IMHO you can’t really understand Ordo Templi Orientis without having some basic knowledge of American utopian cults/communities of the 19th century. Their rejection of Calvinism and an embrace of ecstasy and sexuality a legitimate part of religion, I’d suggest, had a significant impact on the founders of OTO and later recruits including Aleister Crowley. Ida Craddock, whose writing on sacred sexuality Crowley expressed admiration for was one product of this movement. Here’s a recently published article on one of the better known groups the Oneida Community and its founder John Humphrey Noyes. The article starts:
“Dangels have sex? John Humphrey Noyes thought so. Related question: If they do the nasty in heaven, is it really so nasty after all? Noyes reasoned not. These were the basic philosophies that animated the creation of Noyes’s Oneida Community, a 19th century colony of so-called Bible Communists who believed that free love and ecstatic sex would bring them closer to God.”
