Just a note to say that I have not given up on my blog. I have been run off my feet writing material for the new Golden Dawn Order that is starting soon. I wanted to make sure that the course material was original and much more practical. It has so far involved me writing the equivalent of two large books in two months and I have not got passed the 2=9 grade yet. This has been pretty much a get up, work, write course material life, for the last two months and I have had little time to think about much else.In addition I have been updating the correspondence course which had been

After much thought I have decided to leave the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. I will continue to work in this tradition, but am currently considering my future direction and working out what will serve better.

Here is another older essay which I have found and saved for this blogThere is a moment after you have received your 5=6 where you are sitting in your temple, your elemental weapons are consecrated and you are left wondering what to do next. True you might have shed-loads of papers given to you buy your order, but these are practical and experimental.It is a very lonely feeling. You know that, despite the fact you are in an Order, what you do from now on is your own work.No longer are you told "you must do this", it is up to you to follow your path alone and as an individual. It is therefore not surprising that once people have

Since the 1960s the idea of 'pathworking' has largely changed the Golden Dawn techniques of 'Rising on the Planes'. Gareth Knight once told me that he started out using the GD techniques and then discovered they worked well without many of involved details that the older system had.Recently I have been reviewing the GD techniques as part of my own work and am starting to wonder if the baby has gone out with the bathwater.My own book. Magical Pathworking, uses modern techniques. But my view has been that they are taking place within the person's own psyche and if they extend into the macrocosm it is more or less by accident.This was good and powerful because it enabled much transformation

A couple of years ago I wrote this and it disappeared into cyber space. Anyway I get a few more hits on this blog these days so I thought it might be of interest.Interview with Pat ZalewskiWith his latest book 'The Inner Order Teachings of the Golden Dawn', now in the shops, the Golden Dawn Doyen Pat Zalewski talks to me about working in one of the oldest systems of Hermetic Magic in the World.In the 1960's Pat Zalewski had his first brush with spirituality. After working as a boatman for an American company on the Meikong River. Though based in Thailand, he did regualr trips across to Laos and occasionaly to Cambodia. He was wounded twice in Laos

Doing all the preliminary work for setting up new temple I have been giving some thought to thinks like cloaks and tabards for the officers. For the last decade, like many groups, we have used tabards in leiu of cloaks. These are cooler than cloaks and less likely to make a mess when you walk around. I consulted the ritual however and it specifically talks about the middle pillar officers wearing robes... black, white and red. The advanced documents show drawings of cloaks. Robes would be better than tabards or cloaks so why were these used?The problem with modern perceptions of the GD is the belief that they operated much like we do.

WHEN I first got involved in the GD I thought I would incorporate some of the material I had learnt from the various schools I have been involved with - BOTA and SOL – as well as what the old Whare Ra people had taught me. My goal was to return the GD to its place as a magical order and do things properly again. It is a sign that I am getting older when I realise that some of that drive was absolutely silly. I received some good advice at the time which was to do nothing for a while and watch. Try to understand everything that IS done before concentrating on things that

My Novel "When a Tree Falls" has been published and can be bought here Although it is not an occult novel as such it has many kabbalistic ideas and some of my own strange views of the universe. It is pretty silly.The synopsis is:Time is slowing down. Andrew, an English programmer, living alone in Bulgaria, finds out he is the next evolution of humanity and has to save the world before a mysterious being slows down time into a single dull moment. Andrew is forced on a quest through time and alternative realities to find God, whose true name is Jeff. Guided by his Holy Guardian Angel, Tigger, the patron angel of computers and other things that are designed to

The Book of the Tomb, which was an AO collection of documents about the vault is now down-loadable on my site. It is previously unpublished and appears to come from the British AO around 1921. It has a lot of interesting stuff in it. A paper from Westcott which was badly hacked in Regardie's GD and some writings and artwork from Brodie-Innes.I have laid it out with the original diagrams and retyped it so it is readable. It is now an open source document which means that you can share it about but if you use it you have to quote me... and you are not allowed to use it to make any cash on your own. :-)

IF YOU have read anything on occultism you might find yourself facing terms such as Holy Guardian Angel and sometimes, more rarely, Guardian Demon and the Dweller on the Threshold. These terms have been confused over the years so will try and explain them. In a system of 16th century magic called Abramelin the first part of the work was to get in touch with your Holy Guardian Angel and it was through it that you learnt the names of Angels and Demons that controlled the universe using magic squares. Protestant commentators on the system did not really know what the Holy Guardian Angel was, and some of them, such as Alistair Crowley,