Re-establishing O.T.O.
On October 25, 1962 Germer died from prostatic cancer at the age of 77, without naming a successor as head of O.T.O. His widow, who was not a member of O.T.O., retained material possession of the O.T.O.'s extensive archives. Though individual members carried on with their spiritual activities, the central organization, for all intents and purposes, ceased to function. There were a few individuals, notably
Kenneth Grant of Britain, Hermann Metzger of Switzerland, and later,
Marcelo Ramos Motta of Brazil, who claimed succession to Germer. McMurtry was unaware of any of these developments until 1968, when he received a letter from
Phyllis Seckler, a fellow Agape Lodge O.T.O. initiate. Seckler's letter was to inform McMurtry that the archives in Germer's widow's care (including Aleister Crowley's library) had been burglarized the previous year by persons unknown. When he became aware of the situation he decided to take charge of what remained of O.T.O. In 1969 he left his job at the
United States Department of Labor and returned to California to investigate the burglary. Though the crime was never officially solved, McMurtry felt that it had probably been carried out by a group, claiming affiliation with O.T.O., that called itself the "Solar Lodge". McMurtry had moved into Seckler's home in
Dublin, California, and soon they were married. At this time, McMurtry decided to restore the Order by invoking his emergency orders from Crowley which gave him authority (subject to Karl Germer's approval) to "take charge of the whole work of the Order in California to reform the Organization", and he assumed the title "Caliph of O.T.O.," as specified in Crowley's letters to McMurtry from the 1940s. His witnesses were Dr.
Israel Regardie (1907–1985) and
Gerald Yorke, who both offered their support. Along with Seckler and two other surviving members, Mildred Burlingame and
Helen Parsons Smith, he slowly began performing O.T.O. initiations again. They also eventually succeeded in their efforts to find a publisher for the
Thoth tarot deck designed by Aleister Crowley. O.T.O. was registered with the State of California on December 28, 1971 as a legal organization. In 1974 McMurtry and Seckler separated, and he moved to
Berkeley, California. Germer's widow died in 1975, and in 1976 the surviving members of O.T.O. were enabled by court order to claim the still considerable archives. In October 1977 McMurtry founded Thelema Lodge in Berkeley to serve as the headquarters of his resuscitated O.T.O. Many initiations were performed, and a weekly celebration of the
Gnostic Mass was soon established in the San Francisco Bay area. McMurtry, and other initiators chartered by him, established O.T.O. groups in many other areas in the United States and internationally. By 1985 O.T.O., by its own report, had more than seven hundred members in several different countries. In that year McMurtry, in failing health, successfully sued Motta in
United States district court over the possession of the O.T.O. trademarks and copyrights. He died in a
Martinez, California convalescent hospital on the day that the U.S. court clerk released the text of the decision that set the seal on McMurtry's efforts to reestablish O.T.O. Since then O.T.O. had, by its own report, grown to over three thousand members in more than forty countries, although numbers have declined significantly over the last decade. ==Publications==