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THE EQUINOX & SOLSTICE CEREMONIES OF THE GOLDEN DAWN by Pat & Chris Zalewski no photo available $12.95 Pat and Chris Zalewski are co-chiefs of the Thoth-Hermes Temple in New Zealand. Practicing adepts with practical experience rather than armchair theoreticians, Pat and Chris have at their disposal many Golden Dawn papers and documents from the Whare Ra Temple of the Stella Matutina that have never before seen print. This material will be preserved and expanded in future volumes in this series. This book contains historically important material in the form of hitherto unpublished seasonal rituals of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and A. E. Waite's "independent and rectified rite." But they are of more than historical interest. They are powerful instruments toward attaining higher consciousness if placed in the right hands. They demonstrate the threefold nature of the tradition. That is: hermetic/intellectual, as represented in the Masonic type ritual elements; mystical/aspirational, as represented by their Rosicrucian allegiance; and elemental/geomantic, through celebration of the equinoxes and solstices. And should we seek to re-work or re-phrase them, we need to maintain this threefold balance. For instance, to try to write out the Christian from the Mysteries of Christian Rosenkreuz would be rather like trying to make an omelette without the eggs! Or if we worked them in serious doubt about the existence of the "secret chefs" we would have no source of heat beneath our frying pan! Without these elements of faith the rituals would be worked without power. Would be no more than amateur dramatic performances of portentious sounding religiosity. A ritual only exists in its effective enactment, not on the page. Yet if power is contacted by these means (as it sometimes can be, even inadvertently), it is hardly the type than can be "used" for personal ends or convenience. One might as well seek to tap the power of a tiger by pulling it's tail. So if we seek to work seriously with this material we must look to our motives and true aspirations. These rituals have a hidden power, and if we seek to find it we must be prepared for nothing less than personal transformation! These rituals place the keys in our hands. We only have to turn them. ---Gareth Knight author of Magic and the Western Mind
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