Skeptomania - Paranormal / UFOs, etc.

Raven · Google Meister

I was watching through my collection of Full Metal Alchemist just now (yes, i'm a geek... move on)... well, i just noticed in the beginning, in the part where Al is reciting the First Rule of Alchemy and zooming into the picture, there's a book on the desk called "Golden Dawn" (well... all you actually see is "...lden Dawn", but i filled in the rest with logic). Curiosity made me wonder, so after a google and a wiki, i came up with this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermetic_Order_of_the_Golden_Dawn

Anonymouse · Living impaired

I was under the impression the Order of the Golden Dawn was dead. Guess not.

Copycats, maybe?

Raven · Google Meister

From what i'm getting out of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Inc., they almost flatout say that they're copy-cats of the original (not too far from useing those words).
With all the movies and books coming out lately about Freemasons and Templars, i'm almost shocked that i've never heard of one about the Golden Dawn, they seem to be wrapped in about as much crap as the rest--besides having names that would make way better titles.

asmodee

Hey, I actually OWN that book!

It a much different order than the Freemasons as I understand the Freemasons. The book is about ritual magik (note the spelling with a K which denotes real magik as apposed to that fake stage magic stuff). Aliester Crowley was a member for a short while, I believe, before breaking off to make his own flavor of ritual magik. If I remember my history correctly, Israel Regardi, the author of the book, was severely chastised and disowned for revealing their secrets.

Their belief is that you go through 10 stages of the Tree of Live (also known as the Rosy Cross) called Sephiroth (singular is Sephira. Note that the plural Sephiroth, with the 22 paths, encompass the ENTIRE Tree of Life and may explain why they are STILL making new Final Fantasy games). You start out at the bottom stage as a Neophyte and work your way up to the top, which takes years of devotion to meditation and ritual magik. In the end, you become 'More than Human', an immortal god-thing, at which time you are to immediately retake physical form again and live out the rest of your life, telling no one. This is substantially similar to Crowley's belief system. The differences were mostly that Crowley incorporated things such as ritual sex and the like, using the energies released during sex to boost your magik.

What it all boils down to, basically, is a strict regimen of meditation until your mind is conditioned to the point where you begin to have 'experiences', much like my favorite whipping boy, fundamentalist religion. At some point I am sure that the die-hard followers of these belief systems actually believed that they had become 'More than Human' (a quote from either The Golden Dawn or one of Crowley's works, maybe both...it's been a long time) and, to prevent themselves from discovering their lie to themselves, have always followed the rule that they must retake physical form immediately and live out the rest of their lives, assured in the knowledge that they are, in fact, far more important than the other people around them. A quick note, retaking physical form in no way negates their god-thing status. They are still god-things, just now wrapped in a physical form (which they can dissipate and remake at will) to keep people from asking questions and to maintain their mandatory standard of secrecy upon reaching this level.