Ordo Templii Orientis: Who the heck are these guys??

>>>>Just ask, no need to play games


But you probably wouldn't be able to say as this is part
of the secret.


But pretending to look for (Public S.(that word))
is interesting because those who practice it do it
because they believe men shouldn't have a taboo
about it, yet they are the first to create the taboo
by enhancing a myth around it.


As I have proven, taking the
open stand of hedonism is way more
shocking as everyone acts weirdly,
or think htat I am childish,
while....well....you see....the hedonists
had very good points in defending
the cause of mutual pleasure.



On the other hand I would totally comprehend
a secret society ritual involving that one get naked,
because that is one of the most vulnerable state to
be, and as far as I know nudists are very small
percentage of society. For most people that would
represent an intense situation of trust.


I know they are societies thinking along those lines.
Out there. OTO sounded like it.



Cedric Phiphi

Originally posted by Centiment

>>>>Just ask, no need to play games

But you probably wouldn't be able to say as this is part
of the secret.

What part of "just ask" are you having problems comprehending?

But pretending to look for (Public S.(that word))
is interesting because those who practice it do it
because they believe men shouldn't have a taboo
about it, yet they are the first to create the taboo
by enhancing a myth around it.

As I have proven, taking the
open stand of hedonism is way more
shocking as everyone acts weirdly,
or think htat I am childish,
while....well....you see....the hedonists
had very good points in defending
the cause of mutual pleasure.

That’s all well and good but the O.T.O. just doesn’t hold public/private orgies. What the members do on their own time it up to them.

On the other hand I would totally comprehend
a secret society ritual involving that one get naked,
because that is one of the most vulnerable state to
be, and as far as I know nudists are very small
percentage of society. For most people that would
represent an intense situation of trust.

Well gee, the Gnostic mass has already been posted, why don’t you read it and find out yourself?

Ok...getting back on topic here. Let's talk about sex magick.
This is my personal opinion. I am not speaking for the OTO.

Many people assume that there are sex magickal practices within the OTO.
Sex is a very powerful thing/force. We learn from eastern tantric texts that sexual stimulation coupled with other practices intensifies them and makes them more efficacious. This may or may not be true.

I think an important thing to understand is the use of 'blinds' in magickal texts. Magicians frequently use decoys, analogies, outright falsities and every manner of deception to keep their knowledge isolated to their chosen audience.

Then there is the idea of Initiatory traps. At every level of advancement there is a trap set in order to ensnare the unworthy. Something we discussed earlier had to do with the sphere of Hod and how that related to the undying quest for intellectual understanding at the expense of action. This is one of the traps in Hod.

Now, as much as SEX is obviously a very real force in the world and in our lives it is not necessarily everything. Does sex-magick work? I would say yes. Is the ability to cause change to occur in conformity with Will, using sex, the height of spiritual attainment? NO.

In many places you will hear talk of sex and in many of those places it is a Blind. Dust in the eyes of the profane. Sex is just another trap to ensnare the unworthy. Many people are so filled with sex paranoias and mis-understanding that to just confront them with the very word is enough to muddle their mind.

I think to focus primarily on the sexual aspect of tantra is a mistake.

What part of "just ask" are you having problems comprehending?

I think it's the "just ask" part, he's obviously to busy trying to "dismantle your system of belief".

Myself being somewhat uninformed in the matter and having only the vaguest of understanding of tantra.
Could you explain tantra a little further?

[edit on 9-7-2005 by AngelWitch]

Originally posted by AngelWitch
Being somewhat uninformed in the matter, and having only the vaguest of understanding of tantra. Could you explain tantra a little further?

93

No offense angelwitch but I think it would be more fair if you did a little research yourself and then asked me something not so wide ranging. I don't have time to write a book here and there's a lot of stuff on the internet.....though most of it is crap....that can spawn a more fruitful discussion.

93, 93/93

Originally posted by HeirX

Originally posted by AngelWitch
Being somewhat uninformed in the matter, and having only the vaguest of understanding of tantra. Could you explain tantra a little further?

93

No offense angelwitch but I think it would be more fair if you did a little research yourself and then asked me something not so wide ranging. I don't have time to write a book here and there's a lot of stuff on the internet.....though most of it is crap....that can spawn a more fruitful discussion.

93, 93/93

Fair enough, could you point me to a good source then?
Not so interested in the sex aspect; as i understand it, that is the lesser part.

Originally posted by AngelWitch
Fair enough, could you point me to a good source then?
Not so interested in the sex aspect; as i understand it, that is the lesser part.

hey bro-

I haven't fished around on the internet for years about tantra but I just took a peek and found a thelemic encyclopedia online......along the lines of wikipedia but on subjects of interest to Thelemites. Pretty cool. I think this might be a good place to start. Anway, check out this link----->www.egnu.org...
If you would like me to recommend some books as well i would be happy to. Let me know what you think.

Originally posted by AngelWitch

Fair enough, could you point me to a good source then?
Not so interested in the sex aspect; as i understand it, that is the lesser part.

Here is some basic info for ya www.thelemapedia.org...

Originally posted by Cug
[Here is some basic info for ya www.thelemapedia.org...

Jinx you owe me a coke! 1,2,3...

Mod Note: One Line Post – Please Review This Link.

Mod Note: Big Quote – Please Review This Link.

MOD NOTE: With regards to the quote, you do not need to quote the person before you.

[edit on 14-4-2006 by AgentSmith]

>>>>>What part of "just ask" are you having problems comprehending?



Hahaha ! When speaking about secret societies you never ask.
You found out by youself. That I came to learn.

I learn more by clues and reactions than by
official declamations.

Wasn't there a thread here that was banned recently ?


If I say that I know stuff, and that stuff happens to be real,
than this thread would be banned.



>>>>>I think to focus primarily on the sexual aspect of tantra is a mistake.


Well it would be, as it's the lowest chakrah.


Are members of OTO all fans of Steve Tibet ?
(or whatever was his name)


I wasn't even thinking of magic sex.
I was thinking sex a pure form of initiation.
As in: if you are able to participate in this, you are one of us.


With fraternities it is hard to distinguish
those guided by spiritual beliefs and those
who are really more like "fraternities",
people promissing oaths to each others,
support, stuff like that.



>>>Could you explain tantra a little further?


Tantra is kinda like a spiritual orgasm.

Starting with real orgasm, you reach levels
where you have surpassed this because you've
reached higher spheres of a spiritual spectrum.


Kinda like moving from fast light frequencies to lower.
From red to violet.



If you read my "dismantle" post before you could
make a link with the fact at the end of Tantra,
partcipants are supposed to make one with god and the universe.


What of course is belligerent to beliefs that
mankind cannot be made one with god.



Cedric Phi

>>>>If I say that I know stuff, and that stuff happens to be real,
>>>>than this thread would be banned.

you're starting to sound like Mr. Necros. LOL

>>>>>I think to focus primarily on the sexual aspect of tantra is a mistake
>>>>>Well it would be, as it's the lowest chakrah.

Just playing devil's advocate here.....'As Above, So Below' ?

>>>>Are members of OTO all fans of Steve Tibet ?
>>>>(or whatever was his name)

I think it's David Tibet. No, most Thelemites that I know have fairly good taste in music.

>>>I wasn't even thinking of magic sex.
>>>I was thinking sex a pure form of initiation.
>>>As in: if you are able to participate in this, you are one of us.

Well if sex by itself is an Initiation I must be nearing godhead.

Seriously though, from what I'm hearing from you, the OTO would most likely be a great disappointment. No offense meant here but I think you would be more likely to find the Initiation you're looking for in the local bath house.

>>No offense meant here but I think you would be more likely to find the >>>Initiation you're looking for in the local bath house.



You're right. But the interesting point about hedonism
is that it can also have a philosophical moral,
that teach that true hedonism couldn't be atteined
without focussing on pleasure from giving it to others,
implying that it is not satisfied as long as long
as it not shared by everyone.


In this way hedonism is categorically
opposite to tantrism, which is focussed
on self-idealization, trying to reach a state
where you can link with the "universe"
as such, bypassing the human experience
(because the flesh experience is limitative).



As above as below ?


The universe run from gamma rays
to...what is it...radio rays ?

An encompassing experience
would absolutely reach all these levels.


Cedric Phidel

Given that I had not heard from David Tibet since years,
I did a little research, and....


Well I found this, which I thought was interesting
from the perspective of someone who
entered OTO and decided it wasn't for him.

www.uncarved.org...

Tibet makes a lot of sense, answering
some questions that people might have here.


You may bypass any reference to his music


(gee...I got that Lashtal thing somewhere....
that was ages ago... I must have listened
only once or twice)


Cheers,

Cedric

Originally posted by HeirX

Originally posted by AngelWitch
Fair enough, could you point me to a good source then?
Not so interested in the sex aspect; as i understand it, that is the lesser part.

hey bro-

I haven't fished around on the internet for years about tantra but I just took a peek and found a thelemic encyclopedia online......along the lines of wikipedia but on subjects of interest to Thelemites. Pretty cool. I think this might be a good place to start. Anway, check out this link----->www.egnu.org...
If you would like me to recommend some books as well i would be happy to. Let me know what you think.

Thanks Bro. HeirX and Cug, I'll check it out.

Wow, this thread has been a ton of fun. Heh.

The OTO is very hands-off in its approach. You're only a member if you choose to be--they don't recruit (it took one ex-member's devolution into founding Scientology to accomplish that, haha!)--and at least until more advanced degrees, you either teach yourself, hang with local lodge friends and learn from those who've been studying, or you can just rot happily in ignorance for all they care, it's your life, your choice.

Friends in the Golden Dawn (and of course, studying any books such as Regardie's concerning it) tell me that they are extremely hands-on in an educational sense. I think what a person prefers is up to them. I loved the 'Golden Dawn wannabe's' quip -- now that's funny. My observation has been that people simply bond to what draws them. The groups allegedly have similar spectrums of info and process but a quite different feel.

I dreamed of the OTO, a dozen years ago. For three nights, intensely. In the dreams I understood a hazy outline of what it was, and why I was dreaming about it, just no clue why. When I awoke I would find myself thinking it must be something akin to the Rosicrucians, as that was the only thing I'd heard about along those lines at the time. I asked about it in an online forum I belonged to, not really having much hope anybody there would have heard of something so obscure. Actually several members were in the Order. It all seemed so utterly amazing.

I'd studied theology, hypnosis and cult psychology when younger, so I tried to think of my exposure to it as a sort of exploratory case study. The problem was, my seeking it out had nothing whatever to do with conscious ideas or interests. It was very much just "a given" that it was time for me to do that at that time, as if it were already a long-done-deal, it was just time to carry it out 'here' like on the physical. I found all the religious, magickal stuff basically just strange. Ceremonial magick to me seemed like some grandiose hypnotic group mental+physical yoga with fashion and drama attached. (The drama queen in me always drawn to catholic imagery loved that part.)

I found the people a little strange, but in a way I related to. The older and longer-term members tended to be intellectuals, which really astonished me. You know, they had degrees in sciences and spoke and wrote all kinds of languages (some dead!) and how common is that in occult orders, I wondered? It wasn't what I expected. Those I met, I liked extremely well, and felt a great deal of kinship with. The newer and younger members I liked well enough but didn't much relate to, given I'm a goody-two-shoes; I was older, a responsible workaholic, and they were definitely in a younger and less... ah, less structured period of life, shall we say. As it turns out, I've moved all over but never really lived in any place or situation that put me in close contact with many other members of the Order anyway.

When I finally got around to reading something by Crowley, I felt like I understood my introduction to it all. Talk about a weirdo, and the most desperately unattractive older man I'd ever seen in photo in my life, yet I felt as if part of me was him--as if on death he'd fractured into pieces and one of them was part of me. I had intense astralish dreams over the years about him and occasional Regardie (oddly enough), and I still have occasional dream about some dream-Order that seems analogous to OTO but has a slightly different degree structure (degrees 2-8 are the match there, for example). I think it's probably just my subconscious going on with things despite that physically I am not currently involved with any of it. (A small number of seemingly Crowley/Order/Magick-related anomalous experiences are in Bewilderness.)

When I read Liber al for the first time, I think my Christian background ran screaming into the night. And yet I felt like there was an energy and meaning behind a lot of it that justified it in ways the words on the surface alone didn't. I used to wake up with lines from it running through my mind, and felt such heart-chakra response to it, it was just odd, but very powerful, and very cool.

Eventually I had some really ... unusual experiences that seemed to bridge into the psychic and UFOlogy realms. As I wrote in a case study back in '95, I really have no idea why so many different things seem to come through the same doorway or framework. I don't know how to differentiate between something that is an alien, entity, etc. except by feel or by matching some cultural description. I had many bizarre experiences prior to this time that, when I got to know (online) a few people from the group, they at least had a "standard textbook occult" idea of what I might be talking about. The Abyss, the Angelic Language, things I had no words or framework for. Visions that were so bizarre as to be hilarious, when looked at in the light of occult lore, actually were almost textbook-archetypal. I found that intriguing.

I think for many people the OTO functions very much as family. Friends are the family you get to choose, as the saying goes. I haven't really had that due to circumstance, and don't really feel I need that, but I respect that most people benefit from that kind of support network of friendship and mentorship, and as far as religion goes, well, to each their own I guess.

I might add that of the maybe, oh I dunno, 60 people I've met in the Order (which isn't many I admit, but it's not that big), most of them were more likely to fall into the "vaguely-buddhist" category than any kind of demonic category (if some bizarre obsession with The Dark Side is required for membership, they have failed to specify this to me all this time). A couple of the wild young thangs were very much into exploring anything that they felt was "forbidden," but frankly if society had made green apples forbidden, they'd have been just as much into that I think.

Over the years I had done many little head-games with myself just for the hell of it that turned out to be practical disciplines I'd find in related writings. It was interesting to think that maybe there was more going on with me under the conscious level than I had realized. After my first degree initiation, I half-woke up and a group I call my 'elementals of soul' were there, and they put this egyptian-like circlet on my head. I explained to them politely, not wanting to hurt their feelings, that I appreciated their formal recognition of whatever with me, but I really didn't think the OTO was into Egyptian stuff aside from that funky tablet. Later it turned out, well maybe it is. LOL. I didn't know, at the time.

Most of the talk I'd had with people had been about Enochian workings, which even inside the Order finds people with very different perspectives. I found it interesting, yet every time I've focused on it the cat-eyed lizard dudes show up. They have these cohesive-light glowing red-orange orbs (although, in OBE state at-rest, they just look like giant mutant beetles of some unknown dull metal), and I just don't trust them. All told they seem to have been decent to me, but since they don't let you remember jack and they're profoundly TP, who knows. I've seen and 'felt them there for me' when completely conscious outside swimming or walking, or doing programming and look up and there they are, through the ceiling--as if one can see through the ceiling??--there's obviously some psychological or psychical overlay going on there. Anyway so I kind of avoid Enochian now, partly due to that, but primarily because I'm a huge Archangel Michael devotee, so he is my dominant focus instead.

Aside from an honor-bond of sorts, and some of the "deeper" stuff that occasionally comes in dreams and visions and seems to tie me to it through my middle somehow, my only real connection to the Order is my bishop. Though for all I know he has some other title or rank by now. He was 9th degree when I met him but that was a dozen years ago. It was his warmth and maturity and serious down-to-earth-ness that made it possible for me to ever consciously consider following the impelling and joining the order. I've noticed that most the best examples in the group, the people I mean, don't do much public correspondence though, which is really too bad.

Some of the more charming posts on this thread probably example why.

When I read Liber Al for the first time, I think my Christian background ran screaming into the night. And yet I felt like there was an energy and meaning behind a lot of it that justified it in ways the words on the surface alone didn't. I used to wake up with lines from it running through my Mind...

Yes I know what you mean!

93 RedCairo,

Nice post! you get a way above for that

The Bishop you talk about sounds an awfully lot like Lon M D Who IMHO is a great example of what the O.T.O. puts out. It was after a talk of his that I started really looking into Thelema.

93 93/93

Greetings Cug


Just saw this in reference to The Tree of Life(Kabbalah).

Originally posted by Cug
Just as dangerous as any other philosophical system I suppose. For a Christian I guess it could be “dangerous” because it has nothing to do with Christ.

Huh?


The Tree of Life is Christ.

Without the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil(Daath) there would be no Christianity.

The New Testament is basically a treatise on Alchemy.

Pretty much nothing in the Bible can be understood without the keys of Alchemy(the study of Sex), Meditation(Intuitive understanding of the Heart) and Kabbalah(Intellectual(in service of the Christ of course) study of Cosmology).

As I've been saying, Moses himself was a Kemetian Priest and the Hebrew religion is nothing more than a modification of the Egyptian Tree of Life.

So KRST, Christ, Chrestos, Kristos, etc. the Divine Fire of Life itself(RA: The AIN SOPH AUR and Kether emanating from the Divine Inner Stars of the AIN SOPH), is, we could say, the Causa Causarum of the Tree of Life.

It's taught that our Master Yeshua is one of the many Initiates who incarnated The Christ.

Though the Gnostics will say that He, as a Paramarthasatya, is the Highest Initiate who incarnated The Christ.

In Buddhism, any Dharmakaya, Samboghakaya, or Nirmanakaya Buddha incarnates the Christ.


Just wanted to clear that up.



Regards

[edit on 12-4-2006 by Tamahu]

Originally posted by Tamahu
The Tree of Life is Christ.

Show me one non-esoteric Christian who would agree with that.

It's like how we both know that our belief systems are vastly diffrent for each other, but we are still lumped into the same Satanist box by many Christians.