I had someone ask me if I thought why
it was impossible to initiate a group of people roped together.
After all some Golden Dawn groups initiate people in this way, as do
masonic orders, and Mathers explained to his AO members how it could
be done.
If the ritual has NO MAGIC at all it is
quite simple to do as many as you like, but magically it is
impossible for most magicians short of a secret chief to do properly.
Even if you take the most basic instructions in the Z documents and
do not embellish them with half the godforms it takes an extremely
competent magician to initiate more than one person at a time. I do
not believe that there is a single person living who can concentrate
that well and besides the Golden Dawn Z structure prevents it
happening.
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| Feel the intimacy of this mass ritual. |
I know Mathers said it was possible
for the AO but at that point he saw the order as something to make
money from and largely abandoned the magical Z documents. However
in his earlier work he described things like the astral body of the
candidate being split from the candidate and being placed between the
pillars... try and do that with half a dozen people. Then try to see
their sphere of sensation interact with various godforms at different
times while holding your wand the right way up and not going wibble.
I used to think that roping together
was possible for the last part of the elemental grade rituals. This
was because I thought that the magic was somewhat limited and it
appeared to be just reading out long teaching. Of course since then
I have found that there is a lot more work to do in the final
sections of those rituals which I had not been told about before and
these are just as complicated as the other sections.
So if it is magically impossible to
initiate that many people why do groups do it? Because they need to
get the maximum number of bums on seats for their groups. They do
not care about the quality of the magic, they want the quantity of
people. This might be, if they collect dues, to make money for
themselves, but it could also be for the ego value of having a large
temple. Either way it is not a group that anyone serious about
magic should be interested in joining.
One side issue to this is how many
initiations can someone carry out properly? Over the years as the
technical requirements for an initiation have gone up, I am finding
that I can initiate fewer into the 0=0 and 3=8 and 4=7. I tend to
manage three ok in a day but I will need a large glass of wine
before I can speak coherently... Doing a fourth still works but I am
certainly flagging. I have been doing these for a while now and I am sure there are people out there who can do one or more more than me. However the bloke that can do six in a day is lying to himself and the people who he is initiating.
The reason is not just the stress of
the rehearsal, or the visualising, it is managing to hold the
connection open for that many people. It is also the knowledge also
that for the next week I will be as sick as a dog however buzzy I
feel on the day. I am sure that there are better magicians out there
who can do better, but I would be careful of any group that suggests
that you can be initiated with a crowd of people, or even that the
Heirophant can manage to initiate more than four people a day and
that the fifth person will get the same level of attention as the
first.
Bringing someone into the mysteries is
a sacred task. It cannot be done as if you were operating a
production line with everyone getting the same experience. As each
candidate approaches a godform, it will react differently to them
based on their experience. You can see this as the officer's voices
change in ritual as the godform energy changes. That is impossible
if large numbers, either roped together, or not, are involved.
My advice is that you do not join any group which suggests that something is possible. You will come to regret it later.
