Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica

The Gnostic Catholic Church (E.G.C.) is the ecclesiastical branch of Ordo Templi Orientis, the primary purpose of which is the performance of the Gnostic Mass, Liber XV.

Composed by Aleister Crowley in 1913 while visiting Moscow, this eucharistic rite was intended to be the central ceremony of O.T.O.’s public and private celebration.

“One of the simplest and most complete of magick ceremonies is the Eucharist. It consists in taking common things, transmuting them into things divine, and consuming them…Take a substance symbolic of the whole course of Nature, make it God, and consume it…The highest form of the Eucharist is that in which the Element consecrated is One. It is one substance and not two, not living and not dead, neither liquid nor solid, neither hot nor cold, neither male nor female…It is the Medicine of Metals, the Stone of the Wise, the Potable Gold, the Elixir of Life that is consumed therein…The Magician becomes filled with God, fed upon God, intoxicated with God. Little by little his body will become purified by the internal lustration of God; day by day his mortal frame, shedding its earthly elements, will become in very truth the Temple of the Holy Ghost. Day by day matter is replaced by Spirit, the human by the divine; ultimately the change will be complete: God manifest in flesh will be his name.” — Liber ABA, Pt. III, Ch. XX, Of the Eucharist.