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| | From:  _vixedjuju_ (Original Message) | Sent: 12/9/2007 6:17 PM |
THE CHARTER AND THE BOOK Being A Radical Revisionist History of the Origins of the Modern Witch Cult and
The Book of Shadows. "It was one of the secret doctrines of paganism that the Sun was the source, not
only of light, but of life...The invasion of classical beliefs by the religions
of Syria and Egypt which were principally solar, gradually affected the
conception of Apollo, and there is a certain later identification of him with
the suffering God of Christianity, Free - masonry and similar cults..." Aleister Crowley in Astrology, 1974 "...if GBG and Crowley only knew each other for a short year or two, do you
think that would be long enough for them to become such good friends that gifts
of personal value would be exchanged several times, and that GBG would have
been able to acquire the vast majority of Crowley's effects after his death?" Merlin the Enchanter, personal letter, 1986 "...On the floor before the altar, he remembers a sword with a flat cruciform
brass hilt, and a well-worn manuscript book of rituals - the hereditary Book of
Shadows, which he will have to copy out for himself in the days to come..." Stewart Farrar in What Witches Do, 1971 "Actually I did write a scholarly book about the Craft; its title was Inventing
Witchcraft. . . But I spent most of the last fifteen years failing to persuade
Carl Weschcke of Llewellyn or any other publisher that there was a market for
it." Aidan A. Kelly, Gnosis, Winter, 1992 "...the Gardnerian Book of Shadows is one of the key factors in what has become
a far bigger and more significant movement than Gardner can have envisaged; so
historical interest alone would be enough reason for defining it while first-
hand evidence is still available..." Janet and Stewart Farrar in The Witches' Way, 1984 "It has been alleged that a Book of Shadows in Crowley's handwriting was
formerly exhibited in Gerald's Museum of Witchcraft on the Isle of Man. I can
only say I never saw this on either of the two occasions when I stayed with
Gerald and Donna Gardner on the island. The large, handwritten book depicted in
Witchcraft Today is not in Crowley's handwriting, but Gerald's..." Doreen Valiente in Witchcraft for
Tomorrow, 1978
"Aidan Kelly...labels the entire Wiccan revival `Gardnerian Witchcraft....' The
reasoning and speculation in Aidan's book are intricate. Briefly, his main
argument depends on his discovery of one of Gardner's working notebooks, Ye Book
of Ye Art Magical, which is in possession of Ripley International, Ltd...." Margot Adler in Drawing Down the Moon, 1979
Part One - Waiting For The Man From Canada
I was, for the third time in four years, waiting a bit nervously for the
Canadian executive with the original Book of Shadows in the ramshackle office of
Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum. "They're at the jail," a smiling secretary-type explained, "but we've called
them and they should be back over here to see you in just a few minutes." The jail? Ah, St. Augustine, Florida. "The Old Jail," was the `nation's oldest
city's' second most tasteless tourist trap, complete with cage-type cells and a
mock gallows. For a moment I allowed myself to play in my head with the vision
of Norm Deska, Ripley Operations Vice President and John Turner, the General
Manager of Ripley's local operation and the guy who'd bought the Gerald Gardner
collection from Gardner's niece, Monique Wilson, sitting in the slammer. But
no, Turner apparently had just been showing Deska the town. I straightened my
suit for the fiftieth time, and suppressed the comment. We were talking BIG
history here, and big bucks, too. I gulped. The original Book of Shadows.
Maybe. It had started years before. One of the last people in America to be a fan of
carnival sideshows, I was anxious to take another opportunity to go through the
almost arche-typally seedy old home that housed the original Ripley's Museum.
I had known that Ripley had, in the nineteen seventies, acquired the Gardner
stuff, but as far as I knew it was all located at their Tennessee resort museum.
I think I'd heard they'd closed it down. By then, the social liberalism of the
early seventies was over, and witchcraft and sorcery were no longer in keeping
with a `family style' museum. It featu-red a man with a candle in his head, a
Tantric skull drinking cup and freak show stuff like that, but, I mean,
witchcraft is sacrilegious, as we all know. |
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So, I was a bit surprised, when I discovered some of the Gardner stuff -
including an important historical document, for sale in the gift shop, in a case
just opposite the little alligators that have "St. Augustine, Florida -
America's Oldest City" stickered on their plastic bellies for the folks back
home to use as a paper-weight. The pricetags on the occult stuff, however, were
way out of my range.Back again, three years later, and I decided, what the hell,
so I asked the cashier about the stuff still gathering dust in the glass case,
and it was like I'd pushed some kind of button. Out comes Mr. Turner, the manager, who whisks us off to a storeroom which is
filled, FILLED, I tell you, with parts of the Gardner collection, much of it, if
not "for sale" as such, at least available for negotiation. Turner told us about
acquiring the collection when he was manager of Ripley's Blackpool operation,
how it had gone over well in the U.S. at first, but had lost popularity and was
now relegated for the most part to storage status. Visions of sugarplums danced in my head. There were many treasures here, but the
biggest plum of all, I thought, was not surprisingly, not to be seen. I'd heard all kinds of rumors about the Book of Shadows over the years, many of
them conflicting, all of them intriguing. Rumor #1, of course, is that which
accompanied the birth (or, depending on how one looked at it, the revival) of
modern Wicca, the contem-porary successor of ancient fertility cults. It revolved around elemental rituals, secret rites of passage and a mythos of
goddess and god that seemed attractive to me as a psychologically valid
alternative to the austere, antisexual moralism of Christianity. The Book of
Shadows, in this context, was the 'holy book' of Wicca, copied out by hand by
new initiates of the cult with a history stretching back at least to the era of
witchburnings. Rumor number #2, which I had tended to credit, had it that Gerald Gardner, the
`father of modern Wicca' had paid Aleister Crowley in his final years to write
the Book of Shadows, perhaps whole cloth. The rumor's chief exponent was the
respected historian of the occult, Francis King. Rumor #3 had it that Gardner had written the Book himself, which others had
since copied and/or stolen. To the contrary, said rumor #4, Gardner's Museum had contained an old, even
ancient copy of the Book of Shadows, proving its antiquity. In more recent years modern Wiccans have tended to put some distance between
themselves and Gardner, just as Gardner, for complex reasons, tended to distance
himself in the early years of Wicca (circa 1944-1954) from the blatant sexual
magick of Aleister Crowley, "the wickedest man in the world" by some accounts,
and from Crow-ley's organization, the Ordo Templi Orientis. Why Gardner chose to
do this is specula-tive, but I've got some idea. But, I'm getting ahead of
myself. While Turner showed me a blasphemous cross shaped from the body of two nude
women (created for the 18th century infamous "Hellfire Clubs" in England and
depicted in the MAN MYTH AND MAGIC encyclopedia; I bought it, of course) and a
statue of Beelzebub from the dusty Gardnerian archives, a thought occurred to
me. "You know," I suggested, "if you ever, in all this stuff, happen across a
copy of The Book of Shadows in the handwriting of Aleister Crowley, it would be
of considerable historical value." I understated the case. It would be like finding The Book of Mormon in Joseph
Smith's hand, or finding the original Ten Commandments written not by God
Himself, but by Moses, pure and simple. (Better still, eleven commandments, with
a margin note, "first draft.") I didn't really expect anything to come of it,
and in the months ahead, it didn't. In the meantime, I had managed to acquire the interesting document I first
mistook for Gerald Gardner's (long acknowledged) initiation certificate into
Crowley's Thelemic magickal Ordo Templi Orientis. To my eventual surprise, I
discovered that, not only was this not a simple initiation certificate for the
Minerval (probationary-lowest) degree, but, to the contrary, was a license for
Gardner to begin his own chapter of the O.T.O., and to initiate members into the
O.T.O. In the document, furthermore, Gardner is referred to as "Prince of Jerusalem,"
that is, he is acknowledged to be a Fourth Degree Perfect Initiate in the Order.
This, needless to say would usually imply years of dedicated training. Though
Gardner had claimed Fourth Degree O.T.O. status as early as publication of High
Magic's Aid,(and claimed even higher status in one edition) this runs somewhat
contrary to both generally held Wiccan and contemporary O.T.O. orthodox
understandings that the O.T.O. was then fallow in England. At the time the document was written, most maintained, Gardner could have known
Crowley for only a brief period, and was not himself deeply involved in the
O.T.O. The document is undated but probably was drawn up around 1945. As I said, it is understood that no viable chapter of the O.T.O. was supposed to
exist in England at that time; the sole active chapter was in California, and is
the direct antece-dent of the contemporary authentic Ordo Templi Orientis. Karl
Germer, Crowley's immediate successor, had barely escaped death in a
Concentration Camp during the War, his mere association with Crowley being
tantamount to a death sentence. The German OTO had been largely destroyed by the Nazis, along with other
freemas-onic organizations, and Crowley himself was in declining health and
power, the English OTO virtually dead. The Charter also displayed other irregularities of a revealing nature. Though
the signa-ture and seals are certainly those of Crowley, the text is in the
decorative hand of Gerald Gardner! The complete text reads as follows: Do what thou wilt shall be the law. We
Baphomet X Degree Ordo Templi Orientis
Sovereign Grand Master General of All
English speaking countries of the Earth
do hereby authorise our Beloved Son Scire
(Dr.G,B,Gardner,) Prince of Jerusalem
to constitute a camp of the Ordo Templi
Orientis, in the degree Minerval. Love is the Law,
Love under will.
o
Witness my hand and seal Baphomet X Leaving aside the misquotation from The Book of the Law, which got by me for
some months and probably got by Crowley when it was presented to him for
signature, the document is probably authentic. It hung for some time in
Gardner's museum, possibly giving rise, as we shall see, to the rumor that
Crowley wrote the Book of Shadows for Gardner. According to Doreen Valiente, and
to Col. Lawrence as well, the museum's descriptive pamphlet says of this
document: "The collection includes a Charter granted by Aleister Crowley to G.B. Gardner
(the Director of this Museum) to operate a Lodge of Crowley's fraternity, the
Ordo Templi Orientis. (The Director would like to point out, however, that he
has never used this Charter and has no intention of doing so, although to the
best of his belief he is the only person in Britain possessing such a Charter
from Crowley himself; Crowley was a personal friend of his, and gave him the
Charter because he liked him." |
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Col. Lawrence ("Merlin the Enchanter"), in a letter to me dated 6 December,
1986, adds that this appeared in Gardner's booklet, The Museum of Magic and
Witchcraft. The explanation for the curious wording of the text, taking, as Dr.
Gardner does, great pains to distance himself from Crowley and the OTO, may be
hinted at in that the booklet suggests that this display in the "new upper
gallery" (page 24) was put out at a relative-ly late date when, as we shall
discover, Gardner was making himself answerable to the demands of the new witch
cult and not the long-dead Crowley and (then) relatively moribund OTO. Now, the "my friend Aleister" ploy might explain the whole thing. Perhaps, as
some including Ms. Valiente believe, Aleister Crowley was desperate in his last
years to hand on what he saw as his legacy to someone. He recklessly handed out
his literary estate, perhaps gave contradictory instruction to various of his
remaining few devotees (e.g. Kenneth Grant, Grady McMurtry, Karl Germer), and
may have given Gardner an "accelerated advancement" in his order. Ms. Valiente, a devoted Wiccan who is also a dedicated seeker after the
historical truth, mentions also the claim made by the late Gerald Yorke to her
that Gardner had paid Crowley a substantial sum for the document. In a letter
to me dated 28th August, 1986, Ms. Valiente tells of a meeting with Yorke
"...in London many years ago and mentioned Gerald's O.T.O. Charter to him,
whereon he told me, `Well, you know, Gerald Gardner paid old Crowley about
($1500) or so for that...' This may or may not be correct..." Money or
friendship may explain the Charter. Still, one wonders. I have a Thelemic acquaintance who, having advanced well along the path of
Kenneth Grant's version of the OTO, went back to square one with the
unquestionably authentic Grady McMurtry OTO. Over a period of years of
substantial effort, he made his way to the IVo `plus' status implied by
Gardner's "Prince of Jerusalem" designation in the charter, and has since gone
beyond. I am, myself, a Vo member of the OTO, as well as a chartered initiator, and can
tell you from experience that becoming a Companion of the Royal Arch of Enoch,
Perfect Initiate, Prince of Jerusalem and Chartered Initiator is a long and
arduous task. Gardner was in the habit, after the public career of Wicca emerged in the 1950s,
of downgrading any Crowleyite associations out of his past, and, as Janet and
Stewart Farrar reveal in The Witches' Way (1984, p3) there are three distinct
versions of the Book of Shadows in Gerald Gardner's handwriting which
incorporate successively less material from Crowley's writings, though the last
(termed "Text C" and co-written with Doreen Valiente after 1953) is still
heavily influenced by Crowley and the OTO. Ms. Valiente has recently uncovered a copy of an old occult magazine
contemporary with High Magic's Aid and from the same publisher, which discusses
an ancient Indian document called "The Book of Shadows" but apparently totally
unrelated to the Wiccan book of the same name. Valiente acknowledges that the
earliest text by Gardner known to her was untitled, though she refers to it as a
"Book of Shadows." It seems suspicious timing; did Gardner take the title from his publisher's
magazine? Ms. Valiente observed to me that the "...eastern Book of Shadows does
not seem to have anything to do with witch-craft at all....is this where old
Gerald first found the expression "The Book of Shadows" and adopted it as a more
poetical name for a magical manuscript than, say `The Grimoire' or `The Black
Book'....I don't profess to know the answer; but I doubt if this is mere
coincidence...." The claim is frequently made by those who wish to `salvage' a pre-Gardnerian
Source of Wiccan materials that there is a `core' of `authentic' materials.
But, as the Farrars' recently asserted, the portions of the Book of Shadows
"..which changed least between Texts A, B and C were naturally the three
initiation rituals; because these, above all, would be the traditional elements
which would have been carefully preserved, probably for centuries...."
(emphasis added) But what does one mean by "traditional materials?" The three initiation rites,
now much-described in print, all smack heavily of the crypto-freemasonic ritual
of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the OTO, and the various esoteric
neorosicrucian groups that abounded in Britain from about 1885 on, and which
were, it is widely known, the fountainhead of much that is associated with
Gardner's friend Crowley. The Third Degree ritual, perhaps Wicca's ultimate rite, is, essentially, a
nonsymbolic Gnostic Mass, that beautiful, evocative, erotic and esoteric ritual
written and published by Crowley in the Equinox, after attending a Russian
Orthodox Mass in the early part of this century. The Gnostic Mass has had far-
reaching influence, and it would appear that the Wiccan Third Degree is one of
the most blatant examples of that influence. Take, for example, this excerpt from what is perhaps the most intimate, most
secret and most sublime moment in the entire repertoire of Wicca rituals, the
nonsymbolic (that is, overtly sexual) Great Rite of the Third Degree
initiation, as related by Janet and Stewart Farrar in The Witches' Way (p.34):
The Priest continues:
`O Secret of Secrets, That art hidden in the being of all lives, Not thee do we
adore, For that which adoreth is also thou. Thou art That, and That am I. [Kiss]
I am the flame that burns in the heart of every man, And in the core of every
star. I am life, and the giver of life. Yet therefore is the knowledge of me the
knowledge of death. I am alone, the Lord within ourselves, Whose name is Mystery
of Mysteries.' Let us be unambiguous as to the importance in Wicca of this ritual; as the
Farrars' put it (p.31) "Third degree initiation elevates a witch to the highest
of the three grades of the Craft. In a sense, a third-degree witch is fully
independent, answerable only to the Gods and his or her own conscience..." In
short, in a manner of speaking this is all that Wicca can offer a devotee. With this in mind, observe the following, from Aleister Crowley's Gnostic Mass,
first published in The Equinox about 80 years ago and routinely performed
(albeit, usually in symbolic form) by me and by many other Bishops, Priests,
Priestesses and Deacons in the OTO and Ecclesia Gnostica (EGC) today. The
following is excerpted from Gems From the Equinox, p. 372, but is widely
available in published form: The Priest: O secret of secrets that art hidden in the being of all that lives,
not Thee do we adore, for that which adoreth is also Thou. Thou art That, and
That am I. I am the flame that burns in every heart of man, and in the core of
every star. I am Life, and the giver of Life; yet therefore is the knowledge of
me the knowledge of death. I am alone; there is no God where I am. So, then, where, apart from the Thelemic tradition of Crowley and the OTO, is
the "traditional material" some Wiccan writers seem to seek with near
desperation? I am not trying to be sarcastic in the least, but even commonplace
self-references used among Wiccans today, such as "the Craft" or the refrain
"so mote it be" are lifted straight out of Freemasonry (see, for example,
Duncan's Ritual of Freemasonry). And, as Doreen Valiente notes in her letter to
me mentioned before, "...of course old Gerald was also a member of the Co-
Masons, and an ordinary Freemason..." as well as an OTO member. Part Two - The Real Origin Of Wicca We must dismiss with some respect the assertion, put forth by Margot Adler and
others, that "Wicca no longer adheres to the orthodox mythos of the Book of
Shadows." Many, if not most of those who have been drawn to Wicca in the last three
decades came to it under the spell (if I may so term it) of the legend of
ancient Wicca. If that legend is false, then while reformists and revisionist
apologists (particularly the peculiar hybrid spawned in the late sixties under
the name "feminist Wicca") may seek other valid grounds for their practices, we
at least owe it to those who have operated under a misapprehension to explain
the truth, and let the chips fall where they may. |
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I believe there is a core of valid experience falling under the Wiccan-neopagan
heading, but that that core is the same essential core that lies at the truths
exposed by the dreaded boogy-man Aleister Crowley and the` wicked' pansexualism
of Crowley's Law of Thelema. That such roots would be not just uncomfortable,
but intolerable to the orthodox traditionalists among the Wiccans, but even more
so among the hybrid femin-ist "wiccans" may indeed be an understatement. Neopaganism, in a now archaic "hippie" misreading of ecology, mistakes
responsible stewardship of nature for nature worship. Ancient pagans did not
`worship' nature; to a large extent they were afraid of it, as has been pointed
out to me by folk practitioners. Their "nature rites" were to propitiate the
caprice of the gods, not necessarily to honor them. The first neopagan
revivalists, Gardner, Crowley and Dr. Murray, well understood this. Neopagan
wiccans usually do not. In introducing a "goddess element" into their theology, Crowley and Gardner both
understood the yin/yang, male/female fundamental polarity of the universe.
Radical feminist neopagans have taken this balance and altered it, however
unintentionally, into a political feminist agenda, centered around a near-
monotheistic worship of the female principle, in a bizarre caricature of
patriarchal Christianity. Bigotry, I submit, cuts both ways. I do not say these things lightly; I have seen it happen in my own time. IF this
be truth, let truth name its own price. I was not sure, until Norm and John got
back from the Old Jail. A couple of months earlier, scant days after hearing that I was to become a
Gnostic bishop and thus an heir to a corner of Crowley's legacy, I had punched
on my answer-ing machine, and there was the unexpected voice of John Turner
saying that he had located what seemed to be the original Book of Shadows in an
inventory list, locating it at Ripley's office in Toronto. He said he didn't think they would sell it as an individual item, but he gave me
the name of a top official in the Ripley organization, who I promptly contacted.
I eventually made a substantial offer for the book, sight unseen, figuring there
was (at the least) a likelihood I'd be able to turn the story into a book and
get my money back out of it, to say nothing of the historical import. But, as I researched the matter, I became more wary, and confused; Gardner's
texts "A" "B" and "C" all seemed to be accounted for. Possibly, I began to
suspect, this was either a duplicate of the "deThelemized" post1954 version with
segments written by Gardner and Valiente and copied and recopied (as well as
distorted) from hand to hand since by Wiccans the world over. Maybe, I mused, Valiente had one copy and Gardner another, the latter sold to
Ripley with the Collection. Or, perhaps it was the curious notebook discovered
by Aidan Kelly in the Ripley files called Ye Book of Ye Art Magical, the meaning
of which was unclear. While I was chatting with Ms. Deska, Norm returned from his mission, we
introduced in best businesslike fashion, and he told me he'd get the book,
whatever it might be, from the vault. The vault?! I sat there thinking god knows what. Recently, I'd gotten a call
from Toronto, and it seems the Ripley folks wanted me to take a look at what
they had. I had made a considerable offer, and at that point I figured I'd had
at least a nibble. As it so happened Norm would be visiting on a routine
inspection visit, so it was arranged he would bring the manuscript with him.
Almost from the minute he placed it in front of me, things began to make some
kind of sense. Clearly, this was Ye Book of Ye Art Magical. Just as clearly, it
was an unusual piece, written largely in the same hand as the Crowley Charter-
that is, the hand of Gerald Gardner. Of this I became certain, because I had
handwriting samples of Gardner, Valiente and Crowley in my possession. Ms.
Valiente had been mindful of this when she wrote me, on August 8th, 1986: I have deliberately chosen to write you in longhand, rather than send a
typewritten reply, so that you will have something by which to judge the
validity of the claim you tell me is being made by the Ripley organization to
have a copy of a "Book of Shadows" in Gerald Gardner's handwriting and mine. If
this is..."Ye Book of Ye Art Magical," ....this is definitely in Gerald
Gardner's handwriting. Old Gerald, however, had several styles of
handwriting....I think it is probable that the whole MS. was in fact written by
Gerald, and no other person was involved; but of course I may be wrong.... At first glance it appeared to be a very old book, and it suggested to me where
the rumors that a very old, possibly medieval Book of Shadows had once been on
display in Gardner's Museum had emerged from.
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Any casual onlooker might see Ye Book in this light, for the cover was indeed
that of an old volume, with the original title scratched out crudely on the side
and a new title tooled into the leather cover. The original was some mundane
volume, on Asian knives or something, but the inside pages had been removed, and
a kind of notebook -- almost a journal -- had been substituted. As far as I could see, no dates appear anywhere in the book. It is written in
several different handwriting styles, although, as noted above, Doreen Valiente
assured me that Gardner was apt to use several styles. I had the distinct
impression this "notebook" had been written over a considerable period of time,
perhaps years, perhaps even decades. It may, indeed, date from his days in the
1930s when he linked up with a Rosicrucian grouping that could have included
among its members the legendary Dorothy Clutterbuck, who set Gardner on the path
which led to Wicca. Thinking on it, what emerges from Ye Book of Ye Art Magical is a developmental
set of ideas. Much of it is straight out of Crowley, but it is clearly the
published Crowley, the old magus of the Golden Dawn, the A.A., and the O.T.O.
Somewhere along the line it hit me that I was not exactly looking at the
"original Book of Shadows" but, perhaps, the outline Gardner prepared over a
long period of time, apparently in secret (since Valiente, a relatively early
initiate of Gardner's, never heard of it nor saw it, according to her own
account, until recent years, about the time Aidan Kelly unearthed it in the
Ripley collection long after Gardner's death). Dr. Gardner kept many odd notebooks and scrapbooks that perhaps would reveal
much about his character and motivations. Turner showed me a Gardner scrapbook
in Ripley's store room which was mostly cheesecake magazine photographs and
articles about actresses. Probably none are so evocative as Ye Book of Ye Art
Magical, discovered, it has been intimated, hidden away in the back of an old
sofa. I have the impression it was essentially unknown in and after Gardner's
lifetime, and that by the Summer of 1986 few had seen inside it; I knew of only
Kelly and my own party. Perhaps the cover had been seen by some along the line,
accounting for the rumor of a "very old Book of Shadows" in Gardner's Museum. If someone had seen the charter signed by Crowley ("Baphomet") but written by
Gerald Gardner, and had gotten a look, as well, at Ye Book, they might well
have concluded that Crowley had written BOTH, an honest error, but maybe the
source of that long-standing accusation. There is even a notation in the Ripley
catalog attributing the manuscript to Crowley on someone's say-so, but I have
no indication Ripley has any other such book. Finally, if the notebook is a
sourcebook of any religious system, it is not that of medieval witchcraft, but
the twentieth century madness or sanity or both of the infamous magus Aleister
Crowley and the Thelemic/Gnostic creed of The Book of the Law. As I sat there I read aloud familiar quotations or paraphrases from published
material in the Crowley-Thelemic canon. This is not the "ancient religion of the
Wise" but the mode-rn sayings of " the Beast 666 " as Crowley was wont to style
himself. But does any of this invalidate Wicca as an expression of human spirituality? It
depends on where one is coming from. Certainly, the foundations of feminist
Wicca and the modern cult of the goddess are challenged with the fact that the
goddess in question may be Nuit, her manifestation the sworn whore, Our Lady
Babalon, the Scarlet Woman. Transform what you will shall be the whole of
history, but THIS makes what Marx did to Hegel look like slavish devotion. What Crowley himself said of this kind of witchcraft is not merely instructive,
but an affront to the conceits of an era. "The belief in witchcraft," he observed, " was not all superstition; its
psychological roots were sound. Women who are thwarted in their natural
instincts turn inevitably to all kinds of malignant mischief, from slander to
domestic destruction..." For the rest of us, those who neither worship nor are disdainful of the man who
made sexuality a god or, at least, acknowledged it as such, experience must be
its own teacher. If Wicca is a sort of errant Minerval Camp of the OTO, gone far
astray and far afield since the days Crowley gave Gardner a charter he "didn't
use" but seemed to value, and a whole range of rituals and imagery that assault
the senses at their most literally fundamental level; if this is true or sort of
true, maybe its time history be owned up to. Mythos has its place and role, but
so, too, does reality. Part Three - Wicca As An OTO Encampment The question of intent looms large in the background of this inquiry. If I had
to guess, I would venture that Gerald Gardner did, in fact, invent Wicca more or
less whole cloth, to be a popularized version of the OTO. Crowley, or his
successor Karl Germer, who also knew Dr. Gardner, likely set "old Gerald" on
what they intended to be a Thelemic path, aimed at reestablishing at least a
basic OTO encampment in England. Aiden Kelly's research work on all this is most impressive, but at rock bottom I
can't help feeling he still wants to salvage something original in Wicca. In a
way, there is some justification for this; the Wicca of Gerald Gardner, OTO
initiate and advocate of sexual magick produced a folksy, easier version of the
OTO, but by the middle nineteen fifties some of his early "followers" not only
created a revisionist Wicca with relatively little of the Thelemic original
intact, but convinced Gardner to go along with the changes. It is also possible, but yet unproven, that, upon expelling Kenneth Grant from
the OTO in England, Germer, in the early 1950s, summoned Gardner to America to
interview him as a candidate for leading the British OTO. Gardner, it is
confirmed, came to America, but by then Wicca, and Dr. Gardner had begun to take
their own, watered-down course. Today most Wiccans have no idea of their
origins. Let me close this section by quoting two interesting tidbits for your
consideration. First consider Doreen Valiente's observation to me concerning "the Parsons
connect-ion". I quote from her letter above mentioned, one of several she was
kind enough to send me in 1986 in connection with my research into this matter.
...I did know about the existence of the O.T.O. Chapter in California at the
time of Crowley's death, because I believe his ashes were sent over to them. He
was cremated here in Brighton, you know, much to the scandal of the local
authorities, who objected to the `pagan funeral service.' If you are referring
to the group of which Jack Parsons was a member (along with the egregious Mr. L.
Ron Hubbard), then there is another curious little point to which I must draw
your attention. I have a remarkable little book by Jack Parsons called MAGICK,
GNOSTICISM AND THE WITCHCRAFT. It is unfortunately undated, but Parsons died in
1952. The section on witchcraft is particularly interesting because it looks
forward to a revival of witchcraft as the Old Religion....I find this very
thought provoking. Did Parsons write this around the time that Crowley was
getting together with Gardner and perhaps communicated with the California group
to tell them about it? We must remember that Ms. Valiente was a close associate of Gardner and is a
dedicated and active Wiccan. She, of course, has her own interpretation of
these matters. The OTO recently reprinted the Parsons "witchcraft" essays in
Freedom is a Two Edged Sword, a posthumous collection of his writings. It does
indeed seem that Gardner and Parsons were both on the same wave-length at about
the same time. The other matter of note is the question of the length of Gardner's association
with the OTO and with Crowley personally. My informant Col. Lawrence, tells me
that he has in his possession a cigarette case which once belonged to Aleister
Crowley. Inside is a note in Crowley's hand that says simply: `gift of GBG,
1936, A. Crowley'." (Personal letter, 6 December, 1986) The inscription could be a mistake, it could mean 1946, the period of the
Charter. But, as Ms. Valiente put it in a letter to me of 8th December, 1986: If your friend is right, then it would mean that old Gerald actually went
through a charade of pretending to Arnold Crowther that Arnold was introducing
him to Crowley for the first time - a charade which Crowley for some reason was
willing to go along with. Why? I can't see the point of such a pretense; but
then occultists sometimes do devious things... Crowley may have played out a similar scene with G.I. Gurdjieff, the other
enlightened merry prankster of the first half of the twentieth century. Gnosticism and Wicca, the subjects of Jack Parsons' essays, republished by the
OTO and Falcon Press in 1990, are the two most successful expressions to date of
Crowley's dream of a popular solar-phallic religion. Maybe I'm wrong, but I
think Aleister and Gerald may have cooked Wicca up. If Wicca is the OTO's prodigal daughter in fact, authorized directly by Crowley,
how should Wiccans now relate to this? How should Crowley's successors and heirs
in the OTO deal with it? Then too, what are we to make of and infer about all
this business of a popular Thelemic-Gnostic religion? Were Crowley, Parsons,
Gardner and others trying to do something of note with regard to actualizing a
New Aeon here which bears scrutiny? Or is this mere speculation, and of little
significance for the Great Work today? If the Charter Crowley issued Gardner is, indeed, the authority upon which Wicca
has been built for half a century, then it is perhaps no coincidence that I
acquired that Charter in the same year I was consecrated a Bishop of the Gnostic
Catholic Church. Further, it was literally days after my long search for the
original of Gardner's BOOK OF SHADOWS ended in success that the Holy Synod of T
Michael Bertiaux's Gnostic Church unanimously elected me a Missionary Bishop, on
August 29, 1986. Sometimes, I muse, the Inner Order revoked Wicca's charter in 1986,placing it in
my hands. Since I hold it in trust for the OTO, perhaps Wicca has, in symbolic
form, returned home at last. It remains for the Wiccans to, literally (since the
charter hangs in my temple space), to read the handwriting on the wall. " Witchcraft always has a hard time, until it becomes established and changes
its name." - Charles Fort
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