Alternatives to physical secret chiefs - the Theosophical system

No physical secret chiefs have knocked on my door.  The person who came to fix the satellite dish couldn’t remember the 7=4 passwords, and the person who delivered the cable modem had difficulty even remembering his own name let alone the password of the Aeon.  Over the next few days, depending on when I get time, lets look at look at what other people thought about secret chiefs.

Blavatsky

The Theosophical system is probably the most common idea of Secret Chiefs and it comes from the founder of the order, the hard swearing, psychic Helena Petrovna Blavatsky .   Her idea was inspired by the Buddhist idea of Bodhisattva.   It implied that after someone had achieved enlightenment they faced a choice.  They could escape the wheel of birth and death, or hang around and help other people escape the illusion.

In many ways the concept had similarities to the idea of Physical chiefs, which was no doubt influenced by the concept.  Where it differed was that the Inner Plane masters did not exist on the earth.  That is not to say that they couldn’t make the journey, but they rarely did so.  What was the point of going all the way down to physical reality when you could train a student to come and meet you halfway.

Being a secret chief means it is handy to have lots of arms

The secret chiefs, or Masters as they were known would take an aware student and train them.  They would also line up any physical plane meetings so that the student could learn.

A medium could, and did channel, these masters so that their ideas could be understood by the riff-raff. They could also be picked up by students from time to time, but more often by a guru who was an advanced student.

The week point of this system was that it depended a lot on the ability of the medium, who often could not pick up anything and was obliged to make it up. This caught Madam Blavastky herself and her movement was damaged by claims that she made up the letters from her Masters.

Leadbeater -- beards and boys

One of her trusted lieutenants, Charles Webster Leadbeater did not fair much better.  He believed in having a beard you could nest several owls in and poking beautiful Indian boys.  Therefore it was no surprise to him when one of his masters said that one of the beautiful boys he fancied was going to be the Messiah.

Whatever the exponents for physical secret chiefs might say, it is almost certain that it was these sorts of experiences that Sam and Mina Mathers were referring to when they meant secret chiefs.  The language that Sam used to describe his experiences are couched in  identical language to the Theosophical works of the period.  The only thing he did was replace the words Masters with Secret Chiefs.

His biggest mistake was that be loved the book Zanoni by Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, which used a romantic idea of a physical secret chief.  Mathers had made a mistake before in thinking that the book was real and not a novel.  One of the reasons that he adopted the theosophical/ tantic teaching of Tattvahs into the Golden Dawn system, even though its elemental system broke the Western system, was because he believed that a scene where Zanoni removes poison from a drink was based on him using Tatvahs.  However all Mathers’ recorded experience with secret chiefs were using the Theosophical Model. Next we will look at developments of the Theosophical idea within modern magic.

Magical Imagination (first reviews)

The first review is now in and can be seen here.  From Níall s review

Magical Imagination takes a more contemporary view of pathworking as a form of magic rather than the psychological experimentations of Farrell’s earlier work. The industry is already heavily populated with so-called “self-help” books and New Age techniques and so it can be difficult for occultists to find material they can actively work with. Reading the book I’m fascinated with the layers of self-discovery presented before the reader and find myself highly enthused with the material presented here. The book is really well formatted presenting areas of personal space to be explored in one’s own “Inner Kingdom”, following on to mapping out safe techniques that can be developed for clairvoyance and astral projection though the book stays on topic and provides only a peripheral idea of rising in the spirit vision or astral projection. More time is spent towards the latter half exploring the creation of Inner Temples and working with inner plane contacts. The author is highly skilled in this area with case studies on hand to illustrate from personal experience what an individual might encounter along the way offering sage advice.

 And here  from the Skylighers site

"Farrell instructs on modern Imagination techniques, the Inner Kingdom, changing the psyche, the incorporation of myths, pathworking, dreams and the use of various mystical tools, but the real strength of the book is the author’s demonstration of a virile and inventive imagination throughout. He uses fresh examples, makes bold connections and draws from a wealth of associations –  from ancient societies to pop culture. Not just content to pontificate about imagination the author provides explorative insights and draws humorous and surprising parallels from his own experience. Beyond the teaming and delightful references can be found a plethora of useful exercises and practical applications."

 Magical Imagination: The Keys to Magic in support of this wonderful author and teacher. The book is available from various retail outlets such as Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk or direct from the Skylight Press website.

Secret Chiefs Challenge

While I wait for the secret chiefs to show up I need to clarify what it is that I am waiting for. Many people have misconceptions of what I am ACTUALLY wanting to see.

Firstly I am not, like Samuel Mathers, looking for a secret chief who ghosts in and does not say anything.  Nor am I looking for a chief who contacts me in a dream or in a meditation.

I am specifically looking for a physical human being who can be touched and can provide the grade signs and passwords of MOAA.

Why is this important?  Well in some ways it isn’t.  If a secret chief came to me in a skrying session can provided me with the valuable teaching then I would test it and use it on its own merits. 

A physical secret chief on the other hand is similar to believing in superman. According to Zanoni and other places where they are mentioned they are practically immortal and are eternally young and wise.  So therefore we are looking at something which does not provide information, or directly assist in a Magical Order, but are the embodiment of magic itself.

The fact that they exist physically is very important.  Because, at a stroke, it overthrows all perceptions of modern magic.  It does not matter how much great names like Crowley or Dion Fortune studied, or if Alex Saunders really was a magical genius.  All their work will be rendered null because they did not meet a secret chief in the flesh.

You can see how important this is.  If there are a panel of secret chiefs operating in Europe then they have done so completely free of any contact with modern occultism.  This means then that modern occultism and its methods must be completely flawed.

However if Secret Chiefs do not have a physical presence and are just human adepts much like Sprengle, who gave permission for the GD to form, then there is nothing to worry about.  There are a lot of references within modern magic to Inner Plane beings of various sorts which provide connections and teachings.

By showing up, Secret Chiefs would place modern magic at a cross-roads were everything in the last hundred years or so was junked.  Orders which have been formed without their backing would have to close and give way to Orders that had the backing of these physical chiefs.  It would not matter if your Order had lineage, or a court order which gave you the right to exist, if a Secret Chief had not confirmed your right to teach people you would not have it.

This is the scenario of those who claim that secret chiefs are important.  They off course claim that they have seen these secret chiefs.  They do not provide proof but expect us to believe that on faith.  We have no idea, for example, if when these groups met their physical secret chiefs, they tested them with their own order’s passwords.  Certainly Paul Foster Case did not, but then, his meeting with a secret chief was probably not in the flesh. Personally I would not hand over control of my spiritual direction, or the spiritual direction of students, to a complete stranger who did not know the most basic information about my Order.  But then some people, including Mathers, were completely naive in that way.  He failed, for example to test Madam Horos in the way I am suggesting.  Had he done so he could have saved himself some considerable bother.  It is possible that those who claim they have met secret chiefs in the flesh may not have done so, but are just dealing with another Madam Horos case which has yet to reach its final conclusion.

Still we will all know on August 5, if the Secret Chiefs have not shown up physically at their appointment, and provided the passwords and grade signs.

 

Masonry

Around the time I was involved with setting up the Nottingham temple of the HOGD I was invited to join Masonry.  The Lodge which invited me was a more esoteric group which had been formed by former members of the Stella Matutina in the 1940s and met in Grand Lodge in London.  The lodge did not meet often and the grade progress through the three degrees was appropriately slow.

I went to the third degree but never got to take an officer’s role but did get to see what masonry was all about and for that I was grateful.  In the end I left the UK and resigned.

However there were elements about masonry that I simply could not get my head around which would have meant I would have left anyway.  Firstly, although the ritual was superbly performed, there was an absence of magical energy that I was used to seeing in Golden Dawn rituals.  It was possible to pick up psychic things happening, but these were nothing like what I would have expected from a magical initiation.  When I described them to others they looked at me strangely and moved away.

Although the people in the lodge were great people, and all of an esoteric bent, they were not magicians and it reached a point where I ran out of things to say and sat quietly.

Although I was invited to join other masonic groups, everyone said I should have been in SRIA and the Rose Croix  and possibly the Templers. But I could not see the point.  Magic, and specifically Golden Dawn magic, was my main interest and they all had the same sorts of structures which made masonry dull for me.

The closest I came to joining another Masonic style group was when I was involved with the Order of the Rose and Cross.  This was being set up by some prominent masons along masonic guidelines.  However it appeared that it was a more mystical form of the Golden Dawn based around the teachings of Waite.  Several members of the GD signed up for it and the Order acknowledged our grades.

However I never signed an oath or even visited in a meeting (I was living in Bulgaria and never went to London).  The issue with that group for me came down to a fairly benign paper which I wrote about the tomb of CRC.  It was rejected by the hierarchy and while that did not bother me so much (the article was later put into Hermetic Virtues) the reason why it had been rejected was the reason I left. I was told that the chiefs felt that the paper was too practical, and they were not interested in providing instructions for practical magic.  That is fine and acceptable, it is just not what I want to do and talk about. So I left. 

I have had nothing to do with the masonic approach ever since.

However you will find me talk about the masonic approach in my books and writings.  I define it as a system where rituals is performed without magic to create a psycho-magical effect on the candidate.

It has a use, however I do not believe it is as effective as performing a real magical rite.   People told me "you can see where the GD came from with masonry" but to me it was like comparing a horse and cart with a modern sports car.... yeah the principles of the ritual were there, it was just that the car was going to do something faster and better.

You will find with masonic style organisations that they are a bit like a charitable club which happens to have a ritual attached to it.  I took part in a Rotary meeting once, they are very similar.  Any real information is about the organisation itself with some spectacular knifings and arguments.  Some of them made the rows of the GD look tame by comparison.

I think the saddest thing I saw with masonry came was when I visited a US masonic lodge.  I saw this wonderful huge lodge and thought what I could do with that much space. 

I was speaking to one of the oldest members in their huge restaurant. He told me his only reason for living was the Lodge. 

“Why is that?”  I asked.  I thought it might be the symbolism of the ritual which had not lost its shine after all those years.

“Because next year I am going to get my 50 years badge, it gives me a reason for carrying on.  And when I die, they will stick my name on the ceiling of the lodge and stick a black ribbon on my picture in the hallway,” he said.

Kerubim Press

I have been meaning to say for a while now that I am no longer involved with Kerubim Press.  I had a peripheral involvement when the publishing house started and that mostly with layouts.  

It was the vision of Dean Wilson from the start.  It is going really well with lots of new titles and authors coming and I am not needed. I wish it well for the future.  

Magical Imagination hits the shops

My latest book Magical Imagination  is now in the shops.   It is based on work I wrote ten years ago for Llewellyn which it released under the title “Magical Pathworking.”  When I wrote the first edition, I used psychological ideas a lot more than I do now.  The book was designed to make public the magical imagination techniques I used in my successful psychological experiments. 

As my spiritual path has progressed the emphasis on the psychological interpretation of imagination techniques has become less of a personal focus as I started to understand its wider use in magical practice.

For those interested in Golden Dawn techniques it offers a practical approach to those inner systems. In this edition I have reworked the previous material and added new chapters which aim to open the techniques for a more magical and spiritual purpose.  This includes developments on group work, divination, visiting other inner world dimensions and working towards what I call “objective pathworking.” 

It was the realisation that these techniques could breathe new life into such an established magical system as the Golden Dawn that encouraged me to build the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea (MOAA).  

It is still not really a Golden Dawn book, but includes the some of the techniques I think  it is important for any Golden Dawn student to learn.

You can get your paws on the book in the UK here  or in the US here   Llewellyn are still selling the ebook of the much smaller earlier edition.

Reasons why the Secret Chiefs would not show up

 In some of the responses to my Secret Chiefs challenge, some of people have come up with some good reasons why they might not show up which have nothing to do with their nonexistence.  Peregrin Wildoak on his blog has looked at some of the reasons that they might say here . Lenny Stevens has listed one good one in the comments section here and Alex has also done so here 

Here are the reasons.

Nick Farrell is not important enough.  

Sorry Obama I don't want to meet you

Lenny pointed out that just declaring that you want to see him, does not guarantee that you can get the president of the United States knocking on your door.  You are simply too busy and President Obama has better things to do like avoiding reforming the corporate oligarchy he is supposed to be in charge of.   It is a good point.  But the Secret Chiefs cannot be burdened with the same ideas of status.

Who would have thought a
 Young Mathers
would amount to anything.?

Mathers was an unemployed mummy’s boy with few prospects (archangel Raphael), Paul Case was a poor movie theatre pianist when Master R found him.  Neither were particularly important on any scene and they were only declared geniuses after their death.  What Secret Chiefs are supposed to be interested is people doing the work, who have sacrificed themselves to that work.  Please note that I am not saying I am important.  I am just saying that I am just as important as those who have also claimed similar contact.  But also I am not asking for the sort of contact that people build their groups around.  I am attempting to get them to prove they exist.  By doing the MOAA grade signs they are telling the occult community that they not only exist but they have an important role in setting up a group. 

To use Lenny’s analogy --- the status quo is like the US President trying to run the country without being seen and randomly showing up to one or two citizens to tell them what to do.

The Secret Chiefs might not know I want a word.

Alex pointed out that most of the world is not on Facebook and very few people read my blog.  While he has a point, Secret Chiefs, even those on the physical plane are supposed to know what is going on.  They are supposed to be connected to the Akashic Records and the Akashic DVD bank which are astral internets and are supposed to be pretty much all knowing.  Otherwise they would not know who some of the smaller players in the occult scene were.  If secret chiefs are going to be anything useful to the universe then they are going to have to know what is going on in what should be a specialist scene.

I am is not evolved enough.

The idea is that I might not have the spiritual ability to “see” a secret chief.  Actually I would have no problems seeing an astral secret chief… vision things have never been difficult for me.  The whole point, however about a physical secret chief is that you do not need any evolution or special sight.  They are er… physical.  You should be able to see them in the same way you see someone who knocks at your door.

I have pissed the Secret Chiefs off.

It is possible for me to piss off a lot of people.  Most of the time it is because they do not really “get” me, or are trying to make me into something I am not.  One of my mottos, since I was 14 was that I was “going to be myself no matter what.”  Secret Chiefs should understand that and more to the point they should understand where I am coming from.  Some of the people I have pissed off have come to realise what I have been banging on about and became firm friends. 

Nick’s own limited perception will stop him seeing the Chiefs right in front of him.

This is similar to the evolution thing.  Basically if the Secret Chiefs turned up in the form of a big bunny or a white mouse I would not recognise it.  Firstly I am pretty observant.  It comes with the job.  If a white kitten knocked on my door and did the grade signs I would notice.   But the idea that you need a particular psychic ability to see “physical” secret chiefs is bogus.  If I could not see then with my physical eyes then the secret chief was not a physical and the point would have been proven.  A real human has to be seen.  If it is not a real human than secret chiefs are NOT physical.

It’s just not cricket for me to ask for proof.

Actually it is completely within my remit.  Not only do I believe that as an occultist I have to question everything, but also it is actually in the 5=6 oath that I must question anyone who claims to be a Rosicrucian.  Secret Chiefs would fall into the category. What separates magic from religion is that we test everything and experiment.  Faith is not something we need.  We do not need to worship gods any more than we need to worship the bloke who comes around to fix our Sky connection.  Our job is to work with them… you do not do that from faith in them… but knowledge.  What I am asking from the physical plane secret chiefs is to prove they exist.

Secret chiefs are not physical in the first place. If they don’t show up then I can l deny they exist.

Actually I am not.  I think that in the universe there is a concept like a secret chief, but it relies on people on the ground to provide its physical component.  I do not believe that there are physical adepts who are secret chiefs.  However for the purposes of this experiment I am suspending disbelief for a month to give them a chance to prove it.

I am a Christian

 I am not.

I am a Pagan

Not in the accept sense.

I am a Satanist

I don't believe in Satan

er... that is it

Day Three of the Secret Chiefs Challenge

Behold! The Secret Chiefs stand at the
Door and Knock

Still no one has shown up. 

There are those who say that I am being unfair on insisting that the secret chiefs who knock on my door should respond with the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea password of the Aeon and the 7=4 grade signs.

However this sort of thing is expected of Secret Chiefs, particularly in the Golden Dawn.  Indeed the 5=6 oath demands that:

“Finally, if in my travels I should meet a stranger who professes to be a member of the Rosicrucian Order, I will examine him or her with due care before acknowledging  him or her to be such.”

Now the reason we have “secret passwords” is apparently to make sure that people who are not connected to our order, or who have left, cannot gain entrance.  So the password of the age, or Aeon keeps out those who should not be there.  Obviously there is much to this, but I would be breaking my oath if I told you.

Anyway for a Secret Chief to be of any real use, they would have to know the details about my Order.  It seems reasonable for me to expect them to know the details which even a neophyte should know.

The 7=4 grade signs are equally important.  This gives them some rights over our Second Order.

Should a physical chief know these things?  Of course they should.  They should know everything about the Golden Dawn system and beyond it.  For these passwords to have any meaning at all they would need to be registered in any astral library or divine memory.  One of the things the secret chiefs are supposed to have access to are the akashic records, or whatever title they gave it.  Since they are secret chiefs they would automatically be tuned to read that information.

If they cannot read these things then their function in the universe is completely redundant.   All they could do is provide yet more intellectual information, which is not particularly difficult for any being to do.

What if Secret Chiefs were real?

As I am waiting for a visit from physical Secret Chiefs (see earlier blogs), I have been wondering what the impact would be on the Western Mystery Tradition if one of them actually showed up and gave me the passwords to prove they are what they say.

The doctrine of physical Secret Chiefs has been carefully mapped out over the last couple of hundred years.  The idea is that people who have evolved in life enough have developed a form of immortality and can exist both on the earth and on the astral planes.  While many claim to have spoken to secret chiefs astrally few have claimed to have seen them in the flesh.

One of the most documented Secret Chiefs was that of Master R who apparently met BOTA’s Paul Foster Case.  In fact Master R rarely spoke to Case “in the flesh” and most of the information which came from him was channelled through a medium.

Case’s successor, Anne Davies, never met Master R in the flesh, but did say that he once aported a cheap statue of Madonna (the mother of god not the singer) to cheer her up when she was down.

If secret chiefs were real, and remember I am waiting for THEM to confirm this, then it would create a very interesting change in Western occultism.

1.    All occult orders who do not have a Secret Chief who can meet them on the physical, will have to shut.  After all they just playing at it. This would mean 99.99 per cent of all esoteric movements in the last 200 years would be ruled as bogus and have to shut.  Name an order.  Does it claim to have a Secret Chief who its current leader has met in real life?   If the answer is no, then IF secret chiefs exist than, then that group has no spiritual rights at all.  Please be aware that Astral masters do not count.  They have to be perfect humans in flesh to be classed as Secret Chiefs.  So if you like Crowley, Dion Fortune, Israel Regardie, Chic and Tabatha Cicero, Nick Farrell, Pat Zalewski, Marian Green, Alex Saunders… none if whom met secret chiefs in the flesh, their work is gone.

2.   All occult orders would have to be subservient to a human secret chief who acts most of the time like an absentee landlord.  While this chief talks to chiefs of orders, most of the time it lets those chiefs get on with it even if those leaders take their group to ruin.   In all the stories about Secret Chiefs they never intervene in the running of an order.  They just withdraw from it if the order starts to go tits up.  As someone who runs an order, this is not particularly useful. A secret chief does not have to do anything to assist a group.  They just have to be there and in charge.  There are few cases of Secret Chief Material ending up in the studies of an order.  All of it was part of channelled sessions and most of it has the fingerprints of the person running the group.  Case is the same.  Very little material from his channelled sessions with Master R made it into the course material.  So a secret chief does not have to write new material.  The might inspire stuff, but they do not fix errors.  They also do not use their financial wealth to back their orders.

3.   All material which is made public has to be censored by the Secret Chiefs. Secret chiefs appear to be very big on secrecy, I guess it goes with their handle.

4.   The Universe and the magical world is run exactly like a masonic lodge. 

5.   The Mysteries are only for males. The only people who can be Secret Chiefs are males.  The only recorded meetings with secret chiefs in the flesh are universally with males.  It appears that females do not qualify.  There is no racial bar; they are allowed to be Indians, Native Americans, Chinese, Arabs, Jews, Etruscans, Egyptians.  There have been few recorded secret chiefs who were of African descent.  If you were hoping your secret chief could be a black woman you could be out of luck.  If this is true then it tells us something very important about the universe. It also means that if you are a woman you can never aspire to being a Secret Chief, you will always be a second class citizen spiritually.

6.     Group leaders become very important. Secret Chiefs are the spiritual elite of humanity.  They are deemed “just men made perfect.”  Their decisions are supposed therefore to be correct and right all the time. This means that those who they select as leaders are supposed to meet extremely high standards and be nearly perfect themselves.  Since they are the only ones who can talk to the Secret Chiefs, then it goes without saying that without them the group will be spiritually cut off.  It also goes without saying that it is the Chiefs view of a person that counts, and not their spiritual development.

7.    Humans are not allowed to be magically creative until they are Secret Chiefs or have been instructed to do so by them.   One person, who claimed to have had a connection to Master R once said that I was not allowed to write anything, not even papers to my chiefs.  So if you see someone writing a book or a blog, it has to be with the full approval of your Secret Chiefs. 

8.  Humans will be divided into those who are suited to be occultists and the rest of the world who are lesser beings.  If an occultist aspires, they might achieve through their merits the ability to be a secret chief, but the rest of the world will always be cattle.

9.   There is absolutely no individuality in such a system or any free will.  You are either surrendered to the Secret Chiefs or their agents on earth, or you are not doing true spiritual work.

Still it must be a world worth having, if it really is like that.  So I am still open minded about the Secret Chiefs arranging a meeting.

Day Two secret chief's challenge

There was a storm, but nothing spoke to me from it.  I also did not have a dream where I was told to meet at a coffee shop at a certain time.  In fact my dream was about the Taumarunui train station and was not connected to this challenge at all.

So far then it is fair to say that if the secret chiefs exist, then they are not quickly responding to the challenge.

If you know a secret chief you might want to nudge them to get in touch.  After all if they exist, that knowledge should be one of the first lessons we teach students and their are huge implications for magic generally.

Secret chiefs

Gr FR LeT the secret chief behind the
Golden Dawn.  If you see Fr LeT on your
 bus or train you might want to remindhim about
my challenge.  Of course he should already
know about it, but Secret Chiefs in the
Flesh can be so forgetful.

The issue of whether or not secret chiefs exist in real life is perfectly simple to prove or disprove.  So I am going to conduct a scientific experiment.

I am giving the secret chiefs a chance to get in contact with me by August 5.  They will have to physically contact me in a meeting or something similar (phone and email can be faked on the astral).

If they do they will, have to submit to the 5=6 test, which I am required to do because of my oath.  I am prepared to make it incredibly easy.  All they have to do is tell me the current password for the Aeon of the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea and give me the grade signs for the MOAA 7=4. While this would be difficult for a mortal, it should be jolly easy for a Secret Chief.

If they do show up in the appointed period of time, then I will dedicate the rest of my magical life building the concept of physical chiefs into anything I teach or write about.   I will also tell everyone I talk to within the Golden Dawn community that their concept of secret chiefs was wrong and that they have to factor in the idea of physical ones.  If they want to assume some degree of responsibly over the work of the Magical Order of Aura Aurea then it would be irresponsible of me to not let them have some say.

If no one shows up, and face it they should know where I live, or at the very least phone me for an appointment, then I will assume that the status quo on secret chiefs exists.

So if your Order happens to have a physical secret chief, and you have been telling your members that you are somehow superior because you have secret chiefs as contacts, this is your chance to prove it to your members with an independent witness.  After all you don’t want to try and create sheep, who rely on faith in you alone.  You want to create magicians who believe in truth.   So get on the phone to your secret chief now and get them to take part in this experiment.

You can trust in my discretion that I will not name them, unless they fail to come up with the correct password and grade signs of course.

Either way taking part in my experiment will reveal ONCE and for ALL if secret chiefs exist or not.  This is an important experiment which has not been attempted since Helena Blavatsky invented the modern idea of secret chiefs.  I am completely sincere about it all and I will be watching closely just in case some street bum slips me the password in conversation and does the grade signs before walking away.