Reuss was in the habit of initiating people with the merest skeleton
rituals boiled down from those of Continental Masonry. There was, to
put it plainly, no order or decency in the proceeding. He realized that
perfectly well, and it was one of the reasons for his asking me to reconstruct
the whole system of initiation.
I made a comparative study of numerous rituals to which I had access,
and produced a series which were perfected up to and including the 6th
degree (equivalent to the Kadosh) and these were worked in London with
the greatest success.
I must here pause to point out that the fundamental and essential change
which is necessary in any rituals with which I have anything to do is
the complete renunciation of the cult of the slave-gods. It is impossible
for free men to acknowledge any system which is bound up with the fetishes
of savages whose only motive for action is the fear born of their ignorance.
In 1915 or 1916, Aleister Crowley wrote "An Intimation with Respect to
the Constitution of the Order" (Liber
CXCIV), which developed the ideas set forth in Reuss's 1906 O.T.O.
Constitution, Crowley's 1913 M∴M∴M∴
Constitution, and in Crowley's Manifesto. Gérard Encausse died
on October 25, 1916. Charles Détré (Téder, 1855-1918) succeeded
Encausse, and also appears to have received the X° of O.T.O. for France,
but he died only two years later.
In 1916, Reuss moved to Basle, Switzerland. While there,
he established an "Anational Grand Lodge and Mystic Temple" of O.T.O.
and the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light at Monte Verità. Monte
Verità was a utopian commune near Ascona founded in 1900 by Henri
Oedenkoven and Ida Hofmann, which functioned as a center for what the
historian James Webb would later call the "Progressive Underground".
On January 22, 1917, Reuss published a manifesto for
this Anational Grand Lodge, which was called Verità Mystica. On the same
date, he published a revised version of his 1906 O.T.O. Constitution,
with a "Synopsis of Degrees" and an abridgment of The
Message of the Master Therion appended. In his revised constitution,
Reuss included many of the provisions of Crowley's M∴M∴M∴
Constitution of 1913. However, in this document, as in many of Reuss's
documents about O.T.O., he emphasized the Masonic character of the Order.
In May of 1917, Crowley's Lodge in England was raided
and closed down by the police, allegedly over charges of "fortune telling"
against one of the members. However, Crowley's work for Viereck's anti-British
publication The Fatherland may have caused the authorities to suspect
Crowley's Lodge of unpatriotic activities. All Lodge records were seized.
Crowley was forced to temporarily resign the Grand Mastership in favor
of C.S. Jones to ease the situation for the remaining members. The Lodge
was never completely restored.
In Ascona, Reuss held an "Anational Congress for Organising
the Reconstruction of Society on Practical Cooperative Lines" at Monte
Verità from August 15-25, 1917. This Congress included readings of Crowley's
poetry (on August 22) and a recitation of Crowley's Gnostic Mass
(on August 24 -- for O.T.O. members only). The announcement for this congress
stated: "There are two centres of the O.T.O., both in neutral countries,
where enquiries can be lodged by those interested in the aim of this congress.
One is at New York (U.S. of America), the other at Ascona (Italian Switzerland)."
Crowley was living in New York at the time; so, evidently, he and Reuss
were the only active National Heads of O.T.O. in 1917.
Reuss had his secretary, "J. Adderley" (Isabel Adderley
Oedenkoven), send a copy of the announcement, along with a copy of Crowley's
The Manifesto of the M∴M∴M∴,
to the United Grand Lodge of England, hoping that the Grand Lodge would
send a representative. It did not; but William Hammond, the Grand Lodge
Librarian, wrote to Reuss after the congress and asked for additional
information. During Reuss's correspondence with Hammond, Reuss reminded
Hammond that they had met in 1913/14, and Reuss had provided him with
copies of the Oriflamme and Crowley's Equinox, which, he
said, "give details about O.T.O."
Reuss was clearly impressed with Thelema. Crowley's
Gnostic Mass, which Reuss translated into German and had recited at his
Anational Congress at Monte Verità, is an explicitly Thelemic ritual.
In an undated letter to Crowley (received in 1917), Reuss reported excitedly
that he had read The Message of the Master Therion to his group
at Monte Verità, and that he was translating The Book of the
Law into German. He added, "Let this new encourage you! We live in
your Work!!!"
On October 24, 1917, Reuss issued a charter to Rudolf
Laban de Laban-Varalya (1879-1958) and Hans Rudolf Hilfiker-Dunn (1882-1955)
to operate a III° O.T.O. Lodge in Zurich, called Libertas et Fraternitas.
On November 3, 1917, de Laban became the Grand Master of the Anational
Grand Lodge Verità Mystica. Later that month he closed Verità
Mystica and moved his center of operations to Zürich. In March of
1918, Crowley published the Gnostic Mass in The International.
Reuss published his German translation of the Gnostic Mass the
same year. In a note at the end of his translation of the Gnostic Mass,
Reuss referred to himself as, simultaneously, the Sovereign Patriarch
and Primate of the Gnostic Catholic Church, and Gnostic Legate
to Switzerland of the Église Gnostique Universelle, acknowledging
Jean Bricaud (1881-1934) as Sovereign Patriarch of that church. The issuance
of this document can be viewed as the birth of the Thelemic E.G.C. as
an independent organization under the umbrella of O.T.O., with Reuss as
its first Patriarch.
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