Grady Louis McMurtry

Grady L. McMurtry
Grady Louis McMurtry as an officer in 1941
Born	18 October 1918 Big Cabin, Oklahoma
Died	July 12, 1985(1985-07-12) (aged 66) Martinez, California
Education	University of California, Berkeley
Occupation	Caliph, OTO

Grady Louis McMurtry (October 18, 1918 – July 12, 1985) was a student of author and occultist Aleister Crowley and an adherent of Thelema. He is best known for reviving the fraternal organization Ordo Templi Orientis, which he headed from 1971 until his death in 1985.

He lived in various parts of Oklahoma and the Midwest, and graduated from high school in Valley Center, Kansas in 1937. He then moved to Southern California to study engineering at Pasadena Junior College, where he made friends with some students at the nearby California Institute of Technology. Among them was Jack Parsons, who shared his enthusiasm for science fiction, and who introduced him to Thelema. In 1941 McMurtry was initiated into the Minerval and I° of Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), a secret society headed at the time by Aleister Crowley.

In February 1942, two months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, McMurtry's entire Reserve Officers Training Corps class was called to active duty, and he served as an officer in Ordnance. He took part in the invasion of Normandy, the liberation of France and Belgium, and the occupation of Germany. He was recalled to active duty to serve in the Korean War, eventually reaching the rank of major. He was recalled again for another tour of duty in Korea in the early 1960s. Six months prior to completing 30 years of Reserve service, he was mustered out as a lieutenant colonel during a RIF (Reduction In Force) and lost what would have been an earned pension. He continued his academic studies as a civilian between tours of duty at the University of California, Berkeley, where he completed his A.B. in political science in 1948 and an M.A. in the discipline in 1955. His thesis for the latter degree examined the parallels between magic and Marxism. In a 1970 conversation with Jacques Vallée (who was flummoxed by McMurtry's lengthy military career), McMurtry identified as a political liberal. He noted his opposition to Richard Nixon's Middle East policies and characterized himself as "a poet who happened to fight in two wars."