An American esoteric order teaching spiritual alchemy, the Octagon Society traditionally dated its founding to 1158, when members of the Knights Templar at the castle of Gisors in France devised eight spiritual laws governing the transformation of the self. The octagonal rooms within the castle’s famous eight-sided tower supposedly inspired the name of the Society. In the realm of reliable history, however, the oldest surviving documents of the order date from 1958, when its Guardian, Dr. Juliet Ashley, revised the training program based on the eight laws, and those documents refer only to a 1923 text of the eight laws. This may well have been the original formulation, as the society’s methods bear the stamp of early twentieth-century American esotericism and mental healing.
The spiritual alchemy taught by the society is a method of psychological healing, and the traditions of operative alchemy are used as metaphors for the transmutation of the “lead” of painful memories and psychological states into the “gold” of happiness and mental balance. The methods used have much in common with New Thought and other “mind cure” methods from the half-century before the society’s apparent emergence. See Alchemy.
The Octagon Society has eight grades, numbered 1/8 through 8/8. Members of the 8/8 grade are eligible for advancement into two higher orders, the Temple of Solomon and the Ancient Order of Spiritual Alchemy. The Temple of Solomon claims to have been originally founded “toward the end of the first millennium, at the request of Pope John” as a military initiatory order open to single Catholic males; in its present form, it was founded in 1942 as a secret initiatory order for men and women of any religious background, and works the three degrees of Candidate, Seeker, and Student. The Ancient Order of Spiritual Alchemy was founded in 1948 by three senior members of the Octagon Society, and provides very little information about its activities to the public.
SOURCE:
The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Societies : the ultimate a-z of ancient mysteries, lost civilizations and forgotten wisdom written by John Michael Greer – © John Michael Greer 2006