Golden Dawn Blog by Frater Yechidah

One criticism of ceremonial magic over the years has been its focus on the requirement of various tools, both physical, in the sense of implements and regalia, as well as less corporeal, in the sense of charts of planetary hours and other guides for the perfect ritual performance. Some magicians who are not very tool-friendly have suggested that they are more advanced because they do not need such tools, which, of course, intimates that ceremonial magicians do. This is an error, however, as ceremonial magicians do not use tools because they are needed , but because they are useful . It could be argued that the only neccessities for magic are Will and Imagination , but why make the job more difficult than it needs to be? You can tap a nail in with your hand, but why not use a hammer? The value of tools is that they serve as an aid in the performance of magic. The wand or dagger serves as an extension of the will, in much the same way as the sword is an extension of the arm in martial ...

Some time last year I made a post on asceticism in the Golden Dawn , which included sources primarily from the Cromlech Temple, with a small passage from Westcott from one of the Flying Rolls. Recently I was re-reading another Flying Roll, also by Westcott, which deals with the matter of asceticism much more thoroughly, further reinforcing the points made in the previous post. "It has been urged against us that, as a society, we do not preach the necessity for such strict purity of life as do the Theosophists. It may be true that we are not always preaching it, and as we do not hold public meetings, the same opportunities for doing so does not exist. If, however, there is one thing more than another which I would impress upon you as a social sin, it is that of hypocrisy. As to asceticism, the Hermetists have always taught that this necessary purity of mind should and can be combined with the absence of all ostentatious morality and of un-natural habits of life. The Western Teacher...

"The map is not the territory" is an oft-quoted aphorism, and I believe it may need to be quoted again to reinforce the following point: the correspondences of the Golden Dawn are designed around the basis that point A relates or is linked to point B, and point C, and point D. They correspond - i.e. there is a back and forth relationship between them. This does not mean that point A is point B or C or D, which there seems to be some confusion about. So let's look at an example. The four directions are attributed to the elements. Attributed , not are . The four directions are linked to the four elements - they are not the elements themselves., nor are they distinctly elemental. The Four Archangels may correspond with the elements, but they are not elemental in and of themselves. Enochian words like EXARP and HCOMA correspond with the elements of Air and Water, but any Dee purist will quickly point out how they are most definitely not elemental. Likewise for the hundred...

When starting up an order, temple, coven, or other magical group in the modern world, there usually is not much in the way of resources. Not knowing how to attract other members, build a system of study and ritual, and deal with the inevitable conflicts that occur when more than one person comes together can spell doom for any start-up magical group. One exception to this lack of resources is Nick Farrell's Gathering the Magic , which attempts to give a would-be group leader some of the advice needed to succeed in this endeavour. While John Michael Greer's Inside a Magical Lodge still has much to offer in this regard, Nick's book is a bit more up to date, dealing with the issues that a group in the 21st Century will have to face. The book numbers 188 pages and has a number of chapters dealing with the group itself, the leadership, the practical elements, bringing in new people, conflict and crisis, and then growth or death of the group. These are further divided into short...

I thought I'd share a Gnostic piece I wrote in 2006: 1. Those who try to lift a boulder will lift a Stone, but as they try they are tried, and when they look beneath the Boulder, they will become troubled by what they see, but it is the strife of their vision that allows them to See. 2. Those who are content to move pebbles like pieces of a boardgame, they will not know Me. If they looked at the board, they would see that I am all lines and no line, and it is the Breath of My Spirit that moves the pieces, not their hands. 3. Let the Movers of Mountains take Comfort and Solace in their Suffering, for only those who Suffer seek, and only those who Seek find. I am the Seeker and the Sought, and all who seek Me without find Me within. 4. I am beneath pebbles and boulders, and I am the creator of suffering and the absolver of strife. All who know Me shall become Me, and I shall become them, and We will walk in the Light together. 5. For he who is hungry shall be filled with the Bread of...

"The work of bringing people to the light creates tremendous amounts of shadow, and in working with angels our personal demons are evoked." - Nick Farrell, Gathering the Magic

Geomancy is probably the least practiced system taught by the Golden Dawn, and I believe the reason for this is how it was and is continuing to be taught. It is made to seem overly complex, like an elaborate mathematical equation, but underneath it all lies a much simpler system, and Earth Divination, Earth Magic by John Michael Greer exposes this simplicity to great effect. This book has two sections, the first covering the divinatory aspects of geomancy, which includes a brief history, an overview of the geomantic figures, the method of casting a chart, and then several methods of reading it. What is noteworthy about this section is that it contains many elements of teaching that are absent from the original GD documents on the subject, particularly in terms of interpreting the figures that have been obtained. The shield chart is also an extremely useful method of obtaining the figures which works in a very common-sense way. The multiple examples given bring the theory a little cl...