Thelema Lodge (Thelema Community Calendar, Fall 2005)

The viewpoints and opinions expressed herein are the responsibility of the contributing authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of OTO or its officers.

Ordo Templi Orientis
Thelema Lodge
P.O.Box 2811
Berkeley, CA 94702

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

On 3 July 2005 e.v., after 608 consecutive Masses at its previous location, Thelema Lodge, O.T.O. moved to its new per diem space at the Holistic Fitness Center at 2881 Castro Valley Blvd. #2, Castro Valley, right next to the Chabot Theater. The space is large and beautiful, with mirrored walls and an attractive waiting area. We also recently negotiated a deal with the landlord to rent an additional room at the site for purposes of storage and office space. Pictures of the space can be seen at http://www.holisticfitnesscv.com/everything_else/specialevents.html. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those involved who helped us build new temple equipment and move all the Lodge materials (including the huge library) out of the old location. We value your hard work and contributions to our community during this very trying time. Our success is because of you.

If you have never been to a Mass at Thelema Lodge before and would like to attend, please call us at 510-461-4320 and leave a message. Mass takes place every Sunday night at 7:00 pm. The Castro Valley BART station is approximately 1/4 mile away if you wish to take public transit. If you are driving, there is plenty of parking nearby. Please arrive around 6:30 or so to settle in and mix with the other congregants before the Mass begins. The Lodge is a community of people with diverse backgrounds and experiences. Get to know us and learn about other events at the Lodge such as lectures, classes, and the Rites of Eleusis.

The Ordo Templi Orientis has been active in the state of California since 1935 e.v. with the establishment of Agape Lodge in Pasadena. It is from this group that virtually the entire modern O.T.O. is derived. The work of Agape Lodge members such as Helen Parsons Smith, Phyllis Seckler, Jack Parsons, and Grady McMurtry still inspire and influence the members of O.T.O. today.

After the close of Agape Lodge in 1955 e.v. by O.H.O. Karl Germer, there was no official O.T.O. activity in the United States for many years. When Grady McMurtry was informed of Germer's death in 1968 e.v., he came back out to California from Washington D.C. in order to restart the O.T.O. After a number of attempts around the San Francisco Bay Area and years of membership building, he founded Thelema Lodge in Berkeley as Grand Lodge of O.T.O. on October 12, 1977 e.v. This founding took place during a solar eclipse of the Sun on the 102nd anniversary of Aleister Crowley's birth. Thelema Lodge was the first of many O.T.O. bodies that would be founded worldwide in the following years.

Thelema Lodge is no longer Grand Lodge (and has not been for twenty years), but it continues today under the leadership of initiates who are proud of their long history. This Fall, we celebrate our Lodge's 28th year with another Rites of Eleusis cycle. It is our hope that the move to a somewhat more southerly location in the East Bay will help to stimulate new membership from the Peninsula and San Jose areas. We look forward to our next 28 years.

Sirius Encampment was founded in 1986 e.v. by Sr. Glenn Turner. It has always been closely associated with Ancient Ways, a Pagan/Occult supply shop in Berkeley. Sirius Encampment currently hosts Rites of Eleusis and other O.T.O. gatherings. After the departure of Thelema Lodge from Oakland, Sirius continues on to represent O.T.O. in the Oakland-Berkeley area.

Mons Abiegnus Oasis was founded by Fr. Carpocrates in Mill Valley. It has served the North Bay since 1996 e.v. with Gnostic Masses, initiations, and other Magickal Rites. Many events at Mons Abiegnus (including the Gnostic Mass) take place in the beautiful Mill Valley Masonic Temple, adding a very majestic tone to the ambiance.

418 Lodge was founded by Phyllis Seckler (Soror Meral) in 1979 e.v. Phyllis presided over the Lodge until April 2004 e.v., when she passed the Master's chair to Brother David Shoemaker. Originally located in Oroville, the Lodge now serves Sacramento and the surrounding communities, presenting Gnostic Masses, classes, and initiations into the Man of Earth degrees of O.T.O. The Lodge is fortunate to have a committed group of members who have worked over the past year to build a freestanding Temple building where most Lodge events are held. An events calendar and other contact information may be found on the Lodge website: www.418oto.org.

Pax Templi is currently a Camp in formation in El Cerrito. Led by Fr. Khut-em-Abt, Pax Templi represents the newest center of Thelemic activity in Northern California. They offer Gnostic Mass performances, lectures, workshops, and other events. More information can be found at their website: www.paxtempli.net.

Aspirants interested in initiation into the O.T.O. must be 18 years of age or older and not incarcerated nor otherwise under restrictions governing freedom of movement. Please feel welcome to seek out our Deputy Lodge Master, Frater Luciftias Peripsol (Matthew) to ask for an application to the Minerval Degree. Fill out the application, and then request two members of the order that are I° or above to sign your application as sponsors. There is also a Release and Indemnity legal form to sign. Turn these in to Frater L.P. and we will schedule a date for your initiation. Applications for degrees up to IV° and P.I.° are available, but there may be time or other restrictions regarding eligibility.

It is important to remain in regular contact with us (and your sponsors) after turning in an application form. Come to Mass as often as you can and keep getting to know us. We wonít seek you out or call youóif you are really interested in joining the Order or rising up in the degrees, we hope that you will have the initiative to make your wishes known.

You don't have to be an initiate of O.T.O. to join its ecclesiastical wing, the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica. If you are interested in Baptism into the E.G.C., please inform Bishop T Theodora that you are interested and a date can be set. Baptism into the E.G.C. also makes a person eligible for performing in the role of the Child in the Mass. Once a person is Baptized, Confirmation can also be offered in a similar ceremony.

Persons seeking to function in the role of Novitiate Deacon, Priest, or Priestess in the Mass need to be Baptized, Confirmed, and be of at least 0° (Minerval) in the O.T.O. If you are of the 0° degree, you will also have to work with at least one ordained Mass Officer that is K.E.W.° or higher. If you qualify, seek out Bishop T Theodora and she will find a Mass team who will train you for the role you seek.

Ordination to the role of Deacon is available to experienced novitiates of II° or higher. Ordination of Priests and Priestesses is granted in a special ceremony to well-seasoned novitiates who are K.E.W.° or higher. If you have the persistence, and are willing to do the work, you may be able to attain these. Do you have what it takes? Contact T Theodora for details if you are interested.

If you are already a Novitiate or an ordained Mass Officer and would like to perform Gnostic Mass in Horus Temple, the members of Thelema Lodge welcome your participation. Seek out other qualified Officers for your team and contact Sr. Rose who will schedule you on our calendar.

We also welcome visiting clergy from other bodies. If you are visiting from another O.T.O. body and wish to perform Mass in our temple, please, contact us at least a month to two months in advance to make certain that we can schedule you.

We are pleased to announce the appointment of Fr. Phos as the new Secretary of Thelema Lodge. We would like to thank our previous Secretary, Fr. Dionysus, for his time and hard work.

The officers of Thelema Lodge would like to give recognition to all of our brethren who help us with the ongoing setup and break down of the Temple each Sunday. Moving the equipment in and out of the storage room is quite a job (especially moving that 100 pound altar) and we are grateful for your help and prayer of labor.

The Thelema Lodge Newsletter depends on your articles, poetry, and artwork to keep it going. If you have any submissions, please give it to me in person or send it to libanus93@comcast.net. Please put NEWSLETTER in the title line of the e-mail to alert me.

The following piece by Grady McMurtry was contained in a four page flyer for the newly-formed Boleskine House Publishing in 1983 e.v. to advertise the book Thelema Cries — A Book of Vision. This work by Thelemite B.L. Kennedy was billed as "an expressionistic journey into the origins of the magickal mind." It was run as a limited edition of 250 signed and numbered copies for $4.18 each.

Twenty years ago in The Angel and the Abyss and Dark Space and Bright Stars I was explaining the Paths and Sepheroth of the Tree of Life in terms of the shamanic Magick Aleister Crowley forecast and came to fruition with acid and rock music in 1965 e.v. It is especially interesting to find BL Kennedy also exploring this medium relating the birth of a child, her name is Thelema, to the Birth of the New Aeon and her cry against what is happening and how She will manifest Nuit, the Goddess, in Her own way.

we have the ultimate in Shamanic Rock as exhibited at any really rock concert. Check The Stones or The Police.

he delves into the deep mysteries of the change time between Aeons as I did in my

To see this interest in exploring the qualitative physics of the New Aeon in terms of human feelings, the ultimate failure of the quantitative sciences and Industrial Civilization is that it does not, is especially welcome in this time of transition and turmoil.

[The editor would like to thank Brother Robert Flores for this wonderful submission]

This year I celebrated Byron's birthday (1/22) by going to see William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, with Al Pacino (Shylock), Jeremy Irons (Antonio), Joseph Fiennes (Bassanio), and Lynn Collins as Portia. I was really looking forward to seeing this film. Unfortunately, I cannot say it is an unqualified success.

First the good stuff: Michael Radford, the director, did a good job of keeping this a Shakespeare play — i.e., he did not "reinterpret" it to reflect modern sensibilities. This is probably as good a treatment of The Bard as you are ever likely to see on film from a visual and atmospheric perspective. Much of the film was shot in Venice, but despite the locale the camera is kept almost exclusively in tight shots that give the feeling of a proscenium, so that there is always the feeling of characters closed in by their circumstances. This was a technical choice by the director that I didn't even appreciate until I sat down to write this. It works. I did most certainly feel transported to the Venice of the late 1500s, and to the dark and seamy aspects of human nature. Also, the choice of music as background and interlude between acts is a divine blend of lutes and flutes that is a feast for the ears, and contributes to the sense of an authentic Shakespearean experience.

On the other hand, Shakespeare was first, last and always a poet. Even in his plays, his use of poetic meter serves to advance the dramatic tension, and absent competency by the actors with the language, the climax is lost. It is here that this film breaks down, and ultimately I think, fails. None of the actors, with the notable exception of Jeremy Irons, is up to the complicated language of the play, and the director's intent seems to be to have his actors speak s-l-o-w-l-y to overcome the deficit. Both Shylockís "I am a Jew" soliloquy and Portia's "The quality of mercy" soliloquy (maybe the most beautiful speech in the English language) are badly mangled in terms of beats, rhyme and emphasis, so that they are hardly recognizable. In the case of the Shylock speech, Pacino delivers it so poorly that any chance of understanding the character's motives, never mind any larger social commentary within it, are lost. The result is that all the dramatic energy gushes out, like air from a balloon, and the film never really recovers.

This brings me to the crux of my complaint about this film: Al Pacino is badly miscast as Shylock. I know that seems almost impossible to say, he is such a revered actor. I looked forward to this movie because I believed Pacino would be the perfect choice for Shylock, but I was stunned by what a bad job he did in this role. The truth is, he was completely out of his depth in this milieu. He looked the part, and he brought his usual intensity to the role, but he simply could not handle the language. Sadly, when I mention his usual intensity, I mean by that that Shylock's soliloquy seemed delivered more by Michael Corleone than by a Venetian Jew of 1596. And he uses this irritating faux-Yiddish accent, on and off, that made me cringe! Apparently, the director lacked the stones to direct him, or enough command of the project to realize his big-name actor was a mistake.

Equally so, Portia's rendering of "The quality of mercy" is, in Shakespeare's original, the prelude to defeating Shylock in his attempt to use the law to obtain not justice but revenge. Lynn Collins, previously unknown to me, looks exactly as you would imagine Portia, a Renaissance beauty of almost ethereal quality. But her delivery of the entire courtroom scene, and especially her soliloquy, is botched. She hits the beats wrong, in an effort, I believe, to avoid falling into the natural cadences of the poetic meter. Thus, the climax to the whole play loses its intensity, and we donít really feel the tragedy of Shylock's ruin as we should.

As I mentioned earlier, everyone seemed to operate under the assumption that speaking the lines slowly was sufficient to convey their meaning, so the director must be faulted for this. (I would think that given how much this film mustíve cost to make, especially with Pacino's salary, it wouldíve been worth it to hire a real, English, Royal Academy dialogue coach!) It's really a shame, because there is much about the feeling of this movie that is true to Shakespeare's intent. But without command of his poetry, no camera work or sound track can overcome that central, essential failing.

My friend who saw the movie with me was not nearly as offended by the mangled language as I was, and enjoyed the film without qualification. I admit that my prejudice here is a longstanding, dearly held one — my dad used to read me Shakespeare as bedtime stories, and I was a drama/film major for two years before I finished my degree in creative writing. To me, since we all live in an age when English grammar is hardly known, for anyone to get anything from the plays of the man who was master of the written word when English was at its pinnacle, the effort must be grounded in the language.

However, given all of my critical comments above, I still urge you to see this movie and judge for yourselves. I always believe that movies like this should be seen because it encourages more to be made, perhaps better ones. I made the same recommendation last year about Troy, and that flick wasn't as true to Homer as this film is to Shakespeare. So depending upon your appetite for Shakespearean drama, The Merchant of Venice will edify or frustrate you, but please do see it. As always, I welcome your response to my review when you have.

After spending way too much time with Tom Cruise and his new girlfriend in hyperactive special effects blockbusters, I decided to take a break and go see the Ex-Mrs. Cruise in this reworking of yet another cartoon from a long gone era. I'm generally of the opinion that a little bit of Will Ferrell goes a long, long way, so I went in trepidatious. Much to my surprise I liked this movie more than I expected to do. It is a genuine homage to the TV series in its way, and there was some actual thought and writing that went into putting this piece together. Yes, it's a frothy romantic comedy, and yes, it might've been a better movie with some other male lead, but Nora Ephron co-wrote the script with Penny Marshall, they co-produced it, and Ephron directed. Kudos to them both. Mostly, Ms. Ephron controls Ferrell, or at least contains his excesses by changing the scene. For once, special effects are made to serve the script. I strongly suspect that what really garnered all the indifferent to mildly negative reviews was that Bewitched (ever so gently) skewers the ways of Hollywood.

Nicole Kidman is just astonishing in bringing Isabel/Samantha to life. How she captures the naivetè and wonder of a young, otherworldly witch as she discovers this new environment, how she slowly realizes that normalcy is more a fable than magic, how she ultimately learns to balance the clashing elements of her new life are all simply marvelous to witness. It has been reported that Shirley McClaine told friends after making this movie that Nicole Kidman is the best actor McClaine has ever worked with. Think about that. Shirley McClaine worked with giants. And I agree with her in that Kidman is the rare acting genius who can totally disappear within her character. The other actor who comes immediately to mind who did this so well was Spencer Tracy. No one ever accused Katherine Hepburn of disappearing into her characters, but Tracy beside her could do so. Among modern actors Johnny Depp also possesses this ability. I fervently hope that someday he and Kidman will be paired in some suitable vehicle, as that will be the movie that teaches acting forever afterward.

Ms. McClaine does her turn as Iris/Endora with professional grace and a light hand. She's having a good time here and it shows. Also, Michael Caine does another supporting role, as Isabel's father trying to help her find herself. He is an actor who has aged nicely before our eyes, and he seems to have unerring instincts about what role is good for him. Then he unfailingly makes it good for us.

The Thelemic notion of True Will has bugged me since I first encountered it. Much of the explication and gloss around it feels to me an attempt to back pedal: that "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" doesn't actually mean "Anything and everything you have a whim to do is okay", even though that is what a person without prior indoctrination is likely to get from reading Liber AL vel Legis.

I thought this deserved a considered response, since this is one of the criticisms most commonly leveled against Thelema. Here's what I came up with. Perhaps it'll be useful to others facing the same or similar issues.

For various good reasons there's only so much I can say to this. But I think that I can skirt the requirements of the Comment and still say that there are a number of clues in Liber AL that might suggest a priori that something more than whim is meant by "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."

For example, AL I:39 states "The word of the Law is THELEMA." So we know that this "Law" which can be summed up as "Do what thou wilt" has something to do with the concept that translates into English as "Will." This is the dedicated, driven will, not the casual whimsy that might be suggested by a superficial interpretation of "do as you wish."

We're also told (AL I:57) that "Love is the Law, love under will." This points to another concept higher than whim that seems to encapsulate the Law as Will does: Love, specifically, love directed by the will. I can't speak here to what love means in this context, but it seems clear that it refers to something other than self-interested whim.

There are other clues scattered in the text. For example Liber AL clearly outlines some actions as appropriate and others as inappropriate. If the Law is "do whatever you wish" then how can this make sense? It's clear from even a surface reading that there must be a way to make moral distinctions, and if the document is internally consistent then that way must be consistent with "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" and "Thou has no right but to do thy will. Do that, and no other shall say nay."

Thus the plain sense of the text seems to indicate that "will" as used in Liber AL has some particular meaning beyond whim or even the individual will. The fact that moral distinction is possible strongly suggests that this "will" is guided by and judged against some standard outside itself.

Crowley was aware of this as he studied Liber AL, and any understanding of the concepts described in these passages has to make some sense of these indications. The concept that Crowley emerged with after working all of this through was True Will. It really isn't an attempt to backpedal away from the implications of Liber AL but rather an assumption that the book means just what it says, and to follow that through to some sort of consistent conclusion.

Contained in the following word hunt are the names of common perfumes used in Magickal ritual. These were taken from 777, column XLII.

This calendar covers OTO events across Northern California. Most events are public, but some (marked with an I) have degree or membership restrictions. Times and dates may change for some events, so please call to confirm before arriving. Any additions or corrections to this calendar should be sent to libanus93@comcast.net.