Llewellyn Worldwide Publishing, Witch Wars and the Golden Dawn

Donald Michael Kraig recently wrote on the Llewellyn Publishing blog:

"I currently know of two Golden Dawn-like groups where the leaders were members of another group, became initiated into the 5=6 degree, almost immediately quit or were kicked out of the group, and then started their own versions of the Golden Dawn! One actually tried more than once before coming up with a scheme to call his group the Golden Dawn even though his new rituals actually reverse Golden Dawn concepts. (Why call it the “Golden Dawn” if you don’t want to follow the teachings of that group?) The other frequently declares that he is trying to structure peace between Golden Dawn groups while he regularly leads the battles by writing attacks on other groups and individuals."

The above is vintage Golden Dawn Flame War verbiage...

... With Donald Michael Kraig hiding behind a mask of feigned objectivity - and not revealing which Golden Dawn order he belongs to while misusing his author's ethos and the Llewellyn blog as a "bully" pulpit.

Particularly noteworthy is how Kraig mischaracterizes legitimate, scholarly debate in the Golden Dawn community as "attacks," while he himself attacks half of the Golden Dawn community in the very same paragraph.

This is the sort of bullying, duplicitous misrepresentation that typifies Witch War as well as the decades old, Golden Dawn internet flame war, which sadly - judging from the above rant - appears to be alive and well  today on the Llewellyn Worldwide blog - with Don Kraig acting as "de facto" spokesperson of a Golden Dawn order that has been kindling flames in our Golden Dawn community for nearly two decades now.

Enough is enough already.

I would remind Mr. Kraig that the Honorable Jeffrey S. White, United States District Judge, already warned his Golden Dawn order in the court's order dated October 24, 2008 that:

"The Court fully expects [the other party*] will not engage in back door violations of paragraph 4 of the Settlement Agreement, and it will not tolerate any such violations." [This paragraph of the Settlement Agreement viewable here details the non-disparagement clause binding both parties.]

*Case 3:05-cv-00432, "The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Inc. v, Griffin," in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

The Exquisite Corpse Golden Dawn

by David Griffin

Pat Zalewski, much like Nick Farrell, has written that following the closure of the Whare RA temple in 1978, what remains today of the original Golden Dawn is but an exquisite corpse. To this, Pat Zalewksi today added:

"In general terms, most of us think that Westcott and Mathers lied their heads off to create a blind of secret chiefs and non existent mysterious temples, and Mathers says as much. All I know for sure is the ciphers work, and that's enough, regardless of where they came from or who delivered them. It's still good to have the early GD history out in the open though, and the deceptions revealed."

When Pat Zalewksi writes "most of us" above, he certainly does not speak for anyone from any of the traditionalist Golden Dawn orders, like the Rosicrucian Order of Alpha Omega or the August Order of the Mystic Rose. It is only since the A.O. announced a decade ago (in 2002) that we had reestablished contact with the original Secret Chiefs of the Golden Dawn's Third Order, that G.D. reconstructionists Zalewksi and Farrell began defaming Golden Dawn founders S.L. MacGregor Mathers and W. Wynn Wescott and dismissing the historical evidence without justification for the physical existence of the Golden Dawn's Third Order in Continental Europe as both Wescott and Mathers repeatedly claimed.

To any truly objective observer, there are as many logical fallacies in Zalewski's and Farrell's aggressive G.D. reconstructionist position, as there are holes in Swiss cheese. Above, for example, Zalewksi says that even though the Secret Chiefs of the Third Order are a mere fairy tale, that even though Mathers and Wescott are cheats and liars, and that even though the Golden Dawn was a fraud from the beginning, the rituals and the magical system of the Golden Dawn nonetheless still work.

Grasping for straws, this swiss cheese argument was the best Pat Zalewksi and Nick Farrell could find to justify The Exquisite Corpse Golden Dawn, which they dissect and reconstruct into a headless Golden Dawn zombie, like a hybrid of Frankenstein and the Night of the Living Dead.

What Zalewski does not explain is why the rituals and magical system of the Golden Dawn actually do work so well, if the founders were liars and frauds and the Secret Chiefs but fairy tales. If Mathers was a madman like Farrell claims, then how did Mathers and Wescott come up with something so radically different than anything the world had ever seen before? Read Eliphas Levi and you see clearly what 19th Century occultism actually looked like. Obviously, either Mathers and Wescott were the greatest magical geniuses of our time, or alternatively they must have had outside help.

Ellic Howe does not even attempt explain this. Zalewksi does not explain this at all. Nor does Farrell.

To get an objective, outside opinion from someone with no vested interest in the Golden Dawn, this morning I phoned a respected Elder of a major Pagan tradition, who requested to remain anonymous, yet she said:

"The overwhelming historical evidence speaks against these guys. The Golden Dawn is a watershed between the occultism of the 19th and 20th Centuries, something radically different than anything that had ever been seen before. If Mathers was a loon, then where did the genius of the Golden Dawn come from? The only other alternative are the Secret Chiefs, which Zalewksi and Farrell already dismiss as a fairy tail.

Why then are Farrell and Zalewski posing as Elders of the Golden Dawn tradition, when in the same breath they attack the Golden Dawn as a fraud? From where I sit as an outside observer this is the height of hypocrisy. 

Farrell and Zalewski look like a snake oil salesmen defaming the most monumental and revolutionary occult achievement in our times, merely to elevate themselves.

I, for one, would not buy a used car from someone like who claims that, while the car itself is o.k., the manufacturer is a fraud and its CEO a rip-off artist!"