Bardon and Golden Dawn

[Zhongyongdaoist]

The following presumes a good understanding of the Microcosm/Macrocosm relation as I outlined above.  In this discussion I will be looking at two principles fundamental to Sadhu's Hermetic perspective and which he talks both about and around in many places in the whole book, which taken together actually give a fair picture of what he is trying to both convey and hide.  These terms are defined in a glossary that is part of the introduction as follows:

 

Page 26: Egregor: is a collective entity, such as a nation, state, society, religions and sects and their adherents, and even minor human organizations. The structure of Egregors is similar to that of human beings. They have physical bodies (that is, collectively all the bodies of those who belong to the particular Egregor) and also astral and mental ones; the Egregor being the sum total of all these elements.

 

Page 29: Tourbillons or Vortexes: are astral creations of force which are the bases of all astro-mental realizations. Tradition ascribes the funnel like forms to them. Knowledge of the laws ruling over the tourbillons and their construction, is one of the foremost principles of magic. Although it CANNOT be given in open language to the public at large, it has been sufficiently described for initiates in this course, under the veil of Kabbalistic structures. The most guarded secrets of Hermetic magic are: finding the point of support for the tourbillon on the physical plane, and the formula of transition from the astral to the physical world.

 

The first thing to note is that egregor as used in this classical sense is not to be confused with egregor as used in Chaos Magic.  In chaos magic an egregor is solely the creation of human beings which starts out as a "thought form" and evolves to higher levels until it becomes a "god".  This is a collective entity like a classical egregor, but a classical egregor is considered to also consist of spiritual beings who have an independent existence and are not considered to be creations of human beings, and can range from Gods and Archangels down to elemental and nature spirits, as Sadhu says on p. 250, "into the Egregor—apart from the pentagrammatical beings of evolutionary type (living men and elementars)—the energy of the elementals, Spirituum Directorum (leading spirits) and even Angels should also be attracted."  The modern tendency is to dismiss such notions as irrational fantasies, but there are worldviews such as Platonism in which they are parts of a very complete and rational model of reality.  The concept of egregor, sometimes spelled with a final "e" as in the link I am about to give, is quite common in occultist circles as this site on Egregores outlines.

 

As I studied Sadhu I came to the conclusion that an egregor could have only a single incarnate human. as he says on page 80 in an analysis of magical operations, “the person acting uses as his starting point of realization, just the third, that is, the physical plane. it can be the body of the operator himself, or outer objects.” and the rest of it be made up of spiritual beings, thus a single person performing a ritual such as the banishing ritual of the pentagram could be viewed as creating a temporary egregor for a specific magical purpose and I started to view ritual as creating a "unification" of microcosm and macrocosm which was in a sense special, and to which I gave the name of "intercosm" to represent its aspect of unifying microcosm and macrocosm in a single cooperative action.  The training which Bardon gives however, does not involve this type of interaction, but rather a training of the microcosmic abilities of willpower and imagination.  Even the parts of Bardon that do mention "ritual" training are not training like this, but rather a conditioning process within oneself.  The procedures which he gives for manifesting "god" are more complex and their application in his book on magical evocation does involve summoning a spirit, but the core is still purely an exercise of the power of the microcosm through willpower and imagination.  I will deal with these practices in a separate discussion due to their complexity.  As I thought about these things I began to wonder if there was something special in ritual training involving this union of microcosm and Macrocosm that was unique and could not be duplicated by the purely microcosmic training of Bardon, or for that matter similar training in Crowley or other authors, though the matter is more complex in Crowley and will require its own discussion.  Just to make clear Sadhu himself taught exercises for development of the microcosmic development of willpower and imagination and had a book titled Concentration which was devoted to such exercises which he considered essential to mastering his Hermetic teachings, but it existed in a wider context than Bardon, so such exercises can be used with material such as I am expounding here, but they should also be complemented by the ritual experience such as I have outlined above.  This is part of the reason why I believe that Bardon type teachings and Golden Dawn practices are not mutually exclusive, however, as I will develop in future posts, they are not necessary to success in these practices either.

 

As for Vortexes in Sadhu they are closely related to egregors though the relation develops in various discussions spread throughout the book which the reader must synthesize through diligent study and reflection.  They are an important part of manifesting magical results in the physical world, which is Sadhu's reason for talking around them so much.  They are important in the Golden Dawn and I will be dealing with them in more detail in future posts, mostly from a Golden Dawn perspective, which since it was originally not intended to be made public, is more revealing than Sadhu's discussion, though all taken together reveals a clearer picture and I will examine them more in future posts.

 

I realize that the above is rather condensed and I hope that I have been clear enough.  Question are naturally welcome and will be answered, just as further posts will be made, as time permits.

 

 

ZYD

[wandelaar]

What does the abbreviation LBPR stand for?

[Zhongyongdaoist]

4 hours ago, wandelaar said:

What does the abbreviation LBPR stand for?

 

Lesser Banishing Pentagram Ritual

 

In the original Golden Dawn it was the first ritual that the member was taught and has become kind of standard starting point for the Western Ritual tradition.  I first came across it in Crowley's Magick in Theory and Practice which I bought in the Summer of 1963 when I was twelve as I have mentioned elsewhere on Dao Bums.  I did not actually start using it or doing any magical practices until the Summer of 1968 because sometime in 1964 I looked at my cute little library of magic books which I think at the time was about ten to fifteen books, and decided that it was too early to start doing things like that and I stopped buying books and just did Hatha Yoga, which I had started in the Summer of 1961 watching Richard Hittleman's Yoga for Health television program.  I became interested in Yoga because of a Superman comic book that I read in which Superman had had to deal with an alien from a distant galaxy who practiced astral projection to explore outer space and came here to earth. In a note the c0mic mentioned that Yoga practicioner's practiced astral projection, and I decided I want to do it too.  By the standards of the time I was a strange kid, there was no Harry Potter then like there is now to inspire young would be magicians, with twin interests in magic and science and intended to be a physicist and magician when I grew up.

 

In the Summer of 1966 my brother came back from college and brought with him the Tao Te Ching, as it was still called at that time, the I Ching and Tai Chi Chuan, which started my interesting in Daoism and Chinese training methods.  I started buying books again that Summer and started practicing magic using such things as the Lesser Pentagram Ritual and the Middle Pillar exercise in the Summer of 1968, when I figured I was old enough to start training in magic.  I will explain more about what happened from 1968 to the early Seventies in later posts.

 

ZYD

[wandelaar]

Thanks.

 

Do you happen to know if there exists a scholarly book about the historical development of the philosophical underpinnings of western ritual magic from ancient to modern times?

[Zhongyongdaoist]

23 minutes ago, wandelaar said:

Thanks.

 

Do you happen to know if there exists a scholarly book about the historical development of the philosophical underpinnings of western ritual magic from ancient to modern times?

 

There is a large literature of scholarly work on the subject.  I was always interested in history, however, especially after I read the first book of Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy and realized that there were significant differences between traditional magic as practiced in the Renaissance and magic as it developed and practiced in the "magical revival" of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, I became very interested in intellectual history and the practice of magic in the Renaissance, and I read widely in the history of magic in the Renaissance and Middle Ages.  About 1976 I realized based on what I knew of Platonism from this reading that Platonism seemed to provide a rational framework for the practice of magic in the sense that Agrippa wrote about it, and widened my historical reading back to the Hellenistic period and I am quite familiar with the literature written before 1990, and I am sure that the literature has continued to expand since then.  Offhand I cannot think of a single work that details the whole of the period that you mention.  As an overview of the whole period Lynn Thornike's eight volume History of Magic and Experimental Science was and probably still is considered to be the scholarly standard, and can be downloaded from Archive.org, this will link to Volume One.  As an overview and possible source of more recent scholarship the Wikipedia article on Western Esotericism and a special article on the Academic study of Western esotericism look like a useful start.

 

I hope that this is helpful.

 

ZYD

[wandelaar]

I already have the following books:

 

Thorndike, Lynn: A History of Magic and Experimental Science (8 vol.).

Hanegraaff, Wouter: New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought.

Hammer, Olav: Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age.

Yates, Frances: The Rosicrucian Enlightenment.

Yates, Frances: The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age.

Yates, Frances: Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition.

 

But I haven't read them yet. Would reading those books provide a good impression of the philosophical underpinnings of ritual magic?

[Zhongyongdaoist]

22 hours ago, wandelaar said:

I already have the following books:

 

Thorndike, Lynn: A History of Magic and Experimental Science (8 vol.).

Hanegraaff, Wouter: New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought.

Hammer, Olav: Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age.

Yates, Frances: The Rosicrucian Enlightenment.

Yates, Frances: The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age.

Yates, Frances: Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition.

 

But I haven't read them yet. Would reading those books provide a good impression of the philosophical underpinnings of ritual magic?

 

I have given a lot of thought to these books and how they might help you and came to the conclusion that what you want to do is research is an idea called The Great Chain of Being.  The Wikipedia article deals with it in the later Judeo/Christian form, but the ideas go back to Plato and Aristotle and the efforts by the Middle Platonists to unify the thought of both Plato and Aristotle into a unified cosmology, thus the references in my post below to "ideas" derived from Plato and "forms" derived from Aristotle are placed in a cosmological structure the maps out a descent from the highest levels of the Cosmos to the earth where the ideas become forms which are made manifest in our world.

 

The following post is the first post from: Agrippa's Doctrine of Occult Virtues, a core concept examined and explained

On 1/28/2015 at 1:13 PM, Zhongyongdaoist said:

As I have mentioned Agrippa's work has a general structure in which the first chapter introduces a topic and subsequent chapters develop it, thus the section on Occult Virtues:

 

On 11/20/2014 at 8:10 AM, Zhongyongdaoist said:

Here is the general structure of Book One. If we make an index which first gives these broad categories and then when each of these main topic chapters is introduced create a sub-index for the other individual chapters, that might be a good way to organize the material.

One of the most important and misunderstood aspects of traditional magic is that of "Occult Virtues". Agrippa introduces them here:

Of the Occult vertues of Things
Developed in Chapters 10-21, of which chapters 10-14 are of critical importance.

In the Nineteenth Century when Magic was being revived there were not many people who really understood how Occult Virtues fit into the philosophy and worldview of the Renaissance. When I was first reading Agrippa's first Book back in 1972-74, these chapters were to have a very strong influence on me developing a totally different view of magic and its practice than I had developed from my reading of late Nineteenth and Twentieth Century authors.

First I would like to quote from Thomas Kuhn, the man whose book, The Structure of Scienfific Revolutions, introduced the concept of the paradigms and their shifts:

 

Quote

“...historians confront growing difficulties in distinguishing the ‘scientific’ component of past observations and beliefs from what their predecessors had readily labeled ‘error’ and ‘superstition.’ The more carefully they study, say, Aristotelian dynamics, phlogistic chemistry, or caloric thermodynamics, the more certain they feel that those once current views of nature were, as a whole neither less scientific nor more the product of human idiosyncrasy than those current today. If these out-of-date beliefs are to be called myths, then myths can be produced by the same sorts of methods and held for the same sorts of reasons that now lead to scientific knowledge. If on the other hand, they are to be called science, then science has included bodies of belief quite incompatible with the ones we hold today. Given these alternatives, the historian must choose the latter. Out-of-date theories are not in principle unscientific because they have been discarded.” (My emphasis, Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 2)

After finishing his discussion of the elements with a discussion of the Virtues dependent upon the elements in Chapter 9, Agrippa introduces the Occult Virtues in the following way:

 

Quote

There are also other vertues in things, which are not from any Element, as to expell poyson [poison], to drive away the noxious vapours of Minerals, to attract Iron, or any thing else; and these vertues are a sequell of the species, and form of this or that thing; whence also they being little in quantity, are of great efficacy; which is not granted to any Elementary quality. For these vertues having much form, and litle matter, can do very much; but an Elementary vertue, because it hath more materiality, requires much matter for its acting. And they are called occult qualities, because their Causes lie hid, and mans intellect cannot in any way reach, and find them out. Wherefore Philosophers have attained to the greatest part of them by long experience, rather then by the search of reason . . . (Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Book 1, Chapter 10)

to attract Iron: the attraction of iron to a lodestone was one of the primary illustrations of occult virtues, while we now explain this in a certain way, there is no rational reason why considering it also a manifestation of the "virtues" or "powers" inherent in lodestone and iron is not valid and an example of looking at things in the context of a different paradigm.

these vertues are a sequell of the species, and form of this or that thing: Though I was not completely familiar with Aristotle's Four Causes at this time, I was reading texts in alchemy in which Aristotelian terminology was used and in which the medicinal "virtue" of an herb could be viewed as the result of extracting its "form" through "spirit of wine", i.e. alcohol. I will examine the most important of these texts as I go along and this idea will make more sense after the second post in this series.

these vertues having much form, and litle matter, can do very much: It is a matter of learning to extract the virtue or power or to enhance the activity of the virtue through appropriate action. Again more in the next post.

they are called occult qualities, because their Causes lie hid, and mans intellect cannot in any way reach, and find them out. Wherefore Philosophers have attained to the greatest part of them by long experience, rather then by the search of reason: They are "occult" because hidden and unlike elemental virtues, which can be deduced from the qualities of the elements and the proportion of their compound, the occult or "hidden" virtues must be found out by experience.

Those who were following my discussion of Aristotle's Four causes may now realize why in a humorous response to Descartes criticism of Formal Causes I said:

 

On 1/4/2015 at 12:35 PM, Zhongyongdaoist said:

their defenders admit that they are occult: Gosh, I wonder what this is leading to . . ., could it be Occult Philosophy?

Agrippa outlines the cosmological setting for this in Chapter 11:

 

Quote

Chap. xi. How Occult Vertues are infused into the severall kinds of things by Idea's, through the help of the Soul of the World, and rayes of the Stars: and what things abound most with this Vertue.

Platonists say that all inferiour bodies are exemplified by the superiour Ideas. Now they define an Idea to be a form, above bodies, souls, minds, and to be one, simple, pure, immutable, indivisible, incorporeal, and eternall: and that the nature of all Idea's is the same. Now they place Idea's in the first place in very goodness it self (i.e.) God, by way of cause; and that they are distinguished amongst themselves by some relative considerations only, least whatsoever is in the world, should be but one thing without any variety, and that they agree in essence, least God should be a compound substance. In the second place, they place them in the very intelligible it self (i.e.) in the Soul of the world, differing the one from the other by absolute forms, so that all the Idea's in God indeed are but one form: but in the Soul of the world they are many. They are placed in the minds of all other things, whether they be joyned to the body, or separated from the body, by a certain participation, and now by degrees are distinguished more, and more. They place them in nature, as certain small seed of forms infused by the Idea's, and lastly they place them in matter, as Shadows. Hereunto may be added, that in the Soul of the world there be as many Seminal Forms of things, as Idea's in the mind of God, by which forms she did in the Heavens above the Stars frame to her self shapes also, and stamped upon all these some properties; on these Stars therefore, shapes, and properties, all vertues of inferiour species, as also their properties do depend; so that every species hath its Celestiall shape, or figure that is sutable [suitable] to it from which also proceeds a wonderfull power of operating, which proper gift it receives from its own Idea, through the Seminal forms of the Soul of the world. For Idea's are not only essential causes of every species, but are also the causes of every vertue, (Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Book 1, Chapter 11)

Platonists say that all inferiour bodies are exemplified by the superiour Ideas: At the top is "God" or "The One", depending on ones ontological commitments, the ideas as conceived of by Plato, are rooted in this one and then they exert an influence all the way down, through the forms as envisioned by Aristotle and into our world, where they manifest as the occult virtues or "hidden powers" of natural things. Ideas in this sense are active and creative powers, not mere abstractions present in our consciousness.

they define an Idea to be a form, above bodies, souls, minds, and to be one, simple, pure, immutable, indivisible, incorporeal, and eternall: On the highest level they are simple, but as they descend they mix with each other and become more complex.

they place Idea's in the first place in very goodness it self (i.e.) God: While Agrippa my mean God in a circa 1500 Roman Catholic sense, this is not to be confused with god as thought of by your local neighborhood fundamentalist yahoo and it can also be separated from any taint of Abrahamic revelation by being conceived of as Plotinus' One, or even the Dao.

In the second place, they place them in the very intelligible it self (i.e.) in the Soul of the world: Here they are on a lower level and are a part of the animating power of the Universe. It must be remembered that a Platonic world is a living soul, filled with souls, not a mechanical universe consisting of dead matter.

They place them in nature, as certain small seed of forms infused by the Idea's: Here we start to get closer to our own world and this idea of a seed of forms was to prove “fruitful” as I began to look at them as “seeds of power” which the Platonic Magician learned to cultivate, both in him or herself, but also in the external world.

For Idea's are not only essential causes of every species, but are also the causes of every vertue: This simply reaffirms what I said before, the causal efficacy of the “ideas” is manifest all the way down to our world, where they manifest as “power” that can be harvested and harnessed.

This cosmological structure going from ideas in the “Mind of God” to their manifestations as physical objects here on earth, is called “the Great Chain of Being" and was the fundamental idea of how the Cosmos functioned from the Hellenistic period to about 1800. Its History and development have been admirably chronicled by A. O. Lovejoy in his book of the same name, The Great Chain of Being.

For the moment skipping over chapter 12, we will quote from Chapter 13, where the Great Chain of Being is further examined:

 

Quote

Therefore Plato, and his Schollers [scholars] attribute these vertues to Idea's, the formers of things. But Avicen reduceth these kinds of operations to Intelligencies, Hermes to the Stars, Albertus to the specificall forms of things. And although these Authors seem to thwart one the other, yet none of them, if they be rightly understood, goes beside the truth: since all their sayings are the same in effect in most things. For God in the first place is the end, and begining of all Vertues, he gives the seal of the Idea's to his servants the Intelligencies; who as faithfull officers sign all things intrusted [entrusted] to them with an Ideall Vertue, the Heavens, and Stars, as instruments, disposing the matter in the mean while for the receiving of those forms which reside in Divine Majesty (as saith Plato in Timeus) and to be conveyed by Stars; and the Giver of forms distributes them by the Ministry of his Intelligencies, which he hath set as Rulers, and Controllers over his Works, to whom such a power is intrusted in things committed to them, that so all Vertues of Stones, Hearbs [herbs], Metals, and all other things may come from the Intelligencies, the Governours. The Form therefore, and Vertue of things comes first from the Idea's, then from the ruling, and governing Intelligencies, then from the aspects of the Heavens disposing, and lastly from the tempers of the Elements disposed, answering the influencies of the Heavens, by which the Elements themselves are ordered, or disposed.

There is therefore no other cause of the necessity of effects, then the connexion [connection] of all things with the first Cause, and their correspondency with those Divine patterns, and eternall Idea's, whence every thing hath its determinate, and particular place in the exemplary world, from whence it lives, and receives its originall being; And every vertue of Hearbs [herbs], Stones, Metals, Animals, Words, and Speeches,(Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Book 1, Chapter 13)

Therefore Plato, and his Schollers [scholars] attribute these vertues to Idea's, the formers of things.: Again affirming the causal power of the ideas.

The Form therefore, and Vertue of things comes first from the Idea's: The form in the Aristotelian sense is the idea manifesting as a "formal" cause.

There is therefore no other cause of the necessity of effects, then the connexion [connection] of all things with the first Cause, and their correspondency with those Divine patterns, and eternall Idea's, whence every thing hath its determinate, and particular place in the exemplary world: Again the Great Chain of Being. At the top is the One, which differentiates on down the Hierarchy to manifest in our world.

And every vertue of Hearbs [herbs], Stones, Metals, Animals, Words, and Speeches: It is noteworthy that Agrippa includes words and speeches as a potential manifestation of “hidden powers”. He ends his First Book on the subject of "Words, and Speeches" and then expands on it in later books.

These two sections are Agrippa's basic exposition of a cosmological structure that occurs in other places in the Three Books and is an important part of his “theory of the practice”, the base cosmic circuit board, you might say, of Platonic Engineering.

 

 

All cited references to Agrippa's Occult Philosophy are from Joseph Peterson's Twilight Grotto, a very useful site.

 

So to get back to your question the basic ideas go back to Plato and Aristotle, they were worked into a cosmological model "the Great Chain of Being" and this cosmological model became a standard one during the Hellenistic period which would have been used by anyone wanting to rationalize and explain all sorts of things including magic and alchemy.  One primary example would be the integration of the Chaldean Oracles with late Platonism with the development of Theurgy in Iamblichus and Proclus

 

As long as the above is, it just scratches the surface of the subject, but I hope that it will prove to be a helpful and fruitful starting point for you.

 

ZYD

[wandelaar]

Thank you - I never would have thought that classical Greek philosophy could have played a role in the philosophical underpinnings of ritual magic, but apparently it has. An interesting subject to explore.

[Zhongyongdaoist]

2 hours ago, wandelaar said:

Thank you - I never would have thought that classical Greek philosophy could have played a role in the philosophical underpinnings of ritual magic, but apparently it has. An interesting subject to explore.

 

 

You're certainly welcome.   I'm glad that you found it informative and hope that others will too.  There is a reason why I chose that long quote, aside from it aptness as an example, to illustrate the Great Chain of Being and I will return to it later when I examine how reading Agrippa's First Book of Occult Philosophy was to open up a hole new way of looking at magic and how that was to affect how I thought about the Golden Dawn and ritual.

 

ZYD

[Omiiran]

On 2/23/2023 at 12:13 PM, Zhongyongdaoist said:

 

Page 29: Tourbillons or Vortexes: are astral creations of force which are the bases of all astro-mental realizations. Tradition ascribes the funnel like forms to them. Knowledge of the laws ruling over the tourbillons and their construction, is one of the foremost principles of magic. Although it CANNOT be given in open language to the public at large, it has been sufficiently described for initiates in this course, under the veil of Kabbalistic structures. The most guarded secrets of Hermetic magic are: finding the point of support for the tourbillon on the physical plane, and the formula of transition from the astral to the physical world.

Thank you for bringing it up, I always find the material the Sadhu wrote to be quite dense, so thank god that someone talked about it other than coguina! 


That's one of the stuff regarding Sadhu that irked me, is that I don't know if he was intentionally trying to hide the information on Vortexes and Tourbillons or is it because his book was a direct copy of G.O Mebe's book of Major Arcana. I would love to hear more about the Vortexes, since the only only explanation about Tourbillons I found was on a youtube video that was even missing arcana near the end: 
 

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzsy_BVO3F4