Polyhymnia wrote: ↑Tue Dec 24, 2019 3:09 am
obnoxion wrote: ↑Mon Dec 23, 2019 4:17 pm
I have taken a new interest to GD materials. This certainly does not mean I am going through a curriculum of self-initiations. I used to have a steday practice of some of the basic GD rituals for some years (lmainly lesser and greater banishings of pentagram and hexagram and the middle pillar), and now I'm looking of incorprating its materials into a Tarot-based practices.
Very neat! So much of what I practice is still firmly rooted in GD rituals. I've learned so much this past year in the SoA, things that I hadn't even considered to learn or spend time on, and I feel that my time spent studying the GD has really given me a solid foundation on which to build.
Have you listened to any of Regardie's audiobooks or read any of his titles?
When one thinks about it, the influence of the GD on Western Occultism is so overwhelming that if one could somehow make the GD disappear, much on contemporary occultism would simply collapse. And one must add that the people involved with the GD were quite exceptional on any standards, let alone in comparison to other magical orders since, perhaps, the Rosicrucianism during the pubmication of their three manifestos.
I've read much of Regardie, and I just bought back a new edition of the Complete Golden Dawn. Though a bigger influence has been Paul Foster Case's original books, "Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages" and "The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order". It was Case who sparked my interest in gematria, and I think I've taken his inspiration and gone quite far with it.
And I also must mention Eliphas Levi, who is a huge influence both as he is, and through his influence on the GD. I appreciate a vivid imagination and originality in an accomplished occultist and I think Case and Levi had that. Regardie's virtues are different, I think. He clarified and systemized a massive amount of material, and in many ways saved it from the threat of obscuritism. Perhaps that is one of the good things Regardie got from Crowley - the ideal of "magick without tears", so to speak.