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- [00:00]
Ike Baker
Magic is a very specific thing, both on an essential level and a linguistic level for, you know, humanity. You could ask a bunch of people off the street what they thought magic was and you get some pretty funny and I think widely varied answers. So I would I redefined it as the experience or phenomenology of consciousness and its intersection with metaphysical causality. Metaphysical causality.
- [00:32]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Keep watching. To learn more. You can now download all nine copies of the New Thinking Allowed magazine for free or order beautiful printed copies. Go to newthinking allowed.org new thinking allowed
- [00:48]
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- [01:34]
Ike Baker
Thinking Aloud Conversations on the Leading Edge of Knowledge and Discovery with psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove.
- [01:50]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Hello and welcome. I'm Jeffrey Mishlove. Today we will be exploring the topic of esoteric ceremonial magic. My guest is Ike Baker, who is an independent scholar, esoteric instructor, practicing ceremonialist, and senior initiate of the Martinist Order of America, the Masonic Blue Lodge, and the York Rite Freemasonry. He is also a Temple Chief of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Ike is author of A Formless Rediscovering the Magical Traditions of the west, and also Etheric Magic, A Complete System of elemental, celestial, and alchemical magic. Ike is based in North Carolina and now I will switch over to the Internet video. Welcome Ike. It is a pleasure to be with you today.
- [02:57]
Ike Baker
Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be speaking with you truly.
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Jeffrey Mishlove
I'm very interested in your field of esoteric magic or ceremonial magic. I think it's a topic that parapsychologists like my friend Dean Radin are beginning to explore more seriously, and I want the New Thinking Allowed audience to be exposed to your work. And of course I know we've interviewed people who you regard as colleagues who are also deeply involved in esoteric subjects. So to begin with, I think it's fair to say, since you've written about the history of esoteric magic in the west, that it goes back as far, in fact even further than recorded human history.
- [03:50]
Ike Baker
I can't say that I would conclusively know that, but I certainly would infer that based off of my researches and what has now in the last I want to say 15, maybe 20 years of scholarship and serious sort of commentary on, on let's call it magic. I would say that it's overwhelmingly suggests that that is likely.
- [04:24]
Jeffrey Mishlove
For example, here in North America we have Native American cultures who were practicing various forms of ceremony long before they had written languages.
- [04:37]
Ike Baker
Yes. Yeah. And I mean that period of, let's call it metaphysical engagement, that period really comes to us in many cultures. It's as a form of, you know, shamanic, not just spirit vision. It's not just an intermediary sort of position between a tribe or a people and their deities. It's all of that. But there's also a healing component in there as well, which is, I think it's important to, to, to note that about the shamanic tradition. And we, we get this across cultures and really some scholars and practitioners agree that even at its most, I would say developed or sophisticated, let's put it that way, even at its at the apex of, you know, involvement and, and the development of theory and technique, it's still just an elaboration on those core foundational shamanic experiences that we have as
- [05:50]
Jeffrey Mishlove
a collective with regard to the Western intellectual tradition. Peter Kingsley has written a wonderful book about the pre Socratic philosophers and how strongly they were influenced by the shamanic traditions that existed long ago in ancient Greece. But I think it would be fair to say that modern ceremonial magic traces itself primarily back to Iambiclus and the Neoplatonists.
- [06:25]
Ike Baker
I would agree with that. And yes, the book is fantastic. Kingsley is an amazing scholar. I believe it's called Reality is the book you're referring to. And he talks about Parmenides and all that wonderful stuff where we ultimately derive the bulk of the theory. The theory behind modern ceremonial is with Iamlichus, particularly his work on the mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans and Assyrians. Actually the, the Renaissance Florentine translator Marsilio Ficino gave it that title. He doesn't give us a lot of technique to go on. There's a little bit in there, there's bits and pieces. And then we get that cosmogony and cosmology, this, this sort of myth and lore, the, the creation and foundations of the universe and therefore how it works. We get that passed down by people like Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. I mean, if you read his three books on occult philosophy, of, of occult philosophy, it's Ian Blakeian Theurgy. And I think it's, it's an important distinction to make is this word theurgy. And I know You've had conversations with people like, you know, our mutual friend and colleague PD Newman, who is certainly a luminary and has contributed vastly to the field of theurgic work. But to, to sort of, you know, maybe for the sake of repetition to some of your audience, theurgy, coming from the Greek word Theodore, having to do with God working or divine action, really is a very specific application of the techniques and technologies of what we would call, quote, unquote, magic or ceremonial magic. And that is specifically to the end of what Iamblichus himself referred to as the purification, elevation and illumination of the soul of the individual. Now, not all magics take that trajectory, though they do. They are primarily reliant upon those theurgic sort of, let's call them floor plans because of how much relies on, say, Agrippa and, and others of that time period.
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Jeffrey Mishlove
Now, Agrippa is long, long after iambiclus, maybe 1500 years or so between them.
- [08:56]
Ike Baker
Yeah, about 12, about 12 to 13. Iamblichus is writing in the third and fourth century and Agrippa is in the Renaissance in the 1500s. I also think it's pretty important to just mention that we can't really understand Iamblichus and the, I would call, I would say the bones of something like theurgy, believe it or not, without going all the way back to Plato, because Iamlichus considered himself conversant and clearly demonstrated this was the case in the philosophia Franca of his time, you know, the common philosophy, which was Platonism. Now, he may not have referred to himself specifically as Platonism, but we see that he works in a very, very specifically Platonic milieu. He's just so conversant in it. He's, he's adept in that, in the language of Platonism and in that place in time. The near east and Mediterranean are the first few centuries of, of antiquity. In the Common Era, you know, that that was just the norm. The norm. They wouldn't have necessarily said, oh, this is. We do Platonic philosophy. Certainly Amlicus also was very much inspired and influenced by neopythagorean beliefs. But the, the core there connects to what you had mentioned about Kingsley and that being that there were obviously pre Socratics, right? The Socratic philosophers are people like Plato and Xenophon, the people who came after and lived during the time of the great teacher Socrates. Now the pre Socratics, by and large. And allow me a moment to, to contradict the generality I'm about to make. It's For a purpose. By and large a lot of this, the pre Socratics, at least what is available to us on the historical record, were more interested in things like natural philosophy. They were physicists, you know, people like Empedocles that were interested in and what is everything made of, right? And he talks about these four rizomata roots, these rhizomes which we call the elements earth, air, fire and water that are motivated by two forces, love and strife. And there's, you know, there are solons interested in, in law, legality, things like this. There's an exception to that rule. And really we find it in people like Parmenides that Kingsley talks about Parmenides Elia, who there is evidence was an iatro mantis, a healer seer. Exactly what we're talking about before Shaman and also obviously Pythagoras. Now Pythagoras has a little known teacher, okay, that Diogenes Laertius who writes the wonderful biography on the, the philosophers and many others. He, he says that Pythagoras was taught by Pharisee and Pharisee was a great mythographer in something like the Orphic tradition. So what we effectively have in Platonism and the reason why becomes the common philosophy of people that eventually pioneer what we know as ceremonial magic is because that Plato was, he served as a link in the chain of transmission from ancient metaphysical thought up into his period and then, you know, afterwards. So he, there was, there's a great, great onus in the, the Platonic corpus towards metaphysical inquiry. He incorporates a lot of other types of philosophy, you, philosophical ideas, the major schools and their, their, their primary axioms, but the focus right, on something like the Platonic forms, the ideals and this kind of transformation of, and knowingness and being and consciousness. That's all extremely metaphysical from a pre Socratic point of view.
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Jeffrey Mishlove
Well, when we get to Agrippa in the Renaissance, he's very specific about the techniques of magic. It's really almost, I gather, more like a recipe book. But it implies that there might have been a continuous magical tradition between the Renaissance magicians and the ancient Greeks.
- [13:52]
Ike Baker
Yes, and there certainly was. There certainly certainly was. I wouldn't say it was necessarily direct, but I mean if you're looking at the greater Mediterranean and Near east as a single sort of community of that time, then sure, then sure it is kind of direct, perhaps not culturally, but regionally. And what happens is, you know, you have essentially the anti pagan Roman emperors right after Constantine. Theodosius II I believe, is the one who, who actually makes Christianity, the official religion of the Roman Empire, not Constantine. And it is Theosibius and, and Theodosius. I'm sorry, and, and several other Roman emperors in that time period that eventually they begin to outlaw pagan practices. So they, they go to the great temples in Alexandria and they say look, you guys can hang on to your temple, but everything you do in here is illegal from now on. And eventually we have, I believe in 4, 467, I believe I have that date, right. We have the fall of the Roman Empire or at least the Western Roman Empire, which leaves us the Eastern Roman Empire which we now call Byzantium. Okay. They would not have called themselves that. They would have called themselves and they did call themselves Romans. So the Eastern Roman Empire is still in existence and you have great schools, academies of wisdom, great teachers like Michael Cellos still talking about things like statue animation and theurgy and, and it's now it's intermixed with Christianity. Right. And you get these things like holy icons, econes, right. It's similar to this, the ancient animated statuary of, of the, the Hellenistic period and those ceremonialists. And of course you have a, a contingent of Greco Roman and Greco Roman Egyptian philosophers who are welcomed into the golden age of the Arabic perso Islamic empires, the Abbasid Caliphates and things like this. You get the House of Wisdom in Baghdad which was actually astrologically elected for that. The, the founding of the city of Baghdad was astrologically elected. Okay. And, and so there are great of astrology and what they would have considered science back then, it was not airy fairy woo woo. They considered this in the same light that we consider things like you know, hard empirical science now that after post enlightenment kind of stuff. So obviously we know the whole history about the Christians and their struggles with the Islamic Empire, ultimately culminating, it happens beforehand, but ultimately culminating in the Crusades. And there, there comes a re investiture of all this literature that migrated to for all intents and purposes parts East. And who gets it? Priests. They're typically if priests and nobility at this time are the only people who can read these languages and mostly priests have this interest in, in what becomes the Grimoire tradition of the West. They begin to take these spirit spiritual texts, these metaphysical texts and they begin to experiment with them specifically in a very, a highly Christianized and clerical sort of format. And we get the Grimoire tradition which is essentially their, you know, a collation of their, their magical experiments. And, and then of course finally we have the great Marsilio Ficino who I mentioned earlier, the great polymath, also cleric and scholar, who was commissioned by Cosimo de Medici. And I don't think I have to, you know, mention who he is to your learned audience, but Cosimo had several priests in his employ who actually funneled these ancient texts to him, and he was able to get. Give them to Marsilio Ficino to translate the Platonic corpus, the works of the Neoplatonists, Lycia, Amblicus and others. And of course, we know that he. He endeavored a. An incomplete translation of the Corpus Hermeticum. And so now that all this beautiful literature, spiritual literature, metaphysical literature, has been brought back to. To Europe, what do we get? We get a rebirth, the Renaissance.
- [18:58]
Jeffrey Mishlove
I suppose it's also important to consider other sources of the magical. Even before the Greeks, certainly the ancient Egyptian literature is full of magical formulas, and even the Vedas in India are replete with magical recipes.
- [19:18]
Ike Baker
Yes, yes, absolutely. In fact, there's a long history of what we consider Platonic Orientalism and that exchange. But you even see that in something like the Picatrix. Right, so the Picatrix is a grimoire, particularly that speaks on astrological magic. I believe it's from the eighth or ninth century, the, The Arabic text, and I think the second or third, maybe fourth. But one of the opening chapters, right, where the chapters are very short in, in this kind of ancient literature. But in one of the opening chapters, they. The author talks about something called the Mansions of the moon. Okay, 28 mansions of the Moon. They're basically asterisms, small constellations or stars that the moon passes in front of or through during its 28, 29.5 day cycle and the magical operations that can be endeavored with that. But it specifically credits the Vedic philosophers, the Vedic astrologers, for this, this wisdom. So there's a direct admission there. And certainly, I mean, this might be a little bit of a controversial thing to say, but the Greeks, I'm not certain they have much in the way of philosophy, mathematics, even, even cultic worship that isn't directly influenced by the Egyptians. The Egyptians taught the Greeks how to live in many, many ways.
- [21:09]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Well, there's also a connection, I think, between the Greek culture, the Greek pantheon, for example, and the early Hindu pantheon.
- [21:20]
Ike Baker
There's this thing called the interpretatio greca. Okay, so it's the Greek interpretation. And what the Greeks were doing at that time was for a very long period of time, right? They did it. They. They are known to have sort of viewed their gods and their mythologies in this way for at least a millennia, millennium. And they basically were great syncretists. You know, they didn't, they weren't saying, oh well you have Thoth over here and, and we have Hermes and there. And they were, they weren't trying to find the hard line differences so much as they were interested in the commonalities. Oh, Thoth is a scribal God. He's in charge of language communication. Right? The sound of words traveling from my, my larynx out of my mouth to your ear, that's also travel, you know, so Hermes is the God of language communication, travel, this kind of exchange. And, and so then you end up with something like, you know, thrice greatest Hermes or Hermes Mercurius. So that syncretism definitely plays a part when Alexander conquers Persia and then gains Egypt in, in that conquering and then that, that beautiful era where all of those really, really essential texts that Marsilio Ficino it re inherits. You know, you, they're written in that time from the Alexandrian period or the Hellenistic period into about the time of the fall of the Roman Empire. So that, that whole period is really is extremely syncretic and I think that's important. And I think you bringing up the, the idea of this cross, this cross pollination or this exchange between east and West, I think it, it shows maybe a couple of things. In one sense there, there undoubtedly had to have been exchange, right? I mean, particularly among the ancient peoples of the Mediterranean. They were merchants, they traveled by boat, they sold, they traded, so on and so forth, you know, and very interestingly, the island that Pythagoras was from is called Samos. And it's, it's actually closer to Anatolia, to modern day Turkey than it is to mainland Greece, you know. And so obviously a lot of the Pythagorean metaphysics was, I think, personally, I think it was very clearly communicated from people like the Lydians and, and those ancient Anatolian communities. And we even say Pythagoras is, he wore trousers. That would have been very strange to Greeks back then. They wore tunics and mantles, you know, or hymations as they were called. They did not wear pants. The reason why pants were worn by the Anatolians because they were, they were equestrian people, they rode horses so they needed to protect their legs. And you didn't have that in ancient Greece. There was not much horse riding outside of racing, which was done with chariots. So, so that's interesting. It speaks to this east west sort of the historicity of that exchange. However, I have a hypothesis which is not too far, I think I inherited from people like Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung and these people. But I do believe that the image making faculty that allows us to, allows us the facility of ideation to create, to imagine these gods, anthropomorphize them, to, to give them mythologies and relationships to each other. I think that speaks to a central tenet or mechanism in magic, which is that the imaginal faculty is, is not only an instrument of creation as in, you know, daydream or fantasy, it's also an organ of spiritual perception. And, and, and that is extremely important as far back as you go in magic.
- [25:54]
Jeffrey Mishlove
I totally concur with that view. I think we need to really emphasize what the philosopher Henry Corbin referred to as the imaginal. It strikes me as very important. But I would like to jump ahead a lot because I know you are active in a number of different contemporary magical ceremonial organizations, particularly the Order of the Golden Dawn. When we talk about syncretism there you have systems that incorporate the Jewish Kabbalah, incorporate astrology, incorporates Greek philosophy, and also has a dash, you might say, of spice from the connection with people like Aleister Crowley or even the great poet W.B. yeats. So let's talk about magic as you are currently practicing it yourself today. For example, you talk about such things as invocation and evocation and conjuring different types of magic in addition to theurgy for the listeners.
- [27:07]
Ike Baker
Before I launch into this, I want to endeavor a redefinition of magic that I think appeals to more modern people. I think many modern people are left dissatisfied with older, more archaic definitions of magic. And as somebody like Aleister Crowley would talk about, magic is the ability to cause change in conformity with the will. Now, I mean, that can, that's kind of, it's, it's not wrong, but it's, it's a little vague for my tastes because I mean, then that could be something as simple as just closing the curtains. I caused change in conformity with my will. And Crowley, to his credit, he admits that ultimately, yes, everything is magical, right? We're on a sphere in infinite or vast space, floating around a gigantic fireball. Everything from that perspective is miraculous. However, and this is another reason why I make distinctions, understanding that it's, it's. It is, at the end of the day, it's a, it's a monoculture with many phases of evolution, let's say a single plant with many flowers. But the reason why I use terms, I invoke terms like west and east or western and Eastern is because we need to be able to talk about this stuff, you know, and, and, and make it practical from where we stand. And so, you know, I, it's, I make this joke. If you want to be a really good mechanic, you can't call everything under the hood car. We've got, we've got to be able to point to discrete concepts and ideas to understand how they relate to each other. Now I would say the same is true of this idea of magic. While everything is miraculous, magic is a very specific thing, both on an essential level and a linguistic level for, you know, humanity. You could ask a bunch of people off the street what they thought magic was and you get some pretty funny and I think widely varied answers. So I would, I redefined it as the experience or phenomenology of consciousness and its intersection with metaphysical causality. Metaphysical causality. So now I'm obviously, I mean, I'm not saying that there is no causality. I'm saying that we can't see it the way that we see something that is more empirically observable, something more sensible. Right. So if scientific or empirical causality is a series of dominoes that you, you hit one and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom right down the line, okay. Magical or metaphysical causality is you've got a domino over here and a domino over here and one falls and then so does the other. And we don't see necessarily what connects them, but we notice the fact that this cause had this effect. And the deeper you go into this practice, the more you understand the produce the things produced by, by magical experiments and operations. They defy. Absolutely. And Dean Raeden talks about this. They defy statistical probability of it just being coincidental or even psychological. So with that said, I, I have inherited a magical tradition. Now that you know what I mean when I say that I have inherited a magical tradition by way of the hermetic order golden dawn, which itself was very reliant upon Agrippa. So much of it is, is reliant upon Agrippa and also more I would say contemporaneous to that time authors and particularly Freemasons like Eliphas Levy, who was, was also working in, in very much of an agrippin Christian kabbalistic milieu. And ultimately, yes, the golden dawn works very syncretically with Rosicrucianism, the Egyptian mysteries, for instance, in the, in what we call the neophyte ritual of the Golden Dawn. And I'm not telling you anything that isn't already published. So I'm not breaking any oaths, but in the, the neophyte ritual, the, the first ritual you go into you, that initiates you into the tradition, there is an imaginal component. There's a component that several of the qualified, what we call adepts of the tradition, there's a component that they are enacting on that level in the imaginal. And what that is, is it's creating in the eye of the mind of several people working in unison in tandem with a very specific symbolic vocabulary. It's not whatever you want. There's a very specific symbolic vocabulary that we're, we have to apply. The entirety of that ritual is the Weighing of the Heart ceremony from the Egyptian Book of Coming Forth by Day or the Book of the Dead. Now if you were going through that ritual ostensibly, you probably wouldn't know that. And then on the other hand, in the Inner Order of the golden dawn, the golden dawn itself is kind of an outer court where you are prepared and initiated alchemically. Right. It's an alchemical spiritual evolutionary trajectory. Once you get to the Inner Order, you find out that oh, these are Rosicrucians. We're working in the Rosicrucian tradition here. So it is very, very syncretic. It incorporates the mysteries of the ancient Mediterranean, the ancient near east and it inherits a Kabbalistic structure ultimately from the 16th century Christian, mostly German kabbalistic commentators. So that's, that's quite different than, than something like Hebrew Kabbalah. They're related, but obviously it's Kabbalah seen through a Christian lens. Right. All of these commentators were Christian priests, clerics. That is handed down as an, as a mystery tradition that reveals the mystical significance of something like the doctrine and tradition of Christ, which again is rejected by lowercase O orthodox dogma. So you've got Freemasons working in this milieu in the 1800s. And they're working in these things like the societies Rosicrucia, Rosicruciana in Anglia, which is this, the Society of Rosicrucians in England. It's a sort of para, para Masonic organization, very closely related. And they're, you know, investigating things like Christian Kabbalah, alchemy. They loved alchemy, magic, ceremonial initiation. And eventually it, they put their own spin on it. You know, the three founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden. I should say four. You know, there's, there's William Robert Woodman, William Wynn Westcott, Samuel Little Mathers and Samuel Mathers wife Mina or Moyna Mathers. She really is an unsung hero of the tradition she absolutely pioneered. She was the first one to ever go through all the rituals. The guys were like, we're gonna initiate ourselves into these high sounding order, go through any of it. They put her through it. She was the first proper golden dawn initiate. And she was also the, the sister of the philosopher Henri Bergson, which is not. A lot of people know that.
- [35:10]
Jeffrey Mishlove
It's significant because Henri Bergson is probably the primary philosopher talking about, I believe he called it Ilan Vital, the life force within each of us. Something akin maybe to chi energy.
- [35:25]
Ike Baker
Absolutely. And you see that in the golden dawn you find that because his philosophy permeates into things like the theosophical society and their little sort of communities and networks. And so a lot of the ceremonial magic of the golden dawn is based on projecting or moving Elam Vital. Not, not, you know, it's. We don't call it Elam Vital, but we, we call it energy or array or, or power or force. But certainly, certainly it is identical.
- [35:59]
Jeffrey Mishlove
You use the term etheric magic in the title of your most recent book.
- [36:04]
Ike Baker
Yes. Yeah. And I mean, the golden dawn taught me about etheric magic. And of course I have a background in Chinese medicine and qigong martial arts, so, so I was able to sort of like bridge the two. But I had to use what the golden dawn gave me, which are things like the Kabbalistic tree of life and the tria prima of, of alchemy, such as, you know, we know them as salt, sulfur and mercury, those three foundational principles of everything in, in the cosmos. But that's ultimately how that magic gets passed down is it's, it's a version of Christian Kabbalah syncretized with things like etheric energy, auras, psychism, the Tarot, obviously. Right. A lot of people don't know. Like, the most commonly used or most well known Tarot deck is arguably the Rider Waite Smith deck, which was created, or at least the really by two initiates of the Golden Dawn. Right. Pamela Coleman Smith did all of the artwork. And Arthur Edward Waite, it's also a freemason. He kind of figured out, okay, what the symbolism was going to be that came out of a Golden dawn practice. Because at a certain point a Golden dawn magician has to make, has to make their own deck of Tarot cards. So, you know, and it's not like using some sort of like Photoshop. You have to draw it out, you have to paint it out and all that stuff to specify as to the type of magic we do in the Golden Dawn. There is a series or a group of foundational documents that were penned during the foundation of the inner Order. Okay. Many of them are written by the founders. They're called the Flying Roles, and they're available online, they're available in print, published format for anybody that's in interested in looking into this. But they. They talk quite a bit about why are we here, what is this, what do we really do in this order? Why have you been training in this outer court and now have arrived into the Rosicrucian Center? What is the term that is used multiple times throughout the Flying Roles is theurgy. You are here to practice theurgy
- [38:39]
Jeffrey Mishlove
that
- [38:39]
Ike Baker
is distinct from, let's say, something we would call thaumaturgy or wonder working. Right. Theurgy, as I defined it before, is. Is divine action. God working has to do with the elevation of the soul. Thaumaturgy, on the other hand, has to do with, well, for lack of a better term, just the rearrangement of karma. You know, move, move the moving pieces of. Of. Of external reality and, and using metaphysical causality to change things in your life. Which isn't. I can't automatically say that anyone is wrong for wanting that. We all go through hard times, and many of us, in desperation, we reach out to something like that. And it can work for many people. But I must say that in the tradition in which I am trained and from the testimonies of my students as an administrator in the Order and as a private instructor, there are always, almost always, in every case, unintended consequences that are quite severe. They don't have to happen immediately. It can happen well down the line. So the golden dawn actually specifically gives us guardrails to focus magically in a theurgic direction.
- [39:54]
Jeffrey Mishlove
In other words, theurgy elevating one's consciousness toward the divine, or perhaps being receptive to an infusion of divine consciousness within oneself, very different than thaumaturgy, which is basically manipulating events out in the physical world.
- [40:16]
Ike Baker
Yes. Yeah, that's actually a beautiful way to put it, this infusion of the divine into our consciousness. I think it's very, very appropriate for that.
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Jeffrey Mishlove
But how does that differ from the Catholic mass?
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Ike Baker
Well, dogma, that's really it. I mean, much of it is orthoprax. Right. Practice is very similar. So. And that's the whole thing is that, you know, I give presentations almost every month. And again, I. I don't say controversial things to get a rise out of people. I say controversial things because there's, there's, there's certainly an importance to pointing to things that are difficult for modern people to look at. And one of these things is religion. You know, I myself rejected religion for much of my life. And then to arrive in a ceremonial, particularly a theurgic ceremonial milieu and community, you realize that if ancient people saw what we were doing working with angels, working with these disembodied intelligences we call deities and things like this, and giving offerings and doing the, the calls and singing in hymnody their praise to draw them, to draw that, as you say, very aptly, the divine, the infusion of the divine into our consciousness for that union which is divinizing, ancient people would probably find little difference between that and religion. And so what we do is quintessentially religious, which in a lot of ways, but not in a contemporary definition of that term, very much so. You know, what we call spirituality today is very much the religion of the ancient world. So we need to distinguish, I think, in order to keep our understanding of everything kind of on an even keel and not be triggered necessarily by words alone so that we can see, evaluate the situation clearly. We need to distinguish between what we mean when we say religion as a, an orientation of the consciousness towards the divine in hopes that it will infuse itself into us and something say, like an institutional religion. You know, we're not necessarily talking about the capital C Church when we talk about how religious these things are, but certainly the Mass of the Eucharist of the, the Catholic and Orthodox Churches specifically, that is high. It's high magic. It's what it. And the, the, you know, the, the Catholic Church in particular, they don't deny that. They just say, like, oh, but no other magic should be practiced. And only our guys get to do this, you know, so, so that, that's the difference. But certainly they acknowledge there's a, you know, again, it's a difference of orientation. You know, they think it's divine. And to call it magic would be a dirty word. And this is kind of what I meant earlier when I said that there are definitions of magic on an, you sort of, you know, viewpoint and then a linguistic. And so we're left to sort of straighten things up in the muck and mire of the linguistics.
- [43:40]
Jeffrey Mishlove
So it might be fair to say that the ceremonial magic practiced within the Order of the golden dawn bears many similarities to the theurgy that's practiced within many different religions, particularly the Catholic Church. But I think it's fair to say Jewish rituals also endeavor to do something very similar. And the difference being that within the golden dawn you have an intellectual framework that embraces many other threads and currents that you won't find in organized religions.
- [44:17]
Ike Baker
Yes, because something like the golden dawn and the traditions which it ultimately is an evolution of, they're not interested in dogma. They're interested in the mystical or esoteric. Right. These are called esoteric orders. This falls within the, the auspices of what we call Western esotericism. They're interested in the esoteric dimensions and that, that significance in there. You know, there's also a direct experience component. A lot of people don't necessarily feel automatically fulfilled, kind of just showing up and letting the priest do everything for you or whoever is doing the ritual. Some people want to participate at a, at a, at a higher level and, and be able to do that at home, which, which is another thing that I think is extremely human. Human. I think it's extremely human. And I think the further we get from the modes by which and in which we have engaged with our humanity on an essential level for millennia, the further we deviate from that, the further we're abstracted, the more many of us reach back in time, you know, as they say, for the quote, unquote, last sane moment we knew. And so, you know, the reincorporation of this religious life which we call spiritual, that is. Is very fulfilling. I would say that, yes, anything that orients itself to the divine and seeks to understand and remember, to remember the exalted nature of the soul, that it is a part of that divine source. I think any, any of that is theurgic and, and would certainly be in line with what the golden dawn practices. Now, if you have a copy of Israel Regardy's golden dawn, fifth Edition. Right. We call it the Black Brick. And you read that and you buy a bunch of robes in regalia, you can, you can, you know, pitch your tent and, and open a Golden dawn temple. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the, A lot that all of those orders out there are practicing theurgy under the golden dawn sort of label. So, so that's an important thing for people who are interested in this kind of thing is that you there, you have to. There's some suss that needs to happen. As somebody who works in the golden dawn tradition, not only as an administrator, but, you know, I publish a lot in collaboration with other people in Canada and Spain and Latin America and Ireland. We collaborate across the. The golden. The Greater golden dawn community. So speaking as somebody in that milieu I feel that it's prudent to point that out, that you gotta really kind of do your research if you're looking for a Golden dawn temple in your area.
- [47:15]
Jeffrey Mishlove
I'm reminded of W.B. yeats, the Nobel laureate poet who was a member of the Golden Dawn. I am under the impression from other conversations I've had that he regarded his poetry as a form of magic and it might be thaumaturgy in a sense, because I gather his ambition was to reawaken within Irish culture an awareness of their pre Christian roots, certainly.
- [47:47]
Ike Baker
And that's evidenced by some of the work that he did with other Irish natives in the golden dawn, particularly. Right. The revolutionary Maud Gan. They. They worked on a project called the Castle of Heroes, which was a way sort of their project that enlivened and began to call into their spheres the. The Celtic gods and, and. And things like the Tua, the Danan, and, and all that stuff. And, and yes, very much so. I think this becomes a preoccupation and it, it can get a little hairy, it can get a little dicey. But in, in, I would say maybe the second class of the Golden Donors, you begin to see this awakening and this identification with native ancestral lands and the type of religion practiced there in antiquity. For instance, Dion Fortune was very much a proponent of that. If somebody came to her, there are records of her saying, like, you know, ethnically, where's your family from? And say, oh, well, you know, Germany or Norway. Go there and. And practice and see what happens. Right. I mean, she herself moved to Glastonbury and set up shop. And that was, you know, legendarily the, the eye, the. The ancient island of Avalon, you know, that, that King Arthur was buried in. So there, there is a lot of that and I think it was, it was noble work. Now, I don't know if I would consider that work specifically thaumaturgic. It falls somewhere in a. There's some gray area. Think also a lot of our definitions here have really, what we're talking about is intention. Right. And that can really trip people up. You could have a sorcerer and a theorist side by side and say, okay, guys, go do your thing. And they could, what they're doing could ostensibly be virtually indistinguishable from each other, but it's the intention. Where are we reaching to. To what? Or, you know, to whom are we calling? That kind of thing. So I think that ultimately it a noble endeavor. And I tend to think there's a little bit of the music in that. Right. Especially in, in Poetry being an artistic language, and they're, you know, being a muse of poetry. I think that he was. Wbh was somebody who. He leaves us with a written record of some of his visionary experiences. So we know that he's somebody who does engage on a mystical level. And clearly his poetry is inspired. We're still talking about it today. And I think that part of what made him a great magician and what made him a great poet is that he could open up to the muses, and I think they likely had something to do with that.
- [50:49]
Jeffrey Mishlove
I was particularly impressed by the fellow who wrote the introduction to your book, A Formless Fire. I got the impression that his emphasis was that we are living in an era of a very secular world where the enchantment, the mystery seems to be gone. Everything is rational. And I even noticed you dedicated one of your books to the rational spirit of the world. It's almost too rational in some ways, in that the goal of magic was to reawaken people to the realization that we live in. In an enchanted world, a universe that is alive and conscious.
- [51:38]
Ike Baker
Absolutely. There's a couple of things I want to say there. First is that, yes, the brother Mason. I'm a Mason as well. The brother Mason and fellow golden dawn practitioner Jamie Paul Lamb, he's also an incredible astrologer. He did write the foreword to that book. He was also one of the publishers. He really gave me my start in coming out and talking about this stuff, having done it for 20 years behind closed doors. You know, he kind of goaded me out. And so I like to say, if. No, no, if there's no Jamie Lamb, there's no Ike Baker. So I owe him a lot in. In, in, in. In helping me find my voice. And certainly Jamie is a brilliant writer and author himself. So I was thrilled when he said he'd do the forward. And that is what. What he distilled from the writing and conversations he and I have had been having for. For years at that point was that, yes, you. You do have these extremes, right? We kind of always do. And at one end, you have the. I would say Cartesian or not, you know, maybe nominalist empirical rationality. And to your point, yeah, I dedicated A Formless Fire, my first book, to the rational soul of the world. And I did this because the first book I ever read from COVID to cover on esotericism was Manly Palmer Hall's Secret Teachings of All Ages. And that is. That is his dedication. The first thing you see when you open that book is this book is dedicated to the Rational soul of the world. And I really wanted to tip my hat to him as my first teacher in these things from beyond the grave. Now the interesting thing there is that rational soul is a Platonic term. And it. It actually is a far cry from what we would consider rational because in. In the Platonic verbiage, the reasoning part of this soul, synonymous with what we consider the mind. The Greeks just believed it, you know, it lived after death. But the highest part, the highest part of the soul was rational because it allowed us to see the patterns that drew us toward an understanding of the divine. The rational part of the soul is the part of you that conceives, see the brushstrokes of the great painter that can see the order. And. And so it means something very different. Now, in the same. In the same breath, you have Plato and Aristotle, who are contemporaries and one. And he's right, the great empiricist. And he takes the Platonic tradition on a complete, almost completely different track by rejecting the. Specifically the form. He rejects them as exogenous, independent, abstract realities. He believes that they're something we reach in the mind. And that sort of divide follows the Neoplatonists in various ways. It's very interesting. You see it appear as. In these little. As this kind of sort of microcosmic argument that takes various forms throughout, you know, a thousand years. But so rationalism, you know, from the Aristotelian chain goes down to people like William of Ockham in the Middle Ages and then finally Rene Descartes, and we end up with whatever it is we have now, which is. Is really. It's. It's almost. It drains the lifeblood from the experience of being a human for. For people like me. And on the other hand, though Jamie points out that there is. There's kind of this reckless credulity that takes many forms. And I think what he was trying to say, and I think it was what I was trying to do with my book, was show that. That, like, there's a middle ground somewhere here, you know, that there's. We don't have to be completely credulous. And on the other hand, we don't have to be completely dismissive on an a priori basis. Right? Which for anybody that doesn't understand that is, oh, that didn't happen. Oh, why do you say that? Because it can't. Okay? That's I. A priori, without doing any investigation, without doing any inquiry, without going and getting the experience in the content. You say that didn't happen because it can't. Happen. We do that a lot now. Okay. So there. There is a middle ground. And. And I don't know exactly that I'm right there. Right. But certainly I would say I'm very proud to be. I'm very honored to be part of a community of people like PD Newman and Ronnie Pontiac and his late wife Tamara, to be working in a milieu of people that are bridging the art and the science and finding that just that sweet spot. And I learn from them daily.
- [56:44]
Jeffrey Mishlove
As a parapsychologist, I think we understand that sweet spot very well.
- [56:50]
Ike Baker
That's why it's an honor to come and talk with you today. And I'm very sincerely, very appreciative for the space that you have created for people like us to be able to come and explain ourselves.
- [57:02]
Jeffrey Mishlove
When I first got into parapsychology, there was a prevailing attitude amongst the older generation when I was a newbie that we want to avoid all of these esoteric people because they venture too deeply into irrationality. That has changed quite a bit. I think Dean Radin has had a lot to do with that because he writes very explicitly about magic and about how, in some of his research, at least a post hoc finding, practitioners of magic seem to outperform meditators. Although there is a long tradition in parapsychology that relaxation and meditation are the best route to clearing the mind and receiving extrasensory messages or signals of one kind or another, I know you have a lot to say about these things, so I want to let our audience know, Ike, that we plan to do a number of additional interviews, because although this has been a fascinating conversation, I know we've just scratched the surface of the depth of your knowledge in this area. So we will have future interviews where we go into much more detail about magical practice.
- [58:32]
Ike Baker
I'm very appreciative that we're getting to do that. I look very much forward to that for today.
- [58:40]
Jeffrey Mishlove
Ike, thank you so much for being with me. I'm delighted to be able to share your vast knowledge and experience with the New Thinking Allowed audience and to let them know that as far as you and I are concerned, this is the first of what is likely to become a series of conversations.
- [59:01]
Ike Baker
Wonderful. Excellent. I can't wait.
- [59:04]
Jeffrey Mishlove
And for those of you watching or listening, I want to thank you for being with us because you are the reason that we are here.
- [59:36]
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- [60:05]
Jeffrey Mishlove
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Jeffrey Mishlove
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