Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's getting toward midnight, so we can proceed with a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism and I'll do my best to answer it. With certain exceptions, any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. Please note:  Any question or comment received after then will not get an answer, and in fact will just be deleted. (I've been getting an increasing number of people trying to post after these are closed, so will have to draw a harder line than before.) If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 143,916th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.0 of The Magic Monday FAQ here. Also: I will not be putting through or answering any more questions about practicing magic around children. I've answered those in simple declarative sentences in the FAQ. If you read the FAQ and don't think your question has been answered, read it again. If that doesn't help, consider remedial reading classes; yes, it really is as simple and straightforward as the FAQ says. 

The picture?  I'm working my way through photos of my lineage, focusing on the teachers whose work has influenced me and the teachers who influenced them in turn. I'm currently tracing my Martinist lineage.  That's rendered complex by the Martinist tradition that one does not name one's initiator, so we'll have to go back via slightly less evasive routes. The last two honorees, Constant Chevillon and Robert Ambelain, both received part of their many lineages from this week's honoree, Jean Bricaud. Bricaud was a student of Papus and a leading figure in the French Martinist movement, as well as a major figure in the French Gnostic church of the time. He became head of the Martinist Order on Papus' death in 1916, and played a significant role in many other alternative spiritual scenes of the time. He died in 1934.

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With that said, have at it!

***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***

Comments

[ecosophia]

Er, I recommend doing a little more historical research. The Golden Dawn didn't invent the circle with its four quarters; you can find that in Eliphas Lévi, who revived Western magic in the 1850s, and he drew on much older magical traditions. Here's a diagram of the magical cosmos from the writings of John Dee, Queen Elizabeth I's court wizard:



The division of the circle into four quarters -- not "corners" -- is found in Western occultism from early Greek times onward, and it's also common in many other parts of the world; for example, the Native American medicine wheel is similarly structured.

As for what would have happened if the Golden Dawn hadn't been founded, why, one of the dozens of other magical orders active at the same time, using very similar kinds of magic, would have filled the same role. The GD simply happened to be the one that most people borrowed from, and that's because its magic is very effective and tolerably easy to learn and use. I can't speak for Wicca, as I'm not into that; I gather that it's a popular source of inspiration because it was so popular in late 20th century America and so it's a convenient place to start. Again, though, there were other movements in the same direction that would likely have filled the same role.

[jeremys]

Oh wow, that is very interesting. Thanks for that! I get 4 quarters is not original, but did other groups before Golden Dawn do tracing pentagrams in four quarters and summoning personifications of elemental energies in each quarter and tapping the forehead and bringing light from the heavens down through the body into the Earth and stuff like that? That I thought was exclusively Golden Dawn.

I assumed the whole Hermetic Qaballah/Tarot/tracing pentagrams/Neo-Egyptian system was exclusively Golden Dawn, the way they mashed it all together in a workable system. Is that wrong? Almost all magic today stems from Golden Dawn, so you said another group would have taken hold, but what do you think that would have been like? Maybe I'm not explaining myself well. I am trying to imagine what it's like outside this Golden Dawn/Wicca paradigm it seems we are all stuck inside.

[ecosophia]

Your best bet is to read up on other versions of magic available in the late 19th century. You might consider starting with Eliphas Lévi's Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic, which set the whole process in motion, then go on to The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor by Joscelyn Godwin et al., and Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite by Albert Pike; those three are typical works of the period and will give you some idea of what magic was like in those days.