The Thelemic calendar is a foundation from which to elevate one’s life spiritually and practically throughout the year, year after year. Our planet’s annual and diurnal travels around the Sun provide the scaffolding for the story of our lives. This relationship between that Sun above and the sovereign Sun within each of us forms a spiral as these cycles move through time. We mark the inflection points in these cycles with specific practices, rituals, and celebrations. These observances build the narrative understanding of our past, present, and future that helps each of us power the transformation of destiny into liberty.
As individuals we practice the daily observance of our relationship to the Sun in a number of ways, including adorations and meditation. So important is this constant practice that our spiritual founder and prophet Aleister Crowley wrote of it: “Neglect never the fourfold Adorations of the Sun in his four Stations, for thereby thou doest affirm thy Place in Nature and her Harmonies.”
The annual cycle of Earth’s relationship to the Sun lends itself more to collective worship. Four times a year we celebrate the turning of the season at the equinoxes and solstices with group ritual and feasting, preparing ourselves for changes to come, reflecting on the change that has just transpired. Other annual celebrations marked as holidays commemorate pivotal events that brought Thelema into the world, such as the days on which The Book of the Law was first received. Some observances take place only once or a handful of times throughout the period of each person’s incarnation. We celebrate feasts for birth, maturation, marriage, and death. We mark their protection by the church through the ancient rite of ritual baptism, and their subsequent acceptance of the church’s creed through the rite of confirmation.
Through Sekhet-Maat, Ordo Templi Orientis offers a program that provides its students with opportunities to become better servants and leaders to themselves, their families, and to the broader community. The foundation of this program is a sequence (or “degrees”) of ceremonial initiations emblematic of each individual’s Path in Eternity. The sequence in total is called Mysteria Mystica Maxima (M∴M∴M∴), translated roughly as “most secret mystery.” The initiations are in the vein of dramatic ritual. The candidate undergoes specific ordeals throughout the ritual’s narrative in order to have lessons inculcated into their consciousness, both directly and through more subtle means. The specific contents of the initiations are confidential, to be shared only with those who have themselves gone through them. The rituals themselves are subjects of intense study as initiates sort through the layers of symbol and reference in order to discern and absorb the lesson in their own personal way. The initiation program is available to anyone who is free, of majority age, and of good report. However, we urge those seeking this training to first familiarize themselves with the church and develop personal contacts within the community. Being an initiate of M∴M∴M∴ is a requirement for all church clergy.
As individuals we practice the daily observance of our relationship to the Sun in a number of ways, including adorations and meditation. So important is this constant practice that our spiritual founder and prophet Aleister Crowley wrote of it: “Neglect never the fourfold Adorations of the Sun in his four Stations, for thereby thou doest affirm thy Place in Nature and her Harmonies.”
The annual cycle of Earth’s relationship to the Sun lends itself more to collective worship. Four times a year we celebrate the turning of the season at the equinoxes and solstices with group ritual and feasting, preparing ourselves for changes to come, reflecting on the change that has just transpired. Other annual celebrations marked as holidays commemorate pivotal events that brought Thelema into the world, such as the days on which The Book of the Law was first received. Some observances take place only once or a handful of times throughout the period of each person’s incarnation. We celebrate feasts for birth, maturation, marriage, and death. We mark their protection by the church through the ancient rite of ritual baptism, and their subsequent acceptance of the church’s creed through the rite of confirmation.
Through Sekhet-Maat, Ordo Templi Orientis offers a program that provides its students with opportunities to become better servants and leaders to themselves, their families, and to the broader community. The foundation of this program is a sequence (or “degrees”) of ceremonial initiations emblematic of each individual’s Path in Eternity. The sequence in total is called Mysteria Mystica Maxima (M∴M∴M∴), translated roughly as “most secret mystery.” The initiations are in the vein of dramatic ritual. The candidate undergoes specific ordeals throughout the ritual’s narrative in order to have lessons inculcated into their consciousness, both directly and through more subtle means. The specific contents of the initiations are confidential, to be shared only with those who have themselves gone through them. The rituals themselves are subjects of intense study as initiates sort through the layers of symbol and reference in order to discern and absorb the lesson in their own personal way. The initiation program is available to anyone who is free, of majority age, and of good report. However, we urge those seeking this training to first familiarize themselves with the church and develop personal contacts within the community. Being an initiate of M∴M∴M∴ is a requirement for all church clergy.
“But ye, o my people, rise up & awake!
Let the rituals be rightly performed with joy & beauty!
There are rituals of the elements and feasts of the times.
A feast for the first night of the Prophet and his Bride!
A feast for the three days of the writing of the Book of the Law.
A feast for Tahuti and the child of the Prophet— secret, O Prophet!
A feast for the Supreme Ritual, and a feast for the Equinox of the Gods.
A feast for fire and a feast for water; a feast for life and a greater feast for death!
A feast every day in your hearts in the joy of my rapture!
A feast every night unto Nu, and the pleasure of uttermost delight!”
—The Book of the Law II:34-43
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Sekhet-Maat is an officially recognized body of Ordo Templi Orientis, U.S.A.
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