>> Dr Angela Puca – Angela: Hello Symposiasts! I’m Dr Angela Puca, a PhD in religious studies, and this is your online resource for the academic study of magic, esotericism, paganism, shamanism, and all things occult. So, before we start, I’d like to remind you that this project of delivering free academic knowledge, free for everybody to watch, see, and access, is only thanks to your support that I can keep doing this project. So, if you have the means and want to support this project, I would appreciate it if you could support this work with a one-off PayPal donation by joining memberships, my Inner Symposium on Patreon or Ko-Fi, and also you can Super Chat and Super Thank. So, you’ll find everything in the description box and later in a pinned comment. So, thank you all for considering that. Also, sign up for my Newsletter because that’s amazing. I just sent an issue, the last one for 2023, with my New Year’s resolution for 2024. So, suppose you want to be up to date with everything that is going on with me in a more uncensored way because I can say whatever I want without being careful about words. In that case, I recommend that you do that.

So now, let’s start with today’s topic and discussion. As you know, part of Angela’s Symposium project is to bridge the gap between academia and the community of practitioners. That’s one of the things that I care about, and as you know, I have had interviews with academics and practitioners. Today, we have an interview with a Golden Dawn practitioner, whom I will shortly introduce to you. So, this is just a short disclaimer because, in the past, I didn’t do it. It looks like it’s necessary that when I interview practitioners, I do so similarly to when I’m in the field as an anthropologist. So, I allow people to speak and tell me what their experience is and what their thoughts are. I’m not confrontational, and if their views don’t match the academic scholarship, I’m not pointing it out because it’s not the point of the conversation. The point of the conversation with a practitioner is to learn and understand their perspective. So, yeah, now that that is out of the way, I’m very pleased to introduce you to today’s guest, Marcus Mattern. And Marcus has been a patron of mine for quite some time. I think a couple of years, and since you’ve been a Magus, you have access to the monthly lecture. So, I’ve always been very impressed by it because we tend to have discussion time after the lectures. I’m always impressed by your observations. So, I only recently found out that you had your platform and your following, to be honest. So, that was a pleasant surprise, and then I looked into it. You have a very lively Facebook group. I thought it was great, and I wanted to bring you on and learn more about your perspective and what you do.

Hi Marcus, thank you for being here. Would you mind introducing yourself?

>> Marcus Mattern – Marcus: Thank you so much, Angela. So, my name is Marcus Mattern. I teach ceremonial magic in the Golden Dawn tradition and run a Facebook group with over 10,000 magicians. And we have some other professional magic teachers in the group. We get into lots of lively debates, and I love just creating a positive and supportive community where people are respectful to one another and where we can disagree about magic. Still, we’re all interested in helping people determine what works for them. And I love being able to develop this community. It’s benefited me so much, and I love benefiting the community. And if you want to learn more about me if you want to work with me, you can go to marcusmattern.com. I have a new course on the tools of magic that you might be interested in. And I also want to preface everything I’m saying today because my training is in philosophy. I’m interested in the history of ideas and how they are shaped over time by the humans who participate in them. That will be the focus of my talk today. It’s not going to be focused on scholarship or history. I’m looking at how ideas evolved out of the closed system of the Golden Dawn orders and came to be present in the more open Golden Dawn tradition as it exists today.

>> Angela: That sounds very interesting, Marcus, and thank you to Andrew, Edward, and Joao. Not sure if he’s there, but thank you for moderating the chat. And I can see Marco as well. Hi Marco Visconti, Christian Paul, and Yor. Thank you all for being in the chat. I look forward to your questions. So Marcus, let’s start. What can you tell us about the Golden Dawn? What is the Golden Dawn, and what is the million-dollar question: what is the Golden Dawn, and what’s the relation between the Golden Dawn as we see it today and what can access it today compared to the historical order?

>> Marcus: Okay, so the essence of the Golden Dawn system, as I have practised it and understand it, is monism. Monism is the philosophy that everything is ultimately one. Everything relates to a single point. And this is very prominent in the Hermetic Kabbalah, often called the Tree of Life. Because trees do this, if you imagine every point of every branch on a tree is an individual identity, and then you trace that point back up the branch to all the different forks, you can see the different archetypes. Then, you trace those forks of the branch back down to the root, and you realize that all of these different points of the tree branches are all one thing, all one being. And that is the philosophical idea of monism. I also talk about how parts relate to the whole and the system of monism by the fact that I have a hand. I am my hand, but my hand is not me. If something happens to my hand, I’m still mostly intact. And this is a relationship between a part and a whole. And this is the analogy that through monism, we can understand God. Because of the way that we have our different parts, God has different selves. And so, God has a Marcus self, and God is Marcus, but Marcus is not God. And so that is a relationship of the part to a whole. And the same is true for Angela; the same is true for everyone listening. God is you, but you are not God. We are all parts of this one immense, incredible, beautiful being. And what’s important in the Golden Dawn system is that this is not just an esoteric philosophy.

This is a lived experience. The philosophy is often deemphasized to get people to the point of realizing this in their lived experiences and everyday lives. The best way that I have to relate the lived experience of monism versus philosophy is It is a lot more pleasant than this, but imagine that you woke up from an accident, you’re in a hospital bed, and you’re partially paralyzed. And there’s a part of you that you know is you; you know it’s your body, but you can’t feel or move it. This is part of the experience of getting to a lived state of monism, where you see other human beings and know that they are part of you as surely as you know your own body is part of you. But they don’t listen to you, and they can’t feel you. This is why magic is so important in this process because it not only takes us up to the point where we can have a lived experience of monism, but it can also help us to develop once we’re at this state so that we have increased influence over others but also increased sensitivity to others so that our influence is not egotistical. Our influence is based on what other people need and their own needs. It can create a situation in which we’re living and acting in harmony as the one being we all are. This is the essential root of the Golden Dawn system, as I understand it. And then it is very easy to… well, it’s not easy, it’s never easy to teach this stuff. But it is much, much easier in the context of a closed order. Because in a closed order, you have grades. At each grade, you are given precisely what you need to know and exactly what you need to practice to get to the next grade. You do not have to worry about the overall journey. People who have already been through the journey can worry about that. You’re given enough to reach your next step, which works well.

There are still Golden Dawn orders in service today, open today, and that tradition has been going strong since its inception in one way, shape, or form. And so, what happens when Crowley, through The Equinox, and Regardie, through releasing and publishing the Golden Dawn, starts to open this tradition to the general public is that you don’t have that anymore. You don’t have a closed system, you don’t have grades, you don’t have this compartmentalization of information. And so, you start needing to teach the Golden Dawn system differently. Crowley was the first to open the Golden Dawn rituals to the public and try to answer this challenge. All of the authors I will talk about today have responded to the challenge of teaching a system of closed magic practice to the public in an open way. They’ve all answered this problem differently. Crowley’s approach is very much like Crowley being deliberately obscure. And so, with Crowley, you have often aggressively obscured this interesting technique. And I love it, in theory. The idea is that he writes about these topics in a deliberately obscure way so that the initiated will understand what he’s talking about. Still, the uninitiated will be confused but possibly intrigued, possibly interested enough to practice the magic themselves so they can try to make sense of it. And then, when they return and read Crowley, they’ll go, “Oh, that’s what he was talking about.”

>> Angela: So it’s like an anchor.

>> Marcus: Yeah, exactly.

>> Angela: You know, trying to or, you know, something to lure you in, and then you get trapped into not understanding and trying to figure it out.

Oh yeah, and Crowley was an elitist and a sadist, so he loved tying people up in knots. He just loved confusing people as much as possible and delighting in that. But with the hope that they would figure it out, with the hope that they would do the magic and figure it out for themselves. And so, in that process, again, I love it in theory. I think it’s the perfect approach in theory. But in practice, he was still obscure to people who were initiated. He’s still difficult to read, even if you’ve gone through the system and have had all these experiences. There are moments where I think it succeeds utterly, where he writes about monism in particular, in really brilliant, provocative, and insightful ways.

But I feel like a lot of Crowley’s writing still gets kind of muddled at any stage of development. So, it was a partial success, a good first effort. But he’s also like the first person trying to answer this challenge of how to teach a closed system of magic practice to the public through books. And past Crowley, you have Regardie, who was also revealing even more information and trying to teach it to the public. And as you mentioned in your last video, Regardie took this psychological approach. And there’s something valuable about the psychological approach because it’s become increasingly true in the modern era. Uninitiated people, people who haven’t had the direct experiences you can have by practising Golden Dawn magic, tend to have a more sceptical and materialistic viewpoint. And to them, having a psychological explanation of magic that doesn’t disrupt their belief in materialism is handy. It’s nice, and it allows them to engage in magic in a justifiable way, where they can understand the psychological and sociological power of magic without having to delve into the supermaterial aspects of magic that create changes that shouldn’t normally be possible from the perspective of certainly modern society, but popular society in general.

And it’s important to realize that this psychological approach to teaching magic is ultimately a kindness. It’s incredibly disruptive when your belief in materialism is challenged when you realize that magic is real. You suddenly realize you can’t see the world the same way anymore. And I experienced this myself because I started practising magic as a sceptic, as an atheist, as a materialist, really just thinking that I would get some psychological benefits. And I had low hopes. I was thinking maybe I’d get some minor psychological benefits. Instead, I started having life-changing benefits after three months of practising magic every day. And after eight months, I started having experiences with spirits where they would tell me things that would happen, and then they would happen. They would tell me things I had no way of knowing, and then I would look them up, and they were true. And they would tell me to do things that I didn’t think would succeed, and they would be tremendously successful. And so, once I started having these experiences that kind of crushed my belief in materialism, it took me a while to cope. It took me a while to reconcile my world. And so, it is a kindness to be able to talk about magic psychologically to people who are interested without challenging those core beliefs. However, it does cause a lot of confusion within the magic community because there are a lot of people who are still confused and still think that Golden Dawn magic is just psychological magic because of the way Crowley wrote about it briefly in one book.

>> Marcus: Because of the way that Regardie wrote about it, off and on, the psychological approach… not everybody who starts with the psychological model breaks through to the other side. They can understand the reality of spirits, let alone the reality of monism. And so, those people go around telling people what magic is and what the Golden Dawn is, which creates a lot of confusion. So, because of that, the future authors I’m going to talk about didn’t run with that model. But after Crowley and Regardie, in the 1960s and 70s, there was a big resurgence of spirituality in America and of interest in the occult. Led Zeppelin is a perfect example of this, where they wrote Crowley’s Maxim “Do what thou wilt” on one of their albums. And so, there was this big resurgence after the Golden Dawn kind of subsided in popularity, there was this big resurgence and interest in it, led by Crowley but also Regardie, also Dion Fortune, who is a bit of an unsung hero a lot of times when it comes to the Golden Dawn tradition.

And John Michael Greer grew up in this era. He was born in ’62, and he discovered magic at a very early age. He was always fascinated by stories of magicians and magical powers. And once he realized that this was something that human beings and adults were doing, he decided this is it, my life; this is all I want to do. And so, in that era, he was more attracted to Dion Fortune’s writing, much more so than Crowley, but was also influenced by all of these Golden Dawn authors. And he started joining every magical order he could, studying every form of magic he could. He’s now published over 100 books. He’s joined a wild number of different magical orders. He’s just so accomplished as a magician.

He condensed much of this experience into a book in ’97 called “The Circles of Power“. This is a big deal, a landmark book in the Golden Dawn tradition. Previously, we had Donald Michael Craig and “Modern Magic”, and that book worked well as a compendium of Golden Dawn magic and Golden Dawn rituals. But treating it as a path of initiation, going from one chapter to the next, practising everything you read, left a lot to be desired. There were certain parts where you were just doing too much too fast. And it was difficult for people following that book to process it.

What John Michael Greer was able to do was reinvent the Golden Dawn system for an open audience. And the big contribution that he made was an emphasis on metaphysics. So, John Michael Greer has a keen understanding of philosophy, particularly the Neoplatonic philosophy that is the basis of many of the Golden Dawn systems. Look at the four worlds of the Tree of Life. You can find an analogous four-world system in the philosophy of Neoplatonism and Plotinus. And so, he realized there was a potentially substantial influence between these two systems. He returned to the original Greek philosophy to understand the worldview of Golden Dawn magic implied by all of these rituals. And he puts this front and centre at the beginning of “Circles of Power”. He’s able to talk about the different planes and how the different planes relate to different parts of ourselves.

So, we have the material world, which everybody knows about, and some that materialists think only that exists. And then you have this entire world of vibes and emotions, and this is the world of etheric energy in the realm of the world soul. In this world, we realize that we can reach out, and we are both affected by the emotions around us. We can affect and change the emotions around us, not just in people but in everything. Beyond that, you have the astral plane. This is the place of the nous, of the mind, in the Neoplatonic system. The astral plane has the energies of will and the powers of the planets and the influences of these different kinds of desires and mentalities that converge on us as individuals at every moment. To a large extent, we are the puppets of these forces, which is what astrology shows. These influences are going along in these cycles of repetition, and they will cause us to be warlike, very loving, philosophical, or detail-oriented. Becoming fully conscious of these influences is incredibly important for the development of a magician because then you can choose what to be influenced by, what you want to empower you, and what you want to step aside from and not be influenced by. And beyond that, you have the mental plane, this realm of meaning and the sources of symbols. It’s also a realm of pure awareness. And this realm is very ethereal, very subtle, but it is the realm of the greatest power. And so, once you understand how to focus your attention, not just on the symbols you see around you, because all of these things are merely symbols for this one reality, but the deeper meanings and influences behind all of these symbols, then you can start to reshape yourself and reshape your world. And so that approach to laying out the world of Golden Dawn magic as a series of metaphysics, as a system of metaphysics, and then allowing the practices to fill in the detail…

So it gives you this overall map, and then you’re supposed to make the journey by performing rituals. And that’s what’s significant about “The Circles of Power”. It is a complete path of initiation. You can start not knowing what magic is, read that book and practice everything in that book, and then end up on the other side, having attained either your higher self or the knowledge and conversation of your Holy Guardian Angel. In the book that Greer wrote, “In Circles of Power”, as well as in this whole lineage that I’m describing, the higher self and the Holy Guardian Angel are very much syncretized. Because Crowley syncretized them, he thought they were the same thing. And he was the first one to start releasing Golden Dawn material to the public. And so when he told people this was the case, everyone believed him. If you return to the original Golden Dawn orders, the higher self is a focus of Golden Dawn development. The Holy Guardian Angel is something from the Abramelin, like something from a completely different tradition. So there is a bit of a distinction between the cultures there. But in the stream of Golden Dawn teachings that I follow, they’re very much syncretized. And so that was a focus for my development because it’s the book’s finale. It’s kind of this overall focus of Golden Dawn magic, to expand into your higher self, to expand into your Holy Guardian Angel, and to achieve this direct experience of monism, to understand how it’s possible that we can all be one. And start to move and act and live your life more and more from that perspective, rather than from the perspective of the small personality, the small ‘me’ self.

>> Angela: Yeah, could you elaborate a bit more on the different contributions these different esotericists have given to the Golden Dawn and how they have reshaped it?

>> Marcus: Yes, so the way that the Golden Dawn has been reshaped, I think, one of the biggest ones is more rituals. So Regardie published the “Middle Pillar,” and he created the Middle Pillar ritual. It’s important to note that he did this out of demand. It wasn’t like he had some divine revelation or an angel told him, “This is a ritual you need to do.” All these people were trying to teach Golden Dawn magic as he revealed the system to the public, and they had no notion of it. They were trying to connect Golden Dawn magic to what they already knew. And so, they would look at the chakra system. Chakras were very popular then, as they are now, and they are a part of Hindu spirituality that has very much taken root in English and American culture. And so, they wanted something analogous to chakra work. And so, he realized, “Oh well, the Hermetic Kabbalah, the Tree of Life, maps directly onto the human body. And if we take the centre line, the Middle Pillar of that tree, then we have something very close to the chakra system. And then we can start activating and developing those energy centres through ritual magic.” And so that was, in response to people learning Golden Dawn Magic from the outside and wanting something they can more easily connect with and enjoy that meets their needs. And so, this is something you find repeatedly – when it comes to the tradition of open Golden Dawn magic published through books, where everyone can read everything, and there are no orders of secrecy. Which I’m appreciative of. I can say that I’m really happy that I can just talk about everything, about philosophy, and about everything that I’ve learned, with no restrictions, simply because I learned all of it myself by reading books. And so, there’s a real emphasis on new rituals, to sort of meet the demands of the public, and to fill in gaps where there are technologies you don’t have as somebody practising Golden Dawn magic as a solo practitioner, learning from books.

>> Marcus: For instance, the Vault of the Adepts is something you will only find in Golden Dawn orders. It’s very difficult to construct one yourself, even just mentally. It is a very sophisticated and very specific technology for orders. And so, many times, you need more rituals and different rituals to fill in the gaps for things that you do not have available outside of the order system. And so, you end up with these rituals that kind of take a midpoint of development. So, we have the Greater Pentagram Ritual between the Lesser Pentagram Ritual and the Supreme Pentagram Ritual. You have the Greater Hexagram Ritual between the Lesser and Supreme Hexagram Rituals. These rituals are developed to give people learning magic an easier path. And so, the Greater Hexagram Ritual, for instance, is featured prominently in “Circles of Power”, even though they were not in the original Golden Dawn materials because they’re extremely potent rituals and useful for development.

Going along with this, not only is there the development of rituals to meet audience demand, but there’s also way more experimentation in Golden Dawn magic when it’s being done openly. As opposed to being done in an order where somebody is leading the rituals, somebody knows how ritual should be done. Once you read a ritual, you have an idea of how to do the ritual, but you don’t have every detail worked out. And this is something that solo practitioners find out when they come together, and they’re like, “Oh, I do it differently.” But it’s just the case that everyone does it differently; everyone does it in their way. And going along with this, you need to experiment when you’re a solo practitioner to figure out how the stuff works. Like, you don’t have a teacher, you have a book to read from, but you don’t have a teacher to talk to.
So, many times, if you’re learning Golden Dawn Magic alone, the only way you learn how a ritual functions is by tinkering around with it, changing things, trying stuff that shouldn’t work, and then seeing if it works. That kind of wild experimentation is incredibly useful and informative, and it helps you to understand the internal logic and thought process behind the construction of Golden Dawn magic. There’s a deep emphasis on astrology, sacred geometry, numerology, and how these all create a ritual. The more you learn to break down and change a ritual, the more you learn what function each of these different pieces has. And so, in modern Golden Dawn magic, there’s a much bigger emphasis on experimentation, and many more people are developing their rituals. This is difficult to do successfully, but you’re still learning even if it goes wrong. Even if you mix up the ritual in a way that’s not positive, you’ve still learned a lot about how to construct a ritual by that process. So, I think those are two of the big differences you find: the Golden Dawn magic has had to adapt from that origin and the closed system to be useful to an open audience.

>> Angela: What distinguishes the Golden Dawn and its magic from other traditions?

>> Marcus: Oh, I mean, the philosophy of monism is a big differentiator by itself. When you look at many magical traditions, there’s an emphasis on magical realism, where the spirits are real people without bodies but still have consciousness. They’re still able to exert influence. They’re still able to, the same way that we do through magic, they’re able to exert influence on the events that happen in our world. And that’s very different from an understanding where you’re supposed to understand that spirits and other people are a part of you. And the more you connect and have a two-way connection, the more influence and sensitivity you have, the more you expand. And so, the idea of power in Golden Dawn magic differs from that of most magic systems. Power is individualistic, where you’re trying to influence yourself. Often, you’re trying to exert influence without being sensitive so you can tell everyone else what to do, and you don’t have to listen to them. In Golden Dawn magic, it is not the best ethical position and doesn’t make sense from a Golden Dawn perspective. If you take the most powerful person in the world and team them up with literally any competent person, they are suddenly more powerful than they were before. And so, if you want to experience real power, real power is experienced in the individual. Real power is experienced in an infinitely expanding group where we can all love each other, understand each other, be sensitive to each other, and care for each other. And that is so much more powerful than any individual could ever be. And so this is why in Golden Dawn magic, if you look for really accomplished magicians, they’re some of the kindest people in the world. This is one of the reasons I love Damian Echols, whom I will talk about in a moment. But everyone who’s met him is blown away by how kind, sensitive, and patient he is with everyone he interacts with. And that is a mark of an accomplished magician because they understand real power. They understand that it’s through connection that we expand to our greatest potential. That our greatest potential can never be realized in the individual, no matter what they do.

>> Marcus: Yes, I love that. Thank you, thank you. Yeah, this has always been an emphasis of the Golden Dawn system, and this is one of the dangers of learning as a solo practitioner: there’s a real temptation just to read books, to just go from one book to the other. And this is as true now as it ever was; people confuse the map with the territory. They read about a place in consciousness and think, “Oh, I’m there because I’m thinking of it.” No, you’re not, and you have to practice magic to realize that you’re not. This was way more easily handled within a Golden Dawn order because you’re not told everything; you’re only told what you need to practice, so the emphasis is on direct experience. But once you get into an open system where everything is in published books, and everybody can read everything, there’s a temptation just to read everything and never practice anything. You have to practice going to places people describe and starting to transform your life. Now, the caveat with that is it will transform your life, and not everybody is ready to change. Many people are caught in this position of wanting to improve but not wanting to change. And that is never going to lead anywhere. You have to accept the fact that you are going to change, that you are going to die to yourself for yourself, and become a new person through this process. Once you’re willing and open to doing that, you can practice magic, and then it can completely transform your life. Until then, the most you can do is read and fantasize about changing and then wait until you’re finally frustrated enough to change.

>> Angela: Fantasising about changing.

>> Marcus: Exactly, yes, yes. That’s what so many occultists are doing these days, just reading and fantasising about, “Oh, if I was a magician.” No, you need to practice to become a magician.

>> Angela: And can people be part of the Golden Dawn without a formal initiation in an order?

>> Marcus: So, this is another big difference, the perspective on what initiation means. So, in the Golden Dawn system, you’re not a magician until somebody initiates you. You’re not an Adept until somebody initiates you. You have to rely on the people who have come before to give you that authority and that power. But the perspective from an open system is totally different. This is something that John Michael Greer has been incredibly clear about. You initiate into higher stages of magic by being initiated by somebody who’s come before, and they can give you a shortcut or by just doing it yourself. And so, this path of self-initiation is emphasized through his books, including “Circles of Power”, where you, and the way that I’ve always experienced it and embraced it and taught it, is that you want to saturate yourself with each of the energies in the Golden Dawn system, and specifically in astrology, in order to figure out what that energy is like and how it impacts your life and what your capacity is for it. And then, once you’re fully saturated with that energy, you can move on to the next energy and the next.

So, you start with the elements. You invoke Earth, you invoke as much Earth as you can stand, and then you can move on to Air, Water, and Fire. Once you’ve gone through those, you can start working your way up the Tree of Life because the Spheres of the Tree of Life and the planets are closely synchronized. So, you can start with Malkuth and move up to Yesod, Hod, Netzach, and Tiphareth. And every step of the way, use the Greater Hexagram Ritual to saturate yourself with these energies as much as possible. Once you’ve gone through the process, either you win the prize and get solar consciousness, attain some attainment of your higher self, your Holy Guardian Angel, or start all over again. You go back to the beginning with an increased understanding and capacity and start invoking the elements one at a time and the Spheres of the Tree of Life one at a time until you can deeply ingrain them and expand into them. And this is the longer form of initiation because you must do it all yourself. You have to figure out, write, journal, meditate, and philosophize about what each of these things means, access them directly through ritual, and then pay attention and journal how they change your life. Through this process, you are doing a long form of initiation, and potentially, once you go through it, you’ve learned enough to help initiate others.

And that is part of what I’m doing as a professional magic teacher. I’m not initiating people energetically, but I am teaching them all the things that were most pivotal and crucial to my understanding that helped me actually to advance, that helped me to stop, you know, banging my head against the wall and integrating these energies. And so I give people those shortcuts. I give people shortcuts in thinking about this, practising it, and journaling it so that they work through all their resistance to these energies. What you find more and more in Golden Dawn magic is that it’s never an issue of what’s available to you. It’s a matter of how open you are to the transformation you’re trying to call in, whether that’s a change to yourself or your world. And the more adaptable and open you become to change, the more these energies can flow through you.

>> Angela: That’s very interesting. In terms of rituals, what do you think are the most important, if that’s something that we can say?

Yeah, absolutely. So the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram is kind of the bedrock of the entire system. What’s interesting to note is that most rituals are some variation of the Lesser Pentagram Ritual once you understand the formula. So the specifics of the go of the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram include these pentagrams; originally, they were white, but now they’re blue in the modern open system, and they’re accessing the four directions and the four elements. They’re being used to initiate yourself in all these different ways and purify yourself. Once you understand that, there’s another side to it: the invoking side. There’s the banishing side of the ritual and the invoking side of the ritual. And rather than purifying yourself through the four different directions and the elements, you can enchant yourself, empower yourself, and invigorate yourself through the four elements and the four directions. And once you understand that ritual, you realize that you can swap out different pieces of it and get a different ritual. This goes to extreme examples, where something like The Rose Cross Ritual involves these rose cross symbols, which involves detailed tracing a cube around you. And once you understand formulas, you realize this is just a variation of the Lesser Pentagram Ritual. Instead of using a circle, I’m using a cube. Instead of using the pentagram, I’m using the cross. And instead of working with the energies of the elements, I’m working with the energy of Jesus Christ in every single direction. Once you understand how to swap out different parts of a ritual to get a different ritual, you start to understand how to work your way up through the system. That ritual is kind of the foundation, and then modifications are made to access higher energy levels. The one that I will concentrate on is the Greater Hexagram Ritual. Because the pentagrams represent an anthropic view of celestial forces, the pentagram looks like a person. It has a head, two arms, two legs, and it’s our perspective looking up into the heavens.
And then the hexagram is the opposite. It’s the view of Earth from the perspective of celestial forces, which is one of the reasons that when you’re invoking the Golden Dawn system, the pentagram goes counterclockwise, like the movements of the planets through the sky in astrology. Then, the hexagram goes clockwise to invoke because of that change in perspective. And so once you have the hexagram, you can now access the powers of the Tree of Life. I also use them to access the powers of the zodiac, although that’s not the only way. With those two rituals and the Cabalistic Cross to open and close each ritual, you can get from not knowing what magic is to Adepthood, simply from or the equivalent of it. Nobody is technically an Adept if they’ve not been initiated by somebody else in the Golden Dawn system. Still, I use it as a shorthand to describe somebody who’s attained some understanding of their higher self or Holy Guardian Angel by doing these rituals by going through this process. And so, you can go from completely uninitiated to a very high level of magic, simply concentrating on the Pentagram Ritual to access the elements and then concentrating on the Hexagram Ritual to access the powers of the planets and the Spheres of the Tree of Life.

>> Angela: When you talk about acquiring the powers of the Tree of Life or the zodiac, what do you mean?

Oh, okay. So, this is something that Jung explained well: the idea of archetypes, that the parts of ourselves are also parts of other people. And so, you think of Mars, aggression, war, violence. This is a part of each of us, but it’s also a part of all of us. And so, when you access the power of Mars, you start to become more Mars-like. You start to experience a merger of consciousness with the mind of Mars. This is where it’s very important to be working with angels. You know, technically, from the design of the Golden Dawn system, you can work with virtually any kind of spirit. The way I talk about formulas, you can swap out the angels for anything else you want. But it’s incredibly important to work with angels specifically because they are associated with aspects of God in the Christian tradition. You have Raphael, who is the healing of God; Michael, who is like God; Gabrielle, who is the strength of God; and Uriel, who holds the flame of God. And so, these are all different selves, different aspects of one divinity, and they are all perfectly connected to the source of consciousness from which they emerge. Some selves are fully connected to their origin point, and we’re trying to be like them and so to experience monism.

And so, when working with angels, you get access to the most harmonious, balanced form of each of these energies, which helps you integrate them much more positively. And so, when you’re accessing the power of Mars, you want to call upon Camael, the Archangel of Mars, and you call upon him to imbue yourself with this energy, to merge yourself with this energy. Magic is, in many ways, like physical therapy for God. It’s a way of getting us to act like this, as we all are. And so, what you’re doing is you’re restoring sensitivity to this part of yourself, this Mars part of yourself, which doesn’t just exist inside of you but exists inside of everyone. And once you have access to that Mars part of yourself, you can use that to influence others, protect yourself from their aggressions, give yourself discipline and power, initiate yourself, and initiate change. Mars has all kinds of really positive qualities when you want them. But it’s this process, when you ascend the Tree of Life, to fully saturate your consciousness in each of these spheres until it becomes a part of you. Once it’s a part of you again, you can use it and exercise it to influence your world and create change.

>> Angela: So, for instance, if you wanted success, the sun is perfect for success. And so, you invoke solar energy; you imbue yourself with the sun’s energy, the light of success, happiness, and pure joy. And you connect yourself to that until you’re just beaming and radiant. And the amazing thing about it is that it’s a great example of how magic is psychological but more than psychological. You are so radiant when you’re imbued with the sun’s energy that everyone wants you to succeed. People are just happy for you. They love seeing you shine. They just want to be a part of your success. Beyond that, you have the power to manifest success, snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, and exert influence on your world where you can succeed in cases nobody else thought you could. This is a way that working through the Tree of Life combines both theurgy and thaumaturgy, both the raising of your own consciousness and the increasing of your influence over the world in a really positive and beneficial manner.

>> Angela: I was thinking that there have been a few mentions since, you know, as a Religious Studies scholar, I can not notice the fact that there are a lot of Christian references. So, do you think that the Golden Dawn magic system is only for those who are in line with a Christian belief system, or could it also be practised by pagans, for instance, or people who have a completely different religious belief system?

>> Marcus: Yes, so that’s a great point. Thank you for asking. So John Michael Greer wrote “The Celtic Golden Dawn” because he started learning Golden Dawn magic. He was just trying to learn every form of magic he could, but he was never raised Christian; he was never a big fan of Christianity. He grew up at a time when evangelicals were huge, and they were obnoxious if you were alive in that era. So, I understand that. But he always resonated with the Welsh deities. So, he rebuilt the Golden Dawn system to work with Welsh deities rather than angels. And so that’s a perfect example of how flexible the Golden Dawn is. Once you understand this formula, you can start swapping out spirits with analogous spirits from other traditions. And so, you can work with any pantheon you want to adapt it to the Golden Dawn system. You know, this is not impossible. And John Michael Greer has also written polytheist versions of the basic Golden Dawn rituals online. So the Lesser Banishing of the Pentagram, the Cabalistic Cross, and the circle of protection. Many pagans don’t want to use a cross to open the rituals for obvious reasons. And so, he has a circle of protection opening and closing ritual, and he’s developed a way to help people syncretize whatever kind of pantheon they want to work with Golden Dawn magic.

>> Marcus: So, I first want to say that the system is incredibly flexible, and I also understand that the point of the system is monism; the point is to realize that we are all one. And so, it doesn’t matter what path you use to get to that state or what pantheon you use to get to that state. What matters is that you achieve it, unlock the powers of the elements, and unlock the powers of the Tree of Life. And at that level, you’re still, you know, a real Golden Dawn magician, even if you’re not working within a Christian context. All that being said, the original Golden Dawn system is extremely Christian. The outer order of the Golden Dawn system is the Golden Dawn, and the inner order is the Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis. It’s a Rosicrucian order based on Rosicrucianism. And this connection to Christ and everything, and so the idea is that we’re trying to use magic to retrace the steps of Christ as much as possible to incarnate whatever divinity we possibly can. We should all be working to become as divine as possible, to make this world as divine as possible. And Christ is used as an example, as a master magician who fully accomplished this work. It’s significant to look at the story of Christ through the lens of monism, the idea that he achieved this state of consciousness. He realized he was everyone and then was guilty of everything because he was everyone. And he decided to take responsibility for every sin ever committed because he realized he was everyone. He was so committed to that connection that he would suffer anything to remain a part of it, which is wonderful for us because we can attain the state of consciousness without worrying about paying for it in the same way. And so, Christ is crucial to the essence of the Golden Dawn system, and he played a prominent part in rituals like the Rose Cross. Still, it’s not strictly necessary to be a Christian to practice Golden Dawn magic and to become proficient with it. John Michael Greer is a perfect example of that.

>> Angela: You said that rituals can be changed to accommodate a different belief system, and I know the rituals are important for the Golden Dawn system. So, where do you draw the line? How much can you change a ritual and keep its effectiveness?

>> Marcus: Okay, this is a great time to talk about Damien Echols because he has been a pioneer in this space. To give some background, Damien Echols was falsely accused and falsely imprisoned. He was a poor kid in Arkansas, and the jury took one look at him and said, “His name is Damien, he practices magic, he’s going on death row.” And so that was his life for 18 years; he was on death row because of his interest in magic. It took him a while to come back to practising magic after such a traumatic experience, but he started practising magic again in prison, seriously as an adult. First of all, he was in solitary confinement for half of his time in prison. That causes brain damage. That is inhumane treatment, and the ability of Golden Dawn magic to help keep him sane, keep his mind intact, and help him repair his mind, both in and out of prison, is an incredible testament to the psychological power of this practice.

Additionally, once he had become proficient at Golden Dawn magic by reading books like “Circles of Power” and studying the works of John Michael Greer, he decided to manifest his freedom. After almost exactly a year of practising a ritual that he developed himself every day, he walked out of prison, and he’s been a free man ever since. And that’s one of the rare examples of successful magic being a matter of public record.

So this immediately made him a very prominent magician because he was a celebrity before he started practising magic because of this court case, and he got out of prison because of magic; magic saved his life. And so, when he started talking about magic, he revealed that magic saved his life, that the miracle that happened to him happened on purpose, and that he created that miracle himself. He started talking about and sharing the magic he used to do it; he even shared the rituals he used to manifest his liberation. And so, when he started practising, he started writing about magic and talking about publishing books. In 2018, he wrote “High Magic,” which was incredibly impactful. And he’s one of the first magic teachers in the Golden Dawn tradition to emerge outside the older system. So John Michael Greer wrote for an audience that would never step inside a magical order; he wrote extremely well. But Damien Echols achieved a state of monism, a state of adepthood, without participation in an order. And he could share everything he practised that was most effective. And because he is self-taught, he’s way more eclectic and experimental regarding his magic. His most recent book, “Ritual,” is a great example. And “Ritual” is fascinating because if you read it without knowing Golden Dawn magic, you’d have a hard time telling it apart from the psychic exercises in Mat Auryn’s “Psychic Witch“. The magic is so simple; it’s so easy to do and visualize. And it’s an amazing adaptation of the Golden Dawn system because it uses the correspondences of the system.

>> Marcus: To experience a state of consciousness in which you are at one with all other humans, specifically, but all other beings in general, and to be able to act from that state of expansion, to be able to act in such a way that harmonizes your life with the lives of people around you. And that creates contentment, happiness, and security for everyone involved.
If you look under the hood and know the correspondences, you understand what powers he’s drawing upon, and this may be weak magic in many senses. It’s not the most powerful magic, but it’s really important, and people don’t get this: to practice less powerful magic when you’re less experienced. You will break yourself if you try to practice the most powerful magic when you’re inexperienced. It’s not going to be a fun time, and not just psychologically and energetically, but you can also cause physical damage. So, you don’t want to jump ahead. You want to initiate yourself slowly. And to answer your question, that’s a good example of how far something can evolve and still be considered Golden Dawn magic. I would say that it’s based on results, which is distinct in the open Golden Dawn tradition because there’s not as much adherence to a strict set of teachings to a strict hierarchy of rulership. People do what works. And so, if we’re trying to manifest results, whether that’s changes to the external world or attainments of consciousness and theurgy, ultimately, the only restriction on Golden Dawn magic is that it succeeds in the aims of Golden Dawn Magic. And that’s what I would say. I’m open when it comes to that.
I don’t think it necessarily needs to resemble anything else as long as it accomplishes the goal. I think many times, people can just cloak themselves in the ego of being a certain kind of magician, a Golden Dawn magician, or this, that, and the other, and then every other magic is just used to reify that identity. And they miss the point. The golden point of Golden Dawn magic is not to become a Golden Dawn magician. The point of Golden Dawn magic is to heal the world. You can call yourself a Golden Dawn magician if you’re doing that. I think that’s appropriate.

>> Angela: What do you mean to heal the world?

>> Marcus: Oh, specifically to experience a state of consciousness in which you are at one with all other humans specifically but all other beings in general and to be able to act from that state of expansion to be able to act in such a way that harmonizes your life with the lives of people around you and that creates you know contentment Happy and happiness and security for everyone involved.

>>Angela: I was thinking about the effectiveness of rituals in the Golden Dawn and what can be achieved by rituals and magic. So, based on what you said, it seems like magic is used both for self-transformation and being reunited with the monistic self or with the oneness that we’re all part of and to make changes in one’s reality. So I guess a philosophical question would be, if we are all part of this oneness, why would we want to change anything and not just accept it in a more Buddhist way?

That’s a great question. I’m still struggling with that because the reality is, once you experience, at least for me, when I first started to experience this higher state of monistic consciousness, I was just fine. It was so interesting because I was so blissed out, just feeling this incomparable love I had for everyone. And I didn’t even care that they didn’t know or feel the same way about me. In a sense, unrequited love there was difficult, but I was just so in love with everyone and so happy to be here and so grateful that it didn’t matter. I was just enjoying myself; I was on cloud nine, literally. But at a certain point, I think I was just listening to music for three hours straight, and every moment of every song was even more blissful than the last, and then I thought, “Is this all I do now?” I was wondering, “Aren’t I supposed to be here? Aren’t I supposed to be doing something with this life?” And it’s not obvious. It’s not obvious that you can go from blissful perfection and contentment, re-engage in the world, maintain that state, and replicate it through your actions, speech, and how you live. Like, that’s the puzzle, but that’s the puzzle that we’re here to solve. How do we experience both of these? How do we experience that sense of supremely transcended satisfaction, and how do we create action?
And one of the tips that I give people, that you don’t have to have any expansion of consciousness to try, is to attempt some kind of restful action. So, the idea here is that if you stay in bed, take a real day off, sleep in, and sleep as much as you want to, at a certain point, it takes more effort to remain in bed than it does to get up. And your job is not to force yourself to get up; your job is not to decide what you want to do once you get up; your job is to pay attention to that feeling, that emergence, that stirring of action from complete restfulness, and pay attention to what that turns into. It may turn into going for a walk, getting a cup of coffee, or doing something completely unexpected, but you’re not supposed to decide what you’re doing; you’re supposed to observe what you’re doing and embrace it and allow your body to move with it. And that’s the kind of action you achieve, that connects the superlative states of total acceptance and dualistic engagement of the world, where you’re doing one specific thing and not any other. It’s accessing this pure inspiration when we’re not deciding what we’re doing; we’re not leading with the mind but with our hearts and inspiration and allowing ourselves to act restfully from there.

>> Angela: I’m still unsure if that answers the question, or maybe I missed it. I think it was more about how there can be a reconciliation between using magic and having as the ultimate goal to be reunited with the oneness that we’ve always been in terms of if we are the oneness. We feel that and are aware of that; why would we want to change things in our reality?

>> Marcus: You don’t, so that’s important. And this is, was it Maya, the delusion? This has been part of spiritual traditions for as long as we’ve had them. The idea is that the world experienced by mundane consciousness is just a dream, and we’re actually waking up into higher states of consciousness. Now, if it’s a pleasant dream, keep dreaming. Don’t allow me to disrupt you. If your life is going well, don’t do any of this; just enjoy your life. But if you’re having a nightmare, you want to wake up from the nightmare. And even if the dream is not quite a nightmare but just tediously boring, you’ll still want to wake up from it. And so, the motivation comes from the fact that you are this expanded self but that you’re not conscious of it. You’re conscious of a dream within that expanded self where you’re this small, tiny self. If you’re having a good time, stay there. But if it’s not working for you, for any reason, and it was not working for me, I was depressed from about the age of 12 to kind of 35, but really 37, when I first started the Holy Guardian Angel process, started making initial contact. I was overwhelmed with an incredible feeling of love that I’d never experienced before, and I’ve been able to maintain that feeling every day since. And so, that was just such a revelation for me. But a perfect example of those who have the incentive to wake up are those who do it. I mean, when Damien Echols was in prison, his physical circumstances could not have been worse, so he had the greatest incentive to wake up from that nightmare and to experience how blissful and wonderful it is despite all of that. So, I think the motivation comes from the fact that it doesn’t need to happen; the oneness is complete as it is, but from our perspective, we want to wake up because we want to get out of here.

>> Angela: Yes, I can understand that.

>> Marcus: Does that answer your question?

>> Angela: I’m not sure because I think it’s… I’ve always found it interesting, especially when I’ve had discussions with scholars in Buddhism. There’s always a conversation about magic and whether magic is something that feeds the ego or otherwise. So, one of the perspectives that was brought up to me by a scholar of Advaita Vedanta, specifically, but Indian religions and philosophies more generally, he once said that if you are, you know, in a state of, he wasn’t calling it oneness in the same monistic way that you were, although in Advaita Vedanta, of course, you also have that non-dual monistic perspective. But the point was if your ultimate goal is enlightenment, or Moksha, or Nirvana, however, you conceive it, if it is enlightening yourself to the oneness of everything there is, what’s the point of changing your reality via magic if you know, when you realize that everything is perfect as it is, why would you want to engage in magic to alter things in your reality? That’s a debate that we had.

>> Marcus: So, I guess what it was? You find something analogous in the East, and you’ve mentioned this before: Tantric Buddhism. So, in that system of Arya Buddhism, the emphasis is not on enlightenment or becoming an Arhat but on becoming a Bodhisattva and helping everyone else achieve this state. And so, I think there’s something analogous happening in magic, where yes, we can access this state where everything is perfect, but we also exist on this other level. We don’t exist just as individuals. Even if you liberate yourself, you’re not fully liberated because all of the other parts of you, all of your others, are still unliberated. And so, the goal is to make this world a reflection, a good reflection, of the perfection and divinity that we came from and to which we can return. And when we do that, it’s really obvious. For example, when the world is a really good place, and you love being here, it’s obvious that this world can be, at least sometimes, a reflection of divinity. And then, the rest of the time, it’s a festering cesspit of hell. And so, if we want to live in the divinity and not in the festering cesspit of hell, maybe we should try this. It’s an idea, I guess that’s one thing that distinguishes Golden Dawn, and also a lot of systems of Western esotericism, from Eastern religious practices is that this idea that you find in alchemy, “nature unaided fails,” that it’s not enough for us to return to that natural state, that we want to utilize the full powers of our selves and of the ego in service to this higher good and service to this higher self. And so, the goal is not to obliterate but to merge. And this is what you find in the connection with the higher self in the Golden Dawn tradition. It’s not the idea that you are killing the ego. It’s that you’re maturing and developing the ego so that it can now receive a much greater power. The ego is terrified of this process because it becomes an infinitely smaller piece of you once you experience this expanded state and thinks it will be death. But the reality is the ego becomes infinitely greater and infinitely more powerful due to this connection to divinity.

>> Angela: Yes, I take that as the answer. I think that the time when we were having that debate, my former professor and I, my answer was that magic is a way of not just transforming what happens around you but also yourself. So I think that’s something that tends to get missed often, especially when there are dialogues with scholars of Buddhism, at least when I’ve had dialogues with scholars of Buddhism. It tends to be very focused on, of course, that’s a perspective where it’s more based on acceptance, on seeing that everything that is around you is, you know, the Buddhist perspective is based on the idea of Avidyā, which is the inability to see the world as it is. That’s the, and then once you realize the world as it is, suffering will disappear. So they give the example that we see eternity in what is mortal, for instance. So when we suffer from death or decay, it is because we are seeing permanence where there is impermanence, and so on. You know, all the things that cause us suffering are based on ignorance, which is not the translation. Ignorance is not accurate. It’s more the inability to see things as they are. So the point from that perspective is that if, once you have seen things as they are, you realize that everything is perfect as it is, so why change anything by using magic? And I think my reply at the time was something like changing yourself because it’s not just about changing the circumstances. It’s, you know, if everything is interconnected within that worldview, if you do magic to alter something in your life, you’re also altering yourself as the actor. You’re both the actor and the object. You’re, you know, everything. So that would be in line with a more mystical path because I think that sometimes there’s the idea that magic is not in line with a mystical path. It’s more about achieving stuff in your life, whereas a mystical part is about accepting and, in a way, I wouldn’t say submitting, but just being in full acceptance of everything that happens.

Absolutely, and this is something that Damien taught that I appreciate so much how deeply interconnected thaumaturgy, the manifestation of external results, and theurgy, the development of consciousness, how connected they are and how they cannot be otherwise. So he and I communicate that when we manifest, we are exercising parts of ourselves, the amazing thing, and parts of our consciousness. The amazing thing about this process is that our consciousness shows up as us with all of our baggage within the manifestations we create. And so the amazing thing is, even if you start just trying to manifest external goodies, they will come with your impurities, with what you need to work on, and will be flawed in the ways you are. And this is where magic can give you some harsh lessons. But ultimately, that can be a purification process because what you’re doing is you’re taking a piece of your consciousness, and you’re blowing it up to the world stage. You’re making it into something that’s in front of you, that’s physical, and sometimes, you will see and detect impurities at that scale that you were completely unaware of when you were doing your theurgy, personal practice, and self-development practice. And so, often, manifestation can be a purification practice because you’re trying to create a change in the world, and if that messes up, if that goes sideways, that’s your flaws, that’s what you need to work on, that’s how you need to improve as a person. And when you’re dedicated to improvement, you experience that positively, like, “Yes, thank you, thank you for showing me where I need to improve.” And you can be grateful even when your magic and your manifestations have challenging and unforeseen consequences because you’re ultimately learning what you need to transform and become a better person in the future.

The opposite is true as well. When you develop yourself, you cannot help but create change. I’ve talked to so many people, and I’ve had the experience myself of banishing people from your life when you start to purify. Once you start to radiate at a certain level, people don’t want to be around you anymore. They want to be with people on their level. And they…

>> Angela: That happens also when you become an academic, so I know.

>> Marcus: I bet, yeah, yeah, you’re radiating the academic energy.

>> Angela: Everybody’s like, “No, no, she’s gonna ask me for sources every time.” That’s an actual impression of my friends.

>> Marcus: Oh, man, but you know, ultimately, I think it’s positive. It’s just a matter of what you want to become, whether that’s a magician or an academic. Once you start to embody that archetype and radiate that energy, it will cause people to leave your life, but that will also clear space for new people. And so, if you really love this path that you’re choosing, you’re going to create a new life and a new social circumstance that complements it. And if you’re willing to pay the price and endure the discomfort of maybe being a little bit lonely for a while, then you can create a much better life where you’re surrounded by people who support you in doing what you love to do. And I think that’s priceless.

>> Angela: Yeah, I agree. And you’re getting a lot of compliments in the comments. Craig says, “This is the system’s most interesting and wonderful revelation.” And Paul, a patron, says, “Thanks, Dr. P and Marcus. Marcus, you always have such eloquent explanations and wisdom. Thank you so much for sharing.” He’s referring to our Magus lectures in the community. So yeah, you’re very loved in the Patreon community. Quite often privately, it’s like, when people bring somebody up, it’s always, “Oh, Marcus is very interesting.”

>> Marcus: Yeah, I agree.

>> Angela: And you’re getting a lot of compliments in the comments. Craig says, “This is the system’s most interesting and wonderful revelation.” And Paul, a patron, says, “Thanks, Dr. P and Marcus. Marcus, you always have such eloquent explanations and wisdom. Thank you so much for sharing.” He’s referring to our Magus lectures in the community. So yeah, you’re very loved in the Patreon community. Quite often privately, it’s like, when people bring somebody up, it’s always, “Oh, Marcus is very interesting.”

>> Angela: Thank you, Marcus. And thank you, Frater RC. He says that we are both wonderful. And it is strictly for chocolate. I will make good use of it.

>> Marcus: Oh yeah, but we’re on different sides. I’m actually the dark chocolate person, and you’re the light chocolate.

>> Angela: No dark chocolate for me, thank you.

>> Marcus: I can only do dark chocolate. It’s the best. I just want it as dark and as intense as possible.

>> Angela: No, I prefer as sweet as possible. When people say it’s too sweet, it’s like, that has no meaning for me. What is too sweet? Milk chocolate, caramel chocolate, or white chocolate.

>> Marcus: Maybe that’s the polarity. You have more of the dark aesthetic going on, so you need the antidote to that. And I need the pure darkness to nourish me, yes.

>> Angela: Yeah, I think that a friend of mine used to define me as a sparkly goth because people tend to think that if you have a goth aesthetic, you are, I don’t know, sad and something like that, and I’m not. I’m actually very cheerful. So, I personally don’t see my aesthetic as a reflection of… I see it as a refraction of darkness, but it doesn’t lead to what some people may think. It doesn’t lead to being sad or discontent. It leads to being happier because if you embrace the dark side of life, you’re free to enjoy life to the fullest.

>> Marcus: Absolutely. Well, that’s also true in the magic I practice. Like, you want to understand how you are all of this creation and how you and everyone else are this one. So, to the extent possible, you want to embrace every side of life in a balanced way, in a way that actually integrates into the whole of who you are. And I think having experiences and enjoying life, and this incarnation, is really important because I think we’re here for a reason. I don’t think it’s an accident that we have these incredible spiritual abilities but also incredible physical bodies. I think we’re supposed to have both, and we’re supposed to embrace both.

>> Angela: Thank you, Marcus. Any final thoughts before we leave, or do you feel like you have said everything you wanted?

>> Marcus: I’ve said pretty much everything I want to say. If people want to hear me talk more, you can go to Frater RC’s channel. He has a Hermetic podcast. We did a big episode; it was actually his most popular episode for 2023, so I’m very proud of that. You can check that out if you want to listen to me talk more. And thank you, everyone, for listening, and thank you, Angela. This has been absolutely wonderful.

>> Angela: Thank you, Marcus, for being here. It’s been really a pleasure, and I hope that, and I can see from the chat that everybody loved it. So, we will also read the comments afterward. Thank you very much, and I will see you tomorrow for the patron’s call.

>> Marcus: See you tomorrow.

>> Angela: So, I hope that you guys enjoyed this interview with Marcus and this talk about the Golden Dawn. You’ll find all the links and all the contact details to reach out to Marcus in the description box. So if you want, and I would encourage you if you’re interested and if you like this video, don’t forget to smash the like button, subscribe to the channel if you haven’t already, and activate the notification bell so that you will always be notified when I upload something new or I’m live, or I do anything on the channel. And yeah, thank you all so much for being here, and I hope you all stay tuned for all the academic fun. And Happy New Year since it is going to be the last release of 2023. Let’s hope that 2024 is even better for me, for you guys, and for the whole Symposium. Thank you all, and for those of you who are patrons, I’ll see you tomorrow for our monthly Zoom call.

Bye, guys.

Marcus Mattern’s contact details

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Website: marcusmattern.com

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