Unwelcome professions

One of the things that surprises me is that none of the modern Golden Dawn Orders have openly banned writers and historians from joining. Their very training and professions make them more liable than most applicants to be risks to absolute secrecy. It would make sense on a paranoid level, and given the weight the esoteric Orders place on secrecy and the mythical history, it just amazes me that any Order would allow writers and historians to join their ranks.

I think about this a lot. After all, I am a freelance writer (this last semester I wrote an astrology column for one of the local college newspapers) and besides being a literature major, I am also a history minor. I have always been a writer; I started writing in high school.

In my case, my best success as a writer has been writing about paganism, magic, and the occult. Those subjects are part of my pot boilers. And if you believe in absolute secrecy, where even the very substance of the rituals and lessons of an Order, the subject matter itself, falls under the secrecy oath, then I am walking, talking, writing secrecy leak.

And my training that I am undergoing as a student of history, let's just say it is not helping if you are concerned with people who might be attempted to publish stuff.

I know why I am thinking about this so much today. Late last night, I read a response to Nick Farrell publishing a document from the Alpha and Omega: The Book of the Tomb. And given my response to how it was being used as evidence in a discussion, I had the urge to release the pdf copy that was in my possession.

Plus my life is complicated by the little oath that I was put under by Hathoor Temple: the one that says that I will do everything in my power to preserve the lore of the tradition, and if necessary I would publish stuff. This oath was to protect the lore of Hathoor Temple, but it applies to all past Orders that I belonged to and all future Orders. It is why Archive Officers are viewed as accidents waiting to happen by the Big Name Orders: if the only way left to preserve the lore of the tradition is to publish, then Archive Officers are required to do so.

And the oath of an Archive Officer can not be rescinded; it is something that one bears for the rest of one's life.

In this case, given the fact that the same pdf was given to me by more than one source, I decided that it was already being circulated enourgh without me having to worry about it disappearing. At least, in the current time period...of course, now thanks to Nick, I do not have to concern myself about the future fate of that document.

Of course, as an Archive Officer, I look upon Crowley, Regardie, Zalewski, and Farrell in a completely different light. They are people who made decisions like the ones that I had to ponder; they have done things I hope that I never have to do.

Given the present circumstances, I know that I could have been the one to step into the doghouse. And it is just a reminder that a person like myself is not welcome in many circles, especially the Big Name Orders.