Typhonian Ordo Templi Orientis
Kenneth Grant
LAM

Plan 93 from Outer Space by P.R. Koenig Extensions of the OHO's Will "Like a vast network , the iridescent tendrils of our occult complex spread across the land, linking such centres as are located in California, Florida, North Carolina, Chicago, and New York. These dynamic centres of Thelema receive their vivifying current through our World centre in England." Such was the message of Janice Ayers in 'Sothis' I;2, in September 1977.

The New Yorker William Siebert was active in Kenneth Grant's O.T.O. in America. He was expelled in 1986. Chartered as a X° was his co-publisher of the Grantean O.T.O. Magazine 'Mezla', his fellow New Yorker Janice Ayers (Tanith 789'.'), who functioned as acting X° from 21st March 1980 until 18th February 1983. [1] At her invitation Maggie Ingalls (Nema) became a member of the Typhonian O.T.O. Ms. Ayers however found the work of an X° too heavy a burden, and after her resignation Grant asked her to return all her papers to him. "These have never been published so there are no problems. In fact, no one will notice! I note, furthermore, that the term 'Ad Vitam' appears on neither document. You could then continue as a functioning member of the IX°." [2] Her successor as X° was Jeffrey Evans (Kephera-Ma-Ast), who together with his wife Ruth Keenan, a V°, took care of the American membership. [3] Evans was expelled in 2000. Active in Grant's O.T.O. for a time in Canada were Peter and Linda McFarlane, owners of 93 Publishing, where William Breeze - latterly the 'Caliph' - was also active. In 1977 McFarlane published a supposed additional chapter to Liber AL under the title The Book of Perfection, Liber 440, which led to a break with Grant. [4] The McFarlanes were never chartered as representatives, and their representation was purely as publishers of 93 Publishing.

Zivorad Mihajlovic Slavinski has been X° for the former Yugoslavian territories since June 6th 1990. Meanwhile, in Great Britain Michael Staley, who has produced the Order's journal 'Starfire' for many years (the earlier London Magazine 'Sothis' was edited by Mike Magee, Jan Magee and David Hall), is Grant's heir-apparent.

The Cult of Lam.

Crowley's erstwhile secretary Kenneth Grant (who claims to have formed a link to his 'angel' Aossic, and so calls himself Aossic, Ossik, or A'ashik) has - together with his followers - developed a more or less comprehensible outline of a 'new' cosmos on this basis. Interested readers are referred to Grant's books, many of which remain in print. [7] In this article we shall be concentrating on Grant's resulting theoretical expansion of Crowley's demonology. The latter never seems to have regarded angels or demons as very definite beings; for him, they ruled the material world, and were useful for things like getting hold of money. Under Grant's influence they were elaborated into complex transcendental schemes of alternate dimensions outside the circles of space and time. "The terrestrial vehicle is an outcropping in three dimensions of the Angel: the Angel is the fountain of living waters which empowers the terrestrial vehicle." [8] Through contact with this fountain, the Holy Guardian Angel (HGA) opens the gate of remembrance of our supernatural reality, what Grant calls "the continuum often glyphed as the Goddess of which we are terrestrial facets." [9] Grant and his adherents 'remember' the origins of Be-ing [10] and have constructed a remarkably complicated collection of metaphors drawn from sources such as the Qabalah, H.P. Lovecraft, [11] Salvador Dalí, Michael P. Bertiaux, Austin Osman Spare, [12] Lemuria, Atlantis, extraterrestrial visitors from Sirius, the promotion of at least one new 'New Aeon', and a whole shoal of 'revelations'.
Grant placed great emphasis on the development of a IX° 'dream-control' technique, borrowed from Thomas Lake Harris, and introduced into the Crowleyan O.T.O. by Ida Nellidorf under the name of "eroto-comatose lucidity." Before going to sleep the sexual energies were first raised by constant sexual stimulation without orgasm, and then concentrated onto a talisman bearing a requisite symbol, so that in its dreams, the aroused libido would copulate with a dream-partner. The talisman would thus become magically charged, and would make a particular wish - be it for gold or Gnosis - come true.

But the greatest interest has been shown in the entity called Lam which Crowley 'beheld' in 1918. [13] In October 1979 Grant (under his alias of 'Aossic Aiwass 718') described Crowley's Amalantrah Working of 1918 as an "active reflex and extension of Lam" and released "An Official Statement of the O.T.O concerning the Cult of Lam, the Dikpala of the Way of Silence." Grant drew up a ritual meditation for making contact with Lam. The entity was imagined as an egg, and the practitioner would enter its eyes with the aid of the mantra "Lam", so that once united Tantrically with Lam, one would "see" the world from "yonder". [14] Grant judged the sex-magical versions of this meditation to be "extremely dangerous", and "most emphatically" rejected all homosexual variations of it [in some O.T.O.-groups: the XI°]. To gain the most objective results from all contacts with Lam, Grant enjoined that none of its practitioners should inform each other of their own results for several years. [15]

As one example of an actual current emanating from Kenneth Grant's immediate circle, his colleagues were also recruited from other occult groups. [16] By contrast it is notable that the doctrine of the 'enemy' held sway in the 'Caliphate', 'enemy' meaning other Thelemic groups like Grant's or Motta's O.T.O.s, not to mention all other A\A\ lines (apart from those of Motta), and critics like Koenig, Naylor, etc. Such contacts blocked advancement to degrees beyond the IV°, or even resulted in immediate expulsion. We shall be returning to this theme.

The Cult of Lam and Michael Staley, Grant's London amanuensis.

In the 1990's this cult (described as the "quintessence of the Typhonian O.T.O. tradition") was supposed to be a manifestation of the Hidden praeternatural/supernatural God or Holy Guardian Angel (HGA), who united the natural with the supernatural. Contact with this HGA was identical to an entry into the Aeon of Ma'at, or the extra-terrestrial continuum. [17] "In my view Lam is the mask of a dynamic state of [extra-terrestrial] [18] gnosis, rather than simply an entity." [19] Staley interested himself in Lam as a state of Gnosis, although he admitted that this state could sometimes also take the nature of an entity's mask; but he would break through these masks.

Crowley's (feminine?) Hoor-paar-kraat (Set) was again understood as the HGA; in the Tetragrammaton YHVH Ra-Hoor-Khuit (Horus) corresponded with the Vav, and Hoor-paar-kraat to the Heh final. "This identifies Hoor-paar-kraat with the Aeon of Ma'at." [20] Lam 'sits' in the Muladhara Chakra's Bija-Mantra, where the Fiery Serpent (or Kundalini) waits to uncoil. The 'optical' union with Lam took place in Lam's eyes, the region of the Ajna-Chakra (and also the seat of the will). [21] According to Crowley this corresponded to a sex-magical act in which one became conscious of the Ajna and Muladhara Chakras during orgasm. [22]

Contact with the HGA was defined as the stage of "reaching critical mass" after doing intensive Abramelin or Liber Samekh exercises. The HGA is the sum total of experience, gathered into this critical mass and then able to take on spontaneous form. [23]

This contact with the HGA - whether experienced in concrete exterior form, or as the aspirant's spiritual Higher Self - corresponded with the start of 'occult puberty'. [24] For an occultist, it meant that there was no longer any distinction between inner and outer. Evolution demanded that one cast off such old mental habits, [25] and that humanity should become non-human, as in Crowley's A\A\, where a kind of superman hatched from the Egg or Babe of the Abyss (that is, the concept of dissolution in occult Qabalah, the bridge between human and divine). Freed of Ego, only this new human creature can help human evolution, and perhaps even that of the universe. ['Babe of the Abyss'; the whole point being that the Kabbalistic Abyss is the ultimate womb from which the soul is born before progressing to the Supernal Triad of sefiroth (Kether, Chokmah, and Binah) on the Tree of Life. After being born from the Abyss, it first reaches Binah, the 'Magna Mater'.]

For Staley, magic is primarily a matter of communicating with non-human entities. However, such entities are not to be found outside human beings, as man and the universe are one - both are aspects of the universe. [26] Staley found better comprehension of this through the Sanskrit concept of Advaita or "not-divided", and in the Prajnaparamita-Buddhist "Sunyavada". At one stage Staley worked with a Lam-Serpent Sadhana, in which the Lam-Serpent was visualised as the Kundalini surmounted by Lam's head. [27] This Lam-Serpent uncoiled itself along the sushumna, while the chakras were visualised, and the Bija-Mantras were vibrated. According to Staley the 'secret' of sex-magic resided solely in the fact "that matter is malleable and can be influenced by sustained, intense visualisation; the potency of this visualisation can be increased by the directed sexual current." [28]

The HGA functioned as the mediator and boundary station between the terrestrial and the infinite. With the HGA projected as the Egregore outside the individuality, the HGA can be used to communicate with the 'Secret Chiefs'; using the occult technique of 'Assuming a God-Form' one becomes an angel/egregore among other angels/egregores.

A Little Typhonian Gnosis

The magazine included a history of the Order which attempted to present all the facts concerning the 'Caliphate' and Grant. [30] Although there are a number of factual errors in this account - such as the claim that Carl Kellner was involved in the founding of the O.T.O. (which he was not), or Crowley's succeeding Theodor Reuss - these are understandable, since otherwise the article should acknowledge the strict distinction between Thelema and the O.T.O.. [31] Importantly though, there was a renewed assertion that Theodor Reuss had appointed Charles Stansfeld Jones to the office of X° for the USA, and not Crowley. Consequently the latter's expulsion of Jones from the O.T.O. was invalid (as a Reussian X°, Jones had prior rights). [32] Hence Karl Germer was never entitled to be X° for the USA, and after he dissolved the Agape Lodge, Grady McMurtry was only acting as an individual. Germer, who was meant to have validated Crowley's 'Caliphate Letters' to McMurtry, certainly cast doubt on matters when he said in a letter of 3rd May 1952 that there were then no active O.T.O. Lodges in the USA, considering the US a "spiritual desert" and Grady Louis McMurtry a "Minus".

Grant and Staley also wondered to whom _McMurtry had paid his IX° fees.

 "Q [lawyer]. You didn't send any financial support other than repaying
      your loan to either Mr. or Mrs. Germer, did you?
   A [McMurtry]. It was impossible.  I was a graduate student at the
      University of California with no GI Bill from the Korean War.  I had no
      money.
   Q. But after you stopped being a graduate student and after you started
       working, you never sent any money either, did you?
   A. No.  He didn't ask me to send any money.
   Q. And you didn't pay any dues into the Ordo Templi Orientis?
   A. He did not require them.
   Q. I beg your pardon?
   A. He did not require them.
   Q. Don't the provisions of the Constitution require payment of dues?
   A. Yes.  Oh, yes."
(McMurtry vs. Motta,14 May 1985, pages 182-183)

 

Staley also pointed to the dearth of creativity in O.T.O. groups. Beyond making its Order hierarchy steadily more complicated, the only noticeable 'Caliphate' activities seem to be publishing old Crowley material, and threatening other O.T.O. groups and publishers with legal action - at least in the present writer's opinion. [33]

Kenneth Grant himself could be every bit as dogmatic as the 'Caliphate' when it came to perceived challenges to his authority. From the mid-1980s, a then-member of his O.T.O. published the English Nuit-Isis magazine; from 1988 onwards I regularly contributed articles on the O.T.O. phenomenon to it, which were intended to present a new overview of all O.T.O. groups, though in the strictly historical sense. "Kenneth Grant in particular was not amused and set in motion a kangaroo court which expelled Katon Shual [Mogg = Chris Morgan, the magazine's publisher] from the O.T.O. [...] Sadly, this kind of pedantry is not unique to Mr Grant, and many contributors to _Nuit Isis_ have found themselves personae non grata with various so-called Thelemic organisations for daring to voice an unpopular opinion or fact." [34] A different view is provided by Staley: "Katon Shual published a flow-chart showing the descent of the O.T.O., and in particular the main line of descent (the Office of O.H.O.) as going from Crowley to Germer to McMurtry. It seemed curious to name a member of the Caliphate O.T.O. as O.H.O. when a member of the Typhonian O.T.O. ; that's a polite way of putting it. Katon Shual was asked to publish a statement of correction in the next issue, but didn't. Thus the expulsion followed." [35]

FOOTNOTES

1. "I, along with 2 renegades from the Caliphate founded the Chthonic O.T.O. (which later became the Chthonic-Auranian O.T.O.) in the mid 1980's", William Siebert, E-mail of 27.2.98. "When I returned home from a Magickal Festival in Georgia which birthed the C/A-O.T.O., I found a letter of expulsion from Grant," E-mail of 4.4.2001. His collaborators: Cliff Pollick (III° 'Caliphate') and Sam Webster (II° 'Caliphate')
2. Kenneth Grant to Janice Ayers, 2.2.1983.
3. "When Jeff left upstate NY, he & I parted on very bad terms as he had not paid rent or contributed work at my farm. When he was asked to leave, he made a hissy fit & trashed his temple, leaving me & my partner Anne to clean up his mess", Siebert, E-mail of 4.4.2001.
4. "There is currently no X° degree in the USA, Jeffrey Evans being no longer a member of the Order. We are awaiting the emergence of a suitable person - may take a while". Michael Staley, E-mail of 10.4.2001. "I knew Jeff for several years prior to his taking on X°. For many years, the primary focus of Jeff's personal magic was tied into his gender identification. Jeff felt he was a woman in a man's body. When he lived at Math of the ChRySTAL Humm (my place in upstate NY), Jeff was living as a woman full time & going by the name of Deborah. Deborah felt a very strong connection with a past life as a priestess in Egypt who was sacrificially murdered & much of Jeff/Deborah arose from tapping into those memories. Jeff/Deborah was seriously considering a gender change thru surgery. Jeff/Deborah told me on several occassions that Grant was not supportive of exploring this magical venue. Jeff/Deborah left the Humm with Ruth under very strained circumstances. We did not communicate again until Jeff became my superior. At that time, Deborah was no longer visible. Just Jeff. 100% male. I heard thru the grapevine that Grant had told Jeff he must put aside all gender magick & all connecting with his past life as the sacrificed priestess if he was to represent the Typhonian O.T.O.. No proof on this last part. Just hearsay." Siebert, E-mail of 11.4.2001. "This picture of him is one drawn by Siebert, who was resentful of Jeff because Grant appointed him, and not Siebert, as the successor to Janice Ayers. I know this, because I used to correspond with Siebert at the time, and was disconcerted at the animosity towards Jeff which Siebert expressed in several letters." Michael Staley, Email of 15 July 2001
5. The idea of the nervous system as the linking factor between two worlds, a quasi-angelic bridge between humanity and God, is mentioned by Gernot Brückner, in: Das grösste Abenteuer der heutigen Menschheit, Hamburg, 1991, p. 45.
6. Crowley in: Magick without Tears (Letter No 30), many editions, e.g. Arizona 1973, p. 217. Also quoted by Michael Staley in Starfire Vol. I No 5, London 1994, pp. 155 & 189; and by the 'Caliphate' and OTOA- bishop Allen H. Greenfield in Secret Cipher of the UFOnauts, Georgia 1994, p. 16.
7. In the mid-1990's Grant's short story dating from the 1950's, 'The Stellar Lode', was published for the first time in Skoob Esoterica Anthology (London 1995). This anthology also contained an extract from the Manifesto of Grant's New Isis Lodge, which had mentioned Eugen Grosche; this mention had angered Karl Germer. After the death of Grant's erstwhile editor at Skoob, Christopher Johnson, Grant's more recent works have been published under the imprint of 'Starfire Publishing Limited' in London.
8. Michael Staley in Starfire Vol. I No 5, London 1994, p. 191.
9. Ibid., p. 5.
10. UFO/alien abductees who have undergone consciousness expanding treatment 'remember' their extra-terrestrial origins, discovering or explaining their missions to prevent the threatened destruction of Earth. See John E. Mack: Human Encounters with Aliens: Abduction, New York 1994.
11. Lovecraft's literary universe consists of unknown dimensions filled with powerful and evil beings. The Lovecraftian 'Mythos' is that the Earth was once ruled by beings of this sort, who are now trying to regain their power. Today there are even certain individuals and groups who seek contact with these 'Great Old Ones'.
12. 1889-1956; a former student of the Crowleyan A\A\, who created a 'New Sexuality'.
13. The suspected result of the Abuldiz and Amalantrah Workings, in both of which a series of visions concerning an egg seem to have been important.
14. This reminds of "The Meditation about the Divine Phallus" in my Der OTOA-Reader p. 96. Abductees often report being Aliens themselves and therefore perceiving humanity through "other eyes"
15. Mezla magazine, Ohio 1979, no issue or page number.
16. There was also a cult of Lam associated with Manuel C. Lamparter in Spain; the Yugoslavian Julijan Naskov was closely connected with it {see the OTOA-Reader}. Since then Lam has appeared in the guise of Nuit to Naskov, who feels that this was "predestined" - yet Crowley had already composed his so-called 'Djeridensis Comment' on Liber AL as a form of dictation from Nuit. See Symonds and Grant: Magical and Philosophical Commentaries on the Book of the Law, Montréal 1974, pp. 305-335. Arnoldo Krumm-Heller had also previously used 'LAM' as a mantra {see Ein Leben für die Rose}.
17. There were certain adherents who also advocated the concept that the various aeons existed contemporaneously, in what was almost a Gnostic form of time-share and Gnostic inter-penetration of the same space.
18. Michael Staley: 'The Mysteries of Lam', lecture given in 1994, MS., London, p. 1.
19. Michael Staley, letter of 17.6.95.
20. Staley, op. cit., p. 7.
21. It is likewise reported that visual contact with UFO aliens produces unusual states of consciousness.
22. Diary entry for August 12th 1920.
23. Noticing synchronicities, specifically perceiving alterations in reality, is the key to understanding occult phenomena.
24. See also Crowley's commentary on Liber Samekh.
25. Choronzon here represents 'intellect' and 'dualism'; see Staley's article 'The Vision and the Voice', in Starfire Vol. I No 4, London 1991, p. 43. Most Thelemites see Choronzon as approximating to the role Satan once had in Christianity.
26. In Thelemic terms, the magician expels his blood into the chalice of Babalon. Babalon (or Venus, see Crowley's "Vision and the Voice", 1909) has been the (sometimes masculine) Scarlet Whore of Revelation; her number, 156, is equated Kabbalistically with 'constant copulation' and 'samadhi'.
27. The Lion-Serpent.
28. Staley, letter of 23.9.2000.
29. Contact address for Starfire: Starfire Publishing Ltd., BCM Starfire, London WC1N 3XX.
30. Grant repeated his assertion that he had been expelled by Germer because he was in contact with Eugen Grosche - and Zivorad Mihajlovic Slavinski's X° warrant was produced in a new computer-printed version (original in Materialien zum O.T.O., pp. 227-8).
31. Nonetheless the Masonic structure was thrown out in Grant's O.T.O., as anyway Crowley had confirmed that "The secret is the basis."
32. Certain other relevant documents can be found in Der Grosse Theodor Reuss Reader.
33. Questions about the 'creative achievements' of the 800 or so "real" 'Caliphate' members always elicits mention of the same male authors: Wasserman, Wilcox, Martinié, etc. Whereas the women (and only three or four will come to mind) do things like "painting pictures, or doing 'channeling'", thus conforming to the 'classic' stereotype.
34. Special edition of Nuit-Isis, 116 pp., Mandrake of Oxford, Box 250, Oxford OX1 1AP, Autumn 1993, p. ii.
35. Staley, E-mail of 15 July 2001

Translation by Mark Parry-Maddocks. Further suggestions by Michael Staley.
Continued in "Smoke gets in your Aiwass"

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