Offending the Secret Chiefs

One of the dangers of having a system based on Secret Chiefs, either internally or externally, is that you are able to offend them. In this respect they certainly are similar to Godforms.
There are cases where people are said to have lost their contacts or Secret Chiefs often for the strangest of offenses.

Dion Fortune

Sometimes it is because you leave a group.   Dion Fortune regarded her Golden  Dawn contacts lost to her until she joined the Bristol Temple of the Stella Matutina.  Interestingly she regarded these contacts as the same ones she met when she joined the AO.  It would appear that as far as she was concerned, the AO and the SM had the same Secret Chiefs.  If this was true it would be deeply embarrassing for those who claim that the AO was the only true GD and the SM did not have any blessing of the Secret Chiefs.  Personally I think she was mistaken, but it was an interesting comment.
You could also lose a contact or Secret Chief because you angered them by revealing some big secret or had carried out some evil magic.  Most of the sources for this myth are fictions.  Dion Fortune was supposed to have lost a contact after she published Mystical Cabbalah and yet there is nothing in the Dion Fortune collection that suggested any of her Secret Chiefs had abandoned her.
Obviously if your secret chiefs are physical there can be any number of reasons why they might break the link with you and your order.  You might have offended another rising star, you might have failed to come up with some promised cash, or you might simply be a public embarrassment.  These are the sorts of things that anger physical chiefs who are bound by their egos, but probably not astral ones.
Indeed Astral contacts to appear more aloof and reasonable by comparison.  I say by comparison because I have seen Astral secret chiefs give some fairly rubbish and insane advice. 
Once that I was told by one contact that I would not work with him any longer and that he was not really my “secret chief” in the first place.   I could not say I was surprised, I never really thought he had been.  But what followed was a long period of me ignoring the idea of Secret Chiefs and Contacts completely… physical or otherwise.  Part of this was because I started working exclusively on the Golden Dawn tradition.  Sure I met inner plane beings, but nothing like the level expected for a contact.
This dumping of the contact was not so much because I had offended the early Secret Chief.  It was simply that I was no longer working along those guidelines and could not pick him up any more.  The same probably applies to those who do some type of magic which is not in tune with their Secret Chief.
I do not teach people to look for contacts or Secret Chiefs.  As Chic Cicero once told me “You do not need to go looking for Secret Chiefs, if you do the work they come looking for you!”   He was completely right.  
My physical chief challenge was based on squashing an important myth, that physical secret chiefs are a 19^th century marketing gimmick.  So far I have not seen any evidence that they ever existed, or that they exist now.   I remain open minded until August 5, but if they don’t show up the onus will be on those who claim that they talk to physical chiefs to actually prove it, because there is a body of evidence which says otherwise.

In this series of articles I have looked at what the secret chiefs might really be, rather than their literal, somewhat out-of-date interpretation.  In my view they are the sizzle and not the steak of occultism.  You can get through your entire esoteric career and never need one. 
There are those who are like dogs chasing their own tails on this question.  Rather than seeing the secret chief as an extension of their own intellect or wish fulfilment they keep chasing an idea which takes them nowhere.  Then they have the gall to say to the world “look we are superior because we are contacted with a secret chief.”   Chances are that it is their own arses which is leading them rather any real Secret Chiefs.

Physical secret chiefs in a modern world

Needless to say no physical secret chief has knocked on my door or arranged any appointment.  Still the door is open for the supermen to prove they exist.

One of the statements that relate to the concept of physical secret chiefs is that they may not be supermen.  They may simply be adepts from outside the order, who only talk to the senior members of of an order and might what to remain secret.

As someone who is involved with running a group there are certain problems with this idea which might not be obvious to those who have not tried it.    There is nothing wrong with taking advice and teaching from outside your own group and working it within your group’s framework. 

But new systems or occult information is not necessarily the panacea a group needs.  This is particularly true of the Golden Dawn system which interlocks on different levels.  If you change or add something at one level, it breaks something else on another.  This is why if you make one change you have to go through the whole system and changing others.  The relatively minor changes we made in MOAA for example meant going through all the course material and rituals and making sure it all still  worked.

An outsider, however good they are, will not know about how each order really works.  Even if they have all the course material and rituals in front of them, they cannot know the true impact of some of their ideas.  This is one of the reasons why a chief of an order is supposed to know their stuff.  A secret chief, or one not connected to the group, has no chance of having that level of training in that system.  They might be able to turn lead into gold, but if they don’t know the grade signs they will be largely useless.

If they teach a chief their techniques, say for turning lead into gold, then the chief has to translate their techniques into those of the system.   If it does not work, then the technique, however well it works for the Secret Chief and his students will not work for other orders.

This precludes the Secret Chief talking to anyone in the order other than the Premonstrator or teacher.  In fact the Imperator’s role is to make sure that Secret Chief teaching does not contaminate the body of teaching on offer.

The second order is not a place where you can shove any old rubbish from the dustbin of esoteric history because it looks nice.  It has to work within the Golden Dawn system too. 

But there is also a magical reason why using a physical outsider to provide you with teaching is a bad idea.  This person, however good and friendly they might be, is still outside your order.  To give them the role of a secret chief places them in a position of seniority within your group which is not earned.  Again they might know the secrets of the Philosophers Stone but if they have not suffered the fall outs of a 1=10 and can’t to a lesser ritual of the pentagram they are of no use to anyone.  It may sound harsh but, for example, an alchemist is not a magician, and neither is a mystic.  They can be experts in their fields, but not good at your system.

That is not to say that at group has nothing to learn from outsiders, but the question in a group must always be… “If our secret chief is so important, why isn’t he running our group and why can’t I ask him questions?”

This question thing is very important in any order.  Questions might be irritating to the hierarchy but the path of magic is about asking questions so they have to do it.  So if you enshrine a physical person within your group who does not answer questions then you are automatically creating something which is anti-magical.  It seems unfair that if the secret chief issues a paper which says “All elephants are pink” and a student asks “elephants are grey” that the head of an order has to defend the secret chief’s thesis.  The fact that secret chiefs are placed beyond an order by virtue of their secrecy means that there is something wrong with the system.

Under the definition of “non-supermen” secret chiefs, it obvious that MOAA has lots of “secret chiefs in the flesh”, it has also meant I have acted as a secret chief to a number of different groups. These are people who I ask questions too and they ask me. I am an experimental magician I make no attempt to claiming I know everything and sometimes I have to ask experts.  Sometimes their advice works within my terms of reference, sometimes it doesn’t.  None of these people have status within MOAA, or are they called Secret Chiefs.  They are just people I respect.

If you belong to an order which enshrines physical secret chiefs who no one else is allowed to see, then you have to question why that is the case.  The whole idea is that a secret chief is, er secret.  In fact it is much better that the group shuts its mouth about their existence.   It leads to an obvious question.  If your chief is outsourcing his teaching to an outside body, then what is he or she doing there?  Admitting that they have handed over the task of teaching people to secret chiefs outside the order, means that they can’t do the job themselves.  If the secret chief is providing teaching, then the head of the order has nothing to teach and is basically a glorified administrator.   

The only way you can get away with saying that your order is directed by physical secret chiefs is if they really are supermen.  That would certainly be novel.  But if they are not going to come out of the closet and reveal themselves to ordinary members, then they will remain an order myth.

Secret Chiefs the gods of the occultists

 

The idea of secret chiefs is in evolution. In some cases they have become more involved and more complex, with Secret Chiefs being obliged to develop ever more difficult rules.  In other cases they have become completely dumbed down to the point where their role is meaningless in comparison to other similar constructs such as holy guardian angels.

Very few groups believe in the construct of supermen living amongst us.  Part of the reason is that they do not seem to.  With today’s technology it is increasingly difficult for a physical plane secret chief to stay off the grid.  For example it was possible for RW Felkin to write with confidence that he had met Mathers; secret chief LeT and claim he was a doctor in Bruges. After all, who was going to check and how easy was it for them to do so.  

These days it is possible to confirm his existence (or lack thereof) with an internet search. In many ways NOT having an internet presence is an indication of not being a secret chief.   A Secret Chief’s role is to be the cutting edge of human development. There are no rooms for luddites in such a concept.  It is hard to see how anyone can participate in the world and not have something to do with technology.  So those who hint that their Secret Chiefs do not touch computers, and therefore cannot be found, are probably hinting that their physical masters do not exist, at least on the astral. 

 While I remain open minded to the idea, my August 5 deadline is rapidly coming to a close, and without evidence from physical secret chiefs I am obliged to dismiss them from my philosophy.

This does not mean that secret chiefs as a concept are wrong. It is just that I do not accept he current levels of thinking about them.  Theosophical models are far too eastern ideas of gurus, rely too much on concepts of Karma for them to be considered working able.

Dion Fortune’s ideas, while closer to something reasonable, were also crippled by autocratic ideas and a desire to be dominated by an Inner Plane being.  But what she did provide was a concept that everyone could have a Secret Chief and it would help train you to meet your Higher Self.

Modern magic, for better or worse, streamlines ideas into simple workable units.  There are flaws in this approach caused by people who do not know their arse from their elbow setting rules for others to follow.  However here is my crack at an idea.

The universe is manufactured by the one thing, in a bid to understand itself.  All things are aspects of that One Thing which is lost in the illusion of creation and believes it is separate.

Since they remember what it is like to be a One Thing, even in the deepest part of their souls they create aspects of it that they remember.  Most of these aspects end up as gods.  These forces gain a consciousness and a collective power from their worshipers and sit in the realms between the conscious and the unconscious mind and the divine. 

Humanity has continued naming and identifying the various forces in existence and attributing to them different aspects. 

A Secret Chief is like an occultist’s god.  It is a human who has become the embodiment of magic.  Like godforms, the secret chiefs are creations of the created.  They have the power and the wisdom given to them by their worshippers to teach and assist them through difficulties.  Like a God they sometimes have physical manifestations attached to them, but their central function is not to be obvious on the physical plane.  However unlike a godform, Secret Chiefs do not want sacrifices or churches.  They were created by magical minds who wanted information (which technically they would be getting by the one thing).  Secret chiefs are less likely to need worship (although some do).

Like some gods make intolerable demands on their worshippers, so to do Secret Chiefs and while occultists are more like to tell Diana or Thoth to sling their astral hook if they get a bit too demanding, they are less likely to do so with a Secret Chief, or contact, or Master.

The reason that secret chiefs are based on historical personalities is that because the seed form which builds them was a historical personality.  It is possible that the focus of the magician necromantically picks up a dead human shell to base their newly forming godform.  Most gods are based on elemental forces or abstract ideas.  This is not a bad thing, because it does give the Secret Chief godform an understanding of the human condition which is often lacking from godforms.

Fortune’s idea that you could not have an esoteric order without a contact (or secret chief) is interesting and could be explained if the chief’s really were godforms.  A god goes to where it is worshipped and a Secret Chief godform would hone in on an esoteric order.  Once installed it would act as a conduit between that order’s egregore and the One Thing.  It would also provide information to the order.  But it would also have an occultists “personality” which would flavour everything.

If this is true, it could explain why a secret chief needs a truly dedicated group to function and why some groups are better than others.  If a group was formed by person who wanted to bolster their ego, they would not attract a secret chief.  They might, on a good day, attract a parasite or demonic which would pretend to be one.   These anti-secret chiefs would encourage increasingly messianic behaviour to provide them with the negative energy to feed.  If a group attracted a demonic then it might even have access to esoteric information, although this would come at the price of burn-outs and other esoteric illnesses.  This would be rare, most groups would fail to attract anything useful at all and after the novelty wears off, the group will implode with a collective yawn.

If secret chiefs are yet another godform for the occult theurgist to use, then it means that Fortune was right and that everyone should be able to attract one.  Moreover they can form a personal relationship with one or more in their occult careers.  However occultists should be very careful not to let ANY godform stand in the way of them and their quest to find the one thing.  You should be particularly concerned if anyone tells you that their Secret Chief has a normal life somewhere else in the world.  Think how many godforms can do that.  

"Oh that Horus at number 23 plays his sistrum at all hours of the night.... and Thoth and Maat never put their rubbish out on the right day."