Does anyone not know my Grade?

Over the last few weeks, there was some talk about the proper form of dress and acknowledgement in Outer Order on one of the forums. I could not help laughing about the discussion, for I could not imagine anyone who would need to see my Grade sash to know what my actual Grade was in Golden Dawn tradition.

Think about it. If you have been reading my blog and forum posts for any length of time, you have came to a conclusion about what my actual Grade is in the system. It does not matter what I claim that my Grade is (if I even bother to tell you); all that matters is what you percieve it to be. (The same holds true for Wicca, by the way.)

The level of your support and willingness to have a conversation with me, and the level that we talk at, will be determined solely based on what Grade that you think that I am really at. This is a two-way street; my opinion of your actual Grade will color how much information that I am willing to impart, and exactly how I say stuff. We do not need to see each others' sashes; perception and belief is everything.

A lot of people talk about mutual recognition among lodges. It is a nice concept, but I think that it ultimately falls apart. For instance, I can't think of any organization that would call the lodge I belong to "proper Golden Dawn." Sometimes, it is for major things like not acknowledging that a certain Adept is the greatest thing since white bread; other times, it is for minor things like not requiring "perfect scores" on the advancement tests.

And seriously, even if you and I belonged to Order that mutually recognized one another, would you want to sit in lodge with me? I know several groups, that while for the most part I think that they are doing a great job, which have at least one member that I would not want to sit in lodge with (for one reason or another). Often because I cannot figure out how they managed to get to the Grade that they shout from the rooftops. And seeing their Grade sash will not get me to change my mind either.

If you are going to get burned…

Earlier this week on one of the forums, I got to watch (read) another episode of When GDers Attack! I wish I could say that I am surprised at what happened, but I am not.

For a long time, I have been watching the community break into various camps. It is natural. Get three human beings together and you get politics.

At this point in time, it has not hit the point where I would label it politics, but it is getting there.

Basically, what I am seeing is the up-and-comers not living up to the standards of the old guard, and the old guard saying it openly and loudly. The up-and-comers believe that the old guard is outdated, and have not a clue. And both sides are dragging out documents to prove it.

Now, I will admit that when I saw what the member of the old guard was complaining about that I agreed with the old guard. This time the up-and-coming member had fallen far from the mark.

If I was to give the up-and-coming some advice it would be: If you are going to get burned, go for broke! Push the envelope!

The worst that can happen is that you end up looking like a fool.

(Think about it using both ways of reading that sentence. Do you want to risk either? If so, go for broke!)

If you do not want to get burned in the Golden Dawn community, you keep your mouth shut. Anyone who opens their mouth is leaving themselves open to gasoline and matches; or rather venom and criticism…gasoline and matches would actually be easier to deal with.

The old guard is being attacked for being respected and in a position of authority. Every young punk with a copy of Regardie is trying to prove themselves smarter than the old guard (or Crowley, Mathers and Westcott if they think the living old guard amounts to nothing).

The up-and-comers are attacked in return. The up-and-comers are supposed to be the next generation of leaders and experts. And if they ever hope to have any real authority, they need to learn to push the envelope and not be happy with the standard that is currently in play.

Full disclosure: Did you notice that I did not mention any names? The reason for that was it was different set of people last week, and it will be another set of people next week. No matter when you read this post, it will remain current if I do not mention any actual names.

Affliation and bias

Recently, I was reading a post on the Golden Dawn Forum from someone involved in setting up a Golden Dawn group in Massachusetts. They want an unbiased explaination about the differences between the various branches of the Golden Dawn system.

They are not going to get one.

It is impossible to know the differences between the various branches of the system and not have a bias. If you have an association with a branch of the system, you are biased. If you are not affliated with a branch, but can percieve differences between them, you have a bias.

The reason that they want an unbiased opinion is so they can figure out what branch to associate with; they did not state that they wanted an affliation, but I suspect that they feel that they must have a connection to one of the existing branches of the system to be legitimate.

Now everyone who knows me knows my personal bias.

I feel that a group should actually start out without an affliation. Each Golden Dawn group (lodge) is different. Each group has their own working style. Each group has their own way of dealing with the hierarchy and administrative side of things.

And often, when left to their own devices, a group doing the work (working the system) will discover that they are happier not answering to anyone else. Or at the very least, that their opinions of the right way of doing things does not match any existing group.

Charters, Warrents and Affliations (Associations) come with rules. One should know what makes them happy before burdening oneself with a bunch of rules.

That is my opinion.

If a group decides after a couple of years of work that they want to affliate with one of the Big Name Orders, or even one of the smaller ones, then at that point they should feel free to do so. At least then, they will have a benchmark to compare the advantage (if any) of belonging to a Grand Lodge.

Roots of Golden Dawn: Part 5

This particular post may not seem to fit into the set of The Roots of GD, but it really it does.

Yesterday, I was listening to Common Sense With Dan Carlin: Show 134---Instant Gratification. The theme of the show was that our urge for instant gratification is wrecking havoc with the political system (USA) and with the economy.

The idea of the show, Carlin got from someone else who said that if Obama wanted to really make an impact in Washington, then he should openly commit to just serving one term in office. This way he can just focus on getting things done. As it stands right now, a newly-elected President only has about a hundred days in office before he has to start worrying about the next election for his political party, mid-terms, and his own re-election.

Carlin related this to our current economic mess, the stock market and the shady loan bubble. He talked about how CEOs no longer focus on the long-term health of the companies that they run, but on short-term gains to make the stock holders happy.

Ok, what does this have to do with Golden Dawn? Especially its roots?

So this got me to thinking. I have witnessed several dozen people come into Golden Dawn chasing a short-term goal; quite often, it is to make the Inner Order Grade of Adept Minor. But what if making a certain Grade is not the actual goal that Golden Dawn is set up to fulfill?

How long is the ideal membership span for a member of Our Tradition?

In my mind, the ideal membership is the lifetime membership; someone who joins and remains a student of the tradition for the rest of their life is the ideal member. This is my opinion.

Now, as an elected officer, I have always been lucky that the long-term goals of my lodge has always been the priority. The one advantage that I envy of the Secret Chiefs, and those who are non-elected members of the hierarchy is that they can focus on the long-term goals without have to worry about people wanting instant gratification, and voting them out of office when they don't get it. Unfortunately, I have seen the abuses that an unelected hierarchy can lead to; hence my opinion that the entire hierarchy, including the Secret Chiefs, need to be elected and re-elected periodically.

Nevertheless, an important question we have to consider when examining the roots of Golden Dawn is how long a member is supposed to be a member. If it is merely short-term, then it makes little difference about how bad Orders and their leaders act; you only have to put up with it until you reach the goal. But if one is supposed to be a member for life, then it is funny that there is not a way to remove bad leaders and officers from the system.

I told you that it had something to do with the roots of Golden Dawn. I don't have any answers, but I feel that the question did need to be considered.

To read a review of Common Sense with Dan Carlin, click here.

Differentiation of egregores

(Note: Some readers may have read this already. I thought that the issue is important enough that I shared it on one of the Golden Dawn forums.)

A common event during the birth years of Orders, especially those which arise out of schisms, is the founder of the Order writing a document(s) that states why their Order is different and better than the other Orders that one could join. Part of the reason for this is economical politics (all Orders of a certain type and style tend to draw off the same possible membership pool), and partly is due to ego issues (the founder of a new Order is normally doing it because he thinks that he is more capable of running an Order than the people he just broke away from).

That is what we see happening on the surface level; but there is something else going on that many people may not be aware of, which is how this is affecting the egregore of the group.

Now the term “egregore,” in the oldest references that I have been able to trace it to, referred to the occult theory that each nation had an angel (god) which was its patron and guardian. This term and concept later ends up being applied to a mystery of the esoteric Orders.

Now the truth of the matter is that any group of people that gathers together will generate an egregore. Book clubs, businesses, military units, soccer fans, football fans, in fact any gathering of people will create an egregore. Most egregores are temporary things; unfortunately, they are the most primitive and the most dangerous in many ways. Riots tend to be caused by primitive egregores which is why trained Adepts tend to avoid large crowds.

It is possible for Initiates to keep themselves out of spontaneous egregores, and to be able to stand back and observe the effects of the larger ones. It is a skill like any other and can be taught; the base line information on how to do it is hidden in basic lodgekit.

Now in Golden Dawn, we use our egregore all the time. We use it for extra power during ritual, use it to help guide us, and to store excess energy for later. Call it a god, call it an angel, call it an energy bank. Except that we are not all using the same one.

Each Order has its own uber-egregore (I am open to suggestions for revision of this term, but it says what I want it to say) which acts as a template for the egregores that its daughter lodges create. This is one of the first things that an Order creates, knowingly or unknowingly. (This is not to be confused with the Arch-egregore that sits above all of them, and supports the tradition itself.)

And the founders of Orders do their part to differentiate their uber-egregore from the others. In part, this is done though changing the name of the Order, its rituals, and teachings, so that it doesn’t match other Orders.

The reason for this differentiation is that every time a member of the Order generates excess energy in a ritual, the egregore absorbs it. Think of it as a direct deposit device. It knows what energies to absorb and which to ignore by how the energy was generated. And members of Orders learn to generate energy in very specific ways.

(This is by the way one of the reasons that lineage and hierarchy is important; lineage is the wiring of an initiate to send excess energy to a specific egregore based on a specific uber-egregore, and one’s position in the hierarchy helps determines how much access that one has to the energy that has been previously stored.)

So for instance, when Paul Foster Case issued his statement that Enochian led to bad things, that statement helped led to the BOTA egregore ignoring the energies raised by Enochian methods (provided of course, that all the Enochian has truly been removed from the system) and not storing that energy. It would lead to a certain amount of paranoia about the energies in later members (which makes me wonder about Case himself).

You can also see differentiating statements in the works of Mathers, Fortune, and Crowley. I, myself, wrote a couple of statements at the beginning of Bast Temple that ended up affecting the system.

The differentiation of the egregores and the Orders leads to all types of interesting effects. But the most important is that the energies raised by my lodge do not flow into the energy bank of another group.

Now, I would like to explain why I have been thinking of this lately. There has been a lot of noise about differences in techniques and ethics practiced by different groups (in fact, the Denver community now has three lodges, all with a different opinion about the matter). And some people think this is a bad thing.

It is not. I am grateful for these differences. As long as these differences exist, everyone interested in Golden Dawn can find a group suitable for them. It is only when these differences disappear that we will end up with a monolithic single Order, and a whole bunch of people will be excluded from the tradition. Ironically, I would be one of the ones excluded, due to my pro-gun, pro-militia, pro-choice, and semi pro-death penalty opinions. There is also the issue of my big mouth. And quite honestly, I like being part of Golden Dawn.

Hierarchical backlash

Lately, I have been watching a lot of bickering between some of the Golden Dawn leaders, teachers, and writers. It is pretty normal as far as I am concerned. And when one got nasty, it merely pointed out that he was the type of Adept that I came up the ranks surrounded by.

(For those who do not know my background, I do not believe in the saintly Adept, who believes in thinking that kind thoughts will change the universe. Why? Because the Adepts in my mother lodge were not of that kind, rather they were people capable of great anger who thought that members of the RC occasionally have to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty if we want to see changes in the world.)

For me, the reactions were normal when you account for human nature and politics. There is also one other thing that I am accounting for that many people may be overlooking.

And that is that if you hold an active place in the Hierarchy, you suffer a certain amount of backlash when things impact your egregor. If people attack your branch of the tradition's way of doing things, and your egregor reacts as if it is being attacked, then you react as if you are being attacked. It is one of the side-effects of being part of the system, and something you have to watch constantly as an officer. And there are certain officers of the system that are almost guaranteed to react when changes happen to the egregor of their group, and when it is criticized.

I know this from personal experience. I have, on occasion, occupied one of those offices.

Unfortunately, not a lot of people seem to be aware of this side-effect. So when an officer reacts badly, they rack it up to them being a jerk. Before racking it up to that, one should step back and ask if it is completely their reaction, or could part of it be the egregor acting like a drunk in a bar.

(I am sorry, but personal experience has taught me that the egregores of the various Golden Dawn groups act like mentally unstable drunks on the bad days. I don't like the imagery any more than you do. It is just that one needs to be aware of this.)

When I start acting badly, and most people have seen me explode for no apparent reason, I have to ask myself:

1: Is this my bad upbringing? Could this be my mother talking?

2: Is this the egregor, the group mind, of my branch and lodge reacting?

3: Or is this me?

In most situations, it is always best to count to ten kabbalistically before firing off a response.

And having experienced this side-effect first hand, I have to wonder how much of this latest spat is politics, backlash, and personal reactions. I have my bets, but can't prove anything.