Josephine McCarthy - The Work Of The Hierophant

Golem Media

BERKELEY, CA

Golem Media

1700 Shattuck Ave #81

Berkeley, CA 94709

www.golemmedia.com

Copyright 2009 Josephine McCarthy

All rights reserved.

No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission in accordance with the provision of the copyright act 1956 (as amended). The moral right of the author has been asserted.

ISBN: 978-1-933993-94-2

eISBN: 978-1-937002-42-8

Ebook version 1.0

The Eternal One has made a covenant oath with us,

Asherah has made a pact with us.

And all the sons of El,

And the great council of all the Holy Ones.

With oaths of Heaven and Ancient Earth.

AMULET OF THE 7TH CENTURY BCE FROM ARSLAN TASH

Dedicated to Philip Dunbar: a true Adept

Thanks to all the adepts who have worked with me and helped me in various ways over the years, particularly John Plummer, Margie McArthur, Toni Paris, Peggy Brewster, Joann Keesey and Anthony Thompson.

Contents

You can count on the fingers of one hand the number of books that describe real Magical Orders with insight and clarityand two of those were written nearly 80 years ago. You can count on the fingers of two hands the number of magicians around today who completely understand that real Orders are not judged by badges, certificates, glam robes, solemn rituals and impressive grades. This is all Hobby Magic, which is even more draining than Hobby Politics and just as self-serving.

I knew a magician oncenow long since deadwhose naivet pulled him into the more Disney-like aspects of Magical Orders. Let us call him Frater A. Physically he looked like the French magus Sar Peladan, and had all of that cranky individuals concerns with sex, power, secrecy and control. Frater A however, had a tendency to alienate anyone who tried to get close to him by his unfailing ability to grab the wrong end of the magickal stick, no matter how it was handed to him. He was dogmatic, somewhat pompous, inflexible, yet very very good at working on psychic levels. If he ever did a Banishing, then ye gods that place got Banished! No-one ever doubted his sincerity, or his commitment, and his sheer bloody-minded determination to walk every inch of what he saw as his true Magickal Path. No-one could fail to admire him for that.

Yet the one area in which he showed an almost bashful innocence and bewildering stupidity was when he talked about his Order. He became like a little boy, and his face lit up like a lovesick teenager when he spoke about his Order. He wore its logo on his briefcase, and his personal notepaper. Im sure I saw him wearing a t-shirt bearing its legend, and you could imagine that his duvet cover and pillowcases were similarly emblazoned.

When he spoke about the senior Adepts within said Order his voice went a bit hushed, with deep respect bordering on veneration. He had done some essays on abstruse aspects of the Colour Scales, from the Kabbalah, and They had approved. When he said that, you could almost hear him capitalise the word they; it was almost as if something within him bowed. More, to his almost ineffable delight, They had invited him to the main temple in a faraway land, to discuss certain things with him. I dont think Ive seen a man so excited, or in such awe about his potential progress within his beloved Order.

All he had to do now was raise the airfare, and find a place to stay when he was over there. Onward ever inward!

Of course, when he returned outwardly tanned but inwardly ashen, the denouement was as total as it had been predictable. He was honest enough to admit that the Order, when you finally got to the higher echelons, was nothing more than a money-making scam, and its Adepts rather dodgy businessmen who wouldnt know their athames from their elbows. He stuck to working among British stone circles after that. At least you know where you stand with them.

Fifty years before this Dion Fortune had railed against this sort of thing. She had been especially scathing of certain American organisations which she saw as being little more than moneymaking rackets, and she refused to call them Orders. It was also she who pointed out that many of the temples within the legendary Golden Dawn were like flat batteries, attended by greybearded ancients, and not connected to anything vital on inward levels.

At the other extreme was Frater 0, this being the name that the curmudgeonly mage William G. Gray took upon himself for his disastrous initiation into the Society of the Inner Light. Later, when he decided to express his own attitudes and experience with respect to such things as Orders and Inner Plane Adeptii, he wrote in the very first line of his Magical Journal: The Mysteries are a Consciousness-Pattern workable on both sides of the Veil, so that participants from each state can meet and co-operate with each other.

In other words, you have to be connected with something. It is not about poncing around in a circle and gathering plaudits along with initiatic grades. It is about learning to connect with energies and entities that exist within, and can be contacted in a mutually effective way. He went on to add:

Thats what its all about, in essence, though very few self-styled magicians are plugged into anything more vital than their egos.

In short, this is one of the very few intelligent books written about genuine Magical Orders. In it, Josephine McCarthy gives us some startling, eye-opening and at times disturbing insights into how true Orders work, and how we might connect with them. This is the real thing. She shows how the individual can, with right attitude and application, make his or her own links with these inner surges of Otherworld consciousness, for lack of a better description. She shows what you might experience, how you might handle the contact and develop it, with the likely pitfalls that human vanity and ego can create and also what you should avoid and run screaming away from!

Trust me, this will become a classic.

Alan Richardson

Author: Aleister Crowley and Dion Fortune: The Logos of the Aeon and the Shakti of the Age

The Hierophant is a human bridge between Divinity and Humanity. The Hierophant is the Keeper of the Greater Mysteries and is the one who keeps the deepest contact with Universal Divinity while still being human.

In todays magical/spiritual world which has great emphasis on money and power, magical groups/lodges can degenerate quickly. The magical lines begin to manifest power struggles, attacks, fundamentalist thought, and sometimes even a parasitical use of the students energy by the leader. The catapulting of magical groups into the public eye and popular new age culture has made it very difficult to sustain a quiet magical lodge of the Mysteries that is not drawn into the glamour and industry of the alternative culture.

Similarly, in the last 100 years, a loosening of public moral opinion has made it easier for more experimental groups to delve into the more controversial areas of magic such as drugs and sexuality. While the breaking of such taboos and the willingness to explore less socially acceptable approaches to magic is long overdue and very brave, it also has a great deal of degeneracy of its own that can trap the practitioner if they are not careful.

As magicians of the 21st century, we all have a responsibility to resist the commercial tides, to step back and analyse exactly what is happening in the inner and outer magical worlds. From that analysis needs to come a ruthless cutting away of actions that degenerate magic in its many forms, and a willingness to reassess a given magical path to see if the actual practicalities are still in harmony with the original intent of the lodge.