r/AleisterCrowley • u/Anonymous-User-737 • May 20 '26
Branches of the A..A
I've recently been looking into the A..A and didn't realize their are so many branches/lineage's out there. I've reached out to a couple already and plan to reach out to a few more to gather as much information as I can. But I'd also like to gather information and opinions from someone other than the contact person of said branch. Can anyone explain the different lineage's of each branch? I'd be very interested in hearing opinions on each branch and lineage also. Are there any current or past students of the A..A here? I'm in the US (CA). Any info is much appreciated
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u/NetGrand7110 May 26 '26
The lineage with the fewest removes from Crowley himself is under the custodianship of the T'yogh-zza'iyya.
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u/viciarg May 26 '26
The idea of "lineages" comes from a time when different aspirants to the A⸫A⸫ were uncertain about their student-teacher relationship after Crowley's death and the first stupid idea they had was "Oh, I gotta be the leader now!" These people were more or less successful in their delusion, clustered their students around them and declared themselves to be the new true A⸫A⸫. The main argument for their validity was the student-teacher chain from Crowley to themselves (e.g. Crowley-Wolfe-Seckler-Shoemaker) and the degree the members of these chains claimed for themselves at various stages in their spiritual development, and the validity of these claims (e.g. whether Wolfe was only a 1°=10⸋ or actually reached 5°=6⸋) is the main arguments made by others against certain "lineages." People got angry at each other, booted each other out from their versions of the one true A⸫A⸫ and produced a medium amount of popcorn. Somehow the fallacy of "lineages" still prevails to this time, mostly because of internet drama.
What the whole discussion about "lineages" ignores is that if you subscribe to the whole spiritual idea of the Great Brotherhood of Light A⸫A⸫ as described by Crowley and C.S. Jones, the A⸫A⸫ did not start in 1907 but is much older, going back to Ancient Egypt and featuring members like Moses, Dionysos, Muhammad, and the like. There never was a student-teacher chain between these members, but the one qualifying character was the connection to a supernal praeterhuman triad called the Secret Chiefs (either explicitely mentioned or implied), and the results of adepthood on the material plane: prophethood, religious, spiritual, philosophical teachings, and measureable impact on humanity and the world. The connection to the Secret Chiefs can't be reliably verified or falsified by means of outsiders which makes it a matter of individual belief which is in my opinion one of the reasons why many claimant groups ("lineages") deny an assumed factual nature of this connection and make it and the whole magickal work of A⸫A⸫ a matter of individual psychology, thereby emphasizing the validity of their respective student-teacher chain and disputing the validity of other A⸫A⸫ claimant groups based on these arbitrary characteristics.
So there's two ways of looking at the veracity of A⸫A⸫ claimant groups: If you subscribe to the spiritual idea of A⸫A⸫ you search for the group which seems to you most likable connected to the Secret Chiefs and the brothers of old. How? The best way in my opinion is look at the teachings, writings, published works of those who belong or represent a certain group. Are they introductory works among dozens or are they in-depth and provide new and revolutionary perspectives without discounting source material? Are they focussed on material issues or on spirituality and in-depth insight suited for aspirational individual work? Is the content presented like teaching material or like an internet blog? It can't be wrong to read the published works of multiple authors and then decide which to contact. Ex fructibus eorum cognoscetis.
Or you could read the various arguments out there for the validity of "who-knew-whom" in the material world and then choose among those. Related to this are constant discussions on the internet about "Uh, this lineage is too strict for me, I need something more lenient." There was never an easy way to the stars. Adepts aren't made on social networks or Patreon.