Golden Dawn & 1999 Compared To The O. T. O. (also About Sumerian Magick) Options

Bear with me here, I believe I have all or at least most of my info correct & understand this is a very confusing & deep subject.

I'm more familiar with the O.T.O. than I am with the Golden Dawn, as once I learned that Crowley started with the GD & eventually became the head of the O.T.O. & changing many of rituals to tailor to what he had learned & decoded himself I had just jumped to the O.T.O. and have begun to learn their ways of Magick.

But I have recently begun looking & reading about the GD & it's history, which is very very fascinating.

I originally thought the O.T.O would be more advanced since Crowley took the GD teachings to an entirely new level, but now after reading more about the GD & the Third Order, I'm not so sure about that assumption any longer.

Now my question is, even though Mathers himself initiated Crowley into the 2nd Order he was only in the 2nd Order a brief time before Crowley released their secrets. Was it really possible for him to know ALL of the 2nd Order's secrets that quickly that he could know all of their secrets? (Surely Crowley was a genius among genius' so he was able to learn & advance much faster than anyone else)

Clearly since Mathers was unable to finish the 3rd Order, there were still many many secrets & rituals left to be known. Including Sumerian Magick. So it seems Crowley opened his mouth before he was able to learn the highest levels of Magick?

Why did he double cross Mathers/GD when Mathers was the one who started the GD & allowed Crowley to initiate into the 2nd Order? I can understand being pissed at the rest of the GD for them not initiating you because of your sexuality (which must have been REALLY taboo back then) but why double cross your mentor & his life's work & creation?

Now Mathers original plan was to have 3 levels of degrees for the GD, but Crowley destroyed the 3rd Order by releasing the 2nd Order's secrets.

According to Griffin it seems as of 1999 the GD & A+O has decided to move all previously published secrets by Crowley & Regardie of the 2nd order, to the Outer Order in order to re-create the 2nd Order & finally create the 3rd Order. Griffin goes on to say that since 1999 they have reformulated the GD & have created new secret magickal rituals for the 2nd order AFTER they had received from Frater Lux et Tenebris with the teachings and esoteric corpus of the solar, direct mysteries, together with cipher manuscripts for the initiation rituals to comprise the Third Order of the Rosicrucian Order of A+O. Griffin says that this "Frater Lux et Tenebris," a representative of an extremely secretive and ancient European western mystery school. This most occult of all orders originated in Sumer, continued in Chaldea and in Egypt, and was brought to Europe by the Greek and Roman empires.

This is really where it gets interesting to me as it's the first mention of Sumerian Magick I've seen in relation to these groups.

If Regardie was never initiated into the 2nd Order, how was he able to initiate Cris Monnastre who was then able to initiate Griffin who has some how become an A+O with a direct lineage to the true, 1888 HOGD?

How could Griffin have that lineage if it was originally through Regardie who was never part of the 2nd Order himself & how did he have the authority to initiate into the 2nd Order? If he was never part of the 2nd Order, how did he know their secrets? Through Crowley's teaching & also documents he acquired later in his life from the Stella Matutina? But there still is the 3rd level of unknown magick & rituals that the secrets of were yet to be known.

Now I ask these questions because I am deeply interested in the Sumerian Magick & wondering how much, if any of these teaching Crowley was aware of & incorporated into his redesign of the O.T.O.?

Also does anyone have more info, details of materials used or photos of a GD Rosicrucian Vault?

This post has been edited by JohnnyScience: Nov 16 2012, 11:45 AM

On most of this, I've no special expertise. When it comes to pre-crowley western esoteria, I tend to just read the cliffs notes.

But I am a huge follower of ancient history, especially in the middle east, and especially history of the paradigmatic sort.


I can say pretty definitively that any association which explicitly lays claim to coming from ancient Sumer, is exaggerating at best.
"Ancient Babylon" would be a far more believable claim (within which, "Chaldea" is a later period within the larger babylonian history).