You drove me into the conspiracy

[This post is being written on September 27, 2012--and it is a prediction of the HOGD/AO reaction to the fact that a book of Commentaries on the Golden Dawn Flying Rolls has been published. I am writing it now because I am sure if what I am predicting comes true, I will not feel like being even this polite.]

Yes, I willingly volunteered to write a commentary on one of the Golden Dawn Flying Rolls when a member of the "evil conspiracy" asked me to. Yes, I knew that the profits were going to the Golden Dawn Legal Defense Fund. And yes, I knew who else were writing commentaries.

Well, the first statement is true. The other two statements were good guesses on my part. (I saw a partial "proof" copy just a couple of days ago, so I know that my guesses were true.) I will admit that I didn't ask certain questions once I heard that it was a "non-profit" community project, and that Nick Farrell was involved.

Now, I do not necessarily agree with everything that Nick says. I think that he knows this. For one thing, him and me have different opinions about what goes into running an esoteric Order--I suspect this is because I come from the "back of the bookstore" and "let's talk about this over coffee" schools of training; in many ways, his training was better than mine (not hard to accomplish at all). For a second thing, Nick casts Samuel Macgregor Mathers in the role of evil genius; I am not sure that Mathers was nearly as conscious of the effects that his instructions would have. (I will talk more about that in another blog post--if I haven't already by the time this entry is actually published.)

So why would I willing volunteer for this project, especially when I knew that it would get me labeled as a member of an evil conspiracy.

Because the HOGD/AO has already claimed that I am a member of the evil conspiracy.

When I was asked to volunteer for this project, it was just after the little McTroll name-calling session that occurred after the Biased Book Review Battle of 2012 (aka Nick Farrell's positive book reviews must be all written by members of an evil conspiracy--no one could actually think that Farrell's books had any real merit). In the case of that battle, I got labeled as a "McTroll."

After being labeled a member of the conspiracy (which I wasn't) and having my reputation dragged through the mud--yes, I willingly volunteered to do this project.

I did briefly think about withdrawing from the project when the HOGD/AO announced their Peace and Harmony Pow Wow. Clear up to the second that I realized that peace between me and the HOGD/AO meant me ceasing to write about anything occult.

In particular, two comments kept me in the project. The first one was by an anonymous commenter, who lumped me into a list of bad writers and bloggers.

It is a laundry list of who the HOGD/AO considers to be agents for the conspiracy.

A couple of people on this list are friends of mine. And a couple of them I would love to work with, even if it is only getting an article into the same book as them. Plus, lets be honest, they have influenced my approach to magic and Golden Dawn more than Griffin ever has.

The second comment got my Irish up. (Note, both of these comments were made after the HOGD/AO announced their peace effort...hence, my opinion that only my complete disappearance would be classified as peaceful from their viewpoint.) And it is by Griffin's own wife. Even assuming that she was reacting to a death threat, I found it highly disturbing as a writer.

Now, let's be honest--I do not agree with her base opinion that I was hurting the egregore of Golden Dawn, especially the part of it that belongs to the HOGD/AO. But her tone implied that they (the HOGD/AO) can do anything that they want and not have to apologize for it, while the rest of us need to get permission for everything that we do.

(For the record, the part in red is my personal commentary...for it describes how I felt about the comments.)

Having dragged my reputation through the mud, and labeling me an "evil conspiracy member"---it was natural for me to say, "Yes" to a project that I knew was going to be classified a plot by the conspiracy.

In fact, I am not sure that I would have qualified to be involved in this project if it wasn't for the HOGD/AO. After all, I was a neutral clear up until they decided to declare me a member of the conspiracy for giving Nick's book a positive review. And let's be honest, I never bothered to prove that I was a Golden Dawn expert, preferring to remain a lunatic with a soapbox. I honestly think that the HOGD/AO labeling me a McTroll got me this gig.

So I would like to give the HOGD/AO a big thanks for labeling me a member of the conspiracy, and allowing me to get involved in this latest project. I learned a heck of a lot from this project, and it is going on my resume.

How Matherites rewrite Golden Dawn history

Good luck with your attempt to turn Mathers into a Saint. 

The best way to start this post is to perhaps to state upfront that I actually admire the work that Samuel Liddell Mathers did, especially the work he did alongside with William Wynn Westcott. I view the duo of Mathers and Westcott much like I view the duo of Dee and Kelley, two men who helped create a system bigger and more grand than they were. And much like Dee and Kelley, I feel that they were better operating as a duo than separate individuals. Also like Dee and Kelley, I do not think that Mathers and Westcott had the slightest clue of how vast and complicated the system that they helped birth really was. And just like Dee and Kelley, I do not believe that Mathers' word and instruction about the system he helped create is the last and final word.

Then again, I do not believe that a final word is possible about the Golden Dawn system of initiations and instructions--at least, as long as the system remains a living system. I do not think that Westcott, Waite, Regardie, Crowley, the Ciceros, or anyone else understood/understands the system so completely that their word has to be taken as absolute gospel and the only correct way to work the system.

Yet over the years, I have encountered dozens of people who have held up Mathers as the final word of how the system is supposed to be worked, right down to the level of accepted behavior that a leader has to meet. These people brush the more ugly aspects of Mathers' behavior and the troubling aspects of Golden Dawn history that make the man look all too human under a rug. Often it is because they consider themselves the spiritual successor to Mathers' Golden Dawn, right down to even creating a fake charter.

Seriously, I have encountered someone who created a fake charter from the man, not just a simple lineage and historical claim to be the man's successor. It was a rather sad and pitiful attempt to look like more important than they really were. I was not impressed, having a decent knowledge of art techniques that are designed to mimic the works of the masters. Being a happy little cynic probably also helped.

So what are some of the changes that the Matherites like to make to Golden Dawn history? And what is actually closer to the truth?

Mathers was popular and welcome in many different Orders. Actually, no, he was not. In fact, Mathers was barred from joining several groups, due to the intense dislike that some had of his character. In terms of memberships in multiple Orders, Westcott was far more active than Mathers.

Mathers was learned in many languages. Only partially true. Again, Westcott was the better of Mathers.

Mathers was a military man. Only if being a private makes you a military man. Or if translating a book from French does.

Mathers was hard working and reliable. Seriously? At least, one person who hired him to do translation would have argued differently, as well as all the people he borrowed money from and never repaid.

Mathers was really of Scottish noblity. Based solely on Mathers' claims, of course...of which there is no actual historical evidence to back the claim that he was "Comte MacGregor do Glenstrae."

Mathers was a ritual writing genius responsible for what Golden Dawn is. No, no, no. The Cipher Manuscript was written by someone else, probably Kenneth MacKenzie. The Outer Order rituals were mainly fleshed out by Westcott, a fact that Mathers never denied. The Portal ritual, originally part of the 5=6 ritual is a mess magically from an initiation analysis point of view. And large parts of the 5=6 ritual were actually lifted from the original RC manifestos (a point that can be proved by highlighting everything found in the Adept Minor ritual that also is found in the original RC manifestos).

(There is also a rumor that the whole Vault of the Adepts, color scheme and all, was lifted from another group--but in all fairness, I have not seen proof of this claim.)

Mathers was completely ignorant of the Westcott creation of the Sprengel letters during the opening days of Golden Dawn. Seriously, if Mathers was ignorant that Westcott was creating a set of letters and stories to boost the reputation of the Order, then he must have also believed that the Order was hundreds of years old. Often Mathers and Westcott was taking action before they recieved the "official approval" though the Sprengel letters--was Mathers really so dense that he did not notice this?!

Mathers moved to Paris to be in contact with the Secret Chiefs. Actually, he moved to Paris to accompany his wife, Moina, who supposed to go to art school there. Then, after moving to Paris, he claimed to have made contact with the Secret Chiefs and to recieve the Second Order material.

There was a logical reason for him to believe that Madame Horos was really a 5=6 member of the Golden Dawn. If there is one, no source has ever revealed it. And the excuse that he had been cut off from contact with the Secret Chiefs does not cut it either. Quite simply, why didn't he test the woman and her companions on the very basics of the Golden Dawn security procedures and rituals? Surely, the Horos did not fake the passwords, Grade signs, and knowledge of the rituals of the Grades they claimed to have...because if they did, they would had no need to steal documents and rituals from Mathers.

Mathers meet with physical Secret Chiefs. Actually, while Mathers claimed that he believed that he believed that the Secret Chiefs were living on Earth, he said that he only saw them in astral form--"the rendezvous was made astrally by them..." In other words, he never shook hands with a Secret Chief...which would be the ultimate proof that they were flesh and blood beings, so we only have his stated belief that they were physical beings.

The promotion of Crowley and/or actions of the SRIA were the real reasons for the schism against Mathers. No, the problems within the Order, the harbringer of the schism, started to show up as early as 1892, several years before the entry of Crowley into Outer Order, not alone into the Inner Order. And the actual schism in 1900, preceeded Mathers' removal from the SRIA by two years (Mathers was removed from the ranks of the SRIA for inactivity).

(For the record, given Mathers disregard for the wishes of the London Adepti, including his refusal to help make repairs to the Vault of the Adepts, I would have voted against him. His behavior alone, regardless of whether or not he was in contact with Third Order, was enough to cause a significant amount of the membership to rebel against him. The real reason for the schism is simply that people don't always get along with one another, especially if some of the people involved are arrogant ass-holes who believe that people are plotting against them.)

Mathers was cut from contact from the Secret Chiefs for the third and final time in 1906 when the Secret Chiefs realized the mess that he made of their teachings when Aliester Crowley published the Golden Dawn material. There are a few problems with this idea. The system, if guided by the Secret Chiefs, was always "hands-off"--one can hardly blame the worker if the supervisor is never on the job site. The Cipher Manuscript was fleshed out without any input by the Secret Chiefs--hence the entire Outer Order could be wrong. Secondly, it took Crowley publishing for the Secret Chiefs to realize that Mathers was cocking the system up? What they never asked Mathers any questions about how he understood the material?! Thirdly, Mathers AO was not even using the same set of Z-documents and rituals as the ones that Crowley published--or at least, not doing the rituals as if the Z-documents had any actual bearing on the effectiveness of the system.

And Mathers was in contact with a group of physical Secret Chiefs at the time of the Mathers/Crowley court case. And if the Secret Chiefs were physical beings, why did they not at least send a letter to Mathers to show the judge? Crowley got sent several charters and letters to undermine Mathers' claims to be the sole RC representative, why did Mathers not get any from the people most concerned with his claims. It is one thing for them not to show up in court, but why no letters?!

(In fact, why no letters at all from the Secret Chiefs beyond the Sprengel letters? A single physical letter would have proven that they were physical beings living on Earth...yet not a single letter exists to prove that they knew where Mathers lived. And for that matter, why did no one in the Order outside of Mathers and his wife ever met them? Surely, the Secret Chiefs knew where the lodges were located at, and could have proven that they had more right to be there than anyone else did.)

Mathers fully understood the system, and should be considered the final voice in how Golden Dawn and its Inner Order should work, including the acceptable behavior of an occult leader. No, Mathers did not fully understand the system. For one thing, he had not experienced the rituals from the viewpoint of the initiate--there are experiences that only initiates have (things that initiates use to see if someone has done more than just read the GD rituals in a book). Two, he ignored stuff from the very documents and lessons that he wrote (following the Z-documents make it impossible to do the short-cuts to the rituals that he allowed, not alone actually allow people to claim Grades simply by swearing the oath of the Grade and paying an advancement fee--aka rituals done without the person being present, something that shows up in the log books of his own lodge). As for his behavior being acceptable as a leader, tell me again how it is ok to piss off the membership to the point that they rebel against you.

Mathers was selective about who he let into the Order. If Crowley is not proof enourgh that Mathers quality control was lax, how about the Horos? Is there any evidence at all that Mathers ever rejected a single applicant who had the money to pay the dues and fees?

There is at least one lineage today that traces back to Mathers and is authorized. No, none at all. No one was authorized by Mathers to take over the Order after his death. Not even Moina Mathers had authority to run the Order after he died. And by 1940s, every lodge of Mathers' AO had closed its doors.

Of course, let's be honest, none of the facts will ever prevent people from trying to turn Mathers into a Saint or prevent them from claiming that they are his one and only true spiritual successor. And in fact, one can probably put good money on the fact that this little blog post will be called complete and utter lies by at least one Matherite...but then again, me and Matherites never get along with one another, so what else is new?

WWMMD 1

Occasionally, I see people ask what Macgregor Mathers did to initiate the leaders of his American lodges--believing that he performed some form of astral initiation or required them to travel to Europe to recieve their initiations. Both ideas are false, overlooking the state of esoteric lodges in that time period. All Mathers required was the signing of an oath swearing to keep the secrets of the Order and proper alliegance to him as its sumpreme leader and source of all wisdom, plus a small sum of money, and you were a properly initiated member of the Order in his eyes. Sad, but true.

International Talk Like A Pirate Day

Pirate Kitty would like some rum cooked shrimp for his dinner.

Hi everyone! Today be September 19, and that means that it be International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

And let's be honest, everyone in Golden Dawn be a pirate. It be a long and noble tradition we have.

Don't believe me? Well, consider this.

Sometime before 1888, a mesterious man wrote down t' treaayes o' a secret lodge tradition in a document that we now call t' Cipher Manuscript. This was probably Kenneth MacKenzie. Some claim that this system was stolen from a previous system o' lodge initiation. Maybe even from Freemasons or t' evil SRIA. Therefore, MacKenzie be a pirate.

MacKenzie went t' Davy Jones' locker. Leavin' his widow with a pile o' papers that she did not want. Enter William Westcott, a man o' knowledge, and a conjuror of dead men ghosts.

Westcott convinces MacKenzie's bonnie lass that she should give him t' papers, because he belongs t' t' SRIA. T' Cipher Manuscript was not t' booty o' t' SRIA (accordin' t' some). Sad Widow gives up t' papers t' Westcott, a crime o' petty copyrites infrin'ement. Therefore, Westcott be a bigger pirate than MacKenzie.

Westcott then ropes a nice young man by t' name o' Samuel Mathers t' help recruit members t' work this awesome system o' spiritual advancement. Westcott also creates a set o' letters from a person who does not exist to shore up his claim t' t' treaaye. Mathers knows that t' letters be fake. Therefore, Mathers be a pirate.

Later, Mathers fights Westcott. T' prize? Complete control o' t' good Order o' t' Ancient Golden Dawn. Mathers does this by twirlin' a cutlas around while shoutin' that Westcott be a liar. Mathers sails t' France, gets involved in politics and bebuckos t' sinister Aleister Crowley. Mathers be even bigger pirate than Westcott.

Mathers t' keep his crew obeyin' his orders, then created a set o' invisible buckos who told him how wonderful he was, and how his students were t' pay him their last bit of gold. Mathers not only be big pirate, but a delusional creator o' tall tales and creepy ghost stories too.

Crowley a kind young man who fancied everythin' that moved includin' both your grandmother and grandfather, thought that this was bad behavior on t' part o' Mathers. So Crowley fought Mathers. T' prize? T' hearts and minds o' young men and beauties everywhere. And maybe their sex too. And their goats. Crowley shot at Mathers usin' a self-published set o' books, a new system o' attainment, and a boatful o' lawyers. Crowley also had invisible buckos, who told him that he was t' Messiah and t' best thin' since white bread. Crowley liked t' feed his followers t' demons and sharks. He also like t' be in t' newspapers very much. He reveled in his wickedness by writin' prose and poetry for young scallywags. Crowley be even bigger pirate than Mathers, and more drunk than a skunk to boot, but was very sexy.

In t' meantime, several other people started t' run businesses based on t' rituals and lessons o' t' Golden Dawn. Some o' them were con-beauties, and some were scurvy dogs. They all claimed t' gold o' t' seekers o' t' Golden Dawn. They were all pirates.

Then along came a nice Jewish lad by t' name o' Israel Regardie. He saw all t' pirates as dubious crew who should be made t' walk t' plank. He stole their rituals and lectures, hence robbin' them o' their hard-earned gold. He published as did t' wicked Crowley. This made many people upset with him. They claimed that he was a bigger pirate than they were.

Many students and seekers found t' writin's o' Crowley and Mathers and searched for t' treaaye o' Golden Dawn. Some o' them had lawyers and tame sharks and claimed t' be t' sole heirs o' Westcott, Mathers and Crowley. Others just dug a lot o' holes. Obviously, all o' these men and beauties were pirates also.

T' recap, six men sat on a dead man's chest and refused to share the loot. Six pirates, seven--counting you!

Pass the rum, and give another shrimp to the cat.

Happy International Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Book Review Mathers Last Secret

Mathers' Last Secret.

A few years ago, I met someone who tried to impress me with the documents that they had access to. One of the documents was a version of the Neophyte ritual. In order to protect their interests, the copy they showed me had large white blank spaces where some particularly sensitive information was. The person was disappointed because I expressed no interest in what they were concealing.

What they did not realize was that I knew what was in the blanked out sections. It turns out that they were trying to impress me with information that I already had seen through a membership in a previous group.

I wonder how this person reacted to the publication of Mathers' Last Secret, for the Neophyte ritual that they were trying to impress me with was a variation of the AO version (probably through the lineage of BOTA). Given the fact that a person like me had been exposed to the AO rituals before the publication of this book, I wonder how many groups were actually affected by this publication and how many people in them finally breathed a sigh of relief because they could now openly talk about the differences that exist in their rituals compared to the standard Regardie version.

(By "standard," I mean the set of rituals that everyone had access to already.)

Re-reading this book recently, I was stuck by the following statement made by Nick Farrell in the introduction.

The purpose of this book is not to bury the Alpha et Omega, but rather to encourage its development. There is material here which needs to evolve. By looking at it, meditating on it, and TRYING IT OUT the right people can make their own contacts and bring the Order to life in a meaningful way. It might draw some readers into those groups who are already using their own interpretations of the A.O. material. This is all for the good. Equally, it could be the inspiration for other groups to start using Mathers' Last Secrets.

Rather than using the system used in the Bristol Temple of the Stella Matutina, as set out in Regardie's Golden Dawn, the A.O. gives new groups a "new" flavour and approach. The aim of this book is to provide a basis for such a group to take its place alongside the Regardie-style Golden Dawn groups and those, such as the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea, which are inspired by Whare Ra [pages 21-22 hardcover edition].

(Note that this section may have jumped out at me just because of the debate over Farrell's purpose for publishing this book, and its companion book, King Over the Water.)

Interestingly, the group that is most famous for using one of the AO versions of the rituals (outside of BOTA whose rituals were modified by Paul Foster Case) ended up changing their rituals, so that they do not match this (or any other possible) publication. It makes for an interesting situation where the group that claims to have the best connection to the original AO is no longer even using an AO version of the Golden Dawn rituals. Anyone who actually wants to experience this version of the AO rituals is actually going to have to join a group without no connection to the original AO. (That is assuming that one believes that BOTA and its lineage is not actually an AO lineage.) While Farrell does not state what the "right people" are like, it is safe to assume that he does not endorse the trademark holder of the AO brand-name (if only because of the fact that they really do NOT get along).

(In all honesty, I would not be able to endorse the AO trademark holder either, and it is mainly because I have been called out repeatedly for having opinions that do not support their official Order line--hint: "diversity" and "independence" means that multiple opinions and methods can exist, not that they confirm to an unpublished set of rules made up by an invisible Order and their appointed leader.)

One of the big conversations about this book, and the Neophyte ritual that Mathers created for his Golden Dawn offshoot, has been about the shortcuts that Mathers says are permissible "[if] time be of some importance." Most of the Opening becomes optional, large parts of the lecture for the Grade, and even the "Admission ceremony" is optional. Basically, the only thing you cannot skip is the Oath of Obligation.

In other words, instead of not admitting an Neophyte until a full initiation ritual with a full Opening can be performed, a person could become a Neophtye by just paying their dues and committing to keep the AO secret and remaining loyal to Mathers. This reminds me of some of the fringe Freemasonry rituals that I have seen, where a person takes an oath and gets another honorary title to add to their collection.

And note that I consider this wrong, and I am the guy that argues that the system can be worked with just four people with no lineage at all (aka the Three Officer Version of the Neophyte ritual).

(By the way, in my universe, this is proof that none of the American membership had to travel overseas to recieve Temple initiations--in other words, the American lodges could have been started by people without no initiationary lineage to the AO. Note that this fact does not prove one way or another if the American AO started out as a correspondence school; it merely shows that it was possible for this to happen. It also might indicate that Westcott and Mathers did not think that undergoing the initiation rituals was necessary for advancement in the Order, and why they never undergone the initiation rituals of Golden Dawn themselves...I am still waiting to see proof that they did undergo the GD rituals.)

Does a regular member of the modern Golden Dawn need to buy this book? Probably not...unless they want to study what Mathers did after the Golden Dawn suffered the great Revolt of the Adepts. If you want to study and perhaps even experience these rituals, then this book is neccessary. For people not into collecting all the versions of the Golden Dawn rituals, you probably want to give this one a pass (it is just a set of rituals by Mathers and some comments by Farrell).

Mathers' Last Secret is available for purchase on Amazon.

[This book review was based on the hardcover edition, a copy which I paid full-price for on Amazon.]

Rejects and Believers

One of the things that one currently sees in the Golden Dawn blogosphere is a relatively complete rejection of Secret Chiefs by one GD camp, and an absolute total acceptance of Secret Chiefs by another GD camp.

The Rejects generally view the stories told by Mathers and others about being in contact with the Secret Chiefs to be so much myth-making on the part of Mathers and later leaders trying to justify why they should be given total control of the Golden Dawn.

The Believers believe that Golden Dawn is only real and true when it answers to someone who claims to be the mouthpiece of the Secret Chiefs; and this justifies all actions that leader and their group takes, however dubious those actions are.

And both sides point to the stories that Mathers told about the Secret Chiefs as their primary evidence. Secondary evidence takes the form of the teachings that Mathers and later Golden Dawn leaders have installed into the system.

As a historian, I note that Mathers changed his story as time went by--therefore I consider all parts of his story and claims suspect. As an Adept, I note that the Rebels in the original Order did not care that Mathers was in contact with Secret Chiefs and chose to break off anyways--therefore I conclude that the information that Mathers was giving them was not enourgh to put up with his behavior. As a human being, the fact that Mathers was fooled by Madame Horos and Aleister Crowley makes me think that Mathers wasn't the brightest apple in the barrel.

This opinion will get me called an evil historian, a false Adept, and an anonymous troll by the Believers. The Rejects will notice that there is a cat in my lap as I write this post. The evidence doesn't actually matter--only my unfavorable opinions and the presence of the cat will determine what you think of me. Such is the politics of the modern day Golden Dawn and its representatives.

Ultimate extreme of secrecy

Here is a comment that I made on another blog that I want to expand on:

By the extreme rule of secrecy, everything is oath-bound and nothing can ever be said (or written) unless the person you are talking to was involved in an intiation or ritual that you were physically present at.

In other words, anything that was ever secret is still considered oathbound. And nothing can ever be removed from the oathbound category once it was declared oathbound.

By the way, this means that not only were Israel Regardie and Aleister Crowley oathbreakers, but so was William Wynn Westcott and Samuel Liddell (MacGregor) Mathers...because they all wrote about things that at one time was covered under the secrecy oaths of a previous esoteric tradition or society.

This is the ultimate extreme of secrecy. It is the extreme rule that says that if you are involved in the esoteric, you never, ever talk about it in public. The only time you talk about the esoteric and oathbound material is behind closed doors with a guard outside.

This is a level of secrecy that no esoteric writer (or blogger) can actually uphold. You cannot even advertise your own esoteric society if you are obeying this extreme understanding of secrecy.

Therefore, I honestly do not know anyone who goes this extreme route...except for those who would like no one else to talk about the esoteric. These are typically students who think that they understand the real purpose of secrecy, and have missed the boat. I think that we have all dealt with these people at one time or another.

By the way, one of the weird things about this level of secrecy is that stuff that the esoteric traditions adapt and take into their system also becomes oathbound. For the instance, the Hebrew alphabet, invented for things like accounting, once taken into an esoteric system (Kabbalah) is now considered oathbound and secret. Therefore even the proper order of the Hebrew Alphabet cannot be discussed if you are an initiate of an extreme secrecy tradition without a guard at the door.

Basic math, the ability to start a fire, most mythology, color theory---all these subjects you have to quit talking about if you are a member of the extreme secrecy camp.

If you find this extreme level of secrecy silly, you are not alone. But just remember there are those students out there, who despite discovering the first hints of the esoteric traditions from books, who believe that this is the level of secrecy that the esoteric traditions have to adhere to.

Good luck with your meat fight!



One of my favorite scenes from Dharma and Greg.

Ok, I have hit the point where I firmly suspect that I am going to be blacklisted because I refuse to see that Nick Farrell was only bad-mouthing one particular group that claims AO descent in the introduction to King Over the Water: Samuel Mathers and the Golden Dawn. Furthermore, I refuse to retract my good review of the book.

Let me be clear, I have personnally seen other groups doing this...aka in living memory and within the last decade. The trademark did not stop this from happening; it merely removed it from public view. Some of these leaders were bad. And just because your group is good today, it does not mean that it will be good tommorrow. Therefore, I see the need for the warning, and I have serious doubts that it was only referring to one particular group. And no, I do not believe that descent from the original Order, or communication with Secret Chiefs, automatically makes you good guys.

I am not interested in your proof that you are real and your leader pure---let me be clear---I have personnally been buried by people claiming descent from the AO; I have also been burned by people claiming to be communicating with the Secret Chiefs (Third Order). I do not need to see Farrell's proof that people have abused the vaccuum that a lack of information has generated---I have experienced the abuse first hand.

I may not only have a Crowley in my woodpile; I may also have a Mathers in my woodpile. I have been told that my lineage traces through Mathers. Of course, because I am not a member of the trademarked organization, therefore I am no longer AO.

When you demand that Farrell apologizes to everyone in the AO community, am I one of the people he is supposed to apologize to? No. Because I am not a card-carrying member of the trademarked Order.

Therefore, forgive me...and go ahead blacklist me...because I am just as AO as the rest of you (according to some of the people who I have dealt with) and I do not see the need for Farrell to apologize to me (because of abuse by people who claimed to be AO).

Good luck with your meat fight!

And the internet boils over (Flaming Book Review edition)

Satan Kitty is annoyed that we must talk about things other than him.

I was not going to blog about this...but the members of the HOGD/AO want an answer, so here I am blogging about the internet boiling over.

(For those who do not know about today's meltdown, David Griffin has allegedly ordered his members to quit buying Nick Farrell's books, and to give Farrell's books extreme negative reviews on Amazon; and Farrell has allegedly bad-mouthed the only people who have ever called themselves Alpha and Omega.)

The question that is forcing me to address today's meltdown is: Why did I not address Nick Farrell alleged bad-mouthing Griffin's HOGD/AO Order in my antacid review?

Now, this question should have came up before this point. But the only comment I got about the review before today was a remark from one of my friends that I could not spell (antiacid, antacid--what's the difference?!). I might have gotten a comment or two on Facebook, but I do not remember them...because they did not question why I said the things that I said about King Over the Water: Samuel Mathers and the Golden Dawn in my review of the book.

In fact, I was expecting the internet to boil over the first week of March...it didn't. It made me suspect that the only people reading my review were crickets. It made me suspect that the only people to read Farrell's book were the reviewers.

Now, my unpleasant answer to the question---I did address it. Maybe, just maybe, I was too subtle about it.

Here is where I addressed the alleged bad-mouthing of the current AO.

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 destroy 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.

Wow. It looks like I am really good at predicting the future...I am not.

Get your Golden Dawn brand antacids here! Just $9.99 a bottle.

It is now time to take an antacid and step into the Way-Back Machine---mind the flaming dog poop.
The year is 1989. And I am trying to locate anyone working the Golden Dawn system of magic here in Denver Colorado. There are three lodges operating here. (Actually four, but I am unaware of the fourth lodge at this point.) All three lodges claim to be Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. And one is really loud about the fact that they are descended from the original Alpha and Omega.

It turns out that the loud-mouth is the worst behaved of the lot. I am fortunate that the leader (the sole person who really has power in the group) takes one look at me and decides that I am too poor to be worth his time. Yes, too poor. Years later, I had the opportunity to talk to some former members of the group in question after the group exploded into flames, and they had horror stories worse than mine. (For the record, I have been in a lot of bad groups and had lots of horror stories already about bad leaders.)

I also got to see their rituals, thanks to the fact that for some reason I was declared someone responsible. (How that happened I still don't know.) And honestly, the rituals looked like they came out of Regardie's book. It is safe to presume that the loud-mouth lodge had no actual lineage to the original GD/AO.

Interestingly enourgh, the lodge that might have had the best lineage, and which rituals actually looked like the AOs, chose to bury the fact that they ever had a lineage...occasionally, one would hear a horror story about the group that they sprung from. (Technically, they were a schism group...and we all know that schism are never correct in leaving their Mother Order.)

So here we have a bunch of AO problems of the type that Farrell is referring to and Griffin is not even in the community yet (or at least not as a visible member from where I was standing). This misbehavior was well BEFORE Griffin took out the trademark for the HOGD/AO name.

Therefore, I was not completely convinced that Farrell was talking the current AO. Honestly, if you wait long enourgh, the players will change, but the misbehavior will still be the same. In my experience, the worst leaders mimic Mathers and claim descent from him and his branch of the tradition. There was a thrity year period that a whole bunch of misbehavior was carried out under the banner of being from Mathers' spiritual lineage. And Farrell could have been talking about any of them...he did not mention Griffin's modern AO by name.

(One hopes that Griffin is different...but seriously, threats of lawyers, bad book reviews, and piracy?! One should not have to resort to such threats---one's actions and service to their community should be the only proof one needs.)

And honestly, someday Griffin is going to die and a whole bunch of Orders are going to spring up claiming to descend from his AO, and I am betting that some of them are going to be bad apples. Because of that, I would rather see the warning than ignore the past crimes of groups that spent thirty years claiming descent from Mathers before Griffin even showed up on the scene. Because the warning was needed thirty years ago, twenty years ago, and someday will again be needed.

So there is your answer: I am not completely sure that Farrell was talking about Griffin's Order because there were others claiming descent from the AO long before him, and they were bad evil leaders, and someday others (after Griffin is dead and buried) will claim descent from the AO to justify their misbehavior. Better a warning misread today than none at all.

Concord and Peace of the Three

S.R. just posted an appeal for peace in the Golden Dawn community. Having experienced the Denver Witch War of the 80s and having been an "active bystander" in the flaming Golden Dawn feud of the last decade (only half of its length), I doubt peace will actually occur. I honestly do not see any chance for peace in the Golden Dawn community until one of the camps steps completely away from the Golden Dawn label, especially considering how wide the gap is between the perception of the two parties of what Golden Dawn is about.

As proof that such a peace is possible, S.R. notes that he was taught that Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers (Head of the Rosicrucian Order of the Alpha et Omega), Dr. Robert William Felkin (Head of the Stella Matutina), and Arthur Edward Waite (Head of the Holy Order of the Golden Dawn) met and agreed to mutually recognize each other's Orders.

This is only partially true. A "working truce" occurred, but there is no evidence that it ever was a formal meeting and recognition between the three. And it fall apart quickly.

Initially, there was a concord between the Stella Matutina and the Independent and Rectified Rite (Waite). This concord broke because Waite discovered that Felkin was communicating with J.W. Brodie-Innes, Mathers, and Westcott. Waite could not tolerate peace with Mathers or any of his supporters.

And officially, there is a lack of peace between the three Orders.

When the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross formed in 1915, after the Independent Rite suffered a series of schisms, its constitution said "The Independent and Rectified Rite, with its dependencies, if any, in so far as now in activity, and the Stella Matutina Temple, together with its dependencies, are not in communion with the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, and cannot be Visited or Joined."

Likewise, the 1916 New Constitution of the Stella Matutina says, "Members of any other Temples applying for admission, must be clearly warned that they will be required to give a definite pledge not to work in future with or under D.D.C.F. [Deo Duce Comite Ferro--Mathers], S.R. [Sacramentum Regis---Waite], Sub Spe, or Dr B. [Brodie-Innes]." Furthermore, in the section about the conditions where expulsion of memebrs is talked about, besides mentioning that six members were expelled when the Order broke with D.D.C.F., it says, "I have had to ask one Member to resign, because she told me she intended to join S.R.'s new Society."

And people outside the Concord of the Three did not foresee lasting peace between them. For instance, Westcott presumed that after his death that the Three, along with "Crowley and Co." would "make claims on my G.D. properties and may each make public claims derogatory to my historical interests in the G.D. and Isis [Urania] Temple."

Based on all this, if there was ever a meeting between Mathers, Felkin and Waite, the resulting peace did not last very long (and I really doubt that the meeting actually happened). And can you really picture Mathers agreeing that anyone else was legit?!

As for a possible peace between the two current Golden Dawn camps, I will not hold my breath; for the one side will only allow peace when the other side acknowledges their absolute right to rule the entire tradition, and the other side refuses to allow themselves to be repeatedly trashed as being less than fully Golden Dawn. That is how I see it. If you disagree, you know where to comment.

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.]

Scotsman in Ancient Egypt

A Scotsman in Ancient Egypt.

The other night I was watching the first Blackadder series. For those of you who have no sense of humor, Blackadder was a British comedy done back in the Dark Ages of television. In the episode, I was watching the main character, the infamous Blackadder (played by Rowan Atkinson) is busy trying to get a Scotsman killed. One of his ploys is to involve the Scotsman in a play set in Ancient Egypt.

One of the audience members watching the play turns to another and asks, "What is a Scotsman doing in Egypt?" At this point, I just lost it. You see, I have occasionally wondered this myself about someone else. Yes, I am talking about Samuel L. Mathers.

The short answer is that Mathers like many in his generation was enchanted by the lore of Ancient Egypt. Periodically, Egyptology has surges of renewed interest. The late Victorian period was one of those times. And unlike previous times, the late Victorain Age had the advantage that they could actually consult the actual words of the Ancient Egyptians.

After the closure of the last temple of Isis around 400 BCE, the ability to read the Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs was lost. The lore of Ancient Egypt was lost beyond those parts that had already made their way into the Hermetica and Greek histories. Periodically, someone would claim to have broken the code behind the ancient hieroglyphs, but today we know that they were completely wrong.

This all changed in 1799, when French soliders found the Rosetta Stone while dugging a defensive trench duing one of their many wars with the British. After the war, the British claimed the Rosetta Stone as part of their war spoils. Over the next fifty years, scholars used the Rosetta Stone to figure out how to read the Ancient Egyptian language.

One of the changes in the esoteric scene brought on by the decoding of the Ancient Egyptian language was that for the first time in two thousand years, actual Ancient Egyptian ideas could be used in the Western Mystery tradition. The Cipher Manuscript of Golden Dawn has a reference to the images from Ancient Egypt (the subject of a future blog post), and Golden Dawn would be the first esoteric Order to use actual Egyptian words in their rituals since the time of the Ancient Egyptians.

This fact attracted students who were interested in such things to the Order. One of these students was Macgregor Mathers, which passion led him and his wife, Moina, to create a set of rituals celebrating the Ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses while they were living in France.

Of course, using the first generation of translations resulted in the Golden Dawn lore being hopelessly out of date by the time you get to our day and age. This has led the Golden Dawn being looked at with contempt by the modern-day scholars...then again, the modern day scholars tend to also frown on magical experiements, so it is not like we were going to get any of them as members in the first place. But it has also led to Golden Dawn (RR et AC) Egyptian lore and techniques to function differently than those used by the Ancient Egyptians. The gods and goddesses of Ancient Egypt tend to "speak in an English accent" (not literally), or maybe it is a Scottish accent, when they are filtered through the Golden Dawn matrix. Parts of the Golden Dawn system, to use the modern insult for the method used, started out as a "recreation" of the long dead Egyptian mysteries.

So what was a Scotsman doing in Egypt? Simple, he was busy looting the tombs of the dead, just like the English and French were doing. Sad, but true.

(If you feel the punchline is wrong, you know the drill---leave your comments in the comment section. Not all comments are approved, but I do read all of them.)

Working Draft or Finished Project

One of the leaps of faith that occasionally disturbs me is the level of confidence that people place on the Cipher Manuscript. And this includes the amount of faith that Westcott and Mathers placed on the document. It is assumed by people that the Cipher Manuscript is a finished project.

Thanks to my experience in designing rituals, I am not confident that the Cipher Manuscript actually represents a finished project. To me, it looks more like an ongoing work in progress where the creator changed their mind about earlier parts, made changes and did not go back to correct earlier pages because correcting pages written in a cipher is a pain in the lower regions.

(For the record, I sometimes do not correct my own outlines, written in the clear, when I change my mind later in the process of ritual design. There is a possibility that the creator of the Cipher Manuscript didn't either. And he would have had more reason not to.)

Yes, I realize that I am a Golden Dawn heretic. The myth of an earlier Order implies that the Cipher Manuscript has to be the shorthand memory aid for a pre-existing set of rituals. This is the way that Mathers and Westcott and most Order leaders have treated it. But what if it is actually a rough draft and not the final draft?

Personally, some of the difficulties presented in the Cipher Manuscript, including the change in the number and style of pentagrams used in the rituals, can be best explained if the Cipher Manuscript is actually an rough outline with the writer changing their mind as they go along and not bothering to make corrections in the earlier sections. Yes, it is heresy...but it is something you have to consider if you are serious about studying the Cipher Manuscript.

And now, we will invoke the spirits of the blogosphere to provide evidence that the Cipher Manuscript is actually a finished project. (No fair just screaming that Third Order says it is a finished project, you must show your work and evidence---otherwise I am going to continue to use to use my outlines and ritual performances as proof that it is a rough draft---and using the rituals that Mathers and Westcott built from the outline is not actual proof either.) Oh great spirits of the blogosphere prove to me that my lack of faith in the Cipher Manuscript is misguided and just plain silly---I dare you. (Hey, it has been a slow Golden Dawn news week...because I chose to ignore certain postings on another blog...and you can't blame a boy for trying to create a new excitement around here. Unless you really want me to discuss the posts on that another blog...in which case, feel free to say so in the comment section.)

More history and the color scales

King Over the Water pontential cover.

Talking to a Soror from my lodge about the post about Impressionism and the Golden Dawn color scales, I realized that I need to do a follow-up to it with some additional information. She asked some questions---some involved me looking up information to confirm things I already suspected---and I realized that if she had those questions that other people might be curious about the answers too.

(For the record, it was the potential cover of Nick Farrell's book that made my mind connect several facts together and realize that the expanded color scales of Golden Dawn could only result after 1840. And as far as I know, I am the first one to realize this fact...or at least, the first person to actually consider it to be important; I don't remember anyone ever writing about this topic before.)

First, just to get it out of the way, I do not believe that Moina Mathers was a "modern woman" or a "feminist." I am not looking for an example of a modern woman or a feminist---I am looking for an artist. The reason that I am looking for an artist is that the Golden Dawn color scales have too large of a color vocabulary to be the sole invention of a non-artist.

Agrippa's color scales are an example of a set of color scales created by a non-artist; the color vocabulary is simple and basic. The Golden Dawn color scales, on the other hand, has a wide color vocabulary. Now, one quarter of it is just layering an occult idea (colors attract energies) onto the standard artist's color wheel---something that is easily produced by non-artists. But the other three quarters involve a series of colors so rich and varied that one needs a cheat sheet with paint samples on it to accurately reproduce it (or a digitual camera and a really good color printer).

I have seen no evidence that Samuel Mathers or Wynn Westcott had such a large color vocabulary. The concept that color attracted magical forces was not a new idea---Agrippa and the SRIA are solid proof that the idea was common currency among occultists. Nor have I seen any evidence that convinces me that the SRIA is actually the source for the expanded color scales. Occasionally, someone points to the SRIA as the source of the Golden Dawn Vault of the Adepts---but no one has yet to provide what I would consider proof of this fact. When Westcott mentions that there was an older color scheme for the Vault, he may have been referring to the color lore of the SRIA in his day and age.

Therefore, the idea that color attracts magical forces is common currency of occult thought of the 1890s, but the expanded range of color vocabulary is something new and is the product of an artist---therefore who is the artist? Westcott? Samuel Mathers? Moina Mathers? Someone else? Until someone proves otherwise, I am presuming that Moina Mathers was the one to expand the color vocabulary, and therefore it is she (and not Samuel or Westcott) that is truly the source of the Golden Dawn color scales.

As I said, maybe Nick's upcoming book, or maybe Tabatha's, will convince me otherwise.

Possible cover for Concourse of the Watchtowers.

The other thing that my dear Soror brought up was the possibility that it is not water colors or oil paints that are being used in the color scale work. That maybe it is color pencils that were meant to be used. I told her that I was positive that we were supposed to be doing the color scale work in "wet medium." There are some effects that can only be achieved with the use of wet medium---not even the use of modern paint programs can duplicate some of the effects. (Then again, I like the physical process of using a brush to create art.) Furthermore, I told her that color pencils are a modern art development, and that I was positive that the expanded color scales (usable by all Adepts and not just those who were professional artists) had to be an invention occurring after 1840.

Looking it up, I learned that the history of art materials backs up my conclusion. Colored pencils were not marketed to artists until after 1900. It is not until 1920s that we start to get a wide range of art-grade color pencils. Prismacolor pencils are not introduced until 1938. Likewise for other dry mediums---wax crayons 1903; oil pastels 1925; paint sticks 1966.

The only two exceptions for dry medium would be colored chalk and pastels (pastels are pure pigment with a binding agent)---chalks have been used for thousands of years and pastels for about three hundred years. Yet the amount of time that they have been used removes them from the running; if they were suitable for expanding the color scales, the color scales would have expanded much sooner and I would not be looking for an artist inside Golden Dawn to credit the expansion with. Besdies, these two mediums are not actually conductive to making talismans and lamens---which is one of the primary reasons for the Adept's studies of the color scale system.

A final thing I must mention is the fact that we do have a lot of evidence that the color scale work of the Golden Dawn Adept was a new development. The sheer amount of variation between the color scales of various Golden Dawn offshoots, and even between lodges of the same Orders, indicate that the system was not developed enourgh to have standardization. An older, more developed system would have figured out a way to decrease the number of variations.

The expanded color scales are not something that you can look back to a previous esoteric group and find purer information about...unless you want to toss it out completely and go back to the simple color scale used by Agrippa and earlier occultists. In fact, the expanded color scales are so new that the period of its best development may still be in the future.

Impressionism and the GD color scales

King Over the Water by Nick Farrell.

The Book of the Concourse of the Watchtowers by Sandra Tabatha Cicero.

The other day, I was reminded that there are some soon-to-be-released books that are on my shopping list (well, after I managed to crawl out of the monetary hole that I have fallen into). Both Nick Farrell and Sandra Tabatha Cicero posted possible covers for their respective books (I say "possible" because I know how things change at the last moment in publishing).

Looking at the covers, I realized something---our required color scale work in Adept Minor (5=6) was not possible previous to 1841. Or at least, not in the form and style that we do it today.

Don't believe me? Think about how you did your color scale studies. Were there tubes of paint involved? If there were tubes of paint involved, then you are using a post 1841 method. Or did you use watercolors of straight from the pans of a box? In which case, your method of study could not have developed before 1832. The idea of using watercolors from a box only dates to 1766; before that point, watercolors were sold in lumps that had to be hand-grated before using.

The ability to do color studies while sitting in your living room is a product of the Victorian Age. Before the improvements to watercolor paints by Henry Newton and William Winsor in 1832, only professional artists worked with paints. Amateurs did not start to paint until Newton & Winsor developed the methods of creating watercolor paints that could be used directly from the box. Queen Victoria helped lead a national passion for amateur painting.

Paint tubes were invented by an America, John Goffe Rand, in 1841. Rand's invention was a technological leap for the artworld. Rand would tell his son that without his invention that "There would have been no Cezanne, no Monet, no Sisley or Pissaro; nothing of what the journalists were later to call Impressionism." I would go one step further and say that there would be no required color scale work in Adept Minor if he hadn't invented the paint tube.

Please remember that I am not saying that color was not important in magic previous to the Victorian Age (Agrippa is enourgh proof of the importance of color in magical work among our magical ancestors). What I am saying is that the creation of color scales studies and flashing tablets were much harder before that point, and were unlikely to have been an important part of the esoteric lesson plan---at least among amateur artists.

Westcott mentions that there is an older color scale that were used in the ancient Vault of the Adepts. Exactly what this older color scale looked like is hard to say for sure; the Adept Major ritual doesn't develop the idea enourgh to get a clear look at it without some knowledge of art history. There are also alchemical formulas that are actually about making pigments. So while there is definitely color scales involved in the older magical systems, they were placed much higher in the estoteric Grade system.

One of the things that Nick and I have disagreed over (publically on the internet if you want to go looking---I can't remember what Golden Dawn forum it was on) is the importance of Moina Mathers in the creation of the modern Vault of the Adepts and the modern color scales. My logic tends to be: if I needed a crash course in color theory to understand the color scales and its development into the Vault, then an artist had to be involved. My best bet is Moina Mathers, who was trained as an artist. Nick says that Samuel (MacGregor) Mathers and Westcott could be the ones that brought it in---I am not sure if he was implying that the color scales were built up by a previous esoteric group prior to their founding of the Golden Dawn or if it was invented by them (Nick will reply in the comment section about that one).

One thing that would be helpful to determine which one of us is right would be knowledge about whether Westcott or Samuel Mathers were amateur artists before meeting Moina. If they only started working with the complicated color scales after meeting Moina, then I am inclined to continue crediting Moina---after all, she is the one that was responsible for painting the first RR et AC Vault of the Adepts. I am hoping that one or both of these upcoming books reveals some evidence that would make the answer to this question clearer. Knowing the source authority would clear up some questions that I have about the color scales...beyond how much credit to give to Moina.

But while I am unsure about the source authority for our color scale work, I am positive that it is definitely an esoteric development of the Victorian Age. Before that date, the color scales were much simplier, and applied in a different manner when it came to magical workings. This fact affects a lot of stuff that we do and study today---a cascade effect---including the Tarot and the making of magical talismans.

And just in case, you are wondering, the modern Victorian Age color scales is something that I am not willing to abandon, no matter how wrong they are according to the older esoteric material. I may not be good at alchemy, but I am a fair hand with a paintbrush. For maximum outrage, just remember I use the modern color scales with the Elder Futhark (the Norse Runes).

Cipher Manuscript built in problems

Ok, I think that I am done with the numerous disclosure statements that I have had to issue to make everyone happy---which all basically say that you should not be reading this blog (or any of my writing for that matter) because I am not an expert in their eyes (and I am referring to several parties here---I don't think that I can throw a rock without hitting someone who believes this).

So now, let's turn our attention back to the Cipher Manuscript (there is a post from a few days ago on this subject).

There are a few problems with studying the Cipher Manuscript---some of which have plagued Golden Dawn from its very beginning; others are problems affecting anyone who wants to study the manuscript and its content.

Let's start with the latter type of problem. The biggest problem that affects scholars studying the Cipher Manuscript is that we are forced to study it through "trace copies" and "photocopies." This may or may not be a problem depending upon what you are interested in. If you are only interested in the contexts, then trace copies and photocopies are sufficient for one's purposes. But trace copies and photocopies require one to take a leap of faith about certain things, such as the age of the paper and ink. For instance, the science of determining the age of a manuscript has moved on since the last time that the age of the manuscript was determined.

Now, today we are better off than we were forty years ago. We do have the photocopies and trace copies of the Cipher Manuscript. Previous to the 1970s, no one (or maybe only a few people) in the esoteric community had access to the Cipher Manuscript. The document entered a private collection in 1923, and for all practical purposes disappeared.

The circulation of the Cipher Manuscript, awareness of the actual document and not just the myth of it, seems to have been limited to a small number of people in the original Order. Interestingly enourgh, A. E. Waite seems to had access to its contents through a copy of the document made by W, A. Ayton. Likewise, Frank William Coleman knew of the Cipher Manuscript. I have reason to believe that Aleister Crowley may have had knowledge of its contents, but I have no hard proof to prove my theory. The exact circulation of the contents of the Cipher Manuscript among the membership of the original Golden Dawn is hard to determine based on the currently available information. I feel that is safe to say that study of the Cipher Manuscript by members of the original Order was optional, and probably involved a favor or two in order to be allowed to make a copy of it.

In modern times, the Cipher Manuscript resurfaced. The first person to see it in modern times was Ellic Howe, who gained access to the private collection that used the document since 1923. Howe's conclusions about the Cipher Manuscript was unfavorable to say the least. Interestingly enourgh, Howe seems to ignored some of the pages of the document, or perhaps did not see the whole document. During the 1970s, there were some small press publications of the Cipher Manuscript. It was not until the 1990s that a decent publication of the Cipher Manuscript happened.

Today, the best sources are "The Complete Golden Dawn Cipher Manuscript" (Darcy Kuntz) and "Secrets of the Golden Dawn Cypher Manuscript" (Carroll "Poke" Runyon). There are a couple of websites that host images of the Cipher Manuscript; my preferred favorite is the Golden Dawn Library Project.

A couple of the modern Golden Dawn groups have changed their lesson plans to include the Cipher Manuscript. Hathoor Temple (IIOGD) included it in a limited lesson at the Inner Order level---based on the less-than-stellar 70s publications. BIOGD/BIORC includes a brief lesson about the Cipher Manuscript in Outer Order at the Zelator (1=10) Grade level (limited to the Neophyte and Zelator sections), and a longer lesson at the Inner Order level of Adept Minor Theoricus (5=6 THAM).

Another problem facing the scholar is the fact that various publications of the Cipher Manuscript order the pages of the Cipher Manuscript differently. I am working on a spreadsheet to address this problem (in fact, considering that this is a "prescheduled post," it may actually be done by this point in time). There is the additional problem that there were later additions to the Cipher Manuscript, including pages by Coleman and Westcott. Complicating matters is the fact that the lines of the documents are garbled---in fact, the Cipher Manuscript may be a copy itself of an earlier version.

Unless you have worked at "translating" some of the pages yourself (actually the proper term is "decipher"), one is unaware of the difficulties involved at decoding the mess that the Cipher Manuscript is...in fact, Runyon points out that he understands why several people did not finish the task.

The final problem facing the scholar who is merely studying the content of the document is that the Cipher Manuscript is an outline that refers to information from sources---and one is left trying to figure out the sources without a list in hand. In a future post, I will be discussing this problem in more detail; I am merely mentioning it at this point to remind people that I am aware of the problem.

Now the preceeding list of problems was merely based on the content of the Cipher Manuscript itself. There are also a couple of problems that plague the person trying to put the Cipher Manuscript into its proper context (again, the subject of an upcoming blog post). Briefly, they are "Who wrote the document and why?" and "How did Westcott obtain the document?" Both of these questions have plagued Golden Dawn from the beginning. (And in my case, they have spurred me to issue a set of disclosure statements prior to issuing this series of blog posts...because people hate my conclusions.)

So there you have it, a list of problems that will cause no end of problems when it comes to studying the Cipher Manuscript. You will be seeing these problems rear their ugly heads over and over again as we progress through the Cipher Manuscript.

Cipher Mix

As I noted in yesterday's disclosure update, one of the things that we have learned this past year is that European Third Order cut contact with the Golden Dawn/Alpha and Omega/RR et AC because they learned (though the publishing of the Golden Dawn and Inner Order material by Crowley) that Mathers had gone too far in the blending and mixing of egregores that were never met to be mixed to the extent that the Z documents instructs. (Why they did not know this information sooner is a mystery of occult history.)

Looking over the Cipher Manuscript, the outline of the Outer Order rituals, I can see why Mathers and Westcott thought it was ok to mix egregores and lores. Here is a brief list of all the various systems and egregores that the Cipher Manuscript has in it.

Enochian system of Dee and Kelley [British occultism]
Latin Grade mystic titles [German Rosicrucian]
Signs, passwords and Grade sashes [Freemasonry]
Admission badges [SRIA]
Samothracian Kabric lore
Hebrew, Latin and Greek (besides the Enochian and English) languages
Pillars with Egyptian figures on them [Tablet of Isis or the Book of the Dead]
Eleusinian Mysteries lore [Greek]
Prayer from the Divine Pymander of Hermes Trismegistus [Hermetica]
Grimoric Tradition lore [Medieval and Renaissance occult lore]
The Chaldean Oracles [Zoroaster]
Kamea of the planets/sephiroth
Elemental Prayers [Mathers and Westcott used the same ones that Levi did]
Biblical quotes
Kabbalah [Jewish mysticism]
Christian mysticism
English occult writings
Elemental Pentagram key
System of correspondences
Aesh Mezareph [Christian-Jewish alchemical synthesis]
Laboratory alchemy
Religious alchemy
Philosophical alchemy
Natural alchemy [these last three are mentioned as different things]
Osiris and the three animal forms of Western cardinal signs

I am probably missing a couple---if so, just note the missing ones in the comment section.

Specific examples of blending (both in the Cipher Manuscript and lecture/ritual workups):

Westcott wrote his notes using a mixture of languages and ciphers.

Temple name tradition drew from Freemasonry, Roman and Eygpt lore.

Westcott's official history lecture mentions Eliphaz Levi [French occultism], Kenneth Mackenzie [English Freemasonry and RC] and Frederick Hockley [a crystal gazer].

The Tarot is associated with both Egyptian lore and the Kabbalah. Furthermore, the Tarot is associated with the Hebrew alphabet [Kabbalah] and astrology.

Geomancy is associated with astrology and Tree of Life.

Alchemy is associated with the Tree of Life.

(It is a small step, or mistake if you believe the Third Order, to associate alchemy with geomancy, astrology and the Tarot.)

Perhaps the biggest blending of egregores is the Khabs Am Pekht, Konx Om Pax, Light In Extension, which blends Egyptian, Greek and English mysteries.

And this leads me to the conclusion that either the European Third Order failed to see the potential logical extension trap of their Cipher Manuscript; or that the Cipher Manuscript has nothing to do with the Third Order that Mathers had contact with. Their blaming Mathers for making a logical extension of what was contained in the Cipher Manuscript is much like handing someone a loaded gun and then blaming them for shooting someone. One can only imagine what the Third Order thinks of my own work which includes work with the Norse runes and Reiki, as well as Wiccan mysteries. Needless to say, no one has to worry about the Third Order inviting me into their ranks---I embrace the blending of egregores with far too much gusto.

Disclosure Update 2012

Happy Secular New Year!

Once again, it is time to publish an update to the myriad of disclosure statements that I already have on this blog.

[This disclosure is aimed at a particular school of thought---I am sorry, but I disagree with you. Yet given the fact that you have objected to my book reviews and tried to get me to issue a disclosure on every book review stating (more or less) that the reader should not read my book reviews because of my lack of membership in a correct and true Golden Dawn Order, I feel that I must issue this disclosure before you insist that I issue one.]

Over the past year, it has been revealed that the Secret Chiefs (Third Order) broke contact with Mathers in 1906 when Crowley published the Golden Dawn rituals and the first two rituals of the RR et AC, along with some of the teachings developed by Mathers. The reasons for this severing of contact was that Mathers allowed an untrustworthy member into his Order, one who broke his secrecy oaths, and that Mathers had went too far in his mixing of egregores (lores, traditions, currents, energies) that were never meant to be mixed. In other words, the Third Order had no clue what Mathers was doing until Crowley published the rituals and Inner Order material which just added to the insult that someone had broken their secrecy oath.

The reason that I must issue a disclosure update is that the fact that I rather like the mixing of traditions and lores. And in the interests of keeping you safe and ensuring that you only become a member of legitimate and recognized Orders (which the BIOGD/BIORC is not), so that you might someday be allowed into the glories of Third Order, you must be warned not to consider joining the Order I belong to.

Remember the words of an acknowledged expert in this matter:

"[The] fact is that the Third Order must find you...if you are deemed worthy they will eventually contact you. [The] only way in being spotted by them is by joining any of the true and authentic Rosicrucian bodies."

The fact that I do not think that Mathers went too far, besides being a working writer, ensures that I will never be contacted by the Third Order. If you ever hope to be contacted by them, you really should not be reading anything that I write. This is especially true considering that a lot of my work over the years has been involved in expanding the results of this errorous set of teachings. And whatever you do, resist the urge to come back tomorrow to read my post about the mixing of symbols as revealed by the Cipher Manuscript.

Ye have been warned.

Adopt a Secret Chief human edition

JC made a comment about expecting this sets of posts (Adopt a Secret Chief) to be about adopting cats; and I so understand why they would expect that--heck it felt wrong to write what I did without mentioning cats. Nevertheless, there are times when you have to talk about the Secret Chiefs in their human form.
And this post is one of those times.

One of the recent things that has boiled out of the stew of the Golden Dawn fora and blogosphere lately is the idea that there are only two ways to think about the Secret Chiefs and their connection with Isis-Urania #3.

One way is that you believe that the Secret Chiefs are real, and that Mathers and Westcott had contact with them, and that the system is built from older material and the only way to gain a deeper understanding of the material is to gain access to the hidden Order that served as their Secret Chiefs. This school of thought insists (more or less) that any modern material and ideas about Golden Dawn are automatically wrong.

The other way of looking at the concept of the Secret Chiefs is that the Secret Chiefs were merely a lie told by Mathers and Westcott to disguise the fact that their Order was a completely brand new thing in a time period where the only "real" Orders were thought to be secretly hundred, if not thousands, of years old. Because no Secret Chiefs were involved in the creation of Golden Dawn, the school of thought reasons that there is no reason to seek out the Secret Chiefs and the odds are that anyone claiming to make contact with the Secret Chiefs is lying and running a scam.

Please note that this black and white description is actually a simplification; one needs a scorecard to figure out what some people actually believe. Which brings me to the point of this blog post.

There is a third school of thought concerning the Secret Chiefs. And that school of thought is that it does not matter either way whether the Secret Chiefs existed, was in contact with Mathers and Westcott or not, still exist or not...none of this matters.

Now there are several ways to end up in this particular school of thought, most of them accidential. You end up being driven into this school of thought---it is not like you wake up one morning and say, "I want to be a heretic and hated by both of the major Golden Dawn camps"---no you find yourself painted into a corner and discover that you agree with a litttle bit said by this side and little bit said by the other side, and that either side wants you to belong to their side.

In my case, there are three major reasons why I find myself in this outcast school of thought.

One, I have been asked to leave by every strict observance Order that I have ever been a member of. I have a habit of talking back to people; I tend to question the leadership of groups. Opps. With my track record, I am guaranteed to be banned by any Order that claims contact with the Secret Chiefs long before gaining access to anything that would make the additional trouble involved worthwhile. Therefore, it does not matter if an Order has contact with the Secret Chiefs or not, it is not like I am going to be a member long enourgh to benefit from such contact. I am the last person in the world that will ever have a (human) Secret Chief show up on my doorstep.

Two, I am in a situation where I do not have the resources to spare. Being a poor undergraduate (and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel is me actually applying for the grad program), I do not have the money, energy, or time to devote to any particular Order beyond my local lodge. For instance, an Order that emphasizes alchemy (to any significant extent) is not a good option for me at this time. I do not have the money to buy a decent alchemy lab setup, nor the room to use it, nor the time and energy necessary to pursue the work. Other subjects being emphasized also have the same problem, including any system where I would have to travel for instruction or initiation. This is one of those conditions that end up with one not caring if the Secret Chiefs are real or not; and furthermore, not caring if someone actually has contact with them.

Three, this is the worst of the lot and the one that automatically gets me loads of hate from both sides, I am working with very specialized sections of the tradition--unless the Secret Chiefs focus on these areas, they can't help me in the first place. For instance, one of the things I have read is that the Secret Chiefs did not approve of Mathers going hogwild with certain aspects of the system, and are busy rebuilding the system to what it was supposed to look like---these disapproved areas are exactly the areas that I am most interested in and the areas where no help will be forthcoming anyways. Given the fact that I do not have an interest in pre-1888 magic and initiation, it does not matter if I believe in the existence of the Secret Chiefs or not, they can't help me advance in my areas of interest. The areas I am interested in, the Secret Chiefs do not provide support for---then again, most of the other camp do not provide support for these areas either, hence the hate from both sides of the system.

(For the record, I believe that the instant that the Secret Chiefs cut support to an Order that the Secret Chiefs no longer have any rights in that Order and that Order never has to submit to the Secret Chiefs ever again. This is especially true when the system no longer confirms to their original vision. It is opinions like this that gets me banned from groups.)

Therefore for me, and whole bunch of people, it really does not matter if the Secret Chiefs exist or not, and it does not matter if Westcott and Mathers were lying or telling the truth, for we are automatically banned from benefiting from their existence or lack thereof. If you are denied membership or are unable to benefit from the contact, then it DOES NOT MATTER if the Secret Chiefs exist or not.

Of course, this is why I think it is such a neat idea to Adopt a Secret Chief. It is like playing fantasy football or Dungeons and Dragons, it is neat to consider what weirdness would result if a different set of Secret Chiefs had been involved. It does not matter if the Secret Chiefs exist or not, Mathers or Westcott was telling the truth or not, or if anyone is currently in communication with them or not. It is not like it matters to some of us either way. We have NO STAKE in the game---we are allowed to think about the "what ifs." Of course, this annoys both parties---it is nice that they can agree on something, even if it is only to agree that some people shouldn't be in the system for being opinionated and loud-mouthed.

(Please note that this post is not completely true: I know people on both sides who think that I might actually make a decent member of the Golden Dawn tradition...someday, that is.)