The following is an article written by Soror SeC for Lion and Serpent, volume 9, number 1, after experiencing NOTOCON IV. The full article in it’s original format can be found here http://sekhetmaat.com/wiki/journal
If you would like to contribute your own NOTOCON story, please send it to onsite@notocon.org
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I am fierce about my freedom. And yet, communities can do things that individuals cannot. I joined the O.T.O. to learn how this paradox might resolve itself. Thelema had been a part of my life for 9 years prior, and if anything was going to provide a resolution, it would be related to Thelema. I wondered: could this random group of strangers hold themselves together by the thread of this strangely fluid and poetic philosophy? Could the differences between people create a more unified whole, rather than splitting under the force of their own dissent? Could one be a part of a group without sacrificing self to the slavery of mob-mentality? What is community for, and how do we dance as individuals within it? While I can trace my journey toward answers in my daily life, the placement of NOTOCON outside of ordinary life makes it a peculiar benchmark.
In 1999, I took my Minerval two weeks before NOTOCON was held in Portland the first time. .”You can go to NOTOCON now!”, someone exclaimed, directly following the initiation.
“Hm. What happens at NOTOCON?” I asked.
“Lots of parties!”, someone else answered.
Er… I think I’ll pass…
I eased myself into the Portland O.T.O. community, experimenting, observing. Watching for what I could do to it, and what it could do to me. Reaching for insight into the resolution of the paradox between the one and the many, I offered a piece of myself and waited for the results. Plop: a drop in the crucible. Plop, plop, someone else was adding drops. And another…And another… Heat. Stir. Revealed: a brick.
I got back a brick.
I gave more. In an intense and near-instant alchemy of recursion, my pieces transmuted through the community to become the stuff to construct the community, in turn generating pieces for the next brick. The strokes of my paintbrush became the walls of the Lodge. The strokes of my fingers became the code comprising the programs that connect us to the world beyond those walls. My complaints and processes became part of the structures that enable us to engage in the more important business of creation. And through all of this, my pieces were the pieces I chose to give. It was my own strengths as an individual I offered. And found that was all the community wanted anyway.
Curious. Unexpected. But could it hold up elsewhere, or were we just weird here? Let’s begin to dance.
In 2001, I went to NOTOCON in California. From my journal: .Love and joy and beauty, we come from everywhere, all things unknown to each other. But those differences are where joy springs from; we are the wellsprings of life.. There it was…the paradox resolving. A group of radically disparate individuals, from all parts of the world, all classes, all as fierce as I am about their freedom, yet exploding into a transcendent whole, speaking as person to person; participating as individual to group: I talked to a lot of people. I had something to say to everyone. I even went to a room party! The experience of freedom within the group dynamic that I had in the Valley of Portland extended beyond our borders. The experience of freedom within the group was something that moved with us because of who we were, not because of where we were.
Now my participation in the Portland O.T.O. community is a natural extension of the momentum of my own life. And the community is a natural extension of me. The bricks of the community aren’t mine; they are my pieces mixed with the pieces of others, fused in the furnace of love and laid in the transcendence of completion. We dance together. We architect, build, destroy, engineer again. The things that make me and each person in the community an individual are what forge the bricks that are so innovative, and so strong. We dance together. How delightful that NOTOCON would be [in Portland] in 2003!
In 2003, I didn.t just go to NOTOCON. I helped build NOTOCON. I offered my pieces to manifest registration, Certified Initiator Training, the CIT Reception Art Show, and the media for the event. It was happening in my living room; I got to show people things I love and share my world with them. They shared themselves with me, delighting in our differences. I was not the non-participant of 1999, not the analytical observer of 2001. I was a star in the galaxy that was NOTOCON. And so was every other person there, whether they were observing, or participating, or engineering, or sleeping.
This is the dance: We are all individuals, fierce about our freedom.
This is the dance: The whole harnesses the power of that freedom to transcend the sum of its parts.
NOTOCON wasn’t just about my internalized experiences. It wasn.t just about my community in Portland, or about the NOTOCON committee. It wasn’t even about a conference at the Edgefield. For me, NOTOCON 2003 was about that brief bright moment where all of us manifested an island of beauty; a pool of light that is this revolutionary thing: A functional culture,each person building a whole without sacrifice of freedom, to manifest a galaxy of stars.
The paradox resolves.
