Golden Dawn Blog by Frater Yechidah

It is five years to the day since I posted on my Gnostic blog Henosis Decanus  about the relation of the planets to the Archons of Gnostic mythology . I was recently asked what my thoughts on this are after all these years, so let us explore this idea a little deeper. In the esoteric world we are often seen as being tied to the forces of our birth charts. Our strengths and weaknesses, our high points and low points, our ideals and aims, what drives us and holds us back, are all mapped out before us like an oracle, like the foretelling of our doom.  Indeed, it is often the case that many occultists will blame their chart for their problems, admitting a kind of fatalist thinking, where who and what we are is already decided, and cannot be deviated from. This is, in my opinion, an unacceptable approach for a magician, and certainly for a Gnostic. An adept who blames exterior forces for his or her problems is an adept hoping to escape responsibility, and thus this sho...

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...

Gnosticism has become increasingly popular over recent years, with the publication of the Nag Hammadi library, the even more recent Gospel of Judas, the blockbuster Matrix films, and, of course, the infamous Da Vinci Code book and film, not to mention countless others that slip under the radar of all but those who have “eyes to see”. However, all this popularity has led to a very skewed understanding of what Gnosticism is all about – some people think it was invented by Aleister Crowley, that it was all about Jesus' relationship with Mary Magdalene, or that it was a single obscure heretical group that didn't last very long. The Gnostics , by Andrew Phillip Smith, is an accessible book that dispels these erroneous views with a thorough introduction to the history, tradition, scriptures, and influence of Gnosticism in all its facets. The book, numbering just under 250 pages, is broad in scope, dealing with nearly all of the Gnostic groups of note from its inception two millenia a...

I'm sure many of you are familiar with the "argument" that Hermeticism is the oldest thing in existence, stemming from Ancient Egypt (or possible Atlantis before it, as some argue). Now, while I appreciate that there was more than likely a system of philosophy and practice that was dedicated to Thoth (I'm not sure about the Greaco-Egyptian hybrid of Thoth-Hermes at this time, as this seems to me to stem from Greek Alexandria, and thus would not come into play in Ancient Egypt before Greece took control), I prefer to use the Academic distinction for this as Hermetism , because we're taking a big leap of faith in saying that one (Hermeticism) is the other (Hermetism). The fact of the matter is that we simply don't know if the Ancient Egyptian Thoth cult believed the things we accept as Hermeticism today, so we can say "I personally believe they did" but not "they did", as there's no textual evidence for it. Lack of evidence is not evide...

" This , I believe, explains why Rosicrucianism has continued to exert its grip on the Western mind. It is not because we are hopelessly gullible, or because we would like to believe in absurd fantasies. In a legend like that of Christian Rosenkreuz, we seem to catch a glimpse of what we ought to be, and what we could be . If we set about it with sufficient determination, the grip of 'the world' can be broken - or at least, weakened until it ceases to induce a constant feeling of alienation. We are a planet of a double star, torn between two powerful gravitational forces. We have to learn to move inward without losing control over the external world and, like Rimbaud, simply surrendering ourselves to an 'ordered derangement of the senses.'" - Colin Wilson, Introduction to Christopher McIntosh's The Rosicrucians

As a student of both Gnosticism and Qabalah, I began to find many similarities between the two, and wondered just how deep the parallels went. Indeed, it made me question if the Qabalah was influenced by Gnosticism, which even the Qabalistic scholar Gershom Scholem wondered in his many excellent books on the subject. It seems likely that this is so, at least in the Lurianic school of Qabalah, but for now I will content myself with merely pointing out the parallels and letting my readers come to their own conclusions. God is conceived of as beyond the Three Negative Veils of Existence, ( Limitless Light , Limitless , and Nothing ), as the Unmanifest, in the Qabalah. Likewise it was common Gnostic principle (as well as being a general approach in mysticism as a whole [see the Cloud of Unknowing , for example ]) to define God in negative terminology. While the above is true, God was also seen as part and parcel of the entire manifest universe, while also being beyond the Three Negative Ve...