Bernd-Christian Otto gives a working paper on 'The Illuminates of Thanateros and the Institutionalization of Religious Individualization'

The ‚Illuminates of Thanateros‘ (IOT) is a modern new religious movement founded in 1976 (re-founded in 1986) and an initiatory order dedicated to the study and practice of ‚Chaos Magick‘, which is one of the most advanced and individualistic currents in the history of ‚Western learned magic‘. In the article, which I have written for the final proceedings of the Kollegforschergruppe, I interpret the foundation of the IOT as an attempt to institutionalize religious individualization, and henceforth its major schism – the so-called ‘Ice Magick War’ in the early 1990s – as an indicator that institutionalizing religious individualization is inevitably ambivalent and eventually determined to backlash into de- or non-individualization. But, as ever, the finding is ambiguous.