Felicia et al
Re Grant & McMurtry - there appears to have been friendly correspondence
between them -
again according to Martin Starr - Grant idolised McMurtry because of his
devotion to Crowley -
in the small collection of letters 'Grant/Remembering AC" -
McMurtry reported back to Crowley that Grant had indeed
initiated a correspondence -
relationships between the McMurtry and the Grant OTO lineage seem to
have been fairly cordial until McMurtry's death.
I'm not sure how people here rate the Martin Starr's book which seems to
clarify many issues -
via careful research - hence I can not quite fit this with what Felicia
says about Motta and the OTO -
Martin Starr seems to have determined that Motta, as the most senior and
knowledeable member
at the time was in fact Germer's choice to succeed him - this is
documented.
I can quote the passage if that's useful.
(this has nothing to do with copyright - totally different issue)
- it obviously wasn't the end of the matter because Motta was
problematic as a hea d of an order -
and Grant and later Mcmurtry went their own ways and eventual
began their own lineages - as others had done before and after Crowley??
(BTW the current SOTO seem to have been influenced partly by Kenneth
Grants books -
But Motta himself did do extensve experimentation with Liber 231
which as become better known as the Nightside Tarot though KG's writing.)
The stuff on when is a schism not a schism - doesn't really make sense
to me coming
as I do from an Indological background. A rose is a rose is a rose - the
different sects are there -
regardless of whether one acknowledges the 'legality' of another -
afterall would one expect the pre Reformation Catholic church to
acknowledged the legality of the Protestant church -
or indeed the Pope in Rome to acknowledge the several other Popes - for
example Shunude - the Coptic one??.
'Love and do what you will'
Mogg
PS If interested in my lineage - I was back in the 1980s a member of the
Typhonian OTO
but was expelled when I joined AMOOKOS. AMOOKOS was also the subject of
a schism some time back -
but maybe has now found a modus viviendi at my suggestion that we just
need a form of words to cover the fact that two groups have taken
slightly different trajectories but can still respect the difference -
this is 'documented' in my article
'When you guru goes gaga' which will also be part of my forthcoming book
'Tantra Sadhana' -
>> ed the control of the OTO at that point
>
> As far as I've been able to discern where Grant and McMurtry were
> concerned, Crowley was the undisputed head of OTO.
> Grady's only comment regarding those meetings was that Kenneth Grant
> looked like an unhealthy Bella Lugosi. Grady made no other comment
> other than he wasn't certain Kenneth Grant was a member of OTO. There
> is nothing in the records to indicate that they either shook hands or
> said two words to one another although presumably something of the
> kind took place. The only thing Crowley had to say regarding Kenneth
> Grant from that time was an obscene limerick. Crowley seems to have
> been fond of assassinating people's character by attributing his own
> behavior to them.
>
>> can we really say that other OTOs are not, or were not, also OTOs? I
>> just wonder, after the death of a charismatic leader (Aleister
>> Crowley), isn't it quite common for groups to splinter like that, for
>> other charismatic types to claim lineage - whether on paper or not.
>> How un-OTO does one of these groups have to be to be "not OTO"? I
>> mean is the Typhonian OTO considered not OTO - at all? Obviously a
>> lot of people think that non-Caliphate OTOs are OTO... Isn't it a bit
>> like Wicca in its growth out from an original model?
>>
>> ~Caroline Tully.
>
> 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.
>
> On Feb 5, 2008, at 1:54 AM, Mandrake wrote:
>
>> Can you say more about Motta's trajectory and why, if he did, he
>> developed in the way he did.
>> Over the years I've always found the post Motta OTO leadership very
>> helpful -
>> and he seemed to have worked his way through all the Crowley material
>> and the current
>> leadship seem to have some common ground with the Typhonians - is
>> that your impression??
>
> Mogg
>
> Since Motta paid to re-roof Germer's house, Germer saw fit to give
> Motta access to a good deal of Crowley material;
> but, Motta doesn't seem to have either digested it or comprehended
> it. His errors are legion and he seems, rather than to have
> been inspired by Crowley's writings, to have gone off on a tangent.
>
> You don't seem to be saying you find common ground between Motta's
> material and Grant's material.
> What I'm reading instead is that you are finding common ground between
> what those who currently refer to themselves
> as Typhonians promulgate and what those who refer to themselves as...
> Motta's followers (SOTO?) promulgate.
> But, that could easily be explained. They read each others emails,
> websites, and publications, don't they?
>
> Could you be more specific?
>
> Thank you,
> Felicia
>
>
>
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