MEDITATION, YOGA AND THE WEST PART II

The first article on this topic delineated how the two most prolific schools in the West, the Golden Dawn and Bardon, survived in the face of the Inquisition when all of the other schools of practice perished.

Now, we’ll get into the nuts and bolts of how the systems operate and what they have in common with the other major Asian systems.

The Golden Dawn

According to one source, the Golden Dawn system sprang into existence when its founding members were engaged in a group session of mental wandering accidently ran into the egregore associated with the practice and essentially had it downloaded into them.

Whether the foundation story is true, or not, really isn’t all that important. The fact is that it is the oldest and most comprehensive school to come out of the English-speaking world. The Wiccans, the neo-pagans, et al derive most of their methodology from this group.

While this is not true for the ethnic systems, ultra-orthodox Jewish/Nordic/Native America/etc., these are largely not accessible to people who are not from those ethnic groups and correspondingly little is known about their practices in the greater esoteric community.

In terms of powering mechanisms, the Golden Dawn practices are heart centric, and egregore powered. In this regard they have much in common with Mahayana, and some Tantric, Buddhist practices. Calling upon various spirit figures, extensive use of ritual and mantra all form the basics of the system.

Due to large numbers of people having practiced over time the egregore is highly empowered and allows relatively junior members to access the system effectively.

The primary downside is that the egregore, and the associated spirit figures, gets to express its power through the practitioner. The mindset of these figures is old, definitely pre-Enlightenment, and can cause some issues with the post-20th century progressive set.

I’ve met several people over the years who practiced the system, extensively and successfully, for up to a decade before eventually discarding it. The primary reason cited was the inability to square the perspective of the entities involved with the modern world and/or their personal belief systems.