The Alchemy of Bollocks --Turning Pop Culture into something useful

Attached is an old article I wrote for the Horus Hathor Temple in Nottingham when I ran it.  I found it on my computer this morning so I thought I would put it here. 

In the UK there is a term which means something is completely untrue, or a waste of time.  It is called 'bollocks' and it is considered a rude word which you are not supposed to use in polite company.  It is the complete opposite of the phrase the 'dog's bollocks' which is said to mean something very good – particularly for the dog.

Popular culture is built on bollocks. It sucks you into a morass of TV chatshows, Jerry Springer and reality game shows. It is bollocks that television presenters can do up your home or that you will be better if you look like they say you should.  It is bollocks that you should take drugs to make you 'normal' or that is wrong to be depressed occasionally. It is bollocks that your flight is somehow safer because you took your belt off and let someone sniff your trainers. Soap operas are temples of bollocks that we sacrifice our brain, time and souls at its virtual altars. 

Popular culture demands not only that we build our lives on bollocks.  We are encouraged to look away from things that are sensible and well thought out in search of bollocks answers to everything. 

Occultists consider themselves outside the mainstream.  They are supposed to look at the unseen world and find a measure of reality that is unseen by other people.  But despite this, popular culture seeps into their reality too.  Despite our attempts to be outside the system we cannot escape it.

This has lead many modern magicians to say “if you can't beat them join them” Is it possible to turn the symbols of popular culture into something we can use.

The logic is that if modern popular symbols are archetypes it should be possible to use them to key into the same forces that were opened by older symbols. 

However this is not as easy as it appears.  Older symbols are often hard-wired into the consciousness of humanity.  They are based on beliefs held by our ancestors for thousands if not millions of years.  This gives the symbols a depth which more recent symbols cannot quite match.

For a long time I followed the view that a symbol was a symbol.  It did not matter which one you used so long as it meant something to you.   In the spirit of experiment to prove this I did two rituals. The objective was to remove negativity in a particular area.  In the first rite I used pop culture symbols of Star Trek New Generation.  It was a great laugh,  I got to play Picard.  The negativity was visualised as a Borg cube which was destroying the area.  The ritual was effective.  Energy from the phaser banks was seen belting out of the East of the temple by more than one of the temple psychics. In short it did what was expected and was a lot of fun. 

The control ritual was one using heavy cabbalistic symbolism, neo-platonic symbolism with a bit of alchemy thrown in.  It was less of a ritual and more of a pathworking, but it also was designed to send a burst of spiritual energy outwards to smash up a negative thought form.  It did this to the same technical standard as the other ritual. One could say well that was proof that pop culture symbols worked just as well as the traditional ones.  But it didn't.

When the ritual officers asked which they thought was the most effective they all felt it was the classical ritual.  The felt that the symbols gave them more to grab hold of.  While the Star Trek rite amused them and intellectually they could understand the logic of the symbols it failed to move them emotionally  like the cabbalistic version.  So my experiment failed, it seemed that it was not entirely possible to root a magical system in popular culture symbols.  They were simply not deep enough to carry it off.

Does this write off then the use of popular culture symbols within magic?  Not at all.  But it is not simply a matter of replacing your rituals with popular symbols you have to alchemically wire it into the collective unconscious yourself.  In short, you have to turn bollocks into gold.

This has been done before, and will probably be done again in the future, with the myth of Atlantis. Popular culture has muttered that Atlantis was a real place for centuries, but in the 19^th century the literal idea of this place really took off, with the works of the Theosophical Society.  One of the people heavily influenced by this teaching was Dion Fortune who became convinced that she was an Atlantian adept in a past life. She worked with the symbol of Atlantis and made it into a system.

This lead to a funny incident in the 1980s there was a very famous collective of magicians that used to meet around a residential centre called Hawkwood.

They had heard a legend that when Atlantis had sunk, the Solar Logos, which in Dion Fortune's system ruled the solar system, had decided that it did not want some of the Atlantian adepts to re-incarnate because they were too evil.  It stuck their souls on a comet with an incredibly wide orbit around the solar system, to gnash their teeth  until the solar system was ready for them.

It is not clear where the legend started from.  It has all the hallmarks of a channelling session, but it could have come from Dion Fortune's own Inner Light.  However the story got several of these famous magicians thinking.  It seemed to them after a few thousand years the Atlantians should have sorted themselves out and should be ready for an incarnation or two.   They meditated, and prayed, about the idea and got a good feeling about it.  Those who channelled the Secret Adepts of Power also got the nod from their contacts for the project.

So they met at Hawkwood with a plan to do a huge ritual to save the Atlantian evil adepts.  The ritual was set up, everyone was robed, but all was not well with the bloke in charge of the ritual.  He was starting to have a few doubts.  What if the Solar Logos was not happy with the idea of pulling these people back into incarnation?  What if he was releasing a plague of terrible evil on the world?  The rite opened and in the West the priestess made her contacts and poured power into the thought forms that were supposed to draw the errant Atlantians back onto the planet.  There was a pressure building.  The Mighty Magus of Power had broken out into a sweat.  Suddenly he knew he wanted to do this ritual about as much as he wanted someone to jab red hot needles in his eyes.   He decided that the Inner did not want the ritual to happen and used an emergency ritual shut down technique that delivered his fellow magicians to earth with a bump.

The Priestess, speaking words of her contact, said: “Priest you have failed” and stormed out of the temple room only to faint when she got into an outside corridor.  Many of the other officers felt physically sick and the ritual when down in legend as one of the ones which went bang.

But no one seemed to have paused before the ritual took place and thought; evil Atlantian magicians on comets that is complete bollocks that is! Nor did they consider what would have happened if the ritual had been completed. 

The idea of the souls of these adepts being stuck on a comet by the God of this solar system did not seem funny or odd to them.  Even if accept this bollocks they even had to accept other things that they did not believe.  They would have to believe that the soul could be attached to a physical reality. Further that the Solar Logos, or Sun, might consider some humans too evil to allow them to re-incarnate.  This would mean that the Solor Logos woke up one morning and decided to abandon the law of karma for these evil sods.  Adherents of this flavour of occultism are great fans of karma.

Yet they disabled all of these 'common sense' structures to accept a pop-culture myth and then allowed it to effect them so deeply that one of them passed out when it 'failed'.  Why?  Well it was all about faith. It was  serious magic to them.  What normally would have been popular culture symbols had been rooted into their belief structure so deeply that they were wired to the archetypes.  They were able to take the symbols and use them in a way that I was not able to hit with my Star Trek ritual.

This 'faith' built out ideas in other areas. I know of four people who claim to be the priestess who guided the ships from the sinking Atlantis to the shores of Britain.  The first was Dion Fortune who invented that version of the myth.  Others have been those who often are not aware that Dion claimed that role for herself and think they must have done it because they are such shit hot psychics.  However the Atlantis myth also developed into a system of magic based around geometric shapes.  Each shape was held to have a magical virtue and officers in a rite were told to hold lines in this pattern.  The idea was to make the shape light up on the astral.  Now this idea is really superior because it shows that the bollocks has been refined into pure intellectual magical gold.  It is producing something incredibly useful that could be adapted outside of that particular system.  The probably owed a lot to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, but that is not so important to the people who are using this system.

Popular culture can also motivate esoteric people to do workings that they normally would not consider.  As the world readied for the First Gulf War there were a number of magical groups that responded by doing rites for victory.  Some responded by digging up copies of Dion Fortune's Magic Battle of Britain book which described the setting up of wards around Britain during World War Two.  What was interesting about these groups was that they had apparently ignored the fact that the Dion Fortune defence rituals were designed to protect Britain from invasion from the Nazis.  There was no way that the Iraqi army was ever going to fight its way through Europe to besiege Britain. But what they were doing was responding to a stirring in the popular culture that felt that Britain was being attacked.  This was, of course, bollocks but it added power to the working that perhaps logic alone would not have provided.

So how is it possible to redeem a popular culture symbol so that it can be used to the same magical level.  The Atlantian working was based on faith.  The people practising were certain that it must be true and therefore made it happen.  The Gulf War working was based faith based on war propaganda and mass hysteria.  These are things that are very difficult to mimic in the regular working of a magician.

Using neo-platonic thought,  the reason for this is a symbol is not a single object but a gateway to many other objects that link to single divine idea. Look at it this way. One day a creator God, let us call him Jeff, decides to create beer.  He does not visualise a pint of something wet, hoppy, refreshing, lager or dark beer.  He thinks about everything that beer is and conceives it as a symbol.  A primal symbol of all beerness.  This image flows towards manifestation and gives birth to other symbols that make for different types of beer and flavour until there are legions of different types for creation to use.

Popular culture symbols are a bottom up creation.  They make links based on other symbols.  Picard is is not wired into the Universal archetype for leadership, he is  a symbol of other captains who show these qualities.  The Borg are not the archetype of a mechanistic collective, they are based on human societies where these ideas have gone wrong.  

But a divine idea which attracts more ideas to it over time. 

Popular culture symbols might track a way to becoming archetypes over time, but the very nature of popular culture is that it is ephemeral and will pass into history.

But the magician will not let that stop them.  Equipped with a knowledge of how these things work, it is possible to connect popular culture symbols to more primal ones.  It will take some doing and will probably only be personal to you, but it will make symbols from popular culture carry the same weight as those older and more traditional ones.

Firstly you have to do some internal wiring and this requires some meditation.  Take the symbol that you wish to redeem and stare at it for some time.  Allow it to create some 'ideas' in your mind.  So if we use Buffy, we allow the idea of being a chosen one roll around in our mind.  We think of a few of the adventures she has had etc.  Then try to think what she is a symbol of.  Compare  and reject those other heroes who do not fit the  qualities you find interesting about her.  So Alexander the Great for example was a 'Chosen One' but he led armies fighting humans and while Buffy only had a small gang fighting evil.  It does not quite work.  If you think that it is vital for the archetypal 'Buffy' to be a female hero then you will have to find a heroine who fits.  Remember, you do not have to use humans, myths and legends, gods and goddesses will all work.

Once you have selected a 'hero' then you start to look at the qualities that hero has which makes them represent what you want to use. 

Say we decided that Buffy, with her super powers and tendency to rush into dark places to fight evil, has enough links to be similar to the symbol of Hercules.  What is it that Hercules has that connects us to the ideas of heroism? We might generate a list – bravery, leadership, not fleeing in the face of monsters, or being eaten by them and, above all, a strong sense of humanity.

Now, in our mediation, it gets a bit tricky.  We have to take these qualities and ascend upwards with them.  The process makes them more abstract.  Generally I see the symbols as becoming geometric shapes but they radiate feeling.  Allow the shape to move upwards and follow it in your mind's eye toward a single point of light.  That light has symbolically to be damn big.  It represents the singularity of the creator... in my case Jeff.  In that light you should see the shape changing before settling on a single shape.  You might want to note that shape, before allowing it to come back.  Watch it change, moving from primal shape, to new forms, separating out into different beings, heroes, linking to Hercules and finally, like the bottom of a family tree, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

What you have done is link Buffy magically to something more primal and when you use her you will find that she is 'connected' to all the symbols that you meditated on.

It might be interesting to see if some of these symbols start to evolve in the direction that you meditated on.  You might pick up a Buffy comic and see a story line which reflects your meditation.  In magical terms it would be a good 'check on earth' that the links have been properly made as others who work with the Buffy image will have started to pick up on the same connections.  Again that would be a matter for experiment, but from your perspective when you tap into that image you will be free from a lot of the bollocks that surrounds popular culture icons and rooted into a divine reality.  Because you have seen those links between Buffy and 'Jeff' you can believe in them and because you have felt the depth of the links between her and him you benefit from the depth of the symbol.

This technique can be applied to any popular culture symbol, from Star Trek to and Andy Warhol tin of soup. But as an experiment I suggest you do a ritual using the pop culture symbols and then try and linking an iconic set before trying something else. Take the whole cast of Buffy, or the Bridge of the Enterprise, the Jerry Springer show, a range of cars, anything. Then use them as magical symbols to see if you can improve them by linking them to the Divine.  It does make watching the shows, or car spotting a completely out of this world experience.

Nick Farrell

Sofia

25/01/08

WHERE THE OCCULT & PAGAN COMMUNITY LOST THE PLOT

The European Golden Dawn and no that is not a Zelator Salute 

The occult community is doomed to be hijacked by right-wing nut-jobs and other idiots because it has become paralysed by its own desire to be “spiritual.”

Yesterday I was involved in a spat with a Golden Dawn troll in the Nova Roma group on Facebook.  Not the occult Golden Dawn, I mean the Nazi group which has effectively taken over the use of the name in the EU.  The troll was flooding he site with bogus historical claims about how the Jews wrecked Greece and how homosexuality in Ancient Greece was a dreadful rumour put about by the Jews where intimated by Greek masculinity. Ignoring him did not help.  He kept reposting because he believed he was right.

As I thought the Golden Dawn was anti-Turk (and this was a Roman group) so I made a few gags about how the Romans were Troyian refugees and therefore Turkish.  I was wasting my time, the troll had about as much of a sense of humour as his alt.magick counterparts in the 1990s.

The point was that the Nova Roma group seemed unable to do anything about him.  If a troll like that appeared in one of my Facebook groups he would have been banned. Scarlet Magdalene reports that similar trolls are the bane of her existence in Greek religious re-enactment groups but no one is taking them down either.

In all cases the neo-pagan movement is ignoring one of the primary lessons that the Jews learnt in the 1940s. The only way to deal with these thugs is to chase them off the streets.  In Germany the population was in fear of the brown shirts and the result was that they ended up being accepted.  In the UK though Mosley’s Black shirts were literally chased from the streets by gangs of pissed off Jews. The grass roots of the Nazi movement failed.  Then, as in now, the Far Right claimed their views are being censored and that you are trespassing on their rights to free speech.  

So fucking what!

Rights of free speech are intimately coupled with a right not-to-listen.  You have a right to call me name, but in law you cannot control my reaction.  So if you insult my ancestors it is not interfering with your free speech if I curse you never to have any off-spring or you get a terminal illness.  If you post hate-speech on a Facebook group that is your right, it is equally my right to take you down.

Yet in the occult community there is a fear that people are somehow doing the wrong thing. That they are not appearing spiritual enough in their dealing with these people.  If we are all One Thing then surely these people are just as much God as the rest of us.  That might be true but a sun and a black hole are part of the same universe, but you would not want them in the same solar system – one is very bad for the other.

My reaction to the Nova Roma troll was to leave the group, because I don’t want to read that shit and I did not want to appear bad taking him on. Occult leaders in particular have this problem.  There is a mistaken belief that being spiritual is being tolerant when in fact a closer connection to the flow of the universe makes you less tolerant of those who are closer to the trees and not familiar with their opposable thumbs. 

But then I thought fuck it… why should neo-nazis close down occult groups and chase working occultists out of them.  Alt.magick in the 1990s was a case in point.  When it started it was full of really cool people – Pat Zalewski, Poke Runyon, Adam McLean, Aaron Lietch, different groups, OTO, GD, etc.  Then it went to shit because a couple of bullies tried to assert control over it and defamed everyone who did not do their bidding.  Since it was impossible for you to kick someone out of alt.magick everyone just left and that level of egalitarianism has not returned in one place again.

Instead of trying to work with these morons, and “being tolerant” it is really time that occultists showed that this sort of behaviour should not be allowed.  It is time that real occultists started taking back groups from these backward types in whatever form they manifest.  Rather than defending the criminals and their rights to be arseholes, we should be defending ourselves from the contamination that this particular thinking breeds.   Rather than providing platforms for Neo-nazi thought, we should be closing it down at its first opportunely before it contaminates Adam Kadmon any further.

In short, you get the sort of community you deserve. If you do not stand up to bullies they will continue to steal your lunch money.    


UPDATE

The administrator at Nova Roma has banned two Nazi's from the group including the one who inspired this blog. Well done guys.....
THe admin has also posted that will be the fate of any one who tries to post fascist propaganda in the group. This sort of zero tolerance is exactly the sort of approach we need.

EMERALD TABLET CALLS FOR NEW AND ESTABLISHED OCCULT WRITERS

I am setting up a new magazine which aims to be a bi-annual Journal of Ritual Magic.  

EMERALD TABLET aims to bring together people from different traditions to talk about all aspects of Ritual. It will have a few "names" and some new writers.  It will be published in paperback book format and be distributed through Amazon and Lulu. An ebook version will be released a month after the paperback.

The Emerald Tablet is a bi-annual magazine printed in paperback book format which is designed for writers to present their ideas, research and discoveries in the field of ritual magic and occultism. 

It is not limited to one tradition, such as the Golden Dawn, but will focus on ritual magic. It is modelled on the Occult review (only it will be bigger and come out less often). 

Authors will be asked to submit articles of between 2-10,000 words in each issue. They will retain the copyright of these articles and can place them where they like afterwards. There is also no restriction on whether these articles have been used before, if the person has copyright on them, of course. We will take invocations and rituals, but not poetry or articles which have long quotes lifted from other sources. I would like to keep the subject matter as wide as possible with as many people from different traditions and groups as possible. 

While we would like to get “names” from the occult world in the magazine, this is also an opportunity for new writers to get in print. Proceeds from the sale of the book/magazine will go to the Golden Dawn Legal fund, once that fund has been filled we will be looking to support other worthy occult related charities (if and when that happens it will be agreed by the writers). The authors will get a free copy. 

 Deadlines 

The magazine will come out at each Equinox -- 20 March and 22 September. The deadline for copy will be 1 February and August 4 each year. This will give us time to edit and get back to the author for corrections and lay the magazine out. If you would like to write for the Emerald Tablet, please get in touch with me at edfu777 at hotmail.com.

Why Watchers of the Dawn is important to the esoteric community

People wonder why I am so keen on the Watchers of the Dawn site – particularly when I have nothing to do with it.

Sure it are run by people who want to be tabloid hacks and are not (it is harder to write than way than you think). They sometimes go off half-cocked, or “sensationalize things” or fall into the realm of satire,  but they are doing something that the occult community has needed for at least a century – they are reporting news about the occult scene.  Their best items have been actually delivered straight and have been extremely hard hitting.

There is a saying in newspapers that news is something that someone does not want you to read, and Watchers of the Dawn certainly reports news that some people do not want you to know. In doing so they become an unofficial police force for the occult world.

One of the problems of esoteric societies is that they keep their dirty linen locked away with secrecy and a bogus morality which requires you to keep silent even after a group or its leader has committed some form of atrocity.

In the 1980s, I was a member of an Order which had a serious sex scandal which saw a large chunk of senior members leave in horror. What followed were allegations of magical attacks and other silliness in which their verbal and magical assaults at each other continued and off for decades. No one knows about it because no one ever talked about it publically. The protagonists were never named and shamed and the Order continued largely unreformed by the scandal.

If the same event happened today, someone would leak it to Watchers of the Dawn and the whole thing would have been public. The leaders would have had to have done something and it would have been resolved.

Some group leaders have committed extreme atrocities and people continue to join their groups unaware what they are being sucked into. The Modus operandi of a failed and insecure leader is to make a legal threat. One group leader used to warn a student that they had consulted their solicitor about something they had said in a bid to silence them and another one said that they had even consulted the police about how to handle one offish student.  All this is straight lies, but because people have a fear of facing a lengthy and expensive court case, or worse, being arrested and going to jail, the bullied student will back down.

The world would never find out what was going on but the group, and the reputation of the leader was maintained.With Watchers on board, at least there is an avenue for people to go to so that others might be warned. Watchers also stops other groups from spinning their actions quiet so effectively or trying to peddle snake oil to the gullible.

It is not without its faults. These guys are not real journalists and rely a little too much on what people actually post on the Internet, rather than digging out the real story. However, they have had some results. Recently David Griffin hid the death of his Praemonstator Jorge Hevia III for months until Watcher of the Dawn reported it. 

Jorge had been the legal muscle behind the Trademark wars and it was clear from the posts which followed Watcher’s Obit, Griffin felt vulnerable without his free lawyer.

Mysteriously the day after Watcher reported the news, David claimed he had a new lawyer and lots of cash from an unnamed donor from Malta so he could finally felt “legally protected” comfortable about writing the obit that Jorge deserved. If Watchers had not written, the story it is likely that Jorge’s death would have gone un-noted by the order which was shaped by his legal protection.

For all the claims that Watchers news is divisive, it did force David to do the right thing and announce the death of his number two. Whatever fears he might have had about confirming the news, it was the decent thing to do, otherwise it gives the impression that your service to an order is not at all noticed if you fail to be useful to a group, you are forgotten.

I am aware of a case of a sexual abuse case in one order which is being handled properly mostly because of a fear that the case will be leaked to the Watchers and it could blow the credibly of one chief.

That is EXACTLY the sort of unofficial police force which did not exist in the 1980s or earlier which, if it had been around, reporting a blow by blow account, it would have been impossible for some of the atrocities what were committed in the 1990s to have been glossed over in the way they were.

It is also possible for some leaders, who have foul and backward attitudes to realise that if they want to be seen as walking a spiritual path, they should not using a rival’s terminal illness as an attempt raise cash for their own pet projects. Nor will they get away with giving bogus medical advice, or expelling people from groups for not doing what they are told.

Each teacher and order has to be able to have good reasons for their actions and be confident of presenting them in a public forum and it is sites like Watchers that will help to keep them clean.

My only worry about them is that they do not seem to try to get the “other side of the story” before writing. I know they have a lawyer working in their team, but the lack of balance does not sit well with me, even if the guys say “no comment” you have to at least ask them their side.

In the meantime, it is up too occultists to work with his new force… maybe it will make the lives of students better in the long run; in the same way that a free press was so good for democracy. When the Press became less free, politicians were able to get away with murder.

A REAL MAGICAL BOOK

For years, I have wanted to create a magical book; something that you can use as a magical tool. The idea has been around since the middle ages. The Ars Notoria would provide you with a diagram, or a magical seal on the left hand side which you would meditate on while saying a prayer on the left hand side. Now a Canadian occultist Fra Alim has managed to create a Golden Dawn version of what I always wanted. It has taken him ten years hard work and meditation and getting a copy is a real honour.

It arrives in a purple bag with its own seal of protection.

It is a beautiful half leather with gold seals on the front

Front Cover 

Back cover 

  

Inside, Alim has taken several different aspects of the Golden Dawn tradition and built specific diagrams which unlock those particular ideas. On the right hand side are the parts of the ritual, or prayers which unlock the seal and are used as part of the diagram meditation. To a muggle these are simply beautiful diagrams, but to a magician the seals manage to take you places both intellectually and astrally. 

In combination with the prayers or meditations you are taken to places which depict different aspects of reality as seen through the lens of Tiphareth. This is only possible if the artist, in this case Fra Alim, has an experience of those particular states. If someone who had not experienced these states had created such a book, the doors would lead to lower astral or simply intellectual ideas. These seals take you to spiritual visions.

Particularly useful are his seals for the Spheres on the Tree of life. These would be very effective if used ritually by placing the book in the east and opening it on an appropriate page to bring in the sepherotic power for the ritual or to prepare the magician before they start a ritual. It would be useful for a Heirophant to meditate on the Malkuth seal and meditations before attempting to initiate someone into the 1=10.

The book itself appears to have a life of its own. Paola became very attached to it and it seems to like her a lot. It lets you discover something new about the Golden Dawn when you open a page at random. It is a strange and beautiful experience. I have favourite pages one includes a much better version of the Qesheth for the portal grade than the GD or the SM came up with.

Fra Alim’s work is still personal to him, so he is understandably reluctant to give it out, and certainly not to anyone below a certain grade within the tradition. However, if you are real spiritual seeker within the Golden Dawn and under the rose you can seek him out on Facebook for a chat. If you are lucky, he might let you buy one of these.

A Golden Dawn Lingo translation guide

A long time ago a friend of mine Clive Harper published a list of what people in the Servants of the Light really meant when they said certain phrases.  I thought I would update it for the Golden Dawn tradition. I might add to it

What Golden Dawn people mean when they say the following things:

This is a Golden Dawn oral tradition:  I made it up.

• This is a Golden Dawn tradition:  Don’t blame me I didn’t make it up.
• This is a Cabbalistic tradition:  Don’t blame me, god made it up.
• The Golden Dawn used to do it this way:  My old temple used to do it this way.
• They are an independent order: No one wants to go near them.
• They are an independent temple:  We only count them as members when we want to look like a big order.
• We have a Golden Dawn lineage: Our chief once met Israel Regardie in a bar.
• We are the only ones with a Golden Dawn lineage: We have no lineage.
• We do not care about Golden Dawn lineage: We have no lineage.
• We have AO lineage: We do not think you are quick enough to research that we have no Golden Dawn lineage.
• We follow Paul Foster-Case’s approach to the Golden Dawn: We hide in the cellar when any mentions anything about Enochian.
• We follow Anne Davies approach to the Golden Dawn:  We claim that we are the successors to the Golden Dawn in the hope that people will join us.
• We follow Chic Cicero’s approach to the Golden Dawn:  We have the biggest and prettiest wands.
• We take an Alchemical Approach to the Golden Dawn: We don’t know what we are doing so we cover it up with impenetrable quasi-alchemical terms which sound good and mean nothing.
• We prefer to follow a Wiccan approach: We do not do exams and our chief adept has been arrested for indecent exposure.
• We follow the Sun approach:  We don’t care who rules us so long as she has big tits.
• We follow a more pagan approach:  Our meetings start two hours late.
• We teach sex magic in the higher grades:  If you are pretty, you will go from 0=0 to 7=4 in a year and be sexually assaulted by the Chief Adept or the second Adept in the post ritual Jacuzzi.
• We are Open Source:  We never do anything unless it has been blessed by Richard Stallman.
• We follow the masonic approach:  Our temple members are all over 60, we don’t do godforms or magic, we have a dinner afterwards and refer to women as “the ladies.”
• They are influenced by Crowley:  They have wife-swapping parties after temple.
• They are overly influenced by Crowley: They have wife-swapping parties after temple and never invited me.
• It is in the black brick edition:    I am making it up and do not want you to check.
• It is in the doorstop edition:  I am making it up and really do not want you to check.
• It is in Zalewski’s book: I am making it up and I really, really do not want you to check.
• (S)He performs black magic:  He performs actual magic and it scares the shit out of us.
• (S)He is taking a sabbatical:  He was caught poking one of his students and is having to lay low for a while.
• (S)He has been told to practice the Abramelin method and report back: We wanted to expel him/her but we thought it was better to tell them to do this and hope they never came back.
• I am the re-incarnation of Mathers and you are the re-incarnation of Mina: I really hope you are impressed, do not know your history and want to sleep with me.
• We agree with what Regardie said about psychotherapy before joining:  You are nuts and need a lot of therapy before we let you in.  
• All our new teaching is in the 6=5 and 7=4:  We are using photocopies from the Regardie book, the only people who hold 6=5 and 7=4 are the Chief adept and his mate and it will take you 20 years before you find out and by then we will have shifted all the secret teaching to the 8=3.
• The answer to your question is above your grade:  I don’t know.
• This ritual was above your grade: Who the hell let you do the bornless one?
• That was a hard ritual: God I need a drink.
• That was a heavy pathworking:  I dozed off in the middle what happened?
• It is unusual for us to get that effect:  The candidate’s head does not normally rotate and nor does ever get hit by projectile vomit.
• That was an unusual method of consecration: We didn’t think anyone could get the stolisties cup up there.
• We normally don’t allow the Heirus to do the sign of the enterer on the circumambulation: The sheshkababed hegemon and Kerux was difficult to explain to the nice policeman.
• (S)He fails to understand Golden Dawn history:  (S)He does not do what I tell him.
• (S)he does not respect the Order: (S)He fails to see how I ever got a 7=4.
• He is autocratic: I am autocratic.

Heal the Sick and that freely

There are moments when I find myself out of sync with the rest of humanity and the occult community.  I heard that Don Kraig was sick and I thought, lets rally occultists to do a regular healing ritual for him. Someone else thought raise some cash for him so he that he does not have to worry about medical costs.  A group started on Facebook and all seemed quite reasonable.  It seemed normal.  It struck me the world was better off with Don Kraig in it.

But apparently in this modern world this attitude is wrong.  The head  of the Gnostic Church of L.V.X  Paul Joseph Rovelli  said Don Kraig was a fraud.  Since Rovelli could afford expensive medical insurance, so Don Kraig should be able to.  Instead people should be giving money to his Gnostic church which was “giving money to the living.”

 A publisher of what appeared to be “right on” books Leiah Publications said that we should have been giving money and healing to Steve Hyatt who was dead a long time ago and never asked for any.

All of the above people were American and suffering is not part of the American dream. Suffering is a reminder that their system really does not work and only helps a handful of people who are lucky. At the other end of the scale you have people who think that everything is divided into race and whatever race you are not in is somehow privileged.

But what is lost here is someone is sick, help him out in whatever way you can. Magic or money it does not matter. It is what you do for a fellow human, even if they are not your friend. Now I do not know Don Kraig. In fact, I must be one of the few magicians on the planet who have not read his books. He knows a few friends of mine and has been decent when I have written to him and he asked for help generally. It seemed natural to help.

After all, you cannot claim that you do not know, because you have been told.

The Bible talks about a “sense of rightness” and that the Torah is really written on the tablets of your heart. In Ancient Egypt they talked about about the rule of Maat and “rightness.”

This is not saying “ I am right” and these “other guys are wrong.”  It is that there is a rightness in helping people when they need it. Sure, there are times when it is best not to help, and there can be some real moral dilemmas here, but when someone is physically sick and they can’t do to help themselves, which is when others HAVE to step in. 

Occultist are supposed to be developing themselves so that they can help the universe. By helping themselves they are supposed to improve live for everyone else.  They are aware of the illusion of separateness and realise that they are helping themselves by service to others.

This is not some “leftist wishy-washyness” this is obeying a law which is written on the tablet of your heart.  

It is possible that while emphasizing the individual we have lost side of the other. We have become narcissistic. In doing so we have lost the reason why we do all this. We are sparks of an infinite being and the sum is always greater than the whole.  In helping others when they are helpless we are assisting evolution. 

It was that which was the idea behind the Rosicrucian idea of "healing the sick and that for free."  

Or maybe that is just old fashioned, maybe we should be just giving cash to occult organisations or investing in our new shallow Apple inspired consumer culture religion. Maybe we should be only doing magic for ourselves while inspiring others to join our Orders to uphold our fragile egos upon blankets of grades, and lineages.  Or maybe it is time to say, fuck it, others are a manifestation of me I will help them in what ever way I can, when I can.

I should end with a pithy quote here, and all I can think of are the words Peter Gabriel ended his Sofia concert with:

"The rest is up to you."

That is the Magicians creed.... what do you want the story to be?  

More on Don Kraig's illness here

Creating your own Angels

The Angels of Conga  who doth dance in a line for many hours

 In my new book the Shem Grimoire I hinted that using Kabbalistic techniques it was possible to create the names of Angels which no-one who has ever heard of which are personal to you.

This is possible thanks to a flexible view of the Kabbalists that each Hebrew letter represents a different energy and when these are mixed you can create another form of energy

For example you can look at your chart and mix the name of the Shem angel which rules the decan that a planet is found and create your own unique angel for that planet.

Say you have the moon in the first Decan of Gemini. The Shem Angel for that decan is YMB the Lord of Words. The Moon is ruled by Gabriel. GBRIEL גַּבְרִיאֵל. If we were to mix these two beings, we would get GYBMRBIEL. This would be pronounced (using the mystical method in the book) as GiYoBeMeReBeYoAeLa. This then would be your personal moon angel, as it would take on the nature of both the decan and the planet. It would not take much to realise how useful that would be magically. 

Now there will be those who will say that an angel cannot exist simply because you came up with a name for it, but the thing is that the energy was there all along. It just had not been identified. You were working with it through either Gabriel or YMBEL but never encompassing it completely.

But this method is also interesting if you want to find out an Shem angel for a specific function.  For example:  Say you wanted to do a ritual so that you could express your feelings of love for your partner better.  You could YMB the Lord of Words and mix it with AYO the Lord of Love

This would give you an Angel YAMYBO (Yo, Ae, Me, Yo, Be, Ea) since this is an act of mercy he would take the EL to become Yamyboel. (If he were an angel of pu

nishment you would use iah at the end).

There is no end to this as you can build more complex angels from others making them longer and longer

So with the Shem Angel book I have given details of the 72 “base angels” from which you can create an infinite number of angels to suit whatever magic you are working on.  That is more than you can get onto the head of a pin.

 There is a lot in this book which could provide you with a very detailed and simple way of working with Angels.  It is selling quite well so you might want to get in fast.  I am only releasing 200 of them.  You can see more about it by clicking the link http://www.lulu.com/shop/nick-farrell/the-shem-grimoire/hardcover/product-21451554.html.  

The Magic of the Angels

I have been out of things for a while I concentrated on my latest book The  Shem Grimoire.  The book is exactly what it says on the tin.  It is a collection of my Kabbalistic notes and essays on invoking the 72 Shem Angels.   It is a process that I started to investigate several years ago and built up momentum until it started teaching me more about Tarot and the angels.

This book was compiled from my notes and diaries and so is not exactly orthodox.  It uses the Golden Dawn system of magic in its highest aspects and includes papers on consecrating tools for this particular work.

What I found interesting was that besides requiring me to tinker with the Tarot system, the Shem Angels suggested that they were the key to not only understanding your chart but how to work with it to be who you are supposed to be.

The Shem system I worked on says that the 12 areas of your life are controlled by 12 Shem guardians.  Understanding those areas of your life involves talking to them. In addition, while your life is under the authority of the seven main planetary spirits these are specialised according to the deans of your chart and have unique angels appointed to them.

This could mean some big changes for personal rituals as it is possible to get into the details of why some rituals work and some don’t  and to talk to the beings that are making sure that it does (or doesn’t).

This book has burnt me out and I am not going to do any more for a while.  There is a lot in it and it is a really serious book.  It is 333 pages and on a larger format than I normally use.  I think on that basis it is the largest book I have ever written It is packed full of diagrams, sigils and woodcuts.  This is mostly because I always wanted to create a magic book (of the sort you see on Buffy).

I have released it as a limited edition hardback and there will only be 200 made.  Many people have said that they want it and I have sent out a couple of copies for reviews.  It will be my last one for a while, I also have been thinking if this will be my last “practical” Golden Dawn book as I am more and more moving from that system.

You can buy the book here http://www.lulu.com/shop/nick-farrell/the-shem-grimoire/hardcover/product-21451554.html

New limited edition book out

I have released 100 copies of this new hardback on Lulu (see link)

http://www.lulu.com/shop/nick-farrell/what-my-heirophant-should-have-taught-me/hardcover/product-21405702.html



The blurb says:

"One of the problems that many people on the occult path face is that few people will actually tell them them the rules. They blunder through making mistakes and having bad experiences because no-one has told them otherwise.. They might fail to see some crucial signs about a group that they want to join, or not be told the implications of their magical actions. The Chief Adept of the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea, Nick Farrell, has gathered a set of magical statements which can answer all the sorts of questions you should be told by your teachers but were probably afraid to ask. These cover a range of issues starting with elemental theory, to always take the batteries out of the smoke detector before doing a ritual. This book is a limited edition and only 100 copies will be sold."

It is unusual in a lot of ways in that I asked those on Facebook what they wanted to read. I have written two such titles before, and they have meant that I have been able to pay the rent in a pretty tricky time.
 I quite like this book because it gives practical advice and is designed for people to dip into. Some of the issues are things which have come up on this blog.

Invocation to Mercury

Written to fulfil a vow to Mercury for intervening for me. Feel free to attract his attention with it. 

Invocation to Mercury 

I call upon the great translator of the word from which all creation was formed. Mind of the One Thing

Come forth from you home in Of Mount Kyllene in Arkadia. Be present amongst your sheep, of which you are the great shepherd. 

 Come forth Champion of Akakesion who rules the marketplace and the crafts. Who teaches the way of business, and upon whom all fortune rests.

 Guide, Minister, Messenger who brings the highest to the lowest, and the lowest to the throne of the One Thing. 

Messenger of the Blessed Ones who holds the map of the universe in your caduceus and knows the all the ways, even to the darkest Hades. 

Guardian of the three-fold cross-roads, Slayer of Argos, the Trickster, Contriver whose mind and tongue can destroy all. Wily, Shifting, Many-Turning, is your name, patron of writers and magicians. 

 I will invoke thee by thy name ERINNES, the giver of good fortune for that is what you have done, and I will tell others of your powers so that they shall lean upon thee as I have.

 For you are a god amongst gods, one of the seven mighty ones.

 Come forth Pronaos and lead us into the portico of your Mysteries.

Well done everyone

The appeal to the occult community to save the eye sight of the occult writer Aaron Leitch has been successful and met its target within just a few hours.
It is a good thing to see the wider occult community rally around in support of one of its number. As  Josephine Littlejohn said this morning:

"The occult community are a good bunch, particularly when there is an emergency like this. It does matter how much we all fight and grumble, as long as we are there for each other when needed." 

Well done everyone.

Save Aaron Leitch's eye sight

Occult writer Aaron Leitch is losing his sight and will soon be blind unless the Magical Community steps in to help him.

On September 18, 2013, Aaron Leitch was diagnosed with cataracts.  According to the doctors, he is legally blind in his right eye and will lose sight in his left eye within months. 

Aaron is one of the good guys in the occult world who puts his teaching and his magic out there for those in need so it is time that the community gave him something back.  His eyesight is a pretty good gift. 

If Aaron has surgery in time, his vision can be permanently restored.  The not so good news:  The procedures he needs cost over $5000 and, due to the high deductible on his medical insurance, that price is beyond his reach. 

If he was a UK occultist he would have this operation for free, he would be able to raise his family and have a career without difficulty. Unfortunately he lives in a nation where helping people is considered Communinism and the Christians in charge have forgot what it means to care for people.

It is time for the occult community to show that it is BETTER than that and help one of our number carry on his magical work. It will not take much.  If those who Aaron has helped donate a dollar or two it will go a LONG WAY to protecting one of our own.

Our fund raising target is $5,500.00, which includes the cost of surgery (right eye $1527, left eye $3515), plus $450 to help with secondary expenses including PayPal fees for processing donations, medications, etc.  Your gift will not be tax deductible.  Give a little, give a lot, do whatever you comfortably can.  Any funds received over the target amount will be donated to The Himalayan Cataract Project. 

Click on this link for more details  and donate cash  LINK

Beyond the Sun released

Beyond the Sun – the secret teachings of the Missing Golden Dawn Order  (click to order)

“This book contains the Secret Inner Order Teachings of the missing order of the Golden Dawn – Whare Ra. Whare Ra managed to keep secret and above all keep running long after the other Golden Dawn magical orders had given up the ghost. Closing in the late 1970s the Order was founded by Dr Robert Felkin nearly 100 years ago. Working in New Zealand, Whare Ra became a secret forefront of occult teaching.

Nick Farrell publishes the Second Order Rituals of this Order including the 6=5 and 7=4 in their complete and unedited state as well as the 6=5 training papers and lectures. He also examines the history of Whare Ra and provides commentaries to the rituals.

Contained in this book are the 6=5 experiences of the poet WB Yeats and other adepts who went through the various initiations. It also contains magical exercises inspired by the Whare Ra material

This book is limited to 100 copies and was published on the anniversary of Robert Felkin’s death.

 

This limited first edition is selling out faster than I expected which is good.  Thanks everyone.

THIS HAS NOW SOLD OUT 

THANKS EVERYONE

The Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea is not a Golden Dawn Group

For a long while I have described the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea as a traditional Golden Dawn group. From today it is not and we will stop describing ourselves in that way.

MOAA will no longer look to the past for any particular knowledge or security, but to its future.  And rather than trying to pour new wine into old skins we will be more secure in our own independence and ability to move in our own direction.   

The word “Golden Dawn” has come to mean the tradition which encompasses all its off-shoots including the modern renditions of the Stella Matutina, Smaragdum Thallasses and the AO.  However most of these traditions do not run anything like the original Golden Dawn and have been chained to an egregore which is largely hostile to and undermines their activities. 

The Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea, with its emphasis on experimentation and developing the magical tradition is completely at odds with this “golden dawn” egregore. In fact in our opinion this particular egregore has done its best to commit suicide over the last 20 years.    Its use by Greek Fascists has placed another nail in a coffin which has been sledgehammered by people trying to turn it into a cult or a business, or by kids, armed with a copy of Regardie trying to set up Magical Orders without knowledge or ability.  

It should not be necessary to summon the ghost of a long dead and dysfunctional order to prop up an order which in most cases works much better.  Self-confident groups which have something real to offer do not need to evoke the past to describe what they are doing now or in the future.

The Aurora Aurea Vault

In any event the historical Golden Dawn egregore is nowhere near as magical as the groups that replaced it and is a quasi-masonic shadow of the modern groups that bear its name.   In our view the use of this egregore actively works to undermine the ability of good groups to function within the 21^st century.

That is not to say that the “Golden Dawn” methods do not work.  Indeed the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea will continue to use the rituals and general structure of the Smaragdum Thallasses (Whare Ra) order, which was descended from the Golden Dawn but resolved its egregore problem by rewiring itself. 

The Whare Ra Vault

As Smaragdum Thallasses found its own roots to a hermetic source independent of the Golden Dawn, so has the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea.  We have developed our own contacts and method of using the Smaragdum Thallasses system and have our own set of goals which we feel would be constrained by continuing to adopt the old Golden Dawn egregore and name.

Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea will also be seen as being part of a wider “golden dawn community.”   To most people looking at our system we would probably appear to be a bunch of “Golden Dawn people” who emphase magical techniques, but at a deeper level, particularly within our second order, we are not and I feel it is time to make that clear.

In many ways this statement makes us “new” and will be the beginning of work we will be doing to distance ourselves from the “golden dawn” egregore and evolve our own connect with the source behind it.  We will be updating our websites and material accordingly.  While Aurora Aurea is Latin for Golden Dawn, placing it in a “dead tongue” means that it goes to a “different place” and or own lineage and egregore.

 MOAA continues to be a traditional magic order, but is not a traditional Golden Dawn order.

The goals of the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea:

1. Fuse the Inner and Outer plane traditions of the Smaragdum Thallasses (as expressed by the Dion Fortune tradition and the pure Golden Dawn).

2. To develop a scientific and individualist approach to magic.

3. Restore a balance between religions within magic so that a person might develop their own religious understanding free from any dogma.

4.   To provide magical training to those who are ready using the latest communication methods.

5. To experiment with new methods of magical expression and to share that information.

6. To eliminate any discrimination within occultism on the basis of sex, religion, race, sexuality or beliefs.

7. To establish better communication between Western Mystery traditions to the enhancement of our own.

8. To encourage each student to develop their magical gifts to the best of their ability so that they can take a pivotal role within an evolving humanity.

10. To assist a student and adept in the attainment of their own spiritual destiny.

11. To continue to study and adapt the Smaragdum Thallasses system.

12. To create a magical order where practical techniques are given priority over intellectual understanding.

Issued in the Hour of Venus on the Day of Venus

20 December 2013