The idea behind the OTTO is this. In our early days, when we first become acquainted with the occult, it is often an awe-inspiring thing. After reading “The Devil Rides Out” we see an advert for the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Exchange & Mart and send off in trepidation for a catalogue of amazing incenses and weird paraphernalia to read by torch-light beneath the bedclothes with chattering teeth – expecting hellfire to blast us at any moment. A few years later we have worked our way through W. E. Butler, Dion Fortune and plucked up courage to read Crowley and we are ready to argue the psychological validity of magical technique with anyone. What we have gained is wisdom and understanding. What we have lost is that old gut-wrenching excitement.

We know enough to steer clear of the ego-tripping looney with the piercing gaze and long black cloak. We see through his act and congratulate ourselves. But we overlook the fact that a good act can be a delight, a piece of street theatre, an art-form, an invocation in its own right.

The OTTO message is this: now we have grown up enough that we no longer are in awe of the charlatan, it means that we are now free to delight in the charlatan – to dig the charlatan. Now we are mature enough to realise there aren’t any ancient brotherhoods with secrets passed down from time immemorial, we are now free to dig those brotherhoods who put on a good act of being just that.

Now we know that all paraphernalia is just trappings with no value other than surface appearance, let us therefore maximise that residual value by making surface appearance utterly mind-blowing!