The Curious Case of LIBER PORTAE SECRETAE sub figura DX; Thelemic hucksters and also about books just finding their way to you…

“There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own.”

~Moby Dick, Herman Melville, “Ch.49: The Hyena”

It’s just rolled over into the Sun light, and I sit here moments before getting up to partake of my morning Resh, the Thelemic Solar Adoration many Thelemites perform almost 3 times a day. I neglect the Holy meditation which you are instructed to perform after giving certain gestures to the Sun and saying certain adorations, and I should be reprimanded for not doing it. But no one is here to listen to my morning routine, and I suspect few people will be here at all. I’m sure many of our podcast listeners will be aware of Thelema and Aleister Crowley both from their own personal study and/or our show, but most of you will be unfamiliar with the strange inner workings of contemporary Thelemic organizations like the O.T.O and various A.’.A.’. lineages. I will be unable to give you the full view of that, and truly it is out of the scope of this article. The briefest of outlines can be given.

The O.T.O was a Masonic order created before Aleister Crowley and Thelema, and it’s connections to Thelema are after it’s creation, if not it’s full development. What you need to know about it for the sake of this article is this order was essentially revived after it’s collapse following the deaths of both Crowley and his successor, Karl Germer, and after many years of rebuilding and legal battles, claimed the copyrights on many of Crowley’s work, among other things, and established them as the de facto “real” successors of the O.T.O of Crowley. Again, a drastically simplified version, but the important thing to remember is the O.T.O was able to establish itself as “official” in both legal and social ways

The A.’.A.’. is a slightly more complicated creature, and my explanation will be confusing to those who are uninitiated in this sort of thing and annoying to those who are for it’s simplifications. The A.’.A.’. was a group created by Crowley and George Cecil Jones that has much in common with the Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn, with various tweaks including the introduction of Yoga and a single “Student-Teacher” structure. The important thing to know about this order is that the way this structure operates creates lineages, several different lines of students coming from other students who would all eventually lead back to Crowley himself. There are a few articles on line that delve into the issues of tracing these lines, their legitimacy and so on, and I will even include one I think gives a good overview ( https://blog.thelema.dev/what-is-an-aa-lineage/ ) , but the long and short of this is there is no single A.’.A.’. lineage that can truly trace its current authority back without some jumps or hiccups that leave it in question. Karl Germer, both the successor of Crowley as the head of the O.T.O and the head of the A.’.A.’.(well, arguably head of the A.’.A.’.) did not leave a clear successor on either count, and just like O.T.O, there were many people who were making their stand as the one true A.’.A.’.



Enter J. Daniel Gunther.

J. Daniel Gunther is a man who, in his youth, became enchanted by Thelema.(Weren’t we all?) There are many rumors that surround this man and who he is, but there’s very little that matters as much as this; Gunther told people he was in the A.’.A.’. without having ever met any of the people who at this time had any connection to Crowley and the organization he was running. Gunther, through meeting other Thelemites in the rip roaring 70’s, but was brought back onto the right path by meeting one of these people who had a connection to Crowley, a man named Marcelo Motta. Again, for my audience of people who already know this and folks already being confused by names, it goes like this.

Crowley
V
Karl Germer
V
Marcelo Motta
V
Gunther

This is a normal chain and would be perfectly acceptable among the many other lines that exist. But, there’s a problem; J. Daniel Gunther resigned from the A.’.A.’. over some sketchy things involving him allegedly planning to murder someone, but regardless, Gunther willingly resigned from what we could say is a perfectly fine lineage. This is already after claiming he was a member of this order without ANY connection to anyone, except the Secret Chiefs who are the big spooky metaphysical guys who run this order and are really hard to get on the phone if you want to like, confirm someone’s credentials.


(A slightly more complex chart of lineages)

But, Motta, after fighting with the O.T.O over property and copyright in court, died, and Gunther came back, AGAIN. That’s right, for a third time this man has become an A.’.A.’. member, and honestly, his rationale this time is a lot closer to when he didn’t know anyone. From this point on, Gunther claims to be the head of the A.’.A.’. for no real reason, only metaphysical claptrap and the power of his buddies/students being the head honchos of the O.T.O, who as we remember have established themselves as the official Crowley body and have the copyrights. This power move to establish an orthodoxy and single ruling group between not only the O.T.O and the A.’.A’. but all other A.’.A.’. lineages touches on pretty much every Thelemite, from the non-affiliated ones to the other A.’.A.’. lines to the O.T.O membership themselves. There was a book(Keith Readdy’s “One Truth, One Spirit”) released a few years ago attempting to put the “official narrative” out about why Gunther’s lineage and the “Caliphate O.T.O” as its called, has always been a package and there aren’t any other lineages. This is all incredibly stupid and ultimately amounts to people demanding they be recognized for being the one true special snowflake of Crowley’s Great White Brotherhood.

The interesting thing for me is a bit of information that has been an open secret for quite some time. Gunther, in his youth, wrote what we call in the A.’.A.’. world “Class A” documents. I’ll quote the relevant information regarding this classification;

“Class A consists of books of which may be changed not so much as the style of a letter: that is, they represent the utterance of an Adept entirely beyond the criticism of even the Visible Head of the Organization.”

For those of you who don’t get it still, Crowley’s famous “The Book of the Law’, Liber AL vel Legis, is a Class A. These are also called “The Holy Books of Thelema”.

For those who need it spelled out further, Gunther, before he even met someone from the “real A.’.A.’.”, claims to have received/written what would be the Thelemite equivalent of the Book of Mormon. That’s a bold thing to claim, and Gunther hasn’t. No one acknowledges they exist. Most of us only know of their existence because of an old online archive describing them as such and attributing them to Gunther.

This has all been bubbling for years, and as I said before, it’s a bit of an open secret that Gunther thinks he’s something special and that his A.’.A.’. and the people in it are special, but we haven’t seen hide nor hair of any of these documents. I had one person tell me that Gunther views them as “youthful indiscretions”. (Hey, that’s cool, Danny-boy, I wrote some crazy stuff and thought I was gonna be the next Crowley too when I was young), Regardless, rumors persist that these new holy texts are given to those special chosen few.

Now for the interesting part of all this; a supposed document from this A.’.A.’. lineage has surfaced. It was first hinted at, publicly at least, by Marco Visconti, a man who needs no introduction because he’s not really important to this story other than he was the one who said it existed in a review for “The War of the Rose and the Cross” by the late J.P Lund, a Gunther A.’.A.’. inner circle guy who wrote a book that supposedly explains the Gunther A.’.A.’. view of Thelema. In that review, his said the following;

“Maybe this is why Gunther is so worried about the book, especially given the bizarre nature of some of the “secret rituals” of his A∴A∴ lineage, such as an antinomian version of Liber Resh vel Helios, which surfaced recently.

Dubbed Liber Portae Secretae sub Figura DX, being the Book of the Averse Adorations of the Sun, on first reading, it looks like a perverted approach to one of the standard Thelemic sets of adorations and something that seems straight out of a Kenneth Grant’s tome — which is very strange when you realise that these folks spent the good part of the last three decades insisting that Grant only wrote nonsense.”

This as far as I can tell is the first mention of it, and the only people interested enough to ask about it in the public sphere are myself and some poor reddit user who got much the same response I did; Its a Gunther text, its something a few of us know about, no one has the text.

Marco Visconti saw my questioning, told me that he was planning on releasing it with his commentary soon, and about a day later there it was.

Visconti wrote a pretty simple slam on the Gunther lineage, talking about how this ritual was another attempt to mystify Thelema and make it appear as if the Gunther lineage had something because they are, in fact, the One True A.’.A.’., and anyone paying a bit of attention would see that. Completely right, and with the text shared, we can all take a good laugh at this and walk away.

“Just one more thing”

(If you didn’t read that in a Columbo voice, you did it wrong.)

Marco’s release of the text was omitting several pages.

Note, there are 9 pages here, and it was obvious to anyone who read the text that there were things missing. The text opens with simple instructions a Thelemite who is already familiar with Resh would understand. Then, immediately, we are taken to a random page further a long, complete “Again” to let us know that this was done before, whatever THIS is.

Further along we get more explanation of the text and the ritual, including explanations for steps we don’t have.

When asked, Marco said, and I quote:

“there’s no missing page”.

So either he didn’t have it or didn’t want to acknowledge why he held back on it. I don’t think anyone who actually read this wouldn’t realize they were missing something, so it is one of those. The point of all this? Nothing super amazing, just a familiar strangeness.

It gets you thinking, gets you paranoid even. In a fun way, like watching abduction stories at 3 am. I genuinely love when weird things happen to me and I can’t explain then, and especially when I feel like I’m not getting the full story.

So flash forward to me a few hours ago when I was starting to do Resh. No, better yet, flash back to a few weeks ago when I was reminded by a member of our discord of a story a completely different Thelemite told about a mathematical diagram they were doodling during a meeting of some kind. Knowing that the diagram was on the cover of the very elusive and hard to get a hold of “Znuz is Znees” by other controversial Thelemic and A.’.A.’. figure C.F. Russell, I googled and lo and behold, Znuz is Zneez, vol.1-3, just put up for sale. Having let a set of all four volumes slip through my fingers a month ago, I jumped. That experience was a lesson to me. A lesson Aleister Crowley made a point to tell us all,

“Yes, indeed! As you surmise, the injunction to “buy the egg of a perfectly black hen without haggling” is another way of putting the Parable of the Pearl of Great Price; a much better way. For the Pearl-buyer did think of equating the values, which is precisely what one must not do. That Egg is incommensurable with money.”

Someone much more intelligent than I once said that if you’re struggling to find books, its because you’re not doing the work, you’re not doing the magick to get them. If you can’t magick up the information you need, it’s your fault. He remains right.

There’s a genuine power to being in the right place, saying the right things, thinking the right thoughts, and you can beat your head on a wall for a while, but once you get the mojo working, you can fail upward into it like no body’s business. That said, I stumbled on the last two pages, and I give the document, which to the best of my knowledge is complete, for those who wish to see it, and I’ll even give my brief notes as I don’t think their inclusion is a dramatic difference to the narrative.

s

s

Title page and Publication Class:

The title page is the Standard A.’.A.’. fair, and the Publication page gives the usual Gunther lineage positions, no surprises. This is a Class D document, so I will quote the appropriate jargon;

“Class “D” consists of the Official Rituals and Instructions.”

Note that the first document we see from these people is something that, in all seriousness, you should expect from any currently running magical order, some practices. And while some Thelemites might take offense to a practice as central as Resh being built on/’improved”, I will tell you that Liber Resh vel Helios sub figurâ CC is, like this one, a class D document.

Page 1: Compare this page to the regular Resh instructions and it’s pretty obvious. The attribution of Mau and Ahathoor to the Noon sun and the Sunset are actually inventions of Crowley, seen in his Liber HHH and notes for Magick in Theory and Practice. So, these are not a Gunther invention, just something they’re using. Strike one for originality.

Page 2: Again, comparing to Resh, we go through whole usual adoration up to “of Khepra and of Ahathoor” Also note the change of “fill me” to “kill me”, which is another weird little Thelema thing that the old heads know and the non-Thelema people don’t need to know. There is also the use of a sign that is not a “orthodox” A.’.A.’. sign, called SA (Man). These may be from Gunther’s books. We also have the adorant turn and acknowledge the quarters, something we already do in so much Western occultism, guess they couldn’t resist throwing this one in here. There’s a note about the “Spiritual East”. So, there is a mild innovation.

Page 3: Finally, actually new material. Here we get another sign, DUA (Adoration), and we get a nice little chant and a translation. This is essentially the rest of the ritual, we turn 90 degrees, we say an invocation to “the averse”. We do this again, with a new sign HAI (Rejoicing), get a different chant, and keep going.

Page 4: And here we go again, turn 90 degrees, make another new sign, A’ASH(Summons) this time, and we do another chant, rinse and repeat with HENU(praise). I bet those of you who have done the LBRP know what’s coming next!

Page 5: Yep, we return to where we started, do another sign NETER(god) and we finish up, this time with something from the Stele of Revealing. We are then told to compose ourselves to holy meditation.

So, for the record, here’s what we got.

– Took normal Resh and changed three of the God adored and some of their verse.
– Added a “Spiritual east” direction to face, then add some acknowledgement of the quarters with the usual adoration.
– Add YET ANOTHER cycle of acknowledging the quarters and closing.

(EDIT: AH! SLEEP DEPRIVATION HAS GOTTEN ME! I REMEMBER ALL THESE NOW! Each Adoration is taken from Liber 418, the 2nd Aether, and used again in Liber Stella Rubeae. So strike two for originality!)

Look, I don’t want to complain too much, but this sounds like someone’s not even trying.


Page 6: Here we have a break down of all the signs used and some of their significance. Pretty straight forward.

Page 7-8: A further commentary of the ritual that is fine for you to read on your own, it doesn’t do much beyond give you some insight into the interpretation of this rite.

Page 9: We have a quote from Liber AL and a date, signed V, Gunther’s magic motto. Supposedly Martin Starr, Frather S.U.A. is the one who actually wrote this, but there’s nothing in the document to suggest that, just the word of others, so take that info at your own peril.

I remember when I was trying to learn about Thelema many years ago, I found a person calling themselves Alesterion777. They are a completely forgettable class of occult online weirdo, but I found a copy of their rendition of “The Supreme Ritual”. The regular ritual is an invocation to Horus. In their attempt to make it “better” or something, they rewrote it to be about The Beast and Baphomet and so on. It was the ritual equivalent to a palette swap for your Smash Bros character, or for our older readers, how Luigi is just Mario but green on the Super Nintendo. This ritual, while not a direct one to one, just strikes me as someone taking a perfectly acceptable ritual and adding little embellishments for no other reason than they could.

Now, here’s the thing; That’s fine. I’m glad all the A.’.A.’. groups got their own rituals and I hope every single one of them ends up on the internet for us to look at, both in the hopes that some of them will be fantastic and the knowledge that the ones that aren’t can at least be mocked and used as something to point to when asking the dreaded question, “Do the A.’.A.’. have any secrets worth learning?”.

If this is as it seems to be, an official practice given to Gunther’s A.’.A.’., it isn’t the horrific indictment finding one of his supposed Holy Books would be, but it is an indication that there’s not much as far as innovation and magickal tech that you can get out of them. If you want experimental and strange Thelema, there’s no shortage of people; Grant, Nema, Bertiaux will all give you something far more trippy and strange, Russell, Achad and Parsons will give you a contemporary alternative to Crowley, while even looking at the works of people like Jake Stratton-Kent and Peter Grey will give you a newer perspective on Thelema than anything found in this ritual or Gunther’s books. It’s not a good look to have anyone showing off your secrets, but when the secrets don’t even seem interesting, it’s got to be more damning. For all the secrecy and hush hush, this ritual seems like something that any Thelema interested party could have dreamed up if you told them “Make me a secret ritual”.

We at CMN have long told you; There is no secret handshake club. And if my experience today is going to be a lesson of any kind, it’s that even the secrets of these orders are kept so loosely that any unsuspecting Parsifal simply has to ask the question and the secret mantra and rituals can just fall into your lap even after it appeared the door was shut. If you do the work, maybe, just maybe, even the secrets that AREN’T worth knowing might show up in your view.

Of course, I’m left with more questions; If I was so easily able to get my dirty newsman hands on the missing two pages, why didn’t Marco? Is it possible that someone WANTED me to jump on this story? Type up a big thing about the Secrets of the Gunther line? Further more, just looking at this thing makes me wonder for it’s authenticity. It looks like something that was stapled together and photo copied, but hey, you never know what lengths people will go to for a FRAUD. Could this all be a clever trick to show how hoppin’ mad people will go to for “secrets” from these orders? The Guntherites would be perfect to do this with, everyone already thinks/knows they have their own special documents, and they can’t do anything about it but deny it or like, MAYBE pull a copyright claim. Is it a vast practical joke on me? Am I just lucky and in the presence of enemies that shoot themselves in the foot as I go prancing by with the most obvious of questions? Maybe people just like me?

Maybe. You never know. But, from the time I learned about this supposed document a few days ago to now, I was given ALMOST the whole thing, and when I asked for the rest, it showed up in my browser like a dog waiting for it’s owner. I like to think it’s because I’m doing something right, even if it’s just annoying the right people.

The worst case scenario, this will be the goofiest fuckin’ story I can tell about the Thelemites all year. I advise everyone, as it’s now Noon Resh, to come join me in adoring the Sun in whatever way they feel is right, even if it’s this goofy text.

Addendum: Apparently there is one more page with a copyright and the three pages that were withheld were to avoid a copyright claim. Which is why I will be selling the newest Percy Jackson novel with 10 pages missing for 50 cent a pop after this.

If anyone from the Ordo Templi Orientis would like to request we remove this allegedly copyrighted material, you can reach us at cmagicknews@gmail.com