Armadel Project for 2026

  

Grimoire Armadel. Actual title: Liber Armadel seu totius cabalae perfectissima brevissima et infallabilis scientia tam speculativa quam practiqua

Translation (Latin): The Book of Armadel, or the whole Cabala, a most perfect, brief, and infallible science, both speculative and practical

It has long been a dream of mine to publish the Grimoire Armadel with all the additional elements and restructuring needed to make it a completely usable grimoire. I would consider it to be the highest achievement amongst all the books I have published and will publish. I decided this last autumn to try to make this dream a reality. Mathers had translated this manuscript from around 1897 through 1899, when he submitted the Book of Abramelin to be published, but this work was never published until around 1980, when his various papers and manuscripts were supposedly acquired by Gerald Yorke, and he and Frances King published a hardcover edition with an introduction through the publisher Samuel Weiser. A later edition, published in 2001, by Weiser, had a soft cover and an introduction by William Keith.

Here is a link to the edition that was published by Weiser. 

First and foremost, I wanted to find an original digital copy of this manuscript from the Arsenal Library in Paris, France, to begin my  work. I didn’t have a clue how to go about requesting that file, and a friend and neighbor said she would try to help me out, since she was an accredited academic. She was, unfortunately, not successful. The reason why I wanted a digital copy is to validate and verify the work that Mathers did, and to what else might be lurking in the pages. I also felt that what was published was either missing some parts, or was structured in some peculiar manner that made it difficult to use as a working grimoire. While I had extracted some seals from the grimoire to use in my gateway icons, and I found them to be very powerful indeed, I felt a strong desire to get the original manuscript, since it had some mysteries that I wanted to resolve.

As for the manuscript, the original version was likely written in the early to middle 17th century, likely part of a family of German Faustian grimoires, which was the veritable golden age of magical grimoires. The actual manuscript that I was looking for in the Arsenal Library was a translated copy penned in the late 17th century and was supposedly confiscated by the famous and first Lieutenant General of the Paris Police (Gabriel Nicholas de la Reynie) who led a purge of cunning folk, alchemists, poisoners, divinators, diabolists, abortionists, and sooth-sayers from the Paris area, who made it a business catering to the gullible whims and dark fancies of the upper class men and women attending the King's court in Versailles. 

This pogrom was triggered by the notorious and infamous Affair of the Poisons scandal (1677) that rocked the court of Louie XIV. De la Reyine, as head of the police, aggressively pursued this perceived social menace for several years, so it went on for seven years until it quietly ended in 1684. It was, in many ways, a kind of Witchcraft persecution, since most of the victims were women, accused of heresy and poisoning, and several were burned as such. I believe that this grimoire was likely part of the larger confiscated hoard that these cunning folk possessed, and they ended up in the possession of de la Reyine. Additionally, De la Reynie's large collection of books, which contained many costly and rare papers and manuscripts written in Greek and Latin, were later purchased by d’Argenson (who became the next Lieutenant General of Police) another wealthy book collector, and that massive library ultimately ended up in the Bibliotheque de l’Arsenal collection, and then into the Bibliotheque Nationale de France (BNF). 

No other version of this grimoire has turned up amongst the collections and libraries examined by academics who now are studying this literature. While it is rumored that there might be a German copy in some other place or location, which is possible, it has not appeared amongst any of the writings or reports from those academics who are studying them. It might be that the original German version was lost or destroyed. I believe that there are other copies or versions of this grimoire yet to be discovered, but none have surfaced so far. Since the Armadel was only known to a few French antiquarians and occultists like Mathers, it had little notoriety, Since a translated version only appeared in 1980, it likely that this obscure grimoire may exist in other libraries or collections and fail to be noticed by academics. However, a companion manuscript in the same set of book in the Arsenal Library, the Book of Abramelin, was found to exist in German, and it was an earlier and more complete copy than the French version. Some authors have commented that the tradition of the Armadel has more affinity to German grimoires than the French versions, and others have disagreed.

I have written a blog article about this grimoire and you can find it here.

So, to continue with my story, I was at a loss on how to find this manuscript. I searched the internet, but was not able to find any mention of the actual source. I found out that much of the Arsenal library had been digitized and was part of the BNF collection, but looking for it seemed like a fool's errand, since I found that the public face of the online BNF was not very helpful, especially for someone who doesn't speak French. I only lucked out when I had adjusted my web search to Liber Armadel (instead of the Grimoire Armadel) and found this web page, which had the BNF documents hyperlinked. It was a review written by Dan Harms (Papers Falling from an Attic Window) of the book Editions du Monolithe edition of the Armadel, although it was called Liber Armadel in the text. 

Curiously, the manuscript number that I possessed was incorrect, and the link in the article shows two manuscripts as the source and not one, as I had originally thought. These are the BNF manuscript numbers MS #826 and MS# 2494. I then proceeded to download these two large PDF files of the BNF manuscripts, just as anyone else could do. These two manuscripts were available to the public without any kind of protection, other than a copyright disclaimer embedded in the documents, and pages of the manuscripts were stamped with the Arsenal imprint. 

What I discovered is that the source of Mather’s translation consisted of two manuscripts and not one. MS #826 contains just the Liber Armadel with four pages of text added after the manuscript end vignette, the text of which was never translated. These I set out to translate them myself with my rudimentary skills, but my wife used ChatGPT to translate them from the cursive straight into English. That astonished me, but I am not very trusting or willing to rely on that approach and I wanted to find someone who has the time and can read French and Latin to help me. The other manuscript contains the Liber Armadel grimoire in the first set of pages, but the rest of the manuscript contains another lengthy ad hoc grimoire not associated with the Armadel material. 

No one knows who the author or authors of the Aramdel were, nor what was the original source text, but the manuscripts appear to have been professionally scribed by local artisans for a fee. Still, I could imagine that the manuscripts had once belonged to Abbe Etienne Guibourg, or maybe Adam Lesage, two men out of the 32 mostly women who were the primary victims of the prosecution. Guibourg was a corrupted, debauched, and defrocked priest who reputedly performed several black mass rites; Lesage was the magician and spell caster of the accused group. These individuals were part of the informal group that the principle suspect, called La Voisin (Catherine DeShayes), ran as a profitable underground business. They, unlike many of the women, were not executed, but lived the rest of their lives imprisoned through the legal artifice “lettre de cachet.”

I have already started examining the manuscripts, and as I stated, translated the four pages after the end of the Armadel MS #826, and I have carefully looked over that text and found some remarkable things. The last four pages of this book were never translated by Mathers in his manuscript, which was published finally in 1980. The amazing great seal of the Uriel Operation was published, but not the accompanied text. Of course, all this appears after the end of the book, and it was not deemed important enough for Mathers to translate and include in his book. That omission turned out to be an incredible mistake, since those four pages in MS # 826, (129 - 132), contained the whole key to the grimoire. As it turned out, those four pages, translated by AI, were the key to the whole grimoire, and that surprised me. I am sure that it will astonish my readers as well, since this is the key that unlocks the process of activating the grimoire. I will keep that article from the public for now, but it will be an important part of my own rendition of this grimoire. 

By a most curious turn of events, I have managed to teamed up with a French translator, Eric Gazano, who also happens to be a French national and lives just outside of Marseilles. We met on my author's Facebook page, where he introduced himself. I have shared the two online documents with him, and we have shared messages with each other. I won't be using ChatGPT to translate the manuscripts. That was just a one-time deal, and what it translated will be checked over by Eric. There isn't actually a lot of translation work to be done, because Mathers did a respectable job of translating the two manuscripts, at least the Liber Armadel part. Also, the second manuscript has a lot more material that is completely outside of the my target grimoire, which is of doubtful interest to me.

Here is one of the books that Eric has published. 

Still, I want to compare the two manuscripts with the English translation that Mathers has done, looking for any text that was omitted that would be useful for building a modern grimoire. That is my sole purpose to writing this book. However, MS #2494 is a full grimoire manuscript with Armadel enclosed within it, but additionally, it has many pages of untranslated and never published material. There is obviously two different hands writing this larger book, and some of the pages in the middle are very difficult to read because the ink has faded so badly. I have told Eric that translating and publishing this unknown material would impress the English occult audience, thus making the contents of MS #2494 more accessible. I promised to get him some needed contacts to do this task, and some of my friends could help as well.

One question that I do have is what sections from the two manuscripts were used by Mathers to produce his manuscript, or if only MS #826 was the sole source as some have speculated, and that's where a translator will come in handy. We can also see if Mathers made any translation mistakes or omissions, and where the two manuscripts differ from each other. I am not able to pay Eric for his work, since he has the option of translating the bulk of the second volume, which has a hundred or more extra pages of an eclectic period grimoire to examine, translate and publish if he wishes. I will put his name on the future book as the translator when it is published, and give him some useful PR, and help him publish his work in the U.S., depending on what he has to offer. Getting publishers to publish occult books in France these days without academic credentials is tough for someone who doesn't have the right connections, unlike the U.S. in that regard. At least that is what Eric has told me during our conversations. 

My plan is to take the translation that Mathers has already made, including material that he did not include in his work, and produce a modern magical grimoire that can be used by pagans, witches and ceremonial magicians in the English speaking world. Right now, the translated book that was first published in 1980, and later, a second publisher came out with a new version that was practically the same. Both were eminently fascinating, but was not very usable. In other words, it requires someone to develop a methodology for working magic with the incredible seals found in that book. So, it not only requires translating and deciphering, but also organizing and structuring so that it fits into a modern system of magic. I have my work cut out for me.

All of these occurrences, discovering PDFs of the manuscripts online, connecting with Eric, and getting a lot of support from my publishers seems to be telling me that now is the time for me to start working on this project. This is so exciting and it will be one of my life's long ambitions to publish a workable version of the Liber Armadel for English speaking occultists and magical practitioners.

Here and here are the links to the two BNF manuscripts:

Frater Barrabas

Spiritual Ancestors as Heroes

Recently I’ve had a very unpleasant experience arguing with an occult pundit (Nick Farrell) who basically called me a naïve fool because I honor my spiritual ancestors and treat them as heroes. Because I celebrate and honor my spiritual ancestors and treat them with a certain amount of reverence I am considered a dupe and a fool. The reason for this criticism, of course, is because I happen to revere such individuals as Alex Sanders, Gerald Gardner, Aleister Crowley, MacGregor Mathers, or any other number of occult founders and trail Blazers. I take an uncritical and positive outlook on these individuals because they have had such an impact upon my own workings and study. Maybe that’s being naïve and stupid, since in our current time it’s so trendy to be cynical, negative and disparaging of the occult luminaries of the past. I have been called a pathetic hero worshiper and that makes me the worst possible judge of anyone’s character, especially those who have been dead nigh these many years. Yes, I admit it, I’m rightfully found guilty of hero worshiping, but I think that I have an important reason for taking this stand.

It’s not as if I haven’t read about these individuals and know all too well that they were human beings with human failings and flaws. I have also talked to individuals who personally knew Alex Sanders and the consensus is that he was quite a disreputable character. There seems to be no lack of stories about things that Alex did that were notorious and completely over-the-top. It seems that everybody has an opinion about Alex who knew him, and most of those opinions tend towards the negative. There are some people still living today who absolutely despise Alex and have few or even no fond memories of him whatsoever. Someone once told me that Alex was the kind of man who hated to work and so chose a life that was materially precarious when all he had to do was keep a regular job, and that would have made his life and the lives of those he supported more stable.

So, Alex Sanders was something of a gold brick. He was also reputed to be a great storyteller (another way of saying "liar") and had to be the focus of attention at all times. He invited the press and even the police to his very public gatherings in order to garner as much publicity as possible. That’s hardly the kind of stellar image that one would consider either heroic or worthy of emulation. Even so, Alex was a trailblazer and started his own tradition. He was an avid experimenter and tried to mix all sorts of different occult disciplines together into a workable whole. His tradition invited many different and divergent people together under one large tradition. Many of the first gay and lesbian witches that I met years ago were Alexandrian, and this was also true of the first African American and handicapped members. Alexandrian Witchcraft was the “big tent” tradition, and this was before other traditions appeared that catered to specific social collectives, such as the Dianic tradition. Perhaps we can turn a blind eye to his various flaws and bad behavior if we focus instead on what he contributed to the pagan and witchcraft movements. The world needed Alex Sanders, warts, obnoxious behavior and all.

What then is a hero? How do we define what a hero is in our culture today? Is Superman or Mighty Mouse good examples of the iconic hero? What about the antiheroes that are found in Marvel comics? Are they to be considered heroes as well? I found myself pondering the definition of a hero, but then I remembered that a good place to find that definition clearly established would be reading what the author Joseph Campbell had to say about it. Joseph Campbell says, “A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than one’s self.” Well, that seems simple enough, but does that fit the heroism of being a spiritual founder? Additionally, Joseph Campbell says that a hero brings back a “boon” to his community. Basically, Mr. Campbell is referring to the hero’s journey, and the object of that journey is to return something back from the underworld into the world of light. The hero also manifests a steadfast virtue in what they have contributed to their community, despite all of their flaws. According to Campbell, heroes are indeed flawed because they are so human. They are, in word, us. A cartoon hero on the other hand often lacks the kind of humanity necessary as the foundation of being a hero. Despite being flawed, the hero becomes a role model that inspires the rest of us to be better than we thought we could be. A hero is also inspired by an “inner calling.”

I believe that if we take what Joseph Campbell has defined regarding a hero, we can easily apply that definition to individuals such as Alex Sanders, Crowley, and Mathers - not to mention Gardner and many others. As heroes we would expect them to be terribly flawed on the one hand, but also inspiring and the bringer of a profound new way of thinking or practicing occultism on the other. All of these founders had that in common with each other, and all of them were egregiously flawed. To accept their gifts while repudiating their characters or disparaging them could be construed as being highly ungenerous, if not cynically and selfishly motivated. We all owe these founders a certain amount of respect and consideration because we have accepted their gifts and use them in our work; since to behave otherwise is to show oneself as greedy, power-hungry and soulless. I am not advocating that we turn a blind eye to the flaws and imperfections that were so highly on display by these founders, but instead we should really focus on the gifts that they bestowed us. All I am saying is that you can appreciate the history without having to assassinate the character of those trailblazers who came before us. After all is said and done, their gifts were certainly important to us occultists.

Because I’m an Alexandrian witch, then Alex Sanders is one of my spiritual ancestors. Since I also work the Golden Dawn system of magick, at least in part, then MacGregor Mathers would be considered one of my spiritual ancestors. I have to also include Alister Crowley as one of my spiritual ancestors because I have benefitted greatly from reading his work and I was also a member of the O.T.O. Gerald Gardner would be yet another spiritual ancestor in my witchcraft and magical lineage. There are probably many others as well, but that’s the group of ancestors that I’m willing to talk about. So, these four individuals who are founders of their respective traditions make up part of the overall lineage that I have followed as both a witch and a ritual magician. As representatives of the various streams that make up the current of spirituality and magick that I follow, I believe it is important to venerate the memory of these individuals because as magical heroes they have given the world great gifts, and I happen to use those gifts.

We, as ritual magicians, do not stand alone or in isolation. Our practices, whether or not we have been inventive and creative, have come down to us from the work of many other hands across the centuries. This is the whole basis to the perennial philosophy, and while we may add a greater or lesser share to this knowledge, we have received what our spiritual ancestors have passed on to us. Therefore, lineages are important and represent the combined streams that seamlessly joined together to formulate the work and practice of each initiated ritual magician. Our lineages are not exclusive to those founders whose tradition we were initiated into, since each and everyone of us has borrowed extensively from other sources. We are, in a word, a melange or mixture of many different traditions and strains.

To give respect and veneration to the founders of our tradition and practices, we receive from them empowerment, since this opens and establishes the connection between us and them. While this might function as an egregore of a tradition, it is not limited to that vehicle, but could represent the single contribution of some brilliant luminary in the past. Therefore, to use the gifts of our spiritual and magical founders is to be empowered by them. And if we are to retain a certain amount of grace and positive intent in our practices it is important for us to not only acknowledge them, but also to venerate them. This means not just respecting them and their gifts, but also giving them offerings and periodic acknowledgment. This is a Pagan thing to do, to honor our ancestors, both those that are genetic as well as those who represent the lineage of traditions and ideas that we follow. We act this way to retain a certain amount of honor for ourselves and for our work. Just as we give offerings to our genetic ancestors in order to function as modern pagans, we should also give offerings to our spiritual ancestors as well. We do this despite their history and notoriety as flawed human beings who had many failings and even engaged in disreputable activities. This is not white washing or wishful thinking, or even a terrible naïveté; it is a pagan way of honoring those who came before us. It is also how we honor the gifts that they courageously sought and achieved for our benefit.

Now, when we consider everything that I have written up to this point, you can see the ideas that I am promoting and even celebrating as a witch, ritual magician, initiate and adept. I believe that being faithful to the founder and the trailblazer of one’s spiritual lineage is an important part of being an adept. It is not naïve nor foolish to venerate one’s spiritual ancestors, just as it isn’t foolish or naïve to venerate one’s genetic ancestors. It is part of being a pagan and a magician, and so in this context to behave and comport oneself in this manner is honorable and generous. After all, wouldn’t I want people to behave in a respectful fashion to me after I have gone to great lengths to give them the lore that I have labored upon for so many years? Do I want people to disparage me for my all too human failings and personal flaws while at the same time greedily using my ideas and writings for their personal betterment? I believe that that is the real issue regarding the honoring and veneration of spiritual ancestors. How would you like to be treated disparagingly by posterity in the future when you are unable to defend yourself, and even worse, when those same people are still using your ideas and rituals?

While it is so trendy and cool to be cynical, disparaging and cleverly negative to anyone who is a founder or trailblazer, or even someone who could be considered a magical hero, I think that it is despicable and deplorable behavior which only serves to define someone who is actually bankrupt of any original ideas and morally a scoundrel. This might sound like harsh criticism, but I see it as a powerful antidote to the popular sentiment of iconoclastic thinking that seems to be the trend in postmodern occultism today. I stand against that kind of thinking, which I suppose makes me something of counter force in popular thought. Then again, I think that I have good reason for acting and believing as I do because I have found that the popular consensus contradicts both good Pagan theology as well as good magical practice.

Frater Barrabbas

Vault of the Adepti

I think that one of the coolest things that the author of the second order of the Golden Dawn ever came up with was the vault of the adepti, which was a fabricated container of sorts filled with symbolic colors, designs, characters, sigils and furniture. This was obviously something that had the imprint of both Mathers and his wife, Moina, since it was a synthesis of art and occult symbology. If ever there was a potent justification for believing Mathers to be something of a creative genius, the vault of the adepti is one of many. Just the mere idea of sitting or standing in a large container set up within sacred space full of activated symbols and vibrating colors was quite a fabulous notion, perhaps one of the most influential in all of the second order GD lore.

Still, this was one of those fanciful devices that I never got to either see or touch, build in some manner or fully experience; but it was something that powerfully influenced my imagination even today. Even the name “vault of the adepti” sounded exotic and thrilling to me. One of my friends, who was also one of the co-founders of the Order of the Gnostic Star, used to talk about it as one of the highest attributes of the inner order of the Golden Dawn, and his spirited talk helped fuel my imagination. Yet because I never was able to find a Golden Dawn temple to join and thereby learn about this awesome and mysterious vault, it remains something of a side issue that I never really studied or mastered. To this day I am somewhat ignorant of the details of the vault regarding to how it’s supposed to be fabricated, consecrated and utilized in initiations and even in magick. It is also quite beyond my ability to even consider building such an elaborate work or magical edifice today.

A vault of the adepti is simplistically defined as a large septagonal prism shaped container ensconced within a temple room. It has seven walls (shaped into a septagon), and a floor and ceiling both with the contrasting design of a triangle within a septagram, where the ceiling is white and the floor is black. Each wall is approximately 8 feet high by 5 feet wide, and they are divided into 40 squares each, consisting of a colored symbol and a colored background set to a specific symbolic attribute and painted with flashing colors. Each of these 40 squares are associated with the symbols of the ten Sephiroth, twenty-two Pathways (12 zodiacal signs, 7 planets and 3 elements), the four Kerubim, the three Alchemical Principles and the One Eternal Spirit. All of these 40 squares are attributed to the specific planet associated with the wall, and this indicated through the incorporation of different hues of flashing colors, which produces a powerful rainbow effect as each wall contrasts with another. The door to the vault is located on the Venus wall, and once closed, the container presents a seamless depiction of the full range of planetary symbology arrayed in brilliant color.

Within the vault is a circular altar stand situated over a rectangular coffin shaped structure called the Pastos, which is large enough to allow a person to lie down comfortably within it. The Pastos has a white head and a black foot, painted with contrasting Rose/Calvary cross designs, and the center is painted with the colors of the rainbow, depicting (again) the seven planets. Outside of the vault and situated on either side of its door are the black and white temple pillars. The door opens to the western side of the outer temple and against the wall in that outer temple is the cross of obligation. A doorway that leads into the outer temple is situated between the western and northern walls (i.e., northwest corner).  

There are a lot of pictures and images of this spectacular ritual container, but it could ideally be a full sized room secretly annexed off of the main GD ceremonial temple, if one had unlimited resources. I won’t get into the specifics of this marvelous device, since anyone who is that curious can consult the volumes of the Golden Dawn lore that are published. (The specifics of the vault are supposed to be oath-bound, but that hasn’t stopped some from publishing information about it.)  

Even so, the idea of crafting a vault was really beyond my abilities, and so it remained nothing more than a fanciful notion to me. I went on with the magical work, study and practices that I had started back in the early 80's, and what I was doing, however advanced, had little in common with the notions of a concentrated magical environment like a vault. Little did I realize that there is more than one way of either constructing or generating this kind of environment, and that the more elaborate ritual structures that I had developed would in fact simulate, in another manner, the power and majesty of a vault of the adepti.

When we consider that the prismatic energy structures established in an extended version of the energy model of magick can produce simple or complex geometric structures, then when those structures become complex and highly geometric, they can have a similar magical affect as a vault of the adepti. The key, of course, is being able to derive enough of an elaborate geometric construction using prismatic energy structures to simulate the basic elements of a classical Golden Dawn vault. The whole key, of course, are the seven planetary walls each with 40 symbols arrayed on them. How would an elaborate ritual structure incorporating a prismatic energy geometry replicate the array of symbolic structures found in a vault?

I have already discussed the more advanced sacred geometry regarding prismatic energy structures incorporated in ritual magick, and it might be useful for you to re-read what I posted many months ago. You can find that article here. The kind of ritual structure that I would incorporate to establish the outer perimeter of such a magical environment would be the twelve pointed magick circle, which produces an in-circle dodecagon, and this would function as the mystikon or chamber of the mysteries. I have taken a couple of paragraphs from that article to describe in greater detail what that structure would look like and how it would function.

“The twelve pointed magick circle can be used to establish an in-circle dodecagon, and the sixteen pointed magick circle could be used to establish an in-circle double octagon. To produce these structures, each of the points would have to be deliberately drawn together along the periphery of the magick circle. The only actual variances would be the vector used in joining the points together, whether clockwise or counter clockwise. In addition, whatever ritual structures were employed in the center of either a duodecagon or a double octagon would add to the over-all prismatic field, producing very elaborate structures.

A dodecagon with an internal combined structure of a pyramid, a tetrahedral gateway and a mid-point would produce a dodecahedron prismatic structure. That prismatic shape would emerge because the initial energy structure of a sphere would imprint and carry the design to both hemispheres of the magickal circle structure, even though, technically, only half of it would be visual. Such a prismatic energy shape, besides being one of the Platonic solids, would represent an elaborate and fully empowered mystikon or telesterion (chamber of the mysteries).”

An in-circle dodecagon would represent the twelve signs of the zodiac as well as establish the containment field for the chamber of mysteries, yet the overall structure would include other additional elements so that the key number of 40 would be satisfied. The twelve points would be determined by the four Watchtowers and the two in-between points on either side of the four Angles, thus leaving out the four Angles for other structures. 

The other ritual structures would be established within the dodecagon (to fill out and produce the dodecahedron prismatic structure) would incorporate the following additional ritual structures.

• Power Pyramid - set to the four Angles and the Ultra-point, with all five points drawn together. (Set with the four Cherubim and the Eternal Spirit.)
• Octagon - incorporating the four Watchtowers and four Angles and drawing them together to form an elemental vortex. The octagon would be anchored to the infra-point in the center of the circle. (Set with the eight Qabalistic Sephiroth - Yesod through Chokmah.)
• Inner circle and Septagram trigon - the septagram can be set to any of the seven planets, or all seven of them simultaneously. (Set with the seven Planetary intelligences.)
• Double Tetrahedral Gateway - an obverse gateway aligned to the East, and an inverted gateway aligned to the West, representing the double gateway of the mysteries. (Set with the Three Elements, the Three Alchemical Principles, and the Sephiroth of Kether and Malkuth.)
• Meso-point - mid point in the center of the circle, representing the magician within the guise of the Godhead intermediary. (The magician holds the key, which consists of all of the seven Enochian planetary ensigns arrayed in an internal septagram on a central altar.)

Excluding the meso-point (the place of mystery and union for all of the previous elements), the above five integrated structures have the following numeric elements - 12, 5, 8, 7, and 8 equals 40. Each of these forty elements would be associated with an overall planetary configuration, thus making the number of elements of this ritual structure equivalent with that of the vault of the adepti. I would also assume that the effect of erecting these ritual structures would produce a field that would be analogous to that of the vault. An enterprising magician could add to the ritual structures all of the verbalized myths associated with the burial vault of Christian Rosenkruetz (or something that would be spiritually analogous), and the simulacrum of the great vault would be symbolically represented.

As you can see, there are a number of ways of doing something, and magicians don’t have to be stuck on just one way. While it is wonderful to be able to build and craft something that is based on the exact parameters of a tradition, it should not be a sticking point. As always, there are many ways to accomplish the same analogous thing using different magical models or theories. I hope that I have presented one of many variations for producing the wondrous vault of the adepti.

Frater Barrabbas

Veneration of Ancestors - A Pagan Theme

Pagans from all time periods have engaged in a practice that is called ancestor veneration, where one’s departed forebears are given a certain reverential respect and honor due to their linear importance to one’s own birth and residence within the continuity of a family organization. I think that this is a very natural and basic human sentiment, perhaps somewhat displaced in modern times, but still important. I also believe that it is particularly important to modern pagans, as well as magicians who work with spirits.

In the U.S., there is a decided bias against this sort of belief and practice, and there is a habit of diminishing one’s forebears and putting them into a perspective that everyone who lived and existed in the prior age are inferior to everyone who lives and exists today. We are so devoted to progress that we have learned to belittle and dismiss the efforts and achievements of those who have come before us. This mind-set has unfortunately affected people’s attitudes towards their ancestors. It has also forced our culture to be divorced and cut-off from the people who made our lives and our very existence possible. I find this lack of respect and veneration for one’s ancestors to be not only problematic, but it also has the potential of making a practicing magician a lot poorer and much more isolated. Allow me to explain why I believe this to be true.

Several years ago, I had the same attitude towards my ancestors that everyone else of my generation had. We had a complete disregard for anyone in our past who was from the “older generation,” starting with our parents. Since I, like all of my contemporaries, had experienced a decided generational schism when growing up, we amplified this fissure by dismissing and devaluing everything associated with my father’s as well as my grandparents generations, and we even dismissed those unknown individuals who came before them. I guess we believed that we were the Crown of Creation and that everyone who had lived before us was deemed irrelevant. This was the kind of inherent snobbery held by those of us in the “Boomer” generation, and I suspect that this attitude has been continued in the later generations.

Some years later my sister got heavily involved with genealogy and she performed some extensive research and even interviewed some of the remaining family members who remembered events and individuals in our family’s past. I found all of this somewhat interesting, but because I was the only member of my family who had a strong proclivity for occultism and magick, I felt that I was unique and had little in common with any of my forebears. I read her reports with a certain detached interest, but I felt that it wasn’t really relevant to my life in the present world.

This sentiment continued for some time until I underwent a reformation in regards to my pagan beliefs. A few of my most respected pagan friends then gave me some constructive criticism and informed me that it was natural for pagans to have a certain veneration and reverence for their ancestors, regardless of what they might have been like when alive. I have also encountered individuals engaged in the African Religious Traditions who told me that the most important spirits in any kind of root-work or invocation regimen were one’s ancestors. Without them, a magician had no allies nor anyone to guide or vouch for them. In other words, without the ancestors, a magician was alone and without spiritual allies.

I pondered all of these various ideas and came to realize that they were all correct, and this completely changed my opinion and attitude towards my living family and its resident ancestors. I don’t have to either engage with these spirits or seek specific guidance from them, but I do need to at least keep the “spirit door” open for them, and to honor and respect them in turn. In doing this, I have encountered some vague but intriguing notions that I am not the only one in my family line who has had an interest or an ability with magick and occultism. I can’t exactly determine who they were or from which genetic family line or time period they once lived, but I feel them and I sense that they are very much behind the scenes when I perform various magical or liturgical rites. My own mother, who is recently departed, seemed to show her ghostly presence to me whenever I perform the Mass of the Great Goddess, and of course, our recently departed furry friend, the cat Stars, is very much actively participating in the work of the grove where he is buried.

All of these elements have come together and forged within me a very different attitude and perspective in regards to my ancestors. I now have a special sacred place in my library where I have placed all of the pictures that I have of my linear ancestors. They occupy a place of honor and learning within my occult and spiritual work. Certainly, a number of these ancestors would have objected to my occult practices if they were alive (and in fact a few of them did), but now that they are dead, it would seem that I have realized a greater acceptance from them. I have acquired an attitude of honor and reverence for these important individuals regardless of what kind of person they actually were when alive. It would seem that the transition of death gives a person a certain amount of restitution and rehabilitation. Whether they were scoundrels or irascible tyrants during life, death has a way of mitigating all of their faults so that they become worthy of honor and remembrance simply because they were ancestors. Perhaps this is one of the greater mysteries of death, although still being alive, I am unable to confirm this as a fact.

Another thing that I learned is that we have both physical ancestors and we also have spiritual or magical ancestors. We have our actual genetic forebears, and we also have individuals whose traditions we have been initiated into or whose beliefs and practices we borrowed and incorporated into our own spiritual and magical work. Eastern mystical traditions as well as some western venerate their founders and include them in their prayers and spiritual practices. Catholics have their saints arrayed in great abundance, but western occultists have founders and trail blazers who could also receive the same degree of veneration, honor or respect.

We who work with these traditions believe that those individuals whom we venerate are not dead, mute or lost to time, but instead they have a manner of existence that continues beyond death. These spiritual ancestors, as I call them, have become part of the egregore of the spiritual system that they helped to found. Because so many people believe, think or talk about them, and even pray to them, thereby building up their legendary mythic persona, they have become far more powerful and important in death than they ever were in life. As occultists we can choose to either engage with these spiritual ancestors or we can ignore them, but I believe that we ignore them at our own cost. Spiritual personalities that are part of a tradition’s egregore are quite important, and I believe that one must engage with these various individuals in order to fully engage with that tradition. In my opinion, to omit them or somehow denigrate them is to greatly impoverish the holistic experience of that tradition.

Imagine how poor Catholic magic would be without the power of the Saints and the Archangels. The founder of Christianity, Jesus Christ himself, is so pivotal to Christianity that it would seem to be totally absurd to omit him from any kind of Christian service or religious celebration. Yet it is no more absurd to omit the founder or trailblazer of any given occult tradition from one’s considerations and practices. So it is for this reason that I accept and believe that I must give a certain degree of respect, honor and even veneration to those individuals who laid the occult foundation for me to follow many decades later.  

This brings me to the point of my article, and that is the answer as to why I supposedly venerate certain individuals who I believe are critically important to me, and therefore, are my personal spiritual ancestors. One of my friends recently said that he doesn’t believe in putting anyone on a pedestal, which I guess means that he doesn’t subscribe to venerating ancestors, whether genetic or spiritual. I believe that everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, but I think that taking this attitude makes any magician a lot poorer and less able to be spiritually guided and assisted. Perhaps this does occur whether one has this attitude or not, but I have found in my own work that engaging in the proper attitude of honor, respect and veneration makes it much more likely that I will be fully conscious of any positive encounter with my ancestors, and in fact, I highly welcome it. 

Some have obliquely criticized me that venerating such individuals as S. L. MacGregor Mathers, Aleister Crowley, Gerald B. Gardner or even Alex Sanders is ridiculous. These individuals were just ordinary men who lived and died in the last century, and they were as likely to be highly flawed as well as particularly gifted. Of course this criticism can apply to nearly everyone, since we are all flawed and imperfect who are also mortal. In the eyes of my critics I must be some kind of naive fool or a complete sucker to venerate such individuals as these (or for that matter, to venerate anyone). 

Even so, we live in a nation and a world that venerates its past leaders, ingenious creators, inventors and military heroes. Our public areas are filled with statues, busts and commemorative edifices. We have millions of acres of graveyards carefully tended with the past dead, so it would seem that a respect and reverence for our forebears is part of our culture, whether we admit it or not. So, with all of this in mind, I can hardly be perceived as a naive fool because I venerate my spiritual and magickal forebears. In fact, I believe that I am doing what only comes natural to a modern pagan and a member of my culture.

As I have said, founders usually become spiritual attributes associated with the tradition that they established. In this manner, Mathers, Crowley, Gardner and Sanders are alive in some fashion, existing within the ever growing and waning power and prestige of the traditions that they founded. Regardless of whether someone like Nick Farrell or Pat Zelewski excoriates and denigrates the history of someone like MacGregor Mathers, it would seem that he continues to have a powerful presence within the rituals and methodologies that he originally wrote and passed on to his followers. Not only do I find this lack of respect and honor on their parts toward Mathers to be offensive, it would seem to be a very un-pagan thing to do as well. 

Since I have established above that it is proper and a good pagan practice to venerate, honor and respect one’s physical and spiritual ancestors, then I and others who have taken the teachings and practices from the Golden Dawn should naturally have this same kind of attitude to the founder of that tradition. In fact, I would say that anyone who is an initiate in the Golden Dawn should have a particular veneration and respect for Mathers if they are going to be actively engaged with that tradition. In my opinion, to denigrate and devalue Mathers is to do violence to the egregore of the Golden Dawn. Such a person is not only guilty of a kind of attempted spiritual patricide, but they would seem to have stepped fully out of the egregore altogether, and could no longer be considered as actively engaged with that tradition in any kind of magical or spiritual manner.

Finally, do we judge someone who lived either decades or centuries ago by the scant information that exists about them, or do we judge them by their contribution to our world? Certainly Beethoven was a highly flawed individual who few either liked or loved when he was alive; but it was his transcendent music that made him a venerated and respected composer. Do we consider someone foolish who has a bust of Beethoven in their home? Of course not, since his music was so extraordinary in that time, and it is still performed and listened to today. The same thing could be said of Shakespeare or any other great author, poet, or literary master.

In our post-modern world, many westerners have become iconoclasts and have rejected the relevance of their forebears, despite the fact that we owe our cultural heritage and our lives to many individuals who lived in the past. Their efforts have enriched our world today, so giving them their due seems hardly foolish or reprehensible. I think that have made my point, and I believe that now you might understand why I have said certain things in my previous articles about my spiritual ancestors.

Zalewski’s Critique of My Review for “King Over the Water”

One other thing that I would like to mention before I end this rather long article is that Pat Zalewski has recently criticized me for my review of Nick Farrell’s book, “King Over the Water.” I would like to quickly respond to a few of his points, since it does fit into the overall topic of this article. In his response to me, Pat made the following point:

“It was interesting to read a review of King over the Water, which has recently popped up. The author cited Sword of Wisdom as a good Mathers biography and essentially admonished Nick for his analysis of Mathers. Now most of us know that Sword of Wisdom was an informative book, but was essentially a whitewash of Mathers and depicted him as a hero throughout. Now Nick does not need me to defend his work as he is quite capable of doing it himself. What I am commenting on here is how people (like the reviewer) have an idealized mental construct of Mathers and don't want that view shattered with some facts getting in the way, as did the author of Sword of Wisdom. The review was a defence [sic] of the mental image of Mathers and what he should have been like, not like he was. He apparently cannot differentiate the work Mathers did from the character. Howe lays it out [on the] table as to what Mathers was. Though Howe's work is dated, the new material on Mathers that has come to light since Howe, is more peripheral than core.”

Of course, anyone who read my review would note that my problem with Nick Farrell’s book is that it is filled with conjecture, innuendo and talking points; but it has very little actual historical research in it. The lack of citations and the sparse bibliography alone demonstrate that this work is very poorly researched. Farrell has created a supposed psychological profile of Mathers, even when there is so little supporting facts to make such an effort possible.

If Mr. Farrell was such a good historian, then why did he fail to notice that there was another Mathers family in Bedford (possibly related), and that the student who supposedly went to the local grammar school was actually not the same person as MacGregor Mathers, since the birth month in the school registry was in March instead of January? This little fact was explored in the “Sword of Wisdom,” representing one of the many irregularities found in attempting to reconstruct Mathers’ personal history. In short, we don’t really know if Mathers attended that school or not. Maybe he was home schooled. So little is known about his childhood, and also, so much is a mystery about him even as an adult that much of what do know could be considered speculation. With such little information it would be impossible to make a coherent history of Mathers, or even attempt to build up a psychological profile.

Mr. Farrell’s book is more fiction and political talking points than it is factual, and if Mr. Zalewksi thinks that Farrell has presented a factual historical analysis of Mathers, then I wonder how he can make such a statement without perjuring himself. It would seem, as I have pointed out in my review, that Farrell has a hidden agenda for writing two books that disparage and denigrate Mathers. I don’t believe that Mathers was a perfect human being, but I do believe that he deserves honor and respect from us who have used his work to augment our own. It is his work that is being judged, not his person, because so much time has passed that no one is able to build a detailed factual history of him.

Pat continues with the following comment:  

“The reviewer was clearly out of his depth, going by some of the contrasts given. What Nick did in his book was to try and get rid of the fantasized Mathers and let the real one stand up. Now not everyone will agree with all of Nick's comments, but at least he tried to separate fact from fantasy which is a lot more than the reviewer did.”

Well “Golly Gee Wilikers,” I must be out of my depth because I believe that the contribution that Mathers has made to western occultism and the practice of magick is extremely important. If I think that Mathers was important, then I must be either delusional or just plain stupid!

I regret to inform Mr. Zalewski that I am equally as capable of making this kind of judgement as he is, and as a magical practitioner of nearly 40 years, I think that I am not at all out of my depth! I believe that Pat’s condescending attitude towards me is really quite obnoxious, and I feel that I can completely reject it as a bit of character assassination. Nick created a fictionalized cartoon character of Mathers in his book, whereas I judge Mathers based solely on his work. That’s hardly attempting to separate fact from fantasy, and I think that my opinion and attitude towards Mathers is much more realistic. I believe that we can argue about what Mathers was really like for the next century, but it doesn’t change the fact that his work was critically important to many magical practitioners today. The historical Mathers can never really be known because so little information has survived, but his work lives on, and for this we can happily venerate and honor him, just as we do with Beethoven or Mozart, regardless of what they were really like as individuals.

Pat goes to say that he does admire what Mathers produced for the Golden Dawn, albeit simply because he follows those practices and teachings, but he doesn’t enshrine him. In reality, he and Farrell do nothing but disparage and denigrate Mathers, so it hardly seems that there is much truth or sincerity in regards to their supposed “admiration.” I think that it’s obvious that Pat and Nick are really engaged in a serious bit of historical revisionism simply because they want to elevate the Stella Matutina (which is their own lineage) over the A+O; it’s all really as simple as that. 

Anyway, I think that I have made my point, and I believe that my readers will now understand what I mean when I say that I venerate certain spiritual ancestors. In my opinion, taking this attitude towards one’s spiritual and magickal forebears (as well as one’s genetic ancestors) is a testament to a practitioner’s sense of honor, worth and continuity. You don’t have to follow my way of doing things in regards to the ancestors, but if you are a modern pagan, then I think that omitting them from your religious and magical considerations might be a serious mistake.

Frater Barrabbas

Public Interpretation is a Writer’s Responsibility

There is quite a dust-up going on in the Golden Dawn community, and I am not particularly interested in getting too deep into it. However, the source of the controversy is the latest book that Nick Farrell has writen about one of the founders of the Golden Dawn, S. L. MacGregor Mathers. I will admit that Mathers was quite a controversial figure in his time, and like all human beings, he had great virtues and terrible failings. Like most founders of occult organizations, he was a complex man who is now both honored and maligned by modern posterity. 

Ever since Ellic Howe’s book “Magicians of the Golden Dawn” and Francis King’s book “Ritual Magic in England,” it has been fashionable to paint Mathers as a sociopath and to declare that the Golden Dawn was based on deception and ruled by tyranny. Of course, my favorite book about the Golden Dawn’s history is still the one penned by Ithell Colquhoun, entitled “Sword of Wisdom: MacGregor Mathers and the Golden Dawn.” I truly wish that this book was republished in a paper back, since it is one of the few books that deals with the various personalities of the Golden Dawn and its various offshoot orders in a fair and compassionate manner. I am lucky that I own a copy of this book, and it’s one of my treasures.

Ms. Colquhoun wrote her book in manner that she did because she was an occultist and a one time member of the order. Ellic Howe and Francis King were never members of the Golden Dawn, and in fact, Mr. Howe was a historian with little compassion or actual sympathy for the order or its various members. Francis King’s relationship with occultism was very complex. While he managed to write and publish some excellent occult books, he also delighted in reporting on the most salacious and scandalous aspects of the modern occult movement. To this day, I don’t really know if Mr. King ever belonged to any occult organization, so if he wasn’t very sympathetic to the various founders of western occultism, it shouldn’t be too surprising.

Therefore, if someone is a member of an occult organization, you would think that they would be sympathetic to their subject matter if they happened to write a history of their order. However, the latest writer attempting to write the history of the Golden Dawn, and to make a name for himself as both the cutting edge historian and insightful occultist, is Nick Farrell. In his latest book, “King Over the Water,” he has sought to enlighten the public about Mathers and his various failings while attempting to exonerate the order and its teachings. This is quite a balancing act, to be sure. To quote the advertising on this book as it is marketed in Amazon dot com:

“In King Over the Water, Golden Dawn magician Nick Farrell paints a picture of the founders of the Golden Dawn becoming out of their depth as the Order began to create magicians. Rather than painting Mathers as an eccentric genius, Farrell sees him as an autocratic fantasist. He sees Mathers struggling to keep up as his students rapidly became better than him at the system he created, and shows how he was unable to raise his game to help the Order develop further. ”

You can read over this advertisement and it becomes pretty obvious that the book seeks to show Mathers in a particularly bad light. Instead of giving him credit for having founded the order and written most of its lore, he instead seeks to show that the lore stands above and beyond Mathers, who wasn’t apparently up to the job of building a comprehensive system of magickal occultism. I had judged this book to be just another a “hatchet job” on Mathers, so I haven’t bothered to purchase this book yet, but maybe I will so I can at least do a modest job of critiquing it. I am not an expert when it comes to the history of the Golden Dawn and its various affiliates, but I know the basic history. 

The Golden Dawn was founded around 116 years ago, so attempting to investigate the intentions and motives of its founder ends up being nothing more than a guessing game. There are historical records to be certain, but the individuals are now long dead, and their life stories are fragmentary at best, or in the case of Mathers, there are still a lot of mysteries. I believe that it would be better to honor the founders of the Golden Dawn for their unwitting contribution to western occultism and the practice of magick rather than attempting to reveal them as failed human beings. After all, we all have virtues and flaws, and we all accomplish some things and fail to accomplish others in our all too brief of a lifespan.

However, one thing that Nick Farrell did write up in his book that has particularly offended the active organization and honored initiates of the Alpha et Omega is an ambiguous line that he wrote in his book. David Griffin has quoted that part of the book which he found quite offensive, taking some sentences that were actually in two paragraphs and putting them together. However, after examining the actual two paragraphs, I still believe that David presented the basic idea of what was being said. The wording is very ambiguous, and of course, no names are named, so it’s up to the reader to determine the actual meaning implied. 

Whenever an author uses such phrases it’s because he or she doesn’t want to get sued for libel, or at least create a greater controversy. David and his colleagues at the one and only Alpha et Omega operating in the world (as far as I know) have taken this to mean that Nick is calling their organization a “cult.” Here is a paraphrase of the what was said in Nick’s book, and what has gotten the A+O crowd royally pissed off. 

“By the end of the 20th Century this availability of [Golden Dawn] information enabled various reenactment groups to be established. Some of these groups are sound... Unfortunately, other groups border on religious or political cults, typically centered on a single leader.... Typically such groups claim a link to that section of the Golden Dawn Order known as the Alpha et Omega or AO.”

 

I don’t know about you, but if someone wrote something like that about my organization, even if it was couched in ambiguity, I would be quite upset. Nick has denied that he was singling out David’s organization, and has said that he was referring to the recently fallen GD patriarch, Bob Zink and his group. Whatever Nick Farrell’s intention when he wrote these two paragraphs, the interpretation is wholly in the provenance of the reader, since he elected to use innuendo instead of clearly stating his meaning. If the A+O organization is upset at what Nick wrote, then they are fully justified, in my opinion.

As a writer, I am responsible for how people interpret my words, regardless of my intentions. I might say something that I consider innocuous in one of my blog articles or in one of my books, but if a group of people find it offensive, then I am responsible for their umbrage. I can ignore it, or attempt to explain my meaning, or just wade into the conflict and call my detractors names and start a flame-war. The sensible thing to do is to apologize and to write a retraction. I had to do that act of humble contrition on more than one occasion when I wrote something which was erroneous or managed to anger some of my readers. This can happen to any writer, and whether one’s intention was pure and the offending writing was an honest mistake, it doesn’t really matter. You wrote it and so therefore, you own it. It’s just a fact of life that anyone who seeks to be a writer has to deal with this kind of public backlash at some point in their career. The best advice is to be compassionate and seek to amend the wrong if possible.

However, instead of attempting to mitigate the anger that some in the Golden Dawn community felt about what Nick Farrell had written, he has steadfastly refused to take any responsibility, and in fact has resorted to calling his detractors “Brown Shirts,” as if to say that they represent some kind of fascist wing of the Golden Dawn community. That was like throwing gasoline on a brush fire, and it only made things a lot worse. Not only did Mr. Farrell write a hatchet job book on Mathers, but he also insulted some of the members of an operating second order faction. Why anyone would do this is beyond my comprehension. The notoriety will undoubtedly sell more books than what might have happened without the controversy, but the legacy that Nick Farrell is leaving to the rest of us is anything but positive and constructive.

Of course, to deal with this issue, David Griffin has decided to engage in some melodrama and a bit of tongue in cheek, talking about a Godfather-like conspiracy operating behind the scenes. (The only real conspiracy is hubris, personal vanity and egotism.) Some months ago David was comparing Farrell and Zelewski to the Star Trek Borg, which I might add was a humorous way of dealing with individuals who had caused him no small outrage. I guess making fun of your adversaries is better than trying to somehow silence them. If the propaganda against David was correct, then we could expect a mafia style assassination of his detractors, but of course, that won’t really happen. (We won’t get a blog article telling us that Nick Farrell sleeps with the fishes.) What has really happened is a number of adepts in the A+O are quite upset at their treatment by Farrell and company. They are outraged by the slander and the constant attacks against their organization. They aren’t guilty of starting any of these altercations, but they are quite zealous in defending themselves. Who can blame them for that?

As for myself, I am watching this all happen on the internet through the venue of various Yahoo groups and blog articles. There are those who are defending Mr. Farrell and showing their disdain and disklike for David Griffin and his associates, while others are defending their right to practice their lore in peace and goodwill.

All of this is very simple to sort out. The A+O has declared that it is in contact with the same group of secret chiefs that Mathers was originally in contact with. Having met the gate-keepers of this clandestine organization, I can say for a fact that I believe that their claim is legitimate. That really shouldn’t matter to any other faction of the Golden Dawn. They can seek out a connection to this group, or find their own connections, or use the various available inner plane contacts to develop their own lore. There isn’t any need to defame the A+O for making this claim, and there is plenty of room in the world for more than one faction of the Golden Dawn to peacefully coexist.

Still, in order for there to be peace in the Golden Dawn community, various individuals need to refrain from writing and publishing negative broadsides about other factions in the overall organization - or for that matter, writing hatchet jobs on the founders. Until that happens, then it seems obvious that there will be a lot of friction and occasional flame-war flare-ups.

I find this overall state of the Golden Dawn community very sad and disheartening. Instead of engaging in a war of words, I think that it would be better to teach the public (and other magicians, such as myself) about the benefits and social obligations of being an initiate and adept of the Golden Dawn. In time, even this latest flame-war will die down, but I hope it does end soon. Maybe if Mr. Farrell would apologize for what he wrote about the A+O (regardless of his intentions), that would be a good place to start, in my opinion.

Frater Barrabbas 

Why I Venerate the Golden Dawn

I got my first copy of the Golden Dawn book edited by Israel Regardie when it became a single volume. I can remember for a few years prior coveting the two volume version with its own slip case, but it was beyond my ability to afford. It was the great prize for anyone who sought to learn ritual or ceremonial magick, and was carefully displayed behind glass so it wouldn’t get stolen. The new Llewellyn edition was a single hardcover volume with a splashy colorful cover, but the price was right, and the old two volume edition was no longer in print. I bought the new version, back in the early autumn of 1975, and eagerly took it home to extract all of its secrets. I found that task to be nearly impossible, since my nascent intellectual skills weren’t really up to the task. I might have been a twenty year old adult, but my ability to read through hundreds of pages of arcane lore was a bit too much for my reading skills at the time. It would seem that I needed some background in order to fully master this lore.

After I joined the Coven from Hell, I was taught most of the material from the Golden Dawn book, except perhaps the initiation rituals, and that included the Qabbalah, the Enochian material and the basic rituals. Once shown how these rituals worked, I immediately began to incorporate them into my own ritual work. In less than a year, I had my own versions of these rituals, but of them, only the Superior Pentagram, Superior Hexagram, the Middle Pillar, Qabalistic Cross and the Rose Cross rituals were used. The hexagram was soon replaced by the septagram, which I had always preferred, but those other four rituals were seamlessly incorporated into my magickal repertoire. I did fail to figure out how to use the lesser pentagram and hexagram rituals in conjunction with the superior rites, so I never mastered the Golden Dawn methodology for performing elemental, planetary and zodiacal magick. Instead, over time, I invented my own independent system of magick, but the rituals, structures and devices were expropriated from the Golden Dawn. This is because there wasn’t any Golden Dawn organization for me to join, and to this day I remained an outsider to that tradition. 

So it would seem that I used, in a rather cavalier manner, some of the magickal rituals of the Golden Dawn, some of the Enochian materials and pretty much ignored the rest. Since I had books from Aleister Crowley, I found that a combination of Crowley and the Golden Dawn seemed to help me fill in the void. Between these two authors, I was able to expand my knowledge and capability to craft and build my own personal system of magick. I was, in a word, an occult lore pirate, and both Israel Regardie and Aleister Crowley facilitated that plundering. I am sure that many others have found this published material both useful and practical, however, others within the Golden Dawn tradition have called both of them oath breakers. Had they not published the material from the Golden Dawn, I probably wouldn’t have been able to craft the magickal system that I did eventually derive. So I owe a debt of gratitude to these two individuals who are not honored in some of the more traditional Golden Dawn circles.

Since that time, I have moved on and now use my own tried and true ritual structures, devices and components, all of which are now far removed from the Golden Dawn tradition. I have also refrained from purchasing any materials that are supposedly culled from secret documents that are still in use by that order. I have done this out of respect for the active tradition of the Golden Dawn, and because this lore would obviously not be particularly relevant to me or my organization. Thus, I wouldn’t bother seeking to purchase any of the revelatory books published by either Farrell or Zelewski, since I feel that such published works are quite disrespectful to those who are working within a living tradition of the Golden Dawn.

I am also quite cold to anyone writing a history of the Golden Dawn where the founders, such as Westcott and Mathers, and others, are reviled as frauds or shown to be incompetent. Years ago I read Ellic Howe’s book “Magicians of the Golden Dawn” and considered it a harsh and even scurrilous biography of that organization. I have no illusions as to the follies, flaws and failings of individuals and humanity in general, but I think that I would rather focus on the accomplished work of such individuals instead of attempting to judge them many decades after their death. This is why I consider Aleister Crowley to be an important writer and contributor to western occultism regardless of how he behaved or what kind of man he was while alive. So, for me, these individuals are judged by their work and their legacy. If they left behind writings that I find important to my own occult work, then I will judge them as a valuable resource, and nothing more. I think that its pretty tough to judge someone without personally knowing them, and even harder to judge someone who has been dead for a long time.

Whatever I think of the original founders of the Golden Dawn must therefore be based entirely on their work. There is so little historical information about Mathers that his life story has become something of a cipher that holds nearly any opinion, from the gloriously good to the vilifyingly evil. Aleister Crowley painted a picture of Mathers that was very dark and disturbing in the so called fictional work “Moon Child,” and Dion Fortune supposedly accused Mina Mathers of having cursed her. I think that both of these opinions are likely fictional creations that do a great injustice to both of these individuals. If I were to judge the founders of the Golden Dawn, it would be to venerate them, since the Golden Dawn lore was so ahead of its time and such a radical departure from anything that had been practiced in the 19th century up to that time.  I would have to consider Mathers, Westcott and others to be creative geniuses, since the Golden Dawn lore was so advanced. The fact that the rituals and documents of the Golden Dawn are still relevant today, in the early 21st century, should demonstrate just how advanced the lore was back when it was first presented to members of that order. To members of the order back in the early 1890's, the lore must seemed like something totally radical!

Some have said that the founders of the Golden Dawn were frauds or incompetent, and that their vision of the world, populated with rare encounters with flesh and blood advanced high adepts is a myth or a delusion. I think that the Golden Dawn lore speaks for itself, since either the founders were incredible geniuses, or that they had help from other unnamed individuals. These mysterious personages would have been quite enlightened and likely members of an elite organization, which was called the Third Order. Either perspective shows that Mathers, for all his supposed flaws and social issues, was a true adept and facilitator for even higher adepts (visible or invisible), since he was, after all, a man, and the lore that he presented to his order was beyond anything previously seen in the western world. For this reason alone, I venerate Mather’s unwitting contribution to the occult world, which is his legacy, and I also venerate the Golden Dawn. I may not be a member, but as an outsider, I can easily see its long term value.

Frater Barrabbas    

Happy Samhain 2010 - A New Year

I wanted to take a moment and wish everyone a very happy and safe Samhain/Hallows for this year. For some, this represents the boundary of a new year, where the old year has died and the new begins to emerge. It can be a time of reflection, insight, remembrance of those that passed - both recently and further away in time. It is a time of commemorating those deceased that we admired, emulated to some degree, or even accepted as mentors. Having a spiritual or occult mentor is truly an important feature in the life of an occultist, witch or ritual magician. However, that mentor doesn’t always have to be alive in order for one to find their work inspirational and deeply meaningful.

Dead mentors are probably almost as important as the living ones, since they offer us a legacy without any real strings attached. For me, three individuals have acted like unwitting mentors to me over the course of my career as a witch, occultist and magician. These three individuals are, in order of importance, Alex Sanders, Aleister Crowley and Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers. There are other authors and teachers who have had an impact on me (and who are no longer living), but these three have had the greatest impact on me in regards to my studies and practices.

Alex Sanders was probably the most flamboyant witch and ceremonial magician in the mid to late 20th century since Old Gerald himself. Alex freely mixed practical Gardnerian witchcraft with the Golden Dawn system of magick along with parts of the Solomonic grimoire tradition. In many ways, Alex pointed the way for me to proceed in my own spiritual and magickal travels. Even though I was initiated into the Alexandrian tradition on Candlemas, 1976, I never got the chance to meet Alex or Maxine Sanders while they lived together in London in the 70's. I had an acquaintance who met them and even briefly circled with them as a guest, but I never got the opportunity to travel to England to meet them myself. (Some who knew him well have told me that this was probably a good thing, since Alex was reputed to be a very “naughty” boy.)

Alex left behind very few writings, and from what I was able to determine from his written lectures and what others who knew him said about his studies, he was much more of a classical occultist and trained medium than I am, since he readily mixed eastern philosophies, Theosophy and spiritualism with his practical workings. However, Alex was quite an experimenter, and was attempting to fuse a number of different fragmentary systems of occultism together, to create his own version of a pagan system of the Golden Dawn. He lionized the use of the Rose Ankh, which he saw as a replacement or addition to the Rose Cross. Still, the many pictures of him and Maxine, and the books by Stewart Farrar, particularly the first book, “What Witches Do,” and the more nonsensical biography “King of the Witches” completely captured my imagination at a very young age. I can say that my personal and public systems of ritual magick owe a great debt to Alex Sanders – so to that end, I am thankful that he lived and made such a name for himself. It inspired many others to pursue their own path of witchcraft and ceremonial magick, especially me.

The next individual is Aleister Crowley, whose writings and books are an important part of my personal occult library. I have studied “Uncle Al,” as I like to call him, quite rigorously, and have found many of his essays, books and rituals to be highly informative. What I am not crazy about is how Uncle Al lived his life and dealt with people. I have also found some of his writings to be purposely misleading and perhaps even a bit harmful if taken literally. I, for one, would not see any purpose to cutting my arm with a razor blade every time I happened to utter the first person pronoun – this would certainly not, in my opinion, lead one to adopt a humble and ego-less state of mind. I also do not consider myself a Thelemite, nor do I see the “Book of the Law” as holy writ. You won’t find me parroting out of context tracts from that work. I do consider the Book of the Law to be an inspired work, just as the book “Vision and the Voice.” But inspired works are to be analyzed, not enshrined as items of worship.

Since I am not a person of the book, as it were, then I wouldn’t accept any writings as either holy or inviolable. Still, I consider Aleister Crowley to be the father of modern paganism and ritual magick. He was the first who proposed making the adoption of a godhead the principal practice in the art of magick, as he often would fully assume the godhead of Horus when he worked it. Witches and modern pagans have taken this practice to an even greater extreme than Crowley would have allowed, which has both points for and against it.

I was first introduced to Crowley’s writings when I was a teenager, which was a time when a lot of his books and writings were being reintroduced to the western world. After all these years, I still find myself going back and reading over his writings. Whether I agree with his personal lifestyle or fail to believe that he was some kind of occult messiah, I still find a great deal of value in his writings, therefore, I owe him a debt of gratitude.

A few friends of mine, some of whom are Thelemites, have agreed that if we could have actually met Crowley in some manner, we wouldn’t have liked him. Crowley was arrogant, cruel to his friends, allies and followers, abusive to his lovers, and an all around nasty fellow. He grew up wealthy and privileged, but died a poor man with a terrible Heroin addiction. While his personal life is not one to recommend to anyone, his writings stand out for all time. For the sake of his writings, I am grateful for his contribution to the practice of ritual and ceremonial magick.

The final individual that I feel an affinity and respect for is Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, another giant in the annals of western occultism and ceremonial magick. Mathers was responsible for the formulation and establishment of the Golden Dawn organization. It was Mathers who brought the practice of magick from where it had been left in the 17th century into the late 19th century.

Mathers was an excellent scholar and researcher in his own right, and his unwitting legacy stands the test of time. I say unwitting, because Mathers would not have agreed with the Golden Dawn materials being published, and he unsuccessfully attempted to stop Crowley from publishing that lore in the Equinox. After that incident, the flood gate was opened, and there was nothing that Mathers could do to stem the tide. He passed away in the post WWI influenza epidemic that ravaged Paris and he didn’t live to see the fruit of that unwarranted publication. A few other of Mathers’ personal occult manuscripts were published by Crowley, and these, along with the Golden Dawn corpus and the few of Mathers’ legitimate publications represent a massive collection of transitional documents, showing how the occult lore of the earlier modern era was evolved into a system that is both elegant and workable today. Mathers’ legacy to the modern practice of ritual and ceremonial magick is virtually priceless, since the Golden Dawn has spawned a multitude of magickal and pagan systems throughout the western world.

I have often given Mathers a great deal of credit for starting the modern occult revolution of the 20th century, particularly in regards to the practice of magick and western based occultism. Little is actually known about Mathers and his life, and the various pundits and biographers who have written about him have not been very kind to his memory, beginning with Crowley himself. I would suspect that Mathers was a completely honorable man who steadfastly subscribed to the proper chain of transmission and secrecy inherent in the occult orders and organizations of the 18th and 19th centuries. That many no longer hold these values and beliefs as sacrosanct does not in any way diminish Mathers, his accomplishments and his steadfast belief in the Order that he had helped to found. Whether one believes that Mathers had contact with the secret chiefs or not, no one can dispute the legacy that he gave to all of us today who practice ceremonial or ritual magick with an initiatory basis. I suspect that if he were able to witness all that has happened to his lore over the last century, I think that he would have seen it as a positive manifestation of this genius rather than an abhorrent aberration to be condemned. He would not have agreed with the manner of the transmission of this lore, but perhaps would have consigned himself that its revelation did indeed help start a powerful cultural and spiritual movement. That effect may have been the over arching purpose as to why the revelation had occurred in the first place. 

So, these three luminaries are ultimately but not directly responsible for the fruit of my studies and the system of magick that I have forged. During this time of honoring the dead, I shall light a candle and say a Mass for all three of them. They have helped to make my practices and beliefs truly realized, and for this fact, I am deeply grateful.

Frater Barrabbas