I’ve been making the mistake of talking to people online again! But let’s not start there. Let’s set up some definitions before I get on with my typical rant.
Fools gold is an expression sometimes used to describe Pyrite or Iron Pyrite. It’s basically iron with a bit of sulphur attached… as you can imagine this may have played roles in making it seem as though an alchemist can actually make gold, but it doesn’t actually look that much like gold. It’s just closer to gold than iron was because the alloy was made.
During the gold rush, people who didn’t really know what gold looked like got over-excited about mines with pyrite and often sunk all their money into buying mines that were not worth nearly as much as they thought they were. Because these people were unable to tell the difference they were thought to be fools.
Lithos Pyrites as it is called in Classical Greek is actually a special name that means “stone of fire”. “Lithos” means stone and “Pyr” means fire. This is because when you strike it against iron it often sparks enabling a person to start a fire.
Why am I talking about Pyrite? Well “fool’s gold” is symbolic of something we think we have found when actually we were mistaken about the true value of what we found. We might find Pyrite and assume we have found gold. We might find a great person and assumed that they were a powerful magician, but we actually found a charmer!
For many alchemists, the most laudable goal is to find how to make gold. In some cases, this is an attempt to physically make gold from other elements/metals, but in recent years alchemy is treated like a spiritual/psychological process, through which, one achieves some state of enlightenment symbolised by gold. There’s some evidence though spurious that this more psychological and spiritual practice goes back over centuries. For many, “making gold” was synonymous with spiritual attainment. I have known many people who would not have a clue about alchemy and couldn’t name an alchemical text if asked, say things like “achieve the magnum opus (the great work)”, “perform the black art” and “square the circle”.
Am I talking about successful alchemy??? No. I’m talking about people who think they have found gold, but are nonetheless fools like, those who found the pyrite because they couldn’t tell the difference. Many people find Occult celebrities and think they have found a messiah an authority on the Occult, Magic, and Witchcraft, but actually, they have found a charming person who sounds intelligent enough to have hoodwinked them. There are many people who confuse popularity with magical success. I know well-known Occult authors who are dependent on government handouts for income. I know people who have popularly published Occult books but don’t know 75% of their book’s contents (mostly because it was really written by their ex-husband, but let’s not go into detail with that).
It is worth noting that many of these authors are inconsistent with each other. It is often said that if you ask a question of 100 different pagans you will get 101 different answers. What’s the problem with this? Well, magic is somewhere between a science and an art. If it was 100% art, then there is no way to tell people how to express themselves. But if it is a science, then there’s a right way and a wrong way. The difficulty comes when people who treat magic as an art, then teach it like a science. They decide that they can express magic in any which way, but then teach their own expression of magic like a doctrine or dogma. Their doctrine ends up being wrong and they teach it as objective truth without giving their students permission to express themselves differently from them. Then truth ends up being diluted with people’s personal expressions. Which is fine, until it is called truth.
This article was inspired when someone online said that he did not need to cite authorities for the content he was sharing online. He found it really irritating that when he was asked to cite authorities. He took it as a form of disrespect. His words essentially boiled down to “Why can’t people treat what I say as if I am the truth incarnate.”
I commented as follows:
I find that a lot of people make stuff up. Some people intuit stuff. Some people pretend they intuited stuff, because they were unable to do so. Some people intuited stuff, but were misled by bad spirits. All these people tell other people this new stuff as if they’re an authority on the subject and they speak as if that’s objectively how witchcraft works, when really they should be prefacing what they’re saying with “in my experience” or “in my opinion”.
I don’t really have the time to learn every single pagan / witches opinion. There’s too many opinions and some of them are probably wrong. I do, however, have time to learn the teachings of people, who I deem authorities on the subject. The people whose teachings have passed the test of time. So I prefer where possible to have a source for information.
I try my best, when I present an answer to a question to quote my sources. I don’t believe that my opinion is meaningful to someone that doesn’t know me. I’m a single person. The fact I am a practitioner of over 19 years who is well read in the subject matter escapes some stranger, who has no knowledge of my reading. Also I practice near daily and have done for around 13 years. The in-depth nature of my practice is unknown to a stranger. For this reason, I quote people who I think are authorities. If the person I’m writing to agrees that they are authorities they can accept the information I give. If, however, they think people like Aleister Crowley, Janet Farrar, Gerald Gardner, Doreen Valiente, Dion Fortune and Florance Farr are not worth listening to they can ignore the information. If they think that the PGM, some 1500-1800s grimoire or the Corpus Hermeticum is not worth listening to then they can ignore what I say. It’s then nothing to do with the respect they do or don’t hold for me and my practice, but their respect for the authorities I quoted.
Me, Hadron Templeton
He claimed that he had worked magic with Oberon Zell Ravenheart, Mat Auryn among a few others and they aren’t required to cite sources so he shouldn’t be. Let’s be honest and if we required those people to cite their sources then perhaps there would not be so much bullshit passing for genuine magical teaching these days. Also having recently attended a talk with Mat Auryn speaking on 30th July to 1st August he constantly quoted sources and in fact, he jumped to comment on the fact many people do not respect the Kybalion, but gave reasons why he felt it WAS authoritative.
This person just seemed to get taken in by people who other people respected. There is a tendency to respect someone if your friends do. This is how cults form… He then assumed that person was an authority and needed to cite nothing. This elevates those speakers to a god-like level.
Unless a person can demonstrate miraculous powers then I’m going to ask them to cite their sources and sometimes even then. If they can perform miracles then I don’t mind treating them like they know what they’re talk about… but then again they only know how they perform miracles and they don’t know the objective history of the practice of magic through the ages. They might not even have direct communication with divine forces. Perhaps there’s a more mundane explanation of how they do what they do, or perhaps there was a terrible price for doing it for those that worry about Faustian pacts.
My comment was as follows:
So when I was in the states, I have met and got to know some of the people you mentioned. Some I don’t know from Adam. While some of them were pretty cool, at least one of the people you mentioned I feel was entirely incapable of real magic and seemed to get lost in fantasies rather than being able to manifest energy in the physical world. To relate it to Eliphas Levi they were seeing reflections and refractions rather than pure light. So how do I know if the information comes from that person or from someone I have respect for? How do I know if I should respect the information or not? Like anyone can write a book and “practice”. Writing a book doesn’t mean they are particularly capable of anything other than writing a book. Many people rise to high levels of popularity without being capable of anything… can someone tell me what talent the Kardasians have for example? So just because someone is “practising” or has amassed some popularity doesn’t mean they are an authority on witchcraft. Also when they say practising often it means they show up at group rituals from time to time but there’s no telling if they have an in-depth spiritual practise at home.
Nuit the Thelemic goddess once said “My servants shall be few and secret they shall rule the many and known” and I have been in many witch circles where similar words were said by the priestess while in a state of trance. Just because someone is popular doesn’t mean they are an authority on a subject. We live in a day and age where there are some energy workers who don’t have the energy to get up in the morning, some healers who seem to be perpetually sick, some magicians whose lives seem to be in a constant state of turmoil. How do I know I can trust the source of information in such a world?
Hadron Templeton
He proceeded to say that we weren’t brothers… So again we seem to have this idea that truth is tied to whether we are friends or not. Like I said before, I got the impression he determined that truth based on who his friends liked.
Determining truth from friends is never a good idea. If we are surrounded by idiots then when you base your truth on what they say, then you will be just as idiotic as they are. This is how we end up with the “gammon” expressing stupid lies as if they’re fact. They’re just repeating what their friends down the pub think. They’re sense of belonging in a tribe become more important than the validity of what they hold to be true. Is this who we want to be? Delusional people entire brainwashed by the company they keep with no regard for truth? I’m sorry, but magic for me is essentially the seeking of spiritual truth. Why would the gods entrust you with spiritual truth if you have little regard for truth attained via mundane means???
However, the more intelligent man recognises that truth is essentially unknown and therefore can only achieve some form of relative truth. For example, I can’t know how Egyptians practised magic. I wasn’t there or at least my current form wasn’t there 2000 years ago and even if I have past-life memories of practising magic in Egypt, I cannot know they are true or some dream. I can only state:
- what expression of magic works for me in my present form, or
- what is truth relative to the validity of a particular source.
I can tell them what I have discovered through practise and what I have determined from a particular source. A person who is careful what they hold to be true will surely be better able to navigate the reflection and refractions of divine truth which Eliphas Levi warned people about than someone with no regard for truth other than what they wish to hold to be true.
If you want to attain the alchemists gold then you need to approach some magic as a science. This means you need to be careful what you determine to be true. Art is important, but it is only part of the process. Being able to express yourself is very important, but it’s only a small part of the attainment of magical gold. There are many forks on the journey and the only way to navigate them is to be able to remember where you forked and what led you there. Then if you discover you have taken a misleading path then you can go back to the fork and reorient yourself. If however on the journey to truth, you did not pay attention to the forks you made toward truth and why you made them, then you won’t be able to reorient yourself.
Many people don’t bother to do this and then they get lost on the way. It’s a scary place when you have invested years in a spiritual path and then got no where. So sadly many people keep trying to convince themselves they’ve got there. Sadly they often do this by trying to convince other people they got there. To the truth. But the truth isn’t so easily found or we would all be healing people, baking gold in our kitchens, binding politicians and maybe going around being superheroes. We don’t have truth. We are not there and if we are lost we shouldn’t be talking as if we objectively have the answer. Even if we do have the answer and the truth, there’s no reason we can’t share it relative to a source. That source can even be our own experience.
Find the gold. Don’t let anyone lead you astray. Don’t be a fool chasing after pyrite and trying to convince everyone of the value of pyrite. Don’t be convincing people to invest in your pyrite mine. Determine truth relative to the source of that truth. Use it to form a map of the pathways of truthes until you find ultimate truth and then when you find ultimate truth, don’t accept it, test it, question it, try other things to compare. Never assume you’re there, because “its easier to convince yourself you have found the truth than to actually find it.” – My friend Ges 2012.