Ordo Templi Orientis

What it is

O.T.O. stands for Ordo Templi Orientis, Latin for Order of the Temple of the East, also given in English as Order of Oriental Templars. It is an occult secret society and a hermetic magical organisation, started at the beginning of the 20th century. Members join by initiation and pass through a set of degrees. From Aleister Crowley's time the order's guiding philosophy has been Thelema, the occult system he devised, and its central ceremony is the Gnostic Mass, which he wrote in Moscow in 1913. Numbers were never large: at one stage the membership was counted in dozens, not hundreds or thousands.

Where it comes from

Little about the order's early years can be confirmed. No dependable record exists before 1904, and the order's birth is placed somewhere from 1895 to 1906 in German-speaking Europe, with both Austria and Germany given as its cradle. Carl Kellner, a well-off Austrian industrialist (1851 to 1905), is normally named as founder, working to set up an Academia Masonica in which advanced Masonic degrees could be given across German-speaking lands. Theodor Reuss (1855 to 1923) helped build the order and took charge after Kellner's death. Rights were assembled from several quarters: the Memphis and Mizraim rite was bought from the English Freemason John Yarker in 1902, confirmed in 1904 and again in 1905; Martinist authority came from Gérard Encausse; a clandestine Scottish Rite from Joseph Cerneau; and a warrant for a German college of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia from William Wynn Westcott.

How it is done

Work is by initiation. Ten degrees were set out, the first five Masonic, and from 1902 Reuss printed the collected rituals in a Masonic journal, The Oriflamme. When Crowley tried the Masonic version in Detroit in 1919, the local Council of the Scottish Rite refused it, holding that the symbolism came too near that of orthodox lodges. He answered by rewriting the rituals of the first three degrees and cutting most of their Masonic content, while the fourth degree kept its Royal Arch form and structure. Revised rituals for the British section were prepared by 1915.

Tools and materials

A lamen, a magical plaque or emblem, is shown as the order's device. Written texts carried the system: instructional manuscripts passed between leaders, and Crowley's Manifesto of the Mysteria Mystica Maxima laid out the ten degrees, with Kellner's Academia Masonica occupying the seventh, eighth and ninth. Reuss's 1917 Synopsis of Degrees called the third degree Craft of Masonry and the fourth the Holy Royal Arch of Enoch, also summarised as Scotch Masonry. The journal The Oriflamme put the rites into print.

What it is for

Kellner held that his wide reading in esoteric traditions had turned up a key explaining the tangled symbolism of Freemasonry and of nature alike, and he wanted the order to keep that key and hand it on. Once Crowley was in charge, the aim widened to carrying Thelema, his own system, with the Gnostic Mass placed at the centre of its public and private celebration. The order also gave German-speaking countries a body in which high-degree Masonry could be worked, something the 1800s there had barely seen.

Who does it

Headship carries the title Outer Head of the Order. Kellner held it to 1905, Reuss to 1923, Crowley from 1925 to 1947, Karl Germer to 1962, and William Breeze from 2014. Reuss's authority frayed after 1905: Masonic journals in Germany assailed him, doubting his credentials and whether his standing counted as regular, and after moving to London in 1906 he lost control of most of the lodges. Membership came by initiation, and in Crowley's day numbers were small. He told one correspondent that meeting fellow members was impossible, and that contact would only produce criticism of hats and morals.

Peoples and places

The order's home was German-speaking Europe, and under Reuss charters went out to occult bodies in Austria, Denmark, France, Switzerland and the United States. Crowley opened a British section, the Mysteria Mystica Maxima, in 1912, and held a title covering Ireland, Iona and the Britains. War broke the European branches or forced them underground; afterwards only Agapé Lodge in California still ran, beside scattered initiates elsewhere. Karl Germer, the German representative, reached America after being held by the Nazi authorities. Charters for English camps went in turn to Gerald Gardner, Frederic Mellinger and Kenneth Grant, then to Noel Fitzgerald.

What people believe

Behind the degrees sits a claim about concealed knowledge. Kellner taught that one principle unlocked both Masonic symbolism and the natural world, and the order was to guard it. Crowley set the Masonic frame aside in favour of Thelema, presented as a system of his own making, and order documents tie it to the Gnostic Catholic Church, a body branching from Jules Doinel's Église Gnostique, which Reuss met through Joanny Bricaud in 1908. Practitioners also hold that sexual magic belongs to the higher degrees, an element traced to writings by the American occultist Paschal Beverly Randolph, said to have reached Kellner through the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Study of the order's beginnings is thin. Its early history is described as hard to trace, with nothing checkable before 1904. The scholar Marco Pasi questioned the common account that the sexual magic of the higher degrees came from Paschal Beverly Randolph by way of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor: he found no evidence for it and proposed instead that Reuss took such ideas from John Yarker, who held unpublished Randolph material. Crowley's biographer Lawrence Sutin casts doubt on Crowley's claim that Reuss named him successor, while allowing that nothing proves or disproves it.

Compare and confuse

O.T.O. sits closest to European Freemasonry, whose degrees and ceremonies it borrowed and later partly dropped. Masonic bodies judged its rites irregular, and it also drew on the Swedenborg Rite, the Rite of Memphis and Mizraim, Martinism, a clandestine Scottish Rite and the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia. Its church wing descends from Jules Doinel's Église Gnostique by way of Joanny Bricaud. The Latin title is given two ways in English, Order of the Temple of the East and Order of Oriental Templars.

Law and persecution

Several rites the order worked were counted irregular by established Masonry, and in 1919 a Scottish Rite council in Detroit declined to let its rituals be used. German Masonic journals disputed Reuss's standing. In the Second World War the European branches were destroyed or driven underground, and Germer had been held by the Nazi authorities before leaving for America. Court decisions recognise the body registered in California on 26 March 1979 as the order's legitimate successor and as holder of its trademarks, copyrights, name rights and remaining property. In 1982 the tax code's 501(c)(3) provision was applied to it, on the ground that it is a religious organisation.

Today

Karl Germer died in 1962 naming no successor. In 1969 Grady McMurtry acted on a letter of emergency authorisation from Crowley and became Frater Superior, beginning initiations the following year, though he declined the title Outer Head of the Order, saying in 1974 that nobody then held it. Members of the Ninth Degree, the Sovereign Sanctuary of the Gnosis, elected a Caliph in 1985, the year McMurtry died. Four branches had each claimed to be the true line. William Breeze has been Outer Head since 2014.

Questions people ask about Ordo Templi Orientis

Good reading and sources

• Ordo Templi Orientis on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data