I. VAMA MARGA Foundations Of The Left-Hand Path - staticfly.net

emphatic in his unqualified denunciation of Reuss and his O.T.O. venture –
let alone its sex magical teaching. However, it was Reuss's custom to attempt
to forge alliances with prominent men in the occult world of his day by
endowing honorary dignities upon them, in the hopes that these tenuous links
with distinguished names would be good for business. To this day, based on
this nebulous incident, many O.T.O. adherents insist, despite all evidence to
the contrary, that Rudolf Steiner was a leading figure in the early Ordo
Templi Orientis.
Reuss's efforts to publicize the O.T.O remained on this small scale
until September of 1912, when he published his first lengthy article about the
fledgling Order in a Jubilee edition of The Oriflamme, a newsletter Reuss
distributed to his loosely-linked, ever-shifting network of organizations.
Reuss shamelessly quotes a few passages out of context that the then recently
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deceased Franz Hartmann had penned before the Ordo Templi Orientis even
had any semblance of existence:
"Let it be known that there exists, unknown to the great crowd, a very ancient
order of sages, whose object is the amelioration and spiritual elevation of
mankind, by means of conquering error and aiding men and women in their
efforts of attaining the power of recognising the truth. This Order has existed
already in the most remote, and prehistorical times and it has manifested its
activity secretly and openly in the world under different names and in various
forms; it has caused social and political revolutions and proved to be the rock
of salvation in times of danger and misfortune."
Having established the inestimably great age of the O.T.O, as well as its
secret influence upon world history, Reuss lets it be known that "our Order"
is the repository of a transmission of spoken wisdom communicated from
"wise men from the East". Finally, after several circuitous detours through
further hinted-at mysteries and coyly suggested arcana, Reuss finally lets the
cat out of the bag in the last paragraph of the article: "Our Order possesses
the key which opens up all Masonic and Hermetic secrets, namely, the
Teaching of sexual magic, and this teaching, explains, without exception, all
the secrets of Nature, all the symbolism of Freemasonry and all systems of
religion."
Reuss imparted basic magical knowledge and mental training to his
O.T.O. initiates according to a system of seven Freemason-style degrees,
which were fancifully associated with the opening of the seven chakras, a
concept popularized through the writings of Blavatsky. The new candidate
for O.T.O. initiation was earnestly guided through the usual rigmarole of
Masonic pomp, ceremony, and endowing of bombastic titles and fancy
apparel so dear to the joiner of occult organizations. But unlike other
Masonic groups, there was an emphasis on developing pseudo-yogic powers
of concentration, breath control and focus of the will – preparation for the
true work of the O.T.O. In light of its later reputation as an exclusively sexmagical
body, it should be emphasized that the Reuss O.T.O. was extremely
discreet when it came to advertising the exact nature of its teachings. It was
not until the Templar reached the eighth degree of initiation that the secrets
of sex magic were revealed to him. He was instructed to perform autoerotic
magic, which took the form of masturbatory worship of one's own "holy
phallus" combined with the development of mental imagery at orgasm.
Only upon attaining the ninth degree was the initiate instructed in the
O.T.O. technique of ritual coitus with a female. For Reuss, former opera
singer and ardent Wagnerian, the consciousness-altering secret of ritualized
penetration of the vagina with the phallus enacted in the DC' rite was
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revealed in esoteric symbolism by Richard Wagner in his opera Parsifal.
According to Reuss, in his 1914 Parsifal And The Secret Of The Graal
Unveiled, the spear and grail-cup so important to the opera are actually