THE GOLDEN DAWN

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2004-08-24 18:19:43

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NEW REFORMED ORTHODOX ORDER OF THE GOLDEN DAWN

What began as a college-class experiment in San Francisco in 1968 resulted in a Neo-pagan religious organization. The NROOGD has no connection with the original Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a ceremonial magick fraternity, made famous by Ateister Crowley and others. NROOGD recognizes the triple aspect of the Goddess and is organized into covens. The group was entirely self-created and began quite by accident. Aidan Kelly, a poet and one of the founder's of the group described the accidental event in an issue of The Witches Trine. Using ideas from Graves, White Goddess, the students attempted to re-create a Witches' Sabbat for a class project. Kelly and Glenna Turner (COG) composed the ritual, using various notes on the writings of Robert Graves, Margaret Murry, T. C. Lethbridge and G. Gardner. The outline was turned in, and the professor said, "Do it!"

Kelly remarked that they enjoyed the class performance immensely, but hadn't noticed any unusual changes in their perceptions. Later, however, Aidan noted "a subtle change had come over them". In 1968, they repeated the ritual as part of a wedding ceremony, and because it was a celebratory festival, he says, "something did happen". They tried the ritual again at Lammas, a harvest Sabbat in a grove of redwood trees, and by then, Aidan says, '~Ne were hooked." By the end of 1969, the members of NROOGD knew what they were doing was, in fact, a religion. They initiated each other, and began celebrating lunar meetings. At Fall Equinox, when traditionally in Ancient Greece, the Eleusian Mysteries were celebrated, Aidan led the group by torchlight through a state park, crying out the ancient words "Kore! Evohe (Hail) lakkhosi"

" Down the hillside, across the wooden bridges, down to a spring where, as I recall I first spoke the myth of Kore's gift, then back to the circle, where with nine priestesses, we invoked the full Nine Fold Muse, whom I, as Orpheus, audaciously led in a chain dance about the fire; then we all joined the chain, and we danced until all but Isis and I had dropped from exhaustion, until again that silent energy rose and lapped its waves around us fi/ling the entire campground with a warm mistiness that was everywhere, except where I was looking..." (from Drawing Down the Moon)

Kelly said that by the end of 1971 they had been transformed into 'witches'. He believed that the myths of the Goddess were paramount, and that Grave's description was the true function of poetry as religious invocation to the Goddess or Muse. The goal toward which the spiral of reincarnation strives is to become fully human and fully divine.

The invitation to the Lords of the four Towers (elementals or angels) and Gods and Goddesses, called the 'Mighty Ones' are invoked so that the participants can experience that concept. Kelly recognized that Drawing Down of the Sun and Moon originated in antiquity. (It is seen depicted on ancient vases). Margot Adler says, his comments first made her aware of the true shamanistic practices of that ceremony -- that is of (self) becoming part of the divine. That ceremony is still traditionally practiced in many circles. "Kelly's writings on the Craft seem to show more clearly than others, Adler claims, the strongly anti-authoritarian nature of the Craft, since no one has to believe anything" and "There is no authority in the Craft outside each coven." Kelly says that Craft is a religion of ritual rather than theology, or Craft is a religion of poetry, rather than dogma.

Kelly left the Craft in the late 70's. He confessed to having doubts about paganism beginning in 1977. Perhaps some of it was spiritual, but perhaps some was not. A final break came in 1979, when he accepted a teaching position at a Catholic university in San Francisco. He then wrote he came to believe that all visions of a universal Goddess came from the influence of Christianity and concluded, that the Goddess movement was not pagan, but a radically dissenting type of Christian sect. He rationalized that the Goddess is a 'de-Christianized and backdated' version of Mary, and the gentle Wiccan Goddess plays the same role of personal deity and redeemer, that Jesus plays in Christian belief.

Kelly said that if you look at the ancient Goddesses, they were often fierce and uncompassionate, and called the Goddess in current feminist literature a "saccharine" figure, not restored from real history, but created by investing the Blessed Virgin with some of the divine attributes of her son, Jesus. Kelly also commented that his interest in religion was and is poetic, and that he in no way is a true believer in anything, neither Catholicism nor Craft. However, his definition of the way witches and feminists portray the Goddess are far off the mark. Most pagan goddess- oriented groups are quite polytheistic. Witches invoke Kali, Artemis, Demeter, Momgan, Cybele, etc. all of whom were depicted as fierce warriors, law givers, destroyers as well as creatrixes of life.

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