Warning: This is one of those posts where if you know that I have a tendency to make you upset, then you are better off reading something else. Especially if my nasty habit of looking at Golden Dawn as a marketplace annoys the bejeezus out of you. I suggest you go read Harry Potter or the True Blood series---after all, I don't want anyone to die of a seizure just because I am a happy little cynic and they don't understand my sense of humor.
Today, during a moment of boredom, I was cruising around the interent looking at book reviews of occult books. It is something writers do---we go looking for the most bizzarre criticisms and book reviews that we can find.
This pasttime got me to thinking about certain aspects of the Golden Dawn book market. Basically, the fact that it is the most schizoid book market that I know of.
On one hand, the reader wants new material. But...and it is a big but...it has to be OLD material.
A few years ago, a publisher saw a snippet of some material that I was kicking around writing. They were interested in seeing the completed project...clear up to the point that they learned that the material was developed within living memory.
Then they were no longer interested.
One of the sad truths about the Golden Dawn book market is that only material by dead, famous Adepts sells. And given how small the market is, that is really sad.
(Before anyone attempts to tell me that occult writers are making big bucks---remember I am in the business, I seen actual figures of copies sold and how little royalty was paid out. No occult writer, especially a Golden Dawn writer, is making real money writing about the occult. Maybe the New Age writers are, but not Golden Dawn writers. And don't use Donald Michael Kraig as part of your argument, he is not actually a Golden Dawn writer.)
But the Golden Dawn market is schizoid. If you do somehow get your hands on something old, you are yelled at for breaking oaths of secrecy.
So on one hand, anything that you came up with on your own is viewed as worthless. In fact, if you do come up with something on your own, hordes of people will come out of the woodwork to proclaim that it is not really Golden Dawn material, and furthermore that you are not a real initiate of the Golden Dawn to begin with.
And on the other hand, if you publish something old, you are lynched for breaking secrecy.
Given the schizoid nature of the book market, it is amazing that any new Golden Dawn books ever come out.
And yes, I believe that this is a problem. Not only does it ensure that almost all Golden Dawn books are rehashes of previously published material, it ensures that all Golden Dawn writers are hated, and that people don't know enourgh to avoid some of the most un-Golden Dawn-like Orders. It is like a bad hostage situation.
And this hostage situation is enforced, nay encouraged, by some Golden Dawn leaders. And sock puppets. And generally nasty human beings. And all of them have an ax to grind and someone's back to stick it into.
The saddest part is that I know that a horde of angry readers is coming for me. And before you ask: No, I am not going to publish any secret documents. I am the type of writer who gets bad-mouthed for developing opinions of his own.
Quite honestly, someone should go to Third Order and get them to make an official rule banning all writers from the system from this point on. That way, no writer would ever think about becoming interested in writing about Golden Dawn---it would save some poor writers some time and energy. And it would allow the various groups to go back to being the pure monopolies of esoteric wisdom that they want to be. Sounds like a win-win for everyone, doesn't it?
(That last comment is not necessarily directed at who you think it is directed to. I have met a dozen leaders over the years who claimed Third Order contact---which is one of the reasons that I am skeptical of all Third Order claims. I have yet to see any such claim not prove to be false and a merely ploy by a bad leader to lift people's wallets and control their minds. But one can hope that the next claim is different, right? Someone please prove this happy little cynic wrong.)
And if you did not see the humor in this post, it is your fault for not listening to my warning in the first place---I told you to go read something else.
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4 comments:
Why do golden dawn bloggers use colored fonts so much?
Hehe, that question fits into a future post I was thinking of writing talking about the white lettering on black background fetish that Golden Dawn bloggers seem to have.
I figured it was because you were doing queen scale magic.
I went to black on white after I saw how cool it looked on gordon's and jasons blogs. Just sport of clicked.
This is a good point. I was just discussing Regardie with a friend and it came up about how the Ciceros have at least twice edited/annotated a Regardie text and then included almost the same amount of their own material at the end. We came up with the cynical conclusion that they were just riding his coat tails, but framing it in the sense of what you said about only liking the old dead authors it's probably one of the best and easiest way to get new material out there.
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