Phyllis Seckler

Phyllis Seckler (1917–2004), known as Soror Meral, was a Thelemic teacher, editor, poet and artist. Her work connected the California community of Agapé Lodge with later systems of education and initiation. She also helped preserve Crowley's writings through the demanding practical work of preparing manuscripts for publication.

Seckler entered O.T.O. in 1939 and became an A∴A∴ Probationer under Jane Wolfe in June 1940. These were distinct forms of participation: membership in a fraternal order and individual work with a teacher. She later corresponded with Karl Germer, who recognised an attainment in 1952. That later recognition should not be mistaken for the beginning of her training.

Art was another sustained part of her life. She completed a master's degree in art at UCLA in 1955 and worked as an art teacher in Livermore. Her correspondence with Crowley included cartoons, and her later writing ranged across instruction, commentary and poetry. She participated in the renewal of O.T.O. activity with Grady McMurtry and others in 1969, founded College of Thelema in 1973, and led 418 Lodge from its establishment in 1979 until her death.¹⁾

Seckler typed material for Germer, including The Vision and the Voice, Magick Without Tears and part of Confessions.²⁾ This kind of work sits between the composition of a manuscript and its eventual appearance as a book. It requires a readable copy through which an editor, printer or later student can approach the text.

Her contribution belongs to the same wider history of transmission as Gerald Yorke's collecting and the copying of documents for institutional archives. The continued availability of Thelemic literature depended on people preserving, organising and reproducing material, as well as on the original author. A useful history of a particular edition therefore asks who prepared its copy and what manuscript or typescript was used.

College of Thelema developed a programme of foundational study related to A∴A∴ work. Its account of its purpose brings together psychology, Qabalah, astrology, magick and Thelemic ideas. Instruction is organised around a student's progress with a teacher, rather than a single reading list completed at the same speed by everyone.³⁾

This approach gives preliminary study an active role. A correspondence table, for example, is useful when a student understands the symbolic relationships it arranges; learning the entries alone does not demonstrate that understanding. Similarly, keeping a record of practice makes it possible to discuss what was actually attempted, the conditions of the exercise and its results. These distinctions connect the College's educational purpose with the practical emphasis of texts such as Liber E.

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.⁴⁾

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.⁵⁾

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.

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.

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.⁶⁾

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.⁷⁾

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.

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.⁸⁾

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.

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.⁹⁾

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.

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.

In 1987 Seckler co-founded Temple of Thelema with James Eshelman and Anna-Kria King. The Temple describes a system of group initiation and instruction. Its ceremonies and institutional structure should be distinguished from the individual teacher–student relationship described in A∴A∴ literature, even where the systems share subjects and personnel.¹⁰⁾

Posthumous collections make different aspects of Seckler's work available: selected writings on tarot and astrology, further writings on Qabalah, magick and Thelema, and poems spanning 1946–1996. These volumes provide routes into her own voice alongside later institutional biographies.¹¹⁾

Her historical importance lies in the combination of these activities. Classroom teaching, manuscript preparation, journal editing, poetry and initiatory instruction each addressed a different audience. Together they show how Thelema developed through sustained educational work across generations.

See Thelemic organisations, A∴A∴ and the research bibliography.