Keeping the Routine

If you are not “forced” to attend a regular group meeting and thus have to maintain a certain routine and do some “homework”, it is difficult to fight every day’s distractions and keep a more or less strict schedule. Now I realize how much time I wasted while living alone, having all the time and opportunity to perform a daily routine. Living with a family, a new born, a 6 years old and of course partner, limits your free time and space – unless you have a huge house or farm maybe. A friend of mine let’s his kids participate in his performances letting them take the role of the angels during the LBRP, holding swords and so. This would distract me severely, I could not concentrate. So usually I am using late evenings or the night to perform some of my rituals. This of course means that I have to be reasonable. I can not vibrate the divine names the way I want to. I have tried various ways but the most effective for me includes some kind of volume (although I am not screaming). Chanting the names works but also then I would need some sound. So usually I am remaining rather quiet trying to vibrate the names more within, which seems to be a bit difficult for me.
The other problem is that yo need some preparation before the ritual but also some time afterwards. It makes no sense to just switch of the TV and start ritual and afterwards going back to the kitchen doing the dishes or just going to bed. Before the ritual you have to start to build up your concentration and focus by maybe a ritual cleaning or at least some meditation. After the ritual, you need some time to let the effects and the power of the ritual settle within you. After this you should make your journal entry and then maybe another moment of silence and peace before going to bed. In my case, before the ritual is baby feeding and afterwards preparing milk or other stuff for the night. Now you say so do that stuff first and then work afterwards. But I better use the time when I have it. I can prepare milk when I am holding a just woken up crying baby. I can not perform a ritual holding the baby in my arms at the same time. And the mother? Well, she deserves her night’s sleep since she is getting up during nights (me working full time), so she can’t help. Additionally she is not that supportive of my “Abrakadabra” or Hokuspokus” stuff. She is tolerating it but not really supportive.
Since I am not an early morning person and since my night’s sleep is limited anyways, working before everyone is awake is not an option either. This way, I cherish the time alone at home during days when everyone else is gone.
Obviously the office is a bad place too – although I have performed some daily solar adorations in the morning and at noon now and then.

Sometimes a solitary practitioner really needs to be solitary….

Introduction

I start this blog to write about my work and efforts as a Solitary Self Initiating Magus in the Golden Dawn Tradition. This will not be a full diary or journal but I want to use this to write about my experiences, efforts and struggling as well as to straighten out my thoughts. I also hope to receive assistance from fellow sisters and brothers in the Great Work within and outside of any lodges and orders. I have seen quite some great sites which offered advise and so I hope that these offers were not just empty words.

I have chosen to be a solitary practitioner mainly because of a lack of choice. There is no real near by temple of the Golden Dawn I could join and although I would have preferred to work within a group, it seems that I have to stick to myself. I am having friends on the same path and so I am not without any company there. However, I hope to find some more company here.

I have been studying the Great Mysteries for a while now. I have read a lot and I also have taken some online courses. I am serious in my devotion for the Great Work. I am not a Thelemite although I include some of the Thelemite rituals and of course texts into my work. However, I focus on the Golden Dawn tradition because first, it seems that most systems are at least to some extend based on the Golden Dawn teachings and second because the GD teachings appeal to me most. Therefore I truly regret that I have to work solitary. This also alowes me to go on my own pace because right now, family and professional obligations take a great deal of my time and I do indeed find it difficult to maintain a daily routine.

May I be allowed to leave some words about the war between the GD orders and the question of linage. From an outfielder’s perspective this seems to be a useless war, a waste of time and energy. In one post somewhere I read that the seeking student obviously would be looking for the true, the original GD. Well in a way this is true. I do not want any kind of a pseudo GD group which is only using the GD label to make money but not offering any true, serious, real content. But then every serious seeker should be able to judge about the quality of the offer he is looking at. If someone believes that he/she can buy the GD wisdom for only 99.99 including a special offer for eternal life if you order now, well then maybe he/she does not deserve better. However, it is obvious that in our modern time, also the occult and esoteric studies are by fact business. So all this fighting about linage and being the true and real, original and therefore better order looks – to the outsider – also like a fight about shares of the esoteric market. As far as I am concerned, I am indeed confused about this because I would not know how to judge here. The wording used by not only one side here, just the way things are phrased, – can set of people. One should think that within the esoteric community in general but certainly between the same minded groups, tolerance should be more common than amongst other people, not only because we have to deal with a lot of intolerance. The opposite seems to be the case. The fight about the possession of the real and final truth is omnipresent. Finally, and again from my point of view as an outsider, all the involved orders/groups have some legitimate linage. At the end of the day, all go back to the same roots, the original founders. Just that the split created different arms of the same tree. For me it is even difficult to see the difference in the teachings. I am sure there are some, but I do not know how vital they are. I am not sure that they are as vital as for example in Christianity, where it may make a bigger difference whether you believe that the bread and wine are actually transforming into the true and real flesh and blood of Christ or just representing blood and flesh. Or the question whether your true and honest faith in Jesus is already bringing salvation or whether you are already are doomed by the sole fact of being born and need to performs as many good acts as possible to be able to only hope for salvation. That fact is, most people do not really care about some of these differences and other’s are weirded out by it.

Unity? I am not qualified to advise on this. But one thought I may be allowed to mention: I assume that there can be no unity in the way of being under one roof with one chief. Such an idea seems to be rather illusionary. What about one roof but remaining with the individual orders/groups maybe with a synod held on regular occasions attended by the chiefs discussing the differences and finding compromises, agreements or whatever. At the end of the day and at the very least there should be a peaceful co-existence since indeed you (and we non organized self initiated (non-members)) are all sisters and brothers in the same aim and in the same tradition!

in L.V.X.
Fra. Arcad - S.L.