Gleamings from the Golden Dawn

Scotsman in Ancient Egypt

2012-01-22T16:40:00.000-07:00

A Scotsman in Ancient Egypt.

The other night I was watching the first Blackadder series. For those of you who have no sense of humor, Blackadder was a British comedy done back in the Dark Ages of television. In the episode, I was watching the main character, the infamous Blackadder (played by Rowan Atkinson) is busy trying to get a Scotsman killed. One of his ploys is to involve the Scotsman in a play set in Ancient Egypt.

One of the audience members watching the play turns to another and asks, "What is a Scotsman doing in Egypt?" At this point, I just lost it. You see, I have occasionally wondered this myself about someone else. Yes, I am talking about Samuel L. Mathers.

The short answer is that Mathers like many in his generation was enchanted by the lore of Ancient Egypt. Periodically, Egyptology has surges of renewed interest. The late Victorian period was one of those times. And unlike previous times, the late Victorain Age had the advantage that they could actually consult the actual words of the Ancient Egyptians.

After the closure of the last temple of Isis around 400 BCE, the ability to read the Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs was lost. The lore of Ancient Egypt was lost beyond those parts that had already made their way into the Hermetica and Greek histories. Periodically, someone would claim to have broken the code behind the ancient hieroglyphs, but today we know that they were completely wrong.

This all changed in 1799, when French soliders found the Rosetta Stone while dugging a defensive trench duing one of their many wars with the British. After the war, the British claimed the Rosetta Stone as part of their war spoils. Over the next fifty years, scholars used the Rosetta Stone to figure out how to read the Ancient Egyptian language.

One of the changes in the esoteric scene brought on by the decoding of the Ancient Egyptian language was that for the first time in two thousand years, actual Ancient Egyptian ideas could be used in the Western Mystery tradition. The Cipher Manuscript of Golden Dawn has a reference to the images from Ancient Egypt (the subject of a future blog post), and Golden Dawn would be the first esoteric Order to use actual Egyptian words in their rituals since the time of the Ancient Egyptians.

This fact attracted students who were interested in such things to the Order. One of these students was Macgregor Mathers, which passion led him and his wife, Moina, to create a set of rituals celebrating the Ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses while they were living in France.

Of course, using the first generation of translations resulted in the Golden Dawn lore being hopelessly out of date by the time you get to our day and age. This has led the Golden Dawn being looked at with contempt by the modern-day scholars...then again, the modern day scholars tend to also frown on magical experiements, so it is not like we were going to get any of them as members in the first place. But it has also led to Golden Dawn (RR et AC) Egyptian lore and techniques to function differently than those used by the Ancient Egyptians. The gods and goddesses of Ancient Egypt tend to "speak in an English accent" (not literally), or maybe it is a Scottish accent, when they are filtered through the Golden Dawn matrix. Parts of the Golden Dawn system, to use the modern insult for the method used, started out as a "recreation" of the long dead Egyptian mysteries.

So what was a Scotsman doing in Egypt? Simple, he was busy looting the tombs of the dead, just like the English and French were doing. Sad, but true.

(If you feel the punchline is wrong, you know the drill---leave your comments in the comment section. Not all comments are approved, but I do read all of them.)

Ok I have read your advertisment (blog advice)

2012-01-22T15:50:00.000-07:00

Open letter to the person who attempted to post the same comment three times on three different entries:

Dear blogger,

I am glad that you like (?) my blog. But I have a policy of not allowing comments through that are thinnly veiled advertisements---especially ones that are little more than a series of keywords that you are hoping that the search engines pick up on. Furthermore, you really need to brush up on your English, for instance "I really lie your blog" is not the same as "I really like your blog." It is nothing personal; my opinion is based purely on your comment context; it is simply that I would like you to actually comment on the context of my blog, rather than simply post an advertisement for yours. In other words, it is for business reasons, including SEO reasons, that I am not going to let your comment through.

A better way to get me to link to your blog is to write real comments that add something to the discussion. You may not realize this, but search engines are programmed to ignore, or to devalue, sites that use the advertising tactics that you are using. What you really want to do is to be a valuable member of my community, therefore making me think of you as a friend, or at least an interesting expert in your field, and getting an organic in-post link to your blog; this type of link would actually carry far more weight with the search engines than the link contained in your canned blog comment.

Yours in the Great Work,

Morgan Drake Eckstein

Working Draft or Finished Project

2012-01-20T02:16:00.000-07:00

One of the leaps of faith that occasionally disturbs me is the level of confidence that people place on the Cipher Manuscript. And this includes the amount of faith that Westcott and Mathers placed on the document. It is assumed by people that the Cipher Manuscript is a finished project.

Thanks to my experience in designing rituals, I am not confident that the Cipher Manuscript actually represents a finished project. To me, it looks more like an ongoing work in progress where the creator changed their mind about earlier parts, made changes and did not go back to correct earlier pages because correcting pages written in a cipher is a pain in the lower regions.

(For the record, I sometimes do not correct my own outlines, written in the clear, when I change my mind later in the process of ritual design. There is a possibility that the creator of the Cipher Manuscript didn't either. And he would have had more reason not to.)

Yes, I realize that I am a Golden Dawn heretic. The myth of an earlier Order implies that the Cipher Manuscript has to be the shorthand memory aid for a pre-existing set of rituals. This is the way that Mathers and Westcott and most Order leaders have treated it. But what if it is actually a rough draft and not the final draft?

Personally, some of the difficulties presented in the Cipher Manuscript, including the change in the number and style of pentagrams used in the rituals, can be best explained if the Cipher Manuscript is actually an rough outline with the writer changing their mind as they go along and not bothering to make corrections in the earlier sections. Yes, it is heresy...but it is something you have to consider if you are serious about studying the Cipher Manuscript.

And now, we will invoke the spirits of the blogosphere to provide evidence that the Cipher Manuscript is actually a finished project. (No fair just screaming that Third Order says it is a finished project, you must show your work and evidence---otherwise I am going to continue to use to use my outlines and ritual performances as proof that it is a rough draft---and using the rituals that Mathers and Westcott built from the outline is not actual proof either.) Oh great spirits of the blogosphere prove to me that my lack of faith in the Cipher Manuscript is misguided and just plain silly---I dare you. (Hey, it has been a slow Golden Dawn news week...because I chose to ignore certain postings on another blog...and you can't blame a boy for trying to create a new excitement around here. Unless you really want me to discuss the posts on that another blog...in which case, feel free to say so in the comment section.)

What the secret message said

2012-01-18T23:03:00.000-07:00

[Because it is better to toot one's horn than advertise by badmouthing others.]

Earlier this month, I gave a deciphering exercise to my readers. Here is what the message said:

Oh, you are actually going to decipher this. Morgan is very witty & handsome. His cats say so 93 times a day. They want to eat shrimp. Promote your book, they say. Enter coupon code QV63Z at Smashwords dot com to get Five Reasons Magic Fails for just one dollar. Coupon expires at the end of January 2012.

Wikipedia blacked out in protest

2012-01-17T23:12:00.000-07:00

Today, Wikipedia and several other internet sites are going to be blacked out for twenty-four hours to protest two internet bills making their way though Congress: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA).

While I am against piracy (after all, I am a writer and have discovered all my posts feeding directly onto another website), I think that these two bills will do more damage than they are worth. I especially fear what would happen if they were enacted into law and someone with more vinegar than brains decids to use them for the purposes of putting businesses they do not like out of their misery. One of the parts still in the bill requires websites to remove all links to sites that host pirated material; and if they miss a link, they too can be penaltized under the law.

From an occult blogger's viewpoint, this means that most, if not all, occult webpages would become off-limits to link to. Why? Well, do you know who really owns the copyrights to most of the occult stuff out there? Me neither. And even if you think that you do know, are you positive that you are right? And that no one is going to claim otherwise?

For instance, a few years ago one group tried to get certain research libraries to turn over certain collections---the reasoning was that since the group controlled the name that all material under that name actually belonged to them and not the library to which the public domain material had been donated. And given that these internet laws would be enforced by government agencies, well, one only have to look at the OTO and GD court cases to see how such laws could be misused.

(I am sorry---I still think that the legal system may have made a mistake in the OTO case. And given the flame wars surrounding the GD case, well, one can only imagine what would have happened if people could attempt to get websites shut down for copyright violations.)

I am not saying that we do not need such laws to protect intellectual property (copyrights); I am saying that the laws would cripple large parts of the internet that I care about if they are badly enforced and/or misused. If the SOPA and PIPA are passed, large parts of the internet focused on the occult could cease to exist. There has to be a better way to protect copyrights and deal with internet piracy.

Weighing the Grades of others

2012-01-17T14:06:00.000-07:00

Being only one-seventh of an initiate makes me a sad panda.

One of the questions that occasionally arises in conversation is whether or not Golden Dawn Orders should recognize the Grades given by other Golden Dawn Orders. More specifically, should this recognition be automatic with no questions asked.

My answer is always H*** F****** No!

I am sorry; recognition of Grades bestowed by another Golden Dawn Order is something I feel needs to be handled on a case-by-case basis. And if I ever did support the idea of automatic recognition, the support would only extend to the Neophyte Grade level---all the higher Grades would still be determined on a case-by-case basis. To understand why I feel this way, one needs to understand how I look upon initiation and the Grades.

During my involvement with one Golden Dawn Order, I was initiated as a Neophyte. On that day, the Hierophant did six other initiations. Given how complicated Golden Dawn initiation actually are, were all the initiations of equal value? Am I only one-seventh of a Neophyte in that system?

(One should bear in mind that this particular group emphasized personal work; initiations were seen as a starting point, but the initiate had to finish growing their garden on their own.)

The same type of question arises around astral initiation. Given the fact that there are seven layers to an initiation, do astral initiations address all of these layers? Or do astral initiations merely focus on just a single layer? Are astral initiates only one-seventh of an initiate?

(One should bear in mind that I belonged to another group that formally stated that the only thing that they could promise from the initiation was the physical experience. They were unwilling to promise that the initiation would have any effect beyond that point. Again, one-seventh of an initiate.)

The same type of questions arises when you shift your focus to Grade work and instruction. Given the variation in focuses by the various Golden Dawn Orders, one can be fully trained according to one's own Mother lodge and not trained at all in the eyes of another group. For instance, look at the vast difference of emphasis between the training given by Pat Zalewski and David Griffin. They focus on completely different things. There is no way that a person trained by Zalewski can be fully recognized by Griffin; nor can a person trained by Griffin be fully recognized by Zalewski.

(I have been a member of three Inner Order training programs, and I have never seen an exact match ever in the programs. In each program, I had to work with completely new material..sooner or later. While there is some overlap between the programs, the difference is large enourgh where I feel that it is pointless to even mention how far I got in the programs beyond the fact that I been involved in Inner Order training; if I enroll in a new Inner Order program, I get to start all over again.)

There also the issue of the skill and level of the officers conducting the initiation. Is an initiation performed by a crew of all Adept Exempts better than an initations performed by mere Adept Minors? And what if one of them has a cold that day? Does that affect one's initiation?

Does the type of lineage that the officers possess affect the initiation? Is an initiatory lineage better than an administrationary lineage? Are some lineages better than others? Does a lineage that traces though Mathers trump a lineage traced through Crowley? (Oh wait, if your lineage traces through Crowley, it also traces through Mathers...that is not good, is it?)

And do variations in ritual scripts make a difference? And how big of a difference does it take? If my lodge uses a modern language version of the rituals does that make them members of a different system from those who only use the language of 1888 London?

All these questions occur before we get to the ultimate question for the working magician: If you recognize my Grade, can I tap the energy bank of your Order? For a working magician, if recognition is in name only, and does not include the ability to share information and tap magical energies, then the recognition is just an empty gesture. Which is why working magicians tend to ignore this whole issue because they realize that only access to information and magical energies count. Realizing my Grade without giving me access to new sources of energy and information is merely an attempt to appease my ego and stroke yours.

So for me, recognition of my Grade by others, and my recognition of other people's Grades is a pointless exercise unless they are going to be sitting in the same lodge as I am. And let's be honest, there are a whole bunch of people who would refuse to sit in lodge with me; fortunately, for the most part, they are the same people that I refuse to sit in lodge with.

When to toss traditional lore out

2012-01-14T02:48:00.003-07:00

This Viper needs to be taken to the curb.

Something that every working magician will eventually have to wrestle with is the question: When do you toss a piece of lore out of one's system?

(By "working magician," I mean those people who get up off the sofa and spend time actually casting spells and performing magic, rather than just reading about it.)

Now in the traditional hierarchies, the answer is: When your superiors tell you to. Therefore, First Order is ordered by Second Order when to abandon lore and procedures; and in return, Second Order is guided by the Third Order (Secret Chiefs). This answer is all and fine, provided that you are actually in a Strict Obedience/Observance Order, and are willing to take orders.

But most working magicians, or at least the ones that I have dealt with, tend to be lousy at taking orders. And most Strict Observance Orders will rapidly kick out or lose their working magicians. The reason for this is that experience quite often conflicts with "authorized lore" and most Strict Observance are knee-deep in the idea that "authorized lore" is the best, and sometimes only, way to accomplish magical goals.

A few years ago, I was present when a new Strict Observence Order was being started. One day, the subject of Atlantis came up. I stated my opinion that Atlantis was one of those pieces of lore that needed to be kicked to the curb. The leader of the group flatly told me that I was wrong because the GH Frater S used Atlantis in his lessons, therefore it was tradition and had to be included in the system. At this point, I started to look for the escape pod.

(No, I did not leave just over the fact that Atlantis was being included in the system; there was also plenty of administration issues that made me want to bail out of the system.)

Now, in my case, I had good reasons to bolt over the issue of Atlantis. In an earlier group, I had seen the concept of Atlantis being used, and watched the group jump off the rails. Fortunately, there was a working magician at the helm, who rapidly pulled the plug before the group became an outright doomsday cult. Nevertheless, it permanently associated Atlantis with the rancid smell of some lesser evil in my mind.

And unlike the leader, who insisted that I was wrong, I actually had spent some time researching the importance that was attached to Atlantis down though the years. Atlantis was a footnote in Greek mythology and philosophy, something ignored by the esoteric tradition for over two thousand years. It wasn't until the question of why there was similar animals in the New World, as well as human beings and those pesky pyramids arose that Atlantis was dug out of the rubbish bin.

(We all know that human beings have to be told about the concept of stacking rocks on top of one another---it is not like the idea naturally occurs to us when we have plenty of rocks and spare labor at hand.)

Today, we do not need Atlantis to explain the fact that there was plants and animals common to both the Old World and the New World. But there are people who insist that Atlantis cannot be taken out to the rubbish bin...because it is now a part of the official authorized esoteric lore.

(Here is a mystery for you---given the fact that Atlantis was so advanced [the last time I checked they supposely had atomic bombs and lasers, and next year they will be credited with time machines, stargates and warp drives], why haven't we found any plastic from their civilization?)

The bugbear of official authorized lore drives working magicians up the wall. Start talking to people about how to accomplish a magical task, and one finds themselves judged by what the authorized lore says. It does not matter whether or not your method actually works; what matters is whether some old grimoire or famous occult writer agrees with you and your method.

(By the way, working magicians presume if you cite authorized lore as your twenty-four inch rule and do not ask the "special" question that you are not a working magician. And all working magicians know what the special question is.)

There are a whole bunch of occult writers who have been enshrined---some of them are still alive (I hope that they are horrified that they have been enshrined because if they are not horrified, then they are not actually working magicians). A few years ago, I remember a great fuss was being made over this one book (it does not matter which one). At the time, I had no opinion of the book; it wasn't one that I ever worked with. Later on, I did work with the book---if the material was copied, it worked just fine---if it was unique, well, it sucked rocks on toast. The book was enshrined as the only way to accomplish certain things; and quite honestly based on my own results, I doubt that anyone who was busy talking about how great the book was, actually used any of the unique material in the book. In the end, I used other methods to accomplish the same goals.

And yes, I know, I know---just because the material did not work for me does not mean that it was not the proper way to do things. After all, we all know that I am complete and utter plotz without no respect for traditional and properly authorized esoteric lore. But I am a working magician, and the method I use to determine if some lore or magical prodecure remains in my tool box is RESULTS. If it does not work for me, I take it out to the curb and leave it by the rubbish bin. Of course, that habit makes me very unwelcome in the Strict Observance to the Shrine of Official Authorized Occult Lore circles. But that is ok, I prefer to do my drinking in the company of working magicians.

Mocking Ancient Aliens

2012-01-11T17:17:00.000-07:00

Didn't Stargate tell us this fact about Ancient Aliens?!

Today over on Smosh, there is an article called The Six Things I Learned from Watching Ancient Aliens. The really funny part is how the History Channel is defining the terms "expert," "proof' and "science." Of course, their idea of "history" has became a little fuzzy also...it is sad when occultists have a more realistic defintion of the the term.

Now, I know that some occultists believe in the Ancient Alien Astronaut theory, and that humans are the result of their DNA research and that aliens jump-started human civilization. Heck, for many years I did a lot of reading in that field...for some reason, the Brush High School library had a complete set of Erich von Daniken's Chariot of the Gods series. But if you are exposed to enourgh mysteries, after awhile the whole Ancient Alien Astronaut theory starts to look a little cracked.

The day I realized this was a few years ago, after long amounts of Stargate SG1 and entry into an Inner Order pretending to be the RR et AC, when I picked up one of Daniken's books (I forget which one) and he asks the question, "What is the secret of the magician's wand?" I must admit that I laugh every time I think about it.

The field has not changed that much since Daniken's day. The idea is to assume that human beings are incapable of stacking rocks onto other rocks and that no ancient human being ever took any drugs; if you can make those two assumptions and ignore all the six year-olds that you ever meet, then you too can buy into the Ancient Alien Astronaut theory.

The following are the assumptions made by Ancient Alien Astronaut theory:

All buildings are alien landing pads. Humans were incapable of coming up with the idea of roofs, temples or pyramids on their own.

Human beings were the result of alien DNA research. We would never consider screwing mutants on our own---no matter how cute they are.

Humans beings were incapable of taming animals, inventing farming, and using tools on thier own. Obviously, ants, monkeys and crows are more intelligent than humans.

All gods and goddesses are badly drawn pictures of alien spacesuits and rockets. All mythology, including the Bible, are just badly garbled accounts of what aliens did to humans.

Humans were incapable of inventing math and writing on their own. Please ignore Einstein and Hawkings.

And most importantly, ancient alien astronauts preferred using human labor and native materials (rocks and stone chisels), and did not use automated factories and plastics. Aliens invented the concept of "going green."

All these statements are also true of the ancient Atlantians, time-traveling reptiles, and the Babylonian Secret Chiefs. And the lack of evidence of Ancient Alien Astronauts, Atlantians, time-traveling reptiles and Babylonian Secret Chiefs is actually evidence that they did exist.

More history and the color scales

2012-01-09T00:30:00.000-07:00

King Over the Water pontential cover.

Talking to a Soror from my lodge about the post about Impressionism and the Golden Dawn color scales, I realized that I need to do a follow-up to it with some additional information. She asked some questions---some involved me looking up information to confirm things I already suspected---and I realized that if she had those questions that other people might be curious about the answers too.

(For the record, it was the potential cover of Nick Farrell's book that made my mind connect several facts together and realize that the expanded color scales of Golden Dawn could only result after 1840. And as far as I know, I am the first one to realize this fact...or at least, the first person to actually consider it to be important; I don't remember anyone ever writing about this topic before.)

First, just to get it out of the way, I do not believe that Moina Mathers was a "modern woman" or a "feminist." I am not looking for an example of a modern woman or a feminist---I am looking for an artist. The reason that I am looking for an artist is that the Golden Dawn color scales have too large of a color vocabulary to be the sole invention of a non-artist.

Agrippa's color scales are an example of a set of color scales created by a non-artist; the color vocabulary is simple and basic. The Golden Dawn color scales, on the other hand, has a wide color vocabulary. Now, one quarter of it is just layering an occult idea (colors attract energies) onto the standard artist's color wheel---something that is easily produced by non-artists. But the other three quarters involve a series of colors so rich and varied that one needs a cheat sheet with paint samples on it to accurately reproduce it (or a digitual camera and a really good color printer).

I have seen no evidence that Samuel Mathers or Wynn Westcott had such a large color vocabulary. The concept that color attracted magical forces was not a new idea---Agrippa and the SRIA are solid proof that the idea was common currency among occultists. Nor have I seen any evidence that convinces me that the SRIA is actually the source for the expanded color scales. Occasionally, someone points to the SRIA as the source of the Golden Dawn Vault of the Adepts---but no one has yet to provide what I would consider proof of this fact. When Westcott mentions that there was an older color scheme for the Vault, he may have been referring to the color lore of the SRIA in his day and age.

Therefore, the idea that color attracts magical forces is common currency of occult thought of the 1890s, but the expanded range of color vocabulary is something new and is the product of an artist---therefore who is the artist? Westcott? Samuel Mathers? Moina Mathers? Someone else? Until someone proves otherwise, I am presuming that Moina Mathers was the one to expand the color vocabulary, and therefore it is she (and not Samuel or Westcott) that is truly the source of the Golden Dawn color scales.

As I said, maybe Nick's upcoming book, or maybe Tabatha's, will convince me otherwise.

Possible cover for Concourse of the Watchtowers.

The other thing that my dear Soror brought up was the possibility that it is not water colors or oil paints that are being used in the color scale work. That maybe it is color pencils that were meant to be used. I told her that I was positive that we were supposed to be doing the color scale work in "wet medium." There are some effects that can only be achieved with the use of wet medium---not even the use of modern paint programs can duplicate some of the effects. (Then again, I like the physical process of using a brush to create art.) Furthermore, I told her that color pencils are a modern art development, and that I was positive that the expanded color scales (usable by all Adepts and not just those who were professional artists) had to be an invention occurring after 1840.

Looking it up, I learned that the history of art materials backs up my conclusion. Colored pencils were not marketed to artists until after 1900. It is not until 1920s that we start to get a wide range of art-grade color pencils. Prismacolor pencils are not introduced until 1938. Likewise for other dry mediums---wax crayons 1903; oil pastels 1925; paint sticks 1966.

The only two exceptions for dry medium would be colored chalk and pastels (pastels are pure pigment with a binding agent)---chalks have been used for thousands of years and pastels for about three hundred years. Yet the amount of time that they have been used removes them from the running; if they were suitable for expanding the color scales, the color scales would have expanded much sooner and I would not be looking for an artist inside Golden Dawn to credit the expansion with. Besdies, these two mediums are not actually conductive to making talismans and lamens---which is one of the primary reasons for the Adept's studies of the color scale system.

A final thing I must mention is the fact that we do have a lot of evidence that the color scale work of the Golden Dawn Adept was a new development. The sheer amount of variation between the color scales of various Golden Dawn offshoots, and even between lodges of the same Orders, indicate that the system was not developed enourgh to have standardization. An older, more developed system would have figured out a way to decrease the number of variations.

The expanded color scales are not something that you can look back to a previous esoteric group and find purer information about...unless you want to toss it out completely and go back to the simple color scale used by Agrippa and earlier occultists. In fact, the expanded color scales are so new that the period of its best development may still be in the future.

Impressionism and the GD color scales

2012-01-08T03:17:00.000-07:00

King Over the Water by Nick Farrell.

The Book of the Concourse of the Watchtowers by Sandra Tabatha Cicero.

The other day, I was reminded that there are some soon-to-be-released books that are on my shopping list (well, after I managed to crawl out of the monetary hole that I have fallen into). Both Nick Farrell and Sandra Tabatha Cicero posted possible covers for their respective books (I say "possible" because I know how things change at the last moment in publishing).

Looking at the covers, I realized something---our required color scale work in Adept Minor (5=6) was not possible previous to 1841. Or at least, not in the form and style that we do it today.

Don't believe me? Think about how you did your color scale studies. Were there tubes of paint involved? If there were tubes of paint involved, then you are using a post 1841 method. Or did you use watercolors of straight from the pans of a box? In which case, your method of study could not have developed before 1832. The idea of using watercolors from a box only dates to 1766; before that point, watercolors were sold in lumps that had to be hand-grated before using.

The ability to do color studies while sitting in your living room is a product of the Victorian Age. Before the improvements to watercolor paints by Henry Newton and William Winsor in 1832, only professional artists worked with paints. Amateurs did not start to paint until Newton & Winsor developed the methods of creating watercolor paints that could be used directly from the box. Queen Victoria helped lead a national passion for amateur painting.

Paint tubes were invented by an America, John Goffe Rand, in 1841. Rand's invention was a technological leap for the artworld. Rand would tell his son that without his invention that "There would have been no Cezanne, no Monet, no Sisley or Pissaro; nothing of what the journalists were later to call Impressionism." I would go one step further and say that there would be no required color scale work in Adept Minor if he hadn't invented the paint tube.

Please remember that I am not saying that color was not important in magic previous to the Victorian Age (Agrippa is enourgh proof of the importance of color in magical work among our magical ancestors). What I am saying is that the creation of color scales studies and flashing tablets were much harder before that point, and were unlikely to have been an important part of the esoteric lesson plan---at least among amateur artists.

Westcott mentions that there is an older color scale that were used in the ancient Vault of the Adepts. Exactly what this older color scale looked like is hard to say for sure; the Adept Major ritual doesn't develop the idea enourgh to get a clear look at it without some knowledge of art history. There are also alchemical formulas that are actually about making pigments. So while there is definitely color scales involved in the older magical systems, they were placed much higher in the estoteric Grade system.

One of the things that Nick and I have disagreed over (publically on the internet if you want to go looking---I can't remember what Golden Dawn forum it was on) is the importance of Moina Mathers in the creation of the modern Vault of the Adepts and the modern color scales. My logic tends to be: if I needed a crash course in color theory to understand the color scales and its development into the Vault, then an artist had to be involved. My best bet is Moina Mathers, who was trained as an artist. Nick says that Samuel (MacGregor) Mathers and Westcott could be the ones that brought it in---I am not sure if he was implying that the color scales were built up by a previous esoteric group prior to their founding of the Golden Dawn or if it was invented by them (Nick will reply in the comment section about that one).

One thing that would be helpful to determine which one of us is right would be knowledge about whether Westcott or Samuel Mathers were amateur artists before meeting Moina. If they only started working with the complicated color scales after meeting Moina, then I am inclined to continue crediting Moina---after all, she is the one that was responsible for painting the first RR et AC Vault of the Adepts. I am hoping that one or both of these upcoming books reveals some evidence that would make the answer to this question clearer. Knowing the source authority would clear up some questions that I have about the color scales...beyond how much credit to give to Moina.

But while I am unsure about the source authority for our color scale work, I am positive that it is definitely an esoteric development of the Victorian Age. Before that date, the color scales were much simplier, and applied in a different manner when it came to magical workings. This fact affects a lot of stuff that we do and study today---a cascade effect---including the Tarot and the making of magical talismans.

And just in case, you are wondering, the modern Victorian Age color scales is something that I am not willing to abandon, no matter how wrong they are according to the older esoteric material. I may not be good at alchemy, but I am a fair hand with a paintbrush. For maximum outrage, just remember I use the modern color scales with the Elder Futhark (the Norse Runes).

Who was Johannes Trithemuis?

2012-01-07T01:30:00.000-07:00

Polygraphiae.

Joannes Trithemius (born Johann Heidenberg, 1 February 1462---13 December 1516) was an abbot. During his time as abbot of Sponheim, he increased the library of that abbey from a poor fifty volumes to a rich thousand plus. During his time at this post, he acquired a reputation as a magician. In 1506, he switched posts, becoming the abbot of the Schottenkloster where he remained to the end of his life.

Among his students were Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486---1535) and Paracelsus (1493---1541). Trithemius was a writer focusing on "steganography" (cryptography). His most famous work, Steganographia, ended up on the Index Librorum Prohibitorium in 1609. On the surface, the book appears to be about black magic, in particular using spirits to communicate across vast distances. But the black magic is merely a cover for the real contents of the work, which deal with cryptography and steganography---or for those of us with pudding in our heads, codes and ciphers.

It is interesting that Trithemius chose to disguise his writings about secret writings inside a cover text about black magic and spirit (angelic/demonic) messengers. It is the cover text that got him into trouble. His teachings included oaths of secrecy and "delibately obscure discussions of the technique" (as one writer put it). Trithemius also encouraged Classical learning and everyday subjects, believing that they were necessary to those who were involved in theological pursuits. It is not hard to imagine Trithemuis getting into trouble over his ideas.

(I will admit that I am puzzled about why he didn't pick a different subject. Then again, there is another possibility...)

Steganographia was not printed until 1606, though the unfinished manuscript was circulated in manuscript form. Of course, from a Golden Dawn viewpoint, Polygraphia (1518) is the more important work.

The important page from Polygraphia.

A page from Steganographia.

Another page from Steganographia.

One can understand why Johannes Trithemuis got into trouble.

Ah, boyhood memories.

Now, as I noted already, the importance of Johannes Trithemuis to Golden Dawn is his book, Polygraphia. Both William Wynn Westcott and Kenneth Mackenzie had copies of this book in their libraries. The question is Why? In the case of Mackenzie is was probably more about the codes and ciphers; his pen-name was Cryptonymus and he occasionally refered to his wife as Sister Cryptonyma. In Westcott's case, I lean more toward his interest in the esoteric, including magic. But in all honesty, the answer for both men must be a little bit of ciphers and codes and a little bit of magic. They would be the first...or last...magicians to have an interest in codes and ciphers (both Dee and Agrippa leap to mind).

Yet the existence of the book in both libraries create a trust problem when it comes to the various stories that Westcott told about the Cipher Manuscript. One of the stories says that Mackenzie had seen the Cipher Manuscript and had "expressed ignorance of it and wonder." Yet Mackenzie would have been able to decipher it easily, even without a key---a key, he just happened to have in his own library. And Mackenzie, like Westcott, was a member of many societies and Orders and a collector of esoteric lore. I am not sure that Mackenzie could have expressed ignorance and wonder over the Cipher Manuscript...but that is a subject for another day.

Basics of ciphers and codes

2012-01-06T00:30:00.000-07:00

Page from Polygraphia bearing the GD Cipher.

The student at this point of the discussion about the Cipher Manuscript needs to know a few basics about codes and ciphers. In the Bast Temple version of the Zelator (1=10) initiation ritual, the initiate is presented with several examples of codes and ciphers in the additional third part of the ritual.

(The third part of the Bast Temple Zelator ritual is so irregular from the viewpoint of other Golden Dawn Orders. It was inserted into the ritual to allow the ritual introduction of geomancy to occur during the Zelator initiation, rather than forcing the student to wait until Theoricus (2=9) where the traditional Golden Dawn Orders ritually introduce the system to the initiate. To flesh out rest of the third part, several other subjects were also introduced, including codes and ciphers. One of the results of this minor change in the ritual is that Bast Temple students get to study the Neophyte and Zelator sections of the Cipher Manuscript while in Zelator without someone frowning at them about studying material beyond their Grade.)

One of the ciphers presented to the Zelator is "Thee Cipher," the cipher that was used in the foundational (DNA) document of the Golden Dawn---the cipher of the Cipher Manuscript. The cipher dates to before 1518. The source of the cipher for Frater C was probably from Johannes Trithemius' Polygraphia (original edition 1518). The above pictue is the page that the cipher is found on from the 1561 edition.

The text roughly reads in Old French (according to Wikipedia):

Fifth Book.
Another alphabet, by which Honorius, a. k. a. Thebanius occultly describes the rules of magic.
{Theban alphabet cipher}
Another alphabet, by which some alchemists wanted to secretly use & describe rules & secrets of their science; making this science look more estimable than it deserves.
{GD alchemical cipher}
Usually alchemy is accompanied by several servants, familiars and domestics, who...

(Before you ask---no, I do not know how Trithemius finished that sentence.)

Trithemius' Polygraphia was in circulation among the members of fringe masonry in 19th century England (though to what extent is uncertain). Both Kenneth Mackenizie and Wynn Westcott had copies of this book in their libraries. A common assumption is that Frater C was very much into the use of ciphers. This may be true; it is known that Mackenzie (one of the possible creators of the Cipher Manuscript) was rather fond of ciphers. Another common assumption is that because Westcott had a copy of the cipher key, all his stories about how hard it was to "translate" the document are more to impress the listener than actually accurately relay information.

Exactly how hard is it to work with a known cipher?

An message to decipher...if you want to try, that is.

For instance, take this example. It is 58 words and it took me 30 minutes to sketch with a pencil, and another 15 minutes to ink it. So forty-five minutes to encipher a single page.

I am not sure how long it would take someone to decipher it even with the use of the key provided earlier. Frater C modified the symbol for the letter Y, and created a new symbol for the letter W. In my example, two additional symbols were created for the letters J and V. While I made an attempt to make sure that the spaces between one word and the next are clear, I am not so sure that they are completely clear now that I step back and look at the sample. Furthermore, Frater C, like myself in the sample presented, uses Hebrew letters as numbers. My Hebrew letters always get comments from the peanut gallery. Someone who examines my example will also notice that I considered something important enourgh to "write in the clear"---after all, my handwriting is terrible, even without the added burden of writing in a strange alphabet.

During the course of writing up the example, I caught two mistakes as I was engaged in the creation of the sample. These I corrected before inking. How many more I made without noticing will be something that I will learn later. This is important as we will later see when we look at pages from the Cipher Manuscript---mistakes complicate the deciphering process.

Now for those who would like to hear some gooblygook, the Golden Dawn "Thee Cipher" is what is known as a "simple alphabetic substitution script." In other words, the letters of the English alphabet are substituted for symbols, with each symbol only representing a single English letter. There are other forms of ciphers---some that take several steps to encipher and decipher.

You may also like to know that there is a difference between ciphers and codes. Ciphers focus on the letter level of the language. Codes, on the other hand, focus on whole words to attempt to disguise the information context from those who do not have the proper key. It is also probably interesting to the more nerdy readers that given a large enourgh sample in a language that one knows and enourgh brainpower (in the form of people, steam-powered differantial engines, or computers), any code or cipher can be broken. Complicated codes and ciphers merely slow the process down.

Of course, with the Cipher Manuscript, even with a complete cipher key, there are things that will slow the process of reading the document down to a crawl---for more on that, I suggest consulting Carroll "Poke" Runyon's Secrets of the Golden Dawn Cypher Manuscript.

Cipher Manuscript built in problems

2012-01-05T12:00:00.000-07:00

Ok, I think that I am done with the numerous disclosure statements that I have had to issue to make everyone happy---which all basically say that you should not be reading this blog (or any of my writing for that matter) because I am not an expert in their eyes (and I am referring to several parties here---I don't think that I can throw a rock without hitting someone who believes this).

So now, let's turn our attention back to the Cipher Manuscript (there is a post from a few days ago on this subject).

There are a few problems with studying the Cipher Manuscript---some of which have plagued Golden Dawn from its very beginning; others are problems affecting anyone who wants to study the manuscript and its content.

Let's start with the latter type of problem. The biggest problem that affects scholars studying the Cipher Manuscript is that we are forced to study it through "trace copies" and "photocopies." This may or may not be a problem depending upon what you are interested in. If you are only interested in the contexts, then trace copies and photocopies are sufficient for one's purposes. But trace copies and photocopies require one to take a leap of faith about certain things, such as the age of the paper and ink. For instance, the science of determining the age of a manuscript has moved on since the last time that the age of the manuscript was determined.

Now, today we are better off than we were forty years ago. We do have the photocopies and trace copies of the Cipher Manuscript. Previous to the 1970s, no one (or maybe only a few people) in the esoteric community had access to the Cipher Manuscript. The document entered a private collection in 1923, and for all practical purposes disappeared.

The circulation of the Cipher Manuscript, awareness of the actual document and not just the myth of it, seems to have been limited to a small number of people in the original Order. Interestingly enourgh, A. E. Waite seems to had access to its contents through a copy of the document made by W, A. Ayton. Likewise, Frank William Coleman knew of the Cipher Manuscript. I have reason to believe that Aleister Crowley may have had knowledge of its contents, but I have no hard proof to prove my theory. The exact circulation of the contents of the Cipher Manuscript among the membership of the original Golden Dawn is hard to determine based on the currently available information. I feel that is safe to say that study of the Cipher Manuscript by members of the original Order was optional, and probably involved a favor or two in order to be allowed to make a copy of it.

In modern times, the Cipher Manuscript resurfaced. The first person to see it in modern times was Ellic Howe, who gained access to the private collection that used the document since 1923. Howe's conclusions about the Cipher Manuscript was unfavorable to say the least. Interestingly enourgh, Howe seems to ignored some of the pages of the document, or perhaps did not see the whole document. During the 1970s, there were some small press publications of the Cipher Manuscript. It was not until the 1990s that a decent publication of the Cipher Manuscript happened.

Today, the best sources are "The Complete Golden Dawn Cipher Manuscript" (Darcy Kuntz) and "Secrets of the Golden Dawn Cypher Manuscript" (Carroll "Poke" Runyon). There are a couple of websites that host images of the Cipher Manuscript; my preferred favorite is the Golden Dawn Library Project.

A couple of the modern Golden Dawn groups have changed their lesson plans to include the Cipher Manuscript. Hathoor Temple (IIOGD) included it in a limited lesson at the Inner Order level---based on the less-than-stellar 70s publications. BIOGD/BIORC includes a brief lesson about the Cipher Manuscript in Outer Order at the Zelator (1=10) Grade level (limited to the Neophyte and Zelator sections), and a longer lesson at the Inner Order level of Adept Minor Theoricus (5=6 THAM).

Another problem facing the scholar is the fact that various publications of the Cipher Manuscript order the pages of the Cipher Manuscript differently. I am working on a spreadsheet to address this problem (in fact, considering that this is a "prescheduled post," it may actually be done by this point in time). There is the additional problem that there were later additions to the Cipher Manuscript, including pages by Coleman and Westcott. Complicating matters is the fact that the lines of the documents are garbled---in fact, the Cipher Manuscript may be a copy itself of an earlier version.

Unless you have worked at "translating" some of the pages yourself (actually the proper term is "decipher"), one is unaware of the difficulties involved at decoding the mess that the Cipher Manuscript is...in fact, Runyon points out that he understands why several people did not finish the task.

The final problem facing the scholar who is merely studying the content of the document is that the Cipher Manuscript is an outline that refers to information from sources---and one is left trying to figure out the sources without a list in hand. In a future post, I will be discussing this problem in more detail; I am merely mentioning it at this point to remind people that I am aware of the problem.

Now the preceeding list of problems was merely based on the content of the Cipher Manuscript itself. There are also a couple of problems that plague the person trying to put the Cipher Manuscript into its proper context (again, the subject of an upcoming blog post). Briefly, they are "Who wrote the document and why?" and "How did Westcott obtain the document?" Both of these questions have plagued Golden Dawn from the beginning. (And in my case, they have spurred me to issue a set of disclosure statements prior to issuing this series of blog posts...because people hate my conclusions.)

So there you have it, a list of problems that will cause no end of problems when it comes to studying the Cipher Manuscript. You will be seeing these problems rear their ugly heads over and over again as we progress through the Cipher Manuscript.

Diclosure I do my own artwork

2012-01-04T23:46:00.000-07:00

And the disclosures just seem to keep coming. Tonight's disclosure is inspired by something that happened on Facebook. A customer was complaining to one of my writer friends about the fact that she used Paint or Word to create the sigils in one of her books. Needless to say, the conversation was all downhill. Including a comment from me warning the person not to buy any of my books because my sigils are horrific ugly...which I was informed was not the point. Of course, I responded with the fact that I actually use the Paint program on occasion.

Then we got the truth, the person thought the book was overpriced for having such bad sigils. In another words, you can charge an arm and a leg for a book with beautiful, professional drawn sigils, even if it is little more than a paper weight...but heanven forbid you actually charge a high price for a book that works with ugly amateur artwork in it. I suspect the person was a muggle and not a magician.

Therefore, I have to warn people that I do all my own artwork. And it is ugly artwork (I failed high school art), just one step above stick figures. My sigils are ugly and badly drawn. My diagrams are ugly and badly drawn. My godform drawings are ugly and badly drawn. I think that you get the idea.

So be warned that my books do not contain professional drawn artwork. Though it should be noted that I have accepted money for doing artwork, therefore by Olympic standards, I am a professional artist...just not a very good one.

How big is Golden Dawn traffic spike edition

2012-01-04T01:30:00.000-07:00

Blame Mitt Romney for the Sesame Street Ad.

Apologies to Tomas Stacewicz and his Facebook friends for using a post on his wall as inspiration for this post. But hey, ideas come where they may---you can't tell the muses not to show up in certain places without pissing them off all the time. My fellow artists will understand that one must accept the muse at all time and in all places if one wants to continue being creative.

What Tomas was talking about does not matter beyond the fact that I wish him luck on that front, and hopes that he wishes me luck towards never having to issue another bloody disclosure statement. Hey, we can dream, can't we? (By the way, Tomas, if you are reading this---I also want to focus on more important things.)

It is actually his friends' comments that the muses pointed to.

First, there was a comment from David Griffin about the traffic spike his blog got from his New Year's announcement. (Nice to see someone else in Golden Dawn also had a New Year campaign brewing in the background---I would hate to be the only one that was using New Year Day to kick off a new campaign.) David was saying that the day of the announcement was the highest "unique traffic" day for the blog. Now, I do not how much unique traffic he got, but at this point in time I bet he has a new marker for the size of the Golden Dawn market. What I do know is that he got a LOT of traffic that day. His stats for that blog took a real jump. I hope that it results in a nice turnout for his event. (Remember people, I am a writer---different concerns drive my actions. His event ultimately benefits one of my markets, therefore I wish him luck on that front.)

The other comment was made by Nineveh Shadrach, who noted that there are only about fifteen to twenty people bloggging and writing in the Golden Dawn community. And that got me thinking about under-represented the overall Golden Dawn community feels on the blogosphere and on the bookshelves. Of course, our percent of people with soapboxes may be the exact same percentage as other special interest groups---the reason that there seems to be more blogging and writing about baseball may simply be that there are more baseball fans. Without better numbers about how many people are actually interested in Golden Dawn, we can only guess. But I will admit that Nineveh is right---off the top of my head, I can think of about fifteen or twenty people who are actively blogging and writing about Golden Dawn. (Of course, part of the reason for the low numbers is simply that it takes a lot of knowledge and/or creativity to maintain ongoing writing projects in this field without having to resort to the old chestnuts. There are a lot of blogs started that fall silent.)

Oh, for those who are curious about the picture (aka the Sesame Street ad), it is from another blog, Loki's Wisdom. The other day, Mitt Romney said that Sesame Street is going to have ads under his watch...and jokes like the Necromatic Golden Dawn (which hopefully is unlike any real Order) sponsoring the Count and the Cookie Monster and shiny red apples and counting just naturally arose. As I said, you have to take the muses inspiration when and where it comes.

Blog Advice and Disclosure Statement on Prescheduling Posts

2012-01-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

Last week, during the midst of having prewritten and prescheduled posts go live, I realized that I needed to disclose the fact that I sometimes prewrite and preschedule blog posts. OMG! It is another bloody disclosure notice, and Morgan is trying to disguise it as blog advice. (That is exactly what you thought, isn't it?)

What made me realize this was the fact that I dropped a "live and freshly written" post into a block of prewritten ones (there was a hole in the block, and the idea for the fresh post fit in prefectly with the sequence). So I appeared to be reacting to events surrounding something when in reality, I had just taken a best guess about how certain people were going to react ahead of time.

I am not sure if it is a bad sign or not that I can predict how certain people are going to react ahead of time. Personally, I think that it is a bad sign; yet the predictability of reactions in the Golden Dawn community does make one's work as a blogger easier.

Of course, that is the whole reason for prescheduling blog posts in the first place. There are just some mornings when you get up and have a couple of blog posts in mind. Instead of waiting to write them another day, it is just easier to prewrite them ahead of them, and use the schedule function to issue them in a well spaced manner. Prescheduling is also great for those times when you know that you are going to be knee-deep in other activities (semester finals, vacations, well-known weeks from hell).

So if you think that I am reacting to something, you may want to ask me if the post was a fresh post or a preschedule. After all, my evil is often preplanned weeks in advance.

(As a sidenote, I find it interesting that my cute cat picture campaigns---which are prescheduled---do not get me into trouble. Oh, wait, I know why---almost everyone can agree with cute kitty pictures. I only get into trouble when something actually matters to someone.)

Why did Frater C mix systems in the Cipher Manuscript?

2012-01-03T01:30:00.000-07:00

As I have noted before, we don't actually know for (one hundred percent) who created the original outline of the rituals contained in the Cipher Manuscript. For simplicity's sake, let refer to him or her as person C. Now, it is more likely that it was a man who created the rituals, so I am going to refer to them as a Frater for the rest of this post...and for the rest of this series for that matter. Hence, Frater C is whoever created the first outline of the Golden Dawn rituals.

(I would also like to use the honorary "S.H." for them, but the use of that implies that they were much higher in the system than some are willing to give them credit for...therefore I will only say it in my head as I write this post.)

Today, the general rule is "Do not mix systems" unless you are an expert in them...or a chaos magician (I can't imagine a chaos magician reading my blog...but it could be happening...*waves hi at the chaos magician in the crowd*). This rule has not always been the standard. Heck, even in this generation, it is not always the standard...my first Wiccan mentor used the rule "Use whatever works best for the job at hand" and occasionally that meant using the symbols of one system with the techniques of another system.

When we look at the Cipher Manuscript, we see a remarkable mixture of symbols and techniques taken from various systems and cultures. A question naturally arises from this fact.

"Why did Frater C mix systems in the Cipher Manuscript?"

My answer is that Frater C was a product of his time period, just like the Cipher Manuscript is. While others argue an earlier origin for the Golden Dawn system, it is my belief that it is a product of the Victorian Age. Today, we think of the Victorian Age as a conservative time period---and forget that England went from a farming based economy to an industrial based economy. Labor rights, women rights, and the roots of the New Age movement were all developments of this time period in England. We are looking at the dawn of industrial world...and it all happened during the lifetime (a long lifetime) of a single Queen.

Now, one of the things going on in England was what some refer to as "The Golden Age of Fringe Masonry." Or as I like to refer to it, "The Golden Age of Loony Secret Societies." The hundred years from 1850 to 1950 is the most fertile time for the lodge system. The birth of the lodge system is often said to be 1717, when three Freemason lodges in London formed a Grand Lodge, but the lodge system actually predates that year---1717 is the birth of the Grand Lodge system, lodges existed before that time.

The lodge system is actually a product of England. Or at least, lodges using "lodgekit" are. Secret societies existed before the birth of the Grand Lodge system, but the Grand Lodge system changed how they worked. And inside the realm of spiritual development, the lodge system has no counterpart anywhere else...wherever you see lodges, you feel the touch of the English.

Now previous to the start of the Golden Age of Loonies, the rituals practiced by lodges were simple affairs. But as the number of Orders exploded during the Loony period, the rituals got more and more complicated. To explain why, we must remember that lodge membership was a big business and a source of entertainment for its members. The capstone for entertainment value was when one Order created a set of rituals around the novel, Ben-Hur.

Any culture that was not bolted down became fair game. This included the spiritual systems. Now, the lodges tended to not mix systems. But this changed as the age went on.

Part of the reason is the explosion of the spiritual and Theosophical movements. (Think New Age if you want to consider a modern counterpart.) The Theosophical movement was very much into mixing systems together. And the Theosophical movement was busy taking away potential members.

When you actually start looking for mixing of systems, history is full of examples. The Roman Empire, Graeco-Egypt, the Medieval Age, the Fama of the RC, can all be mined for examples. There is nothing quite like the reading of medieval literature and encountered Isis as an example of a saintly woman. And Frater C would have known this.

One can see that it is not always "Do not mix systems." Often, it is "Take whatever will work the best and use it." And Frater C willingly grabbed anything that was not bolted down. It is reasonable to assume that Fracter C was aware of the Theosophical movement. And while he was not into the entertainment side of the lodge system, he did know that the English occultists of the day were willing to borrow from any system they could get their hands on. Call it a form of Magical Imperialism. Of course, knowing why he mixed system just leads to other questions that must wait for another day...or week...or however long it takes to rotate around to them.

Article and Book disclosures

2012-01-03T00:30:00.000-07:00

Another disclosure statement---I will NOT be adding disclosure statements to my articles and books. The reasons for this is that A) I am sick and tired of making disclosure statements, especially ones that undermine my own authority and serve no purpose other than advertising an Order that I have no connection with, and B) my readers should be able to figure out from my public profiles, my blogs, and the "putting stuff in context" statements that I have a personal bias and limited knowledge about the stuff I am writing about.

Therefore, if I write about Tarot, I am not going to say that I know nothing about Tarot and that the reader needs to go to someone else for the real initiated secrets. Same goes for Norse runes, alchemy, magic, Golden Dawn, RR et AC, geomancy, and everything else that slips my mind at this moment.

Please note that no one has said I need to do this personally; but given the Golden Dawn information police views about other writers, I thought that I would beat the rush and just issue my warning that I am not going to undermine my own authority and provide them with free advertising.

Note: The membership of the Golden Dawn information police changes on a regular basis. It seems to consist of people who think that they are the only people who really know what the various esoteric traditions are all about.

Cipher Mix

2012-01-02T00:30:00.000-07:00

As I noted in yesterday's disclosure update, one of the things that we have learned this past year is that European Third Order cut contact with the Golden Dawn/Alpha and Omega/RR et AC because they learned (though the publishing of the Golden Dawn and Inner Order material by Crowley) that Mathers had gone too far in the blending and mixing of egregores that were never met to be mixed to the extent that the Z documents instructs. (Why they did not know this information sooner is a mystery of occult history.)

Looking over the Cipher Manuscript, the outline of the Outer Order rituals, I can see why Mathers and Westcott thought it was ok to mix egregores and lores. Here is a brief list of all the various systems and egregores that the Cipher Manuscript has in it.

Enochian system of Dee and Kelley [British occultism]
Latin Grade mystic titles [German Rosicrucian]
Signs, passwords and Grade sashes [Freemasonry]
Admission badges [SRIA]
Samothracian Kabric lore
Hebrew, Latin and Greek (besides the Enochian and English) languages
Pillars with Egyptian figures on them [Tablet of Isis or the Book of the Dead]
Eleusinian Mysteries lore [Greek]
Prayer from the Divine Pymander of Hermes Trismegistus [Hermetica]
Grimoric Tradition lore [Medieval and Renaissance occult lore]
The Chaldean Oracles [Zoroaster]
Kamea of the planets/sephiroth
Elemental Prayers [Mathers and Westcott used the same ones that Levi did]
Biblical quotes
Kabbalah [Jewish mysticism]
Christian mysticism
English occult writings
Elemental Pentagram key
System of correspondences
Aesh Mezareph [Christian-Jewish alchemical synthesis]
Laboratory alchemy
Religious alchemy
Philosophical alchemy
Natural alchemy [these last three are mentioned as different things]
Osiris and the three animal forms of Western cardinal signs

I am probably missing a couple---if so, just note the missing ones in the comment section.

Specific examples of blending (both in the Cipher Manuscript and lecture/ritual workups):

Westcott wrote his notes using a mixture of languages and ciphers.

Temple name tradition drew from Freemasonry, Roman and Eygpt lore.

Westcott's official history lecture mentions Eliphaz Levi [French occultism], Kenneth Mackenzie [English Freemasonry and RC] and Frederick Hockley [a crystal gazer].

The Tarot is associated with both Egyptian lore and the Kabbalah. Furthermore, the Tarot is associated with the Hebrew alphabet [Kabbalah] and astrology.

Geomancy is associated with astrology and Tree of Life.

Alchemy is associated with the Tree of Life.

(It is a small step, or mistake if you believe the Third Order, to associate alchemy with geomancy, astrology and the Tarot.)

Perhaps the biggest blending of egregores is the Khabs Am Pekht, Konx Om Pax, Light In Extension, which blends Egyptian, Greek and English mysteries.

And this leads me to the conclusion that either the European Third Order failed to see the potential logical extension trap of their Cipher Manuscript; or that the Cipher Manuscript has nothing to do with the Third Order that Mathers had contact with. Their blaming Mathers for making a logical extension of what was contained in the Cipher Manuscript is much like handing someone a loaded gun and then blaming them for shooting someone. One can only imagine what the Third Order thinks of my own work which includes work with the Norse runes and Reiki, as well as Wiccan mysteries. Needless to say, no one has to worry about the Third Order inviting me into their ranks---I embrace the blending of egregores with far too much gusto.

Disclosure Update 2012

2012-01-01T00:30:00.000-07:00

Happy Secular New Year!

Once again, it is time to publish an update to the myriad of disclosure statements that I already have on this blog.

[This disclosure is aimed at a particular school of thought---I am sorry, but I disagree with you. Yet given the fact that you have objected to my book reviews and tried to get me to issue a disclosure on every book review stating (more or less) that the reader should not read my book reviews because of my lack of membership in a correct and true Golden Dawn Order, I feel that I must issue this disclosure before you insist that I issue one.]

Over the past year, it has been revealed that the Secret Chiefs (Third Order) broke contact with Mathers in 1906 when Crowley published the Golden Dawn rituals and the first two rituals of the RR et AC, along with some of the teachings developed by Mathers. The reasons for this severing of contact was that Mathers allowed an untrustworthy member into his Order, one who broke his secrecy oaths, and that Mathers had went too far in his mixing of egregores (lores, traditions, currents, energies) that were never meant to be mixed. In other words, the Third Order had no clue what Mathers was doing until Crowley published the rituals and Inner Order material which just added to the insult that someone had broken their secrecy oath.

The reason that I must issue a disclosure update is that the fact that I rather like the mixing of traditions and lores. And in the interests of keeping you safe and ensuring that you only become a member of legitimate and recognized Orders (which the BIOGD/BIORC is not), so that you might someday be allowed into the glories of Third Order, you must be warned not to consider joining the Order I belong to.

Remember the words of an acknowledged expert in this matter:

"[The] fact is that the Third Order must find you...if you are deemed worthy they will eventually contact you. [The] only way in being spotted by them is by joining any of the true and authentic Rosicrucian bodies."

The fact that I do not think that Mathers went too far, besides being a working writer, ensures that I will never be contacted by the Third Order. If you ever hope to be contacted by them, you really should not be reading anything that I write. This is especially true considering that a lot of my work over the years has been involved in expanding the results of this errorous set of teachings. And whatever you do, resist the urge to come back tomorrow to read my post about the mixing of symbols as revealed by the Cipher Manuscript.

Ye have been warned.

Disclosure about upcoming disclosures

2011-12-31T00:30:00.000-07:00

During the first week of the secular year, starting tomorrow actually, several disclosure statements are going to be issued by me. They are going to sound hostile...mainly because I felt like I was being forced to issue them by parties who have appointed themselves the Golden Dawn information police.

Exactly who the Golden Dawn information police are varies by the day of the week, hence why no names are mentioned.

I am issuing the statements as fair warning to the poor students that the information police say that the rest of the Golden Dawn community is conning and ripping off. But each disclosure statement undermines my own authority, makes the groups I belong to look like some alley scum, and serve no purpose other than to make someone else look like they are the only true authority on Golden Dawn. Hence, the hostile tone.

I know that given the fact that I have started to expand my writing into the realm of ebooks, it is only going to be a matter of time before the information police start to call me a crook, a conman, and ignorant flaming troll.

Therefore, I have decided to beat the rush and just issue some disclosure statements as fair warning that you should only be listening to their opinions about what is and what is not Golden Dawn. Yes, I am hostile---after all, I have seen what they say about other writers that I agree (partially) with and I do not like having to undermine my own authority just because someone cries that they and theirs is being flamed every time someone disagrees with them and their official version of what Golden Dawn is.

After the current round of disclosures, I may never issue anothe disclosure statement (outside of monetary involvement of product and service reviews) ever again.

I would love to think that I am judging the Golden Dawn information police wrong; but after watching them over the past couple of years, I know that they are going to come for me next. I have a choice between issuing a few hostile disclosure statements and getting back to work, or dropping out of the business of talking and writing about the Golden Dawn completely. Given the fact that I will not do the latter, I have to do the former.

Ye has been warned.

Misrepresentations and mislabels

2011-12-30T14:47:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I wrote a post where I was talking about the differences between the various esoteric camps and groups. It was a "live drop" into a blank day of a cycle of posts that I had already prewritten and prescheduled to kick off my secular (business) new year. (Actually, the posts were probably more about avoiding the harder money making writing that I should have been doing instead.) And it was a perfect fit for what was already in the pipeline.

Now, during the course of the post, I used the label "European Golden Dawn"---in my defense, I borrowed the term from someone else (opps) and at the time of writing the post, it matched how I was thinking. As was pointed out to me, European Golden Dawn is a mislabel. It lumps everyone in Europe into the same camp (opps). I also learned that I misrepresented the beliefs of at least one of the parties involved (opps).

Well, let me let you onto a little secret---I sometimes write comedy, and all professional comedians are professional liars. We bend the truth for the sake of a good joke. Or in my case, I bend the truth for the sake of an interesting blog post. My regular readers know this. I don't need to tell them that I am a trickster. My regular readers have read dozens of posts where I am busy poking fun and scorn on the parts of the system that I am struggling to make sense of. For me, the politics and bickering between the various esoteric factions is nothing more than one large farce.

The Golden Dawn lodge that brought me into the system labeled themselves, "Independent and Irregular." Call it truth in advertising. All Golden Dawn groups are Independent and Irregular once you step out of their group and start to look at them from the viewpoint of other groups. Pretend that you completely agree with any particular party and then look around at the other Golden Dawn groups---everyone suddenly looks Independent (for not obeying the Big Giant Head) and Irregular (for not believing in the absolute truth that the Big Giant Head teaches). And I do not care who you decide to presume is the Big Giant Head---the result is the same: everyone outside of their select group is a bunch of lunatics.

This is one of the dangers of our current political system in the Golden Dawn system. One can easily fall into the trap of only XYZ is right, and everyone else is wrong. One can also easily fall into using the labels that XYZ is using for the various other camps. It is easy to start to believe that your set of ideas are the only proper and true way of thinking and that everyone who disagrees is nothing more than a flaming troll. And worse of all, some of the Big Giant Heads encourage you to believe exactly this.

Another trap that you can fall into is to believe the misrepresentations that Big Giant Heads put forth about other groups. I was surprised that anyone took my misrepresentations of the the European Order seriously. (Yes, I could be a Big Giant Head---why not?!) Now, there is a grain of truth in what I said, but I took it to the extreme. The trick is to figure out what I actually thought was true before I carried it out to the extreme. (Of course, once you figure that out, you may not like what you see going on---which is why jesters were so important in the Middle Ages---please remember that you are not allowed to kill the comedian when he tells the truth.)

A nasty truth about esoteric groups is that unless you are a member of them, you don't know what is actually going on in them. And if they practicing an information embargo, it is even worse. Think about it---outside of one, two, maybe three of the top people, no one know everything about a group's purposes. There is always the posssibility of there being an ugly surprise waiting in the wings.

For instance, ignore what I said about the European Order's eventual goals. Look at what they said instead, and what they have done over the last thirteen/fourteen years (I was counting on my fingers here), and ask yourself "Why did they do and say these things?" And presume that Griffin (considering that he is their top level person) has really made contact with the Third Order just like he claims. Does Griffin really know why the European Third Order has contacted him? And what is their reason for wanting to bring Golden Dawn, an Order they abandoned, back into the fold?

If you can look at those words and actions, perhaps while believing in the Third Order contact, and not feel a touch of paranoia, then perhaps you are a better person than I am. Then again, my father had Italian friends while I was growing up; I can't help being paranoid. (Please leave your comments about my misrepresentations and mislabels of Italians in the comment section.) My goal here is not to tell you the truth; it is to make you think for two seconds about the dryrot that is weakening the entire Golden Dawn community. After looking at Griffin and his Order's action, look at all the other Orders and leaders. In the end, can you trust anyone?

Please bear in mind, you can belong to an Order without fully believing in its leader and without fully supporting that group's actions. It is how most rational people survive inside the esoteric Orders. It is how I have survived, and continue to survive---but then again, I am just a beacon of rationality, ain't I?

Are flame wars good for business? (Blog Advice)

2011-12-29T14:36:00.000-07:00

My superpower is pissing people off. Seriously.

One of the things that you see quite a few new bloggers do is to attempt to please everyone. There is a problem with this approach---you tend to end up with a vanilla blog that no one reads (not even your own mother). Awhile back, I started to read blogs written by pro-bloggers (bloggers who were making a living by blogging). And all the pro-bloggers seem to think that you cannot have a successful money-making blog without upsetting the occasional reader.

This opinion made me reconsider the recent policy by some to shut up anyone whose opinion upsets someone else. What if avoiding the flames is actually harmful to business?

(By "business," I mean getting eyeballs to your blog.)

Looking around at the various Golden Dawn blogs that I am aware of, I was stuck by the pageviews of the blogs that shouted flame war the most, allowing the most trollish comments through---the more irate the comments, the more views they exhibited.

Now, I will admit I was not scientific in my approach; I was using the numbers from the widgets that bloggers willingly displayed. I am not sure if the numbers can be gamed or not. What I do know is that if the numbers are even half-right, these people who are fanning the flames and allowing trolls to post are getting a lot more pageviews than I am.

And over the last few years, I have watched two Orders basically run campaigns where they claimed that others were attacking them. It reminded me of the tactics that various bad governments used to control the minds of their population. I don't foresee either group changing their tactic any time in the near future. Obviously, instilling the fear of others into their membership is good for their business.

Now, I am still not completely sure that flame wars are good for business, nor am I sure if they are bad for business. But I do know one thing for sure. Trying to avoid a flame war is bad for my business. Let me explain.

Over the last year, there have been several times that I had a really good blog idea...then I would realize that it would upset someone, and I would not write the post. That is right: the fear of causing flame war prevented good blog posts from being written. It is the French method of losing wars---surrender before the fighting begins. (Leave your rage about my bad attempts at humor in the comment section.) Basically by allowing the internet fire department to control my writing, I went silent which just gives the victory away to anyone who is willing to buck the trend.

Look around the Golden Dawn blogosphere. What do you see? A lot of silent blogs. I suspect that it is because no one wants to post for fear of causing a flame war. I am not sure that it is good for business. I know that it is hurting my own business. Is it hurting yours?

When is it flamewar?

2011-12-28T14:09:00.000-07:00

One of the things that I have been debating lately is where is the line between discourse and flame war in the Golden Dawn community. It has became an obsession as the beginning of the year approaches and I am writing out the disclosure statements that start to go live after the first of the year.

And the conclusion I come to presents a sticky wicket for me.

As far as I have been able to determine from the outcries of the internet police is that if someone does not agree absolutely with your opinion, your lesson plan, your Grade system, and your version of Golden Dawn history, then it is flame war. Even with something like a book review, unless you agree completely with the other person's opinion, then you open yourself up to being accused of being a member of the flame war trolls tenth division.

If you know me, you immediately see my problem. I don't agree a hundred percent with anyone's opinion. The short list of people that I disagree with (to a lesser or greater extent) includes Pat Zalewski, Nick Farrell, Chic Cicero, Steve Nicohols, Tony Deluce, Sam Robinson, Tomas Stacewicz, David Cherubim, Aaron Leitch, Robert Zink, and David Griffin. And the list goes on and on. (If I did not mention you, it is simply because I do not want to spend days typing out the names of every known member of the Golden Dawn community.) Some of these people I consider friends---others I would never even remotely consider having a drink with.

Basically, I do not agree a hundred percent with anyone's opinions. But that is where the line in the sand has been drawn: if you do not agree a hundred percent with someone, then you are guilty of being in a blood feud with them. Therefore by the rules being shouted the loudest, I am at war with the entire Golden Dawn community, even the people that I consider my friends.

There is a few dangers with this strict hundred percent agreement standard.

For one, it kills the diversity of the tradition. If everyone must agree with everyone else all the time, then you have no difference of opinion and you can have no discourse. The community will just become a fan club for whoever managed to get the others to agree with them. Of course, this is exactly what I suspect some people want---they want to be the only game, the only true Golden Dawn authority on the block.

It also leads to the possibility of abuse, monetary and emotional, of the entire Golden Dawn community. One of the worst things that could happen to the Golden Dawn is for a single person to corner the entire market---they would be free to abuse the members of the community any way they want simply because there would be no other options. And worse, if you disagree with the abuse, you are the one that is guilty, not them.

And it has already led to a double standard being applied to the various fora and blogs. Comments bad-mouthing other parties are let through despite the fact that if such comments were said elsewhere about the moderator, they would be labeled flame war attacks. Basically, you can say anything you want about other people in the Golden Dawn community, provided that you agree with the moderator of the online community you are posting to.

The cries of flamewar has split the Golden Dawn community is several camps, and honestly I don't think that the wounds will ever heal.

Now, I will admit that is some flaming going on in the Golden Dawn community. There are some things being said that I look at and realize are nothing more than "attack ads." Interestingly enourgh, the replies of the internet police are no better; in fact, sometimes their replies are actually worse. I think that we should have some concern about the possibilities of flame wars being conducted, but I think that it is an error to insist on a hundred percent agreement standard.

Growing abyss between schools of thought

2011-12-27T15:46:00.000-07:00

One of the trends that I noticed over the past year is the growing abyss between various schools of thought. In US politics, the gap has grown so wide that I foresee nothing but badness occuring in the upcoming Presidental election (it is the rich and the poor brainwashed by the rich vs. the poor). In paganism, there is growing gap between those building on the past and those building on the concept that it is a newly invented religion. In Wicca, the gap between the secret coven members and the public anything goes witchcraft continues to widen.

What all these situations have in common is that the differences of opinion, perhaps the very bedrock of ideas that the schools of thought are built upon,are creating differences in the language being used so wide that clear communication is being blocked. This communication gap may or may not being
intentional.

This type of situation is also occuring in Golden Dawn. For years, we have suffered from the difference between the self-initiates and the classically trained and initiated Temple (lodge) members. Golden Dawn has always lost a certain number of people to the fact that active Golden Dawn lodges are hard to find. The couple of work-arounds that has been developed to address the problem are highly questioned in a few quarters.

And for several years, we have seen the growing abyss between Robert Zink and certain members of his Order. This spring, it finally broke the EOGD into two camps; and earlier this month, it became three camps. It looked like a repeat of the Revolt of the Adepts for awhile there.

Then we have the latest and greatest difference of opinion to develop in the Golden Dawn community. There has been a growing abyss growing between the European school of Golden Dawn and those schools that originated elsewhere in the world.

The primary issue is whether or not to accept the existence of an European Third Order---acceptance of such implies that you are willing to follow their public Head and spokesperson, are willing to increase your level of secrecy to the point where all published material are no longer considered valid (including the Mathers material) and all the rituals and lessons have been rewritten to re-install absolute secrecy, and are willing to be expelled if one of your fellow lodge members breaks their secrecy oath. Acceptance also implies that all modern developments of the Golden Dawn system (aka any that developed after the Cipher Manuscript) will someday be abandoned.

Ok, maybe it is not that severe...but given the fact that no one (outside of a couple of selected spokepeople) are able to talk about what is going on in that camp---well, one can only imagine what is really going on.

What one does not need to imagine is the lack of communication between the two schools. For the person who does not keep track of such things, here is the scorecard: The European school insists that all modern developments (before 1888) of Golden Dawn are wrong (including Mathers) and that Golden Dawn needs to be restructured according to the precepts of the original parent organization---all statements of the modern school are labeled flame attacks. The modern school insists that the original parent organization does not exist and has never existed, and that it is a shell game to conceal who is really the Head of the European school---furthermore, the modern school is slightly upset that all new developments must generally be abandoned to return the system to its 17th century glory.

Ok, maybe it is not that severe...but both sides refuse to communicate with the other party until they agree to play by their rules.

Of course, this scorecard summary ignores those of us who believe that the Golden Dawn developed from an earlier system, but that contact with Third Order was broken for so long that the modern Golden Dawn does not have to answer to the European Third Order---in other words, we have been separate systems for a long time and no longer have much in common. To reunite the two schools means destorying one of them---someone has to lose in order for there to be a reunification.

Now, the big question is do I foresee this abyss of difference, and the lack of communication between the schools, going away any time soon? No. In fact, at the point of time, I foresee the pagans, the Wiccans (and witches), and the American political system healing their differences long before the European and global Golden Dawn communities heal theirs.

One Pot Witchery Stone Soup (ebook review)

2011-12-26T13:30:00.000-07:00

ebook review: One Pot Witchery Stone Soup---the Hidden Grimoire of the Kitchen Hedge Witch (Barbara Ann Daca).

A few years ago, I spent a lot of time hanging out at Herbs and Arts, one of the occult shops here in Denver. At the time, Morning Glory was running the shop. There were a lot of evening classes held there during this time period, plus several that happened on the weekends. I took several classes from Morning Glory; I also took a class from Cassandra, a kitchen witch.

One of the relics (it is a relic to me) that resulted from this time in my magical training was a notebook that had the stray lines of ritual, wise sayings, cooking notes, and herbal recipes in it. And One Pot Witchery Stone Soup reminds me of that old notebook of mine.

One Pot Witchery Stone Soup is one part cook book (there are a couple of recipes I need to try), one part spell book (there are a couple of spells I need to try), and one part collection of lore and wise witch sayings (dressing in red for your weddings ensures faithfulness in bed---I did not know that, but I do like the idea now that I do).

My only issue with this ebook is the formating (Kindle version). It has all the earmarks of the print copy file being used for the ebook. There are places that sections are muddled together, and there are a couple of places where I am sure a different font was used and stripped out when it was converted to ebook form (it is either that or those who taught me certain things were using a different script style---if you know it, you will spot it). The author might have been better off creating a clean file for the ebook creation process. But let's be honest, all writers working in the ebook trade, including myself, are experiencing a learning curve on the proper ways to format ebooks. The information in the ebook far outweighs the formating issues.

I give this book four out of five pentacles.

[Disclosure notice: this ebook review was based on a free ebook copy being given out by the author for promotional purposes.]

And if you would like a copy of this ebook, the author is giving away free copies until December 30, 2011 on Amazon.

(Copying from the author's Facebook page posting)

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12 Days of Christmas Kitties Bonus Kitty 5

2011-12-25T19:00:00.000-07:00

My cat's favorite Christmas carol.

This is the Christmas Kitty that caused me to inflict a bunch of funny cat pictures on you this holiday season. It reminds me so much of one of the cats that I own---or does he own me? This morning, my wife gave him a new toy and within a couple of hours, he had destoryed it. I am quite sure that if we got a Xmas tree that he would remove most of the ornaments before the day was done. Nevertheless, I do love my wild rescue cat. And with this picture, we close out another holiday season---next on the Gleamings from the Golden Dawn is a series of posts that will be labeled annoying and trollish. Ye have been warned.

12 Days of Christmas Kiities Bonus Doggie

2011-12-25T17:30:00.000-07:00

Yes, it is a Christmas doggie.

Occasionally, I do find a cute picture of a dog or puppy. In tribute of Anubis, I present you with a Christmas doggy.

12 Days of Christmas Kiities Bonus Kitty 4

2011-12-25T16:30:00.000-07:00

Witch kitty got Santa voudoun doll.

One of the things that amuse me as a pagan is the number of Santa figurines, pictures, and toys there are available for sale. If each one was an icon, Santa would be a pretty powerful Saint. I think it is readily apparent what we really worship in this country.

12 Days of Christmas Kitties Bonus Kitty 3

2011-12-25T14:30:00.000-07:00

It is the tin foil hat that causes the crazy.

A Xmas ritual in many pet owners' homes is the annual is the "let's put a bow" on the cat. This is a ritual that tends to make most cats think that their owners are crazy. And they may be right.

12 Days of Christmas Kitties Bonus Kitty 2

2011-12-25T13:12:00.002-07:00

Cats meet window shades and make Santa sad.

I presume that many cats out there did not get all they dreamed of from Santa. Of course, one wonders if Santa is having as hard time as the rest of us in the distressed global economy, or if the cats were merely bad kitties. Just for the record, it is wrong to blame the lack of Xmas presents on bad behavior when it is actually the lack of money. Don't tramatize your cat's ego just to disguise the fact that Santa's budget is scrapping the bottom of the barrrel.

Merry Mithras Day or Christmas or Yule or whatever!

2011-12-25T00:30:00.000-07:00

Happy holidays to all---no matter what your holiday or religion.

(Please remember that I am a non-Christian, aka evil Wiccan, who believes that Jesus was a great man, but not necessarily the Messiah and Savior; furthermore, I believe that he was born during another time of the year.)

12 Days of Christmas Kitties Bonus Kitty 1

2011-12-24T16:59:00.000-07:00

Santa Claws is coming.

Yes, there are bonus Christmas kitties to be shared with you---which just proves that the internet exists merely to share cat photos. For the record, I would insist on doing a second round of Christmas kittes because technically, the twelve days of Christmas is actually the twelve days following Christmas (the things one learns when they start hanging out with medievalists).

12 Days of Christmas Kitties Day 12

2011-12-24T00:30:00.000-07:00

Hear that? Santa is coming to town.

Tonight is the night. Santa is coming to give presents to all the good kitties and maybe some of the bad ones too. I know my cats will be waiting for him. They are hoping for fresh shrimp and catnip.

12 Days of Christmas Kitties Day 11

2011-12-23T01:59:00.000-07:00

Is your kitty on Santa's naughty list?

I am sure that one of my cats is on Santa's naughty list...perhaps even permanently. No names mentioned, Mr. Everything Looks Like a Cat Toy---including jewelry, hair ties, computer cables---not only does everything look like a cat toy; he can also pull apart actual cat toys apart in a matter of minutes. I guess I cannot blame him; he is one of the rescue cats. As I type this entry, he is helping himself to the packing peanuts and batting them all over the floor---my wife is not going to be pleased with the mess that he is making. And yes, I am also on Santa's naughty list because watching him do this amuses me.

(And for the curious, this is my 666th post on this blog...and it is about one of my cats---go figure.)

2012 Doomsday Disclosure Notice

2011-12-22T12:30:00.000-07:00

Just a heads-up to everyone that I am jumping on the 2012 doomsday wagon. As of yesterday, you had just one year left to live. Bwahahahaha! Over the next year, I will be reminding you of your decreasing time left.

It is not that I actually believe that the end of the world is coming on December 21, 2012; it is that jumping on the bandwagon allows me to write a series of survival posts. I mean how else would I justify writing about MREs? helpful skills? other great doomsdays? It is either hop on the bandwagon or completely ignore these juicy topics.

And we all know that I am not going to be the only blogger doing so. It is just that I will not be calling it a Shift or painting it with any pixie dust. After all, I believe that when doomsday happens, we will have failed to see the asteriod with our name on it. Instant death, no warning, that's a comforting thought, isn't it?

12 Days of Christmas Kitties Day 10

2011-12-22T00:30:00.001-07:00

Secret Chief attacks false Santa.

I love pictures of cats sitting on Santa's lap. Of course, being cats, occasionally you see a picture of a Christmas Kitty trying to take out the eyes of the evil Santa. Kitties know where their presents come from; their mommies and daddies buy their toys and treats at Petsmart---Santa is just trying to take the credit for someone else's work.

Shocking truth of the Shroud of Frater RC

2011-12-21T18:40:00.002-07:00

[Thanks to Ananael for calling my attention to the latest research on the Shroud of Turin; you can go to his blog Augoeides to read his reaction to the research.]

Full length negatives of the Shroud of Turin.

The latest research on the subject of the Shroud of Turin reveals that the image could have been made by a flash of ultraviolet light. Of course, this leaves two problems for those who believe that the Shroud of Turin is the shroud that Jesus Christ was buried in: One, where did Jesus find a ultraviolent laser in his time period; and two, why does the carbon dating of the shroud place the Shroud's origin between 1260 and 1390?

Being the mad occultist I am, I think I have a solution; but the Christians are not going to like it. I don't think that the Shroud of Turin is actually the burial cloth of Jesus Christ. Instead, I propose it is the burial cloth of the founder of the Rosicrucian movement, the burial cloth of Frater RC himself.

My theory has the benefit of bringing the Shroud into a myth that uses temporal dates much closer to the carbon dating results. Plus my theory has the additional benefit of explaining how the lasering of the cloth occurred---quite simply, when Frater RC died and assumed his rightful place in the Rosicrucian hierarchy as a solar being, his corpse emitted a flash of ultraviolet light which imprinted his image onto the burial cloth.

Therefore, the Italian scientific community has proved evidence that not only was Frater RC a real person, they have also provided proof that ascension into the solar body is possible. Sounds like a win-win to me...unless you are a Christian that believes the myth that Jesus was buried in the Shroud of Turin.

Shroud of Turin before its 2002 restoration.

Blessed Solistice

2011-12-21T13:27:00.000-07:00

It is the solistice ritual of the world famous Cat Henge.

Tonight is Winter Solistice here in (oh my god, it is freaking cold out there) Colorado. So tonight will be the longest night of the year (beware of creatures that only come out at night), and tomorrow the days will start getting longer. I know that there are some people who like to go "drumming up the sun" at Red Rocks, but I prefer to sit on the couch inside the nice warm house (some Viking I make, right?). Then again, it is not a crime---my cat prefers me to stay inside the house. So cuddle up with your loved ones, the dogs and cats (and your human family if the pets let you), and know that the days are going to start getting longer again...unless you live in the Southern Hemisphere, in which case, prepare for Fall and Winter coming.

The solistice (oh who are we kidding?! everyday) ritual of warming up the couch.

12 Days of Christmas Kitties Day 9

2011-12-21T00:30:00.000-07:00

Ho Ho Ho says Christmas Kitty.

This cat just looks full of Christmas spirit, doesn't he? I am just amazed at the number of people who succeed in getting their cats dressed up for Christmas. And all this time I thought that the holiday costumes at Petsmart was only for the humans.

Bon Jovi is a zombie (Blog Advice for Occultists)

2011-12-20T13:52:00.000-07:00

It worries me that Jon Bon Jovi thinks New Jersey looks like heaven.

One of the job skills you must develop as a Golden Dawn newshound and occult blogger is the ability to separate real news from the lies and hoaxes. Bloggers on the occult scene work in an envirnoment that can best be described as a sewer with the bits that float to the top being...well, you get the idea.

As an example of how to separate real news from the truth, consider the news that Jon Bon Jovi is dead. Yesterday, social media was awash with the news that Bon Jovi was dead...of something.

I generally ignored the news. I didn't believe it because I did not see something that would make me believe it---reports and links to sites that I trust. As long as it is just rumor, then I do not place much stock in it.

And I saw nothing on the ten o'clock news about it last night either. I consider that a red flag. Going back to Facebook, I noticed that the official Bon Jovi fanpage had posted a picture of Bon Jovi holding up a handwritten sign with the date and time. The ghost of Bon Jovi also wrote that heaven looks a lot like New Jersey---I resisted the urge to make a joke about New Jersey.

Of course, some people thought it was a hoax---the picture of Bon Jovi that is. Their proof? A blog called the dailynewbloginternational. A blog that was started yesterday, has just four posts, including the Hello World prompt that WordPress puts on your newly open blog (it can be removed if you care to do so) and two about Megan Fox being the 14th hottest woman in the world complete with shameful incidents and a case of HIV.

Surely this blog is a better source than the Washington Post which posted an article this morning that includes the fact that Bon Jovi played a benefit concert last night.

Ahh, lets cut the difference and presume that Jon Bon Jovi is dead and still walking around. So that gives us the possibility of him being a zombie (my personal favorite), a vampire, a Cyclon, a clone, or someone with a doppelganger or maybe a secret twin.

The story of his death and rebirth (Bon Jovi is beginning to sound like Jesus, isn't he?) just illustrates one of the big hazards of being a blogger focused on the occult. The occult scene is full of accusations that various people are criminals, frauds, con-artists, sex-perverts, drug-users, delusional, crazy, morons, and generally untrustworthy. These claims are always proclaimed by people who claim to know the truth.

You have to figure out who you trust and who you don't. For instance, I never trust a brand-new blog shouting the latest shocking truth about some occult leader being a crook. Nor do I trust anyone who shows up on the forums and starts their posting history by revealing the fact that they know someone is really a drug dealer.

I will admit that my personal method of weighing the truth is not suitable to everyone. I develop relationships with people that I know are in the occult, and over the space of time I watch them. If they make a habit of lying to people and bad-mouthing people on a regular basis, I don't trust them. I watch what information that they are willing to share. I perform exit interviews when they leave their respective Orders. I compare what various people are saying.

In other words, I treat the fora and blogosphere as if I was an old style journalist. Or possibily an intelligence officer. Or law enforcement agent. Or someone who worked with a lot of blinded occult sources.

I also look at the possible motives for people to say what they are claiming. Are they trying to undermine a rival? Are they just begging for attention? Are they trying to prove that they are the one and only person who knows the truth? And does their story match what my other sources are telling me?

Remember that as a blogger writing about the occult and the people who dabble in it is much like working in a sewer. Don't trust what floats to the top. After all, trolls and flamers are fond of hanging out in the bathroom writing lies on the walls.

12 Days of Christmas Kitties Day 8

2011-12-20T00:14:00.001-07:00

The Xmas tree had to die, says laser cat.

This is as good as a reason for a Christmas tree massacre as any other, isn't it? And I will admit that having been taunted, I occasionally feel like striking back myself. Maybe it was a French tree.

Working on some future blog posts

2011-12-19T13:05:00.000-07:00

The key to Christmas victory is the element of surprise.

While many of my readers would be quite happy with 365 cat pictures a year, other readers would actually like to see some blog posts about Golden Dawn---hehe, just goes to show my audience for this Golden Dawn blog is not super-focused---it is an organic audience.

For those who would like more Golden Dawn related stuff, I am working on a few Golden Dawn entries. Well, struggling with a few Golden Dawn entries. Well, being defeated by the entries because they are threatening to call the blog anti-flame police after me.

One of which is an update to the numerous disclosure statements that are on this blog. No matter how I write it, you can hear the resentment that I feel about having to state the obvious just so I am not accused of being a flaming troll. Not that disclosure statements actually help, they just move the target to other beliefs that I have about Golden Dawn which I am unaware are evil ideas.

The reason that I have to issue yet-another-damn-I-am-an-individual-not-a-loyal-follower disclosure statement is that I am also working on a post that concerns itself with the Cipher Manuscript. Yes, that is dangerous ground, especially when combined with my beliefs.

I am also working on a couple of ebooks: one Golden Dawn related, the other Abramelin related. Some of the material from these future offerings may make their way onto this blog. Of course, both of these ebooks will require me to issue disclosure statements shouting that I am not an expert and that you really should only listen to approved sources.

The underming of my own authority is what annoys me the most about having to write disclosure statements. Legally, I am not required to write any disclosure statements outside of the ones that are tacked onto the end of product and service reviews, and those merely need to say whether I received any money, product or service for the review. But some people got it into their head that every statement that does not agree with their version of Golden Dawn needs to be accompanied by a statement that undermines one's authority, and states that they are the one and only true Golden Dawn. Or at least, it feels that way. The problem with trying to play fair is that it automatically puts you into a losing position, especially when the other players are cheating. Of course, this whole paragraph needs a disclosure statement that says that I am annoyed and not talking about anyone who has appointed themselves the Golden Dawn blog police.

Of course, I should disclose the fact that someday I am going to get so sick and tired of doing disclosure statements that undermine my position that I am going to quit doing them and allow the chips fall where they may. At that point, I might venture what I really think is going on in the Golden Dawn community---and no one is going to like that. Let's hope that it does not come to that...because I learned how to be a flaming troll from the best of them.

Here is looking forward to the New Year---remember I have interests outside of funny cat photos. And consider keeping that pair of lead-lined long johns that your grandmother just gave you; they might be needed.

12 Days of Christmas Kitties Day 7

2011-12-19T00:30:00.000-07:00

Yes, cats would like to have homes for Christmas.

A warm home, a kind human, a clean litter box, and lots to eat is on the wish list of the cats that are homeless. Remember to do your part and get your pets fixed---there are enourgh homeless animals out there already. Cats who get fixed live longer and healthier lives. (The same goes for dogs.)

12 Days of Christmas Kitties Day 6

2011-12-18T00:30:00.000-07:00

You can meet a Secret Chief in disguise at work.

Is it wrong to dress the cat up as Santa Claus and send him to work to catch slackers and loafers? Probably. I bet someone is getting a hairball in their stocking for Xmas.

12 Days of Christmas Kitties Day 5

2011-12-17T00:30:00.000-07:00

Maybe kitty is bad because he does not like what you got him.

If you tell a cat that it is a "nice kitty" several million times that merely brainwashes you into thinking that it is a good cat---it does absolutely nothing to change the cat's actual nature.

Slow GD News week isnt it?

2011-12-16T22:34:00.001-07:00

I was worried that something interesting might happen in the Golden Dawn blogosphere while I was busy writing all the papers that I had to do for this semester's finals. Turns out that was a needless fear--so far, I have only came across an "April's Fool post" and a rerun. Obviously, it has been a slow news week for Golden Dawn. So, I guess I will just have to give you a bonus Christmas kitty---thank the lack of flames for all the Xmas Cats you are getting.

What is such a nice cat doing with such a creepy guy?

Remember to give a shout out in the comment section if you are a fan of the show.

12 Days of Christmas Kitties Day 4

2011-12-16T00:30:00.000-07:00

Another cat's Christmas wish list.

Christmas is for the birds--yummy, tasty birds. My cats would like theirs cooked in BBQ sauce.

12 Days of Christmas Kitties Day 3

2011-12-15T00:30:00.000-07:00

The annual truth telling ritual of Christmas?

This Christmas Kitty looks slightly disgrunted. Don't blame him--I am not quite sure what the costume is supposed to represent. Woe be to the poor Christmas tree that he takes his frustrations out on.

12 Days of Christmas Kitties Day 2

2011-12-14T00:30:00.000-07:00

A favorite Christmas song for my cat.

A Christmas cat dressed as a reindeer and singing a Christmas carol, what could be more festival?

12 days of Christmas Kitties Day 1

2011-12-13T00:30:00.000-07:00

Catnip is on my cat's Christmas list also.

Yes, it is that time of year again---that time of year that we give thanks for all the Christmas themed cat photos out there.

We are not warring against Christmas

2011-12-10T18:08:00.001-07:00

As most of my regular readers know, I am not a Christian. I am a tree hugging Wiccan, who has one foot in the Norse camp and one foot in the Egyptian camp. I have studied some Christian and Jewish symbology through my membership in Golden Dawn, but I have no desire to change my religion. This background makes watching certain trends interesting---perhaps in the ancient Chinese curse sense.

One of the big trends at the moment is the idea that there is a war against Christianity and all its aspects in the United States. This includes Christmas. And supposely, the pagans are the ones waging it and are being led by President Obama.

It is that last part that you need to play attention to, for it is what the whole trend is really about.

Politicans in their infinite wisdom, having decided that Obama is the cause of all of society's ills, and they want the man out of office. And the best way to do this is to convince you that he and his evil minions are waging a war against the Christian religion. The reason that this is effective tactic is because the majority of the population of the United States is Christian (80 percent).

Religions in America.

Please note that my religion is not even large enourgh to show up on the piechart.

Therefore, if you are after the soul of the voter, the best way to do it is to claim the the evil twenty other percent of the population is guilty of trying to change the United States into Babylon. Of course, you must be kept ignorant of certain truths in order for the politicians, who have your best interest and not the big business in mind.

For instance, you must remain unaware that the United States was not meant to be a Christian country---the Founding Fathers were concerned about what happens when a state religion is implimented, and they remembered how the English King had treated them. Therefore, you are allowed to be any religion you want to be---just like I am.

You also must remain ignorant of the fact that Jesus' birthdate is not recorded in the Bible. The decision to make it December 25th was actually a Catholic decision; it was about converting the worshippers of Mithras, a Roman sun god, to Christianity. Christmas and its customs actually has nothing to do with Jesus.

You must remain ignorant of the fact that the pagans merely would like to be able to acknowledge their own holiday, a holiday that was stolen from them. It is not really a war---we merely want to wish you a happy holiday without having to claim Christ as our Savior.

So please forgive me when I wish you a Happy Holiday without acknowledging your god.

Are your book reviewers clones?

2011-12-07T01:45:00.001-07:00

Given the few books that come out in my chosen field, I tend to check out the new ones as soon as they become available...or at least, I check out their sales page immediately; even through at the moment, I have no money to buy books. Nevertheless, I do find some interesting reading.

Like tonight, I checked out the Amazon page for a book that just came out---no name mentioned---and noticed that it had already gotten four five-star reviews. Actually, there was only four reviews all together. And they were glowing reviews. And all dated December 6th. Get the picture?

Now, as a scholar and a writer, I found myself curious about what other books these people were buying. After all, maybe I can sell them something. Upon looking at the other reviews that they have done, I rapidly realized that I will not be selling these readers any books. I had gotten the picture.

Each of them had brought a baby clothing item, a baseball book, and this new occult book. By the way, the baseball book is the exact same book. And these are the only three reviews that these four people have done. Get the picture?

So this book is selling to a very specific audience, one who has a new baby, only read baseball books written by a fan of the Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy, and who thinks this new occult book is the bees' knees. Get the picture?

I get the picture. If the writer who wrote the book is reading this, I would like to inform you that your audience consists of clones. I am not sure how big that audience is...but good for you for cornering that market. As for your book, not being a clone and having a long list of books that I cannot afford to buy already...well, I think I will take a pass on this one. After all, I am not a cloned baseball loving sheep baby-making machine. I hope that you get the picture.

(And if one of my readers have spotted the book that I am talking about and would like to propose a different theory, please feel free to leave it in the comment section. Please remember that I suspect that this writer will be googling themselves to see what type of press they are getting---bear that in mind before naming the author or the book. I am not sure that we want to give buzz to a book that only clones are reading.)

How to survive the 2012 doomsday

2011-12-05T12:49:00.001-07:00

Here is a taste of something amusing that I read today---sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it?

Begin quote:

The ancient Mayans predicted the world as we know it will end on December 21st 2012.
What will you do about it? How will you protect your loved ones?

BE A 2012 SURVIVOR!

Wearing the Invisible Mystic Mayan Power Cloak™ gives you guaranteed immunity from the 2012 apocalypse.

Survive the Apocalypse in style!
Raise your Spiritual Vibration!
Begin an Exciting New Life!
Master the Power of the Ancients!
Harness Unlimited Love, Money & Power!
Marvel at the Anti-fungal, Anti-bacterial fabric that makes bathing & deodorant use obsolete!
Enjoy Instantaneous Enlightenment!

End quote.

Hehe. There is more; but I figure that if you want to read the rest of it (and donate some money to support the second best cause of them all---supporting a straving artist), then you can slip over to the website that are "selling" this marvel of doomsday preparedness.

Warning: The following link leads to a site that shows the naked shocking truth about what one needs to do in order to survive the 2012 end of the world---never say that I did not warn you. Don't let your annoying boss or co-workers see this. Remember that the most important part of a survival plan is secrecy...and we really do not want certain politicans and CEOs to survive (you are aware that annoying people talk to one another?!).

Learn more about the amazing powers of the Invisible Mystic Mayan Power Cloak---you know that you want to. [Link is probably not safe for work.]

Ignorance or meddling

2011-12-04T13:29:00.001-07:00

Over the last couple of days, I have noticed an upswing in amount of attention paid to the problem with groups being ignorant of the basics. Now, there is always a certain amount of concern surrounding this issue---it is one of those issues that is always present---the waxing and waning of attention paid to it is cyclic.

There are three things related to this I would like to address.

Concerning the Golden Dawn Knowledge Lectures: Someone pointed out that the Golden Dawn Knowledge Lectures seemed to be rather sparse. They are. The commentor felt that they should be more fully explained and just a list to memorize. They are right.

One of the problems with the Knowledge Lectures as we have them is that they are merely the list of what you need to know to pass the most basic test for advancement. What is missing is the oral (or written) lectures that the lodge member should be exposed to. It is things like this that contribute to people having a high Grade and having no idea what they are talking about.

Concerning how much concern we should have when we realize a group is being ran by someone ignorant: One of my friends on Facebook pointed out that many Wiccan and pagan circles are being ran by people ignorant of the basics---a problem that never *wink* occurs in Golden Dawn *chokes a little* Orders. A group being ran by someone ignorant of the basics does not alarm me as much as the unwillingness to admit ignorance.

I know a lot of people do not trust me because I use the following sentences: "This is my answer based on my current knowledge and understanding" and "I reserve the right to change my mind, and the answer I am giving, based on further thought and experience." The people who associate distrust with these sentences are looking for the ONE and ONLY CORRECT ANSWER---something that I have serious doubts actually exist.

I realize that our myths state that only Masters should be in charge and apprentices should be just students, but the truth is that Masters are still just students with added responsibilities.

Concerning the rewriting of Golden Dawn rituals: Yes, I am guilty of rewriting sections of the Golden Dawn rituals. I consider all the versions that we have to be just "working drafts." It is one of reasons that I shrug my shoulders whenever someone publishes a version of the rituals--I figure that any set of rituals that have been used for more than a decade is probably in need of a tune-up.

For instance, I added an unauthorized "third part" to the Zelator ritual to address the fact that the a section of the Golden Dawn community was now starting the study of geomancy in Zelator. And what I learned was that this third section had more oomph and flow than the official parts of the ritual did. This in turn is going to lead to a reworking of the rest of the Zelator ritual.

This will lead people to pointing out that I am meddling in things that I do not fully understand---that only an Adept Extemptus...or a Magister Templi...or an Ipsissimus has the knowledge and authority to change the scripts of the rituals. My answer to this is that I don't care that I am not of the proper Grade according to your understanding of the system...and that I am not even sure that we are working in the same system to begin with. I belong to a system that changes with the time and the experience of those involved in it---what was true a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago, etc. is not exactly suitable for the modern student who is living in a different time and place than our ancestors did. If you think that the dawn of consciousness was the Golden Age, you need to move back into the caves with the bears.

Adopt a Secret Chief shocking dog and cat edition

2011-12-03T13:41:00.001-07:00

This post is for JC...hehe.

The other day, I came across a shocking revelation. And I forgot to bookmark where I found it. Sorry. But I do remember its main point.

It was an article talking about the number of homeless pets, and the fact that people really need to fix their pets. According to the article, in order to make sure that every dog and cat in the United States had a home, each individual (every man, woman and child) would have to own 3 cats and 1.5 dogs.

That means that my wife and I should own 6 cats and 3 dogs. My godfamily (two adults and a kid) needs to own 9 cats and 4.5 dogs. Obviously, this ignores the limits that the local law imposes.

And the point of the article was that when it comes time for a new pet, go to a shelter and adopt a homeless animal...and make sure that you get them fixed, so that they don't have any more babies.

The Secret Chiefs will bless you if you adopt them. And they will be much happier and healthy if you get them fixed.

Adopt a Secret Chief human edition

2011-12-02T15:38:00.001-07:00

JC made a comment about expecting this sets of posts (Adopt a Secret Chief) to be about adopting cats; and I so understand why they would expect that--heck it felt wrong to write what I did without mentioning cats. Nevertheless, there are times when you have to talk about the Secret Chiefs in their human form.
And this post is one of those times.

One of the recent things that has boiled out of the stew of the Golden Dawn fora and blogosphere lately is the idea that there are only two ways to think about the Secret Chiefs and their connection with Isis-Urania #3.

One way is that you believe that the Secret Chiefs are real, and that Mathers and Westcott had contact with them, and that the system is built from older material and the only way to gain a deeper understanding of the material is to gain access to the hidden Order that served as their Secret Chiefs. This school of thought insists (more or less) that any modern material and ideas about Golden Dawn are automatically wrong.

The other way of looking at the concept of the Secret Chiefs is that the Secret Chiefs were merely a lie told by Mathers and Westcott to disguise the fact that their Order was a completely brand new thing in a time period where the only "real" Orders were thought to be secretly hundred, if not thousands, of years old. Because no Secret Chiefs were involved in the creation of Golden Dawn, the school of thought reasons that there is no reason to seek out the Secret Chiefs and the odds are that anyone claiming to make contact with the Secret Chiefs is lying and running a scam.

Please note that this black and white description is actually a simplification; one needs a scorecard to figure out what some people actually believe. Which brings me to the point of this blog post.

There is a third school of thought concerning the Secret Chiefs. And that school of thought is that it does not matter either way whether the Secret Chiefs existed, was in contact with Mathers and Westcott or not, still exist or not...none of this matters.

Now there are several ways to end up in this particular school of thought, most of them accidential. You end up being driven into this school of thought---it is not like you wake up one morning and say, "I want to be a heretic and hated by both of the major Golden Dawn camps"---no you find yourself painted into a corner and discover that you agree with a litttle bit said by this side and little bit said by the other side, and that either side wants you to belong to their side.

In my case, there are three major reasons why I find myself in this outcast school of thought.

One, I have been asked to leave by every strict observance Order that I have ever been a member of. I have a habit of talking back to people; I tend to question the leadership of groups. Opps. With my track record, I am guaranteed to be banned by any Order that claims contact with the Secret Chiefs long before gaining access to anything that would make the additional trouble involved worthwhile. Therefore, it does not matter if an Order has contact with the Secret Chiefs or not, it is not like I am going to be a member long enourgh to benefit from such contact. I am the last person in the world that will ever have a (human) Secret Chief show up on my doorstep.

Two, I am in a situation where I do not have the resources to spare. Being a poor undergraduate (and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel is me actually applying for the grad program), I do not have the money, energy, or time to devote to any particular Order beyond my local lodge. For instance, an Order that emphasizes alchemy (to any significant extent) is not a good option for me at this time. I do not have the money to buy a decent alchemy lab setup, nor the room to use it, nor the time and energy necessary to pursue the work. Other subjects being emphasized also have the same problem, including any system where I would have to travel for instruction or initiation. This is one of those conditions that end up with one not caring if the Secret Chiefs are real or not; and furthermore, not caring if someone actually has contact with them.

Three, this is the worst of the lot and the one that automatically gets me loads of hate from both sides, I am working with very specialized sections of the tradition--unless the Secret Chiefs focus on these areas, they can't help me in the first place. For instance, one of the things I have read is that the Secret Chiefs did not approve of Mathers going hogwild with certain aspects of the system, and are busy rebuilding the system to what it was supposed to look like---these disapproved areas are exactly the areas that I am most interested in and the areas where no help will be forthcoming anyways. Given the fact that I do not have an interest in pre-1888 magic and initiation, it does not matter if I believe in the existence of the Secret Chiefs or not, they can't help me advance in my areas of interest. The areas I am interested in, the Secret Chiefs do not provide support for---then again, most of the other camp do not provide support for these areas either, hence the hate from both sides of the system.

(For the record, I believe that the instant that the Secret Chiefs cut support to an Order that the Secret Chiefs no longer have any rights in that Order and that Order never has to submit to the Secret Chiefs ever again. This is especially true when the system no longer confirms to their original vision. It is opinions like this that gets me banned from groups.)

Therefore for me, and whole bunch of people, it really does not matter if the Secret Chiefs exist or not, and it does not matter if Westcott and Mathers were lying or telling the truth, for we are automatically banned from benefiting from their existence or lack thereof. If you are denied membership or are unable to benefit from the contact, then it DOES NOT MATTER if the Secret Chiefs exist or not.

Of course, this is why I think it is such a neat idea to Adopt a Secret Chief. It is like playing fantasy football or Dungeons and Dragons, it is neat to consider what weirdness would result if a different set of Secret Chiefs had been involved. It does not matter if the Secret Chiefs exist or not, Mathers or Westcott was telling the truth or not, or if anyone is currently in communication with them or not. It is not like it matters to some of us either way. We have NO STAKE in the game---we are allowed to think about the "what ifs." Of course, this annoys both parties---it is nice that they can agree on something, even if it is only to agree that some people shouldn't be in the system for being opinionated and loud-mouthed.

(Please note that this post is not completely true: I know people on both sides who think that I might actually make a decent member of the Golden Dawn tradition...someday, that is.)

Call for Secret Chief Adoption Day

2011-12-01T23:33:00.001-07:00

Sometimes, Pat Zalewski cracks me up. Earlier today, or yesterday (depending upon how quickly I type), Pat Zalewski said:

"Heck we can have a [Secret Chief] adoption day- pick one old order at random and our troubles will be gone!"

And I think that this is a really good idea---for the blogosphere---I suggest that all the bloggers who read this post to please consider researching and posting about some obscure and possibly extinct esoteric Order.

Please note, Pat did not say when this magical event should occur---feel free to vote in the comment section---but I am thinking that it should be December 24.

(In case, you are wondering some people say that the Mayan calendar ends on December 24, 2011 and not December 21, 2012...personally, I think we should plan on doing something to celebrate the end of the world that is not going to happen this year and maybe not ever. Bwahaha!)

Pentagram pottery is special order only

2011-11-26T17:08:00.001-07:00

Pentagram Corked Jars.

Closeup of green pentagram.

Closeup of reddish pentagram.

One of the things that regular readers of this blog might be interested in knowing is the fact that my wife will not be putting up any pentagram decorated pottery and jewelry on her Etsy site. Pentagram decorated pieces are special order only. In order to buy a pentagram decorated piece of jewelry or pottery, one needs to contact my wife through her Etsy store. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Casualty of flamewar fears

2011-11-25T13:10:00.001-07:00

Last night, I was cruising the internet while trying not to cough up a lung (I have been sick all week), and I ran across a great blog idea. I started to write it, and then I stopped.

Why?!

Simply, because I could see how it was going to be taken out of context and used as evidence that I was flaming an aspect of Golden Dawn mythology. Which was not my purpose---I was merely using my Golden Dawn background (which I presume my readers share) to explain something else.

So I deleted a perfectly good post because it was likely to get someone's knickers in a tangle.

One of my long-standing fears about the "we can't afford another flame war" school of policing is that it is going to shut good people up completely. That we are going to end up with just one party talking about Golden Dawn, and the rest of us becoming New Agers simply because we can't talk about anything interesting in Golden Dawn.

It is something that I noticed that happened in the Wiccan community. Ironically, the only people who actually shut up are the people who should not have been censored in the first place---the trolls and the flamers are still as loud as ever.

You can't do book reviews because it shows that you have a bias, therefore you are flaming someone. You can't write about your opinions about Golden Dawn techniques because you are wrong and flaming everyone who has a different understanding of how the system works. You can't advertise your own work because only flamers are interested in making money.

The only option you have if you do not want to be accused of being a flamer and a troll is to simply shut up. Completely shut up. And give up the field to those who have appointed themselves as the internet police.

Yet despite the claims of the internet police, I am not sure that it is helping the community at all.

And heavens knows that it annoys the hell out of me. I should be focused on writing the very best blog posts that I can. Not deleting good posts because they are going to upset someone. More of my mental energy is spent trying to figure out how to not upset people than it is to advance interest in the system I am working. I am getting sick and tired of having to be politically correct.

And I may not be paying much attention to the internet police much longer. Of course, that statement will be read as a declaration of flame war---the question is what side is going to yell at me first.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T00:30:00.000-07:00

No matter how hard you try, you'll never top this.

This Thanksgiving, let's us bow our heads in thanks for the greatest invention by the druids of old: the bacon wrapped twinkle stonehedge.

And if you are serious about trying something like this, check out the video I posted over on Loki's Wisdom on how to actually make bacon-stuffed deep fried twinkles. Your heart will not thank you.

And if you haven't already, check out the Thanksgiving themed article I did for the November 2011 Hearthstone Community Church's newsletter, included in Four Cornerstones (available for free on Smashwords).

FBI arrests 7 in Amish Mullet Conspiracy

2011-11-23T19:30:00.001-07:00

Earlier today, the FBI has arrested 7 people including the group's leader, Sam Mullet, for attacking and cutting the hair and beards of Amish believers. For the Amish, women do not cut their hair, and men do not trim their beards after marriage. Hair and beards are simply part of the Amish identity.

And it makes some of the silliness I have seen in the occult community look sane---well, sanier. Well, ok, there are loonies everywhere.

Does the following sound familar?

"Mullet told The Associated Press in October that he didn’t order the hair-cutting, but didn’t stop his sons and others from carrying it out. He said the goal was to send a message to other Amish that they should be ashamed of themselves for the way they were treating Mullet and his community."

There are some conflicting accounts that idicate otherwise.

Besides, the hair cutting, there was beatings, isolating of members who had fallen astray, and sexual relations with married women in order to cleanse them.

And at this point, I have to ask, given the stories I have heard about various groups, are we not better than the Amish radicals? Or could we at least not try to be better?

Yeah, yeah, I know. No occult group has ever done anything wrong ever. And this includes bad experiences and cult-like behavior I have seen first-hand---it was all in my imagination. Let the accusations of flaming begin.

Remember, my friends, if you are in an occult group and do not like the way that the leaders treat people---get the hell out of there; for if you do not, you will become just like them.

You can read more about the Amish Mullet Haircut experience at the website of the Chicago Sun Times.

Jewelry inspected and blessed by the Secret Chiefs

2011-11-21T16:00:00.000-07:00

This dragonfly necklace has been inspected by Secret Chief Mortimor.

Over this past weekend, I was taking photos some of my wife's jewelry, including several new pieces. One of the new pieces was this dragonfly necklace which Mortimor personally inspected. I presume that he approved of it. He might have even blessed it---I am not completely sure. Either it was a blessing, or he wanted me to play more attention to him.

Lucky kitty foot not included.

Step one in the secret blessing ritual.

Step two in the secret blessing ritual.

Ok, looking at the photos, it is probably not a Secret Chief blessing of the jewelry; it seems to be merely that the Secret Chief in question wanted more petting and less photography. And he is such a cute kitty, who am I to refuse?
(All implications that the Secret Chiefs approve of my wife's jewelry are meant to be taken seriously. Some Secret Chiefs promote esoteric Orders; mine promote my wife's jewelry business, so that she will buy them freeze dried salmon kitty treats. Obey the Secret Chiefs---go buy some of my wife's jewelry right now. And remember that the piece he blessed is available for sale right now.)

If you want the esoteric information that the Secret Chief is guarding, you must give him a bribe.

Tomas Stacewicz is not a landmine

2011-11-20T18:06:00.001-07:00

One thing that I want to make clear is that Tomas Stacewicz was not the person that set me off yesterday. It may have seemed that way given the timing of posts and such not, but Tomas was innocent.

What happened was that I recieved a private message from someone, who decided to chew me out about my last blog post and claimed that I was bad-mouthing the HOGD/A&O and their Third Order with my way of reading the Fama.

And I exploded.

Let's be honest, people trying to force me to shut up is one of my personal landmines. Blame it on my childhood, my sunny disposition, the fact that I broke my fair share of lances in the Denver Witch Wars of the eighties, or whatever you like. Griffin blamed it on me getting out on the wrong side of bed---which is as good of explanation as any about why an over-zealous defender of the HOGD/A&O set me off yesterday.

But Tomas was not responsible for the explosion.

For the lack of a better translation

2011-11-19T22:39:00.001-07:00

It has been an interesting day. Besides recieving one of the nasty and demanding private messages ever, I did learn something today. The English translation of the Fama Fraternitatis that all the English and American Orders use is flawed compared to the German version (or so I have been informed).

(Actually, I do trust the opinion on the translation error--after all, I have seen some blunders when Hebrew is translated into English---why should German to English be any different?)

Personally, I was unable to find a German version of the Fama that was not set in the alphabet form that I struggle with, not alone a copy that might be accessible with the help of a translation program and a German to English dictionary by one's side. And it does amuse me that the one Order that I would have been expecting to use a different translation only has the same flawed English translation up on their website.

(One can only hope that one of their members does a full translation of it someday and allows those of us with limited language skills to see it. Oh who am I kidding---non-members will never be allowed to see it.)

So given that us the English Orders have been using a flawed translation, does this mean that our Rosicrucian philosophy is wrong? Of course, it does---or so I have been told. I am just not convinced that it as wrong as the person would like me to think it is. Then again, I am not convinced that we are even in the same tradition anymore---at a certain point, enourgh errors and differences of opinion create whole new systems.

(Of course, my real crime of the day was that I forgot to undermine my own authority by including fifteen million mentions of the fact that I am a wrongfully trained scholar---something that I am so sick and tired of doing in the name of peace.)

Now, I am willing to accept that the translation that we have been using loses something in the translation. But I am not sure that I am willing to bow down and toss out the version that the English and American schools have been using for a three and a half centuries. Especially in the light that it is only English version that I was able to find after two hours of internet searching.

The flawed English translation is the only version I have been exposed to in the various groups that I have belonged to over the years. It is the same version that I discuss with students when the subject comes up. And heavens knows that I have a hard enourgh time trying to maintain the little French and Hebrew that I know in the midst of my wife's plot to secretly teach me Spanish, that the very thought of trying to learn more German than the little bit I picked up studying the World Wars turns my stomach.

(Yes, I choose languages that utterly useless when it comes to the study of the Rosicrucian movement...is anyone really surprised by that?! If only I would have known in high school that I needed to make a different set of choices.)

So until I get my hands on a dual language scholar's edition, I have two choices: Keep using the flawed translation and NEVER discuss Rosicrucian philosophy ever again in public (especially if I want to keep a certain letter writer happy) or completely toss them out and make up something to replace them with. It is not a good set of choices at all, is it?

I was not talking about the Third Order

2011-11-19T13:35:00.001-07:00

I am annoyed---very annoyed.

It has came to my attention that my previous blog post (Get paid to do the Great Work) has been read as a criticism of Griffin and company's Third Order. It was not talking about them. I did not mean for it to be read in that manner.

I was merely trying to come to a conclusion about whether or not, anything that we can call the Great Work, can be done as a form of paid employment.

And I thought it was important to include the fact that the Fama stated (or at least, the English version that I am familiar with) that physical immortality was not allowed to the members of the RC. Hence anyone who is promising to provide you with physical immortality shouldn't get paid to do that type of work if they are a member of the Fraternity; this has no bearing on spiritual immortality.

(I am sorry that I am restricted to English, bad English, bad French and bad Hebrew--and that I forget that you can not be a real Rosicrucian while being a poorly educated American. I did mention that I was restricted to an English translation.)

This fact about the fact that original Brotherhood not being able to cheat physical death really has no bearing on my personal beliefs about an afterlife, or whether or not a person can gain conscious, controllable existence after the death of their physical body. Nor does it represent a criticism of the HOGD/A&O and their Third Order.

I am sorry that I forgot that any reading of the RC documents has to be ran by Griffin's Third Order because they are the only ones with the correct reading. And yes, I am getting annoyed with the fact that one cannot write about the Golden Dawn and the Rosicrucians and come to a conclusion different from the HOGD/A&O official party line without being accused of criticising Griffin's group. In this case, I did not realize that my conclusion would go against their official version. (They really need to issue a complete manual on what one is allowed to say and not say.) And I especially annoyed because I did not think that my conclusion about employment had any bearing on what the HOGD/A&O is promising about spiritual immortality.

I was talking about the types of gainful employment open to a member of the RC Brotherhood. That is what I was concerned with, that is what I cared about, and that what I wanted the discussion to be about. Not every discussion has to end up reaffirming that Griffin's Third Order is the only correct method to gain spiritual immortality. Some of us, such as myself, are concerned with other Rosicrucian matters, such as one's proper place in the physical world, which includes the issue of employment.

Maybe I should have defaulted to using Crowley or the New Age materials instead. Oh wait, that material is only used by villians. Is it wrong to once again ask Griffin's Third Order to openly declare me an outlaw, so that I can focus on the work that concerns me?

Did I mention that I am annoyed? Very annoyed?

Get paid to do Great Work

2011-11-18T13:38:00.001-07:00

Last night, one of my friends asked if there was any way to get paid to do the Great Work. Is it possible to make your livelihood doing the Great Work? or helping others do the Great Work?

Now, being a Rosicrucian, my answer is based on the Fama Fraternitatis. In this founding document of the Rosicrucian movement (which Golden Dawn and the BIORC may or may not be a part of--depending upon who you ask), we learn the original Brotherhood bound itself by six rules.

First, That none of them should profess any other thing than to cure the sick, and that gratis.

Second, None of the posterity should be constrained to wear one certain kind of habit, but therein to follow the custom of the country.

Third, That every year, upon the day C., they should meet together at the house Sancti Spiritus, or write the cause of his absence.

Fourth, Every Brother should look about for a worthy person who, after his decease, might succeed him.

Fifth, The word R. C. should be their seal, mark, and character.

Sixth, The Fraternity should remain secret one hundred years.

It is the first and second clauses that has the most bearing on this particular question.

Let's start with the second clause, which states that no future generation of the Order will be forced to wear a particular style of clothes, that they will adopt the customs of the country that they are living in. The extension of this clause to this question is the implication that if one normally gets paid for a profession in the country that one is living in, then a Rosicrucian is also entitled to charge for that service or product.

It is the first clause that complicates matters. There are three parts of it that we need to understand, for it applies to all in the Fraternity.

The first part is "profess"--which is not only to claim, but it is also related to the words professor and profession. It also relates to taking the vows of a religious Order. So does this mean that the only profession that a member of the RC can take is that of a doctor? Or that is the only subject that they can teach? Or are they only allowed to join religious Orders and tradtions that are focused on healing? Or something else?

The seond part we need to understand is what is meant by "cure the sick." Is this referring to physical sickness? Or to mental sickness? Or to societial sickness? Or all three?

We do know one thing that it does not refer to---the members of the Brotherhood are not allowed to cheat death. Even though they are allowed to live life free from disease and pain, "they could not live and pass their time appointed by God." Even the most learned of them, the very founder of the Fraternity, Brother R.C. dies. Yet the fact that they live from from illnesses and pain indicates that curing the sick does include the physical. So must the members of the RC be doctors and nurses? or must they be some form of healer which work affects the physical body? Ironically if the latter, it would mean that a member of the RC can work in any profession that provides care and substance to the physical body, or that has a positive effect on the human body---this would include cooks and writers.

The last and third part, we must understand is what is meant by "gratis." This word is related both to grace and to gratuity (aka tips). At the very least, the members of the RC are allowed to take tips for their work. The implication is that a member of the RC is not allowed to withhold their services from those who are unable to pay; but they are also allowed to accept payment, or at least tips, for the work that they are doing.

So given that the members of the Fraternity are allowed to adopt the customs of the country they are living in, the range of activities that could lead to healing, and the fact that the membership is allowed to take tips---yes, you can get paid to do the Great Work; just remember to have a sliding scale on your fee structure.

If you disagree with me, because you speak the original language and I am using an English translation, remember that I am allowed to adopt the customs of the United States of America which is the country I am living in. Also bear in mind that I would like to keep a roof over my head and food on the table without having to resort to robbing banks or begging on the street. Nevertheless, feel free to criticize my reading of the material---you can't possibly disagree with me more than the professors at the University of Colorado do.

Two repeated advertisements

2011-11-14T12:05:00.001-07:00

Apologies to all who have already seen these two advertisements; but due to a hiccup with Facebook and Networked Blogs, those who follow this blog through Facebook did not see these two important advertisements.

One, my wife is now selling wheel thrown pottery in her Esty shop: Celtic Soul Jewelry and Pottery.

Royal Blue Mortar and Pestle.

She currently has one urn, four mortar and pestles, two herb jars, and a pair of candlestick holders available.

Two, I am giving away for free an ebook on Smashwords, Four Cornerstones, collecting the three best articles I wrote for the Hearthstone Community Church's Newsletter, as well as a reprint of the very first article that I wrote for the pagan/Wiccan/esoteric community. Did I mention that it is free? All I ask is that people give me some feedback on how horrible the meatgrinder conversion tool is treating the text.

Four Cornerstones available for free on Smashwords.

Advertisement Four Cornerstones

2011-11-13T14:48:00.001-07:00

Four Cornerstones now available.

This is an advertisement---and not for pottery. My short ebook collecting the best three Hearthstone Community Church's Newsletter articles that I have written is now available for FREE on Smashwords. The only thing I ask is for people to come back here and tell me how badly the meatgrinder ebook conversion tool is treating the book.

And for those of you who are curious, the final tally for pottery, including the stuff she put up this morning, was four mortar and pestles, two cork jars, a pair of candleholders, and one urn.

Pottery finally available online

2011-11-13T00:30:00.000-07:00

Royal Blue Cork Jar.

Royal Blue Mortar and Pestle.

Announcement: My dear wife has finally started to put some of her wheel thrown pottery up on her Etsy site: Celtic Soul Jewelry and Pottery. I am not sure what she will have up by the time she goes to bed tonight, but so far she has two cork jars and a royal blue mortar and pestle up.

(This post was pre-scheduled---my plan is to get off the computer and go do some of my homework, which is why I can't give you the final tally of what she now has available.)

Veteran Day

2011-11-11T01:32:00.001-07:00

Just extending a thank you to all who have served in the armed forces. Blessed be.

Jumping on the New Age and LoA Bandwagon

2011-11-06T17:13:00.002-07:00

Hear ye! Hear ye!

Let it be known that Morgan Drake Eckstein, the slimest type of writer (one that would like to occasionally get paid for his writing), has jumped onto the New Age and Law of Attraction Bandwagon. All should avoid reading his ebooks. His expulsion from the ranks of honest occultists and decent Golden Dawn leaders will happen on the next slow Golden Dawn news day.

Message ends.

Or so it will go as soon as some critic decides to get upset with me because I said something that they did not like. Let's be honest, I have several strikes against me.

First, I am one of those writers who occasionally would like to make enourgh from my writing to pay for my cats' food bill. This desire to be paid has only increased this semester, thanks due to a major foul-up in the student loan system.

(In fact, if you would like me to quit writing short occult ebooks for the rest of the semester, please help the rest of my loan money get to my bank account. Heavens knows I would rather be focused on finishing up my senior year, so that I can move on to the masters program. If I am busy in school, I will not have time to annoy you.)

(And if you are one of my friends, help me get the rest of my loan money into my bank account. That way I do not have to go begging to feed my cats.)

Second, I am one of those occultists who did not burst into flames when I read The Secret. In fact, I can see how it would relate to magical work...through I will admit that I do not completely agree with how most people view the Law of Attraction.

Third, I am one of those people who tends to treat the various forms of magic as variations on a scheme. For me, Golden Dawn, Wicca, and the New Age are kissing cousins.

Fourth, and worst of all, I honestly think I know what I am talking about. And let's be honest being an opinionated loud-mouth is the greatest crime of them all.

Five Reasons Why Magic Fails now available on Smashwords.

Raccoon Apocalypse

2011-11-04T13:21:00.000-06:00

Some people worry about the upcoming zombie apocalypse. I don't. That is because I am too busy fighting off the raccoon apocalypse.

When I moved to my current neighborhood eight years ago, I realized immediately that I had squirrels (the black walnut trees inplied that there were squirrels). For many years, I have feared the upcoming squirrel apocalypse, the demonic squirrels (my neighbor pointed out that they are demonic) keep chewing through the phone lines. Once a year, the phone company has to come out and repair the lines.

There was also the small feral cat colony that came with the house. That one surprised me---Sherlock Holmes, I am not. It probably shouldn't have, considering that two of the feral cats checked my wife and I out when we were originally looking at the house.

But honestly, I have never feared the kitty apocalypse that much. After all, I am on good speaking terms with Bast and Sekhmet. Years of loyal service should count for something.

(Yeah, I know---the cats have obviously eaten my brains already.)

Last night, I discovered a new fear---the raccoon apocalypse.

I have known about the raccoons in the neighborhood for some time. Yes, I am living just a few miles from downtown Denver (just north of the Denver Zoo and Golf Course). And I have raccoons visiting my porch late at night.

Last night, the raccoons were busy trying to enter the cat house that Mortimer sleeps in on the porch. (Mortimer refuses to be an indoor cat.) I am not sure if they were upset that there was no cat food in the bowl, or if they were looking for shelter. Either way, Mortimer did not like it. I ended up going outside twice to drive them off the porch.

I am sure that the raccoons thought about eating me. And my neighbor calls the squirrels demonic. I vote that the raccoons are the demonic hoarde of the upcoming apocalypse.

Happy Day of the Dead

2011-11-01T14:00:00.000-06:00

There are days that I can't help thinking about what my ancestors (both physical and spiritual) would think of my current activities. Today is one of those days. Today is Dia de los Muertos, (Day of the Dead).

What would my ancestors think of me, a non-traditional university student who seems to think that cats are the Secret Chiefs and that writing essays about the occult and posting them in public is perfectly fine?

Ironically, the two physical ancestors that I would most be concerned with their opinion, probably would have no problem with my activities. One of them used to ask why it was ok to have pictures of Jesus everywhere, but not pictures of the horned god. The other one would only find fault in the fact that it took me so long to enroll in college, and that I am not treating my business as a writer as seriously as I should.

No, it is the spiritual ancestors that would have a problem with me. Mathers would hate me for not believing many of his claims (my left foot is more Scottish than you are). Westcott would hate me because I am not as serious in lodge as I should be. Yeats would hate me for not studying more poetry.

And of the spiritual ancestors that would sort of approve of me, Crowley is hardly a prize. In fact, Crowley would think that I need to annoy more people.

As for my living spiritual ancestors, who know who they are, I am quite sure that there are days they wonder how I managed to get into the clubhouse.

Of course, someday I will be dead, and someone's ancestor...I plan on haunting that person a lot.

I swore I have earned the love of my ancestors---sort of.

31 Days of Halloween Kitties Day 31

2011-10-31T00:30:00.000-06:00

Happy Halloween from Bast Temple.

Happy Halloween! It is now time to let kitties sleep in peace, safe and secure from the horrors of having to wear costumes. Or at least, safe until the next big holiday. I wonder if there are some pictures of cats dressed up in turkey costumes out there.

31 Days of Halloween Kitties Day 30

2011-10-30T00:30:00.000-06:00

Would you dress a bear up like this?

Here is one upset looking kitty. They are so upset about their little Halloween costume. And none of us are quite sure what it is supposed to be. Weasel? Dog? Bear? Whatever it is, it annoys the cat. And that is just wrong. It is a good thing that Halloween only comes around once a year, isn't it? I hope this cat got a kitty treat for putting up with this costume.

31 Days of Halloween Kitties Day 29

2011-10-29T00:30:00.000-06:00

Egyptian kitty is not amused.

Yesterday, I mentioned that members of Golden Dawn had to wear a lot of stuff to perform proper magic. Well, it could be worse. We could have to dress our cats up in a lot of strange Egypt inspired costumes to get anything done. But we don't. People quit dressing up your cats and get a life. Think of the kitties!

Trick or treating is not looting

2011-10-28T13:27:00.000-06:00

Angela on the Llewellyn blog just posted a link to the CDC Safe Halloween list.

The very first item (drumroll please)---

Swords, knives, and similar costume accessories should be short, soft, and flexible.

Yes, that is right---the very first tip is that you are not supposed to be carrying lethal weapons around while treat or treating. Is it just me that wonders why this tip makes the top of the list?

Somehow I can just imagine some kid whacking some other kid with their dad's (or mom's) Highlander sword. Hey, it would happen in my family.

Please remember that trick or treating is not looting.

Viking kitty is here to pillage your village.

31 Days of Halloween Kitties Day 28

2011-10-28T00:30:00.000-06:00

There is something wrong with this cat.

I will admit that it freaks me out to see a cat calmly wearing a costume. And this one is way too calm. But never fear, see that evil glint in its eye. You just know that someone is going to find some kitty barf in their favorite shoe later.

Now this cat looks properly annoyed.

See that is what a cat dressed up as a wizard is supposed to look like---annoyed. We all know that cats do not need to dress up to work their magic---unless us humans who stumble into Golden Dawn (neymss, a couple of robes, a couple of pair of slippers, two sashes, a lamen, etc.).

And what do wizard cats do with their spells?

Of course, we all know that cats are smart and darn good wizards too. And what do they perform spells for? To get more cheeseburgers, of course. That is what the internet tells us, and the internet would not lie to us, would it?

31 Days of Halloween Kitties Day 27

2011-10-27T00:30:00.000-06:00

Vampire? Wizard? Annoyed cat?

I am not sure what this cat is dressed up as. Perhaps they are a wizard? Or maybe a vampire? Fairy tale princess? Annoyed cat? Probably the latter. Someone please send a rescue party to save this poor cat from its owners.

31 Days of Halloween Kitties Day 26

2011-10-26T00:30:00.000-06:00

Kitty is a Kiss fan.

Ok, I know that this picture is photoshopped. But it is just too good not to use. My cat would be a Kiss fan...well, maybe if they weren't so loud.

31 Days of Halloween Kitties Day 25

2011-10-25T00:30:00.000-06:00

It is wrong to try to make kitty part of the borg.

One can never have to much Star Trek or cats on a Golden Dawn blog. And today, you are getting a double scoop of humorous goodness. Behold Borg Kitty. This cat does not look happy at all. Borg kitties are supposed to assimilate you and your belongings, not you them. The following photo is what Borg Kitties are supposed to look like.

Borg Kitty will assimilate all your comfy belongings.

See the difference. Your sofa, your food, your textbooks, your favorite sweater, all will be assimilated. And all without the silly costume. We are the borg kitties, you will feed us shrimp! Resistance is furtile.

31 Days of Halloween Kitties Day 24

2011-10-24T00:30:00.000-06:00

It is steam punk biker kitty.

I have been reading too much steam punk lately. How do I know? Well, this biker kitty looks like a steam punk kitty to me. Or maybe an atomic punk kitty. Can you picture him on a bike, armed with missiles and big machine guns shooting mutants and gasoline thieves in a post atomic holocaust world. I can. Oh dear, now I have the urge to stay home today and write a sciene fiction story rather than go to my college classes.

Occult blinds v occult mistakes

2011-10-23T14:03:00.001-06:00

Last night, I was working with *something* and I found myself in the position where I started to debate whether it was an occult blind or simply an occult mistake. Nowadays, the joke is that if you make a mistake duiring the course of writing about the occult, you call it a "blind." This is a modern thing; in the old days, it was different.

In the old days, there was a fine game of concealing important information from the readers of occult books. In theory, you were supposed to learn the basics of the esoteric sciences from a teacher---in other words, you were supposed to serve an apprenticeship. And one of the things, you were supposed to learn was how to spot an blind and how to create one.

Words of warning---under no circumstance are you to believe that I am a member of certain lineages that still practice this style. My lineage (for what it is worth) has NO connection with theirs. The only things we share in common is that masters teach lesser skilled students---nothing more.

For those of you who have never experienced an apprenticeship, it involves washing a lot of glasses, grinding a lot of stuff, harvesting thistles, and generally any other grunt work that your master really does not want to bothered with. It is like being the low man on a construction site and being the go-fer. It also involves a lot of practical and intellectual jokes; it is a great way to become paranoid.

It is in the practical and intellectual jokes that the learning about the occult blinds happen. Think of being an apprentice as being a lab animal of a mad scientist. Or at least, that is the way that my apprenticeship felt. Maybe there are nicer masters out there---if so, I have not encountered them.

Of course, we do not deal with this system today. (I am not sure how I ended up in the system myself; except that was the way they were taught, therefore I was taught the same way. The modern methods of teaching obviously skipped over my masters.)

One of my teachers would allow me to work the rituals exactly how they were written, hence I got to experience first-hand the problems that blinds created. Only later, after many questions about what I thought was wrong, would they explain to me the little secrets that you needed to work the system properly. As I said, it was like being a lab animal to a mad scientist.

I may or may not have picked up this style of teaching---we will see when it comes time for me to teach my god-daughter.

When the secret societies picked up the ball, and the masters were faded out, in theory the secret societies replaced the master-apprentice relationship with a kinder proctor-student relationship. Not necessarily so, as my encounters with Advanced Adept Advisors has indicated.

Unfortunately, one of the problems with the secret societies is the fact that many of the officers can not hex their way out of a wet paper bag, and cannot spot an occult blind if you lit it up with flashing neon lights. And many of them can make it sound like they are experts in their fields, despite the fact that I would not trust them to guess my weight.

Warning---questioning the abilities of the officers of esoteric societies is part of the tactics of the Witch and Golden Dawn Flame Wars. Obviously, I am a bad person who should not be at the head of an esoteric Order.

The reason that many esoteric officers cannot spot an occult blind is that they were sworn to absolute secrecy and are given completely clean and truthful documents. It handicaps them when they encounter materials written in the heyday of blind creation.

Yes, the *something* I was working on last night was the work of someone I know is an officer in one of the esoteric societies. The *something* is a correction of an older text. So is the problem I spotted a blind? or is it a mistake? and does it really matter?

I am not sure about the first two, but I do know the answer to the last one. It does not matter to me. I am going to have to fix it, whether it is blind or mistake, if I intend to use the material. Whether the expert spotted the world of hurt that their version, and the previous versions, would create is unknown to me. I would like to think that if someone spots a really bad blind, and this one will create the exact opposite of what the material is labeled for, that a footnote about possible blinds would be in order.

Of course, that is just my opinion. And you can't trust my opinion. After all, I belong to some bad lineages, been trained by people without authority, and generally hold some opinions that worry those who are superior to me. And I am not above giving a stick of dynamite to someone trying to open a box of corn flakes. I guess it goes without saying that all my writings should be considered blinded.

31 Days of Halloween Kitties Day 23

2011-10-23T00:30:00.000-06:00

Beware the invasion of the kitty snatchers.

Oh no, the alien pod invasion has begin---and they got to your cat! Poor kitty has been cloned by the insidious alien pod people from outer space. Now, the alien invaders will have a spy in your home, checking out all your closets, tasting your food (and perhaps you), and coughing up hairballs in your shoes. And there is nothing that you can do about it---because alien pod kitty is so cute, though he does look a little like a pumpkin.

20th Annual Denver Witches Ball

2011-10-22T19:17:00.000-06:00

Are you ready for the Witches Ball?

So next Saturday (October 29th, 2011) at this time of night, I will be at the annual Denver Witches Ball. For the first time in like forever, I will not officially be Toni's helper. On the other hand, I get to keep an eye on my god-daughter all night...which sounds like it is going to be a lot more work. I might bring my Doctor Who scarf with me, just in case I need to tie her to a chair.

For those who do not know this is the twentieth anniversary of the Denver Witches Ball. It is held at the Highlands Masonic Center, 3550 Federal Boulevard, Denver Colorado. Doors open at 6 pm. Admission is $20 for adults, and $5 for children 12 and under. The midnight samhain ritual is free (show up after eleven if you are just attending the ritual). There will be music and a costume contest, as well as a cafe serving food.

And remember if you see me tie my god-daughter to a chair, I am doing it for the safety of the entire community. That is my story, and I am going to stick to it.

Toni is going to be selling pottery (not jewelry) at this event; and one of our friends, Jo, will be sharing the booth space and selling bath salts and healing oils.

31 Days of Halloween Kitties Day 22

2011-10-22T00:30:00.000-06:00

Pumpkins, sunflowers, and a black cat. Oh my!

There is no costume on this black kitty, but they do not need one to prove that they are just full of halloween spirit. The cat kinda reminds me of one of ours---Anubis---who would do exactly this if we had a pile of pumpkins in the house. Anubis also like checking out all the plants that I bring into the house. He probably would love to go outside and play, but I don't want him getting eaten by the neighborhood foxes and coyotes.

It is the End of the World

2011-10-21T12:00:00.000-06:00

How my cats look when my god-daughter comes to visit.

Breaking News: If you are reading this, then the end of the world didn't happen.

Or maybe it will before the end of the day. I am not really sure when Harold Camping figured out the exact hour to be. Six o'clock, maybe. Is that Jerusalem time? Or California time?

Seriously, me and the cats have a sure-fire end of the world survival plan. It is the same plan we use when my god-daughter comes to visit. We hide. And if she finds us, then we read poetry out loud.

It has worked so far. Why? Simple, both my god-daughter and Jesus hate poetry.

Well, maybe not Jesus. But my god-daughter does---she calls it cruel and unusual punishment.

I call it payback. Rather Norse of me, isn't it?

Now, I have Elmer Fudd singing "Kill the Wabbit" stuck in my head.

Gee, I wish that the end of the world would hurry up; I don't want that song stuck in my head all night.

(Feel free to post your End of the World rituals in the comments section. I will approve them tomorrow...unless the world comes to an end before then; in which case, Jesus will have to moderate your comments---so keep the comments clean. Thank you.)

How the Secret Chiefs will survive the End of the World.

31 Days of Halloween Kitties Day 21

2011-10-21T00:30:00.000-06:00

Halloween Jester Cat is not pleased.

Open letter to all internet users:

Do not enjoy this blog. There is nothing funny about dressing up cats in Halloween costumes. See how annoyed it makes me. See how sad it makes me. Do not give this strange man any page views...because he might be encouraged to do other bad things. And if you do show up and view his blog, do not laugh...because if you do, I will cough a hairball into your shoe.

Seriously,

Halloween Jester Cat

31 Days of Halloween Kitties Day 20

2011-10-20T00:30:00.000-06:00

Dracula's cat perhaps?

This picture makes my cats scratching the sofa seem just normal, doesn't it? This is one freaky looking cat, and it is not in costume. It is looks like it is trying to suck the stuffing out of the sofa. Paging Dracula, or is it Dr. Evil?, come and get your cat.

31 Days of Halloween Kitties Day 19

2011-10-19T00:30:00.000-06:00

At least, he is not covered with glitter.

Beware of vampire kitties. They are savage and cruel. And nothing like the New Age Teen Angst vampires of Twilight and the Vampire Diaries. If you do not believe me, come back tomorrow and see Dracula's cat (or is it Doctor Evil's?). There is not a bit of sparkly glitter anyway on the real vampiric kitties.

31 Days of Halloween Kitties Day 18

2011-10-18T00:30:00.000-06:00

There is not enourgh Star Trek on this blog to protect Security Cat.

It is wrong to make your cat wear a Halloween costume. It is sadder to catch the act on film and post it to the internet. And it is just plain evil to dress your cat up in a costume that is going to make him the target of every Klingon, Romulan and Borg who comes by. Of course, he might not be killed while wearing a red uniform, but he is sure to be mocked. Hopefully, kitty is smart and can slip out of the red shirt before his nine lives are up...or at least, get even with you.

Less guilt over Halloween Kitties

2011-10-17T21:08:00.001-06:00

I am just an angry bird.

I will admit that when I decided to do the 31 Days of Halloween Kitties, I felt some guilt. After all, something important might happen in the Golden Dawn community while I was taking my break (in the sense, that I am focusing on a PITA semester---so, it is not a break from the real world).

Today, I feel less guilt. Some things just do not change in the Golden Dawn blogosphere, do they? My big question---a journalist question---is did anyone consider checking out the facts before spreadig the news?

Yeah, yeah, I know---past history says that we have to believe the worst. But given the things various trolls have said over the years, those of us in Golden Dawn are all thieves and ax murderers if the rumors be true. I don't kow about the rest of my readers, but I am not an ax murderer. As for the thief part, well, there are some people that consider every author who writes about the occult to be a thief...therefore if you believe that logic, then I must be a thief.

Of course, it could be worse. I could be guilty of playing Angry Birds and dressing cats up in silly halloween costumes instead of doing my homework.

31 Days of Halloween Kitties Day 17

2011-10-17T00:30:00.000-06:00

This is not my cat in a dress.

I swore that this is not my cat---but they do (sort-of) look like one of my cats. As I mentioned before, none of my cats are willing to be dressed up for Halloween. And being put into a doll's dress...well, they wouldn't talk to me for a week if I did something like this to them. Especially Apollo.

This is my cat.

See the difference. He refuses to stay focused long enourgh to even get his picture taken. And Apollo bites and claws---yes, I have tried to get him to wear a kitty hat. Poor Halloween Kitties who actually put up with this---what is wrong with you?!

31 Days of Halloween Kitties Day 16

2011-10-16T00:30:00.000-06:00

This cat fills my heart with girlish glee!

So, here we are at the halfway point of the 31 Days of Halloween Kitties. And you know what I discovered?

Yes, that I could do many more years of this, along with 31 Days of Thanksgiving cats, and 31 Days of Christmas cats, etc. etc. until your head explodes from the cuteness of it all.

Not that the cats enjoy it---Geisha Kitty looks like she is a little annoyed.

But don't worry, I plan on going back to annoying people with comments about Golden Dawn at the beginning of next month. After all, that is what this blog is really about---annoying people with my naive view of occultism and magic.

Bet you can't wait.

First Smashwords test project up

2011-10-15T22:56:00.000-06:00

Available on Smashwords now.

So I finally got my first test project up on Smashwords. It is a collection of the dozen articles I wrote for the Hearthstone Community Church's newsletter in 2010 (you know Hearthstone---the Full Moon ritual people here in Denver). The name of the collection, Pizza Boxes on the Floor, refers to the OFM I did in June 2010.

Of course, that is not nearly as important as the fact that I managed to get some jewelry pictures edited today for my wife's Etsy shop, Celtic Soul Jewelry and Pottery. Let's be honest, she is going to make more money from her craft than I am going to make from mine.

I am not sure when she is going to get the new pieces up (I took pictures of three items---one set I am happy with, the other two I need to take replacement photos for); but hey, they are done.

I love this bracelet photo that I took.

Loving the peace and quiet

2011-10-15T13:01:00.002-06:00

One of the things that I noticed this month is the amount of peace and quiet that I have enjoyed (only a single quote taken out of context this month so far). I guess that no one really finds cats offensive. Nevertheless, next month I know that I will go back to offending people and making comments about things that people just generally get annoyed over.

Chemistry humor cat.

Of course, I suspect a large part of the offense will be the fact that I am going to be releasing a collection of newsletter articles that I wrote in 2010. The reason I suspect that it will be offensive is simply the fact that some people like to be the only authority on the occult wisdom of Golden Dawn and witchcraft, Wiccan and paganism.

The Collected 2010 Hearthstone Newsletter Articles---coming soon.

Then again, the very fact that I saw fit to assemble a collection of the articles that I wrote for the Hearthstone Community Church Newsletter (a free newsletter) and put them into a cheap (but still charging money for) ebook is going to annoy some---it offends people when writers decide to try to make money from their occult and esoteric related writing.

I am not sure what is going to be more offensive. The fact that I refuse to leave the field to those who are obviously much wiser, more learned, and better lineaged than I am. The fact that I would like to make some cat food money. The fact that I am not really that good of a writer...or occultist in the first place. The list of possible crimes is almost endless, isn't it?

Oh wait, I just remembered. The thing that is going to annoy people the most is the simple fact that I refuse to shut up. Bwahahaha!

31 Days of Halloween Kitties Day 15

2011-10-15T00:30:00.000-06:00

I am the Philosophus admission badge.

It is the pyramid of flame, the secret admission badge of the Golden Dawn Grade of Philosophus (4=7)...oh wait, it is just a cat dressed up as a pyramid. Or is it? Maybe it is really a Secret Chief came down from his lofty seat, ready to exchange the secrets of Fire for a few kitty treats and big bag of catnip. You don't know for sure. That is why we call it a Mystery Tradition.

31 Days of Halloween Kitties Day 14

2011-10-14T00:30:00.000-06:00

Just call me Huggy Bear.

This kitty is suffering from the 1970s ghetto pimp look, or at least that is what old television reruns has lead me to believe. I could be wrong. Maybe kitty is not a pimp. Maybe he is selling catnip instead. Remember to talk to your kitties about the evils of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. (Or better yet, get your cats fixed so that they do not have unwanted kittens---abandoning cats outside is wrong.)

31 Days of Halloween Kitties Day 13

2011-10-13T00:30:00.000-06:00

Lizard kitty Robin Hood?

Here is another kitty halloween costume that I am not quite sure what it is. It reminds me of Robin Hood, but I am fairly sure that it is supposed to be a lizard costume. Unlike many of the kitties in this series, this one seems to be ok with the halloween dress-up...probably because he plans on helping himself to dinner directly from the dining room table or kitchen stove. Robbing vitties from humans to give to oneself, it is the American way.