Master’s Inaugural Speech
By Entelecheia
Delivered 5/7/2023
Brother, Sisters, Siblings of Horizon Lodge, friends of the community, welcome. Thank you for being with me on this evening for what I can only describe as an awesome occasion.
When I began to craft a vision for my mastership of Horizon, I posed three questions to myself:
- Where do we go?
- How do we get there? But most importantly of all:
- Who are we?
Who are we? Who are we as a community? Who are we as an O.T.O. local body?
Thelema teaches that you cannot impose standards on any individual without taking into account its nature or true will. The same goes for an O.T.O. local body, which is like an organism with its own true will.
The flame of the Lamp of Horizon is like its true will. It is the flame that burns in our hearts, in the core of our star. There are three lenses through which to understand the characteristics of this light which is uniquely our own.
We can understand ourselves as an O.T.O. local body. We are tasked with fulfilling the mission of United States Grand Lodge in accordance with its principles and values. This includes performing the rites and rituals of O.T.O. and disseminating its doctrines.
We can understand ourselves as a local body of O.T.O. San Francisco and New York are both American cities, but they feel completely different to be in. Similarly, each local body of O.T.O. has its own distinctive characteristics, its own particular way of realizing the mission of O.T.O. in its particular context. Each community brings its own perspective and skillset to the mission. We have done many workshops over the years to bring our local identity into focus.
But first and foremost, we are a community of Thelemites. Thelema is the flame that burns at the core of our star. Thelema is what drew us here. Thelema is what has transformed us. Thelema is what keeps us here. (Diabolical laughter.) Thelema is our superpower. Thelema is our magick. It is our adherence to the Thelemic path that is most essential to who we are.
There are three principles of Thelema that I would like to share with you which I think are of particular importance to Horizon.
The first of these is the idea that every man and every woman is a star. Each individual is the ecstatic union of Hadit with Nuit. This union or process of unification is ongoing. This means that the true will of an individual is not static but is instead dynamic. It is the will of every organism not just to exist but to thrive. It is our will not just to be but to become, to expand outward into our environments, to push the limits of what we can do and who we can be.
This means that it is not enough that we just change. It’s a bit of a cliché to say that the only constant is change. We do not just want to change. We want to grow. When we understand the laws of change and utilize them in order to increase our powers, then we are growing, then we are thriving. This is the second principle, which Crowley called love under will or magick. We can use our magick to increase our physical abilities, to increase our intellectual and moral abilities. We can also direct it toward our spirit, to unlock our occult powers, to reveal ourselves as gods. We can use it to transform ourselves from a mere what into a who. A god is an infinitely deep who. That is what our magick allows us to do.
The third idea is that the world was destroyed by fire in the year 1904 e.v. The cubical stone upon which the Aeon of the Father rested was cracked. It began to crumble. It is still in the process of being torn away. We are still in the process of making way for the New Aeon. To realize divinity in the world is a project, not something we can simply count upon. All human relations need to be reestablished upon a naturalistic, rational foundation which takes into account the individual natures of each. When it is still possible for a black teen to be shot just for knocking on the wrong door, or for a transgender individual to fear for their lives by using a public restroom, that tells us that we have a long way to go before such relations are established.
Horizon brings particular gifts to this battle. Spend any time among our members, and you will quickly find out that this is a community of individuals highly focused on self-development and growth. For some this manifests as a focus on athleticism or physical fitness. For others, developing our intellectual understanding of Thelema and communicating it better. For others it means honing their artistic or musical crafts. For others, understanding and applying new technologies in the fulfillment of our mission.
Horizon exemplifies the principles of dynamic change and adaptation to circumstance I mentioned earlier. When the pandemic hit, four of our siblings immediately started live streaming the Gnostic Mass. I suspect they had the camera rolling even before they had gotten permission from Sabazius to do it. Another brother quickly adapted his ritual invocations for YouTube livestream. The pandemic destroyed many local communities. It didn’t destroy us. We adapted, and as a result, we expanded our reach! We get comments on Youtube almost daily from people in Europe, South America, and other parts of the world. Some of these comments are even worth reading!
This is the spirit of Horizon. We adapt. We don’t just change. We grow. Through the wise application of the Four Powers of the Sphinx, we transform conditions of resistance into conditions of persistence.
We do not compare ourselves to anyone. We neither look down upon nor look up to any other local body. We look to ourselves. We try to be a slightly better version of ourselves today than we were yesterday. This is why we are one-of-a-kind.
The initiation rituals of O.T.O. teach that every individual is the incarnation of an adventuring god. Think about that. No matter what the circumstances we are born into, no matter what we encounter, life is an adventure. It requires those virtues of vision, understanding, exploration, and perseverance embodied in our Lamp and Talisman. It means that birth, life, and even death are not merely foisted upon us. We can take up the circumstances of our lives and reveal the divinity and the joy inherent in them.
O.T.O. also teaches that there is no god but man. Absent the divine individual, the word “god” has no sense. This means that if we fail in our self-understanding and our self-discipline, if we fail to reveal the divine in ourselves, the world is empty of meaning and purpose. God is as good as dead.
This means that what we do in here matters.
How we understand ourselves matters.
How we relate to ourselves matters.
Whether we come to know who we truly are matters.
How we relate to the world and other beings matters.
Whether we are cowardly or courageous matters.
Whether we resolve our differences with civility matters.
Whether we tell the truth matters.
Whether we seek justice matters.
How we conduct ourselves matters. The choices that we make matter.
This is not merely about self-discovery. This is not just an exercise in self-improvement. So much more rides upon what we do than that. Do not be fooled by our humble storefront church. Nothing less than the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven is at stake.
Brothers, Sisters, Siblings of Horizon, friends of our community: we face many challenges. We face a constantly changing world. But with our unique gifts and outlook, we will face these challenges head on. We will not be defeated by them. We will instead grow through our encounters with them. Encouraged by the flames in our hearts, and the flame burning at the heart of this community, we will conduct that light outward ever-further into the world, with vision, understanding, exploration, and perseverance.