Gods of the Golden Dawn

The Golden Dawn has an unusual attitude to Gods, which can be best described as an intellectual abstraction which is disconnected from their god status.

Osiris 

During a 0=0 ceremony, the Heirophant creates a battery of Egyptian godforms which matches the Book of the Dead. These were closer to thought forms, because in most cases the officers, who were unorthodox Christians, would not have considered them “real” in any sense of the world. Each god would be dressed in a specific way which would allow them to reflect the colours and powers of the Golden Dawn system, rather than any attachment to ancient Egypt.

These godforms acted like thought forms which effected change within the candidate's sphere of sensation by virtue of the fact that they resonated to certain ideas.

Horus the Elder

For this to work, Mathers had to make up a couple of godforms to get what he wanted. Thus you end up with godforms for the Dadouchos and Stolisties which are extensions of Maat, but were unknown in Ancient Egypt. Over the centuries we have come to understand a lot more about Ancient Egyptian gods and some of the ones in the Golden Dawn ritual have different meanings from their real counterparts. For example Aroeris, or Horus the Elder, who the Golden Dawn connects with an active form of Osiris has really nothing to do with him. Aroeris was a pre-dynastic sky god who He was the son or husband of Hathor and was considered to be a creator god and the archetypal king. He was the brother of Set, and Osiris and was a creator god, the falcon who flew up at the beginning of time. His right eye was the sun and his left eye was the moon and images of the "Eye of Horus" were considered to be powerful protective amulets. His speckled feathers formed the stars and his wings created the wind.

True, he was associated with wars with Set, he became more Solar, and merged with the latter when the Isis and Osiris legend took hold of Egypt. But he was was a completely different God and certainly not a “more active Osiris.” If you were going to say that Horus was a counterpart of anyone on the floor of the 0=0 it would be the Hireus and not Osiris.

This would be unimportant if you relied on the Godforms as simply thought forms. However, occult philosophy has also developed over the last 100 years and thinking about Gods has changed.

Dion Fortune

Some of this work was carried out by Dion Fortune and the line which extended from her, manifesting through Bill Gray, Alan Richardson, Dolores Ashcroft Nowicki, and Josephine McCarthy.

The current thinking is not that these forms are abstract beings, but rather they are living entities which continue to function long after their worship is stopped. While they do not require worship from occultists, they still want their work to continue and, with the correct handling, are useful to us. These are intelligent vortexes of power which can genuinely transform. Many magicians have approached these gods for help with their magical projects. Sometimes they agree, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they say they would like to, but the work does not fit properly with their powers. Others fit a role really well when you do not expect it and an aspect of their power which was previously unknown becomes obvious.

With the rise of the neo-pagan movement, many Golden Dawn magicians are coming to the system with a religious connection of some kind with some of these Gods – Bast, Sekmet, Anubis and Isis are pretty popular. This is starting to prevent the use of such Godforms as the abstract thought-forms envisaged by Mathers. An experienced officer who works with Anubis on a daily basis creates a much stronger Kerux than one who does not.

Maat

The loss of the intellectual thought-form idea is not such a bad thing. The Gods themselves have a useful part to play within the 0=0 and can make the ritual more theomagical and it would be better to encourage the development of contact with these ancient Gods to improve the ritual.

However this then creates a problem in that some of the intellectual patches that Mathers installed within the rituals suddenly do not work. True, you can still think of the active and passive aspects of Maat as Dadouchos and Stolisties, although seeing them as separate godforms is inaccurate. It is better to bring in more accurate fire and water goddesses. Likewise you cannot see Osiris as Aroeris because he is standing up.

On the plus side, the group starts to tap into something which has been built by countless worshippers over a long period of history.

A lot more work still needs to be done to see if these godforms can be dressed within the more narrow conceptions of Mather's thought-forms. If they agree, and they can follow the ritual, then you are creating a much more powerful form of initiation and developing the more Theurgic aspects of the Golden Dawn.

This is an area for research. There will be many who say that the Golden Dawn system of godforms is perfect and does not need touching. But in my view it is one worth looking at.

Power, Magic and psychology

It does not matter what you think or say your motivations were for getting involved in magic, it’s almost certainly really going to be something to do with power. We want to be more powerful than our circumstances allow us to be. It isn’t because you want to serve the light, it isn’t because you want to help people or find the God within, or any other sanctimonious reason, it’s because you are attracted to a path that promises power. 

But  power is a bad thing, isn't it? The bad guys in the comics like Lex Luther crave power and magicians want to be the good guy, the Superman. Yeah right, leaving aside the self delusion behind that statement for a moment, it is worthwhile pointing out that not only is Superman famous for being powerful, he only wins because he’s more powerful than anyone else.

When people join esoteric groups they write their initial motivations behind joining an occult group. They are almost always power related, even if the word is lacking from their application. You will find phrases like “I want knowledge” when knowledge is power. They will say that they are seeking Wisdom usually without saying why. It could be so that they are superior to someone who is 'ignorant'. Even safe general phrases such as "I seek the Light of God" can be seen in terms of seeking power because normal people don’t ever get see the Almighty.

It is almost as if occult seekers are bending over backwards to deny that they are seeking power. It is a dirty word which nice spiritual types are not supposed to use in mixed company.

We’re taught that it’s better to be a team player than to be the captain, or in the chorus than in centre stage. This social programming is nothing more than a cop-out. It is those forces of darkness that want to keep you small. Those demons who want to keep you from becoming and expressing your true individuality. The message of occultism is that you are a unique expression of God and that doesn’t tally with a message from society that says we have to fit in and stay small and powerless.

Some powerless leaders of magical groups insist that their students
carry out magical attacks "for the defence of the group."
Traditionally the method is to slit the jugular of a watermelon.

However what draws occultists to this path is the fact that they suffer from a lack of power. They are usually the oddballs of the society who find themselves at loggerheads with the way their country is built. Some of this powerlessness is beaten into them by society and their families who want them to conform. Rather than fight their way into society they would rather sit back and moan about it in their various fantasy worlds; worlds that occultism makes all the more intense.  This is one of the reasons why people are drawn to power crazed nut cases who run occult groups. They appear to have power and will reflect their students own feeling of powerlessness. Many a water melon has been sacrificed to a leader's paranoia and the students doing the attacks are not aware that they are damaging themselves and their own karma by doing the leaders's bidding. If they had a healthier attitude to power then they would be less keen to give it away so readily.

These outsiders still crave power, but have to justify their lack of powerlessness to themselves. Therefore they invent copouts. They make society 'material' so that their 'spirituality' doesn’t have to mix with it. They seek to “escape the rat race” and thus allow such a system to continue unchecked. They talk about having spiritual cleansing, while at the same time are unable to find time to have a bath.

Searching for God is a quest for power. But it is not a power over others, it should be a self-power. Irritatingly the new age movement calls this process 'empowerment' and unfortunately there isn’t a better word in the dictionary to describe it.

You realise that this is a co-dependent relationship
where I give you all my power and don't even get a
shag out of it?  

When we look at the nature of that self-power we get into the realms of that archetypal of Quests the Holy Grail. Although this allegory has been long castrated by those who would have turned it into a symbol of the Divine Feminine, the story is about the search for real spiritual power. Lancelot was powerless because of his neurotic love of Guinevere which was why he couldn’t see it.

His son who was an embodiment of spiritual power was able to take it. Bors, who was the average family man, also could experience it. The message is clear. Spiritual power is not for the neurotic or those who deny the truth in themselves and spend their time picking over their sins like old sores.

Our average occultist, who is starting the path, believes in him or herself about as much as he or she believes in the ability of a rifle to stop a rogue bull elephant with a bullclip attached to its testicles. They have a huge task on their hands attracting power because their personalities aren’t the natural place for such abilities to grow.

Most magical work involves visualisation that is charged with emotion and will. Basically you see something happening as clearly as possible and will it to happen so that it feels that it already has happened. You can enhance this process by the use of symbols which are a bit like pre-made visualisations. The goal of this is to make your visualisations alive and as real as possible.

Most people do magic every second of the day. They are just not aware of the process which is why they aren’t magicians. They get up and visualise what their day will be, good, bad, or indifferent. They charge these mental images, normally with their fears, and aren’t surprised when they all manifest. Those who believe in themselves, or find life good, tend to be more optimistic and therefore, when shit happens, it is usually happening to someone else.

In my book Magical Pathworking, I describe how the universe is basically God's dream and everything is connected by symbols. Since we are part of God, we create our universe in the same way and our life is symbolic of who we are. I suggested various methods of playing around with those symbols so that we can not only see who we are but change ourselves and our environment. What I suggested is that we all carry in our psyches an Inner Kingdom which we rule according to our own perceptions. Some people make a pig's ear of it, others are masters of their Inner Kingdoms, while the majority of us do some things better than others. Therefore, before our occultist can progress, he or she must become empowered at the level of his or her Inner Kingdom.

The average Inner Kingdom of an outsider is often messier than their bedrooms. Cluttered with failure, they often find their Inner Kingdom is ruled by circumstance, bad habit, and laziness. Symbolically they are the prodigal prince who has left the Kingdom in the hands of the Grand Vizier, who has done his best to take control and doesn’t want the prince to take his rightful place on the throne. If you really were the King or Queen of your environment, the Grand Vizier would be a dependable character -- he makes everything you believe in happen. However, if he is in charge, all he does is maintain the status quo. He uses the symbols that you believe in and creates an Inner Kingdom which is usually less than desirable. For example you might have had a bad boss who fired you for no reason. That boss becomes a symbol for every employer in a position of power over you. Your Grand Vizier will dust off that symbol every time you encounter an employer and make sure that you will come across similar situations.

In the case of our new occultist, there will be few symbols of power. However, there will be a lot of symbols of a lack of these things. When they perform rituals to plant new ideas of power within their Inner Kingdom, the seeds are often falling on stony ground or among weeds. There is just so much in the Inner Kingdom that will strangle such rituals that they are pointless.

Ritual does have some safe-guards to over-ride these problems. By calling on powerful forces in the universe, such as Angels and Gods, it’s possible to override our feelings of being small. Fully charged by a good working, and the godform working through us, it‘s possible to really feel that this time there will be change. We can push ourselves over our barriers and believe it’s possible to be wealthy or powerful. However, our own negativity about becoming wealthy will eventually shine through and ultimately any ritual will fail, or worse we will lose anything we gain.

Viv Nicholson

This can be seen in the case of the non-magician Viv Nicholson who was one of the UK's pools winners. In 1961, Viv and Keith Nicholson were living on a £7-a-week trainee miner's wage bringing up three kids in a tiny terraced home in Castleford, Yorkshire. Then they won the equivalent of £3 million on the football pools. Far from making them happy, they spent the money too quickly. Keith died behind the wheel of his expensive car, Viv ended up with a string of husbands who married her for the money that she had already spent. She became bankrupt and later became a devout Jehovah's Witness. Wealth was not part of her Inner Kingdom.

In other cases you will find within the occult field those who attempt to take power from the universe and others to prop up their own powerless egos. Such types will knife their friends to gain power that was never theirs to take and find that the universe snaps back against them. They might end up with seeming power over others, but end up alone and muttering in the darkness. If such types were more empowered in the first place this would not happen.

So what is the process we need to empower ourselves. In the outer order of the GD we spend a lot of time balancing the elements. Finally in portal we crown these elements within ourselves with spirit. We symbolically become empowered. However the process is part performed every day and not just for the portal grade. The more work we do in empowering ourselves, the less fall-out we suffer when we hit portal. Ask yourself the following questions:

How powerful am I now?

How do I give my power away?

Why do I give my power away?

How do I misuse the power I have?

How can I increase the amount of power I have?

These are irritating 'New Age' questions to ask ourselves. But it does not stop them being powerful keys to unlock our weaknesses. There are no 'off pat' answers here. You have to journey to your own Inner Kingdom to find out the answers. Then once you have found them, you have to change so that you are not a victim, or small, but a King or Queen in charge of your own kingdom.

I am not saying that magic is all psychological and that ritual is just a trick you play on your own mind to “get what you want.” Magic is working with real forces that flow through you. But the first place they appear is in your Inner Kingdom. Therefore it is really important to do some personality work and become a little more balanced before starting on serious work.

If I was right, my patents would
be the most stable magicians
in the world.

To resolve “power issues” amongst other things, Israel Regardie suggested that you needed to undergo some psychological counselling before you continue magical work. He would say that because he was a Reichian shrink. I have yet to see how counselling made a difference to anyone.  In fact many people who go to shrinks do so to vent themselves on someone once a week and never change at all.   Most of the trained counsellors I have been have seen are more unbalanced than their patents. But a general desire to work on one's personality and to see it as a tool which can be fashioned, is an important precursor to serious magical work.  That does not really require a shrink, just the ability to work on your ideas of power on your own.

This article was first printed in the first issue of  Hermetic Virtues. 

Banishing Mathers

There is an old bugbear about doing banishing after you consecrate a talisman. It all comes from Samuel Mathers who wrote at the end of the Z documents section on making a talisman that you should wrap up your talisman in silk. He said that you should not perform a banishing in the room because you will discharge the talisman completely.

Those who believe that Mathers spoke with the authority of God, or his secret chiefs, claimed that this piece of information is absolutely right. They tell their students that banishing will remove all the charge from everything in the room!

Mathers was never sure if he was
Golden Dawn or King Solomon. The
Crown here is from the Greater Key

There are a number of reasons why this is rubbish. If a banishing removes the charge of objects in the room, the it means that all that consecration work you did on your tools is a pointless exercise. You put on your rose cross, lay out your lotus wand and four elemental weapons and do your banishing ritual of the pentagram and turn them into very expensive lumps of wood.

Er no. That does not happen and before you say “ah that is because you did not intend to banish those objects, I will have to point out that people that say “intention is everything” in magic usually do not play with the real stuff. What you intended is no help when the floor has turned into a perfect storm. Magic is a science. If a rule does not work then you have to find out why.

A well constructed talisman is built from the four levels of reality. It starts with a divine name, contains an archetypal on and then there is a Yetizatic one. Finally there is the physical talisman itself which is like a body for the other three levels.

The Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram can be used to banish the earth and lower astral levels only. Since the material basis of a weapon or talisman is simply the material object drawing a pentagram is not going to change is nature any more than you can use one to stop a speeding car.

So the danger of a lesser ritual of the pentagram has to be to the lower astral connections to the material object.

In this respect, Mathers could have a point. After doing a ritual the link you have made between the talisman, or tool, and its astral counterpart is possibly weak. Banishing early in the life of the talisman or tool could be disconnected by the ritual.

However Mathers did not think that a similar relationship, that of a 0=0 candidate and their Higher Self was also weak. After the 0=0, which is the same ritual as the Z document, the candidate is told to banish and invoke often.

So Mathers then must think that the only applies to talismans or freshly consecrated tools.

I am going to stick my neck out here and say that Mathers is wrong. True it is probably not a good idea for you to put a talisman under any pressure after creating it until it has had a chance to settle down into its new body. But the ritual of consecration should be a lot more powerful than any lesser ritual of the Pentagram. This is because the lesser ritual works by raising the spiritual level of the room to keep the astral nasties out. A connection between a physical object and its astro-spiritual form would not be uneffected. Think about it. Do you lose the connection between your Higher Self because you did a banishing ritual? True, you are a little more spiritually robust than a talisman or tool, but the idea does not make much sense.

Neither does the idea of wrapping an object in silk. Silk is a good insulator if you think that spiritual force is the same as electricity. But if that were the case, wrapping an object in silk would cut the physical body of the talisman from the spiritual or astral one. It doesn't so therefore the whole exercise is pointless.