Oliver St. John received initial training in the Hermetic Art by working through an experimental five-year course written by W.E. Butler, an Initiate of occultist Dion Fortune's Fraternity of the Inner Light. On completion of this in-depth study and practice of the Western Mystery Tradition, he accepted the Law of Thelema, the magical current that was unearthed through the mediumship of Aleister and Rose Crowley. This led to his foundation of the Hermetic college, Ordo Astri (the Order of the Star) in 2000 e.v. and his entry into Kenneth Grant's Typhonian Order (formerly Typhonian OTO) in the same year. Over the course of time Oliver St. John has also worked with the late Mary Long (author and student of Dion Fortune), Gareth Knight, Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki (co-founder of the Servants of the Light Association) and Lady Olivia Robertson (co-founder of the Fellowship of Isis).
There is much talk in occult circles of lineage and contacts, but how does a magical Order get started? An examination of the history of the Hermetic Tradition reveals that new Orders are periodically established to continue the work of their predecessors. Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) formed the Order of Argenteum Astrum after the break-up and schism of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, of which he was an Initiate. By publishing the rituals of the Golden Dawn in his journal of The Equinox he effectively ensured the survival and continuation of this knowledge for future generations.
Dion Fortune (Violet Firth) formed the Fraternity of the Inner Light as an outer court to a post-schism faction of the Golden Dawn called Stella Matutina (Morning Star). Before long she claimed to have received the necessary spiritual contacts to found her own organisation. She developed the solar teaching of the Golden Dawn with tantrik ideas that were inspired through assuming the role of a priestess of the moon. Dion Fortune’s legacy has continued to inspire the imagination of subsequent generations of occultists.
In the final years of his life Aleister Crowley accepted a young chela, Kenneth Grant. Grant, who took on the magical name of Aussic Aiwass 718, absorbed the magical current that surrounded Crowley. His Order became known as the Typhonian O.T.O. (now simply the “Typhonian Order”).
At the dawning of the 21st century, the Maatian current poured through the earthly vessels of the Typhonian Order and the Fraternity of the Inner Light to create Ordo Astri. And so the story of magical Initiation and Apocalypse continues in the strange Aeon of Hrumachis.
A Note from the Founder
There are two essential streams, from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn via Dion Fortune, and from the Golden Dawn via Aleister Crowley:
1. Isis-Urania/Golden Dawn – Fraternity of Inner Light – Ordo Astri
2. Isis-Urania – Argenteum Astrum/OTO – Typhonian Order – Ordo Astri.
W.E. Butler worked directly with Dion Fortune; Gareth Knight and Dolores Ashcroft Nowicki were students of W.E. Butler in the Fraternity of Inner Light. Ashcroft-Nowicki, Knight and Butler then formed the Helios group that eventually morphed into Servants of the Light (without Gareth Knight or W.E. Butler).
The late Mary Long, however, was my most direct magical contact with the Fraternity of Inner Light. She was a student of that Order while Dion Fortune was still Magister Templi. Upon their meeting, Dion Fortune remarked, characteristically, “She has the mark of the Master upon her. She’ll do!” Mary was a natural – and fearless – psychic medium, who shared both Dion Fortune’s and Aleister Crowley’s complete disdain and disregard for social conventions of the time (she was a young adult around the time that Crowley was establishing his Abbey of Thelema in Sicily). Like those two pillars of 20th century occultism, Mary was primarily interested in cosmic mediation. She absorbed the Pan-Dionysian current in its entirety. This unfortunately resulted in insanity and early death for her magical partner, following an operation to invoke the great god Pan. (Dion Fortune had earlier performed rites to Pan with members of her Order.) This episode has reinforced my conviction that magical safeguards are of paramount importance in occultism. However, Mary Long claimed that through these rites, contact was made between herself as “Miriam”, and extraterrestrial or praeterhuman intelligences. A magical book was received in similar fashion to Crowley’s Liber AL vel Legis, though it was set in the form of a novel (“Our Son Moves Among You”, Bachman and Turner, London 1974).
It was a member of the Fraternity of Inner Light that suggested (in 1998) that I contact Kenneth Grant, since I was most interested in development of the 93 Current. I was formally admitted to the Typhonian Order under the seal of the magical ring of Aussic Aiwaz, 718 in the year 2000 e.v.
Ordo Astri existed in various experimental forms previous to the year 2000. In April 1995 I was ordained as a High Priest (or Hierophant) by Mary Long, who kept a Lyceum of Matriani in the Fellowship of Isis – the organisation founded by Lady Olivia Robertson, the cousin of Robert Graves. A year or two later I founded my own Lyceum with a charter from Olivia Robertson, dedicated to the Star of Nuit-Babalon. By the new millennium the Order of the Star was born as a fully-fledged Esoteric Order with a system of grades or degrees based on the Hermetic Qabalah and Tree of Life.
Please note that there is no connection or link of any kind between Ordo Astri and the Theosophical “Order of the Star in the East” that was dissolved by Krishnamurti in 1929 e.v.
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There are two essential streams, from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn via Dion Fortune, and from the Golden Dawn via Aleister Crowley:
1. Isis-Urania/Golden Dawn – Fraternity of Inner Light – Ordo Astri
2. Isis-Urania – Argenteum Astrum/OTO – Typhonian Order – Ordo Astri.
W.E. Butler worked directly with Dion Fortune; Gareth Knight and Dolores Ashcroft Nowicki were students of W.E. Butler in the Fraternity of Inner Light. Ashcroft-Nowicki, Knight and Butler then formed the Helios group that eventually morphed into Servants of the Light (without Gareth Knight or W.E. Butler).
The late Mary Long, however, was my most direct magical contact with the Fraternity of Inner Light. She was a student of that Order while Dion Fortune was still Magister Templi. Upon their meeting, Dion Fortune remarked, characteristically, “She has the mark of the Master upon her. She’ll do!” Mary was a natural – and fearless – psychic medium, who shared both Dion Fortune’s and Aleister Crowley’s complete disdain and disregard for social conventions of the time (she was a young adult around the time that Crowley was establishing his Abbey of Thelema in Sicily). Like those two pillars of 20th century occultism, Mary was primarily interested in cosmic mediation. She absorbed the Pan-Dionysian current in its entirety. This unfortunately resulted in insanity and early death for her magical partner, following an operation to invoke the great god Pan. (Dion Fortune had earlier performed rites to Pan with members of her Order.) This episode has reinforced my conviction that magical safeguards are of paramount importance in occultism. However, Mary Long claimed that through these rites, contact was made between herself as “Miriam”, and extraterrestrial or praeterhuman intelligences. A magical book was received in similar fashion to Crowley’s Liber AL vel Legis, though it was set in the form of a novel (“Our Son Moves Among You”, Bachman and Turner, London 1974).
It was a member of the Fraternity of Inner Light that suggested (in 1998) that I contact Kenneth Grant, since I was most interested in development of the 93 Current. I was formally admitted to the Typhonian Order under the seal of the magical ring of Aussic Aiwaz, 718 in the year 2000 e.v.
Ordo Astri existed in various experimental forms previous to the year 2000. In April 1995 I was ordained as a High Priest (or Hierophant) by Mary Long, who kept a Lyceum of Matriani in the Fellowship of Isis – the organisation founded by Lady Olivia Robertson, the cousin of Robert Graves. A year or two later I founded my own Lyceum with a charter from Olivia Robertson, dedicated to the Star of Nuit-Babalon. By the new millennium the Order of the Star was born as a fully-fledged Esoteric Order with a system of grades or degrees based on the Hermetic Qabalah and Tree of Life.
Please note that there is no connection or link of any kind between Ordo Astri and the Theosophical “Order of the Star in the East” that was dissolved by Krishnamurti in 1929 e.v.
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