Inside a Magical Lodge: Group Ritual in the Western Tradition

by John Michael Greer

Inside a Magical Lodge by John Michael Greer reveals what has been hidden for the true secrets of what happens inside a magical or fraternal lodge. This revelation is obviously the work of a person who loves the lodge system and wants to see it continue. Some people involved in lodges have forgotten or ignored many of the symbolic and powerful aspects of the lodge. By revealing this information, the book saves and empowers lodges.

Inside a Magical Lodge does this without being focused on any one tradition. This adds to the value of the book because the information you learn here can be applied to any magical group, even if they are not following the lodge structure.

The book works on two levels. On the practical level it describes the layout of the lodge, including the responsibilities of the officers, the stations they occupy, and even how they should move during rituals. Greer even includes information on setting up your own lodge as a corporation.

On a spiritual level, the book includes information on building the group egregore, initiation, and rituals. In fact, the book includes fifteen rites for such things as invisibility, cleansing, sealing the aura, and more.

This book is a must for you if you are part of an order or are going to join one. If you want to create your own order you will find that this book has everything you need to know in order to take advantage of the lodge structure. Whatever your purpose is, get your copy today.

Genres: Occult, Magick, Magic, Nonfiction, Religion, Esoterica

360 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

John Michael Greer is an author of over thirty books and the blogger behind The Archdruid Report. He served as Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America. His work addresses a range of subjects, including climate change, peak oil, the future of industrial society, and the occult. He also writes science fiction and fantasy. He lives in Rhode Island with his wife.

Reviews

[Andrew Watt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was in our local bookstore on Monday — I think it was Monday — and browsing around looking for a present for a friend of mine with a birthday coming up. I just turned a corner away from the science section, to go between the two stacks where all the magic books are and something shouted out, Hey! Down Here! Pick Me Up!

It turned out to be John Michael Greer's Inside a Magical Lodge: Group Ritual in the Western Tradition. I put it down, went and did some other things around the store, undid the other things I had done around the store, put back what I'd planned on buying, and eventually wound up back at the book. I bought it. Once home, it sat on my desk for all of Monday and Tuesday, before I could pick the thing up again. In the meantime, I learned that I've already read some of Greer's work over at the Archdruid's Report, because of my recent interest in Peak Oil theories and responses.

OK. The guy may be a nutter, or he may be onto something when it comes to peak oil, but that's not why I bought this book. I bought this book because I know that my grandfather Duncan was a Mason, and something about that appealed to me when I first understood that he belonged to a secret society of men. It affected me more at his funeral, when his Masonic brothers gave him a Masonic burial rite at the funeral home that none of us outsiders of the family really understood.

What I do know is that I ploughed through this book between 9:30 last night at 2:45 this morning. I felt blown open by what I learned about the methods and processes which fraternal lodges use. Greer is an initiate of at least four fraternal and magical lodges, and so he revealed none of the working traditions of his lodge. Even so, he spelled out the processes and frameworks for opening and closing a lodge, raising or lowering a lodge from one degree to another, and managing the processes of lodge business through officers and etiquette.

The book also explained how fraternal lodges (like the Masons) wound up borrowing elements of the Western/European magical traditions as a result of the interest of alchemists and kabbalists in the 18th and 19th centuries, and how magical lodges (like the Golden Dawn and the O.T.O) co-opted the forms of the fraternal initiatory lodges and used their ritual frameworks as looms on which to build new mentalities.

The book also includes a description of the process by which a group of magical students could form a lodge, initiate themselves and their colleagues, and form a working partnership for group magical work. There's clear advice on creating by-laws and constitutions that prevent abuse, and encourage unity and partnership and friendship in the lodge. Greer emphasizes the importance of developing a strong and also well-focused egregor or 'Spirit of the Lodge' which is akin to the Force of the Jedi — an energetic form that obeys the lodge members' wills, but also helps shape their actions.

There are a number of chapters that I found deeply enlightening. The one on the formalities of voting, of admitting and sending out members into the world, guarding the doors, warding the space with both external words and internal visualizations, the process of accepting new members to the lodge, the system of knocks and grips and tokens, and the role of the officers of the lodge... well. Part of me wants to go out and write up a whole set of rituals and start practicing.

My friend Marc tried starting a co-housing community many years ago, and lots of people wanted to be part of the planning and development stages. When it came to putting down real money, though, and hiring a G.C. and an architect to do the actual designs of the buildings and the construction — lots of people started missing meetings, 'forgetting' it was co-housing planning night, or spending their money on other stuff besides babysitters. So the thing came apart. Starting a magical lodge is like that, I think. It's not easy, and you need a group of people who are prepared and committed to the practice of the rituals and rites, so that it becomes second nature to all involved. Greer emphasizes that a lodge doesn't need to have an ancient tradition, though it helps; it doesn't need a higher power investing it, though it helps; and it doesn't need a high magus creating, moving and sustaining the work, though it helps. What it does need is a group of people focused on some common purposes and goals, who are prepared to use the basic 'lodge tool set' to do that work.

And it does seem that it works. Even reading through the fictionalized lodge process with its made-up rituals and constitutions and such, there's this thrill that goes through me of seeing this process in action, and being able to imagine it occurring, witnessing it. I went digging in the Interwebs this morning, and read through the lodge process for the Entered Apprentice and Fellow Craft rituals, and it seems to me that Greer has done a great job of summarizing what the rituals are, and how they work at the level of the framework (which can be adapted to any set of myths or symbols that the lodge might care to work with).

It's also clear that 'lodge' in the Western magical tradition has the potential to be as effective and real as other magical system, whether from the high Andes or the plateau of Tibet or the sand divinations of west Africa. The principal requirement of any magical system is that it be able to help you think and imagine in at least one other mentality besides your own culture's mind-set. Reading this book, I was reminded of Wade Davis's addled but highly interesting talk on the webs of myth and belief that encircle the Earth. The function of secrecy for events in the lodge is to create a highly-selective web of myth and belief with one circle of people, and separate that web of myth and belief from the rest of the world, so that it is possible to swing back and forth between two different mindsets. Or so Greer believes.

The other part of the book that I found extremely helpful and interesting is that if you can create a set of rituals to work with as a lodge, those individual ceremonies can then be translated to function as a solitary ceremony for substantially different purposes. The group rituals become the basis for spellwork and magical actions of other kinds, and Greer gives several examples. Moreover, there is a section on how the verbal (speeches and songs), the somatic (the gestures, the signs and the handshakes) and the material (the physical tableaux and symbols of the lodge) help cue and key the lodge members into different states of consciousness to enter the heightened awareness necessary to do various kinds of work.

(I'm realizing that this Book Review is wandering all over the place; it's sort of a signal to my state of mind, and to the fact that I was up until way too late in the night last night.)

Greer is much more organized than I am right now. He's got carefully arranged chapters on the processes to follow in a lodge, the process of admitting new initiates, the process of electing officers and starting new lodges, and more. You could use this book to build a credible magical system, I'm pretty certain.

That said, Greer is also up-front with the recognition that if you want to work in a magical lodge process or program, and be a member of such an organization, you had better spend some time in a fraternal lodge, too, or work the two systems in parallel. For one, joining a fraternal lodge will give you the ability to rent space in a building designed as a lodge, and it will give you practice in someone else's system to help focus and design your own. He doesn't say you have to join an organization, only that it's valuable to work in a lodge that already works so that you understand the procedures to make your own lodge work.

I'm intrigued on a number of levels. I feel like my interest in Freemasonry is re-awakened, and I'd like to follow my grandfather into this fraternal organization. But I also feel like I'd like to round up some folks and create a magical lodge process to parallel the work in the fraternal program, and learn to work with this as a magical system. Some of the work that I've done at the Boy Scouts actually falls within this framework quite nicely, and it could be expanded very well. Some of it could be done at an even deeper level or higher level, depending on how you think about it.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is worth slightly more than four stars, but somewhat less than five. It would earn five stars if I could recommend it equally to anyone starting or running a small group project of any kind, and I almost could, but it's ultimately most useful for what it says it is: folks interested in founding or running a "Magical Lodge." He defines this as simultaneously "a group of people who come together for a specific magical purpose," "a pattern of symbolic images and ideas," and "a temple in which a set of collective magical rituals [is] performed" (p. 21-22). This is a very broad definition, that could include a wide variety of fairly loose associations, but it is clear from the outset that he is primarily concerned with organizations which pattern themselves to some degree on the traditional fraternal lodges which flourished in the United States and Europe in the eighteenth and especially nineteenth centuries. Since this remains the primary model for most magical groups, and even for traditional Wiccan covens as delineated by Gerald Gardiner, that does make this a widely applicable guide.

Where Greer particularly excels is in explaining why organizations that last succeed, and why so many others fall apart. He explains why the lodge structure works when it does, and why each part of that structure has been put in place. He does not argue that therefore “thou shalt” do things exactly as he prescribes, but gives you the tools to think about how and why the template exists, and how you can work within or change that template to suit your particular needs. Especially strong is his discussion of group dynamics and how formal lodge structures and traditional lodge secrecy can contribute to both conflict and solutions in that context. Also his advice on how to incorporate apply for tax-exempt status, while not solid legal advice, is a good starting-point for thinking about making an organization that goes beyond a loose association of friends.

The book has a few flaws, the biggest for me is its extremely shoddy index, which consists of less than four pages of large-typeface text. To make this a useful reference work, someone should go back and do a professional job of indexing it to all of the major concepts. Simply reducing the size of the text might even allow a future edition to maintain the same page-count with a vastly improved index. Another unfortunate oversight is his definition of the left-hand path lodges as “deliberate use of the techniques of magical lodge work for selfish and destructive purposes,” which clearly was taken from the enemies of the LHP without any consultation with those who proclaim it. Ironically, the overtly-LHP organization the Temple of Set could be taken as an example of everything he says a magical lodge should be, even in 1998 when he wrote this.

These criticisms aside, reading this book is a step I would recommend to anyone seriously considering group magical work, especially the many aspiring Magi and gurus who want to start their own group, but also to those that may join them. This book helps to bring a very Air-oriented pursuit back down to Earth in a most useful way.

[Jeremy Preacher · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a surprisingly hard-nosed and practical look at the history, logistics, and group dynamics of the lodge system (including, and based around, groups like the Freemasons.) I have always been exceedingly skeptical of ritual magic, but despite the fact that this book was clearly written for practitioners looking for ways to expand their own toolkit, I found that the patient and detailed explanations created a fairly convincing argument for ritual magic as a valid method of self-discovery. It probably helped that at least three quarters of the basic "toolkit" resembles my very non-mystical karate dojo's practices pretty much exactly.

Definitely recommended for people interested in either or both fraternal lodge systems or ritual magic in any tradition. (The author has a background in the Golden Dawn which no doubt informs all of his writings, but he makes an obvious effort to be style-agnostic.)

[JHM · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a tribute to John Michael Greer's knowledge and writing skill that this book was relevant and interesting even to a solitary magical practitioner. There is enough generally relevant information in this book, including a fascinating discussion of the purpose and power of secrecy (not what I expected!) that it is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the serious practice of magic.

I will admit that I didn't read every page, but I read most of it without skimming and found it well worth the time.

[Kenneth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm giving it four stars. It's fascinating, but I'm not going to be forming a magical lodge, so as a whole there are large swathes of the book that aren't particularly relevant. I came this book from the author's blogs on the history of lodges and fraternal orders, which is fascinating and not really replicated here, being a bit off topic.
Still, the chapters on goal setting, specifically what is your order about, what's it's purpose, what symbolism will you use, what purpose does it all serve, that was priceless stuff that has a lot of use for anyone. If you're sort of already inherently fascinated by the topic at hand.

[Julian Greene · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned everything I need to know to create my own magickal lodge.

[Dharia Scarab · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not sure how this book ended up on my shelf, but an interesting read with practical as well as historic information on the lodge system.