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Underground > Temple >

Magical Orders

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07:47 / 07.10.07

There should be a pun on “ordure” in the title, but I couldn’t quite work it in (submissions welcome on a postcard)….

Anyway, a question: to what degree is the classical idea of the magical order (with grades, hierarchies, initiations, and perhaps “secret teachings”) relevant to our lives today?

A further question: Pete Carroll’s comment about “ideas passing from book to book without any intervening thought” has been quoted several times on here by me and others. Perhaps this phrase relevant to discussion of magical groups, in that most seem to take their “DNA” from pseudo-masonic orders like the Golden Dawn - do magicians simply attempt to set up these structures (“because that’s what magical orders are like”) without asking if these structures are really relevant or useful?

Most of my most positive learning experiences have been in a small, informal settings. More like families or group of friends getting together than anything as grand and pretentious as an order. I wonder to what degree does the pomp and circumstances surrounding the classical model of the magical order works against group and member aims rather than support them. Thoughts?

17:02 / 08.10.07

What were classical magical orders based on?

I got the idea they were based on something like medieval universities or trade guilds, but I'm not sure if that's actually the case.

12:58 / 09.10.07

I think we would have to conjure Trouser the Trouserian to visible appearance to answer that fully, Grant. But AFAIK the GD system was based on the Masons, though Mathers & Co deserve props for allowing women in. I get the impression from the few books I read about it a long time ago that there was something of a vogue for mebership societies at the time, which is part of the reason I see this model as something very alien from our society and our ideas about social grouping and interaction.

The earliest mention I've come across of similar socities is in early stuff about the Illumnati in Francis Yates' work - early "Rosicrucian" ideas and imagery were used in some of the political propoganda spread in the 17th Century, specifically movements prompted Fredrick, the Elector Palantine, against the Hapsburg Dynasty. How this exactly feeds into the 19th Century Occult Revival, I've no idea - possibly it doesn't, beyond the notion of a secret brotherhood with access to the secrets.

21:29 / 09.10.07

This Magick is a mess, someone needs to order it or no dessert.

21:32 / 09.10.07

I view the emphasis placed upon achievement important within orders towards the progression of the student. However it's just a teaching method, the grades themselves shouldn't be viewed as something of value. While a GED, BS, BA, MA or PHD will get you a job, what's more important is what you can do.

12:55 / 11.10.07

My (somewhat cynical) opinion sways to the idea that they were created for the same reason all social heirarchies are - elitist assertation of power operating under a guise of achievement recognition.

In my experience the grades are there only to reflect ones social status within said group and attainment of them caters to materialistic esteem/greed.

The only "power" distinctions I personally view as relevant would be a dynamic, dualistic teacher / student relationship.

12:34 / 14.10.07

The organisation to which I belong structures itself in grades according to degree of involvement in the life and work of the group. Think not of hierarchy but of concentric circles, and while the inner circle keep some things from the outer, this reflects not so much a need for 'secrets' as an appropriate confidentiality: the need to know of those who commit themselves more.

*

17:12 / 15.10.07

An alternative model is the artist's collective, with fluid membership, consensus replacing hierarchy, and influences replacing lineage. Although I don't know how they structure themselves, I suspect the Center for Tactical Magic has a design similar to the one I just described. Any other counterexamples to the graded order mentality? Maybe we can do an analysis of each model's successes and weaknesses here.

17:15 / 15.10.07

I'll skip the anaylsis, but I have less excuse for skipping a mention of a group to which I belong. Put simply, we rotate group roles among those competent to do them, with new members encouraged to join the rotation as they become able.

17:22 / 15.10.07

Do we count the Temple as a magical order? It's where I communicate with my peers, pick up new ideas, get my woolly thinking tightened up, we meet a few times a year and have shared values and although there's a slew of different trads here I've participated in a couple of attempts at group workings.
Is the Temple a magical disorder? I mean, order?

*

17:54 / 15.10.07

Kite, please don't skip the analysis, because that sounds like an interesting approach. How's it working?

19:35 / 15.10.07

A question that springs to my mind about magical orders is, 'what's it for?' What's the main purpose, what are the secondary gains people get out of it as well?

22:49 / 15.10.07

A question that springs to my mind about magical orders is, 'what's it for?' What's the main purpose, what are the secondary gains people get out of it as well?

Well there is two approaches to that question I guess. One, from an individual who seeks to gain something from said group, and two, from the group who wants to gain something from the person who has approached it. I imagine it is as simple as that really.

From an individual approach I’d say that it is about wanting to learn and be around people who can teach them, coupled with an urge to be part of a community, part of a group. That’s why I went looking around for various groups to be a part of. The need for finding people that are in someway thinking the same things that I was thinking and who I could talk freely with, the chance to learn off them. That can work beautifully, doing rituals with other people, whether its one other person or 5 or 30 is such a great thing.

Larger groups and Orders maybe have this, the teaching and the learning, but also have, some of the time, a large overbearing, dogmatic lump to pass on and this can cause problems when its stuck in your face and you have to try and squeeze your head around it to talk to anybody. I’m just talking about my own history here with largish organised groups ( Khemetic really…they just don’t want to know).

08:19 / 16.10.07

a large overbearing, dogmatic lump

I've noticed some of those in magical orders... often the person in charge.

08:22 / 16.10.07

I've also seen this from those going round saying "over " and "over" again how bad groups are .

12:40 / 16.10.07

Yea, i imagine that would be pretty annoying Osymandus. It's not something i've really come across much though, most people i know IRL have had both good and bad experiences with groups and this thread, and the Temple in general, seems pretty clear of that sort of thing.

13:36 / 16.10.07

Oh yeah, I've had some enormously positive experiences from groups - but these were by and large when the group was small enough to stay "member focused". I started this thread in part because of something I read (by a disgruntled member of a big magical order, slagging it off basically. If anyone has had the opposite experience, feel free to share. More later, busy today.

17:45 / 16.10.07

Day of the Zippid,

It works well so far. The group's been going for three years and has to my mind a lower dropout rate than others of its kind. No power struggles, and a membership of differing abilities gets on fine. Meeting as friends as well as magicians probably helps the cohesion of the group. I led from the front at the beginning but have taken a back seat as others have become confident enough to take on larger roles. We run new role assignments past the group. The faces say it all before the debating starts. It feels so good when others take the lead from their predecessor. SDome sort of statement about equal value in the group. Ideally, all would see leadership as just another role, like driving the van.

17:49 / 16.10.07

Oh and Roy medallion, I feel positive about my involvement in the IOT, but can't really go into detail. Perhaps it helps that the IOT does not represent a teaching order, preferring its members to have had magical experience before approaching. And the magical philosophy doesn't lend itself to dogmatism. Catmatism, yes. Fans of RAW will know what I mean.

Closed for Business Time

19:04 / 16.10.07

Disclaimer: Serious armchair theorising ahead.

What happens if one thinks of magical orders along the lines of control of information access? Whether intentional or not, non-recorded esoteric activity like an oral transmission and all kinds of teaching-sharing by non-symbolic sight, sound, smell and touch (ie without written words or other recordings) are inherently limited in timespace. Some orders seem to have used this feature of the social dynamics of non-literal groups, that scarce information can create power differentials solely by virtue of structural, and ultimately spatial (geogaphical) quantities. Of course, this happened all the time with books, scrolls, parchments, talismans etc?

12:31 / 17.10.07

In a way you'd hope that any good , sensible and well defined group would have a form of information filtering.

Espically regarding magick, your perceptions and idea's can change so rapidly and in somecase totally, that if your adhering to a set cariculum it makes sense to walk before you can run.

A nice Yogic example is the warning of waking the Kundaline too early.

However as with anything theres alway's exceptions

12:18 / 22.10.07

What happens if one thinks of magical orders along the lines of control of information access?

Doesn't it just depend as to what the underlying purpose of the information control is for?

Do the members of the group control such information for their own ends (power-centric or otherwise)? or to help acclimatize a student along his path?

Isn't the more appropriate question for a member of the group (applying to both "controller" and "controlee")along the lines of clarifying why the access-limitations are there?

Unconditional Love

16:44 / 24.10.07

Their is something that gets me about the idea of a magical order it reeks of religion, the closer something gets to that structure the further i want to run or kill it. When group identity is greater than individual freedom i want to kill things. Shared information can fast become a straight jacket when there is no option to say 'no! fuck you'.

The ability to question and flat out refuse becomes harder when the emphasis is laid upon a group structure over and above individual freedom.

The main thing spiritual groups seem to pass on is there advocates inherent sickness and bad habits to the next generation, abuses and unexamined thought structures that become group dogma at the expense of self knowledge or know thyself.

I personally can no longer see any place for magical, spiritual or religious groups in my life.

17:18 / 24.10.07

When group identity is greater than individual freedom i want to kill things.

Remind me not to invite you to my Morris Dancing group!

17:41 / 24.10.07

Sorry about the facetious post WA. I'll try and post something of more worth later tonight when i get away from work.

22:52 / 24.10.07

Their is something that gets me about the idea of a magical order it reeks of religion, the closer something gets to that structure the further i want to run or kill it.

This comes up again and again on Barbelith doesn't it. The idea of religion being this all consuming monster eater of individuals. Don't get me wrong WA, i can see where you are coming from, in some ways i can identify with how you are feeling, but it's something that, for me, doesn't really hold much ground really. It's a tricky one though.

When group identity is greater than individual freedom i want to kill things. Shared information can fast become a straight jacket when there is no option to say 'no! fuck you'.

Well, yea. Shared infomation that is just shunted along without any thought is always going to be a problem. The big dogmatic lump i alluded to up thread was about me looking to join an egyptian khemetic group who wanted me to take seriously the Negative Confessions from Egyptian history as a 'Vow' even though it has a number of 'confessions' that i am quite happy with ('I have not polluted myself,I have not lain with men,I have not worked witchcraft against the king.' etc) Seemed completly stupid at the time when i was discussing this with them but they seemed serious. Nutters.

But that is a small, strange number of groups surely. There seem to be far more people who are part of a religion or group and who are quite able to be 'free' enough to explore their beliefs within the parameters. Quite a few people in the Temple are religious and have talked beautifully about this. I'm struggling through Catherine Kellers book.. The Face of the Deep at the moment. Mainly because i just love how she writes, and even though a huge amount goes over my head (i'm not really up on Hebrew and Derrida and femminist theory) i'm so enjoying a bit of hard core theology. Which is something that comes out of a group thing.

00:05 / 25.10.07

I guess what i mean by that last bit of post is that any group or religion always has endless possible growth and change which comes about from individuals adding to it.

Instead of thinking of these large beliefs as huge, dogmatic creatures that lumber on through time, sapping up any people and individuals in their path, maybe try thinking of them as something that you can add to, be creative with, play with a bit maybe. And yes, argue with! Thats what Keller is doing in the book i linked to above. And think of them as people because that is what they are.

10:04 / 25.10.07

You can't say 'Religion is X', it's generalising nonsense. It's like saying 'Women are X' or 'American people are X'. The idea of this ravenous Cronos-like monster devouring millions of innocent believers down the centuries is not what religion is (even monotheism), it's a phantasm grown from your own mind.
I rather like the idea of a magical order, but I have yet to find one I like. Setting up a group seems to be the way to go, IME stories like Ghadis' experience with the negative confession people are all too common. (Did they want to cut out your heart and weigh it against the feather, too?)

10:11 / 25.10.07

Their is something that gets me about the idea of a magical order it reeks of religion, the closer something gets to that structure the further i want to run or kill it.

But that is your unique reaction isn't it, and you have it every time you perceive any constraint, whether real or imagined (much more of the latter actually, in your case) or indeed any structure. Frankly it gets really wearisome.

10:13 / 25.10.07

At least we get a couple of good posts from people reacting to you, but that's about it, in terms of a positive contribution.

Closed for Business Time

10:26 / 25.10.07

To continue my abstruse pontifications - and do tell me to shut up if I'm spouting nonsense;

Magical orders seem to be more prevalent in societies that had/has stronger and more segmented social strata, this meaning that the roles (and goals) of people and networks of people in these societies were less mutable, more predictable and less contingent. Modern post-industrialised societies are less stratified, more random and contingent and less hierarchical. This is of course generalising on a grand scale.

Magical orders (as opposed to just loose networks of practitioners, of which the Temple may be one example) seem to rely heavily on hierarchies as control and coordination mechanisms. Identities are accorded on the basis of role ascriptions that are given according to predetermined scripts, on the basis of fulfilling certain obligations or other meritorous action-achievements.

One thing I'd like to know more about from people who have experience of orders is how they felt about the processes of judgment and validation in these orders. I've heard that several orders function like schools, with reading lists and exercises to be done and tests that must be passed for further initiaton to be had. Are these valid ways of judging someone's spiritual worth? If not, what are?

Hope this makes some sense..

11:03 / 25.10.07

I think my idea of a good magical order is like a knitting circle or book club, where you get together and do stuff, swap top tips and feedback, give and get encouragement and grounding, that sort of thing. Or maybe like a martial arts club or musical band or something. The idea of a structured GD style hierarchy with grades and titles turns me right off.

11:35 / 25.10.07

To make a worthwhile contribution to the thread rather than expressing my annoyance...

Magical orders seem to be more prevalent in societies that had/has stronger and more segmented social strata, this meaning that the roles (and goals) of people and networks of people in these societies were less mutable, more predictable and less contingent. Modern post-industrialised societies are less stratified, more random and contingent and less hierarchical. This is of course generalising on a grand scale.

I think your post is getting an exactly what I'd hoped to talk about in my first post. I was wondering aloud if the structure of magical orders as most commonly encountered is an anachronism, basically. This historical form seems to survive but to what degree is it still relevant?

One thing I'd like to know more about from people who have experience of orders is how they felt about the processes of judgment and validation in these orders. I've heard that several orders function like schools, with reading lists and exercises to be done and tests that must be passed for further initiaton to be had.

To be honest, I would say that the way around this problem for me is to keep the "one star in sight" - why are you there? What is the purpose of the order? Do the people around seem capable of getting you where you want to go or imparting useful knowledge to you? Are the exercises you re asked to do, or reading you are suggested useful to you? It's easy to lose sight of all this stuff when confronted with the glamour and flash or a group, but they are important questions, I think.

I think one can answer these questions in smaller, more informal groups myself, see my comments above.

11:38 / 25.10.07

X post with Q.

Can anybody here argue in favour of the big magical order?

Kite, I meant to get back to your comment above: Perhaps it helps that the IOT does not represent a teaching order, preferring its members to have had magical experience before approaching.

It was always my impression that the IOT styled itself as a teaching order (Liber MMM etc)? Was I wrong? Have things changed?

Unconditional Love

12:12 / 25.10.07

When you value freedom above constraint and structure and have experienced the abuses of so called spiritual society's first hand and have an experiential insight into just what hypocritical abusive behaviours lay under the surface that reaction is the initial one based on an intelligent response to being abused by so called spiritual person that uses that guise as nothing more than a front to abuse vulnerable people.

And many organisations are doing that on mass (forgive the pun) If not raping peoples bodies raping there minds instead with drivel and shite. I am not going to shut up about it until all those so called spiritual people (arseholes) are held accountable for their actions, without hiding under the cloak of their spiritual beliefs. If need be i will start the removal personally myself one piece of shit at a time.

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