kaos

The ultimate aim of the Ordo
Templi Orientis
by Joel Biroco
In the years since Aleister Crowley’s death in 1947 his magical organisation the OTO
has fragmented—what was its original purpose and where is it going today?
Readers of the last issue of Starfire, Vol. II, No. 2, will have seen a remarkable “Official
Statement” concerning the Ordo Templi Orientis. In this case, Kenneth Grant’s
Typhonian oto, since unto themselves they are the oto and the existence of any other
oto—about ten at the last count, although the Caliphate oto is the only other one
worth mentioning—remains largely unacknowledged. The grandiloquent statement—
“Issued by the Sovereign Sanctuary of the Gnosis of the Ordo Templi Orientis this 21 st
day of June 1998 e.v.”—to my mind read like a reorientation document towards firm
Thelemic principles lest anyone think the Typhonian oto had completely gone off the
rails since plunging beyond the Mauve Zone after three decade’s worth of opening up
of extraterrestrial gateways through which little came but oceans of purple prose, which
I concede was utterly fascinating. My eyes were therefore wide with amazement as I
read the Official Statement, I had to sit down on a footstool in Watkins bookshop its
heady aroma stirring romantic visions of occult world domination, and I decided in the
end this is an issue I simply must buy for the Official Statement alone.
Grant, who is of course acutely aware of the chaos that awaits his demise within his
beloved Typhonian oto, began his statement innocently enough after the obligatory
wilting Law:
It has been considered desirable to remind prospective candidates for membership—and
even some members—that ‘creative occultism’ is not, per se, the final aim of our magick,
but merely its mode of operation. The present statement is therefore intended as a brief
and summary blueprint of the ultimate aim of our Order. [p 11]
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