In the disguised O.T.O. lodge that calls itself Fraternitas Saturni (FS),
there is a misogynistic agenda, to which the FS's founder Eugen Grosche gave
blatant voice. Only a few of many examples need be quoted here:
"The Female Being is the enemy and the opposer of Man from the very Beginning." "Certainly not
every cow is a beast of prey, and not every Female Animal a demonic being." The purpose of
marriage is "to domesticate man." What can Man do against it? "In marriage the will of Man
must be dominant." "The influence on Man of the pure sexual urge for females will be defeated in
time through the self-conscious spiritualization of Woman."
Under his pseudonym of Gregor A. Gregorius, Grosche defined his view of women's rôle clearly: "To
be a lover who only satisfies all sexual and erotic desires of man." Nonetheless, the FS was -
and still is - described as a "unique and recognised magical Lodge" which "nevertheless
admits women," though the female members are only qualified "as help-meets for experimental
magic, and in the cult of the sexual Mysteries." Hence the men in the FS used "consciously
created sexual dependance" to achieve their aims.
Grosche's successors have continued this doctrine: Karl Wedler (or 'Giovanni') and his protegé Guido Wolther ('Daniel') have on the one hand declared that "homosexuals and pederasts must be rejected
as sex-magical monstrosities" - yet on the other hand proclaimed that the ruling spirit of the
present æon is the "Dæmon of torture and adultery" worshipped with "grains of incense
steeped in semen and human blood; he follows the Dæmon of Lies, of Sodomy and Homosexuality, the
Dæmon of Lewdness and Orgies." This is indicated by certain magical symbols, which are said to
confer "immediate power with respect to sex on both men and women." Wedler gave his
"brother and friend" Wolther a manuscript entitled 'The Devil's Elixirs', which contained
recipes for poisoning enemies, inflicting deadly ailments, driving people insane, and so on ad
nauseam.
Having come upon the dogma propounded by his FS predecessors, Dieter Heikaus ('Set Horus') elected
to cathartically reveal their ideas to the outside world - a risky process that he hoped would set
these "great magicians" up as magical idols once more. He decided that his Ordo Saturni, and
more particularly its internal 'Pentalpha' group, could perform "the
sex-magical operations of the old FS".
Because of his chauvinistic attitudes towards women, Eugen Grosche was never able to find his
soul-mate in the physical world, but using his occult arts and knowledge, assumed the form of
'GOTOS' an égregore or group-spirit. GOTOS was also called 'UTUIT', which was
supposed to mean 'OTO-it' (a sort of activated form); it was also the highest rank in the FS (from
'Gradus Ordo Templi Orientis Saturni'), and the égregore was created as an astral body by the joint
efforts of all FS members, using a specially created head-and-shoulders statue or bust to help their
efforts. By this means, Grosche hoped that after his death, in the form of GOTOS's astral body, he
could at last be united with his soul-mate - and thereby reach an androgynous state on a higher
plane. This group-spirit was supposed to have some femimine characteristics, but the only feminine
aspect of GOTOS was the mediumship used to obtain the design of its statue. Representing an égregore
as a bust or head recalls the literary traditions of statues coming to life (see next section); or
else the tale of Salomé, who desired John the Baptist's head on a platter - perhaps to gain his
powers of prophecy.
So the central concept in FS lodges is that of the lodge égregore, and its powers of re-animation.
The classic prototype for such an idea is that of Baphomet, the supposed idol of the Knights
Templar, who was (as the Roman Emperor) likewise worshipped in the form of a head. It has been
claimed that Baphomet was invoked with the first sura of the Qur'an, and dismissed with the
twenty-fourth chapter of the apocryphal Book of Sirach.
O.T.O. groups have all made use of the idea of Baphomet - but in the Saturn lodges it has been given
a different emphasis, and far greater value than in the other versions of the O.T.O.
In India, it is a tradition amongst certain Tantric sects to anoint their phallic lingam images with
oil, milk, and sometimes semen. A similar tradition involving living statues and plaster busts
exists in Western culture - at least on a literary level. E.T.A. Hoffman, Edgar Allen Poe, Ambrose
Bierce, and Jules Verne amongst others, have reinterpreted the original myth of Pygmalion from Ovid;
it can even be seen in the musical 'My Fair Lady'. This tradition fulfills an ancient human dream,
that of bringing the dead back to life, either artificially or with the help of the gods of magic.
Even today there are hints of it in cybernetics and genetic engineering. Inspired by the attempts of
Charles Darwin's grandfather Erasmus Darwin to re-animate dead worms, the nineteen-year-old Mary
Shelley wrote the novel 'Frankenstein: or the new Prometheus' which was published in 1818. More on
the theme has been written more recently by authors such as Philip K. Dick (as in 'Blade Runner'),
Alfred Bester, Stanislaw Lem and Pierre Klossowsky. In Switzerland in 1972, a drama based on the
classical myth of Galatea appeared, expressing the eternal dream of a man for a woman who is wholly
dedicated to him. In the play, which was a reworking of an episode from the 'Alpensaga', some
farmers create a 'Sennentuntschi', an artificial woman grown in a bottle from a mixture of dung and
cheese. Needless to say, Sennentuntschi soon frees herself from their attentions.
In Jewish mysticism, there is the legend of the Golem, which is ultimately based on Psalm 139 verse
16; the story is best known from the mediæval golem created by Rabbi Löw of Prague, as described in
Gustav Meyrink's impressive novel The Golem (1915). Golems are reproductions of Adam, formed
from the dust of the earth, and they go even further back in Jewish culture, as may be discovered in
a commentary on the ancient Cabalistic text the Sefer Yetzirah, as expounded by the eminent
scholar Gershom Scholem. The German author of occult and erotic potboilers H.H. Ewers added a sexual
twist to the legend with his novel Alraune in 1911. Also in Germany, Paul Wegener directed a
film of The Golem in 1915, the first in a series of German films such as Nosferatu,
Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari and Dr. Mabuse which evoked a fascination for evil.
Neo-Gnostics and secret societies in Germany and elsewhere got a lot of inspiration from fictional
sources such as these - enough for them to devise their own 'Order Secrets'. The concept of the
Homunculus, an alchemical mannikin produced in a bottle, was not foreign to Theodor Reuss, the O.T.O.'s founder. The prescribed reading-list for O.T.O.
members included G. Herman's work called Genesis - das Gesetz der Zeugung (Genesis - the
Law of Procreation) which describes the production of a being "who is realized through the
odic power of materialization, and which as odic mist streams from the vulvae, and under the
traditional uterine influence easily forms child-souls." The alchemist Paracelsus described his
formula for creating a Homunculus using blood and semen, and this has been compared to the
consecrated hosts of the Spermo-Gnostics. In 1914 Aleister Crowley wrote his
Xth degree instruction De Homunculo Epistola in which he described the homunculus, even
though he was less than enthusiastic about it. It is quite possible that he had been inspired by
Somerset Maugham, who had published a novel called The Magician in 1907, whose villain Oliver
Haddo is based on Crowley; in the novel Haddo manufactures a mad homunculus by devilish arts.
Similarly, Crowley himself wrote a novel in 1917 (not published until 1929) called Moonchild,
in which sex-magicians create a speaking homunculus with astrological enchantments.
In the Saturn Lodges a definite connection was made between the subject of 'artificial astral
beings' and Vampire mythology. The égregore and its incarnate 'tenant', the possessor of the highest
degree in the FS, were fuelled by the vital sexual powers of all the lodge members. Both the FS and
its successor the Ordo Saturni deliberately tried to creat a form of astral vampire, which
they hoped eventually to incarnate as a being of flesh and blood. It was a reversal of the Christian
Eucharist, where the congregation consumes the supposed flesh and blood of God, in the form of bread
and wine. If one believes that Gods are the creation of Man, then it follows that an order-egregore
is also a God. To succesfully create a Golem might therefore mean that with the Golem even a God
could be vicariously destroyed; a dream of omnipotence realised. In the FS the office of Gotos
permits a personality to be united with GOTOS UTUIT itself; the Outer Head of the Order (OHO)
becomes the Inner Head of the Order (IHO). Deus est Homo - Homo est Deus, as was stated similarly
(but unconnectedly) in Reuss and Crowley's Liber Agapé.
In the FS's magical system, the libido during sexual intercourse was transferred from the sexual
partner to the astral égregore. In concrete terms, this meant all that heterosexual and homosexual
activity was conducted with the use of wordshells/euphemisms (Holy, Logos, Saturn, etc.) to feed the
égregore's vitality. These efforts to identify the Saturn Order with an (at least) astral Golem, a
Homunculus, an image or statue brought to life, or else some other form of android to build up
power, is quite different from the practises of other O.T.O. groups, who are effectively engaged in
a quest for the 'Elixir of Life' in the form of psychosexual secretions to gain self-empowerment, or
to contact spirits. Nonetheless, this has not prevented some membrs of the so-called 'Caliphate' O.T.O. from joining the Ordo Saturni; in the Saturn lodges this
'elixir' was mostly used for anointing the statue of the GOTOS.
The égregore has never been an important issue to other O.T.O. groups. As Marcelo Ramos Motta wrote:
"the Egregora does exist in the so-called 'astral plane' and it is a demon, that is to say, an
illusory entity. It is not a true Microcosm, but a gestalt of vitalized shells, a focus for
everything that is negative, defeatist, maudlin, bigoted, introverted in human nature - a morass
completely hostile to progress and to the spiritual evolution of mankind."
The publication of an earlier version of the foregoing sections in this essay
caused some interest among members of the 'Typhonian' O.T.O. following the FS
example, they duly devised what they called an 'Égregore Map' from various more or less Thelemic
entities: Lam, Olun, Aiwass, Maat,
Babalon, and the Beast. "It can be defined as the group spirit (super-consciousness) of all
the members of a particular Order... It is analogous to the running of magical computer programs
across a network of adepts or members, in order to access necessary gnosis and guidance from the
Secret Chiefs. This can be done using these égregore maps because they express the laws of Creation
and the Fall through their symbolism. They allow people to free themselves from the lust of result
by the externalisation of the Holy Guardian Angel into the égregore."
The égregore is by definition a created soul (psychogon); according to Aleister Crowley it serves
mostly to realise of wishes, and is consequently a 'helpmeet-spirit' who obeys the Holy Guardian
Angel as in the Abramelin system.
The 'Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage' (see illustrations 1 & 2 ) describes one method of attaining
communication with one's guardian angel; every human being has an individual spiritual power, a
divine mirror image called the Holy Guardian Angel, who restores a link to the divine for human
beings engulfed in matter. Once contact with the Guardian Angel has been established - after six
lunar months of asceticism and constant devotional prayer - the magician may then (if he dares)
invoke armies of demons and servile spirits to do his will.
From the other side, it could reasonably be claimed that the guardian angel gets something in
return. In the ecstasy of a human orgasm, the Angel attains a vision of the Universe as a
continuous, unblemished phenomenon, where it is separated from the pure union of human with the
divine; and thus the Angel finds wholeness in the human to whom it ministers.
Many FS techniques, like absorbing the libido from sexual partners may also be found in O.T.O.
lodges. But in the OTO, the method is to transfer the libido's energy to one's own ego and its
adjuncts. The Order becomes a substitute for the archetypal Mother, while its charismatic leader is
transformed into a substitute for the corresponding Father-figure. This practice started with Carl Kellner, whose female followers wore a locket
containing a photograph of him, and the lamen, or magical shield of the Memphis-Misraim Rite: a sphinx within a pyramid under a blazing sun. Kellner viewed
his self-created office as Baphomet as descending from the Babylonian priesthood. However, in
Richard Payne Knight's interpretation, Baphomet was an androgynous figure who united active and
passive polarities. Kellner apparently did not accept Éliphas Lévi's diabolic interpretation of
Baphomet, which Crowley was later to use in the 'Devil' card of his Thoth Tarot designs. Indeed,
Crowley always described himself as Baphomet in connection with the O.T.O., and considered this to
unite the offices of both Inner and Outer Head of the Order in himself - they were linked in the
concept of the homosexual eleventh degree of the O.T.O. [This might explain the 'Caliph' William
Breeze's assumption of the XIth degree]. It is
not known whether he ever tried to bring an image to life (except the skeleton he fed with blood at
his Chancery Lane 'Black Temple'), or to use Baphomet as an égregore in the FS sense. Certainly,
when his follower Jack Parsons
tried to create a homunculus with the aid of sex-magic (and the founder of Scientology, Lafayette
Ronald Hubbard), Crowley reacted angrily, calling the affair "nonsense".
Crowley, alias Baphomet XI°, assumed the rôle of an idealised father-figure in his rescension of the
O.T.O. By idolising Crowley/Baphomet in this way, his followers nurtured precociously regressive
sadistic and anal attitudes, which tended to be acted out in the form of oral aggression, as a
consequence of a significant upset of the balance between fantasy and reality. As the central idol
of the Crowleyan O.T.O. there stood a golden phallus, with which the sex-magician was meant to
identify himself in the form of an ejaculating penis. In O.T.O. groups of this school there is
little possibility of using such phallocentric and narcissistic behaviour as a way of obtaining
solitary communion with an égregore. Energies liberated in this way would generate 'disorder' in
'practicing' individuals (at least in the higher degrees). The imitation of Crowley's biography
stimulates dramatic relationships and drug-addiction. There is no Gnosis here. No, not even here,
where a Gnostic sense of an intolerable existence is reflected in several different O.T.O. Orders
all at war with each other; these merely show that there is a yawning void between the 'rotten
places' and the Pleroma.
With these O.T.O.'s, the light at the end of the tunnel for seekers is the corpse-light glimmer from
carefully contrived schemes and inducements towards sensuality and self-indulgence; it shines on a
mouthful of semen, and illuminates no more than ready-made images, images which are endlessly
imitated, regurgitated and thoroughly manufactured.
The Saturn lodges have never succeded in achieving the union of the
human holder of the Gotos office, with the GOTOS égregore. This is
apparently why the O.T.O. fell into schism during Crowley's time; the
Saturn lodges have not been able ("so far" that is) to invoke
the spirits of Pluto necessary to the union, and this has meant the
Gotos-Golem (the O.T.O. Saturni Golem) has fragmented into narcissistic
offshoots of Grosche and his allies.
If this human Gotos is not a Charismatic individual, then the efforts of his followers can only be
devoted to the service of the égregore-GOTOS, charging it up like a battery; but if the human Gotos
does not remain in the background, then the magical energies can flow back, and not drain away. But
this latter possibility only works if the human Gotos avoids the trap of narcissistic folly through
excessive dependance on the GOTOS (human or égregore), as also so long as the human Gotos separates
himself from the lodge members having an influence on psychological transmission. This practice has
only been tried in the 'Caliphate' O.T.O. (in contrast to H.J. Metzger's group) where the chief of the
Order, the 'Caliph' remains effectively incomminicado, except for 'ex-cathedra' pronouncements;
paradoxically, the 'Caliph' is seen as magically powerless. A repressed identification with a
homosexual All-Father figure in the form of Crowley has proved to be a deficiency in the personal
development of many 'Caliphate' followers. The result has been a fanatical, supposedly socially
involved 'coming out' of the 'Caliphate' as a publicly recognised religious community, and led to
their concealment of all their magical and sexual doctrines. Recently this group has told its
membership to separate the "problematic" figure of Aleister Crowley from the doctrine of
Thelema, even though Thelema is still to be considered as he Highest Truth of this Æon. This has
effectively replaced critical thought, and
replaced it with all the trappings of 'belief' in a cult, with an emphasis on the importance of
ritual for its own sake, and new myths. Information which might promote dissent is suppressed, and
measures to censure those who step out of line is now included in the group's statutes.
Unsubstantiated legal threats frighten bogeymen. So the 'Caliphate' (which now represents itself as
the one and only O.T.O.) proclaims that it is incapable of error, and uses the courts to fight every
criticism from the moral 'majority', the press or the police. A strategy of positive news-management
has been introduced, and where necessary truth is the first casualty.
There is no evidence that Krumm-Heller believed in any particular Intelligence, like those found in
Crowley's spiritual cosmogeny. Krumm-Heller focussed more on human reality and not on gaining
contact with transcendental realms, even when those were formulated as Beings. To this day, "the
teachings of the Ancient Rose-Cross Brotherhood" have had no real rôle for their astral
(actually Theosophical) Master Racoczy, nor of the égregore, nor of an Inner Head of the Order.
Contact with the "angel on the other side" takes place only in "helping and
healing".
Apart from thinking that avoiding ejaculation helped healing and human evolution, Krumm-Heller
thought it a "good deed for redemption". Maybe redemption was necessary in revolutionary
Mexico, when the material world must really have looked like a Gnostic "Rotten Place". It is
not known, however, whether he used semen either homoeopathically or isopathically as a universal
medicine.
After Krumm-Hellers death, there was conflict within his Rosicrucian organization, rather like those
in the O.T.O. groups. But today his F.R.A. is relatively small, its membership regarding themselves
as isolated groups, and not ruled by an overall leader. Krumm-Heller offered little room for his
followers psychological projections, and his F.R.A. was, and still is, too exclusive to attract
really deep devotion. Had it not been for H.J. Metzger's claims to be the leader of the F.R.A.,
nobody would have heard anything about Krumm-Heller or the F.R.A. in the German or English-speaking
worlds after World War Two. It has only been by plagiarising the present author's books that the
'Caliphate' have been able to mix Krumm-Heller into their historical fantasies.
At Stein in Appenzell, where Metzger's
Swiss O.T.O. has its headquarters it was claimed that "Beauty and Ecstasy take the place of the
previous taboos of society" and "through a period of monogamy in marriage (devotion to only
one other person), which is a deviation from natural law, there may be rediscovered that substance
which will regain the Divinty's blessing," which was apparently so because "Europeans lack
the blessed institution of polygamy". "Every wedding dissolves matter, and creates less
matter". The duty of women: "Eroticism and sin - these are the Gates to the Upper World. The
Feminine has the key... women will become the Guardians of Good, Loyalty, and Morality." This
group also taught techniques for tightening the vaginal muscles, and enjoined washing one's genitals
in cold water to prevent sexually-transmitted diseases. "Homosexuality is spreading worryingly
through the masses", while "Masturbation is a scourge" - and the only remedy was "to
cut it off".
The group was against Yoga; instead autogenic training was "the sweetest fruit of the struggle
for self-knowledge". "Humanity finds a place on the astral plane after death. An interaction
occurs with the chain-reactions from atom-bomb tests, whereby the fusion of nuclear hydrogen in the
Sun facilitates the manifestation of divine power". "From the clouds, radioactivity gives
life to stones." They apparently promote a sort of homeopathic "electronic healing",
which "will solve the riddle of illness, especially of epidemics", because "it is not
impossible that metals and precious stones can have a localised effect on the orbit of
electrons". Accidents like broken legs are a result of wrong thinking according to Metzger's
O.T.O., which also claimed that vaccination and vegetarianism are bad for health.
In the end all sex-magical systems fail, when psychological order (not to mention the body's
metabolism) is upset by its techniques; any gaps (such as the Void in the image of the Self) are
filled with synthetic replacements (the Phallus, the égregore, Crowley, etc.). Despite a rigid
regulation of daily life, interpersonal relationships outside the artificial reality of the O.T.O.
or FS shrink to the level of projecting one's own failures onto others. This produces dependency,
fears of persecution, and a reliance on curses, rituals for destruction, and invoking the help of
demons. For instance, at Easter 1992 the mother of what was claimed to be the future reincarnation
of Eugen Grosche (and Gotos) Gertrude Zellhuber (aka 'Lara') felt magically threatened by the former
Grand Master of the FS, Walter Jantschik. Although GOTOS and the necessary spirits of Pluto were
evoked, Jantschik noticed nothing, which seems to have left these hostile intentions free to wreak
havoc among other supposed enemies of Lara & co., such as the Temple of Set.
A slowing-down in self-development can be a direct inducement to magical thinking, while
overemphasis on instinctive and impulsive energy may cause weakening of control over sexual and
aggressive behaviour. This particular polarised state is characterised by an exaggerated emphasis on
autoerotic and autonomous activities - in other words, Do what thou Wilt. It can alter a person's
self-esteem, their identity, and their sexual and societal rôles. Deliberately distorting the libido
can become a serious sport in sex-magic.
Crowley clearly identified himself with Thelema "I am the Beast... I am Thelema" (Diary, 22
October 1920); has Thelema turned out to be a a defect in the oedipal phase of the New Aeon,
fostering tendencies towards neurosis and psychosis?
FRATERNITAS SATURNI
Nosferatu's Baby
(Much
too much) Too hot to
handle by Peter-R. Koenig
The topic of hostility towards women in religion and occultism has scarcely been touched on in
studies of these subjects. However, it is a symptom of such attitudes that even the hedonistic
prophet of the "New Æon" Aleister Crowley, and his quasi-counterpart the ascetic Arnoldo Krumm-Heller, adhered to certain forms of misogyny in both theory and
practice; attitudes which are still present in those who proclaim their ideas of a new humanity. The
reader should ideally be familiar with The O.T.O. Phenomenon, or the authors' articles,
before reading the following excursus on the practices and psychology of the
various O.T.O. groups. Nosferatu's Baby
People out of stone
You are my Creator but I am your Lord
Baphomet and the O.T.O.
Knights of the Neurosy-Cross
Fraternitas Rosicruciana Antiqua
Although Baphomet also occurs in the initiation rituals of the F.R.A., it seems that Arnoldo Krumm-Heller was never involved in the aforementioned shenanigans. He saw
himself in a messianic role, adhering strongly to the idea of Christian Gnostic objects of
veneration, and Jesus as saviour. Salvation was obtained from Him alone, and it meant that people
would only ever meet good deeds along the way. True, salvation could be achieved through
spermo-gnosis as well, but only by avoiding ejaculation. These homoeopathic
Gnostics served a higher divine order, but their concomitant will to bring order to humanity was
very far from self-deification. In spite of his apparent adherence to Thelema, and the use of LAM as
a mantra, Krumm-Heller was more involved with social concerns and joining organisations, rather than
any magical or mystical self-development. Homoeopathy requires a lot of human sensitivity from both
doctor and patient.
Gnosis in Appenzell
- A catalogue Love is the Law - Love under Will
© P.R. Koenig 1994/October 1996/August 1998, translation adapted
by Mark Parry-Maddocks in October 2000
Versiune romana: Bebelusul Nosferatului
SPERMATOZOOLOGY
Spermo-Gnostics and the Ordo Templi OrientisThe Secrets of the O.T.O.
Correct Gnosticism
Smoke gets in your Aiwass
Nosferatu's Baby -- Too Hot To Handle
Texte zum Thema GOTOS-Büste
Die GOTOS-Büste. Winke, Anregungen und Ratschläge für die Brüder und Schwestern der Loge Fraternitas SaturniWalter Jantschik: Die GOTOS-Belebung
