Alchemy and Golden Dawn Ritual

Alchemical ideas are starting to be battered around the blogsphere again. As usual this is thanks to the output of Pat Zalewski. It seems that Pat only has to cough an idea these days and people will flood the internet saying they thought of it first and Zalewski got it wrong.

Part of the problem, and it is not a problem for Pat, is that Alchemy means different things to different people. The symbolism is so obtuse that some, like the psychologist Carl Jung decided that it was all archetypal processes of transmutation and not meant to be taken literally. Others, like Israel Regardie, nearly killed themselves trying to create the Philosophers' Stone in a test tube. My own experience of physical alchemy has been what I have seen others achieve. I was around at the Zalewski house in the 1980s when I saw a created plant stone in action. I have also seen a person who managed a peacock's tail transformation during some metal alchemical work. At the time I thought it was fairly interesting, but did not seem to create much in the way of spiritual transformation. The Peacock's Tail for example was a multicoloured oxide coat which I had seen when I used to make toy soldiers (I think it was to do with the oils). Equally I do not believe those who claim they have turned base metal into gold, simply on the principle that it is clearly a sales ploy. I find it incredibly unlikely that, given the personality transformation required to archive the Stone, that anyone who claims to have done so must be practically of saint-like status. Most of the people I have met who claimed follow Alchemy as a spiritual path have been arrogant wankers with glass egos and a love of belittling other people's efforts to re-enforce their flaccid egos. Mind you the same can be said of ritual magicians.

As a metaphor, alchemy is an important way of understanding magical processes. It is a set of symbols which can be used as an allegorical language to understand some of the more subtle ideas in magic.

The Golden Dawn was a little soft on the use of Alchemy. It is fairly clear from some papers, that Mathers had a passing interest in the subject. Certainly alchemical ideas flow into the rituals. Even without going into details it is possible to see an alchemical idea being expressed in the transmutation by the Kerux.

It is the idea that the Golden Dawn rituals can be interpreted alchemically that Pat Zalewski has latched onto in his book. The idea is simple but can be taken to depths which could end up with you trying something out in a test tube.

You start with the candidate being the base matter. Each grade is an alchemical process which leads to the refinement of the personality. To Pat, the entire outer order is part of the blackening process with different phases of whitening and yellowing.

These are all alchemical terms and when others use them they are inclined to make your head spin. But by rooting them into the Golden Dawn ritual it is easy for anyone who follows this tradition to understand.

For those who are using the Golden Dawn system, this book unlocks a layer of understanding that they would otherwise not have got, even if they were experienced alchemists. Alchemists tend to live in their own world and are not used to applying their system to something as involved as the Golden Dawn. They will spend days writing long smug a treatise which says that the Golden Dawn Alchemy shown in the Z documents is “wrong” and not understand that it is wired into the 0=0.

Zalewski covers this point smoothly and tells it like it is. It is also a very different book from what he has written previously. His previous contributions to the Golden Dawn tradition were written many years ago. This one was written this year. It shows a considerable maturing both in writing style and thought. Gone are the days of quoting his teacher Jack Taylor. In Alchemy and Golden Dawn Ritual, Pat is standing on his own with his own ideas and it is an approach he can fell justifiably proud. It is a little book of 128 pages but it points you in the right direction for how you need to see the rituals to get them to work correctly.

One of the downsides to this approach is that you can say any old rubbish with an alchemical gloss and get away with it. It is possible to sniff that “of course you were not using the 12 step method or the method insisted on by Father Bacon for storing cheese”. However Pat's approach does not have that problem. Instead of obscuring, the approach clarifies.

Anyway, it is a book well worth buying http://www.amazon.com/Alchemy-Golden-Dawn-Ritual/dp/0982352182/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1315997849&sr=8-1 .

Johnson's Solids and Enochian Aethyrs

I got passed a paper from the Hermetic Order of the Nascent Dawn which had some interesting ideas relating the to the Governor of the Aethyrs. It was given on to me in the assumption that I would put it here.

The idea is that there are 92 governors of the Aethyrs who rule over different parts of the world. The rule of the First Aethyr is Occodon and he rules Egypt.

The number also pops in a list of Geometric Solids. These are called Johnson's Solids after Dr Norman  Johnson who wrote his 1966 worked out that there were only 92 convex non-uniform polyhedra which could have regular faces.

What is interesting is that he arranged a list of them in order  If you look at the first one (which is the simplist) you get a four sided pyramid.  Remember Occodon and the fact he looks after Egypt?

What HOND is arguing is that there is a reason why the list of geometric shapes appears in this order and that we can find out a bit about the energy of each Governor by looking at the Johnson Solid connected to it.

It gets into adding up numbers as each of them a calculator. Each face is made up of a number both inside and outside. I would guess that each solid is made up of a shape which can be interpreted cabblastically.

Magically you could construct a talisman built out of each shape with your name on the outside... your mystery name on the inside and surround yourself with all the angels and divine names that each shape creates. They would be like my four worlds talismans only replicated many times and into a three dimensional solid.

Since each Governer represents an area of the earth you could use their shape to help you in magic to help that particular country.

I have no strong views on this and am suggesting it in case anyone has an “aha moment” and it provides them with an answer they needed.    I have not seen any Metabiaugmented dodecahedrons structures in Rome (I think I would have noticed).  But Angels do tend to throw up geometric shapes a lot so there might be something in it.

The nature of the 6=5 and 7=4 Grades in the Golden Dawn

The Golden Dawn is a system of spiritual evolution. People often forget this and assume that it is all about magical techniques and intellectual information.

As far as history goes this state of affairs has been encouraged. Papers on the various Golden Dawn components were written, promoted and demoted in the grade structure often giving the illusion that “more powerful techniques” were given in future grades.

However more powerful techniques seemed to have dried up by the 5=6 grade and no one appeared to be able to provide a system for the 6=5 and 7=4 grades. Felkin came the closest with two very impressive rituals but the actual grade material that went with it was, in theory, a little sparse.

This has lead people to attempt to create new 6=5 and 7=4 grades which are providing “new information” and “powerful techniques”. However more techniques and more intellectual information is not what the 6=5 and 7=4 grades are all about.

The 5=6 grade is called Adeptus Minor. In that grade you are given many practical techniques and magical processes. These are incredibly involved and cover all the major branches of the Western Mystery Tradition. By the time that a person has completed this training they should be a competent magician within the Golden Dawn tradition. They should be experienced in Inner States and practical magical methods. They should equally be able to take magical systems and convert them to the Golden Dawn system. I will give you an example of how you can take something that is outside the Golden Dawn system and make something that fits and appears to give you more information.

Agrippa sigils using planetary squares

One of the incredibly basic forms of magic used by the Golden Dawn was the art of drawing sigils and seals on Planetary squares. The squares produced by Agrippa were basic. Below is a simple Saturn square. (I worked this out in the 1990s  before I was a member of the Golden Dawn and had to redraw the diagrams from an old dot matrix printer)

However if you “enhance” the square using Golden Dawn information, it appears much different and adds considerable teaching to the nature of the square.

From this we can see that the square is centred on the Tarot card The Emperor so we know that Saturn energy sets things in Order. Paul Case would say that the top lines were the initiating energies, the second line where the catalysts and the third line were the results.

More interesting stuff comes when we start to use the planetary square to create a sigil of a spirit or angel. Here we have created the sigil of Zazel by connecting all the letters of the name onto the square. (The lamed is missing but is converted to Gimmel be found by using the Al Beker chart).

What we can learn from this is that Zazel is heavily committed towards communication and Gemini, which is something we would not expect from a Spirit of Saturn. Indeed with the Fool we would think that the spirit is pure air. The only thing that seems to root him to anything would be having his feet in the waters of Luna and the High Priestess. Using the Golden Dawn Talismatic associations we could visualise a crowned being with a thin intelligent face, light hair (you could argue a case for a dual headed Janus). Winged with a swastika lamen, holding a sword standing on waves of water. (note that if you are using the square you do not look up the talismatic image for Lamed, you look up Gimel). There is a lot more information which can be gleened from this method,   you could take it even further by adding the colour scheme from the vault and really sex it up. What would you get? Four points for Gryffindor for coming up with it. What have we really learnt here? We have simply fine tuned something which already existed and it may or may not be more effective. But is this sort of thinking advanced? The answer is no. It is pure and simple intellectualising which may or may not take us somewhere.

The 6=5

The Golden Dawn was apparently very slap dash when it came to the 6=5 and 7=4. Mathers wrote two rituals which were quite simply rubbish and boosed a couple of 5=6 papers to higher grades in the hope that people would leave him alone. Felkin did better with two rather good rituals but weak teaching. Paul Case did not believe it was possible for an order to train people at 6=5 and stopped his chapter at 5=6 (he did issue 6=5 and 7=4 grades. Will Chesterman had a 7=4 grade on his Premonstrator certificate,which was signed by Anne Davies hanging on the wall of the temple at Naenae).

Whare Ra taught that the 6=5 was more of a mystical grade than the 5=6 and the work of the grade was to use the lessons of the 5=6 to find your own spiritual path.

Certainly the approach to this grade was much more transpersonal than the 5=6. In addition to goetic work and some other experimental systems, the focus of the grade appears to be using greater magic for the good of humanity. Through this service, the Greater Adept learnt the humility and sacrifice to pass on to the next grade. In many ways the 6=5 is about the surrender of the personality completely to archive the will of the One Thing. Thus you know that training system has to be geared towards teaching that, rather than more ways that the personality can be agrandised. 

The 7=4

This grade was even more mystical. Instead of working magic, 7=4 was the magic, or at least working to become it. Given this slips down to what your definition of magic is, it is probably best explained by using mine as an example. Magic is the art and science of becoming a co-creator with God. Instead of using that science, you are a living example of it in action. This can be said to be the goal of the grade as the jump between this state and the 6=5 is high. No longer are you a person working magic for the good of humanity, you are the magic working within humanity.

Both these grades depend on the knowledge of the 5=6, but they are not looking for more information. Instead they are looking to apply information gained effectively. So an order teaching new information at the 6=5 and 7=4 grades is barking up the wrong tree. Any new information automatically categorises itself at the 5=6. If it is a system, new or not, it is by its very nature 5=6.

This is not to say that there is no scope for teaching at the 6=5 and 7=4, however it has to be a different order of training than we have seen before and not just systems, and intellectual chewing gum.    The 6=5 is easier in that its goal slightly more familiar – use magic at bigger targets. The training must be how you manage this. Equally the ability to use the system as part of a spiritual quest is not something that the Golden Dawn system has done particularly well up to this point. The 7=4 is the last stab that the Golden Dawn system has of training anyone anything and this is one region which requires serious research from the next generation of Golden Dawn orders. Mathers, Westcott, Felkin and Case failed to manage it. While we work to create more intellectual systems to fill that gap, so will we.  While we teach that all we need is a new system incorporating Alchemy, sex magic, or Macramè, we fall further from what these higher grades mean.