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Secrets of the Lost Symbol
Two years later Spencer and his family, who among themselves filled most of the offices of the fledgling order, moved operations to San Jose and acquired a printing plant and a radio transmitter. Lewis and his order had a complicated relationship with its parent body, the Ordo Templi Orientis. The 1915 charter from Reuss was part of an intended collaboration between Lewis and the OTO, and was part of Reuss’ efforts to regain control of the order from Aleister Crowley and his protegé Charles Stansfield Jones. SEE CROWLEY, ALEISTER. Crowley, for his part, made overtures to Lewis in 1918 and offered him membership in the OTO or the A...A..., but Lewis turned him down. Reuss granted Lewis the honorary degrees of 33°, 90°, 95°, and VII° in 1921, the same year he formally expelled Crowley from the OTO, but his constant requests for money alienated Lewis and led to a parting of the ways between them. To his occult background, Lewis added marketing and advertising talents of a high order, and once AMORC was on its feet it attracted a growing stream of students. This brought the new order the unwanted attention of R. Swinburne Clymer, head of the Pennsylvania-based Fraternitas Rosae Crucis (FRC), who claimed exclusive rights to the term “Rosicrucian.” For much of the 1930s the two orders fought a furious but inconclusive pamphlet war over their respective pedigrees, which ended up in the