The Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea is not a Golden Dawn Group

For a long while I have described the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea as a traditional Golden Dawn group. From today it is not and we will stop describing ourselves in that way.

MOAA will no longer look to the past for any particular knowledge or security, but to its future.  And rather than trying to pour new wine into old skins we will be more secure in our own independence and ability to move in our own direction.   

The word “Golden Dawn” has come to mean the tradition which encompasses all its off-shoots including the modern renditions of the Stella Matutina, Smaragdum Thallasses and the AO.  However most of these traditions do not run anything like the original Golden Dawn and have been chained to an egregore which is largely hostile to and undermines their activities. 

The Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea, with its emphasis on experimentation and developing the magical tradition is completely at odds with this “golden dawn” egregore. In fact in our opinion this particular egregore has done its best to commit suicide over the last 20 years.    Its use by Greek Fascists has placed another nail in a coffin which has been sledgehammered by people trying to turn it into a cult or a business, or by kids, armed with a copy of Regardie trying to set up Magical Orders without knowledge or ability.  

It should not be necessary to summon the ghost of a long dead and dysfunctional order to prop up an order which in most cases works much better.  Self-confident groups which have something real to offer do not need to evoke the past to describe what they are doing now or in the future.

The Aurora Aurea Vault

In any event the historical Golden Dawn egregore is nowhere near as magical as the groups that replaced it and is a quasi-masonic shadow of the modern groups that bear its name.   In our view the use of this egregore actively works to undermine the ability of good groups to function within the 21^st century.

That is not to say that the “Golden Dawn” methods do not work.  Indeed the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea will continue to use the rituals and general structure of the Smaragdum Thallasses (Whare Ra) order, which was descended from the Golden Dawn but resolved its egregore problem by rewiring itself. 

The Whare Ra Vault

As Smaragdum Thallasses found its own roots to a hermetic source independent of the Golden Dawn, so has the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea.  We have developed our own contacts and method of using the Smaragdum Thallasses system and have our own set of goals which we feel would be constrained by continuing to adopt the old Golden Dawn egregore and name.

Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea will also be seen as being part of a wider “golden dawn community.”   To most people looking at our system we would probably appear to be a bunch of “Golden Dawn people” who emphase magical techniques, but at a deeper level, particularly within our second order, we are not and I feel it is time to make that clear.

In many ways this statement makes us “new” and will be the beginning of work we will be doing to distance ourselves from the “golden dawn” egregore and evolve our own connect with the source behind it.  We will be updating our websites and material accordingly.  While Aurora Aurea is Latin for Golden Dawn, placing it in a “dead tongue” means that it goes to a “different place” and or own lineage and egregore.

 MOAA continues to be a traditional magic order, but is not a traditional Golden Dawn order.

The goals of the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea:

1. Fuse the Inner and Outer plane traditions of the Smaragdum Thallasses (as expressed by the Dion Fortune tradition and the pure Golden Dawn).

2. To develop a scientific and individualist approach to magic.

3. Restore a balance between religions within magic so that a person might develop their own religious understanding free from any dogma.

4.   To provide magical training to those who are ready using the latest communication methods.

5. To experiment with new methods of magical expression and to share that information.

6. To eliminate any discrimination within occultism on the basis of sex, religion, race, sexuality or beliefs.

7. To establish better communication between Western Mystery traditions to the enhancement of our own.

8. To encourage each student to develop their magical gifts to the best of their ability so that they can take a pivotal role within an evolving humanity.

10. To assist a student and adept in the attainment of their own spiritual destiny.

11. To continue to study and adapt the Smaragdum Thallasses system.

12. To create a magical order where practical techniques are given priority over intellectual understanding.

Issued in the Hour of Venus on the Day of Venus

20 December 2013

Golden Dawn astral initiation rituals do not work magically

I am famous for being blunt and the headline statement will get a few people upset. I have said over a number of years that I do not believe that astral initiation into the Golden Dawn  work, but have not said why.

I would LOVE astral initiation to work. As the head of an order, it would mean that I could set up temples in the US or other far-flung parts of the world at a great rate. If I was charging fees for this, I could make a bomb. It would enable groups to be established without me having to bring people to Rome for training. In short, astral initiation is a tool for empire building rather than creating magicians. If MOAA used astral initiations there would be a huge temptation to empire build.

None of the people I had ever met who said they had been astrally initiated into the Golden Dawn had any experience which indicated that anything useful happened. Those who claimed mystical experiences had none of the signs in their sphere of sensation, nor did their experiences show that an astral initiation had taken place.   For example one person said that during their astral initiation, they had seen a pyramid and that was proof they had been initiated into the Golden Dawn.  However, a Pyramid is not a symbol in the 0=0 and it is not proprietary to the GD.  Others have just said new Age sorts of answers like “I felt a white light” or “I was surrounded by love.”  I get that when I eat chocolate, it does not mean that Lynd hazelnut is a self-initiation into the Golden Dawn.  If someone told me, “I felt scared shitless, I could not speak, I felt like throwing up and then I felt Horus was banging a sort on the back of my neck” I would thing you had something close to what a 0=0 is like.

Astral initiation is possible and takes place at a senior level of magic all the time. However, it does not take place at an outer order level. Firstly, because to be astrally initiated you have to be able to get up onto the astral levels, which a beginner cannot do. Secondly, it needs an initiating temple to perform a ritual on the astral plane at a correct time and to perform the entire ritual without scripts or direction.  For this reason, astral initiation is traditionally carried out by a high-level contact to a student and is not something which works in a structured group environment.

So let us look at two rituals which are being used for astral initiation. The first is supposed to involve using the Golden Dawn Z documents and sees the candidate as a talisman. 

The candidate’s name is placed on a list of those who want to be initiated, sometimes a photograph is used, or an astrology chart. This list is placed in a black bag and “initiated” as if it were a talisman. The logic is that since a talisman can be charged, then a human can be too by proxy.

Intellectually this technique could technically work. The talisman version of the Zdocs creates a thought form which is initiated with force. The thought form would then slowly transform the candidate’s sphere of sensation until it reached a standard comparable to initiation.

Practically however the Z docs do not allow a talisman to be adjusted to a candidate - it was written assuming that you were fusing a spirit to an inanimate object. If you look at the wording of the Z2 document, it is different for a talisman with good reason. You are looking to tie the spirit of a talisman to a physical object and not the complex operation of breaking down the sphere of sensation which the 0=0 is supposed to be doing. Most of the talisman ritual is focused on the talisman and the astral form of the force you are trying to attract to it. A list of names or symbol of a candidate will become charged (as a talisman) but the person will not. The best-case scenario is that your talismanic list will draw the correct experiences to a candidate over time. This is unlikely, particularly as it breaks the rule of having a talisman focusing only on one or two outcomes. Your poor talisman thought-form could be trying to reach two to ten different people at the same time and bring them an experience which is supposed to be life changing.

So what about plan b? This method involves initiating an astral form of a person using something connected to them. You create a simulacrum of a person and then perform the 0=0 ritual on that. Afterwards, you send the simulacrum to the person and fuse it to their sphere of sensation.

This requires you first to build a particularly dense astral body and then build the thought forms for the Golden Dawn ritual as normal. You could not do that for a list of people. It would have to be a two-part ritual which involved a rite to build a strong enough astral body. This thought-form would have to be built from the energy of the officers and would be quite draining. They would then have to carry out the initiation proper.

It would take a great deal of experimentation to see if this worked and there would be some problems.

The 0=0 requires the purification and consecration of the candidate. In this situation, you would be purifying and consecrating the thought form. There is nothing to make the thought form do the same thing to the candidate’s sphere of sensation. Even if there was, it is difficult to see how a thought form would manage it.

Then there is the oath which has to be administered to the candidate and tested and sealed into their sphere of sensation. In this situation, the oath is being said by a thought form and NOT by the candidate. The thought form will be bound by the oath and tested by the 42 assessors and not the candidate. Then there is the splitting of the sphere of sensation to the four sons of Horus, something that I consider an important part of the 0=0. What would be split here is the thought form’s “astral form” and not that of the candidate. This means that not all the problems of leaky spheres of sensation which plague most candidates would be fixed.

On the plus side, a thought-form could perhaps bring an awareness of the Higher Self and perhaps make some changes to the sphere of sensation but this would be nothing like the experience of a physical initiation.

I mentioned that astral initiation does exist and I can say that there have been a couple of situations where it happened to me.  Neither case involved a ritual at all, all where while the initiator, and myself were in an astral state. I was wasted for some weeks afterwards. It gave me no status in any order other than in my own personal development.

In the MOAA correspondence course, we use a form of astral self-initiation but it takes more than a year’s worth of preparation before the 0=0 grade initiation takes place. It connects the candidate to the forces behind the Golden Dawn and their Higher Self. However, it does not involve any ritual on our part at all, nor does it count as a 0=0 in MOAA. It has an effect (although it is not as good as a 0=0) because the candidate is forcing the connections and the contacts are doing all the ritual work. In the astral work, the candidate sees what happens to them and interacts with it. I think it is the closest you can come to an astral initiation, but it takes a long time to build up to that point.  One thing I find interesting about this particular method of astral initiation is that the people we have put through it soon found a source for a physical initiation.

There are some other problems with Astral Initiation. Given that most candidates either do not feel anything (or are not trained enough to feel anything) it requires a lot of trust that the group is kosher. Ten years ago I wrote how a group was making a fortune by doing mass astral initiations.  A friend who lived around the corner from the group’s house applied for a fake astral initiation. He was told that the ritual would take place at a certain time and he would have to tune into it. Instead, at the time he went around to the house where the group met. He was invited in and found the entire group drinking beer and watching Gerry Springer. In other words, they were collecting the cash and doing nothing. Not only is astral initiation good for empire building, it can be a good source of income for the unscrupulous.

Watching Dr Who will connect you to the GD better than astral initiation.

One of the excuses made for astral initiation is that it gives people a chance to experience something if you cannot get to a physical temple. However, if the thing does not work then what is the point?A candidate would be better off meditating on their own than carrying out a bogus astral initiation. In fact, I would say it would be more challenging and fulfilling for a candidate to watch a good episode of Dr Who than to pay cash for an astral initiation and have nothing happen.

Within the Golden Dawn or Stella Matutina there was no practice of astral initiation. It was used in the AO as a Mathers money making exercise to squeeze cash out of rich Americans (and it is not clear what, if any, ritual or astral work was done for this). It had the bonus that allowed them to establish US temples, but there is no indication that they worked. 

Nick Farrell’s secret chief sauce of the WISE

For many years I have kept SECRET this most excellent ELIXIR which ALCHEMICALY TRANSMUTES even the most base of the animal kingdom into something tasty.  It was past to me by my on SECRET CHIEFS and I transmitted it to those of the most SENIOR BRETHREN

in ITALY where they had heard of it not. It should be prepared after much prayer for the making of the SECRET SAUCE is not to be embarked upon lightly.  If it is prepared incorrectly it can partake of too much of OUR FIRE and not be pleasant.  But if you follow the MIDDLE WAY between FIRE and Water you shall find the elixir should transform into a REDDENING of pure Fire EARTH.
It is ideal for transmuting the charred flesh of the BBQ into something which tasteth nice.  Indeed many have claimed that it is a MIRACLE of MYSTICAL SCIENCE.

Take then the following.

1 Tablespoon of the purest olive oil.

2 cloves of the bulbs of Alliaceae (Garlic)

3 cm of Gingiber (Ginger)

1 Escalonia  (shallot) finely chopped

1 teaspoon of the grindings myrtle pepper  from the e Greater Antilles  (All Spice)

1 teaspoon of the grindings of Sinapis hirta (mustard).

2 teaspoons of the spice made by the Turks of Broda (Paprika)

1 teaspoon of the grindings of Capsicum being a member of the nightshade family, Solanaceae (Chilly powder)

230gms of dark brown sugar

400g of Tomatos

280mls of the MOTHER OF VINEGAR (red wine vinegar)

2 tablespoons of the Sauce of Worcestershire

Salt and pepper

Over a medium flame warm the oil in a saucepan. Add the garlic, ginger and shallot and cook for three minutes.  The vegetable matter should be transformed by the heat to the colour of the Sun.

Add in the Allspice, mustard powder, paprika and chilli powder and stir for no longer than a minute.

Add the sugar and stir for 30 seconds or until the sugar takes on the nature of caramel.

Add the Tomatoes, vinegar and Worcestershire Sauce and stir 20 times clockwise while reciting a Paternoster or the Orphic Hymn to Mars.

Raise the flame and simmer for 15 minutes.  The sauce must be exposed to the sunlight.  Do not simmer with a lid on for that will create a sauce of great evil.

When the time has passed. Take from the heat and allow to cool to the temperature of blood. Then liquidize until it is smooth.

Season with salt and pepper.

Pour into a sterilised bottle. It is best left in a cool place for 24 hours for the sauce to transmute and its flavours to arise.