March 12, 2021 • 54 mins
In the late 19th century, several friends and Freemasons embarked on a strange endeavor -- creating their own secret society for the purpose of studying magic. While the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn may sound bizarre and obscure today, its existence had a profound impact on later, similar groups and systems. But what exactly was it? Perhaps more importantly -- did any of this magic work?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul.
Mission Control decads. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
I was thinking over the past few days that everybody
we meet, to one degree or another, participates in something
(00:48):
that could be called a secret or occulted organization. It
may be some like group you're a member of during
your schooling days. It might be some weird you know
class organization should like the various orders that aristocrats have. Uh.
It might just be fandom for a particular artist, right,
or something you're interested in. Or it might be a
(01:09):
bond built upon surviving a particular type of trauma. Right.
It might be something entirely extracurricular. But we're all members
of all these various different things, and that's that's not
necessarily a bad thing. Right, Just because a bunch of
people are into some like weird Cadillac forum on the Internet.
Doesn't mean they're automatically the illuminati, right, Like, are are
(01:33):
we all kind of into weird stuff? Yeah? I mean,
you know, just by by virtue of being podcasters, were
sort of softly initiated into a weird kind of uh
cabal of sorts. Right, that's a good point. I hadn't
thought of that, but that's a good point. Sorry, Sorry,
who God? Anyway, today's this will make sense later or not.
(01:55):
Today's episode focuses on a particular school of thought. It's
an organization that prizes itself on exclusivity, on the idea
of initiation, a creating knowledge incrementally, and yes, a form
of magic. So today's question, what is the Golden Dawn. Uh?
(02:17):
Here are the facts. Full name of it, the Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn. Today we see it as
an odd uh, an odd group somewhat forgotten by the mainstream,
but it played a fundamental role in today's magical organizations.
The weirdest thing about it was at the time, in
the nineties, eighteen eighties or so, it was well, I
(02:40):
think it kind of functioned like a social network. I
don't know what you guys think as as you dive in.
But you know, with magic, right, it's it's kind of
an augmented reality the more we think about it. Similar
to the Latitude Society, they took ideas that we're a
unique combination of ancient, pre existing spit virtual traditions and
(03:01):
then other stuff that was happening right before it in
the realm of science and spiritualism. So like the Cabbala, Egyptian,
Greek mysteries, several strands of early Christian thought, all these
esoteric traditions combined in the late eighteen eighties, and the
story of the Origin, We'll let you be the judge.
(03:22):
The story of the Origin feels a little sketchy. Yeah, indeed, Uh,
whod God? Okay, right? Who God? Sorry? Ben, you gotta
help with out here. What is this acronym? I love
the way that's that's maybe lazy in the notes, it's
just shorthand for the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dollars.
They didn't call themselves who God. Well, we talked off Mike,
(03:45):
how that would be a fantastic name for likely a
Florida rapper, perhaps the Gulf Coast, I believe is what
you said, Ben, yeah, I think so, Gulf Coast coast
out there. It's a great idea. So so, who'd got
Hermitic Order of the Golden Down was founded in eight
seven by a Freemason by the name of William Wynn
Wescott's www. Lots of fun alliteration there. Also in this
(04:08):
group of founders was Samuel Liddell McGregor, Matthews UH and
William Robert Woodman the least impressive of those three names,
and all of them were Mason's Yes, indeed correct, a
group of Mason's UH. And allegedly they based their founding
of this group on a series of writings that were
collectively known as the Cipher Manuscripts, which is definitely the
(04:32):
name of the first album from Hood God, no question
about that. Um. So, these Cipher Manuscripts are a group
of sixty different UH folios. I guess you could call
them outlining a series of magical intention rights or rituals, right.
A ritual is something that is intended to produce a
result through UH synchronized incantations or something or movement. Various
(04:57):
things can go into a ritual. This podcast contains quite
a few rituals. In fact, you might not even realize that. Um,
but these things were corresponding to the spiritual elements of air, earth, water,
and fire. Um yeah, it was. I got to say
their powers combined, they are in fact captain planet. Yeah.
(05:17):
And you you can think about these rituals and rights,
the things that were contained in these manuscripts somewhat somewhat
like a mixtape. Really, uh, it's it's it's an anthology.
We already mentioned it above, all of these varying thoughts
and schools of thought kind of going together into one thing,
all types of different what you would call magical theory,
(05:38):
either with a C or a K, mostly with a K,
and a lot of it is is just steeped in symbolism.
So when you when you're looking at these these things,
the reason why hoot God is so interesting and funny
to me, it reminds me of Minerva and representations of
the owl. And we were just speaking about this on
a listener mail episode Esoteric Wisdom, right. Yeah, and and
(06:00):
really the this this this manuscript, Cipher manuscript. It's kind
of like, uh, beginner's manual, but it's also the advanced
stuff kind of altogether in one. It's just everything you
need to operate as a member of the Hermetic Order
of Golden Dawn. Yeah. So the if you look at
the water marks on on these folios, on the actual
(06:20):
text themselves, it looks like they were created back in
eighteen o nine. So the that's one theory. Uh. They
are written in code, and like you said, Matt, they
contain diagrams, symbols, but they also contain this written text.
It's not a particularly difficult code to crack. Numbers are
substituted by Hebrew letters, so for example, a left equals
(06:45):
one according to the Order's own records, Westcott himself discovered
slash decoded the text in or around seven. Like we said,
when the Order was founded. It's important to note that
these founding members, they all had day jobs. That's going
to be a complicating factor. In just a bit, Westcott
(07:06):
claimed that he had just found these have been given them.
He did not say that he had written them, though
later historians would suspect. Indeed, some of his colleagues would
accuse him of just writing them himself and then claiming
some more prestigious authorship. You could have also possibly been
written by Edward Bullward Litton, who was a popular author
(07:32):
at the time associated with some of these occult beliefs
are a lot of fans of his work were also
fans of these sorts of magical practices. Today, you'll recognize
Bullward Litton most easily as the inspiration of one of
my favorite contests, the Bullward Litten Fiction Contest. Have you
guys heard about this? Another great name? Though, I suggest
(07:54):
we all consider h entering the contest just if you're
bored of an afternoon one day. It's an official annual
contest to write the worst opening sentence of any possible novel.
And uh, I haven't won yet. Like you, you try
to imagine what the worst novel ever would be, and
(08:16):
then you write the first sentence for that novel. That
should give you a sense of the kind of writing
bull Warre Litton did when he was alive. Do grammatical
errors count towards the badness of it? Or does it? Do?
You just have to get that stuff right? It's just
the arrangement or no? I guess the the words that
you put in there grammatically correct just need to be terrible.
(08:40):
You know, sky's the limit? I say, get creative with it. Uh.
This the winner of twenties contest was Lisa Klueber of
San Francisco. This is the winning sentence, her dear John
mss flapped done ambiguously in the windy breeze, hanging like
a pizza menu on the doorknob. Of my mind, I
(09:01):
thought that was all right. They won. Anyway, that feels
more exciting than it should. Disagree with me. So many
like that. One of the things with the little door
knob holes in it right, also completely unrelated. We're talking
about proprietary eponyms. I learned that door knob is one.
Door knob is like a brand name. Anyway, So back
(09:22):
to these texts. We don't know who really wrote them,
but there are some guesses. Uh. We're going to give
you the version of the order itself, and then we'll
give you some of the critics ideas. So Westcott told
his compatriots that not only had he decoded these texts,
which illuminated various mysteries, but in the process of deciphering
(09:48):
this stuff, he found the address of a German aristocrat
and Rosicrucian named Anna Sprangele. Anna Sprangele was not your
average risk deocrat. Westcott believed that she had the ability
to contact some sort of supernatural and or extra dimensional entity,
(10:08):
which they were collectively referred to as the Secret Chiefs,
which is a term I had never heard before. Like
we've heard Machine Eies, Right, there's a band called the
Secret Chiefs, like kind of a weird almost like Mr
was actually related to Mr Bungle, but kind of like
almost like a metal jazz band called the Secret Chiefs.
I never knew where that term came from. I always
(10:29):
thought was the oddest name. Yeah, the Hidden Kings. This
is very interesting. Uh all right, so allegedly the Hidden
Kings are the ones who wrote this thing or inspired,
uh the guided the hands of the person who did
write them. Right. And this isn't necessarily a new idea,
(10:50):
the idea of divinely inspired written text, right, this is um.
This is something that dates back to religions of old.
It continues today various organizations. The Secret Chiefs themselves are
specifically mentioned in earlier works, like one called The Cloud
upon the Sanctuary back in seventeen by a name that
(11:14):
Noel I will defer to your German in pronouncing, Okay,
I'm gonna give this my my young German boy, all uh,
let's see. This would be cal Von eckott Schauson Calm
von eckott Schausen. Maybe it's more of an Ecotts house. Um,
maybe I may be doing too hard of an s h.
But I've given it mile. This is the best I
(11:35):
can do. I like both of them, so I love it.
So this gentleman allegedly wrote this thing way way before,
well not that far before, if it was, in fact,
you know, written in eighteen o nine, but it was,
as we said, discovered eight seven. So he wrote this
work The Cloud upon the Sanctuary in seventeen nineties sev
(11:57):
something like that exactly. So we see a rough timeline
that we can trace through the use of these particular phrases, right,
the secret Chiefs, hidden Kings, stuff like that. The Golden
Dawn did differ from some earlier, arguably similar groups, and
even differed from some groups that would exist around the
(12:17):
same time period because it did not restrict membership along
the lines of gender, unlike Freemasonry. Women were treated as
equals and allowed into this order. It's progressive for its time.
So things started going wrong pretty quickly. Spoiler Westcott had
to leave leadership of the order when he literally lost
(12:40):
some papers in a cab he just forgot to take them.
You know, it's like leaving your phone in an uber,
but you have the necronomicon with you on your phone
or something, or your phone. Your phone is the necronomicon.
Your phone is that is the necronomicon. Uh. So the
Secret Chiefs did out appear to help him out, uh
(13:02):
as far as his day job goes. Because word got
to his employers. They discovered his connection to this group
that at the time would seem pretty odd, and they
gave him a choice. They said, look, you can keep
working here and stop messing around with magic WW or
you can leave because you will be fired. So Westcott
(13:23):
thought about it. We don't know too many of the specifics.
Ultimately he said, you know, I'm gonna stick with my
career as a coroner. Uh. And I am going to
still be associated, you know, low key with this group,
but I'm not going to be an active prominent member
because I got bills to pay. He was a corner
and he was dabbling in magic. Does that mean he
(13:43):
was was he stealing organs and other gutty parts for
from black magic c k rituals? I mean, if you
wanted to be a necromancer that's a pretty good place
to start. Yeah, no one's gonna miss an errand spleen
here and there. That's that's true. Uh, you know I
thought the same thing too. I couldn't find and tell
(14:04):
us if you have an inside scoop folks, but I
couldn't find any reports to that. Of course, we're we're
joshing a bit. We don't want to just accuse somebody
of necromancy. No, no, no, I'm just look just stating
the fact that if there are corpses near your person
as part of your day job, it would be helpful
(14:26):
if one were interested in some of those dark arts. Yes,
well said, and it's very good point. Also. I just
love that in the context of this episode, it sounds
like we have in the past ruined someone's lives by
accusing them of being a necromancer, and now we're taking
pains to make sure that's not the case. But you're right,
(14:47):
you're right circumstantial if nothing else, it's definitely uh, the
pieces are there, right. Um, we just don't know what
sort of picture the puzzle makes. Last thing, it would
just it would be a headline in like the Mirror
or something local area person accused of necromancy. Uh lose
(15:08):
his job over kerfuffle, and no one would ever think
about it again. Just say yeah, yeah, first paragraph, it's like, uh,
local corridor was discovered after leaving magical documents and grimoires
in uber So uh yeah, you know what, maybe we
(15:30):
should write for the Mirror. But look, this this is
a true story. And the rest of it, the rest
of the story of the group's origin, uh and it's evolution,
quickly descends into a story of obscure conspiracies, wheels within wheels,
competing motivations, competing magical philosophies, secret societies forming like within
(15:51):
secret societies, and then a study of just good old
fashioned backstabbing. But what actually happened to the Golden Dawn,
and perhaps most most importantly, did any of the magic work?
We'll dive into this afterword from our sponsors. Here's where
(16:17):
it gets crazy. Let's tackle those two questions separately, right,
what actually happened to the organization? And you know, how
did the organization work? And then we'll get to we'll
get to the magic. We have to get to the
magic at some point. So yeah, let's talk about how
popular the Old Golden Dawn was in it's heyday if
(16:39):
you will. Um, it was a big part of Victorian society.
Strangely enough, you you wouldn't imagine that magic was was
running wild in regular society. Well, yes, somewhat, not not fully,
but somewhat right. There are all kinds of notable members
from the top of society all the way down to
the bottom. There is one member named Annie Horne Neman. Uh.
(17:03):
This person actually built Ireland's Abbey Theater. Have you ever
heard of that? That's a famous theater that exists. This
person built that. She was also a member of the
Golden Dawn. Pretty cool, huh. And then and then there
were a lot of poets and authors involved, like William Butler.
Yates is probably one of the most famous members of
the Golden Dawn, or one of the most well remembered
(17:24):
in the modern day. And he is on record saying
that other than writing poetry, which he's kind of known for,
the other most important pursuit of his life was his
membership in the Golden Dawn, which is a big thing
to say. Other authors like Algernon Blackwood were also members.
And then well to do people, uh, scientists of folks
(17:48):
who were practicing forms of meditation things like that, Folks
who are just interested in hanging out and talking about
this stuff really quickly. I just want a minute, I believe,
correct me if I'm wrong. Guys, that Alex, our buddy
Alex Williams podcast Ephemeral did like a special Halloween episode
where they did a reading of an Algernon Blackwood story. Yeah,
(18:09):
and we were literally talking about that a few hours ago,
about how influential Algernon was and and is still on
like horror writing essentially, right, Yeah, Yeah, a tremendously influential
horror writer. So it makes sense that in his uh,
non authorial time, he would be interested in these sorts
(18:30):
of spiritual philosophical explorations. But of course there is one
other person associated with with the Order of the Golden
Dawn uh in a controversial way. This is a guy
who you are doubtlessly familiar with if you've listened to
our show before. He's occasionally referred to as the Great Beast.
(18:54):
That's right, Alistair Crowley. I'm saying Crowley on purpose. You
could call him Crowley if you want, but after the
comments on YouTube, we I will forever see his name
be traumatized. And then say cruelly. It's cruelly. But but
you you're aware of that name, and you're likely aware
of the Golden Dawn because of him, at least I
(19:15):
certainly was. And we'll we'll, we'll dive into his association,
which I think gets a little bit exaggerated sometimes given
the rest of his other work post Golden down But
the downfall of this organization, or the troubles it would
have in its evolution, these were all present in the
(19:35):
early days, in its formation. For the first few years,
it was just that it was a single group of
people studying the Cipher manuscripts together, right, and they were
reading this stuff saying, what do you think about this
philosophy of air? You know what I mean? Or this
passage about fire. This group, this initial group, would later
(19:56):
be called the outer order or the first order. And
all you did in the first order was get graded
by fellow members and superiors in terms of your understanding
of the of the arts and philosophies explored in those
initial texts we mentioned, earth, air, firewater. You began as
(20:17):
a neophyte, you eventually progressed through several ranks to become
a kind of intermediate. Why is there an intermediate thing.
If the outer order is like complete, well, it's because
in a secret society kind of begins. In this secret society,
it calls itself the Inner Order or the second Order,
(20:39):
the cool part of the cool kids club. And uh,
this second order is entirely composed of people who have
who have literally passed a written examination about the stuff
from the the first order. And you can can join
up with the first order, but getting into the second
order requires social proof. Uh. The other people that are
(21:02):
already in the order have to dig you. They have
to think you're on the same page. And that's where
you start learning what we as outsiders would probably call
practical or applied magic and ritual. But it doesn't end there.
They have three ranks Adeptis, Minor, major, and at the
top exempt us. Uh, there is a third order. However,
(21:26):
this is really where it gets really weird. If if
the third Order is real, then Matt, I was thinking
of our conversations about that excellent video game Control that
you would recommend it a while back. Um, if the
third Order is real, it's composed of things that are
like those extra dimensional monsters in Control. Totally, it's a
(21:47):
it's what do we call the secret chiefs right like
they they exist in another realm, in another place, but
that they are the power structure that is above even
the adept in the exempt Yeah. And if you are
exemptis or if you're high enough in your understanding and
your membership in the second order, then you can function
(22:09):
as an intermediate for these otherwise unobservable entities. And this,
of course wrinkles some feathers, especially when Mather, the guy
we mentioned earlier, when he starts being a very strict leader,
and he's like the he's like the voice of these
entities and no one else can communicate with them except
(22:31):
for him. He brings the divine knowledge. Oh, he's got
the hotline or what was it called. He's like in
that room that's separated from everything, and you can you
pick up the phone and you can talk to the
board that's him. Uh So, as you can see, this
tendency for in groups to create even more insular groups
within themselves eventually led detention, distrust, internal conflict, and ultimately
(22:55):
these conflicts led to the downfall of the organization. After
it's wait for it, golden age, It did have a
golden I'm sorry, I'm sorry. We had to. It did
have a golden age though, because at the time, you
know it, it was something that people accept like it
was controversial at first, but eventually it became an accepted
(23:16):
thing in society. It wasn't seen as necessarily in opposition
to the status quo, if that makes sense, like it
would be. It was no longer something you would necessarily
get fired for the fact it might have made you
look kind of cool. Uh. And the thing in despite
these earlier problems, the Golden Dawn, some version of it
(23:39):
exists today in the modern day of multiple places. It
is possible to become a member, and we can tell
you how. Towards the end of today's show, I can't wait, man,
is this like really magic or is this sort of
symbolic magic like for the sake of a club and camaraderie,
Like do they really think they're affecting outcomes of like
world events or like how deep does the scale? It's
(24:01):
a great question. Let's get to the magic, right. This
is so we've got we've got the backgrounds. All the
stuff we talked about did really happen, But what kind
of magic were these members? Practicing magic can mean a
million different things. If you read up on the history
of the group. It's easy to get deterred because it
(24:22):
falls into a lot of talk about structure organization. There
are a lot of foreign phrases, a lot of jargon terminology,
things like that. So it's easy, it's easy to get
turned off by that, but it's crucial to note again,
like Matt said earlier, Uh, the Golden Dawn did borrow
heavily from earlier spiritual belief systems, but it was not
(24:44):
in itself a religion. When we define magic, we're inherently uh.
Our definition is inherently relying upon a specific cultural lens.
Like there's practical magic, right, Can I make that? Can
I make this thing float? Can I have precognitive dreams?
(25:05):
Or send my consciousness away from my body? And then
there's the more metaphorical stuff like who are we in
the universe? And what what is this whole reality thing?
So they had maybe we start with the metaphysical stuff.
They had a number of metaphysical pursuits at play. Yeah,
that's right. Uh. So here the idea is that through
(25:25):
ceremony and ritual like we were talking about, uh, an
individual might be able to achieve um kind of that
esoteric knowledge, that knowledge of the of the gods perhaps
or like of the spheres that otherwise would be completely
out of reach for mere mortals, right, the kind of
stuff that would like blow your mind up if if
(25:46):
if someone that was not prepared to receive it did. Um.
So that includes things like being able to leave your
body or with leave your body spiritually and project your
consciousness into other places, a process known as astral projection,
um clairvoyance, you know, psychic powers, being able to read
(26:06):
people's minds or see the future um or it's very
specific to this belief system. Communicating specifically with those secret
chiefs you would reach on another plane of existence entirely.
Then you get into more abstract kind of philosophical ideas
um that are wrapped up in it, things like hidden
(26:28):
truths that there's a unity within all the things, those interconnectedness, uh,
and things that might at first appear to be a
little contradictory, right, yeah, just just a bit. Yates talks
about it when he says he describes it as tapping
into the single energetic mind, where the single memory of nature,
(26:52):
you know what I mean, it's we We see this
reflected in later ideas about earth as a superorganism, right,
the guy a hypothesis and so and similar to that.
But really, then from the abstract lens, what they are
saying is that magic can be defined as the process
of removing limitations and preconceptions. Right, so the alchemy that
(27:14):
takes place is an alchemy of cognition more so than
an alchemy of metals, right of base metals to gold.
You know, it really makes you wonder if they had
a specialist mage that could, let's say, remove all the
water from your body, or another one that could infect
your brain with all of the known and unknown things
(27:36):
that can possibly happen to your brain. You know, just
and if you ever come across I don't know, some
kind of ancient octopus entity like you could get it
removed from your body and you need a specialist like that.
I've been watching too much Sabrina. Sorry, I didn't mean
to watch it. It just happened Sabrina the teenage Way.
Sorry geez wait, I heard it was really good. Yeah, sorry,
(27:59):
let's move on. Yeah, what the production value this season is?
All right, I'll check it out. Man. Uh yeah, So
if we if we take these claims of extrasensory perception
and maybe even supernatural powers aside. If we just bracket
(28:20):
that for a second, then some of the descriptions of
what people are doing here practicing sounds kind of like therapy, right,
It's kind of like a self inventory or what's that
that great quote describing magic weaponized psychology. So it's it's
maybe not so much changing your external reality as it
(28:41):
is enhancing your ability to perceive reality as it always was.
It's allowing you to experience things in a new, more
conscious way. And I was thinking about this like as
far as an analogy, Um, remember back when we're doing
episode on Ireland's Vanishing try Angle and that you did
(29:02):
something really interesting, which is you went to you went
through Google Earth, I believe, and you started constructing an overlay,
a skin to put on the area such that we
could see different events and see when they occurred. That
has a lot of similarities with the idea of philosophical
magic here, right. Oh yeah, I could see that. I
(29:24):
could definitely see that. It's it's also very reminiscent of
modern insular groups that we've discussed on this show recently.
I'm thinking about Nexium, thinking about our discussions with Mike
Render thinking about it just has very very very similar
things where on the surface there appears to be exactly
(29:45):
what you're saying here been um a self helps kind
of thing, a self improvement or UM map that you
get to follow. But at the end of that map
there's something that is really hidden or or there's something
you know just very different or a different route to
get there. I guess yeah, yeah. The Google Earth example, right,
(30:09):
maybe you apply an overlay or of skin uh on
an area of Google Earth that you're looking at, and
maybe you have one map that shows future planned constructions.
So you go down the street, you you walk around,
you've got the school map that says this is coming
in or this is coming in, or alternatively, you could
have a map that shows how a place looked a
(30:30):
thousand years ago. This is what London looked like back
in you know, ten one or something like that. You
haven't then necessarily changed anything about the outer world, but
you have changed your perception of it, and therefore your
actions will reflect and potentially benefit from this new perspective. UH.
(30:52):
From a secular viewpoint, if we want to look just
at the group dynamics of this, there could be another
kind of magic play and we might some people might
not want us to call it magic, but I I
think it's not too different social engineering. Right, It's a club. Yeah,
the the society itself would lead the members of the
(31:13):
different classes and background there that existed in society. People
who would be considered by others to be lowly others
to be you know, notable and and in power essentially
allowed them to interact and encounter each other in ways
that they just wouldn't have that opportunity outside of being
in this group. So it was merit based in some way.
It wasn't just you know, cutting off certain parts of
(31:36):
the social you know, ladder like like, it wasn't closed
off to the lower the lower classes. Yeah, apparently was
unusually progressive that way. Yeah. Yeah, And it's not necessarily sinister.
So I don't want to poison the well. But for
anybody who's read the Wheel of Time series by Robert
Jordan's and Brandon Sanderson, there is an organization of bad
(32:00):
guys in the story. They're called Dark Friends, and they
they function kind of the same way. They have this
hidden knowledge. They have signals they use to indicate their
presence to one another. Um also similar, Matt to the
Latitude Society. Right, dark friends are fictional and dark friends
(32:21):
are definitely antagonists, but the this organization itself is not
necessarily antagonistic, nor is it necessarily sinister. But it definitely
feels cool to be included. Right, You're like, oh, hey,
what did you do today? I went to I went
to the pub, and then I talked with a fellow
(32:43):
member of my order who happens to be you know,
the Duke of Middlebury on Sandwich or whatever. Yeah, well
it reminds me of some of these country clubs that exist,
or these private health clubs or something where. But in
this case that the entry fee, the bar to entry
is different. It's very different. It's more about are you
(33:07):
are you interested in this more esoteric version of the
world or or of reality, and that's really all you need.
You're still gonna have to pay something to get in,
but it you know, you don't have to spend several
thousand dollars. And of course there were there were cases
of con artists being involved, uh and impersonating members of
the Order or claiming to be a temple when they
(33:28):
were you know, just doing a money grab. But this
kind of streets, this kind of social circuit moves both ways.
So not only did it allow people to have access
to maybe influential individuals they might not have otherwise interacted with. UH,
it is also possible that these influential individuals themselves could
(33:51):
have used their presence in the organization to advance their
own worldly goals. Hey, you know, great meeting today before
we leave, UH, I need you to help me with
this important deal. I'm working on things like that. You know.
It's it's quite possible, and it's also quite possible that
all of this was occurring at the same time, and
(34:13):
that different people were prioritizing different things in their relationship
to the organization. We're gonna pause for word from our sponsor,
and then we'll return with a well with a great
example of of when these motivations contradict one another. And
(34:38):
we're back to talk about the Dark One himself, the
Great Beast, the Grand Magician, Wizard, high Wizard. I made
up all those except for the Great Beast, I believe.
Alistair Crowley, Alistair Crowley. Here here he is it, ladies
and gentlemen. Alistair Crowle uh he he. He was a
(35:00):
out in the late eight hundreds and joined the order
in eighteen and he is an episode all his own.
He's one of those kind of phantom topics we mentioned
earlier because comes up in in various related topics. Uh.
The Golden Dawn heavily influenced a lot of what he
would go on to right and a lot of what
(35:22):
he would go on to claim to believe. He did
not really care for a lot of the members that
were already in the organization when he joined up, because
he thought he thought they were like holding call Field
style phonies. You know. He said, look, you're you're not
in this for the real reasons. You're in it because
it works out for you socially, or it gives you
(35:45):
um material rewards. You're in the country club. You're in
the country club. Yeah, exactly. He was saying, this should
not be country club. It's kind of like the way
someone might take up golf, not because they care about golf,
but because it gives them access to money, advance in power.
So that's what he that's his issue that he had
with a lot of those members, but they also had
(36:06):
some issues with him. He was a bit of a libertine,
a bit of a hedonist, you know, very open about it.
A little bit, a little bit, yeah, and it wasn't
ashamed of of his his sexual proclivities. Uh. And it
was very gregarious and then just you know, really kind
(36:26):
of brought a whole another b D energy kind of
to the to the group, you know, um bellicos and
derogatory didactic correct Yeah. Yeah, and he uh, he progressed
through that first order where you're learning most of these
spiritual metaphysical concepts, and he wanted to be in the
(36:48):
second order, but a lot of people were against it.
They were like, this guy, no way. Do you know
what he gets up to on the weekends. Uh, he
goes to pyramids with his wife and they you should
see the incantations. Yeah, they're like, how disgusting. Tell me
more in detail. Yeah, So there was there was controversy, right,
(37:11):
but uh, the guy that he was following, Mather, liked him,
and so Mather unilaterally inducted him into this second order,
which caused a great deal of problems. Uh. He became
like Mather's sort of he did things for Mather, and
he also experimented heavily with the ritualistic use of drugs. Uh.
(37:36):
The everything comes to a culmination when he and his
mistress try to take over a space that was rented
by the Order in West Kensington. This goes to court
and when the case goes to court, he loses. And
that's that's one of the final nails in the coffin
of his official membership. But weirdly up and you know,
(38:00):
he went on to do all the other stuff that
you know about, But weirdly enough, his interaction with this
group is one of the few reasons mainstream society talks
about the Golden Dawn today. Even if he didn't like them,
he helped keep their legacy around. And that's what we
talked about. I mean that he he is probably the
(38:22):
search term that that gets many people to a Hermetic
Order site or to something written about Hermetic Order. It's
because they went Alistair corrawly Um. But you know that
there's something really interesting that we can talk about here
because as open as they were, as as large of
(38:43):
a membership as the Golden Dawn had, they were able
to keep a lot of their stuff very very quiet,
at least the materials they used to learn, rituals, to
learn a lot of the you know, more secretive knowledge.
They were able to keep that stuff hidden at least
pretty well. And this, uh, this occurs of course because
(39:04):
they know everybody who would have access to that information,
kind of like the way in a film production, scripts
will be watermarked, so you know what what leaked or
what didn't leak. Even some specifics of the story might
be exercised or changed just a bit so you can say, oh,
we put that type of there in purpose. That way
(39:24):
we would know if Reginald or whoever spilled beans. Eventually
p A always stealing scripts and sending them over to
where do you send scripts? I don't I don't even
know scripts. You mean prescriptions or scripts, screenplays? Screenplays? Okay,
what like you're leaking it to TMZ? Is that works?
(39:46):
And then uh, somewhere right now, J. J. Abrams is
listening to this podcast and he throws his fist up
in the sky and he goes Roginald, he knew, don't
mess with Disney. If you're gonna steal a script, don't
mess of Disney. No, don't mess with the mouse. No.
And he's terrifying in person. Let me tell you, yes,
(40:06):
all my script. Well there's a darkness that's like no,
he's one of the founding members. Okay, yeah, so so
mouse decide um. They all took a specific vale of silence,
but that vale of silence didn't last. And that is
why today you can see detailed descriptions of various specific
(40:27):
rights on any number of websites like Hermetic dot com
is a pretty great resource. And don't worry, folks, it's
not a bunch of witches like cackling around a cauldron
or practicing human sacrifice. What's interesting here is that the
golden dawn itself, nothing ever happens in a vacuum, right,
The golden dawn itself occurs in the same kind of
(40:49):
cultural context of spirituality spiritualism rather than science of emerging psychology.
Like the Western fascination with what they called Eastern mysteries
like meditation or yoga. They definitely came bundled up with
a lot of xenophobia, a lot of racist notions of
the time, but there turns out to be genuine science
(41:13):
to the benefits of things like mindfulness and exercise. You're
practicing rhythmic breathing, you know what I mean. You're you're
moving your body in a healthy way and you're exploring
your own mindset. So that's like, that's beneficial to people.
Absolutely it is. And you know, I mean whether or
not these practices will grant you, you know, the ability
(41:34):
to commune with the astral plane or across the astral plane.
Is it a thing you have to cross or a
place that you occupy I'm not quite sure, or or
be able to speak with those machine als. We talked
about that in the in the cash episode, that that
you gotta have d m T for that business. Uh.
Here's a surprising thing. Um, maybe not to everybody, but
(41:55):
there is this seems like pretty progressive. I would argue,
even in the earliest forms where they're letting you know,
regular old folks join in. And uh, they thought Alistair
Crowley was a creep. But there apparently is a far
right version of this organization. Yeah, unfortunately they have they
have a very similar name, but they are not They're
(42:19):
hopefully not related past the name. Uh. And of course
you know we have people who have um read up
on the Golden Dawn in the audience here, so we
wanted to be clear there's a different organization that has
very little to do with magic. It is. Uh. The
Golden Dawn is a far right political party in Greece.
(42:39):
They've got a number of policy platforms. The main thing
is they want to return Greece to a military dictatorship,
and they say the benefits of this would be superior
to the current Greek government. Here's here's the thing. They're
often described by many people as neo Nazis. Many members
of the already disagree with that characterization, but I did.
(43:03):
I did put a little link to their official banner. Uh,
Matt Noel, I'd love to hear you guys describe this
on air. I'd love to. I will describe it. But
it's like it has way more than a whiff of
a swastika. I mean, you look at it and it
practically feels like a swastika to you look a little
closer and realized that it's twisted a little differently. It
(43:24):
kind of looks like a hedge maze or something. But
it's just very swastika. Ask Matt, what what? What? How
does it? How does it strike you? Well? I guess
it depends on which one we're looking at, because I know,
I think one of them is a slightly different color
than the other. I know that their standard colors are red,
black and white. And when when you've got the black
(43:49):
symbol on top of the red background. That's where your
mind goes. That's right there, there's a distinct flavor, let's
say to it doesn't make like just because they chose
colors that look like that, and just because their symbol is,
you know, blocky shapes that are look like they could
(44:09):
be a swastikia doesn't mean they are like that. Fact
doesn't mean that they are in any way related to
Nazis or anything like that. Colors aside, it definitely has
a whiff of a swastika though. But the butt is, uh,
it's you should see the ideologies that they're associated with. Um.
(44:33):
For you know, many many, many people who write about
this group, several people who have you know, come from
this group to talk about it. Um. Good lord, don't
even look at the Wikipedia page because it will tell
you all of the varying ideologies that their associated. It'll
probably get you on some kind of lists just for
pulling it up. Yeah. In the interest of, you know,
(44:57):
giving their own reasoning for this band enter uh, they
say that it is act as nothing necessarily to do
with Nazism. It is a depiction what's called Meandros. Meandros
is a kind of decorative border in a in a
continuous line like you've seen it at every Greek restaurant
you've ever been to, probably in some form. So that
(45:19):
that's what that's at least their argument. But as Matt said,
if you just take a quick dip into their Wikipedia page,
you'll see the various members of the group and leaders
have been found guilty of murder, attempted murder, attacks on immigrants,
the creation of an organized crime ring, and they've been
you know, convicted. Uh So, maybe maybe they should take
(45:43):
a take a cue from the other Golden Dawn and
just try some meditation. I agree, Let's just let's do
that all around. Let's do that. Do we mention that
their salute is kind of the same one, It's the
exact same one, same one. Uh they, you know, according
to officials from the group, where people spokespeople from the
(46:03):
group is you know again has a different inspiration. But
it's like Vanilla Ice years and years ago when he
described the slight difference in a drumbeat to say a
song was unique. You remember that was I'm behind the
music or something is one little extra dumb because ours
goes and there's goes. Case closed. You know what I mean.
(46:26):
So this is UH, it's just important for us to
say this because what it means is, if you want
to learn more about joining an organization affiliated with the
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, just make sure you're
joining the right outfit. Double check the website, you know
what I mean. Be careful. UH. Also as a message
(46:47):
to anybody who actively investigates UH these sorts of schools
of thought or philosophical explorations. We're obviously outsiders to this,
but we find it fast and eating because it touches
on so many levels of society at the time, you
know what I mean. And there's there's a boldness to
(47:08):
the exploration in theory. And that's where we leave it
to you, folks. What do you think is the Golden
Dawn is or was it really teaching people magical rights?
Was it really giving people extraordinary abilities or allowing them
to commune with uh the board the management of reality?
(47:29):
I gotta tell again, and I I promises last time
won't bring it up. Control is such a cool game.
It might I don't know if it's the best, but
it might be my favorite game I've played during the pandemic.
Really I'm in such an unfortunate position where I'm like
past the point of no return in several games. Uh Like,
like I'm like, you know, good, midway through Last of
(47:51):
Us two and then they gave me such a bummer
that I can only play it for a little bit
of times. Also pretty hard. And I'm almost done with
the Breath of the Wild, and I've still got Red
Dead Too installed on my machine, which is like three
hundred gigs, so I've got like, you know, guilt about
not finishing that. So I'm like convincing myself that I'm
going to. But I keep hearing about these cool new games.
It's just like Ghost of Sushima or something like. It's like,
(48:14):
oh yeah, that's fabulous. And then you guys keep talking
about this control. Is that a Switch game? Or is
it only PS four? Where can I get this game?
They dig myself deeper. I think it's everything. I don't
know if it's on Switch though I've got PS four
X Files meets Big Government, conspiracy meets Lovecraft? Is it
like long form game? Is it like? OK? Yeah? And
(48:37):
uh there their rules for communication with extra dimensional entities
or things like you have to go through this weird
time bubble where it's always mid afternoon at a strange hotel.
Anyhow do you do you think that there it is
possible that these extra dimensional entities, whatever you want to
(48:59):
call them. Do you think it's possible that they exist
and that members of the Golden Dawn somehow figured out
a way to contact them? Or was this organization functioning
more as an an experiment of sorts with social interaction
or was it something in between? You know, um, we'd
(49:21):
we'd love to hear from you. Yeah, please, And did
we did we tell people how to join? We did not.
Because you can right now. You want to get in
on this hermetic order of the Golden Dawn in one
or whenever you're listening to this past, present, or future,
you can do it. And there's a website you can
go to prepare yourselves and your wallets. Uh. It is
(49:45):
www dot Golden dash Dawn d a w N dot com. Uh.
And once you get there you can look up memberships
and you will find that at least on this date
we were cord this in March of one. You can
join for the low low price of one hundred and
(50:07):
ninety nine dollars US. It used it used to be
one thousand, one hundred and eighty eight dollars and it's
got a slash through it. But now it's only one
hundred and ninety nine dollars. Is that Is that just
like a limited time offer or is this just the
new the new rate. I do not know, but you
get lots and lots of books and PDFs. It looks
(50:32):
like a dagger. Perhaps at least maybe um some very
interesting folks on the front of that live webinar training
picture I've fascinated. Maybe we maybe we draw straws and
one of us joins up and then breaks the valve
silence for the other two. Dude, I'll I'm not breaking
(50:53):
a vale of science if I if I join up,
I'm taking this seriously, you guys, of course, Okay, you're
a hundred percent in so then it would be a
conversation where to talk with you about it. We have
to also join up. Yeah, you better believe it. I'm
not going in two d dollars just to give you
guys all the information. Is there is there any criteria
other than just paying the fee? I mean, I would
(51:16):
love to think that there was some kind of you know,
test of might that you would have to pass our
mental fortitude, you know. I mean, I'm cool with it
being like not about like your wealth, because that that's
a reasonable enough fee. But I don't want to be
in there if it's if it's like just anyone can join,
I think it should be merrit, merit based merit. But no,
now that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying it should
(51:37):
be you should be able to have to bring something
to the table. You know what I'm saying, Well, you
do have to pass a written examination at least in
the original Golden Dawn to move to the second or
inner order. Uh. Yeah, So there's there's a like not
everybody can do this, it says, not everybody's gonna make it. Okay, great,
this is this is important information. Yeah, they're taking it
(51:58):
seriously as well. So we want to we want to
hear your opinion of it. Tell us if you have joined,
if you are joining UM, tell us, if there are
concerns about the organization, tell us if most importantly, whether
you think the rights and rituals described actually UM actually
have efficacy, whether they work out of respect for you know,
(52:23):
the idea of initiation and the idea of secrecy. We
have not described any specific rituals other than to say
it's not you know, it's not like eating eyeballs or
flaying people alive or any any of that movie stuff. Um,
and if you want to learn more, there are people
who are glad to share that information with you. You
(52:44):
can tell us about your experiences, UH, tell us about
other secret organizations, and tell us whether you think there
are forms of magic that are real. By finding us
on our own kind of magical order of these times
the internet, you can find us a conspirace the Stuff
on Twitter and Facebook, Conspiracy Stuff Show on Instagram. We
(53:05):
recommend joining our Facebook group Here's where it gets crazy,
where you can exchange memes, have spirited conversations about episode topics,
and maybe make a new best friend. That's right. You
can also give us a phone call. Check it out,
you guys. Our number is one eight three three st
d w y t K. If you choose to pick
(53:26):
up your phone and call, please do the following. Give
us the name you'd like for us to refer to
you as. If it's not your real name, that's fine.
Just say whatever you want us to call you, and
we'll call you. That can leave us your message try
and keep it a little brief if you can leave
it under that three minutes, and then if you want
to tell us anything, just personally, just talking to Ben Nolan, myself,
(53:48):
Paul Alexis, whoever. Just keep that right at the end
of the message. That will help us put everything together,
edit it quickly and then get it on the air.
We do appreciate you calling in and taking the time
to do it, so looking for order to hearing from you.
If you don't want to do any of that stuff, hey,
we've got a great way for you to connect with us,
especially if you've got a longer story or a suggestion
with a bunch of links or something. Please send us
(54:10):
a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at i
heart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to know.
(54:36):
Is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul.
Mission Control decads. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
I was thinking over the past few days that everybody
we meet, to one degree or another, participates in something
(00:48):
that could be called a secret or occulted organization. It
may be some like group you're a member of during
your schooling days. It might be some weird you know
class organization should like the various orders that aristocrats have. Uh.
It might just be fandom for a particular artist, right,
or something you're interested in. Or it might be a
(01:09):
bond built upon surviving a particular type of trauma. Right.
It might be something entirely extracurricular. But we're all members
of all these various different things, and that's that's not
necessarily a bad thing. Right, Just because a bunch of
people are into some like weird Cadillac forum on the Internet.
Doesn't mean they're automatically the illuminati, right, Like, are are
(01:33):
we all kind of into weird stuff? Yeah? I mean,
you know, just by by virtue of being podcasters, were
sort of softly initiated into a weird kind of uh
cabal of sorts. Right, that's a good point. I hadn't
thought of that, but that's a good point. Sorry, Sorry,
who God? Anyway, today's this will make sense later or not.
(01:55):
Today's episode focuses on a particular school of thought. It's
an organization that prizes itself on exclusivity, on the idea
of initiation, a creating knowledge incrementally, and yes, a form
of magic. So today's question, what is the Golden Dawn. Uh?
(02:17):
Here are the facts. Full name of it, the Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn. Today we see it as
an odd uh, an odd group somewhat forgotten by the mainstream,
but it played a fundamental role in today's magical organizations.
The weirdest thing about it was at the time, in
the nineties, eighteen eighties or so, it was well, I
(02:40):
think it kind of functioned like a social network. I
don't know what you guys think as as you dive in.
But you know, with magic, right, it's it's kind of
an augmented reality the more we think about it. Similar
to the Latitude Society, they took ideas that we're a
unique combination of ancient, pre existing spit virtual traditions and
(03:01):
then other stuff that was happening right before it in
the realm of science and spiritualism. So like the Cabbala, Egyptian,
Greek mysteries, several strands of early Christian thought, all these
esoteric traditions combined in the late eighteen eighties, and the
story of the Origin, We'll let you be the judge.
(03:22):
The story of the Origin feels a little sketchy. Yeah, indeed, Uh,
whod God? Okay, right? Who God? Sorry? Ben, you gotta
help with out here. What is this acronym? I love
the way that's that's maybe lazy in the notes, it's
just shorthand for the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dollars.
They didn't call themselves who God. Well, we talked off Mike,
(03:45):
how that would be a fantastic name for likely a
Florida rapper, perhaps the Gulf Coast, I believe is what
you said, Ben, yeah, I think so, Gulf Coast coast
out there. It's a great idea. So so, who'd got
Hermitic Order of the Golden Down was founded in eight
seven by a Freemason by the name of William Wynn
Wescott's www. Lots of fun alliteration there. Also in this
(04:08):
group of founders was Samuel Liddell McGregor, Matthews UH and
William Robert Woodman the least impressive of those three names,
and all of them were Mason's Yes, indeed correct, a
group of Mason's UH. And allegedly they based their founding
of this group on a series of writings that were
collectively known as the Cipher Manuscripts, which is definitely the
(04:32):
name of the first album from Hood God, no question
about that. Um. So, these Cipher Manuscripts are a group
of sixty different UH folios. I guess you could call
them outlining a series of magical intention rights or rituals, right.
A ritual is something that is intended to produce a
result through UH synchronized incantations or something or movement. Various
(04:57):
things can go into a ritual. This podcast contains quite
a few rituals. In fact, you might not even realize that. Um,
but these things were corresponding to the spiritual elements of air, earth, water,
and fire. Um yeah, it was. I got to say
their powers combined, they are in fact captain planet. Yeah.
(05:17):
And you you can think about these rituals and rights,
the things that were contained in these manuscripts somewhat somewhat
like a mixtape. Really, uh, it's it's it's an anthology.
We already mentioned it above, all of these varying thoughts
and schools of thought kind of going together into one thing,
all types of different what you would call magical theory,
(05:38):
either with a C or a K, mostly with a K,
and a lot of it is is just steeped in symbolism.
So when you when you're looking at these these things,
the reason why hoot God is so interesting and funny
to me, it reminds me of Minerva and representations of
the owl. And we were just speaking about this on
a listener mail episode Esoteric Wisdom, right. Yeah, and and
(06:00):
really the this this this manuscript, Cipher manuscript. It's kind
of like, uh, beginner's manual, but it's also the advanced
stuff kind of altogether in one. It's just everything you
need to operate as a member of the Hermetic Order
of Golden Dawn. Yeah. So the if you look at
the water marks on on these folios, on the actual
(06:20):
text themselves, it looks like they were created back in
eighteen o nine. So the that's one theory. Uh. They
are written in code, and like you said, Matt, they
contain diagrams, symbols, but they also contain this written text.
It's not a particularly difficult code to crack. Numbers are
substituted by Hebrew letters, so for example, a left equals
(06:45):
one according to the Order's own records, Westcott himself discovered
slash decoded the text in or around seven. Like we said,
when the Order was founded. It's important to note that
these founding members, they all had day jobs. That's going
to be a complicating factor. In just a bit, Westcott
(07:06):
claimed that he had just found these have been given them.
He did not say that he had written them, though
later historians would suspect. Indeed, some of his colleagues would
accuse him of just writing them himself and then claiming
some more prestigious authorship. You could have also possibly been
written by Edward Bullward Litton, who was a popular author
(07:32):
at the time associated with some of these occult beliefs
are a lot of fans of his work were also
fans of these sorts of magical practices. Today, you'll recognize
Bullward Litton most easily as the inspiration of one of
my favorite contests, the Bullward Litten Fiction Contest. Have you
guys heard about this? Another great name? Though, I suggest
(07:54):
we all consider h entering the contest just if you're
bored of an afternoon one day. It's an official annual
contest to write the worst opening sentence of any possible novel.
And uh, I haven't won yet. Like you, you try
to imagine what the worst novel ever would be, and
(08:16):
then you write the first sentence for that novel. That
should give you a sense of the kind of writing
bull Warre Litton did when he was alive. Do grammatical
errors count towards the badness of it? Or does it? Do?
You just have to get that stuff right? It's just
the arrangement or no? I guess the the words that
you put in there grammatically correct just need to be terrible.
(08:40):
You know, sky's the limit? I say, get creative with it. Uh.
This the winner of twenties contest was Lisa Klueber of
San Francisco. This is the winning sentence, her dear John
mss flapped done ambiguously in the windy breeze, hanging like
a pizza menu on the doorknob. Of my mind, I
(09:01):
thought that was all right. They won. Anyway, that feels
more exciting than it should. Disagree with me. So many
like that. One of the things with the little door
knob holes in it right, also completely unrelated. We're talking
about proprietary eponyms. I learned that door knob is one.
Door knob is like a brand name. Anyway, So back
(09:22):
to these texts. We don't know who really wrote them,
but there are some guesses. Uh. We're going to give
you the version of the order itself, and then we'll
give you some of the critics ideas. So Westcott told
his compatriots that not only had he decoded these texts,
which illuminated various mysteries, but in the process of deciphering
(09:48):
this stuff, he found the address of a German aristocrat
and Rosicrucian named Anna Sprangele. Anna Sprangele was not your
average risk deocrat. Westcott believed that she had the ability
to contact some sort of supernatural and or extra dimensional entity,
(10:08):
which they were collectively referred to as the Secret Chiefs,
which is a term I had never heard before. Like
we've heard Machine Eies, Right, there's a band called the
Secret Chiefs, like kind of a weird almost like Mr
was actually related to Mr Bungle, but kind of like
almost like a metal jazz band called the Secret Chiefs.
I never knew where that term came from. I always
(10:29):
thought was the oddest name. Yeah, the Hidden Kings. This
is very interesting. Uh all right, so allegedly the Hidden
Kings are the ones who wrote this thing or inspired,
uh the guided the hands of the person who did
write them. Right. And this isn't necessarily a new idea,
(10:50):
the idea of divinely inspired written text, right, this is um.
This is something that dates back to religions of old.
It continues today various organizations. The Secret Chiefs themselves are
specifically mentioned in earlier works, like one called The Cloud
upon the Sanctuary back in seventeen by a name that
(11:14):
Noel I will defer to your German in pronouncing, Okay,
I'm gonna give this my my young German boy, all uh,
let's see. This would be cal Von eckott Schauson Calm
von eckott Schausen. Maybe it's more of an Ecotts house. Um,
maybe I may be doing too hard of an s h.
But I've given it mile. This is the best I
(11:35):
can do. I like both of them, so I love it.
So this gentleman allegedly wrote this thing way way before,
well not that far before, if it was, in fact,
you know, written in eighteen o nine, but it was,
as we said, discovered eight seven. So he wrote this
work The Cloud upon the Sanctuary in seventeen nineties sev
(11:57):
something like that exactly. So we see a rough timeline
that we can trace through the use of these particular phrases, right,
the secret Chiefs, hidden Kings, stuff like that. The Golden
Dawn did differ from some earlier, arguably similar groups, and
even differed from some groups that would exist around the
(12:17):
same time period because it did not restrict membership along
the lines of gender, unlike Freemasonry. Women were treated as
equals and allowed into this order. It's progressive for its time.
So things started going wrong pretty quickly. Spoiler Westcott had
to leave leadership of the order when he literally lost
(12:40):
some papers in a cab he just forgot to take them.
You know, it's like leaving your phone in an uber,
but you have the necronomicon with you on your phone
or something, or your phone. Your phone is the necronomicon.
Your phone is that is the necronomicon. Uh. So the
Secret Chiefs did out appear to help him out, uh
(13:02):
as far as his day job goes. Because word got
to his employers. They discovered his connection to this group
that at the time would seem pretty odd, and they
gave him a choice. They said, look, you can keep
working here and stop messing around with magic WW or
you can leave because you will be fired. So Westcott
(13:23):
thought about it. We don't know too many of the specifics.
Ultimately he said, you know, I'm gonna stick with my
career as a coroner. Uh. And I am going to
still be associated, you know, low key with this group,
but I'm not going to be an active prominent member
because I got bills to pay. He was a corner
and he was dabbling in magic. Does that mean he
(13:43):
was was he stealing organs and other gutty parts for
from black magic c k rituals? I mean, if you
wanted to be a necromancer that's a pretty good place
to start. Yeah, no one's gonna miss an errand spleen
here and there. That's that's true. Uh, you know I
thought the same thing too. I couldn't find and tell
(14:04):
us if you have an inside scoop folks, but I
couldn't find any reports to that. Of course, we're we're
joshing a bit. We don't want to just accuse somebody
of necromancy. No, no, no, I'm just look just stating
the fact that if there are corpses near your person
as part of your day job, it would be helpful
(14:26):
if one were interested in some of those dark arts. Yes,
well said, and it's very good point. Also. I just
love that in the context of this episode, it sounds
like we have in the past ruined someone's lives by
accusing them of being a necromancer, and now we're taking
pains to make sure that's not the case. But you're right,
(14:47):
you're right circumstantial if nothing else, it's definitely uh, the
pieces are there, right. Um, we just don't know what
sort of picture the puzzle makes. Last thing, it would
just it would be a headline in like the Mirror
or something local area person accused of necromancy. Uh lose
(15:08):
his job over kerfuffle, and no one would ever think
about it again. Just say yeah, yeah, first paragraph, it's like, uh,
local corridor was discovered after leaving magical documents and grimoires
in uber So uh yeah, you know what, maybe we
(15:30):
should write for the Mirror. But look, this this is
a true story. And the rest of it, the rest
of the story of the group's origin, uh and it's evolution,
quickly descends into a story of obscure conspiracies, wheels within wheels,
competing motivations, competing magical philosophies, secret societies forming like within
(15:51):
secret societies, and then a study of just good old
fashioned backstabbing. But what actually happened to the Golden Dawn,
and perhaps most most importantly, did any of the magic work?
We'll dive into this afterword from our sponsors. Here's where
(16:17):
it gets crazy. Let's tackle those two questions separately, right,
what actually happened to the organization? And you know, how
did the organization work? And then we'll get to we'll
get to the magic. We have to get to the
magic at some point. So yeah, let's talk about how
popular the Old Golden Dawn was in it's heyday if
(16:39):
you will. Um, it was a big part of Victorian society.
Strangely enough, you you wouldn't imagine that magic was was
running wild in regular society. Well, yes, somewhat, not not fully,
but somewhat right. There are all kinds of notable members
from the top of society all the way down to
the bottom. There is one member named Annie Horne Neman. Uh.
(17:03):
This person actually built Ireland's Abbey Theater. Have you ever
heard of that? That's a famous theater that exists. This
person built that. She was also a member of the
Golden Dawn. Pretty cool, huh. And then and then there
were a lot of poets and authors involved, like William Butler.
Yates is probably one of the most famous members of
the Golden Dawn, or one of the most well remembered
(17:24):
in the modern day. And he is on record saying
that other than writing poetry, which he's kind of known for,
the other most important pursuit of his life was his
membership in the Golden Dawn, which is a big thing
to say. Other authors like Algernon Blackwood were also members.
And then well to do people, uh, scientists of folks
(17:48):
who were practicing forms of meditation things like that, Folks
who are just interested in hanging out and talking about
this stuff really quickly. I just want a minute, I believe,
correct me if I'm wrong. Guys, that Alex, our buddy
Alex Williams podcast Ephemeral did like a special Halloween episode
where they did a reading of an Algernon Blackwood story. Yeah,
(18:09):
and we were literally talking about that a few hours ago,
about how influential Algernon was and and is still on
like horror writing essentially, right, Yeah, Yeah, a tremendously influential
horror writer. So it makes sense that in his uh,
non authorial time, he would be interested in these sorts
(18:30):
of spiritual philosophical explorations. But of course there is one
other person associated with with the Order of the Golden
Dawn uh in a controversial way. This is a guy
who you are doubtlessly familiar with if you've listened to
our show before. He's occasionally referred to as the Great Beast.
(18:54):
That's right, Alistair Crowley. I'm saying Crowley on purpose. You
could call him Crowley if you want, but after the
comments on YouTube, we I will forever see his name
be traumatized. And then say cruelly. It's cruelly. But but
you you're aware of that name, and you're likely aware
of the Golden Dawn because of him, at least I
(19:15):
certainly was. And we'll we'll, we'll dive into his association,
which I think gets a little bit exaggerated sometimes given
the rest of his other work post Golden down But
the downfall of this organization, or the troubles it would
have in its evolution, these were all present in the
(19:35):
early days, in its formation. For the first few years,
it was just that it was a single group of
people studying the Cipher manuscripts together, right, and they were
reading this stuff saying, what do you think about this
philosophy of air? You know what I mean? Or this
passage about fire. This group, this initial group, would later
(19:56):
be called the outer order or the first order. And
all you did in the first order was get graded
by fellow members and superiors in terms of your understanding
of the of the arts and philosophies explored in those
initial texts we mentioned, earth, air, firewater. You began as
(20:17):
a neophyte, you eventually progressed through several ranks to become
a kind of intermediate. Why is there an intermediate thing.
If the outer order is like complete, well, it's because
in a secret society kind of begins. In this secret society,
it calls itself the Inner Order or the second Order,
(20:39):
the cool part of the cool kids club. And uh,
this second order is entirely composed of people who have
who have literally passed a written examination about the stuff
from the the first order. And you can can join
up with the first order, but getting into the second
order requires social proof. Uh. The other people that are
(21:02):
already in the order have to dig you. They have
to think you're on the same page. And that's where
you start learning what we as outsiders would probably call
practical or applied magic and ritual. But it doesn't end there.
They have three ranks Adeptis, Minor, major, and at the
top exempt us. Uh, there is a third order. However,
(21:26):
this is really where it gets really weird. If if
the third Order is real, then Matt, I was thinking
of our conversations about that excellent video game Control that
you would recommend it a while back. Um, if the
third Order is real, it's composed of things that are
like those extra dimensional monsters in Control. Totally, it's a
(21:47):
it's what do we call the secret chiefs right like
they they exist in another realm, in another place, but
that they are the power structure that is above even
the adept in the exempt Yeah. And if you are
exemptis or if you're high enough in your understanding and
your membership in the second order, then you can function
(22:09):
as an intermediate for these otherwise unobservable entities. And this,
of course wrinkles some feathers, especially when Mather, the guy
we mentioned earlier, when he starts being a very strict leader,
and he's like the he's like the voice of these
entities and no one else can communicate with them except
(22:31):
for him. He brings the divine knowledge. Oh, he's got
the hotline or what was it called. He's like in
that room that's separated from everything, and you can you
pick up the phone and you can talk to the
board that's him. Uh So, as you can see, this
tendency for in groups to create even more insular groups
within themselves eventually led detention, distrust, internal conflict, and ultimately
(22:55):
these conflicts led to the downfall of the organization. After
it's wait for it, golden age, It did have a
golden I'm sorry, I'm sorry. We had to. It did
have a golden age though, because at the time, you
know it, it was something that people accept like it
was controversial at first, but eventually it became an accepted
(23:16):
thing in society. It wasn't seen as necessarily in opposition
to the status quo, if that makes sense, like it
would be. It was no longer something you would necessarily
get fired for the fact it might have made you
look kind of cool. Uh. And the thing in despite
these earlier problems, the Golden Dawn, some version of it
(23:39):
exists today in the modern day of multiple places. It
is possible to become a member, and we can tell
you how. Towards the end of today's show, I can't wait, man,
is this like really magic or is this sort of
symbolic magic like for the sake of a club and camaraderie,
Like do they really think they're affecting outcomes of like
world events or like how deep does the scale? It's
(24:01):
a great question. Let's get to the magic, right. This
is so we've got we've got the backgrounds. All the
stuff we talked about did really happen, But what kind
of magic were these members? Practicing magic can mean a
million different things. If you read up on the history
of the group. It's easy to get deterred because it
(24:22):
falls into a lot of talk about structure organization. There
are a lot of foreign phrases, a lot of jargon terminology,
things like that. So it's easy, it's easy to get
turned off by that, but it's crucial to note again,
like Matt said earlier, Uh, the Golden Dawn did borrow
heavily from earlier spiritual belief systems, but it was not
(24:44):
in itself a religion. When we define magic, we're inherently uh.
Our definition is inherently relying upon a specific cultural lens.
Like there's practical magic, right, Can I make that? Can
I make this thing float? Can I have precognitive dreams?
(25:05):
Or send my consciousness away from my body? And then
there's the more metaphorical stuff like who are we in
the universe? And what what is this whole reality thing?
So they had maybe we start with the metaphysical stuff.
They had a number of metaphysical pursuits at play. Yeah,
that's right. Uh. So here the idea is that through
(25:25):
ceremony and ritual like we were talking about, uh, an
individual might be able to achieve um kind of that
esoteric knowledge, that knowledge of the of the gods perhaps
or like of the spheres that otherwise would be completely
out of reach for mere mortals, right, the kind of
stuff that would like blow your mind up if if
(25:46):
if someone that was not prepared to receive it did. Um.
So that includes things like being able to leave your
body or with leave your body spiritually and project your
consciousness into other places, a process known as astral projection,
um clairvoyance, you know, psychic powers, being able to read
(26:06):
people's minds or see the future um or it's very
specific to this belief system. Communicating specifically with those secret
chiefs you would reach on another plane of existence entirely.
Then you get into more abstract kind of philosophical ideas
um that are wrapped up in it, things like hidden
(26:28):
truths that there's a unity within all the things, those interconnectedness, uh,
and things that might at first appear to be a
little contradictory, right, yeah, just just a bit. Yates talks
about it when he says he describes it as tapping
into the single energetic mind, where the single memory of nature,
(26:52):
you know what I mean, it's we We see this
reflected in later ideas about earth as a superorganism, right,
the guy a hypothesis and so and similar to that.
But really, then from the abstract lens, what they are
saying is that magic can be defined as the process
of removing limitations and preconceptions. Right, so the alchemy that
(27:14):
takes place is an alchemy of cognition more so than
an alchemy of metals, right of base metals to gold.
You know, it really makes you wonder if they had
a specialist mage that could, let's say, remove all the
water from your body, or another one that could infect
your brain with all of the known and unknown things
(27:36):
that can possibly happen to your brain. You know, just
and if you ever come across I don't know, some
kind of ancient octopus entity like you could get it
removed from your body and you need a specialist like that.
I've been watching too much Sabrina. Sorry, I didn't mean
to watch it. It just happened Sabrina the teenage Way.
Sorry geez wait, I heard it was really good. Yeah, sorry,
(27:59):
let's move on. Yeah, what the production value this season is?
All right, I'll check it out. Man. Uh yeah, So
if we if we take these claims of extrasensory perception
and maybe even supernatural powers aside. If we just bracket
(28:20):
that for a second, then some of the descriptions of
what people are doing here practicing sounds kind of like therapy, right,
It's kind of like a self inventory or what's that
that great quote describing magic weaponized psychology. So it's it's
maybe not so much changing your external reality as it
(28:41):
is enhancing your ability to perceive reality as it always was.
It's allowing you to experience things in a new, more
conscious way. And I was thinking about this like as
far as an analogy, Um, remember back when we're doing
episode on Ireland's Vanishing try Angle and that you did
(29:02):
something really interesting, which is you went to you went
through Google Earth, I believe, and you started constructing an overlay,
a skin to put on the area such that we
could see different events and see when they occurred. That
has a lot of similarities with the idea of philosophical
magic here, right. Oh yeah, I could see that. I
(29:24):
could definitely see that. It's it's also very reminiscent of
modern insular groups that we've discussed on this show recently.
I'm thinking about Nexium, thinking about our discussions with Mike
Render thinking about it just has very very very similar
things where on the surface there appears to be exactly
(29:45):
what you're saying here been um a self helps kind
of thing, a self improvement or UM map that you
get to follow. But at the end of that map
there's something that is really hidden or or there's something
you know just very different or a different route to
get there. I guess yeah, yeah. The Google Earth example, right,
(30:09):
maybe you apply an overlay or of skin uh on
an area of Google Earth that you're looking at, and
maybe you have one map that shows future planned constructions.
So you go down the street, you you walk around,
you've got the school map that says this is coming
in or this is coming in, or alternatively, you could
have a map that shows how a place looked a
(30:30):
thousand years ago. This is what London looked like back
in you know, ten one or something like that. You
haven't then necessarily changed anything about the outer world, but
you have changed your perception of it, and therefore your
actions will reflect and potentially benefit from this new perspective. UH.
(30:52):
From a secular viewpoint, if we want to look just
at the group dynamics of this, there could be another
kind of magic play and we might some people might
not want us to call it magic, but I I
think it's not too different social engineering. Right, It's a club. Yeah,
the the society itself would lead the members of the
(31:13):
different classes and background there that existed in society. People
who would be considered by others to be lowly others
to be you know, notable and and in power essentially
allowed them to interact and encounter each other in ways
that they just wouldn't have that opportunity outside of being
in this group. So it was merit based in some way.
It wasn't just you know, cutting off certain parts of
(31:36):
the social you know, ladder like like, it wasn't closed
off to the lower the lower classes. Yeah, apparently was
unusually progressive that way. Yeah. Yeah, And it's not necessarily sinister.
So I don't want to poison the well. But for
anybody who's read the Wheel of Time series by Robert
Jordan's and Brandon Sanderson, there is an organization of bad
(32:00):
guys in the story. They're called Dark Friends, and they
they function kind of the same way. They have this
hidden knowledge. They have signals they use to indicate their
presence to one another. Um also similar, Matt to the
Latitude Society. Right, dark friends are fictional and dark friends
(32:21):
are definitely antagonists, but the this organization itself is not
necessarily antagonistic, nor is it necessarily sinister. But it definitely
feels cool to be included. Right, You're like, oh, hey,
what did you do today? I went to I went
to the pub, and then I talked with a fellow
(32:43):
member of my order who happens to be you know,
the Duke of Middlebury on Sandwich or whatever. Yeah, well
it reminds me of some of these country clubs that exist,
or these private health clubs or something where. But in
this case that the entry fee, the bar to entry
is different. It's very different. It's more about are you
(33:07):
are you interested in this more esoteric version of the
world or or of reality, and that's really all you need.
You're still gonna have to pay something to get in,
but it you know, you don't have to spend several
thousand dollars. And of course there were there were cases
of con artists being involved, uh and impersonating members of
the Order or claiming to be a temple when they
(33:28):
were you know, just doing a money grab. But this
kind of streets, this kind of social circuit moves both ways.
So not only did it allow people to have access
to maybe influential individuals they might not have otherwise interacted with. UH,
it is also possible that these influential individuals themselves could
(33:51):
have used their presence in the organization to advance their
own worldly goals. Hey, you know, great meeting today before
we leave, UH, I need you to help me with
this important deal. I'm working on things like that. You know.
It's it's quite possible, and it's also quite possible that
all of this was occurring at the same time, and
(34:13):
that different people were prioritizing different things in their relationship
to the organization. We're gonna pause for word from our sponsor,
and then we'll return with a well with a great
example of of when these motivations contradict one another. And
(34:38):
we're back to talk about the Dark One himself, the
Great Beast, the Grand Magician, Wizard, high Wizard. I made
up all those except for the Great Beast, I believe.
Alistair Crowley, Alistair Crowley. Here here he is it, ladies
and gentlemen. Alistair Crowle uh he he. He was a
(35:00):
out in the late eight hundreds and joined the order
in eighteen and he is an episode all his own.
He's one of those kind of phantom topics we mentioned
earlier because comes up in in various related topics. Uh.
The Golden Dawn heavily influenced a lot of what he
would go on to right and a lot of what
(35:22):
he would go on to claim to believe. He did
not really care for a lot of the members that
were already in the organization when he joined up, because
he thought he thought they were like holding call Field
style phonies. You know. He said, look, you're you're not
in this for the real reasons. You're in it because
it works out for you socially, or it gives you
(35:45):
um material rewards. You're in the country club. You're in
the country club. Yeah, exactly. He was saying, this should
not be country club. It's kind of like the way
someone might take up golf, not because they care about golf,
but because it gives them access to money, advance in power.
So that's what he that's his issue that he had
with a lot of those members, but they also had
(36:06):
some issues with him. He was a bit of a libertine,
a bit of a hedonist, you know, very open about it.
A little bit, a little bit, yeah, and it wasn't
ashamed of of his his sexual proclivities. Uh. And it
was very gregarious and then just you know, really kind
(36:26):
of brought a whole another b D energy kind of
to the to the group, you know, um bellicos and
derogatory didactic correct Yeah. Yeah, and he uh, he progressed
through that first order where you're learning most of these
spiritual metaphysical concepts, and he wanted to be in the
(36:48):
second order, but a lot of people were against it.
They were like, this guy, no way. Do you know
what he gets up to on the weekends. Uh, he
goes to pyramids with his wife and they you should
see the incantations. Yeah, they're like, how disgusting. Tell me
more in detail. Yeah, So there was there was controversy, right,
(37:11):
but uh, the guy that he was following, Mather, liked him,
and so Mather unilaterally inducted him into this second order,
which caused a great deal of problems. Uh. He became
like Mather's sort of he did things for Mather, and
he also experimented heavily with the ritualistic use of drugs. Uh.
(37:36):
The everything comes to a culmination when he and his
mistress try to take over a space that was rented
by the Order in West Kensington. This goes to court
and when the case goes to court, he loses. And
that's that's one of the final nails in the coffin
of his official membership. But weirdly up and you know,
(38:00):
he went on to do all the other stuff that
you know about, But weirdly enough, his interaction with this
group is one of the few reasons mainstream society talks
about the Golden Dawn today. Even if he didn't like them,
he helped keep their legacy around. And that's what we
talked about. I mean that he he is probably the
(38:22):
search term that that gets many people to a Hermetic
Order site or to something written about Hermetic Order. It's
because they went Alistair corrawly Um. But you know that
there's something really interesting that we can talk about here
because as open as they were, as as large of
(38:43):
a membership as the Golden Dawn had, they were able
to keep a lot of their stuff very very quiet,
at least the materials they used to learn, rituals, to
learn a lot of the you know, more secretive knowledge.
They were able to keep that stuff hidden at least
pretty well. And this, uh, this occurs of course because
(39:04):
they know everybody who would have access to that information,
kind of like the way in a film production, scripts
will be watermarked, so you know what what leaked or
what didn't leak. Even some specifics of the story might
be exercised or changed just a bit so you can say, oh,
we put that type of there in purpose. That way
(39:24):
we would know if Reginald or whoever spilled beans. Eventually
p A always stealing scripts and sending them over to
where do you send scripts? I don't I don't even
know scripts. You mean prescriptions or scripts, screenplays? Screenplays? Okay,
what like you're leaking it to TMZ? Is that works?
(39:46):
And then uh, somewhere right now, J. J. Abrams is
listening to this podcast and he throws his fist up
in the sky and he goes Roginald, he knew, don't
mess with Disney. If you're gonna steal a script, don't
mess of Disney. No, don't mess with the mouse. No.
And he's terrifying in person. Let me tell you, yes,
(40:06):
all my script. Well there's a darkness that's like no,
he's one of the founding members. Okay, yeah, so so
mouse decide um. They all took a specific vale of silence,
but that vale of silence didn't last. And that is
why today you can see detailed descriptions of various specific
(40:27):
rights on any number of websites like Hermetic dot com
is a pretty great resource. And don't worry, folks, it's
not a bunch of witches like cackling around a cauldron
or practicing human sacrifice. What's interesting here is that the
golden dawn itself, nothing ever happens in a vacuum, right,
The golden dawn itself occurs in the same kind of
(40:49):
cultural context of spirituality spiritualism rather than science of emerging psychology.
Like the Western fascination with what they called Eastern mysteries
like meditation or yoga. They definitely came bundled up with
a lot of xenophobia, a lot of racist notions of
the time, but there turns out to be genuine science
(41:13):
to the benefits of things like mindfulness and exercise. You're
practicing rhythmic breathing, you know what I mean. You're you're
moving your body in a healthy way and you're exploring
your own mindset. So that's like, that's beneficial to people.
Absolutely it is. And you know, I mean whether or
not these practices will grant you, you know, the ability
(41:34):
to commune with the astral plane or across the astral plane.
Is it a thing you have to cross or a
place that you occupy I'm not quite sure, or or
be able to speak with those machine als. We talked
about that in the in the cash episode, that that
you gotta have d m T for that business. Uh.
Here's a surprising thing. Um, maybe not to everybody, but
(41:55):
there is this seems like pretty progressive. I would argue,
even in the earliest forms where they're letting you know,
regular old folks join in. And uh, they thought Alistair
Crowley was a creep. But there apparently is a far
right version of this organization. Yeah, unfortunately they have they
have a very similar name, but they are not They're
(42:19):
hopefully not related past the name. Uh. And of course
you know we have people who have um read up
on the Golden Dawn in the audience here, so we
wanted to be clear there's a different organization that has
very little to do with magic. It is. Uh. The
Golden Dawn is a far right political party in Greece.
(42:39):
They've got a number of policy platforms. The main thing
is they want to return Greece to a military dictatorship,
and they say the benefits of this would be superior
to the current Greek government. Here's here's the thing. They're
often described by many people as neo Nazis. Many members
of the already disagree with that characterization, but I did.
(43:03):
I did put a little link to their official banner. Uh,
Matt Noel, I'd love to hear you guys describe this
on air. I'd love to. I will describe it. But
it's like it has way more than a whiff of
a swastika. I mean, you look at it and it
practically feels like a swastika to you look a little
closer and realized that it's twisted a little differently. It
(43:24):
kind of looks like a hedge maze or something. But
it's just very swastika. Ask Matt, what what? What? How
does it? How does it strike you? Well? I guess
it depends on which one we're looking at, because I know,
I think one of them is a slightly different color
than the other. I know that their standard colors are red,
black and white. And when when you've got the black
(43:49):
symbol on top of the red background. That's where your
mind goes. That's right there, there's a distinct flavor, let's
say to it doesn't make like just because they chose
colors that look like that, and just because their symbol is,
you know, blocky shapes that are look like they could
(44:09):
be a swastikia doesn't mean they are like that. Fact
doesn't mean that they are in any way related to
Nazis or anything like that. Colors aside, it definitely has
a whiff of a swastika though. But the butt is, uh,
it's you should see the ideologies that they're associated with. Um.
(44:33):
For you know, many many, many people who write about
this group, several people who have you know, come from
this group to talk about it. Um. Good lord, don't
even look at the Wikipedia page because it will tell
you all of the varying ideologies that their associated. It'll
probably get you on some kind of lists just for
pulling it up. Yeah. In the interest of, you know,
(44:57):
giving their own reasoning for this band enter uh, they
say that it is act as nothing necessarily to do
with Nazism. It is a depiction what's called Meandros. Meandros
is a kind of decorative border in a in a
continuous line like you've seen it at every Greek restaurant
you've ever been to, probably in some form. So that
(45:19):
that's what that's at least their argument. But as Matt said,
if you just take a quick dip into their Wikipedia page,
you'll see the various members of the group and leaders
have been found guilty of murder, attempted murder, attacks on immigrants,
the creation of an organized crime ring, and they've been
you know, convicted. Uh So, maybe maybe they should take
(45:43):
a take a cue from the other Golden Dawn and
just try some meditation. I agree, Let's just let's do
that all around. Let's do that. Do we mention that
their salute is kind of the same one, It's the
exact same one, same one. Uh they, you know, according
to officials from the group, where people spokespeople from the
(46:03):
group is you know again has a different inspiration. But
it's like Vanilla Ice years and years ago when he
described the slight difference in a drumbeat to say a
song was unique. You remember that was I'm behind the
music or something is one little extra dumb because ours
goes and there's goes. Case closed. You know what I mean.
(46:26):
So this is UH, it's just important for us to
say this because what it means is, if you want
to learn more about joining an organization affiliated with the
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, just make sure you're
joining the right outfit. Double check the website, you know
what I mean. Be careful. UH. Also as a message
(46:47):
to anybody who actively investigates UH these sorts of schools
of thought or philosophical explorations. We're obviously outsiders to this,
but we find it fast and eating because it touches
on so many levels of society at the time, you
know what I mean. And there's there's a boldness to
(47:08):
the exploration in theory. And that's where we leave it
to you, folks. What do you think is the Golden
Dawn is or was it really teaching people magical rights?
Was it really giving people extraordinary abilities or allowing them
to commune with uh the board the management of reality?
(47:29):
I gotta tell again, and I I promises last time
won't bring it up. Control is such a cool game.
It might I don't know if it's the best, but
it might be my favorite game I've played during the pandemic.
Really I'm in such an unfortunate position where I'm like
past the point of no return in several games. Uh Like,
like I'm like, you know, good, midway through Last of
(47:51):
Us two and then they gave me such a bummer
that I can only play it for a little bit
of times. Also pretty hard. And I'm almost done with
the Breath of the Wild, and I've still got Red
Dead Too installed on my machine, which is like three
hundred gigs, so I've got like, you know, guilt about
not finishing that. So I'm like convincing myself that I'm
going to. But I keep hearing about these cool new games.
It's just like Ghost of Sushima or something like. It's like,
(48:14):
oh yeah, that's fabulous. And then you guys keep talking
about this control. Is that a Switch game? Or is
it only PS four? Where can I get this game?
They dig myself deeper. I think it's everything. I don't
know if it's on Switch though I've got PS four
X Files meets Big Government, conspiracy meets Lovecraft? Is it
like long form game? Is it like? OK? Yeah? And
(48:37):
uh there their rules for communication with extra dimensional entities
or things like you have to go through this weird
time bubble where it's always mid afternoon at a strange hotel.
Anyhow do you do you think that there it is
possible that these extra dimensional entities, whatever you want to
(48:59):
call them. Do you think it's possible that they exist
and that members of the Golden Dawn somehow figured out
a way to contact them? Or was this organization functioning
more as an an experiment of sorts with social interaction
or was it something in between? You know, um, we'd
(49:21):
we'd love to hear from you. Yeah, please, And did
we did we tell people how to join? We did not.
Because you can right now. You want to get in
on this hermetic order of the Golden Dawn in one
or whenever you're listening to this past, present, or future,
you can do it. And there's a website you can
go to prepare yourselves and your wallets. Uh. It is
(49:45):
www dot Golden dash Dawn d a w N dot com. Uh.
And once you get there you can look up memberships
and you will find that at least on this date
we were cord this in March of one. You can
join for the low low price of one hundred and
(50:07):
ninety nine dollars US. It used it used to be
one thousand, one hundred and eighty eight dollars and it's
got a slash through it. But now it's only one
hundred and ninety nine dollars. Is that Is that just
like a limited time offer or is this just the
new the new rate. I do not know, but you
get lots and lots of books and PDFs. It looks
(50:32):
like a dagger. Perhaps at least maybe um some very
interesting folks on the front of that live webinar training
picture I've fascinated. Maybe we maybe we draw straws and
one of us joins up and then breaks the valve
silence for the other two. Dude, I'll I'm not breaking
(50:53):
a vale of science if I if I join up,
I'm taking this seriously, you guys, of course, Okay, you're
a hundred percent in so then it would be a
conversation where to talk with you about it. We have
to also join up. Yeah, you better believe it. I'm
not going in two d dollars just to give you
guys all the information. Is there is there any criteria
other than just paying the fee? I mean, I would
(51:16):
love to think that there was some kind of you know,
test of might that you would have to pass our
mental fortitude, you know. I mean, I'm cool with it
being like not about like your wealth, because that that's
a reasonable enough fee. But I don't want to be
in there if it's if it's like just anyone can join,
I think it should be merrit, merit based merit. But no,
now that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying it should
(51:37):
be you should be able to have to bring something
to the table. You know what I'm saying, Well, you
do have to pass a written examination at least in
the original Golden Dawn to move to the second or
inner order. Uh. Yeah, So there's there's a like not
everybody can do this, it says, not everybody's gonna make it. Okay, great,
this is this is important information. Yeah, they're taking it
(51:58):
seriously as well. So we want to we want to
hear your opinion of it. Tell us if you have joined,
if you are joining UM, tell us, if there are
concerns about the organization, tell us if most importantly, whether
you think the rights and rituals described actually UM actually
have efficacy, whether they work out of respect for you know,
(52:23):
the idea of initiation and the idea of secrecy. We
have not described any specific rituals other than to say
it's not you know, it's not like eating eyeballs or
flaying people alive or any any of that movie stuff. Um,
and if you want to learn more, there are people
who are glad to share that information with you. You
(52:44):
can tell us about your experiences, UH, tell us about
other secret organizations, and tell us whether you think there
are forms of magic that are real. By finding us
on our own kind of magical order of these times
the internet, you can find us a conspirace the Stuff
on Twitter and Facebook, Conspiracy Stuff Show on Instagram. We
(53:05):
recommend joining our Facebook group Here's where it gets crazy,
where you can exchange memes, have spirited conversations about episode topics,
and maybe make a new best friend. That's right. You
can also give us a phone call. Check it out,
you guys. Our number is one eight three three st
d w y t K. If you choose to pick
(53:26):
up your phone and call, please do the following. Give
us the name you'd like for us to refer to
you as. If it's not your real name, that's fine.
Just say whatever you want us to call you, and
we'll call you. That can leave us your message try
and keep it a little brief if you can leave
it under that three minutes, and then if you want
to tell us anything, just personally, just talking to Ben Nolan, myself,
(53:48):
Paul Alexis, whoever. Just keep that right at the end
of the message. That will help us put everything together,
edit it quickly and then get it on the air.
We do appreciate you calling in and taking the time
to do it, so looking for order to hearing from you.
If you don't want to do any of that stuff, hey,
we've got a great way for you to connect with us,
especially if you've got a longer story or a suggestion
with a bunch of links or something. Please send us
(54:10):
a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at i
heart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to know.
(54:36):
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