Joining a magical group is remarkably easy in the
21st century. It seems strange that you can read all about magical groups
on the internet and think they are as common as muck. But real good quality
ones are as rare as they ever have been. Finding one good one can still be a
life's work. There are many people who go from Order to order looking for
something and never really finding it. Sometimes that is the universe trying to
tell you that you are not ready for a real magical order. You might be looking
for the wrong things, or cannot really handle the sort of training that a real
magical group puts you through. However
you can save yourself some time by using some wisdom.
The idea of a coven or a magic order still has a
lot of merit as they can be hot houses to learning. But if the leadership is wrong then you could
be suffering from bad experiences that you will talk about until you drop. What follows are tips to help work out if a Order is good or bad.
Is it too easy for you to join?
Groucho Marx once said that he would never be a
member of a club who accepted him as a member.
If a group wants members, for whatever reason, they might be too keen to
lower their standards. Remember if they
lower them to admit you, then there is a good chance that they have done so in
the past and most of their members are not the sort of people who should really
be doing magic. Magic is not a easy
path, so joining an occult group should not be easy either. Real magical groups see people as things they have to train
and a long term project. They generally should not be too concerned about getting
extra people if they have enough to do their work projects. If a group seems
too keen for you to join, say by paying for you to come and be initiated, you
should avoid them. This means that they are desperate to boost their
membership. An esoteric group should always be looking for quality over
quantity. You might think that the reason a group wants you is because you are
a wonderful esoteric candidate with heaps of knowledge. However to a real
magical group lots of experience and pre-knowledge is a hindrance. You have to
learn from scratch in any order you join so any intellectual baggage you might
be carrying will have to be dropped before you join.
Does the group try to sell itself to you.
In the 21st century many groups have a
web presence or a place to contact them. However a group steps over the line
when it tries to sell itself like a product. It is mostly recognised by the overblown
language on their website which is pitched to stereotypes about what Muggles
think magic is. The sort of thing which
promises secrets, power, mastery of the universe, cures for cancer etc. Here are a list of common ones:
“We are the ONLY magical school teaching the TRUE
and ANCIENT TECHNIQUES”
“Orders have to receive a dispensation from the
Masters on the Inner Planes who are known on in the West as the Secret
Chiefs. We have been told that our Order
is the only one to receive our Contact’s dispensation in the 21st
century.”
“All others are frauds and cannot offer our
secret techniques.”
“Other groups are envious that they do not have
our sources of Secret Teaching and training.”
The list could go on, but you get the idea. To get a high Google ranking you have to do a lot of shady
self-promotion. This involves going onto lots of blogs and waxing lyrical about
your order and encouraging all your students to mention you often on their
blogs. It is possible to know who some members of magical orders are because
often they are writers, but if you start to know too much you have to be
careful. Self-promoting groups are trying increase their membership to make
money (and sometimes sex). They are also often trying to build an esoteric cult
around their actions.
Does the group block a particular group from membership
and why?
Magical Groups should not stop anyone from
entering on the basis that they are the wrong sex, colour, sexual orientation, physical
disability, or hold different religious or political views from the members. Magical training is possible for everyone and
it does not matter what shape you are, or what you prefer to bonk (or how).
That does not mean that they HAVE to accept everyone.
Some groups do not allow people to belong to other orders, or have a blacklist
of groups that they will not allow members to join at the same time. This is often not because they are bad, or
evil (although it can be), it is just that they have different symbol set from
the group and it would lead to some confusion.
This is particularly true of
different Golden Dawn orders. While MOAA
gets on well with most of them, all emphasis different aspects of that
tradition, or do some things differently. Nor does a group want to hear “well in my
other Golden Dawn order we insist on the [insert teaching here].”
Honestly I do not believe it is possible to be a
member of two different groups anyway as the workload should make it
impossible.
Does the group allow you to skip grades on the
basis of your previous experience?
This is a trick to try and establish an Order as
quickly and widely as possible. The
premise is that the Order will acknowledge the grades of the leaders of a forming
group so that they can form a new order under their banner. However anyone with common sense will
realise that they are not getting anything from the Order that they are
joining. True they might have access to
intellectual training, but they will not have experienced what the magic order
is supposed to be doing! As an idea it
only works on idiots who like the idea of holding high grades in an order, preferably
without doing any work for them (cough masonic types). When you join an order, you start at the
lowest level of that group and then you let it do its magic on you. You do not do it to form another group for
them, or just to have a flashy badge. Never
join an order that allows you to take several grade initiations in the same day
or in a short period of time. They do
not understand how the grade system works and you will not get anything out of
it.
Does a group accept you without meeting you or
pay for you to visit them to be initiated?
If you meet someone you can know much more about
them and know if they are going to fit into your group mind and if they are
going to make it. You cannot tell that
over a Skype call, even if you have the video chat on. The fact that a group skips this important
meeting (and some even insist you turn up at several of their public meetings
first) indicates they do not really care if you fit or not. Paying for someone to travel to a place to be
initiated smacks at desperation.
Does a group offer to give you status on the
basis of an “astral initiation.”
Astral initiation takes place at a high level
when the person is experienced enough to go out of their body to receive it. It is rarely given by a physical being, and
only in unusual circumstances.
Lower grade initiations cannot be performed
magically, because the candidate needs to experience certain things
psychologically and physically. I was
fairly open minded about the idea of astral initiation at this level but I
heard too many stories which showed it to be bogus. The technique involved
telling the candidate to sit passively at the time of the initiation while a
group of officers initiated a talisman (or astrological chart) with their name
on it. One of the tests for an Astral initiation
is that the candidate picks up images or feelings from the rite. I have not met anyone who has come up with
anything which compares to a 0=0 experience.
Astral initiation performed in this manner is
designed to raise funds from distant members and enable training. There are much better techniques than passive
“astral initiation” which can have a dramatic effect on the candidate, however
the groups that use them always insist on a future physical initiation.
Are the leaders who interview you too young?
I started magic when I was 17 and studied really
hard at it for many years. I do not
think I really understood anything until my 30s and started to teach when I was
in my late-30s, I have become a lot
better since my 40s.
My
mid-twenties were spent cramming knowledge and dealing with the fall out, I was
also trying to build my career. I
cannot see how anyone under the age of 30 can be an esoteric teacher. You can know enough intellectually in your
20s, perhaps, but you certainly cannot pull in the magic. Even Jesus, who was supposed to be a prodigy (and
apparently the Son of God) did not start teaching until he was 30.
In your 20s you think that running an occult group
is important. In fact we find that too
many younger members think that this is a priority. Occult leaders should have their arms twisted
before they form a group because it gets in the way of real work. MOAA has enough work in it to last a
lifetime, pissing around worrying about people forgetting to bring their red
socks to rituals is not something a sensible person would want – unless they
are too young, arrogant, and have not had enough magical experience.
Does the group attack others?
Good esoteric groups do not publically attack others. Even a saint loses their temper in the presence
of an internet troll (which is why some good teachers refuse to have an
internet presence) and this does not usually mean there is something wrong with
them. As a rule of thumb, the groups
that are being attacked, are usually the ones that are doing something, those
who are doing the attacking have nothing to offer. There are some exceptions.
One group,
fortunately disbanded, had an initiation test for its adepts. This involved either attacking an ex-member’s
property or “supporting the order” by setting up webpages defaming rival
groups. There was an inner circle within
this group which was dedicated to making magic attacks against those who the
leadership thought were trying to attack them.
Real occult orders get on with other occult
orders. They accept that they are
different and are happy with that.
Does the group tell you what other similar groups
do?
I have heard lots of things that apparently MOAA
does from people who have talked to other groups. I find it fascinating that they claim to know
what happens in our rituals. I don’t
know (or care) what they do, so how can they know what is happening in ours? The latest one is that Nick Farrell has “changed
everything” and that the godform of the Hierophant is apparently Hermes! It is no secret that MOAA has a Heirophant
which uses an Osiris godform (when he is sitting down) just like 99 per cent of
the Golden Dawn orders out there (the Open Source Order which uses a different
inner structure). All groups (even those
who claim to be fundamentalist GD) have changed something. This is because even if you had the original
scripts of the GD, you would have no idea how those rituals were
performed. Nor do you have any idea how
much modern thinking has corrupted that teaching. Generally saying that another group is "doing it wrong" when you can't be certain what they do, means you are trying to convince people that your way is the only way.
