AtDTDA: (8) 219 T.W.I.T.

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

I posted this 8/8/06, after the cover art and self-authored blurbs appeared:

            Something I have yet to hear mentioned here: What if 
            “Against the Day “ turns out to be “The Big One”, the 
            one that ties it all together?

            Here’s my thoughts. The Occult elements of Pynchon 
            always have been my focus. This just dawned on me: 
            “Mason & Dixon” deals with the historical Mason/Dixon
            line between an age alchemical and an age scientific. 
            Along with all those anachronisims and bad puns, 
            there's tonne's of olde magicke and persuits alchemical. 
            The historical range of “Against the Day” covers the 
            early development of the Golden Dawn. This will tie this 
            book much more tightly to the occult elements in 
            “Gravity’s Rainbow”. “ATD” just might be “The Big One”. 

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0608&msg=104200&sort=date

"T.W.I.T." and Nicholas Nookshaft are Pynchon's portraits, rendered
only as Pynchon could render them, of Ordo Templi Orientis and the
group's nortorious founder, Aleistair Crowley

            "The letters O.T.O. stand for Ordo Templi Orientis, the 
            Order of Oriental Templars, or Order of the Temple 
            of the East. O.T.O. is dedicated to the high purpose 
            of securing the Liberty of the Individual and his or her
            advancement in Light, Wisdom, Understanding, 
            Knowledge, and Power through Beauty, Courage, and 
            Wit, on the Foundation of Universal Brotherhood.

http://oto-usa.org/

This is the official history of O.T.O.:

http://oto-usa.org/history.html

These are some comparatively sane histories of Crowley:

http://www.crystalinks.com/crowley.html

http://www.answers.com/topic/aleister-crowley

I've been slowly digesting Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley
by Lawrence Sutin, that is very detailed and quite fair in its 
presentation of "The Great Beast. 

http://tinyurl.com/yokqsp

My neice is in the O.T.O. I read her pages 219-222, trying to elicit a reaction. 
She found it mostly hysterical, and hysterical in spots where I would detect no 
obvious content that would elicit such a reaction. As far as I can tell, the 
Jokes in "T.W.I.T." are inside jokes, the work of someone who, if not an 
insider, probably should be. I wish there was some arethmatic symbol for 
"not equal to, but close enough for barter". Consider the following:  

T.W.I.T. = True Worshipers of the Ineffable Tetractys. 

For followers of Thelema (Aleistair Crowley's Magickal system) the phrase
"the Ineffable name of the Tetragrammaton" would be the first thing that
would come to mind. 

http://www.answers.com/topic/tetragrammaton

            The most important number of all, to the Pythagoreans, 
            was the fourth triangular number, 10. For it was made 
            up of 1 + 2 + 3 + 4. They called it the "Sacred Tetractys," 
            swore by it in their oaths, and attached marvelous 
            properties to it, as "the source and root of eternal nature."

http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/pyth3.htm

The T.W.I.T./O.T.O. correspondences are presented as satire, as parody.
The caricature of Aleister Crowley (in the form of Nicholas Nookshaft) is as 
specific as a portrait as that of Jeshimon's Governor. The difference being 
that the Governor's prescence is pretty much limited to the section we just 
passed through, whereas "The Grand Cohen" [doubtless the progenitor 
of Gengis Cohen] has his fingerprints all over the book, like Snape on Potter.