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phyllis_seckler [2026/10/01 09:53] – Develop biography with fuller history, discussion of works and source references; batch 17. andyphyllis_seckler [2026/10/04 07:13] (current) – Add matched video with channel credit and reading context andy
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 The journal **In the Continuum** provided another means of teaching. A periodical allows an explanation to be developed across successive issues and creates a durable body of material beyond a private conversation. Seckler's work as an editor thus complemented her work with individual students.(([[https://thelema.org/college|College of Thelema]], account of //In the Continuum//.)) The journal **In the Continuum** provided another means of teaching. A periodical allows an explanation to be developed across successive issues and creates a durable body of material beyond a private conversation. Seckler's work as an editor thus complemented her work with individual students.(([[https://thelema.org/college|College of Thelema]], account of //In the Continuum//.))
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 +===== Teaching in the first issue of In the Continuum =====
 +The first issue of **In the Continuum**, dated **1973**, makes Seckler's teaching method visible in detail. Its opening letter, dated **20 March**, begins with questions about the pentagram ritual and directs readers to specific passages in Crowley and Regardie. She then places quotations beside her own explanations and additions, identifying a specifically Thelemic form of the practice.((Phyllis Seckler, //In the Continuum// I:1, 1973, pp. 1–6, available in the [[https://thelema.org/downloads/ITCvol1.zip|College of Thelema's Volume I archive]].))
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 +The discussion includes the relation between a printed Tree of Life and its imagined placement on the body, the meaning of names and the work of visualisation. She encourages readers to keep observations and investigate symbolic correspondences. The page thus moves between inherited text, explanation and an assignment for the student. It is a concrete example of her role as an interpreter and instructor, rather than simply a reprint editor.
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 +The issue's date also clarifies inconsistent dating on later web descriptions of the journal. The surviving first issue establishes publication in 1973; a description beginning the run in 1976 should not displace that primary evidence.
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 +Seckler tells the reader that her presentation contains more than a reprint:
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 +> I have also added later instructions by Crowley which are not in any of these books.
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 +— Phyllis Seckler, //In the Continuum I:1//.(([[https://thelema.org/downloads/ITCvol1.zip|In the Continuum I:1]], letter dated 20 March 1973, p. 1; the preceding references include The Equinox, Magick in Theory and Practice and books by Regardie.))
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 +This is her attribution of the additional instructions. It identifies the issue as a witness to a transmitted version of the ritual, while leaving the history of each addition to be established from further evidence. Her method combines quotations, comments and additions within one exposition. Readers comparing the journal with //Liber O// should therefore mark those layers instead of assuming that everything on the page appeared in Crowley’s earlier printed text.
 +
 +===== A specific alteration to the Qabalistic Cross =====
 +Seckler's 1973 exposition makes its Thelemic revision concrete by inserting **Aiwass at the breast** in the Qabalistic Cross. She interprets the name in relation to the Holy Guardian Angel and Tiphareth. Her accompanying arrangement places the gesture for Malkuth lower on the body while explaining its ideal correspondence with the feet. The explanation therefore distinguishes the place of a gesture from the larger symbolic map of the body.((Phyllis Seckler, //In the Continuum// I:1, pp. 2–3, in the [[https://thelema.org/downloads/ITCvol1.zip|College of Thelema's Volume I archive]].))
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 +The contrast can be checked directly against the earlier printed **Liber O**, whose Qabalistic Cross places Malkuth at the breast and does not insert Aiwass there. Seckler presents her additions as later instructions from Crowley. Her article is evidence for her transmission and explanation of that version; it should not be silently substituted for the wording of the 1909 publication.(([[https://keepsilence.org/the-equinox/1.2/liber-o_low.pdf|Liber O]], section IV, Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram.))
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 +This comparison gives a precise example of continuity through adaptation. The sequence remains recognisable, but a newly inserted name changes the expressed religious identification. The commentary also gives the change a rationale, allowing a reader to see what Seckler believed the adaptation accomplished.
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 +===== The diagram and the person facing it =====
 +The same discussion addresses a common difficulty in relating the **Tree of Life** to the body. Seckler explains that a printed diagram faces its viewer: assuming the Tree as one's own bodily arrangement reverses the apparent left and right of that frontal picture. Her account connects the person's right with Severity and the left with Mercy.((//In the Continuum// I:1, p. 3.))
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 +This is more than a list of correspondences. It is an explanation of how a representation changes when the observer becomes its imagined subject. Alongside the Aiwass addition, it shows Seckler treating the ritual as something whose words, spatial relations and underlying assumptions needed to be explained to students, rather than merely reproduced from an earlier page.
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 +Her explanation addresses a practical difficulty in reading a body diagram:
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 +> Let me here emphasize that you are the Tree of Life and that you see a mirror image of it on the printed page.
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 +— Phyllis Seckler, //In the Continuum I:1//.(([[https://thelema.org/downloads/ITCvol1.zip|In the Continuum I:1]], letter dated 20 March 1973, p. 3.))
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 +The next sentences ask the reader to imagine backing into the Tree and place Severity on the practitioner’s right. The change of viewpoint is the point of the instruction: right and left must be assigned to the person performing the gesture, not casually inferred from a facing picture. This example shows Seckler teaching through a reader’s likely misunderstanding and a physical comparison, as well as through the transmission of ritual words.
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 +===== Essays, poetry and recorded voice =====
 +The posthumous collections preserve several distinct forms of Seckler's work. **The Thoth Tarot, Astrology, & Other Selected Writings** includes essays on the trumps' psychological symbolism and the relationship between tarot and astrology. Its companion volume gathers further instructional essays and correspondence. **Collected Poems 1946–1996** presents a long poetic career, including mystical themes and more personal subjects.(([[https://www.totss.org/store/|Temple of the Silver Star publications]], descriptions of the Seckler collections.))
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 +Her successors also released a recording of her reading the first chapter of //The Book of the Law// in her garden in the early 1980s. It preserves the sound of her delivery alongside the written record. Such materials give access to different aspects of a teacher's work: extended argument in an essay, personal expression in poetry and interpretation through spoken performance.
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 +These distinctions matter when approaching her bibliography. A selected volume is an editorial arrangement drawn from a longer working life, while an issue of the journal preserves the original setting in which instruction appeared. Studying both makes it possible to follow particular teachings and to understand the sustained practice of publication through which she addressed students over time.
  
 ===== Temple of Thelema ===== ===== Temple of Thelema =====
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 See [[thelemic_organisations|Thelemic organisations]], [[a_a_argenteum_astrum|A∴A∴]] and [[research_bibliography|the research bibliography]]. See [[thelemic_organisations|Thelemic organisations]], [[a_a_argenteum_astrum|A∴A∴]] and [[research_bibliography|the research bibliography]].
 +
 +===== Video: a personal account of Seckler’s legacy =====
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 +Catherine Berry discusses Phyllis Seckler's magical legacy in this Blazing Star Oasis lecture, recorded on 27 October 2020. The channel identifies the presentation as a personal perspective, reflecting Seckler's importance to the speaker as a guide. It provides testimony about teaching and influence to place beside the article's documentary account of Seckler's institutional, editorial and artistic work.
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 +{{ youtube>-nmUtTDagCU?full |The Magical Legacy Of Phyllis Seckler}}
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 +**The Magical Legacy Of Phyllis Seckler** — [[https://www.youtube.com/@BlazingStarOTO|Blazing Star O.T.O.]]; 1:34:10. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nmUtTDagCU|Watch on YouTube]].
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  • Last modified: 2026/10/01 09:53
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