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The Secret Rituals of the O.T.O.
CHAPTER FIVE
PART ONE
The Birth and Development of the O.T.O.
The O.T.O. since Crowley’s Death23
*
After Crowley’s death, Karl Germer, who was born in 1885, became the Outer Head of the Order — that
is to say, the Chief (on the plane of Earth) of the O.T.O.
Germer was devoted to both Thelema and to Crowley himself and he did everything in his power to
revive the order. In these efforts he was only partially successful, for his difficult temperament upset
many of those who might otherwise have become his allies. Nevertheless his good business sense not
only saved the O.T.O. from a threatened extinction, but enabled him to publish some of Crowley’s works
(e.g. The Book of Wisdom and Folly) — for Germer, as Grand Treasurer of the O.T.O. had inherited the
Crowley copyrights. This may surprise some people, for there is a widely held belief that these
copyrights were inherited by Louis Wilkinson and John Symonds. This was not so; Louis Wilkinson and
John Symonds were Crowley’s literary executors, entrusted with the duty of gathering together all
monies earned by Crowley’s literary works, and handing them to Karl Germer. They performed these
duties admirably, with no reward and little thanks, as is shown by the duplicate copies of the receipts
issued by Germer.
Germer died in 1962 leaving the Crowley copyright to ‘the O.T.O.’. Unfortunately he failed to say which
of the many scattered groups claiming to be the O.T.O. he regarded as being genuine. There are just four
of these groups whose claims to O.T.O. status are worthy of examination. They are:
(a) The O.T.O. in Switzerland headed by Frater Paragranus.
(b) The O.T.O. in California, U.S.A.
(c) ‘Saturn Gnosis’ O.T.O. in Germany, led until his death by, ‘Gregor A Gregorius’.
(d) The O.T.O. in England led by Kenneth Grant.
Before dealing with (a) and (b) in detail I shall briefly discount the claims of (c) and (d).
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