kaos

the skull placed in the temple during the installation of a candidate as a member of the
masonic Order of Knight Templars.
In March 1999 Fernee publicly laid open at length on the Internet the Caliphate
oto’s persecution of him and stressed that he had never sold any materials obtained
through his membership of the oto, but in a post on alt.magick, May 31, 1999, he
reported that he had just been expelled. Fernee’s statements were a powerful indictment
of the petty politics at the heart of Bill Breeze’s Caliphate. In my own considered opinion,
it was probably the significantly different variant of the seventh degree sex magick
instruction by Crowley that they couldn’t bear the thought of being available, let alone
advertised for sale to all bidders by one of their own. Had they acted with the dignity
befitting a magical Order pursuing the Great Work they might have just quietly
purchased it themselves, as it turned out to this day they do not know what it contains
nor do they know its new owner. Fernee, on the strict instructions of the private collector
who was selling these items, allowed no-one to view them, regarding the information
as being for the new owner alone. I might also add that a copy of Francis King’s Secret
Rituals of the OTO that I borrowed from the British Library’s Boston Spa facility has an
interesting pencil annotation specifically appended to De Natura Deorum, with no further
pencil marks anywhere in the book. I considered rubbing it out, but no, it is still there,
for all I know it may be of historical importance. What does it say? Now that would be
telling. Ask me in the pub.
Ben Fernee was involved as the Caliphate’s “Inquisitor” of David Rietti (“Frater
Prospero”, formerly “Fr. Thanatos”) in 1995, who oldtime KAOS readers will remember
as the pompous oaf who once threatened me with a libel suit for an attack on his good
name and reputation, upon which a barrister at Gray’s Inn I asked to comment said
after studying the relevant documents: “It would be difficult to lower Mr Rietti’s
reputation further in the eyes of right thinking people.” Rietti, now the “Black Magus
of Manchester” and another reincarnation of John Dee (in the 80s he used to be Aleister
Crowley, who himself claimed to be the reincarnation of Dee’s magical partner Edward
Kelly, so that posits some intriguing questions), was expelled from the Caliphate oto
along with his wife Irene Fraenkl-Rietti (“Soror Phoenix”) at the end of January 1996
for a catalogue of misdemeanours hard to fathom in their entirety (frankly, I can’t be
bothered) but on a cursory glance at the evidence it seems to involve them garnering
business for their tattoo parlour—“Tattooed Lady Body Art”—from oto initiates (the
fifth degree, in particular, requires the candidate to get tattooed). The entire transcript
of Fernee’s Inquisition of the Riettis is quite hilarious, particularly the first line by
David Rietti, and is on the web at: http://www.mysunrise.ch/users/prkoenig/inquisition/
trans.htm.
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