I don't particularly like the OTO because of the distortion of Enlightenment Era groups and Freemasonry. Crowley and some of the esoteric philosophies are interesting but there's not many concrete ideas there.
John Fleming wrote a great book related to this called The Dark Side of the Enlightenment: Wizards, Alchemists, and Spiritual Seekers in the Age of Reason.
There's a distinction between Freemasonry, philosophy, and DMT; and the speculative ideas of John Dee, the OTO and mystical reasoning. A lot of the most fascinating things are polluted with ridiculous claims and beliefs.
Fleming on the Dark Side of the Enlightenment is great, I agree. But I wouldn't say his book is trying to separate the dross of ridiculous belief from the gold of "true" science or philosophy. What I take away from that book is a to me more interesting claim that Enlightenment ideals and methods have always been entangled with varieties of magical beliefs, be they utopian idealism or alchemy or (in a contemporary context) transhumanism. I wrote about this at more length in an article about the history of drugs that appeared in Aeon magazine a few months ago, if you're interested: http://aeon.co/magazine/altered-states/yesterdays-drugs-are-...
Aeon and The Appendix have both been sources of some excellent posts here. We'd like to see more such material—the more in-depth, the better. I'm excited to see what you do with The Appendix. There's a crying need for more substantive general-interest articles online.
HN has a largely technical orientation, but its mandate is for intellectual diversity and we're a little low on historical nutrients these days.
John Fleming wrote a great book related to this called The Dark Side of the Enlightenment: Wizards, Alchemists, and Spiritual Seekers in the Age of Reason.
There's a distinction between Freemasonry, philosophy, and DMT; and the speculative ideas of John Dee, the OTO and mystical reasoning. A lot of the most fascinating things are polluted with ridiculous claims and beliefs.