By the design of the A.’.A.’. a Recognition was supposed to coincide with the Recognition of another into the Degree you were vacating. Before you could become a Zelator, you were supposed to find someone to take your place as a Neophyte. This design would ensure that a superior could teach something to an inferior in the Order and ensure the continued expansion of the Order’s membership.
When Crowley Recognized himself as a Magus, he knew he would need someone to replace him as Magister Templi. Charles Stansfeld Jones would be recognized as a Magister Templi based upon his taking the preliminary “Oath of the Abyss” in 1916. Jones’s claim to being a Magister Templi had come not from doing the regular Work of the A.’.A.’. but from essentially leapfrogging over the Grades via the Oath.
Crowley took the Oath of the Ipsissimus in 1923 C.E. with no co-Recognition as Magus below himself to take his place. In fact, during Crowley’s lifetime, he never recognized another Magus within the Aeon of Horus*. When he died in 1947 C.E., he had not made legal provisions for the A.’.A.’ survival beyond his life, though he had with the O.T.O.
This did not prevent others from claiming to be a Magus or Uttering a Word via the A.’.A.’., nor for others to cast their preferred Thelemic Teacher in this role.
C. S. Jones made claims of instituting an “Aeon of Justice and Truth,” which superseded the Aeon of Horus but was not quite the Aeon of Ma’at that Crowley had claimed would supersede that of Horus. Jones never proclaimed a Word for himself, nor from his letters as republished in the introduction to Liber Aleph, did he feel he was the Magus of this Aeon. Others, however, have cast him into that role since his death in 1950 C.E. Of particular value for Jones’ exploration of these ideas is the collection of letters published under the title The Incoming of the Aeon of Maat.
Following Crowley’s death, the state of organized Thelema largely fell to nothing. In his excellent, The Unknown God, Martin P. Starr provides an account of Crowley’s O.T.O. heir, Karl Germer’s attempt to hold together the existing Thelemites with little effect. As a result of no centralized Thelemic authority, it was easy for quasi-Thelemic groups to form.
One of these quasi-O.T.O. groups was known as “The Solar Lodge.” Created by Ray Burlingame, a one-time O.T.O. IX°, and his student Georgina “Jean” Brayton, the group worked an idiosyncratic combination of the O.T.O. and A.’.A.’. systems beginning in 1965. They operated a ranch compound that would become subject to law enforcement scrutiny and tremendous bad press. An insider account of their activities can be found in Inside Solar Lodge – Outside the Law, written under the pseudonym “Frater Shiva.”
The bad press around the Solar Lodge, and thus Aleister Crowley and Thelema, lead a one-time IX° of the O.T.O., Grady Louis McMurtry (1918 C.E. – 1985 C.E.), to decide to do something about the lack of central authority in Thelema. A veteran of WW2, where he had helped in the execution of the Normandy Invasion and of the Korean War, McMurtry had spent time with Crowley while in England and would return to the United States a IX° O.T.O. Crowley would also provide him with authority to take charge of the O.T.O. operations in California, and potentially to succeed Germer if need be, pending Germer’s confirmation. Crowley would pun upon California by calling those who would lead after him, Caliphs.
Using the authority of the so-called Caliphate Letters from Crowley, McMurtry would re-establish the O.T.O. in 1969 C.E. McMurtry began seeking out those others who had been IX° to ask them to either help or get out of the way in his attempt to revive the O.T.O. and defend Crowley’s legacy. This would lead to no minor turbulence, particularly with other claimants to the title of being the one true head of O.T.O.
In 1977 C.E., he wrote a Charter for Thelema Lodge of San Francisco as the Grand Lodge of the O.T.O. In signing this Charter, he pronounced this under his authority as “Frater Hymeneaus Alpha 777, IX° O.T.O., 9=2, Caliph of the Ordo Templi Orientis.” The charter can be seen here. Of note is the claim of 9=2, the designation in the A.’.A.’. for the Degree of Magus. To the best of anyone’s records, McMurtry was not a member of the A.’.A.’. while Crowley was alive. Also, McMurtry never publicly proclaimed himself as a Magus other than this one time, nor did he ever state his Utterance publicly. He was never Recognized as a Magus 9=2 by any of the Students of Crowley in the A.’.A.’. at or after this point in time.
McMurtry’s A.’.A.’. experiences and those of his students were largely unrecognized for decades. This has changed dramatically in the past decade due to the work of one of McMurtry’s A.’.A.’. students, Jerry Cornelius. If you are interested in McMurtry’s life and magical legacy, Cornelius’ two-volume biography, In the Name of the Beast, is essential reading. For those interested in a more condensed account of McMurtry’s Magus claim, this essay will be valuable
https://www.parareligion.ch/rf/rf2.htm
*There is a rumor that Crowley regarded Jones as a Magus 9=2 of A.’.A.’. and recorded him by this Grade on a copy of the Order of Thelemites Constitution. However, at this point, those rumors have not been substantiated.
Setemheb 