Nick Farrell just posted an entry about secrecy on his blog today. It is the direct result of a long going debate in the Golden Dawn community about secrecy and what is covered and what is not covered, a debate that had a recent hot spot that erupted in the comment section of his blog and a couple of others.
Now, my beliefs about secrecy were laid by experience, both in the tradition and outside of it. Outside of the tradition, I have watched the worst possible things be made secret ("skeletons in the closet"). This has made me believe that secrecy is really bad for human beings, or at least in the wrong context. For example, one of your relatives is abusing you, but you must not tell anyone...I think that you get the idea.
Inside the tradition itself, secrecy is a wonderful tool provided that you use it only when necessary. The problem is that secrecy tends to be used more by the charlatans and cons than it does by the enlightened.
My twelve-inch rule on secrecy was provided by Hathoor Temple. I learned by example. I treat secrecy the same way they did...much to the horror of several secrecy minded individuals. For instance, every document and lecture I write I have the right to publish---oh, the lodge can ask me not to, but ultimately it is my choice.
This, as some will point out, bars me from all the better Orders. They will promptly fail to note that you and I are barred from them even if we were practicing absolute secrecy---when certain Grades are only able to be held by a limitied number of people at a time, only those especially favored by the current holders of the Grade are allowed in when (and only when) one of their current members die.
Hathoor Temple was a strange beast when it came to secrecy. They were a dying lodge and they knew it. They are the only example of a lodge I know of that instead of becoming more and more secretive as the end approached, decided to loosen up the oaths of several members and swore them to preserving the system at all costs. Think of it as a form of reverse-secrecy.
My oath is about preserving the system, and perhaps even expanding it. The difference between me and the absolute secrecy crowd is that my instructors have decided that sometimes secrecy hurts the tradition more than it helps it...and they chose to enable some to act.
I understand both sides of the secrecy argument. And I think everyone who has sat down at a table with me for a cup of coffee, or attended a public ritual that I have led, or read some of my blog and forum postings, know exactly where I stand on the subject. The only thing they do not know are the things that I chose to keep secret...and yes, even I keep secrets.
Showing posts with label Hathoor Temple. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hathoor Temple. Show all posts
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Saturday, September 26, 2009
My own personal Golden Dawn background
Given some of the recent discussions I have had lately, ones where I found myself looking at things completely differently than everyone else, it might be useful to remind people that my personal background in Golden Dawn is perhaps not what they expect it to be.
Like many people, I got drawn into the occult when I was young. My parents raised me without any religion; there was a conflict over what religion I should be raised in, and the compromise was none.
But I was exposed to some religion, one that my mom (in hindsight regrets that I was exposed to, especially after she became born again). My aunt was a Gardnerian; like a fool, I followed suit becoming an initiate of one of the offshoots of the Craft in my late teens/early twenties.
(My mom blames wicca, along with a couple of other things, for her sister's death. In her book, me and my aunt are not wiccans, but outright satanists. It is hard to be a satanist when you do not believe in that entity or his enemy; or at least, I do believe in the same sense as a Christian does. I believe that there are unbalanced spiritual entities out there; I just chose not to worship them.)
I have belonged to a few covens in my time, along with study circles, healing circles, and the odd Golden Dawn lodge. I have also belonged to a few groups that score high on the cult evaluation form. I was actually expelled from a couple of these, including one where I was stripped of my degree by someone of a lesser degree than myself (basically, I refused to do something illegal after they seized control of the group; they thought I should follow their every order; hence, my ongoing battle with willfulness made me unfit for all fair society).
Being told that you are unfit for fair society allows one to look at things differently. For instance, I know that there is potential for cult-like behavior in Golden Dawn. And I will not keep this a secret, even when high superiors tell me that this must never be admitted.
I am also a journalist (sort of). I believe in the freedom of the press. One of the first things that a bad leader does is try to control what is being said about them (and others). I have a soapbox; I am going to use it (even if it is only to write bad book reviews).
But the thing that one needs to know the most about me is that I did not start off as a book learned member of Golden Dawn. Before I walked into Golden Dawn, I knew as much about the system as is contained in Kraig's Modern Magick. In fact, it was my carrying that book in public that caused me to come to the attention of a member of Hathoor Temple.
I was harassed for six months (or tested if you prefer that term), brought in and promptly made an officer. At the time, the lodge was in distress. They were trying to find a replacement for one of their long standing officers; hence, my experience of being ran though the mill.
For those who have not experienced this, imagine undergoing the rituals and teachings of an esoteric system, both as a student and an officer at the same time. As quickly as you move up the Grade ladder, you are also moved up the Officer ladder. People wonder why I dropped out after Hathoor Temple closed: I was simply burnt to a crisp.
It is due to this experience that I look at the Golden Dawn system differently. So differently that often I will back out of a conversation rather than try to convince people that I might know what I am talking about. I did not learn the system though papers and books: I learned it from a script while trying to figure out where I was supposed to be standing.
My experience was hands-on. Studying the papers came later. And Hathoor Temple (along with the Inner Order mentors that I came into contact with later) often disagreed with the published material. For me, the published material is always going to be a touch wrong.
I am also a touch suspicious of anyone shouting "Lineage!" or "Secret Chief!" Here in Denver Colorado, a place that had four GD lodges active in the late eighties/early nineties, we have never had any help from the outside. We have been on our own for quite some time doing the best that we can. In my opinion, it is a little late to suggest that we need help.
So to sum it up: I have been involved in too many groups that were on their own; I come from a non-Christian religion (hence I do not think that GD is a Christian Order [Hathoor sure wasn't; Bast Temple sure isn't]); I have suffered at the hands of bad leadership; I learned hands-on using scripts that disagree with the published material; and I believe in the freedom of the press.
If I wasn't already declared unfit for all fair society, the combination would get me be expelled.
Like many people, I got drawn into the occult when I was young. My parents raised me without any religion; there was a conflict over what religion I should be raised in, and the compromise was none.
But I was exposed to some religion, one that my mom (in hindsight regrets that I was exposed to, especially after she became born again). My aunt was a Gardnerian; like a fool, I followed suit becoming an initiate of one of the offshoots of the Craft in my late teens/early twenties.
(My mom blames wicca, along with a couple of other things, for her sister's death. In her book, me and my aunt are not wiccans, but outright satanists. It is hard to be a satanist when you do not believe in that entity or his enemy; or at least, I do believe in the same sense as a Christian does. I believe that there are unbalanced spiritual entities out there; I just chose not to worship them.)
I have belonged to a few covens in my time, along with study circles, healing circles, and the odd Golden Dawn lodge. I have also belonged to a few groups that score high on the cult evaluation form. I was actually expelled from a couple of these, including one where I was stripped of my degree by someone of a lesser degree than myself (basically, I refused to do something illegal after they seized control of the group; they thought I should follow their every order; hence, my ongoing battle with willfulness made me unfit for all fair society).
Being told that you are unfit for fair society allows one to look at things differently. For instance, I know that there is potential for cult-like behavior in Golden Dawn. And I will not keep this a secret, even when high superiors tell me that this must never be admitted.
I am also a journalist (sort of). I believe in the freedom of the press. One of the first things that a bad leader does is try to control what is being said about them (and others). I have a soapbox; I am going to use it (even if it is only to write bad book reviews).
But the thing that one needs to know the most about me is that I did not start off as a book learned member of Golden Dawn. Before I walked into Golden Dawn, I knew as much about the system as is contained in Kraig's Modern Magick. In fact, it was my carrying that book in public that caused me to come to the attention of a member of Hathoor Temple.
I was harassed for six months (or tested if you prefer that term), brought in and promptly made an officer. At the time, the lodge was in distress. They were trying to find a replacement for one of their long standing officers; hence, my experience of being ran though the mill.
For those who have not experienced this, imagine undergoing the rituals and teachings of an esoteric system, both as a student and an officer at the same time. As quickly as you move up the Grade ladder, you are also moved up the Officer ladder. People wonder why I dropped out after Hathoor Temple closed: I was simply burnt to a crisp.
It is due to this experience that I look at the Golden Dawn system differently. So differently that often I will back out of a conversation rather than try to convince people that I might know what I am talking about. I did not learn the system though papers and books: I learned it from a script while trying to figure out where I was supposed to be standing.
My experience was hands-on. Studying the papers came later. And Hathoor Temple (along with the Inner Order mentors that I came into contact with later) often disagreed with the published material. For me, the published material is always going to be a touch wrong.
I am also a touch suspicious of anyone shouting "Lineage!" or "Secret Chief!" Here in Denver Colorado, a place that had four GD lodges active in the late eighties/early nineties, we have never had any help from the outside. We have been on our own for quite some time doing the best that we can. In my opinion, it is a little late to suggest that we need help.
So to sum it up: I have been involved in too many groups that were on their own; I come from a non-Christian religion (hence I do not think that GD is a Christian Order [Hathoor sure wasn't; Bast Temple sure isn't]); I have suffered at the hands of bad leadership; I learned hands-on using scripts that disagree with the published material; and I believe in the freedom of the press.
If I wasn't already declared unfit for all fair society, the combination would get me be expelled.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Enshrining Regardie
Pat Zalewski, over on the Golden Dawn Group yahoo forum, is busy taking another tilt at convincing people that Regardie had a limited view of Golden Dawn.
I doubt that he is going to succeed in convincing anyone to change their mind.
Outside of a couple of people who have reason to see Regardie as a vemonous toad who broke all possibility of them being able to milk members for the privilege of seeing the Outer Order material (stuff that most of them would not have obtained if it wasn't for Regardie in the first place), most of us view Regardie as a beloved Frater of the Order who has became the unofficial Godfather of Golden Dawn.
And either you enshrine the man for saving the system, or you shrug your shoulders and get on with the Work.
Those people who enshrine Regardie hold his books up as the limit of what Golden Dawn and the RR et AC can be. For them, the rituals beyond Neophyte have no corresponding godforms despite indiciations that Adepts always perform the Work with the aid of godforms. For them, the last Grade of the system is ZAM (Zelator Adeptus Minor 5=6).
(There are also people who enshrine Mathers, Crowley, and the Secret Chiefs; all this enshrining limits what Golden Dawn can be.)
Those who just shrug their shoulders and move past the limits of what Regardie thought have learned already that his viewpoint was limited. It is a matter of experience. Those who are experienced know firsthand that there are things past the limits of the Regardie material.
In my own case, I got lucky. My first encounter with Golden Dawn was with a group of people who saw Regardie as a human being complete with flaws and warts. This group would have gotten along with Pat---scary thought as that is. I never even got a chance to enshrine Regardie.
As someone pointed out in an online class I attended today: Regardie only attended ritual seven times.
Read that again: seven times.
My cat has attended more rituals than Regardie did. My cat probably also has a better understanding of the rituals than Regardie, or Mathers for that matter, ever did.
It is one thing to read the works of Regrdie, but one should use a grain of salt when using them as Holy Writ; they are not a true indiciation of what Golden Dawn can be.
I wish Pat luck in his windmill tilting session. But I am not going to hold my breath that he is going to succeed in convincing a single person to change their mind.
I doubt that he is going to succeed in convincing anyone to change their mind.
Outside of a couple of people who have reason to see Regardie as a vemonous toad who broke all possibility of them being able to milk members for the privilege of seeing the Outer Order material (stuff that most of them would not have obtained if it wasn't for Regardie in the first place), most of us view Regardie as a beloved Frater of the Order who has became the unofficial Godfather of Golden Dawn.
And either you enshrine the man for saving the system, or you shrug your shoulders and get on with the Work.
Those people who enshrine Regardie hold his books up as the limit of what Golden Dawn and the RR et AC can be. For them, the rituals beyond Neophyte have no corresponding godforms despite indiciations that Adepts always perform the Work with the aid of godforms. For them, the last Grade of the system is ZAM (Zelator Adeptus Minor 5=6).
(There are also people who enshrine Mathers, Crowley, and the Secret Chiefs; all this enshrining limits what Golden Dawn can be.)
Those who just shrug their shoulders and move past the limits of what Regardie thought have learned already that his viewpoint was limited. It is a matter of experience. Those who are experienced know firsthand that there are things past the limits of the Regardie material.
In my own case, I got lucky. My first encounter with Golden Dawn was with a group of people who saw Regardie as a human being complete with flaws and warts. This group would have gotten along with Pat---scary thought as that is. I never even got a chance to enshrine Regardie.
As someone pointed out in an online class I attended today: Regardie only attended ritual seven times.
Read that again: seven times.
My cat has attended more rituals than Regardie did. My cat probably also has a better understanding of the rituals than Regardie, or Mathers for that matter, ever did.
It is one thing to read the works of Regrdie, but one should use a grain of salt when using them as Holy Writ; they are not a true indiciation of what Golden Dawn can be.
I wish Pat luck in his windmill tilting session. But I am not going to hold my breath that he is going to succeed in convincing a single person to change their mind.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Unwelcome professions
One of the things that surprises me is that none of the modern Golden Dawn Orders have openly banned writers and historians from joining. Their very training and professions make them more liable than most applicants to be risks to absolute secrecy. It would make sense on a paranoid level, and given the weight the esoteric Orders place on secrecy and the mythical history, it just amazes me that any Order would allow writers and historians to join their ranks.
I think about this a lot. After all, I am a freelance writer (this last semester I wrote an astrology column for one of the local college newspapers) and besides being a literature major, I am also a history minor. I have always been a writer; I started writing in high school.
In my case, my best success as a writer has been writing about paganism, magic, and the occult. Those subjects are part of my pot boilers. And if you believe in absolute secrecy, where even the very substance of the rituals and lessons of an Order, the subject matter itself, falls under the secrecy oath, then I am walking, talking, writing secrecy leak.
And my training that I am undergoing as a student of history, let's just say it is not helping if you are concerned with people who might be attempted to publish stuff.
I know why I am thinking about this so much today. Late last night, I read a response to Nick Farrell publishing a document from the Alpha and Omega: The Book of the Tomb. And given my response to how it was being used as evidence in a discussion, I had the urge to release the pdf copy that was in my possession.
Plus my life is complicated by the little oath that I was put under by Hathoor Temple: the one that says that I will do everything in my power to preserve the lore of the tradition, and if necessary I would publish stuff. This oath was to protect the lore of Hathoor Temple, but it applies to all past Orders that I belonged to and all future Orders. It is why Archive Officers are viewed as accidents waiting to happen by the Big Name Orders: if the only way left to preserve the lore of the tradition is to publish, then Archive Officers are required to do so.
And the oath of an Archive Officer can not be rescinded; it is something that one bears for the rest of one's life.
In this case, given the fact that the same pdf was given to me by more than one source, I decided that it was already being circulated enourgh without me having to worry about it disappearing. At least, in the current time period...of course, now thanks to Nick, I do not have to concern myself about the future fate of that document.
Of course, as an Archive Officer, I look upon Crowley, Regardie, Zalewski, and Farrell in a completely different light. They are people who made decisions like the ones that I had to ponder; they have done things I hope that I never have to do.
Given the present circumstances, I know that I could have been the one to step into the doghouse. And it is just a reminder that a person like myself is not welcome in many circles, especially the Big Name Orders.
I think about this a lot. After all, I am a freelance writer (this last semester I wrote an astrology column for one of the local college newspapers) and besides being a literature major, I am also a history minor. I have always been a writer; I started writing in high school.
In my case, my best success as a writer has been writing about paganism, magic, and the occult. Those subjects are part of my pot boilers. And if you believe in absolute secrecy, where even the very substance of the rituals and lessons of an Order, the subject matter itself, falls under the secrecy oath, then I am walking, talking, writing secrecy leak.
And my training that I am undergoing as a student of history, let's just say it is not helping if you are concerned with people who might be attempted to publish stuff.
I know why I am thinking about this so much today. Late last night, I read a response to Nick Farrell publishing a document from the Alpha and Omega: The Book of the Tomb. And given my response to how it was being used as evidence in a discussion, I had the urge to release the pdf copy that was in my possession.
Plus my life is complicated by the little oath that I was put under by Hathoor Temple: the one that says that I will do everything in my power to preserve the lore of the tradition, and if necessary I would publish stuff. This oath was to protect the lore of Hathoor Temple, but it applies to all past Orders that I belonged to and all future Orders. It is why Archive Officers are viewed as accidents waiting to happen by the Big Name Orders: if the only way left to preserve the lore of the tradition is to publish, then Archive Officers are required to do so.
And the oath of an Archive Officer can not be rescinded; it is something that one bears for the rest of one's life.
In this case, given the fact that the same pdf was given to me by more than one source, I decided that it was already being circulated enourgh without me having to worry about it disappearing. At least, in the current time period...of course, now thanks to Nick, I do not have to concern myself about the future fate of that document.
Of course, as an Archive Officer, I look upon Crowley, Regardie, Zalewski, and Farrell in a completely different light. They are people who made decisions like the ones that I had to ponder; they have done things I hope that I never have to do.
Given the present circumstances, I know that I could have been the one to step into the doghouse. And it is just a reminder that a person like myself is not welcome in many circles, especially the Big Name Orders.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Writing about the Golden Dawn
One of the things that disturbs people about me is the fact that I am a writer. And I write about Golden Dawn. This scares a lot of people.
I am not sure why. They occasionally cite secrecy as the reason.
Huh? The material I publish about Golden Dawn is mainly book reviews. And the rest is my own creation: stuff based primarily on material that already been published.
I guess it is another one of those bad habits that I picked up from Hathoor Temple. Their opinion, one that made its way into their bylaws, was that the creator of a document controlled the copyrights to it. They couldn't prevent publication. They thought it would be polite if you asked the Chiefs to make sure that there was nothing vital in the document that should not be published; but even in that case, they really couldn't stop you from releasing the material.
Hathoor Temple was also big on citing your sources. It is amazing how many secret documents are actually built up from public (published) sources.
This was how Hathoor Temple decided to deal with the core of the Golden Dawn system being in public domain. They felt that eventually everything from the original Golden Dawn would be published. They also felt that any Order or lodge worth its salt needed to put up or shut up.
It is a different business model than most Orders use. They felt that it was not lineage that counted or how many secret documents that you had; it was your current ability to generate new material and be an asset to the community that mattered---nothing else counted.
Now I will admit that based on my writings that I am probably next to useless as far as the Golden Dawn community is concerned. I ramble. I am opinionated. And quite often I am just plain wrong. Opps, my problem is that I am still human; I must get to work on that problem if I want any respect from my fellow Golden Dawn members.
But I don't care if you judge me by my writing or by the posts that I make on the Golden Dawn forums. And I could care even less if you think that I am not worthy of trust. The only opinions that matter are those of Bast Temple, my mentors, my friends, and my own. If I can live with my bad writing, it is not going to kill the rest of you.
(Though the writer in me would be impressed by writing so bad that it kills; Vogon poetry, anyone? How do I get my writing to be that bad? I want to be a lethal weapon, master of the poison pen.)
I am not sure why. They occasionally cite secrecy as the reason.
Huh? The material I publish about Golden Dawn is mainly book reviews. And the rest is my own creation: stuff based primarily on material that already been published.
I guess it is another one of those bad habits that I picked up from Hathoor Temple. Their opinion, one that made its way into their bylaws, was that the creator of a document controlled the copyrights to it. They couldn't prevent publication. They thought it would be polite if you asked the Chiefs to make sure that there was nothing vital in the document that should not be published; but even in that case, they really couldn't stop you from releasing the material.
Hathoor Temple was also big on citing your sources. It is amazing how many secret documents are actually built up from public (published) sources.
This was how Hathoor Temple decided to deal with the core of the Golden Dawn system being in public domain. They felt that eventually everything from the original Golden Dawn would be published. They also felt that any Order or lodge worth its salt needed to put up or shut up.
It is a different business model than most Orders use. They felt that it was not lineage that counted or how many secret documents that you had; it was your current ability to generate new material and be an asset to the community that mattered---nothing else counted.
Now I will admit that based on my writings that I am probably next to useless as far as the Golden Dawn community is concerned. I ramble. I am opinionated. And quite often I am just plain wrong. Opps, my problem is that I am still human; I must get to work on that problem if I want any respect from my fellow Golden Dawn members.
But I don't care if you judge me by my writing or by the posts that I make on the Golden Dawn forums. And I could care even less if you think that I am not worthy of trust. The only opinions that matter are those of Bast Temple, my mentors, my friends, and my own. If I can live with my bad writing, it is not going to kill the rest of you.
(Though the writer in me would be impressed by writing so bad that it kills; Vogon poetry, anyone? How do I get my writing to be that bad? I want to be a lethal weapon, master of the poison pen.)
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Coloring the Tarot: XIII Death
One of the more interesting tasks of the Inner Order, in my less than humble opinion, is the making of one own Tarot deck. I was first exposed to this concept, individualizing the Tarot, when I was a member of Hathoor Temple; in Portal, one had to produce several cards to prove that one could do the entire deck if called upon to do so.
It was a small task. Much easier than the way it was originally planned in the original Golden Dawn (RR et AC) which wanted its members to make an entire Tarot deck, a task that fell by the wayside. (Due to the task being hard to accomplish, and natural wear and tear, we end up with only a few decks actually being made, or so it would seem based on the information in my possession.)
There are a couple of reasons why the original Order wanted its members to do this task. The first being that Tarot decks were rare in England at the time; most of the decks that could be brought were of Italian origin. The other, and more important reason, is that the Golden Dawn Tarot differs from other Tarot decks, especially in the Major Arcana.
Yet the weight of the task ensured that it would be one that fell by the wayside when corners started to be cut. But it never disappeared completely.
For instance, Paul Foster Case, the person behind BOTA (Builders of the Adytum), had the members of BOTA handcolor a outlined Tarot deck. It is a compromise between doing the entire deck and not attempting the project in the first place. Case was a former member of Alpha and Omega (AO), the branch of Golden Dawn that Mathers controlled after the revolt of the Adepts. Case himself would have troubles with Moina Mathers, an event that led to the formation of BOTA.
Quite frankly, I have never been completely happy with the BOTA deck. For instance, Case issued an exact color scheme for each of the cards. Looking at the current card that I am studying, the Death card, I find that it has way too much red for my individual tastes. I understand its place, but I think that it is emphasized too much.
The Death card from the Classical Golden Dawn Tarot
Fortunately, I have never been a stickler for obeying instructions. Even better nowadays, I have another deck option, thanks to Richard Dudshus and David Sledzinski.
Several years ago, when the Ciceros published their Golden Dawn Tarot deck, I moaned "Why couldn't they issue a version in black and white?" I liked the deck at the time; since then, I have grown a little leery of it considering the differences between it and the results of my own studies.
For instance, on the Cicero version of the Death card, they have a fish and a scorpion. Inside a Golden Dawn setting, is it really necessary to include these symbols.
After all, the card is associated with the Hebrew letter Nun (the name of the letter means "fish") and is assigned the Zodiac sign of Scorpio. If you know your correspondences, you really do not need the hint on the card. (The Thoth deck also has a fish on it, but that deck is used in a different setting.)
So why go to all the trouble of coloring one own Tarot deck?
Case believed that coloring the Tarot helped make it part of your mental furniture, that it helped one make a connection with the symbolism of the cards. I agree with his conclusion. I just wished that he used a deck more in line with the Golden Dawn symbolism and a different color scheme.
But as I said, I do have another option today.
When coloring the Tarot, one should notice what one thinks about. For instance, when coloring the classical version of the Death card (a task that is assigned to the Adept Minor Grade by the Inner Order teachings that I follow), I found myself wondering whether the hanging tatters on the skeleton were the remains of a robe or whether it was the remains of decayed flesh. In the end, I decided that it is probably both.
And it is little thoughts and questions like that make coloring, or outright creating from scratch, your own Tarot deck worthwhile.
Friday, August 3, 2007
Hathoor Temple
One of the things that vastly affects one's opinion of Golden Dawn is the first group that one belongs to. My Mother Lodge, so to speak, was Hathoor Temple. Located in Denver, Colorado, it served the local Golden Dawn community for over a decade. Extinct now, it still colors my opinion about what Golden Dawn is and can be.
I first encountered one of its members in mundane circles. At the time, I was working in fast food. During my breaks I was reading Donald Michael Kraig's Modern Magick. I was also practicing my flash cards and drawing my Hebrew Letters. It was the latter that Andrew spotted. After getting to know me very well over the next few months (I call it haressment--he had a wicked sense of humor), he told me that he knew some people who believed in the same things that I was studying and asked if I would like to meet them.
I said, yes. At the time, I didn't know that he was a member of Golden Dawn. Or rather a Golden Dawn based group. I did not learn that until my Neophyte initiation in March of 1992. All this time, I thought that he was just a lonely old man who took great joy in mocking my beliefs and rolling his eyes at my studies. While that was true, he was also the Chief of Hathoor Temple. His mocking turned out to be that of an initiate laughing his head off at how far off track a self-taught person could be.
There are some that have observed that I seem to function best in lodge when things are falling apart. Call it crisis mode, battle field conditions, or whatever you like; truth be told I am more comfortable during those times. And a large part of this comfort arises from the fact that Hathoor Temple was a lodge in crisis when I joined.
The crisis was a simple one. They knew that they were losing their Chief Adept in a couple of years. In fact, they had closed their membership by the time Andrew met me. To this day, I am not sure why Andrew pushed to make an exceptation on my behalf. Maybe they just needed a warm body to help organize their archive of documents.
I do know that I got to serve in a lot of offices during my brief stay in Hathoor Temple. Two weeks after my initiation into Neophyte, I got elected to be Sentinel. Before the doors closed completely, I also served as Kerux (an awkward position for me), Hiereus, and as an Archive Officer. Besides the service, I got a whirlwind training course in how to be an officer in Golden Dawn.
I admit that this training affects how I view the system. It was pounded into my head that officers serve the lodge and its members. Ideally, the best people are supposed to be elected to these positions, though there are times when you cope with less than the ideal. First sign of an officer taking a walk to the padded room, the membership should remove them from their position. Only the Archive Officers were officers for life, but that was because their duty (function of the office) required that condition.
Officers were to fulfill the function of the system. In Hathoor's view that function was teaching. Therefore their Chief Adept was actually the Praemonstrator. This is something that a lot people consider strange in Golden Dawn, but for me the Chief is supposed to be a teacher while his (or her) Co-Chiefs are responsible for taking care of enourgh daily business and problems for them to actually be able to focus on that job.
This difference in opinion is one of the reasons that Hathoor Temple referred to themselves as "Independent and Irregular." Or to put it another way, "Golden Dawn based." This particular term has carried over into Bast Temple. It simply means that just because someone else claims that Golden Dawn is ran this way and this way only that it is necessary true for us.
Having not been exposed to the majority of the published Golden Dawn documents at that time, to this day, the Hathoor rules and customs seem normal to me. It is the variations drawn from literal interpretation of the published material, or due to new revelations that seem strange to me.
The silliest notions I have heard is that everything has to be done the way that the original Order did things, or conversely that everything that has been published is now Outer Order material. The members of Hathoor Temple believed that things could change, bylaws voted on, officers elected, and new material added to the system. But they also believed that the material was graded in such a manner for the benefit of the students; while most people know far more about occultism than the original members of the system, even today there are real Neophytes, who enter the tradition knowing nothing about occultism other than it is there.
So while Hathoor Temple believed in a certain amount of tradition, they tried not to be slaves to it. Exactly where they picked up this strange (to some) notion I am not sure.
Did they have a lineage tracing back to the original Order? No. They did break off from an earlier group, but it seems to have been based on the published material of Regardie--the earlier and more distorted version--or at least, that is how I interpret what I seen in their Archive. That group I am guessing started in the seventies, with Hathoor breaking off in the early eighties. Another reason for the label "Golden Dawn based."
I never asked about why they break away from their roots. But I do have a good idea--abuse of power by the leadership. On one occasion when the possibility of just appointing someone to the position of Chief Adept came up, the Co-Chiefs stated that they had no desire to go back to that state of affairs. The next Chief Adept needed to be elected and able to fulfill the office, not be a figurehead without the knack to do the job. They believed that a certain amount of raw ability coupled with experience and training was necessary to do the job. And none of the newer members were ready yet, and the existing Co-Chiefs knew that they could not fill the position.
Hence the membership's decision to finish training its current members and then disband. They chose to lay the groundwork for a possible future lodge in Denver, rather than became a fossil themselves. Whether it was the right decision or not, I am still not sure. I do know that my subsequent adventures with various groups were the result of being "an orphan;" and if the claims of certain leaders be true, my own personal lineage is actually better than those who originally brought me into the tradition. (If you believe their claims, my own lineage, having to re-undergo Outer Order, trace back to the original--but that is an entry for another day.)
When Hathoor Temple closed its doors in late 1994, I was an Adept Minor, and bore an Administrative Grade of 9=2 because of my position as an Archive Officer. Many of their lessons and customs ended up in Bast Temple, due to my involvement in its formation. And to this day, the Hathoor way of doing things looks (more often than not) like the correct way.
Which just goes to show that your Mother Lodge will affect the way you approach the system for the rest of your life.
I first encountered one of its members in mundane circles. At the time, I was working in fast food. During my breaks I was reading Donald Michael Kraig's Modern Magick. I was also practicing my flash cards and drawing my Hebrew Letters. It was the latter that Andrew spotted. After getting to know me very well over the next few months (I call it haressment--he had a wicked sense of humor), he told me that he knew some people who believed in the same things that I was studying and asked if I would like to meet them.
I said, yes. At the time, I didn't know that he was a member of Golden Dawn. Or rather a Golden Dawn based group. I did not learn that until my Neophyte initiation in March of 1992. All this time, I thought that he was just a lonely old man who took great joy in mocking my beliefs and rolling his eyes at my studies. While that was true, he was also the Chief of Hathoor Temple. His mocking turned out to be that of an initiate laughing his head off at how far off track a self-taught person could be.
There are some that have observed that I seem to function best in lodge when things are falling apart. Call it crisis mode, battle field conditions, or whatever you like; truth be told I am more comfortable during those times. And a large part of this comfort arises from the fact that Hathoor Temple was a lodge in crisis when I joined.
The crisis was a simple one. They knew that they were losing their Chief Adept in a couple of years. In fact, they had closed their membership by the time Andrew met me. To this day, I am not sure why Andrew pushed to make an exceptation on my behalf. Maybe they just needed a warm body to help organize their archive of documents.
I do know that I got to serve in a lot of offices during my brief stay in Hathoor Temple. Two weeks after my initiation into Neophyte, I got elected to be Sentinel. Before the doors closed completely, I also served as Kerux (an awkward position for me), Hiereus, and as an Archive Officer. Besides the service, I got a whirlwind training course in how to be an officer in Golden Dawn.
I admit that this training affects how I view the system. It was pounded into my head that officers serve the lodge and its members. Ideally, the best people are supposed to be elected to these positions, though there are times when you cope with less than the ideal. First sign of an officer taking a walk to the padded room, the membership should remove them from their position. Only the Archive Officers were officers for life, but that was because their duty (function of the office) required that condition.
Officers were to fulfill the function of the system. In Hathoor's view that function was teaching. Therefore their Chief Adept was actually the Praemonstrator. This is something that a lot people consider strange in Golden Dawn, but for me the Chief is supposed to be a teacher while his (or her) Co-Chiefs are responsible for taking care of enourgh daily business and problems for them to actually be able to focus on that job.
This difference in opinion is one of the reasons that Hathoor Temple referred to themselves as "Independent and Irregular." Or to put it another way, "Golden Dawn based." This particular term has carried over into Bast Temple. It simply means that just because someone else claims that Golden Dawn is ran this way and this way only that it is necessary true for us.
Having not been exposed to the majority of the published Golden Dawn documents at that time, to this day, the Hathoor rules and customs seem normal to me. It is the variations drawn from literal interpretation of the published material, or due to new revelations that seem strange to me.
The silliest notions I have heard is that everything has to be done the way that the original Order did things, or conversely that everything that has been published is now Outer Order material. The members of Hathoor Temple believed that things could change, bylaws voted on, officers elected, and new material added to the system. But they also believed that the material was graded in such a manner for the benefit of the students; while most people know far more about occultism than the original members of the system, even today there are real Neophytes, who enter the tradition knowing nothing about occultism other than it is there.
So while Hathoor Temple believed in a certain amount of tradition, they tried not to be slaves to it. Exactly where they picked up this strange (to some) notion I am not sure.
Did they have a lineage tracing back to the original Order? No. They did break off from an earlier group, but it seems to have been based on the published material of Regardie--the earlier and more distorted version--or at least, that is how I interpret what I seen in their Archive. That group I am guessing started in the seventies, with Hathoor breaking off in the early eighties. Another reason for the label "Golden Dawn based."
I never asked about why they break away from their roots. But I do have a good idea--abuse of power by the leadership. On one occasion when the possibility of just appointing someone to the position of Chief Adept came up, the Co-Chiefs stated that they had no desire to go back to that state of affairs. The next Chief Adept needed to be elected and able to fulfill the office, not be a figurehead without the knack to do the job. They believed that a certain amount of raw ability coupled with experience and training was necessary to do the job. And none of the newer members were ready yet, and the existing Co-Chiefs knew that they could not fill the position.
Hence the membership's decision to finish training its current members and then disband. They chose to lay the groundwork for a possible future lodge in Denver, rather than became a fossil themselves. Whether it was the right decision or not, I am still not sure. I do know that my subsequent adventures with various groups were the result of being "an orphan;" and if the claims of certain leaders be true, my own personal lineage is actually better than those who originally brought me into the tradition. (If you believe their claims, my own lineage, having to re-undergo Outer Order, trace back to the original--but that is an entry for another day.)
When Hathoor Temple closed its doors in late 1994, I was an Adept Minor, and bore an Administrative Grade of 9=2 because of my position as an Archive Officer. Many of their lessons and customs ended up in Bast Temple, due to my involvement in its formation. And to this day, the Hathoor way of doing things looks (more often than not) like the correct way.
Which just goes to show that your Mother Lodge will affect the way you approach the system for the rest of your life.
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