Well-phrased; I agree. I have been looking for signs of the OTO and the Golden Dawn (and the A.A.) in Kingsmouth (but I stopped actively looking after that) but have indeed not found them.
@JOrifice might however have some point in referencing Parson, indeed for things like the mentioned Babalon Working (which can be very well imagined as something that would happen in the Secret World). Parson was an assciate of Hubbard, who took off with Parsons’ money to found Scientology — so maybe it can be said that this is when the old-school esoteric groups spawned this new wave of cults.
I found signs of the O.T.O. in Blue Mountain in the old game, but that was in the form of a Templar cabal using the name, and they kind of fizzled out not long after launch (judging from the last time I checked the guildleader’s Chronicle page) and never got to endgame.
Only real point of contact with Morninglight is that OTO’s exoteric doctrine might be called sun-worship (their esoteric doctrine appears to be based on a largely discredited 19th-century school of interpreting religious symbolism).
My apologies!
I was not referring to the modern Church Of Satan in that post at all, but rather to the ‘Satanic Panic’ style of completely imagined death cults.
Given the origins of the Morninglight in-game, the similarities to Parsons and Hubbard make perfect sense. Hubbard cribbed a lot of Scientology’s ritual from other occultists, but mostly left them in the dust and did his own thing, and nowadays, his heirs in the Church of Scientology like to pretend that their organization had nothing to do with the likes of Parsons, Crowley, and the OTO. Likewise, the Morninglight started out as a tool for Lilith to control the Dreamers with, but then the Dreamers corrupted Marquard and took full control of the Morninglight, turning it against Lilith and the Orochi Group.
Btw now that I look at the CryGaia wiki entry for Philip Marquard, I must say that he reminds me somewhat of Sun Myung Moon, in the sense that he is a non-white yet very W.A.S.P.y (American Protestant) looking christian leader. So, imho the Unification Church might also be added to the list of likely Morning Light inspirations.
I find it pretty unlikely that the inspiration is a modern source. It’s possible that Games Workshop drew on similar ideas to make Necrons, but given the Secret World’s roots are in the real world, not the grimdark future, it’d be a lot more likely that the mythos comes from reality.
It’s like saying magic is inspired by Psykers. If that’s your only basis for comparison then it seems to fit, but in reality you’re missing that one predates the other by a few thousand years.