In the last few years, a clique of fundamentalist occultists has emerged who claim that they are following the Original Golden Dawn system. They cut off all developments after Mathers was expelled. For those who don’t know, the central focus for this change means that the god-awful portal ritual in which the student is subjected to a boring lecture on diagrams and the Masonic style of giving the passwords and a funny handshake is superior to the longer more magical ritual which most people know about. The original ritual can be seen in my Mathers Last Secret Book because the AO could not be bothered changing it themselves. So is there anything in the original Golden Dawn teachings that is better
Nick Farrell
Beyond the Sun is out
The rewrite of the history of Dr Felkin and Whare Ra, along with the 7=4 and 6=5 rituals is now out through Skylight Press, who also did my Magical Imagination book. For those who saw the now improbably rare first edition, the book is much larger. It goes much more into the Whare Ra history from its beginning to closure. it looks at its involvement with Anne Davies and Paul Case and looks the the reason for its demise. It also looks at the rituals and recounts some of the experiences of those who went through it and provides some of the teachings that they receieved. It also deals with some of my own experiences meeting and working with Whare Ra people. Felkin
21ST CENTURY MAGIC – a lecture given at the XVIII Foro ACCE in Nerja
The following is the speech I wrote for the XVIII Foro ACCE in Nerja Spain in 2017. In fact I tinkered with the talk considerably "on the fly" to adjust for the audience. I went over time and was only about half way through what follows. Still it was a great time, and my first time in Spain. Magicians living in the 21st century are living in a time of transformation where the structures upon which magic is built are changing. Magic has emerged from an effective 2000-year-old slumber where practitioners lived in fear of their neighbours reporting them to the authorities. There was a flowering at the end of the 19th century with the likes of the Golden dawn, Alister
Golden Dawn evolves
The Golden Dawn is evolving and there there is no right or wrong as it changes into what ever direction its teachers take it. When we look at the Golden Dawn system there appears to be a big pile of papers. Indeed so called “bible” of the group “the Golden Dawn” is huge book. However the pile of papers is just the tip of an iceburg of material which has been generated by Golden Dawn people since 1888. All these documents offer the work of people at the time who were working through the system and some took the system into some interesting directions. It is fairly clear that for all the amount of paper that exists on the Golden Dawn
HOW PHILOSOPHY HELPS MAGICAL DEVELOPMENT
Humans are extremely bad at learning from the past, yet at the same time they cling onto concepts which are long out-of-date. This is caused by the way we learn. For evolutionary reasons humans had to learn a lot of things very quickly and our brains are hardwired to accept the first idea we are told from a "perceived authority" without question. This is logical as we do not want to distrust everything and most things we will need to understand the first time. Besides much of what we learn will not be used again for some time. When a solution turns out to be wrong it takes effort to remove it. This why we often continue to believe things which are
Mixing religions in Magic
When I was first training it was drilled into me that you should never mix the godforms of different traditions. I saw the concept in a Ritual 101 book written by Murray Hope. Some godforms could be mixed and Hope helpfully gave a list. You could for example mix in Cabbalistic Angels with any Godform system as neither side seemed to mind. Greek and Roman pantheons tended to work ok, but others should be kept apart as mysteries within their cultural tradition and if you mixed Roman with Egyptian you would get a jarring of energy. At the time it made absolute sense and any rituals I wrote were geared to being either totally Egyptian, Celtic, Babylonian etc. However as my magical
THE SUMMER EDITION OF THE HERMETIC TABLET IS OUT
The Hermetic Tablet is a bi-annual Journal of Western Ritual Magic where people, from all traditions, share their experiences. Some of the contributors are well known names in the occult field, while others are just those who want to share knowledge and experiences with the public. This issue includes articles written by the following writers: Jake Stratton-Kent, Mike Magee, Chic & Sandra Tabatha Cicero, Aaron Leitch, Christine Zalewski, Nick Farrell, Paola Farrell, Jayne Gibson, Tony Toneatto, Michael Straw, Samuel Scarborough, Tony Fuller, Wynn Westcott, Ina Cüsters-Van Bergen , Morgan Drake Eckstein, and Carman Lawrick. The Journal covers a wide range of different subjects all related to Western Ritual Magic, including Goetia, Golden Dawn, Wicca, Theurgy, Angelic Magic, Ancient Egypt, and
WHARE RA AND THE MODERN GOLDEN DAWN
A debate is starting to happen on whether or not the New Zealand Whare Ra order, which was the last Golden Dawn group with a direct lineage to the original order was better than the modern versions which have emerged since the 1970’s. The danger is that both sides can see themselves as better than the other, which would be completely untrue. For those who came in late, Whare Ra’s existence was first made known in a book published by Pat Zalweski in the 1980s. Zalewski, and his wife Christine were not a members of Whare Ra but was exclusively trained by one of its best Heirophants Jack Taylor. Later it emerged that Tony Fuller was also trained by a Whare
Magic is not for those who want to escape
A magician who would approach the throne of the Most High, must perfect a temple on the earth which has its roots in the underworld and the roof below the moon. This is the purpose of a magical life. You are not trapped in earth, you were sent. You are not imprisoned by life; it is your mission. The fates have spun their net for you and you must use it to be the best you can. One does not reject or demolish the temple that is built by the One Thing, to spit in the eyes of his Aeons and expect it to be pleased to see you. One of the great sins of the Gnostics, which was picked up by
ESOTERIC CODE BROKEN
I have a new book out:From the blurb In the late 18th century two prominent German esoteric masons wrote a fantasy about an Ancient Egyptian Magical Order called the Crata Ropea. The tiny book was based on classical sources and was taken literally, particularly in France. It was influential in the development of many masonic and esoteric groups through-out the 18th and 19th centuries and its influence can be indirectly seen on modern groups such as the Order of the Golden Dawn, the Ordo Templi Orientis and even modern Wicca. As the knowledge of Egyptian history developed, Crata has become disregarded by those who had taken it literally and it has been largely ignored.What Nick Farrell sets out in this book is