To Perfect This Feast

Aleister Crowley wrote the Gnostic Mass in 1913. He described it as the central ritual, public and private, of Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.). It is a mythic hymn to the wedding of scientific truth and religious aspiration; the celebrant is encouraged to leave superstition and dogma at the door and join in an ecstatic tribute to the glorious nature of reality. The Gnostic Mass offers a truly modern spirituality and it is being performed on a regular basis throughout the civilized world. 

The authors—both longtime O.T.O. members and consecrated bishops of the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholicae (EGC)—share between them over half a century of practicing the Mass. Their passionate devotion to the rite was rewarded in 2006 with an important, long-sought insight into the complex geometry of the ritual. In 2009, they published their research in the first edition of this book. Based on a continuing series of understandings, an even more accurate second edition was created in 2010. This third and final edition solves remaining subtleties in the choreography of the five officers and the overall conclusion of the rite. 

The detailed instructions presented here not only provide the missing performance keys to the geometrical puzzle of the Mass, but offer a window into the wider workings of magical ritual. 

James Wasserman first performed the role of Priest in 1979. In 1992 he and Nancy Wasserman performed the most widely attended Mass in the history of the ritual—with a congregation of some 500 people at the Harry Smith Memorial at St. Marks Church in New York City. James is the author of In the Center of the Fire: A Memoir of the Occult 1966-1989 and the editor of Aleister Crowley and the Practice of the Magical Diary. Nancy is the author of The Weiser Concise Guide to Yoga for Magick.