tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8458080909001903011.post2396401453523698188..comments2023-09-14T06:40:37.907+02:00Comments on Nick Farrell's Blog: Mathers' Last Secret is Out!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11198094991381684617noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8458080909001903011.post-69440335052751264052011-07-20T11:31:54.165+02:002011-07-20T11:31:54.165+02:00I can see what you mean about the pentagram and he...I can see what you mean about the pentagram and hexagram rituals. Those for me were the most interesting part of the book.<br /><br />I reiterate yet again that I am glad you wrote the book and you have my gratitude, and fuck those people that didn't want you to release it. They are morons, thinking they own A et O material, hell, thinking they are Alpha et Omega. They have hardly the least connection to the A et O apart from that they are being run by at idiot who likes to take photos of himself dressing up and who thinks he can get away with pretending to contact mysterious "Secret Chiefs" who give him SUPER SECRET KNOWLEDGE that no-one else has. (So actually, haha they are very similar, but in terms of their actual connection to the real, historic Alpha et Omega, it just doesn't exist; It is a travesty that they hold all the copyrights. They have no right to them at all. It annoys me the same way that Stuart Kaplan getting the copyright on the Rider-Waite deck does).<br /><br />Anyway, enough of those fuck-heads, and back to your point you just made, which I totally agree with. It really *is* all about packaging, and pretending that your order is different and more credible or has more lineage that you just invented somehow (in the grand tradition, I suppose of even Isis Urania). "Alpha et Omega" should not in my view be seen as distinct in any way from the Golden Dawn except that it refers to a certain period of time because Mathers felt he had to change the name. They didn't suddenly use totally different grades, rituals and equipment on becoming A et O- it was all still the same.<br /><br />Having said that, and that I agree with you in that "branding" and marketing are important only to attract members and have little to no importance on magick, I don't see why you would encourage people to take the name Alpha et Omega and to use as a starting point the version of the rituals in the book. I suppose people using the name Alpha et Omega will annoy David Griffin, which is always a good thing, but so should anyone using the name Golden Dawn or R.R. et A.C. Honestly David Griffin annoys the crap out of me, as I'm sure you've gathered. How he can have the cheek to claim his orders have lineage handed to them by mysterious Secret Chiefs is beyond a joke. "Oh, we don't really have any more solid links to real GD temples than any of our competitors so in order to claim that we have sole unbroken lineage I'll just MAKE UP that we were given it by Secret Chiefs, yeah that'll work" Idiot. And people accept it!<br /><br />Anyway, isn't it enough just to publish the book and get the information out there, as you say, to stop people hoarding it exclusively? I don't see why you have to say that people could use it as the basis of an A et O order. They would be better advised to use the non-magickally-flawed versions of the rituals and take it from there.<br /><br />Anyway, best wishes, I don't want to annoy you any more because you need your energy to fight that slobbering idiot, David Griffin.graspeehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13417948406807282590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8458080909001903011.post-35509948348154580752011-07-20T10:42:23.761+02:002011-07-20T10:42:23.761+02:00It is all about packaging. With different Golden ...It is all about packaging. With different Golden Dawn groups out there you have to pretend that yours is different. If you say that you are AO you can bang on that you have the *real* GD which Mathers intended. The rituals had been sitting around in libraries (if you knew where to look) but most people thought they would be buying into a new product. The downside of this is that while the SM and Whare Ra group underwent development over a long period of time, the AO only really started after Mina Mathers died. The order really did not survive the second world war and so that development was stopped dead in its tracks.<br />Packaging though is important to marketing and not important to real magical work. In fact the need for it indicates that there is nothing substantial in the group that tries it. Peter Gabriel once said "I would rather trust a man who does not shout what he has found, there is no need to sell when you are homeward bound."<br />My hope was that if people wanted to play with the AO approach they would continue the development that was started after Mathers' death. That would be a rewarding experience. The rituals also help those who use the SM and Whare Ra because it explains what Mathers was getting at on some fairly important issues. This is particularly true of the pentagrams and hexagrams. There are some things which the NISI documents clarified to a point where they replaced the SM teaching in my own group.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18397283594429773853noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8458080909001903011.post-73798953451297393062011-07-20T10:14:34.973+02:002011-07-20T10:14:34.973+02:00And by the way, if that smug little fucker David G...And by the way, if that smug little fucker David Griffin or one of his sycophantic shits tries to use anything I write here to attack you with I will tear those snivelling, arrogant little shits a new arsehole with what I will write about them, you have my word.graspeehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13417948406807282590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8458080909001903011.post-35335274704440719082011-07-20T10:10:52.654+02:002011-07-20T10:10:52.654+02:00Yes I hate David Griffin and his cronies. In fact ...Yes I hate David Griffin and his cronies. In fact one of the main reasons I bought your book was because he attacked it.<br /><br />I'm not attacking YOU for the errors in the book, I'm not attacking anyone really, but if you want to see it as an attack, see it as an attack against the proofreader.<br /><br />You keep saying I will understand more if I write a book, yet you don't know who I am or whether I have written a book. (I've written several).<br /><br />I still can't understand though why anyone would set up an A et O order anyway. You said yourself that the rituals are flawed in the book. Mathers either didn't touch them, or ruined them. Why would someone want to use these rituals to set up an order? I can see that the changes Mathers made are interesting to me and other G.D. researchers/scholars and thank you for publishing them, but why would someone try to change these rituals to work better rather than using the rituals from either one of the two Regardie books or indeed Zalewski's ?<br /><br />It's almost as though you see the name Alpha et Omega as a special thing. It's not. It's just a name used for a new order because of the demise of the original Golden Dawn. All sorts of offshoots popped up back then and indeed over the years with all sorts of names. I don't think people then put much stock in the actual name. People nowadays of course do, because they have too much reverence for every letter of the old texts, so they call their orders variations of "Golden Dawn" mostly. If Mathers were around today he'd probably just say "Oh well, I'll make a new order and I'll call it hmmmm. 'The Sanctified Mysteries of the Rosy Cross' or 'Order of the Flaming Sword' or 'Expeled from Eden' or ... " ... you get the picture.graspeehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13417948406807282590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8458080909001903011.post-19280760114960964222011-07-20T09:15:55.503+02:002011-07-20T09:15:55.503+02:00And yet you attack publicly and become a willing t...And yet you attack publicly and become a willing tool for those who you profess to hate? I am sure that your posts and my response will be cut and pasted as proof that Nick Farrell's book should not be read. It is a neat trick used by PRs on the news sites I work for to silence a bad story by going for the spelling, which is a handy black and white argument which has nothing to do with the author. If the writer objects it is "their problem" for being so defensive. Write a book, take a lot of stick for daring to do so and then have someone moan about the spelling and see how defensive you are. BTW people did the same thing to my Llewellyn books and the proof reading there took months.<br />Yes, you can use the book to set up an AO order, however the theme of the book is magical development over the masonic approach. Mathers opted for a masonic approach while the SM and modern orders did not. Therefore anyone who attempts to set up an AO order would have to do some substantial work making these rituals more magical and cover some of the holes that Mather's changes to the rituals bought in (particularly those which break the Z documents) Remember that the early GD rituals have never been published so even when Mathers is saying the same thing, it is still telling the reader something that they do not know (see my later post on What Regardie did not know)Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18397283594429773853noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8458080909001903011.post-71401819652345476212011-07-20T05:57:14.685+02:002011-07-20T05:57:14.685+02:00I'm sorry that you feel defensive, Mr. Farrell...I'm sorry that you feel defensive, Mr. Farrell, but it is really true that the book is full of errors. It's true that all books have errors, but esoteric books from small publishers tend to be riddled with them, and this one more than even most of those.<br /><br />It's true I'm guilty a bit of smugness but that's because I pride myself on my proofreading ability. Whoever proofread this volume was not very good at their job. I would have provided you with a complete list of errata from the book but there are so many it would constitute actual work that I would want to get paid for.<br /><br />You don't need to be so defensive though. I approve of you releasing the material. It's not like I'm that awful David Griffin chap. I absolutely despise him. It's just that I'm very disappointed to pay quite a lot of money really for a so-called professionally-produced book which has so many errors in it, and such weird fonts with all that 'o' looking like '0' nonsense and so on, that it's like I'm reading a self-published kindle book.<br /><br />I'm also confused as to why you state in the beginning of the book that the A et O material you present in the book could be the basis of a new magickal order and then spend the whole book dismissing each ritual as either pretty much unchanged from the G.D. rituals we already have from Stella Matutina and Isis Urania or magickally flawed and useless as a result of Mathers' meddling, which you point out is often in order to be able to process multiple members at the same time and therefore make more money.<br /><br />But I'm not attacking you. I have no hostile feelings towards you, I do not want to be lumped in with the David Griffin crowd.graspeehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13417948406807282590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8458080909001903011.post-18728897629013499802011-07-19T19:37:26.065+02:002011-07-19T19:37:26.065+02:00Of course it had proof readers and those we do not...Of course it had proof readers and those we do not spot get fixed in the second wave. There is not a single book on the market which does not have typos in them. When people point them out they always have a degree of smugness about it as if they are somehow superior to the writer. They always make their comments public rather than a quiet word. When you write a book, then you will get exactly the same thing. You will also get miffed at they always use exaggeration like "this book is full of errors"Nick Farrellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01663533542726414450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8458080909001903011.post-24631605082142188972011-07-19T19:16:38.005+02:002011-07-19T19:16:38.005+02:00The book is very interesting but was it not proofr...The book is very interesting but was it not proofread? There are some truly embarrassing mistakes in there.<br /><br />Take for example page 67:<br /><br />"It would appear that this ritual is restructured to allow for the maximum number of candidate's to be processed at once"<br /><br />(should be "candidates" not "candidate's")<br /><br />Then further down the same page we have:<br /><br />"...neither of which was used by either the other Golden Dawn temples".<br /><br />(should be "either of the", not "either the")<br /><br />There are unfortunately many more; It is a rare page that has no errors on it.graspeehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13417948406807282590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8458080909001903011.post-65511079039698987732011-02-02T16:38:43.238+01:002011-02-02T16:38:43.238+01:00Congratulations Nick... hope Sean can see your boo...Congratulations Nick... hope Sean can see your books some day....Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8458080909001903011.post-38269791366166251082011-02-02T06:22:59.307+01:002011-02-02T06:22:59.307+01:00Congrats to you Nick! Looking forward to checking ...Congrats to you Nick! Looking forward to checking it out.Adam Smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09007172745385898382noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8458080909001903011.post-62420138330948948702011-02-02T02:54:20.031+01:002011-02-02T02:54:20.031+01:00This is really great. Congrats Nick, I have been ...This is really great. Congrats Nick, I have been looking forward to this for a while!<br /><br />YShYFrater YShYhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11328779411859819281noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8458080909001903011.post-57333225528806508542011-02-01T22:36:46.124+01:002011-02-01T22:36:46.124+01:00@ Perigrin
uffa I was trying to get the colours of...@ Perigrin<br />uffa I was trying to get the colours of the staff of the Kerux!Nick Farrellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01663533542726414450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8458080909001903011.post-50933390549103882052011-02-01T22:35:21.602+01:002011-02-01T22:35:21.602+01:00SR
You would be looking at the later AO, where th...SR <br />You would be looking at the later AO, where they had a little more sense of magic. Mathers advocated much worse cuts than that in the early AO.... as you can see in the book.Nick Farrellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01663533542726414450noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8458080909001903011.post-14075525114499374512011-02-01T18:16:29.546+01:002011-02-01T18:16:29.546+01:00Great news, looking forward to reading the book. I...Great news, looking forward to reading the book. It is important that material like this not be hogged by individuals or groups, since the Golden Dawn tradition has evolved considerably since its original foundation. If things can be published and shared, they should be, and then people can see for themselves what Mathers was up to in the AO.<br /><br />LVX,<br />Dean.Frater Yechidahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08630272924336872824noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8458080909001903011.post-24712737373098139702011-02-01T17:23:36.419+01:002011-02-01T17:23:36.419+01:00I see it as a big recipe with different ingredient...I see it as a big recipe with different ingredients and different symbols adding up to equal the system. Most modern hierophants would never dream of cutting out any important sequence to an initiation. Opening by sceptre is not really part of the main initation, although I would not sacrifice that either. The bits that Mathers cut were part of the main initition. I think that if you did all mathers cuts, opening and closing by scepter you could probably get the rite down to about 20 minutes! <br />Short cuts are done for a reason, and in the post Mathers periods different parts of the ritual were accorded more importance. I believe that the depth in the AO came from Brodie Inness and his generation rather than Mathers. Just like the depth from the rebels came from Felkin. Even Waite did not dare move from the Cipher manuscripts structure in case he missed a crucial symbol. Yet Mathers felt he was safe to chop out at least a third of the initiation rite. <br />Getting back to the biased side, I have said the same thing about the Bristol Temple rituals which were also carved up and missed vital ingredients. <br />My conclusion would be the same.. doing that strips the magic from the rite.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18397283594429773853noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8458080909001903011.post-5623743729911288912011-02-01T16:20:18.475+01:002011-02-01T16:20:18.475+01:00Congratulations in forward, and I am really lookin...Congratulations in forward, and I am really looking forward to your book Nick!<br />In LVX<br />Ina Cüsters-van BergenHermetic Order of the Temple of Starlighthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04202957154143371069noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8458080909001903011.post-46380876034263087162011-02-01T15:18:55.264+01:002011-02-01T15:18:55.264+01:00Congratulations Nick!
I am really looking forwar...Congratulations Nick! <br /><br />I am really looking forward to this, and I have to admit to looking upon the ructions it will cause in some quarters. :)<br /><br />So, will we get books 2-1-3 or 2-3-1?<br /><br />Love the shock-awe 70s style cover :)<br /><br />Congrats again and well done for this service to the broader GD community.Peregrinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09508191641503321789noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8458080909001903011.post-17338972446885424002011-02-01T15:18:28.831+01:002011-02-01T15:18:28.831+01:00The short cuts are a little more than the opening ...The short cuts are a little more than the opening by scepter... as you would know if you had read the book :-) <br /><br /><br />"I hope this isn't a reference to the HOGD/A+O, and if it is this is clearly slanderous behaviour from you." <br /><br />Um no... why would you think it was? No, the Order in question knows who it is and it is beneath the radar of many of the known golden dawn groups. If I did name it then it would be libel not slander. The reason I have not named and shamed anyone is because I am not into attacking other groups. I suspect though there will be a number of groups which are lead by people claiming to be Mathers' reincarnation using the Regardie book as the True Text who will be a little shocked that their secret chief is not who he or she says he or she is. I expect them to go on the attack straight away. As are the Photocopy adepts I mentioned who will be upset that I have taken away their mana.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18397283594429773853noreply@blogger.com