kaos

magick practised in its ninth degree. (Reading Kenneth Grant’s Aleister Crowley and the
Hidden God again after many years I must admit I had forgotten how blatant he had
been in revealing and concealing the secret of the 9 th degree. I laughed though at his
straight-faced suggestion that the “higher forms of cunnilinctus” were performed by
very advanced Tantric adepts without physical contact, the method being a closely guarded
secret. Maybe Grant is the ultimate piss-taker. As for his apparent belief that cunnilingus
is a cough mixture, I might note that the true spelling is derived from the Latin: cunnus,
“vulva”, lingere, “to lick” [although “linctus”, a syrup-like medicine, comes from the
Latin linctus, “a licking”, so conceivably Grant could be alluding to the elixir].)
The Typhonian oto has never been particularly terrestrial, its lodges are to be found
on the astral plane in such places as the winking eye of Algol. By contrast, the Caliphate
oto is a terrestrial corporation fiercely protective of what it sees as its territory, and as
such legally hindered the distribution of Mr Grant’s book Hecate’s Fountain in the States
(see Michael Staley’s essay “It’s An Ill Wind That Bloweth…” in Starfire Vol. 1, No. 5
[1994]). The Caliphate forced Grant to insert a slip of paper in each copy stating that
he had been expelled from the oto in 1955 by Germer and that the Typhonian oto
had no right to speak on behalf of the oto in the States. Grant wanted a right of reply
but the Caliphate did not allow him to have one, and they also managed to get him to
remove the oto lamen from the book jacket on the ground that it was their official
corporate logo. While writing this essay I specifically asked Bill Heidrick, Treasurer
General and Ninth Degree Magus of the Caliphate oto, about whether he felt Kenneth
Grant’s Typhonian oto had the right to educate and provide direction concerning
Thelema in the United States without legal interference from the Caliphate oto. He
responded to me on the Internet newsgroup alt.magick, on June 5, 2001:
It was a disclaimer that allowed ambiguity to be set aside in some of the remarks in his
books. The alternative would have been limitation of speech, something nobody wanted.
This way he just included a removable notice that what he said didn’t come from or bind
the oto.
Thus it is clear that had Grant not complied with their request the alternative of
“limitation of speech” (a contravention of Crowley’s Liber Oz, incidentally) would have
been applied by resort to the courts.
The Caliphate oto was founded in 1977 by Grady McMurtry (1918–1985). Peter
Koenig on his “oto phenomenon” website suggests that McMurtry took the title
“Caliph”, which had never previously existed in the oto, simply because Crowley wrote
to him in “Calif ”, the postal abbreviation for California. More seriously, Koenig also
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