Books and Films that Inspired the O.T.A.

On Christmas night December 25th, 2014 the Hermetic Hour with host Poke
Runyon will present a special program in which Frater Thabion, your host
and the founder of the Order of the Temple of Astarte, will trace the
books and films that influenced and inspired him to create and develop
his unique American system of Magick. I grew out of the Oz books and
graduated to the Mars books (John Carter) then into a teenage
fascination with Richard Shaver's hi-tech Lemurian survivor stories. I
will go to my 1950s early college days watching films such as Jean
Cocteau's Orpheus, and Orson Welles Black Magic (on Cagliostro and
Mesmer) and move on through to a study of Voodoo in line with my
Caribbean adventurer-fiction writer persona. The Saragossa Manuscript
for Kabbalah and mirror magick, Graves The White Goddess. Then my
illness which I tried to cure with self-hypnosis. This led to a serious
study of hypnosis along with Tibetan Tantra (Evans-Wentz) and finally
Western Magick. Mastering the Goetia with the mirror method led to
Jungian psycho-philosophy and the study of anthropology culminating in a
Master's Degree in the subject from California State University. During
this program I created the modern Hermetically oriented Neo-Canaanite
Seasonal ceremonies for our magical order The Temple of Astarte, The
main purpose of our Goetia was to bring up and reestablish the Secret
Goddess of old King Solomon himself. We use the 1770 Hermetic-Masonic rite of Crata Repoa as a structure for our system and I will discuss the sources behind this. Perhaps some of these books and teachings will help others to understand our perspective on the Western Tradition and what we expect to
accomplish by what we call The Great Work.