Secrecy in the Old Craft

[PufPuf23]

5. No slam at all the to the Gardnerians. I am a rare book collector that tends to "mine" out

a genera or author that hits my fancy until too cost prohibited.

Gardner had an OTO charter from Crowley before they split and Gardner started his own path.

Think "Do what thou Will (or Wilt)" (which Crowley likely derived from Rabelais).

There was a fellow named IIRC something like Tim Mahroney (sp), a member of the OTO (and passed on 10 yrs or so ago), who did a presentation at a conference of his academic study comparing early Gardner writings with internal OTO material. There are cases of paragraphs lifted word for word from the older OTO material. The question was whether Crowley had ghost-written or Gardner had borrowed (and to my knowledge this is still not answered).

Adler, in Drawing Down the Moon, specifically quotes Doreen Valiente critcizing Gardner for unattributed Crowley quotes and ritual in his early books.

An example of Crowley ghost-writing were the first two best-selling books on astrology released in the 1920s as authored by Evangelina Adams which were her adaptations from a manuscript Adam's paid Crowley to produce. Adams brought astrology to American newspapers. Only in 2002, Weiser (under OTO copyright) published Crowley's manuscript as originally written and with comments about the history. Crowley said that everything anyone needed to know about astrology could be found in Dr. John Dee's Hieroglyphic Monad. He may have been joking. ;o)