Witch apprentice (31 Days of Halloween Kitties Day 22 Year 3)

Is your cat your witch apprentice?

Sometimes I think that my cats are taking notes while I am doing rituals. Like yesterday, during my daily performance of the Lesser rituals and the Middle Pillar, the two youngest cats (they are both three years old--and brothers) just sat there and watched me. I am positive that they were taking notes, and judging me on my performance. Now, there are some that might say that they are learning magic from me, and therefore are apprentices. My personal view is that they are probably Secret Chiefs (as my regular readers know).

I teach GD over coffee

One of the things that I occasionally have to remind myself is that I am not typical of the majority of the Golden Dawn community. The way that I was initially taught affects the way that I teach; it also affects the way I think about the system. For instance, outside of a few isolated bits, such as what ended up in Kraig's book, most of my initial Golden Dawn training happened in working lodge...or over coffee.

It is the "over coffee" part that you want to play attention to. Because I was taught in informal conversations, I tend to do my best teaching during informal conversations. A lot of people think that I am joking when I announce that I am willing to try to explain what Golden Dawn does over coffee, but it is actually true. Outside of the lodge work, more of my training happened during informal, friendly conversation than it did from books and secret documents and the official lecture hour.

And when I teach...I mean truly teach...it is in the same envirnoment. You are either working or having coffee...lecture days tend to not be very educational.

I have been being reminded of this lately. One of the Sorors from my lodge recently have been dealing with me in "coffee" mode. Over the past month, she has gotten more information out of me in informal conversations than she has in formal lodge lectures (outside of actual work sessions...which is ritual work and not lectures). By the way, this is always true for me. If you want information from me, lodge is necessary; but you really want to make time to "socialize" with me, if you want me to really explain what is going on.

I just don't function properly in a strict envirnoment where you only deal with your superior during lecture hour.

(The odd thing is that if you can get me to write about the system, you also get more out of me than during a spoken lecture...I am not sure why.)

{By the way, this is one of the reasons why I could care less about the HOGD/A&O claims. Strict secrecy implies that you NEVER about talk Golden Dawn over coffee or deal with your superiors and lessers outside of a strict controlled envirnoment. Because of that, it would be pointless for me to join that system...no matter how true their claims are or what secret information that they actually have.}

Why I dont use Opening by Watchtower more often

Jason Miller, over on his blog, just asked why all the ritual outlines we see tend to start with LBRP or LBRH, and not the Opening by Watchtower, when doing practical magic in the Golden Dawn/Modern Magick context.

(For the sure-to-stumble-upon-this-post newbie: LBRP---Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram; LBRH---Lesser Ritual of the Hexagram; Modern Magick is the title of a book by Donald Michael Kraig, which has became the core textbook for a lot of people.)

I am not sure that I have a good answer for him. For that matter, I am not sure if I am in the context that he is talking about. I presume that I am. If not, *shrugs*.

So here is my personal answer, I generally skip the LBRP and LBRH in my own workspace; it is used for lodge and ritual related work mainly, so I only occasionally have to clean up after a non-ritual use. But I teach that if your ritual room is used for something else, then one really should do the Lesser Rituals of Banishment.

(The use of the room by the cats do not count...though occasionally I do wonder what they are doing with the simple Enochian Chess set.)

And most of my rituals start with the proper Opening of the Grade that I am working in. The kicker is that the Opening by Watchtower is not part of any of the Golden Dawn Openings that my Order uses. Therefore, I do not spend a lot of time working with it. (There is Enochian in the Openings, but not this particular ritual.)

As for the greater Golden Dawn/Ritual Magick community not using the Opening by Watchtower more often, I would venture the guess that they are taking their cue from what they see other people doing. Given the fact that most are learning from reading books and other material, it is natural for them to think of this as the proper way of doing things. If you see a hundred outlines saying that the Lesser Rituals of the Pentagram and Hexagram is the proper way to start, and only one that says otherwise, you tend to go with the majority opinion.

I learned practical magic by observing actual people doing the work, therefore I picked up a different set of habits. Of course, one wonders how the people who showed me Our Arte and Craft overlooked the fact that most of the Regardie examples start off with the Lesser Rituals of Banishment. Then again, one wonders how the Modern Magick community have ignored Kraig's examples. I know the answer to the former, but not the latter.

If you have a better answer than mine, please hop over to Jason Miller's blog and tell it to him.

Trying to make the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram interesting

One of the joys of being in Golden Dawn, or any other esoteric group for that matter, is that occasionally you can see one of the officers crack up. Each officer has their particular burden to bear. In the case of the Praemonstrator, it is having to lecture about a subject that they have done fifteen million times before (or so, it feels to them).

A particular amusing lecture to watch the Praemonstrator around is when they have to talk about the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram. Due to the neccessarity of it being taught to every new member (aka Neophyte), most of us have attended this lecture a million times (ok, maybe it just feels like a million times). The only thing that I can imagine more boring than attending the lecture would be teaching it. You can see the eyes of the Praemonstrator twitch as they think about having to do yet another round of teaching it.

The only solution I have seen for this problem (how many times can you watch the same lecture over and over again) is to treat the lecture as if you have two audiences---one being the Neophyte, the other audience everyone else. For the Neophyte, you teach the standard "Here is where you move; these are the symbols you draw; these are the words you say." For everyone else, you take a dartboard, divide it into six parts, and throw a dart at it.

The Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram has seven layers just like the rest of the Golden Dawn rituals have. The lowest is the physical layer (the part that you are showing to the Neophyte). Everyone else gets a lecture corresponding to the layer that the dart landed in. It is not the most ideal way of teaching, but it cuts down on the snoring and eye twitching.

And if you somehow have not attended the lecture on the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram fifteen million times, then you might enjoy reading this post on Augoeides about the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram (click on sentence).