Ten Tons of Flax!
It is amazing the amount of drek that is on the Internet sometimes. I was thinking about the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn today and my thesis. Since I put it up on Lulu as a free download, I happened to go there. I then made the mistake of doing a search there on
"Golden Dawn". Whoa! 83 items!
Of course, like anything in life, out of 83 items, 90% are probably of sub-standard value. I must say that I wasn’t overblown by the things I saw there though I did see a few things from friends or acquaintances of mine who are practicing magicians. Not exactly a center of scholastic endeavor, unfortunately.
I’ve been thinking of doing a paper on Golden Dawn ritual, mapping the Neophyte ceremony using the method of Frits Staals that Richard Payne makes us of in his analysis of the Ajikan in the Journal of Chinese Religion and his dissertation on the Goma. I’m not fully convinced that it is the best method but there seem to be no excellent or even good methods of analyzing different rituals and comparing them that aren’t simply long discussions of them. At least this method presents the data in a different manner.
I’ve been wanting to try to publish an essay or two in the field where I actually did my master’s and I figure that it wouldn’t hurt on my doctoral application to have a publication credit, if something I write is accepted and doesn’t take two years to show up. I am still surprised at how little actual academic work is done on the Golden Dawn, of all things.
I’ve also been considering trying to publish the Allan Bennett rituals that JFC Fuller copies down between 1906 and 1908. I have copies of most of this material from the Ransom Center in Austin. I would have to get their permission, because it is from their archive, but, as far as I know, given the date and history, it is all public domain outside of it being in a collection. Fuller’s handwriting is pretty clear and the illustrations are very well executed, as I’ve mentioned previously. Given the amount of work involved, I’m not sure that it would be worth the work to transcribe 400+ pages of Fuller’s handwriting in order to try to publish rituals of the 1890s Golden Dawn. I mean, it might sell all of 100 copies.
April 21st, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Hi there Al,
Can I be among the 100 to encourage you in these endeavours? It would be very useful to see the Neophyte analysed in an non-esoteric manner. I have little skills in these disciplines, so go for it.
As for publishing Fuller’s work, it would be of great value, for both scholars and Western magicians alike. Again…please go ahead.
Sadly, I waded through most of the 80 odd items on Lulu when I first saw your link; you are right, mostly not worth the bandwidth :)
Peregrin
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Interesting subject, The Golden Dawn. I studied it for a time and considered following it’s teachings before I came to Buddhism. I read, “The Golden Dawn” as revealed by Israel Regardie and enjoyed much within it. I still relate to a lot of the mystical schools around the world, especially Taoism.
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:30 pm
The chief problem that I have with the Golden Dawn, and almost all occult thought in the West, is that it is a broken lineage that has lost, for the most parts, its goals.
If you really look at the tradition of practice, the adepts, incarnated as us or otherwise, are really similar to the ideas in other traditions around saints or the bodhisattvas. They work for the salvation of sentient beings and the healing of the world.
Unfortunately, the tradition basically became one passed down by texts, not mouth to ear from realized teacher to student. Part of what led me to Buddhism is that it was a surviving and vital living tradition. So much of the Western Mystery tradition is just the remanents of a earlier tradition that died out, mostly, and was reconstructed.
If one wanted to be a part of the Western Mystery tradition and have a largely unbroken lineage, you’re really need to be a Roman Catholic or Orthodox priest or monk or Rabbi or the like. Most modern magicians have broken away from Christianity, Islam, and Judaism so they’ve also lost the continuity that those traditions have.
Part of the other reason that I left involvement is that I’m a pretty crappy monotheist and don’t have a typical idea of theism at all.
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Yeah I was a crappy monotheist too. It never made sense me. I just didn’t like all the black and white thinking.