Jones, Crowley and an independent course
Jones worked as an accountant in Vancouver and became involved with the occult organisations associated with Crowley. He was an initiate of the A∴A∴ and the Ordo Templi Orientis, establishing a Canadian O.T.O. lodge. Crowley regarded him as a spiritual or magical son. These titles expressed relationships and claims within the organisations, rather than independently established spiritual accomplishments.
Jones also lived in the United States and eventually parted from Crowley’s organisation. His writings developed his own interpretations of the Tree of Life and included The Anatomy of the Body of God. The name Frater Achad needs care in bibliographic records: a later writer, George Graham Price, also used it, and his publications are not works by Jones.
The Grail drama through Qabalah
The Chalice of Ecstasy is a commentary on Wagner’s Parsifal. The copy here is an electronic transcription, rather than an original printed edition. Its opening expects acquaintance with Wagner’s drama; it neither replaces the libretto nor translates the medieval Parzival.
Jones associates the cup with understanding and the spear with will or wisdom. Numbered points connect the drama with other texts and a Qabalistic system. In the conclusion, numerical values and the Tree of Life organise the chalice, but spellings have to be adjusted to produce some correspondences. That dependence on selected forms is part of his interpretive method: the pattern belongs to the commentator’s construction as well as to the material he interprets.
