The Agape Lodge was a California-based chapter of the Ordo Templi Orientis founded in 1935 by Wilfred Talbot Smith. Following World War II, it was the sole surviving O.T.O. organization.
Background
The original O.T.O. was founded by the wealthy German industrialist Carl Kellner. After Kellner's death in 1905, Theodor Reuss became Outer Head of the Order. After Reuss's death in 1923, Aleister Crowley was elected Head of the Order in 1925.
In 1915, the lesser-known Agapé Lodge No. 1 of Vancouver, B.C. had been established.
Hollywood: 1935–1936
In 1935, Wilfred Talbot Smith founded the Agape Lodge No. 2, based at his Hollywood home at 1746 Winona Boulevard (now demolished), and brought in seven initiates to the Minerval level in September 1935. Smith advertised the foundation of his group through an advert in American Astrology magazine and printed a pamphlet explaining what the O.T.O. was. The Agape Lodge held regular meetings, lectures, and study classes, as well as social events and a weekly Gnostic Mass open to the public.
In February 1936, the lodge held a Mass in honour of New Thought leader Wayne Walker who ran a group called "The Voice of Healing"; The Agape Lodge members hoped to attract Walker and his supporters to Thelema, but they were put off by the Lodge's sexual openness. Later in 1936, Smith and Jacobi's employer, the Southern California Gas Company, discovered their involvement in the Lodge, demoting Smith to bookkeeper and firing Jacobi. Angered, Jacobi left the Lodge altogether, while Smith shut down the group's private ritual activities for the next three years. As a result, the public attendance of the Gnostic Mass plummeted.
Hollywood: 1939- March 1940
In 1939, the group initiated Jack Parsons, a jet fuel engineer, and his wife Helen Parsons, who had become interested in the O.T.O. through attending the Gnostic Mass. Smith wrote to Crowley that Parsons was "a really excellent man ... He has an excellent mind and much better intellect than myself ... JP is going to be very valuable". The Parsons would help bring new members into the group Grady McMurtry and his fiancée Claire Palmer, and Helen's sister Sara Northrup.
February 1939
In February 1939, a young college student who had attended the mass, Ayna Sosoyena, was murdered; although police drew no connection to the Lodge, sensationalist local tabloids connected the two, although were unaware that the Lodge was involved with Crowley or Thelema. A sympathetic local radio reporter allowed Smith to explain the purpose of the Mass to allay fears of the group, but the interview was never aired in an agreement with local press that they would drop the story.
Crowley appointed Karl Germer, a German Thelemite recently arrived in the US, to be his representative on the continent, and instructed Germer to oversee the payment of dues to himself. He also specified that it would now be Germer, and not Smith, who was his chosen successor.
Regina Kahl, who worked as a drama teacher, brought three of her interested students into the group, among them Phyllis Seckler, and other individuals also joined the group, among them Louis T. Culling and Roy Leffingwell.
The Lodge again ceased its private activities from March 1940 to March 1941.
Sarah Northrup joins, 1941
Sarah Northrup joined the O.T.O. in 1941, at Parsons' urging, and was given the title of Soror [Sister] Cassap. She soon rose to the rank of a second degree member, or "Magician", of the O.T.O.
In June 1941, at the age of seventeen, Northrup began a passionate affair with Parsons while her sister Helen was away on vacation. She made a striking impression on the other lodgers.
When Helen returned, she found Northrup wearing Helen's own clothes and calling herself Parsons' "new wife." Such conduct was expressly permitted by the O.T.O., which followed Crowley's disdain of marriage as a "detestable institution" and accepted as commonplace the swapping of wives and partners between O.T.O. members.