Absolute Discretion
Hilaria Benavidez (8)
“…It’s the trees, it’s the ground, it’s the rocks, it’s the moon, it’s everything. If God and the Devil were playing football, Manon would be the stadium that they played on. It would be the sun that shone down on them.” -The Craft
Have you ever had those kinds of friends where you keep a bunch of secrets? Maybe even a religious youth group, sharing the same goals? Or maybe you’re even a witch in a coven? You get the idea, and hopefully you can connect with those bonds. Because today I’ll be sharing a brief history on secret societies and the Occult. If you’re still here I’m assuming you don’t believe Santa Claus is real, but I’ll tell you where the real toy factory is, this is not as shallow as you might think.
For how intertwined the Occult and Secret societies are, most people consider it a package deal, though to understand this you must acknowledge their individual definitions. A secret society is pretty self explanatory, a society that keeps their happenings in secret. A heads up, secret societies don’t try to keep their existence unknown, they open their arms to anyone, which is why you might be familiar with many today. Now, Occult is more specific. It derives from the Latin word “Occultus” translated to hidden. The Occult is fairly complex, with subdivisions, umbrellas and more, but to put it as simply as I can, it is known as The Western Esoteric Practice Of Mysticism.
Perpetual Beginnings: Freemasonry in America
When you read the word “mysticism” you might have had the idea that it’s a bunch of hocus pocus, but the Occult culture we know today really roots back into a philosophical movement: The Great Awakening. It all happened in the mid-1700’s when the American colonies were finally getting a taste of religious freedom. “ The Enlightenment” was associated, and heavily influenced this movement as well, it was a breakthrough for revolutionary thinking. Many of the founding fathers were quite involved with these secret societies. Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, John Hancock, and the legendary George Washington, yes they were all Freemasons! If you take a closer look, you can see how close freemason beliefs and the constitution overlap, with similar ideologies and the ways to govern. For example, the three branches of government. For America, it’s the legislative, executive, and judicial. But for the Freemasons, its entered apprentice, fellow craft, and master mason! I could go on with all their likeness, but I would basically be paraphrasing the entirety of “We the People”, so you get the jist. In fact, that each major structure of Washington D.C is laid out in a way that many people speculate that their formation is based on the Freemason symbolism, and a six pointed star! Not much is known about Freemasonic secrets, for what we know this fraternity roots to the 13th century! But with a little context from the book by Christopher Knight, The Hiram Key, their ceremonies are based on the myth of how a king manipulated demons to create the first temple for god, Solomon’s temple.
Rosicrucianism: The Influencing Rose
The rise of Rosicrucianism is around the same age of Freemasonry, again their modern expression all connect through early American movements. But you can think of them like the cooler younger sibling, the cool 25 year old teacher versus the 60 year old strict one. To give you an idea, Freemasonry is far more confidential, dogma and government oriented. Compared to Rosicrucians, who are far more open, and expressing of their spirituality. Freemasonry has fraternities AND sororities, it’s just that sororities are a minor factor. They don’t really mix. However, with Rosicrucians you can join it in its totality no matter your gender. Anyway, you can understand that liking Rosicrucians is much easier, and now it would make more sense if I told you they have a larger influence on the known occult, like more minor societies as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Rosicrucianism has given the modern world a better understanding of esotericism, magic. An influence that grows into the notion of: The New Age
Occult Conduct: Inching Into the New Age
Now the new age is complicated in different kinds of ways. The new age is inspired by many occult things ( with the twist of a public community). So things such as politics, controversy, and lacking minds are inevitable. But don’t worry, the most political thing that I’ll get into is Religion, the previous idea of “The Awakening” and how people got more creative with it. It is simply what happened. This is not biased, and is up to you to decide your opinions and thoughts. Again, don’t get ahead of yourself, we’re not going into the hippie 1970’s new age, but to how it was formed.
Let’s rewind about 7 decades prior, the start of the 20th century. It’s been about 1 ½ of a century where now, you probably won’t be burned for guessing the time correctly. We’re gonna focus on one of the most influential occultists, and probably one of the worst men in history, inside and outside of the occult world, Aleister Crowley. He was brought up in a British, Christian family. But despite this he was probably demented from the womb. So when his mother would joke about him being, “The Beast 666” he took that, very literally. After some time of not really growing up, at the age of 23, he decided to join the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn where he learned of the Occult. Six years later, he went to Egypt and got inspiration to write “ The Book of The Law” The main Idea out of the gibberish was in sum “ Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” Which really can be translated into the hedonism of the moment. This book is if not one of the most confusing books ever written, but definitely his biggest contribution. After a lavish life of parading his materialism and beliefs, his last few years were penniless and poor, miserably passing away from respiratory issues. Nevertheless, he has left a forever mark on Occultism AND culture. Influencing Important characters Like Peter J. Carroll, Creator of Chaos magic, the guitarist of Led zeppelin, Jimmy Page, and even an Image of Aleister Crowley can be found in The Beatles album cover: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club. In All Aleister Crowley has given a large influence in today’s society and the secret ones.
In summary, I’ve given the brief and currently most prominent times in Occult history, and how they have influenced each other into today. If you were interested in this and would like to see into this with more detail, Then I recommend reading on books I’ve mentioned like The Hiram Key, The Book of The Law, or even Liber Null, Fama Fraternitatis, Confessio Fraternitatis, The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, and Aleister Crowley The Biography. If you would like to gain infinitely more knowledge, I would point you to the site sacred-texts.com.
Thank you for taking this precious time out of your life to read what is really the tip of the iceberg in these matters. I digress, magic has made a name for itself so proceed with absolute discretion.