When to part the Veil

As I have gotten closer to June, and the Open Full Moon ritual that I am conducting that month, I have once again find myself spending time kicking around the question of when is it ok to reveal information.

If we go back to the 1888 standard, it is never ok to reveal information unless someone is of the proper Grade to reveal it. This includes the very existence of the Order itself. The exception is the three Co-Chiefs, who can do whatever they want to do.

At some point in time, it became ok to admit that you belonged to an esoteric Order if you were talking to someone that you were willing to sponsor. I am not sure when that happened...and it probably was so unofficial.

Information-wise, there seems to been a standard that if the information existed in the public domain, then you could talk about provided that you did not reveal any of the initiated secrets. For an idea of how this worked, look at the little booklet that Mathers did on the Tarot; it is hardly a ringing advertisement for his expertise.

Aliester Crowley is accused of changing the standard, but that accusation is rather unfair. Despite all his faults, the information that he gave out was actually rather limited. There is also the fact that most of it was done in a very limited print run. We forget that the Equinox was a limited print run; and if you had a copy, then you were almost a de facto member of either the AA or the OTO.

Paul Foster Case's BOTA actually had a larger membership than both of Crowley's organizations. Of course with BOTA , you spend years and years in what Golden Dawn/RR et AC classified Outer Order.

Dion Fortune is a good example of someone who hinted at what initiates knew without giving anything away.

It is Regardie that broke open the piggy bank. But quite honestly in my opinion, what he published was just the tip of the iceberg---just enourgh to ensure that the system did not disappear, but not enourgh that a living esoteric Order was made unnecessary.

(Others will so disagree with me on this one. My question to them is: How bad off is your system that Regardie, or any of the others I mention in this blog post, have actually made your Order useless?)

Today, the information leaks are the Chic and Tabitha Cicero, Pat Zalewski, and Nick Farrell; or at least, they are the ones that most people pay attention to. And they pretty much restrict their stuff to NAM (Neophyte Adeptus Minor) and below. (In Pat's case, that is not completely true---he preserving the core bits of a higher Grade system without giving more than one percent of it away.)

There are some others who give hints; but for the most part, either their hints are for those who are already of the proper Grade to know (if you can figure it out from the hint, then you have the right to know it), or are meant to attract new members to their groups (sorry, I spent too much time as a businessman; if it looks like advertising, I presume that it is advertising).

(Of course, I am ignoring the people who just reprint the stuff that others have published, and who claim to understand it better than the rest of us. I think everyone knows my issues with these particular people.)

Now in my particular case, I am kicking around if it is proper to connect the dots between the hints a couple of people have made, plus add a big dollop of research and a dab of personal insight, and actually put it in article form. Outside of the hints, this is my own work; this is not a secret or teaching that was shown to me. But it definitely comes out of the Golden Dawn/RR et AC system.

And for the record, I realize that this question is just a personal issue. No matter what I actually decide, someone will get up on a soapbox and scream that I made the wrong decision. Because of that the only thing that will ultimately matter is making sure that I can live with myself in the morning.

Thanks for listening.

Baking a bigger pie

One of the things that disturbs me is those magicians and witches who tell you it is wrong to do a spell for money because it will rob someone else. Often this attitude refers to abundance magic. Bet these people are horrified that I am going to be doing spell work to increase my income flow in the near future (it has to wait until after this semester finals when I have time to actually do both the magic and actual work to manifest the energies). Problem with this type of thinking is that it presumes that we are trapped in a zero-sum game. There is another way to deal with this: Grow a bigger pie. Don't believe me? Would you believe Donald Michael Kraig if he told you that was the solution to having your cake and letting your neighbor have theirs? We do not have to be poor; we have pie.

Bast as a goddess of abundance

A couple of weeks ago, I was thinking about Bast while I was walking home from one of my college classes. I used to have a friend that gave me a hard time about picking a goddess that was a "party goddess." And I am so not a party person; I am the person in the corner that has been there for five minutes, and that is about an hour too long as far as I am concerned. I am also not very sexually amorous either which also makes Bast look like a bad choice for me; no, I do not go tom-catting around.

Quite simply, I am a prudish stick-in-the-mud. Therefore is his mind, there is no way that Bast should be connected with me. (Obviously, he has no truck with the theory that you should deal with gods who have a different outlook on life than you do, in order to shore up your weaknesses.)

While this former friend and I have parted paths (long story---basically I had no time to spare), I still can't but help think about his "party goddess" label occasionally when I mediate on Bast. I do understand where he was coming from with the comment, as will all those who have read stories about the ancient Egyptian festival of Bast.

But Bast is so much more. She is the lighter side of her dark sister Sekmet. She is probably connected with the Strength card of the Tarot though some energetic or philosophical manner.

Bast was definitely sacred in ancient Egypt, as were her animal of choice, the cat. Now, these are not are typical housecats; these were cats one step removed from the wild. The reason that cats were protected was the fact that they were a much needed form of pest control. Large grain stores tends to attract mice and rats; you need something to keep the scurrying pests down to an acceptable level where they are not eating you out of hut and silo.

Enter the cat. Today, even as I am writing this, I find that it is hard to believe that a cat can be bothered to get up and hunt down anything. But then again, I have three cats on the sofa with me---and they are slowly taking up every spare inch of room.

Yet I do know that they still hunt. Or at least, some of them do. The other day, I found a half-eaten mouse on the front porch. Probably a gift from one of the feral cats that I fed. I hope that they did not expect me to finish eating it for them. I appreciate the present, but even my eating habits are better than that.

Which brings me to why Bast is a goddess of abundance. We all have a bunch of scurry time and money wasters in our lives that if we could get under control, we could actually make some progress towards putting some money into the bank and keeping it there. Securing and protecting the stockpile of wealth, one's resources, and stemming the tide of being nippled to death has the same effect as creating more wealth. Therefore Bast is a goddess of abundance despite the fact that she probably spends as much time sleeping as her four legged counterparts do.

Thinking about this month's newsletter

I always love it when someone proves that I really need to do something. For several months, I had an idea of what my column for the May's issue of the Hearthstone OFM Newsletter is going to be about. And someone just made such a sweeping generalization on one of the Golden Dawn forums that I definitely have to do it. I thought it was going to be one of the local Wiccans that were going to make me loudly declare, "Don't speak for all of us, and declare your method of doing things the one and only way!"

Rule of thumb: Unless you have talked to everyone of a particular tradition (and their minds are permanently frozen), don't assume you know what all of them do and believe.

Edit: Opps, my bad. They were being sarcastic. Another general rule of thumb, sarcasm does not work on the internet...especially around those who have just spent the last six hours researching a term paper.

If you are in Northeastern Pennsylvania (Pow-Pow)

I just learned of a year-long series of classes are going to be held in Northeastern Pennsylvania on Pow-Pow, German Folk-Magic this year. Ahh, I wish that I lived in northeastern Pennsylvania. I am very interested in this magical tradition, considering that it made its way across the ocean and set up in these shores relatively intact.

There is also the little fact that many of my ancestors set up shop in Pennsylvania after arriving on these shores. Not that any of them would have been involved in the Pow-Pow tradition. They were much more upstanding and faithful than I ever have been. Only the black sheep in my family dabble in magic.

And I have dabbled (bad Morgan) with hex signs and the magical use of the Psalms. For the record, hex signs are actually not about hexing; the term actually refers to the artwork produced, and not their purpose. I am not sure if hex signs will be covered or not, but there is plenty of other things to interest the serious working occultist in this class.

A partial list of the subjects being covered include:

* The Magical Use of the Psalms, New Testament, and Revelations in Talismans and Rituals
* The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses
* The Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy
* Protections Cords: Their Construction and Use

Mark Stavish, who is the one who emailed me about this, did put forth the following caution: "Please note, this is a demanding class, traditional in form, structure, and methods, and requires considerable commitment from students wishing to participate."

How much commitment? Well, you are spending a Saturday or Sunday every month, from ten in the morning until four to six in the afternoon. I imagine that there is probably is going to be a boatload of homework to do also (I am just guessing on that last part).

Anyway, if you are interested in the Germanic Pennsylvanian Dutch magical tradition and live in northeastern Pennsylvania, consider emailing  info@hermeticinstitute.org for more information on this series of classes.

The Knowledge and Conversation model of Adeptship

Just a few minutes ago, I replied to a status update (on Facebook) by Stephanie Connolly Reisner, who mentioned an ongoing talk that led to the question, "What is an Adept?"

And someone replied with the oldy, but goody, that an Adept was someone who had Knowledge and Conversation of their Higher Guardian Angel.

To which I replied:

"I have never been comfortable with the whole Knowledge and Conversation standard; who is to decide who has and has not [experienced this]? If it is just oneself, how do you keep your ego out of it? If others, how do you keep the egos of others out of it?"

My answer is firmly rooted in the fact that I am positive that I have seen egos all around whenever this standard is used. Plus the K&C model of Adeptship is not even officially Golden Dawn/RR et AC...it is actually something that came out of Thelema. While gauging Adeptship on magical results and knowledge may be elitist, and subject to the standards of the group that one finds themselves in, at least (in principle) the Thirteen Inch Rule is applied equally to all group members, and not just those who can stroke the ego of the leadership.

Quote of the day: Mona Magick on Fake Occultists

(I love this statement.)

You may be able to cleverly recite forbidden chants, engrave symbols on your chest, and decorate the most elaborate altar, but it means nothing if the spirits you so summoned know the real deal and you're a fake.

---Mona Magick