Tim Maroney ([info]tim_maroney) wrote,
@ 2003-06-29 17:42:00
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As I have only skimmed your site its hard to say what your position is but I am constantly surprised to meet OTO people who are entirely wrapped up in the propaganda of the order.

Two points - 1) The OTO is the Outer Order. 2) After turning the OTO into his Thelemic propaganda machine, Crowley set up the A.:A:. because I believe he knew that OTO was an old aeon hierarchical conception and he was happy to have a propaganda machine promulgating his word. He knew he couldn't change it so he made it work as best he could to serve his purpose and then set up the A.:A:..

And so on. Just so you'll know, friend, Crowley didn't join the OTO until years after he created the A.'. A.'. And I am about as much a propagandist for the OTO as Michael Moore is a spokesman for K-Mart.

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[info]thiebes
2003-06-29 08:21 pm UTC (link)
I am about as much a propagandist for the OTO as Michael Moore is a spokesman for K-Mart.

LOL LOL :)

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[info]hey_elan
2003-06-30 10:50 am UTC (link)
I did not get a copy of the Homosexual Agenda.

I am offended. Sure I sleep with boys, too, but I've been known to be face down in a lady occasionally.

Feh on you elitist bastards. Feh, I say!

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[info]lionserpent
2003-06-30 02:13 pm UTC (link)
Your correspondent obviously doesn't know you at all! lol!

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[info]tim_maroney
2003-06-30 02:42 pm UTC (link)
It's funny how often this old once-banned critic gets accused of being a lock-step, mind-controlled zombie of the shadowy OTO authorities these days.

There has sprung up a campaign of slander against the OTO that is not concerned at all with accuracy or decency, and failing to go along with every wild accusation marks one in the minds of the defamers as thoroughly brainwashed. I wish the OTO had more and better critics, rather than the useless set of vilifiers it has now. These days, all the good critics seem to have been accepted by the group and to have found useful ways to participate, while the inveterate screamers and those who are merely unhappy by nature (e.g., Cypert, Cornelius) are selecting themselves out and trying to catch the Koenig/Childress train instead.

It's also understandable that I'd be seen less as a critic today than I used to be, since I have less to complain about in the OTO these days. Many of the concerns I've expressed over the years have been taken up and addressed. I hope and expect to continue to help with the improvement and growth of the group.

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Re:
[info]lionserpent
2003-06-30 08:18 pm UTC (link)
It seems that the "useless set of vilifiers," as you so aptly put it, always seem to be paranoid about the "shadowy OTO authorities." I think that it speaks volumes about the OTO that many of its worst critics have been able to contribute the to growth of the Order.

Of course, there will always be those who bitch and moan with no constructive ends. To hell with them. Their energies are wasted. They can feel free to devote their lives to attacking the Order. It just seems a damn shame that they don't have anything better to do.

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[info]tim_maroney
2003-06-30 09:21 pm UTC (link)
The funny thing about the shadowy authorities is how much of the distance from them exists only in the minds of the paranoid. The thought of, say, just dropping a polite email to Bill Heidrick about a problem area is somehow crossing a mental line beyond which they can not go. Either they never send it or they just have to include belligerence or nonsense. If they didn't they'd get an equally calm and polite reply -- at least that is my experience.

My own case started improving rapidly once I took some simple steps to improve my communications with Grand Lodge -- which I had been discouraged from doing locally. Ever since HQ moved to NY in the 1980's the Berkeley/Oakland OTO attitude has been to treat the leadership with fear and suspicion (except for BH, who however tries to stay out of Lodge affairs for the most part.) And the old guard is passing along the attitude to the new. Youngsters who know nothing about Sabazius are treating him as some sort of hideous foreign monster, for instance.

Some of the internal vilifiers have made considerable contributions in the past, but can't measure up to the current leadership standard. Jerry Cornelius, for instance, certainly made contributions to the Archives and in other ways -- he's not simply some slouch who gripes and never does anything. His contributions are measurable. However, his leadership presence exerts an entirely negative influence, and his work is hardly the brilliant stuff that might at least partially justify his emotional and social shortcomings.

In the past with a small number of members in the group, simply contributing and volunteering was often enough to propel one into a leadership position, almost by default. I'm not surprised that those who rose under this model and then fell when standards tightened up feel somewhat betrayed by the group, though honestly, when it's a result of obvious and unaddressed personal failings, I have to put the blame mostly on them, and express hope that these issues might yet be resolved in the future.

If the group is doing something wrong, perhaps it lies in not providing a more graceful retirement path. It would have been lovely if, for instance, Ebony could have become a grand old man of the scene with, however, no actual power to abuse his authority and harm those around him.

This is one of the problems of our Freemasonic formulation, and its combination of spiritual and political degrees. It would be unfair on a spiritual plane to confine an Ebony to fifth degree (I say this as a person below those degrees, and with a limited understanding of them, and yet who over the last 23 years of association have known a great many of the degrees' holders). On a spiritual plane he undeniably had something very real and very powerful going on, not reducible to the intensity of the psychotic, though perhaps fueled by it. But to give him the powers of an SGIG would have been a catastrophe. As it is he could barely handle the VI, and complained about it bitterly in private, without much concern for degree secrecy, to those of us who were his friends for however short or long.

We should find a way not to hold back spiritual advancement through the degrees simply because a leadership position is not what someone was born to hold. At the same time we have to respect the wisdom that makes advancement through the organization the process of spiritual development. It's a difficult problem and I don't have any ready answers.

As far as external critics are concerned, Koenig -- who for at least a while was relying in an obvious but deliberately uncredited way on Jerry as a source -- has made a cottage industry out of attacking the OTO. He does sell his photocopy books, and for a while he had some relationship with the Naylor bootleg, which at its high asking price must have brought in a significant little bundle. He appears at European conferences to present his slanders, and it has been disappointing to me to see that he is invited back to some of them. It reflects the soft standards in the humanities these days, where a compelling narrative is everything and concentrating on factual accuracy is just spoiling everybody's fun. I think the Koenig slander is a problem we are going to have to do more about, by answering it more directly.

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