Stay Wild, Moon Child
There is also a legend of a place called the Black Lodge: the shadow self of the White Lodge, a place of dark forces that pull on this world. A world of nightmares. Shamans reduced to crying children, angry spirits pouring from the woods, graves opening like flowers."
The Black Lodge was a mythological place referenced in the stories of the Nez Perce tribe of northeastern Washington. It was the name used to refer to a particular extra-dimensional location visited by FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper during his 1989 visit to Twin Peaks, which bore the appearance of an endless, red-curtained series of rooms and hallways. Legends:
The Black Lodge and its opposing counterpart, the White Lodge, originated in ancient legends passed down by the Nez Perce tribes who once inhabited the Twin Peaks region. In the stories, the Black Lodge was the "shadow self" of the White, a place of pure evil through which all souls passed on the way to perfection. During this process, the pilgrim would confront the Dweller on the Threshold, their own shadow self. If this challenge was not met with perfect courage, the lodge would utterly annihilate their soul.
While the White Lodge could supposedly be accessed with strong feelings of love, the Black would open to its opposite: fear.
The settlers who followed the Nez Perce gradually became aware of a "darkness" or "presence" in the surrounding woods and formed a secret society, the Bookhouse Boys, dedicated to fighting against it. Dale Cooper hypothesized that this presence and the Black Lodge of lore were one and the same.
The ritual magicians of the Western mystery tradition sometimes refer to the Great White Brotherhood as the "Great White Lodge", a name that appears to indicate that they imagine it constitutes an initiatory hierarchy similar to Freemasonry. Gareth Knight describes its members as the "Masters" or "Inner Plane Adepti", who have "gained all the experience, and all the wisdom resulting from experience, necessary for their spiritual evolution in the worlds of form." While some go on to "higher evolution in other spheres", others become teaching Masters who stay behind to help younger initiates in their "cyclic evolution on this planet". Only a few of this community are known to the human race; these initiates are the "teaching Masters."
The AMORC Rosicrucian order maintains a difference between the "Great White Brotherhood" and the "Great White Lodge", saying that the Great White Brotherhood is the "school or fraternity" of the Great White Lodge, and that "every true student on the Path" aspires to membership in this Brotherhood.
Some of Aleister Crowley's remarks appear to indicate that Crowley identified the Great White Brotherhood with the A∴A∴, his magical secret society.
The A∴A∴ claims to have been present in all societies and epochs, although not necessarily under that name. The A∴A∴ is composed of two orders, known as the inner and outer college. The outer college in its modern form was formulated in 1907 by Aleister Crowley and George Cecil Jones, claiming authority from Aiwass (the Author of The Book of the Law) and other Secret Chiefs of the planetary spiritual order after the schism in and subsequent collapse of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn at the turn of the Twentieth century. The principal holy book of the A∴A∴ is the book Crowley called "AL" and "Liber Legis", technically called "Liber AL vel Legis sub figura CCXX as delivered by 93=418 to DCLXVI", whose scriptural title is The Book of the Law, by which name the Book is most commonly known and referred to. There are several other holy books venerated in A∴A∴, which comprise the so-called Class A and AB material. In 1919 the O.T.O. considered itself to be a "close ally" of the A∴A∴, both organisations having accepted the authority of the Book of the Law, although the O.T.O., being a temporal and fraternal society, in no way participates in the A∴A∴'s strictly hierarchic and spiritual initiatory program, nor does O.T.O. represent A∴A∴. or transmit its functions or authority. The classic account of A∴A∴ is Karl Von Eckharthausen's "The Cloud Upon the Sanctuary", re-issued by the A∴A∴ as "Liber XXXIII". A "black lodge" of evil magicians figured in Moonchild, a 1923 novel by the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley. In the novel, the black lodge was one of two factions vying for an unborn child believed to be the Antichrist.[4]