A A (Astrum Argenteum)

The A A, whose name is rendered Astrum Argenteum or Argenteum Astrum, the Silver Star, is built on an organising principle that sets it apart from the lodge orders it grew out of.

Each knows only two

Founded around 1907 by Aleister Crowley and George Cecil Jones after the collapse of the Golden Dawn, the order runs on the grades of the Tree of Life and on solitary work under a single superior. Each member knows only the person who introduced them and those they in turn introduce, so the order has no meetings, no visible membership and no assembled body: it exists only as a set of one-to-one links. The syllabus was published openly in The Equinox, the periodical edited by Crowley, which is the paradox of the thing, an order whose curriculum is public and whose structure is invisible.

What the design assumes

The arrangement places the entire weight of authority on the individual teacher-student bond and on the claimed attainment of the superior, since there is no assembly and no external check. Several lineages claim descent from the original body, and there is no institution above them able to adjudicate the claims, which is a direct consequence of the way the order was designed.

The A A's design is deliberately unusual. A member knows the person who admitted them and the people they admit, and no one else. There are no meetings, no lodge, and no roll. The stated reason is that an order without a visible body cannot be captured, corrupted or turned into a social club, which is a direct response to what Crowley had just watched happen to the Golden Dawn.

Against that secrecy sits an unusually open publication record. The Equinox, issued from 1909, printed the Golden Dawn rituals Crowley had sworn not to reveal, the order's own instructional papers, and the syllabus of study, under the motto that gives the enterprise its character: the method of science, the aim of religion. The Libri, numbered instructional texts, remain in print. A prospective member can read the curriculum before approaching anyone.

The grades follow the Golden Dawn ladder upward past where the Golden Dawn stopped, through the Abyss to grades that are described rather than conferred. The required practice is documentary: a member keeps a magical record, and advancement rests on that record being examined. Whatever one makes of the claims, the demand that a practitioner write down results and submit them for review is the closest thing to a methodological standard the tradition produced.