Names and Images is cake rather than icing.

In his review of Names and Images by Peregrin Wildoak, the British esoteric writer Gareth Knight said that the book shows that there is a magical substance in the Golden Dawn after all.

The Golden Dawn has become a bit of a joke in the land of its birth. It is forever associated with people claiming high grades, flame wars, court cases, using shedloads of magical gear, and wearing the silliest of robes. In the UK magical scene you would never see a trained magician shove 7=4 under their name in public even if they were entitled to it.

It is one of the reasons that the US Golden Dawn orders have had a limited impact in the UK, because phrases like “Power Week” and other hard sell language is seen as belonging to the other side of the pond.

Many of the perceptions of the Golden Dawn are based on what has been written and its teachings. So British adepts look at this material and say “interesting... so what?” The rituals, if seen on their own, use dated language and lack magic.

In the Golden Dawn, the serious magic was printed in the 5=6 and it is that material which forms the basics of British magic today. But that is the point. It is just the basics. If you were so minded you could go through the pile of 5=6 material and understand it in a weekend. You could probably construct some pretty good experiments to try it out. But it is not magic in the way that the British magic scene works these days. They look at the GD with its huge equipment requirements and think that it is a dinosaur from the past.

To be fair they are not the only ones. There are those within the Golden Dawn community who see holes in what is available. There are calls to expand the curriculum and add material which was lacking or under developed.

In my early days of training I can't say I ranked the GD system particularly highly either. I liked the more inner approach of godforms and inner work which was touted by the Inner Light tradition. It was not until I read Pat Zalewksi's Z5 book that I saw that what the Golden Dawn did and what I was doing in the Inner Light Tradition was the same thing. Bits of what I had been told by the Whare Ra people suddenly made sense and the Golden Dawn always had an inner tradition which had never been talked about before.

A 7=4 grade Titanic ego is about to find that his badge and
flashy wand is just the tip of the real GD system

Later when I became involved with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn I started to understand that the written material which was given was just the tip of an incredibly complex iceberg. Those who thought it was all about gadding about in robes and calling yourself the Heirophant fast run aground on its unseen depths, and break up to the horrific strains of Celine Dion. 

This was not something that was just more intellectual information and none of it was written down. It was the idea which lurked behind all the written words which inspired people like Dion Fortune. But even these people missed some important stuff which can only be seen when you have the order and its methods working in front of you.

Making those techniques real is a lifetime's work, if you look at the implications of what is said and, like Pat's Book, Peregrin's book is a good starting place for those who want to make the system real.

Peregrin's book shows the sort of work that people need to do bring the system magically to life. True at times he adds stuff, there is something on the unicursal hexagram which I have never seen before (although the Whare Ra people used it for planetary force, they did not use it the way Peregrin suggests). There is also a lot more material bringing the modern charkra system into the Golden Dawn rather than the Sphere of Sensation method which was used. Peregrin brings these in and explains them so that they are not alien.

But in my view where Names and Images is vital is when it is telling you what you are doing at this point and why.

If you are Osiris and you know it clap your hands.

It differs from Pat's approach, which was tied to the rituals, and instead branches out into the magical system of the 5=6. Ideas related to the INRI formula for example.

There are also rituals for the solo practitioner to try and feel the system as well as aspects. The material here is solid and is peppered with stories about Peregrin's experiences.

Yes it is a book to study, but equally it is a book to do. You can't read it but have to try out stuff.

That is something which has been sadly lacking within the modern Golden Dawn. There are systems, upon systems and then sub-systems upon sub-systems within the GD, but that becomes a trap.

All Golden Dawn work has to be seen on four different levels and the ritual and teachings only a hint of what the magic is really about.

Peregrin's book is the harbinger of what the Golden Dawn will become. It is an introduction to the idea of a magical Golden Dawn which is firmly rooted within the Inner. It might even be a Golden Dawn which appears new to many, certainly it is a Golden Dawn which many will want to suppress because it requires expertise that many “high graders” lack.

Nevertheless for the next generation of Golden Dawn student “By Names and Images” is a vital part of any collection. 

Meditation on the seventh Jupiter Pentacle

Mathers wrote: “This pentacle has great power if you consider it with the verse “he raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap Dunghill” This pentacle does not have an angel associated with it and Mathers claims that it will stop the angels and demons who are protecting treasure from falling into your hands. In short it is the key to material wealth.

So lets look at this verse and see what it means.

Adam was made from the 'dust of the earth'. Cabbalistically this means that the scattering of light within creation. This light was gathered by god and ensouled with the divine breath. The light has to pulls the first is toward unity and the second is the illusion of separateness.

On the material plane, humans are not born equal. Socially some have money others do not. God has decided who does and who doesn't. The majority of the rich are the Paris Hiltons of this world. They do not create their wealth and power. It belonged to an ancestor and they inherited it. If that power was lost they would not have the ability to get it back. The dust of the earth gathered by their ancestors will erode down the generations.

However to the poor it is impossible to get enough material dust. Power appears to them in small chunks and therefore they cannot get enough of the very substance they were created from. They sit on dung hills of small materiality begging for other people's power.

However they may be taken out of this state. The One, YHVH, takes away this. Its nature is to bring things together so the beggar is raised up and power (money) is drawn to him. This does not mean that the self made man is enlightened, just that he has aligned himself to the same forces that draw more of the sparks that he has inside towards him.

Occultists are notoriously poor and often lacking in power. Why is it that a beggar wins the lottery and squanders the lot and ends up poor again? The answer is that they are not in tune enough with their Higher Self or YHVH. The poor occultist exists because they do not believe they should be concentrating on the dust, the beggar who wins the lottery fails to see God's hand in his transformation and seeks to return to his dung heap.

But we are not prisoners to the whims of an idiosyncratic God. We are made in its image of a God which is bigger than that. We are are reflection of the God that is beyond the rim of the Universe, Ayn Soph Aur. So it is the spirit in man (HVShHY) that lifts us from our dung heaps. The god within draws the sparks of matter of what we need towards us. It is not a matter of 'trusting in God' that will help us win the lottery but attuning ourselves to our higher selves to draw all things needful toward us. This is why he six rayed star is at the top of he wheel. This seal tunes us by its symbolism towards our higher self. But not in just a spiritual way, a material way.

In the centre of the seal is eight spokes with different signs on them. These are like spokes in a wheel which have been frozen for an instant. What these are we cannot be sure. On one is a triangle so we know we are looking at some form of manifestation. There is a hebrew yod which means that this is like a closed fist and meant to rotate. Yod is a symbol of the tarot key the hermit.

Two of them are crescent moons, perhaps suggesting that there is an unconscious change required in the person. However despite this maybe we do not need to know what it means. The symbols speak deep inside us. As we watch the wheel turn (like the Wheel of Fortune in Tarot which is ascribed to Jupiter), it brings its own revelations.

There are 25 letters in the verse. This number is attributed to Sagittarius, the archer and the Tarot Key Temperance which happens to be ruled by Jupiter. The 25^th path connects Yesod to the Higher Self at Tiphareth. 25 is also the number of the Rose.

So by transmuting ourselves to the Gold of Tiphareth we are lifted from begging dust on top of a material dung heap. We draw what we need by aligning ourselves to our higher self on the path of Temperance. The reason occultists are powerless and therefore poor, is because they live in the Yesod consciousness which is only marginally above the dunghill that is the rest of humanity. They need to soar upwards further up the path of Sagittarius and behold their Higher Selves. From there they can draw all things needful, both spiritual and material.

Life of Brian was the beginning of my spiritual path

Monty Python’s Life of Brian opened on August 17, 1979 in New York and Los Angeles. At the time I was a 14 year old fundamentalist Christian and I was told by our leaders not to see the film.

"I am sorry, I really didn't think that you could have a
mass initiation in the 5=6

We were told that it insulted Jesus, it was blasphemous and above all it was cruel to all those who followed Christ. Life of Brian was banned in several countries, including Norway (say no more!)

When it appeared in New Zealand some of my mates went out and picketed it. I remember one guy even bought his own cross. When the reporters asked if he had seen it yet he said “you do not need go and see a sewer to know that it smell's bad.”

In fact many of them were parroting what other people had told them about the film. None of them ever saw it, because they feared what would happen if they snuck in and formed their own opinion.

I made a mistake when I happened to say something similar about the film to my Dad. Dad is not religious, but something seemed to really bother him about it all. He knew how much I really liked Monty Python. So much so that a Monty Python ban was one of the best ways to make me behave.

In one of the few moments I can think of where he ever made me do something I would not have done, he made sure I went to the movie. In New Zealand it was an R16 and I was 14 so he went with me in case there was any trouble.

Our crack suicide squad is prepared
to kill itself if anyone reads
King over the Water

It is still one of the funniest movies of all time.

On the train home Dad had one of those sorts of conversations that fathers have with their sons about the nature of censorship. We agreed that Life of Brian did not take the piss out of Jesus but mocked those followed it. But it also lead me to question those who had demanded the film censored without seeing it. They had become like those who were too eager to throw stones at the wrong target because he had said Jehovah. Those who don't need to see sewers to know they smell bad, had missed a crucial point. Those who are ignorant should be informed before they speak. Moreover, those who are ignorant should not outsource their opinions to others however much they respect them.

Now there is King over the Water, which some on Amazon have insisted is “burnt” because it is an “insult” to a modern AO order. They have formed his opinion because someone has told them that it insults their order.Yesterday a writer called Frater Barabas even claimed that “ Public Interpretation is a Writer’s Responsibility” This is quite an alarming concept. It means that those who called for the death of Salmon Rushdie were actually right. It also implies that the public interpretation of your writing is automatically informed and right. In the case of Frater Barabas he is relying on the opinion of someone who regular readers of this blog will know fudged a quote to start a flame war. Barabas admits that he had never read the book either. 

So tell us oh leader, which book shall we burn today?

Like the guy outside the Embassy theatre with his cross, Barabas does not need to see a sewer to know it smells. He just needs to be told it smells and he will provide the intellectual frame work.

Barabas should also be aware of the dangers of anyone who turns up on the side which bays for blood. Choices made on the basis of a hysterical crowd meant that his name sake was chosen over Jesus. It does not mean that public mis-interpretation of his teaching was Jesus's fault, simply that the crowd was wiped up by a bunch of people who wanted him dead.

Likewise the readers of King over the Water have universally liked it and understand what it is getting at.  It is not attacking Mathers, or any modern order which claims it is the AO at all.  It is just presenting the historical facts about Mathers and his Order which closed in the 1940s.  If you read it for yourself you can make your own conclusion.  And, having read it, you might want to wonder why someone has gone so far as demanding the book was burnt.

Occultists do not follow crowds, nor do they parrot opinions of group leaders. After Life of Brian I started to question.  Two years later I was away from the fundamentalist Christian view point for good. It might have been that Life of Brian really was the start of my occult path.