So, I’ve written about Liber Oz Fest, the retreat I attended this past weekend. The part that I didn’t mention is that during the retreat I also took my Minerval initiation into Ordo Templi Orientis, or OTO, a pagan/magickal order that I’ve been attending events with for awhile now. I’ve known many of the members for years, and I was essentially raised with much the same philosophy and tenets that the order is based around, so I decided that it was the right time for me to take the next step.
OTO is a fraternal order much like the Masons (indeed, it was founded by former Masons), and as such, their initiation practices are secret, so I can’t really say much about what went on, but I can certainly speak to how it made me feel.
I’m generally what I would consider “emotionally skeptical”. When people talk about having a really strong emotional reaction to an experience they had, I generally find that when I go through the same thing, my reaction is more of a “meh, it was okay”. And, honestly, that’s what I went into this initiation expecting. I thought that it wouldn’t nearly live up to the hype that I’d heard from friends, and that it would be yet another thing that I’d have to feign a reaction to.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
From beginning to end, I was impressed by how much the process put me into a deeply introspective, experiential, almost instinctual state. Things that normally are nearly second nature for me suddenly became difficult, while others that are generally more foreign became oddly familiar. It was a surreal thing to experience internally. I know myself and my psyche pretty damn well and even I’m still not entirely sure what happened.
The other result that was somewhat unexpected for me is just how much I really do feel a part of the order now. I was friends with lots of Thelemites before, and I had been to many events and rituals, even stayed over at their homes before, but once the initiation was over, it was like someone had suddenly cut down a fence that I didn’t even realize had been there before. Thelemites who have undergone initiation call eachother “siblings”, often referring to eachother as “brother” or “sister” (or “frater” and “soror”), as one finds in similar organizations, and I always just assumed that it was some kind of formality that was done because it’s always been done, not because it had any significance. Well, I can now say that I understand why they do – the sense of connection, and family, and friendship, and, to use their own term, fraternity, is profound. The entire rest of the weekend, I felt like a had a huge family kind of looking out for me, and that’s because, frankly, I did. I’ve generally not felt much connection to most occult/pagan groups, or to any kind of spiritual group in general, so the warmth with which I was received and that I felt in return was something of a revelation.
The entire experience lent the weekend something of a euphoric haze for me, which is another thing I would not have predicted, but that others nodded or grinned knowingly in response to when I mentioned it to them. There’s something to be said for the connection that comes with experiencing something that all other members of a group have as well. I see this sometimes in rugby – you can see so much stronger of a connection between players who have played a game together than between those who have merely practiced together. There’s something about an ordeal, or even simply a shared experience, that brings people together.
I’m honestly still processing this experience to some degree, so I will probably write about it again at a later point, but for now, I wanted to get my reactions down on proverbial paper before the memories get too foggy.