Dr Angela Puca AP: Hello everyone. I’m Dr Angela Puca and welcome to my Symposium. I’m a PhD and religious study scholar and this is your online resource for the academic study of Magick, Paganism, Esotericism, Shamanism, Thelema and all things occult. Today we have a special guest, Marco Visconti. And before we start I’d like to remind you that this project of delivering free academic knowledge to the public and freely on social media and YouTube can only exist thanks to your support. So if you have the means and can help at all I would really appreciate it if you’d consider supporting my work with a one-off PayPal donation, by joining Memberships or my Inner Symposium on Patreon. You will find all the links in the info box and in a pinned comment and you can also Super-Thank me now in case you want to support my work. So thank you for being here and I hope you enjoy this interview.
Welcome, everybody to these episodes, another episode of Academic Plus Practitioner in Conversation and today we have a special guest Marco Visconti, a fellow Italian, who I knew from before I was an academic and yes, I’m really pleased to have you here Marco. Thank you for accepting my invitation to be on Angela’s Symposium, first of all.
Marco Visconti MV: Yeah, thank you so much for inviting me, Angela. Good to see you again after so many years. I think like last time we met it was back in Italy. One of the many Pagan Pride days or esoterica conferences back when yeah, like this was the very beginning of, maybe like, this new magical revival that we’ve been experiencing in the last few years. So I mean, first of all, let me congratulate you on your first channel, it’s fantastic.
AP: Thank you very much.
MV: I think you’re doing a fantastic job at, you know, bridging that divide between you know really practitioners and those, you know, those academics that study the history of Occultism and Esotericism it’s really needed, so thank you.
AP: that’s really nice of you. So would you like to share something about your background in Esotericism?
MV: Yes, of course, so I define myself as a Thelemic Magician and so let’s unpack a little bit of what it means. Thelemic of course comes from Thelema which is this Greek word that means will and it is, in fact, the word that denotes a religious, magical-religious movement that was started by the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley in 1904. It is very contentious if we want to call it a religion or not, some people would say it’s a religion, but it definitely has a lot of religious elements. It has religious rituals but at the same time Crowley himself never really wanted to go all the way in that direction, even if he fancied himself as, you know, the prophet of the New Eon and even if did channel a new Bible, if you want to say, like a religious text the volume of the Sacred law called “Liber Al Vel Legis” or “The Book of the Law.” And then again, in later years, in his writings, especially in the book called “Magick without Tears” he would say well, maybe we shouldn’t call it a religion and this is more for the uninitiated. And so what is Thelema? It is a very multifaceted system of beliefs and of practices that are focused on fundamentally two steps in personal initiation. The first one is to achieve the knowledge and conversation with Holy Guardian Angel which is a theme that you find across the Western esoteric tradition. This idea of, you know, getting in touch with your augoeides if you want to use like a term coming from the Greek again or Your Divine Self. Some people describe it as the higher self, you know, hearkening back a little bit to psychology, I don’t know if that’s correct, but let’s say this divine spark that’s hidden inside of us and once you have unlocked this union then you’re able to pretty much move on with your Magick and more towards a more mystical set of practices that are very reminiscent of non-dualism and the kind of non-dualism that you find in Tibetan Buddhism, for instance, Dzogchen practices or even Tantra. And so it’s very full of different practices that you can approach and a lot of it, a lot of those practices are magickal in nature and by magickal, I mean with the K.
So Crowley was the one who added the K to the term Magick, he said, in order to differentiate it from stage magicians. And so the idea that in fact, Magick with the K is the proper tool of Thelema as, maybe you could say, that you know, deep meditation is the proper tool for Buddhism. I’m generalizing here, apologies, but just to give an idea then Magick with the K it’s the proper tool to fully unpack the Mysteries that are hidden in Thelema itself. And of course, being Crowley there is a lot of sexual Magick and sexual practices embedded…
AP: With Crowley being Crowley and all.
MV: Exactly. I would say that you know it’s definitely interesting to understand that, you know, exactly Crowley being someone who, I mean if nobody here knows, I mean he came from a very strict Christian family. He was born into a Plymouth Brethren family and especially an even stricter sect of a sect called The Exclusive Brethren. So the kind of Christians that really believed that they needed to know was in the Bible. They couldn’t read anything else and they were just waiting for the Rapture, pretty much, right. So there was a lot of sexual frustration, you know, that built up into that system. And so of course Crowley tried to fight against it. I mean we could speak about Crowley forever. He was a very, very complex character multi-faceted character. He wasn’t an iconoclast just for the sake of being that he really tried to make sense of the kind of life he was born into and make it better and try to reach for his higher self and he thought that a way to reach the higher self was through sexual practices. Do we do sexual practices in Thelema nowadays? Well, yes but unfortunately, or fortunately, not in the way that most people think we do. A lot of the sexual practices in Thelema are sublimated, are, you know, you approach them by allegory, by all sorts of symbols and there are some direct practices that involve proper sex of various kinds, right? But that’s not something you start out with, right? And I’m saying this because over the last 30, almost 30 years I’ve been a Thelemite which tells you how old I am. The discourse around Thelema has changed substantially. When I first started in the 90s it was really all about, let’s see, how dark we can get because Crowley, of course, also has this, I would say, ill-deserved fame of being an evil Satanist. He wasn’t, by any initiatable form. Thelema has a Luciferian aspect to it, which is echoed in its iconoclasm or even in the idea that you know, we don’t need a saviour anymore, right? We don’t need somebody like Jesus Christ to come and save us from our sins. In Thelema, there is no sin, there and there’s no vicarious atonement like nobody is going to come and save us. We are the ones who, through these magical practices, can unlock the union with the Holy Guardian Angel and through that union make sense of our experience in this world and maybe, you know, opening up the gates for other worlds to explore. So it wasn’t maybe, you know like that was like the Satanism of Crowley because in many ways you know it’s it echoes the Luciferian Principle of non-servium, like not being the subject of a higher power. I think I’m rambling. One place is all right, no?
AP: I think it’s actually very interesting. And how did you get into Thelema and the OTO?
MV: Oh, wow that’s a story. Okay.
AP: In the 90s apparently. You just mentioned that. I didn’t know.
MV: We’re going back to the very beginning of the 90s, pretty much around this time in 1990. So some 32 years ago. I was very young I was 12 at the time and I was already interested in mythology and I was already interested in, you know, a few years later I would discover Goth music and Metal music. So I was already going in that direction, right? But that summer I discovered Aleister Crowley in a comic book. In Italy, I don’t know if you ever chanced upon it but there is a series of comic books called Martin Mystere which is a sort of like Indiana Jones kind of character, right? He’s an Anthropologist but he also has a TV show, possibly. Maybe if they were writing in this day he would have a YouTube channel, right? But it’s also like this kind of Indiana Jones character and actually is written by this guy called Alfredo Castelli who is also connected to a guy called Sebastiano Fusco in Italy, which is a very well-known esotericist, somebody who’s been writing about the esoteric forever. So you can imagine there’s a lot of real Esoterica in his comic books and I was like reading this comic book and there you go you have this Aleister Crowley character and I was like, wow! That’s a fascinating character and I started investing. I was a bit of a bookworm back when I was young, very young. And I started investigating and there you go, in Italy, we had very few esoteric books available but we had Crowley. We had “Magick in Theory and Practice,” which is Crowley’s magnum opus. And it was actually the only Crowley book that was translated into Italian and at the time I already could speak English. But you know it was before Amazon, before everything, you couldn’t really get a hold of any, you know, foreign books. So I just bought “Magick in Theory and Practice” which in Italian is just called “Magick” and I didn’t understand a single thing. It was sad. It was because…
AP: It’s really complicated.
MV: It is a very complicated text. It’s interesting because as you read it, right? So Crowley writes it at the end of the 1920s. It is published for the first time by Electron Press in 1929 and, at that point, he is very advanced in his magical practice but he is trying to, with “Magick in Theory and Practice” is writing a book for everyone. In the introduction, it says, you know, the Magick will be…
AP: Magic is for all.
MV … for all and Magick will be, you know, the banner award whereby the pugilist and the banker and the common person will be able to rally behind. That didn’t work out very well because the book then from there goes to absolute, you know, complex places and as you can imagine I couldn’t understand any of that. Interestingly enough that Edition was in 1972. An edition by John Simons and Kenneth Grant, edited by them and it was translated by someone, I don’t know who, for Astrolabio. Well, the translator could not understand bits and pieces so he just did not translate it. Like if you get the book you will see that there’s, you know.
AP: Yeah, I have it here. Actually the Italian version, I know exactly what you’re talking about.
MV: Exactly, right. Like you read and then it jumps from one sentence to the other. Say well something must be missing here, right? Yes because the guy couldn’t make sense of what it is. And that just gives you an idea of how Magick is very complex. To be fair, if there are any Italians listening to this right now, there’s been a new edition coming out that has been translated by the members of Order Templi Orientis, the OTO, the organization you just mentioned before and we will discuss it shortly. And it’s fantastic. They did an outstanding job. You know, finally, so as Italians, we can say we finally have a proper translation of “Magick in Theory and Practice.” It took 32 years, I mean took way longer because, you know, go back to 50 years because getting back to 72, right? But yeah we finally have it. So that’s where I start. From that point onward I tried to make sense of that book. One thing that happens is that Astro Avion also translated the first two books by Kenneth Grant. And Kenneth Grant was one of Crowley’s disciples that really took Thelema in very different directions, as you should do, I think. It’s important for a living tradition to evolve and go to different places. So that, you know, different practitioners can experiment with different things. One of the core ideas of Thelema is that of scientific illuminism which means trying to pretty much apply the method of science towards the aim of religion. The aim of religion is trying to understand who we are, where we’re going, you know, the ontological questions of humanity but try to apply the method of science. So I’ll say like, you know, instead of just say Magick works because it works, well layout experiments and see what can be reproduced by me, by others if it’s, you know, if what I can reproduce you can do it as well etc. So I really believe in the idea of, you know, taking traditions to different places. Grant really took them in very different places, you know incorporating the two methods of HP Lovecraft, incorporating a Ufology, incorporating the work of Austin Osman Spare and Magick as art. I mean if anybody is curious about Kenneth Grant, definitely look into it, he’s an interesting character, so yes you know I went from Crowley to Kenneth Grant and then fast forward a few years.
It’s the late 90s now and I just applied to become a member of One of Crowley’s organizations which is the A∴A∴. The A∴A∴, which stands for at least in the outer, stands for Argenteum Astrum or Astron Argon which means silver star and it is the magical order, whereby you go to learn Magick, okay. Crowley founded it at the beginning of the 1900s as a continuation of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Crowley did start in the Hermetical Order of the Golden Dawn and at some point, you know, through all the schisms and you know, infighting that these orders always invariably devolve into. He was left to his own devices and for some years he became a Buddhist, for some years he just left Magick behind up until, you know, something called him back which was the reception of “The Book of the Law.” You know, reception of Thelema as a new magical system, possibly as a new religion. And from there, from that point onwards he decided to restructure the order of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn into this new order called the A∴A∴. That’s what I joined around the late 90s, thanks to a very, you know, very strange group of people that were operating in Rome at the time. And then I became aware of another order called the OTO or Order Templi Orientis which means Order of the Temple of the East or Order of the Oriental Templars. And at the time I didn’t join because this is more like the early 2000s, I just, you know, got in touch with some people there. Interestingly enough at the local Goth Club, the Jungle Club which was, as it happens, from time to time, right? But it wasn’t the right match and so I keep being a Thelemite, I keep being a member of the A∴A∴ but I go and do other things, right? I experience, I keep experiencing different magical practices and magical traditions up until again 10 years later. We were now at the beginning of the 2010s.
I finally joined the OTO and I’ve been in the OTO up until recent years. Starting, I was first initiated in Rome and then when I moved here to London I joined AMeTh Lodge here in London. I would become the Treasurer of AMeTh Lodge. So I ended up becoming very intimate with how the system works beyond just initiation. How the, I would say the nitty-gritty of running an order, you know, when you have to chase people after dues and then you have to pay for the temple room, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then eventually, you know, eventually I left the OTO for various reasons and I wrote about it. Maybe, you know, if somebody’s interested in it can I can send them the writings of why I left and now I’m just a solitary Thelemite. Well, you know, I organize my own things. I’m writing a book, I wrote a book afterwards, it’s coming out and so yes, that’s my story pretty much. If you want to know more about the OTO I can tell you more about it because…
AP: Yeah I’d like to know more. Both about the A∴A∴ and the OTO but we can start with the OTO first, in terms of what you can share, you know, about the initiation process, the structure of the order?
MV: Of course. So I would say that OTO is definitely the most famous of Thelemic orders out there. If you Google ‘Crowley Magick’, maybe you will find a lot of OTO references. The reason why is that the OTO was always the order that was in control of the Crowley literary estate. So every time you would, you know, you would buy a book, you know, going back from the 70s onwards, right, you would buy a book you would find, you know if you want to know more contact the OTO here. So, you know, while it was not the first and while in fact the OTO was not founded by Crowley, Crowley narrated it, that’s why it became maybe so popular, at least in the minds of those who see Thelema from the outside. The OTO was founded in fact by a group of German Freemasons and Rosicrucians and it wasn’t until that time that Crowley joined. First, as you know, he first joined in 1907 if I’m not mistaken because as a Freemason himself, it was recognized to a certain degree. This is something that happens a lot in Freemasonry, at least it used to happen a lot in Freemasonry and that is that if you already are initiated, if you already want a curriculum of degrees, as long as you can demonstrate that maybe you know the password or the pass greet and the token etc. you would be recognized as the same degree or an equivalent degree in the new system you’re joining, right. And this is what happened with Crowley. At the time Crowley was a 33rd degree of Scottish Rite Freemasonry and so when he was introduced to Theodore Reuss who was one of the founders of OTO, Theodore Reuss recognized him as a seventh degree at OTO because that was the same level of, you know, correspondence. There’s it’s fascinating like you can lay out all these things on very interesting diagrams and it takes a little while but then you start recognizing some patterns there.
Fast forward a few years, 1912. The legend says that Theodore Reuss barged into Crowley’s rooms in London accusing him of stealing the secrets of the OTO, of the higher degrees, of the highest degree of the OTO which was the ninth degree. Crowley was like, I don’t know what you’re talking about and at that point, Theodore Reuss presented him with a copy of the “Book of Lies” which is one of Crowley’s best mystical texts and allegedly some of the secrets of the OTO are written in plain sight there. Crowley would say that he had no idea and so possibly it was just something that was, you know, some sort of divine revelation that he received and that’s when Reuss decided to appoint him the leader of everything. I’m simplifying the story, especially because we really don’t know if this ever happened like this, right? Crowley was a fantastic writer and a fantastic storyteller. So whenever we look at these histories a lot of it is mirrored in Crowley’s Diaries which are available in various collections around the world. Here in London, they’re available at the Warburg Collection which, despite what some people would tell you, you can access them, quite easily, in fact. It’s called the Yorke Collection at the Warburg Institute. Sorry, that’s the correct name. And so, you know, you will find his tales in his diaries but then again was he spinning his own myth or was he telling the truth? We likely never know. What we know for instance is that the Book of Lies was never published until 1913. So how would Theodore Reuss be able to have a copy one year before, you know, some things don’t really match there?
Anyway, Crowley becomes the leader of the British section of the OTO and thanks to Reuss’ encouragement he becomes to make it Thelemic. What do I mean by this? As I told you, the OTO was founded by Freemasons and Rosicrucians, right? So in many ways at the beginning, it was only a system of synthesis of the Masonic degrees, of the Scottish Rite, of the Memphis Mizraim Rite. So imagine the Scottish Rite as 33 degrees the Memphis Mizraim Rite or Egyptian Rite can go up to 99 degrees, so you can imagine there’s a lot of material there. What this group of Freemasons and Rosicrucians in Germany set out to do was to synthesize everything into nine degrees, which was a very lofty task to undertake and also they were trying to bring in all those teachings of Yoga, Tantra that were starting to seep in from the East at the time, We’re talking about the early 20th century – 1903, 1904 something like that, very early times. Crowley comes in, of course, he was studying this material already and Thelema is really steeped in the mysteries that come from the East, from Tantra and from I would say Buddhism, et cetera, et cetera, right? So by thelemising, I mean like he started to take these Masonic rituals and change them in their, let’s say, in their allegories, in their symbology like leaving behind all the Masonic symbology that’s usually tethered to Christianity. For those of you that know 99% of Freemasonry is pretty much stories from the Bible, okay, mostly Old Testament as well. And Crowley was like well this is good. The system works but how about we make all these stories, we make them Thelemic?
And so, without going too much into what I cannot divulge publicly, let’s say that the OTO is a system of Thelemic mystery in many ways. In that sense that you join an order whereby, slowly but surely as almost like you go by degree on a clock, right? So that’s why they’re called degrees because slowly you’ve shown the entirety of the mysteries by little increments, okay? And each degree builds up on the previous one and so by the time you are, I don’t know, fourth degree, you’re given a series of instructions that make sense, as a whole, but you still know that you don’t have the full picture of it, right. And this is the Masonic way of imparting, I would say unlocking, the mysteries for those who are initiated into their ways. And this is what happens in the OTO as well. Interestingly enough there’s one degree at the very beginning called the Minerval degree, which is a name that actually comes from the Bavarian Illuminati, it has nothing to do with the Bavarian Illuminati degree, it’s very different.
However, in that degree, you’re kind of given most of the secrets already but at the beginning, you don’t know. So when you go back at the end of the system what you’ve done at the very beginning, it’s almost like, as I say, it’s almost like going around the clock, but you know and so you’re back at the beginning but now you have a deeper understanding of what the system is really about. And the OTO system really teaches you the principles of light, life, love and liberty in the sense of Thelema. So you know, liberty, in the liberty of the individual, every man and every woman is a star which is from, you know, one of the three most important aphorisms from “The Book of the Law” and of Thelema. The other two being, do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law and Love is the law, love under will. Which I’m pretty sure everybody heard by now and they’re quite famous. But again Liberty. So the idea is that everybody every man and everyone is a star. We all have the same potential to unlock our stardom, like our divine selves. The fact that you know, the life we have to engage in life there’s no nihilism in Thelema and there’s definitely no nihilism in Thelema as unlocked and presented to you in the OTO teachings. You have to engage with life, you have to really live life to the fullest. Love, love is complex because the love of Thelema is agape as opposed to eros as opposed to philos which are, you know…
AP: These kinds of love are in ancient Greek.
MV: Exactly they are different, exactly the ancient Greek. I think it’s seven, seven ways of saying love and it’s very interesting because of course philos is the love that you’re gonna have for a friend, for a brother, eros is the love you again, for your beloved, for the person you are in, you know, you’re engaged in, also everybody you fancy, if we want to use like an English term.
AP: It’s more of a sexual interest.
MV: There’s a sexual interest exactly. And agape, it’s something that, it’s more like the love for the creation itself, the love and all its parts, right? So it’s a more all-pervading love for everything, like life. And then there’s light. Light is intended, I mean it has the source of that stardom, so that intimate, divine spark that is found everywhere and it’s almost like there’s this light is, as light, you know, expands immediately everywhere, this divine spark is the centre of a circumference that extends infinitely and so that centre is everywhere. And this inter-point between this point and circumference, it is the interplay between Hadit, the point and Nuit, the circumference which is but Nuit, I have it.
AP: Yeah, I was looking at her.
MV: And so and again you have these ideas that are presented to you again and again and again in different ways. They can take the form of Egyptian Gods and there will be a lot of people that are very, they’re very like peculiar about saying well, you know, Thelema is, in fact, the Egyptian Mysteries that are presented to us. Once again they’re like a revival of the Egyptian Mysteries and there are people like me that say well, maybe or maybe simply, you know, these principles are universal and the fact that Crowley, you know, was so steeped in the Egyptomania of the Victorian time and Edwardian time. That’s how, you know, this principle imprinted into him, you know, through these masks, the reality there is that I’m very agnostic in the sense that I don’t know if there is a resurgence of ancient Egyptian Heka which was the name for Magick, right this time, in Thelema or not. Definitely, the rituals of Thelema aren’t, as much as I know, right, I might be wrong but as much as I know, the rituals of Thelema have nothing to do with Egyptian Heka. So while at the same time this idea of this all-pervading force, this all-pervading light, that is divided into these two points. Almost as, for us, to entertain the idea of duality before transcending duality itself, that makes more sense to me and in fact, it’s closer to what you find in Tantra and which in, you know, I think that’s more, if we were to find like a historical beginning for Thelema, before Crowley, we’re going back to a long strand of tradition passed from person to person to person. Yeah, you know the ideas scattered around the world by cross-pollination, cross-fertilization etc. etc. I would say that possibly, we should look more towards India and those traditions as the source of Thelema. But again we really don’t know what we know and what I can tell you, as a practitioner, is that it works and what do I mean by ‘it works,’ those rituals have power behind them. Like if you engage with them, if you try to understand them, properly and if you don’t expect, I don’t know, to throw a fireball from your hands which is something that you can take the time for.
AP: You hear people on the internet sometimes.
MV: Exactly if you don’t expect that Magick will create the impossible, these rituals work because Thelema gives you – first of all frees you from almost 2000 years of Christian indoctrination that the body is evil, that life has to be, you should forsake life and you should just wait for, you know, someone else to come and save the day and guide you to the realm of Heaven. Thelema tells you this life is what we have. There might be something else but we don’t know, so we have to live this life to the fullest without it becoming hedonistic for the sake of it. But without even forcing out any sort of pleasure that we might encounter, right? And the idea that that’s so crucial of Thelema that every man and every woman is a star implies that we should not trample our fellow man and by man of course I mean you may have a fellow human, member of the human race, right? And we should remember that divinity is in everyone, right?
Unfortunately, I can tell you that this has not always been understood this way in Thelema. And I think that going back, you know, going back full circle back to the OTO maybe it’s also a little bit the fault of the OTO. It’s been 40 years from now, more or less, from 85 when the OTO was finally able to solidify itself into one main organization. As you can imagine when we think about magical orders and esoteric organizations there’s always splinters, there’s always schisms but around 85, you know, there was a landmark copyright case that was won by a group of people in the United States and they start to reorganise the OTO as one OTO. Unfortunately they kinda, I would say, haven’t done a great job in the last 40 years. And they haven’t been able to become that guiding light that maybe Thelema needs in order to make sure that the true message is understood by everybody who approaches Thelema. In the third chapter of “The Book of the Law” which is our central text, you can read a lot of things that may seem might be read in two different ways.
Because the third chapter of “The Book of the Law” is the one whereby Ra Hoor Khuit or Horus the Warrior speaks in very fiery and very warlike terms. But it’s beyond doubt for me that those have to be understood as a way for us to master ourselves, right? There are some excerpts in the “Book of the Law” that says, you know, trample the weak and the wretched. And a lot of people, especially in recent years, with all the resurgence of the alt-right, etc, they read that in a way of like, you know, well Thelema can be a way to be a white supremacist, can be a way to be a person that just lived by the idea of that might is right, right. And that couldn’t be further from the truth and at the same time, I feel that the OTO kind of dropped the ball on being very clear about these things. So yeah, I don’t know if this answers your question, right?
AP: Yeah, I was also wondering how many degrees are in the OTO and you said that you know, the further you advance the more you have the full picture of the Mysteries but is there any other way you could define the progression through the degrees and was the ultimate goal that you achieve at, you know, at the final degrees.
MV: So in the structure of the OTO there are nine degrees that ideally you could complete. There’s then a 10th degree which is considered to be an administrative degree only. So only people that have to do specific jobs get to the 10th degree. And then there’s an 11th degree which is meant to be, it’s said, to be outside the scope of the order itself. What are you going to do if you go from degree 0 to degree 9? You’re given the full understanding of how to properly live a Thelemic initiatory experience, okay? You start in the Minerval degree. Let’s see what can it say, with the stating that you are travelling towards the city of the sun, you’re travelling towards, pretty much towards, you know, the union with the divine, right? That’s what you’re trying to do, you are a seeker of wisdom and you’re travelling towards, that place because it is the place whereby you will achieve wisdom, okay? And this is what the OTO wants to do. Across the various degrees of the OTO, the history changes because the allegories that are represented to you are always meant to show the idea of… there’s a strong antinomian vibe throughout all the degrees.
And so, let’s say, in order to travel through the city of wisdom, you want to join a group of people called the Templars because you think that the Templars are the ones having wisdom. But the first thing that happen is in fact you are forced to become allied with the enemy of the Templars. I’m not going into too much detail but just so this idea of always changing the expectation, reversing what you expect and by reversing what you expect you’re taught wisdom by always being reminded that you should contemplate two different points of view in order to annihilate them. Because neither one is the truth, neither one holds that wisdom that you’re seeking. But in fact, the annihilation of those two, let’s say that illusory duality actually, is the key to wisdom. Another thing that the OTO promises you is that in the higher degrees, from the seventh to the eighth and then the ninth you are taught the secrets of sexual Magick and sexual Alchemy. That means all the juiciest bits that people read about on how to use sex as a way of creating magical talismans, as a way of creating the kind of elixir of long life that you read about in alchemical texts, as a way of creating the Philosopher’s Stone. I cannot go into more detail, as you can imagine, but this is the promise, right? So why would you join the OTO? Well, these are all the reasons why you join the OTO. Now can you do this nowadays? Unfortunately, in my experience, you can’t, for a series of reasons. The idea that, as I said, you can join today the one I eventually joined, the one that was reconstructed in 1985, it’s a reconstruction because the OTO kind of disappeared with the death of Crowley. Only one person was declared as direct, you know, the heir, the person who would take over from him, it was his disciple called Germer, Frater Saturnus. Karl Germer didn’t do anything to further the OTO, in fact, he let it die and after he died a lot of the Magick of OTO died with him. Also, when he died and this is a classic history of what happens within magical orders after he died his house was raided by a group of people that pretty much stole Crowley’s writings, Crowley’s Diaries and papers were all stored at Karl Germer’s house and these people went on to become a rather notorious in occulture history as the Solar Lodge.
The Solar Lodge had some kind of ties with Charles Manson and the Family. It was never known if these ties were true or not. At least not to my knowledge. I’m pretty sure somebody in the comments would say actually, you know, but let me know because I’m curious about that. But what I know because I spoke with one of the people that are still alive from Solar Lodge, this guy called Frater Shiva. He’s an old man now, still alive you can find him on LAShTAL.com which is possibly the last Forum, you know, the textual Forum that still exists on the internet and this guy wrote a book called a Solar Lodge outside the Law in something like that Solar Lodge Outside the Law (Inside Solar Lodge Outside the Law) any way you can find the book as well. And he gives very much detail about what happened and the fact that, yes they did steal a lot of secret instructions and when they realised that they would, pretty much, have legal problems because of their connections with the failed Summer of Love 69 and all the proto-Satanic Panic of the 70s. They had problems with the FBI, just to let you know, they just burned it all. So whenever you joined the OTO today there are huge things missing. I always remembered that, for instance, when I was initiated into the Perfect Initiate Degree. So it’s like four plus one, you literally receive a little piece of paper that says, you know, according to this degree you should be given all the secrets of these degrees of Freemasonry. We don’t have them. If you do have them please share them with us.
So just to give you an idea that is the reality of OTO and I left right around that time. And after I left the OTO several top-tier people left as well. And one of these people, this person, you know, shared with me all the other degrees, right? By the way, you can find them all online, it’s very easy. But I would argue that finding and reading the degrees won’t do you any good but you really need to understand it. Imagine it’s all written in code, right? Not so much as cryptography, like it’s plain English but when you speak of the Gluten of the Eagle and the Red Lion that means something very specific, which are specific sexual fluids. So if you’re not aware of, you know, that kind of code that’s used in a word, well maybe you won’t make much sense of what’s presented to you. Anyway, you know, I was given the other degrees, I was presented the other degrees and I can tell you there are bits that are missing. Possibly because Crowley never wrote them or possibly because it was just an oral tradition that has been lost in time and possibly because, maybe, it was written in these documents that were in possession of the Solar Lodge that got all burned. So would I still join the OTO? Possibly yes because I mean especially if you never joined a magical order, you can, you know, scratch that itch and you know, see certain things that you wouldn’t see anywhere else. But you know, with the knowledge I have today it’s also true that you know, what it says on the tin, I think it’s undeliverable because they cannot teach you all the secrets of how to create the philosopher stone and to create the elixir of long life, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
I also have to say that the experience is very different from Lodge to Lodge. This is the same thing in Freemasonry, people that are not Freemasons and people that are not members of the OTO tend to think of these two organizations as monolithic structures, right. There’s THE Freemasonry, there’s THE OTO. Yes and no, it depends on the Lodge that you chose, sorry it depends on the Lodge you join. If you are here in London we had good people, right. I’ve heard that in other places around the world that things were not that good and not I’m not even going into the discussion of whatever, almost invariably happens in hierarchical structures, where there’s always nepotism, there’s always some sort of abuse going on. Which is why I don’t believe in a hierarchical structure anymore, really. But you know the kind of instruction would vary massively from London to Liverpool and yes, I am mentioning something that I know directly. So you know, that’s the problem, right. So it really is, are you winning the lottery to join the right Lodge or not, that’s a problem there as well.
AP: And what about the A∴A∴ and its structure and aim what they are and how it differs from the OTO?
MC: So the difference is stark in the sense that while the OTO is set up to be like a Thelemic Freemasonry, right? So it’s set up around the Lodge or the Oasis or the Camp. So it’s set up to be social, right and it’s set up for people to go, receive the initiation rituals passively and try to make sense of them in time, right? Like, again in a degree structure. The A∴A∴ it’s a magical school. The A∴A∴ is something whereby, first of all, there’s no Lodge structure whatsoever, at least in Crowley’s original idea. You were only supposed to know your direct superior which means like your teacher and in time you would only get to know those who were assigned to you as your students. I can tell you this is yet another myth because in this day and age, it’s impossible to keep this kind of connection secret. Everybody speaks about it on the internet, there are A∴A∴ groups, there are A∴A∴Facebook groups, forums, whatever and it’s been like this for the last 20 years, really. The difference is also that there are no, with two exceptions, there are no group rituals, okay. The two exceptions are the first two grades of the A∴A∴ and their name grades, and not degrees because each one is a self-contained experience and it is something that, in fact, once you go through it you are graded with it like you have to go through it and you have to show that you fully understood the lessons there. So, for instance, while the OTO is, as I said, very passive, in the A∴A∴ and you can’t really fail the degrees of the OTO. I mean from time to time you just have to wait a set amount of time, maybe you have to read something, but that’s about it. Well in the A∴A∴ you can fail it, like there are grades of the A∴A∴where, for instance, you’re supposed to show your skills in Pranayama or in Asana. So you have to stand still with a jug of water on your head for one hour and if you’re not able to do that you won’t be graded, you won’t pass that grade. You can do it again, of course, but that’s it like you have to show your skills. Also, the A∴A∴ is incredibly academic, in a way. Like the syllabus of the A∴A∴, I would say it’s very antiquated right now but it’s something in excess of 200, 300 texts that you need to show proficiency with them, right and it goes from things like Crowley’s texts to the spiritual lesson of Michael Molinos to, Patanjali, I mean he goes to Hargrave Jennings, everywhere. It’s very, very, it really is like even before you join the A∴A∴ you should show a mastery of the theme of religions really. Because that’s what you are trying to do. You’re trying to learn Magick in the sense that Magick is the core, the secret core of religion itself, right, the kernel of a religion if you want. So the grades of the A∴A∴ also are different from the degrees of the OTO. They are eleven because they are each tied to each of the Sephirot of the Tree of Life. Similarly to the grades of the Golden Dawn, you know, the structure of the grades, it’s very similar. The scale is different and by that, I mean that if you were to do the first six degrees of the Golden Dawn you would only be a second grade of the A∴A∴. I mean, I don’t want to go too much in, you know, it’s going to be boring but let’s say the scale is different, right. And this is the implied idea that Thelema, the teachings of Thelema do bring you past the limits of the teachings of the Golden Dawn. The teachings of the Golden Dawn really brought you to the Sun to the Sphere of Tiphareth, right? And I think I can speak freely of Sephirot, I mean everybody here, you told them about the Sephirot already.
AP: I will link one of my videos.
MV Exactly, good idea. So but yes, like you know the Golden Dawn brings you from Malkuth to Tiphareth and of course, you know after the Golden Dawn died and its Splinter groups other people like Felkin and others, they did bring in the degrees, they go up to Binah, even beyond. When by the A∴A∴, from the very beginning, almost implies that you are already at Yesod and then you’re going to work very fast towards the point of knowledge and conversation with your Guardian Angel which happens in Tiphareth and then your goal is to enter Binah, you know, across the abyss, realizing the non-dual nature of the universe and understanding the mystery of Babalon. Big name, by the way, we say Babalon for the first time in one hour in.
AP: Yes.
MV: And so like the mystery of Babalon and you know, that’s kind of the end of it. When you become a Magister Templi, a Master of the Temple. There are two more degrees, you know, the grade of Magus and the grade of Ipsissimus. It’s very contentious if those grades are even accessible and I’m a Thelemic heretic for things. So but I’m not even sure that those grades are earthly grades, like the kind of enlightenment and the idea that you have integrated non-duality. I mean how can you integrate non-duality if you’re still in a body that has an internal monologue, right. Anyway going like I said, I’m rambling once again. These are the two main differences between the A∴A∴ and the OTO. The OTO is a Thelemic Masonic system that will let the initiate understand the Mysteries by grades and by, you know, by allegories and by symbols. Whereby the A∴A∴ is a system that gives you the keys to the Lamborghini, okay. Go, you do Magick and see and show us what you can do. I mean there are some tests to do whereby you say, hey join us in the Astral Temple and tell us what you see. If you are able to do it you pass the test. If you’re not able to do it you will have to go back and study harder and do the practices harder, I would say. So these are real, these are the stark differences between the two.
AP: Yeah that’s very interesting and you also mentioned, I think, that the OTO is less magical, in a way, more ritualistic
AP: Yeah that’s very interesting and you also mentioned, I think, that the OTO is less magical, in a way, more ritualistic
AP: That’s typical of esoteric practitioners, Pagans and…
MV: Exactly. I would say that there’s a lot of Magick in the OTO. Like the rituals of initiation are magical and there’s one central rite which is called Libre 15 – the Gnostic Mass commonly known as the Gnostic Mass which is incredibly magical, it’s a Eucharistic ritual and it’s a ritual that really encapsulates, pretty much, the entire Mysteries of the OTO from of all the degrees of the OTO. Heavily, heavily hidden in allegories for the common people to have a glimpse of them, okay. But they’re very magical in the sense that if you officiate as a priest or a priestess or a deacon in the Gnostic Mass, I think there’s a lot of Magick going on there. There are visualizations, there are mantras, there’s specific – each, you know, each step you take has a specific kabbalistic reference and if when you know this, you create almost, you created like a mandala, right? Like something that really acts magically. The point is that in the OTO you’re never expected to do Magick. In the Lodges that I belonged to, especially here in London in AMeTh Lodge, yes we had magical classes on how to build or access an Astral Temple. We had some major classes when I created a Talisman we had some magical classes on how to create and consecrate our magical tools but for instance, all these things I told you, those are the things that are found in book two of “Magick in Theory and Practice” by Crowley, you never find them in the OTO. The OTO really expects you to, you know, enter a room and be receptive to all the things you will see and hear and the things that will be done to you and these are the same things that happen from Mizraim. You enter a room and you’re bombarded with allegories with symbols with sounds and it will take, maybe several years, to try to really understand where are all the messages. Because there are some messages that are clear and some messages that are hidden.
The A∴A∴ really is about doing Magick in the sense that you have a goal and the goal is to cross the abyss or rather the first goal is to achieve knowledge and conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel, so achieve, unlock that Divine spark in you.
It’s almost like that becoming that conduit for the fire from heaven until you use a beautiful allegory. And then use that conduit to go even further down the road and even leave behind that connection with the Holy Guardian Angel and enter the womb or bubble of Babalon herself or itself. So that’s the stark difference. So that’s why, you know, I would say the OTO can be magical. It depends on which Lodge you join. You can do Magick as an extra curriculum but there’s no strict Magick in the OTO itself. There’s the promise of sex Magick when you reach the higher degrees but very few people reach the higher degrees because of nepotism, because of the nature of hierarchical orders and the fact that very few people make it to the top, not because it’s difficult but because I think humanity tends to not want to share the fun with everybody else. In the A∴A∴, you do Magick from the beginning and you do Magick till the very end. You consecrate talismans, you consecrate magical weapons, you speak with angels, you speak with demons. We should even understand what they are but they’re not what people think they are. And you also engage with sex Magick as well in the A∴A∴ at various levels. All towards the goal of transcending humanity leaving humanity behind but again, not so much into becoming a living God, kind of. It’s more about literally transcending human nature and becoming one with nothingness which is Nuit. Hope it makes sense.
AP: Yeah, thank you very much. I think it was pretty informative. Another question that I have is, what role does Magick play in the spiritual advancement of a Thelemite, that is in the OTO and in the, well not, you know, either/or, I mean in the OTO and in the A∴A∴? Yeah how does it differ the role that Magick plays in spiritual evolution, spiritual advancement?
MV: You know, first of all, it’s important to say that you can be a member of both, you know, for a while I was a member of both. Most people, well maybe not most people a lot of people are a member of both. Maybe more people would be a member of both if it wasn’t for all, again, all the lineage wars and you should join this group don’t join that group. That comes with hierarchical structures. Magick for Thelema, I personally believed in Magick for a Thelemite is Paramount. And by that I mean there are all the magical practices that start from learning to sit still or even learning to walk while meditating while being aware of your breathing or being aware of whatever happens in your mind’s eye, and trying to control them, try to have, you know, try to still the reactive mind. Going to ceremonial Magick practices that, you know, I guess like we mentioned before. Like the consecration of the tools, learning, for instance, to use the pentagram rituals. Not so much as just banishing, because it’s not just about that but like learning how to, depending on rituals, can help you refine the Hermetic elements and you can bring them into your aura or body of light and these practices will enhance your body of light. I would say that without this there’s no Thelema, again personal opinion. In recent years what I noticed is that since Magick hasn’t been able to become as widespread as Crowley hoped it to be back when he wrote “Magick in Theory and Practice,” “Libre ABA,” there’s been a lot of trying, a lot of attempts to, I don’t want to say, distance, to distance Thelema from Magick but remembering that, you know, you can be a Thelemite or also if you’re not a practitioner, which is absolutely true by the way, like you don’t have to do it. But at the same time to reduce Thelema just to, I don’t know, a quirky philosophy – it’s missing the point completely. Crowley really thought that for the next step of human evolution we had to regain this magical series of practices that, you know, through the Enlightenment and onwards, we lost, right?
I think that’s it. I think that’s absolutely true. The book I wrote, right, the book that’s coming out next year which is called “The Aleister Crowley Manual – Dynamic Magick for Modern Times,” I mean that’s exactly the point I’m making, you know, it’s not an academic book by any stretch, absolutely not. It’s a book for practitioners because I think that, you know, what I’m trying to share in that book is the idea that to fully unlock the message of Thelema, yes you have to do a series of things that might seem crazy, which may be to salute the sun four times during the day by virtue of a ritual called Liber Resh. Or you should learn to invoke the astral light into your body of light into your aura and even try to entertain the idea that there might be an invisible world around us that we cannot perceive with our five senses. But it’s there and we will start to perceive it as we deepen our understanding and our proficiency in these practices. So again long, long story short. I think it’s absolutely fundamental and I think that if you reduce Thelema to just the philosophy you’re missing something. And possibly you will get to a point where you won’t make sense of certain more advanced lessons like, for instance, the non-dual nature of our existence because one way of making sense of non-duality is by stilling the rational mind. Of course, you know, you can go and do it and apply for a Zen course and be beaten by my heads and master in order to realize that you are not your body or you can actually try and go through all the practices of Thelema and you get there because, again, that’s where we get we’re going towards with Thelema. So yeah, if you want to be a Thelemite I think you should be a Thelemic Magician.
AP: Sounds like an ad. If you want to be a Thelemite you should be a Thelemic Magician.
MV: I know. I might make it as an ad for, yeah.
AP: But so, yeah, I was trying to sort of make sense of the things that you said when it comes to the use of Magick in the spiritual advancement of the Thelemite. So is it the case in your perception that Magick helps you achieve your spiritual goals because it allows you to experience yourself as a human being, in a way that is not only related to the physical and dualistic world?
Is that what you meant?
MV: Yes, absolutely.
AP: And how and what’s the role that Magick plays when it comes to the kind of Magick that is used to alter your reality for, you know, to improve your experience even in the dualistic world?
MV: Well, in my experience, right, the Magick of Thelema it’s not so much a Magick of results, right. It’s not so much a Magick that you do in order to get a better job or get another girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever. It’s basically a series of practices that will almost force you to peel away the layers of your personality and by peeling all these layers away, you know, going closer and closer and closer till you you become one with that divine spark. Okay, once you do that or rather as you do that and finally, once you reach that goal, you become one with what we call true will or pure will, as it’s written in “The Book of the Law” and that is almost like you find them, how do you say, like the trajectory of your entire incarnation, like you have an answer to the age-old question, what am I doing here, right. And it’s so much more than just finding a purpose in life, which it’s something that, you know, it might seem like that, it’s more about entering a state of eudemonia, entering a state of perfect understanding, to a degree, of why you’re here, where you’re going and being I don’t say like it’s not so much about being happy because it’s not about letting sorrow disappear but making sense of sorrow, making, you know, Crowley’s speaks of the trance of sorrow a lot which is something that he gets, you know, from Buddhism. The idea is not so much about, you know, getting rid of pain getting rid of sorrow but making full sense of why we are experiencing what we’re experiencing and moving on towards this enjoyment of life in all its manifold refractions. Which, I mean, I guess that’s what Magick really is. Why for instance, just to maybe, close a loop that I started a few sentences ago, a few – many sentences ago. Why Magick with the K? Why Sex Magick? Well because if you think about it. We all experience this sense of eudemonia all of us. The moment of orgasm the La Petite Mort to use a French term, it’s that moment of eudemonia, of absolute Bliss that is still very rooted in our physical senses but it’s like it’s a sliver of perfection there and of course, it’s fleeting it disappears but we can try to go back there. And Thelema wants to get you back there. Or wants for you to be able to expand that moment of bliss as long as possible, which is never going to be more than a few minutes, maybe, but still, right. Because the more you go there and the more you extend the period of bliss the more you can live this life to the fullest. So for instance, this is why the emphasis on sex Magick. Because sex, it’s almost like an alchemical formula that we have embedded into our DNA. As humans we have that, we do that, right. So, you know, using it magically and using it with full understanding can help us make sense of who we are, right now, hopefully. If that answers your question.
AP: Yeah I was also thinking that sex is also the union of the opposites and it’s also, not necessarily, in a heteronormative way but I mean the opposite in terms of two people that are different and they get united and they get pleasure out of that union. So it’s also a way of experiencing union in the separation.
MV: Absolutely and one fundamental icon of Thelema is Baphomet, right. Baphomet is the union of the opposite, it is the high and the low, it is the male and the female, beyond gender as well like as you know, as cosmic principles. But again, it’s an embodied form. So yes, absolutely. True, you cannot transcend duality unless you have fully experienced duality, right. Crowley would go even further and you know, you mean like he was a cross-dresser, right? He was a gender fluid individual by any means and so he went even further to the idea that you know you really have alchemically experience polarities constantly and bring them into the athanor and have them collide in order for that illusion of separation dissipate completely. It’s internal Alchemy at its finest and that’s what Magick is, you know, with the K. You know I tend to call this also Theurgy, maybe but I use Theurgy in a very wrong way, it’s my own meta-language, right. Because I want to separate it from what I call Sorcery which…
AP: Is it like a high Magick low Magick kind of distinction?
MV: It’s a terrible divide but…
AP: Yeah, it’s very ceremonial centred in a way because it assumes that the Magick that deals with changing and affecting things in your reality is low. So you know the high – low sort of implies that one is better.
MV: Which is why I don’t, you know, I don’t like to use the term high and low. You know again, in the book I speak of Theurgy versus Sorcery and the fact that, for instance, everything that you find in Thelema is theurgical, right. There’s nothing in Thelema, literally nothing, to my knowledge and then again somebody maybe will correct me here, that will help you get a better job. Crowley used a lot of nine-degree operations, which is heterosexual generative Sex Magick, to power talismans in order for him to get money or get better jobs and whatnot. But you know that’s only fuel for Talisman Magick, right, which is Sorcery in many ways. The real use of the kind of sexual energy would be only to fuel this sort of ascension right. But again I hear what you’re saying whereby there’s this kind of idea that everything that just gets you a better job is wrong. I mean I’m not saying that at all. I’ve done it many times, like I’ve done sigils, I keep doing sigils but the reality there is that the deeper I go into these practices and like I told you it’s been 30 years now, maybe 25 seriously but still the less sigils I do because I am more and more getting into a state where I am supposed to be, I deal with grief and I deal with happiness at the same almost like, I don’t say detachment because detachment is such a loaded term, like you’re just like become completely detached from everything. No, no, no I lose myself into that, I lose myself into that experience but I don’t identify with it anymore. So you know what…
AP: That’s very Buddhist.
MC: Uh, sorry?
AP: That’s very Buddhist.
MC: Yes but I really think that Thelema has a lot, I mean that’s why I say the beginning I think that the real roots of Thelema are in the East. Not so much in Egypt because first of all, we know very little of Egypt. So maybe if we ever know more of Egypt maybe we’ll say yes, it’s the same but that’s where I think the roots are. I think Gordon Djurdjevic wrote a book on that about the roots of Thelema in Tantric Buddhism and it was right, in my opinion of course.
AP: Yeah but yeah, that’s very interesting also something that I often say in conversations with my Patrons is that in Western esotericism you will find that many traditions will say that they draw back to ancient Egypt. It’s like, you know, it sort of became a kind of a recurring theme to make it seem as though your tradition dates back to the very beginning of magical practices because Egypt was identified as this sort of primary, original source of, you know, magical practices. So it was sort of this imagined perception of Egypt as the source of it all.
MV: Then I think it’s a very Orientalist
AP: And exoticising. I think there’s yeah, it’s another trend that you find even in Shamanism, you know the idea that when something is foreign and comes from a different place, a different mindset, you know, we have the West versus East here but yeah, something that is exotic and is far away and is distant from your mundane world has more of a mystical appeal because it seems like, you know, it’s not that the banal, trivial thing that you have in front of your eyes every day, something that goes beyond and so you can also imagine more around it because it’s not something that you’re super familiar with. It’s something that there’s a degree of imagination that goes into the perception of things that are exotic or perceived as… approach as well right because it’s like, you know.
MV: The older it is the better, like I mean, you know, that we’ve been experiencing this grimoire revival in recent years right maybe like 10 years or so and I think there’s been a lot of fantastic scholarship coming out from that we, you know, I think about Jake Stratton-Kent, you know, Encyclopedia Goetica especially Geosophia, all the things are coming from DM press they’re fantastic, right to the study of the PGM, fantastic. At the end of the day, I mean as a practising Magician, I only work with the Goetia and with the Arbatel and a few others expect but the Goetia and the Arbatel are the main ones that I work with. I work right now like in, I don’t have Patreon anymore, I have a community but in my community, we do that a lot. It’s like you know besides that what do we really need to go and find yet another obscure grimoire because it’s the first grimoire, I mean we don’t know where this comes from, like do we have no idea about it but it’s not just because they’re older they’re better, right. Especially even when we look, for instance, at the Goetia, you know, like there’s like 160 various different recensions of it. Which one is the best? Possibly the best approach is rather to do the Magick and get in touch with the spirit, if you allow that something that can happen, right. And then maybe the spirit will tell you what to do. Which has been my experience by the way.
AP: So thank you so much for this interview Marco and where can people find you if they want to reach out?
MV: So first of all, thank you once again for having me it’s been quite a nice chat about lots of different subjects.
AP: Yes.
MV: Where people can find me? I have my own website called, you can email me online of course. magick@markovisconti.org or if you go directly to my website markovisconti.org there are links there and yeah, let’s say my first book is going to come out next year on February 2023. I can’t believe it’s already 2023, right. And it’s gonna come out in or from Watkins publishing the title is: “The Aleister Crowley Manuel – Thelemic Magick for Modern Times” and let me think what else. Yes, I’m on YouTube, and I’m on social media. I don’t I really don’t have a YouTube channel. I am on YouTube from time to time, I’m not very good at updating things. Yes and then I’m doing a magical course, like if you want to learn something practical come and see on my website that we’re starting in a few weeks actually on the 21st of September and yeah, that’s where people can find me.
AP: Thank you and I will put the links in the info box so that viewers will have an easier time finding them.
So thank you again and I hope all of you guys enjoy this conversation and leave us a comment so that we know what you thought about it and whether you have any questions or observations.
MV: Okay, bye-bye.
AP: Bye.
So this is it for today’s video. I hope you liked it and if you did, don’t forget to SMASH the like button, subscribe to the channel, activate your notification bells so that you will never miss a new upload from me and share the video with your friends so they can know about this community and maybe they are interested in the academic study of Magick, Esotericism and all things occult. Thank you for being here and stay tuned for all the Academic Fun.
Bye for now.
BY MARCO VISCONTI
MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS: https://magick.marcovisconti.org
“THE ALEISTER CROWLEY MANUAL: THELEMIC MAGICK FOR MODERN TIMES”: https://www.marcovisconti.org/home/book
You also find him on social media as Marco Visconti.
Uploaded 10 Sep 2022