We welcome your comments, feedback, and ideas. You can contact the Order by emailing our Cancellarius (cancellarius@osogd.org).
Membership in the OSOGD
Are you interested in membership in the OSOGD? Here are some things you will want to know up front:
- We provide referrals to our Lodges based on your location. You may contact them by sending email to our Cancellarius.
- We do not accept members who live at a distance from us, but we can provide referrals to our Lodges based on your location. You may contact them by sending email to our Cancellarius
- The OSOGD does not provide long-distance or “astral” initiations. Our initiations are performed only on a physically present candidate and our teaching requires regular attendance. Therefore, if you seek actual initiation into the Order you must arrange to travel to a working Lodge to receive it, and live near enough to work with us in one of our Lodges.
- To become a member of OSOGD, you must be 18 years of age or older.
- If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area and would like to pursue membership with the OSOGD, please contact the Cancellarius. You will receive an email that will explain and begin our membership application process.
- Anyone is free to use the materials on our website for study and practice, for yourselves or if you wish to gather a study group together. (You may wish to review our Operational Principles elsewhere on our website for further information about the OSOGD’s organizational structure.) Everything that is currently available in terms of rituals, knowledge lectures, etc. is published on the website. At this time we are not set up to provide a correspondence course or similar on-going support.
- Individual OSOGD lodges may charge their members dues as they see fit. Currently Het-Nuit Lodge members pay $80.00 USD per year to help cover the cost of temple supplies and other expenses. No one is turned away for financial reasons.
OSOGD Temples
Our policy for forming a Temple is:
- Go for it! The rituals are there for you to use.
- It is more important to meet and work than build infrastructure.
- Have fun making tools.
- Play with the Rituals.
- If you want, tell us what you doing.
Affiliation with the OSOGD
Anyone is welcome to use our material as they like, constrained only by the rights reserved in the documents.
If a temple or lodge is formed in its use, it may say it is using OSOGD material or inspired thereby but may not say that the group is an OSOGD group, nor can it claim to initiate within the OSOGD current.
Any group using our material, or inspired by it, or having embraced the open source approach, may join our Network of Open Source Lodges. After applying (telling us about yourself and how you are practicing in an open source manner) and providing a group name, contact points, and a short descriptive text, a free listing will be provided on our Lodges (was Temples) page.
If you wish to initiate within the OSOGD current, you must apply to be a Lodge of the Order. The executive council of the Order, called the Areopagus, will review the application with particular attention to the group’s level of maturity and readiness to initiate. Only initiated adepts of the Order may initiate or advance within the current, and then only with a Charter to do so, or if granted a Warrant to do so without having completely fulfilled the requirements.
Should the Areopagus agree, the applying group may be granted Daughter Lodge status, which is a probationary period of no less than one year during which the new Daughter Lodge and its members are mentored and its officers trained.
At the end of the probationary period:
- If the Lodge has a member who is a fully initiated OSOGD Adept willing to take up the office of Hierophant, the Lodge may apply to the College of the Order for full Sister Lodge status, which will require a two-thirds vote for ratification.
- If not, but possesses a member who achieved adeptship in another Order, is duly advancing towards initiation as an Adept of the OSOGD and has the skills to perform the initiations and advancements, the Areopagus may grant the Daughter Lodge a Warrant to perform the initiations and advancements of the First Order until a fully initiated Adept is present. This Warrant may be applied for and granted at any time during the probationary period.
- If no such person is found, the Daughter Lodge will need to make arrangements with her mentors for an initiated Adept to perform the rites.