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To: alt.tarot
From: "J. Karlin" 
Subject: Re: Thoth's Devil & Sex (was:  The Devil)
Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 20:31:53 GMT

Bill Heidrick wrote:

> Reactionary, maybe, but not otherwise founded.  There is no need to
> make misleading statements, 

Sure there is, you want to appear to 'protect' your
'trade secrets'.

> certainly I have not deliberately made
> false statements.  

Ever? On only in this thread? 

> I have hinted where I am bound by oath not to state
> in clear terms.  

Why do you need to 'hint' about where you are 'bound'?

If you intent was to be clear about such things, you would
not need to hint about anything.

Indeed, you would spend a lot more time being silent.

> I have denied missinformation, 

You've simply denied what you don't wish to discuss.

You've not offered ANY explanation for how or why your
admission (that was posted here) to the effect that OTO
must lie about the nature of its 'trade secrets', was
not exactly what it appears to be. In the same way,
you've offered no explanation for how and why you can't
or won't explain the myth OTO has fostered and maintained
about the Stele of Revealing.

> such as the error
> regarding passwords.  

There was no error regarding 'passwords'. 'Thelema' is the word 
of the IXth degree and 'Agape' is the reply. 

Aleister Crowley wrote this. I simply quoted him.

Your argument for how it could not be so was ridiculous,
by the way. There are numerous terms, in common usage
all the way through a person's initiation in OTO, which
DO appear later as passwords or words of special importance
in initiations and instructions. That, in fact, was one
of the things I noticed when I acquired the 'secrets'---that
the truth of the thing was explicitly described in
many ways throughout Crowley's writing. There was indeed
nothing much surprising about the nature of the 'secrets'.
They are mostly affirmations, not revelations.

> Otherwise, I simply stop, saying that I neither
> confirm or deny.

That's not true Bill, you go much further than this, and
you've admitted to why you feel the need to do so.

> >The fact is that both you and Grady McMurtry (in 1985) have
> >affirmed that 'Secret Rituals of the OTO' is a facsimile (meaning
> >accurate) reproduction of Crowley's OTO rituals.
> 
> No.  It's a book based on out-dated OTO rituals, found in collections.
> It is not a facsimile in any sense.  

In any sense, Bill?

Here, Bill advises me on the value of the very same book, 
'Secret Rituals of the OTO', in reference to its rendition 
of the Minerval initiation---

"If you have access to a copy of Francis King's "Secret Rituals of 
the O.T.O.", you can read a reasonable facsimile of the thing."

Reasonable=Not excessive or extreme; fair. 
Facsimile= An exact copy or reproduction, as of a document.

'Reasonable facsimile'? Or 'outdated and incomplete'?

Also, in the transcript of the 1985 OTO-SOTO trial, we have a 
record of several OTO members (and Motta himself) affirming 
the accuracy of "Secret Rituals of the OTO". The book was
used in the trial to validate the accuracy of claims
made by both sides. This was in 1985, long after the
book was published. Certainly, if it had become, in the
interim, 'outdated', it would not have been used
in the manner it was in this trial, nor would the
comments about it (affirming its accuracy) have been
made.

> The rituals were incomplete, 

Bill, when shall 'the rituals' EVER be 'complete'?

Having reviewed copies of Crowley's drafts of these 
rituals, in two languages, I know that, while King himself
admits to certain variations and omissions ('Emblems
and Mode of Use' is not included for example) they
form, as you yourself admit, a 'reasonable facsimile'
of what Aleister Crowley wrote and intended as a corpus
of OTO ritual and instruction.

> not
> accurately reported and sometimes false conjectures were added to
> flesh them out.  

'false' according to what standard of truth?

What draft of what ritual, written when and by whom establishes
the one and only TRUE form of the ritual in question?

There IS no such thing and never was. King offered 'Secret
Rituals' as an aid to the reconstitution of the order,
providing, as Regardie did with the rituals and instructions
of Golden Dawn, a 'reasonable facsimile' of OTO rituals,
and that's exactly how you all have used it---while
at the same time cursing Francis King for actually
doing you a big favor.

> Where it is right and where wrong is something I may
> not say, 

Nor can you even admit that it is substantially right---except
that you all have, and have done so in a public record.

> >According to your own statements re: the danger of making
> >any such admission, you've lost the right to claim
> >the rituals AS trade secrets.
> 
> Inaccurate.  Such as these are, they were not provided by OTO.

They were provided by officers and members of the 
order, and some of the statements were made under
threat of penalty of perjury for giving a false account, 
so if they were 'inaccurate', that raises other questions.

> >What 'damage' can you suffer from having your own statements
> >concerning your veracity revealed to the public?
> 
> Like this present post, a waste of time, off topic for this newsgroup.

Entirely ON-topic, since the argument (between us in
this thread) condenses to the question of whether you,
or anyone else in OTO, can be trusted to provide truthful 
statements regarding linkages between Thoth tarot 
symbolism and the rituals and teachings of OTO.

To the degree you are prepared to misrepresent the
truth of the accuracy of published accounts of OTO
teachings and rituals, I don't see how you CAN be
trusted to be truthful in respect to these questions.

> >> Jess and I have in the past agreed to
> >> occasionally heated argument here.
> 
> >It's not a question of 'agreement' Bill. I'm not in the
> >OTO, and I don't have to 'agree' with you about what I
> >can and can not discuss here or anywhere.
> 
> You don't remember the email, do you?

No. Please produce whatever you think constitutes
an 'agreement' about the content of my posts between 
myself and OTO.

(jk)

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R. Brzustowicz wrote:
 
> In article ,
> Gary Achenbach  wrote:
> >Some distance back, in one of the post-OTO-introduction branches, one
> >of Bill's more inadvertantly hilarious points was something akin to,
> >"but without secrets, grade initiations would be nothing more than
> >plays."  Nothing really to add to it, the statement just still makes
> >me giggle.
> 
> I'm not sure why.  

He's suggesting that if that's all they are, unless they
are kept secret, maybe that's all they are, period.

Here is something very interesting with respect
to this question---

I'm sure it's only part of Bill's reason for being so high on 
secrecy (after all, there's the ever-important 'BUSINESS' 
concern) and it's kind of amusing that he would assert 
that a big problem for him with people being informed about 
the rituals is that his own initiation went so poorly 
(although it sounds like it was much more a problem of 
people NOT having learned the bloody rituals well enough 
instead of their having had TOO MUCH foreknowledge of them). 
In light of what I've learned about Bill, and what we've 
seen of him in this thread, it's just kind of perfect 
that he would find the need to instruct the supposed head 
of the order in how to properly initiate him.

Bill relates:

"When I was scheduled for IVth degree, the initiation
had not been held for over 30 years.  I had to set up the 
temple, photocopy the scripts and help with the staging.  
At one point, Grady couldn't make one of the properties work, 
and I, the candidate, had to go over with my eyes closed to 
fix it.  At the height of the ritual, there was another mix up, 
and I told him to try again.  Since I was in the first wave of 
most of the resumption of OTO initiations and an officer, I 
and a few others were necessarily privi to the initiation 
rituals and involved in setting up.  It all worked, but the 
unpleasantness of the experience has more than a little to do 
with my support for no advance knowledge of the rituals."

My guess is that stories like this are more the norm
than that the candidate is vivified by some transcendent
experience.

(jk)