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The Unknown God gives a view into the twentieth-century North American occult underground influenced by the English occultist and prophet Aleister Crowley, as told through the biography of his disciple in the USA, Wilfred Talbot Smith (1885--1957). It draws on accounts from Smith's social network, which encompassed Caltech rocket scientist Jack Parsons, the Rosicrucian leader H. Spencer Lewis, the Hollywood actor John Carradine, and gay liberationist Harry Hay. Students of esoteric Freemasonry, the Golden Dawn, the Theosophical Society, and the Crowley-based occult orders will find
The Unknown God a fascinating resource--this is the book that connects them all.
List of contents
- Foreword
- Prologue
- 1. The Skeleton in the Cupboard
- 2. First Steps
- 3. British Columbia Lodge No. 1
- 4. Isis, Therion, and Hilarion
- 5. A Master of the Temple
- 6. In the Red Room of Rose Croix
- 7. Nemo Abest
- 8. The Detroit Working
- 9. Viator in Regnis Arboris
- 10. New Orders for the Ages
- 11. Psychomagia
- 12. The End of the Beginning
- 13. Jane, Kath, and Leota
- 14. Salve Regina
- 15. Rosicrucian Amity
- 16. Chants Before Battle
- 17. Ten-O-Three
- 18. Apotheosis
- 19. Hoc Id Est
- Epilogue
- Appendix A: W. T. Smith Diary
- Appendix B: The Trail of OTO
- Appendix C: Crowley and H. Spencer Lewis
- Appendix D: OTO Degree Work 1938--1943
- Appendix E: Manifesto of December 7, 1941
- Appendix F: 132-666/1943
- Appendix G: Apotheosis 132-Liber CXXXII
- Works Cited
- Index
About the author
Martin P. Starr is an alumnus of the University of Chicago where he received his undergraduate degree in Classical Languages and pursued graduate study in the History of Science. He is an independent scholar of Western Esotericism and New Religious Movements with interests in social networks arising from the nexus of practitioners of Neo-Rosicrucianism, independent eucharistic church movements, Theosophy, and Freemasonry. He was the editor of the Teitan Press series of the works of Aleister Crowley.
Summary
The Unknown God is the first documentary study of Thelema, a twentieth-century religious movement in the "magical" family, founded by the occultist, poet, and prophet of a new age of personal freedom, Aleister Crowley (1875--1947). Martin P. Starr tells the history of the movement through the biography of its leader, Wilfred Talbot Smith (1885--1957), who took up Crowley's plans for organizations to teach the latter's methods in Western and Eastern esoteric traditions and his laws for a new world order, and established these systems in British Columbia and in California. Crowley provided the concepts; Smith and his associates made them take flesh, applying Crowley's doctrine of "Do what thou wilt" and cementing it a part of the artistic and religious underground of the twentieth century.
This account provides a contextual overview of the elements of the resulting bricolage of religions, which included Freemasonry, Theosophy, Rosicrucianism, Neo-Gnosticism and other related forms of esotericism, demonstrating the overlap between apparently disparate ideologies, groups, and participants. Drawing primarily on diaries and letters, Starr gives a rare and fascinating study of the contemporaneous application of Crowley's thought, whose long trail we can see in the Satanism of Anton LaVey, the Scientology of L. Ron Hubbard, and the popularization of many forms of witchcraft, magic, and tantric practices.
