Clerk-House

I created this crest with input from stevensteven and translation by salimondo. It symbolizes the ethos and aspiration of self-sufficient bodies of O.T.O. who strive toward the establishment of a profess-house in their area.

Sekhet-Maat Lodge has this crest on our "About" page and on our MySpace.

Click the image of the crest below for a complete explanation and code for your own web site or blog, or that of your local body. If you post it somewhere, please comment!

As mentioned in the previous post, here is the SML Treasurer's report, including graphs!

http://sekhetmaat.com/wiki/Treasury/Reports/2007_Annual_Meeting

I have posted my address from last night's annual Lodge meeting to our website. It is available here:

http://sekhetmaat.com/wiki/2007_Annual_Meeting_Address

I'd be interested to hear any comments about it.

We are also working on putting the treasury report form the meeting up, with the charts and graphs that were included in that presentation. I will post here again when that is completed.

[Originally posted to my personal LJ]

One of the reasons why I get so irritated with discussing local dues is often those who discuss membership local dues seem to be acting as if it were the cure-all for all the local financial issues that ail us. And from a local body leadership position there is something seductive about being able to say that once you establish a "reasonable" local dues system (with "reasonable" defined in some vague, hand-wavey sort of way), then all of the local body financial problems will go away.

Hell, there are even those who suggest that if we could just institute the right local dues system, we would be able to buy a space rather than just rent a space.

If wishes were fishes...

The topic 'local dues' is essentially one dimension of a larger topic of local fund raising, which itself is simply the means by which a local body obtains the resources in order to do what it sets out to do. Local dues is not an ends in and of itself--but a means to an ends.

So on the topic of raising funds for local body activities, there are several questions that come up in my mind--questions which seem not to have been asked, much less addressed, in forums such as this one.

(1) To what purpose is the dues being collected?

Yes, it's easy to answer this with boiler-plate stock answers: "to do the mass, to perform initiations, to establish local body stability and to establish a presence" But the answer that you should be searching for should have more depth than just a boiler-plate stock answer. After all, the answer given above could be done in someone's home without the tens of thousands a year commitment a space entails. And suggesting "to establish a presence outside of someone's home" could be responded with "why?"

In short, neither of these are, in and of themselves, compelling. And unfortunately those who seem to be pushing for a local space have dwelled exclusively upon the negative: "what if the local body master moves?" "Garages are smelly and filthy." "It's unprofessional."

So come up with a compelling positive answer that goes beyond the stock "because." The reason why is not just so you can answer it here or so you can justify yourself to a mentor--but because when you go hat in hand asking for money from your various sources, you need to give them a compelling reason why they should give you the money rather than spend the money on themselves.

(2) How much do you need to collect?
( Read more... )

Dear Br. Joseph and kinfolk -
93.

Regarding the issue that was mentioned in the Normalization thread, about the College feeling that gathering and publishing information in Agape similar to that which we gather in the Annual Report - eg. number of Masses, Outreach programs, etc. - freely volunteered by local Bodies, would be viewed as an end-run around the way we decided to handle the ARf data itself.

That just didn't line up with my own understanding of the College's take on such a question, so I have been doing some followup.

The Elector who made that remark to Br. Joseph was expressing a personal concern based on tensions that obtained at that time - it was not meant as an informal or clandestine warning from the College.

If a one, or a dozen, or all the Body Masters wrote reports for Agape to share with the membership(as they are encouraged to do) and noted "We are up to two Masses a month, have a library of 150 volumes, and are engaged in outreach with the local University" - or if Br. Joseph built a summary from such reports, no one is going to say anything but "Well done."

Masters are free to share such information, or not, as seems good to them, and Agape is certainly free to publish information sent in to be shared. As noted in the Normalization thread, the idea is not to call out Bodies that don't choose to send in their info but to see which Bodies seem to have a handle on doing different aspects of this Work well, and to learn from those achievements when we can, rather than re-inventing the wheel.

Hope that helps clarify this particular situation.

Love,
Paul

I'm new here, thiebes read a post on my LJ and thought it was good, asked me to repost it here.  So here it is:
   If the OTO or any part of the OTO wants to increase the number of people it has its disposal to work it must consider how to go about doing it.  My local body has a reasonable number of members, most of whom only show up every now and again, myself included.  And of those that do show up only a small number do the work.  
   As I understand, this problem is rampant throughout the order.  One might say, well at least we're getting their money.  But often, even that is not the case.  What should be done to remedy this?
   When the U.S. Army wanted to increase its numbers it set out on an aggressive advertising campaign that gave the impression that the Army could be whatever you wanted it to be.  Recruiters still push this idea.  I imagine their idea is that if we can just get them in, if they don't like it after finding out the trouble they'd have to go through to get out, they'll just decide to stay and do their frickin job.  The problem with that is you get people that don't want to be soldiers.  They are not equipped morally or by aesthetic to live the life being a good soldier entails.  Consequently you get a lot of turnover, wasting money.  And you get a lot of bad soldiers.
    I definitely don't recommend the same thing for the OTO.  In fact, I recommend quite the opposite.  The OTO should expose itself.  It should bring in new members and bring back old ones who know the work.  But in order to do this it must be able to say why it's important that people join the OTO, and consequently why it's important that the OTO exist at all.   To do this we need to have a purpose.  And, granting the mission, values statement and program synopsis of the order, to a certain extent we do.  
    But these things only give the arena in which we work.  They do not express how we plan to do them or how effective we will be.  And our difference, our importance as an organization in the world rests upon how we work in that arena, i.e. our goals.  
    If you can say what you want to accomplish to somebody and how you plan on doing it, it will be easier for that person to know whether they want to be a part of your organization.  It will also help to keep people away that would not be good members for the order because they don't want to do the things the order is doing.  
   In other words, goals are a good filter.   And as I write and think about it, having them and intelligently applying them, would go a great extent to solving many of the order's problems. 

I'm about to discuss local body development and the challenges that I see facing the OTO today in terms of fostering the growth of pre-existent local bodies and generating new local bodies. In this post, I will pull from my experience with Abrahadabra Oasis (AO) and Knights Templar Oasis (KTO), as the former was born of the latter and I think there are lessons that can be learned in examining the process of their separation. I am presently a member of the former and affilliate of the latter. If that's not your bag of tea, then please feel free to continue scrolling.

( No lj-cut tags were harmed in the formatting of this message. )

At some point, Thelema Lodge wants to be able to make its library available to the general public so that it can get a grant from the government. Grants have been given before for large libraries such as this and we wish to go the same route. We are having one problem, however. . .

Our first step is to get the library insured. This is easy except for one thing--we need to give the insurance company an appraised value. The Thelema Lodge library (also called the Rose Library) contains between 2500 and 3000 books. The cost of a professional appraiser in this area ranges from $150 to $250 per hour. One appraiser told me that he would be willing to determine how long it would take to appraise the library for the sum of $300 which then could be added to the appraisal cost. Considering the size of the library, and the fact that some books are still in boxes, this particular job is easily going to exceed $1000, and we simply don't have that kind of money.

Does anybody here have any ideas? We want eventually want the grant from the government in order to help fund a permanent stand-alone space for the library and Lodge, but we are caught in a bottleneck. How can we appraise this thing without breaking our bank?

If you have been clicking the links in recent announcements, you may have noticed some changes to the Sekhet-Maat Lodge website. We've rolled out a new site which can be edited by any of our members, and it has a fresh new look and feel.

Along with upgrading the site in general, we have added a number of new resources and documents which will be useful and interesting to all visitors to the site, but especially members of this community. Here is a brief rundown, along with links to the new pages.

( Would you like to learn more? )

Departing for a moment from the lofty world of policy to the very mundane one of bookkeeping... Can anyone here point me in the direction of some resources or fora (preferably online, and cheap or free) oriented toward Quickbooks? I also welcome personal expertise.

The question I have regards the assignment of classes to certain types of transactions. More specifically I'm finding that a few types of transactions have no means for associating with a class. This screws up the reportage because this means that we have no way of determining, for example, exactly how much of the amount in our bank accounts belongs to which class.

BTW, we use the classes to track incomes and expenses purposed to particular ends. We have a "Temple" class for all of our facilities needs like dues and rent, an "Events" class for parties and other special events, etc. We also have special funds for our library, temple improvements and such. We break it up in this way so that people can donate $100 to the library fund and know that it will be spent on the library, not rent or paint. If there's a more effective way to partition funds like this, I'd love to hear about that, too.

93,

You can view the schedule, register for Kaaba online and pay through PayPal or by check.

http://kaaba.oto-usa.org/2006_11.html

If the above link doesn't work for you, there is an announcement on the USGL site: www.oto-usa.org

93 93/93
BT

Corss-posted from stevensteven by request:

The study of Freemasonry as an organization is a fruitful exercise, both because it is an antecedent body to ours, and in that it has some similarities with its Lodge structure. The study of organizations such as the freemasons is a well researched area in sociology. A question plaguing the organization is the decline in membership, and a team of sociologists did a study on it. Oklahoma Grand Lodge provided its data for all its lodges which was then correlated against US census data for the area.

"This article had two goals. First, we used statistical analysis to evaluate the membership structure in the 1990s to determine which socioeconomic variables related most strongly to higher or lower levels of Masonic membership in Oklahoma. ... We used statistical methods derived from regression analysis to find significant links between Masonic membership and socioeconomic variables including age, commuting time, education, income, occupation, political and religious activity, and residential location. Second, we mapped pertinent statistical results to demonstrate the regional variability of Masonry and significant variables in Oklahoma".

Although a simple remedy for Freemasonry in Oklahoma does not exist, understanding what socioeconomic conditions and what regions are more or less amenable to Masonic membership provides the Grand Lodge of Oklahoma with information it can use to focus its recruiting and retention efforts.

What they found was interesting:

"Overall, our results demonstrate that age is the most significant predictor of Masonic membership, specifically the proportions of the population who are in the retirement age categories (55 and over). Masons are generally elderly men, and few younger men are joining like was once the case. Masonry, like many other fraternal and service clubs, is losing out in popularity in the face of longer commutes, increasing competition for leisure time from sports and television, and the greater overall range of free-time activities available to urbanites as compared to rural communities. Along these lines, variables indicating rural living are the second most common variables that demonstrate significant explanatory power.

Educational levels correlate moderately to Masonic membership, but in an inverse trend in which more educated persons tend to avoid the group. This is a well-established trend that has been present for at least 100 years, if not longer. Certain occupations, in particular machinists, farmers, and protection services, correlate strongly, although these seem to behave more as proxies for urbanity and ruralness than as the impact of these specific occupations, given their modest contributions to the overall employment base of Oklahoma.

Political activities correlate modestly, and religious and income characteristics seem to have little relationship to Masonic membership at the county level despite some evidence in the literature. This may reflect the overall decline of popular interest in religion and politics in this country, even though hard data on whether churches or religion are truly in decline is often contradictory."

And what is recommended?

"The results of this study in aggregate indicate what characteristics to look for in a county, if one wishes to identify a "model" county in which Masonic membership should be strong. This ideal county would have a large percentage of its population in retired age groups, more rural farming residents, short commutes, more occupational opportunities for protection and farming occupations, and a lower-than-average educational level. This description seems to accurately portray small-town America. Although this helps identify the counties that should and do have strong Masonic lodges and membership levels, this does not solve the systemic problem of how to attract younger members who will remain active for four or five decades. The typical older Mason today is such a person, but this cohort is dying and not being replaced by the baby boom and generation x cohorts that dominate the population today. Understanding where Masonry is strong or weak in the state is an important first step, but it falls to the Grand Lodge of Oklahoma, as well as other state lodges in the United States, to determine, first, whether it wants to change its target demographic, and then, second, how to go about effecting this change."


Another fascinating statistic not from this study is that 42.7% of people who take masonic initiation drop out. However, they have a 75% retention rate for people that take the third degree. It would be interesting to find out what is it that happens that causes half to drop out after first, and what is it about third that makes the retention rate jump up? Perhaps more education about what the system is about would help reduce that drop off, and perhaps extra effort in getting people to third would help the retention rate? I also wonder if the one day multi degree mass initiations they do now (which I think are poorly thought out) changes these rates?

The data in in itself is interesting, but what you do with it is even more so......

93,

Invitations were sent to all the LBs in the Eastern US. If anyone who wants to attend the Fall 2006 Kaaba has not seen the info, please email me at bill (at)set-triumphant (dot) org. I will send you all the information currently available.

There is an October 30th deadline for reservations at the host hotel. The registration fees are $30 for LB Officers and $40 for anyone else attending. This is the first time this iteration of Kaaba has been presented in the Eastern US.

93 93/93
BT

An article in this week's MetroActive mentions OTO in the course of a nice little bit about H. Spencer Lewis and the Rosicrucian park.

The man who claimed to have disinterred Rosicrucian documents from California's soil was H. Spencer Lewis, an energetic Egyptophile and adman who founded the Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis in New York in 1915. Lewis was initiated by a Rosicrucian master in Toulouse and spent time as well in the Ordo Templi Orientis, an occult order led by the notorious Aleister Crowley; Spence took AMORC's Rosicrucian emblem from the pages of Crowley's journal, The Equinox. In 1927, Lewis purchased a modest plot of land amid the luscious apricot and peach orchards that once thronged San Jose. The Grand Imperator dubbed the property Rosicrucian Park, which would become home base for the largest and most famous Rosicrucian group in America.

Today Rosicrucian Park is one of the crown jewels of California's visionary landscape. An inviting maze of temples, fountains, statues, plants, and bas-relief gods, the site is part Egyptian Revival, part Deco, and part Disney. (Walt Disney, it should be mentioned, was once a member of AMORC, as was Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.) Though Lewis saved his heaviest sacred designs for the interior of the windowless main temple, the park's grounds and exteriors stand as a public monument to the esoteric imagination.

More here.

Wouldn't it be nice if we had something like a public monument to Thelema?

For those who missed it, there are some excellent replies to 00goddess's post on oto_community (click here) where she asks for examples of fliers that local bodies have used. This is also relevant to local body development for obvious reasons, so I thought it would be worth posting a link here.

I got an email asking for clarification on the requirements for participation in this community. I thought it would be best to make an explanatory post.

• Yes, you must be an "active" member of OTO, not suspended, on sabbatical, etc., but actively paying national dues.
• Yes, you must be a member in good standing of some local body. This does not mean you have to be contributing money, as long as some local body has you on their roll and you maintain your good standing in accordance with their bylaws.
• No, I am not asking the GTG or your local body Masters to verify either of the above. Such information is considered confidential and is only given to those with need to know. In the context of this community, which is not an official OTO community, I have exactly zero need to know.
• No, I do not look at the records that I am privy to in my official capacity in the Order to cross-reference and figure out who is a member of what, etc. This would be IMO a conflict of interest, and besides, a hellish lot of work.
• Therefore if you join this community, I assume on your honor that you have fulfilled the requirements as outlined on the profile page.

Any questions?

93 all, new to this community, thanks to thiebes for bringing this place to my attention when he asked me to xpost this here. This is probably a better place for discussion of this than ljoto. I've got links to other scholarly papers on these issues if anyone is interested, here's an interesting tidbit from another one I read last night:

"Of the three conflict types [personal, task, and process], process conflict [who has what responsibilities] is the least examined. In one study, process conflict was associated with a lower level of group morale, as well as decreased productivity. The logic proposed is that when a group argues about who does what, members are dissatisfied with the uncertainty caused by the process conflict and feel a greater desire to leave the group. In addition, Jehn notes that process conflicts interfere with task content quality and often misdirect focus to irrelevant discussions of member ability. In a more recent study, Jehn, Northcraft, and Neale found that groups who continually disagreed about task assignments were unable to effectively perform their work." [brackets and emphasis mine].

I originally found this stuff by simply Googling "constructive vs destructive criticism." Fascinating. Enjoy!

-------------------------

There's been a lot of talk lately in the OTO about matters of 1) strategic management and 2) intragroup conflict.

I decided to do some research, and came across a paper that I thought may provoke some interesting discussion here.

http://www.mngt.waikato.ac.nz/ejrot/Vol3_2/tompson.pdf

One of the things this paper talks about is intragroup conflict having an effect of "leveling the field" in strategic decision making, ensuring that the opinions and agendas of every member of the organization is heard. I don't know if such an egalitarian ideal is necessarily appropriate for the OTO, as we've got certain implicit and explicit agendas in the founding docs of the Order, but I'd like to hear an opposing point if someone has one.

I also thought it was really interesting to learn that management theory is still a pretty new field of research, apparently the first real scholarly work was done in the 1960s, and a lot of the theory in the field could use more testing and long-term analysis.

Finally, this paper addresses the matter of gender differences in management style and conflict resolution, which I think is an especially important consideration in looking an an Order that is essentially built on a masonic-style organization, but includes women in both its membership and top management.

Okay, I'll shut up and let you go read someone who has done a lot more research than me. I look forward to hearing your opinions.

93s

Cross-posted from my own LJ, Apr-02-2003 ev. The following is a series of questions designed for the local body leader who is interested in implementing local dues programs and acquiring a space.

Someone asked me in email to assist in some brainstorming efforts on implementing a local dues program at an OTO body. In case anyone else is thinking along these lines, I want to first of all say that you are a GEEK! Now, from one geek to another, here are some questions that might help you to organize your thoughts on local dues and acquiring permanent space. ( Read more... )