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Nick Farrell just published yet another long flame attack (yawn) on the Alpha et Omega, rife with the customary "ad hominum" attacks on GH Frater S.R. and myself. (The article just above Farrell's: "Limited Number of Golden Dawn Tarot Meditation Sets Available.")
What is most telling about this latest rant is how Mr. Farrell opens by trying to hawk his latest Golden Dawn rehash book by setting our order up as straw men in a transparently desperate sales gimmick.
Here we have the truth of the matter.
Farrell is fanning flame war merely to peddle his books and tarot trinkets!
Well, to this I say:
"AW COME ON, NICK. THE GOLDEN DAWN IS NOT A BAZAAR. WE AT THE ALPHA ET OMEGA COULD CARE LESS WHAT YOU WRITE OR WHAT TRINKETS YOU SELL. WHEN IT COMES TO THE ALPHA ET OMEGA, ALL YOU HAVE ANYWAY ARE LONG SINCE DISCARDED VERSIONS OF A.O. RITUALS AND DOCUMENTS, LONG AGO EITHER UPDATED OR SUPPLEMENTED WITH NEW MAGIC FROM THE SECRET CHIEFS...... SO PUBLISH AWAY TO YOUR HEART'S CONTENT. IT IS YOUR KARMA, NOT MINE.HOW ABOUT GIVING THE GOLDEN DAWN COMMUNITY A BREAK, THOUGH, AND FIND SOME OTHER WAY TO PEDDLE YOUR TRINKETS THAN TO SUBJECT AN ENTIRE ESOTERIC COMMUNITY TO YOUR TANTRUMS AND ANTICS. I WILL NOT COMMENT ON YOUR OFT-REPEATED MISREPRESENTATIONS ABOUT THE LINEAGES OF THE ALPHA OMEGA, AS WE HAVE REFUTED SUCH NONSENSE FROM YOU OVER AND OVER ALREADY IN MANY PLACES. I WILL ONLY MENTION THAT THE REAWAKENING OF THE AHATHOOR TEMPLE IS A COMPLETELY UNRELATED MATTER, AND THAT THE ALPHA OMEGA'S STATEMENT ABOUT OUR GOLDEN DAWN LINEAGES HAS ALWAYS REMAINED CONSTANT, DESPITE YOUR ABSURD LIES TO THE CONTRARY.I KNOW YOU HOPED THAT YOUR "SECRET A.O." GOLDEN DAWN REHASH BOOKS WOULD BE DEVESTATING TO OUR ORDER. I AM SORRY TO DISAPPOINT YOU, NICK, THE BOOKS AND TRINKETS YOU SELL ARE COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT TO US. WE REVISED ALL A.O. RITUALS LONG AGO AND YOU HAVE NO KNOWLEDGE WHATSOEVER OF THE CONTENT OF OUR PRESENT RITUALS, SO PLEASE QUIT ACTING LIKE OSCAR THE GROUCH NOSING AROUND IN OTHER PEOPLE'S GARBAGE. IN REALITY, WE HERE AT THE ALPHA ET OMEGA ARE SWIMMING IN AN OCEAN OF NEW MAGIC RECENTLY RELEASED BY THE SECRET CHIEFS OF THE GOLDEN DAWN'S THIRD ORDER, SO WE COULD CARE LESS ABOUT WHATEVER OLD MUSTARD STAINED A.O. CAST OFFS YOU FIND IN THE TRASH. SO PLEASE, NICK - STOP TRYING TO PEDDLE YOUR BOOKS, SEMINAR CDS, AND TAROT MEDITATION SETS BY ACTING LIKE A SCHOOLYARD BULLY THROWING TEMPER TANTRUMS TO GET ATTENTION. I AM NOT SURE ABOUT IN YOUR MOAA, BUT WE HERE AT THE ALPHA ET OMEGA, HAVE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO DO WITH OUR TIME, LIKE PRACTICING NEW MAGICK. Finally, it is clear you have not learned from the lesson of Robert Zink. You obviously think the Golden Dawn community is your own private playground and you can go on attacking the Alpha Omega all you like without consequences. But there is one factor you have not properly considered...What to you think the Secret Chiefs must think about your constant attacks on the Alpha et Omega at a time when they have just given the Golden Dawn the greatest gift of new magick since the founding of the order?Whether you believe the Secret Chiefs are real or not does not matter one whit. The Secret Chiefs are physical. The Secret Chiefs have been working very hard of late to transmit all of the new magick right now to the Golden dawn community, while you are making a complete fool of yourself. So continue with your silly attacks on the Alpha Omega and the Secret Chiefs all you like. But just remember... Whether you believe in them or not, and even though they are remaining silent on the sidelines... The Secret Chiefs are observing everything...
"The Only Thing Sacred to a Farengi is Profit."
BY DAVID GRIFFIN
In in the Alpha Omega, our primary mission is to provide Western individuals with the tools they need for their spiritual and energetic evolution. As a part of this continuing mission, we are beginning to unveil several valuable new resources for Independent Practitioners of the Magic of Light.
There are Self-Initiates. There are Solitary Ritual Magic practitioners. There are Golden Dawn initiates in orders that will not teach them Ritual Magic in the outer order. There are Thelemites who would like to practice the Ritual Magic of "Liber O." There are Pagans who would like to properly invoke the forces of the Elements, Planets and Zodiac.
What do all of these people have in common? Except for my Ritual Magic Manual, all of these Independent Practitioners have been pretty much left to their own resources when it comes to their practice of the the Golden Dawn's system of spiritual evolution through the Magic of Light.
Well, that has changed, as of now. Over the next few weeks, the Alpha Omega is taking the lead once again, this time in providing you with one valuable resource after the other in regards to the Independent Practice of the Magic of Light.
Remember - Here in the Alpha Omega:
"We Make Magicians!"
This is the entire mission of our order, put into its simplest terms.
Independent practitioners have had my Ritual Magic Manual to assist them in their practice for over a decade already. Most independents, for whatever the reason, prefer not to work in a traditional order structure. Then there is the problem that most Golden Dawn orders other than the Alpha Omega do not provide any magical training at all to Outer Order initiates.
Thus there is a huge body of people out there who have been left until now with little guidance from Golden Dawn Adepts in their independent practice of Ritual Magic. The Alpha Omega is now stepping forward, as a community service, to better meet the needs of Independent Practitioners of the Magic of Light.
Today, it is my pleasure to unveil a bold new A.O. initiative. As the first step in our "1,000 Points of Light" initiative, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and our parent order, the Rosicrucian Order of Alpha et Omega would like to help ignite "1,000 Points of Light" around the world, with the goal of fostering the creation of 1,000 new Personal Temples.
Creating a Personal Temple will give your magic great power, because you build energy through constant magical practice in the same consecrated space. There are plenty of good resources available on how to create your own personal temple as well as how to craft magical tools. We encourage you to use these resources, together with your own personal creativity, to create your own, unique personal temple.
A personal temple does not need to be complicated. Your tools can be Golden Dawn style, Wiccan style, or whatever style suits you. What is important is that you dedicate a sacred space where you can practice Ritual Magic on a regular basis. It can be as simple or as elaborate as you like.
As I mention in the Ritual Magic Manual, if need be, you can practice Golden Dawn magic with nothing other than your index finger! On the other hand, you could craft all of the wands, swords, banners, robes, etc. that make up a full Golden Dawn temple. The choice is yours - and yours alone.
If you would like to do something in between, for Golden Dawn magic, what is most essential is to create an altar space and to place something to represent each of the four elements on it.
Some people use a fan for air, dirt for earth, a cup of water, and a candle for fire. Others like to craft and consecrate classic Golden Dawn magical implements; an air dagger, a fire wand, a water cup, and an earth pantacle, each with the correct sigils and names of power.
Certain Wiccan practitioners prefer to work with a wand for air, an athame for fire, a cup for water, and a pentacle for earth. Other Pagan practitioners reverse the wand and athame, more closely resembling the Golden Dawn arrangement.
Personally, I recommend to begin with the basic components used in the Golden Dawn's magical Eucharist; a red rose for air, a cup of wine, a candle for fire, and bread and salt for Earth.
See...
"YOU CAN SET UP A GOLDEN DAWN STYLE ALTAR WITH NOTHING MORE THAN A FEW THINGS AVAILABLE IN MOST KITCHENS." - DAVID GRIFFINWhat really matters is that you PRACTICE magic, then practice, practice, and practice even more. Try to set aside an hour a day for your magical practice if you can.
You will quickly see for yourself how much it helps to have a dedicated space for your magical practice. You do not need an entire room for this, although that would be ideal. When an entire room is not possible, you can always store your altar in a corner of a room, then bring it out when you are ready to practice. With time you will begin to feel a sense of awe, a sense of the sacred, merely by entering into your personal temple space.
Our first goal with this 1,000 Points of Light initiative, is to motivate you to create your own personal temple, and to help individual practitioners to create 1,000 new personal temples around the world. Can you imagine the power for spiritual growth that will be generated by 1,000 new personal temples all around the world?
... And there is no better way to motivate ourselves to create a beautiful personal temple than to share the fruit of our work with others. The Alpha Omega therefore invites you to send us a photograph of your personal temple once it is set up, and we will publish it for you here on the Golden Dawn Blog!
What better way to learn and to gain inspiration from one another?
We begin here with one photo we recently received from a solo practitioner in Australia, the beauty of which motivated the A.O. to create the 1,000 Points of Light initiative.
Personal Temple in Melborne, Australia
Again, we invite you to share your personal temple here as well. Just tell us what city you are in, and we will put you on the map!
You can also send us a photo of your personal temple and we will publish it to share it with readers here on The Golden Dawn Blog. (Please try to keep the file size somewhat small. Please also let us know if you would also like your name or motto to appear. Otherwise, we will include only the city).
Watch this blog for other exciting news and valuable resources for Independent Practitioners of the Magic of Light!
Coming Soon...
Sincerely,
GOLDEN DAWN IMPERATOR David Griffin
HOGD, AO, 33, 90, 96
Since last November my friend Frater Barrabbas has been following an ongoing debate in the Pagan community over how closely modern Paganism resembles its historical ancestors. In a more recent article he discusses his interpretation of the three philosophical perspectives that seem to be fueling the debate.
These three different philosophical perspectives are based on three different approaches to engaging with a tradition. I call these three perspectives "traditional lore, reconstructionist" and the middle ground of "objectified traditional lore," or "revisionism." If you ever wanted to be entertained, just get together three individuals who are die-hard adherents of these three different perspectives, introduce them to a strategic point of disagreement, and then let the fur fly.
According to Barrabbas' definitions, Traditionalists are defined as members of a particular initiatic system or lineage who adhere to to the teachings of that tradition regardless of outside evidence to the contrary. Reconstructivists seek to restore the practices of a particular group at a particular period in time according to academic writing and research about the tradition. Finally, Revisionists validate and augment their lore by researching academic and scientific information. Like this. By those definitions I'm clearly a Revisionist and proud of it. In fact, I have no idea why anyone would want to be a Traditionalist or Reconstructionist if they're at all interested in doing magick.
Purely Traditionalist systems suffer from the accumulation of dogma. Without any sort of peer review inaccurate information can wind up being disseminated. For example, the Golden Dawn origin story about Anna Sprengel and her body of European adepts made for a great plot element in my novel but most experts agree that it is probably not historically true. From the fragmentary technical documents that have been published on the Golden Dawn tradition sometime between Aleister Crowley's work with Macgregor Mathers ("Liber O vel Manus et Sagittae") and Israel Regardie's publication of the Stella Matutina documents ("The Golden Dawn") it looks like the Lesser Invoking Ritual of the Hexagram was replaced by the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Hexagram, a change which is taught by most of the modern Golden Dawn orders but which according to my own empirical research on probability shifts massively weakens the system.
Reconstructionists sometimes make important new historical discoveries about their respective traditions that prove useful, but without revision any such system is always going to contain elements that were appropriate in a particular time and place but are no longer relevant to the modern world. For example, there a million books out there that purport to teach "Celtic" Paganism. Many experts believe that the discovery of bog men clearly demonstrates that the ancient Celts practiced human sacrifice. Should we? Obviously a modern person is going to respond in the negative to that one, but as soon as you start changing even extreme elements of the system to fit the modern world you effectively are a Revisionist anyway. I also think the idea that if a magical practice is old it automatically works well needs to be discarded once and for all. My electric refrigerator works a lot better than an icebox.
When Traditionalists and Reconstructions went to war over whether or not Ronald Hutton's ideas about the history of Neo-Paganism were correct my Revisionist response was pretty much a big yawn. Who cares? Seriously. Either the techniques work or they don't. Whether or not they're ancient or modern shouldn't make any difference, especially since the debate seemed to be between two sides that couldn't agree over what percentage of modern Pagan practices have ancient roots. The more important question is what percentage of modern Pagan techniques work and what percentage don't. If all the people kicking up a huge fuss about whether the correct percentage of ancient lore is 10% or 90% instead performed a series of experiments with various Pagan magical techniques and recorded their results something useful would be generated rather than an emotional but pointless debate.
Magick is a technology. That means if something works better it is better, plain and simple. Some of its effects can be subjective, but that only makes evaluation of those aspects difficult, not impossible. Psychologists research subjective mental phenomena all the time. And as far as practical techniques go, all you need to do is set up experiments to test the probability shifts those techniques produce. Ancient methods are still worth studying because the human mind has changed little over the last several millenia, but they should be researched, tested, and integrated into modern systems only if they are found to be effective. The "sifting" method that most proto-sciences use to accumulate knowledge can occasionally produce spectacular successes that the formal scientific method will miss, but at the same time it can produce some spectacular failures, superstitions that manage to live on as the tradition evolves despite their ineffectiveness.
What amazes me from following this whole debate is how ridiculous it is. If your spiritual system works for you and produces the results you want, why should you care if it's ancient or modern? If it doesn't work for you, why should you practice it? Thelema works for me and "The Book of the Law" was written in 1904. I've certainly never lost any sleep over its relatively recent origins. As a matter of fact, from the standpoint of study, being in possession of the original manuscript is quite useful, and if the book were thousands of years old it almost certainly would have been lost. Furthermore, Thelema's modern elements such as "the method of science, the aim of religion" are a big part of its appeal to me and had it originated even hundreds of years ago those elements would probably not be present.
UPDATE: The comment thread for this article has drifted over into discussing the issue of individuals in the Pagan community who do not practice magick but still want to be treated as authority figures. That conversation is continuing over at Rob's place.
