Descriptions:
Video Description
Some readers have said the work is not truly Golden Dawn, and this video is the answer. Lyam Christopher begins by agreeing, partly. The course is not the original order as it stood in 1900, because the tradition kept living. Between the old lodge, Israel Regardie, Pat Zalewski, and the teachers who handed the work to him, much of what was once locked away in the Adept grades moved outward so a modern student could begin the real inner work much sooner.
He draws a useful line between a purist and an evolutionist. A purist treats the old system as a finished object to preserve untouched, while an evolutionist sees it as a living being that can mature. He is wary of chaos magic’s urge to weigh everything by modern reason alone, yet he also refuses to pretend nothing has changed since the beginning. The goal is not to cling to a year on a calendar but to keep the high magic of theurgy alive inside its original fire.
The clearest change is a gentle one. In the curriculum he learned, the Middle Pillar and much of the astral work were already brought forward because the Adept’s magic does not begin in some distant waiting room, it is happening now. The main task in Kabbalah, Magic & the Great Work of Self Transformation, he says, is to recognize that this is it. That recognition, repeated little by little, is the whole secret the tradition has always been pointing toward.
Full Video Transcript
Well, I know that there have been a number of remarks about the Kabbalah Magic Book
in how it is not truly Golden Dawn material.
And so it looks like it’s time to respond to that via a video.
It is not like the original Golden Dawn.
That is very much true.
So we’re going to talk about what’s happened between 1900 and then 2026,
which is this year. All right, so before we get into it, it’s worth it to mention the
difference between a purist and an evolutionist, let’s say. I kind of had to think about this for
a second, because in other words, if you’re not a purist, what are you? Well, I guess you’re an
evolutionist. In other words, you see a tradition as evolving over time. But that’s not that easy,
okay because when i look at what has happened to much of modern magic i kind of cringe sometimes
not because i’m a purist but because there is a sort of disdain for older forms of magic and
an attempt to modernize things in terms of the modern age anyway um so i’m kind of targeting
in my mind right now, chaos magic, because it tends to bring the modern attitude of rationalistic
hubris to bear upon magic. And quite frankly, the original high magic, let’s say, of theurgy
was entirely wary of what has happened in the field of chaos magic. And that is applying
modern standards of the purely scientific, purely psychological, purely intellectual
interpretations of magic upon magic. Okay, so in some respects, you could say, oh my god,
oh my god, Liam’s a purist. He thinks we should go back to the original stuff that they were doing
back in, you know, the year 400 or something like that. But no, because the Golden Dawn material
that i was trained in was stuff that thankfully had evolved since the time of 1900 at least
and uh what i know now is that the golden dawn material was created built upon the original
principles of theurgy as presented by iamblichus from the year 300 something 400 something and
And it’s almost as though the creators of the Golden Dawn Curriculum were reading Iamblichus and then checking off every requirement for theurgy that he was requiring for magic to be truly high magic.
I don’t know how to say that exactly.
A magic that avoids rationalistic hubris.
rationalistic hubris is the the belief that the human mind and its interpretations of reality
are enough that you can proceed based on those the problem with that is that the manner in which
we proceed to let’s say fix our lives is if it’s going to be guided by the manner in which we
currently think then the the principles that we’re using to screw up our life are then being
applied to our means of fixing our lives. So this is the problem with rationalistic hubris.
We think that our rational mind and our modernistic sensibilities are enough
to help us develop our own magical curriculums. So the principles of theurgy or high magic,
to my mind, need to be based on the original principles of Iamblichus, let’s say. But they
do need to evolve to accommodate modern sensibilities yeah so it’s a little tricky um
i don’t think that any form of magic the way that it has supposedly evolved today i’m doing air
quotes around evolved um not any form of magic that has evolved to today i don’t think is
necessarily worthwhile and i personally i think i’m pretty lucky to have found a curriculum
that evolved from the time of Ambacus to become a sort of golden dawn curriculum around the year
1900. And then in the hands of people like Israel Regardi, Pat Zalewski, and Laura York,
it continued to evolve, and others, no doubt. It continued to evolve since then. And I’m going to
talk about how the Kabbalah Magic book is mostly a reflection of how I learned iMagic, and that the
way I learned it is from an evolved curriculum, not from the original Golden Dawn 1900, you know,
curriculum. Okay, it’s based on the original Golden Dawn material, but things were changed by
Israel Rigardi himself, and by Laura York, and to some extent, as far as I understand it,
Pat Zalewski. Yeah, my training was with the Raharakti Temple up in Washington State.
So am I an evolutionist? Sort of, yeah. But I’m not really too happy with many of the sort of
modern forms of magic. I tend to assert that humans suffer from an ailment called modernity,
and that it’s a type of insanity primarily it’s an insanity that insists that you are an entity
that is crammed up inside your head or inside your body and that you are inside your body and
that you are looking out of your body at the world um this is a fantasy of modernity and
modernity sort of does that to us so it can then objectify us and then we can become a worker in
the system it’s not all bad but um but at the same time it is uh materialistic and reductionistic
among other things and we don’t need to subscribe to modernity all right so the original golden
dawn around the year 1900 when the original golden dawn existed um i don’t know 1888 i guess is when
it started and uh the idea kind of what the golden dawn evolved out of was a bunch of um freemasons
and members of other occult secret societies
that weren’t happy with the Masonic structure
because they realized, well, this is just a gentleman’s club,
a social club, and it masquerades
as a system of occult rituals.
And it does have some effect, obviously,
as a sort of a success club and a networking club.
And there are principles involved,
like the pattern on the trestle board and things like that,
which you can use to become more successful and things like that, right?
But they were realizing that the principles of Freemasonry were not magical.
And so apparently what they did is they created a magical society
based on what they knew about Rosicrucianism, about Hermeticism,
about Theurgy, most of all, about Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy,
which is basically trying to base itself on Theurgy.
and they put together somehow a system of self-initiation into high magic.
However, the original Golden Dawn was still very much steeped in the idea of the social club.
So it was very strong with them that they felt that they as a group of adepts could initiate you into their group.
and so the primary principle was let us transform you in this group ritual okay and so in other
words the primary work of the initiation that was supposed to be done with you was done to you
in a group initiation ceremony which can be uh it’s very tribal very normal for humans to do
that if you’ve ever been a member of a fraternity at a college you they might there might have been
some bizarre initiation rituals these things tend to evolve on their own okay they’re mostly about
you know social norms and being indoctrinated into the group and adopting the values of the
group things like that right and i think many people who gravitate towards occultism want that
they want to be part of something they want to be part of an egregor that word egregor is used so
often people who know me know i don’t like that word because it tends to be people who use that
were intended to be, you know, joiners. It’s like, well, Liam, tell me, where can I find a group that
will initiate me and I can become one of that group? I don’t know. Bhaharakti, as far as I know,
doesn’t exist, or they’ve completely withdrawn from public view at this point. I do know of
other temples out there, but don’t know. Sorry. The primary work anyway, when I was trained, was
by yourself. So even if I had lived in Washington state with Raharakti people up there, I would
still primarily have been doing the rituals myself and checking in with my advisors on a regular
basis. So the original Golden Dawn was, well, let us do it. We’ll do one massive initiation ritual
ritual on you and then your only task then is to memorize some material none of this learning it
was experiential just memorize the material and at least they gave you one ritual to do and that
was the lbrp the lesser banishing ritual the pentagram which you could do every you do that
every day and then you also do a meditation for the grade that you’re in so the neophyte
meditation. There’s a lot of meditation, the Theoricus meditation, et cetera. Okay. And that
was it. That was all you did. Granted, you might have a contact within the temple, which was your
advisor who might take you under his wing or her wing and then give you additional guidance through
the outer order, teach you astrology and other principles like geomancy, things like that. Okay.
maybe, but the original Golden Dawn didn’t really do anything beyond one massive group initiation,
and then a daily LBRP, and then daily meditation. That was it. Now, over time, the Golden Dawn,
thanks to mostly to Israel Regardi, became much more theurgic, much more experiential,
much more, very much more intense as a personal spiritual practice, primarily solitary. So the
evolved golden dawn, as I’m calling it here, primarily the principle was transform yourself,
self-transformation. Okay. I don’t know if that term is still in vogue right now. That’s a pretty
good way of describing it self-transformation uh so you still work on purifying yourself which
would be through the lbrp every day but there’s also now middle pillar work established in the
outer order grade process okay so the initiation process in the evolved golden dawn was primarily
by yourself and it involved daily lesser banishing ritual the pentagram middle pillar
and very often very special subtle body work, okay?
As well as the principle of invoking.
The principle of invoke often.
There was a daily invocation involved
once you get in the elemental grades
and there was daily banishing involved, okay?
And one of the best additions,
which I cannot overstress enough,
is the addition of the magical journal,
which Crowley stressed a lot.
Crowley liked to write kind of my assertion is if you don’t like to write and reflect upon what’s
going on inside your mind or in your imagination what are you doing practicing hermetic magic
to begin with okay so if you don’t like to keep a daily journal then don’t do this type of magic
go out and do zen or learn martial arts or something okay this is hermetic magic is the
path of an intellectual experimental intellectual magician who is constantly reflecting it’s very
philosophical but also very experiential but but largely in terms of mental activity yeah and that’s
um it’s a path for nerds essentially if you are really very studious because the one of the
problems is that when you when you try to reach enlightenment through learning and the mind and
you know being bookish studying uh the the mind is a major obstacle however there is a route that
you can take which is basically like hermetic high magic where you can use the mind as a means to
bypass the mind okay it’s very important okay um so the hermetic path is a path for people who are
very, let’s say, intellectual. They like to read, they like to write, they like to study,
they like science, they like mythology and literature and things like that. They like to
learn. If you don’t like to write and read and things like that, then please do not take up
hermetic magic. Go do Zen or something like that, okay? One of the things about people who don’t
want to keep a journal is that they are uncomfortable with their handwriting. Get over it
or take calligraphy and then improve your handwriting. If you didn’t really develop
your handwriting when you were in third grade, let’s say, go back and then work on your
handwriting. Make it beautiful. Take pride in it. So enjoy keeping your magical journal with pen,
your actual writing with a pencil or pen, you know, like the olden days. So, and the interesting
thing about the Evolve Golden Dawn is that it was maybe 80% experiential. Most of the stuff
you were doing was daily awareness exercises ritual going out and experiencing things and
then writing about them and there were some awareness techniques involved as well so the
original golden dawn from like the year 1900 or so pretty much in the neophyte grade all you did
was you went you underwent the zero equals zero initiation ceremony also called the neophyte
ceremony, which is probably the most important ritual in the Golden Dawn whatsoever. Not
necessarily that you go through it, but that you at least study it, because the principles of
theurgy are all bound up within that ritual. It’s astonishing just how much that ritual
encompasses in regard to theurgy and for my people on patreon somebody has asked that i do
a closed door meeting with my patrons uh i think i will do that um a closed door meeting just about
the zero equals zero ceremony because in the kabbalah magic book it’s required that you at
least study it and visualize what’s happening you know on the temple floor during the zero equals
zero initiation okay but in the original golden dawn all they required was that you underwent the
zero equals zero initiation ceremony and then you just had a knowledge lecture that gave you
just some basic things to remember like the signs the signs of the zodiac uh the symbols of the
planets and the hebrew alphabet and the only thing you did on a daily basis was the lesser
banishing ritual the pentagram the lbrp and the neophyte meditation that was it that was all you
until the next grade so people went through the grades very quickly uh and too too quickly
obviously uh it didn’t really work that well it obviously stirred up a lot of um of crap in the
psyche among these people and it caused some problems of course but that’s because it was
working there was something really really cool going on and it needed to be harnessed and better
developed into a curriculum that took advantage of what was actually happening in the in the
souls or in the psyches of the people undergoing the process. Incidentally, the Hebrew as a
language, one of the principles of theurgy is that it’s important to value languages that are dead,
like Latin, let’s say, right? So yes, the Golden Dawn used Latin, and it used Greek a little bit,
and ancient Egyptian as far as what it knew, and it used Hebrew as it’s like, and also Enochian,
but Hebrew as its primary sort of language of barbarous names of evocation and invocation.
So at the time, in 1900 or so, Hebrew was a dead language.
So that kind of met one of the requirements of theology.
Like you need to use an old language that still has, it now has an exotic element to it,
which is now brought back from the hoary old ages past that has,
what I recommend is that you do not learn Hebrew,
that you keep it mysterious, okay?
Now that ever since 19, I don’t know, in 40-something,
it’s amazing that Hebrew has actually come back as a spoken language.
That’s almost impossible to do, but Israel managed to do that.
For theology, it’s kind of unfortunate
because we need to have an old language that’s sort of dead and from the past that we can use
in our invocations. All I have to say is that the version of Hebrew that we use in
Theoretic Magic is still old. It has no vowel points. It’s not modern Hebrew. It’s still the
older forms. And it’s best to simply use the Hebrew as though it’s a language from the deep
past, such as Sanskrit or something like that. So I don’t have any problems with the fact that
it’s no longer a dead language. Kind of the version of Hebrew that the Golden Dawn uses is
essentially a dead language. The language supposedly behind the Torah and the original
Old Testament. And of course, in the original Golden Dawn, you can see a pattern here. So
there was simply an initiation ceremony, a knowledge lecture, and of course the meditation
for the grade. So in other words, every single grade, all you did is you’re still doing the LBRP
every day, you’re still doing some type of meditation every day, but the only thing extra
required is that you undergo the group initiation ceremony once, and that you commit the knowledge
lecture to memory which is not high level knowledge it’s simply a matter of memorizing
correspondences just so that you can then then they give you a test and you answer questions
based on rote memorization this is why people went through the grade systems very quickly in
the original order because there was almost nothing to do the only difference is that in
the philosophist grade this is the fire grade philosophist is right before the portal grade
and adeptship okay uh that is supposedly when the principles of astrology were then practiced
you might have been learning a little bit of astrology up until that point
just the symbols and whatnot but not practicing yet in the philosopher’s grade
then some uh actual practice with astrology was required for instance drawing up a horoscope
and things like that and so the ability to work with astrological symbols the golden dawn is
primarily a system of astral magic which means star magic and it’s basically the idea that you
can draw down principles from the heavens and manifest them upon the earth and then in the
portal grade this is right before you become a superpowered adept right in the portal grade
there was simply the portal grade initiation ceremony which is very interesting and worth
studying uh and there’s also the then they introduced the middle pillar ritual finally
and uh as though it were just sort of an afterthought and then um there was a nine
months incubation period so uh symbolic of course for being gestating in the womb and then being
reborn into the world of the adept. And then suddenly everything changes. Okay, so for the
middle pillar, that becomes extremely important. And I think Israel O’Gardy recognized in it
the genuine theurgic potential that it contains. And then he began teaching it as something to be
implemented in the outer order with students going through the elemental grades. And so that
started the curriculum that eventually turned into the curriculum that i learned from okay but
before we get into that curriculum we’ll let’s talk about the tatwa symbols okay so the tatwas
were taught in the inner order so in other words once you got beyond the self-initiation process
into the inner order and became the sort of super powered adept um then the system of tatwas was
revealed and then you could begin working with them unfortunately what happened is that when
israel agardi published some of the golden dawn materials he basically showed that the tatwas
each of these tatwa symbols was related to the elemental grades so the assumption was that
the people going through the outer order process could then work with the tatwa symbols okay
there’s a problem with that okay how should i describe that so when you work with the
tatwa symbols you hold them up in front of you and they tend to have this effect on your um your
your optic nerve and eventually you can close your eyes and then use the afterburn image of
that tatwa symbol because it makes an impression on the retina and you can still see it after you
close your eyes okay and then when you have that symbol then you can then see through it
into some kind of imaginary realm. And then, of course, the temptation is then to go into that
realm and project into that realm, which is really cool, by the way. If you do that before you
understand what’s happening, there are major karmic consequences to that. So one of the big
problems with the Golden Dawn that persisted from 1910 onward, something like that, was that they
were using the tattva symbols in the outer order among students who were not ready to work with
that yet. It’s doubtful even that inner order members, some of them were ready to work with
these symbols. Okay, so if you’re not of the adept level yet, if you haven’t been through
all the elemental grades yet, hands off the tattva symbols. Don’t practice them because there
are i can go into that but it’s too much to go into okay anybody who you know is is a member on
the patreon site can ask me about this and i’m happy to dialogue with you back and forth about
how these things work and and and why there is a supposed you know karmic danger from working with
um many of these um various magical techniques before you’re ready to work with them danger is
not really quite the right word. Because if you work with them before you’re ready, they’re just
going to cause the same kind of troubles you’ve been experiencing and maybe amplify them. They’re
going to basically keep you from really using them as the adept would use them anyway. They’re going
to, they gatekeep themselves, if that makes any sense. Okay, so there’s not much really danger in
them. It’s just that it’s pointless to go into these kinds of studies until you realize something
very important about the nature of duality and karma, right? Once again, you can contact me if
you want to, and we can dialogue a little bit further. All right, so what did Liam change?
So when I published the Kabbalah Magic Book, it caused me a little bit of trouble because
I very briefly was accused of breaking my oath of initiation, but eventually my teacher said,
no, no, no, I’m glad the material is out there. I’m glad it’s good. It’s perfectly fine.
So what did I change? I basically put forth the same stuff that I learned in this evolved
Golden Dawn as developed by Israel Rigardi and my teacher Laura York. And basically what’s happened
in that evolved curriculum is that half of the work of the adept has been moved into the
self-initiation process of the outer order. This is wonderful for people like me because
I’m the type of person who doesn’t like to learn the basics without just jumping right in. As an
example, when people tried to teach me the basics of music before actually me learning how to play
guitar and play a song, I couldn’t learn that way. There was just no way to learn scales and
individual notes and how to read a musical register and things like that. It’s simply
the rote memorization that doesn’t work for me. I just wanted to play something right away.
okay so the and that’s the way the original golden on was set up learn the basics first
memorize the material just go through our group initiation ceremonies do the do the daily
purification work and eventually eventually then you’ll be ready to study and do this all of a
sudden get the advanced work right so the evolved curriculum basically pulled a lot of the advanced
work out into the outer order so that you could systematically begin to practice it, but in a way
that basically begins to transform you very quickly. Is it dangerous? Yes, of course it is.
Anytime you engage in real spiritual work like this, it stirs up a lot of shit and you’re gonna
have to do your journal entries, you’re gonna have to do your shadow work, and you’re gonna
have to process this stuff as it comes up. And some people have it really bad. Some people have
a fairly easygoing time of it. I spent 10 years in the outer order, and yet it was not too difficult
for me. I don’t have a lot of accumulated karmic crap, supposedly. And yet I spent a lot of time
in the outer order processing a lot of stuff. That doesn’t mean that’s the way it’s going to
be for you. It’s about six months per grade, let’s say, if you do the Kabbalah magic work,
and nine months for the portal grade. That’s kind of the way it’s set up, okay? And there’s no
guarantee that you’ll actually succeed. Most people do not, plain and simple, okay? And what
does it mean to succeed? That is hard to describe, but you’re going to reach a lifestyle in which
you are basically free of suffering it’s not quite accurate to say that okay but eventually
you reach a lifestyle in which you are aware of the true nature of suffering and of pain
and you’re also able to some extent co-create with the divine so you can do magic that is now
in line with the way that the divide is manifesting things in the world. There’s
nothing really special about that, okay? So my main point here is that when the evolved curriculum
brought much of that inner order material into the outer order so that you can begin practicing
it right away, the advantage of that is that as you go through the outer order grade process,
you are doing theurgy you are doing what the magician does you are functioning as the adept
already you’re already doing it problem is you don’t know what you’re doing so you have to stick
to the program okay but the challenge for you as as you’re doing all this stuff is to recognize
that this is it this is this is what the the the magician or the ceremonial adept
ceremonial magic adept whatever that is right the magus of power this is the way that the
magus of power lives so if you’re going through the outer order grade process you’re already doing
that co-creation process you’re orchestrating your life to appear in a certain way it’s already
happening it’s kind of weird for me to say that because i can just say that it’s already happening
now even though maybe you’re somebody who doesn’t practice magic it happens for everybody they just
don’t recognize it. Okay. So the main task to my mind of any student of magic in the Kabbalah
magic book is to periodically do a reality check and see this is it. But in other words, how is
this really? So Liam said that doing this work is the work of the adept. How? How is this? I’m
already doing the magic of the adept. It doesn’t feel like it. Okay. So the primary task is to
recognize how it happens, okay? And eventually it clicks. And there’s some major devastating
transformations that, of course, have to happen within the psyche. Essentially, the death of the
ego, letting go, entering the flow state, things like that. Once again, you can join me on the
Patreon site and become part of the community there, and we can talk about these things further.
they are heavy duty topics many people would call them deep i don’t think they’re deep at all
actually calling them deep is a way of dismissing them as beyond your reach so calling them deep is
not that helpful what did i change okay so in the evolved curriculum the golden dawn
once you get in the elemental grades that’s earth air water fire you work with your astral body
your star body, the way that the theologists of old worked with it. And you work with it
according to the four worlds of the Kabbalah. So the way that my teachers taught it is that
you simply work with the aura, the egg shape around the body, and you work with the aura in
terms of the colors of the light according to the golden dawn color correspondence system.
And of course, you’re using various names of power for different layers and levels of the psyche or
the soul. And as you go through the grades, the colors change. Of course, they become more pure,
more rarefied, more primary, let’s say. And that’s really cool. The thing that I changed is that
the shape of the body is now different. So in the original Raja Rakshasa curriculum that I went
under okay the evolved curriculum we’re always working with the egg shape around the body the
egg shape and the color so but for me what i did is i changed the um in the zolotar grade you’re
working with the physical body in that color just visualizing your physical body within that color
and made of like crystalline substance or material substance and then in the next grade higher
then you work with the astral body or the or the etheric body let’s say which is just the glowing
form of your body your etheric double let’s say right and then the grade higher than that then
you work with the egg shape around the body which is the briatic body okay and then for the highest
level then you just work with the tree of life image that’s superimposed upon the body okay for
the highest level there’s nothing really that you can conceive of or visualize so we simply
visualize the tree of life itself superimposed upon the body in the azaluthic color okay so i
that’s what i that’s a major change actually what we get then is a four-fold body of light
that consists of a tree of life pattern an auric egg pattern an etheric double pattern and then
the physical body itself okay which which tends to be very powerful when all four levels are then
combined in one image. Bam. Okay. That’s the major change that I made to their curriculum.
I’m not going to apologize for it because it is a major step up, in my opinion. And we call that
the middle pillar in the four worlds. But of course, I’m calling it the fourfold body of light.
And so in each of the initiation grades, you’re developing a version of the subtle body as it
appears in one of the four worlds of Kabbalah. Why are we doing this? So the astral body, let’s say,
the subtle body, they call it a vehicle. And many people think that, well, that’s because it’s a
vehicle I jump into and then I travel to other planes of existence, right? No. So it is a vehicle
because it is the means by which the divine manifests your life so it it is the vehicle of
the divine um being able to appear in the physical world to manifest it so in other words from the
highest level down to the lowest level of materiality that is the nature of the vehicle
it basically transmits or condenses the divine power all the way down to your particular spirit
spiritual form or physical form in your life that’s how it’s a vehicle okay if you want to
talk about astral projection and things like that astral projection is not what we think it is it’s
not me hopping in my astral body and like zooming out of my body into other places no sorry it’s
that’s something else, okay? It certainly can seem as though you’re doing that. That’s fine,
okay? But the idea of the astral body as a vehicle is simply as a means of the divine power
descending from the highest level to the lowest level in order to create the world. That’s how
it’s a vehicle. Anyway, once again, you can join me on Patreon and we can talk about these things
further. All right. Other changes I made. This looks like a lot. Okay. There was a lot of stuff
in the curriculum I learned, which was not really available in the published material in the Golden
Dawn. So some stuff I had to remove, which actually I didn’t think was that important.
So there were awareness exercises in the curriculum that I learned, which were just kind of like
cycled through as you went through the grades. Okay. I kind of grouped them up and changed them
somewhat to make them correspond to the various elemental grades. So in neophyte, there are silence
exercises. In psalater, there are grounding exercises. In theoricus, there are naming
exercises. It’s very important, by the way. And in the practicus grade, there are hermetic exercises.
and in the philosophers grade there are voice exercises and in the portal grade there are
aura exercises but the awareness exercises are very important in the and very fun too
even though your idea of fun is going to transform as you go through this process
does the adept have fun anymore ever fun is no longer really the proper word for what the adept
experiences. So in the original curriculum I learned, all we really had to do was take some
coloring pencils and color the god forms of the neophyte ceremonies and the other
grade ceremonies. I just changed that into make a compendium of gods and kind of put together
images of gods and then write down the various, you know, attributes and correspondences of the
gods, just as you need to. And I think a minimum requirement is that you had to go through the
various Egyptian gods that I’ve made a list of, plus any others that you might want to add,
especially the gods of the planets, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Helios, etc., etc., right? So
those would also be important. But many of the Egyptian gods are very important as well
in the golden dawn system uh the rose cross ritual i was taught i think it was in there’s a
ladder or neophyte i don’t think it was effective at that point it’s something for the adept so
i reserved that for later for the portal grade so i moved it it’s one thing i changed why why did i
do that because calling upon the divine light students don’t know how to do that if you think
you know how, contact me and tell me how you do it. So anyway, physical exercises, those were
interesting. Yeah, I made them optional. So I don’t need to go into that very much really because
quite frankly, I think all you really need to do is maybe resistance training every other day
and maybe some form of high intensity interval training, HIIT training,
maybe twice a week. That would be really fine enough. But I did recommend some exercises,
which I still like very much, actually, like Pilates and the Alexander Technique. Many people
swear by them. They say that they are quite awesome. The Alexander Technique is actually
really cool, though it’s kind of drifting off into oblivion now. I think physical therapy is
also really important to learn, especially as you get older. It blows my mind to see people in the
grocery store on these people mover carts like they can’t walk anymore. That is so needless
in most cases. It really just blows my mind the way that people eat and fail to take care of
themselves and the rampant inflammation. Anyway, it also startles me that many supposed adepts of
the golden tradition are so unhealthy. Physical exercise is just so important. I can’t stress it
enough. I changed the Enochian tablets. I think, well, yes, when I was trained, we just created
them in black and white during the grades. That was it. But what I did is I said, well, color them.
You make your own Enochian tablets, color them, and have them in the ritual space when you’re
doing a ritual. But that’s it. There’s no work done with them whatsoever other than to create
them with the proper color correspondences. We were also taught pendulum work, working with
the pendulum. That was interesting. I removed that. Not that I’m against it. It’s very interesting.
The book was large enough already. I didn’t need to include that. We were taught how to work with
runes, which was also very interesting. I think that was in Theoricus, which is the air grade,
But I didn’t think that essential to the Kabbalah magic curriculum.
But by all means, if you’re in Theoricus or entering Theoricus, include the runes.
Why not?
See if that system of magic agrees with you.
Something I’m not listing here.
We also did the I Ching in the practicum grade, which I really did not like.
Yeah, but many people really like the I Ching.
And we did that in the practicum grade.
Yeah, but I removed that from the curriculum.
not because it’s bad or anything like that simply because the book was large enough already
and it’s i consider it not essential to golden dawn magic we had to do an alchemical dictionary
yeah so i kind of just tried to cover that in the required reading of the cabal magic book
so i’m not sure writing down we what we had to do is we had to just write down the magical
dictionary that um the alchemical dictionary that they sent us and just write it down with pencil
basically and um i’m sure i benefited from that but um i’m not sure how really it was kind of
wrote not even memorization really just writing it down the kamias this is taken from the three
books of occult philosophy from agrippa that i removed as well i don’t see much value in them
actually. But many people would probably disagree with me. Study the Kamias at any point. You can
always read whatever you want. If you’re going through the Kabbalah magic curriculum, study of
the Kamias is encouraged, actually, to see whether that resonates with you. The principle behind it,
I think is really interesting. And I think it can work. Yeah, I just I don’t know, it just seems
very, it’s not necessary, as far as I’m concerned. And there were some projects, these are really
cool for creating three-dimensional pyramids out of paper where you fold it like origami and you
make different, like the tetrahedron or the five-sided pyramid, which I thought was really
cool. The thing that I did is I required eventually the truncated pyramid visualization
in the portal grade, I think it was. So the ascent into the pyramid temple, I think it is.
Is that what I did? So that you’re working with the Pyramid Temple in the Portal Grade.
That was to get you ready for Enochian Scrying, if that’s something you wanted to do later on.
The Truncated Pyramid is a very important symbol in the fourfold system of magic for manifestation in the Golden Dawn.
So the Three-Dimensional Pyramids projects, I removed those.
they’re fairly easy to find especially in the latest edition the seventh edition of the golden
dawn um released by the ciceros you can find all of those pyramid projects did i did i include
anything about adeptship no i did not really i think i talked briefly in the book about you know
what it feels like what it’s like to be an adept or something like that and um one of the things i
have to say about this is that there is naturally a curriculum of the golden dawn that goes into
what you can do as the adept my response to that is since i learned almost all of the golden
i learned almost all the golden dawn material in the outer order the only thing left was a lot of
the enochian stuff which was like wow um but um there’s a few other things too but um didn’t
really need much more beyond that and when people continue to stress that further great initiations
are required past five equals six, I consider that an indication that their five equals six
initiation didn’t take. In other words, once you get to the level of the adept, which is the middle
of the tree of life, let’s say the center of the tree of life, beyond that point, everything is now
under the guidance of providence, or under the guidance of your destiny, or dare I say it,
under the guidance of your holy guardian angel.
Then beyond that point, it just doesn’t matter.
Because one of the things about that initiation is that the entire tree of life collapses.
That whole ladder of initiation just kind of smooshes down into one thing.
So to continue to entertain the idea that you can keep climbing and climbing and climbing up to the plate.
No, I’m higher than you are and all this nonsense.
It just goes away.
it’s no longer a concern all right it doesn’t mean you can’t continue to learn some of the stuff
if you get some of zaluski’s books pat zaluski um he he discloses what’s in the uh inner order
curriculums okay and so there’s some stuff there that is not covered in the kabbalah magic book
that you could still go into but it’s you know mostly anokian stuff and um maybe the tree of
life as it’s superimposed upon the celestial sphere, those kinds of things, all very interesting,
not really necessary anymore, my opinion. I must reiterate then, the primary thing that you are
doing, if you are engaging in the self-initiation process in the Kabbalah magic book, the main task
as you’re doing it is to recognize that this is it. This is what the adept does. You’re not
in a waiting room waiting to become an adept, this is what the adept does. The only problem is that
you don’t recognize it. And once you recognize what it is that you’re doing, then suddenly it’s
like, ah, right. And some of the people I’m working with are already, they already have that click.
Maybe in the Zolotar grade, in the Orchis grade, it starts to click for them and they realize
what’s happening are they continuing with the grade work yes but um now when they correspond
with me we’re tweaking the the material for them so that they can already begin to do some you know
practical magical work as they perceive pretty cool um so the primary thing is that um the big
advantage of the evolved curriculum of the golden dawn is that you’re already doing it you’re already
doing the magic of the adept okay you already are doing you’re tweaking the forces that are
creating your life and your future not that not that you’re ever not doing that but the the
chance the challenge is to recognize that it’s happening and i think that’s the main thing in
the eastern traditions too it’s like enlightenment is not a matter of being enlightened it’s really
the challenge of recognizing that you already are in this state all right i’m sure that was
just as cryptic as ever but all right uh but i look forward to the comments and um and keep in
mind that you can always join the patreon thing it’s like five dollars a month and uh that gives
you a direct line to me where we go just back and forth via chat with a with a four-day delay
pretty much right so but um uh it’s a pleasure to work with a lot of you guys on the patreon site
okay and of course i’m available for consultations um as well which can be sometimes a big benefit to
people just to have um an exposure to someone who has been through these this process of self
initiation and um can maybe impart to you um some of the missing pieces or if you’re struggling to
realize how is this already it? How is this actually the process of being the adept? Maybe
I can help that click for you. All right. So maybe. Right. Well, until next time.
Source: Lyam Christopher