Ordo Templi Orientis
Spermo-GnosisCarl Kellner
Theodor Reuss
Aleister CrowleyA lecture by
Peter-Robert KoenigThe MisogynistsMaybe because it was the greediness of the female aspect of the creative Entity that caused the fall into the profane, it is the duty of the Man to give the universe back its completeness/integrity. On the material plane the woman is punished with the large wound between her legs. (6*) This wound signifies the place where primitive man once was bound with his own female aspect: the perfect Androgyn, now torn apart. It is the man's turn now to experience the lust which broke the universe apart. Woman has to suffer. Only man's sperm transports the Holy Logos. Women lack the prostata (7*) and therefore are superfluous for man's salvation as long as he does not achieve androgynity. (8*) If he does have "use" for the female, then it is only as a channel to higher divine entities. Maybe he sees some use for her menstrual blood? When he is Christian orientated (let us call him the libertine Gnostic), he might use her blood as the "Blood of Christ" and consume it as a "religious nourishment". If he sees the world as a really bad place, he avoids having children and animalistic flesh-eating (and here we find vegetarians). An ascetic avoids having ejaculations, even with his wife, but directs his sexual energies in Yoga-practises into his head (where he assumes is found the most direct bridge to the Divine). In order to achieve Androgynity, he penetrates his wife (avoiding orgasm) so that she, as well, might benefit from his luck. (9*)
Yoga is one of the preliminary conditions to master the body before using it as a temple. By westerners, Yoga is mistakenly thought to be a system of physical exercises to keep the body supple and the mind calm. But the meaning of the word yoga is union and the system was developed by eastern adepts to assist them to attain union with the source of all being.
All the Gnostic movements, be they the old ones or modern ones, assign salvation only to man: the woman has to become a man in order to enter heaven. (10*) The ascetic Gnostics avoid ejaculation and let the woman join in his wonderful ability to "produce" the Logos; the libertine Gnostics use all of the woman's gifts in order to sweat out the Pneuma.
Well. Our two questions (1. can women be saved? and, 2. what shall we do with the sperm?) cannot be separated. Only man's sperm can offer salvation (11*) and woman has to become man in order to be saved. (12*)
Which spermo-Gnostics are known today? Since the turn of the present century, the most famous group has organised itself as a quasi freemasonry organisazion, called Ordo Templi Orientis, in short: O.T.O. (13*)
The O.T.O. under Aleister CrowleyAfter Reuss' death in 1923, Crowley made an entreprise out of the O.T.O.'s secrets. There is a surviving plan to promote the "Elixir of Life" (under the name "Amrita", the Magical Medicine) (27*) and to heal patients according to O.T.O. methods, (28*) that is: to heal them with yoga and sexual fluids. (29*) Crowley used the Ordo Templi Orientis (as he used other real or ghostly orders) as a play, a publishing house and found it a suitable instrument to extract the "gold" (be it alchemistical or sexual) from the pockets of his followers. To that purpose he pretended never having had sex out of sheer lust. (30*) It always should have been a "duty", a "prayer to God" (Aiwaz, Baphomet or Sheitan (31*) — there are many more disguises); in consequence a prayer to himself whom he identified with an erected penis.
Crowley's VII* is a treatise about the creative organ's divinity, and from his "Book of Lies" one can interfer that the vital fluid is a vehicle of immortality. The Matter is the original primitive material substance semi-spiritual, immortal and containing in itself the archetypes of all form and possessing the double potency of attracting to itself individual spirits and also particles of gross Matter to form their temporary envelope on this plane (the gnostic Rotten Place).
Crowley's VIIIth degree unveiled to the "pupil" that masturbating on a sigil of a demon or meditating upon the image of a phallus would bring power or communication with a (or one's own) divine being/Super Ego. The IXth degree labelled heterosexual intercourse where the sexual secrets were sucked out of the vagina and when not consumed (when considered holy) put on a sigil to attract this or that demon to fullfill the pertinent wish/order. (32*) In his "Emblems and Mode of Use" (33*) Crowley describes the method of how to smear sperm on a talisman/sigil in order to attract for example money. This paper is so secret that, at one time, its possession was equal with having the IXth degree O.T.O. There was no other proof until only recently: now one possibly needs to go through an examination test to prove "possession"/"knowledge" of the IXth degree O.T.O. (34*)
Crowley played around with different sexmagickal methods. One of the O.T.O.'s secrets is the adoration of the idol Baphomet of the old Templars. While the German splinter-group, the misogynist Fraternitas Saturni definitely tried (and still tries) to incarnate Baphomet in flesh, (35*) in the O.T.O.-groups (that emerged after Crowley's death in 1947) the subject is not that clear although incorporated in the Xth degree. Crowley advised selection of a female partner. The magician and his mate "copulate continuously" until impregnation results: a homunculus. (36*) Maybe the ability of the Xth to create a homunculus was realised on the physical level in their privilegue of electing their OHO.
In the XIth degree, the mostly homosexual degree, (40*) one identifies oneself with an ejaculating penis. (41*) The blood (or excrements) from anal intercourse attract the spirits/demons while the sperm keeps them alive. On 31 March 1946 Crowley noted down a dream in his diary: "A most frightful semi-dream (between two normal motions) of giving birth to a foetus per anum. It was a mass of blood & slime. The nastiest Qliphotic experience I can remember!"
Crowley saw no use in the vaginal fluids nor did he think that women are divine, (42*) therefore he could not imagine lesbian sexmagick. He believed that "man is the guardian of the Life of God; woman but a temporary expedient; a shrine indeed for the God, but not the God." ==> Women exist for the use of men. His ideal female: "robust, vigorous, eager, sensible, hot and healthy". That is to say, his interest was in the woman's body and he wanted no spiritual or intellectual participation from her.
Crowley's main tools to achieve illumination remained: spermophagy, coprophagy and algolagnia.