Smashwords Sale until March 10 2012

Five Reasons Why Magic Fails

Smashwords is having a site-wide sale until March 10, 2012. One of my ebooks (really an article) is included in the sale---you can get Five Reasons Why Magic Fails for half off ($2.50) until the end of the sale by entering coupon code REW50 at the checkout. This small ebook sums up the five most common reasons why practical magic fails---at least according to my experience.

Five Reasons Why Magic Fails.

AoW Crowley in the Woodpile

A week ago (or was it two weeks ago?) I openly noted that I was kicking around the question of how one's lineage was affected by having a villian in your lineage. "Does having Aleister Crowley in your lineage make you less of an Adept?"

The reason that I started thinking about this question again (it is a periodic re-occurring question) was that I had encountered some blog posts about lineage that were arguing that you could not have an initiation higher than the person's initiating you; furthermore, Grades are actually a measure of spiritual development--and NOT magical development. Therefore, it is doubtful that a sinner could initiate someone into Neophyte even.

Now, this is always an interesting question for me...because if you believe the story that I was told by one of my initiators, part of my lineage actually traces back through the infamous Aleister Crowley. That is right, my lineage may go back to Crowley and MacGregor Mathers.

Of course, if you believe that a sinner like Crowley cannot pass on a lineage, then the initiations I got from that lineage does not count. In fact, I can point to dubious characters in all the other lineages that I supposely have. Therefore by the logic and beliefs of many people, I am not an initiate at all.

To add a cherry on top, having sat in the hot seat and initiated people myself into the Golden Dawn system, there are people who trace their GD lineage through me. While I am not as bad as Crowley, there are some people who think that I am more than slightly evil.

And there are some people who do not even know that their lineage traces through me. (Oh, you know how that happens.) One should really pity those poor souls.

When I openly started kicking around this question this time around, someone pointed out that the question is really about the spiritual technology and not the person giving the initiation. That answer is fine...provided that there is only one true Golden Dawn, and everyone outside of the real Golden Dawn is not an initate at all.

(Please remember that everyone in the 80s and 90s claimed to be the one and only true Golden Dawn. Someone obviously had to be lying. My membership in an Order was based more on who I discovered first than on what they claimed to offer.)

Problem is that I do not believe that there is only one true Golden Dawn. I believe that all initiations have an effect on the person undergoing them. Therefore, the question is really about how badly does it affect someone to undergo an initiation where the officers are not ALL SAINTS armed with the COMPLETE KNOWLEDGE OF THE 10=1. Yes, I am serious. Saints who are 10=1s would be the ultimate initiation team.

(Of course, given the fact that there are only allowed to be twelve/twenty-four/thirty-six/seventy-two/whater-your-number-is Magus 9=2s in the entire world at any one time, logic tells us that the perfect initiation team is more myth than actual fact. Especially when you consider the number of groups that claim that there is only one 10=1 alive at any one time. And this is not even accounting for the groups who do not believe that Third Order Grades can be held by living physical human beings.)

Everyone who suffered with a team of initiators who were less than full 10=1s has been dealt a lineage with holes and problems in it. (I do mean the whole team has to be 10=1s--therefore the Neophyte Grade needs eleven 10=1s to man all the officer stations in order to properly do the Neophyte initiation.)

Lesser members do not have the full spiritual technology. Therefore, by logic of the spiritual technology model combined with the idea that officers must know and master it all (otherwise their ritual performances are flawed), only a person with access and mastery of the complete system, aka a 10=1, can provide a complete initiation. Logically by this style of thinking, only Third Order, and only those of the very highest Grade, should be giving initiations to anyone.

Yet we live in a world that this is not true. For instance, in the very first days of the Golden Dawn, there was only three officers and (let's be honest) they were not yet fully instructed in the system yet. Their rituals were flawed...their initiates were flawed...and the cycle goes on and on. Therefore, most initiates in Golden Dawn have undergone flawed initations.

So the real question becomes how do you deal with the fact that you have a Crowley in the woodpile. The answer is keep collecting lineages (to better your chances of connecting to a better stocked lineage) aka "healing your lineage" and/or by doing the advanced work of the system. The latter unfortunately requires finding the correct work to do, which also leads to collecting multiple lineages. Hence the only way to make sure that the rot of Crowley (or whoever your favorite villian is) does not bog you down is to join every Golden Dawn Order that will let you in the door. And don't trust anyone who claims to possess the only correct way to do things...because they might be wrong. You must collect all the lineages if you want to be absolutely sure that you have the correct spiritual technology.

Of course, if you are like me, a poor college student with little spare time and money, that is not really an option. In that case, you just have to make your best guess and cross your fingers. And in my case, let's be honest, everyone knows how incorrect my decision was.

"What the hell?! It is a tadpole--I wanted a dragon." "That is not a tadpole; that's a baby salmander." "A baby salmander?! I wanted a dragon." "Patience, patience, patience."

Rule 1 of magical mottos

[Here is a peek of one of the small ebooks that I am currently working on.]

The first rule to remember about your motto is that it is supposed to be personal to you. The motto represents a channel which the spiritual and magical energies that you are exposed to during initiations and your private magical work are directed through. This channel should represent your spiritual aspirations, and not those of another person.


The fact that it should represent your own spiritual aspirations, and not another person’s, means that being given a motto by someone else, whether a guru or Order superior, is undesirable. After all, who knows your personal spiritual aspirations best? Hopefully, it is you.

Likewise, recycling the motto of a previous member of the Order is unwise, for the mottos of previous members represent their spiritual aspirations, not yours. Furthermore, a recycled motto carries with it part of the karma of its original possessor. A common initiate that many people recycle mottos from is Aleister Crowley, the founder of Thelema. While it is true that Crowley was a great Adept, and perhaps even the higher Grade that he claimed to possess, his mottos come with a heavy price. Before even remotely considering recycling a previously used motto, one needs to consider if they are willing to help another initiate (living or deceased) work on their karma while ignoring one’s own karma and aspirations.

Book Review King Over the Water

Would you like an antacid with your Mathers' Last Secret book?

When Mathers' Last Secret came out, one of my friends joked that we should market a brand of Golden Dawn antacids. I regret not following up on that suggestion, for the latest book by Nick Farrell, King Over the Water: Samuel Mathers and the Golden Dawn, is going to just increase the market for antiacids among some members of the Golden Dawn community.

This book review is not for the antiacid crowd. My suggestion for the antiacid crowd is just continue on with your work and ignore this book. This includes anyone who thinks that Mathers was the genius behind Golden Dawn, that Mathers was in contact with some uber-Adept, or that secret documents should remain unpublished and Secret Chiefs and their contacts unquestioned. And if you choose to ignore my advice, and buy the book anyways, just remember that I am willing to sell you a big jar of premium Golden Dawn brand antiacid.

In fact, if you feel that Mathers was perfect and/or the Secret Chiefs are perfect, you may want to ignore the rest of this book review as well and just go pop an antacid right now.

King Over the Water

*antacid time*

I like this book. It is long overdue. It will be a valuable addition to anyone's Golden Dawn history or document library.

Have you taken your antacid yet?

(One would hope that the antacid crowd have taken my advice and wandered off already, but I know that they would rather stick around and throw rotten eggs at me for liking this book. *sigh*)

The biggest problem with this book quite honestly is that those people who need to read it the most will ignore it because their superiors will tell them that it is just a pack of lies and a political ax job meant to destory Mathers and their superiors' reputations. And they will believe their superiors. Farrell tries to address this issue by pointing out some of the things that dishonest Orders have done in the past. I would love to say that the offenses he lists are isolated events, but they remind me of the laundry list of crap that I have seen in the various esoteric groups that I have been involved in.

My advice to one and all is: Be wary of anyone who holds an office in an esoteric Order, especially anyone who holds power because of the documents and contacts that they alone control. And be prepared to pop a lot of antacids. Why? Because a lot of people look fondly back on Mathers and decide to act just like he did. This tends to lead to the exact same results that the early GD experienced---do I need to remind you of the last time that this happened?!

Samuel Liddell (MacGregor) Mathers, while necessary for the birth of the Golden Dawn system, is not the person you want to model your behavior on as an officer or Chief of an esoteric Order.

One of the things that I think that every student of Golden Dawn should study is the history of the early years of the Order. It is part of our heritage as members of the Golden Dawn. I don't care what branch of the Golden Dawn tradition you belong to, the early history is important to know.

Unfortunately, up until this book, no history of the early years of the Order has been written by someone who has stood on the inside of a functioning Golden Dawn lodge. The closest we have gotten, previous to this book, are a few Freemasons who chosen to write about esoteric Order history. Because of that there are some things that are perfectly "normal" inside the GD envirnoment that end up sounding mighty strange to an outsider, and the histories so far have made the early GD sound slightly wacky.

Does Farrell make Mathers sound like a complete loon? No. Farrell makes it clear that Mathers had some personal issues, but they are no stranger than those of most of the people that I have sat in lodge with. It was rather interesting to see Farrell point out the possible psychological issues that may have been driving Mathers actions.

Over the years, I have tried to get people to explain to me why Mathers did certain things (ex. the Horos encounter---why would anyone in contact with Secret Chiefs fall for Horos and believe that they were the real thing). And this is one of the best attempts that I have seen of trying to figure out what was really going on and why Mathers occasionally made a decision that just makes your head hurt as you try to figure out his logic. Is Farrell's solution the only one? No, but it will do until something better comes along.

(If the antiacid crowd is still present, I would like to point out that they are free to hunt down records and documents, and write their own history of Mathers and the early days of the Golden Dawn.)

In all fairness, this book is mistitled---it deals a little bit with every significant member of the Golden Dawn during its early days. Westcott, Crowley, Moina Mathers, etc. But the main focus is MacGregor.

One of the accusations that will be leveled at this book will be that Farrell is not qualified as a historian. I am going to have to disagree with this notion. Having spent a lot of time learning the profession, I can see the hallmarks of a historian in this book. I might not be able to track down all his sources, but I can see that he was actually working from actual sources (primary documents).

As a history of the early days of Golden Dawn, and a biography of Mathers, this book is a welcome addition. It is not the ax job that I expected it to be, occasionally one even feels sympathy for Mathers.

In addition to the history of early GD and biography of Samuel Mathers, King Over the Water also contains several early A&O (GD) documents---an early version of the Book of the Tomb, the Z documents (which I learned is actually a single document divided into three parts), and an earlier version of the Sword Consecration ritual. (Or at least, these were in the earlier draft of the book that I read.)

Each one of these documents is of a particular interest to me. The version of the Book of the Tomb that the BIORC uses is much later, and has some additions made to it (that what happens when an Order believes that its own members can contribute to the system without having to rely on Secret Chiefs); therefore, it is nice to see an earlier version of it (beyond the photocopies that I have been given by others---this is the earliest version I have seen of the Book of the Tomb). The Z Document, just like the material in Mathers' Last Secret, has some material in it that makes me wonder if my Mother lodge reinvented the wheel or actually concealed a major part of their actual lineage (at this point, I really wonder if my lineage does not go back to Mathers on the one side through BOTA---of course, that cannot actually be true).

One thing that the reader should know is that Mathers' Last Secret and King Over the Water are very much tied into one another. If I was to assign them as part of the required reading for a lesson unit, the two books would be assigned together---for parts of each book is only understandable if you have ready access to the other. Then again, that is just like the rest of the Golden Dawn system, isn't it? For instance, the argument that Mathers did not understand the Z Document is dependent on looking both at the shortcuts that Mathers approved of for A&O rituals and the Z Document as Mathers knew it.

Of course, beyond the fact that Farrell's history reveals that Mathers and company was composed of human beings, the publishing of these documents is going to annoy some people. It is natural to be annoyed when your branch of the tradition insists on absolute secrecy.

But the biggest annoyance is going to be the fact that Farrell actually presents a strong case that Mathers' Secret Chiefs were actually ASTRAL. Or some other non-physical entity type (I am including stuff that comes out of one's brain as "non-physical" here). And that more than one person in the early GD had such contacts. The reason that this is going to annoy a lot of people (and there is more than one Order involved here) is that there are several Order Chiefs out there who claim to be in contact with the "one and only" set of Secret Chiefs.

So there you have it, the three strikes against this book (and the reason I should be making a fortune selling Golden Dawn brand antacids)---Mathers and company are human; there are early GD/A&O documents included in this book; and the Secret Chiefs are either astral or a product of the human mind. Nevertheless, this is still the best explanation about why events unfolded the way that they did.

Nick Farrell's book, King Over the Water--Samuel Mathers and the Golden Dawn, is available to order on Amazon.

[Full Disclosure Statement and shameless self-promotion: This book review was based on a pre-publication version of the book given to me by the author. If you would like me to consider reviewing your book, feel free to email me a electronic copy through my lodge email address: basttemple at msn dot com. Remember that my reviews tend to involve the selling of antiacids.]

QoW A Crowley in the Woodpile

Question of the week: If one's lineage goes through Aleister Crowley,* are you somehow less of an initiate because of it? If so, why? If not, why not?

*Or whoever your favorite villian is (Pat Zalewski, Nick Farrell, Robert Zink, David Griffin, Chic Cicero, Israel Regardie, or that bloke in Denver Colorado).

A computer could write this blog

The Secret Chiefs of the Golden Dawn will see you now.

I am a writer---I think that most of my readers know this. And I read lots of blogs, including some in the publishing/writing field. Today, I was reading a blog post over on Galleycat about how Forbes has joined the horde of 30 companies now using the Narrative Science software to write their stories.

(Yes, I have decided that a group of 30 companies is a horde. It is either a horde or a government. And either way, you are probably not going to like what they are doing.)

Anyway, I find myself wondering if I could be replaced by a computer program. Could a computer write this blog? Would you be able to tell the difference?

And in my case, yes---a computer could write as intelligently as I do; after all, most of my jokes are not funny. Just throw in a whining attitude and a few cat photos and BLAM! you would not be able to tell the difference.

Come to think of it, there are several other bloggers you could replace with a whiny attitude and a few pictures. No names mentioned---you know who they are. Heck, the entire esoteric blogosphere could be replaced by a machine. It is not like you cannot predict what various bloggers and commenters are going to say. It can't be that hard to program a computer to do the writing instead. For that matter, we could replace all those pesky Secret Chiefs with a computer too---it is not like most of us would know the difference provided that they continued to take our money.

Don't believe me?! Just think about the number of books that you have read that are just rip-offs of Agrippa, Regardie or Crowley. Think of the number of Golden Dawn websites that are just clones of these writers. (I am beginning to believe that Agrippa is the most pirated occult writer in history.)

And the critics of this cloning---the Secret Restoration Crowd---who argue that we must change everything, so that everything is absolutely secret, you have read their posts also, right? You can predict what they are going to say next, right?

See, we could all be replaced with computers, the entire occult blogosphere. And given the amount of time that some of us spend on this stuff, we should really encourage someone to write a computer program to replace us. I wonder if I could raise money on Kickstarter to do this project.

Most anonymous blogs could be written by machines.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

As many of my regular readers know, I am working on getting my Bachelors in History (as well as a Bachelors in Literature). This semester, I am doing my Senior Seminar (capstone) for history. Yes, I am one of those evil people who is trained as a historian (and have enourgh experience with journalism and oral story telling to be leery of the oral tradition), and therefore have no place studying the history of Golden Dawn and the other esoteric Orders. It is a good thing that I am more interested in studying other branches of history, isn't it?

For my Senior Seminar paper, I am working with the papers of Denver Mayor William McNichols that are part of the Denver Public Library's Western History collection. I am focused on Civil Defense. Therefore I am reading a lot of government memos and letters.

One of the things that I have learned going though the McNichols papers is that a lot of letters supposely written by the Denver Mayor were not created by him; they merely bear his signature. Last night, I was reading a reply to a letter sent from one of the many cities who were interested in getting a copy of the "Denver Plan." (Denver's Civil Defense over time became more focued on dealing with all types of emergencies, not just nuclear strikes---riots, extreme weather, airplane crashes, etc.) And in the course of the request, the person requesting the information (to be used as a "model example" of an emergency plan) told the Mayor how proud the city and county of Denver should be to have Colonel Allen as Director of the local Civil Defense. The person preparing the Mayor's reply (writing as if he was Mayor McNichols) said that he would be sure to pass the compliment onto Colonel Allen.

The punchline is that the person preparing the draft copy was Colonel Allen himself.

And what does this have to do with Golden Dawn? Absolutely nothing...unless you are like me and wonder how often a reply from a Secret Chief is actually written by someone else. As I said, being actually trained as a historian makes me unsuitable to study the history of Golden Dawn and other esoteric Orders.