Treating the rituals of Golden Dawn as a literary text

(Please remember that one of my majors in college was literature while you are reading this. I wrote this as comment in a Facebook discussion on associating the officers of Golden Dawn with various Tarot cards, and believe that some of my readers might be interested in this comment, even if they do not belong to that FB group.)

I think that a lot of the layers in the GD rituals are hardwired into the system by the Cipher Manuscript and the basic set of assumptions that eventually find their expression in the original Z documents. It does not matter if you use the Spirit model or the Psychological model or whatever other model you want. The Cipher Manuscript, the ritual scripts, and the Z documents are a piece of literature, and it can be analyzed though the lens of literary studies.

The Cipher Manuscript associates the Tarot with planets and deities. Once you bring in the idea that the officers, and other forces (places of potent power on the floor of the lodge) are associated with deities (in the form of god-forms), it is natural to make the link between the officers and invisible stations to the Tarot (though the planets and deities).

This linkage creates a situation that once the idea is put forth that (for instance) the Hierophant is the Sun, that we will also associate the Sun card with the office. Furthermore, it opens up the box that says the other six officers who move in the Neophyte ritual are associated with the other six classical planets, and their associated Tarot cards.

Because the creator of the Cipher Manuscript did this type of linkage, and the first generation of GD initiates read this type of linkage into the system, following generations have discovered that though a process much like literary analysis that they can puzzle out more linkages that have always been present, but invisible upon first reading of the text of the rituals. (Note that a performance of a ritual is a reading of the text, much like the performance of a Shakespeare play is a reading of the text of that play.)

What students of the system, such as Jack Taylor, Pat Zalewski, and myself, are doing is merely exposing the implications of what the original authors of the text (Cipher, ritual, Z docs) wrote into the text itself. Now what you do with it will depend upon what model you are using, but the task of literary analysis remains the same no matter what model you choose to use (just like in literature, you can read the same text using several different literary theories).

Updating and modifying rituals

One of the things that you occasionally see someone make a fuss over is the fact that some of the modern lodges have modified the rituals that they are using. No longer are the rituals the same as the ones that Westcott and Mathers were using...hence, they are not correct according to some people.

Personally, I have mixed feelings over the matter of changing the rituals myself. I have learned a lot about ritual structure though having to modify the rituals that my lodge uses, but I was not happy about having to do it in the first place.

For instance, due to the inclusion of geomancy in the Zelator Grade, our Zelator Grade ritual had to be modified. The decision to bring geomancy down to the Zelator Grade wasn't even our decision; it was something that occurred in the greater Golden Dawn community, and new members started to expect to see it there. It was a curriculum reform done by someone else, due to the nature of geomancy, and put into print.

This curriculum change has probably affected everyone in the system. Other groups have picked it up, and used it also. But here is the kicker...this curriculum change disagreed with the Outer Order Initiation rituals.

In our case, once we figured out that the ballon had gone up, we decided to bring geomancy into the Zelator ritual. Of course, this violates the sacredness of the Cipher Manuscript where it is clearly stated that geomancy is not introduced until Theoricus...at this point, one could argue that the groups that do this are no longer Golden Dawn.

(And given the people who would argue this...well, I have to thank them...I do not want to belong to the same club as they do.)

And this is not the only type of change that has happened to the Golden Dawn rituals. Recently I have been reading a discussion about the 6=5 Adeptus Major Initiation ritual. There is a lot of debate about how long the 36 hours in the pastos is supposed to be. I have my own personal opinion based on my own experience and ritual skill.

It is the latter that one should look at the rituals though. In my opinion, it does not matter what the ritual script says; if you do not have the ritual skill to maintain the energy flow while doing it strictly by the script, then you need to consider modifying the ritual.

In many ways, the fact that the Golden Dawn ritual were set in stone so soon after their modern creation limits them. For instance, the original rituals presume that only the Hierophant and Co-Chiefs know the underlying godforms; it also presume that they are the only ones with the ability to create the shells for them. Many modern groups may not even have a single Adept when they start out: What do you do then?

One of the modifications that I like is the idea that all members can take part in the building up the godforms. This is especially true for a ritual like the 6=5, where there is that question of how long is a person supposed to lay in the pastos. (Yes, there are godforms associated with the reading of the hours; they have seven layers, just like all the other Grade rituals.) Instead of one person trying to hold these godforms together, you have a team doing it. Think of it as enriching the lodge.

My bottom line is that the rituals and curriculum of Golden Dawn needs to be able to change over time. If the system does not change, it becomes a dinosaur. And we all know what happened to them, don't we?

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.

Planetary Associations of the GD Hall Officers

I just mentioned in a posting that I did on the Golden Dawn Group yahoo forum that I once read that each of the Neophyte officers could be associated with a planetary energy. For anyone who does not know the list, or does not own The Equinox & Solstice Ceremonies of the Golden Dawn by Pat & Chris Zaleski, here is the list:

Hierophant: Sun
Hegemon: Moon
Hiereus: Mars
Kerux: Mercury
Stolistes: Jupiter
Dadouchos: Venus
Sentinel: Saturn