Just Crazy I Guess
By
Lon Milo DuQuette
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
While it’s true that all crazy people don’t change the world, it’s equally true that most people that change the world are crazy.
I received my O.T.O. Minerval initiation on November 15, 1975 E.V. a little more than a month after the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Aleister Crowley. I was 28 years old. It was an unforgettable and awesome experience. My initiator was Grady L. McMurtry (Hymenaeus Alpha, 777) who was assisted by his (then) wife Phyllis Seckler McMurtry. We three were the only visible attendees.
The ceremony took place in the Spartan but artfully decorated garage of their home in Dublin California. It was a profoundly moving experience and the feast that followed (which I would later realize was still part of the initiation) was an intimate orgy of ambrosial magick. We talked late into the evening. I had a million questions, beginning with…
“How big is the O.T.O.? How many members? Are all initiations this intimate?”
I was shocked to learn that since Crowley’s death in 1947 the Order had ceased to initiate new members, and death had claimed all but a handful of the old members from the Crowley days. I was only the fourth new candidate admitted since initiations resumed a couple of years earlier (and two of them it seemed had already fallen away).
It seems odd today when I look back on it. Why were my initiators at the time so optimistic about the future of a nearly extinct order whose crazy prophet died broke and alone 28 earlier, and whose writings were almost impossible to find….an organization whose active membership you could count on your fingers?
“They’re crazy,” I thought. “Absolutely crazy. I love them!”
Well…Grady and Phyllis did indeed change the world and so have all the other crazy people who through their efforts in the last 42 years have resurrected Crowley from near oblivion and for the first time made nearly all his priceless writings available -- crazy people who have put Crowley and his teachings into the texts and curriculums of colleges and universities; crazy people who have helped to make the O.T.O. the world-wide Thelemic initiatory order of Crowley’s dreams.
However, something much bigger than the efforts wonderful crazy people is happening at this point in human history to change the world. Something much bigger than the O.T.O.. Something much bigger than Aleister Crowley. Something that happened one hundred and twelve years ago.
On March 20, 1904 E.V. the Age changed; and a 28 year old prophet stepped forward to give voice to the titanic spiritual forces that dictate the formula of existence in a New Aeon, an Aeon characterized not a Mother Goddess or Father God, but by that of their Child.
One hundred twelve years is a very short time in the life of an Aeon, but look what has happened since March 20, 1904. The world has changed more in the last hundred years than in the previous 10,000 years. Technology, communication, information are exponentially escalating by the minute. Human consciousness, like the absorbent brain of a baby, is itself is undergoing radical and continual change; and, like a newborn child, we are as yet unequipped to express our new genius in the outer world.
Yes, we are innocent and curious, but just like children, we are also immature, self-centered, impatient and cruel. Can anyone deny that humanity is currently acting like a child?
The golden promise of this Aeon lies in the formula embodied in the Child itself; the formula of continual growth. Humanity will outgrow diapers and training potties. We will outgrow our irrational fears and hatred, our insecurities and jealousies. We will eventually grow up and fulfill our potential as a race of adults. (It seems to me this is a brighter prospect than what was promised at the beginning of the last Aeon…
“You won’t really have fun until you’re dead, and the more miserable you are until you die…the better!”)
We are all of us very fortunate to be alive at the very beginning of the Aeon of Horus. It’s very exciting and violent (and we know how much children enjoy excitement and violence), but we’re also present at a moment that blesses the very beginning of every Aeon. It’s the moment when a few souls, in touch with themselves and the times, can actually see in the outer world the secret changes taking place in the inner world; the fleeting moment when we walk with the Gods of our Aeon a heartbeat before the forces of corruption begin their inevitable task of twisting the inward formula of the Aeon 180 degrees to eventually manifest as a stupid religion for the masses that is the exact opposite of what it was all about at the beginning.
Armed as we are with this frightful foreknowledge, it would probably be fair to ask why I am so optimistic about the future of humanity.
I’m just crazy I guess.
Love is the law, love under will.
