Labyrinthos, Esoteric newsletter, November, 2001, Copyright (C) 2001 by Michael Bertiaux, P. 0. Box 1554, Chicago, II. 60690-1554,USA

Cycles of Magical Energy:

The history of the OTOA is a pattern or image of a cosmic process, which is measured by astrological movements and expressed in terms of the events of humanoid history. It is possible to establish very exact metrics for these patterns and to endow them with touches of archetypal, significance. Furthermore , every event is reflected at scale in a myriad of contexts, some macrocosmic, while others are microscopic and only may surface at the level of elemental contexts.

Factual being exists both in abstract and concrete reality, so that actions from thirty (30) years ago, rise to the surface of existence as facticities or surface when the chain of causation has been timed and attuned by metaphysics to produce the moment, of which no other moment is possible.

Normally, causation of such character can only manifest itself in the formularies of ancient religious content, but in the sense of the causation of the OTOA, the magical tantras and weaving of the inroads and inwardnesses of energy can implode upon the logical maps of our ontic sphere and require that they be made known, not so much as proclamation but as agenda and the agenda of a revelation.

Over thirty years ago, in the Hyde Park OTOA Lodge, on the south side of Chicago, at a magical meeting, several adepts holding the rank of SGM, with the cooperation of the Hierophant of the rite, consecrated the little boy, who would grow up into the present SGM, in this year 2001; even though he was in another state (so it involved an astral operation) and was not a member of the order at that time, but with only his astrological data, and the fact that he was from New York, and his ethnicity and career choice, viewed in the astral light of the adepts. Led by the adept T. Paez, the group consecrated this magical prince as SGMA, because for the first time the adepts and worldwide community of this mystery would infuse the magical light, for the expected work to be done at the time of the change of the millenium.

As you know, the lessons of the Monastery of the Seven Rays were never intended to end with the Fourth Year Course. The fifth Year course was spoken of in various ways. We heard of the Voudon Gnostic Workbook as being the 5th year of study. Actually the Workbook is re-presentative of a parallel development to the Monastery's work. Actually, the 5th Year Course has to be a history of the pre-1973 OTOA, which begins in the 1960's, when Dr Jean-Maine established the Afro-American OTOA society in Hyde Park, Chicago, Il. in the early 1960s. He taught and worked with the group that met in the spiritualist churches of that community, and set up the magical and ontical community and space, wherein the Monastery of the Seven Rays lessons could be grounded, as written by me and tested in the OTOA community five years after the establishment of the Lodge.

It will be necessary to show the many esoteric research programmes, to be found in this Lodge, and also the rites and ceremonies, which were used to make contact with the Research Loa , whose presence In the mysteries of the Lodge would validate the mystical truth and the phenomena of these seances.

The research programme of HF JH and the complete history of the OTOA , with its magical theory and practice can now be told clue to the end of the time-frame, which placed a closure on certain secrets during the lifetime of the adepts. This time frame ends just as there seems to be a problem in the magical world with the introduction of chaos , and especially a type of psychic-chaos,or egotistical use of elements of chaotic, methodology and in the patterns of order faced by many of my students in Europe, who have written to me and to Dr Willis for help. Naturally, the medium of the permeable boundary of matrices around the OTOA allows us to see the fluidic light of problems faced by other families, but it is of the nature of orders such as these to work from within one's own light and thusly extend by pure inwardness the sanity of the practice and consequently the protection of our order.

While inwards these practices driven by chaos have been the tribunal for my concern over the fragmentation of the light, and while it is tempting to want the light to be one's own, and in a sense this too is certainly true; our solutions from the plain methods were used in the past to create and work out a magically suitable method for the present age. The answer will be found in the history of the OTOA, because a grounding in the pure Level of magical energy will enable those, who had accepted negative influences as elements of truth,to understand that such powers were not found in the continuum of the OTOA Lodge in Chicago. Those who are freed by this history will realize that such forces could never be found in the first establishment of the OTOA outside of Haiti, because the adepts would not allow them to live in the family of the Voudon-gnostic light.

 Michael Bertiaux

A. Bishop Paez was in charge of the main research programmes. It was his idea to create a more ontic definition of the "ad vitam" rank of previous SGMA, by infusion of special powers. Naturally, he wanted his magical sun-son to be the first to hold this state of consciousness, but he was not the only magician in the Hyde Park OTOA Lodge to want to be the "father". As a consequence of processes at work in the lab of the temple, the Sun-Son would have several fathers, because paternal genetic materials from several SGM were used in the temple rites. The resultant was a more concrete and also more aeonic concept of the true "ad vitam" quality . Bishop Paez way the Sagittary proponent of the experiment.

A. Actually Crowley materials were rare. It was easier to find humanoid links to Crowley than his writings, which were sold at the Aries Press at very high prices, along with Frater Achad's classics. Mr Roth, the owner of the Aries Press, was in his business to make a go of it. Then one day in 1966, the old Economy Book Store on West Madison Street in the "Loop" area of downtown Chicago had on display stacks of all of the Equinox volumes as well as the smaller works, especially the all important Book of Lies, which members of the OTOA bought up, since only a few books on Crowley were out, but all spoke of the Book of Lies. It was very easy to work Crowley into the system of magical work, as it was known from the two books by John Symonds that one of the Crowley women was the "high priestess of Voodoo", and thusly it was assumed that all. true magic(k) was one state of being. I might add that the only other writer known at this time on Crowleyana was Mlle Overton Fuller, whose book on Neuburg was available from Mr Roth's shop in 1965-1966. Hence there was a Crowley focus, without the dogmatism to be found in the magickal process ten years later.

Q. Getting back to the consecration of Dr. Courtney Willis, can it be said that there was an evocation in the biosphere of the components of what was known as "The Paris Working" by the OTOA in Chicago, led in its experiments by Bishop Paez?

A. It is important, to understand that "The Paris Working" was not seen as a Mss, as a ritual book, or as a series of meeting-events for a type of magical operation. If the Paris working was known to the OTOA only through the book by Symonds "The Magic of Aleister Crowley" (Published by F Muller, London, 1958) and by the book on Neuberg by Mlle Overton Fuller, our work could not be the result of the actions of the "Paris working"as a document,(which persons feel they can fax all over the world!); but here the genius of the Hyde Park magicians comes to focus:

if they could not have the document, then surely there was no reason why they could not have by evoking the Egregor of "The Paris Working", or the "Elemental Essence" of the magical rite, present on the Astral plane and viewed in the wonderful astral light. This was especially true if the elemental of the event could be fed and sustained by certain formulae found in cosmological poem of Lucretius, De Serum Natura. Why the poetry of an ancient Materialist should be used this way, as a kind of magical fuel, we owe to the metaphysics of Bishop Paez, who was able to demonstrate before Bertiaux and Jean-Maine the way of magical control or holding by attraction. Therefore, the Egregor of the Paris Working was used in the magical process of creating the Sun-Son. But to say that the OTOA in Hyde Park had the Mss of the Paris working is not so , since under the circumstances they did not have any need to possess it.

Q. It would seem that the OTOA teachings have been given in the occult

physics papers of the Voudon-Gnostic Workbook, so why is it necessary to go back to Hyde Park, or this Hyde Park OTOA ideal, in order to see the continuity of the teachings used by the family led by Dr Courtney Willis?

A. Actually, the reason is continuity and making explicit the many mages,who added to the wonderful stream of the OTOA. When Dr Willis asked for a direction from the Loa at the millenium, he was asking for a return to the roots of this order. The roots are in the magic done by the early adepts in Hyde Park, which was the first place the OTOA had a lodge outside of Haiti. Not knowing our history has led many well-meaning but intellectually vapid leaders in Europe, especially, to add an eclectic and self-destructive content from a wide range of chaotic sources. Younger members, inflamed with egotistical psychologies of self-worth and fuelled with a mindless stream of faxes and pseudodocumenta, have led many pure souls in the OTOA away from the truth of the Hyde Park adepts. This would never happened if the history of the OTOA was clearly known and deeply appreciated. That is why the fifth (5th) year course of the monastery is to be about the history of the OTOA in the period of its creativity. Then the continuity of the Voudon-gnostic workbook with the Monastery papers, years 1 to 5, will be self-evident. For example, the sections on physics in the workbook wore originally papers read before the OTOA Lodge by Dr Bertiaux, in his capcity as head of research on the esoteric roots of the OTOA physics.Also, by a careful reading of the same physics papers, one can see how the use of the De rerum Natura of Lucretius and the "Physics of Aristotle" would facilitate certain magical structures in the holding of the cubic field of "the Paris Working", as two readers, one in Sikim, N India and another in Belgium, have pointed out to this writer. Thus, it was determined to tell the story of the adepts of the south side of Chicago and of their pioneering work in magical theory and practice.

Q. There has been talk that Michael Bertiaux forms a link to Crowley as he is supposed to have met Crowley's widow and some say took direct initiation from Dorothy 0lsen.Is this too used in the OTOA magic(K)?

A. Because of the private nature of their relationship Dr Bertiaux has never discussed his link with Crowley's widow, who lived in Chicago until her death in the 1980s. However, Dr Bertiaux has been a leader in the movement of Crowleyana appreciation. It is well known that he was expelled from the Martinists, in the 1960s, when he became a "Slave of Crowley" and joined the Hyde Park OTOA, thereby giving up all Martinist advancement.

Michael Bertiaux