letter, "It is my will to be O.H.O. and Frater Superior of the Order and avail myself of your abdication -- to proclaim myself as such." He signed the letter "Baphomet O.H.O." Reuss's response is not extant, but Crowley recounts in his Confessions that Reuss "resigned the office [of O.H.O.] in 1922 in my favour." However, it does not appear that Crowley waited for Reuss's response to assume his duties. In a diary entry for November 27, 1921, Crowley wrote: "I have proclaimed myself O.H.O. Frater Superior of the Order of Oriental Templars." Reuss died on October 28, 1923. In a letter to Heinrich Tränker dated February 14, 1925, Crowley stated the following: "Reuss was very uncertain in temper, and in many ways unreliable. In his last years he seems to have completely lost his grip, even accusing The Book of the Law of communistic tendencies, than which no statement could be more absurd. Yet it seems that he must have been to some extent correctly led, on account of his having made the appointments of yourself and Frater Achad, and designating me in his last letter as his successor." In a letter to Charles Stansfeld Jones dated Sun in Capricorn, Anno XX (Dec. 1924 - Jan. 1925), Crowley said, "in the O.H.O.'s last letter to me he invited me to become his successor as O.H.O. and Frater Superior." Reuss's letter designating Crowley his successor as O.H.O. has not been found, but no credible documentation has surfaced which would indicate that Reuss ever designated any alternative successor.

Reuss's writings include: The Matrimonial Question from an Anarchistic Point of View (1887); Die Mysterien der Illuminaten (1894); Geschichte des Illuminaten-Ordens (1896); Was muss man von der Freimauerei wissen? (1901); Was ist Okkultismus und wie erlangt man occulte Kräfte? (1903); Was muss man von Richard Wagner und seinen Ton-dramen wissen? (1903); Lingam-Yoni; oder die Mysterien des Geschlechts-Kultus (1906); Allgemeine Satzungen des Ordens der Orientalischem Templer O.T.O. (1906; Parsifal und das Enthüllte Grals-Geheimnis (1914); Constitution of the Ancient Order of Oriental Templars, O.T.O., Ordo Templi Orientis, with an Introduction and a Synopsis of the Degrees of the O.T.O. (1917); Die Gnostische Messe (1920); Das Aufbau-Programm und die Leitsätze der Gnostischen Neo-Christen (1920); and numerous articles published in his periodical Oriflamme (1902-1914).

==References==
*http://www.hermetic.com/sabazius/reuss.htm The Invisible Basilica of Sabazius: Theodor Reuss. (c) Sabazius X. Used with grateful acknowledgement and by kind permission.
*Howe, Ellic; "Theodor Reuss: Irregular Freemasonry in Germany, 1900-23" in Ars Quatuor Coronati, Feb. 1978
*König, Peter-Robert; Das OTO-Phänomenon, A.R.W., München 1994
*Merlin Peregrinus (Theodor Reuss); I.N.R.I., O.T.O., Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae, Canon Missae, Die Gnostische Messe [1918], privately published by the Oriflamme 1920, translated by Marcus M. Jungkurth
*Möller, Helmut and Ellic Howe; Merlin Peregrinus, vom Untergrund des Abendlandes, Königshausen & Neumann, Würtzburg 1986
*Reuss, Theodor; I.N.R.I. Constitution of the Ancient Order of Oriental Templars, O.T.O., Ordo Templi Orientis, with an Introduction and a Synopsis of the Degrees of the O.T.O., 1917
*Reuss, Theodor; Ordo Templi Orientis - Hermetic Brotherhood of Light. Anational Grand Lodge & Mystic Temple: "Verità Mystica", or Ascona. Manifesto., Ascona, Switzerland 1917
*Reuss, Theodor; I.N.R.I. The Programme of Construction and the Guiding Principles of the Gnostic Neo-Christians, O.T.O., 1920
*Reuss, Theodor; Introduction to Lingham-Yoni (Phallism, by Hargrave Jennings), Verlag Wilsson, Berlin 1906
*Shepard, Leslie (Ed.); Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, 2nd. Ed., Gale Research Co., Detroit MI 1984
*Symonds, John and Kenneth Grant, eds.; The Magical Record of the Beast 666, Duckworth, London 1972

Theodor Reuss

2004-10-07T04:06:45Z

Frater DVV:

Theodor Reuss (1855 - 1923 e.v.) Theodor Reuss was an Anglo-German tantric occultist, utopian socialist, journalist, singer, and promoter of Women's Liberation; and the successor to [Carl Kellner] as head of [O.T.O.]

Reuss was born the son of an innkeeper at Augsburg on June 28, 1855 e.v. He was a professional singer in his youth, and was privileged to work under [Richard Wagner], whom he first met, along with Wagner's patron, King [Ludwig II] of Bavaria, in 1873. He took part in the first performance of Wagner's Parsifal at Bayreuth in 1882. He later became a newspaper correspondent, and travelled frequently as such to England, where he became a Mason in 1876. He also spent some time there as a journalist and as a music-hall singer under the stage name "Charles Theodore."

In 1880, in Munich, he participated in an attempt to revive Adam Weishaupt's Bavarian Order of Illuminati. In 1885, in England, he joined the British Social League, which some say he joined to spy on Karl Marx's daughter for the German Secret Service. While in England, he became friends with [William Wynn Wescott], the Supreme Magus of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia and one of the founders of the [Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn]. Wescott provided Reuss with a charter dated July 26, 1901 for the Swedenborgian Rite of Masonry and a letter of authorization dated Feb. 24, 1902 to found a High Council in Germania of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia. Gérard Encausse provided him with a charter dated June 24, 1901 designating him Special Inspector for the Martinist Order in Germany. In 1888, in Berlin, he joined with Leopold Engel of Dresden, Max Rahn and August Weinholz in another effort to revive the Illuminati Order. In 1895, he began to discuss the formation of [Ordo Templi Orientis] with Carl Kellner.

The discussions between Reuss and Kellner did not lead to any positive results at the time, allegedly because Kellner disapproved with Reuss's connections with Engel. According to Reuss, upon his final separation with Engel in June of 1902, Kellner contacted him and the two agreed to proceed with the establishment of the Oriental Templar Order by seeking authorizations to work the various rites of high-grade Masonry. Wescott assisted Reuss to contact the English Masonic scholar, John Yarker (1833-1913). Along with his associates Franz Hartmann and Henry Klein, he activated the Masonic Rites of Memphis and Mizraim and a branch of the Scottish Rite in Germany with charters from Yarker. Reuss received letters-patent as a Sovereign Grand Inspector General 33° of the Cernau Scottish Rite from Yarker dated September 24, 1902. On the same date, Yarker appears to have issued a warrant to Reuss, Franz Hartmann and Henry Klein to operate a Sovereign Sanctuary 33°-95° of the Scottish, Memphis and Mizraim rites. The original document is not extant, but a transcript of this warrant was published in Reuss's newsletter, The Oriflamme in 1911, which commenced publication in 1902. Yarker issued a charter confirming Reuss's authority to operate said rites on July 1, 1904; and Reuss published a transcript of an additional confirming charter dated June 24, 1905. Reuss and Kellner together prepared a brief manifesto for their Order in 1903, which was published the next year in The Oriflamme.

When Carl Kellner died in 1905, the leadership of the Academia Masonica of O.T.O. fell upon Reuss's shoulders, and he incorporated all his other organizations under its banner, developing the three degrees of the Academia Masonica, available to Masons only, into a coherent, self-contained initiatory system, open to both men and women. He promulgated a constitution for this new, enlarged O.T.O. on June 21, 1906 in London (his place of residence since January 1906) and the next month proclaimed himself Outer Head of the Order (O.H.O.). That same year he published Lingham-Yoni, which was a German translation of Hargrave Jennings's work Phallism, and issued a warrant to Rudolph Steiner (1861-1925, who was at the time the Secretary General of the German branch of the [Theosophical Society]), making him Deputy Grand Master of a subordinate O.T.O./Memphis/Mizraim Chapter and Grand Council called "Mystica Aeterna" in Berlin. Steiner went on to found the Anthroposophical Society in 1912, and ended his association with Reuss in 1914.

On June 24, 1908, Reuss attended Encausse's "International Masonic and Spiritualist Conference" in Paris. At this conference, Reuss issued to Encausse a warrant to establish a "Supreme Grand Council General of the Unified Rites of Antient and Primitive Masonry for the Grand Orient of France and its Dependencies at Paris," and possibly received authority in Église Catholique Gnostique. He also appointed Dr. Arnold Krumm-Heller (Huiracocha, 1879-1949) as his official representative for Latin America.

While living in London, Reuss became acquainted with [Aleister Crowley]. In 1910, he made Crowley a VII° of O.T.O. (based on Crowley's previously held 33° in the Scottish Rite), and in 1912, he conferred upon him the IX° and appointed him National Grand Master General X° for the O.T.O. in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland by charter dated June 1, 1912. Crowley's appointment included authority over an English language rite of the lower (Masonic) degrees of O.T.O. which was given the name Mysteria Mystica Maxima, or M:.M:.M:. In 1913, Crowley issued a Constitution for the M:.M:.M:. and the Manifesto of the M:.M:.M:., which he subsequently redrafted and issued as Liber LII, the Manifesto of the O.T.O. In 1913, Crowley wrote [Liber XV], the Gnostic Mass for Reuss's Gnostic Catholic Church. Crowley also dedicated his Mystery Play The Ship (1913) and a collection of poetry, The Giant's Thumb (1915) to Reuss.

In 1914, at the outset of World War I, Reuss left England and returned to Germany. He worked briefly for the Red Cross in Berlin, then, in 1916, moved to Basle, Switzerland. While there, he established an "Anational Grand Lodge and Mystic Temple" of O.T.O. and the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light at Monte Verità, a utopian commune near Ascona founded in 1900 by Henri Oedenkoven and Ida Hofmann, which functioned as a center for the Progressive Underground. On January 22, 1917, Reuss published a manifesto for this Anational Grand Lodge, which was called "Verità Mystica." On the same date, he published a revised O.T.O. Constitution (based in a large part on Crowley's 1913 Constitution of the M:.M:.M:.), with a "Synopsis of Degrees" and an abridgment of The Message of the Master Therion appended. Reuss held an "Anational Congress for Organising the Reconstruction of Society on Practical Cooperative Lines" at Monte Verità from August 15-25, 1917. This Congress included readings of Crowley's poetry (on August 22) and a recitation of Crowley's Gnostic Mass (on August 24). On October 24, 1917, Reuss Chartered an O.T.O. Lodge, "Libertas et Fraternitas" in Zürich. This Lodge later placed itself under the Masonic jurisdiction of the Swiss Grand Lodge Alpina.

In 1918, Reuss published his German translation of Crowley's Gnostic Mass. In a note at the end of his translation of Liber XV, he referred to himself as, simultaneously, the Sovereign Patriarch and Primate of the Gnostic Catholic Church, and Gnostic Legate to Switzerland of the Église Gnostique Universelle, acknowledging Jean Bricaud (1881-1934 -- on left in photo) as Sovereign Patriarch of that church. The issuance of this document can be viewed as the birth of the Thelemic E.G.C. as an independent organization under the umbrella of O.T.O., with Reuss as its first Patriarch.

Reuss was clearly impressed with Thelema. Crowley's Gnostic Mass, which Reuss translated into German and had recited at his Anational Congress at Monte Verità, is an explicitly Thelemic ritual. In an undated letter to Crowley (received in 1917), Reuss reported exitedly that he had read The Message of the Master Therion to a gathering at Monte Verità, and that he was translating The Book of the Law into German. He added, "Let this new encourage you! We live in your Work!!!"

Reuss left Monte Verità some time before November 1918. On May 10, 1919, Reuss issued a "Gauge of Amity" document to Matthew McBlain Thomson, founder of the ill-fated "American Masonic Federation." On September 18, 1919, Reuss was reconsecrated by Bricaud, thus receiving the "Antioch Succession," and re-appointed as "Gnostic Legate" to Switzerland for Bricaud's Église Gnostique Universelle. In 1920, Oedenkoven and Hofmann abandoned Monte Verità in 1920 to establish a second colony in Brazil, and Reuss published a document titled The Program of Construction and the Guiding Principles of the Gnostic Neo-Christians: O.T.O.

On July 17, 1920, he attended the Congress of the "World Federation of Universal Freemasonry" in Zürich, which lasted several days. Reuss, with Bricaud's support, advocated the adoption of the religion of Crowley's Gnostic Mass as the "official religion for all members of the World Federation of Universal Freemasonry in possession of the 18° of the Scottish Rite." Reuss's efforts in this regard were a failure, and he left the Congress after the first day. On May 10, 1921, Reuss issued X° Charters to [Charles Stansfeld Jones] and [Heinrich Tränker] to serve as Grand Masters for the U.S.A. and Germany, respectively. On July 30, 1921, Reuss issued another "Gauge of Amity" document, this time to [H. Spencer Lewis], founder of A.M.O.R.C., the San Jose, California based Rosicrucian organization. Reuss returned to Germany in September of 1921, settling in Munich.

There is some reason to believe that Reuss suffered a stroke in the Spring of 1920, but this is not entirely certain. Crowley wrote to W.T. Smith in March of 1943: "the late O.H.O., after his first stroke of paralysis, got into a panic about the work being carried on... He hastily issued honorary diplomas of the Seventh Degree to various people, some of whom had no right to anything at all and some of whom were only cheap crooks." Shortly after appointing him his Viceroy for Australia, Crowley appears to have corresponded with his student Frank Bennett and discussed with him his doubts about Reuss's continuing ability to effectively govern the Order. It would appear that Reuss discovered the correspondence; he wrote Crowley an angry, defensive response on November 9, 1921, in which he appeared to distance himself and O.T.O. from Thelema, which, as shown above, he had previously embraced. Crowley replied to Reuss's letter on November 23, 1921, and stated in his letter, "It is my will to be O.H.O. and Frater Superior of the Order and avail myself of your abdication -- to proclaim myself as such." He signed the letter "Baphomet O.H.O." Reuss's response is not extant, but Crowley recounts in his Confessions that Reuss "resigned the office [of O.H.O.] in 1922 in my favour." However, it does not appear that Crowley waited for Reuss's response to assume his duties. In a diary entry for November 27, 1921, Crowley wrote: "I have proclaimed myself O.H.O. Frater Superior of the Order of Oriental Templars." Reuss died on October 28, 1923. In a letter to Heinrich Tränker dated February 14, 1925, Crowley stated the following: "Reuss was very uncertain in temper, and in many ways unreliable. In his last years he seems to have completely lost his grip, even accusing The Book of the Law of communistic tendencies, than which no statement could be more absurd. Yet it seems that he must have been to some extent correctly led, on account of his having made the appointments of yourself and Frater Achad, and designating me in his last letter as his successor." In a letter to Charles Stansfeld Jones dated Sun in Capricorn, Anno XX (Dec. 1924 - Jan. 1925), Crowley said, "in the O.H.O.'s last letter to me he invited me to become his successor as O.H.O. and Frater Superior." Reuss's letter designating Crowley his successor as O.H.O. has not been found, but no credible documentation has surfaced which would indicate that Reuss ever designated any alternative successor.

Reuss's writings include: The Matrimonial Question from an Anarchistic Point of View (1887); Die Mysterien der Illuminaten (1894); Geschichte des Illuminaten-Ordens (1896); Was muss man von der Freimauerei wissen? (1901); Was ist Okkultismus und wie erlangt man occulte Kräfte? (1903); Was muss man von Richard Wagner und seinen Ton-dramen wissen? (1903); Lingam-Yoni; oder die Mysterien des Geschlechts-Kultus (1906); Allgemeine Satzungen des Ordens der Orientalischem Templer O.T.O. (1906; Parsifal und das Enthüllte Grals-Geheimnis (1914); Constitution of the Ancient Order of Oriental Templars, O.T.O., Ordo Templi Orientis, with an Introduction and a Synopsis of the Degrees of the O.T.O. (1917); Die Gnostische Messe (1920); Das Aufbau-Programm und die Leitsätze der Gnostischen Neo-Christen (1920); and numerous articles published in his periodical Oriflamme (1902-1914).

==References==
*http://www.hermetic.com/sabazius/reuss.htm The Invisible Basilica of Sabazius: Theodor Reuss (from which this entire article is taken)
*Howe, Ellic; "Theodor Reuss: Irregular Freemasonry in Germany, 1900-23" in Ars Quatuor Coronati, Feb. 1978
*König, Peter-Robert; Das OTO-Phänomenon, A.R.W., München 1994
*Merlin Peregrinus (Theodor Reuss); I.N.R.I., O.T.O., Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae, Canon Missae, Die Gnostische Messe [1918], privately published by the Oriflamme 1920, translated by Marcus M. Jungkurth
*Möller, Helmut and Ellic Howe; Merlin Peregrinus, vom Untergrund des Abendlandes, Königshausen & Neumann, Würtzburg 1986
*Reuss, Theodor; I.N.R.I. Constitution of the Ancient Order of Oriental Templars, O.T.O., Ordo Templi Orientis, with an Introduction and a Synopsis of the Degrees of the O.T.O., 1917
*Reuss, Theodor; Ordo Templi Orientis - Hermetic Brotherhood of Light. Anational Grand Lodge & Mystic Temple: "Verità Mystica", or Ascona. Manifesto., Ascona, Switzerland 1917
*Reuss, Theodor; I.N.R.I. The Programme of Construction and the Guiding Principles of the Gnostic Neo-Christians, O.T.O., 1920
*Reuss, Theodor; Introduction to Lingham-Yoni (Phallism, by Hargrave Jennings), Verlag Wilsson, Berlin 1906
*Shepard, Leslie (Ed.); Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, 2nd. Ed., Gale Research Co., Detroit MI 1984
*Symonds, John and Kenneth Grant, eds.; The Magical Record of the Beast 666, Duckworth, London 1972

Gerard Encausse

2004-10-06T13:55:04Z

Frater DVV:

Dr. Gerard Encausse (1865 - 1916 e.v.) Gérard Encausse, usually known by his pseudonym "Papus," was a Spanish-born French physician, hypnotist, and popularizer of occultism.

Encausse's pseudonym "Papus" was taken from Lévi's "Nuctemeron of Apollonius of Tyana" (supplement to Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie) and means "physician." Papus is primarily remembered as an author of books on magic, Qabalah and the Tarot, and as a prominent figure in the various occultist organizations and Parisian spiritualist and literary circles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries e.v. He was born at La Coruña in Spain on July 13, 1865, of a Spanish mother and a French father, Louis Encausse, a chemist. His family moved to Paris when he was four years old, and he received his education there. As a young man, Encausse spent a great deal of time at the Bibliothèque Nationale studying the Qabalah, the Tarot, the sciences of magic and alchemy, and the writings of Eliphas Lévi. He joined the French Theosophical Society shortly after it was founded by Madame Blavatsky in 1884-85, but he resigned shortly after joining because he disliked the Theosophical Society's emphasis on Eastern occultism. He was also a member of the H.B. of L. In 1888, he and his friend Lucien Chamuel founded the Librarie du Merveilleux and its monthly revue L'Initiation, which remained in publication until 1914.

Although Papus claimed as his "spiritual master" the mysterious magician and healer known as "le Maitre Philippe" (Philippe Nizier), his first actual teacher in the intellectial aspects of occultism was the Marquis Joseph Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre (1842-1910 e.v.). Saint-Yves had inherited the papers of one of the great founders of French occultism, Antoine Fabre d'Olivet (1762-1825 e.v.), and it was probably Saint-Yves who introduced Papus to the Marquis Stanislas de Guaita (1860 1898 e.v.). In 1888, Papus, Saint-Yves and de Guaita joined with Joséphin Péladan and Oswald Wirth to found the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix.

On May 12-15, 1891, Papus participated in the famous duels between de Guaita and Jules Bois, a writer who had attacked de Guaita in print. Bois had become involved in the "magical war" between de Guaita and his rival, the Abbé Boullan. Boullan was the head of a schismatic branch of the Oeuvre de la Miséricorde (Work of Mercy), the occultist church founded by Eugène Vintras in 1851. The "magical war" had included the publication of La Bas, a novel by Joris K. Huysmans, which was a sensationalized account of a group of satanic sorcerers intended to portray de Guaita and his associates. The first duel was between Bois and de Guaita, and involved pistols. Bois had expected sinister magical influences to be exerted on the outcome of the duel; and indeed, his horse suffered fit of unexplained terror on the way to the duelling ground. Neither de Guaita nor Bois were hurt during the duel, but later, it was discovered that one of the guns (it was never determined whose gun it was) had misfired, and its bullet had never left the chamber. The second duel was with sabres, and was between Bois and Papus. This time, Bois' carriage collapsed twice on the way to the duelling ground. Papus and Bois were both only slightly wounded in the duel and they later became friends. After the death of de Guaita in 1897 (from a drug overdose), Papus became the (last) chief of the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix.

In 1891, Papus formed an organization called l'Ordre des Supérieurs Inconnus of three degrees, commonly known as the Order of the Martinists, which was based on two extinct Masonic Rites: the Rite of Elus-Cohens or Elected Priests of Martinez Paschalis, or de Pasqually (c.1700-1774 e.v.); and the Rectified Rite of Saint-Martin of Louis Claude de Saint-Martin (1743-1803 e.v.) a student of de Pasqually who wrote under the pseudonym "The Unknown Philosopher." Papus claimed to have come into the possession of the original papers of de Pasqually and to have been given authority in the Rite of Saint-Martin by his friend Henri Viscount Delaage, who claimed that his maternal grandfather had been initiated into the order by Saint-Martin himself, and who had attempted to revive the order in 1887. The Martinist Order was to become a primary focus for Papus, and continues today as one of his most enduring legacies.

In 1893, Papus was consecrated a bishop of l'Église Gnostique de France by Jules Doinel, who had founded this Church as an attempt to revive the Cathar religion in 1890. In 1895, Doinel abdicated as Primate of the French Gnostic Church leaving control of the Church to a synod of three of his former bishops, one of whom was Papus. In March of the same year, Papus joined the Ahathoor Temple of the Golden Dawn in Paris.

Despite his heavy involvement in occultism and occultist groups, Encausse managed to find time to pursue more conventional academic studies at the University of Paris. He received his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1894 upon submital of a dissertation on Philosophical Anatomy. He opened a clinic in the Rue Rodin which was quite successful.

Papus visited Russia three times, in 1901, 1905 and 1906, serving Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra both as physician and occult consultant. In October 1905, he allegedly conjured up the spirit of Alexander III, the Tsar Nicholas's father, who prophesied that the Tsar would meet his downfall at the hands of revolutionaries. Papus allegedly informed the Tsar that he would be able to magically avert Alexander's prophesy so long as he was alive (his claim proved accurate, Nicholas kept his hold on the throne of Russia until 141 days after Papus's death). Although Papus seems to have served the Tsar and Tsarina in what was essentially a shamanic capacity, he was later curiously concerned about their heavy reliance on occultism to assist them in deciding questions of government. During their later correspondence, he warned them a number of times against the influence of Rasputin.

Papus never became a regular (Grand Orient) Freemason. He opposed Masonry as being atheistic, in contrast to the Esoteric Christianity of the Gnostic Church, the K.O.R.C. and the Martinist Order. Despite this, he organized what was announced as an "International Masonic Conference" in Paris on June 24, 1908, and at this conference he received a patent from Theodor Reuss to establish a "Supreme Grand Council General of the Unified Rites of Antient and Primitive Masonry for the Grand Orient of France and its Dependencies at Paris." It was probably on the same occasion that Reuss conferred upon Papus the X° of O.T.O. for France, and Papus in turn assisted Reuss in the formation of the O.T.O. Gnostic Catholic Church as a child of l'Église Gnostique de France. When John Yarker died in 1913, Papus was elected as his successor to the office of Grand Hierophant (international head) of the Antient and Primitive Rites of Memphis and Mizraim.

When World War I broke out, Papus joined the French army medical corps. While working in a military hospital, he contracted tuberculosis and died on October 25, 1916, at the age of 51.

His works include Traité élementaire de science occulte (1888), Le tarot des bohémiens (1889), Traité méthodique de science occulte (1891). Le tarot divinatoire (1909), Traité méthodique de magie pratique (1932), and Le science des nombres (1934) three of which were edited by his son, Dr. Philippe Encausse.
==Source==

http://www.hermetic.com/sabazius/papus.htm The Invisible Basilica of Sabazius, Docteur Gérard (Anaclet Vincent) Encausse, from which this article is taken in its entirety.

Theodor Reuss

2004-10-06T13:50:27Z

Frater DVV:

Theodor Reuss (1855 - 1923 e.v.) Theodor Reuss was an Anglo-German tantric occultist, utopian socialist, journalist, singer, and promoter of Women's Liberation; and the successor to Carl Kellner as head of O.T.O.

Reuss was born the son of an innkeeper at Augsburg on June 28, 1855 e.v. He was a professional singer in his youth, and was privileged to work under Richard Wagner, whom he first met, along with Wagner's patron, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, in 1873. He took part in the first performance of Wagner's Parsifal at Bayreuth in 1882. He later became a newspaper correspondent, and travelled frequently as such to England, where he became a Mason in 1876. He also spent some time there as a journalist and as a music-hall singer under the stage name "Charles Theodore."

In 1880, in Munich, he participated in an attempt to revive Adam Weishaupt's Bavarian Order of Illuminati. In 1885, in England, he joined the British Social League, which some say he joined to spy on Karl Marx's daughter for the German Secret Service. While in England, he became friends with William Wynn Wescott, the Supreme Magus of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia and one of the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Wescott provided Reuss with a charter dated July 26, 1901 for the Swedenborgian Rite of Masonry and a letter of authorization dated Feb. 24, 1902 to found a High Council in Germania of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia. Gérard Encausse provided him with a charter dated June 24, 1901 designating him Special Inspector for the Martinist Order in Germany. In 1888, in Berlin, he joined with Leopold Engel of Dresden, Max Rahn and August Weinholz in another effort to revive the Illuminati Order. In 1895, he began to discuss the formation of Ordo Templi Orientis with Carl Kellner.

The discussions between Reuss and Kellner did not lead to any positive results at the time, allegedly because Kellner disapproved with Reuss's connections with Engel. According to Reuss, upon his final separation with Engel in June of 1902, Kellner contacted him and the two agreed to proceed with the establishment of the Oriental Templar Order by seeking authorizations to work the various rites of high-grade Masonry. Wescott assisted Reuss to contact the English Masonic scholar, John Yarker (1833-1913). Along with his associates Franz Hartmann and Henry Klein, he activated the Masonic Rites of Memphis and Mizraim and a branch of the Scottish Rite in Germany with charters from Yarker. Reuss received letters-patent as a Sovereign Grand Inspector General 33° of the Cernau Scottish Rite from Yarker dated September 24, 1902. On the same date, Yarker appears to have issued a warrant to Reuss, Franz Hartmann and Henry Klein to operate a Sovereign Sanctuary 33°-95° of the Scottish, Memphis and Mizraim rites. The original document is not extant, but a transcript of this warrant was published in Reuss's newsletter, The Oriflamme in 1911, which commenced publication in 1902. Yarker issued a charter confirming Reuss's authority to operate said rites on July 1, 1904; and Reuss published a transcript of an additional confirming charter dated June 24, 1905. Reuss and Kellner together prepared a brief manifesto for their Order in 1903, which was published the next year in The Oriflamme.

When Carl Kellner died in 1905, the leadership of the Academia Masonica of O.T.O. fell upon Reuss's shoulders, and he incorporated all his other organizations under its banner, developing the three degrees of the Academia Masonica, available to Masons only, into a coherent, self-contained initiatory system, open to both men and women. He promulgated a constitution for this new, enlarged O.T.O. on June 21, 1906 in London (his place of residence since January 1906) and the next month proclaimed himself Outer Head of the Order (O.H.O.). That same year he published Lingham-Yoni, which was a German translation of Hargrave Jennings's work Phallism, and issued a warrant to Rudolph Steiner (1861-1925, who was at the time the Secretary General of the German branch of the Theosophical Society), making him Deputy Grand Master of a subordinate O.T.O./Memphis/Mizraim Chapter and Grand Council called "Mystica Aeterna" in Berlin. Steiner went on to found the Anthroposophical Society in 1912, and ended his association with Reuss in 1914.

On June 24, 1908, Reuss attended Encausse's "International Masonic and Spiritualist Conference" in Paris. At this conference, Reuss issued to Encausse a warrant to establish a "Supreme Grand Council General of the Unified Rites of Antient and Primitive Masonry for the Grand Orient of France and its Dependencies at Paris," and possibly received authority in Église Catholique Gnostique. He also appointed Dr. Arnold Krumm-Heller (Huiracocha, 1879-1949) as his official representative for Latin America.

While living in London, Reuss became acquainted with Aleister Crowley. In 1910, he made Crowley a VII° of O.T.O. (based on Crowley's previously held 33° in the Scottish Rite), and in 1912, he conferred upon him the IX° and appointed him National Grand Master General X° for the O.T.O. in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland by charter dated June 1, 1912. Crowley's appointment included authority over an English language rite of the lower (Masonic) degrees of O.T.O. which was given the name Mysteria Mystica Maxima, or M:.M:.M:. In 1913, Crowley issued a Constitution for the M:.M:.M:. and the Manifesto of the M:.M:.M:., which he subsequently redrafted and issued as Liber LII, the Manifesto of the O.T.O. In 1913, Crowley wrote Liber XV, the Gnostic Mass for Reuss's Gnostic Catholic Church. Crowley also dedicated his Mystery Play The Ship (1913) and a collection of poetry, The Giant's Thumb (1915) to Reuss.

In 1914, at the outset of World War I, Reuss left England and returned to Germany. He worked briefly for the Red Cross in Berlin, then, in 1916, moved to Basle, Switzerland. While there, he established an "Anational Grand Lodge and Mystic Temple" of O.T.O. and the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light at Monte Verità, a utopian commune near Ascona founded in 1900 by Henri Oedenkoven and Ida Hofmann, which functioned as a center for the Progressive Underground. On January 22, 1917, Reuss published a manifesto for this Anational Grand Lodge, which was called "Verità Mystica." On the same date, he published a revised O.T.O. Constitution (based in a large part on Crowley's 1913 Constitution of the M:.M:.M:.), with a "Synopsis of Degrees" and an abridgment of The Message of the Master Therion appended. Reuss held an "Anational Congress for Organising the Reconstruction of Society on Practical Cooperative Lines" at Monte Verità from August 15-25, 1917. This Congress included readings of Crowley's poetry (on August 22) and a recitation of Crowley's Gnostic Mass (on August 24). On October 24, 1917, Reuss Chartered an O.T.O. Lodge, "Libertas et Fraternitas" in Zürich. This Lodge later placed itself under the Masonic jurisdiction of the Swiss Grand Lodge Alpina.

In 1918, Reuss published his German translation of Crowley's Gnostic Mass. In a note at the end of his translation of Liber XV, he referred to himself as, simultaneously, the Sovereign Patriarch and Primate of the Gnostic Catholic Church, and Gnostic Legate to Switzerland of the Église Gnostique Universelle, acknowledging Jean Bricaud (1881-1934 -- on left in photo) as Sovereign Patriarch of that church. The issuance of this document can be viewed as the birth of the Thelemic E.G.C. as an independent organization under the umbrella of O.T.O., with Reuss as its first Patriarch.

Reuss was clearly impressed with Thelema. Crowley's Gnostic Mass, which Reuss translated into German and had recited at his Anational Congress at Monte Verità, is an explicitly Thelemic ritual. In an undated letter to Crowley (received in 1917), Reuss reported exitedly that he had read The Message of the Master Therion to a gathering at Monte Verità, and that he was translating The Book of the Law into German. He added, "Let this new encourage you! We live in your Work!!!"

Reuss left Monte Verità some time before November 1918. On May 10, 1919, Reuss issued a "Gauge of Amity" document to Matthew McBlain Thomson, founder of the ill-fated "American Masonic Federation." On September 18, 1919, Reuss was reconsecrated by Bricaud, thus receiving the "Antioch Succession," and re-appointed as "Gnostic Legate" to Switzerland for Bricaud's Église Gnostique Universelle. In 1920, Oedenkoven and Hofmann abandoned Monte Verità in 1920 to establish a second colony in Brazil, and Reuss published a document titled The Program of Construction and the Guiding Principles of the Gnostic Neo-Christians: O.T.O.

On July 17, 1920, he attended the Congress of the "World Federation of Universal Freemasonry" in Zürich, which lasted several days. Reuss, with Bricaud's support, advocated the adoption of the religion of Crowley's Gnostic Mass as the "official religion for all members of the World Federation of Universal Freemasonry in possession of the 18° of the Scottish Rite." Reuss's efforts in this regard were a failure, and he left the Congress after the first day. On May 10, 1921, Reuss issued X° Charters to Charles Stansfeld Jones and Heinrich Tränker to serve as Grand Masters for the U.S.A. and Germany, respectively. On July 30, 1921, Reuss issued another "Gauge of Amity" document, this time to H. Spencer Lewis, founder of A.M.O.R.C., the San Jose, California based Rosicrucian organization. Reuss returned to Germany in September of 1921, settling in Munich.

There is some reason to believe that Reuss suffered a stroke in the Spring of 1920, but this is not entirely certain. Crowley wrote to W.T. Smith in March of 1943: "the late O.H.O., after his first stroke of paralysis, got into a panic about the work being carried on... He hastily issued honorary diplomas of the Seventh Degree to various people, some of whom had no right to anything at all and some of whom were only cheap crooks." Shortly after appointing him his Viceroy for Australia, Crowley appears to have corresponded with his student Frank Bennett and discussed with him his doubts about Reuss's continuing ability to effectively govern the Order. It would appear that Reuss discovered the correspondence; he wrote Crowley an angry, defensive response on November 9, 1921, in which he appeared to distance himself and O.T.O. from Thelema, which, as shown above, he had previously embraced. Crowley replied to Reuss's letter on November 23, 1921, and stated in his letter, "It is my will to be O.H.O. and Frater Superior of the Order and avail myself of your abdication -- to proclaim myself as such." He signed the letter "Baphomet O.H.O." Reuss's response is not extant, but Crowley recounts in his Confessions that Reuss "resigned the office [of O.H.O.] in 1922 in my favour." However, it does not appear that Crowley waited for Reuss's response to assume his duties. In a diary entry for November 27, 1921, Crowley wrote: "I have proclaimed myself O.H.O. Frater Superior of the Order of Oriental Templars." Reuss died on October 28, 1923. In a letter to Heinrich Tränker dated February 14, 1925, Crowley stated the following: "Reuss was very uncertain in temper, and in many ways unreliable. In his last years he seems to have completely lost his grip, even accusing The Book of the Law of communistic tendencies, than which no statement could be more absurd. Yet it seems that he must have been to some extent correctly led, on account of his having made the appointments of yourself and Frater Achad, and designating me in his last letter as his successor." In a letter to Charles Stansfeld Jones dated Sun in Capricorn, Anno XX (Dec. 1924 - Jan. 1925), Crowley said, "in the O.H.O.'s last letter to me he invited me to become his successor as O.H.O. and Frater Superior." Reuss's letter designating Crowley his successor as O.H.O. has not been found, but no credible documentation has surfaced which would indicate that Reuss ever designated any alternative successor.

Reuss's writings include: The Matrimonial Question from an Anarchistic Point of View (1887); Die Mysterien der Illuminaten (1894); Geschichte des Illuminaten-Ordens (1896); Was muss man von der Freimauerei wissen? (1901); Was ist Okkultismus und wie erlangt man occulte Kräfte? (1903); Was muss man von Richard Wagner und seinen Ton-dramen wissen? (1903); Lingam-Yoni; oder die Mysterien des Geschlechts-Kultus (1906); Allgemeine Satzungen des Ordens der Orientalischem Templer O.T.O. (1906; Parsifal und das Enthüllte Grals-Geheimnis (1914); Constitution of the Ancient Order of Oriental Templars, O.T.O., Ordo Templi Orientis, with an Introduction and a Synopsis of the Degrees of the O.T.O. (1917); Die Gnostische Messe (1920); Das Aufbau-Programm und die Leitsätze der Gnostischen Neo-Christen (1920); and numerous articles published in his periodical Oriflamme (1902-1914).

==References==
*http://www.hermetic.com/sabazius/reuss.htm The Invisible Basilica of Sabazius: Theodor Reuss (from which this entire article is taken)
*Howe, Ellic; "Theodor Reuss: Irregular Freemasonry in Germany, 1900-23" in Ars Quatuor Coronati, Feb. 1978
*König, Peter-Robert; Das OTO-Phänomenon, A.R.W., München 1994
*Merlin Peregrinus (Theodor Reuss); I.N.R.I., O.T.O., Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae, Canon Missae, Die Gnostische Messe [1918], privately published by the Oriflamme 1920, translated by Marcus M. Jungkurth
*Möller, Helmut and Ellic Howe; Merlin Peregrinus, vom Untergrund des Abendlandes, Königshausen & Neumann, Würtzburg 1986
*Reuss, Theodor; I.N.R.I. Constitution of the Ancient Order of Oriental Templars, O.T.O., Ordo Templi Orientis, with an Introduction and a Synopsis of the Degrees of the O.T.O., 1917
*Reuss, Theodor; Ordo Templi Orientis - Hermetic Brotherhood of Light. Anational Grand Lodge & Mystic Temple: "Verità Mystica", or Ascona. Manifesto., Ascona, Switzerland 1917
*Reuss, Theodor; I.N.R.I. The Programme of Construction and the Guiding Principles of the Gnostic Neo-Christians, O.T.O., 1920
*Reuss, Theodor; Introduction to Lingham-Yoni (Phallism, by Hargrave Jennings), Verlag Wilsson, Berlin 1906
*Shepard, Leslie (Ed.); Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, 2nd. Ed., Gale Research Co., Detroit MI 1984
*Symonds, John and Kenneth Grant, eds.; The Magical Record of the Beast 666, Duckworth, London 1972

Carl Kellner

2004-10-06T13:43:36Z

Frater DVV:

Carl Kellner

2004-10-06T13:41:49Z

Frater DVV:

Michael Maier

2004-10-06T13:33:40Z

Frater DVV:

<Michael Maier> (1566-1622) Writer, diplomat, physician, poet, classical scholar, alchemist and Rosicrucian apologist, was born at Rendsburg (Prussia), educated at the University of Rostock, and later received his doctorate of medicine at Basel. He lived for some years in Prague as physician and confidant of the Emperor Rudolf II, an important patron of the arts, who had an especial interest in hermetic philosophy. Maier travelled extensively on diplomatic missions, and made many contacts with influential people sympathetic to his interests in hermetic philosophy. After the death of Rudolf in 1612, Maier spent some years in Britain, where he was friendly with Robert Fludd.
In a number of works, he defended the Rosicrucians against their critics. It seems unlikely that he
was actively involved in the early development of the Rosicrucian myth during the early years of the seventeenth century, but once it had become public through the publishing of the manifestos in 1614-1615, Maier and Fludd were among the mysterious movement’s staunchest defenders.

Maier's works include the Arcana arcanissima [‘the most secret secret’] of 1614, the Lusus serius [‘the serious past-time’] of 1616, Examen fucorum [‘the detection of the falsifications of pseudo-alchemists’] in 1617, the Jocus severus [‘the earnest jest’] and the Silentium post clamores [‘the silence after the clamour of the announcement of the Rosicrucians’] of 1617, his famous emblem book, the Atalanta fugiens [‘Atalanta fleeing’] of 1617, Themis aurea [‘golden Themis’] 1618, Tripus Aureus [‘the golden tripod’] 1618, Viatorium [‘the wayfarer’s guide’] 1618.

Maier saw his work as deeply religious, explaining the relationship of God to the cosmos. Like all other philosophical alchemists, he had a very high view of his calling and he was at pains in his writings to support the sublime truths of alchemy and hermetic philosophy against its detractors, and against the false alchemists and charlatans who gave the discipline such a bad reputation.

Maier's most celebrated work is Atalanta fugiens, hoc est, emblemata nova de secretis naturae chymica (Oppenheim, 1618), which contains 50 engravings of emblems. They each have a verse and an epigram associated with them, and a short prose discourse which elaborates a classical mythological interpretation of the symbolism in the emblem. The first emblem, for example, shows the North Wind as a bearded man carrying the fundamental principle of the alchemists, symbolised as a gestating child, in his belly.

''EMBLEM 1, Of the secrets of nature
The wind carried him in his belly
EPIGRAM 1
When the unborn child, which lies hidden in the womb of the NORTH WIND,
One day will rise to the light alive
He alone will be able to surpass all deeds of heroism
With his art, his hand, bodily strength and spirit,
Let him not be born for you like a Coeso, and not as a useless abortion,
Not as an Agrippa, but under a lucky star.''

The Atalanta fugiens attempts to merge music, poetry, visual art, and prose into an unified experience. It takes the form of an emblem book with fifty emblems, but with the added dimension of music. Maier uses the myth of the beautiful young woman Atalanta who, in order to avoid losing her own essence by being married to some unsuitable man, challenges each of her suitors to a race. She is an exceptionally fast runner and easily wins against all her pursuers, until the youth Hippomenes, following the advice of Venus, tricks her by dropping three golden apples which she cannot resist stopping to pick up, thus allowing Hippomenes to win the race.

Maier creates a ‘fugue’ to accompany each emblem, taking the form of a three-part canon, with a leading voice representing Atalanta, a pursuing voice Hippomenes and a simple base figure of three notes reflecting the golden apples. The music also is further elaborated by the fact that for certain emblems the music is a mirrored version, or inversion, (or sometimes places the notes in reverse order) of that found accompanying another emblem. Thus we have a complex musical interrelationship between emblems.

==Sources==

http://www.nd.edu/~dharley/witchcraft/Maier.html Ideas in Society, 1500 - 1700: Michael Maier.

Valentinus

2004-10-05T16:31:52Z

Frater DVV:

Valentinus was one of the most influential Gnostic Christian teachers of the second century A.D. He founded a movement which spread throughout Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Despite persecution by the Catholic Church, the Valentinian school endured for over 600 years. Valentinus' influence persists even today.

==Biography==

Valentinus was a second century Christian mystic and poet. He is sometimes refered to as a "Gnostic" because of the importance that mystical knowledge (gnosis) plays in his thought. Valentinus was born in Phrebonis in upper Egypt about 100 AD and educated in nearby Alexandria. There he became a disciple of the Christian teacher Theudas who had been a disciple of Saint Paul. He claimed that Theudas taught him secret wisdom that Paul had taught privately to his inner circle.

Like many early Christian mystics, Valentinus claimed that that he had a vision of the risen Christ. Following his vision, he began his career as a Christian teacher at Alexandria around 120AD. His esoteric theology quickly attracted a large following in Egypt and Syria. In 136 AD, he went to Rome after stopping briefly in Cyprus. At Rome he quickly rose to prominence and was widely respected for his eloquence. He was so well regarded in the Roman church that in 143 AD he was a candidate for the office of bishop. It seems likely he refused the position. He continued to teach in Rome for at least ten more years.

Nothing certain is known of his later career. He may have died at Rome around 155 AD. According to a late source, he left Rome and went to Cyprus. Some of the legends about "Saint Valentine" probably reflect the lasting prestige he enjoyed at Rome. After Valentinus' death, his disciples further developed his ideas and spread them throughout the Roman Empire.

==Valentinus's Teachings==

===The Secret Tradition===
According to Valentinus, there are esoteric teachings which originate from Jesus that were passed on in secret. When Jesus spoke in public, he used metaphors that did not disclose his complete teachings. He only passed them on to his disciples in private. He referred to this when he said: "The knowledge about the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but to the rest it comes by means of parables so that they may look but not see and listen but not understand."(Luke 8:9-10 cf. Ireneus Against Heresies 1:3:1). Similarly, when Saint Paul encountered the risen Lord in a vision (2 Corinthians 12:2-4; Acts 9:9-10), he received the secret teaching from him. Valentinus claimed that he learned this secret teaching from Theudas.

According to Valentinus, this secret tradition provides the key that is essential for a complete understanding of Jesus' message. One of his followers put this in the following words: "The scriptures are ambiguous and the truth cannot be extracted from them by those who are ignorant of tradition." (Irenaeus Against Heresies 3:2:1). The Valentinians claimed that the secret teachings are meaningful only to those who are spiritually mature. If a person was not ready to receive them, they seem like nonsense "because their value can be judged only on a spiritual basis" (1 Corinthians 2:14). According to the Valentinian tradition, Paul and the other apostles revealed these teachings only to those who were 'spiritually mature' (1 Corinthians 2:6)

===God===
Valentinians believed that God is incomprehensible and cannot be known directly. Therefore he defies accurate description. He is infinite, without beginning or end and is the ultimate origin of all things. He encompasses all things without being encompassed. Everything including the world lies within the deity and continues to be part of it. The Godhead manifests itself through a process of self-unfolding in the subsequent multiplicity of being while maintaining its unity.

Valentinians believed that God is androgynous and frequently depicted him as a male-female dyad. This is related to the notion that God provides the universe with both form and substance. The feminine aspect of the deity is called Silence, Grace and Thought. Silence is God's primordial state of tranquillity and self-awareness She is also the active creative Thought that makes all subsequent states of being (or "Aeons") substantial. The masculine aspect of God is Depth, also called Ineffable and First Father. Depth is the profoundly incomprehensible, all-encompassing aspect of the deity. He is essentially passive, yet when moved to action by his feminine Thought, he gives the universe form.

===The Son===
The origin of the universe is described as a process of emanation from the Godhead. The male and female aspects of the Father, acting in conjunction, manifested themselves in the Son. The Son is also often depicted by Valentinians as a male-female dyad. The Son manifests himself in twenty-six spiritual entities or Aeons arranged into male-female pairs. The arrangement and names of the Aeons will not be discussed here. They represent the energies immanent within Son and were seen as part of his personality. Together they constitute the Fullness (pleroma) of the Godhead.

===The Fall===
The Aeons who are manifested by the Son are conceived as having some degree of psychological independence. They lie within God but are separated from him by a Limit or boundary. As a result, they do not know the one who brought them into being. The Aeons sensed that they were incomplete and longed to know their origin.

This longing passed to Sophia (Wisdom), the youngest of the Aoens. On behalf of the whole Fullness, she took up the quest to know the supreme Parent. She attempted to know him by thinking alone, something that is impossible. As a result, she became separated from her consort and fell into a state of deficiency and suffering. Through the power of Limit, Sophia was divided in two. Her higher part was returned to her consort but her lower part was separated from the Fullness into a lower realm along with the deficiency and suffering. This lower realm is identical with the physical world.

Valentinians envisioned the universe as a series of concentric spheres. The innermost sphere is the world or deficiency where the lower Sophia was exiled. Enclosing this is the Fullness (pleroma) where the Aeons are. The Aeons are enclosed within the Son. The outermost sphere which encompasses the Son is where the Father (Depth and Silence) is. There is a boundary or Limit between God and the Fullness. There is a second boundary or Limit between the Fullness and the deficiency. Just as the Fullness is a product of the Godhead and lies within it, so also the realm of deficiency is a product of the Fullness and lies within it. The deficiency arose as result of ignorance and it will be dissolved through knowledge (gnosis).

Through the mediation of the Son, the Aeons within the Fullness were given knowledge (gnosis) of God and received rest. All of the Aeons then joined together in celebration and became completely integrated into the personality of the Son. The reintegrated Son is also called the Savior. He is destined to be the male partner or bridegroom of the fallen Sophia. He is surrounded by a retinue of angels who were brought forth in honor of the Aeons.

The lower Sophia, trapped in the realm of deficiency, continued to suffer the emotional torments of grief, fear and confusion. As a result of her ignorance, she was trapped in a state of illusion and was unable to distinguish what was real and what unreal. She underwent a conversion when she thought of the light and she began to plead for assistance. In response, her bridegroom, the Savior, and his retinue of angels descended through the Limit to her. Through knowledge (gnosis) of the eternal realm she was freed of illusion and suffering.

The lower Sophia rejoiced at the sight of the Savior and his retinue of angels, and brought forth spiritual seeds in their image. These seeds are the spiritual element present in every Christian. For this reason the seeds are referred to as the spiritual Church. Just as the Savior is the bridegroom of the lower Sophia, so also the angels will be the bridegrooms of the spiritual seeds at the end of time.

Three states of being or "substances" came into being from Sophia as a result of her quest to know God. First the illusion which characterizes material existence came from ignorance and suffering; it is personified as the Devil. Second came soul which comes from conversion as an intermediate stage between ignorance and knowledge. It is personified as the Craftsman (demiurge) who forms the material world. Last the spiritual seed came from her knowledge (gnosis) and is personified in the lower Sophia herself.

Despite the fact that the lower Sophia was no longer ignorant, the ignorance was not fully dissipated. The spiritual seeds were immature and needed training. For this purpose, the creation of the material world was necessary. The lower Sophia and the Savior secretly influenced the Craftsman to create the material world in the image of the Fullness. The Craftsman is ignorant of his mother and thinks that he acts alone, but he unconsciously acts as her agent.

===Human Beings===
Human beings were created by the Craftsman. In addition to a physical body, Valentinians believed that people were composed of three non-corporeal elements: a demonic part (chous), a rational soul (psyche), and a spiritual seed (pneuma). Human beings were divided into three types depending on which of the three natures is dominant within them. That is why Adam and Eve are described as having had three children who they named Cain, Abel and Seth. They are the prototypes of carnal (choic), animate (psychic) and spiritual (pneumatic) human beings respectively.

===Jesus===
The decisive event in the history of the world was the ministry of Jesus. He is the physical manifestation of the Son or Savior. Prior to his coming, the true God was unknown. Jesus came to bring knowledge (gnosis) to a suffering humanity that was desperately seeking God. By knowledge, the two elements which had been separated (i.e. the seeds and the angels) are joined.

The Valentinian tradition draws a sharp distinction between the human Jesus and the divine Jesus. The human Jesus was born the true son of Mary and Joseph. By a special dispensation, his body is consubstantial with Sophia and her spiritual seed. When he was thirty years old, he went to John the Baptist to be baptized. As soon as he went down into the water, the divine Savior, referred to as the "Spirit of the Thought of the Father", descended on him in the form of a dove. This is the true "virgin birth" and resurrection from the dead, for he was reborn of the virgin Spirit.

Jesus taught publicly in parables and riddles, but to his closest disciples he revealed the whole truth about the fall of Sophia and the coming restoration of the Fullness. According to Valentinian tradition, Mary Magdalene was an important member of this inner circle. She is seen as an image of the lower Sophia and is described as Jesus' consort in the Gospel of Philip.

The divine Jesus experienced all of the emotions of human being including grief, fear and confusion in the Garden of Gethsemene. However, only the human Jesus suffered pain and died on the cross. His divine aspect transcends physical suffering and death. When his physical body died, his non-corporeal spiritual body rose up from it.

Following the crucifixion, Valentinians believed that Jesus continued to appear to his disciples for eighteen months, not the forty days reported in the Acts of the Apostles. During this period he instructed the disciples "plainly about the Father." Even after his ascension, he continued to appear to people in visions, most notably Saint Paul and Valentinus.

===Redemption===
According to the Valentinians, people manifest their true nature by their response to the message of Jesus. Using the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:1-8), they explain that through Jesus, Sophia sows the spiritual seed in all who hear the message. In some people the seed "falls on the path" and they do not respond at all. Such people are carnal by nature. In others the seed is choked by the thorns which are worldly concerns. They are hesitant and are unable to go beyond the level of rational explanations. Such people are dominated by their rational element or soul. In others, the seed was planted "in good earth" and they bear spiritual fruit. Such people are Gnostic or spiritual Christians.

People bear fruit spiritually by attaining a state of mystical knowledge (gnosis) in which they are joined with their angel who accompanies the Savior. Awakened from the drunken stupor of ignorance, and freed of suffering, they recognize their true spiritual nature. This is the true resurrection from the dead, that is, from the death of ignorance. This resurrection does not take place in the afterlife. It must be experienced in the here and now.

Valentinians describe the process of union with the divine in terms of a general eschatology that can be realized in the individual here and now. First the person spiritually ascends above the Craftsman and the lower powers to join Sophia, the Savior and their angel. Rejoicing with all of the saved, the person is joined with their angel and enters the Fullness. Such a person is "in the world but not of it." They have already attained a spiritual existence such that, for them, the world has become the Fullness.

===Ethics===
Despite the untruths spread by their enemies, Valentinians insisted on the highest possible ethical standard from members of their school. They believed that it was possible to lead a sinless existence through perfect knowledge (gnosis) of God's will. Sin was seen as an expression of ignorance. As it says in the Gospel of Philip, "The one who has knowledge is a free person. But the free person does not sin, for the one who sins is a slave of sin " (Gospel of Philip 77:15-18).

The Sermon on the Mount was seen as a guide to leading an ethical life. According to the teacher Ptolemy, the law of love taught by Jesus abolished unjust laws, tranformed other laws to a spiritual sense and fulfilled the true divine law (Letter to Flora). While they did reject wealth and temporal authority, Valentinians never rejected marriage and raising children. According to the Alexandrian teacher Theodotus, marriage was necessary so that those with the spiritual seed might be born. Despite his advice, some members of the school practiced celibacy.

==Sources==
*http://www.gnosis.org/library/valentinus/index.html Source for this article
*Hoeller, Stephen A. "Valentinus: A Gnostic for All Seasons." http://www.gnosis.org/valentinus.htm

Forlong dux

2004-10-05T16:13:40Z

Frater DVV:

Forlong dux, Major-General J.G.R. (James George Roche) Forlong. He was a Scottish military engineer in the Anglo-Indian Army, who received acclaim from the governments of England and India for his brilliant feats of road-building in the jungles of the Indian subcontinent during the Mahratta and Burmese wars.

Forlong's lifelong hobby was the comparative study of the religions of Man, a study which was facilitated by his knowledge of seven languages. He avidly pursued this avocation during his 33 extensive travels in India, as well as after retiring from the military in 1876. He is the author of two monumental works on the subject: Faiths of Man, a Cyclopaedia of Religions (1906) and Rivers of Life (1883). The latter is included in Section 1 of the A:. A:. reading list. Faiths of Man compares the various religions of mankind, demonstrating that many elements of the Christian mythos were borrowed from older religions. Rivers of Life traces the development of the great world religions back to their primitive origins in the worship of the sun and/or the phallus.

Dux (rhymes with "hooks") is Latin for "leader." In the late Roman Empire, a dux was a military chief commanding the troops in a frontier province, and is the origin of the title "Duke." The term "dux" is used in Scotland to denote a student who is academically first in his or her class.

==Sources==
*http://www.hermetic.com/sabazius/forlong.htm The Invisible Basilica of Sabazius, "Forlong Dux"

Dion Fortune

2004-10-04T07:38:03Z

Frater DVV:

Dion Fortune (1891 - 1946), born Violet Mary Firth, British magician and author.

She was introduced to the occult by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and after its break up she launched her own occult society, the Society of the Inner Light. She remained active in the occult for the rest of her life.

She wrote a number of novels and short stories that explored various aspects of magic and mysticism, including ''The Demon Lover'', ''The Winged Bull'', ''The Goat-Foot God, The Sea Priestess'', and ''The Secrets of Dr. Taverner''. This latter is a collection of her short stories, and contains perhaps her most successful efforts at fiction.

Of her non-fictional works on magical subjects, the best remembered of her books are ''The Cosmic Doctrine'', meant as a summation of her basic teachings on mysticism; and ''The Mystical Qabalah'', an introduction to the Kabbalah, at least as practiced by those Western adepts of hermeticism who have borrowed from it. Though some of her writings may seem dated to contemporary readers, they have the virtue of lucidity, and the avoidance of the deliberate obscurity that characterised many of her forerunners.

Dion Fortune allegedly participated in the magical Battle of Britain, which was supposed to have been a gathering of British magicians for the purpose of hexing Adolf Hitler and forestalling a German invasion during the darkest days of World War II. The effort involved in casting these spells is said to have contributed to her death shortly after the war ended, although the Society for the Inner Light website states that she died of leukemia. Her Society for the Inner Light continues to function, as do other organizations descended from her students.

==Fortune and Crowley==

Fortune, in her The Mystical Qabala, clearly stated that she depended on Crowley's reprinting of S.L. Mather's notes on Qabalah:

The Unwritten Qabalah . . . concerning which MacGregor Mathers says, "I may say no more on this point. . . ." [I]t may be justifiable to say that if he did receive the Unwritten Qabalah it has for some years ceasted to be unwritten, for after a quarrel with MacGregor Mathers, Aleister Crowley, the well known author and scholor, published the lot . . . .

In these pages it is the system given by Crowley of which I shall avail myself to supplement the points upon which Macgregor Mathers, Wynn Mescott, and A.E. Waite, the principal modern authorites upon the qabalah, are silent.

In her preface, however, she clarified that she was not personally acquainted with Crowley:

As I have frequently referred to the authority of MacGregor Mathers and Aleister Crowley in matters of Qabalistic mysticism, it may be as well to explain my position in relation to these two writers. I was at one time a member of the organisation founded by the former, but have never been associated with the latter. I have never known either of these gentlemen personally, MacGregor Mathers having died before I joined his organisatrion, and Aleister Crowley having then ceased to be associated with it.

Nevertheless, as one reads The Mystical Qabalah it is clear that Fortune owes much to Crowley's The Temple of Solomon the King and Liber 777.

==Sources==
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dion_Fortune Wikipedia, Fortune, Dion.
*http://www.innerlight.org.uk/ The Society for Inner Light
*Fortune, Dion. The Mystical Qabalah

Dion Fortune

2004-10-04T07:37:09Z

Frater DVV:

Dion Fortune (1891 - 1946), born Violet Mary Firth, British magician and author.

She was introduced to the occult by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and after its break up she launched her own occult society, the Society of the Inner Light. She remained active in the occult for the rest of her life.

She wrote a number of novels and short stories that explored various aspects of magic and mysticism, including ''The Demon Lover'', ''The Winged Bull'', ''The Goat-Foot God, The Sea Priestess'', and ''The Secrets of Dr. Taverner''. This latter is a collection of her short stories, and contains perhaps her most successful efforts at fiction.

Of her non-fictional works on magical subjects, the best remembered of her books are ''The Cosmic Doctrine'', meant as a summation of her basic teachings on mysticism; and ''The Mystical Qabalah'', an introduction to the Kabbalah, at least as practiced by those Western adepts of hermeticism who have borrowed from it. Though some of her writings may seem dated to contemporary readers, they have the virtue of lucidity, and the avoidance of the deliberate obscurity that characterised many of her forerunners.

Dion Fortune allegedly participated in the magical Battle of Britain, which was supposed to have been a gathering of British magicians for the purpose of hexing Adolf Hitler and forestalling a German invasion during the darkest days of World War II. The effort involved in casting these spells is said to have contributed to her death shortly after the war ended, although the Society for the Inner Light website states that she died of leukemia. Her Society for the Inner Light continues to function, as do other organizations descended from her students.

==Fortune and Crowley==

Fortune, in her The Mystical Qabala, clearly stated that she depended on Crowley's reprinting of S.L. Mather's notes on Qabalah:

The Unwritten Qabalah . . . concerning which MacGregor Mathers says, "I may say no more on this point. . . ." [I]t may be justifiable to say that if he did receive the Unwritten Qabalah it has for some years ceasted to be unwritten, for after a quarrel with MacGregor Mathers, Aleister Crowley, the well known author and scholor, published the lot . . . .

In these pages it is the system given by Crowley of which I shall avail myself to supplement the points upon which Macgregor Mathers, Wynn Mescott, and A.E. Waite, the principal modern authorites upon the qabalah, are silent.

In her preface, however, she clarified that she was not personally acquainted with Crowley:

As I have frequently referred to the authority of MacGregor Mathers and Aleister Crowley in matters of Qabalistic mysticism, it may be as well to explain my position in relation to these two writers. I was at one time a member of the organisation founded by the former, but have never been associated with the latter. I have never known either of these gentlemen personally, MacGregor Mathers having died before I joined his organisatrion, and Aleister Crowley having then ceased to be associated with it.

Nevertheless, as one reads The Mystical Qabalah it is clear that Fortune owes much to Crowley's The Temple of Solomon the King and Liber 777.

==Sources==
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dion_Fortune Wikipedia, Fortune, Dion.
http://www.innerlight.org.uk/ The Society for Inner Light
Fortune, Dion. The Mystical Qabalah

Dion Fortune

2004-10-04T07:14:48Z

Frater DVV:

Dion Fortune Dion Fortune (1891 - 1946), born Violet Mary Firth, was a British magician and author.

She was introduced to the occult by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and after its break up she launched her own occult society, the Society of the Inner Light. She remained active in the occult for the rest of her life.

She wrote a number of novels and short stories that explored various aspects of magic and mysticism, including ''The Demon Lover'', ''The Winged Bull'', ''The Goat-Foot God, The Sea Priestess'', and ''The Secrets of Dr. Taverner''. This latter is a collection of her short stories, and contains perhaps her most successful efforts at fiction.

Of her non-fictional works on magical subjects, the best remembered of her books are ''The Cosmic Doctrine'', meant as a summation of her basic teachings on mysticism; and ''The Mystical Qabalah'', an introduction to the Kabbalah, at least as practiced by those Western adepts of hermeticism who have borrowed from it. Though some of her writings may seem dated to contemporary readers, they have the virtue of lucidity, and the avoidance of the deliberate obscurity that characterised many of her forerunners.

Dion Fortune allegedly participated in the magical Battle of Britain, which was supposed to have been a gathering of British magicians for the purpose of hexing Adolf Hitler and forestalling a German invasion during the darkest days of World War II. The effort involved in casting these spells is said to have contributed to her death shortly after the war ended, although the Society for the Inner Light website states that she died of leukemia. Her <a href="http://www.innerlight.org.uk/">Society for the Inner Light</a> continues to function, as do other organizations descended from her students.

==Sources==
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dion_Fortune Wikipedia, Fortune, Dion.
http://www.innerlight.org.uk/ The Society for Inner Light

Egyptian Godforms

2004-09-27T07:52:56Z

Frater DVV: /* Other Important Egyptian Godforms */

===The Ennead===

The Ennead were the nine most important gods and goddesses worshipped in the Egyptian city of [[Heliopolis]].

*Ra (also Atum), his children
**Shu
**Tefnut, their children
***Nut
***Geb
*Nebt-het (Gk: Nephthys)
*[[Osiris|Asar]] (Gk: Osiris)
*Aset (Gk: Isis)
*Set

===The Ogdoad===

Many ancient Egyptian cities revered a principal set of eight deities, usually arranged in four male/female pairs. For example: the Ogdoad of Hermopolis was as follows:

*Nu | Naunet (primordial waters)
*[[Amoun]] | Amaunet (potential for creation)
*Kuk | Kauket (infinite darkness)
*Huh | Hauhet (vast empty space)

===Other Important Egyptian Godforms===

Egyptian and Greek names:

*Anpu (Gk: Anubis)
*Antaios
*Anuket
*Apep (Gk: Apophis)
*Apis
*Astarte
*Aten
*Bast
*Bes: An Egyptian godform usually depicted as a man of dwarf stature, facing forward (as opposed to the nearly universal canonical profile), wearing the mask and tail of a lion and carrying a large knife; also often holding a rattle. Bes is the Name associated most strongly with protection of the household and specifically its children and pregnant women; he was also seen as the patron of laughter, dancing, happiness and fertility. Bes's masked face with lolling tongue can be seen on amulets and pieces of furniture throughout Egyptian history.

*Hapi
*Het-heru (Gk: Hathor)
*Heru (Gk: Horus)
*Hoor-par-Kraat (Gk: Harpocrates)

*Kephra (also Khepri, Khopri; Crowley Khephera): Khepra is the manifestation of the Sun in the form of a scarab beetle, who pushes the Sun across the heavens daily. The actual Egyptian scarab beetle lays an egg and rolls it into a ball of dung and mud to protect it until it hatches. The beetle was (and is) a common sight pushing its egg in the ball of mud and dung over the ground. It was from this natural fact that the Egyptians derived the idea of the sun rolled from horizon to horizon. Crowley incorporated Khephera into [[Liber Resh]] in the midnight adoration of the Sun.

*Khonsu
*Khnum
*Maat
*Mentu
*Neith
*Nut
*Ptah
*Sebek (Sobek; G/R Suchos) - "Watching over You" Son of Nit (and also, according to some myths, Set), Sebek is either depicted as a full crocodile, or, less often, as a crocodile-headed man. He is often given the epithets of Heru-sa-Aset as a Netjer of protection, healing and vengeance over the wrongdoer. In some mythologies Sebek is a powerful and awe-inspiring denizen of the underworld, and was invoked to do away with annoyances and negative situations, in the phrase "to Sebek with it(him)!," much as modern-day slang consigns bothersome things and persons "to Hell." Sebek/Sobek is associated with Key Number 32 in Liber 777.
*Selket
*Sekhmet
*Serapis
*Tawaret (Gk: Thoueris)
*Tehuti (Gk: Thoth)
*Tum

==Sources==
http://www.kemet.org/glossary/ Listing of Kemetic (ancient Egyptian) god-names from the website of The Kemetic Orthodox Faith, a neo-Egyptian religion featuring a very well researched listing of Egyptian god-names (netjeru).

666

2004-09-26T10:25:36Z

Frater DVV: /* 666, the Beast, and Aleister Crowley */

666, The Biblical "Number of the Beast." Adopted by [[Aleister Crowley]] in his youth as part of his persona as "The Wickedest Man Alive" and "The Beast." (To Mega Therion). Later linked to a number of concepts in [[Thelema]] through [[Gematria]].

==The Beast of Revelation==

AND I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. 2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. 3 And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. 4 And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him? 5 And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months. 6 And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. 7 And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. 8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. 9 If any man have an ear, let him hear. 10 He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints. 11 And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. 12 And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. 13 And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, 14 And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live. 15 And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. 16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: 17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. 18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. -- Revelation of St. John the Divine, ch. 13, 1-18. (emphasis added)

==666, the Beast, and Aleister Crowley==
In his youth, because of his recalcitrance once he departed from the ways of his fundamentalist [[Plymouth Brethren]] parents, Crowley was referred to by (and gloried in) the title of "Beast." At Cambridge he not only accepted the title but expanded on it, calling himself "The Great Beast" and signing notes "666," the number taken from Chapter 13 of the Book of Revelation.

Qabalah

2004-09-25T13:10:23Z

Frater DVV: /* Gematria, Notarikon, and Temura */

Qabalah (alt. kabbalah) is an aspect of Jewish mysticism. It consists of a large body of speculation on the nature of divinity, the creation, the origin and fate of the soul, and the role of human beings. It consists also of meditative, devotional, mystical and magical practices which were taught only to a select few and for this reason Kabbalah is regarded as an esoteric offshoot of Judaism. In general usage, the spelling qabalah is used to distinguish the variation of kabbalah used by western or hermetic magicians from Jewish mystical kabbalah.

==The History of Qabalah/Kabbalah==

===The Kabbalah in Jewish Mystical Tradition===

The word "Kabbalah" is derived from the Hebrew root "to receive, to accept", and in many cases is used synonymously with "tradition". According to Jewish tradition, the Torah (Torah - "Law" - the first five books of the Old Testament) was created prior to the world and she advised God on such weighty matters as the creation of human kind. When Moses received the written law from God, tradition has it that he also received the oral law, which was not written down, but passed from generation to generation. At times the oral law has been referred to as "Kabbalah" - the oral tradition.

The earliest documents which are generally acknowledged as being Kabbalistic come from the 1st. Century C.E., but there is a suspicion that the Biblical phenomenon of prophecy may have been grounded in a much older oral tradition which was a precursor to the earliest recognisable forms of Kabbalah. Some believe the tradition goes back as far as Melchizedek. There are moderately plausible arguments that Pythagoras received his learning from Hebrew sources. There is a substantial literature of Jewish mysticism dating from the period 100AD - 1000AD which is not strictly Kabbalistic in the modern sense, but which was available as source material to medieval Kabbalists.

On the basis of a detailed examination of texts, and a study of the development of a specialist vocabulary and a distinct body of ideas, Scholem has concluded that the origins of Kabbalah can be traced to 12th. century Provence. The origin of the word "Kabbalah" as a label for a tradition which is definitely recognisable as Kabbalah is attributed to Isaac the Blind (c. 1160-1236 C.E.), who is also credited with being the originator of the idea of sephirothic emanation.

By the early middle ages further, more theosophical developments had
taken place, chiefly a description of "processes" within God, and a
highly esoteric view of creation as a process in which God manifests in a series of emanations. This doctrine of the "sephiroth" can be found in a rudimentary form in the "Yetzirah", but by the time of the
publication of the book "Bahir" (12th. century) it had reached a form
not too different from the form it takes today. One of most interesting characters from this period was Abraham Abulafia, who believed that God cannot be described or conceptualised using everyday symbols, and used the Hebrew alphabet in intense meditations lasting many hours to reach ecstatic states. Because his abstract letter combinations were used as keys or entry points to altered states of consciousness, failure to carry through the manipulations correctly could have a drastic effect on the Kabbalist. In "Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism" Scholem includes a long extract of one such experiment made by one of Abulafia's students - it has a deep ring of truth about it.

Probably the most influential Kabbalistic document, the "Sepher ha
Zohar", was published by Moses de Leon, a Spanish Jew, in the latter
half of the thirteenth century. The "Zohar" is a series of separate
documents covering a wide range of subjects, from a verse-by-verse
esoteric commentary on the Pentateuch, to highly theosophical descriptions of processes within God. The "Zohar" has been widely read and was highly influential within mainstream Judaism as well as Hermetic Qabalah.

===Historical Hermetic Qabalah===

About the 16th century, Western European scholars began taking interest in the Jewish Kabbalah. In this century we first see documents refering to [[Hermes Trismegistus]], the "father" of Hermetic Magic.

At the time it was believed that the Corpus really was the religion of the ancient Egyptians, and that Hermes was a kind of Egyptian Moses. The fact that they were written much later, and heavily influenced by Neoplatonism, had the effect of convincing readers at that time that Greek philosophy was founded on much older, Egyptian religious philosophy - this had a huge influence on liberal religious and philosophical thinking at the time. Into this environment came the Kabbalah, brought in part by fleeing Spanish Jews, and it was seized upon as another lost tradition, the inner, initiated key to the Bible.

Two figures stand out. One was Giovanni Pico, Count of Mirandola, who commissioned several translations of Kabbalistic works, and did much to publicise Kabbalah among the intellectuals of the day. The other was Johannes Reuchlin, who learned to read Hebrew and became deeply immersed in Kabbalistic literature. It must be said that Jews were suspicious of this activity, finding that Christian scholars were using the Kabbalah as a bludgeon to persuade them to convert to Christianity.

It was out of this eclectic mixture of Christianity, Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, Kabbalah and Renaissance humanism that Hermetic Kabbalah was born. Over the centuries it has developed in many directions, with strong influences from Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism, but continued input from Jewish Kabbalah has meant that many variants are not so different in spirit from the original. Its greatest strength continues to be a strong element of religious humanism - it does not attempt to define God and does not define what an individual should believe, but it does assume that some level of direct experience of God is possible and there are practical methods for achieving this. In a modern world of compartmentalised knowledge, scientific materialism, and widespread cultural and historical illiteracy, it provides a bridge between the spirit of enquiry of the Renaissance (the homo universalis or - in Hebrew - hakham kolel) and the emergence of a similar spirit of enquiry in our own time.

===Qabalah in Recent Ceremonial Magick===

Qabalah was a subject of study for most Ceremonialists between the time of [[John Dee]] and the [[Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn]]. But [[Eliphas Levi]], whose influence on the Order of the Golden Dawn and on Thelema was great, rooted his Transcendental Magic (Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie) in a Qabalistic tradition. His Elements of the Kabbalah remains a fundamental text for the student of ceremonial magick.

It would not be an overstatement to say that the [[Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn]] was a Qabalistic organization. Its initiatory structure was based on the Tree of Life. Indeed, its entire magical system depended on the Qabalah.

===Qabalah and Thelema===

Put simply, Qabalah is a sine qua non in the practice of Thelemic magick. Aleister Crowley summarized the importance of Qabalah in The Temple of Solomon, Liber LVII:

Fortunately, there is one science that can aid us, a science that, properly understood by the initiated mind, is as absolute as mathematics, more self-supporting than philosophy, a science of the spirit itself, whose teacher is God, whose method is simple as the divine Light, and subtle as the divine Fire, whose results are limpid as the divine Water, all-embracing as the divine Air, and solid as the divine Earth. Truth is the source, and Economy the course, of that marvellous stream that pours its living waters into the Ocean of apodeictic certainty, the Truth that is infinite in its infinity as
the primal Truth which which it is identical is infinite in its Unity.

Need we say that we speak of the holy Qabalah? O science secret, subtle, and sublime, who shall name thee without veneration, without prostration of soul, spirit, and body before thy divine Author, without exaltation of soul, spirit, and body as by His favour they bathe in His lustral and illimitable Light?

==Principles of Qabalah==

To summarize the principles of Qabalah within this space is similar to attempting to define "love" in three words. There are, however, a few concepts that are fundamental to the Qabalah. The student must do more research beyond this article. A beginning list of sources follows.

===The Sephiroth and the Tree of Life===

In the original Jewish tradition, the sephiroth (singular sephira) are the ten aspects or manifestations of God. They begin with the highest aspect, Kether, and as the energy or concepts of God pass through creation, reaches the created world, the world humanity dwells in, Malkuth.

As Kabbalistic tradition grew, kabalists conceived of an interconnected pathway between the ten Sephiroth by which the energy of the Sephiroth traveled and by which adepts could travel to gain the benefits of each Sephira. This network of pathways became known as the Tree of Life.

(image should go here)

===Gematria, Notarikon, and Temura===

====Gematria====
Gematria is a method of exegesis (critical explanation or analysis of a text) used since the time of the Second Temple to derive insights into the sacred writings, to obtain interpretations of the text, or to illustrate a secular matter. The Hebrew language uses its letters to represent numbers. The first nine letters represent the numbers I to 9 respectively; the next 10 letters represent the numbers 10, 20... to 90; and the next four represent 100 to 400.

The cipher alphabet makes possible the method known in Hebrew as gematria. The term gematria is based on the Greek geometria. In talmudic times the rabbis began to mean by it "calculation" in general. In this sense, they used the numerical value of the letters of one word or verse to construct a different word or verse, the numerical value of whose letters equals that of the original passage, in order to give the original verse an added or a different meaning.

Thelemites make use of Gematria to link words and concepts and to validate revelations given to them in magical operations. Perhaps the most useful Thelemic book on Gematria is Liber D, the Sepher Sephiroth. This book is a listing of Gematric numbers and some of the words associated with their gematric values.

====Notarikon====

====Temurah====

===The "72 Names of God"===
There are three verses in the Old Testament which, in Hebrew, are made up of exactly the same number of letters. These are Exodus 14: 19-21.

14:19 And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them:

14:20 And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud and darkness [to them], but it gave light by night [to these]: so that the one came not near the other all the night.

14:21 And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD caused the sea to go [back] by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry [land], and the waters were divided. 

Kabbalists believe that by lining up each verse, one atop the other, and then selecting the three letters that are aligned from top to bottom (starting from the left, as Hebrew is written from left to right), one derives 72 "names of God". The nature of these verses are such that they represent great power: the power of God to part waters and call forth his angels.

The "72 names" primarily appear in Jewish Kabbalah and are particularly prevalent in the current manifestation of Kabbalah taught through the "Kabbalah Centre" in Jerusalem. (www.kabbalah.com)

==Sources==
===On the Web===
*http://www.digital-brilliance.com/kab/ Colin Low's Qabalah Page. Far and away the best web resource for Qabalah.
*http://www.digital-brilliance.com/kab/faq.htm Qabalah FAQ.
*http://www.digital-brilliance.com/kab/nok/index.htm A Depth of Beginning Low, Colin. Colin Low's free PDF introductory text on Hermetic Qabalah. A very good resource for the beginner. You can't beat the price.
*http://www.kabbalah.com The Kabbalah Centre in Jerusalem. The modern center of popular Jewish Kabbalah study. This is the organization which brought pop singer Madonna to Kabbalah.

===Books===

NB: These are introductory books only and by no means comprehensive. Refer to the bibliographies in these and other sources for original sources on Qabalah.

*Duquette, Lon Milo. The Chicken Qabalah of Rabbi Lamed ben Clifford. Weiser Books (2001). Absolutely the best introduction to Qabalah for the person with no knowledge of the subject.
*Fortune, Dion. Mystical Qabalah. Weiser Books (2000). Dion Fortune considered the Qabalah to be "Western Yoga."
*Regardie, Israel. The Tree of Life: An Illustrated Study in Magic. Llewelyn Publications (2000). One of several books by Regardie on the Qabalah. Opinion varies as to which is the best.
*Regardie, Israel. A Garden of Pomagranates: Skrying on the Tree of Life. Llewelyn Publications (1999). Another of the best known of Regardie's books on Qabalah.
*Crowley, Aleister. Liber LVIII: The Temple of Solomon the King with An Essay upon Number.. Crowley's fundamental text on Qabalah. Try to find one complete publication, rather than the online PDF versions available, as they often are not complete.

Qabalah

2004-09-25T13:09:05Z

Frater DVV: /* Gematria, Notarikon, and Temura */

Qabalah (alt. kabbalah) is an aspect of Jewish mysticism. It consists of a large body of speculation on the nature of divinity, the creation, the origin and fate of the soul, and the role of human beings. It consists also of meditative, devotional, mystical and magical practices which were taught only to a select few and for this reason Kabbalah is regarded as an esoteric offshoot of Judaism. In general usage, the spelling qabalah is used to distinguish the variation of kabbalah used by western or hermetic magicians from Jewish mystical kabbalah.

==The History of Qabalah/Kabbalah==

===The Kabbalah in Jewish Mystical Tradition===

The word "Kabbalah" is derived from the Hebrew root "to receive, to accept", and in many cases is used synonymously with "tradition". According to Jewish tradition, the Torah (Torah - "Law" - the first five books of the Old Testament) was created prior to the world and she advised God on such weighty matters as the creation of human kind. When Moses received the written law from God, tradition has it that he also received the oral law, which was not written down, but passed from generation to generation. At times the oral law has been referred to as "Kabbalah" - the oral tradition.

The earliest documents which are generally acknowledged as being Kabbalistic come from the 1st. Century C.E., but there is a suspicion that the Biblical phenomenon of prophecy may have been grounded in a much older oral tradition which was a precursor to the earliest recognisable forms of Kabbalah. Some believe the tradition goes back as far as Melchizedek. There are moderately plausible arguments that Pythagoras received his learning from Hebrew sources. There is a substantial literature of Jewish mysticism dating from the period 100AD - 1000AD which is not strictly Kabbalistic in the modern sense, but which was available as source material to medieval Kabbalists.

On the basis of a detailed examination of texts, and a study of the development of a specialist vocabulary and a distinct body of ideas, Scholem has concluded that the origins of Kabbalah can be traced to 12th. century Provence. The origin of the word "Kabbalah" as a label for a tradition which is definitely recognisable as Kabbalah is attributed to Isaac the Blind (c. 1160-1236 C.E.), who is also credited with being the originator of the idea of sephirothic emanation.

By the early middle ages further, more theosophical developments had
taken place, chiefly a description of "processes" within God, and a
highly esoteric view of creation as a process in which God manifests in a series of emanations. This doctrine of the "sephiroth" can be found in a rudimentary form in the "Yetzirah", but by the time of the
publication of the book "Bahir" (12th. century) it had reached a form
not too different from the form it takes today. One of most interesting characters from this period was Abraham Abulafia, who believed that God cannot be described or conceptualised using everyday symbols, and used the Hebrew alphabet in intense meditations lasting many hours to reach ecstatic states. Because his abstract letter combinations were used as keys or entry points to altered states of consciousness, failure to carry through the manipulations correctly could have a drastic effect on the Kabbalist. In "Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism" Scholem includes a long extract of one such experiment made by one of Abulafia's students - it has a deep ring of truth about it.

Probably the most influential Kabbalistic document, the "Sepher ha
Zohar", was published by Moses de Leon, a Spanish Jew, in the latter
half of the thirteenth century. The "Zohar" is a series of separate
documents covering a wide range of subjects, from a verse-by-verse
esoteric commentary on the Pentateuch, to highly theosophical descriptions of processes within God. The "Zohar" has been widely read and was highly influential within mainstream Judaism as well as Hermetic Qabalah.

===Historical Hermetic Qabalah===

About the 16th century, Western European scholars began taking interest in the Jewish Kabbalah. In this century we first see documents refering to [[Hermes Trismegistus]], the "father" of Hermetic Magic.

At the time it was believed that the Corpus really was the religion of the ancient Egyptians, and that Hermes was a kind of Egyptian Moses. The fact that they were written much later, and heavily influenced by Neoplatonism, had the effect of convincing readers at that time that Greek philosophy was founded on much older, Egyptian religious philosophy - this had a huge influence on liberal religious and philosophical thinking at the time. Into this environment came the Kabbalah, brought in part by fleeing Spanish Jews, and it was seized upon as another lost tradition, the inner, initiated key to the Bible.

Two figures stand out. One was Giovanni Pico, Count of Mirandola, who commissioned several translations of Kabbalistic works, and did much to publicise Kabbalah among the intellectuals of the day. The other was Johannes Reuchlin, who learned to read Hebrew and became deeply immersed in Kabbalistic literature. It must be said that Jews were suspicious of this activity, finding that Christian scholars were using the Kabbalah as a bludgeon to persuade them to convert to Christianity.

It was out of this eclectic mixture of Christianity, Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, Kabbalah and Renaissance humanism that Hermetic Kabbalah was born. Over the centuries it has developed in many directions, with strong influences from Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism, but continued input from Jewish Kabbalah has meant that many variants are not so different in spirit from the original. Its greatest strength continues to be a strong element of religious humanism - it does not attempt to define God and does not define what an individual should believe, but it does assume that some level of direct experience of God is possible and there are practical methods for achieving this. In a modern world of compartmentalised knowledge, scientific materialism, and widespread cultural and historical illiteracy, it provides a bridge between the spirit of enquiry of the Renaissance (the homo universalis or - in Hebrew - hakham kolel) and the emergence of a similar spirit of enquiry in our own time.

===Qabalah in Recent Ceremonial Magick===

Qabalah was a subject of study for most Ceremonialists between the time of [[John Dee]] and the [[Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn]]. But [[Eliphas Levi]], whose influence on the Order of the Golden Dawn and on Thelema was great, rooted his Transcendental Magic (Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie) in a Qabalistic tradition. His Elements of the Kabbalah remains a fundamental text for the student of ceremonial magick.

It would not be an overstatement to say that the [[Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn]] was a Qabalistic organization. Its initiatory structure was based on the Tree of Life. Indeed, its entire magical system depended on the Qabalah.

===Qabalah and Thelema===

Put simply, Qabalah is a sine qua non in the practice of Thelemic magick. Aleister Crowley summarized the importance of Qabalah in The Temple of Solomon, Liber LVII:

Fortunately, there is one science that can aid us, a science that, properly understood by the initiated mind, is as absolute as mathematics, more self-supporting than philosophy, a science of the spirit itself, whose teacher is God, whose method is simple as the divine Light, and subtle as the divine Fire, whose results are limpid as the divine Water, all-embracing as the divine Air, and solid as the divine Earth. Truth is the source, and Economy the course, of that marvellous stream that pours its living waters into the Ocean of apodeictic certainty, the Truth that is infinite in its infinity as
the primal Truth which which it is identical is infinite in its Unity.

Need we say that we speak of the holy Qabalah? O science secret, subtle, and sublime, who shall name thee without veneration, without prostration of soul, spirit, and body before thy divine Author, without exaltation of soul, spirit, and body as by His favour they bathe in His lustral and illimitable Light?

==Principles of Qabalah==

To summarize the principles of Qabalah within this space is similar to attempting to define "love" in three words. There are, however, a few concepts that are fundamental to the Qabalah. The student must do more research beyond this article. A beginning list of sources follows.

===The Sephiroth and the Tree of Life===

In the original Jewish tradition, the sephiroth (singular sephira) are the ten aspects or manifestations of God. They begin with the highest aspect, Kether, and as the energy or concepts of God pass through creation, reaches the created world, the world humanity dwells in, Malkuth.

As Kabbalistic tradition grew, kabalists conceived of an interconnected pathway between the ten Sephiroth by which the energy of the Sephiroth traveled and by which adepts could travel to gain the benefits of each Sephira. This network of pathways became known as the Tree of Life.

(image should go here)

===Gematria, Notarikon, and Temura===

====Gematria====
Gematria is a method of exegesis (critical explanation or analysis of a text) used since the time of the Second Temple to derive insights into the sacred writings, to obtain interpretations of the text, or to illustrate a secular matter. The Hebrew language uses its letters to represent numbers. The first nine letters represent the numbers I to 9 respectively; the next 10 letters represent the numbers 10, 20... to 90; and the next four represent 100 to 400.

The cipher alphabet makes possible the method known in Hebrew as gematria. The term gematria is based on the Greek geometria. In talmudic times the rabbis began to mean by it "calculation" in general. In this sense, they used the numerical value of the letters of one word or verse to construct a different word or verse, the numerical value of whose letters equals that of the original passage, in order to give the original verse an added or a different meaning.

Thelemites make use of Gematria to link words and concepts and to validate revelations given to them in magical operations. Perhaps the most useful Thelemic book on Gematria is Liber D, the Sepher Sephiroth. This book is a listing of Gematric numbers and some of the words associated with their gematric values.

===The "72 Names of God"===
There are three verses in the Old Testament which, in Hebrew, are made up of exactly the same number of letters. These are Exodus 14: 19-21.

14:19 And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them:

14:20 And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud and darkness [to them], but it gave light by night [to these]: so that the one came not near the other all the night.

14:21 And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD caused the sea to go [back] by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry [land], and the waters were divided. 

Kabbalists believe that by lining up each verse, one atop the other, and then selecting the three letters that are aligned from top to bottom (starting from the left, as Hebrew is written from left to right), one derives 72 "names of God". The nature of these verses are such that they represent great power: the power of God to part waters and call forth his angels.

The "72 names" primarily appear in Jewish Kabbalah and are particularly prevalent in the current manifestation of Kabbalah taught through the "Kabbalah Centre" in Jerusalem. (www.kabbalah.com)

==Sources==
===On the Web===
*http://www.digital-brilliance.com/kab/ Colin Low's Qabalah Page. Far and away the best web resource for Qabalah.
*http://www.digital-brilliance.com/kab/faq.htm Qabalah FAQ.
*http://www.digital-brilliance.com/kab/nok/index.htm A Depth of Beginning Low, Colin. Colin Low's free PDF introductory text on Hermetic Qabalah. A very good resource for the beginner. You can't beat the price.
*http://www.kabbalah.com The Kabbalah Centre in Jerusalem. The modern center of popular Jewish Kabbalah study. This is the organization which brought pop singer Madonna to Kabbalah.

===Books===

NB: These are introductory books only and by no means comprehensive. Refer to the bibliographies in these and other sources for original sources on Qabalah.

*Duquette, Lon Milo. The Chicken Qabalah of Rabbi Lamed ben Clifford. Weiser Books (2001). Absolutely the best introduction to Qabalah for the person with no knowledge of the subject.
*Fortune, Dion. Mystical Qabalah. Weiser Books (2000). Dion Fortune considered the Qabalah to be "Western Yoga."
*Regardie, Israel. The Tree of Life: An Illustrated Study in Magic. Llewelyn Publications (2000). One of several books by Regardie on the Qabalah. Opinion varies as to which is the best.
*Regardie, Israel. A Garden of Pomagranates: Skrying on the Tree of Life. Llewelyn Publications (1999). Another of the best known of Regardie's books on Qabalah.
*Crowley, Aleister. Liber LVIII: The Temple of Solomon the King with An Essay upon Number.. Crowley's fundamental text on Qabalah. Try to find one complete publication, rather than the online PDF versions available, as they often are not complete.

Qabalah

2004-09-25T13:04:06Z

Frater DVV: /* On the Web */

Qabalah (alt. kabbalah) is an aspect of Jewish mysticism. It consists of a large body of speculation on the nature of divinity, the creation, the origin and fate of the soul, and the role of human beings. It consists also of meditative, devotional, mystical and magical practices which were taught only to a select few and for this reason Kabbalah is regarded as an esoteric offshoot of Judaism. In general usage, the spelling qabalah is used to distinguish the variation of kabbalah used by western or hermetic magicians from Jewish mystical kabbalah.

==The History of Qabalah/Kabbalah==

===The Kabbalah in Jewish Mystical Tradition===

The word "Kabbalah" is derived from the Hebrew root "to receive, to accept", and in many cases is used synonymously with "tradition". According to Jewish tradition, the Torah (Torah - "Law" - the first five books of the Old Testament) was created prior to the world and she advised God on such weighty matters as the creation of human kind. When Moses received the written law from God, tradition has it that he also received the oral law, which was not written down, but passed from generation to generation. At times the oral law has been referred to as "Kabbalah" - the oral tradition.

The earliest documents which are generally acknowledged as being Kabbalistic come from the 1st. Century C.E., but there is a suspicion that the Biblical phenomenon of prophecy may have been grounded in a much older oral tradition which was a precursor to the earliest recognisable forms of Kabbalah. Some believe the tradition goes back as far as Melchizedek. There are moderately plausible arguments that Pythagoras received his learning from Hebrew sources. There is a substantial literature of Jewish mysticism dating from the period 100AD - 1000AD which is not strictly Kabbalistic in the modern sense, but which was available as source material to medieval Kabbalists.

On the basis of a detailed examination of texts, and a study of the development of a specialist vocabulary and a distinct body of ideas, Scholem has concluded that the origins of Kabbalah can be traced to 12th. century Provence. The origin of the word "Kabbalah" as a label for a tradition which is definitely recognisable as Kabbalah is attributed to Isaac the Blind (c. 1160-1236 C.E.), who is also credited with being the originator of the idea of sephirothic emanation.

By the early middle ages further, more theosophical developments had
taken place, chiefly a description of "processes" within God, and a
highly esoteric view of creation as a process in which God manifests in a series of emanations. This doctrine of the "sephiroth" can be found in a rudimentary form in the "Yetzirah", but by the time of the
publication of the book "Bahir" (12th. century) it had reached a form
not too different from the form it takes today. One of most interesting characters from this period was Abraham Abulafia, who believed that God cannot be described or conceptualised using everyday symbols, and used the Hebrew alphabet in intense meditations lasting many hours to reach ecstatic states. Because his abstract letter combinations were used as keys or entry points to altered states of consciousness, failure to carry through the manipulations correctly could have a drastic effect on the Kabbalist. In "Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism" Scholem includes a long extract of one such experiment made by one of Abulafia's students - it has a deep ring of truth about it.

Probably the most influential Kabbalistic document, the "Sepher ha
Zohar", was published by Moses de Leon, a Spanish Jew, in the latter
half of the thirteenth century. The "Zohar" is a series of separate
documents covering a wide range of subjects, from a verse-by-verse
esoteric commentary on the Pentateuch, to highly theosophical descriptions of processes within God. The "Zohar" has been widely read and was highly influential within mainstream Judaism as well as Hermetic Qabalah.

===Historical Hermetic Qabalah===

About the 16th century, Western European scholars began taking interest in the Jewish Kabbalah. In this century we first see documents refering to [[Hermes Trismegistus]], the "father" of Hermetic Magic.

At the time it was believed that the Corpus really was the religion of the ancient Egyptians, and that Hermes was a kind of Egyptian Moses. The fact that they were written much later, and heavily influenced by Neoplatonism, had the effect of convincing readers at that time that Greek philosophy was founded on much older, Egyptian religious philosophy - this had a huge influence on liberal religious and philosophical thinking at the time. Into this environment came the Kabbalah, brought in part by fleeing Spanish Jews, and it was seized upon as another lost tradition, the inner, initiated key to the Bible.

Two figures stand out. One was Giovanni Pico, Count of Mirandola, who commissioned several translations of Kabbalistic works, and did much to publicise Kabbalah among the intellectuals of the day. The other was Johannes Reuchlin, who learned to read Hebrew and became deeply immersed in Kabbalistic literature. It must be said that Jews were suspicious of this activity, finding that Christian scholars were using the Kabbalah as a bludgeon to persuade them to convert to Christianity.

It was out of this eclectic mixture of Christianity, Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, Kabbalah and Renaissance humanism that Hermetic Kabbalah was born. Over the centuries it has developed in many directions, with strong influences from Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism, but continued input from Jewish Kabbalah has meant that many variants are not so different in spirit from the original. Its greatest strength continues to be a strong element of religious humanism - it does not attempt to define God and does not define what an individual should believe, but it does assume that some level of direct experience of God is possible and there are practical methods for achieving this. In a modern world of compartmentalised knowledge, scientific materialism, and widespread cultural and historical illiteracy, it provides a bridge between the spirit of enquiry of the Renaissance (the homo universalis or - in Hebrew - hakham kolel) and the emergence of a similar spirit of enquiry in our own time.

===Qabalah in Recent Ceremonial Magick===

Qabalah was a subject of study for most Ceremonialists between the time of [[John Dee]] and the [[Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn]]. But [[Eliphas Levi]], whose influence on the Order of the Golden Dawn and on Thelema was great, rooted his Transcendental Magic (Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie) in a Qabalistic tradition. His Elements of the Kabbalah remains a fundamental text for the student of ceremonial magick.

It would not be an overstatement to say that the [[Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn]] was a Qabalistic organization. Its initiatory structure was based on the Tree of Life. Indeed, its entire magical system depended on the Qabalah.

===Qabalah and Thelema===

Put simply, Qabalah is a sine qua non in the practice of Thelemic magick. Aleister Crowley summarized the importance of Qabalah in The Temple of Solomon, Liber LVII:

Fortunately, there is one science that can aid us, a science that, properly understood by the initiated mind, is as absolute as mathematics, more self-supporting than philosophy, a science of the spirit itself, whose teacher is God, whose method is simple as the divine Light, and subtle as the divine Fire, whose results are limpid as the divine Water, all-embracing as the divine Air, and solid as the divine Earth. Truth is the source, and Economy the course, of that marvellous stream that pours its living waters into the Ocean of apodeictic certainty, the Truth that is infinite in its infinity as
the primal Truth which which it is identical is infinite in its Unity.

Need we say that we speak of the holy Qabalah? O science secret, subtle, and sublime, who shall name thee without veneration, without prostration of soul, spirit, and body before thy divine Author, without exaltation of soul, spirit, and body as by His favour they bathe in His lustral and illimitable Light?

==Principles of Qabalah==

To summarize the principles of Qabalah within this space is similar to attempting to define "love" in three words. There are, however, a few concepts that are fundamental to the Qabalah. The student must do more research beyond this article. A beginning list of sources follows.

===The Sephiroth and the Tree of Life===

In the original Jewish tradition, the sephiroth (singular sephira) are the ten aspects or manifestations of God. They begin with the highest aspect, Kether, and as the energy or concepts of God pass through creation, reaches the created world, the world humanity dwells in, Malkuth.

As Kabbalistic tradition grew, kabalists conceived of an interconnected pathway between the ten Sephiroth by which the energy of the Sephiroth traveled and by which adepts could travel to gain the benefits of each Sephira. This network of pathways became known as the Tree of Life.

(image should go here)

===Gematria, Notarikon, and Temura===

===The "72 Names of God"===
There are three verses in the Old Testament which, in Hebrew, are made up of exactly the same number of letters. These are Exodus 14: 19-21.

14:19 And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them:

14:20 And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud and darkness [to them], but it gave light by night [to these]: so that the one came not near the other all the night.

14:21 And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD caused the sea to go [back] by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry [land], and the waters were divided. 

Kabbalists believe that by lining up each verse, one atop the other, and then selecting the three letters that are aligned from top to bottom (starting from the left, as Hebrew is written from left to right), one derives 72 "names of God". The nature of these verses are such that they represent great power: the power of God to part waters and call forth his angels.

The "72 names" primarily appear in Jewish Kabbalah and are particularly prevalent in the current manifestation of Kabbalah taught through the "Kabbalah Centre" in Jerusalem. (www.kabbalah.com)

==Sources==
===On the Web===
*http://www.digital-brilliance.com/kab/ Colin Low's Qabalah Page. Far and away the best web resource for Qabalah.
*http://www.digital-brilliance.com/kab/faq.htm Qabalah FAQ.
*http://www.digital-brilliance.com/kab/nok/index.htm A Depth of Beginning Low, Colin. Colin Low's free PDF introductory text on Hermetic Qabalah. A very good resource for the beginner. You can't beat the price.
*http://www.kabbalah.com The Kabbalah Centre in Jerusalem. The modern center of popular Jewish Kabbalah study. This is the organization which brought pop singer Madonna to Kabbalah.

===Books===

NB: These are introductory books only and by no means comprehensive. Refer to the bibliographies in these and other sources for original sources on Qabalah.

*Duquette, Lon Milo. The Chicken Qabalah of Rabbi Lamed ben Clifford. Weiser Books (2001). Absolutely the best introduction to Qabalah for the person with no knowledge of the subject.
*Fortune, Dion. Mystical Qabalah. Weiser Books (2000). Dion Fortune considered the Qabalah to be "Western Yoga."
*Regardie, Israel. The Tree of Life: An Illustrated Study in Magic. Llewelyn Publications (2000). One of several books by Regardie on the Qabalah. Opinion varies as to which is the best.
*Regardie, Israel. A Garden of Pomagranates: Skrying on the Tree of Life. Llewelyn Publications (1999). Another of the best known of Regardie's books on Qabalah.
*Crowley, Aleister. Liber LVIII: The Temple of Solomon the King with An Essay upon Number.. Crowley's fundamental text on Qabalah. Try to find one complete publication, rather than the online PDF versions available, as they often are not complete.

Qabalah

2004-09-25T13:02:35Z

Frater DVV: /* The "72 Names of God" */

Qabalah (alt. kabbalah) is an aspect of Jewish mysticism. It consists of a large body of speculation on the nature of divinity, the creation, the origin and fate of the soul, and the role of human beings. It consists also of meditative, devotional, mystical and magical practices which were taught only to a select few and for this reason Kabbalah is regarded as an esoteric offshoot of Judaism. In general usage, the spelling qabalah is used to distinguish the variation of kabbalah used by western or hermetic magicians from Jewish mystical kabbalah.

==The History of Qabalah/Kabbalah==

===The Kabbalah in Jewish Mystical Tradition===

The word "Kabbalah" is derived from the Hebrew root "to receive, to accept", and in many cases is used synonymously with "tradition". According to Jewish tradition, the Torah (Torah - "Law" - the first five books of the Old Testament) was created prior to the world and she advised God on such weighty matters as the creation of human kind. When Moses received the written law from God, tradition has it that he also received the oral law, which was not written down, but passed from generation to generation. At times the oral law has been referred to as "Kabbalah" - the oral tradition.

The earliest documents which are generally acknowledged as being Kabbalistic come from the 1st. Century C.E., but there is a suspicion that the Biblical phenomenon of prophecy may have been grounded in a much older oral tradition which was a precursor to the earliest recognisable forms of Kabbalah. Some believe the tradition goes back as far as Melchizedek. There are moderately plausible arguments that Pythagoras received his learning from Hebrew sources. There is a substantial literature of Jewish mysticism dating from the period 100AD - 1000AD which is not strictly Kabbalistic in the modern sense, but which was available as source material to medieval Kabbalists.

On the basis of a detailed examination of texts, and a study of the development of a specialist vocabulary and a distinct body of ideas, Scholem has concluded that the origins of Kabbalah can be traced to 12th. century Provence. The origin of the word "Kabbalah" as a label for a tradition which is definitely recognisable as Kabbalah is attributed to Isaac the Blind (c. 1160-1236 C.E.), who is also credited with being the originator of the idea of sephirothic emanation.

By the early middle ages further, more theosophical developments had
taken place, chiefly a description of "processes" within God, and a
highly esoteric view of creation as a process in which God manifests in a series of emanations. This doctrine of the "sephiroth" can be found in a rudimentary form in the "Yetzirah", but by the time of the
publication of the book "Bahir" (12th. century) it had reached a form
not too different from the form it takes today. One of most interesting characters from this period was Abraham Abulafia, who believed that God cannot be described or conceptualised using everyday symbols, and used the Hebrew alphabet in intense meditations lasting many hours to reach ecstatic states. Because his abstract letter combinations were used as keys or entry points to altered states of consciousness, failure to carry through the manipulations correctly could have a drastic effect on the Kabbalist. In "Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism" Scholem includes a long extract of one such experiment made by one of Abulafia's students - it has a deep ring of truth about it.

Probably the most influential Kabbalistic document, the "Sepher ha
Zohar", was published by Moses de Leon, a Spanish Jew, in the latter
half of the thirteenth century. The "Zohar" is a series of separate
documents covering a wide range of subjects, from a verse-by-verse
esoteric commentary on the Pentateuch, to highly theosophical descriptions of processes within God. The "Zohar" has been widely read and was highly influential within mainstream Judaism as well as Hermetic Qabalah.

===Historical Hermetic Qabalah===

About the 16th century, Western European scholars began taking interest in the Jewish Kabbalah. In this century we first see documents refering to [[Hermes Trismegistus]], the "father" of Hermetic Magic.

At the time it was believed that the Corpus really was the religion of the ancient Egyptians, and that Hermes was a kind of Egyptian Moses. The fact that they were written much later, and heavily influenced by Neoplatonism, had the effect of convincing readers at that time that Greek philosophy was founded on much older, Egyptian religious philosophy - this had a huge influence on liberal religious and philosophical thinking at the time. Into this environment came the Kabbalah, brought in part by fleeing Spanish Jews, and it was seized upon as another lost tradition, the inner, initiated key to the Bible.

Two figures stand out. One was Giovanni Pico, Count of Mirandola, who commissioned several translations of Kabbalistic works, and did much to publicise Kabbalah among the intellectuals of the day. The other was Johannes Reuchlin, who learned to read Hebrew and became deeply immersed in Kabbalistic literature. It must be said that Jews were suspicious of this activity, finding that Christian scholars were using the Kabbalah as a bludgeon to persuade them to convert to Christianity.

It was out of this eclectic mixture of Christianity, Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, Kabbalah and Renaissance humanism that Hermetic Kabbalah was born. Over the centuries it has developed in many directions, with strong influences from Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism, but continued input from Jewish Kabbalah has meant that many variants are not so different in spirit from the original. Its greatest strength continues to be a strong element of religious humanism - it does not attempt to define God and does not define what an individual should believe, but it does assume that some level of direct experience of God is possible and there are practical methods for achieving this. In a modern world of compartmentalised knowledge, scientific materialism, and widespread cultural and historical illiteracy, it provides a bridge between the spirit of enquiry of the Renaissance (the homo universalis or - in Hebrew - hakham kolel) and the emergence of a similar spirit of enquiry in our own time.

===Qabalah in Recent Ceremonial Magick===

Qabalah was a subject of study for most Ceremonialists between the time of [[John Dee]] and the [[Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn]]. But [[Eliphas Levi]], whose influence on the Order of the Golden Dawn and on Thelema was great, rooted his Transcendental Magic (Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie) in a Qabalistic tradition. His Elements of the Kabbalah remains a fundamental text for the student of ceremonial magick.

It would not be an overstatement to say that the [[Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn]] was a Qabalistic organization. Its initiatory structure was based on the Tree of Life. Indeed, its entire magical system depended on the Qabalah.

===Qabalah and Thelema===

Put simply, Qabalah is a sine qua non in the practice of Thelemic magick. Aleister Crowley summarized the importance of Qabalah in The Temple of Solomon, Liber LVII:

Fortunately, there is one science that can aid us, a science that, properly understood by the initiated mind, is as absolute as mathematics, more self-supporting than philosophy, a science of the spirit itself, whose teacher is God, whose method is simple as the divine Light, and subtle as the divine Fire, whose results are limpid as the divine Water, all-embracing as the divine Air, and solid as the divine Earth. Truth is the source, and Economy the course, of that marvellous stream that pours its living waters into the Ocean of apodeictic certainty, the Truth that is infinite in its infinity as
the primal Truth which which it is identical is infinite in its Unity.

Need we say that we speak of the holy Qabalah? O science secret, subtle, and sublime, who shall name thee without veneration, without prostration of soul, spirit, and body before thy divine Author, without exaltation of soul, spirit, and body as by His favour they bathe in His lustral and illimitable Light?

==Principles of Qabalah==

To summarize the principles of Qabalah within this space is similar to attempting to define "love" in three words. There are, however, a few concepts that are fundamental to the Qabalah. The student must do more research beyond this article. A beginning list of sources follows.

===The Sephiroth and the Tree of Life===

In the original Jewish tradition, the sephiroth (singular sephira) are the ten aspects or manifestations of God. They begin with the highest aspect, Kether, and as the energy or concepts of God pass through creation, reaches the created world, the world humanity dwells in, Malkuth.

As Kabbalistic tradition grew, kabalists conceived of an interconnected pathway between the ten Sephiroth by which the energy of the Sephiroth traveled and by which adepts could travel to gain the benefits of each Sephira. This network of pathways became known as the Tree of Life.

(image should go here)

===Gematria, Notarikon, and Temura===

===The "72 Names of God"===
There are three verses in the Old Testament which, in Hebrew, are made up of exactly the same number of letters. These are Exodus 14: 19-21.

14:19 And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them:

14:20 And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud and darkness [to them], but it gave light by night [to these]: so that the one came not near the other all the night.

14:21 And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD caused the sea to go [back] by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry [land], and the waters were divided. 

Kabbalists believe that by lining up each verse, one atop the other, and then selecting the three letters that are aligned from top to bottom (starting from the left, as Hebrew is written from left to right), one derives 72 "names of God". The nature of these verses are such that they represent great power: the power of God to part waters and call forth his angels.

The "72 names" primarily appear in Jewish Kabbalah and are particularly prevalent in the current manifestation of Kabbalah taught through the "Kabbalah Centre" in Jerusalem. (www.kabbalah.com)

==Sources==
===On the Web===
*http://www.digital-brilliance.com/kab/ Colin Low's Qabalah Page. Far and away the best web resource for Qabalah.
*http://www.digital-brilliance.com/kab/faq.htm Qabalah FAQ.
*http://www.digital-brilliance.com/kab/nok/index.htm A Depth of Beginning Low, Colin. Colin Low's free PDF introductory text on Hermetic Qabalah. A very good resource for the beginner. You can't beat the price.
===Books===

NB: These are introductory books only and by no means comprehensive. Refer to the bibliographies in these and other sources for original sources on Qabalah.

*Duquette, Lon Milo. The Chicken Qabalah of Rabbi Lamed ben Clifford. Weiser Books (2001). Absolutely the best introduction to Qabalah for the person with no knowledge of the subject.
*Fortune, Dion. Mystical Qabalah. Weiser Books (2000). Dion Fortune considered the Qabalah to be "Western Yoga."
*Regardie, Israel. The Tree of Life: An Illustrated Study in Magic. Llewelyn Publications (2000). One of several books by Regardie on the Qabalah. Opinion varies as to which is the best.
*Regardie, Israel. A Garden of Pomagranates: Skrying on the Tree of Life. Llewelyn Publications (1999). Another of the best known of Regardie's books on Qabalah.
*Crowley, Aleister. Liber LVIII: The Temple of Solomon the King with An Essay upon Number.. Crowley's fundamental text on Qabalah. Try to find one complete publication, rather than the online PDF versions available, as they often are not complete.

Thelemapedia talk:Community Portal

2004-09-25T10:22:48Z

Frater DVV:

'''Hit the tab above with the + sign to start a new topic on this page. If you want to answer someone's topic on this page, click on the "edit" link next to the topic title (not the one at the top of the page). To indent your entries, just put a colon in front of the first line of every paragraph. The more colons you type, the more indented the paragraph will be. Please sign all your entries.'''
----

This is a great idea!

[[User:Frater C.U.G.|Frater C.U.G.]]

This is fantastic!! Thank you Scarlet Woman Lodge! :)

:'''Glad you like it!'''

:...of course, it will be as good as we all make it. I am hoping that over the next couple of years, we will make Thelemapedia the single best source of information on Thelema anywhere! The world will be ours! Muwahahaha! —[[User:Ash|Ash]]
----
Indeed ! This is an outstanding venture and excellent execution. At lease from what I see so far. I am sure I'll get a good deal of milage at of this in my office as PIO. Thank you my brothers, and please let me know if I can be of assistance with this project.

93/93

In L.V.X.,

Frater Hrumachis

:Well, of course you can be of assistance...write an article! :) —[[User:Ash|Ash]]
----

I especially appreciate you allowing us young'uns (Thelemically speaking) to add to the corpus of Thelemic knowledge.

[[User:Frater DVV|DVV]]

:There's no age limit for the ability to write a good article! Thanks for contributing. --[[User:Ash|Ash]] 19:12, 21 Sep 2004 (EDT)

:---Okay, read your profile...sorry, that was presumptuous of me. I should have said, "there's no limits on Thelemic newbies of whatever age to write a good article." My apologies. —[[User:Ash|Ash]], the insensitive dope

::Actually, this is a good vehicle for someone who is "just learning" to research topics of interest. --[[User:Frater DVV|DVV]] the old fart.

== style issues ==

Can we get a standard on spelling? I am ''extremely averse'' to the spelling '''magickal'''. Now, for those who must have a K, the word '''magick''' is a perfectly proper adjective, as in "magick wand." But Crowley never used the word "magickal," and I recommend that we also stick to '''magical''' when the three-syllable adjective is in order. -[[User:paradoxosalpha|paradoxosalpha]]

:I agree 100%, Nix on magickian also. -- [[User:Frater C.U.G.|Frater C.U.G.]]

:"Magickal" and "magickian: are not words, as far as I'm concerned. —[[User:Ash|Ash]]

:To hear is to obey, effendi. "Magickal" shall be magickally removed from my posts henceforth. [[User:Frater DVV|DVV]]

Ok, here's a trickier one: '''qabalah'''? That's Crowley's spelling, approximating transliteration, but it's usual to spell it '''Kabbalah''' in reference to Hebrew mysticism, and '''cabala''' in reference to Christian esotery and systems of word calculation and symbolism. Should we have a standard? --[[User:Paradoxosalpha|Paradoxosalpha]] 19:31, 24 Sep 2004 (EDT)

: I made some redirect pages last night Kabbalah and cabala both go to qabalah now. [[User:Frater C.U.G.|Frater C.U.G.]]

: In my original entry, I used "qabalah" to refer to Hermetic Qabalah, and "Kabbalah" to refer to Jewish Kabbalah. Purely arbitrary and any modifications are welcome. [[User:Frater DVV|DVV]]

== kinda new to all this ==

kinda new to this. This site, I'm sure will be invaluable.

:Welcome! You'll catch on. It took me 10 minutes to get writing; a week to get all the basics; and a month or two to really "get it". Now that I'm an admin and watching the site grow, I'm having to learn a whole new set of skills. If this site has done nothing but that for me, it's been more than worth it. —[[User:Ash|Ash]]

== Suggestion for new topic ==

==Godforms?==
I see that we have a whole list of "godforms" but no entry under "godform" itself. Maybe an entry as to what a "godform" is?

I'd write it myself if I knew how to define "godform" (as opposed to "deity," "god," or "grand wazoo."). -- [[User:Frater DVV|DVV]]

:I'd say that the principal differences are 1) relationship with a lack of invested belief in the objective existence of the godform (Liber O I:1), 2) the option for the magician to ''identify'' with the godform through invocation (Liber O II:1-2). See also '''Magick Without Tears''' pp. 145-6; and the use of godforms in GD initiation. The most important godform, often mentioned by Crowley for its utility, is that of [http://www.livejournal.com/users/paradoxosalpha/34059.html Harpocrates].

==T-shirts==

Okay, when do we get Thelemapedia T-shirts? You can't have a community project like this without T-shirts. :D [[User:Frater DVV|DVV]]

Islam

2004-09-25T10:07:51Z

Frater DVV:

'''Islām''' (Arabic: الإسلام) is the monotheistic faith founded by Mohammed and believed by Muslims to have been revealed by God (named Allah in the Qur'an) to all they consider Prophets of Islam which include Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad (c. 610-622 CE).

==History==
Muhammad was born in the year 571 e.v. (Common Era). His father died before his birth, and his mother died at a very early age, so he was raised by his uncle Abu Talib. According to Islamic tradition, he experienced his initial prophetic call about age 40 while meditating alone inside a cave in the hills above Mecca - a city in the Arabian peninsula.

Muslims believe that Muhammed was chosen by God, like prophets before him, to teach a sacred message. Though marginalized and opposed initially, Muhammad began to gain followers, most of whom came from lower classes and marginalized peasantry. The first wealthy men accepting the prophet-hood of Prophet Muhammad were Abu Bakr and Umar ibn al-Khattab.

As Islam attracted more believers, Muhammad encountered severe opposition by residents of Mecca who felt threatened because Islam undermined the pagan idols around the Ka'aba. The pagan idols around the Ka'aba were important to the residents of Mecca not only for religious reasons, but also for economic reasons. As pilgrims visited the idols in Mecca, they brought economic prosperity to the city, and the fear was that a monotheistic religion would remove this source of prosperity and trade.

As Muhammad's opponents in Mecca - including one of his uncles, Abu Lahab, who was among his worst enemies - began to organize to bring about an end to his prophecy, Muhammad withdrew with many of his followers to Medina in September of 622. This migration is called the Hijra, and its year is used to establish the Muslim calendar; thus the year 622 CE is the year 1 A.H. (Anno Hegirae). The A.H. system dates from the beginning of the lunar year in which the Hijra took place, so it does not neatly coincide with the Julian or Gregorian year numbers. After three major battles and one last battle with Mecca, almost all Arabia fell to Muhammad in 630 and great number of tribes established alliance with the prophet. Muhammad died on June 8, 632 e.v.

==Teachings==

The fundamental concept in Islam is the unity of God (tawhid). This monotheism is absolute, not relative or pluralistic in any sense of the word. God is described in Sura al-Ikhlas, (chapter 112) as follows: Say "He is Allah, the one, the Self-Sufficient master. He never begot, nor was begotten. There is none comparable to Him."

In Arabic, God is called Allah, a contraction of "al-ilah" or "the deity". "Allah" thus translates to "God" in English; it is not grammatically a proper name, unlike the Israelite divine name Yahweh or the Christian usage of Jesus as a personal divine name. The implicit usage of the definite article in Allah linguistically indicates the divine unity. In spite of the different word used for God, Muslims assert that they believe in the same Judeo-Christian deity. However, Muslims disagree with Christian theology for compromising on monotheism (through the doctrines of the Trinity, and that Jesus is the son of god).

Although no Muslim visual images or depictions exist of God (due to the prohibition on idolatry), Muslims define God by the many divine attributes mentioned in the Qur'an, also commonly known as the 99 names of Allah. All but one Surah(chapter) of the Qur'an begins with the phrase "In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful". These are consequently the most important divine attributes, in the sense that Muslims repeat them most frequently during their ritual prayers (called salat in Arabic).

The Five Pillars of Islam are five basic duties of Muslims:

*The Testimony that there is none worthy of worship except God and that Muhammad is his messenger.
*Establishing of the five daily Prayers (Salaah).
*The Giving of Zakaah (charity), which is generally 2.5% of the yearly savings for a rich man working in trade or industry, and 10% or 20% of the produce for agriculturists. This money or produce is distributed among the poor.
*Fasting from dawn to dusk in the month of Ramadhaan (Sawm).
*The Pilgrimage (Hajj) to Mecca during the month of Dhul Hijjah, which is compulsory once in a lifetime for one who has the ability to do it.

==Sources==
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam#Historical_origin_of_Islam. This article is taken almost exclusively from Wikipedia, Islam.

Islam

2004-09-25T09:54:19Z

Frater DVV:

'''Islām''' (Arabic: الإسلام) is the monotheistic faith believed by Muslims to have been revealed by God (named Allah in the Qur'an) to all they consider Prophets of Islam which include Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad (c. 610-622 CE).

Islam

2004-09-25T09:51:53Z

Frater DVV:

--Frater DVV --

Christianity

2004-09-25T09:50:16Z

Frater DVV:

Christianity Religion founded by Jewish mystic and rabbi Yeheshua ben Yosef Netzariot, [[Jesus]] of Nazareth, also known as the Christos, the "Annointed One approx. 30 e.v. and propagated throughout the Roman Empire by his disciples in the following century, especially by Saul of Tarsus (St. Paul). It is currently one of the world's largest religions and also one of the most internally divided.

==Historical Christianity==

Christianity originated in the first century AD. According to Acts 11:19 and 11:26 in the Christian New Testament, Jesus’ followers were first called Christians by non-Christians in the city of Antioch, where they had fled and settled after early persecutions in Judea. After Jesus' death, early Christian doctrine was taught by Paul (Saul)of Tarsus and the other apostles.

Jesus Christ claimed to be the long awaited Jewish Messiah, but was rejected as an apostate by the Jewish authorities. He was condemned of blasphemy and executed by the Romans for being a rebel leader around 30 AD.

Jesus' apostles were the main witnesses of his life and teaching. After his execution, his apostles and other followers claimed that Jesus rose from the dead, and set out to preach the new message. The original apostles are believed to have written some of the New Testament's Gospels and Epistles.

==Original Teachings of Jesus of Nazareth==

Jesus taught a doctrine of love, tolerance, and forgiveness. The essence of his doctrine is contained in the "Beatitudes" of the "Sermon on the Mount," a lesson taught in the hillsides of Judea. (Matthew 5:1 - 7:29):

3
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven.
4
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
5
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
6
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after
righteousness: for they shall be filled.
7
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
8
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
9
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the
children of God.
10
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake:
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11
Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you,
and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my
sake.


==History of Christianity==

===The Early Church===
Christianity spread rapidly over the first three centuries AD aided by the relative internal peace and good roads of the Roman Empire:

*via Egypt into North Africa, Sudan and Ethiopia
*via Mesopotamia to Persia, Inner Asia and India
*via Greece and Rome to Europe

During this period of first organization the church had to deal mainly with occasional, but sometimes severe persecutions. The life of the martyr, who would rather die than renounce his faith, became the highest virtue. The canonical books of the New Testament were agreed, early translations appeared, and a church hierarchy emerged: the Bishops of Alexandria, Antioch and Rome assumed the title Patriarch.

The Roman Emperor Constantine Constantine I was converted in 312 and with his Edict of Milan (313) he made Christianity the favored religion of the Empire. Similar events took place in neighbouring Georgia and Armenia. But in Persia, which was at constant war with Rome, the Christians struggled under the oppresive Sassanids, which tried to revive the Zoroastrian religion.

In the Persian empire, at the synod of Seleucia in 410 the bishop of Seleucia was pronounced Catholic and replaced the Patriarch of Antioch as the highest authority of the Assyrian Church of the East. Soon after, during the Nestorian Schism, this church broke all ties with the west. It would be the dominant church of Asia for more than a millennium, with bishopries as far away as India, Java and China.

===Fragmentation among Christians===

The Great Schism of 1054 split the Church into Western and Eastern branches: the Western branch gradually consolidated into the Roman Catholic Church under the central authority of Rome, while the Eastern branch became known as the Orthodox Church with the Patriarch of Constantinople as the most honored bishop among its autocephalous churches.

In the European Reformation of the 1500s, Protestants and numerous similar churches arose in objection to perceived abuses of growing Papal authority and to perceived doctrinal error and novelty in Rome. Led by Martin Luther, a German monk, the Reformation ultimately raised five key questions in the Reformation controversy are summed up in five famous 'solas': Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone - does the church's authority derive solely from correctly intrepreting the Scriptures, or does it have a separate authority?), Sola Fide (Faith alone - is a man saved through faith in Christ alone, or do the Church, good works and the sacraments contribute?), Sola Gratia (Grace alone - is a man's salvation purely and exclusively due to God's unmerited grace, or do individual works make a contribution?), Solus Christus (Christ alone - is Jesus Christ the only mediator between man and God, or does the Church and its priests play a part?) and Soli Deo Gloria (To the glory of God alone - does 100% of the glory for man's salvation belong to God, or are the Church and its priests eligible for a part?).

The Reformation sparked a vigorous struggle for the hearts and minds of Europeans. Disputes between Catholics and Protestants sparked bloody persecution and were caught up in various wars, both civil and foreign, whose repercussions still plague the world.

==Current Christian Doctrine==

Christianity is seen as the fulfilment and successor of [[Judasim]] and carried forward much of the doctrine and many of the practices from the Hebrew faith, including monotheism, the belief in a Messiah (or Christ from the Greek Χριστός Christós, which means "anointed one"), certain forms of worship (such as prayer, and reading from religious texts), a priesthood (although most Protestants assert the Universal Priesthood of All Believers), and the idea that worship on Earth is modelled on worship in Heaven.

The central belief of Christianity is that by faith in the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, individuals are saved from death - both spiritual and physical - by redemption from their sins (i.e. faults, misdeeds, disobedience, rebellion against God). Through God's grace, by faith, repentance, and obedience, men and women are reconciled to God through forgiveness and by sanctification or theosis to return to their place with God in Heaven.

Crucial beliefs in Christian teaching are Jesus' incarnation, atonement, crucifixion, death and resurrection to redeem humankind from sin and death; the belief that the New Testament is a part of the Bible; and supersessionism. Supersessionism is the belief that the Jews' chosenness found its ultimate fulfillment through the message of Jesus: Jews who remain non-Christian are no longer considered to be chosen, since they reject Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God, even so this position has been softened by some churches where Jews are recognized to have a special status due to their covenant with God and this continues to be an area of on-going dispute.

The emphasis on God giving his son, or the Son (who is God) coming down to earth for the sake of humanity, is an essential difference between Christianity and most other religions, where the emphasis is instead placed solely on humans working for salvation.

==Sources==
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity Wikipedia, Christianity. Much of this article is lifted whole cloth from this web site.
*The New Testament. Multiple authors, many uncertain. King James version.

Christianity

2004-09-25T09:49:00Z

Frater DVV:

Christianity Religion founded by Jewish mystic and rabbi Yeheshua ben Yosef Netzariot, [[Jesus]] of Nazareth, also known as the Christos, the "Annointed One approx. 30 e.v. and propagated throughout the Roman Empire by his disciples in the following century, especially by Saul of Tarsus (St. Paul). It is currently one of the world's largest religions and also one of the most internally divided.

==Historical Christianity==

Christianity originated in the first century AD. According to Acts 11:19 and 11:26 in the Christian New Testament, Jesus’ followers were first called Christians by non-Christians in the city of Antioch, where they had fled and settled after early persecutions in Judea. After Jesus' death, early Christian doctrine was taught by Paul (Saul)of Tarsus and the other apostles.

Jesus Christ claimed to be the long awaited Jewish Messiah, but was rejected as an apostate by the Jewish authorities. He was condemned of blasphemy and executed by the Romans for being a rebel leader around 30 AD.

Jesus' apostles were the main witnesses of his life and teaching. After his execution, his apostles and other followers claimed that Jesus rose from the dead, and set out to preach the new message. The original apostles are believed to have written some of the New Testament's Gospels and Epistles.

==Original Teachings of Jesus of Nazareth==

Jesus taught a doctrine of love, tolerance, and forgiveness. The essence of his doctrine is contained in the "Beatitudes" of the "Sermon on the Mount," a lesson taught in the hillsides of Judea. (Matthew 5:1 - 7:29):

3
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven.
4
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
5
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
6
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after
righteousness: for they shall be filled.
7
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
8
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
9
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the
children of God.
10
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake:
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11
Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you,
and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my
sake.


==History of Christianity==

===The Early Church===
Christianity spread rapidly over the first three centuries AD aided by the relative internal peace and good roads of the Roman Empire:

*via Egypt into North Africa, Sudan and Ethiopia
*via Mesopotamia to Persia, Inner Asia and India
*via Greece and Rome to Europe

During this period of first organization the church had to deal mainly with occasional, but sometimes severe persecutions. The life of the martyr, who would rather die than renounce his faith, became the highest virtue. The canonical books of the New Testament were agreed, early translations appeared, and a church hierarchy emerged: the Bishops of Alexandria, Antioch and Rome assumed the title Patriarch.

The Roman Emperor Constantine Constantine I was converted in 312 and with his Edict of Milan (313) he made Christianity the favored religion of the Empire. Similar events took place in neighbouring Georgia and Armenia. But in Persia, which was at constant war with Rome, the Christians struggled under the oppresive Sassanids, which tried to revive the Zoroastrian religion.

In the Persian empire, at the synod of Seleucia in 410 the bishop of Seleucia was pronounced Catholic and replaced the Patriarch of Antioch as the highest authority of the Assyrian Church of the East. Soon after, during the Nestorian Schism, this church broke all ties with the west. It would be the dominant church of Asia for more than a millennium, with bishopries as far away as India, Java and China.

====Fragmentation among Christians====

The Great Schism of 1054 split the Church into Western and Eastern branches: the Western branch gradually consolidated into the Roman Catholic Church under the central authority of Rome, while the Eastern branch became known as the Orthodox Church with the Patriarch of Constantinople as the most honored bishop among its autocephalous churches.

In the European Reformation of the 1500s, Protestants and numerous similar churches arose in objection to perceived abuses of growing Papal authority and to perceived doctrinal error and novelty in Rome. Led by Martin Luther, a German monk, the Reformation ultimately raised five key questions in the Reformation controversy are summed up in five famous 'solas': Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone - does the church's authority derive solely from correctly intrepreting the Scriptures, or does it have a separate authority?), Sola Fide (Faith alone - is a man saved through faith in Christ alone, or do the Church, good works and the sacraments contribute?), Sola Gratia (Grace alone - is a man's salvation purely and exclusively due to God's unmerited grace, or do individual works make a contribution?), Solus Christus (Christ alone - is Jesus Christ the only mediator between man and God, or does the Church and its priests play a part?) and Soli Deo Gloria (To the glory of God alone - does 100% of the glory for man's salvation belong to God, or are the Church and its priests eligible for a part?).

The Reformation sparked a vigorous struggle for the hearts and minds of Europeans. Disputes between Catholics and Protestants sparked bloody persecution and were caught up in various wars, both civil and foreign, whose repercussions still plague the world.

==Current Christian Doctrine==

Christianity is seen as the fulfilment and successor of [[Judasim]] and carried forward much of the doctrine and many of the practices from the Hebrew faith, including monotheism, the belief in a Messiah (or Christ from the Greek Χριστός Christós, which means "anointed one"), certain forms of worship (such as prayer, and reading from religious texts), a priesthood (although most Protestants assert the Universal Priesthood of All Believers), and the idea that worship on Earth is modelled on worship in Heaven.

The central belief of Christianity is that by faith in the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, individuals are saved from death - both spiritual and physical - by redemption from their sins (i.e. faults, misdeeds, disobedience, rebellion against God). Through God's grace, by faith, repentance, and obedience, men and women are reconciled to God through forgiveness and by sanctification or theosis to return to their place with God in Heaven.

Crucial beliefs in Christian teaching are Jesus' incarnation, atonement, crucifixion, death and resurrection to redeem humankind from sin and death; the belief that the New Testament is a part of the Bible; and supersessionism. Supersessionism is the belief that the Jews' chosenness found its ultimate fulfillment through the message of Jesus: Jews who remain non-Christian are no longer considered to be chosen, since they reject Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God, even so this position has been softened by some churches where Jews are recognized to have a special status due to their covenant with God and this continues to be an area of on-going dispute.

The emphasis on God giving his son, or the Son (who is God) coming down to earth for the sake of humanity, is an essential difference between Christianity and most other religions, where the emphasis is instead placed solely on humans working for salvation.

==Sources==
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity Wikipedia, Christianity. Much of this article is lifted whole cloth from this web site.
*The New Testament. Multiple authors, many uncertain. King James version.

Christianity

2004-09-25T09:48:18Z

Frater DVV:

Christianity Religion founded by Jewish mystic and rabbi Yeheshua ben Yosef Netzariot, [[Jesus]] of Nazareth, also known as the Christos, the "Annointed One approx. 30 e.v. and propagated throughout the Roman Empire by his disciples in the following century, especially by Saul of Tarsus (St. Paul). It is currently one of the world's largest religions and also one of the most internally divided.

==Historical Christianity==

Christianity originated in the first century AD. According to Acts 11:19 and 11:26 in the Christian New Testament, Jesus’ followers were first called Christians by non-Christians in the city of Antioch, where they had fled and settled after early persecutions in Judea. After Jesus' death, early Christian doctrine was taught by Paul (Saul)of Tarsus and the other apostles.

Jesus Christ claimed to be the long awaited Jewish Messiah, but was rejected as an apostate by the Jewish authorities. He was condemned of blasphemy and executed by the Romans for being a rebel leader around 30 AD.

Jesus' apostles were the main witnesses of his life and teaching. After his execution, his apostles and other followers claimed that Jesus rose from the dead, and set out to preach the new message. The original apostles are believed to have written some of the New Testament's Gospels and Epistles.

==Original Teachings of Jesus of Nazareth==

Jesus taught a doctrine of love, tolerance, and forgiveness. The essence of his doctrine is contained in the "Beatitudes" of the "Sermon on the Mount," a lesson taught in the hillsides of Judea. (Matthew 5:1 - 7:29):

3
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven.
4
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
5
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
6
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after
righteousness: for they shall be filled.
7
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
8
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
9
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the
children of God.
10
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake:
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11
Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you,
and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my
sake.


==History of Christianity==

===The Early Church===
Christianity spread rapidly over the first three centuries AD aided by the relative internal peace and good roads of the Roman Empire:

*via Egypt into North Africa, Sudan and Ethiopia
*via Mesopotamia to Persia, Inner Asia and India
*via Greece and Rome to Europe

During this period of first organization the church had to deal mainly with occasional, but sometimes severe persecutions. The life of the martyr, who would rather die than renounce his faith, became the highest virtue. The canonical books of the New Testament were agreed, early translations appeared, and a church hierarchy emerged: the Bishops of Alexandria, Antioch and Rome assumed the title Patriarch.

The Roman Emperor Constantine Constantine I was converted in 312 and with his Edict of Milan (313) he made Christianity the favored religion of the Empire. Similar events took place in neighbouring Georgia and Armenia. But in Persia, which was at constant war with Rome, the Christians struggled under the oppresive Sassanids, which tried to revive the Zoroastrian religion.

In the Persian empire, at the synod of Seleucia in 410 the bishop of Seleucia was pronounced Catholic and replaced the Patriarch of Antioch as the highest authority of the Assyrian Church of the East. Soon after, during the Nestorian Schism, this church broke all ties with the west. It would be the dominant church of Asia for more than a millennium, with bishopries as far away as India, Java and China.

==Fragmentation among Christians==

The Great Schism of 1054 split the Church into Western and Eastern branches: the Western branch gradually consolidated into the Roman Catholic Church under the central authority of Rome, while the Eastern branch became known as the Orthodox Church with the Patriarch of Constantinople as the most honored bishop among its autocephalous churches.

In the European Reformation of the 1500s, Protestants and numerous similar churches arose in objection to perceived abuses of growing Papal authority and to perceived doctrinal error and novelty in Rome. Led by Martin Luther, a German monk, the Reformation ultimately raised five key questions in the Reformation controversy are summed up in five famous 'solas': Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone - does the church's authority derive solely from correctly intrepreting the Scriptures, or does it have a separate authority?), Sola Fide (Faith alone - is a man saved through faith in Christ alone, or do the Church, good works and the sacraments contribute?), Sola Gratia (Grace alone - is a man's salvation purely and exclusively due to God's unmerited grace, or do individual works make a contribution?), Solus Christus (Christ alone - is Jesus Christ the only mediator between man and God, or does the Church and its priests play a part?) and Soli Deo Gloria (To the glory of God alone - does 100% of the glory for man's salvation belong to God, or are the Church and its priests eligible for a part?).

The Reformation sparked a vigorous struggle for the hearts and minds of Europeans. Disputes between Catholics and Protestants sparked bloody persecution and were caught up in various wars, both civil and foreign, whose repercussions still plague the world.

==Current Christian Doctrine==

Christianity is seen as the fulfilment and successor of [[Judasim]] and carried forward much of the doctrine and many of the practices from the Hebrew faith, including monotheism, the belief in a Messiah (or Christ from the Greek Χριστός Christós, which means "anointed one"), certain forms of worship (such as prayer, and reading from religious texts), a priesthood (although most Protestants assert the Universal Priesthood of All Believers), and the idea that worship on Earth is modelled on worship in Heaven.

The central belief of Christianity is that by faith in the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, individuals are saved from death - both spiritual and physical - by redemption from their sins (i.e. faults, misdeeds, disobedience, rebellion against God). Through God's grace, by faith, repentance, and obedience, men and women are reconciled to God through forgiveness and by sanctification or theosis to return to their place with God in Heaven.

Crucial beliefs in Christian teaching are Jesus' incarnation, atonement, crucifixion, death and resurrection to redeem humankind from sin and death; the belief that the New Testament is a part of the Bible; and supersessionism. Supersessionism is the belief that the Jews' chosenness found its ultimate fulfillment through the message of Jesus: Jews who remain non-Christian are no longer considered to be chosen, since they reject Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God, even so this position has been softened by some churches where Jews are recognized to have a special status due to their covenant with God and this continues to be an area of on-going dispute.

The emphasis on God giving his son, or the Son (who is God) coming down to earth for the sake of humanity, is an essential difference between Christianity and most other religions, where the emphasis is instead placed solely on humans working for salvation.

==Sources==
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity Wikipedia, Christianity. Much of this article is lifted whole cloth from this web site.
*The New Testament. Multiple authors, many uncertain. King James version.

Christianity

2004-09-25T09:34:49Z

Frater DVV:

Christianity

2004-09-25T09:33:01Z

Frater DVV:

Christianity

2004-09-25T09:30:18Z

Frater DVV:

Christianity

2004-09-25T09:14:27Z

Frater DVV:

Christianity Religion founded by Yeheshua ben Yosef Netzariot, [[Jesus]] of Nazareth, approx. 30 e.v. and propagated throughout the Roman Empire by his disciples in the following century, especially by Saul of Tarsus (St. Paul).

==

666

2004-09-24T17:55:56Z

Frater DVV:

666, The Biblical "Number of the Beast." Adopted by [[Aleister Crowley]] in his youth as part of his persona as "The Wickedest Man Alive" and "The Beast." (To Mega Therion). Later linked to a number of concepts in [[Thelema]] through [[Gematria]].

==The Beast of Revelation==

AND I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. 2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. 3 And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. 4 And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him? 5 And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months. 6 And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. 7 And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. 8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. 9 If any man have an ear, let him hear. 10 He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints. 11 And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. 12 And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. 13 And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, 14 And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live. 15 And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. 16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: 17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. 18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. -- Revelation of St. John the Divine, ch. 13, 1-18. (emphasis added)

==666, the Beast, and Aleister Crowley==
In his youth, because of his recalcitrance once he departed from the ways of his fundamentalist Plymouth Bretheren parents, Crowley was referred to by (and gloried in) the title of "Beast." At Oxford he not only accepted the title but expanded on it, calling himself "The Great Beast" and signing notes "666," the number taken from Chapter 13 of the Book of Revelation.

666

2004-09-24T17:55:28Z

Frater DVV:

666The Biblical "Number of the Beast." Adopted by [[Aleister Crowley]] in his youth as part of his persona as "The Wickedest Man Alive" and "The Beast." (To Mega Therion). Later linked to a number of concepts in [[Thelema]] through [[Gematria]].

==The Beast of Revelation==

AND I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. 2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. 3 And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. 4 And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him? 5 And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months. 6 And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. 7 And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. 8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. 9 If any man have an ear, let him hear. 10 He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints. 11 And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. 12 And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. 13 And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, 14 And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live. 15 And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. 16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: 17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. 18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. -- Revelation of St. John the Divine, ch. 13, 1-18. (emphasis added)

==666, the Beast, and Aleister Crowley==
In his youth, because of his recalcitrance once he departed from the ways of his fundamentalist Plymouth Bretheren parents, Crowley was referred to by (and gloried in) the title of "Beast." At Oxford he not only accepted the title but expanded on it, calling himself "The Great Beast" and signing notes "666," the number taken from Chapter 13 of the Book of Revelation.