Title: O.T.O. Rituals and Sex Magick
Description: O.T.O. Rituals and Sex Magick (Paperback) 
Some thirty-five years ago, before the public rise of the Caliphate O.T.O. in California, a djinni was let out of a bottle. It's a cryptic djinni, an incomplete djinni, a sometimes inaccurate djinni, one that has caused no end of arguments, deceptions, debates, and misinformed fools. Such are the natures of djinni, as any careful reading of the Tale of a Thousand Nights and a Night will inform.

In 1972, certain manuscripts were borrowed from private collections and copies of others allegedly stolen from the Warburg collection were provided to Mr. Francis X. King, a researcher of no small fame in his native Great Britain, who had, among other things previously published a collection of the "Flying Rolls" of the Golden Dawn under the title of "Astral Projection, Ritual Magic, and Alchemy" and the decidedly more racy titled "Sexuality, Magic and Perversion." Mr. King's motives were supposedly genuine; he was reportedly trying to provide to modern students of the occult such rare and secret documents as he was able before they were lost, stolen, or locked away in private collections and rarely if ever to see the public light of day again. The end result, "The Secret Rituals Of The O.T.O." has had at least one UK Edition and one U.S. Edition (variant dust jacket colors and some editions with attached silk bookmark exist in the UK edition). Two decades later, a certain British bookseller decided to publish an upgraded edition and was successfully sued by the O.T.O for his efforts, with much rending of garments and gnashing of teeth by the O.T.O.'s sometimes fanatical detractors. Largely the same as King's edition, "O.T.O. Rituals and Sex Magick" does correct errors from King's edition, and presents further material, most of which has already been published elsewhere, if sometimes in dubious and inferior reproductions, as in Koenig's "How To Make Your Own McO.T.O."

As I said, Mr. King's motives were genuine: Mr. King used the best sources he had available to him, he used the best of his considerable skills and specialized knowledge of the subject to try and decrypt the odd abbreviations these manuscripts were plagued with, the hand-written notes on some of the scripts he was presented, and he presented the documents in question to the best of his not inconsiderable abilities. At the time he published his book, he was not aware of any active O.T.O. organization that was using these rituals, and wrongly presumed that no one was using them any more. But this edition's publisher's intentions were apparently rather less altruistic. After unsuccessfully courting the O.T.O. to further his publishing profits and falling out with its Officers, he appears to have published this book out of misguided spite, and found himself with a presumably costly attorney's fee, after unsuccessfully defending himself in court.

Over the years, this book and Mr. King's have been sought out by many would-be students of Aleister Crowley, who, for whatever reasons, try in vain to discern the "secrets" of the Ordo Templi Orientis without submitting themselves to its initiatory mysteries. Perhaps it is the case as W.C. Fields noted in his biography, that a "stolen pie always tastes sweeter," or perhaps it is the glamour of the forbidden fruit. It certainly seems so when a previous reviewer gleefully proclaims it "The Book They Don't Want You To Read." How juvenile. The fact is this: This book is a tiresome read. It's like reading a straight script of a play or musical show-- the would-be student will find it's scripts inadequate and woefully short of stage-directions, libretto, or choreographic notes, the very sort of performance instructions that would give them life. And unless you already know a good deal about Sex Magick, Freemasonry and Alchemy, the dryly symbolic 8th and 9th Degree papers this book contains (errors and all) aren't going to teach you much.

Any actor will tell you: Reading the script of "Hamlet" is hardly a substitute for seeing the play, let alone for actually acting the role in front of an audience. So too it is for "O.T.O. Rituals and Sex Magick" It's no substitute. Anyone who suggests otherwise does not understand the nature of the mysteries being communicated, mere Philistines presuming they comprehend the mysteries of both the Old Aeon and the New. Much as in Freemasonry-- it's the performance of the ritual and the combination of all its nuances, the props, the symbols, the costumes, the colors of the flags and curtains, and the hidden meanings of their Qabbalistic correspondences that communicate the *real* mysteries. Granted: "O.T.O. Rituals and Sex Magick" *is* a more complete collection of scripts than Francis King's "Secret Rituals", but it's still incomplete, and at best of limited interest even to most serious occultists who are not O.T.O. initiators or initiates. If you are not in either of those categories, you will probably not find what you are looking for in this book. If you are an initiate, in reading this book you may find some of the surprises in future degrees spoiled, and cheat yourself out of a more rewarding experience. So you may wish to save yourself for the experience of the initiatory ordeal as it was meant to be-- unknown. In the long run, you'll be glad you did.