The A A's design is deliberately unusual. A member knows the person who admitted them and the people they admit, and no one else. There are no meetings, no lodge, and no roll. The stated reason is that an order without a visible body cannot be captured, corrupted or turned into a social club, which is a direct response to what Crowley had just watched happen to the Golden Dawn.
Against that secrecy sits an unusually open publication record. The Equinox, issued from 1909, printed the Golden Dawn rituals Crowley had sworn not to reveal, the order's own instructional papers, and the syllabus of study, under the motto that gives the enterprise its character: the method of science, the aim of religion. The Libri, numbered instructional texts, remain in print. A prospective member can read the curriculum before approaching anyone.
The grades follow the Golden Dawn ladder upward past where the Golden Dawn stopped, through the Abyss to grades that are described rather than conferred. The required practice is documentary: a member keeps a magical record, and advancement rests on that record being examined. Whatever one makes of the claims, the demand that a practitioner write down results and submit them for review is the closest thing to a methodological standard the tradition produced.