Mathers' Last Secret is Out!

THIS WEEK my book Mathers' Last Secret hit the pre-order in Amazon and is likely to stir some controversy.  For the first time, I reveal the real rituals of the Alpha et Omega along with the notes that a Hierophant followed.  The rituals have not been seen before.  They are from an extremely early AO period.  They belong to the  Berridge Temple and were written soon after the revolt.

Most of the AO material, that has come to us,  is much later. It is often written by Mathers' successors, and so this book gives the chance for those to see what the Great Man himself thought about the Golden Dawn system.    The rituals were found in a cache which was preserved in a Witch Museum and belonged to  VH Fr Nisi.  Included in the cache were several diagrams, which had been drawn by Edward Berridge and included lettering, which had been missing from published works and other groups.

This is the second book in a trilogy of material I am writing on Mathers' AO.  The first " King over the Water" looked at the history of the Early AO and the Nisi material.  It was co-written with Melissa Seims and has been given to Thoth Publications.  "Mathers Last Secret" looks at the rituals from a magical perspective and the third “Mathers' Torch” will examine the work of Mathers' successors.  By a quirk of the publishing world, it looks like the sequel is out before the first one.

I have said that this book will upset people.  This is partly because the rituals, like the rarely seen versions of the early Golden Dawn rites reveal something about Mathers and Westcott that many will not like.  The founders of the Golden Dawn were not particularly good Golden Dawn magicans by later standards and that the system that we know and love comes to us from a system evolving into something better.

There has been a tendency to make Mathers, in particular, into a god of magic and the only sole source of a magical trend within the GD.  In these rituals, we see that he allows short cuts, which disobey the Z documents and, in terms of magic, would make an initiation null and void.   To any later user of the system, the only conclusion is that Mathers did not understand the technique that he had bought through.

Other people who will be offended by this book are those Chiefs who claim they are the reincarnation of Mathers and are performing the "only true and correct" AO rituals.  These people will have some explaining to do to their members when Mathers' Last Secrets reveal that they are actually using the cut down Regardie rituals and techniques.

Finally there will be a small number of people who claim to be the Guardians of the AO material.  These are people who have collected photocopied documents and sat upon them distributing them piecemeal in return for status among fledgling GD groups.  They will be disturbed that most of the material they are sitting on is post Mathers and does not reveal his will about the way that the GD should have proceeded.

The publication will probably revive the old argument against oath breaking and secrecy.   Firstly, I should make it clear that I have never made an oath to any AO group.  If I had, it would not have been the same oath that is contained in this book.  Secondly, this material is publically available if you know where to look.  Although NISI has never been seen, other AO materials are being distributed among the GD community.  No doubt this distribution is carried out in return for favours, is being done by those who will claim I am breaking some oath in publishing this book.   I have no doubt that it will be these that will have their followers write scathing reviews about the accuracy of the text (NISI had a large number of typos)

I would say that all this is a smokescreen for the real Elephantin the room. That is that the Golden Dawn under Mathers and Westcott was not the Magical Order that the Golden Dawn tradition has become and was not the Golden Age of magic.  Those who have built their Orders on this premise will have problems explaining this to their memberships and will turn to attack the messenger.

It does not have to be this way.  The AO rituals are just as valid as those of the Stella Matutina. While Mather's guidelines would need to be junked, if you merge the rituals with the Z documents, perhaps add the realisations made by Whare Ra, or Pat Zalewski, you would have a very interesting magical system.

Mathers Last Secret allows AO groups to be formed along more accurate lines and flower into a better system.  This protects students from the guesses of their teachers and frees them from the Secret Masters of photocopies.

Even if readers do not accept my magical interpretations of Mathers' antics, they will at least have accurate copies of the rituals and notes to make their own conclusions.  They will also have material and approaches that have not been published before.

The book has been printed and Amazon should be taking orders in a few days.  You can apply to be notified when they have it.

Thoughts on charging for correspondence courses

For a year now the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea has run a correspondence course. It uses the Golden Dawn system to provide people with a system of training and mentorship. As a system it works and those who have worked hard at it have got a lot out of it.
The only problem is that the drop out rate between the first and second course is phenomenal as is the range of “dog ate my homework” excuses. I wrote the first few courses to weed out those who will not survive. It forces people to wrestle with their lower self and get a bit of discipline by learning the basics of meditation. All vital stuff in training and has to be done. The work picks up after about five or six months. But the idea is more that if you are forced to write a daily diary that will be mentored you start working and from that you get the insights into the system. It was the same sort of system used by the outer order of Inner Light and is still being used in the Servants of the Light. It worked for me too.

The course is cheap. We were not in it for the money, the order just wanted to help people who could not make contact with a group start working on the magical path. Currently we charge 10 euro for the first lesson and five euro for each one afterwards. This is what I think is the problem. People join with the expectation that it is cheap so they do not place any value on it. They join without engaging brain as to whether or not they can really do the magical path.

I am toying with the idea of raising the price for the first course from 10 to either 50 or 100 euro with the idea of people giving it some value. The course will remain at 5 euro for after that. Obviously if we raised the fees the amount of people joining would plummet, but those who did pay up would be serious about it.

One of the things that really gets on my nerves is that many people have not even bothered to tell us that they want to quit. This meant that one of our supervisors had ten or so students but was not doing anything, where as another had five students and was run off her feet. We did a purge of these members recently and the correspondence school lost another 70 per cent.

The reason I am posting this here is to ask what the view of the community would be to increasing the fees like this and for this reason. Like I said the course was not about the money (the Order itself is not collecting dues at the moment). However I am beginning to feel that if we are to be taken seriously we might have to charge a bit more for the first lesson to make people stop and think about what they are getting into. By keeping it cheap afterwards we are still sticking to our volunteer ethos without having to waste so much time with people who stumble across the order on the Internet and think that joining is a good idea. I am fairly open minded about this so I am interested to hear people's point of view. Discuss.

John Dee Work

I realise I have not been posting for a while, I have been writing like a mad thing and sorting out the portal Material for the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea.  Portal has required a lot of work.  Not only are the published versions of the ritual hacked about (and in my opinion unworkable) the course material for this important grade is tiny.  Much of the work appears to be writing an essay on your experiences in the Outer Order.

Frankly this is a missed opportunity as I think that the portal should be a nine month pressure cooker with the student looking for connections with their Higher Self in preparation for the 5=6 grade.  When the ritual is restored the Portal is a shadow working for the 5=6 and indeed provides the candidate with important technical information.
I have also been working with Paola to start on Enochian again after a long absence. The first thing to go has been the GD pronunciation system.  Thanks to the work done by Aaron with his Angelic Language book, she has gone through and replaced the pronunciation of the words.  These are actually a lot easier to vibrate and have a lot more grunt.  Paola is better at this stuff than I am.  I don't think that this is an area that the GD came up with anything useful and the Dee system is a lot more natural.

I have also dusted off my Wnochian table and started to work with it using a supreme pentagram environment (I do not like Regardie's Watchtower Ritual).  My seal is a bit knackered and needs replacing,  I also need more red silk to cover the table and the floor. The ensigns of creation are paper (they will be tin soon) and I will make four lesser seals of truth but Paper will do under the four wheels of the cubic altar.
All up, it is a good effect.  If you call angels on the quarters the crystal acts as a balance (much like a rose in the rose cross) and it does not need to be even used to scry.  The tablet of equilibrium is placed on the seal of truth and then the cloth over the top with the gold ring and the crystal.
Anyway this is just an update.