Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
It is my will that this site stays available to the public and does not become a cause of legal hassles for either myself or the Leeds group. As such there are other laws which must be taken into account. I will explain.
As has been mentioned on other pages on this site, one of the projects of Sunwheel Camp (as it then was) and the Hand of Glory Working Group (an ad hoc group which kept O.T.O. activity going in Leeds while Sunwheel was dormant) was devising adaptations for group performance of the A.'.A.'. rituals from Appendix VI of Magick in Theory and Practice. A slightly revised version of Sunwheel's group Reguli has been posted on this site already. While Frater D.I.C.E. completed an adaptation of the Star Ruby, he has informed me that he wishes to revise it before it is publicly posted. My own attempt at a group adaptation of the infamous Star Sapphire has also been posted here.
Anyway, the notes for the Hand of Glory Working Group's group Phoenix were recently recovered by Frater O.B. Unfortunately, even a cursory reading of the ritual revealed that it could not be legally performed in the U.K. as the law currently stands, and – leaving aside what is said in the O.T.O. Bodymaster's Handbook about the Mass of the Phoenix – to post it on this site could be considered incitement.
Following a particularly stupid trial and subsequent appeals, the so-called "Spanner" case (R vs. Brown et al, Central Criminal Court Dec. 1990, Court of Appeal Jan. 1992, House of Lords Dec. 1992) in which a number of men were convicted of assault and bodily harm for consensual S&M activity, the precedent has been established that an act which, if perpetrated on an unwilling victim would constitute assault and actual bodily harm, still constitutes exactly the same criminal offence if done with the freely given and fully informed consent of all parties involved. This piece of idiocy has been upheld by this country's highest court and an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights was turned down in February 1997 (Laskey, Jaggard & Brown vs. United Kingdom), so the recent incorporation into U.K. law of the European Convention on Human Rights is unlikely to affect this matter.
More information on the "Spanner" case.
This effectively means that were this ritual ever to be performed in this country, even privately, those involved would be deemed to be either committing assault and ABH, or conspiring to do the same. Bearing this in mind, and given also the law on incitement as it stands, this ritual will not be posted on this site until we have been able to clarify the position (for instance, as to whether the religious freedom clauses of the Human Rights Act could apply in this case).
Love is the law, love under will.
Frater T.S.
Website co-ordinator, Nu Isis Working Group.