Toward Ecosophy

While we're discussing books and tracks in space...

A while ago, after I finished reverse-engineering the system of Druidical ceremonial magic I published in my book The Celtic Golden Dawn and had practiced it for a couple of years, I started exploring ways that I could apply that system to magical tasks other than the basic work of magical training -- the focus of the book just named. I didn't expect that to interface with another research project then (and still) under way -- the exploration of the origins of Masonic ritual begun in my book The Secret of the Temple: Earth Energies, Sacred Geometry, and the Lost Keys of Freemasonry -- but yeah, that's what happened. 

The results can be summed up very briefly under three heads. First, some evidence suggests that in late Roman Britain there was a local mystery cult, in at least two places, which worked with the myths and energies of a Celtic deity whose traditions come down to us in fragmentary and distorted form in the medieval legends of Merlin. Second, some evidence suggests that one form of that mystery cult, preserved in garbled form in the Scottish lowlands, ended up being reworked into the Master Mason degree of Freemasonry -- a degree which wasn't yet part of the Craft when Freemasonry went public in 1717, and which no one has been able to trace to a known origin. Third, it's possible to pick up the contacts of another form of that mystery tradition using the tools of Druidical ceremonial magic, and work them for their original purpose -- as a means of initiation. 

Of course that turned into a book. The Mysteries of Merlin is mostly about the third point just made -- it's a manual of self-initiation using the Merlin legends as a basis for eight seasonal ceremonies; yes, I've performed them, and yes, they work very well indeed.  I also discuss the other two points, and -- well, let's just say that brother Masons may be startled to discover the origins of the substitute Word each Master Mason gets on being raised to that degree. 

I'm far from finished plunging down that tangled warren of rabbit holes -- right now, for example, I'm exploring the possibility that a survival or revival of a medieval Grail cult may have played a significant role in the origins of modern fantasy fiction -- and the book that will lay all this out in more detail, The Ceremony of the Grail: Ancient Mysteries, Gnostic Heresies, and the Lost Rituals of Freemasonry, is still a heap of jumbled notes. The Mysteries of Merlin offers a progress report, though, and it's also a very solid system of magical self-initiation that anyone interested in Druidry or Celtic spirituality generally can use. If you're interested, copies can be preordered here.