And, let’s also be honest, if by some miracle you do make it to 9th degree, and you don’t already know what the Supreme Secret is by that point, then you should probably be expelled for being too dumb and too incurious to have figured it out already, and thus disqualified from continued membership or initiations as an unsuitable candidate.
Here’s another point to consider: one of the documents that those in A∴A∴ are supposed to read is a degree secret in OTO, therefore, given that example, it’s the system, not the document that really determines what’s a secret or not at what point in the process.
That kinda begs the question: if not for the secrets, what is a reason to join OTO? Well, there’s very little in OTO that you can’t get more and better elsewhere, but there are a couple, very specific, things OTO offers that you can’t really get elsewhere, or by reading material on the Internet. One is the experience of a collective attempt to create an intentional community organized around Thelemic culture. The second is the imprint vulnerability inherent in the participatory experience of unspoilered initiation rituals which OTO can offer.
For the first, I mean, if you want that, go for it. I’d recommend it only in small doses and heavily recommend that you stay grounded in other communities along the way, to give you a lifeline and a way to check yourself. I mean, in the sense that revolutionaries make poor administrators, a widespread overtly Thelemic governance, I think be awful; and if Thelemites were actually in charge of important things in the world, based on what I’ve seen, we’d eventually be living in a post-apocalypse Libertarian utopia, and that’s no good for anyone except zombies and, for only so long as supplies and ammo lasts, survivalists. Just. No. Thanks, but no. I’ve met some great people in and through Thelema, but I wouldn’t trust most of them to edit a page on the site unsupervised, let alone run a government doing anything of consequence. But, OTO does offer a way to experience what Thelemic culture might be and to consider if it is for you.
As to Thelemic culture, I submit that the overall Enlightenment struggle neither starts nor ends with the movement of Aleister Crowley’s Thelema. It’s an ongoing struggle, to be sure, but it’s got way more history both in breadth and length, through time and concurrently at any point in time, than just Thelema. I mean, as long as Thelemites are working in solidarity and intersectionally with others, welcome to the club! But, when they aren’t? They’re stuck fighting limited, parochial Edwardian battles for freedoms Crowley wished for himself during his lifetime that the world has, mostly, already grown past, just not evenly distributed.
(Seriously, what 70s rock star didn’t do without guilt more wild shit and faster than Aleister Crowley ever did? And a shit ton more people still listen to 70s musicians than read Crowley.)
For the second,
as I’ve said before, you can, literally, only ever experience an initiation once without spoilers. If you read ahead, you’ve missed your one and only chance, which you cannot ever get back. That should be an extremely compelling reason to give it a go without looking things up on the Internet ahead of time.