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

eproached his host for having dared to publish the most inaccessible O.T.O.
secret, the sexual mystery of the IX°, in one of his books. The Englishman,
one Aleister Crowley, informed his guest that was impossible – he did not
even know the O.T.O.'s IX° secret. To prove his point, Reuss examined
Crowley's library and found one of his perplexed host's tomes, The Book Of
Lies, an enigmatic collection of magical riddles, puns and wordplay even
more cryptic than others in his oeuvre. There, on the page entitled "The Star
Sapphire", Reuss pointed an accusatory finger to the offending line; "Let
him drink of the Sacrament and let him communicate the same."
Clearly, Reuss explained, Crowley must be referring to the O.T.O.'s
central initiatory mysterium: the ritual consumption of semen as the essence
of the Gnostic Logos. Of course, it was unlikely that any reader unversed in
the obscure byways of libertine Gnostic heresy would have the faintest idea
what this sentence meant. Nor was it very likely that Crowley's obscure
book would have fallen into the hands of too many readers. Nevertheless,
Reuss bade Crowley to keep the sacred secret of the Order, the supposed key
to all magic. Crowley solemnly vowed that he would never disclose this to
the profane. The purpose of Reuss's visit resolved, the adepts discussed the
mysteries of erotic initiation as they understood them. Reuss, realizing that
Crowley's independent research into sex magic had made him privy to the
teachings of the Order, suggested that he become the leader of the (then
memberless) O.T.O. in Britain. Ever fond of fancy titles and quasi-Masonic
pomp and ceremony, Crowley agreed to bear the terrible burdens of office
he had been offered.
At least that is the story – more or less – as it was related by
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Aleister Crowley, and subsequently embellished by his followers. While
there may be some atom of truth to this oft-told tale, at least one detail is
askew; at the time of this momentous meeting of magical minds, The Book
Of Lies had not yet seen print – it was not to appear until the next year. In
which case, whatever spermomagical O.T.O secrets had been hinted at in its
pages, they were already known to Crowley, who had by then been installed
as the Order's British chief.
Crowley later claimed that his meeting with Reuss confirmed his
suspicion that "behind the frivolities and convivialities of Freemasonry lay
in truth a secret ineffable and miraculous, potent to control the forces of
nature, and not only to make men brethren, but to make them divine."
That secret, of course, was sex magic – a practice that may not
always make men "brethren", but can at least be counted on to make them
very friendly with one another. Although the name of Aleister Crowley is
today practically inseparable from the idea of sex magic, it must be
remembered that in his lifetime, despite all of his deliberate provocations of
public morality, he was surprisingly tight-lipped about his practice of erotic
sorcery and initiation. Crowley may never have made that legendary solemn
vow to Theodor Reuss to guard the sex secrets of the O.T.O. from the great
unwashed. But in the vast body of written work Crowley wrote for public
consumption, he offers only a few covert clues to his readers, usually veiled
in symbolic euphemisms. His more direct sex magic instructions and rituals
were reserved only for those few of his students who actually formally
joined his precarious variant of the O.T.O.
Much was rumored and insinuated about Crowley's notorious sexual
habits during his fleeting public appearances in courtroom battles and gutterpress
reports of his activities. But very little of a definitive nature was
known until after his death, first through a few less than objective
biographies, and then through the publication of his many magical diaries,
the most useful of which are The Magical Diaries Of Aleister Crowley and
The Magical Record Of The Beast 666, which were not made publicly
available until the 1970s. For the most part, it is to Crowley's own