Inside a Magical Lodge: Group Ritual in the Western Tradition

by John Michael Greer

Book Overview

A must-read for members of existing lodges, for students of magical traditions such as the Golden Dawn, for practitioners of other kinds of group magical work, and for all those who have wondered... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 156718314X
• ISBN13: 9781567183146
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Llewellyn Publications
• Length: 360 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Check out Moloch's review

I couldn't have said it better! Everything you need to start a magical group is right here for the taking. Pick it up. Even if you are not considering joining or creating a lodge, you never know...this could come in handy one day. Also has an interesting ritual for invisibility within it.

A plus for group leaders

This is an excellent book. Instead of rehashing other people's material, the author has focused on a much ignored topic - the framework of the magical lodge. The book goes through the structure, purpose and workings of a magical lodge in a concise and down-to-earth manner. The author also goes step by step through the work needed to set up and maintain a magical lodge, from identity and requirements to aims and practices. All in all this book is well worth investing in if you have an interest in ritual magick and in the dynamics of a working magickal group. I would recommend this book to anyone thinking of starting a magickal group, regardless of tradition - be it Thelema, Grimoires, or even Wiccan Covens!

How To Form Western Esoteric Group

Finally a decent book on forming a group in a modern, esoteric, manner. Prior to this book, there hasn't been much on the structuring of a formal magical lodge/order outside of a few Wiccan Circle types of books. The closest I've come across is the late William G. Gray's "Inner Temple Magic" and that had more to do with WHAT to do while in a magical order than it did about forming one. Part of the problem with such books is that little is offered as guidance on dealing with the people within such a group. The group dynamics is usually overlooked so the seeker looking to gain some knowledge running a group and not just forming one is often left to his/her own devices on dealing with people. This makes for a blind leading the blind type of situation - at least emotionally - and usually what occurs is that the rest of the group is leaderless. In the Satanic oriented groups, the leader is often encouraged to lead with an "iron fist" or "it's MY way or the highway" as pointed out by Rev. Yaj Nomolos in his book "The Magic Circle". Whereas in the Ritual & Ceremonial Magical traditions, the heavy handedness is not always conducive to a smooth running operation. Fortunately this book offers some simplistic thoughts on dealing with people within the lodge and mainly that is covered in Chapter 2. What this book does offer is pretty solid material on WHY one should want to formulate a lodge and WHAT kind of structure the group should have. The book starts out with pretty basic historical information on who the Freemasons were and why they came to be. This was based on the Medeival Guilds that were formed around trades and craftsmen. What follows next is the jump from the Freemasons to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and it's not like we haven't heard of that particular order before. Greer also points out the foundation of what a Magical Lodge really is and offers to the interested party: structure, symbolism, magic and secrecy. In chatper 2, he nails it on the head when he writes "A magical lodge can take many forms and be many things. If it's going to function at all, though, there's at least one thing it has to be: a group of people who are able to put together the resources of space, time, and material needed for the lodge's work and who can do so with a minimum of bickering, confusion, and hurt feelings....A group that can't manage at least this much isn't going to likely to last long or get far." This fact has caused many lodges (and covens) to peter out long before they really could begin all over this very fact. When we get thru the next three chapters on each of the foundations of symbolism, magic and secrecy, Greer has done a pretty decent job of offering more than mere platitudes in which to live by. He has explored very real concepts such as the group's egregore which helps to keep the nucleus of the group together. Then he tackles initiation and why this should be an important step to getting into a lodge. Finally he discusses the

Great information, but bring salt.

Greer does a great service to the occult community with this book. Some of the best parts of this book deal with the drudgework and mundane aspects of lodge management -- creating the ritual, handling the legal aspects of creating a lodge, and maintaining the lodge on the administrative end. However, when he starts getting into the inner parts of lodgework, he tends to pass off his own personal (or his tradition's) theories and ideas as fact. It's a great deal of good information to ponder, but shouldn't necessarily be taken literally.Overall, I would definitely recommend this book to those interested in both occult and non-occult Fraternal-type orders.

You wanna start a magickal lodge?

This book is excellent for starting a magickal lodge. I'm in a group of seven occultists and this book has offered so many suggestions to keep all of us honest. It explains the lodge structure and whtat it means, and then gives an example of starting a lodge, and then has a fictitious account of a lodge being created from scratch! Great book for establishing a lodge that will last a long time. No spells here, but information that's more important for group work. It's how to keep your group alive and not letting it fall apart.