FRATER SUPERIOR BAPHOMET X


System of

the O.T.O.

from Magick Without Tears


Cara Soror,


Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.


You inform me that the Earnest Inquirer of your ambit has been asking you to
explain the difference between the A...A... and the O.T.O.; and that although
your own mind is perfectly clear about it, you find it impossible to induce
a similar lucidity in his. You would add that he is not (as one might at
first suppose) a moron. And will I please do what I can about it?

Well, here's the essential difference ab ovo usque ad mala the A...A...
concerns the individual, his development, his initiation, his passage from
"Student" to "Ipsissimus"; he has no contact of any kind with any other
person except the Neophyte who introduces him, and any Student or Students
whom he may, after becoming a Neophyte, introduce.

The details of this "Pilgrim's Progress" are very fully set forth in One Star
in Sight; and I should indeed be stupid and presumptuous to try to do better
than that. But it is true that with regard to the O.T.O. there is no similar
manual of instruction. In the Manifesto, and other Official Pronunciamenti,
there are, it is true, what ought to be adequate data; but I quite understand
they are not as ordered and classified as one would wish; there is certainly
room for a simple elementary account of the origins of the Order, of its
principles, of its methods, of its design, of the Virgue of its successive
Grades. This I will now try to supply, at least in a brief outline.

Let us begin at the beginning. What is a Dramatic Ritual? It is a celebration
of the Adventures of the God whom it is intended to invoke. (The Bacchae of
Euripides is a perfect example of this.) Now, in the O.T.O., the object of
the ceremonies being the Initiation of the Candidate, it is he whose Path in
Eternity is displayed in dramatic form.


What is the Path?


1. The Ego is attracted to the Solar System.

2. The Child experiences Birth.

3. The Man experiences Life.

4. He experiences Death.

5. He experiences the World beyond Death.

6. This entire cycle of Point-Events is withdrawn into Annihilation.


In the O.T.O. these successive stages are represented as follows:


1. 0(Minerval)

2. I(Initiation)

3. II(Consecration)

4. III(Devotion)

5. IV(Perfection, or Exaltation)

6. P.I.(Perfect Initiate)


Of these Events or Stations upon the Path all but three (II) are single
critical experiences. We, however, are concerned mostly with the very varied
experiences of Life.

All subsequent Degrees of the O.T.O. are accordingly elaborations of the II,
since in a single ceremony it is hardly possible to sketch, even in the
briefest outline, the Teaching of Initiates with regard to Life. The Rituals
VIX are then instructions to the Candidate how he should conduct himself; and
they confer upon him, gradually, the Magical Secrets which make him Master
of Life.

To return for a moment to that question of Secrecy: there is no rule to
prevent you from quoting against me such of my brighter remarks as "Mystery
is the enemy of Truth"; but, for one thing, I am, and always have been, the
leader of the Extreme Left in the Council-Chamber of the City of the
Pyramids, so that if I acquiesce at all in the system of the O.T.O. so far
as the "secret of secrets" of the IX is concerned, it is really on a point
of personal honour. My pledge given to the late Frater Superior and O.H.O.,
Dr. Theodor Reuss. For all that, in this particular instance it is beyond
question a point of common prudence, both because the abuse of the Secret is,
at least on the surface, so easy and so tempting, and because, if it became
a matter of general knowledge the Order itself might be in danger of calumny
and persecution; for the secret is even easier to misinterpret than to
profane.

Lege! Judica! Tace!


Love is the law, love under will.


Fraternally,


666