I have found that there is one common characteristic of people who often consult fortune tellers. They repeatedly go to these places until they are told good words.
See:
Category Archives: Supernatural
Why people rely on fortune telling
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Alex is into Polyglottory
There was a time when I thought that I knew or possessed all there was to know about the occult, and I thought, “Is that it?”
I was wrong.
The fact is that although one may be tempted to assume that Aleister Crowley and the Golden Dawn between them dispose of the majority of the occult teachings of the present day, there is a vast amount of material out there of equal if not greater quality, which seldom gets talked about. The truth of the matter is that Crowley and the GD only account for the majority of the occult in the English language. If, however, you want to venture outside the influence of the Anglophone sphere, there is a trove waiting to be discovered.
In this respect, the most important foreign languages for an English-speaking occultist are not Hebrew, Coptic and Enochian, but French, German and Italian. There is a large corpus of marvellous occult material in these languages, but because it has never been translated into English, most people in English-speaking countries have never heard of it. It is of course possible that there is yet more in other languages.
I currently am busy translating a load of French rituals into English. To save time I am attempting to use an automatic translation program – but then proof-read the results thoroughly to get the correct nuances and iron out the inevitable errors that these things throw up. One trivial example: the French word Gardien means “Guardian” but also “goalkeeper.” I am therefore having to deal with a French ritual for attaining Knowledge and Conversation of one’s Holy Goalkeeper Angel 🙂
Holy Goalkeeper Angel???
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Pic of the day: Pentagram of Solomon
Pentagram of Solomon, as used in the Goetia of the Lesser Key of Solomon
January 22, 2014 · 7:35 pm
QOTD: Pythagoras
The moral test was a more serious one. Suddenly, without the least preparation, the would-be disciple would one fine morning find himself imprisoned in an empty, dismal-looking cell. A slate was given him and he was coldly ordered to discover the meaning of one of the Pythagorean symbols, as, for instance: What is the signification of the triangle inscribed in a circle? or: Why is the dodecahedron, confined within the sphere, the symbol of the universe? He spent a dozen hours in his cell with his slate and the problem, and no other companion than a vase of water and a piece of dry bread. Then he was taken into a room to face the assembled novices. Under these circumstances the order had been passed round that they should ridicule without pity the wretched youth, who, hungry and sullen, stood before them like a culprit. “So this is the new philosopher,” they would say. “How inspired he looks! He will now tell us of his meditations. Do not conceal from us what you have discovered. You will in the same way go through all the symbols in turn. A month of this régime and you will have become a great sage!”
At this point the master would attentively observe the young man’s attitude and expression. Irritated by his fast, overwhelmed with these sarcastic words, and humiliated at not being able to solve an incomprehensible problem, no small effort was needed to control himself. Some would weep with rage, others gave sarcastic replies, whilst others again, unable to control themselves, dashed their slate madly to the ground and burst out in imprecations against school, master, and disciples alike. Then Pythagoras came forward and calmly said that, as they had failed in the test of self-respect, they were begged not to return to a school of which they had so bad an opinion, in which friendship and respect for the masters should be the most elementary of virtues. The rejected candidate would shamefacedly retire and sometimes become a redoubtable enemy of the order, like the well-known Cylon who, later on, excited the people against the Pythagoreans and brought about their downfall. On the other hand, those who bore everything with firmness, and gave just and witty replies to the provoking words they listened to, declaring they were ready to repeat the test a hundred times if only they could attain to the least degree of wisdom, were solemnly welcomed into the novitiate and received the enthusiastic congratulations of their new companions.
via Pythagoras and the Delphic Mysteries: Chapter IV. The Order and the Doctrine.
January 9, 2014 · 12:56 pm
What the Stars Have In Store For… The Golden Dawn
What with prominent people in cyberspace suddenly renouncing the Golden Dawn tradition – although, when it is convenient to them, not renouncing the Golden Dawn legacy – bethought myself that there might be something astrological going on? I therefore decided to cast a chart for the Golden Dawn itself, and investigate.
The Birth of the Golden Dawn
The three founders of the GD signed the original warrant for Isis Urania temple on 12th February 1888 (so immediately we know the GD is Sun Aquarius, Moon Pisces). I was not able to find a time or place this took place, but I am willing to bet that it was at Westcott’s house. According to The Golden Dawn Scrapbook
As to the birth time, I was going to use an approximated time… but then a thought occurred to me. The Golden Dawn received unwanted public attention on two notable occasions – the Looking Glass Trial in 1911, and the publication of “The Golden Dawn
I therefore decided I could use this information to create a Rectified chart for the Golden Dawn. Receiving unwanted public attention is one of the by-products of Saturn transitting the MC. On the day the Looking Glass trial was reported in the papers, Saturn was at 9º 16′ of Taurus, whilst in 1940 it would have ranged from 5º to 17º Taurus. I therefore decided to pick an arbitrary figure of 10º Taurus, this being a nice round number which makes the “best fit.”
Crunching this into Solar Fire, I got the following:
The Golden Dawn
Time (Rectified): 17:02
Date: 12th February 1888
Place: 51º 13′ 10″ North, 0º 7′ 20″ West.
Ascendant (Rectified): Leo.
Sun: Aquarius.
Moon: Pisces.
Rectified birth chart for the Golden Dawn, based on the MC being 10º Taurus and the warrant being signed at Westcott’s house.
What appears to have happened, therefore, is that Westcott, Woodman and Mathers founded the Golden Dawn over sherry one evening! But what does it all mean?
Birth chart interpretation
Of the combination Sun Aquarius / Moon Pisces, it is said:
[This] … produces a mind that is very original and able to grasp the most vague, ethereal and extreme concepts.
And also:
You are a person who is naturally persevering and conscientious, being interested in detail, method and order. Your way of reacting to the world is very interesting. You can spend days just dreaming and speculating. You are fascinated by the unusual and the abstract, finding it interesting to take up studies in any number of bizarre topics. Loving to read and study, you may become very well informed on a wide variety of subjects. You lean heavily on your hunches and way out ideas, and you’re easily distracted from routine work. You dream a lot and you have an utter faith in the dreams you dream.
Moreover, given the fact that the Sun and Moon are both in the seventh house, this ought to be ideal for a large group of people who all want to work together and get along with one another – would it not?
However, a warning bell is sounded by Mercury in the 7th house – of which Cafe Astrology says: “You might attract partners who are not especially sincere or downright duplicitous.” Also, the fact that both Mercury and the Moon are in Pisces would indicate that the GD had a tendency to dwell in illusion and perhaps being economic with l’actualité – telling its members what they wanted to believe, not what was strictly accurate – whilst in a stressful situation it would react with throwing out a haze of disinformation and deceit.
Leo, being the rising sign, would indicate a propensity for drama and performance – thus fitting in well with the GD’s use of dramatic ritual. However, Cafe Astrology says of those with Leo Rising: “[t]hey are given to rash decisions, temper tantrums, and excesses.”
What this means for the modern Golden Dawn movement
Oh irony of ironies! Saturn was again transitting Taurus back in 1999 – right in the middle of the flame wars involving HOMSI and David Griffin proclaiming his supposed Golden Dawn Reformation. Obviously it would be a churlish for me to suggest that this was a public scandal just as damaging to Golden Dawn as had been the shenanigans involving Crowley and Regardie, so I won’t.
Looking however at the present, the following transits are occurring roundabout now / the not too distant future.
Saturn will be square to the Golden Dawn’s Ascendant (as established above) on 14th February… then it will go retrograde and form an exact square on 19th March, before going direct again and making another exact square on 25th October. This indicates current key relationships being put to the test, and some GDers wanting to break down old structures. October will be an especially testing time as the planet will also square the GD’s natal Sun, making the movement feel as it is undergoing an endurance test. An opposition to the natal Neptune in November 2014 will appear to shovel more grief on. However… the good news is that it is entirely possible for the members of the GD to overcome these difficulties, by sticking to their core ideals and especially concentrating on spiritual studies.
Jupiter meanwhile, being square to the GD’s natal Uranus (exact on 25th December 2013 and 13th May 2014), indicates people feeling irritable and wanting to break free of past restrictions, and even causing rebellion. Separately, Jupiter is in opposition to natal Venus, signifying difficulty in relationships. Already around Christmas 2013 we have seen Nick Farrell and Sincerus Renatus each say they want to get out of the GD tradition. Come August Jupiter will be squaring the rectified Mid-heaven, indicating some difficulty in juggling public and private responsibilities: this will follow on from a square with natal Mars in June 2014, indicating that some GDers will be overly-assertive to the point of aggression in trying to achieve their goals (no doubt leading to more arguments, etc).
However, transitting Jupiter does form harmonious aspects with natal Mercury (good for writing projects); Saturn (good for achieving balance with ones responsibilities); and Jupiter (optimism, opportunities).
Conclusion
So all in all, I believe that there is sound evidence to support the rectification arrived at above. Moreover, recent events within the GD community would indicate that there is an astrological impetus for them.
BUT… seeing as the whole point of spiritual development in the GD tradition is to transcend the influences of the stars and planets, being prey to their influence is hardly Hermetic, now, is it?
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All in your head…?
Dion Fortune
Every once in a while, I come across someone who claims that Dion Fortune once said that Magick consisted of causing Willed Changes in consciousness. I personally have two problems with this, to wit:
Firstly, every time I challenge the person saying so to quote where Dion Fortune actually said this, I don’t get an answer. I have read just about all of Dion’s books, and I have never seen the quote myself, so I am wondering if this is not just an urban myth along the lines of the Jesus=Horus story, or the Third Vatican Council meme. As far as I’m aware, Donald Michael Kraig first made the claim in Modern Magick
Secondly, and more importantly, even if it is true, what a lot of people do not get is that it certainly does not mean that Magick only takes place in the imagination and nowhere else – and Dion Fortune would certainly have never claimed such a thing herself. How do I know this? Because it is on record that Dion Fortune was a firm believer in telepathy. Hence, Dion would be of the opinion that if you make the right change in consciousness, this would lead, via a process similar to telepathy, to objective results in the world at large. This was essentially her rationale for such magickal workings as those described in (e.g.) The Magical Battle of Britain
Hence, beware someone claiming that magick is “all in your head,” or words to that effect. It’s neither “all in your head,” nor is it “all in your head.” I personally have seen enough freaky coincidences to have my own evidence of its objectivity.
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Golden Dawn Exhibition, 19th December 2013
The Minutum Mundum
To London yesterday, where I assumed human form and attended a strictly-invite only exhibition of artefacts from the original Golden Dawn, dating right from the founding of the Isis-Urania temple and even before.
The place: the Grand Officers’ Robing Room at the United Grand Lodge of England, Great Queen Street. The exhibition was a selection of materials kept in the archives of the Library & Museum of Freemasonry. Although this material has been available for inspection for some time – as I first reported in the post Golden Dawn Manuscripts and Where To Find Them – this was the first time that an actual exhibition had been organised of them. This was quite an event to see so much on display in one place all at once, as usually one can only view each individual piece one at a time. That this came about was mainly thanks to a series of negotiations between Susan Snell, the head archivist, and one of my contacts in the “Illuminati.”
Hegemon and Hierophant wand. They appear to have been made from bannisters!
One of four tablets on display yesterday, each depicting the symbolism of one of the elements (in this instance, Earth).
There was room for fifty people (all seats were taken). As I surveyed the attendees I noted that there were large contingents from two supposedly rival GD orders! I say “supposedly” but this did not stop us going down the pub together later that evening. The actual exhibition was preceded by a talk about the Golden Dawn collections: however it was purely given from a scholarly and archival point of view. That is to say, the speakers were completely expert about how researchers would be able to use the collections to conduct further research into the GD, although they knew nothing of the magic of the GD itself. In that respect, those experts were in the audience listening to them.
The GD material at Great Queen Street has provenance from two main sources. Firstly, there was a collection which was acquired in 1920: secondly, there was another large collection acquired from a private source in 2008. The staff didn’t actually say who this private source was, although given that a lot of the items on display previously featured prominently in Bob Gilbert’s The Golden Dawn Scrapbook: The Rise and Fall of a Magical Order
None of the material was secret per se, as it has all been written about extensively before. However, it was a great pleasure to appreciate the exquisite draughtsmanship and care which the original members of the GD had taken in creating their bits and pieces.
My favourite exhibit was the complete membership roll of the Isis-Urania Temple. It literally was a gigantic (A0) roll, with the name and motto of each member who had passed through its doors, right up until the last initiate who entered in 1910 (the temple was closed two years later). It was great fun picking out the names of all the famous people of whom I had heard. I noticed that a large number of names had been struck through with a line. Some people standing nearby were wondering why those particular names were struck through so I took a closer look and realised: they were the names of all the people who had sided with Mathers at the time of the 1900 schism. Except for Aleister Crowley – whose name was crossed out three times.
“Now that’s just being petty.”
NB: All photographs (except the Crowley snap) are taken from the Library & Museum of Freemasonry’s website and are © copyright the Library & Museum of Freemasonry.
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Are psychics the new detectives? – Lifestyle – DNA
Are psychics the new detectives? – Lifestyle – DNA.
Apparently Tarot Readers in India are being asked to investigate whether their client’s significant other is cheating on them! Unfortunately the article is short on technical data like which spread to use, etc. Obviously they don’t want to give away their trade secrets. 
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The Matrix: an occult view
Monica Belluci in Matrix: Reloaded
News today that some scientists have theorised we may be living in The Matrix. This is based on the idea that the fact that cosmic rays always hit earth with a specific maximum energy of 1020 electron-volts, this somehow implies that this limit is controlled from outside by mysterious beings who are running this Universe as a simulation.
However: just as Neo and his friends had the Agents called Smith, Jones and Brown to spoil their fun, so we have Agents of our own called Thomas Bayes and Pierre Laplace! I.e. in all their theorising, the scientists have not once accounted for how probable it is that these results can also be explained by the Universe not being a simulation.
Nevertheless, this has prompted me to write an occultist’s explanation of the whole deal. The Matrix has been described as a parable of Gnosticism in the past: however, this is a rather superficial analysis. In actual fact, the viewpoint of the fictional millieu evolves from a Gnostic to a Neo-Platonic setting as the Trilogy progresses – as I shall explain below.
Gnostic Symbolism
The basic premise of Gnosticism is that humans are enslaved within the material universe, which is a prison. The ultimate aim of existence is therefore to defeat the spiritual forces which are enslaving us, escape from the material universe, and re-take our place in the “real” or Spiritual Universe.
At once there are some immediate parallels with The Matrix, to wit:
| The Architect is the Demiurge, the creator of the material universe, and hence ultimately responsible for enslaving humankind. |
 The Demiurge |
| The Agents are the Archons, who actively work to prevent us breaking out of the material universe. |
 The Archons |
| The Oracle is Sophia. |
 Sophia |
| Neo is the Logos, who helps us poor souls break out. |
 The Logos |
| The Red Pill is Gnosis, the key whereby to achieve spiritual freedom. |
 Gnosis |
| Zion is the Pleroma, the real Universe where everybody is free. |
 The Pleroma |
Neo-Platonic Symbolism
However, this straightforward correlation to Gnosticism was complicated – along with most other things in the Trilogy – by Matrix:Re-Loaded and Matrix:Revolutions. The main problem is the concept of the existence of rogue sentient programs such as The Merovingian and his chums, the Key-Maker, Seraph etc – and ultimately Agent Smith himself. These characters – who exist within the Matrix, but are independent of the forces controlling it and thus follow their own agendas – don’t really have parallels in Gnosticism – but they do in certain Neo-Platonic frameworks.
The Oracle remarks in the second film that these entities are in fact left-overs from previous versions of the Matrix. This basically mirrors the cosmological view espoused by Martinez De Pasqually – the founder of the Elu Cohens and by extension an inspiration behind Martinism – in his Treatise on the Reintegration of Beings. To wit: the so-called Demons of the material universe are in fact spiritual beings that did not fit in nicely in with previous emanations of the spiritual universe. Thus they were consigned to this universe as a sort of prison.
In the third film, this parallel is taken to its logical conclusion when at the climax, the forces of the Matrix, instead of fighting against Neo and friends, ask Neo to defeat Agent Smith, the quintessential rogue sentient program for them. Neo’s prize for doing so is that the war is ended, those that want to be released from the Matrix are freed, and everyone can now play nicely with each other. This is the scenario envisaged by De Pasqually i.e.
| Neo becomes “Yeheshuah,” the mystical Jesus, sent to save the material universe. |
Yeheshuah, the Repairer |
| The Architect is still a demiurge-type figure – the “Supreme Architect of the Universe” as De Pasqually has it – but now he has become a Neo-platonic demiurge – i.e. one that is willing to be merciful to the souls of the virtuous who are trapped within the material universe. |
SAOTU |
| Agent Smith – collectively – represents the various Demons, whom “Yeheshuah” (Neo) has to defeat and drive back to ensure that the inhabitants of the material universe (the Matrix) have the chance to achieve their spiritual potential. |
 Demons |
Thus, the Matrix Trilogy collectively represents a development from Gnosticism in the first film, to Martinez De Pasqually style Neo Platonism in the third film – with the second film being a transitional mish-mash between the two.
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Sol Ascendans - The Website of Alex Sumner 
Foretelling the Future – How Not To Do It
“Help! I’m stuck!” 😉
In an article in the forthcoming Journal of Consumer Research, researchers report that the way people react to a prediction of the future (e.g. an astrological forecast), depends to a large extent on the extent to which they believe in fate. In some circumstances this may lead to seemingly counter-intuitive behaviour. (NB: this story was misreported in the Daily Telegraph today under a headline luridly suggesting horoscopes may be bad for you, despite the fact that technically speaking, no actual astrology took place during the study concerned.)
The gist of their findings is this: if you give a prediction of ill-omen to someone who believes fate is malleable, that person is likely to choose a “virtuous” course of action (i.e. in an attempt to avert the omen). However, if you give the same prediction to someone who believes fate is fixed, they are likely to just thing “F— it,” and just go do something self-indulgent. In such a situation, trying to use the prediction as a warning to them to mend their ways will end up having the opposite effect that which is intended.
This has potentially important implications for those of us who practice divination, either in the form of Astrology, Tarot, or some other method.
In order to make use of divination as an effective tool to help someone, it is necessary first to make them understand that their Fate is not fixed, that they still have free will and therefore the choice to either avoid or accept the message being given to them. There is an old saying: the stars impel, they do not compel. This rather goes back to the ancient Hermetic view of the universe, which was that it was possible to rise above the influence of the stars and the planets if one were to ascend in consciousness – to “free one’s mind,” in other words. Divination – typically in the form of astrology – was thus the key to achieving this freedom, as it enabled the individual to be fully informed of the route he or she needed to take in life – rather than be imprisoned in a deterministic, mechanistic universe.
This approach can be applied by analogy to other forms of Divination, e.g. the Tarot, which releases intuitive insights from the consciousness of the reader. Instead of predicting the future, per se, the divination is in fact pointing out present causes: and, indeed, present opportunities. These only create a “fate” where the querent is unwilling to take responsibility for his or her own actions.
My tarot themed novel, Taromancer
, is free until December 11th 2013. Hurry to download a copy now!
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Tagged as astrology, daily telegraph, Hermeticism, Journal of Consumer Research