"The Cinema Crowd of Cocaine-Crazed, Sexual Lunatics, and the Swarming Maggots of Near-Ocultists": Scandal and Religion Building in Los Angeles' Ordo Templi Orientis Lodges

This paper focuses on how members of the magical order Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) build and maintained their religion in the greater Los Angeles area in the wake of scandal. Focusing on the events in the late forties surrounding the Agape Lodge and Jack Parsons as well as those related to the Solar Lodge of the late sixties, this work relies on both correspondence of past leadership and field work with current members of the Star Sapphire Lodge, the OTO’s current LA home. This material reveals the creative work needed to maintain a new religious movement while accepting the scandal that is native to the city they call home and inevitable in an order intent on changing the world through magical means.