A Magical Update: My entry into the Golden Dawn system of magic

Near the end of June I started keeping a magical journal.

It was something I always intended to do, since every spiritual teacher and system instruct you to do so, but the blank page terrified me. What am I supposed to write in there? What if someone finds it? What is the purpose of this record? Is it a regular journal but with moon signs? Do I write in code? Am I gonna fuck it up?

My indecisiveness and need to find “the right way” frequently keeps me from starting anything in earnest. It’s one of the demons I’m trying to exorcise.

A profound depression over this summer took me to a place where I realized that, actually, no one is going to save me. My partner or my boyfriend or my boss or my therapist or my friend or my god won’t ever ever save me. In fact, they can’t, even if they were to try. What I need saving from is inside my own head. People in my life can help me to prepare for the internal battle (or however you want to look at it), but I have to actually do it on my own.

It was this realization, coupled with being introduced to the works of Israel Regardie, that inspired me to begin the work of transforming my abstract mystical spirituality into the highly structured spiritual system that is the Golden Dawn. I was drawn to Regardie’s explanation that the magic of the Golden Dawn is psychology. It is a study system that guides one in rebuilding their personality after having sorted out and purified the dross and flotsam abundant in all of us.

Now, it isn’t just psychology. As the Qabbalist Lon Milo DuQuette said:

“It’s all in your head—you just have no idea how big your head is.”

If you’ve never looked into the Golden Dawn (aka The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn), it was a 19th-century initiatic magical order that existed for only sixteen years before breaking apart and spinning off into other orders. Despite the order being short lived, the material it produced lives on because of the subsequent work of Regardie and other authors such as R. G. Torrens, and Chris and Pat Zalewski.

The purpose of this and similar orders was simple: explore the world of magic, Kabbalah, tarot, and other extra-ordinary practices in a systematic and reproduce-able way, and retain those records so future students don’t have to start with nothing. The goal is a collective evolution of our spiritual consciousness(es).

Rosicrucianism

The Golden Dawn was, among other things, a Rosicrucian magical order, a fact which, in my eyes, made the complicated system more appealing. Until this summer, my spiritual life has been dominated by Lewisonian Rosicrucianism, that is, a very New Thought-forward mystical school that leans heavily on the Rosicrucian aesthetic, but which is actually pretty light on the R+C content. I’ve made it into the 7th Degree of CR+C (the org that uses the original Harvey Spencer Lewis (HSL) monographs), and while I’ve found the series of essays quite enjoyable and interesting, I was getting desperate for something…deeper.

Rosicrucianism, by the way, is a spiritual and philosophical school of thought based in practical Kabbalah (aka magic) and developed from three manifestos published between 1600 and 1616 first in Germany, and then across Europe. It started as an anti-Catholic movements of Christians who incorporated spiritual practices from other faiths to experience the Divine on their own, without the need of a spiritual middleman (like a Priest or the Pope).

The biggest R+C org today is AMORC, the Egyptian-flavored order founded by Harvey Spencer Lewis in 1915, and it (in)famously does not involve any magical practice whatsoever. Lewis went to great lengths to stress the benefit and superiority of a mystical path, rather than an occult path. A later AMORC Imperator (the big guy in charge) explained that both mystic (inner work, visualization, etc.) and occult (outer work, ritual, ceremonial magic, etc.) methods can get aspirants to the same place (oneness, the Great Work, Adeptship, enlightenment, etc.), but that AMORC/CR+C is of the mind that the inner path is a safer one. These definitions are informed by remarks from AMORC Imerators, and the definitions don’t hold up in other contexts and organizations. That is to say, it doesn’t need to be either/or, and often is not.

I’m of the mind that we each inherently “speak” a unique “language.” So, no path is “better” than another. Instead, we each have to find our own way to Adeptship, and each individual must find the particular language that they can understand. It can be anything! It can be something you create! When you start understanding threads of meaning in the world around you, you’ll start to slowly figure out what language you speak. If you aren’t actively working to observe your mind in this way, the language you speak may express itself as intuition, a sense of knowing, and/or being drawn to a particular thing, be it a style or practice or object or whatever.

All this is to say that it seems my language needs more structure than Lewisonian R+C was giving me. I wanted to do something. I wanted to perform ritual.

After devouring Regardie’s The One Year Manual, The Philosopher’s Stone, Garden of Pomegranates, and parts of The Golden Dawn, I settled on two titles to guide my initiation process into the system. One by Lyam Thomas Christopher and the other by Chic and Sandra Tabatha Cicero. Essentially, I’m working on the Neophyte Formula from Christopher’s book, and the God Form Meditations (GFM) from the Cicero’s with the ultimate goal of performing the Neophyte 0=0 initiation ritual from their book.

In addition, the Ciceros, in their book, lay out a series of God Form Meditations that should be done for a minimum of four months before attempting the Neophyte 0=0 initiation ritual.

These different approaches to this system, by different authors, are meant to both take the place of ceremonies done in a temple as recorded by Regardie and to support the solitary individual who may not want to practice in a group. The LBRP and the Middle Pillar exercise are pieces of ritual taken from the second or inner order of the Golden Dawn, which was called the Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis. These two rituals would have initially only been available to members who successfully passed through the elemental grades of the first Order, through the portal, and into the realms of the subtle (the second order). Because of Regardie’s work, specifically, both of these rituals have become fairly well-known outside of Golden Dawn magic, and are used by many an occult student.

[08.23.2026 edit: The Qabbalistic Cross and the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram (both banishing and invoking) are introduced in the First Knowledge Lecture of the order, so they are literally the first rituals you learn. However, the student does not learn that they are using Earth Pentacles, and that there are four other types of elemental pentacles to use, and that there is a Greater Ritual of the Pentagram until the Inner Order (R. R. et A. C.). The Middle Pillar is introduced in the Portal grade.]

Using the Neophyte Formula on a daily basis, I am spiritually centering and balancing myself, as well as starting to lay groundwork for the mental system I’m creating. Using the GFM as prescribed by the Ciceros, I am working to create a mental representation of (my) Justice and (my) Truth (taking the form of well-known goddesses) who will guide me through my initiation, in place of officers in ceremonial regalia.

Reflection

And doing all this daily work brings me back around to my magical journal and the practice of reflection.

Understanding magic as a part of one’s self development and personal improvement makes journaling essential. I’m not passively waiting for something to happen (as if by magic), but am, instead, working slowly and carefully to observe and identify parts of my psyche. I am learning an extremely complex and exhaustive symbolic language and using it to see my mind in a new way. It is an active process in a way I haven’t previously experienced.

I’ve enjoyed, already, looking back through my entries and seeing how they’ve changed. Initially, I used the pages more like a log book, simply noting the time and date of the rituals and exercises I performed. As I said, I didn’t really understand why I was doing this, so I just tried to do what I thought was right.

As time went on, I’d jot down some pertinent piece of information, eventually settling on bulleted lists of observations, feelings, and notable insights I’ve experienced. I find that in the middle of ritual or meditation, my mind clears and new insights float into my awareness. Depending on the experience, an entry could be half a page or more. I’ve discovered that there is a LOT to observe and experience when I make an effort to do so.

Slowly, my magical journal is becoming a habit that I rely on, perhaps as much as the rituals and exercises themselves. I guess that’s kind of the point: journaling, recording, reflecting…these are essential pieces of journeying inward and upward. A little nugget of information I gleaned from a recent evening’s ritual and subsequent journaling was the intense power of ritual drama. I’ve been slowly turning up the performative aspect of myself as I trace the pentagrams and intone the name of the goddess. The more I act like these things are actually happening, the more I can feel the effects of them inside my body in a pretty real way.

You have to be constantly aware of your progress, as if you as The Observer and you as the Spiritual Aspirant are different beings (they kind of are!). This internal distance you foster between The Observer and other parts of yourself is essential to maintaining objectivity and, frankly, sanity.

That, generally, has been a massive pillar in my life, a pillar that came into my awareness during my ascent into ceremonial magic, as well as with all the mundane aspects of my life. I got hints from YouTube videos about how inherently different our thinking process is in the age of the internet. A book called Amusing Ourselves to Death. A Course in Miracles. Aleister Crowley. Qabbalah. Some of these resources are listed at the end of this post.

I am determined to see the world differently. Above all else, I want to see things differently.

ACIM Lessons 21 and 28

Quiet, stillness, and solitude are essential. How else can you observe your mind?

Conscious Choices

When is the last time you read a book? Like, a physical paper book?

We are in the midst of a major change in society, one in which our technological advancements have radically changed all of our lives in such a short period of time, and will continue to do so. It isn’t good or bad; it’s just change, and change is forever and always. Immortal.

I’m learning that if I don’t observe the change, I’m swept up in it, unknowingly. We typically have almost no distance between The Observer and other parts of ourselves, making it feel as if we had no agency in the change around us. Creating a habit as simple as journaling can help you to develop enough space to get a better view of what’s happening outside your head.

You are, right now, looking at the world (literally and metaphorically) through a lens that you have created. You are not seeing actuality, but only an interpretation of it, an interpretation based only on your lived experience.

Part of all of this comes out of my intense unhappiness on social media in recent years. That, of course, is not a unique experience. I know many of us millenials have grown up during the birth of the internet, and we feel so much nostalgia for the glowing screen and the click-clack of the keyboard, and the apparent boundlessness that is knowledge accessibility.

And while it feels good to sit in front of this softly glowing screen and tap-tap-tap for this whole post, I’ve also noticed that my attention span has decreased rapidly as I’ve gotten older. I disabled the YouTube app on my phone (it’s a pixel so I can’t uninstall it lol) once I noticed myself getting bored watching reels – the short form content on the app. If I wasn’t engaged in a matter of seconds, I was swiping to the next thing. The mindless swiping would go on and on and on.

Around this time I noticed it was harder to engage with books, harder to be with myself, and much MUCH harder to organize my life. I feel the urge to buy the solution, rather than to imagine it and create it. I hate that. I want instantaneousness. I run from discipline.

I’m an occult boi, so ceremonial magic seemed like the natural approach to take. It especially felt perfect at this point in my life where I’m looking for more structure. However, it’s been my journal and pen that have been the most powerful tools so far. I can fairly objectively see that my focus has improved, my ability to visualize has improved, and my mind is fighting back against the work less and less.

Because of the way our thinking has changed over the last hundred years, I think it’s evident that our “need” for organized fraternal groups has waned. As I sit here in this world, unhappy in my office job and dreaming of being barefoot in the woods, I want to make a conscious choice to regress away from the cutting edge, and spend more time in the world I loved as a kid.

In creating distance between The Observer and The Experiencer, I’ve been able to see how much I don’t actually resonate with things that have felt essential to me previously, such as my cell phone, or social media. Again, my choice isn’t good or bad. Technology isn’t good or bad. The way your mind works isn’t good or bad. BUT: you DO have a choice in all of it. Your choice, if it is a conscious one, is the right choice for you in this moment.

Conclusion

Regardless of the path you choose to Self Realization, I’ve learned over the last few months that a journal is the most essential part of the path. Most of the systems out there “work,” but none of them will work externally. The work of each system is to integrate the material into your consciousness. In order to do that, one must reflect. One must learn to look back at themselves objectively, to create space between oneself and one’s thoughts.

And like, that’s what journaling, is, bro.

My feelings of “why didn’t I start journaling sooner?!” are being quickly replaced with overwhelming and existentially thrilling excitement and joy over the changes I’ve observed, and the implications those changes have for my future. That’s how I know I’m on the right path at this point in my life.

Sources/Resources

• Why We Can’t Focus – Jared Henderson (YouTube)
• you need to make something only you understand. – Neter9 (YouTube)
• The Revolt Against Technology – Jared Henderson (YouTube)
• Aleister Crowley And The Practice Of The Magical Diary (Archive.org)
• A Course in Miracles – Workbook for Students
• A garden of pomegranates : skrying on the tree of life – Israel Regardie (LibraryThing)
• The One Year Manual: Twelve Steps to Spiritual Enlightenment – Israel Regardie (LibraryThing)
• Philosopher’s stone : spiritual alchemy, psychology, and ritual magic – Israel Regardie (LibraryThing)

Remember: don’t fucking use Amazon for fuck’s sake. If we’re friends, I’m happy to lend you one of the above books. If that’s not an option, check your local library, check ebay, check local bookstores, or buy from a more ethical seller like Bookshop.org. Using Amazon for things you don’t need to survive right in this moment is something that may feel necessary. It may feel like Amazon is just a part of your world. But it doesn’t need to be. None of this is required. Make your choices consciously.