Richard Kaczynski

Richard Kaczynski is a social psychologist, biostatistician and research scientist whose 1993 doctoral dissertation examined metaphysical beliefs and experiences among occult practitioners. He is the author of Forgotten Templars: The Untold Origins of Ordo Templi Orientis (2012) and Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley (2002; rev. exp. ed. 2010), widely considered to be the definitive biography of the Great Beast. He is also a contributor to the 2012 academic anthologies Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism (Oxford), Mathematics in Culture (McFarland) and Tarot in Culture (ATS), and author of The Weiser Concise Guide to Aleister Crowley (2009), Panic in Detroit: The Magician and the Motor City (2006), and Perdurabo Outtakes (2005). He has additionally contributed to several other books (A Concordance to the Holy Books of Thelema, The Golden Dawn Sourcebook, Rebels and Devils) and magazines (High Times, The Magical Link, Neshamah, Mind Body Spirit, Cheth, Mezlim, Eidolon, Different Worlds). He co-edited with Hymenaeus Beta The Revival of Magick and Other Essays (1998), and performs editorial/typesetting duties for the National O.T.O. Conference proceedings books and Neshamah (journal of the O.T.O. Psychology Guild). He appeared in the television documentaries Secrets of the Occult (2006) and Aleister Crowley: The Beast 666 (2007). Richard has written and lectured internationally on these and related topics since 1990... which is also the year he first taught at Starwood.

Forgotten Templars: The Untold Origins of Ordo Templi Orientis

An unlikely cocktail of actors and musicians, doctors and merchants, anarchists and sexual reformers populated the occult underground of the late nineteenth century. One by-product of this strange brew was the magical order known as Ordo Templi Orientis, or the Order of Oriental Templars, with its controversial mix of esoteric Freemasonry, yoga and sex magic. While its name is familiar thanks to its second Grand Master, Edwardian enfant terrible Aleister Crowley, its origins have subsisted as shadowy mytho-history. Until now. This revelatory study brings into sharp focus the perfect storm of personalities, movements, and circumstances that gave rise to one of the largest and most influential secret societies of our time. It is a story that has waited a century to be told.

Sex and Sex Magick in the Victorian Age

The 19th and early 20th centuries were a hotbed of discourse on intercourse which spilled over into religion and esotericism. Beginning with the seminal works of Gnostic saints Richard Payne Knight, J.G.R. Forlong, Richard Burton and Hargrave Jennings, we'll uncover both the literature and practice of sacred sexuality as it sprung up before and beside Ordo Templi Orientis. Come one, come all to hear goodies about:

* The Golden Dawn's favorite sexual mystic, Thomas Lake Harris, who taught about breathing exercises, group marriage, and the fairies living in your breasts
* The sexual mischief of Golden Dawn wanna-be's Madame and Theo Horos
* The less than Rosy relationship between sex magick pioneers Hargrave Jennings and Paschal Beverly Randolph
* Carl Kellner's encounter with sacred sexuality and its entry into Ordo Templi Orientis
* The unlikely two degrees of separation between Crowley and New York tantric initiator Oom the Omnipotent (and it doesn't involve Kevin Bacon)
* Ida Craddock's tell-all book about her marriage to an angel with godlike technique
* Clement du Saint-Marcq's strange yet compelling argument for what really happened at the Last Supper.