To many people, spiritual power comes by meditation, ritual, chanting, fasting, book study, drawing magical circles, and one hundred and one other methods. The fact is that none of these will give you true spiritual power. Spending time with a Guru is a far better method, but Gurus have gone out of fashion, and besides, how do you know your Guru is true or not?

The OTO

Association with the Masters of a Spiritual Line bestows extraordinary benefits on the Seeker. That this is known in the western magical tradition is clear, particularly with Aleister Crowley’s Ordo Templis Orientalis organisation, concocted an extraordinary lineage, which included:

The O.T.O. is a body of initiates in whose hands are concentrated the wisdom and the knowledge of the following bodies:

In more remote times, the constituent originating assemblies of the O.T.O. included such men as:

Fohi, Hippolytus, Laotze, Siddartha, Krishna, Tahuti, Ankh-f-n-khonsu, Herakles, Merlin, Arthur, Titurel, Amfortas, Percivale, Mosheh, Orpheus, Odysseus, Vergilius, Mohammed, Catullus, Martialis, Apollonius Tyanaeus, Hermes, Pan, Dante, Simon Magus, Carolus Magnus, Manes, William of Schyren, Basilides, Frederick of Hohenstaufen, Valentinus, Roger Bacon, Bardesanes, Jacobus Burgundus Molensis, King Wu, Ko Hsuen, Christian Rosenkreutz, Osiris, Ulrich von Hutten, Melchizedek, Paracelsus, Khem, Michael Maier, Menthu, Jakob Boehme, Johannes Dee, Francis Bacon, Sir Edward Kelly, Andrea, Thos. Vaughan, Robertus de Fluctibus, Elias Ashmole, Chau, Comte de Chazal, Saturnus, Sigismund Bacstrom, Dionysus, Molinos

And recently:

Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sir Richard Payne Knight, Hargrave Jennings, Sir Richard Francis Burton, Karl Kellner, Forlong Dux, Eliphas Lévi, Ludovicus Rex Bavariae, Franz Hartmann, Richard Wagner, Cardinal Rampolla, Ludwig von Fischer, Papus (Dr. Encausse)

From the O.T.O. Manifesto

Now, this dizzying and eclectic list is remarkable, not because of the unlikelihood of it being true, but that the founders of the O.T.O. felt the need to concoct such a list. To this day, the heirs of Crowley’s legacy and of the Golden Dawn are bitterly fought over in the courts and propaganda wars.

Transcendental Meditation

I learned Transcendental Meditation when I was fourteen, and I continued with the advanced techniques and siddhis. The Puja is done before transmission of the mantra.

The Puja

To Lord Narayana, to lotus-born Brahma the Creator, to Vashishta, to Shakti, and to his son, Parashar, to Vyasa, to Shukadava, to the great Gaudapada, to Govinda, ruler among yogies, to his disciple, Shri Trotika and Varttika-Kara, to others, to the tradition of our masters I bow down. To the abode of the wisdom of the Shrutis, Smritis and Puranas, to the abode of kindness, to the personified glory of the Lord, to Shankara, emancipator of the Lord, I bow down. To Shankaracharya, the redeemer, hailed as Krishna and Badarayana, to the commentator of the Brahma Sutras, I bow down again and again. At whose door the galaxy of gods pray for perfection day and night, adorned with immeasurable glory, perceptor of the world, having bowed down to him, we gain fulfillment. Skilled in dispelling the cloud of ignorance of the people, the gentle emancipator, Bramananda Saraswati -the supreme teacher, full of brilliance, him I bring to my awareness.

Secrets of the Lineage

The next part is the ritual, which is not important. You might think that the lineages of the O.T.O. and Transcendental Meditation are entirely different, but you would be wrong. Look carefully, and you will note that both mix Gods with Masters. Unless you are familiar with the names you will also notice that the Gods and the Masters treated equally. In plain view a secret is revealed, a powerful secret that is rarely acknowledged. The secret is this. In the spiritual realms, the Masters and the Gods are equals. Furthermore, it is possible to do spiritual work with the Gods and Masters, to commune with them, and to help them.

The O.T.O. List goes one step further as it includes mythological figures from literature, such as Percivale, King Arthur and Odysseus. Clearly, these powerful archetypal people are accessible in the spiritual realms.

The great advantage of working with Spiritual Lineages is that you are working with powerful forces that transcend Time is the Arrow, and there is no structure that tells us which is more powerful, higher, or lower than the magician. The diaries and writings of Dion Fortune show her contact with these powerful archetypal figures of the British landscape.

Qawali Lineage

The Sufi roots of Qawali are vitally important. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was one of the greatest of Qawali singers, and I was fortunate enough to meet him in Brighton, and see him sing at a number of concerts in the UK. In every interview, Nusrat would recite the Qawali Masters that had gone before him:

• al-Gazali (1085-1111)
• Khwaj Moinuddin Hasan Chisti (1143-1234)
• Ibrahim Qahandazi
• Shaikh Abdul Qadir Jilli
• Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya (1236-1325)
• Amir Khusru (1254-1324)

Many of these Masters celebrated in Qawali songs. Qawali predated the birth of the Prophet Mohammed, but some of the Masters originated in Iran. India had a huge effect on Qawali, where the music is also known as Sama (see the Sama Veda).

Sufism Lineage

Many dispute the origins of Sufism. Clearly Sufism is associated with the rise of Islam and the Prophet Mohammed, but my knowledge suggests an earlier period of history. Sufis place great importance on the lineage of their organisations, for good reason. There are a many Sufi groups throughout the world, but whoever they revere as the founder of their sect; the Prophet Mohammed will be at the beginning.

Islamic Lineage

Politics inevitably enters the ‘True’ Lineage of the Prophet Mohammed, particularly after the parting of the Shia and Sunni faiths, a legacy seen played out in the nascent civil war in Iraq at the moment.

With this in mind, here is a selection of the various Lineages that abound:

The Four Caliphs

• Abu Bakr (632-634)
• Umar (634-644)
• Uthman (644-656)
• Ali (656-661)

The Companions of the Prophet

Below is a partial list of some of the companions of the Prophet (saas). Their lives remain a source of inspiration for the later generations of Muslims, including today’s. May Allah be pleased with all of them.

• Abbad ibn Bishr
• Abdullah ibn Abbas
• Abdullah ibn Hudhafah as-Sahmi
• Abdullah ibn Jahsh
• Abdullah ibn Masud
• Abdullah Ibn Sailam
• Abdullah ibn Umar
• Abdullah ibn Umm Maktum
• Abdur-Rahman ibn Awf
• Abu-d Dardaa
• Abu-l Aas ibn ar-Rabiah
• Abu Ayyub al-Ansari
• Abu Dharr al-Ghifari
• Abu Hurayrah
• Abu Musa al-Ashari
• Abu Sufyan ibn al-Harith
• Abu Ubaydah ibn al-Jarrah
• Adiyy ibn Hatim
• Aishah bint Abi Bakr
• Al-Baraa ibn Malik al-Ansari
• Amr ibn al-Jamuh
• An-Nuayman ibn Amr
• An-Numan ibn Muqarrin
• Asmaa bint Abu Bakr
• At-Tufayl ibn Amr ad-Dawsi
• Barakah
• Fatimah bint Muhammad
• Fayruz ad-Daylami
• Habib ibn Zayd al-Ansari
• Hakim ibn Hazm
• Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman
• Ikrimah ibn Abi Jahl
• Jafar ibn Abi Talib
• Julaybib
• Khabbab ibn al-Aratt
• Muadh ibn Jabal
• Muhammad ibn Maslamah
• Musab ibn Umayr
• Nuaym ibn Masud
• Rabiah ibn Kab
• Ramlah bint Abi Sufyan
• Rumaysa bint Milhan
• Sad ibn Abi Waqqas
• Said ibn Aamir al-Jumahi
• Said ibn Zayd
• Salim Mawla Abi Hudhayfah
• Salman al-Farsi
• Suhayb ar-Rumi
• Suhayl ibn Amr
• Talhah ibn Ubaydullah
• Thabit ibn Qays
• Thumamah ibn Uthal
• Ubayy ibn Kab
• Umayr ibn Sad al-Ansari
• Umayr ibn Wahb
• Umm Salamah
• Uqbah ibn Aamir
• Utbah ibn Ghazwan
• Zayd al-Khayr
• Zayd ibn Thabit

The Koran Lineage

The Holy Koran traces their lineage back to Abraham through Ishmael, which aligns with the Jewish and Christian faiths. Christians are surprisingly ignorant at how much of the Koran is about the Patriarchs. Clearly there is far more that links the faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Judaic Lineage

The tradition maintaining the Lineage is alive and well in Islam, but there are problems with Judaism and Christianity. In Judaism, the Lineage goes back to Adam and Eve, and in particular the Book of Numbers; the Lineage is then carried through the Kabbalistic Masters who lived in Europe, particularly Spain and Eastern Europe from the 12 century onwards. The problem is that many Kabbalistic texts are actually propaganda tools to convert Jews to Christianity. However holy (and I am not disputing the saintliness of the Kabbalistic Masters), working with tainted texts is not going to be fruitful unless one knows and is aware of the problem. Here we see the superiority of after the lineage and not necessarily the texts!

Christianity

Jesus claimed his lineage back to the early Prophets, and he had his eye on the future by the Disciples who would continue the Work. Unfortunately, Christianity veered off into the realms of politics, and the denial of the marriage of Jesus or had children, or that any descendants survived continues to this day. The power of transmission projects through Rome and the Papal system, where any element of spiritual ability disappears under expediency and power politics. That there is a yearning for the rediscovery of the Line of Jesus is clear in the phenomenon of the Dan Brown books and the Da Vinci Code. Prophets appear regularly in the world to remind us God, and it is my belief that the Prophet Mohammed appeared to re-establish the Spiritual Lineage.

Modern Genetics and Lineage

DNA is the genetic code we inherit from our parents and ancestors. There is nothing revelatory in that statement, but now scientists have discovered that our genes shape our ancestors life experiences. The evidence comes from times of famine in a small village in Sweden but we can see that those same genetic memories can also come from spiritual experiences.

Accessing your own lineage

My great-grandfather was very active in the Theosophical Society. He died ten years before I was born, but he has been very helpful to me for many years now. I keep a photo of him on my altar. You can research your own family to see if you have any ancestors who you can connect to. We all have our own grandparents, and when they pass on, they are invariably around to help us.

Making contact with your own relatives will make a big difference. You can also align yourself with the Saints and Holy Men mentioned on this page. Going to a holy place or a cemetery will have a similar effect.

Lineage

One way of connecting with the Lineages is to read or recite the names of the Prophets and Masters. Another way is to read their writings, or listen to the music of Qawali, as I did, and continue to do. The Lineage of Names is immortal, and does not rely on the survival of books and writings.

Another method of connecting to the Masters is to go their Shrines. If you are not near a Shrine, then a graveyard will serve a similar purpose.

With time, you will find yourself closer to the Prophets and Masters than you ever thought possible. The Holy Books will come alive, and you will start to receive direct knowledge.