Post by Catsmate on Jun 1, 2020 12:47:41 GMT
The Great Beast, the Eight Legs and the Tenth Planet.
As an FYI the material in the following article is, except where noted specifically, entirely true.
Truth is far weirder than fiction...
Aleister Crowley1 died in 1947 (or maybe not) and this left the occult organisation he founded, the OTO (Ordo Templi Orientis in utter disarray. Already damaged by the war, which left members dead, impoverished and damaged (the Germans tended to dump non-Nazi occultists in concentration camps) and society changed utterly from the Pulp era where occultish and unusual beliefs had flourished.
Nominally the leadership of the OTO passed to Karl Germer (wiki), who'd been Crowley's protege and was then living in the United States (having escaped from a concentration camp in 1941 to the relative safety2 of the United States). But Germer was busier and more interested in seeing to the publication of Crowley's vast array of manuscripts and writings than managing the OTO's diminished structures, let alone reviving the organisation.
In Britain Crowley's successor was generally seen to be Kenneth Grant, then a young ceremonial magician and writer on the occult and Germer accepted this fait accompli by granting a charter in 1951 to Grant to create a new OTO temple in London, though this was to be restricted to the lowest three of the eleven "degrees" of the OTO. In 1955 Grant formally organised the New (or Nu3) Isis Lodge of the OTO.
He also ignored Germer's strictures on the organisation and began teaching all eleven OTO degrees. Grant also issued a manifesto that announced the existence of a new planet in the outer solar system beyond Pluto4, a planet unknown to astronomy, which he named Isis.
Germer was annoyed by this lèse-majesté and promptly expelled Grant from the OTO, an action that Grant and his followers completely ignored5. In fact Grant has no 'legitimate' OTO competition in the UK until the 1970s.
Further annoyances and challenges to Germer's authority continued; Grant had access to Crowley's library and started writing on both on the Crowley legacy and on his own revisions of it. In 1969 he gained considerable status in the larger occultist community as co-editor of Crowley's autobiographical The Confessions of Aleister Crowley.
Now for the giant, psionic spiders...
Grant modified the Crowley OTO rituals; creating a new variation that grew from of his own experiments with what he called the "shadowside" of the Kabalistic system, something than many ritual magician compared to Satanism.
During this period the New Isis Lodge channelled (induced a trance and supposedly received telepathic transmissions) of a feminine spider being known that they dubbed OKBISh6 that "dwelt in the tunnels between the dimensions"7.
These messages are found in the 'Liber OKBISh' (The Book of the Spider) written by Grant. It seems that most of the messages were received by a mediumistic priestess known as Soror Arim8 starting in 1952 but that others (all female) were involved over the years.
The Book of the Spider is basically a collection of, rather cryptic and Nostradamus-like, oracles which were received over a number of years. These were arranged into 29 chapters each of 29 verses. Not all of them survive. A later 'transmission' added a further three chapters, also of 29 verses each.
Integrating into AITAS and the Whoniverse.
So far we have three distinct themes:
The Whoniverse is rather mixed on 'magic'; it can be derided as nonsense, explained as psionics, weird alien science or fakery depending on who's writing the script. But psionics, Block Transfer Computation and some odd powers (like Lady Peinforte) are canonical so I'm going to meld them into this seed.
So of course are Sinister Organisations (government and private) with plans of their own, deliberate alien and temporal meddling with humanity and other factors.
So in the 1950s there is in London a group of people, what would become the Typhonian Ordo Templi Orientis, dabbling in ritual magic. Maybe it worked, maybe Soror Arim was a genuine telepath and used a piece of Egyptian bric-a-brac that was a left over Osiran psionic amplifier, but she contacted the immensely powerful mind of the Great One of Metebelis 3, presumably through the Time Vortex as the Eight Legs didn't exist in the 1950s.
Seeing an opportunity, as she would twenty years later with the meditation centre in Planet of the Spiders, to further her plans, she uses the humans; initially to create an organisation to assist her (and ensure that the events leading to the human arrival on Metebelis 3 go to plan) but also to retrieve that pesky missing psi-active crystal for her amplifier.
Perhaps she used the occultists to aid in creating a base in the outer solar system. Personally I set Vulcan (of Power of the Daleks) on a brown dwarf satellite deep in the Oort cloud so that would do nicely for planet Isis. Far beyond human capacity to detect. Maybe she used psionic power to 'tunnel through' hyperspace to there?
So what happens next? Is Torchwood/ICMG watching the TOTO? Is Torchwood, or an older and even more secret organisation, using the occultists as part of a clandestine attempt to breed psionic humans perhaps?
Are others meddling with "Egyptian" artefacts that are actually Osiran junk, or unknown purpose and reliability?
What other plans are in progress? Certainly there was an upsurge in interest in psychic phenonema, the occult and alien visitations in the 1970s. The Human Potential Movement for example, and psionic phenomena are common themes is the sci-fi of the era. Grant's writings in the period meld explicitly extra-terrestrial (and Lovecraftian) themes into classical Crowley-esque and Golden Dawn magic.
And there I leave it. Comments, ideas and suggestions welcome.
1. Who we've discussed before
2. Relative here being that the FBI kept an eye on him as he's been an Army office in WW1, was an associate of dubious persons and was an occultist. Be he wasn't dumped in a solitary cell for a few months.
3. This is one of those impenetrable puns popular with a certain type of intellectual; 'New' was a substitution for 'Nu' or 'Nuit', a bit of Egyptian mythology that Crowley borrowed that supposedly symbolised "absolute consciousness". Crowley linked the concept to of the "Scarlet Woman", the embodiment of "love under will". Thus 'New-Isis' therefore symbolised the dual aspects of the heavenly and earthly goddess.
This probably isn't important.
4. Still a respectable planet in '55 and believed to be far larger and more massive than subsequently shown (0.1 to 1 Terrestrial masses, rather than the 1/500 we accept today). Of course maybe Pluto was more massive back then, personally I blame the Mi-Go....
5. Though for gaming purposes there could have been a constant state of low-level psychic warfare between the groups, possibly with some actual violence, utilisation of alien/psionic artefacts to injure rivals. Fell free to improvise.
6. Also spelled OKBIsh but the more legitimate sources I've seen have the S capitalised also.
7. All those seeing parallels to the Great One raise my hand.
9. Arim is Persian but I'm unable to determine the significance or why this sister chose that name.
As an FYI the material in the following article is, except where noted specifically, entirely true.
Truth is far weirder than fiction...
Aleister Crowley1 died in 1947 (or maybe not) and this left the occult organisation he founded, the OTO (Ordo Templi Orientis in utter disarray. Already damaged by the war, which left members dead, impoverished and damaged (the Germans tended to dump non-Nazi occultists in concentration camps) and society changed utterly from the Pulp era where occultish and unusual beliefs had flourished.
Nominally the leadership of the OTO passed to Karl Germer (wiki), who'd been Crowley's protege and was then living in the United States (having escaped from a concentration camp in 1941 to the relative safety2 of the United States). But Germer was busier and more interested in seeing to the publication of Crowley's vast array of manuscripts and writings than managing the OTO's diminished structures, let alone reviving the organisation.
In Britain Crowley's successor was generally seen to be Kenneth Grant, then a young ceremonial magician and writer on the occult and Germer accepted this fait accompli by granting a charter in 1951 to Grant to create a new OTO temple in London, though this was to be restricted to the lowest three of the eleven "degrees" of the OTO. In 1955 Grant formally organised the New (or Nu3) Isis Lodge of the OTO.
He also ignored Germer's strictures on the organisation and began teaching all eleven OTO degrees. Grant also issued a manifesto that announced the existence of a new planet in the outer solar system beyond Pluto4, a planet unknown to astronomy, which he named Isis.
Germer was annoyed by this lèse-majesté and promptly expelled Grant from the OTO, an action that Grant and his followers completely ignored5. In fact Grant has no 'legitimate' OTO competition in the UK until the 1970s.
Further annoyances and challenges to Germer's authority continued; Grant had access to Crowley's library and started writing on both on the Crowley legacy and on his own revisions of it. In 1969 he gained considerable status in the larger occultist community as co-editor of Crowley's autobiographical The Confessions of Aleister Crowley.
Now for the giant, psionic spiders...
Grant modified the Crowley OTO rituals; creating a new variation that grew from of his own experiments with what he called the "shadowside" of the Kabalistic system, something than many ritual magician compared to Satanism.
During this period the New Isis Lodge channelled (induced a trance and supposedly received telepathic transmissions) of a feminine spider being known that they dubbed OKBISh6 that "dwelt in the tunnels between the dimensions"7.
These messages are found in the 'Liber OKBISh' (The Book of the Spider) written by Grant. It seems that most of the messages were received by a mediumistic priestess known as Soror Arim8 starting in 1952 but that others (all female) were involved over the years.
The Book of the Spider is basically a collection of, rather cryptic and Nostradamus-like, oracles which were received over a number of years. These were arranged into 29 chapters each of 29 verses. Not all of them survive. A later 'transmission' added a further three chapters, also of 29 verses each.
Integrating into AITAS and the Whoniverse.
So far we have three distinct themes:
- Occultists
- Telepathic transmissions from a spider deity
- A Tenth planet
The Whoniverse is rather mixed on 'magic'; it can be derided as nonsense, explained as psionics, weird alien science or fakery depending on who's writing the script. But psionics, Block Transfer Computation and some odd powers (like Lady Peinforte) are canonical so I'm going to meld them into this seed.
So of course are Sinister Organisations (government and private) with plans of their own, deliberate alien and temporal meddling with humanity and other factors.
So in the 1950s there is in London a group of people, what would become the Typhonian Ordo Templi Orientis, dabbling in ritual magic. Maybe it worked, maybe Soror Arim was a genuine telepath and used a piece of Egyptian bric-a-brac that was a left over Osiran psionic amplifier, but she contacted the immensely powerful mind of the Great One of Metebelis 3, presumably through the Time Vortex as the Eight Legs didn't exist in the 1950s.
Seeing an opportunity, as she would twenty years later with the meditation centre in Planet of the Spiders, to further her plans, she uses the humans; initially to create an organisation to assist her (and ensure that the events leading to the human arrival on Metebelis 3 go to plan) but also to retrieve that pesky missing psi-active crystal for her amplifier.
Perhaps she used the occultists to aid in creating a base in the outer solar system. Personally I set Vulcan (of Power of the Daleks) on a brown dwarf satellite deep in the Oort cloud so that would do nicely for planet Isis. Far beyond human capacity to detect. Maybe she used psionic power to 'tunnel through' hyperspace to there?
- She may have been pulling the strings of the colonists there even before the Daleks were found, if you're interested in another layer to that plotline.
So what happens next? Is Torchwood/ICMG watching the TOTO? Is Torchwood, or an older and even more secret organisation, using the occultists as part of a clandestine attempt to breed psionic humans perhaps?
- This could neatly mesh with The Tomorrow People in the 1970s, just ripe for UNIT and Doctor3 to meddle into.
Are others meddling with "Egyptian" artefacts that are actually Osiran junk, or unknown purpose and reliability?
What other plans are in progress? Certainly there was an upsurge in interest in psychic phenonema, the occult and alien visitations in the 1970s. The Human Potential Movement for example, and psionic phenomena are common themes is the sci-fi of the era. Grant's writings in the period meld explicitly extra-terrestrial (and Lovecraftian) themes into classical Crowley-esque and Golden Dawn magic.
And there I leave it. Comments, ideas and suggestions welcome.
1. Who we've discussed before
2. Relative here being that the FBI kept an eye on him as he's been an Army office in WW1, was an associate of dubious persons and was an occultist. Be he wasn't dumped in a solitary cell for a few months.
3. This is one of those impenetrable puns popular with a certain type of intellectual; 'New' was a substitution for 'Nu' or 'Nuit', a bit of Egyptian mythology that Crowley borrowed that supposedly symbolised "absolute consciousness". Crowley linked the concept to of the "Scarlet Woman", the embodiment of "love under will". Thus 'New-Isis' therefore symbolised the dual aspects of the heavenly and earthly goddess.
This probably isn't important.
4. Still a respectable planet in '55 and believed to be far larger and more massive than subsequently shown (0.1 to 1 Terrestrial masses, rather than the 1/500 we accept today). Of course maybe Pluto was more massive back then, personally I blame the Mi-Go....
5. Though for gaming purposes there could have been a constant state of low-level psychic warfare between the groups, possibly with some actual violence, utilisation of alien/psionic artefacts to injure rivals. Fell free to improvise.
6. Also spelled OKBIsh but the more legitimate sources I've seen have the S capitalised also.
7. All those seeing parallels to the Great One raise my hand.
9. Arim is Persian but I'm unable to determine the significance or why this sister chose that name.