Hi everyone
Ever wondered how modern magic is different from the Mystica Aeterna tradition? Well, after speaking with an old friend who left the Golden Dawn she asked me about how life and spirituality is achieved without the daily routine of rituals, so I wrote this blog post to share some Rosicrucian ideas.
You see most people out there in mainstream Golden Dawn type groups do a lot of daily ritual routines. These might include: daily pentagram rituals, followed by a hexagram ritual, and then some sort of auric energy ritual, followed by another pentagram ritual because they believe you have to ‘banish bad energies to close.’ All in all, this might take around thirty minutes to an hour of ritual practice every day. A lot of people are doing this and a lot of people think that this is Rosicrucian. It is not.
It has become apparent that at some point, such heavy duty occult rituals have become a spiritual object in and of themselves, and that people depend on doing such rituals to ‘be spiritual.’
People start believing that if you aren’t doing your daily prescribed rituals, as instructed by your teacher, then you are falling behind, and spiritually slacking off. Over time people fall into this routine and start seeing the real world as ‘mundane’ and their temple rituals as ‘more spiritual.’ The temple becomes sacred and… life, work and every day shim-digs become mundane things for mundane people.
Now this doesn’t help anyone does it? This is also what makes the Rosicrucians different.
Instead of enriching life, mainstream occultist end up with a bunch of strange dudes and gals hanging out in the basement dressed in funny robes, chanting weird stuff you would be too embarrassed to do out in public places. What’s worse, it starts to create a kind of spiritual elitism, because people doing such complicated rituals often start believing they must be spiritually more advanced than ordinary people… ‘After all they can do all these advanced magical formulae.’
I do love ritual and see the benefits having undergone it myself. The problem is though that in mainstream mystical traditions such as the Golden Dawn many people start losing perspective as to the spiritual expressions of everyday life. They start to forget the magic happening around them.
So wonder upon this: what we DO daily IS THE RITUAL, those very moments and ventures in which we dedicate ourselves in service is a high expression of ritual, both culturally and mystically.
There are many ways in which to offer the same heart-felt dedication as one would during ritual, offering our heart-felt love up as we do towards the divine. And of course, we shouldn’t just offer up our hearts in silence and in meditation or mystical experiments alone. We have to go all the way and get out there and share that same love we offer to IAO-Nous to everyone. We have to offer it up and show it to others on a daily basis, worshiping the deity in all, and respecting and serving the sacredness in all.
There are many avenues to offer up this same dedication and the Rosicrucian way of the Mystica Aeterna is aimed at offering avenues to do just that.
As Rosicrucians we may empower others, the land, the environment, help people and help community, raise culture and thinking: as all these aspects of service are rituals.
If you don’t see that, if you think that doing your magical stuff is the only way to spiritually develop yourself, by drawing things like pentagrams in the air and repeating divine words of power, or intensely visualizing angels, while ignoring those in need around you, ignoring cries for help without sensitivity, then you are being anything but spiritual. In fact you are avoiding your spiritual duty.
As many of my readers know, I am part New Zealand Maori. A mystic of our tradition recently stated his intentions to do some consecrations and help revitalize some connections between the heavens and the earth, and indeed such consecrations are important, and yet his tribe stated ‘he better get home and peel some potatoes out on the tribal land and help out in the kitchen.’ It’s that simple really.
If you don’t get out there, and help the locals, and watch over and protect the children, and help them learn, and if you don’t pay your respects to the aged and elderly, and can’t offer them a little time to listen, then surely the local powers that are around you, those powers of the land and rain and spiritual forces that govern the life-power all around you, will certainly not help you, because you haven’t made those connections to ALL. It is service that binds and links us to all. Those magical types need to start understanding this, and it’s no wonder so few of them experience true miracles from their rituals.
Yes, that’s right. I said it. Because of this lack of service, occult rituals don’t really work. Period.
Spirituality isn’t just about making a connection to the light, as it’s about expanding and connecting to everything around you, forming a real web of connections to all of God’s creation. Only then do you have the ties to do something truly miraculous. All spiritual gifts, be that healing, prophecy, peace-bringing, finding spiritual treasures, talking to plants and having them communicate with you about their uses; all those things just a few special people have proven to have, and those that had these gifts lived in complete sacrifice. We know them as shamans and saints. I call them Rosicrucians.
But this implication doesn’t intend to displace mystical practices from the Rosicrucian tradition.
How mystical rituals, such as magical rituals and mystical initiation ceremonies fit into the greater scheme of things is that they set out the blue-print, the way, and we should look at our Rosicrucian initiation ceremonies and consider how they play out in real life, following the very same cycle. As everything we encounter in the temple, either in our personal meditations and visions, or during ceremonies of initiation, also find mirroring experiences in real life, that is, if one correctly perceives them in life through meditation and if one really understands Rosicrucian initiation.
Let’s take a short side-street into this, so put on your imagination-cap.
Remember, during all initiation rites (into the first degree) a candidate is placed into darkness, blindfolded and taken around a dark world, of dark sounds and foul smells. Sometimes it is referred to as Hell or Hades. During that symbolic journey the candidate is challenged by some sort of officer wearing a mask, who represents Death, the Master of Darkness, or the Victor Over Death, in his many forms by that Egyptian, Christian or pagan, and then the candidate passes that challenge by knowing the right knowledge (passwords) to send him away and remove his sword. Then at some point during the ritual the candidate is liberated, because they are dramatically taken out of darkness and pulled through, or between two pillars, as one might raise one out of a grave or the gates of hell. This mystical drama is universally and done true throughout all initiation ceremonies of the European tradition.
But then, the initiation is not the initiation, just like…. there is no spoon!
It is the passing through the same darkness, the challenges at the same stations, the liberation through the same pillars, that we experience in everyday life, because these cycles are a meditation and indication which leads us to the real spiritual life. We will pass through times of darkness, sadness and depression, and may likewise come across struggles or darkness in culture, society and family and if we follow the formula truly, we need to face those challenges with right knowledge and banish the darkness of hard times away, be that tears, pain, struggles or disease. Continuing to mirror the ritual, we will also seek a path of liberation, and let the gravity of this mystical cycle guide our lives, and those around us to the Light, as this formula applies to all challenges of life and society.
By following the mystical formula, not only in the temple, not only in mystical rituals, we are lead to the way of the saints, those very same beautiful souls, who attained to spiritual power, not through mystical practices, but through love for humanity and nature. Despite all the magical rituals people do in traditions like the Golden Dawn, their power comes nothing near to the miracles done by the saints and the great things they have worked in history, all achieved through their dedication to humanity.
The mystical cycle, of mystical rituals and magical formula needs to be drawn out and reconnected to everything around you. And how it is taken out is through service, so that the mystic forces contacted in meditation spiral out, and spread out, and are connected to the minerals, plants and animal life around you, as well to community, friends and family, because all are to benefit from your mystical encounters as you go out and offer them that spiritual substance in whatever it is you are doing with love.
That light attained through mysticism: we must offer a spark of it, a particle of it, in everything we do. For it is this element of service in everyday life that helps mysticism flower into the miraculous, and further the miraculous to help awaken the greatest sense of compassion and sensitivity needed, which helps us see the Word of IAO-Nous in Nature, to see the commands and prophecies in our habitat. Then the divine letters write themselves out in nature, and then the blessings we receive reach unprecedented heights, as our life in the miraculous reflects our truest love for ALL.
Your friend along the path, Samuel Robinson
