When is an initiation?

Be warned, as Tony Hadley sings: “Question, questions, give me no answers“.

A while back I unwittingly de-initiated someone from the Golden Dawn. It happened when the gentleman in question, let’s call him Toby, asked to be considered for entry into our Golden Dawn Order as a Zelator rather than Neophyte because he had already received the Neophyte initiation. Now our Order has the rather neat (I think) policy of admitting everyone as a Neophyte; that way we do not make judgements on which other Order’s initiations are “valid”. It also helps create a stronger and more balanced egregore. Anyway, after explaining this policy I was chatting away and asked Toby in which Order he was initiated. He named an online Order and the date and time and other details as to when he had been astrally initiated into the GD. Oh dear.*

Keeping my personal views in check, I began to idly muse and compare his details with what I knew, and stupidly blurted out some facts that showed the initiation could not have taken place as he described. Toby insisted it had, and I only replied that the Order in question had a somewhat dodgy reputation. He suddenly looked very crestfallen. Later that evening, after some net searching and overseas phone calls, he rang me in great distress. The initation had not taken place. He felt duped and deluded (he had described some intense astral experiences during the ‘initiation’). “I thought I was Golden Dawn” Toby  bemoaned sullenly, “but I’m not.” On hearing this, I wished I had kept my big mouth shut.

Now here’s the thing: in his reality Toby had a valid and moving initiation and became part of an august tradition. He was an initiate. He acted as one, served as one and practiced as part of the GD tradition. Being an initiate helped him grow. However, in another reality, that of any objective observer and the cruel wanker who took his money without so much as waving a painted stick over his name, he was never an initiate.

There is no doubt in my mind the objective space-time “truth” in this case was harmful. Toby became depressed, left his magical studies behind and drifted away. I hope he has found some peace now.

So, when is an initiate an initiate? I have elsewhere referred to a Wiccan initiation reported by Margot Adler which was dysfunctional, chaotic and included arguments between the officers in front of the initiate. Yet, Ms Adler describes the new initiate as glowing, content and showing all the signs of those Witches “properly” initiated. So was she now an initiate?

I am pondering these things because of Nick’s recent post on multiple initiations and a few comments stemming from it. Nick avers that properly initiating groups of people into the GD grades is impossible, something I agree with. He also states that a Hierophant performing six or so serial initiations on a single day would be letting the side down somewhat towards the end, something I again agree with. However, different people have different ideas. A Facebook friend of Nick’s puts the high limit of group initiations at three. Interesting. I have asked this commentator to write a paper on how this can be done, and I really hope he does, as me wee small brain cannae see it. I am always keen to learn new ways in the GD.

However, the essential question still remains. If a Hierophant was to initiate six people into a high grade, one after the other, would the poor bastards who drew the last straws be initiated? Even if they had full and wonderful internal experiences, could we say the intiation was not full or valid? If I were to rope together six candidates and initiate them en masse into the Neophyte, would they be initiates? Or would they only be one sixth of an initiate?

Is the internal experience of the candidate the most important factor? If it is, why do we need to do “proper” initiations at all, since, as in Toby’s case, they can be stimulated by just telling someone they are being initiated. If external factors are important, how do we measure them, ensure quality control (ha ha) without involving some internal perception? I mean we can tell if a newly minted coin is up to scratch cos there are standards by which to judge. Judging initiation, not magical skill, seems to me fraught with peril and possible bias.

However, I cannot honestly say that if our Order suddenly changed its procedures and accepted people at higher grades I would be happy. I could not easily accept someone wandering into Practicus based, as we have seen in the case of Toby, on possible astral initiations. And if someone told me they had been made Practicus together with four other folk, all at once, I’d probably start making Marg Simpson dissaproving moans. And honestly, if someone wandered in cheerfully announcing they were a Practicus via self initiation or an Adept by following the advice in Modern Magick, I would be somewhat of a sad panda too.

So where does this leave me, where does it leave us? Do we only trust our own views and ideas on initiation? Or should we be happy so long as someone, like Toby, knows they have been initiated? It fairly does my head in, it does. Thoughts anyone? Thanks

*As readers of MOTO will know I remain to be convinced astral GD initiations are at all possible. I’ve publicly asked one of the more prominent expontents of astral initiation to address my concerns, but have never recieved a public answer, only an invitation for one on one dialogue, something I do not wish to do. That aside, this is my personal view – our Order has no official stance on the matter, only that we do not do them.

Quick thought on the Golden Dawn…

Over at the Gleamings From the Dawn blog Morgan has been busy with a series of thoughtful and frank blogs on the GD. I missed most of these when they appeared cos I was on holidays blissing in the country. However, I did smart-phone reply to a couple of emails sent to me about the topics in general (why people don’t comment on blogs surprises me. Most bloggers don’t actually bite).

One of the questions concerned the ongoing back and forth bantering in the GD community and when would it stop. I replied it will never stop so long as any group, Order, teacher or faction seeks hegemony over others. Now on the surface no group outwardly states they are seeking this, but as I have pointed out before, the political jockeying over legitimacy and lineage does in fact attempt this. So for 2012 I see little change in the outward GD discourse. That said, as Nick Farrell has pointed out the GD community is actually more friendly and collegiate than it appears in the blogs and websites. Nick says eight different Orders gave him a hand on his latest book, sharing info and wot all. I agree completely with Nick – even my own little efforts on MOTO have brought me online friends and unsolicited sharing of original documents and information. Most people, even GD magicians, are nice people.

Now, I suspect if I ever sat down with Morgan and his Secret Chiefs (if they gave me a seat) we would disagree as much as agree on the finer points of the GD and magic. However, I think the essential agreement we would have is that it is fine to disagree. Now again, no Order or teacher is brazen enough to say otherwise. However, as Morgan has pointed out the reality is sometimes quite different and the resulting avalanche of accusations and abuse shows this (I’ve read too many Marvel Comics recently – apologies for the alliteration). As I have posted before, the rhetoric of binary choice being touted these days is alien to the GD and a sign of attempted hegemony. When on Facebook I maintained that one can always choose a third path, not one of the extremes (Neophyte ceremony anyone?), I was compared to an archetypal villain

You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.

Still I sometimes feel sorry for those GD folk who argue from a classic Secret Chiefs, hidden masters perspective. You see, within that paradigm the Chiefs are all wise and compassionate Masters, having perfected their humanity and lower passions. The more one approaches their exalted status, the more one becomes a little more like them, transforming base emotions and petty human feelings etc. In this paradigm those of the higher adept grades are more developed, more wise and more spiritual than those of us below them. Logically this should be even more so for someone who is the Chief’s self declared amanuensis or has them round for tea.

In the hurly burly of internet discourse this puts such people at a disadvantage. If they get angry and abusive or petty and paranoid they automatically call into question their own advertised spiritual attainment. On the other hand folk like Morgan, Nick and Pat Zalewski who have never promoted themselves within this paradigm of spiritual and moral development can say what they like, how they like. They can do the virtual equivalent of pulling their pants down and shaking their bums at whoever pisses them off (not that they ever would). Not so the spirtually exalted GD folk… they need to remain calm and nice Of course, if these folk were really that cool, they would never even be tempted to be anything other than calm and nice. I’ve seen my Tibetan teachers roused by passion but never approaching anger, even in the face of extremity. Mostly they are sad at the state of consciousness the other folk must be in to do such extreme things.

The interesting thing though is that it seems those folk who promote the spiritual-development-Chiefs are often the most petty and silly on the net. Just look in the past MOTO comments for examples. As soon as a spiritual-moral paradigm 7=4 dude descends to name calling or lies they call into question their attainment. It must be hard for them, but even harder for their intelligent followers who have to somehow deny or reconcile the obvious non-attained actions of their attained leader. Again and again. Without such denial or forced reconciliation of course, the whole spiritual point and edifice of the Order comes crashing down like a house of cards. I learnt this the hard way at 19 as my supposed 7=4 Chief had a nervous breakdown when the boyfriend of an underage street kid he was intent on bonking took umbrage in the form of a knifepoint threat. Glad I learnt it so young…

Oh well, Happy Secular New Year MOTO folks

Medieval Pagan-Hermetic Initiation and Tradition

The recent lunar eclipse, wonderfully visible all night in Perth, was the culmination of over 20 years of magical-pagan training for me. On that night, as the moon was not, I received the final of seven ‘bindings’ in a magical-pagan tradition I have been blessed to work within since a trip to England in 1987. Now that my apprenticeship is complete, I will hopefully be able to talk more freely about this tradition in future.

There is no real distinct name for this tradition; each group and each generation seem to refer to it in different ways. Its internal mythology and all the material, songs, ways of magic and archives I have seen suggest it stems from the time of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain. In medieval England its presence was more or less underground depending on the prevailing mood of the civil and sometime ecclesiastical authorities. Its main areas of activity were Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and by transplantation Warwickshire, Hampshire and Dorset.

Its mysteries and practices often merged with local and church tradition, sometimes being contained in plain sight within local song cycles and stories, as well as the architecture, decorations and motifs in local churches, graveyards, wells and village halls. An example of this is found in Alan Garner’s Strandloper novel where the mysteries are contained in a foliage leaf pattern on a church wall, only able to be understood during the exalted state of initiation.

Following the violence and changes of the Reformation, the tradition went more underground and began to merge with the bourgeoning magical-hermetic tradition. Its practices began to include more formal wording and Hermetic motifs. Some of the adepts of the tradition around this time include notable English ‘Rosicrucians’ such as Anne Finch, Lady Conway, and the circle that surrounded her and her family at Ragley Hall. The merged presence of the tradition and Rosicrucian-Hermetic motifs can also be found in the gardens, private chapels and surrounds of several stately homes in England. An excellent example of this is Arbury Hall  in Warwickshire, not far from the home of McGregor Mathers of the Golden Dawn. An earlier, more public example is the Garden of Planets at Edzell Castle, Angus.

In providing a material and physical representation of the mysteries ‘in plain sight’ these noble families were continuing the tradition established previously in the decoration of wells and church grounds. Many of the these families have passed on the tradition, as well as English Rosicrucian-Hermetic lineage, through their descendants and close family friends right up until the present day. There is evidence in the letter archives I have seen that show Ronald Heaver and others from the early 20^th century being involved in tradition, being close friends of one of the lineage holders. The resonance between the tradition and much of the work of RJ Stewart seems to stem from this connection. As readers of MOTO know, I require solid evidence before making historical claims, and have personally seen and experienced more than enough to satisfy my innate scepticism of the nature and age of the tradition.

We have coyly released surface elements of the tradition previously here and here, attributing them to the Simon Goodman collection as a convenient foil, as well as given hints on the work of Alan Garner and another novelist connected with the tradition – and a few more clues

I was blessed to discover the threads that led to the tradition when helping to clear the back yard of a friend’s newly brought property in one of the older river suburbs of Perth 25 years ago. There we discovered a grown over circle area and buried artefacts that made no sense to my fellow workers, but spoke volumes to me a newly initiated magician. Eventually, I tracked down the original owners, who were very elderly, and was ultimately given a letter of introduction to a hidden Master in the New Forest area, where I visited in 1987. More on this and the tradition in a later post…

And oh, by the way, the above account is  a load of bollocks.

However, and here is the kicker – I defy anyone to prove this did NOT happen.

Such is the way with trying to prove a negative historically. Add to that the sub rosa activities and assertions of magicians and secret societies, and it becomes almost impossible to prove something someone claims did not happen. However, that is not evidence it did happen. Besides, like all good con men, there are many half truths, just about truths and could-be-true things in the account above.

So really, this MOTO post is about evidence and veracity. Just because someone says something, offers a few titbits of original interpretation of traditional material, makes lots of wonderful claims, it does not mean it is true. We can never prove it is not true, but without evidence – and I mean primary source letters, archives, documents etc – we can also never prove it is true. Of course I am thinking of the Golden Dawn and certain claims, counter-claims and hints being thrown around at the moment. Many of these, use the same structure and method of my little story above… analyse them for yourself and you will see what I mean

“Magicians”, Alan Richardson writes, “fib a lot”. How right he is

By Names and Images next March (REALLY this time)!

As I’ve recently mentioned the long overdue and long awaited, “By Names and Images: bringing the Golden Dawn to life” is due for release next March. (See here for info already on MOTO)

After seven years of waiting the book feels a bit like an imaginary friend – I keep talking about it, but no one actually sees it Still, some folk have at least seen the manuscript (pdf document really) and have been very kind about it. In fact, after nudging away my old publisher (years beyond contract date) I suddenly received a few unsolicited requests from other publishers wanting to look at the beast and I am very, very pleased to announce that Skylight Press have taken it on. Skylight is the latest publishing venture of the wise and venerable Gareth Knight together with his daughter Rebecca and her creative partner, Daniel.

A while back, when it looked like Thoth publications would actually publish the work alongside the likes of Gareth Knight and Dion Fortune, I wrote I was ‘all giddy inside’. To be published by Skylight takes that giddiness up several notches.

After seven years I am very surprised that even now when people read it, a common comment is there is ‘nothing else like it’. Now of course, every author likes to promote their wares, but I do think BNAI will be a welcome and valuable addition to the Golden Dawn corpus. You can judge for yourself next March, thanks to Skylight! More information (and shameless promotion) to come…

‘Proof of Reality’
Skylight – look under ‘forthcoming titles’.
Book Depository
Amazon UK

Belief within the Golden Dawn

When I was a young and naive Pagan teenager one of the selling points the Wiccan community kept repeating was that in Wicca “everyone was a priest”, unlike Christianity. I had already read a little about the Protestant concept of the Priesthood of all Believers which directly contradicts this, but kept my heretical notions to myself, less the Elders forbid me the longed for Initiation. And it was all a little confusing anyway.

After a few months, I realised that what my fellow Wiccan propagandists were actually meaning was that Wicca was a religious and magical practice, rather than a confessional faith. We practiced something that changed us and our relationship with the Gods, rather than simply believing in something. I had already come across the worst aspects of confessional Christianity via such lurid works as ‘the Cosmic Conspiracy‘ and ‘Man 666′, which had nice neat confessional forms printed in the back, complete with a space ready for the reader’s signature. All I needed to do was sign and I too would be saved! Back then I was appalled by such nonsense; these days I find it both appalling and amusing.

The movement from religious practice to religious belief in the west is relatively recent, dating back to the late Renaissance at the earliest (see Karen Armstrong, ‘The Case for God‘ for a good introduction to this). Not that there is, or was, always a sharp distinction between the two, but more an emphasis. We can understand this by seeing how the following two phrases sound:

“A practicing Catholic”or “a practicing Protestant “. (I picked this up somewhere on my travels – if anyone knows where, please let me know.)

Even our everyday language points to a disjunction in the idea that Protestants practice rather than believe. Not that this is a universal truism, just a trend.

Karen Armstrong

And so it is that the magical and esoteric traditions in the west, drawing on the older traditions, kept alive spiritual practice, meditation, ritual, symbolic enactment etc in an era when belief became a hallmark not only of western Christianity but of how different denominations defined themselves apart from their religious neighbours. This method and tradition of spiritual practice was inherited by the nascent Neo-Pagan traditions in the early and mid 20^th centuries, and became a hallmark of their approach to mystery. This is all very lovely and indeed a hallmark of my root tradition, The Golden Dawn.

It is therefore with much distress that I have witnessed of late an almost confessional form of the Golden Dawn. I alluded to this with, I hope, good humour in my last post on the GD creed. The GD Order, the various pagan and esoteric traditions I have been initiated into all are very clear: one does not need to believe ANYTHING to be a member. It is practice that changes us and personal beliefs to make sense of that change and our relationship with the universe, are just that – personal and in many ways irrelevant, as they tend to be temporal and fluid. And indeed over the years my way of understanding and making sense of the Lesser Pentagram ritual has changed markedly but the ritual and its blessings remain constant. To quote the Beast himself:

In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth, and the Paths, of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether they exist or not.  By doing certain things certain results follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them.

So for any group to expect a form of confessional acceptance that physically Mathers did X, or the Secret Chiefs really exist, unseen and unknown, or that an invisible and unprovable Third Order has existed since Atlantis, Alexandria or even Acton flies in the face of magical tradition. As myth these concepts have power, validity and truth; as shared space-time reality they fall into the same trap literalist Christians do went insisting Christ did this or that, having no evidence only belief to back it up.

Sure, some people may have actually met the Secret Chiefs, as opposed to the thousands of liars and delusional folk who claim this. Some people may have even got their autographs over a cup of tea. Some people may have added them on Facebook. But unless they can freely share that experience, there is no point in talking about it. And to expect new and younger students to accept these kinds of statements as fact at the start of their journey is essentially religious in nature. Not, I guess, that there’s anything wrong with that. If we want the Golden Dawn to become a heterodox religious cult, which I for one do not. Thanks