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| Actual Photo of Bleeding Edge 19th Century Occultists, Circa 1902, Colorized |
There’s a reason Aleister Crowley and the Theosophical peers of his day looked around at the world in which we live and breathe, and dreamed of a council of wise adepts looking down on the lot of us as a species, with a plan in mind, and some tools in hand, and Words that might change the outcome, for the better.
It’s because they were hanging out with the cutting edge occultists of their time.
And saw, that point in fact, the cutting edge occultists of their times were stupid. Stupid stupid heads, with little grace, ingenuity, inspiration, charisma, or talent. Leadbetter and his pedophilia, Blavatsky and her letters from Koot Hoomie that materialized in her closet, in her own handwriting, Gurdjieff and his blatant frauderies, Mathers running off to Paris to live off his wife’s prostitution (nothing wrong with prostitution, but the guy could have tried to get a job), Westcott’s buffoonery, Bennett’s hippie communism (which was also ok), Waite’s incredibly boring ways to talk about things he didn’t understand …
And while Crowley had plenty of faults he didn’t care to see, he also knew how stupid he was, referring to himself as “the Imp Crowley.”
These were cutting edge magicians, the bleeding edge of their day.
Greedy self-important folk, mostly, renowned for being frauds, liars, thieves, and scoundrels. And yet, Rosicrucianism was supposed to be a spiritual path that perfected the soul, brought wisdom, and healed the world through the alchemical marriage.
Well, OBVIOUSLY NOT THESE GUYS…
So there had to be someone up higher on the foodchain, who had done the magick, and succeeded, and attained the wisdom, and so forth and so on, right?
Thus … the Secret Chiefs, who hang out in the City of Pyramids being dust and watching over the rest of us little monkeys and imps. They must exist, otherwise … what?
Me, I’m not sold on their existence. I did some magick a few years ago to get into that space, and it was a lot like visiting Atlantis in a guided meditation when I was 16 after reading too much Cayce and Dion Fortune, and Crowley’s Moon Child. Interesting imagery, completely catered to my expectations, and producing no verifiable information that would make me think it was anything more than confirmation bias. I didn’t leave knowing anything I didn’t know going in.
Harper and I have been doing a lot of conjurations the last few weeks that have been compeltely different. I have 14 years of actual magical experience with spirits that provide info I couldn’t know, that effect change practically and pragmatically in the material world, that have an existence outside of my imagination.
So I’m done with them.
I’m a flawed person, doing my own best to make the world a better place, for magicians first, because then we can pass that on for others. I say things other people won’t say, because to them Silence is safer, and to keep from hurting others. I get that, I spent most of my early days hiding behind my pseudonym because I didn’t want to bear the repercussions that come from being honest.
I got over it.
I talk about what I consider unrighteous action, fundamental juvenility that goes on behind closed doors, and the blatant misrepresentation of fact within the OTO leadership. What are they going to do, kick me out? Yes, that’s what they did. Woooooo. I talk about the abuse of Peter Gray’s writings, and his unwillingness to address that publicly, because I think that needs to be done. What’s going to happen? People who worship him as the savior of British Occultism aren’t going to like me? Woooooo.
Everyone in the OTO knows that I care about the Order, how it behaves, and my Oaths. Lots of ’em think I do it all wrong, and even more think I should keep it quiet. But for every dozen hateful despisers of my techniques, there is at least one person who has come to me privately, thanking me, asking what they should do, who to contact within the Order to talk about things, tapping into the courage to stand up and say, no, this is wrong. I send them to the ombudsman, their fellow victims, the women fighting for them within the Order who have been through this for years and are striving to make a change.
For all few thousand Scarlet Imprint fans on the planet, maybe half a dozen people have contacted me to say something to the effect of “finally, someone said it.” Hopefully more people will say it, that yea, the BDSM kink thing is powerful, but it’s not for everyone, and it can be easily manipulated to remove authority by bad people with ill intentions, and becoming an adolescent fantasy of a sex slave is not the only path to power. Witches weren’t powerful because they went to the dungeons. They were incarcerated, tortured, and punished for having power that existed long before they were torn apart and put back together by sexually repressed men who can’t see women as people.
I’ve fallen into the trap of my own imagination when it comes to what I say publicly. I think everyone knows me, knows my heart, has read my thoughtful explorations of things over the last few years, and knows that I’m not just a drunken idiot with a keyboard and a bottle of bourbon, and too much time on my hands.
So I’m toning down the bombastic rhetoric.
I’ll take the time to explain what I’m concerned about, in small words, in reasonable ways. Because too many people see the vitriol and toss it out, without thinking about why I am saying these things.
So back to the Secret Chiefs. They had to exist, because people were obviously flawed, and yet they were also magicians. And yet, they don’t.
We’re in charge of ourselves, our actions, and the consequences. Our evolution. Our responses, our love, and our passion, and our anger. It’s us. We are the Chiefs.
Go be a Chief, and I’ll keep doing it too. Judge, jury, and the occasional bombast, with or without “all the facts” or the “full understanding” of the situation, with or without “both sides of the story.” You hurt my brothers or sisters, you bring harm, I’m going to do something about it, because for some reason I have that impact on people.
And a stable full of spirits.
Lights on the sepulchres, in the City of Pyramids.
