Hi Caroline,
Have you read Hobsbawm's primitive rebels?  It goes through this process 
with 18th and 19thC Occult ritual societies in a very insightful concise 
way.  I think its a systemic approach taken to splinters and 
disagreements in these movements including the formation of Wicca and 
its splinter groups as well as the OTO and offshoots.
I like Hobsbawm's stake as he gets into the sociologial process of it in 
secret societies in a insightful (and somewhat cutting) way.
David


heliade wrote:
> Hi Felicia, OK, OTO may have been invented by one man, but from recently reading Heinrik Bogdan's "Western Esotericism and Rituals of Initiation" I discovered that it was (is) quite common in Masonic-style secret societies for people to "hive off' (not in the Wiccan sense) and claim their own (better, truer) versions of the lineage. I just thought it was interesting that this keeps happening, despite whoever has the actual paperwork of the lineage. I wonder if these secret societies can really be kept contained? 
>
> ~Caroline Tully.
>
>
> ---- Felicia <[log in to unmask]> wrote: 
>   
>> On Feb 4, 2008, at 11:19 PM, D E wrote:
>>     
>
>   
>> There is a fundamental difference:
>> Gardner presented Wicca as a re-emergence from a widely dispersed but 
>> existent religious phenomena of great antiquity.  Gardner claimed not 
>> to have coined the term 'Wicca" or "wicce".  He claimed that what he 
>> was doing was part of a continuity, one of many.  Whether this is true 
>> or not, that was the claim.  In other words, he presented his Wicca as 
>> being one fish from a lake.  Ostensibly, other fish exist in that lake, 
>> may be pulled from it, and may be called "Wicca".  Hence, for instance, 
>> Bill Heidrick can legitimately claim that he is a family trad witch by 
>> virtue of the fact that his great-grandmother kept a book of recipes 
>> for cures, one of which was for a powder to take when a man or a horse 
>> is bewitched.  Others claim such, why not Bill, too?  However, Bill, 
>> not being an initiate of Gardnerian Wicca, cannot validly claim to be 
>> Gardnerian since Gardnerians ostensibly keep very careful records of 
>> initiates so that validity of claims can be verified from that 
>> particular line.
>>
>> In the case of the OTO, one man created it - Theodor Reuss.  It is a 
>> work of art, unique, created by one man.  Theodor Reuss promulgated a 
>> manifesto defining the OTO.  The way the OTO is and was structured 
>> requires a paper trail if one is claiming continuity from OTO.   
>> Kenneth Grant at one time had an OTO charter from Germer (the OHO of 
>> the OTO) but Germer subsequently expelled Grant from the OTO in the 
>> 1950s.   Being expelled, Grant lost any claim of affiliation with or 
>> authority in the OTO.  Therefore what Grant later created had no 
>> affiliation with the OTO and could not be considered a direct 
>> continuation of the OTO.  As such, it cannot, therefore, be referred to 
>> as a schism since the narrow and concise usage of the term applies only 
>> to current members, not to former, expelled members.   Otoh, what Grant 
>> innovated after being expelled from the OTO can be appropriately 
>> referred to as having been inspired by the OTO or by Crowley but 
>> Typhonianism was not a continuation or branch of the OTO as it was 
>> under Crowley or Reuss.
>>
>> Motta "borrowed" terms for something he created in order to flesh out 
>> that creation.  Since Motta paid for the new roof on Germer's house and 
>> paid for the publication of some Crowley material, Germer mentored 
>> Motta in the A.'.A.'.  work.  However, Motta was never a 
>> member/initiate of the OTO though Germer offered more than once.  Motta 
>> then made claims that he was he was the Head of OTO and Thelema, 
>> worldwide.    He failed to prove these claims in court although he 
>> brought the court case to Maine with that intention.  There is a 
>> difference between inspiration and deception.  Motta stated, in open 
>> court in San Francisco, that he started using the initials SOTO when he 
>> discovered that Crowley's will named the OTO owner of Crowley's 
>> copyrights.  The court found more in the direction of deception than in 
>> the direction of inspiration.
>>
>> Bertiaux never produced evidence in support of his claims.  Bertiaux 
>> quit his claims shortly after Motta lost the court case.
>>     
>
>