Tag Archives: Golden Dawn

June 12, 2011 · 1:23 pm

The Divine Current: It works!!!

Constance: The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs Oscar Wilde

When a candidate to the Golden Dawn is obligated, he or she has to swear a terrible oath, the breaking of which entails sinister occult penalties for those who are foresworn. In the Cipher Manuscript the penalties were described simply as:

Death or Palsy

In the original Golden Dawn, this was described more colourfully as:

…the awful penalty of voluntarily submitting myself to a deadly and hostile current of will set in motion by the chiefs of the Order, by which I should fall slain and paralyzed without visible weapon as if slain by the lightning flash.

At Whare Ra this was rendered:

…a deadly Stream of Power, set in action by the Divine Guardians of this Order, Who, Living the light of their Perfect Justice, can, as tradition and experience affirm, strike the breaker of this magical obligation with death or palsy, or overwhelm him with misfortune.

In the Bristol Temple of the Stella Matutina, whence Regardie half-inched the rituals that he published in The Golden Dawn, the corresponding passage is rendered:

…a Stream of Power, set in motion by the Divine Guardians of this Order, Who live in the light of their Perfect Justice, and before Whom my Soul now stands.

So basically we can infer that the penalty was meant to be some pretty heavy-duty magic, like being struck down by a lightning bolt – only the Bristol temple decided to water it down and make it sound like some kind of fluffy-bunny politically correct version.

Now some people with an interest in esoteric Freemasonry – or at least, those people who remain in Freemasonry longer than two minutes so they can appreciate how esoteric it can be – will be aware of the Symbolic Penalties. Furthermore, they may be interested to know if they are not already aware that after you see through all the blood and gore, each Symbolic Penalty relates to a chakra: the first to the Throat; the second to the Heart; the third to the Solar-Plexus. This has further led people like Sebottendorf to speculate that the S…s – which relate to the Symbolic Penalties – indicate the way energy flows in a particular degree.

Now let’s look again at the original Golden Dawn obligation. Whilst the Cipher Manuscript merely talks about death or palsy, the version created by Mathers says: “as if slain by the Lightning Flash.” Oh-ho! The Lightning Flash is also the symbolic arrangement of the Sephiroth on the Tree of Life! So perhaps Mathers too had this instinctive grasp of the relation between the Symbolic Penalty and the Energy Flow. Perhaps the real meaning – i.e. the real nuance that Mathers was trying to convey – was that if a Neophyte did not integrate the lightning flash (i.e. the Tree of Life) in his or her soul, then they would end up being destroyed by it instead. If this be true, and it appears quite reasonable, then we have to thank Mathers and his knowledge of the true value of Freemasonry for getting this point across.

There is however one problem with this whole business of being slain by the Lightning Flash, and that for all the oath-breakers in the original Golden Dawn there is no evidence that any of them ever suffered it. Until now. Some enterprising historian has actually discovered that at least one member of the Golden Dawn was actually struck down from creeping paralysis and was overwhelmed with misfortune after she left the order: Constance Wilde, wife of the famous playwrite. In a story published in the Sunday Express today, it is alleged that Constance Wilde left the order after only a year as a member and revealed such as she had learned to her husband. Everyone is familiar with the calamities that befell Oscar thereafter, but apparently she herself died aged 40, after having suffered from paralysis in her arms and legs.

Crikey! So the deadly stream of power does work after all! Ironic, then, that with all the people who did break their oaths and damaged the order, she was the only to succumb. Even more ironic is the fact that if you read Wilde’s output there is no evidence that he made use of any of Constance’s secrets. Want more irony? The first London production of Salome was put on in 1905 … directed by Florence Farr. 😉

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June 6, 2011 · 1:04 pm

Happy Beast Day!

It’s that time of year again when Black Metal bands think its really kewl to release new albums – yes it is 6/6 day, or Great Beast Day as I have “antichristened” it. No doubt at around 6pm local time wherever you are, expect to see a lot of tweets on Twitter about Satan and what not.

666 is of course most famous from Revelation 13:18, whence comes its popularity in modern culture, from eschatology to horror novels & films (e.g. The Omen), rock music, etc. Aleister Crowley famously dubbed himself “The Great Beast 666” – partly out of re-action against his religious upbringing, but also to assert the Humanistic nature of Thelemic spirituality, i.e. as far as Crowley was concerned, the number of the Beast was not just the number of a particular man, but of Man generally.

Other writers (e.g. Rudolf Steiner) have identified the Great Beast as a being called “Sorath” – whose name in Hebrew Gematria (Samekh + Vau + Resh + Tau) enumerates to 666. This presents a tiny problem for ceremonial magicians (or at least the ones who claim not to be Satanists). According to Henry Cornelius Agrippa, the Intelligences and Spirits of the various Planets all have names whose gematria is associated with the Magic Square of the planet. The magic square of the Sun is a 6*6 grid containing the numbers 1 to 36. Each row adds up to 111, whilst the total for the whole grid – the 36th triangle number in other words – is 666. The Intelligence of the Sun is “Nakhiel,” the gematria of which is 111, whilst the Spirit is (you’ve guessed it) Sorath – for the gematric reasons stated previously. Hence when magicians perform a Qabalistic ceremony to invoke the forces of the Sun, e.g. to perform an evocation or consecrate a talisman, etc, they will wind up calling on Sorath. Magicians who purport to be of the right-hand path justify this by saying the only do so after first invoking all the divine and angelic Solar beings first, so that nasty old Sorath is not running wild, but is safely under control of the forces of light.

I am not alleging hypocrisy of any kind … too much … but this rationalisation starts to break down when it comes to practising the art of Geomancy. As far as the Golden Dawn is concerned, geomancers are encouraged to invoke a “Geomantic spirit” of the planet which most pertains to the question which they are attempting to answer. These Geomantic spirits are the same as the planetary spirits listed by Agrippa – so when a Geomancer attempts a Solar question, they will again find themselves calling upon Sorath – only this time they are not told to invoke the superior divine and angelic names first.

There are three possible conclusions to be drawn – magicians of the Golden Dawn are really closet devil-worshippers; writers like Rudolf Steiner did not know what they were talking about; or that St John the Divine was a git for mucking up an otherwise nice safe magical system. 😉

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April 24, 2011 · 9:50 am

Protected: On the Resurrection Body

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April 14, 2011 · 11:18 am

Fiction Is Stranger Than Truth

Working on a new book recently – i.e. the one I intend for publication after “Licence To Depart” comes out on May 11th – I wanted to create a story that combined elements of science fiction and fantasy with the occult. More specifically, I wanted to create a plot-device which would enable one character to teleport from one place to another. The actual method of teleportation was essentially a MacGuffin to introduce the main action of the plot, i.e. the various adventures that occurred at the destination points, and the implications in terms of character development arising therefrom. I therefore threw together something off the top of my head, which as far as I was concerned was unrelated to anything of which I had previously conceived in my study of the occult, but was instead pure fiction.

Then, that night I had a lucid dream about my fictional plot-device – and it worked.

I hasten to add that of course I did not physically teleport from one place to another, it was all action taking place within my lucid dream. Nevertheless using this fictional plot-method in my own lucid dream I realised I had invented a new method of Clairvoyance.

Vayu (Air)

Vayu - the Tattva of Air

At this point I shall just digress on the nature of Clairvoyance. In the Golden Dawn Clairvoyance is not the same thing as “Remote Viewing” or “Auric Vision.” It is not so much about seeing things which are occurring on the physical plane as it is about discerning the contents of the Astral plane. This is why I have to chuckle when I hear about doctors in hospitals putting things on shelves too near the ceiling, so that only disembodied spirits would supposedly be able to see them. When people who have an NDE inaccurately report what is on those shelves, these doctors claim that clairvoyance must be a hoax. To which I have to say, “No: your own definition which you have made up of Clairvoyance is a hoax. I could have told you before your experiment started that it would not provide valid evidence of real Clairvoyance.”

The classic method of achieving Clairvoyance in magic is to astrally project through a “magic door” which consists of a symbol of a magical force – e.g. a Tattva. What one sees beyond that door will be an astral representation of the qualities which that symbol represents. Ultimately, by undertaking this astral journey, one may come to learn how to manifest that magical force in physical life.

The Tattva-method of Clairvoyance is a well known practice in western occultism, but it has a potential draw-back, in that all the phenomena encountered will ultimately remain within the paradigm established by the Tattva symbols. What if, for example, one wanted to explore a magical force which was unrelated to the Tattvas – which was outside the paradigm? I keep talking about “Tattvas” but of course they are only one set of symbols in use in occultism. It is entirely possible that instead of a Tattva one could substitute something else which is more appropriate to the magical force which one wants to explore – and then use the astral projection method on that instead.

However, what if one had exhausted all the known sets of symbols in all forms of occultism … and one still wanted to explore something that was outside the paradigm-limits of all of them – what then? What if, indeed, one wanted to explore the outer limits of what is possible and impossible? It is here that the creative use of Fiction as a Magical Tool comes in useful – as I believe I had inadvertently discovered with my experiences with my plot-device.

Philosophically this is somewhat difficult to describe fully, as ultimately the only way to satisfactorily describe something which is capable of transcending all paradigms of thought is to stand outside all paradigms. But if I do that, am I not then speaking from another paradigm, albeit a new one? Whatever – I shall describe it in terms of the astral plane, as that is what I am comfortable with. What is fundamental to realise is that the so-called astral plane is not tied to any particular belief system, but applies to the entire Universe – the Known, the Unknown, Past, Present, Future, Alternate, Potential, Speculative, Fact and Fiction. From Earth to the far reaches of the Cosmos and all points in between. On the Astral Plane, it does not matter whether something is true or false in Physical Plane terms, but whether it is a Real Astral Phenomenon or not. Moreover, its reality as an Astral Phenomenon again does not depend on truth or falsehood – because if it is perceived it must exist in some sense or other – but on how important or significant it is – which is a subjective value judgement.

To illustrate my point: take for example the Archangel Michael. Is he true or false? Fact or fiction? He is undoubtedly a Real Astral Phenomenon. I imagine that fundamentalist Christian might go further and claim that he is actually true – because the Bible says so, and the Bible as we all know is not fiction. 😉

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

What however about Cthulhu – an entity created by the author HP Lovecraft, who is on record as stating that he himself knew that this Great Old One and the rest of the Mythos were fictional? Is it then valid for people like Kenneth Grant or Phil Hine to go and perform magic rituals based on the assumption that Cthulhu is in fact real? In a certain way – yes it is, because it is no more outrageous than claiming it is possible to create an Artificial Elemental, which has been an established magical practice for more than a hundred years. If we assume that creating Artifical Elementals are possible, then it should certainly be possible to create Artificial Elementals out of characters who are fictional creations, whether they be Cthulhu, Gandalf, or whoever. In fact, it should be easier to create an Artificial Elemental based on a fictional creation – as opposed to say one who has been invented de novo – because the former will have a back-story already written which helps the magician to fully realise them.

The only qualification I would have to make is that whilst such a Fictional Magical being or indeed thing may produce effects on the physical plane – as indeed we must hold out the possibility of it being able to if we subscribe to the validity of Artificial Elementals working at all – the Fictional creation remains on the astral plane. It is not a paradox between truth and falsehood, it is just that truth/falsity only applies to the physical plane, whilst different rules applies to the Astral. So whilst I might be impressed by someone who was able to take a piece of Fiction and make a successful magical operation out of it, I am less than keen on people rabbiting on and on about their astral experiences as if they were “true” in the physical-plane sense of the word.

So the moral of this blog-post is: if you want to achieve anything in magic, do not get hung up on whether it fits in with any particular milieu – or whether you are comfortable working with that milieu at all. The creative magician can always find a solution, because in a very literal sense, you are only limited by your imagination.

Hang on! If artificial elementals are real, perhaps that means the Archangel Michael is an artificial elemental? Perhaps that means that … whisper it… God is both Fictional and Real! If this statement does not get me lynched by both Christians and Atheists then nothing will! 😉

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February 15, 2011 · 1:35 pm

Celebrities Discover Thelema Without Realising It

Lady Gaga, Christina Aguilera, Eminem, P Diddy, and Snoop Dogg have managed to discover “Thelema” quite inadvertantly. It is almost as if Aleister Crowley has come up behind them and shouted “Surprise!” Not that they are practising occultists (with the possible exception of Gaga) – they have stumbled across the principles without realising.

I should hasten to add that by “Thelema” I do not mean “Crowleyanity” – I doubt any of the above subscribe to Crowley’s dogma in the literal sense, even if they have read any of the Great Beast’s books. They perhaps do not even know that it is “Thelema” they are practising. What appears to be the situation is this: each one has found his or her “True Will” and is Doing it, and achieving great success thereby. However, the irony is that what is actually their True Will they have identified with “God,” perhaps out of ignorance. Hence they profess belief in God which seems to explain their success, but it does not follow any conventional theology.

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal by Neil Strauss,

Before they were famous, many of the biggest pop stars in the world believed that God wanted them to be famous, that this was his plan for them, just as it was his plan for the rest of us not to be famous. Conversely, many equally talented but slightly less famous musicians I’ve interviewed felt their success was accidental or undeserved—and soon after fell out of the limelight.

In a separate piece Strauss mentioned research that belief in God helped liver transplant patients’ chances of survival, and other scientific studies on the power of belief. The fact that people without conventional religion can yet be saved by the power of their beliefs suggest that none of these are actual pieces of evidence for the existence of God but, like Pascal’s Wager, are arguments in favour of the desirability of believing in God.

What therefore is happening? If Belief by itself is powerful, that would tend to suggest that it is actually these people’s own Will which is looking out for them. Identifying the Will with God may not be an insincere move on their part – besides it probably serves to make it a powerful experience for them.

Incidentally: it is a little appreciated fact that the concept of “True Will” is yet another thing which Aleister Crowley “borrowed” from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. In “GD” terms “True Will” is what happens when the Lower Will (represented by Tiphereth) is successfully integrated with the Higher Will (represented by Daath). The former is the everyday Will, the latter is that which aspires to the very highest – hence True Will is when one is able to integrate this aspiration into one’s mundane consciousness. Finding one’s True Will is the natural task of every Adept.

I therefore suggest that if one aspires to the kind of success that these people have, it may be wise to adopt the kind of religious self-belief that these various people adopt – not in a cynical fashion, but in an attempt to discover in truth ones part in the Divine Plan. Who knows? Perhaps one of these celebrities might one day acknowledge their debt to the occult? 😉

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January 19, 2011 · 12:55 pm

Re: Charging for a Correspondence Course

Getting into an argument on some Yahoo group about charging money for spirituality. I got so into it that I realised it would make a blog-post in its own right! So here is a rejoinder I was planning to write, from which I have trimmed the intemperate bits (i.e. the more intemperate bits).

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Now let me present a completely different argument about why it is wrong to charge people money for spirituality. It has nothing to do any superstitious notion about money being tainted, and everything to do with Economics. It is this:

If Spiritual Teachers are seen to be getting away with charging money for their services, it will only encourage Spiritual-Teachers-Who-Aren’t-All-That-Good to charge money for their services.

Now I may be treading on sensitive ground here, but without naming any names I’m sure we can all think of a few organisations, maybe but not necessarily connected with some incarnation of the Golden Dawn, whom we all know are basically a bunch of crooks who are only in it for the money. Why are they doing it? Because they think they can! They have seen genuine teachers charge money, and they think “we can make an argument for saying we’re genuine – now let’s see those dollar bills!”

Hence, based on Economics, the way to get rid of the shysters is not to charge more money than them, but to undercut them.

Moreover, I can think of two ways to make sure that only high-quality candidates take a correspondence course on offer. The first is to set them at fairly difficult entrance exam right at the out-set.

The second is to cease advertising it. This only looks counter-intuitive to those who have an obsession with publicity, or with empire-building, but the fact is that there are a great number of organisations that thrive perfectly well with doing no publicity whatsoever. People who are genuinely interested in their work seek them out, of their own volition.

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January 7, 2011 · 2:49 pm

Enochian Magic in Tamworth

An open letter to the Enochian Magician who has been unwittingly discovered in Tamworth, West Midlands, England.

Dude! You may or may not have been reading the local papers recently but the brass plate which you buried in those woods has been discovered, and is in the possession of the West Midlands Ghost Club, who tried appealing for help in deciphering its contents. They would probably have got help a lot sooner if the paper had published a photo of the plate, but hey! This little detail seems to have been overlooked by the editorial staff.

I presume you meant the brass plate to be a talisman of some description. Whilst I admire your adventurous spirit, I cannot help but think you were over-egging the pudding by inscribing the words of the seventh Enochian key onto a brass disc and then burying it in the middle of the woods. The thing about Enochian magic is that you do not need to go to quite that much effort. Through my own magical work, I have found that there are only three things you need to do in order to get an Enochian Call to work:

  1. Beforehand – you need to have memorised what the English translation is meant to be;
  2. You need to keep in mind what the supposed effect of the Enochian call – i.e. what particular energies it is meant to be invoking; and
  3. You need to say (nb: not “vibrate”) the call in the original Enochian.

I personally find it best to memorise the actual Enochian itself. In addition to any magical virtue this might have, I feel it inconvenient to work from a script, so I reduce my reliance on one as much as possible. Generally this means it takes me at least a couple of days to prepare for each ritual, as I do not profess to have memorised all 19 keys by heart.

Once the hurdle of preparation is overcome, though, what is most noticeable is that an amazing feeling of power can be sensed almost immediately as the Enochian key is pronounced. So long as one has mastered the above three steps, one does not even have to be a particularly experienced magician. These are not just my own findings – other Enochian practitioners to whom I have spoken confirm its power as well.

Regarding pronunciation: I used to use the GD style, but I developed the conviction that the only real reason that the Golden Dawn developed this method was because they only had access to a limited number of Enochian texts, e.g. they worked from Sloane 307, which is not an original Dee text! Meric Causaubon’s A True and Faithful Relation, flawed though it may be, at least points out that Dee made marginal notes as he received the calls as to how each odd collection of consonants should be pronounced. What is immediately obvious is that the overall scheme is quite simply that each word is pronounced as it would have been in Elizabethan English, with odd consonants being pronounced separately. Moreover, Z is not pronounced Zode every time, but only when either smooth pronunciation demands it, or to add the connotation of “of God” to a word. The idea of interpolating vowels from equivalent Hebrew letters is entirely absent in Dee’s work.

I have much sympathy, though, with Geoffrey James‘ remark that Angels do not have vocal cords. Hence the manner of pronouncing a given Enochian key is rather academic at best. Hence knowing what the Enochian call is, and what it is meant to do, is possibly more important than how to pronounce it using the vocal cords of an “alien being” – i.e. a human.

The seventh Enochian key, which you used, in the Golden Dawn system invokes the Air Lesser Angle of the Water Tablet. From recollection, in the GD system again Air of Water refers to Pisces and the letter Qoph – which is magically associated with creating glamours, bewitchments and enchantments. Not sure that is what you intended but there you go. It is debatable whether this is what Dee intended for, having looked carefully at A True and Faithful Relation the only indication as to what the Enochian keys were to be used for was a single one-off magical working – and then never to be used again! Of course, there will be many Enochian magicians (including, it has to be said, me) who will counter that A True and Faithful Relation is not the be-all and end-all, as it would spoil a lot of people’s fun if it turned out that everyone had been doing it wrong for the past five hundred years or so.

As to why the Enochian language is so magical at all, the tradition supposes that it is the “Adamitic language” which was “spoken” in the Garden of Eden. But how can that be possible, especially if we follow James’ theory? One intriguing suggestion was put forward by the author Charles Williams. Whilst not referring to Enochian language per se, he posited the idea (in his book, The Place of the Lion) that the “Garden of Eden” is actually the Platonic World of Forms – and that the Adamitic language speaks directly to this World, thus invoking archetypal energies. Whether or not this is the case, the fact remains that Enochian is the closest thing we have to objective proof that magic actually works.

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December 23, 2010 · 2:50 pm

Holy Guardian Angel

News today that over a third of Britons apparently believe they have a Guardian Angel, with “17% unsure.” This plus recent discussions I have been having over the interwebby-type thing have got me thinking about the subject. The “Holy Guardian Angel” is a term that crops up a lot in the occult, mainly thanks to a certain Mr A Crowley. I wrote an article about this a little while ago, but I thought I would expand upon the subject with an attempt to debunk some myths which crop up about it.

Fiction: Attaining Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel is the be-all and end-all of Magick

Fact

If one reads the Book of the Sacred Magick of Abramelin the Mage, one finds that the “Abramelin Operation” is a preparatory step before embarking on a career as a ceremonial magician which will involve evoking all the demons of hell, charging magic squares, etc.  Moreover, if one consults other grimoires such as the Pauline Art, Trithemius’ Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals, etc, one finds that the invocation of a Guardian Angel is an important first step before communicating with other intelligences. Finally, one should note that according to “777” the so-called “Vision of the Holy Guardian Angel” is the spiritual experience not of Kether, nor even of Tiphereth, but of Malkuth.

The reality of the situation is that from being the ultimate end, KCHGA is the exact opposite – it is only the beginning of the path. The end is “Divine Union.” KCHGA on the other hand should be seen as the simple basic qualification that one is now an actual magician, as opposed to a mere theorist.

Related to this realisation that KCHGA is the beginning, not the end, is the unfortunate phenomenon one sees of people who let their egos inflate egregiously when they say they have achieved KCHGA, as if this is supposed to mean something. The true experience of KCHGA is not exalting, it is humbling – rather like one feels humbled when coming into the presence of something of great beauty like a great work of art.

The only gratifying thing that can truly be said about KCHGA is that it may be the bottom rung of the ladder, but at least it is the right ladder.

Fiction: The Holy Guardian Angel is identical to the Higher Self.

Fact:

I have dealt with this in a previous blog post. This is an assertion put about by Crowley, but the evidence breaks down when one starts to examine and compare the grimoires from the past which actually mention Holy Guardian Angels. The HGA is the Guardian Angel of the Clairvoyant process – be that a crystal ball, magic mirror, or one’s own ability to skry generally. The HGA ensures that only the spirit with which you desire to communicate speaks to you, and that it speaks the truth when it does so. In mediumistic terms the HGA is a “Spirit Guide.” Franz Bardon in his book “Initiation into Hermetics,”
and in the present day the Kabbalist Z’ev Ben Shimon Havlevi, state that the souls of departed human beings can fill this role as well.

The Higher Self is better thought of as the Yechidah, the Divine Spark within one’s own soul, which corresponds to Kether. The point being that whilst Knowledge of the Higher Self is a valid aim of magick, it is theoretically possible to achieve this without having anything resembling conversation with anything resembling an angelic being.

Fiction: The “Holy Guardian Angel” is a term used by Crowley which was not part of the GD teachings.

Fact:

This is something I have seen crop up from time to time. Yes it is true that Crowley used “KCHGA” to describe the work of the 5=6 of the A.’.A.’. . Yes it is also true that this term is not used in the 5=6 teachings of the Golden Dawn – phrases like “higher self” being used instead. On this basis I have heard it confidently asserted that the term “Holy Guardian Angel” belongs to Crowley only and does not form any part of the GD’s teachings.

WRONG. In the Stella Matutina the Holy Guardian Angel crops up in the 6=5 Adeptus Major ceremony. In a paper in W B Yeats’ collection – which is published in George Mills Harper’s Yeats’ Golden Dawn – whilst the aspirant gazes into a bowl of water during the passage of the path of Mem, his “Holy Guardian Angel” wraps him with its wings, whilst he gazes upon the image of his “resurrection body.” This is all part of the astral working that formed the structure upon which the Stella Matutina Adeptus Major ritual was based.

Hence we have primary evidence (or at least – the National Library of Ireland does) – that at least one faction of the GD incorporated the concept of “Holy Guardian Angel” at least in some respect into its Higher Grade teachings.

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December 13, 2010 · 12:42 pm

The Controversy of Astral Initiations

Burn Da Herb, Not Da Quran

Scanning the news today I note that Pastor Terry Jones, the man behind the infamous abortive Quran-burning stunt back in September, is allegedly threatening to grace the United Kingdom with his presence. He is supposedly going to be addressing a meeting of a far-right organisation in Luton – a town in Bedfordshire which so happens to have a large Muslim community.

Let us not forget that due to the successful efforts of mainly yours truly, and to a lesser extent several world-leaders and all right thinking people generally, this guy backed down from his antics last time. It may therefore be just another publicity stunt … However: just in case it isn’t, there is now a mass debate in Britain at the moment, as to whether he should be banned from entering the country or not. On the one hand, there are a load of bleeding hearts saying “freedom of speech!” etc. On the other, there are a load of law-abiding citizens in Luton who don’t want to get caught up in a riot or violent demonstration. IMHO, the way to appease both sides of the argument is so simple it is a no-brainer – SKYPE. He can address all his racist friends from Florida, without having to come anywhere near dear old Blighty. Result: riot-averted, freedom of speech preserved.

But I digress.

This has got me thinking about the wider use of modern technology generally, whilst more specifically in the context of magic. For example: could not Skype be used to link together distant magicians so they can perform a ritual? If your Golden Dawn temple does not have five adepts to sit on the Dais, you could instead set up a data-projector and a screen in the East of the room!!! Let’s face it, some Golden Dawn orders purport to conduct “astral initiations” at the moment, so it should not be too much of a stretch to conduct an initiation by Skype. If anything it would be more authentic, because you would actually see the officers conducting your astral initiation, and thus be reassured that they are not just sitting around eating pizza instead. Needless to say though that if it were a Golden Dawn Neophyte ceremony, in order to replicate the effect of a hood-wink, you would be staring at a blank screen for most of the ceremony.

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November 26, 2010 · 6:54 pm

A Method of Vibrating Adonai Ha-Aretz To Unite Yourself with your Personal Kether

This is a follow up to my previous blog post, Golden Dawn Manuscripts and Where To Find Them. Your Humble Blogmaster, and basset-hound of all things GD, has found yet another cache of original Golden Dawn manuscripts, i.e. in addition to the one which I said its owner did not want publicised. This new cache, however, is reasonably accessible to the public – it is also at a venue that I happened to mention in passing the last time – the Library and Museum of Freemasonry at Freemasons’ Hall in London.

It hasn’t been hidden away at Great Queen Street all this time, it was actually purchased by them in 2008 (I would not be surprised one bit if it is Bob Gilbert’s old hoard). It has only just been catalogued in the past few weeks – i.e. since I first wrote my original blog post. Most of the papers, from my initial perusal, appear to be from the collection of the Reverend Ayton, who was amongst the very first members of Isis Urania temple. Ayton, an alchemist who had briefly met Eliphas Levi many years earlier, became a 5=6 in the original order, and stayed with Isis Urania after the split, becoming a member of Waite’s Holy Order of the Golden Dawn.

As you might expect, the contents of most of the documents have found their way into the public light by other routes, although there are a few rare gems. By way of example, I present the following ritual, which to my knowledge has never before been published. There is a saying in the Golden Dawn – “Invoke the Highest, First.” In this spirit I present the following: the first goody to be revealed from the archives at Great Queen Street is an invocation of the Highest, a ritual of pure Theurgy. It is a particular method of vibrating “Adonai Ha-Aretz” which was distributed to advanced members of the 5=6 Adeptus Minor grade. NB: This is substantially different from the method mentioned in Regardie’s “The Golden Dawn” ! It is, however, similar to a document in the other archives to which I have had access.

Unfortunately I don’t have a facsimile of the ritual. When I asked about making a copy, I was informed that they don’t do photocopies – as this damages the books. They can arrange to make digital photographs of the pages, but this is charged at the rate £2.50 per image (+ £1 for burning it to CD-Rom). Hence the ritual I present below, which was two pages long, would have cost £6 (I didn’t have any change on me at the time when I had a look at it). NB the National Library of Ireland charges similar rates for making facsimiles, which is why Yeats’ papers are not more widely known.

Hence I will have to rely on my notes which I made.

Pay attention – it’s the Scholarly Bit!

The ritual is hand-written on both sides of a sheet of foolscap octavo, which on the front bears a hexagram device in the top-left corner. It is illustrated through at key points in the text with pencil line-drawings. It is bound with other papers of different handwriting in a volume called “Grade of Geburah etc,” which despite its name contains just two documents relating to the 6=5 of the Holy Order of the Golden Dawn, whilst the rest are mainly Adeptus Minor documents of the original order, along with some miscellaneous items.

The hand-writing itself is very neat. I was not able to make a comparison with any known handwriting samples to establish precisely who copied or wrote it. The only thing I can definitely say that it wasn’t Wynn Westcott! Doubtless it would be possible to work out who did it simply by spending more time studying it.

The Ritual Itself

First clear the room with the Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram.

Stand in the form of a cross. Say I N R I

YOD NUN RESH YOD*

Alex’ note: in the original this is written in Hebrew, right to left.

Virgo Isis Mighty Mother

Scorpio Apophis and Typhon Destroyer

Sol Osiris slain and risen

Isis Apophis Osiris. IAO

The Sign of Osiris Slain.

L the sign of Isis mourning.

V the sign of Apophis and Typhon.

X the sign of Osiris Risen.

Alex’ note: the above lines are each accompanied by a miniature line drawing demonstrating the signs of an Adeptus Minor. Think of a stick-figure wearing a tau-robe and you get the idea. Interestingly, the “L” is not a straight-armed “L” as given in Regardie’s books, but more of a crooked-arm swastika-like arrangement demonstrated by Crowley in the plates that accompany “Magick in Theory and Practice.” I.e. from the sign of Osiris slain, turn the right arm straight up at the elbow, and the left arm straight down from the left elbow.

L V X Lux the light of the Cross.

Trace the Rose-Cross in the four cardinal points.

Alex’ note: Here there is an illustration of the Rose-cross. Note that the ritual clearly says the “four cardinal points,” not the cross-quarters – thus differentiating it from the more well-known Rose Cross Ritual. Thence over to page 2…

Formulate whilst facing the East before you in flashing white brilliance:

Illustration from the ritual - Adonai Ha-Aretz formulated in flashing white brilliant letters. Recreated from memory. (c) Alex Sumner 2010

Alex’ note: The word Formulate conceals far more than it reveals. As a magician I would guess this means vibrate “Adonai Ha-Aretz” by the vibratory formula of the Middle Pillar 16 times – once for each letter of the cruciform version of the divine name. However – and note well – this is not indicated in the text.

Attach yourself to your Kether until you see brilliant white light.

Alex’ note: The ritual ends with a sketch of an Adept standing in the sign of Osiris slain, a globe of brilliance immediately above his head (i.e. Kether).

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