What’s the OTO? I tried looking it up.
I put “O.T.O.” in search engine and got “Ordo Templi Orientis”
It’s all Latin to me!
Ordo Templi Orientis: an occult group that originated in Germany and Austria, known for ritualized sexual practices (”sex magick”), represented in the English-speaking world by Aleister Crowley, networked with various occult groups in England, France, and America around the turn of the 20th century. Steiner in his student days became associated with future OTO cofounder Franz Hartmann, a leading German Theosophist he met in Vienna in the 1880s among progressive circles centered around one Friedrich Eckstein. Eckstein, Hartmann, Steiner and others in their circle came under the influence of the aforementioned Alois Mailander, who taught meditation techniques adapted from Johann Baptist Krebs aka J.B. Kerning. Mailander was a hidden guru for Steiner and other leading German Theosophists interested in Yoga and yogic sexual practices (Theosophy was the leading source of information on Yoga in the German-speaking world at this time). Steiner regarded Mailander as a reincarnation of the Apostle John and Lazarus (whom he considered the same person) and used his teachings as a key to reinterpreting Christianity from a Theosophical viewpoint (for instance, he borrowed Mailander’s idea that Christ’s Second Coming would not be physical, but “etheric”). Mailander’s techniques were integrated with other occult sexual practices by Hartmann’s German Theosophical associate Carl Kellner, the “spiritual father of the OTO”. Steiner was recruited to represent what became the OTO by Kellner and Hartmann’s associate Theodore Reuss in the late 1890s, and Reuss issued Steiner a charter to start a lodge using the OTO’s rite in 1906. Meanwhile, Steiner became the head of the German section of the Theosophical Society in 1902, at the invitation of leading German Theosophist Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden. After a split emerged in German Theosophy, Steiner and his followers broke off and joined the Anthroposophical Society, launched as a rival to Theosophy in 1912, while Hartmann’s following went with a faction led by Theosophical publisher Hugo Vollrath. After Steiner died in 1925, his posthumous autobiography went to lengths to minimize his associations with earlier mentors and organizations.
Many references discussing these figures are available online. For in-depth research, start with the work of James Webb (The Occult Establishment), Karl Beier (Yoga within Viennese Occultism: Carl Kellner and Co.), and Peter Staudenmaier (Between Occultism and Nazism: Anthroposophy and the Politics of Race in the Fascist Era).