Josephine and others,
I'm going to chime in here, although I have held off up to this point.
To give some background, I'm sitting on a years worth of fieldnotes and
about 40 or 50 hours of interviews with members of an OTO Lodge in the
United States (Sekhet Maat Lodge in Portland, OR). I haven't
transcribed and coded everything yet, so I don't want to put out too
many conclusions on some of these issues, but I would like to present a
perspective that comes from some substantial research. Also, note that
I bring to my research over ten years of involvement with the OTO. I've
been an initiate in the order during most of that time. So keep that
all in mind as you read my comments--they are grounded in data, but data
that has not been thoroughly parsed as of yet.
Josephine Cavopol wrote:
> well yes, and no. The GD was not set up as a religion, but it did strive to understand Divinity and work with deity, but not in a religious structure. Where as the OTO mass that was quoted, and then subsequent creed was without question built as a religious expression.
>
Well, this is a complex question, and I think the academic question is
not to try to match the OTO or GD with an overly essentialized category
like "religion," but to examine what the actual participants understand
their role to be in order to both understand what they see themselves as
doing and how they understand religion.
My own experience was that while a majority of members of the OTO did
see their work as "religious" a significant, and often vocal, minority
did not. What is interesting in my own research is how much this turned
around the increasing importance of the Mass in the specific local body
I studied (and in the wider order). One of the reasons I found for
inactivity amongst long-term members or even attrition was their
perception that the OTOs emphasis on the "church" side was at odds with
their own rejection of religion.
I only have anecdotal experience with people involved in the Golden
Dawn, so take the following comment FWIW, but I do understand some of
them to perceive their participation in a Golden Dawn derived order as
"religious"
Josephine, I also think you are mistaken to understand the "creed" as
functioning within the OTO or the EGC (the church that celebrates the
Mass within the OTO) as having the same function for participants as
other creeds. For one, there is almost no training or communication by
officers of the "meaning" of the creed; members are left to interpret it
as they will. I have heard members range everywhere from stating that
it is simply a symbolic expression of the facts of nature as understood
in science to a suggestion that it is essentially a meaningless mantra
whose primary purpose is to entrain participants in the Mass in
preparation for the rest of the ceremony.
> I also think it is important to differentiate between religion ( as a construct) and working with deities. The GD ( and Dion fortunes group) had no creed, and did not rely on faith. It was a method of ritual pattern making that was used for a variety of reasons including working with Deities.
>
Most OTO participants would reject the idea that faith is involved in
their work within the OTO or EGC, though a minority seemed to accept
that. I need to go back into the data more thoroughly before I can
parse that out much more, and I don't expect to do this until the end of
the summer or early Fall at earliest (I'm in the final stages of
finishing my dissertation, which is not directly on these matters, and
so won't turn to the OTO material much for a little while).
If list participants would like to see some of my work on the OTO,
please contact me off-list, and I can send you .pdfs of the two papers I
have presented thus far, one on science and one on an Autumn Equinox
ritual they celebrated in 2006. I'm particularly interested in having
other academic readers who may wish to dialog (ie. read and give
feedback) with me as I move these into article manuscripts and
especially a book.
Regards,
Grant
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