You know what? I like the Golden Dawn.
I just wish I could sleep better during the night!
The noise of artillery exchange is probably disturbing your sleep too, as an active member of the Golden Dawn community, unless you are living in a bunker with Paris Hilton.
You’ve probably guessed that I am talking about the on-going identity-war between Robert Zink and David Griffin’s respective Golden Dawn orders. You know how it is when there are too many Chiefs and not enough Indians.
I try not to get involved in family feuds, so I don’t care who the good guy and who the bad guy in this conflict is. All I am going to say is that sometimes fallen bombs unearth buried treasure. Buried in cyber space that is.
I am referring to the latest translation of the Emerald Tablet of Hermes.
It all started when, during the latest cyber bombing campaign, the topic of astral initiation came up again. It is a favorite target because everybody knows it’s the soft belly in Zink’s empire. How could it not be?
I mean, let’s say you went on a date with a pretty woman and you were both ready for some skin time and she tells you to go home and imagine all the fun you two would be having in bed, while she physically goes to bed with this OTHER dude while imaging him as you. She tells you that it is just like the real thing and gives you a copy of What The Bleep Do We Know – what would you do? Now imagine if that woman was actually a prostitute and she charged you $500 for that long-distance fun-fun. Would you pay it?
Yeah! I’ve heard Zink talk about astral initiation and the Emerald Tablet before and let me tell you that dog won’t hunt.
Whenever that topic comes up, Griffin usually posts about how it is dangerous or it could lead to possession, and that is all she wrote.
Not this time! David Griffin actually pulled an oops a daisy, to Zink’s chagrin.
He posted a link to a new translation of the Emerald Tablet directly from Arabic by scholar magician Nineveh Shadrach. Like most people, you probably never heard of this guy. That is probably because he isn’t part of the Golden Dawn community.
My guess is that, being a member of the growing sacred magic yahoo group, Griffin saw the link that was posted there and decided to use it like a Navaho missile aimed right at the heart of Zink’s New Age business slogan and Golden Dawn marketing advantage.
I went to the link posted [link] and read the translation and added commentary pulled directly from the translation of the book in which it originally appeared. Let me warn you though - you need to input your name and email to get the download link for the original translation of the commentary.
That was a stroke of genius on Griffin’s part. The author of that “instructional occult tale” wove into that tale a lot more information and revealed more advanced Hermetic secrets than 30 books I’ve read on this topic. The downside is that if you are a total beginner and haven’t read far and wide you will probably miss a good deal of the teachings and their impact.
I don’t know if Zink read it or not, but if he did, I’ll bet he had that ‘falling feeling’ that you get from path working the Tower Card.
You knew a response had to be forthcoming. His big ego wouldn’t let him cede any point to Griffin, especially not something like astral initiation and the Emerald Tablet.
Sure enough, today Zink fought back and fired his counter measure. Alas, it was a mere scud missile!
Oh boy! Someone should switch off this guy’s subscription to Fox News.
He began his blog [here] with the following:
“The mystical community was shocked when the leader of the HOGD/AO attempted on his forum to convince readers that the Emerald Tablet of Hermes did not indicate a pre-supposition that what we create in the higher planes will manifest in the physical plane.”
If you have been hanging around forums and blogs, you probably noticed almost total silence concerning Griffin’s blog about the Emerald Tablet. Like all good new information. People read it, study it, digest it and move on. Rarely do people have a teenage girl at a concert’s hysteric reaction in a library full of controversial information that challenges many of their strong held beliefs.
Does the Chief of the Esoteric Order of the Golden Dawn think that if he was shocked, the whole world must have been too or was he pulling a fast one to try and convince us that the natives are having a fit, when obviously they are snoring? Who knows?
So how does Zink address the main thesis that the Emerald Tablet does NOT in fact support astral initiation?
After a brief emotional tantrum, he counter- attacks with a logical fallacy of appealing to authority, without even presenting proof. He tells us that it is a guarded secret of almost every mystery school, though quick browsing shows many esoteric orders don’t actually support this claim. He then points out that Steven Covey, who is NOT a mystic, believed in two creations.
How that relates to the Emerald Tablet itself is anyone’s guess. I am glad to know that we magicians base our beliefs on the fact that someone else believes them – not!
He then tells us that we can’t do anything unless it was created in the mind. Yes, I too own a copy of the Cognitive Science for Dummies book. How that relates to the Emerald Tablet is again anyone’s guess?
Wait…Zink does tell us.
He tells us that this ‘sounds’ like it was copied right out of the Emerald Tablet of Hermes.
I laughed so hard while drinking my coffee, I need a new mouse now. Damn it!
Not to be outdone in the taunting game…
Zink now tells Griffin that he too should do astral initiations and be done with it.
I take that back. Zink was actually being SINCERE in this advice. He put it so eloquently: “I think a more productive path of the HOGD/AO would simply be to offer astral initiation. They are already providing the grade materials in a vending machine style format.”
Oh dear!
So is Mr. Zink saying that, since Mr. Griffin is engaging in mass commercialism, he might as well do what comes next in such an endeavor and do astral initiation?
Whoops.
Next Zink gives the reader complete, unequivocal proof of the Emerald Tablet support of his astral initiation thesis.
He does it by showcasing his mastery of Google. He literally goes to Wikipedia and other sites available on the 1st page and amasses a slew of commonly known information and secondary translations of the Emerald Tablet and presents it without the slightest analysis. And at the top of his evidence is the secondary translation of the same source that Nineveh Shadrach relied on to prove conclusively that the Emerald Tablet does NOT support astral initiation.
“Thud!”
That was the sound of a falling Golden Dawn giant. Sadly, it was a sound heard by thousands of critters in the Golden Dawn forest. I can’t say it is funny to watch, because now you know David the Jack will start chopping off the remnant of Zink’s stature into firewood for his next blog.