How an Order Became the Vehicle of One Revelation

The OTO is the clearest case in this atlas of an existing initiatic body being rebuilt around the teaching of a single later figure.

Before Crowley

The order was established in the German-speaking world in the first decade of the twentieth century by Carl Kellner and Theodor Reuss, on a Masonic-style system of degrees. Reuss admitted Aleister Crowley around 1910 and authorised him to lead an English-speaking section.

After Crowley

Crowley then rewrote the rituals to align them with Thelema, the system announced in the Book of the Law, whose maxim, that the whole of the law is to do what thou wilt, became the governing principle of the order. The central public ceremony, the Gnostic Mass, dates from this reworking. After a period of decline the order was revived in the later twentieth century, and litigation in the United States recognised a principal successor body as the continuation of the order and holder of the Crowley copyrights, which is why the modern OTO is inseparable from the management of one body of authorship.