Apotheosis

Esoteric Orders: A Survival Guide
          Section I: How To Find An Esoteric Order

Last Chapter: Fly-By-Night Mentors

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Now that you’ve chosen a small group of community members to interact with, and a few who have chosen to interact with you, you can start asking questions of them. At last! Maybe now you can get the answers you’re looking for! Maybe so, but what you really want is more than answers. You also want to know how those questions are answered. There is plenty of information about the person with whom you’re interacting, if you take enough time to read between the informational lines.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said that “great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people”. For your benefit, you are going to want to talk about all of those things with your prospective mentors. This is not to say that you want, say, a small-minded person for a mentor. What you are looking for is a person who has been around long enough to have tackled all these things and, hopefully, has done it with a certain level of grace and dignity.

Although spiritual Orders are supposed to exist to be a channel to reach for the Higher, they are still comprised of human beings, who by their very nature are imperfect. Squabbles between different circles are commonplace, but even within groups of spiritual brothers and sisters, wherever two or more are gathered, politics is there in their midst. This is not a sad commentary on the state of esoteric Orders; it is simply a factor of the human condition. Do not blame the spiritual Path for the followers who are treading upon it.

The question then arises as to how much time and attention is given to such activities such as inter-Order politics. The more they quagmire themselves in such mundane trifles, the less focus they have on the actual Work. In litigious struggles, online skirmishes and witch wars, some may get ahead, but when all is said and done, no one really wins. Spiritual traditions and their communities end up diminishing themselves and their reputations. Yet again, there are those who stay out of the fray altogether, or actually conduct themselves with aplomb. It is those people who can rise above such things that have the most potential to be good mentors.

You may wish to withhold questions about community members until later, though. You want your first impression to be that of a light-seeker, not a gossip-monger. That said, give some thought to the initial questions you want to ask your group of potential mentors. This again comes back around to first impressions. If you ask a question whose answer is easily and readily found on the Web, there may be variable results, but none of them will be good. To the more unscrupulous mentors out there, you will be setting yourself up as an easy mark. The standup community members, however, are likely busy with projects in the magical, literary and mundane realms. To them, you will be wasting their time. No worthwhile mentor is going to take on a student who can’t do his own homework.

Once you get your answers, of course, check and cross-check them to see if they are valid, or at least consonant with the tradition at hand. For example, if a prospective mentor teaches you that the sign of Libra is ruled by the “esoteric planet” Atlantis, you’re not getting a lesson in astrology, you’re getting a bucket of hogwash. That’s not to say that there isn’t any room for innovation in a tradition. Many modern astrologers assign the planet Pluto as ruler over the sign of Scorpio, for instance. However, when it comes down to tradition versus innovation, consistency must rule the day. If a teacher proclaims to be a traditional astrologer in one breath and then spouts off about Ophiuchus being the 13^th sign of the Zodiac in the next, he’s feeding you a line.

What’s happening here is these mentors are trying to be all things to all people to make their Orders look enticing, as if they have an edge on all the other groups out there. What that really makes, though, is not a good tradition nor a good Order, but just good recruiting, and nothing more. You’ll find that most especially in Orders which smash together a bunch of disparate traditions. Yes, syncretism is found at the very heart of the Western Esoteric Tradition, but again, coherence is the key to an intelligible magical system. A Thelemic Rosicrucian Order of Mystic Knights might sound really swank and exclusive, but more than likely, once inside, you’ll be served up a “garbage plate special” of cryptic tripe instead of sound arcane knowledge.

All that said, the other critical thing you need to pay attention to is how your questions are answered. Any teacher worth his salt is going to answer the question in a language the student is going to be able to understand. Anyone who answers in a grandiloquent fashion, all the while denigrating alternate views, is an instructor to avoid. A good mentor doesn’t need to beat others down in order to raise himself up. A great mentor doesn’t need to raise himself up at all.

This leads then to the question of the character of the mentors with which you are now interacting. A spiritual teacher could hold the keys to the mysteries of the universe. However, all that information is going to be of no use to his students if the teacher treats them in such a manner as to leave them spiritually and psychologically broken.

Knowledgeable mentors are those who have spent years working a magical system through and through. Oftentimes, though, such magical achievements yield a certain inflation of the ego, sometimes even leading to a level of self-adulation. They may treat your basic questions with an air of haughtiness or even a hint of derision. A telltale sign would be when such a mentor doesn’t know the answer to a question you might have but responds nonetheless. If the response smacks of rhetorical sophistry rather than pertinent information, then he’s being dishonest with both you and himself.

On the other hand, wise mentors are those who have allowed their magic to work on them as well. They understand the nature and importance of spiritual alchemy and the psychological transformation that it yields. These people will not have forgotten the steps on their path up the mountain, so they would answer your questions sincerely, on the level, and at your level. They would also have the proper balance of self-assurance and integrity to actually say “I don’t know” to questions outside their sphere of expertise. The best types of mentors will go so far as to make you think for yourself, rather than spoon-feed you answers from their font of knowledge.

Again, it would be wise to spend a number of weeks sifting through your short list of community members and filtering them out according to their proficiency in the tradition, their prowess in tutoring, and the quality of their rectitude as a spiritual advisor. Once this is done, now is the time to ask your key advisors about their affiliations and recommendations when it comes to esoteric Orders. Listen to them carefully and take their guidance in this regard seriously. Armed with their well-informed insight, you can now endeavor to make first contact with those esoteric Orders which would be the best fit for you.

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Next Chapter:  Observing the Chiefs (If You Can)

As you may have noticed, I have just changed my profile picture here to something a little more personal and meaningful.  I had originally chosen a frame of William Blake's "Newton" for a number of reasons.  First, for the most topical and obvious, a reference to the study of Newtonian physics and the study of geometry, as it relates to Freemasonry and other sacred subjects.  The second, deeper layer is a tip of the hat to Blake, himself a mystic, who thought of Newton as someone who was unable to think outside his own scientific circles and recognize a greater spiritual reality.  Lastly, as recent historical research would have it, Newton's own esoteric endeavors in subjects such as alchemy and bibliomancy have come to light.  Newton then, as such, lived life with one foot in science and the other in mysticism, something to which I aspire.

Recent events, however, have caused me to brandish my Magic Sword.  In the Golden Dawn Tradition, the Magic Sword is a symbolical instrument of the Sephirah Geburah, and is meant to be employed for the purposes of banishing and the warding off of evil forces and influences.  Therefore, its hilt is painted red, and various Geburic and Martial Names of God, Archangels, Angels and Divine Beings are painted upon it in their flashing color green.  A nearly identical version of the Magic Sword is wielded by the Hiereus, who is the officer in the Golden Dawn Temple who symbolically sits in the darkest part of Malkuth, guarding against the multitudes that sleep through the light and awaken at twilight.

These multitudes are part of the Qliphoth or Shells, the resultant shards of the cosmogonic event called the Shevirat ha-Kelim or the Shattering of the Vessels.  According to Lurianic Kabbalah, the initial Sephiroth or vessels to contain the Divine Light were created in Tohu or Chaos.  So when the Light flowed into the vessels, they were subjected to the process of Din or Judgment when the Light reached Geburah.  They were judged to be imperfect, and thus they shattered.  The shards fell and become the Qliphoth, along with the Light, which scattered in Nitzotzoth or Sparks of Holiness.

However, the effect of pouring pure Light into imperfect vessels is not the reason why I'm writing this blog entry.  Rather, it is about the effect of filling vessels of innocence with the luminescence of external splendor which is internally corrupt.   This is the Venereal radiance, "known as Nogah amongst the Shells", and is often referred to as a form of Serpent.  Affixed to the Middle Pillar, it is Nehushtan, the Celestial Serpent of Wisdom.  Let loose, it becomes the Serpent that slithers around the Qliphothic Tree on the Sitra Achra.

Such is what happens when seekers of the Light, new to a tradition and a community, find themselves joining up with an esoteric group and mentor who looks like the real deal, but beneath the veneer are toxic, or at worst, predatory.  Instead of finding the spiritual alchemical transformation they seek, these seekers instead end up as shattered vessels, divided from their "order" through tragedy, often entirely alone to try and deal with their grief and heal from the damage done to them.  Learning to trust again seems to many of them like an unclimbable mountain, and the idea of joining a different spiritual group practically unfathomable.  Others go "on the rebound", joining a similar group, often presenting itself as entirely different but, under the surface, ends up being painfully similar.

I have been made aware of numerous happenings like this as of late.  I do not know if this is the fallout of the Grand Cross in the Cardinal Signs currently in the Heavens, but it happens much too often to too many good and sincere people.

I myself have been through four different Golden Dawn Orders.  My jump from first to second was a complete rebound.  My jump to the third was an "allergic to Orders" move, as the group of us went totally independent.  For the fourth, I took my time, and proceeded carefully and cautiously.  (Maybe too cautiously than the folks in that Order deserved!)  I have now been with the HOGD for over eight years now, and I'm very happy to be with an Order where the Chiefs are unpretentious, selfless and, most of all, sane.

It is said that wisdom comes from good judgement.  Good judgement comes from experience.  And most of all, experience comes from bad judgement.  So let me say, I have my fair share of wisdom in this particular subject matter.  That said, I have good friends that have had similar yet different experiences, and some who have stared deep into the heart of corruption in some of the leaders in the esoteric community.

It is my intention to come together with a few of those notable fellows and commence a series of blogs as a definitive guide to the perils and pitfalls of dealing with esoteric leaders, mentors and organizations.  Our goal is to share our knowledge and wisdom (see definition above), so that other seekers of the Light won't have to go through the same trials and tribulations that we did.

Stay tuned to this page, as it will stand as an index and table of contents for this blog series.  I hope to get the first installment published within a week.

When I was going through the regimen of the Outer Order, by far the hardest grade for me was Philosophus.  I have almost no planets in the Fire signs in my natal chart, and oh, how it showed.   I struggled with the spiritual alchemy of it all, sometimes mightily, but most of the time pathetically.  My wife sometimes reminds me of the scorch marks I left on her, but then I remind her that she was in Theoricus at the time, just fanning my flames.  I had taken no longer than six months in any previous grade.  Philosophus would take me a year and a half.  There were many a time that I didn't think I would make it, but I managed to overcome, thanks to a little help from my friends and loved ones, scorched or otherwise.

The peculiar thing about it now is, out of all the Golden Dawn initiations I conduct, by far the most efficacious ones are the Philosophus initiations.  With a proper opening of the Fire Tablet, salamanders come pouring out and start nipping at everyone's heels.  Closing the same, there follows a noticeable draft felt at the ankles.  So I boggle at the ease of working with the element of Fire, because it gave me so much grief when I went through its Grade.

I was discussing this paradox with my wife while in the car tonight, and I made a realization.  I was reminded of my struggles with social anxieties in my teenage years, and they were much harder and took a lot longer to overcome compared to my paroxysms in Philosophus.  The Hiereus tells us in the Neophyte Initiation that "every obstacle can at length be conquered by perseverance", but what I just discovered is, the longer you persevere, the stronger you become.

Besides, I didn't engage in the quest for the Great Work because I thought it would be easy...