Does Aurum Solis belong to the Golden Dawn? What is the relationship between its magical system and Greek polytheism?

[khloexia]

My lack of knowledge about the Golden Dawn has led to these doubts. Their writings feel unfamiliar to me.

 

[MorganBlack]

Separate orgs but both were inspired by Frederick Hockley (1808–1885) and Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (SRIA), founded in 1867. I happen to like the AS material. They are much more Hellenic, leaning into Renaissance Platonism side of the SRIA archives. Whereas the GD is more the Christian Kabbalah and Hebrew side, with truckloads of what we would now call Chaos Magic thrown in. All good, but it just needs better labeling.

 

[Dworkin34]

The so-called "Ogdoadic tradition" is a sham. It was made up by Melita Denning (real: Vivian Godfrey) and Osborne Phillips (real: Leon Barcynski) for Carl Llewellyn Weschcke (Publisher Llewellyn) at first to sell books. Golden Dawn stuff with greek names. The history of the "order" ist fake.

 

[MorganBlack]

Yeah. I like them just fine, but always figured the 'Ogdoadic tradition' was just the what little they had of the Greek Magical Papyri and the bits of Iamblichus and Proclus.

The Golden Dawn had their fictional, dubious Anna Sprengel letters - which many historians believe were forged by Westcott to claim a German lineage - which to them was foreign enough and "over there" enough to let their imaginations run free. Blavatsky had her spurious 'Mahatmas' in Tibet, and Gardner had his composite character in Dorothy Clutterbuck.

I cut them all some slack. Everyone back then, and even most people today, thought you had to 100% mind-fuck yourself , or the magic wouldn't work. They didn't have our placebo studies that show the magic will still work even if you know up front you're taking a chemically inert sugar pill.

It’s the difference having a locked down unimaginative lawyer's brain and needing to believe a movie is a true story to enjoy it, and being a creative and being able to get immerse in the story so it becomes real and jumps off the screen and into your living room.

 

[stalkinghyena]

It's something I have been meaning to follow up on, but some time back I came across a claim that Anna Sprengel may have been a real person, but that was not her real name. "Sprengel" may have been a pseudonym for Anna Kingsford, which would be a significant twist if it true. I believe Westcott and Co. knew personally, she being a highly significant figure in the English occultism of the day. Apparently, the claim arose from letters being found in her personal effects that were in her handwriting and signed "Anna Sprengel".

 

[L’chaimGoldberg]

It's something I have been meaning to follow up on, but some time back I came across a claim that Anna Sprengel may have been a real person, but that was not her real name. "Sprengel" may have been a pseudonym for Anna Kingsford, which would be a significant twist if it true. I believe Westcott and Co. knew personally, she being a highly significant figure in the English occultism of the day. Apparently, the claim arose from letters being found in her personal effects that were in her handwriting and signed "Anna Sprengel".

Super interesting, I hadn’t ever heard that before. It seems like people fall into either of 2 sides, A, everything they said was fake and a forgery or B, it’s 100% history fact and we just can’t prove it now
It’s kind of funny how history works itself out, huh?

Post automatically merged: Today at 6:30 AM

The so-called "Ogdoadic tradition" is a sham. It was made up by Melita Denning (real: Vivian Godfrey) and Osborne Phillips (real: Leon Barcynski) for Carl Llewellyn Weschcke (Publisher Llewellyn) at first to sell books. Golden Dawn stuff with greek names. The history of the "order" ist fake.

So are Denning and Phillips just posers? I got their big “planetary magic” book and found it very fascinating, and wondered about using it with some other material, but it’s the only book I have ever read by them. I know they talk about their alleged magical order but I think they’re both deceased now. Never tried to look up their organization or anything

 

[Frater R.P.G.]

I am not a member of either, though I worked a GD-based system in the past. From what I can see they are similar to the GD, and clearly got influenced by it, but they're not exactly the same. The structure of the system is different. Kabbalah is still part of their system, but more attention is given to Greek than Hebrew.

Something important the others haven't mentioned yet is that technically Aurum Solis does not exist anymore. New leadership remade it into some new age yoga stuff, which the original leaders do not aprove of. There is however a continuation of the original ogdoadic current called Ordo Aurum Sophiae.

 

[MorganBlack]

My two cents.

Shit man. We’re all big posers... at first.

"Fake it til you make it," as the Chaos Magicians say. It's a mythic journey for us, our little egos. But once you pass through Chapel Perilous, it all becomes shockingly real — more real than real. That is when all the crazy things people say in magic make a lot more sense.

But please, please do try to relax. Everyone here is tying themselves up in knots trying to find the "real tradition."

In my experience there are three distinct stages tied loosely to two different types of practices in magic:

The first is Hermetic Mind Magic. It looks and sounds very New Agey - so I avoided it years many years and focused on the Grim Verum and a Zen practice - until you realize it totally works.

Most 20th-century magic works this way, by providing people who have very weak imaginations little scenes and stories they can follow along with. The GD system works this way. Wicca and modern paganism too. Then they fight over the little stories and movies they are given, whose movie is more "real life. " Sad.

The second level is Traditional Magic, which is animist. There is a mental aspect to it that is best explored, imho, in the Dual-Aspect Monism of Dr. Jeffrey Kripal’s books. This is the level of the grimoires. It is great stuff and totally lives up to the hype. I am a Daimonic Idealist and was raised very secular, so I feel they too are just stories; but if you do them, they will stop being be stories. The daimons will DO things and act with a seeming intelligence and volition that can really mess with your sense of reality at first. Magicians in fundamentally magical cultures, like the Mexican and Haitian cultures, ,just use their local culture to integrate them, and have an easier time.

Learn from conjure / traditional witchcraft - which is not often "pagan" and is usually held within a Catholic or even Baptist (ugh) mythic system. Adapt them to your own mythic preferences, pagan or not. .Get the spirits to agree to use the stories, if they will. But you have to make it a good movie, or they'll think you're lame, and you'll get lame manifestations.

But once you integrate it, you reach the third stage:

That it's ALL true. You are an immortal manifestation of God (Infinite Consciousness) (and so is eveyone and everyting else) , and all the ridiculous things mystics and magicians have been saying make a LOT more sense.

But everyone wants to jump to stage three, usign their local stores as the fumble towrd it. tjey know there is more but they are trying tio jump the line in a effort to not do the work. I say don’t. Just enjoy the ride. Do the stuff, say the words, learn to feel and imagine deeply, and you will be shocked.

Then you don’t worry about if the system is true. A magician can make ANY system work.

I highly recommend starting with Neville Goddard. Oh, get Mitch's book and do it until you are calm and not sabotaging yourself.

Book – EPUB/MOBI - Mitch Horowitz - '30-Day Mental Challenge'

If I had an Esotericism and Occult Top Ten First Books reading list then Mitch Horowitz's '30-Day Mental Challenge' may very well be in the number one spot. https://www.amazon.com/30-Day-Mental-Challenge-ebook/dp/B09Q4GLPMV I do love the demons, but I am pretty much convinced Mitch's '30-Day...

wizardforums.com

Then pick a system of stories you can believe in. and apply it to you New thought pratice. Ideally it sync up with the Lev. 2 Animist magic, but does not need to. Make shit happen.

Then pick up the grimpires and pre -850 magic systems. Try them out. They slap hard.

The daimons / spirits will begin teaching you at that point and you can ignore just about 90% of the moden magic industral-complex noise.

 

[L’chaimGoldberg]

My two cents.

Shit man. We’re all big posers... at first.

"Fake it til you make it," as the Chaos Magicians say. It's a mythic journey for us, our little egos. But once you pass through Chapel Perilous, it all becomes shockingly real — more real than real. That is when all the crazy things people say in magic make a lot more sense.

But please, please do try to relax. Everyone here is tying themselves up in knots trying to find the "real tradition."

In my experience there are three distinct stages tied loosely to two different types of practices in magic:

The first is Hermetic Mind Magic. It looks and sounds very New Agey - so I avoided it years many years and focused on the Grim Verum and a Zen practice - until you realize it totally works.

Most 20th-century magic works this way, by providing people who have very weak imaginations little scenes and stories they can follow along with. The GD system works this way. Wicca and modern paganism too. Then they fight over the little stories and movies they are given, whose movie is more "real life. " Sad.

The second level is Traditional Magic, which is animist. There is a mental aspect to it that is best explored, imho, in the Dual-Aspect Monism of Dr. Jeffrey Kripal’s books. This is the level of the grimoires. It is great stuff and totally lives up to the hype. I am a Daimonic Idealist and was raised very secular, so I feel they too are just stories; but if you do them, they will stop being be stories. The daimons will DO things and act with a seeming intelligence and volition that can really mess with your sense of reality at first. Magicians in fundamentally magical cultures, like the Mexican and Haitian cultures, ,just use their local culture to integrate them, and have an easier time.

Learn from conjure / traditional witchcraft - which is not often "pagan" and is usually held within a Catholic or even Baptist (ugh) mythic system. Adapt them to your own mythic preferences, pagan or not. .Get the spirits to agree to use the stories, if they will. But you have to make it a good movie, or they'll think you're lame, and you'll get lame manifestations.

But once you integrate it, you reach the third stage:

That it's ALL true. You are an immortal manifestation of God (Infinite Consciousness) (and so is eveyone and everyting else) , and all the ridiculous things mystics and magicians have been saying make a LOT more sense.

But everyone wants to jump to stage three, usign their local stores as the fumble towrd it. tjey know there is more but they are trying tio jump the line in a effort to not do the work. I say don’t. Just enjoy the ride. Do the stuff, say the words, learn to feel and imagine deeply, and you will be shocked.

Then you don’t worry about if the system is true. A magician can make ANY system work.

I highly recommend starting with Neville Goddard. Oh, get Mitch's book and do it until you are calm and not sabotaging yourself.

Book – EPUB/MOBI - Mitch Horowitz - '30-Day Mental Challenge'

If I had an Esotericism and Occult Top Ten First Books reading list then Mitch Horowitz's '30-Day Mental Challenge' may very well be in the number one spot. https://www.amazon.com/30-Day-Mental-Challenge-ebook/dp/B09Q4GLPMV I do love the demons, but I am pretty much convinced Mitch's '30-Day...

wizardforums.com

Then pick a system of stories you can believe in. and apply it to you New thought pratice. Ideally it sync up with the Lev. 2 Animist magic, but does not need to. Make shit happen.

Then pick up the grimpires and pre -850 magic systems. Try them out. They slap hard.

The daimons / spirits will begin teaching you at that point and you can ignore just about 90% of the moden magic industral-complex noise.

You bring up an incredible point here at the end that I almost NEVER see people discuss: UPG for research and development of different things. I mean I understand how different individuals especially in the 1800s tried to make their own upg a religion and dogma and if you assign a historical artifact or location to people for UPG research you’re probably going to get a wide range of views but still it’s a start.

I mean who isn’t curious about what a particular ancient civilization or tradition practiced, or whether the pyramids are however many years old.

another thing to consider is how little is published about Appalachian folk magic, almost everyone is focused on hoodoo but there’s a huge wealth of history and tradition in those rural folk magic practices that is sadly overlooked, I hate to sound like a politically correct stereotype about “racism” but it’s almost like people are more interested in African or Hispanic magic just because of the exoticism factor, like the orientalists in the 16000-1900s Like I consider myself something of a scholar and can tell you all kinds of things from books and practitioners I know of African and brujeria but almost nothing about “granny magic”.

and it’s really true that nearly all of these traditions consider themselves Christians to whatever degree. They don’t see any contradiction between being devout traditional mainstream Protestant or catholic Christians and sorcerers. A fact sadly overlooked by many who just want something to be anti than to be a functional system of magic that delivers the goods.

 

[MorganBlack]

Man, agreed. UPG (Unverified Personal Gnosis) is kind of the point, but it's also an insult. I feel it works best as a reminder to come back down the ritual mountain and integrate. When in ritual, you HAVE to take it 99% literally. Fling yourself into it.

When out of ritual, it is best to take it metaphorically, or it may drive you too crazy at first - at least until you develop "Double-vision" and can see "the thing" and the mythic level of the thing at the same time.

It's a little off-topic, but since we're talking about traditions: yeah, my son is in Portland and the kids there keep wanting me to teach them brujeria. All good, have fun, but I also was like WTF is going on? Not used to people paying much attention to us. I'm the Latino-Anglo mix you get in L.A., Texas, and the American Southwest. My aunt was a curandera, a healer. Let me say, we are no more innately "magical" (ugh, that word is being used to carry too many concepts) than anyone else.

Magic is usually the tool of the very rich or the very poor. White people lost most of their magical traditions because they simply didn't need them very much anymore. Haitians I know in New York wanted Anglos -blancs - to join Vodou because their own US-born kids were being sucked into the disenchanted TV and McDonald's American culture. It happens quickly.

Same thing with Applachian Folk Magic. I have friends in Asheville, NC (lovely town) and what we call the 'Scotch Irsh' were are very magically savy people. Rock on!

Folk Catholics and poor African American Baptists just had a cultural air-gap between us and the mostly English-language-coded Scientific Revolution that disenchanted the world. The British version was distinct from the more hip and inclusive Continental version and their philosophical traditions. (I love science too, but as a methodology, not as a totalizing worldview.)