Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism has just published a new article by noted esoteric author Manon Hedenborg White, “Fire-Faith and the Gnostic Neo-Templars: Aleister Crowley’s Gnostic Catholic Mass and Its c. 1917 German Translation by Theodor Reuss.”
The Abstract states:
The article analyses the early development of Aleister Crowley’s (1875–1947) Gnostic
Catholic Mass and its c. 1917 German translation by Theodor Reuss (1855–1923), the
founder and first international head of the initiatory fraternity Ordo Templi Orientis.
Crowley’s Gnostic Mass is an influential and important example of esoteric group ritual
still celebrated across the globe today. Reuss’s translated ritual holds historical interest,
being the first published version of the ritual (1918) and containing a number of editorial
innovations. The article discusses Crowley’s and Reuss’s collaboration and their
respective masses in context, suggesting Reuss’s innovations to the Gnostic Mass shed
light on his own interests in phallicism and neo-Gnosticism as well as his wish to promote
Crowley’s teachings to the continental European esoteric milieu.
