{"id":2484,"date":"2026-07-02T17:30:33","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T00:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/?p=2484"},"modified":"2026-07-02T17:30:36","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T00:30:36","slug":"what-really-happens-during-o-t-o-s-initiation-ceremonies-my-second-interview-with-cults-to-consciousness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/what-really-happens-during-o-t-o-s-initiation-ceremonies-my-second-interview-with-cults-to-consciousness\/","title":{"rendered":"What Really Happens During O.T.O.&#8217;s Initiation Ceremonies? \u2014 My Second Interview with Cults to Consciousness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"What Really Happens During \u201cOrdo Templi Orientis\u201d Initiations?  (Trapped in a Secret Society)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/l3aIdJeg0vE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, thanks for coming back, James Luceno.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thanks for having me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, this was one that I had never heard of before and you submitted to be on the show through our drop form, which you guys can always do through our about section, so I was really interested to hear about it. It&#8217;s considered a secret society. To make sure that I don&#8217;t butcher it, I&#8217;m going to let you tell everybody what it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sure. So, Ordo Templi Orientis or OTO is a modern mystery school. It presents itself as a continuation of the Western occult tradition and it&#8217;s based on a spiritual philosophy called Thelema, which was created in the early twentieth century by the British occultist Aleister Crowley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And outwardly, OTO is a church. It puts on public religious ceremonies. But inwardly it&#8217;s structured like a secret society with different degrees that you ascend through by means of ceremonies called initiations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And ostensibly, OTO presents itself as being focused on values like individual freedom, personal responsibility, and enlightenment &#8211; all things that spiritual seekers care about. My experience of OTO ended up being very different. It also enforces things like silence and attacks against critics, and it protects predators and bad actors of various kinds, especially when they are well connected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then can you tell people a little bit about your experience and then if they want to see all of the details they can go to your interview?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. So I&#8217;ve been a spiritual seeker my entire life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I started out very interested in Western philosophy and eventually became interested in Buddhist meditation and eventually became interested in a practice called ceremonial magic, which is a kind of ritual movement combined with visualization and that got me interested in Aleister Crowley who is this just towering figure in the history of ceremonial magic and in my early 30s I ended up moving across the country and moved to Seattle. When I moved there, I sought out Ordo Templi Orientis, which is the largest and most prominent organization that is associated with Thelema and Aleister Crowley, and I was genuinely impressed both by the rituals and by the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I found a lot of people who were also spiritual seekers and I was impressed by the intelligence of people and the conversations that we had and the bonds that I was able to form. And after a few months of coming around I took my first initiation and gradually over the years I rose up through the ranks. I rose up to the fifth degree in OTO which sits pretty much right in the middle of the hierarchy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Drop-off in OTO is pretty fast. So it&#8217;s actually quite rare to get to the fifth degree. I would say probably fewer than 5% of people who join make it that far. I was very serious about the organization. I was a leader in the organization, an intellectual and moral leader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I rose up to run the what&#8217;s called the local body of OTO, which is sort of like the local branch of it in Seattle, Washington. And I got pretty far on the inside to see exactly how the innards of this organization work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I was eventually so disturbed by what I saw over a period of several years that I resigned my position and resigned from the organization. Having been an outspoken proponent of the organization who invited people in, made it intelligible, and made it seem spiritually legitimate and significant, I felt that it was necessary for me to tell the truth about the organization when I left and that&#8217;s how I started making YouTube videos about it and that&#8217;s how I found your channel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. And with that, you were saying how if you really just kind of hang out in those lower levels, you probably won&#8217;t have necessarily a cultic experience, but once you get to those upper levels, you start to see all of the dysfunction, the silencing and the perpetrators, and basically people misusing their power, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. So, everybody&#8230; OTO runs on what I have described as a Mushroom Culture: people are kept in the dark and fed shit. And that really goes for people at all levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What you&#8217;re going to see at the lowest levels is a lot of dysfunction. You&#8217;re going to see toxicity. You&#8217;re going to see a lot of backbiting, gossip, cliquish behavior. You&#8217;re going to see corruption of various kinds. It&#8217;s going to look like a toxic work environment basically and that usually drives a lot of people away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But there&#8217;s another side of OTO where it gets, I think, significantly worse that sort of you become exposed to the longer you are in it and certainly the more you rise in rank in it, as I did, you&#8217;re going to see kind of nuttier, unhinged behavior, threats of violence, people having outbursts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And these individuals are not only protected and kept in the organization but put into positions of authority over others, in charge of the safety of others. And it was that pattern and also leadership spying on people&#8217;s social media accounts being constantly screenshotted and passed around and things of that nature really only became apparent to me once I rose up into a leadership position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And once I got a look at that level of toxicity, like the toxicity at the lower level started to make a lot more sense to me and I realized that there was no way to reform this organization. It was functioning as intended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. It was part of the system itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Exactly. It was not something that was a flaw of the system. It&#8217;s something that&#8217;s baked into it. And that baked-in dysfunction is something that the leaders of the organization spiritualize and try to rationalize using spiritual language, which we can get into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. I definitely want to get into that. And we also had a lot of questions about the initiatory rites that people were curious about. So let&#8217;s go ahead and start there. And if you guys are watching live, thank you for being here. Drop your questions and your comments in the chat and Jonathan will be bringing those up in a few minutes here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, let&#8217;s talk about the initiation. What is it that makes it dangerous and what is it that makes people want to stay after experiencing it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. So, I think in order to understand the initiations, you have to understand what is so powerful and compelling about them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think when people hear about initiations, they&#8217;re thinking of occult secrets, candles, maybe a scene out of the movie Eyes Wide Shut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And honestly, they&#8217;re a lot more subtle than that and they work on a much deeper psychological level, which makes them more profound, but also makes it more difficult to understand the effects that they&#8217;re having on you long-term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, the initiations themselves are actually quite beautiful and moving at times. They were written by Aleister Crowley, who had real literary ability. And he would combine these kinds of existential teachings about life and death with a grand sweeping vision of the cosmos and of history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And he would express all of this in occult symbolism in a way that was genuinely compelling and transformative so that people with PhDs would go through these initiation ceremonies and be deeply moved, maybe go off and stare at the sea for a couple of days to absorb what had happened to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I mean, these weren&#8217;t crude hazing events by any means. They&#8217;re deep. They&#8217;re sophisticated. They&#8217;re moving. They gave people things to contemplate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I think to really understand the appeal and how they work, you have to understand that they&#8217;re actually more subtle than people might be thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And all of the initiation rituals followed a similar formula.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They all involve disorientation of some kind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They all involve taking an oath of some kind and they all involve what is called an ordeal of initiation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So let&#8217;s go through each of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So disorientation could happen a few different ways. You could be blindfolded. You could be grabbed and tied up. Maybe you just kind of walk into something that is sort of like a play that&#8217;s already ongoing and you have to kind of figure out who these people are, who you are in relation to them, and what you&#8217;re supposed to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, you&#8217;re immediately put on your back foot as soon as you go into one of these because you don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s going to happen. You don&#8217;t read them ahead of time. You just go in and you&#8217;re surprised by it. So you&#8217;re already starting on your back foot in a state of disorientation and then at some point they administer an oath to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now all of the oaths involve promises of secrecy and obedience; that&#8217;s a mainstay throughout all of the initiations. And in the beginning, you&#8217;re also promising things like that you&#8217;re going to study the mysteries earnestly and that you&#8217;re going to control your own behavior and that you&#8217;re going to be respectful toward other people in the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stuff that&#8217;s really wholesome, basically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. Basic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But as you go on and as you reach higher degrees, especially once you reach fifth degree and beyond, it starts to become more extreme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So you promise never to leave OTO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You promise unquestioning obedience to its governing body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You promise to turn over all of your wealth to OTO if it&#8217;s requested of you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ooh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And you promise yourself body and soul to all of the other members of your grade and higher, which many people interpret to mean sexually, that you make yourself sexually available to other people. Not everybody interprets it that way, but that is an interpretation of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mhm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And there&#8217;s always some penalty attached to the oath. Like it might be something like, may something very bad happen to you, like being eaten by birds or something ridiculous like that. But as you go up through the ranks, the penalty becomes that the Order itself will take vengeance on you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, I have to pause here. Any ex-Mormons in the chat? Because this sounds eerily familiar to the temple ceremony. I don&#8217;t know how much did we talk about this in our interview, James, about the Mormon temple ceremony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You mentioned several times like, &#8220;Oh, that sounds like Mormonism.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I realized I&#8217;m like, &#8220;It was so long ago that we recorded and I should have rewatched it to refresh.&#8221; So, that&#8217;s my fault. But yeah, this is very similar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I guess I&#8217;ll just say it again. The whole you don&#8217;t know what you&#8217;re going to get into until you get there. And once you&#8217;re there, you&#8217;re not backing out because you&#8217;ve worked really hard to get to this point. And everyone&#8217;s looking at you like you&#8217;re going to do the thing, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And there&#8217;s chants and secret handshakes and oaths and even down to the language that you&#8217;re saying where you promise to give, I think, in Mormonism it&#8217;s your time, your talents and something else to the church. And guys, help me out in the comments if you&#8217;ve been to the temple and this. And then the penalties that they took out because they were too risqu\u00e9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I guess they took them out in the &#8217;90s, which is if you reveal the secrets of the temple, you agree to slit your throat and cut out your bowels and you pretend to like hold them in a cup as they fall out of your body if you tell the secrets of the temple. And so it sounds so similar which isn&#8217;t a surprise and I know we&#8217;ve talked about this because the temple ceremony came from Masonic teachings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joseph Smith was a Freemason and so you have to become a Freemason in order to join OTO, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No, you don&#8217;t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Oh, I thought that was like a path to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No, that was kind of initially how it was conceived at the very beginning that it was like a compendium of high-degree Freemasonry, but it&#8217;s completely separate from it. You&#8217;re absolutely right. The ceremonies are based on the vernacular of Freemasonry ceremonies. That&#8217;s why they&#8217;re so similar to Mormonism. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Interesting. Did any Mormons in OTO?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, I did know a couple of former Mormons and even one person who was currently a Mormon who decided that I guess he wanted to be a bad boy, rebel, and come join the Aleister Crowley cult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, I was going to say they seem contradictory even though they&#8217;re kind of not. They&#8217;re very similar in order. They are. Yeah. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay. After that, we were talking about the penalties and then I interrupted you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. No, that&#8217;s fantastic. Yeah, there&#8217;s a lot to absorb. So interrupt me by all means. There&#8217;s always going to be what&#8217;s called an ordeal of initiation. That could be something like having to disrobe during the ceremony, which was certainly transgressive for our one Mormon gentleman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Right. So completely naked is what you&#8217;re saying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. In front of everybody. Yeah. Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it could be something like you&#8217;re pushed over into water. It could be something like you are symbolically or ritualistically lynched or burned at the stake or something like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. It&#8217;s meant to cause stress, not distress. Obviously, it&#8217;s very dependent on the sensitivities of the person going through it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, it&#8217;s something that basically puts somebody into a vulnerable state because all of it is happening in a room that is just absolutely saturated with symbols that can be interpreted at least a hundred different ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So what these initiation ceremonies are like is that your ordinary judgment and your ordinary perception are destabilized and it&#8217;s happening in this pressure cooker of meaning and you&#8217;re agreeing to things and undergoing things that you can&#8217;t think through the implications of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They&#8217;re not necessarily harming you. They&#8217;re not doing something like breaking down your will. It&#8217;s different from that. What&#8217;s happening is that your sense of meaning is ramping up and it&#8217;s outrunning your capacity to understand what&#8217;s happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mhm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And what happens long-term for people in the organization is that this becomes a pattern that your sense of meaning-making becomes more important than your judgment and your common sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So things that you would normally react to as, &#8220;Wait, hold on a second,&#8221; gradually get reframed. Not just in the rituals; I&#8217;m talking about the organization in general &#8211; the dysfunction and the abuse. You&#8217;re gradually trained to perceive it in a way that&#8217;s more symbolic, and therefore calls for contemplation, rather than things like, &#8220;Hey, no,&#8221; or getting out of there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay, that makes sense. So, let&#8217;s go back here because I think there&#8217;s a lot to unpack and I see the comments. People are like, &#8220;What? [laughter] What&#8217;s going on?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, I feel like at least as a woman, if I went into an initiation, and I knew nothing beforehand, and obviously I&#8217;ve been climbing because by the time you get to disrobing, you&#8217;re probably in it for a while. But if someone looked at me and said, &#8220;You must strip down naked.&#8221; That would feel abusive to me and very shocking and distressing. I feel like more than just stressed, I would feel very distressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Did you notice women feeling that way?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Surprisingly not. It&#8217;s done in a way that&#8217;s very solemn and very sacred. It&#8217;s not being done in a way that feels like lascivious or like lewd when it&#8217;s when it&#8217;s happening. The room is completely dark. You&#8217;re in pitch black.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You have probably been in the organization for a few months now. Like you paid money to come and do this. Some people do balk, but the overwhelming majority of people go into the bathroom and take off their clothes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I mean, I can relate to you what I experienced doing it and what went through my head because I think a lot of people probably have similar thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, I was taken off to the side. I was told to go in the bathroom, take off all my clothes and come out. And the first thing that I said was I made sure I understood what I was supposed to do because I didn&#8217;t want to go into the room, disrobe and come out and then be like, &#8220;No, no, no. You weren&#8217;t supposed to do that.&#8221; [laughter] So, that was my first thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, and then the second thought that occurred to me as I was being walked out in front of a room full of like 12 or 13 or 14 people was everybody else in this room has done this before and this is like this is joining this is joining in an experience that is vulnerable and intensely sacred and intensely symbolic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So you&#8217;re not thinking through all of the consequences of it. You&#8217;re not sitting there thinking, &#8220;Oh, okay. Well, what happens when you do that?&#8221; Like when you make yourself vulnerable to this group of people in an intensely symbolic way, what will you learn to come to accept later on or what will you tend to think later on? You&#8217;re not thinking that way. You&#8217;re very much in the moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And honestly, it&#8217;s very rare to feel that much in the moment and to have that kind of intense experience like we don&#8217;t do ceremonies like this in modern society anymore like you might have your confirmation or your bar mitzvah or whatever and you get married and that&#8217;s it. Here, you&#8217;re becoming part of something secret and sacred, so it feels like an honor when you&#8217;re doing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So much of this language. And we&#8217;re going to get to questions. I promise. Jonathan&#8217;s been texting me. But I have to get this out before we switch topics because yeah, the secret and the sacred thing are also common Mormon things of the temple&#8217;s not secret. It&#8217;s sacred and it&#8217;s beautiful and it&#8217;s loving and it&#8217;s this and it&#8217;s that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then when people deconstruct from Mormonism, oftentimes the feelings that they&#8217;ve buried about how they actually felt about the experience hit them like a ton of bricks in the face and they realize that it was actually abusive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I feel like there are probably people in OTO who have deconstructed and maybe you&#8217;re one of them that can look back at that now and go, &#8220;Oh, that is a very common cult manipulation tactic where it&#8217;s groupthink, where you&#8217;re pressured but also it feels like your decision because you&#8217;re becoming part of something even though it is at its core abusive, at least in my opinion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Expecting someone to get naked without telling them beforehand and that&#8217;s what is going to happen, I think is a way of manipulating people into extreme vulnerability and then you can get them to do whatever you want, especially if you label it as something that&#8217;s empowering and beautiful and sacred. So, I guess I don&#8217;t know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I just wanted to talk that out with you a little bit because it seems like from my opinion it would be something that maybe down the road you could clock as ooh that probably wasn&#8217;t very good for me to do or maybe I buried some feelings about it because I thought I was doing something great when maybe it wasn&#8217;t. Does that make sense?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. I definitely see like the role of choice like what choice really means. It was something that I started to question a lot more like after leaving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I mean it was something that I was questioning even when I was in it because like how consensual is it really if you are springing something like this on somebody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So with some of the things, you would have the opportunity to stop. If you didn&#8217;t want to take off your clothes, you could just stop the initiation there and walk out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Would you? Because you would probably face ostracization from the group right or people would look down on you a little bit and you feel that, or like, I have to perform, or people are going to look at me differently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s different from that. It&#8217;s more like you&#8217;re turning your back on an opportunity to join your spiritual family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, it&#8217;s not that they&#8217;re going to ostracize you. They&#8217;re going to be okay with you not doing it, but you&#8217;re going to feel bad because you&#8217;re always going to wonder what would have happened if you had just gone and done it. Yeah. Yeah. Looking back on it, I think the far more insidious thing is not so much like I don&#8217;t know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t know how many people regret having taken their clothes off or allowed themselves to get pushed into a thing of water or something like that. I don&#8217;t know. Some people genuinely hated it and left. I can tell you that much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think the more insidious thing is how the initiation rituals kind of train you to start to spiritualize abuse and loss of sovereignty in other areas [laughter] because you get habituated to it after a while,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and the whole concept of consent is so blurry in OTO. The initiation rituals make it very intense, I think, but you find that same ambiguity you&#8217;re talking about &#8211; is this really a choice, is this really consent &#8211; repeated many times throughout a person&#8217;s involvement with the organization because they train you to view everything that happens to you as happening because of you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Right, yeah, which is basically what we were just talking about as far as reframing an experience to something you&#8217;re choosing, something that is beautiful, something that will heighten your spirituality in some way, something that will make you belong and then they repeat that in other scenarios that maybe you wouldn&#8217;t have agreed to if you hadn&#8217;t already experienced this initiation. Is that what you&#8217;re saying?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. I think &#8211; and I want to emphasize that it&#8217;s a gradual process that happens over time. It&#8217;s not that somebody goes through this ritual and then suddenly they&#8217;re like, &#8220;I&#8217;ll do anything.&#8221; You get habituated to it. But yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. Okay. So, now we&#8217;ll pause and do some questions. Thanks guys for your patience and then we&#8217;ll go back to this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hi all. I knew Jim and was a member of his lodge. I&#8217;m glad he&#8217;s speaking out on the OTO. I became uncomfortable with it after the second degree. Oh, thank you for sharing that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. So, the second degree, a lot of people bail after the second degree, because it includes some minor hazing in it. That&#8217;s where they push you into water. Also, around that time, I mean, I think you&#8217;re probably in the organization for about two years by that point. And most people get pretty tired of it, of the dysfunction at that point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like, it&#8217;s not worth the once-a-year carnival ride of initiation to continue to be part of something that&#8217;s as dysfunctional as OTO is. So that&#8217;s a really frequent drop off point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. Okay. Next question here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Time, talents, even your life if necessary for the building of the kingdom of God. Yes, that&#8217;s right. Thank you for sharing that. Scott Alder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hey Izzy. OTO sounds like a Scientology thing. I&#8217;m trying to get OT levels language out of my head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, we are going to talk about Scientology. Okay, is now a good time? I guess it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jonathan, you want to put this up right now? Tell everybody how they are linked. You said you have information on that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Oh yeah. So L. Ron Hubbard was friends with a guy named Jack Parsons is famous in the history of rocketry. He invented a type of rocket called jet-assisted takeoff which was important during World War II.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So he had a lot of money from figuring out jet-assisted takeoff. He helped found the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and he was inside of OTO. He actually ran the lodge in Pasadena, California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And L. Ron Hubbard kind of wandered through there in the 1940s I think after he got into the military. And yeah, he did ceremonial magic for a while with Jack Parsons. And Jack Parsons was trying to incarnate the Thelemic goddess Babalon. And Hubbard helped him with these ceremonies out in the desert. He eventually ended up eloping with Jack Parsons&#8217;s girlfriend, who became Hubbard&#8217;s first wife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He stole some money from Parsons and a boat and actually fled the country with Jack&#8217;s girlfriend and later on like there are certain things in Scientology that are reminiscent of Thelema.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s been a little while since I read Going Clear, but I remember going through it and thinking because I know that Hubbard was really impressed by the idea of the holy guardian angel, which is kind of like the voice of your higher self or this is kind of how it&#8217;s interpreted. But yeah, so they had personal history and L. Ron Hubbard learned quite a bit about mysticism from Jack Parsons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scientology denies this, by the way, and says that L. Ron Hubbard was actually being paid by the government to spy on like Freemasons, I think, is the story that they tell or something instead of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course, they would make something up like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. So, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. So, someone also commented on your video that the naming of the higher levels is basically very similar. So, I mean, I don&#8217;t remember. Do the names of the higher levels of Scientology?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, the OT levels. OT stands for Operating Thetan. No, I mean it&#8217;s a bit different. Scientology promises that you have the ability to heal wounds with your mind and move objects with your mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like OTO doesn&#8217;t promise anything like that concrete. In fact, they don&#8217;t promise people anything. They just let people project pretty much entirely onto it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>OTO&#8217;s sort of like higher tech as it were is sex magic. So the ability to manifest magical results using like orgasm and sexual fluid which as far as I know Scientology does not, and Scientology includes aliens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>OTO and Thelema do not include aliens. They include ascended masters. So it&#8217;s more of like a callback to the whole Theosophy thing. So, similar sort of structure in the sense that you&#8217;re climbing a pyramid up to magical powers and at the top of which there are these otherworldly beings but the particulars are somewhat different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay. And it&#8217;s pay to play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes. Somebody calculated that you have to pay something like half a million dollars or something to get up to OT-3. OTO is a lot cheaper than that. It does not cost anywhere near that much money but you still should not do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s not a good reason to do it. Let me [laughter] be clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Oh my gosh. Okay. Any more questions before we continue on?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Were you born into this organization? If not, what were the teaching points that made you decide to continue going?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, almost nobody is born into OTO. And so, as far as a religion goes, it is not a very successful one since successful religions usually require, people to be born into them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What made me get into it? Like I said, I was a seeker my entire life. I got into Buddhism and then ceremonial magic and Aleister Crowley and I had a mystical experience in my early 30s that made me move across the country. And when I came out here, I was like, let me try to find the Aleister Crowley kids and see what they&#8217;re up to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And they had a space pretty much like five-minute drive from my house. And I went and I checked it out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I think the decisive factor for me was the beauty of the rituals and the people. You know, I genuinely liked the people and genuinely respected many of them pretty much the entire time I was there. It&#8217;s a good community. It&#8217;s just got a lot of sickness at the center of it unfortunately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. Let&#8217;s talk about that psychological component to how you&#8217;re spiritualizing what may be considered abuse instead of seeing it for what it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. So I mean you&#8217;re trained into this gradually inside of the rituals themselves and the first initiation that you do symbolizes the decision of the soul to incarnate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So Thelema is based on this idea of reincarnation and so inside of the ritual itself you are portrayed as a spiritual seeker wandering through the Middle East and you stumble across OTO which is symbolized as an army during the time of the Crusades. And so already what they&#8217;re doing in that ritual is they&#8217;re blurring the deeper meaning of your life the reason you&#8217;re here on earth with joining OTO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And OTO is portrayed this way: the relationship of the member to OTO is explained as the relationship of an organ to a whole body. Okay? So it&#8217;s like a part to a whole. That&#8217;s why you have to follow orders inside of OTO because if the heart starts doing the work of the stomach, right, the host is going to die.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so they&#8217;re already getting you used to this idea right off the bat: OTO is like a microcosm for life itself and for the universe. And you are not here as an individual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You are here as a function or as a role, and that&#8217;s given to you in the first initiation itself. That kind of part-whole logic gets intensified as you go through the organization until, in the fifth degree, the individual relates to OTO the way a mystic relates to God and instead of giving your soul over to OTO, you give them your bank account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Basically, you promise them your money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I want to emphasize something about the oaths. This is really important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The oaths are not always literal. Like sometimes they&#8217;re interpreted literally, other times they&#8217;re not. Because I could very easily hear somebody from OTO saying, well, they never took my money from me or you promised never to leave, but you did, so therefore it wasn&#8217;t serious. And the truth is a little more complicated than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let me give you a story to help really make this clear. So, when I was a member of OTO, I wrote an article in which I disagreed with an upper member of the organization. I disagreed with him about some interpretation of a ritual and it was a respectful article. It was well cited. It was the kind of thing that would have been normal to me with a background as an academic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I was told by no fewer than three upper degree members, they implied that I was violating my third degree oath by writing that article. Because there is a line in the third-degree oath where you promise to always look with respect and reverence upon members of higher grades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And they interpreted disagreement as disrespect and therefore a violation of a sacred obligation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>OTO doesn&#8217;t control you through breaking your will or forcing you to do things. They don&#8217;t say, &#8220;You have sex with that person, you give me your money.&#8221; That&#8217;s not how it works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They control people through ambiguity because you&#8217;re never quite sure. The way that they blend the symbolic and the literal and switch between them at a moment&#8217;s notice when you cross an invisible line leaves you constantly in a state of guessing where you can never trust your own perception and judgment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Right. You give that over to the person above you or the higher up. You refer to them like, &#8220;Tell me what to do here.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Exactly. Over time, it trains people to not take action, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To not rock the boat and to be permission-seeking. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay. Outsourcing your decisions or your actions. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so one of the other key ideas in Thelema and that&#8217;s embodied in these initiations is the idea that you&#8217;re here by choice and all of the aspects of your life are like all the things that seemingly happen to you are actually chosen by you in this incarnation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And there&#8217;s a leader inside OTO. His name is Lon Milo DuQuette. And he&#8217;s probably the closest thing to a spiritual teacher inside of Ordo Templi Orientis. On multiple occasions he has lectured to packed rooms and in front of people he has said things like, all of the dysfunction you see in OTO, all of the politics, the backbiting, even what he refers to as the bullshit and stupidity is not a flaw in the system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is actually your initiation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And these people who are slandering you, attacking you, gossiping about you are actually officers in the ongoing initiation of your life. It&#8217;s the universe. It&#8217;s you teaching you spiritual lessons. If you are able to detach from your emotions and stay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But that sounds like Scientology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s similar to Scientology in the sense that it seemingly places power in your hands, and that&#8217;s what makes it seductive. Because if you can detach from your emotions and you can hang on, you get to keep the relationship and you get to feel like you&#8217;re growing while you do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. And that&#8217;s incredibly seductive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And he even goes on in these talks in these talks to say that survival is the first and last ordeal of being in Ordo Templi Orientis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What do you mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That staying is success and therefore leaving is failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay. So let me sum this up. It sounds like he&#8217;s saying all this dysfunction, everything that&#8217;s going wrong is actually for your benefit because they&#8217;re all tests and if you leave, you fail and if you stay and deal with all the bullshit then you win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Exactly. Because it&#8217;s an ongoing initiation. It&#8217;s you self-transcending and encountering your real self.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wow. I think that&#8217;s extremely dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And there are a lot of organizations that do this, but they don&#8217;t say the quiet part out loud. And OTO is actually not only admitting to the dysfunction, but saying that it&#8217;s part of the design, which is crazy. And it actually sounds a little bit like NXIVM, too, and some of the other groups that we&#8217;ve covered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>People have a lot of questions. We&#8217;re going to do some rapid-fire questions right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, go for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Oh, hey, thanks so much for the super chat. Are there aspects of hypnosis? Ooh, in the OTO, like how Scientology uses aspects of hypnotism or &#8220;trancework&#8221; in auditing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s a great question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No, there&#8217;s nothing in OTO that I would describe as being like hypnosis. I think the similarity with Scientology is that it&#8217;s often emotionally cathartic and that can be very addictive, especially at the beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay, great answer. Next question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What states on the East Coast have the biggest OTO memberships?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Good question. I honestly couldn&#8217;t tell you. I know that there is a significant presence in New York, Georgia, and Florida; those would be the places that I would look. I mean, you shouldn&#8217;t look anywhere, but in case you&#8217;re in [laughter]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Don&#8217;t look, but there might be a lot of people in those states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Are the leaders of OTO often high up in Freemasonry?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No, there is no overlap. There are some people in OTO who are also Freemasons, but there&#8217;s not, as far as I know, there&#8217;s not a lot of overlap. No.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How do you get recruited into things like this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You don&#8217;t get recruited. They are anti-recruitment, which makes it feel disarming and makes it feel safe because everything feels like it&#8217;s your choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes. Okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And Izzy has another question. Wait, who runs this thing? Is there a head? Is it a hydra?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nope. It is hierarchical. It is a pyramid. The person at the very top of it, who is called the Outer Head of the Order, goes by the name Hymenaeus Beta. His name is William Breeze. The person who runs it in the United States goes by the moniker Sabazius.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s organized by an international organization and then it is organized by country and then in the United States it&#8217;s also organized by local bodies and states so there are different authorities at different levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So you explained it like a pyramid. Do you feel like the money also runs to the top in that way?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is not a lot of money in OTO. That is another thing that&#8217;s really disarming about it because you look at it and people are not obviously laughing their way to the bank. OTO is fairly pathetic as far as actual material wealth goes. They don&#8217;t even really publish books. That&#8217;s not the main form of manipulation inside OTO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In fact, somebody told me I don&#8217;t know if this is true, but I&#8217;ll just say it because I heard it. Somebody said that the reason OTO does not want property because they do not want to have anything that they could be sued over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay, interesting. Next question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Does OTO come after you like Scientologists do when you leave or speak out? They did a smear campaign, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you go quietly and don&#8217;t say anything, they will leave you alone. They will forget that you ever lived. The people who claimed to be your best friends yesterday may never think about you again as long as they live. However, if you speak out against them, they will attack. And when they attack you, they will use the kind of language that I mentioned before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, when I left, I received comments and DMs every single week to the effect of, &#8220;You&#8217;re just creating drama. You are rejecting the work. You have failed your initiation. You&#8217;re just immature.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I don&#8217;t think that Lon DuQuette and the other leaders of OTO instructed these people to say these things to me, but they also don&#8217;t have to because the ideas are there and the rituals reinforce them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. All of those sounded like different versions of, well, you&#8217;re just not spiritual enough. Well, you just wanted to sin. All of the Mormon excuses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They don&#8217;t use the word sin because sin is not a Thelemic term. What they will say instead is more like how Christians will say, &#8220;I&#8217;ll pray for you.&#8221; In OTO, they&#8217;ll say, &#8220;I hope you find your will,&#8221; or &#8220;I hope you feel better,&#8221; or things like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, it&#8217;s all the same. Yeah, it&#8217;s all the same sentiment just packaged differently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Exactly. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Next question. At what point do they ask for your bank account?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They don&#8217;t literally ask for your bank account, but you do swear all of your wealth down to the last penny in the fifth degree and it is reiterated again in the sixth degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So if they did ask you for money, it wouldn&#8217;t be a surprise because you already agreed to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, exactly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Did they ask you for a significant amount of money at any point?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No, the dues increase as you go up in rank and the initiations become more expensive. The only time I was literally ever asked for money is when my replacement as local body master showed up at my door and demanded my bank card.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I guess fearful that I was going to take the $1,500 or whatever that belonged to Horizon Lodge at the time, but that was actually the only time I was ever asked for money, and it was their money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So would you say then that the initiations as you get higher get a little bit more intense and shocking? I guess that&#8217;s probably the best word I could describe it. So, as you go up higher, not only are you paying more, but what&#8217;s happening to you is a little bit more distressing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not necessarily. When I think about probably the most intense of the initiations I went through, I actually think more of the first handful of them that I went through, the ones that you go through in your first three or four years are pretty intense. The sixth degree is pretty intense, but it&#8217;s intense more in the sense of being like cinematic or theatrical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like they lead you into this octagonal room where you&#8217;re surrounded on all sides by mirrors and they do a ceremonial burning at the stake, figuratively, like the founder of the Templars was. And then after that, I&#8217;m not even really sure exactly what the ceremonies are, but my understanding is that they&#8217;re actually maybe less theatrical and they&#8217;re just kind of like giving you the secrets of the order at that point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I&#8217;m not really sure because I didn&#8217;t go through those top initiations personally and it&#8217;s a little unclear exactly what they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay. I wondered because I was thinking if it got more expensive, if you&#8217;re paying a significant amount of money or any amount of money as you got higher, you&#8217;re less likely to walk away because you paid to be there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Oh, so that&#8217;s a really good point. So it&#8217;s not the money that&#8217;s keeping people there, but it&#8217;s more like by the time you&#8217;re taking that initiation where you are pledging yourself body and soul in charity to all of the other members of the grade and higher, it&#8217;s a tremendous honor that you were invited to that degree. You didn&#8217;t fill out an application for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You waited quietly maybe for 10 years before somebody said you were worthy to do it. So, yeah, they&#8217;re trafficking in status and recognition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s interesting. You don&#8217;t just decide to move up; someone has to tell you&#8217;re ready.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Oh, yes, that&#8217;s an important point. So let&#8217;s cover that. So the first six of these ceremonies that you go through, you fill out an application and give them some money and you take it. But after that, there&#8217;s what&#8217;s called the invitational degrees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Somebody has to recognize you and you&#8217;re not even allowed to ask like, &#8220;Oh, when are you going to give me the fifth degree or when are you going to give me the sixth degree, whatever.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That is disqualifying. And so that decision is being made like in the shadows [laughter] And they are watching you in some cases. They&#8217;re watching you and they&#8217;re screenshotting your stuff on social media and they&#8217;re having conversations about you and talking about whether you&#8217;re mature enough or ready to do this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so you have to imagine what it&#8217;s like from the person going through it. Like you don&#8217;t know what the rules are. You don&#8217;t know what the criteria are. It&#8217;s hierarchical. It&#8217;s opaque.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course people are going to be highly motivated to be conformist in an environment like<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That makes so much sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That makes so much more sense because then it truly does feel like an honor and you will go along with it because it seems it does seem like hazing with the college groups. Why can&#8217;t I think of the names? The sororities, fraternities. I&#8217;m like, what is [laughter] that word? It does kind of feel that way where you&#8217;ve been chosen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it&#8217;s an honor to be there and so you&#8217;re just going to do whatever it takes to become part of this group or to move up in status.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s really fascinating when I left I went and started reading ahead in some of the initiations because I was trying to understand what made people do the things they did. In particular, I was trying to understand why a friend of mine had turned on me. And so I went and I read the text of the initiation and there was actually nothing in it to explain that transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it was all just the same shit. It was like, &#8220;Swear never to leave, swear it&#8217;s all your money, blah. And I&#8217;m thinking to myself, that&#8217;s when I realized like it&#8217;s not anything. It&#8217;s not any one particular thing. It&#8217;s not like they take a video of you doing something and now they&#8217;ve got blackmail on you and they own you. It&#8217;s not like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s just that by the time you get up to the level where you would be quote-unquote ready to take that initiation, they&#8217;ve got you psychologically at that point. All of your reflexes are in the direction of permission-seeking, obedience, spying, and tattling because you have learned to intuit what the leaders of the organization want from you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, you are unquestionably devoted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes. And if you pulled any of these people aside and if you asked them like, &#8220;Hey, do you think that it&#8217;s okay to attack critics or do you think that it&#8217;s okay to be spying on people in social media or do you think that it&#8217;s okay to keep these kinds of files on people that the leadership has?&#8221; They would probably say no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But if you said like, &#8220;Well, then why are you then?&#8221; and you pointed to the things in the organization, they would say, &#8220;Well, hold on. That&#8217;s an exception&#8221; and they would have a reason for it. So, right, they&#8217;re not irrational. They&#8217;re not immoral in the sense of being wicked, devious, evil people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They are people whose instincts and perception have been shaped gradually over time through immersion in this social and symbolic and ritualistic environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s so interesting you said that because it was almost word for word. We just did a live with Jaden Jeffs who is the son of Warren Jeffs who is the prophet of the fundamentalist polygamist sect currently in jail. Anyway, he said that he was having conversations with current FLDS members and was like, &#8220;Do you think it&#8217;s okay for Samuel Bateman?&#8221; I don&#8217;t know if you saw Trust Me, the documentary just came out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay, so do you think it&#8217;s okay that Samuel Bateman married 12-year-olds or young children? And they&#8217;re like, &#8220;Absolutely not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s so wrong.&#8221; And he&#8217;s like, &#8220;Okay, but Warren Jeffs did the same thing.&#8221; And they&#8217;re like, &#8220;No, no, no. That&#8217;s different.&#8221; [laughter]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, it&#8217;s like the same exact thing where they&#8217;re just programmed to believe something so strongly that it&#8217;s impossible for them to make the connections and see how one thing could be considered wrong in their mind and another considered okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. I mean, having watched some of those documentaries on the FLDS church, I mean, from an outsider perspective, I imagine people asking like, well, how could you give over your wife and your children to this person? I just don&#8217;t understand it at all. And while I never encountered anything that extreme while inside of OTO, I understand the psychology of it perfectly. [laughter] Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s not just people being irrational or just being immoral. That&#8217;s not it. Over time, their judgment has been weakened and their perception has been shaped in a particular direction by a set of beliefs and a system of incentives. So that is the rational and moral choice in that moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yep. Okay, we have a few more rapid-fire questions before we go. Wow, it&#8217;s already almost been an hour. Cults unite to rule the world. My dear woman, keep up the amazing work. Thank you so much. [laughter] Amazing guest. Thank you so much. Thank you for being here. Your work is so powerful and it feels like you&#8217;ve really leveled up lately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Oh, thank you. I devoured your psychedelic video at the gym today. I&#8217;ve had healing experiences with them, too. Thank you. Oh my gosh, I laughed because that was such an old episode. It was like one of the first 10, I think, where I discussed my psychedelic experience. Anyway, glad you enjoyed it. Thank you so much for watching and for supporting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Is OTO growing or shrinking in terms of number of members and how many members are there in OTO roughly?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t even know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Active in the United States at any given time, it&#8217;s in the hundreds and I think that internationally it&#8217;s like in the thousands. It was fairly stagnant when I was in it. I think it might actually be shrinking though. I&#8217;m not sure. It&#8217;s not growing. Let&#8217;s put it that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, that&#8217;s actually a lot less than I thought you were going to say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s very small. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And there was a huge number of people in the comments of your video being like, &#8220;Oh, I almost joined this.&#8221; Or, &#8220;I&#8217;m so glad I didn&#8217;t.&#8221; Or, &#8220;I also had a bad experience.&#8221; So, wow, the algorithm really found the right people then. [laughter]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For an organization that small, it&#8217;s surprising that they produce so much scandal and drama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Really?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. Any other questions? Are people allowed to get married or have kids in the OTO? And what about day jobs?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, they&#8217;re allowed to marry and have children. There is a there is an OTO wedding ceremony if people choose to do that. Although you do not have to get married in the OTO church if you don&#8217;t want to. There&#8217;s no rules around having children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Aleister Crowley encouraged people to have children and to not use protection and to just have as many children as possible. Most modern Thelemites do not follow that injunction as far as I know. And as far as day jobs go, that was actually one of the disarming things about OTO is that everybody seemed pretty normal. They had like normal jobs in offices. They worked in tech. Some of them were academics. People made six-figure salaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like they seemed like worldly down-to-earth people. Yeah. And they are. But that is not protection from being part of something that&#8217;s abusive as it turns out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yep. And I love that you say that because it&#8217;s the same thing with Mormonism. And I would look around and be like, there&#8217;s doctors and lawyers and people are so smart. So clearly they&#8217;ve got it figured out or they know something that I don&#8217;t and I just need to stick with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it&#8217;s another way to disarm people and to get them to go with the groupthink because it makes them think that they&#8217;re the problem for not seeing something that they should versus the organization itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that was one of the reasons that I had to speak out against it because when I was inside, I was not a follower. I used all of my intellectual abilities to make the organization look good, safe, and spiritually legitimate. I was a commercial for it. That is why when I left, I decided to use my intelligence and my ability to tell the truth about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, that&#8217;s amazing. And everyone should go check out your channel. It should be in the description. And let&#8217;s see if there&#8217;s any final questions. Oh, hey, thank you for becoming a member.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, we do have channel memberships, of course. Liking, sharing, subscribing, commenting is all incredible ways to support the channel, and we really appreciate that. It boosts the algorithm, shows it to more people. If you do want to support us more during this postpartum time when I&#8217;m not really recording, and we&#8217;re releasing episodes that we pre-recorded while I was pregnant, you can become a channel member. We will be doing a members-only live this weekend sometime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, if you want to become a member, you can join us there and ask your questions. I give you some behind the scenes info and what&#8217;s going on, upcoming guests, and get your opinions on who you&#8217;d like to see on the show. So, thank you for doing that if that&#8217;s something you want to participate in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And Izzy says, &#8220;This is so seductive and slippery in a way that&#8217;s unlike so many religious cults. It has that Scientology self-propulsion\/internal power to it. Dangerous.&#8221; Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. I agree completely. It is an organization that is attractive to intelligent, conscientious seekers and that&#8217;s what&#8217;s so insidious about it because it will take your intelligence and it will take your conscientiousness and it will turn them against you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. And that&#8217;s a scary place to be. Especially when you&#8217;re a seeker, when you&#8217;re looking for something, when you&#8217;re open to it and you&#8217;re ready. You&#8217;re hungry for this information and then they force-feed you something you weren&#8217;t necessarily thinking would be the end goal and you&#8217;re like, &#8220;Wait a second, but I&#8217;m already here and I&#8217;m already in and I&#8217;m in too deep, and it just&#8230; Yeah. It blinds you in such a weird way.&#8221; Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. Okay. I cannot believe you&#8217;re only a few weeks postpartum. Aw, you&#8217;re so sweet. You look like a million bucks and you&#8217;re already doing interviews. Go you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Welcome Earthside Little Roman. Thank you. Yes, he&#8217;s three and a half weeks old now. It&#8217;s crazy. So cute. He&#8217;s getting a little chunky. He&#8217;s filling out. Oh, hey, you&#8217;ve been a member for a month. That&#8217;s so awesome. So much love to see. Really enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much. We really appreciate your support coming on live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We have another one tomorrow, right Jonathan? With Claire Headley talking about Scientology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Oh my gosh. I should talk to Claire about OTO if she knows anything about it. Are you familiar with Claire Headley?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, totally. I&#8217;ve seen her in documentaries. I think she was in Going Clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. So, I&#8217;m going to ask Claire if she knows anything about it. I&#8217;d be curious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, I&#8217;d be curious if they know. Yeah, that&#8217;d be an interesting question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. Well, join us tomorrow, everybody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I forget the time. Jonathan, you can put in the chat if you remember or look at the calendar. And anything else that we want to talk about? Is there something else that we missed that you wanted to say, James, that we didn&#8217;t talk about?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No, I mean all I would like to leave people with is that the initiation rituals of OTO are often not what people think they are. They operate on a much more subtle psychological level in the sense that they reshape people&#8217;s perception over time, especially their perception about themselves and authority and abuse. And you find that technique used in a lot of cults or high control systems. It&#8217;s not just OTO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, I hope that people listening to me talk about it can take something away about it and be wiser as a result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. And what&#8217;s interesting, too, when I was looking through the comments on your video, your interview, which everyone go watch that after this if you haven&#8217;t, is someone mentioned that it was almost like their abusive marriage that they experienced, the way that you talked about OTO, how they experienced their abusive marriage. And I thought that was an interesting parallel, too, that it&#8217;s not even just cults.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It can be high control people and narcissistic relationships and things like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s one of the things that I talk about a lot in my videos: the structure is the same across those. And yeah, and I did a video about OTO last year called Governance by Gaslighting. So imagine like the worst gaslighting relationship and then blow that up to the size of an organization and that&#8217;s a pretty good idea of what OTO is like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, exactly. Well, thanks for coming back, James, and being willing to share some more with us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thanks for having me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SHELISE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hey, it was a great conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes. All right, guys. Thanks for being here. Leave your comments after the video is posted or if you&#8217;re watching the replay, we love to see those comments. It boosts the algorithm some more. Liking, sharing, commenting, all of those things. Words of encouragement, your experiences, all of those are a great way to support the channel. If you want to become a channel member, you can. Of course, as we mentioned, members-only live stream this weekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And behind-the-scenes content, we just did one about my birth experience. If you&#8217;re interested in hearing about my home birth or any other behind the scenes stuff, you&#8217;re welcome to go check out that members-only content. And until next time, well until tomorrow. I think tomorrow. Follow your highest excitement. Be conscious and be well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SHELISE So, thanks for coming back, James Luceno. JAMES Thanks for having me. SHELISE Yeah, this was one that I had never heard of before and you submitted to be on the show through our drop form, which you guys can always do through our about section, so I was really interested to hear about&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[32,506,505,515,67,66,488,487,2],"class_list":["post-2484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aleister-crowley","tag-cult-recovery","tag-cults","tag-cults-to-consciousness","tag-ordo-templi-orientis","tag-oto","tag-oto-high-control-group-2","tag-oto-high-control-group","tag-thelema"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2484"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2485,"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2484\/revisions\/2485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapis-mercurii.org\/lvx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}