Practice · Orders · Thelemic

Ordo Templi Orientis

1906, on its earliest constitution · Germany and Austria, later international

A German initiatory order of the early 1900s that Crowley was given charge of in Britain in 1912 and rebuilt around Thelema. It is the body that held Crowley's copyrights, which is why its succession ended up in court rather than only in argument.

Is anything of the name working now?

The name is in use, and contested

Bodies of this name have been in dispute since 1962 and the dispute has twice reached the United States federal courts. One body holds a judgment in its favour. That judgment decides who may use a name and hold copyrights in the United States; it is not, and does not claim to be, a finding about who inherited an initiation.

What can be gleaned from it

Its constitution is printed in full and quoted on these pages. It is also the one body here whose succession can be followed in public documents from beginning to end — not because it was more open, but because it owned something worth litigating.

Learn then that our Holy Order has but Three True Grades; as it is written in The Book of the Law: The Hermit, The Lover, and the Man of Earth. It is but for convenience that these grades have been separated into Three Triads.
Liber CXCIV, Liber CXCIV — The Equinox III:1, Detroit, 1919 (‘The Blue Equinox’) · The Blue Equinox (III:1), 1919

In plain English Eleven degrees are the arrangement; three are the thing arranged. An order's grade list is the part a reader meets first and the part that means least without the ceremony behind it.

The Man of Earth takes no share in the Government of the Order; for he is not yet called upon to give his life to it in service; and with us Government is Service, and nothing else.
Liber CXCIV, Liber CXCIV — The Equinox III:1, Detroit, 1919 (‘The Blue Equinox’) · The Blue Equinox (III:1), 1919

In plain English What the grades are for, in the document's own words: rank is duty rather than privilege, and the lowest grade is excused government because it has not yet been asked to give anything up.

Founding

  • Founded 1906, on its earliest constitution contested

    The earliest constitution is dated 22 January 1906 and is thought to have been produced nearer 1912. Carl Kellner is traditionally called the founder and died in 1905; Theodor Reuss built the body. A founding date this soft is normal for these bodies and is usually tidied away.

  • Founder Theodor Reuss

On the record

  • Reshaped Crowley chartered for Britain and Ireland, 21 April 1912; Thelema made central thereafter

    The O.T.O. a modern member joins is Crowley's rebuilding of Reuss's order, not Reuss's order. The name is continuous across that change and almost nothing else is.

  • Its constitution three true grades, arranged as eleven degrees

  • The name, in dispute decided for McMurtry's body in the United States, affirmed 1987 contested

    Karl Germer died in 1962 without an undisputed successor and at least three men claimed the order. Two of the claims reached the federal courts. What the courts decided is who may use a name and hold Crowley's copyrights in the United States.

    • McMurtry v. Society Ordo Templi Orientis, 819 F.2d 1146 (9th Cir. 1987), No. 85-2897, affirming N.D. Cal.; cert. denied, 484 U.S. 1006 (1988) court record — CourtListener, disposition
    • Motta v. Samuel Weiser, Inc., 768 F.2d 481 (1st Cir. 1985) court record — CourtListener, full opinion
    • World Religions and Spirituality Project, Manon Hedenborg White, ‘Ordo Templi Orientis’, 10 April 2022 — World Religions and Spirituality Project in copyright — cited by locator, not quoted