About O.T.O.

OTOLamen2

O.T.O.

PEACE, TOLERANCE, TRUTH;
SALUTATION ON ALL POINTS OF THE TRIANGLE;
RESPECT TO THE ORDER.TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: GREETING AND HEALTH.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

The let­ters O.T.O. stand for Ordo Tem­pli Ori­en­tis, the Order of Ori­en­tal Tem­plars, or Order of the Tem­ple of the East. The O.T.O. is an Outer Thelemic Order which is ded­i­cated to the high pur­pose of secur­ing the Lib­erty of the Indi­vid­ual and his or her advance­ment in Light, Wis­dom, Under­stand­ing, Knowl­edge, and Power through Beauty, Courage, and Wit, on the Foun­da­tion of Uni­ver­sal Brotherhood.

O.T.O. is the first of the great Old Aeon orders to accept The Book of the Law, received by Aleis­ter Crow­ley in 1904, with its mes­sage of a rev­o­lu­tion in human thought, cul­ture and reli­gion based upon a sin­gle supreme injunc­tion: the Law of Thelema, which is Do what thou wilt. This Law is not to be inter­preted as a license to indulge in every pass­ing whim, but rather as the man­date to dis­cover one’s True Will and accom­plish it; leav­ing oth­ers to do the same in their own unique ways. “Every man and every woman is a star.”

The Law of Thelema can ulti­mately be ful­filled only through the efforts of each indi­vid­ual. Nev­er­the­less, many wor­thy aspi­rants to the Great Work have a gen­uine need for infor­ma­tion, guid­ance, fel­low­ship, or the oppor­tu­nity to assist their fel­low aspi­rants and serve human­ity. Such aspi­rants will find wel­come in the O.T.O.

O.T.O. is a Cal­i­for­nia char­i­ta­ble cor­po­ra­tion and a fed­er­ally rec­og­nized tax-exempt reli­gious entity. We have proven our­selves to be the gen­uine O.T.O. of Aleis­ter Crow­ley, both in the US Fed­eral Courts, and by our demon­strated suc­cess in faith­fully pro­mul­gat­ing prac­ti­cal Thelemic phi­los­o­phy through a care­ful imple­men­ta­tion of Aleis­ter Crowley’s vision of the mis­sion of the Order.

The struc­ture of the O.T.O., like that of Freema­sonry and the ancient mys­tery schools, is based on a staged series of ini­ti­a­tions or degrees, most of which are con­ferred cer­e­mo­ni­ally. In the Rit­u­als of these degrees, O.T.O. seeks to instruct the indi­vid­ual by alle­gory and sym­bol in the pro­found mys­ter­ies of Nature, and thereby to assist each to dis­cover his or her own true Identity.

Every man and woman of full age, free, and of good report, has an inde­fea­si­ble right to the first three Degrees of O.T.O. These Degrees fol­low a pat­tern based on the sym­bol­ism of the Chakras and the ris­ing of the Kun­dalini. They also rep­re­sent, in dra­matic form, the Individual’s Path in Eter­nity. In the higher Degrees, there is instruc­tion in Her­metic Phi­los­o­phy, Qabalah, Mag­ick and Yoga, all aimed at prepar­ing the Ini­ti­ate for the rev­e­la­tion and appli­ca­tion of one Supreme Secret.

In addi­tion to the offi­cial O.T.O. instruc­tions, many of the local O.T.O. Lodges, Oases, and Camps offer sup­ple­men­tary instruc­tion to their mem­bers. The par­tic­u­lar form of this sup­ple­men­tary instruc­tion depends on the char­ac­ter and capa­bil­i­ties of the par­tic­u­lar local body; it may be pro­vided in the form of classes, sem­i­nars, study pro­grams, or publications.

For more information on O.T.O. please see the fol­low­ing links:

O.T.O. History

O.T.O. Initiations

O.T.O. Membership