David Conway

BEYOND TANTRA

2009-11-08T11:12:00.000Z

BEYOND TANTRA
By David Conway
"It's all sex nowadays" my mother used to grumble after an evening in front of the television. Even her favourite nature programmes, she moaned, were increasingly obsessed with it. Much the same might be said about Tantra. Or, at least, about what currently passes for Tantra, something which to many people today means little more than sex with fancy trimmings. No surprise then that among the first 'tantrik' sites to appear on Google is one that markets books on sexual techniques, as well as performance-enhancing potions like - currently on special offer - tiny pots of nipple sensitising cream. True, there's a token reference to Tantra's origins in India but it's the "get your kit off" message that counts. My mother wouldn't approve. And neither, frankly, do I.

What offends me is not so much the sexual free-for-all - each to his own as far as I'm concerned - but the attempt to glamorise, even sanctify, it by calling it Tantra. After all, Tantra is first and foremost a spiritual practice by which the self aspires to merge with the energies that sustain or, rather, constitute, the universe. It is a means of becoming one with the Whole, of escaping from the illusion of separateness that determines how we experience the phenomenal world around us. Sensitised nipples have precious little to do with it. (And anyway a dab of Vaseline does the job, if you're curious.)

The word Tantra is Sanskrit for 'weave', a term used to indicate that a particular text has been composed according to an orderly pattern (samhita). Others prefer to believe it points to secret teachings 'woven' into the Vedas, the thread visible only when teased out by a scholarly commentator or qualified guru. This interpretation, though appealing, is undermined by evidence that before being taken up by Hinduism, Tantra was already a feature of Buddhist practice, later becoming associated with Mahayana Buddhism in particular. (There the feminine principle, sakti, has long been held in high esteem.) This might also explain its early adoption by the Vajrayana (Sk. "Diamond Vehicle") sect of Tibet, one that borrowed heavily - again significant perhaps - from that country's indigenous religion (Bön). Yet the true origins of Tantra almost certainly pre-date all of these and are rooted in the ancient practice of Yoga, especially in what later became Hatha Yoga, so called because it is the path (Sk. marga) of effort and discipline, both essential if the body and its vital energies are to be brought under control. Appropriately enough, one of the early names given to Tantrik teaching - Agamas or 'What has come from before' - may be an acknowledgement of its great antiquity.

Not all Hindu teaching is sympathetic to Tantra, with many scholars, especially more recent ones, uneasy with its intentionally blunt language (Sandhya-bhasha) and overtly erotic symbolism. At times even its defenders sound apologetic, pleading that, for want of anything better, it is at least a convenient path to mystical experience in the current Dark Age (Kali-yuga) (1), a period when our race is woefully lacking in spiritual refinement. (Held to have started 5000 years ago or, as others maintain, following the death of Krishna in 3120BCE, the Dark Age is scheduled to last for 430,000 years so there's lots more of it ahead.) With the advent of Kali-yuga we are said to have lost our ability to see beyond the illusory appearance of things (maya), something traditionally expressed as the loss of our Third Eye or Eye of Siva. This symbolic organ is depicted in art as a lotus blossom, the sun, a snake or a star and set in the middle of the forehead, though some occultists maintain, none more forcibly than Mme. Blavatsky, that the Third Eye was, literally, just that. Today, the pineal gland is claimed to be its only anatomical remnant.

Hinduism accommodates two kinds of Tantra, that of the right hand (Dakshinacara) and that of the left (Vamacara). The first, regarded as the more respectable, favours a metaphorical interpretation of the erotic language found in the texts, while the second, often dismissed as 'black' magic, adopts a more literal approach, treating what it finds as a practical guide to attaining enlightenment. Only the latter approach need concerns us.

As was said earlier, Tantra is not about sex. Well, not just about sex. Its spiritual element - 'psychical' may be a better epithet - is at least as important as the physical. In any case the two are complementary. More than that, they are inter-dependent for only when acting together - physical act and spiritual intention - will they induce awareness of the unity subsisting between the conditional world and the absolute reality on which it depends. Nowhere is this togetherness more sublimely realised - here comes the sex - than in the act of coition, that synergic conjunction (Paramsiva or the union of Siva and Sakti) of two individuals or, better still, two creative polarities.

As for the erotic techniques described in tantrik literature or even in the teach-yourself manuals peddled on the internet, their purpose is to facilitate this beatific outcome by means of, inter alia, breathing exercises, tactile stimulation and, most famous of all, delayed orgasm or, on occasion, the disciplined retention of semen. Above all, however, recourse is had to the goddess Sakti herself, the initiatory and dynamic expression of divine power. (The name itself means nothing less.) As the "Princess who sleeps at Brahman's gate" the goddess is dormant inside each of us under the guise of Kundalini, the Serpent Power coiled three and a half times around the Muladhara chakra at the base of the spine. Aroused from its slumber, Kundalini can be persuaded to ascend the spinal column - or, more correctly, spiral through the citrini nadi of its subtle equivalent (Sushumna) - like a jet of blue flame, shedding sparks in its wake, red on one side, yellow on the other. (2) Passing rapidly through the next five chakras, it brings each of them into harmonious and tuneful life - the first syllable of Kundalini (the word itself denotes a coil of rope) means 'sound' - until at last its cosmic fire ignites Sahasrara, a supernumerary chakra and the noblest of them all, immediately transforming that glorious, thousand-petalled lotus into the marriage bed of Siva and Sakti. It is their divine coupling, mirrored in our own, that facilitates our release (moksha) into the ineffable bliss of absolute being.

A similar bliss is accessible through magical practices, particularly those with an overtly sexual component. For that reason the latter are often referred to as Tantra, proof again of how the word has become synonymous with sex. And true enough, the methods of sexual arousal available to the magician are often similar to - because copied from - those of the tantrika. (They have, after all, proved their worth over time.) Even so it may be misleading, no matter how convenient, to describe sexual magic as tantrik because there is one important, indeed fundamental, difference between the two.

To grasp it we need to remind ourselves that for Vedic scholars, phenomena and form enjoy no real existence (avastu). Our awareness of them is merely the accidental reaction of our senses to a reality, itself imperceptible, which is nothing less than the creative self-projection of Brahman. (3) Over time this emphasis on the "otherness" of what is truly real (and, as such, a manifestation of God's inviolable Oneness) led to the view that the phenomenal world, product of our faulty perception, could not be other than inferior to what lay beyond it. After all, was it not the imperfect, because conditional, aspect of what is immutable and absolute? And so the notion grew that the world of matter was somehow debased and, as such, unworthy of being cherished or respected on its own terms. Such a notion is not confined to Hinduism. Closer to home we come across it in much Christian thinking, both orthodox and (to a far greater extent) heretical, while the neo-Platonists - to whom Western magic owes much - were, like the Manicheans, particularly infected by it. The celebrated Plotinus summed up their views by dismissing matter as "the primary evil".

We have always to remember, therefore, that while Tantra indulges the body and the senses, it does so with the aim of transcending both. Because of that, all the tantalising foreplay and eventual orgasm, however incidentally enjoyable, are simply means to an end, devoid of any ultimate value themselves. A way of escape from the snares of conditionality, they facilitate a brief triumph of mind over matter.

For the magician by contrast, matter is inherently sacred. Far from being a route to the Absolute it is the route by which the Absolute becomes real and present - even palpable - to us. For that reason the aim of Magic is to exploit the sacramental nature of matter, treating it (in the language of St. Augustine, as modified (in italics) by St. Thomas Aquinas) as the outward and visible sign of an inward, divine and efficacious grace. From this it follows that for the magician the sexual act is no longer the means to an end but correctly understood, the end itself. Through it, with it, in it, a higher, unconditioned reality manifests itself in terms appropriate to our environment. Tantra, by contrast, requires us to "liberate" ourselves from that environment before the same reality is met. At the risk of labouring the point: for Tantra it is through matter that we strive to touch the Absolute; for Magic it is through matter that the Absolute touches us. Matter is the Absolute in posse. (4)

It should be emphasised that sexual activity is not an indispensable constituent of magical practice. (Like Tantra, Magic is not, definitely not, "all sex"!) Readers who feel ill at ease with it or, as must happen to us all, no longer up to it, need on no account despair! But those who have at some time or other been privileged to participate in this type of work will be aware of its tremendous efficacity. My own first experience, following hints so discreet it took months to work them out, occurred when I was fifteen and introduced me - too soon, I sometimes think - to matters which (if my memory serves me well) are deemed in some sections of the O.T.O to belong to the arcana of the VIII° and IX°. Ten years later in a crowded warehouse deep within the meat-packing district of Manhattan (now gentrified beyond recognition) I watched dumbstruck as a veritable phantasmagoria of mighty beings were lent form and substance by the tremendous power inherent in what Verlaine called "ce divin phosphore". (5) Indeed, I have only to recall that occasion to be made giddy by the memory of it and, more importantly, to have again at my disposal (for such was the purpose of the undertaking) the 'phosphoric' energy simultaneously generated in the theurgic fervour of that night. But of course there's no need to cross the Atlantic for such experiences. Members of the gentlest, least pretentious Wiccan group will have experienced something of the kind - and of comparable worth - each time the Goddess deigns to bless them with her presence in the quiet of the night.

On all such occasions the aim is not to gratify the senses - however gratified they are in the process - but to permit the physical to make explicit the spirituality implicit within it. This requires of us an immense act of will, something that again distinguishes Magic from Tantra. There, you may remember, the participant's will, like the rest of his individuality, is dissolved in a supra-mundane reality where all differentiation has ceased. The magician, on the other hand, applies his will - and such should be his highest ambition - to effect changes that help advance the evolution of the world. (5) His is above all an act of love. Of love freely exercised in accordance with his true will, a concomitant of that divine will which sustains the dynamic reality, perceptible and imperceptible, of which we are at once the part and the whole: verum est....quod superius est sicut quod inferius et quod inferius est sicut quod superius, ad perpetrando miracula rei unius. Unlike Tantra, which uses the 'below' to embrace the 'above', Magic, sexual or otherwise, enables the magician, loyal to the Thrice Great Hermes, to embrace the 'above' in the 'below'.

And by so doing, he sanctifies the world.

oOo

Notes:
(1) According to the Puranas there are four successive ages within each maha-yuga of 4,320,000 years. Kali-yuga is the fourth and darkest of the current maha-yuga, its predecessors (Krita or Satya, Treta, and Dvapara) each marking a progressive decline in the moral, spiritual and physical condition of mankind. Another Puranic tradition speaks of time divisions known as kalpas, divisible into fourteen manvantaras each consisting of 71 maha-yugas, though the duration does seem to vary. Each manvantara is governed by a different Manu, our present one (the "post-Atlantean" as some occultists call it) being in the custody of Vaivasvata (Sk. "Child of the Sun") whose responsibilities include the ethno-cultural progress of mankind. (Manu - Sk. "Man" - is another term for the Purusha or Paradigmatic Man, comparable to the Hebrew Adam Kadmon.)

(2) Usually the red flames occur on the left side (ida) in men, the right (pingala) in women but variations occur as, for instance, when the sexual activity is other than heterosexual. Solitary activity by either sex may produce a brilliant mix of red and yellow flames on both sides, often suprasensibly 'visible' to observers. Alas, some esotericists condemn masturbation in terms worthy of those stern Victorian moralists who claimed it led to blindness and insanity. There are also lurid warnings from certain Jewish authorities that onanism (and nocturnal emissions) are induced by Lilith, the first Eve, who then uses the spilled seed to manufacture bodies for the demons in her charge. No less devilish are the incubi and succubi - I always forget which of them does what - who feature prominently in accounts of the witch trials.

(3) The creative impulse (Brahman) is other than the "divine Nothingness (ahava), which alone is God. Referred to in the Upanishads as Neti, neti ('not this, not that'), the featureless nature (nirguna) of God was cleverly expressed by Crowley as God=0. None of which should be taken to mean that God is the negation of everything (in itself impossible since it presupposes a positive ground), but, rather, that God is the absence of 'something'. And in this case the 'something' is 'existence' as opposed to 'non-existence'. Yet by denying existence to God, neither Crowley nor Hindu thinkers call in question the fact that God is. For them existence is secondary, the product of God's self-awareness, manifesting itself - the Vedas speak of an effulgence of cosmic light (hiranyagarbha) - in the dualistic world of "becoming" (Crowley's 0=2), of which we are part. (The Cabbala, of course, teaches much the same, as did the Neo-Platonists, albeit in a typically complicated manner.)

(4) In the impending New Age this same principle - that matter is the vehicle of spirit - will be of particular significance to those who encounter the Lord of the Aeon himself, end product of the equation already quoted (note 3): 0=2=1. Outwardly human, inwardly - or in the Thomistic sense, 'substantially' - divine, His person will become a valid object of devotion. For out of this Divine Child, as the liturgy of the A.O.M (II°) proclaims, there gushes forth the solar light that vivifies creation, microcosmic equivalent of that greater light, more incandescent than a million suns, that is His true, unmanifested self. Especialy inimical to the New Aeon are the secret forces currently responsible for the growth in fundamentalist religion and, paradoxically, novel and belligerent forms of scientific dogmatism..

(5) The location in Washington Street, with animal carcasses stacked on the pavement and in surrounding buildings - there was a pervasive odour of fat and stale blood - may not have been accidental. For as Dion Fortune observed in her book, Sane Occultism, " . . .. blood being a vital fluid, contains a large proportion of ectoplasm, or etheric substance. When shed, this ectoplasm rapidly separates from the congealing blood and thus becomes available for materialisations". Several psychic researchers, notably the less-than-reliable Harry Price, have observed that physical phenomena are more prevalent during séances conducted when the (female) medium is menstruating. (It may be for this purpose that the use of blood is recommended in certain magical operations.) Luckily, for those who, like me, are of a squeamish disposition, the power of creative visualisation, known in Yoga as Kriyasakti, works just as well.

OLD EGYPT AND THE NEW AGE

2009-08-23T09:51:00.000+01:00

Those poor Egyptians! Over the centuries maligned, misunderstood and capriciously misrepresented, their tombs pillaged, their sacred sites violated and, as if that weren't enough, being made to endure plagues, the drowning of their army and a cannon ball smashing into the face of the Sphinx. Not much of a reward for being what Herodotus described as the most religious people on earth.

Nor have they fared any better at the hands of their admirers. Occultists, for instance, have accorded them few favours, consistently misappropriating their mythology, their symbolism and, at least until Champollion, their hieroglyphic script. And all too often done in order to impress people afflicted by a naive fondness for what seems old and mysterious, as well as deliciously exotic. I've even done it myself, though in my case I can plead the callowness of youth by way of mitigation. For I had barely turned 12 when, inside the cover of Alan Leo's Astrology for All (1910 edition, purchased from a second-hand bookshop during the school holidays) I drafted an advertisement offering "amazing revelations of your character and fate, using the unique astrological system of the Ancient Aegyptians ". Not surprisingly, since none but me ever opened the book, there were no takers. Which is a pity, for I went on to boast of having consulting rooms not only in my home town of Aberystwyth, but also "at Strasbourg, Bonn, London, Las Vegas, Burma and Victoria". (The choice of locations is bizarre, even for a twelve-year old, especially the final two.)

Already by that age I had begun to marvel - scepticism came later - at the number of occultists who routinely beefed up their C.V by laying claim to past incarnations spent on the banks of the Nile. Spent, I should add, as priests, priestesses, court physicians and, best of all, pharaohs but never, so far as I recall, common labourers or slaves. One of my favourites was Mrs. Grace Cooke (1892-1979), a spiritualist medium and founder in the nineteen-thirties of the White Eagle Lodge, who claimed to have formerly been Ra-min-ati, a protegée of the High Priest, Is-Ra. Under his sensitive guidance she had been initiated into the Mysteries of Osiris before going on to better herself by marrying Ra-hotep, soon to become Pharaoh of the Two-Lands. There have been numerous others, chiefly women, whose recollected lives are no less distinguished. And such recollections may well be accurate. Just as my twelve year-old self might well have had consulting rooms all over the world. I might even still remember them, were my memory only half as good as Mrs. Cooke's.(1)

Someone else who, like me with my "unique astrological system", exploited things Egyptian, was the celebrated Count Cagliostro (1743-1795). In his case he used them to add lustre and questionable authenticity to the Egyptian Lodge he established in Rome, a creation inspired largely by his acquaintance with Freemasonry. (He had been initiated into the Craft during an earlier visit to England). For although Masonry is permeated with the the legend of Hiram and the building of Solomon's Temple, drawn largely from the account provided in King's 7:13-45 and (with added detail) 2 Chronicles 2:13, few would deny that the story is a re-working of the myth of Isis and Osiris. It is no surprise therefore that the Great Pyramid of Giza (flat-topped to indicate work still in progress) features prominently in Masonic symbolism, usually surmounted by what is taken to be the all-seeing eye of God but which, correctly understood, is the Eye of Horus. Neither is it surprising that the same theme is represented in that eclectic mix which forms the "matter" of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.(2) After all, the three W's who served in a sense as its midwife - The Rev. A. F. A. Woodford, Dr. W. R. Woodman and Dr. W. Wynn Westcott - were all committed Masons. And whatever truth there may be in the account of a manuscript picked up on a second-hand bookstall (rather like my copy of Astrology for All) and drafted in Enochian or the existence of a mysterious Fräulein Sprengel and her Rosicrucian Order, the Egyptian content of the Golden Dawn's teachings is not only pervasive but also, in a sense, its raison d'être. For it is nowadays acknowledged that from its inception the true, if covert, purpose of the Golden Dawn was to initiate - but no more than that - the realisation in Time of what lay behind the great myth of Isis, Osiris and Horus. Through sources of their own, a few members of the Order, Mathers possibly but Crowley certainly, were equipped to discern this higher purpose, just as some people can discern the face of Isis behind the veil of Nature.

It would nevertheless be wrong to pretend that the occult purpose of the Golden Dawn was uniquely its own. Or, as we have seen, that the Egyptian/Masonic connection was in any way novel, still less accidental. Already in the 15th Century, the Illuminati possessed more than an inkling of what was intended. (Incidentally, Adam Eishaupt, the young lawyer who re-organised the movement in 1776, was himself a Mason, as were his closest collaborators.) Linked to the Illuminati were the Martinists of France, ostensibly followers of Louis Claude de St. Martin (1743-1803), with our old friend Cagliostro often serving as an intermediary between the two. It is also noteworthy that one of the Illuminati was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe whose work (but especially its esoteric content) hugely influenced Rudolf Steiner, founder of the Anthroposophical Society and, fleetingly, an associate (at the very least) of the Ordo Templi Orientis, itself a legitimate successor to the Illuminati. Crowley was to join the O.T.O some six years after Steiner's brief flirtation with it ended.(3)

Conveniently - and not before time - this brings us to the present and the true purpose of the Egyptian Mysteries in magical practice,(4) a topic often alluded to but seldom addressed. The trouble is it is not possible to address it openly and frankly, at least not yet, because much of the relevant information has been imparted under conditions of secrecy. This is done not for the sake of mystery-mongering (though, sadly, there's much of that about) but because of the grave consequences that would follow, were the power contained in it, hitherto implicit, to be disclosed prematurely. Silence, as Eliphas Lévi never tired of stressing, is incumbent on those who cross the threshold of the Adytum.(5)

Some things may nevertheless be said with impunity. Before doing so, however, it should be emphasised that the Egyptian mysteries now being explored by a growing number of magical groups represent truths of universal significance. This means that the same truths are embedded in other systems all over the world, no matter how varied their expression. The fact is that no tradition, no ancient mythology, no antique culture has an exclusive right to them, something the more rigidly sectarian of our modern occult groups might care to bear in mind: outwardly different they may be, but essentially all are the same. Which serves to explain how my initial encounter with them - as it happens, in the very year I set up those ubiquitous astrological practices! - occurred within the framework of a Celtic, allegedly Druidic, tradition very different, at least superficially, from its Egyptian counterpart. In this case the precise connection was revealed to me by the late Joan Grant, author of several past life biographies, mostly set in ancient Egypt. (Her interest in my 'Celtic' experience was due in part to her once having had a nanny who was both Welsh and a witch.)

Some occultists with access to the Akashic record maintain that these scattered truths are fundamentally the same because they share a common hieratic source. And that source was in Atlantis. According to them, the custodians of this sacred knowledge quit the doomed continent before it was too late (its destruction not, as commonly supposed, a single event), with the majority journeying westwards to Asia via Africa, whence their successors migrated to the Middle East and finally to Europe. (Both chronology and route vary from one account to another.) True or false - and I remain uncommitted - it is indisputable that what we now encounter in different guises is one central and universal truth, something that inspired Mme. Blavatsky to embark on her first book, Isis Unveiled. "What we desire to prove" she wrote, "is that underlying every ancient popular religion was the same wisdom doctrine, one and identical, professed and practised by the initiates of every country...."

What is indisputable is that for many contemporary occultists this fundamental truth has become accessible in a new and startling fashion through the Egyptian Mysteries. Which is why, in what is regarded as the nascent Aeon of Horus, it is above all on this tradition that the minds and magical endeavours of so many are focussed. No single group has exclusive rights to it, whatever some may fondly (and self-importantly) believe. Instead each of us has a particular task to perform, a particular contribution to make towards completion of the Great Work. The alchemical term is appropriate for what lies ahead is a transmutation of reality, nothing less, on both the micro- and the macrocosmic levels. By our separate, even disparate, efforts (though these may be more co-ordinated than we imagine) what has been present only in myth will finally become real inside Time, redeeming our environment and us so that both may return (with apologies to Teilhard de Chardin) to that Omega point which is our end and our beginning, the selfsame Alpha from which manifestation emerged.

That, then, is why today so many esotericists, whatever their magical preferences - wiccan, gnostic, Thelemic, tantric, Rosicrucian, Enochian, Christian(6) - are 'working', consciously or not, with constituent features of the Isis-Osiris-Horus myth. Some accord special prominence to the Isis/Hathor aspect, others to the more virile, yet compromised, role of Osiris, while most in one way or another pay homage to Thoth/Tehuti, the presence that converts darkness into light. There are also some content to devote their magical (and chakric) energies to Set, often maligned by those who see but the part, never the whole, while others are intent on discovering the plenitude of Nuth in the awesome void of the Abyss. (All such divinities, it need hardly be said, are essentially conduits of force, however theurgically "real".) Meanwhile what these practitioners have in common is an abiding awareness of the Divine Child. For it is the divinity represented, indeed anticipated, by the mythical Horus that will shortly be realised within the space-time reality we occupy. And his will not be a benign influence remotely exercised from some supra-physical realm but an incarnation, a sacramental presence in the world about us. Best of all, a privileged few among those now working towards that glorious end will enjoy an intimate acquaintance with the same divine peson sub specie hominis.

But with that, I have already gone too far. Suffice to say that those maligned, misunderstood and misrepresented Egyptians have finally been vindicated. No wonder the Sphinx is smiling.

oOo

David Conway, author of Magic: an occult primer (Cape, London 1972, subsequently The Complete Magician (Aquarian Press, various editions) There is also some background information in Secret Wisdom:the occult universe explored (Cape, 1984, new edition - Secret Wisdom: the occult universe revealed, Vega/Chrysalis, London 2002)

Notes

(1) Mrs. Cooke's previous selves included not only Ra-Min-Ati but also a Mayan priestess, Minesta who lived over ten thousand years ago. As the latter, she claimed to have been admitted into something called The Plumed Serpent, also known as The Brotherhood of White Magic. ("White" and "Brotherhood" are words that appear irritatingly often in esoteric literature: the Golden Dawn was held to be the 'outer' version of The Great White Brotherhood, an august fraternity that numbered Mme. Blavatsky's controversial Masters among its more exalted members.) Throughout her lives Mrs. Cooke's mentor remained the same whatever his intermittent identity: Is-Ra in Egypt, Ha-Wah-Tah in Central America, possibly Hiawatha, and, most recently, White Hawk, a deceased Mohawk chieftain who served as her spirit guide. (Just as B &Q makes a point of giving jobs to pensioners, Spiritualism keeps countless Native Americans in post-mortem work.) More credible, despite their noveletish style, are the descriptions of previous lives published by Joan Grant. Of these, her first book, The Winged Pharaoh remains the most popular but equally worth reading are the autobiographical reflections in Many Lifetimes and Far Memory, the latter written in collaboration with her (third) husband, Dr. Denys Kelsey. The author has left on record her revulsion on first meeting Crowley - "the toad", as she called him - but, to be fair to both, she was only six or seven at the time.

(2) I use the term 'Golden Dawn' to cover both the First (Outer) and Second (Inner) Orders, the latter characterised by Gnostic-Christian influences reminiscent of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, a quasi-masonic order to which the founding fathers belonged and which was inspired by (if not copied from) the Rose Croix of Regular Masonry.

(3) For the next twenty years Steiner did his utmost to downplay his association with the O.T.O, choosing not to refer to it by name in his autobiography. He claimed to have approached the Order only to obtain from it a charter - one it was historically entitled to grant - empowering him to set up his own lodge, its sedate purpose to conduct "symbolic-ritualistic exercises" far removed from the hanky-panky indulged in by the O.T.O. Only a few months ago the Anthroposophical Society announced - with sighs of relief audible far beyond Dornach - that recently discovered correspondence confirmed that the revered Steiner had never been involved with the O.T.O. Ironically, my former doctor in Munich (the late Frau Dr. Wiegand), herself an eminent Anthroposophist, assured me that in his early days Steiner (who left his first wife to marry the dancer Marie Sievers) was notoriously fond of women and strong drink. As for the O.T.O, the less said, the better, if only to avoid the wrath of the several squabbling factions that nowadays claim to represent it - none of which would appreciate being relegated to a footnote.

(4) So far as concerns theurgic (or goetic) practices in Egypt itself, these are commonly referred to as heku (of which "Hecate" is a possible, if improbable, derivation). Several books exist on the subject but despite their scholarship (sometimes more apparent than real) it is advisable to read them critically, accepting only what "seems" right or is confirmed by one's own experience. Two stalwarts are E. A. Wallis Budge's Egyptian Magic (Dover Publications, New York, 1901) - though Budge, rumoured to have been a member of the Golden Dawn, is nowadays distrusted by most Egyptologists - and the idiosyncratic but informative Secret Teachings of All Ages (originally published in 1928 but re-issued in 1977 by The Philosophic Research Society in 1977) from the pen of Manly P. Hall. Of more recent publications, the respectably academic are, arguably, the most reliable, though not the most enlightening from an esoteric point of view.

(5) Lévi (Alphonse-Louis Constant) is rumoured to have suggested he was the reincarnation of François Rabelais whose fictional Abbey of Thelema, set on the banks of the Loire, (v. Gargantua, I. lvii) was revived by Crowley, together with his own adaptation of the commandment set above its entrance: Fay ce que voudras (Do what thou wilt). Appropriately enough, Crowley in turn claimed to be a reincarnation of (inter alios) Lévi who is said to have died on the very day Crowley was born (12 October 1875). The Theosophical Society had been founded in New York a month earlier.

(6) And this despite the fact that such groups - "Orders" always strikes me as pompous - include a variety of diverse ingredients, superficially incompatible, in their meditative, magical or liturgical practice. (True also of the Golden Dawn, it is now regarded as testimony to the comprehensiveness of S. L. Mathers' researches.) Thus one often comes across a hotchpotch of the kabbalistic, the neo-platonic and the gnostic, to which a generous dollop of Egyptian, Classical, and neo-pagan mythology or symbolism has judiciously been added. All this, remember, before the inclusion of astrology, abstruse bits of numerology and a generous pinch of tarot. At some point, too, the chakras (and much else that's that's yogic or Eastern) will join the mix. Fortunately the final dish is all the tastier for the richness of its composition, though a less indiscriminate approach is usual when operations specific to a particular tradition are undertaken.

Worth mentioning is the phenomenon known as as esoteric Christianity. Many occult-minded organisations have sprouted "churches", some more ostensibly Christian than others. All, however, borrow from the sacramental and liturgical (usually pre-Vatican II) practices of the Roman Catholic Church and even imitate its hierarchical structure. Such has happened in the Theosophical society under Besant and Leadbeater (with the latter's take-over of the Liberal Catholic Church), in the Anthroposophical Society (Christian Community) and in the "official" - Karl Gemer - version of the O.T.O (Gnostic Catholic Church). This tendency has always struck me as odd. In any case Rome does it far better.

(c)David Conway 2006

2006-11-01T11:16:00.000Z