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To: alt.magick
From: heidrick@well.sf.ca.us (Bill Heidrick)
Subject: OTO Gnostic Mass Cakes of Light
Date: 28 Nov 1994 09:32:41 GMT

Quoting: |Tim Maroney (tim@toad.com) 
         |>heidrick@well.sf.ca.us (Bill Heidrick) writes:
         
|>communion.  This rule is for avoidance of communicable diseases...

|My usual unreliable sources tell me that this rule originated in
|response to a few people who were not informed of the contents of the
|cakes making a ruckus after finding out.  As it happens, I raised this
|issue years ago with Rusty Sporer on Josh's ThelemaNet board, seeing it
|as an issue of informed consent.  The response was to flame me, and
|then fall into a sullen silence.  If informed consent policies had been
|put in place then, this issue might never have arisen.

No, that's not the origin of the rule.  The rule originated for the
reason cited.  Sorry to learn that you got flamed, but please recall
that ThelemaNet closed down several years before this rule was created.
For that matter, Rusty had his Greater Feast before the rule came out
too.  You must have been discussing another, related topic on the BBS.
There have been discussions regarding the use of animal blood, bringing
one's own cakes of light, using a lancet to apply one's own blood (that
one is illegal in California when prompted by a 3rd party) and using
other substances.  Quite possibly you are thinking of something like

that.

|It still seems to me that since it
|is well established that baking destroys the virus, and that
|blood-borne agents are rarely communicable through ingestion in any
|case,

Baking does not destroy the virus, unless high temperatures are
reached inside the center of the cake -- effectively rendering the
cake unusable.  Contrary to your information, blood-borne agents are
quite communicable orally --- either through ingestion or through
lesions in the mouth.  Since a hard cake is likely to produce minor
lesions during biting, the high heat baking process actually enhances
risk if not carried to completion.  --- that is some of the argument
I heard, not necessarily my argument.  In my own opinion, drying
the blood would probably do it, if not the effect of the oil of
cinnamon itself.  Still, the rule is the rule.  Sponsorship by OTO
of the Gnostic Mass means that such official Gnostic Masses will
necessarily have a certain uniformity and regularity not imposed on
private production Gnostic and other masses.  Exposure to air would
kill HIV, if actually done thoroughly; but there are many other
bugs that aren't effected by it.

It is possible to arrange to bring one's own separately wrapped
and marked cakes of light --- so long as they are vouched free of
drugs or other alien ingredients.  That really should take care of
all reasonable objections for a general attendance mass.

93 93/93
Bill Heidrick

----------------------------------

To: alt.magick
From: tim@toad.com (Tim Maroney)
Subject: OTO Gnostic Mass Cakes of Light
Date: 28 Nov 1994 09:33:52 GMT

Quoting: |heidrick@well.sf.ca.us (Bill Heidrick) 
         |>Tim Maroney (tim@toad.com) writes:
         |>|heidrick@well.sf.ca.us (Bill Heidrick)

|>|communion.  This rule is for avoidance of communicable diseases...

|>My usual unreliable sources tell me that this rule originated in
|>response to a few people who were not informed of the contents of the
|>cakes making a ruckus after finding out.

|No, that's not the origin of the rule.  The rule originated for the
|reason cited.

Well, it's a good thing I clearly marked the story as unreliable!

How was it that the issue of risk inspired the rule?


|>I raised this issue years ago with Rusty Sporer on ThelemaNet, seeing it
|>as an issue of informed consent.

|ThelemaNet closed down several years before this rule was created.
|For that matter, Rusty had his Greater Feast before the rule came out
|too.  You must have been discussing another, related topic on the BBS.

I guess I wasn't clear.  I wasn't discussing the rule, but the issue of
informed consent.  Rusty talked about celebrating a Mass using cakes
that contained the elixir.  I asked whether the participants were
informed.  I received an inflammatory response that of course they
weren't and there was no reason to.  To me this seems to be the core
issue: informed consent and assumed risk.  However, if there =is= a
real health hazard, that would be a more serious issue.


|>It still seems to me that since it
|>is well established that baking destroys the virus,

|Baking does not destroy the virus, unless high temperatures are
|reached inside the center of the cake -- effectively rendering the
|cake unusable.

Our mutual friend who works in a medical library told me that he had
checked into the issue and discovered that ordinary baking temperatures
(either 250 or 350, I don't recall) for a normal baking time (30-45
minutes) would destroy the virus.  You do have a point about the
unequal distribution of heat, although the majority of "cakes" I have
seen in the Masses I have attended were thin cookies which would have
reached a fairly uniform temperature.


|>and that
|>blood-borne agents are rarely communicable through ingestion in any
|>case,

|Contrary to your information, blood-borne agents are
|quite communicable orally --- either through ingestion or through
|lesions in the mouth.

Hmm.  Well, this isn't the information I have received about oral
transmission of the AIDS virus.  There are a vanishingly small number
of cases definitively linked to oral transmission, even though HIV
is present in saliva.  The digestive tract in general is designed
to buffer the bloodstream against direct exposure to disease agents
in foodstuffs, and it does a pretty good job of it, barring bad oral
hygiene or other sources of lesions.


|Since a hard cake is likely to produce minor
|lesions during biting, the high heat baking process actually enhances
|risk if not carried to completion.

Another good point.  However, if the high heat baking process does
neutralize the virus, then there's no risk from crunchiness.  It seems
that there could be a danger point in mid-process, as you say.


|--- that is some of the argument I heard, not necessarily my argument.
|In my own opinion, drying the blood would probably do it, if not the
|effect of the oil of cinnamon itself.

Oops!  Are we agreeing vehemently again?


|Still, the rule is the rule.

Sure, but rules are open to discussion.  I'm not recommending that
anyone violate the rule, just pointing out that the rule may be on
shaky grounds medically.  I think insuring that people make an
informed choice is more Thelemic (you should pardon the expression)
than imposing a restriction that violates some peoples' idea of
how the magic works.

Incidentally, I noticed you didn't comment on the magical argument.
As I said, it doesn't seem to me (even given a belief in magic)
that reducing a substance to ash should damage its magical properties
in any way.  This could even be seen as a refinement and purification;
I'm sure I could dig up a specific alchemical reference on this.
Any thoughts on the issue?
-- 
Tim Maroney.  Please CC all public responses to tim@toad.com.

----------------------

To: alt.magick
From: heidrick@well.sf.ca.us (Bill Heidrick)
Subject: OTO Gnostic Mass Cakes of Light
Date: 28 Nov 1994 09:34:46 GMT
Quoting: |Tim Maroney (tim@toad.com) 

|How was it that the issue of risk inspired the rule?

There have never been any instances reported of even probable or possible
illness as a result of the cakes of light.  Discussion on hazard to
health started in the early 1980's e.v. and continues without abatement
today.  Most of that time, the principle that only blood would be used,
reasonable baking time, and advance warning of what was in the cakes
at Gnostic Masses was standard.  The Advance warning tended to be very
difficult to maintain, and people frequently used "fresh blood of a child",
or "dropping from the host of heaven" --- neither of which is blood or
human remains --- rather sexual secretions in both cases, the former male
and female and the latter male only --- by most interpretations derived
from Crowley's comments.  In recent years, the Grand Master decided to
face the fact that the rules were not being adequately followed in
public access Masses, and were probably unenforcible.  He made the new rule
about reducing the biologicals to ash as a way to deal more effectively
with the problem.


|Rusty talked about celebrating a Mass using cakes
|that contained the elixir.  I asked whether the participants were
|informed.  I received an inflammatory response that of course they
|weren't and there was no reason to.

Rusty had a lot of problems with things like that.  Cakes using the
elixir were unofficially not to be used in public masses --- a rule
that was forgotten fairly often.  Participants were always to be
informed --- Rusty would have had a phone call from me today, on
reading this part of your post, if he was still with us.  In his
defense, Rusty had a leave of absence from active O.T.O. membership
owing to difficulties with his wife at the time, from 1982 to 1984
e.v. --- the period when these rules came into effect.  He missed
it and never checked back to see what changes in procedures had
occurred.


|but rules are open to discussion.

That's what we are doing.  :-)


|insuring that people make an informed choice is more Thelemic
|(you should pardon the expression) than imposing a restriction
|that violates some peoples' idea of how the magic works.

Informed choice (baring the fact that having successful informed
choice does not prevent litigation) would have been better, if
it had been enforceable.  "Restriction" is a tricky issue.  Aside
from Liber AL, this is more a matter of one of several specifications
of what is required for an official O.T.O. Mass.  Violating some peoples'
idea of how things work is unimportant --- since people are always
going to have different ideas in a Thelemic setting anyway, such
outrages of reason are perfectly normal, even healthy.


|Incidentally, I noticed you didn't comment on the magical argument.
|As I said, it doesn't seem to me (even given a belief in magic)
|that reducing a substance to ash should damage its magical properties
|in any way.

Magick works by the application of the natural processes of the mind
to external events in the world.  If associations of symbols can be
made in the mind, they are appropriate when reproduced in the world
outside.  It's a matter of choosing the symbols, not restricting the
action to certain blind deeds in the world and no others.  If fire
is seen as a symbol of total destruction, the magick fails.  If fire
is seen as a symbol of spirit, the magick is enhanced.  Liber 777 does
have Key Nos. 31 and 31bis, after all.  There is Shin and Shin; choose
ye well!  ;-)

93 93/93
Bill Heidrick