An Order of Two

 The A.'.A.'. as it exists today is the source of a lot of confusion and misunderstanding, often among those who really should know better! Although the term 'Order' is used, this really, if at all, only applies to the outermost parts of the Order, that part charged with receiving and training potential initiates. There may be officers with specific jobs, traditionally three: Cancellarius, Imperator, and Preamonstrator. These are ascribed to Tiphareth, Geburah and Chesed, and serve as secretary, overseer and teacher respectively. There may also be a Grand Neophyte charged with looking after the Outer Order members, but in general this role is carried out by one or all of the original three.

In practice however, these three roles are minimalist, their holders don't interfere with the work of individuals, and serve only to ensure that the overall standards, traditions, and teaching within the Order are maintained. The A.'.A.'. isn't an order in the sense that the OTO or the Freemasons are Orders, there is no centralisation, there are no fees or meeting times, no charity dinners or special events, no group interactions of any kind. If there were, then it wouldn't be the A.'.A.'., but a social Order.

One of our lineal ancestors actually parted ways with another fairly well know A.'.A.'. lineage for this reason, citing that it was being turned into a social Order, largely because most of their members were in California, and interacting with one another daily in a 'teaching order' in 'service' to the A.'.A.'., had blurred the lines sufficiently that he felt that the term A.'.A.'. no longer applied. He walked away whilst a 6=5 and subsequently continued to practice under Israel Regardie (whether you consider Regardie a legitimate A.'.A.'. link is another question that I don't intend to try to answer here), it is thanks in part to his decision that my 'lineage', A.'.A.'. in Albion, exists today, and why we consider Regardie a lineal ancestor.

As a tradition, A.'.A.'. follows the age old model of teacher/student transmission. The exchanges of letters, or these days emails. Phone calls, occasionally supplemented in the early stages by initiation rituals and paperwork, by one to one interaction in short, is where the Order really exists. In my experience, officers very rarely have any business interfering with these relationships, and only then when flagged directly by one or another party, and that is where the option is even available. For the most part such intervention does more harm than good, and it best left alone.

In this way, the Order is passed from teacher to student to student etc, down the line. We might hear of our predecessors, our fraternal ancestor so to speak, but in general have no business meeting or talking to them, much less to our Order siblings, if we even know who they are. As far as the A.'.A.'. is concerned, only the teacher student relationship matters, and that only up to Tiphareth.

Beyond that level, while the teacher is still around, that role is more comradely, as a graduated student to his/her professor. Respect and fellow feeling, but not authority, that is between each initiate and his/her Angel, for whom the teacher was really a surrogate. The teacher is now a companion on the path, a fellow pilgrim on their way to the City of the Pyramids.

So the A.'.A.'. remains an Order of Two, the initiate and the person who introduced them. It may happen that an initiate will later receive a student, in which case they become the teacher to that student, and it is still an Order of two since their teacher is not in that particular picture except perhaps in stories related. In this way the A.'.A.'. maintains it's integrity as an Inner Order, and avoids becoming a 'tea party' where 'members' get together to discuss, socialise, and otherwise bring the A.'.A.'. down to the level of mundane things.